MacRumors

Still three weeks away from being released to the public, the Apple Watch has received another design award for Apple ahead of launch, this time receiving the "Best of the Best" designation by the German Red Dot design awards (via aBlogtoWatch).

Previously winning the Gold Award, and being called "an icon", at the International Forum Design awards earlier in March, the Red Dot award counts a second win for the wearable in the design category before its April 24 launch date.

The Apple Watch wasn't alone in the smartwatch category, however, as the MB&F HM6 Space Pirate horological smartwatch also received the "Best of the Best" designation.

The Red Dot jury judged the Apple Watch, and all products in the category, on its functionality, durability, ergonomics, and even "symbolic and emotional content", amongst other criteria. As aBlogtoWatch points out, there's a drastic monetary difference between the two winning smartwatch devices this year, even when comparing the $17,000 Apple Watch Edition to the Space Pirate.

Red Dot design award jurors understandably fawned over what is still, by far, the best-looking smartwatch, even though it isn't on the market yet. Given the limitations of technology, as well as the potential of what can come of connected smartwatches, I think it makes a lot of sense that the Red Dot award jury decided to not only recognize the Apple Watch, but consider it as a "Best of the Best" product.

It's an interesting Best of the Best Red Dot watch design award this year, as, on the one hand, you have the $230,000 MB&F HM6 Space Pirate that is limited to just 50 pieces, and on the other hand, you have the mostly $1,000 and under Apple Watch that could easily have 50 million units on wrists before long.

The Product Design category of the Red Dot awards celebrates 31 total areas of design, including everything from living room furniture to vehicle accessories, with the "Watches" category getting introduced this year to compensate for the increasingly crowded smartwatch market.

The Product Design category specifically in 2015 had 4,928 entries with only 81 total products receiving the "Best of the Best" award recognition. A gala will be held this June 29 at the Aalto-Theater in Essen, Germany for all of the Best of the Best Red Dot award winners. The winners not only receive the Red Dot designation materials to use on product packaging and marketing, but will have their products displayed in the Red Dot Design Museum in Essen for up to a year.

Samsung will provide Apple with A9 chips for its next-generation iPhone and other devices, reports Bloomberg, confirming a previous report in early February. Over the past couple of months there had been confusion and conflicting reports as to whether Samsung, Apple's longtime supplier and rival, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) would produce the chips.

Samsung will start making Apple A9 processor chips at its Giheung plant in South Korea, the people said, asking not to be identified because the contract hasn’t been discussed publicly. Additional orders will go to Samsung’s partner Globalfoundries Inc., according to another person familiar with the arrangement.

In 2013, Apple signed a chip production deal with TSMC in hopes of diversifying its supply chain resources and reducing its reliance on Samsung amid the two companies' ongoing legal disputes.

It appears that Samsung's investment in manufacturing technologies won Apple over, with TSMC Chairman Morris Chang recently telling investors that the company would lose ground to Samsung in producing the most advanced chip technology possible in 2015, though he also noted the company would regain that advantage in 2016.

Samsung is reportedly producing the chips with its advanced 14-nanometer process, which has outpaced TSMC's capabilities and results in smaller chips that consume less energy and provide more processing power. The Korean company is also said to be providing memory chips for Apple's next-generation devices.

Thus far, little is known about what the next-generation iPhones or iPads could include other than new A9 chips, but new reports indicate Apple could be bringing its new Force Touch technology to the devices. Other rumors also suggest the A9 may make its way into the "iPad Pro", which may debut in late 2015. It's likely the 2015 versions of the iPad Air and iPad mini will be outfitted with versions of the A9 as well.

Apple today seeded the seventh beta of OS X Yosemite to developers, three days after seeding the sixth OS X Yosemite beta and two months after releasing the first OS X 10.10.3 beta.

The new beta, build 14D130a, is available for registered developers through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store and through the Mac Developer Center.

In today's beta notes, Apple has added Safari and Mail as focus areas for testing, in addition to previous testing areas that include Wi-Fi captive networks, screen sharing, and Arabic/Hebrew system languages. The known issues section lists just one remaining issue with missing thumbnails when using Time Machine to restore a Photos library upgraded from Aperture.

OS X 10.10.3 includes several new features, like the Photos for OS X app. Designed to integrate with iCloud Photo Library and the Photos app on iOS, the Photos for OS X app is a replacement for both iPhoto and Aperture. Reviews have suggested that while Photos is a suitable replacement for iPhoto, with more advanced tools and performance optimizations, it may leave professional users disappointed in its initial incarnation.

Along with the new Photos for OS X app, earlier OS X 10.10.3 betas have introduced a redesigned emoji picker that consolidates emoji into a single scrollable page with clear labels, new diversified emoji and emoji skin tone modifiers, new flag emoji and updated emoji for the iPhone, iMac, and Apple Watch, and support for Google 2-step verification when setting up accounts in System Preferences.

With the fifth and sixth OS X 10.10.3 betas, there were just two minor bug fixes, and today's update likely includes similar small changes. Given that we're on the seventh beta, OS X 10.10.3 is undoubtedly getting close to completion and we may see a public release of the software in the near future.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has a respectable track record at reporting on Apple's upcoming plans, issued a note to investors on Thursday that claims the next-generation iPhone will have a FPC-made capacitive Force Touch sensor under the backlight, laminated with metal shielding. Kuo adds that the change may be significant enough for Apple to call its next iPhone the "iPhone 7" instead of the so-called "iPhone 6s."

The analyst claims that the hardware design of Force Touch will be different than the technology used in the Apple Watch and 12-inch Retina MacBook. Instead of directly detecting the pressure applied by fingers, the new improved Force Touch hardware will monitor the contact area where a finger presses to determine how much pressure is being applied. The sensor will use capacitive technology and thin FPC material to save space.

"We believe that iPhone’s Force Touch sensor doesn’t directly detect the pressure applied by fingers. Instead, it monitors the contact area on which the finger touches the screen to decide how big the pressure is.

There are two possible structural designs for Force Touch from a technology viewpoint. The Force Touch sensor can either be placed between the cover lens and the In-cell touch panel or under the In-cell touch panel’s backlight. In the first position, the technological challenge lies with how to produce the transparent Force Touch sensor; in the second position, the challenge is how to reduce signal interference from in-cell touch panel. Our understanding of the technology is that producing a transparent Force Touch sensor is more difficult, so the chances are the new iPhone this year will opt for the second position."

Kuo adds that Apple is likely to change the hardware design of Force Touch again in 2016 by removing the metal shielding to achieve a thinner form factor. He notes that the changes should improve the iPhone user experience, but will likely create uncertainty for Force Touch module suppliers TPK and GIS, as well as metal shielding suppliers Minebea, Hi-P and Jabil.

Kuo claims that Apple is still targeting 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch models for its next-generation iPhones, akin to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and notes that a 4-inch model is unlikely to be released this year. KGI Securities estimates iPhone shipments will total 25 to 30 million units in the third quarter, helping drive momentum for Force Touch components within the supply chain.

Apple's pressure-sensing Force Touch technology could be exclusive to the so-called "iPhone 6s Plus," according to Taiwan's Economic Daily News (via GforGames). The report, which claims Taiwanese manufacturer TPK will be responsible for supplying Apple with the Force Touch sensors, makes no mention of the "iPhone 6s," leading to speculation that the technology could be reserved for the larger iPhone 6s Plus.

It has been reported that Apple will include Force Touch technology on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus on at least three occasions since the beginning of this year. TechNews Taiwan reported that the iPhone 6s will gain Force Touch and 2GB of RAM in January, while AppleInsider reported in March that Apple's next-generation iPhones will feature Force Touch, but lack a previously rumored dual-lens camera system.

The Wall Street Journal corroborated both reports later in March, claiming that Apple will introduce Force Touch and is considering a new pink color option for its next-generation iPhones. Currently built into the upcoming Apple Watch and 12-inch Retina MacBook, Force Touch lets devices distinguish between a light tap and a hard press, enabling new gestures that yield different actions depending on how much pressure is applied.

While this latest report should be treated with a proverbial grain of salt, making Force Touch exclusive to the iPhone 6s Plus would not be an unprecedented move. Apple limited optical image stabilization (OIS) to the iPhone 6 Plus, and the larger smartphone also features a landscape mode. The higher cost of Force Touch sensors could be another reason that Apple would limit the technology to the more expensive iPhone 6s Plus.

In a new interview with Wired, Apple vice president of technology Kevin Lynch and head of human interface design Alan Dye shed some light on the intricate origins of the Apple Watch, from its secretive beginnings to its legacy in a post-Steve Jobs Apple.

Leaving a job at Adobe, Lynch walked onto the Apple Watch project blind and found a team of Apple engineers working away with bare-bones prototypes that included everything from vague sketches to the inclusion of an old-school iPod click wheel.

Apple decided to make a watch and only then set out to discover what it might be good for (besides, you know, displaying the time). “There was a sense that technology was going to move onto the body,” says Alan Dye, who runs Apple’s human interface group. “We felt like the natural place, the place that had historical relevance and significance, was the wrist.”

Following Jobs' death in 2011, Jony Ive began envisioning what would eventually become the Apple Watch, and tasked Apple's head of user interfaces, Alan Dye, to custom-fit iOS 7 - which the group was just working on - into a wrist-worn wearable. After months of experimenting, the team settled on the thesis that interactions with the device shouldn't be long, arduous glances, but quick snapshots of information.

Our phones have become invasive. But what if you could engineer a reverse state of being? What if you could make a device that you wouldn’t—couldn’t—use for hours at a time? What if you could create a device that could filter out all the bullshit and instead only serve you truly important information? You could change modern life. And so after three-plus decades of building devices that grab and hold our attention—the longer the better—Apple has decided that the way forward is to fight back.

Apple, in large part, created our problem. And it thinks it can fix it with a square slab of metal and a Milanese loop strap.

The team created dozens of prototypes, including an iPhone rigged to a velco strap attached to a tester's wrist, until landing on the design launching later this month. They optimized the software with features like Short Look and Long Look, getting the Watch to differentiate between saving a notification for later when a user puts his or her wrist back down quickly after buzzing, or displaying it immediately the longer the wrist is held up.

That buzzing, which Apple has dubbed the Taptic Engine, also required significant refinement, with the team researching synesthesia, using one sense to recognize another, to tweak the taptic feedback just right.

When they had the engine dialed in, they started experimenting with a Watch-specific synesthesia, translating specific digital experiences into taps and sounds. What does a tweet feel like? What about an important text? To answer these questions, designers and engineers sampled the sounds of everything from bell clappers and birds to lightsabers and then began to turn sounds into physical sensations.

There were weekly meetings where the software and interface teams would test out, say, the sound and feeling of receiving a phone call. Ive was the decider and was hard to please: Too metallic, he’d say. Not organic enough. Getting the sounds and taps to the point where he was happy with them took more than a year.

Dye points out that while the immense amount of variations on the Watch can be initially intimidating, that vast customization option was always the plan for the Apple Watch. "We didn’t want to have three variations, we wanted to have millions of variations," Dye says. "Through hardware and software, we could do that." He also maintains that thanks to the deep variety of options, the $349 Apple Watch Sport and $17,000 Apple Watch Edition are "very different products."

But, as Wired points out, the company is equally concerned with the Watch's cultural impact as its monetary one. Lynch describes visiting with his family and not feeling the obtrusive invasion of the outside world attempt to distract him with long glances at his iPhone. Though it's still up in the air whether Apple will achieve all the goals it's setting out to accomplish with the Apple Watch, Wired caps the interview by noting, "In all the time we’ve been talking, he's never once looked at his phone."

Check out the full Wired interview here.

European regulators are scrutinizing Apple's discussions with record labels for its much-rumored streaming music service, according to Financial Times. The report claims the European Commission has contacted several labels and digital music companies to request information about their agreements with Apple, although these actions do not guarantee it will launch a formal antitrust investigation.

The report, citing people familiar with the matter, claims that the European Commission is "concerned" that Apple will use its size and influence to persuade the music groups to abandon free, ad-supported services such as Spotify. Apple has nearly 1 billion iTunes users, and the company could face hefty fines and be required to change its business practises if committed of wrongdoing.

Apple is expected to launch a revamped streaming music service at WWDC in June, although it will reportedly not offer a free, ad-supported streaming option like Spotify and some other competitors offer. The service will reportedly be deeply integrated into iTunes on Mac and the stock Music app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, and apps will also be available for Apple TV and Android.

Apple Watch continues to be marketed around the world leading up to its highly-anticipated launch in April, this time making its Canadian debut in the upcoming May issue of fashion magazine Flare. The publication features actress Hailee Steinfeld wearing an Apple Watch Sport on two separate covers in both silver and space gray, accompanied by an article listing things you can do with your Apple Watch.

In addition to the fashion shoot, the magazine outlines more than a dozen ways the Apple Watch can be used beyond timekeeping, such as for ordering a coffee, boarding a flight, learning a new language, hailing a cab, managing finances, tracking health and fitness, identifying songs, controlling a vehicle, becoming a karaoke star, controlling an Apple TV, unlocking a hotel room and more.

Apple Watch has been featured in several fashion and fitness magazines worldwide in recent months, including Self, Vogue, Style, East Touch, YOHO, Fitness Magazine and Elle. Apple has heavily promoted its first wearable device in the fashion industry leading up to its launch, and has set up boutique shops at Galeries Lafayette in Paris, Isetan in Tokyo and Selfridges in London for the product.

Canada is one of nine countries where the Apple Watch is set to launch later this month, alongside the United States, Australia, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and United Kingdom. The wrist-worn device will be available for pre-order and try-on appointments beginning April 10 ahead of an April 24 release date. Wider international availability is likely to occur in the near future.

Though the Retina MacBook isn't officially launching until April 10, an early 64-bit Geekbench benchmark of the entry-level machine was spotted this afternoon, giving us our first glimpse at how the new ultra thin MacBook measures up to existing products in Apple's notebook line.

The 1.1GHz entry-level Retina MacBook with an Intel Core M-5Y31 processor was benchmarked twice, giving two single-core scores of 1924 and 2044, and multi-core scores of 4038 and 4475. Comparatively, the 2015 entry-level MacBook Air with a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 processor has seen scores in the neighborhood of 2881 (single-core) and 5757 (multi-core), so it's a good bit faster than the new MacBook.

Performance wise, the Retina MacBook CPU seems to be par with the higher-end 2011 MacBook Air with a 1.8GHz Core i7 processor, but graphics performance on the new MacBook, which Geekbench does not measure, should be far superior to the 2011 machine. Taking into account the Intel HD 5300 graphics and an improved SSD, the Retina MacBook will outperform the aforementioned 2011 MacBook Air even though the CPU speeds are similar.

Apple offers two additional processor upgrade options for the Retina MacBook, at 1.2GHz in the higher-end machine and at 1.3GHz as an optional build-to-order upgrade, both of which will see somewhat better performance results than the entry-level 1.1GHz processor.

The new Retina MacBook, which is Apple's thinnest and lightest notebook to date, will go on sale on April 10. Prices start at $1,299 for the 1.1GHz/8GB/256GB model and $1,599 for the 1.2GHz/8GB/512GB model.

Update 8:34 PM: The original Geekbench results have been deleted, but a Google cache is available.

(Thanks, David!)

For its upcoming streaming TV service, Apple is asking its content partners to take on the job of streaming television shows and movies to its customers, reports Re/code. Rather than hosting streaming content itself, Apple is requesting that its partners build out the necessary infrastructure and take on the related costs.

Apple is asking TV networks to handle the responsibility and cost of the streaming infrastructure associated with its Web video service, industry executives say. That issue is one of many unresolved questions about the proposed service, which Apple would like to launch next fall but can't until it lines up programming deals.

Negotiations for the streaming service are reportedly being conducted by iTunes chief Eddy Cue, who has told networks and potential partners that Apple wants to concentrate on software and hardware, areas where it excels, while leaving infrastructure concerns in the hands of people who are better suited to handle it.

According to Re/code, the request isn't unusual because content that users stream from existing Apple TV channels and iOS apps is handled by the networks that provide the content, through partnerships with content delivery networks like EdgeCast. Though streaming services aren't overly expensive, at approximately 5 cents per hour per stream, the idea of dealing with the demand of an Apple television service available to millions has "given executives pause."

In addition to leaving infrastructure concerns to those with more experience, a source that spoke to Re/code believes that it's also possible Apple is hoping that if programmers provide the streams, Internet providers like Comcast and Verizon will be less likely to "penalize Apple's service."

Apple is rumored to be working with several partners on its upcoming streaming service, including CBS, ABC, Fox, Discovery, Disney, and Viacom. It may include around 25 channels, and pricing is said to be in the range of $30 to $40. The streaming service may make its debut in June at the 2015 Worldwide Developers Conference ahead of a fall launch.