MacRumors

During Apple's most recent earnings call, CEO Tim Cook announced plans to begin carrying the Apple Watch in the company's retail stores in late June. Now that we've entered the first week of that month, Apple has begun preparing its retail employees for the in-store launch of the Apple Watch.

In a video message sent to retail employees, the contents of which were shared by 9to5Mac, retail chief Angela Ahrendts told employees that they need to be "above and beyond ready" for the launch. Apple's VP of retail operations Jim Bean also detailed an upcoming "Reserve and Pickup" feature.

Reserve and Pickup will let customers check the Apple Online Store each day at 8:00 a.m. local time to see if a nearby store has their desired Apple Watch model in stock. If it's available, customers will be able to reserve the Apple Watch and choose a time to pick it up. Customers will also be able to make reservations for Apple Watch models that are not yet in stock.

"This is our moment to shine, this will be a launch unlike any we've ever had before... this is what you were born to do, this is why you are at Apple," Ahrendts told employees hoping to encourage them to re-review the Apple Watch training materials. Apple is also encouraging employees to discuss the benefits of Apple Pay with customers, which is a core Apple Watch feature.

In addition to preparing Apple employees for in-store Apple Watch sales, Apple has also notified them that customers are now able to try Apple Watch demo units paired to an iPhone in store. Prior to now, Apple Watches have been in a demo loop or attached to tables and unable to pair with iPhones.

Since its launch on April 24, the Apple Watch has been available from Apple solely online. Apple has, however, made limited numbers of the Apple Watch available to customers through third-party boutiques, such as Maxfield in Los Angeles. According to retail chief Angela Ahrendts, Apple's efforts to keep sales online have been done due to supply constraints and to provide customers with the best possible Apple Watch buying experience.

The Apple Watch continues to be in short supply, but shipping times for many models have greatly improved since launch. Some models of the Apple Watch Sport and stainless steel Apple Watch are now shipping within a week in the United States.

Apple has quietly changed the way it promotes new and popular apps on the App Store, shifting from algorithmically generated lists to editorially curated content last month. TechCrunch reports that the "Games" section, for example, no longer has "New," "What's Hot," or "All iPhone (Free & Paid)" categories, which have been replaced with editor curated lists such as "Best New Games" and "More Games You Might Like," the latter based on a customer's purchase history.

"What’s also notable about the changes is that this represents the first time the Games’ subcategory pages (e.g., Action, Adventure, Racing, Trivia, etc.) have included editorially created lists," reports TechCrunch. "These pages now have their own banner art at the top as well in order to better highlight the best new games within those sections. Within each subcategory page, consumers can browse editorial collections including 'Best New Games,' 'All-Time Greats,' 'Free,' and 'Pay Once & Play.'"

The move towards editorial curation was expected given the multiple job listings that Apple has posted for App Store and iTunes editors in recent months, including one specifically for the games section.

"This position is responsible for the discovery, selection, and promotion of games on the Apple App Stores. Working under the direction of the Editorial Manager for Games, they are tasked with ensuring all games selected for promotion are played and scrutinized to the highest level of standards," the job description for an "Editor, Games, App Store" position posted in late April reads.

The report claims that some app developers have seen between 30% to 90% fewer organic app downloads since the changes were made, although the move away from automatically generated app lists is not expected to negatively impact most developers. In fact, editorial curation should help developers with truly useful apps gain some well-deserved exposure on the App Store, rather than clone or rip-off apps that sometimes slipped through Apple's old automated process.

Following the surging popularity and subsequent removal of Flappy Bird from the App Store a few years ago, for example, a number of developers were quick to release copycat versions of the app with similar app icons, titles, graphics and gameplay. At any given time, at least a few of those apps were often undeservingly featured under the algorithmically generated lists on the App Store such as "New" or "What's Hot" based on total downloads and other factors.

There are over 1,400,000 apps available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod.

Apple's Director of Fitness and Health Technologies Jay Blahnik is touring the Asia-Pacific region this week to host live Q&A sessions with popular personal trainers and other well-known icons at Apple Stores in Australia, China and Japan. The special events focus on the intersection of health, fitness and technology, such as how to live a better life by maintaining a healthy body and mind.

Blahnik sat down with Australian personal trainer Michelle Bridges for a live Q&A session at the Apple Store in Sydney, Australia on May 29 before heading to the Omotesando Apple Store to speak with technology journalist Nobi Hayashi in Tokyo, Japan earlier today, as noted by Macotakara. Blahnik will now travel to Beijing for an event with Chinese action filmmaker Donnie Yen at the Apple Store in China Central Mall on June 3.

Prior to joining Apple in July 2013, Blahnik was a Nike FuelBand consultant for almost 20 years and an award-winning fitness instructor and personal trainer. As health and fitness director at Apple, he has played an instrumental role in development of the Apple Watch, working in the company's top-secret health and fitness lab where it has collected over 18,000 hours of health and fitness data from employee workout sessions.

Apple is in talks to sign Toronto-born rapper Drake, hip-hop artist Pharrell Williams and electronic music DJ David Guetta as guest DJs for a revamped iTunes Radio, according to the New York Post. The report also claims that Apple continues to negotiate with record labels for Apple Music and wants to offer a three-month free trial period for the $10-a-month streaming music service.

Apple Music will reportedly combine the best features of Pandora, Spotify and YouTube into one service, including streaming music and video, artist pages, a YouTube-style sharing section called Apple Connect and a refreshed version of iTunes Radio. Apple also wanted to offer lyrics as part of the service, but does not want to pay extra to record labels to offer the feature.

Apple is expected to announce its new streaming music service on June 8 at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, building upon the assets it acquired through its Beats Music purchase last year. The company will reportedly push customers to sign up for Apple Music by offering SoundCloud-like sharing, exclusive content and the aforementioned three-month free trial period.

For the past several months, Apple-leased Dodge Caravans with equipment-laden roofs have been spotted driving around the United States. While early speculation suggested the vans could be Apple's first attempt at developing a self-driving vehicle, it quickly became clear that the vans were being used for mapping purposes.

The Dodge Caravans are all outfitted with an array of LIDAR cameras, much like the vehicles that Google uses to capture images for its Street View mapping feature, so it is no surprise that a report shared today by 9to5Mac suggests the images and data from the vans will be used for future improvements to Apple's Maps feature. Here at MacRumors, we have been aggregating Apple van sightings to give a clear picture of the areas where Apple is currently focusing its attention.

Apple has worked tirelessly to improve the Maps app since its 2012 launch, fulfilling Tim Cook's promise that Apple would work "non-stop" until Maps met its "incredibly high standard." The next step in Maps' evolution is the gathering of in-house data to reduce reliance on third-party companies like TomTom, which has provided data for Apple Maps since it launched. Just this month, TomTom and Apple renewed their mapping contract, so Apple's shift towards its own data system may still be several years off.

Using in-house data has the potential to significantly improve the Maps experience. Apple will not have to rely on third-party information that's potentially riddled with errors and inaccuracies, and the company will also be able to implement changes and fixes more quickly.

In the future, the imagery captured by the vans may be used by Apple to create its own 3D street level viewing experience to complement its existing Flyover feature. Flyover is designed to let Maps users explore landmarks and major cities around the world through an aerial view. A street level addition to Flyover could perhaps be useful in day-to-day life to get a look at nearby locations, but it's possible Apple has its eye on something grander, perhaps giving Maps users a way to explore exotic locations on a more granular level.

Apple is also reportedly using its fleet of Dodge Caravans to capture images of storefronts and businesses, and this data may be of more immediate use to the company. Imagery of stores, businesses, and restaurants may be incorporated into an upcoming iOS 9 revamp to Apple's Points of Interest system, replacing photographs pulled in from third-party sources like Yelp.

We may see the first fruits of Apple's new mapping project as soon as June 8, when Apple unveils iOS 9 at WWDC and provides it to developers for testing purposes. iOS 9 is rumored to have a few other upgrades in addition to a new Points of Interest system, including transit routing information in a limited number of cities.

Apple had the highest overall customer satisfaction for tech support among more than 3,200 computer owners surveyed by Consumer Reports, unsurprising given the company has been top-rated for tech support since the not-for-profit organization first surveyed customers about the topic in 2007. Apple has also routinely topped multiple J.D. Power and Associates studies for customer satisfaction over the past decade.

Apple earned high marks for the Genius Bar located at the back of most Apple retail stores, where customers can book an appointment to receive face-to-face technical support and troubleshooting for iPhone, iPad, Mac and several other Apple products and services. Consumer Reports praises the Genius Bar's free lifetime support as a differentiating factor over similar services, which generally require paying for help.

Windows-based PC makers did not receive the same accolades for tech support among survey participants:

"The help desks at Windows PC companies often didn’t live up to that name. For four of the six PC brands in the survey, tech support solved only half of the problems consumers brought to them. Even the best of them—Lenovo and Dell—came through just 61 percent of the time."

Consumer Reports found that most Windows-based PC users were most satisfied by phoning tech support rather than seeking online help through web, chat or email support. Best Buy's Geek Squad and Staples' EasyTech services were found to be a step behind the Genius Bar, given that Apple serves as both the retailer and manufacturer and is subsequently more knowledgable about its own products and support information.

Apple provides 90 days of complimentary phone and online chat support that can be extended for up to two years with an AppleCare+ Protection Plan for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV and other products. AppleCare+ also protects against up to two incidents of accidental damage with an applicable service charge, such as a cracked screen from dropping the device or water damage.

A couple days after a new iOS bug was discovered, allowing a select string of characters sent in an iMessage or text to reset iPhones and crash the Messages app, Apple has created a new support document to address the problem. The Cupertino company acknowledges the problem and says that it's working on a fix, offering temporary solutions in the mean time.

At its I/O developer event this morning, Google announced a new Google Photos platform that's designed to compete with both photo sharing sites like Flickr and cloud services like iCloud Photo Library. Google Photos is cross platform and available on iOS, Android, and the web.

Both the iOS app and the web service are now live, letting those in Apple's ecosystem make full use of Google Photos. The service is free for high-quality photos and it lets users upload an unlimited number of photos (up to 16 megapixels) and videos (up to 1080p).

A hands-on overview of Google's new Photos service

Photos with resolutions that exceed 16-megapixels will be downscaled to 16MP, and videos with resolutions higher than 1080p will also be downscaled. Google offers an option to store photos and videos in their original quality, but only with the 15GB of free storage that comes with any Google account. Additional storage is priced at $1.99/month for 100GB or $9.99/month for 1TB.

16-megapixel downscaling is suitable for most camera phones and point-and-shoot cameras, but the free storage option may not be as appealing to DSLR users who need to store original-quality images. According to Google, photos uploaded with a 16-megapixel resolution or lower will look "essentially" the same when uploaded to the site using the free plan.

Google designed Photos around three central ideas: a "home" for all of your photos, deep organization, and easy sharing. On iOS, Google Photos is not unlike the default Photos app that Apple offers. It includes a main photos view that's organized by when a photo was taken, and it's possible to zoom in and out to adjust the view using pinch gestures.

You can organize your photos and videos into albums, but Google has also built in its own organizational tools. Google Photos will group images based on the person in the photo, an item in the photo (like a dog) or the place where it was taken. Google demonstrated the facial recognition features on stage at Google I/O, showing how it was able to recognize the same child at multiple ages, starting from birth.

In the iOS app, there are tools for quickly enhancing photos to improve color, lighting, and more, plus it's possible to create collages, animations, and movies using the app's tools.

Google Photos has quick selection tools for grouping up multiple photos, and this feature works alongside the app's photo sharing tools. Users can create a link to any number of grouped photos, sharing all of them by simply sending the link. It's not necessary for those who view the photos to log into the Google Photos app, but doing so allows the shared photos to be downloaded to one's own library.

Sharing is also bolstered by a built-in Photos Assistant. This tool automatically makes videos, GIFs, and collages out of a series of photos, which can then be shared if so desired. Google Photos also includes tools to share photos to numerous social networks.

Google Photos for iOS can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Apple recently acquired augmented reality startup Metaio, reports TechCrunch. According to the company's website, Metaio is a "pioneer in augmented reality and computer vision" that built the Metaio Creator, an augmented reality authoring tool. With the Creator, users could create augmented reality scenarios "within minutes."

Metaio has stopped taking new customers and a shareholder document concerning the transferring of shares has confirmed that it was purchased by Apple. Apple also provided TechCrunch with its standard acquisition confirmation statement: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Metaio's augmented reality tools have been used by several companies to create interactive experiences. Ferarri, for example, created an augmented reality showroom with Metaio, and it's been used in Berlin with historical footage to let travelers see what the scene they're viewing would have looked like when the Berlin Wall was still in place.

It is not clear how Apple plans to use Metaio's technology, but there have been persistent rumors indicating Apple is interested in virtual reality and augmented reality. Based on patents, Apple has explored a video headset, a motion-sensing virtual 3D interface for iOS devices, and 3D "hyper-reality" displays.

It's possible that Apple could use Metaio's AR creation tools to introduce unique features to Maps and other apps. A 2014 rumor suggested Apple was considering adding augmented reality features to Maps, and a more recent rumor points towards Apple's work on a "Browse Around Me" feature for iOS 9 that includes an augmented reality view.

Recent rumors have suggested that Apple has a small team working on augmented reality projects at its Cupertino headquarters, but it remains unclear exactly when we'll see Apple incorporating AR and VR features into its products.