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A collection of major tech blogs yesterday published their in-depth reviews for the Apple Watch, one of which was Yahoo! Tech's David Pogue, whose opinion fell in line with most other sites, describing the Apple Watch as "light-years better" than any other smartwatch, but "you don't need one."

When discussing the Watch's tethering to an iPhone, Pogue reveals a few pieces of information about the Watch that Apple has yet to comment on in any promotional material for the wrist-worn device, mostly regarding some cellular-related functionality sans iPhone.

And here’s a surprising feature that Apple hasn’t said anything about previously: When the watch is in a known Wi-Fi hotspot, the watch can perform the most essential online functions even when your phone is completely dead, turned off, or absent. It can query Siri, for example, send and receive texts, and send/receive drawings and tap patterns to other watch owners. That’s impressive.

According to Pogue's week-long experience with the Apple Watch, even with the iPhone dead or turned off, his Watch could still perform these basic iPhone-reliant functions like sending and receiving texts and drawings. He never mentions actual phone calls, which are undoubtedly still reliant on full use of an iPhone.

Pogue also mentions the Watch's ability to communicate with an iPhone over both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, meaning the two devices can communicate indefinitely as long as they stay under the same Wi-Fi connection even when they're out of Bluetooth range, a previously known but still notable aspect of the Watch.

The Wall Street Journal's Apple Watch review makes a passing reference to Pogue's claim, though providing fewer details than Yahoo! Tech's piece. "The watch does work (a little) away from the phone," The Wall Street Journal's Geoffrey A. Fowler said. "When you’re around a known Wi-Fi network, the watch can tap directly into it."

Stay up to date on the latest Apple Watch news, from estimated shipping and delivery dates to the newest reviews, before Apple's first wearable device goes up for pre-order tonight at 12:01 AM Pacific Time.

Following the release of iOS 8.3 for iPhone and iPad on Wednesday, many users have turned to the Apple Support Communities, Reddit and MacRumors discussion forums about Touch ID not working in the App Store on the latest software version. The issue affects multiple iPhone and iPad models, including the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and iPad Air 2, although the bug does not appear to affect all users.

"I just updated to iOS 8.3 and it completely removed my ability to use Touch ID in the App Store on my iPhone 6," a post on Reddit reads. "It asks for my password for each and every purchase. Is anyone else seeing this? The option to use Touch ID in the App Store is on. I have already tried turning it off and on again to re-enter my password."

The bug persists for many regardless of whether Touch ID is listed as enabled for purchases under Settings > iTunes & App Store, and there does not appear to be a proper solution for the problem yet. Apple may be forced to resolve the bug through a minor point update such as iOS 8.3.1, as it has done in the past with iOS 8.0.2 when the original iOS 8.0.1 update broke Touch ID and Wi-Fi entirely.

Fortunately, the lack of Touch ID within the App Store is mainly an inconvenience at this point for affected users, rather than a serious security issue. iPhone and iPad users will still be prompted to enter their Apple ID password when purchasing apps from the App Store, which was standard functionality before Touch ID was released on the iPhone 5s. Apple has yet to provide comment on the matter.

Apple issued a reminder on Thursday that Apple Watch pre-orders and try-on appointments begin April 10, with retail chief Angela Ahrendts stating that Apple Watch orders will be taken exclusively online at launch to ensure that customers have the best selection and experience possible.

Apple also believes that "tremendous interest" in the Apple Watch will result in demand exceeding supply at launch. Yesterday, it was reported that some Apple Watch models may be unavailable for April 24 delivery based on shipping times that briefly appeared on the Apple Online Store in the United Kingdom and Germany.

"We are excited to welcome customers tomorrow and introduce them to Apple Watch, our most personal device yet. Based on the tremendous interest from people visiting our stores, as well as the number of customers who have gone to the Apple Online Store to mark their favorite Apple Watch ahead of availability, we expect that strong customer demand will exceed our supply at launch,” said Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice president of Retail and Online Stores. “To provide the best experience and selection to as many customers as we can, we will be taking orders for Apple Watch exclusively online during the initial launch period.”

Apple Watch pre-orders begin on April 10 at 12:01 AM Pacific, or equivalent local times in other countries, in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and United Kingdom. Apple Watch officially goes on sale April 24 in the aforementioned launch countries, although in-store pickup will not be accepted without a reservation.

Apple Pay is now accepted by ten additional stores and partners in the United States, including T-Mobile retail stores, GameStop and a trio of NBA franchises in the Golden State Warriors, Orlando Magic and Phoenix Suns. The mobile payments service, compatible with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and soon Apple Watch, can now be used at 68 participating stores throughout the country as Apple continues to add new partners.

The full list of newly added participating stores and partners:

— ACME
— Davis Food & Drug
— Firehouse Subs
— GameStop
— Golden State Warriors
— Luby’s
— Orlando Magic
— Phoenix Suns
— Rubio’s
— T-Mobile Stores

Apple Pay is a NFC-based mobile payments service that debuted on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus last October, enabling customers to make contactless payments by holding their smartphone up to a payments terminal at participating vendors. The service is secured by Touch ID and will also be compatible with the iPhone 5 or later when paired with an Apple Watch, which is available for pre-order April 10 and goes on sale April 24.

Disney is one of the partners Apple is working with on its upcoming streaming television service, and according to a new report from The Street, Disney and Apple are disagreeing over how many Disney-owned channels will be available in Apple's television content bundle.

Disney is pushing Apple to include most of its channel offerings, while Apple wants to offer fewer channels in an effort to keep prices lower. Disney's channels include ESPN and Disney Channel, along with several spinoffs channels like Disney Junior, Disney XD, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, and more. Disney also owns ABC channels that Apple feels are essential, like ABC Family, so Apple may be forced to agree to offer more Disney channels to ensure negotiations go smoothly.

Disney is said to be asking for "the strongest deal it can get," according to one of The Street's sources, to avoid upsetting other cable providers and endangering existing revenue streams.

Disney likely would insist that Apple offer all of its channels to as many subscribers as possible. Many cable operators have "most favored nation" clauses in their contracts with Disney that could require ESPN to be carried as widely as possible. If Apple enabled its subscribers to pick and choose which channels to take, other cable channels could use that clause to cut back on lesser watched Disney channels.

Disney CEO Bob Iger sits on Apple's board of directors and was a longtime friend of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and the two companies have worked together several times over the years. Disney was the first company to partner with Apple to offer content like television shows through iTunes in 2005. Despite the disagreement over the number of Disney channels to be included in Apple's television service, The Street suggests that Disney is likely to remain one of Apple's content partners.

Apple is planning to announce its streaming television service and its content partners at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, ahead of a fall launch. Rumors have suggested the service will include approximately 25 channels and will be offered at a price between $30 and $40.

Apple's television service announcement may also be accompanied by the launch of a new Apple TV set top box, which is said to be in the works. The set-top box is rumored to include a full App Store, Siri integration, an A8 processor, and a dramatic increase in internal storage.

Apple today launched a newly updated Siri website, which gives a comprehensive look at the voice assistant built into the company's iOS devices. The site opens with a quick overview of what Siri can do, and then provides users with a list of categories featuring Siri's different abilities: At a Glance, Staying in Touch, Getting Organized, Sports, Entertainment, Out and About, Getting Answers, and Tips and Tricks.

Talk to Siri as you would to a friend and it can help you get things done -- like sending messages, placing calls, or making dinner reservations. You can ask Siri to show you the Orion constellation or to flip a coin. Siri works hands-free, so you can ask it to show you the best route home and what your ETA is while driving. And it's connected to the world, working with Wikipedia, Yelp, Rotten Tomatoes, Shazam, and other online services to get you even more answers. The more you use Siri, the more you'll realize how great it is. And just how much it can do for you.

Each category offers a look at the different commands that Siri can work with. "At a Glance" gives a quick rundown of a random assortment of questions that can be asked, like "When is the sunset in Paris?" and "What movies are playing today?" while other categories offer a more specific selection of available commands.

"Getting Organized," for example," includes commands specific to apps like Calendar and Reminders, such as "What does the rest of my day look like?" and "Remember to pick up dry cleaning next Friday." "Entertainment" includes commands like "Show me the trailer for Boyhood" and "Buy the latest season of Homeland."

Each of the pages offers a look at features many iOS users might not have known Siri was capable of, and they're organized in a compelling grid-like view that's easy to read and outfitted with pictures for visual appeal.

Apple previously had a site that offered information on Siri, but it was just a single page that offered more of an overview of what Siri can do rather than something more specific that drilled down into actual commands. The new Siri site offers a much deeper look at Siri's abilities.

Today's Siri website revamp follows the release of iOS 8.3 that added new Siri languages and the ability to make voice calls over the speakerphone using Siri. Apple has also added new Siri features to several additional countries, making local search, directions, and more available in countries like Brazil, Denmark, India, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Thailand, and Turkey.

Over the last few weeks, several previously unknown Apple acquisitions have surfaced. In March, Bloomberg shared news of the company's purchase of data analytics firm Acunu, and earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that Apple had acquired search technology startup Ottocat in 2013.

TechCrunch has now shared news of another acquisition that happened in 2014 -- the purchase of Dryft, a startup that specialized in creating keyboard apps. Dryft chief technology officer Randy Marsden, who also co-founded Swype, is listed as an "iOS Keyboard Manager" that joined Apple in September of 2014, suggesting the acquisition may have occurred around that date.

Dryft's technology was a keyboard that appeared only on the screen when a user placed a finger on the display, and as described by TechCrunch, it's "essentially a keyboard for tablets that tracks your fingers' movements," meaning it appears wherever your fingers are placed on the screen.

It is not clear if Apple plans to incorporate this specific technology into iOS or if it made the purchase of Dryft to acquire the company's employees to work on other keyboard features. As of iOS 8, Apple's operating system supports keyboards created by third-party developers, but the company has continued work on its own keyboard. iOS 8 brought keyboard improvements like QuickType, which offers word predictions to speed up typing.

Apple confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch with its standard purchase statement: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Apple today released iOS 8.3, the third major update to iOS 8. Seeded to developers in February and to public beta testers in mid-March, iOS 8.3 brings several new features and design tweaks to the operating system.

iOS 8.3 is available immediately as an over-the-air download. Xcode 6.3 is also available, as is a 7.2 update for the Apple TV and a 1.2 update for Swift, Apple's programming language.

iOS 8.3 has a heavy focus on emoji improvements, bringing an updated emoji picker that organizes emoji into categories in an easily scrollable list, new diversified emoji with expanded family options, and emoji skin tone modifiers for changing the look of people emoji. There are also several new flags and updated phone, computer, and watch emoji that now resemble the iPhone, iMac, and Apple Watch.

Other iOS 8.3 changes include wireless CarPlay, letting users connect their iPhones to their CarPlay systems sans Lightning cable, support for Google two-factor authentication that makes it possible to add Google accounts without the need for app specific passwords, and Apple Pay support for the China UnionPay network. On the iPhone 6 Plus, in landscape mode, there's now a bold/italics/underline key for formatting text. Previously, the key only allowed for bolding.

There are also minor changes to Passbook (dividing Apple Pay and Passes) and the Photos app (icon overlays for albums). Siri has gained new languages plus the ability to make calls using the iPhone's speakerphone, and in Messages, there's now an option to enable filtering to separate iMessages from friends from iMessages from Unknown Senders.

One of smaller but most notable UI changes includes an update to the space bar, which has been elongated to prevent users from hitting the period key in Safari when attempting to make a space. It's also now possible to turn on a setting to allow you to download free apps without the need to enter your password. We have a full list of the changes in iOS 8.3 in our iOS 8 Features Roundup.

iOS 8.3 also has a very long list of bug fixes, which we've added in below. There are multiple fixes to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, orientation, messages, and more.

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Following the circulation of Apple Watch reviews and news this morning, German-based Apple tech site Macerkopf.de [Google Translate] discovered what appears to be the shipping dates for every line of the Apple watch in Germany.

On the German version of Apple's official website, every model in the Sport lineup features a 4/24-5/8 delivery estimate, which is up to a two week time frame after the Watch's April 24 launch. For the middle-tier Apple Watch collection, the Sport Band, Milanese Loop, and Black Classic Buckle all feature the same 4/24-5/8 estimate. Everything else in the 20-Watch collection, including the Leather Loop and Link Bracelet options, denote a 4-6 week shipping estimate.

Complete shipping estimates:

- Aluminum Case with Sport Band: "Delivers 4/24 to 5/8"
- Stainless Steel Case with Sport Band: "Delivers 4/24 to 5/8"
- Stainless Steel Case with Milanese Loop: "Delivers 4/24 to 5/8"
- Stainless Steel Case with Black Classic Buckle: "Delivers 4/24 to 5/8"
- Stainless Steel Case with Modern Buckle: "Dispatched in 4 to 6 weeks"
- Stainless Steel Case with Leather Loop: "Dispatched in 4 to 6 weeks"
- Stainless Steel Case with Link Bracelet: "Dispatched in 4 to 6 weeks"
- All Edition Models Dispatching in May

To see the shipping dates, a Watch option must first be added into a user's favorite list. The United States store has yet to showcase similar shipping dates to corroborate Germany's estimates, though the exact same match-up of band option and dates can be found on the UK store currently. Interestingly, every version of the Apple Watch Edition only states a vague "May" shipping date, with no other specific frame of time mentioned.

Update 10:34 AM PT: The shipping estimates have now been removed from the U.K. and German Apple Store websites.

Apple lifted the embargo for large websites to publish their Apple Watch reviews this morning, providing us with detailed insight about various functions of the device. Battery life in particular has been one area of interest for several prospective Apple Watch buyers, and most early reviews found the Apple Watch to fulfill its promise of all-day battery life on a single charge.

Well-known tech journalist Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal offers one of the better looks at the Apple Watch's battery life in her video of using the device in day-to-day life. The video keeps track of how much battery life the Apple Watch uses while Stern goes about her daily routine in New York, with the device fully charged at 7:30 AM and having five percent remaining at just past midnight.

Apple confirmed last month that the Apple Watch will have up to 18 hours of battery life with mixed usage, and last up to 72 hours in Power Reserve mode. Early reviews find the Apple Watch generally on par with, or falling slightly short of, those numbers based on articles published by Daring Fireball, The Verge, The Wall Street Journal, Techpinions and Re/code. We've compiled those findings in the roundup below.

John Gruber, Daring Fireball:

"After more than a week of daily use, Apple Watch has more than alleviated any concerns I had about getting through a day on a single charge. I noted the remaining charge when I went to bed each night. It was usually still in the 30s or 40s. Once it was still over 50 percent charged. Once, it was down to 27. And one day — last Thursday — it was all the way down to 5 percent. But that day was an exception — I used the watch for an extraordinary amount of testing, nothing at all resembling typical usage. I’m surprised the watch had any remaining charge at all that day. I never once charged the watch other than while I slept."

Nilay Patel, The Verge:

"By the end of each day, I was hyper-aware of how low the Apple Watch battery had gotten. After one particularly heavy day of use, I hit 10 percent battery at 7pm, triggering a wave of anxiety. But most days were actually fine. Apple had a big challenge getting a tiny computer like this to last a day, and it succeeded — even if that success seemingly comes at the expense of performance."

Geoffrey Fowler, The Wall Street Journal:

"The battery lives up to its all-day billing, but sometimes just barely. It’s often nearly drained at bedtime, especially if I’ve used the watch for exercise. There’s a power-reserve mode that can make it last a few hours longer, but then it only shows the time."

Ben Bajarin, Techpinions:

"From my experience with battery life, Apple appears to have undersold it. The Apple Watch easily lasted a day, even a long day of heavy use. My Apple Watch battery never got below 20% and only once even got close to that. The day it did was a long day when I took it off the charger at 5:45am and used it frequently, including tracking my activity during a two hour tennis match, and I didn’t plug it back in until 10:30pm.

With my average usage, I tried to see how long I could go and several times over the week got nearly two days of battery life. This will obviously vary by person, but the fact Apple Watch users will not have to worry about battery life over the course of the day no matter how heavy it is used is important for the experience."

Lauren Goode, Re/code:

"Apple has promised that the battery will last 18 hours per charge with normal use. It hasn’t yet died on me during the day, or even late at night. My iPhone actually conked out before the Watch did; this happened to Bonnie, too.

One day this past week, I woke up at 5:15 am, exercised for an hour using the Watch, ran Maps during my commute, made phones calls and received notifications throughout the whole day, and by 11:00 pm the Watch was just hitting its Power Reserve point."

Apple Watch goes on sale April 24, with pre-orders and try-ons beginning April 10.

As expected, Apple today released OS X Yosemite 10.10.3, the first significant feature-rich update the operating system has received. OS X 10.10.3 was first seeded to developers in February, and was provided to public beta testers in March.

The OS X 10.10.3 update can be downloaded through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store. OS X Yosemite Recovery Update 1.0 is also available to improve the reliability of Yosemite Recovery when restoring from a time machine backup.

The OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 update includes the new Photos app and improves the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac.

The update also includes the following improvements:
- Adds over 300 new Emoji characters
- Adds Spotlight suggestions to Look up
- Prevents Safari from saving website favicon URLs used in Private Browsing
- Improves stability and security in Safari
- Improves WiFi performance and connectivity in various usage scenarios
- Improves compatibility with captive Wi-Fi network environments
- Fixes an issue that may cause Bluetooth devices to disconnect
- Improves screen sharing reliability

Earlier Yosemite releases, including OS X 10.10.1 and 10.10.2, brought mostly under-the-hood bug fixes and reliability improvements to the operating system, but OS X 10.10.3 includes major new features, like the Photos for OS X app.

Designed to be a replacement for Aperture and iPhoto, Photos for OS X was first announced during the 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference, where Apple promised it would see an "early 2015" release. The Photos for OS X app takes on Yosemite-style design elements, with an emphasis on flatness and translucency, and it integrates with both iCloud Photo Library and the Photos for iOS app.

Reviews of the Photos for OS X app have suggested that while it's a suitable replacement for iPhoto, with speed improvements and better tools than were found in iPhoto, it lacks many power features that professional users have become accustomed to in its current incarnation, like plug-ins, a loupe, brushable adjustments, and custom metadata fields.

Along with the new Photos for OS X app, OS X 10.10.3 brings a new emoji picker that consolidates emoji into a single scrollable page with clear labels, new diversified emoji and emoji skin tone modifiers, additional flag emoji and updated emoji for the iPhone, iMac, and Apple Watch.

There's also support for Google 2-step verification when setting up accounts in System Preferences, doing away with the need for app specific passwords, and there are Force Touch APIs for developers, which will let them incorporate Force Touch gestures into their apps.

As noted by MacRumors reader Joe, the Memory section of the Activity Monitor app has been redesigned to make memory usage more clear to users. The App Memory, Wired Memory, and Compressed sections are now listed as part of "Memory Used" rather than listed separately.

Wired earlier this morning posted an interview with Apple Human Interface Chief Alan Dye, in which Dye discusses a few lesser-known details of the Apple Watch, specifically giving Wired an inside look at the obsessive level of detail that went in to making each of the Watch's customizable faces.

During the interview, Dye elaborates on his team's enormous talent, but says what makes them work so well is that they "really care" about what they create. Echoing back to Steve Jobs' creative concern over every bit of minutiae within any one of Apple's products, Dye begins discussing the process of capturing a simple flower bloom for one of the Apple Watch faces.

Yet what Dye seems most fascinated by is one of the Apple Watch’s faces, called Motion, which you can set to show a flower blooming. Each time you raise your wrist, you’ll see a different color, a different flower. This is not CGI. It’s photography.

“We shot all this stuff,” Dye says, “the butterflies and the jellyfish and the flowers for the motion face, it’s all in-camera. And so the flowers were shot blooming over time. I think the longest one took us 285 hours, and over 24,000 shots.”

The same goes for the jellyfish face, which was captured by the team after building a tank within the design studio and shooting a variety of different species at 300 frames-per-second with high-end Phantom cameras. The resulting 4096 x 2304 images were shrunk down to fit the Watch screen, Dye noting “when you look at the Motion face of the jellyfish, no reasonable person can see that level of detail. And yet to us it’s really important to get those details right.”

The Mickey Mouse face features a similar level of detail, with the popular mouse's feet tapping in exact rhythmic beat to a one second count. Dye claims that if one were to line up 100 Apple Watches with the Mickey face on, his foot would tap in perfect unison on each one. The astronomy faces are some of Dye's favorites, however, with the Apple chief noting how hard the team worked to perfect the Earth and Moon's daily orbits and cycles.

Dye points out the subtlety of this face. “When you tap on the Earth and fly over the moon: We worked really hard with our engineering team to make sure the path you take from your actual position on the Earth to where the moon is and seeing its phase, is true to the actual position of the Earth relative to the moon.”

Wired interviewed both Dye and Apple vice president of technology Kevin Lynch earlier in April, with the two providing some behind-the-scenes knowledge on everything from the origins of the Apple Watch to the reasoning behind the look of the fitness-related medals.

Check out the full Wired interview here.