Innehållsförteckning för #181 från AppleMagazine

An online rush replaced the traditional overnight queues outside Apple stores Friday as the iconic tech company began taking orders and letting shoppers get their hands on its much-vaunted smartwatch for the first time. Eager customers placed online orders for the Apple Watch as soon as Apple’s website began accepting them, shortly after midnight Pacific Time. Within half an hour, the company appeared to sell out the initial batch of watches that were available for the first official day of shipping on April 24. By midmorning, Apple’s website was showing the earliest shipping date for many watch models would be in June or later. Demand was difficult to gauge, since Apple hasn’t said how many watches were available for shipping in the first wave on April 24. And in contrast…

Apple Watch comes with a choice of watch case, band and size - there are 54 possible configurations in all. Most models come in two sizes, 38 millimeters and 42 millimeters, as measured by the height of the watch face. The larger one costs $50 more in most cases. For a few of the bands, only one size is available. There are three lines to choose from: - The cheapest is a “Sport” version with an aluminum case. You can get it with a silver case and choose a white, blue, green or pink band made of synthetic rubber. Or get a gray case with a black band. The smaller version costs $349, and the large one is $399. That’s 10 configurations - five bands, each in two sizes. -…

The publisher of “Guitar Hero” is readying a comeback tour. Activision Blizzard Inc. announced plans Tuesday to resurrect the once-popular video game franchise, which involved players rhythmically tapping guitar-shaped controllers along to music. The new entry scheduled for release this fall is titled “Guitar Hero Live” and introduces a redesigned guitar, live-action actors and an online music video network to the series. “We said we would bring it back when we’ve got true innovation,” said Jamie Jackson, creative director at “Guitar Hero Live” developer FreeStyleGames, who previously worked on “Sing Party” and the “DJ Hero” series. “We wouldn’t have come back if we didn’t think we were giving you a new experience. We genuinely feel like we’ve nailed it with innovation.” “Guitar Hero Live” will cast players as an up-and-coming…

Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection All six installments of the iconic space opera franchise are made available digitally for the first time in this generous set, which also includes various never-before-seen special features. There can surely be no better way to appreciate - or re-appreciate - some of the most momentous films ever made. FIVE FACTS: 1.  The collection includes both trilogies of the film series spanning the years from 1977 (Episode IV: A New Hope) to 2005 (Episode III: Revenge of the Sith).2.  All six movies were nominated for or won Academy Awards.3.  The Star Wars movies - also including the theatrical Star Wars: The Clone Wars - have generated a total box office revenue of $4.38 billion.4.  The franchise has also spawned books, television series, comic books and computer…

SpaceX will have to wait another day to deliver groceries and an espresso maker to the International Space Station. Fast-approaching storm clouds prevented the unmanned rocket from blasting off Monday afternoon. The company will try again Tuesday afternoon, but more bad weather is forecast. The odds of acceptable conditions are just 50-50. SpaceX halted the countdown at the 2 1/2-minute mark as a menacing storm system moved into the 11-mile keep-out zone surrounding the Falcon rocket. The company had a single second to get off the ground. “We were in a race, but we didn’t quite make it today,” a SpaceX launch commentator said. The SpaceX supply ship holds more than 4,000 pounds of food, experiments and equipment. Italy provided the specially designed espresso machine for Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti,…

Revenue from digital music matched that from physical albums and discs for the first time in 2014, a global industry body said Tuesday. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s annual report said digital and physical sales each accounted for 46 percent of the $14.97 billion in global music revenues. Income from performance rights and synchronization revenue made up the rest. The old-fashioned vinyl format has had a renaissance and now accounts for 2 percent of revenues. Total revenue was down 0.4 percent from 2013, but the group said the overall picture for the industry was positive. The federation said the rise of subscription music services was driving digital growth, and there was “substantial untapped potential for growth” in the paid-for streaming sector. “Music companies are charting a path to…

Technology firms increasingly pitch new sensors and software to U.S. airports as a way to bolster exterior security and keep intruders out, but such digital barriers come with a hefty price tag and don’t always work. An Associated Press investigation this week documented 268 instances in which people hopped over, crawled under, drove cars through or otherwise breached the fences and gates protecting the perimeters of 31 of the nation’s busiest airports from January 2004 through January 2015. How to address the problem is up for debate. “There’s a lot of things that can be done,” said John Pistole, retired director of the Transportation Security Administration, who, like airport officials, argues the perimeters are secure and that breaches are rare. “The question is whether there’s an appetite for paying for…

AN APT TIME TO CELEBRATE THE ICONIC SPACE FRANCHISE It's difficult to think of a more iconic two words in media than Star Wars. The epic space opera that began with a film of the same name - later renamed Episode IV: A New Hope - in 1977 has since spawned a six part film series, soon to be seven after the completion of filming of the J. J. Abrams-directed The Force Awakens. Indeed, those six films have now been put on sale in full digital HD form for the first time. If you fancy finally ditching those VHS tapes and DVDs and taking your Star Wars viewing experience into the 21st century, all that you have to do is browse to the iTunes Store and invest in any one…

Nokia said Tuesday it’s in advanced talks to buy the ailing French telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent, but that there was no certainty about the outcome of the discussions. In a brief statement, Nokia Corp. said the two companies are in negotiations “with respect to a potential full combination which would take the form of a public exchange offer by Nokia for Alcatel-Lucent.” Nokia stock plunged more than 6 percent in Helsinki to 7.26 euros in midday trading while Alcatel-Lucent, which has been losing money since its creation in 2006, saw its share price leap more than 12 percent in Paris. That put Alcatel-Lucent’s market value at 12.2 billion euros ($12.9 billion). The Finnish company gave no details of the talks and denied further comment except to say that a further announcement…

Underlining a change across the nation, nearly 9 out of 10 adults now say they have health insurance, according to an extensive survey released Monday. As recently as 2013, slightly more than 8 out of 10 had coverage. Whether the new number from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index turns out to be a high-water mark for President Barack Obama’s health care law, or a milestone on the path toward his goal of getting virtually all U.S. residents covered, remains to be seen. The law’s future is still up in the air, and will turn on factors ranging from an upcoming Supreme Court decision on consumer subsidies to actions by Republican leaders in states opposed to Medicaid expansion. The Gallup-Healthways survey found that the share of adults who lack insurance dropped to…

RAVE REVIEWS AND A BOX OFFICE TRIUMPH Given that The Fast and the Furious action film franchise has been running since 2001, you would need to have spent the intervening time on Mars to not be familiar with the basic formula that has prevailed since: tire-squealing car stunts, fighting, heists and plenty of macho bravado, as epitomized by its central stars, like Vin Diesel. However, the fact that another of its big names - Paul Walker - passed away during filming was always going to give the seventh Furious a different complexion. Was Furious 7 - to give it its proper title - going to live up to the formidable critical and commercial reputation built up by the previous six installments, despite not only Walker's untimely demise in a car…

From the moment I took it out of the box, Apple’s new MacBook looked and felt like an iPad. The laptop is Apple’s lightest and thinnest yet and borrows many of the iPad’s designs, including the lack of a fan. The result is a 2-pound (0.92 kilogram) laptop that feels almost non-existent on my lap. Yet it packs in a lot of power, including a high-resolution display and a sturdier keyboard. The new MacBook goes on sale Friday starting at $1,299 in silver, gold or gray (the same choices as the iPad). Its box even resembles the iPad’s. NEW KEYBOARD To make the MacBook as thin as it is - a half-inch (13.1 millimeters) at the thickest point - Apple had to redesign the keyboard. Traditional keys need to be…

Remember those declarations that teens are done with Facebook? Think again. Facebook remains the most used social media site among American teens ages 13 to 17, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center. And, surprisingly, boys visit the site more often than girls. Aided hugely by smartphones and other mobile devices, 71 percent of teens surveyed said they use Facebook, with the same percentage saying they use more than one social network of seven options they were asked about. Half the teens said they also use Instagram and four in 10 said they used Snapchat, according to the study released April 9. Among 22 percent of teens who use just one site, 66 percent use Facebook, 13 percent use Google Plus, 13 percent are Instagram users and…

The health care sector has become the hot target for hackers in recent months, according to researchers at Symantec, a leading cybersecurity company that says it’s also seeing big increases in “spear-phishing,” “ransomware” and efforts to exploit newly discovered vulnerabilities in software used by a wide range of industries. After a wave of high-profile attacks on banks and retailers over the last two years, almost 80 percent of the calls to Symantec’s global “incident response” service since December have come from health organizations, said Robert Shaker, a Symantec official who oversees the commercial service. While usually seeking valuable patient and employee data, hackers who target health organizations may inadvertently disrupt computer systems that oversee medication and other lifesaving treatments, Shaker said during a press event Monday. The health sector’s vulnerability…