Parker Ortolani

Apple has introduced an all new “Black Unity” sport band to help celebrate Black History Month. Starting today, you can visit your local Apple store (if it’s open) or order one on Apple.com. We got our hands on the beautiful new band, and here’s what it looks like.

Earlier this week, Apple made standalone sets of AirPods Max ear cushions available for purchase. If you didn’t already know, AirPods Max ear cushions are magnetic, so they’re interchangeable both for repair and customization purposes. We got our hands on a set of green AirPods Max ear cushions, and here’s what they look like when you buy them on their own.

AdAdge has shared a new Apple Watch Series 6 ad focused on the ECG functionality. The ad shows a user taking an ECG in all kinds of environments, highlighting how you no longer need to make an appointment to go to the doctor to get one taken.

When Apple announced AirPods Max back in December, they also quietly added individual magnetic ear cushion sets to the Apple Store. Well, there’s good news for AirPods Max owners who want to customize their headphones. You can now order cushions in all 5 colors and mix and match them. AirPods Max Ear Cushions are priced at $69 so they certainly aren’t cheap. But then again, if you bought a pair of $550 headphones you can probably also afford these.

Almost six years after the introduction of tvOS, Apple’s design team has released their first-ever design tool kit for the platform. Apple’s tvOS design kit includes all of the components you’d expect from design templates to colors, materials, and more. These new tools should make it much easier for designers and developers to create mock ups and concepts for their apps.

England based designer Hector Simpson has created a beautiful set of new wallpapers for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS inspired by the classic blue wave designs that were a staple in early versions of Mac OS X. The set is called “Aquex” – clearly an homage to aqua. Simpson has designed a wide array of options that use color schemes from more recent versions of macOS as well. The best part, though, is that there are dynamic wallpapers that change throughout the day.

Earlier today, reports came out saying that Apple plans to include blood sugar measurements as a flagship feature of this year’s Apple Watch Series 7. Later this year, Apple Watch could gain the ability to measure an incredibly important health metric for millions of people. With blood sugar measurements, diabetics could use their watch to stay healthy without finger pricks. This, of course, is contingent on the watch measurements being accurate. Apple wouldn’t ship a feature like this if it wasn’t accurate though.

Apple has announced that longtime hardware executive Dan Riccio will be transitioning to a new role where he will continue to report directly to Tim Cook. Not much is clear about this new role, and its description is quite vague. They note that his new role will focus on a “new project,” and officially his title will be “vice president of engineering.” This new project could be anything from the long-rumored Apple Car or even Apple’s VR/AR hardware efforts.

Today, Twitter announced an all-new initiative for combating the massive amount of misinformation on the platform called Birdwatch. Birdwatch is a collection of new crowdsourcing tools designed to allow users to flag tweets as misleading and to “write notes that provide informative context.”

Nearly two months after macOS Big Sur’s public release, the Apple human interface team has finally released an updated Sketch library optimized for its top to bottom redesign. User interface designers and developers have been anxiously awaiting this new design kit for quite awhile.

Apple has updated Apple.com with an all-new gift guide for Valentine’s Day shoppers. The gift guide is interactive and lets you shop for specific types of people such as “lovers of photography” or “lovers of music.”

It’s no secret that the Apple TV Siri Remote is controversial. It’s a powerful remote that many believe is poorly designed. It’s not easy to use in the dark, and it has very few distinct buttons. Lots of folks turn to their iPhone or Apple Watch to use as an alternate remote. That’s in part because the user interface can change. So this had us wondering what a better stand-alone Apple TV remote could look like. Turns out, the solution was in front of us all along.

There are so many big and small ways that Apple can improve watchOS. If you haven’t already, make sure to check out part 1 of our watchOS 8 concept before you continue reading. The second half of our concept includes some smaller changes to the operating system that would be welcome quality of life improvements.

We’re about six months away from the unveiling of the next version of watchOS. We haven’t heard any rumors yet, so all of these ideas are based purely on conjecture. But at the end of the day, there are lots of ways that watchOS could be improved. From more detailed health data metrics to even more glanceable information, Apple has plenty of opportunities to make watchOS more powerful.

Most Apple Watch bands from Apple and third-party manufacturers tend to have silver steel lugs. Unfortunately, they just don’t match the vast majority of watches on wrists. While these classic lugs do usually match silver stainless steel watches, other models like gold and space gray tend to get left in the dust. Some bands come with matching lugs in those colors, but it’s been particularly difficult finding bands that match the (Product) red and blue Apple Watch Series 6 models.

Alongside the Apple Watch Series 6, Apple announced a ton of new watch faces. One of those faces just so happened to be a collaboration with artist Geoff McFetridge. Apple had previously made a few watch faces in collaboration with Disney in the form of the Mickey and Mini Mouse face and the Toy Story face. But the Artist face is the first one that truly breaks the mold.

Alongside the introduction of the iPhone 12, Apple released a wave of new accessories compatible with the MagSafe ecosystem. If you have or you’re planning to get an iPhone 12, you probably want a case. Apple’s first-party offerings are far and away my top picks.

To celebrate the Chinese New Year, Apple has introduced a limited-edition pair of AirPods Pro available in multiple Asian countries, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia. This coming new year is the Year of the Ox, and Apple has created an adorable new emoji character to celebrate. On these countries’ home pages, Apple has also added a new custom logo to commemorate the occasion.

With iPadOS 13, Apple introduced the ability for apps to have multiple instances. In other words, you can have multiple Safari windows open or multiple notes, for example. It’s an incredibly useful feature and it turned the iPad into a much more powerful computer. We think it would turn the iPhone into a much more powerful phone, too.

One of the new watch faces introduced in watchOS 7 was the Memoji face. To be honest, it felt like an afterthought. It’s really just a digital clock with Memoji and Animoji that already existed slapped on top. Nevertheless, it’s a really fun watch face with tons of potential. In fact, there’s a rather obvious way to supercharge it.