Apple Weekly News Roundup: Apple Watch Pre-Order Begins, iOS 8.3 Released and More

Among the more notable news items from last week, Apple began taking pre-orders for its highly anticipated Apple Watch at 12:01 AM Pacific time on Friday. As many pundits expected, the demand exceeded the initial supply and all models quickly ran out of stock, pushing estimated shipping times to 4-6 weeks for about half and to June for the other half. The pink band watch was even pushed back to July. The first unboxing video also emerged last week. Additionally, the Apple Watch became available for personal demos at many Apple Stores on Friday (by appointment), though it can only be ordered online.

Also of note last week, Apple released iOS 8.3 on Wednesday. The upgrade features a new emoji interface plus several hundred new emojis, and the ability to change the ethnicity of the human emojis. Siri's voice was tweaked to sound more natural and she received several new languages. Message filtering for SMS/iMessages was introduced and a new setting allows you to download free

apps without having to enter your password. Support for Wi-Fi calls was added for Sprint and EE customers and CarPlay can now connect wirelessly. There were also numerous bug fixes and other improvements.

Aside from iOS 8.3, there were several other software releases last week:

OS X 10.10.3 was also released on Wednesday. The upgrade comes with a number of new features, including the new Photos app. Photos replaces iPhoto and has improved editing and navigation tools. It also uses the iCloud Photo Library, which launched on Wednesday as well. Consequently, Aperture and iPhoto disappeared from the App Store shortly after. Aside from the Photos app, the upgrade adds the same new emojis found in the iOS 8.3 upgrade, and has a number of other performance improvements.

Xcode 6.3 was officially released on Wednesday as well. The update comes with Swift 1.2 for iOS 8.3 and software development kits for OS X 10.10.3, which include support for the new Force Touch trackpad.

HBO Now, the network's stand alone streaming service, launched on Tuesday, just in time for the Game of Thrones season 5 premiere which airs later tonight. The service offers on-demand access to all of HBO's programming and costs $14.99 per month, with the first month free. It can be viewed with an app on the iPhone and iPad, on the Apple TV and via web browser on your Mac or PC.