Microsoft Support & Discussions

Whether you're calling, sending taps, or answering a message, the Apple Watch makes communication more convenient. Need to quickly let someone know you're running late for a meeting, or place a quick call? The Apple Watch lets you stay in touch with those most important to you without reaching for your iPhone. You can give your favorite contacts one-button access, create a new message and dictate whatever it is you need to say, and even send your heartbeat to let someone know you're thinking about them. However you want to use your Apple Watch to communicate, here's everything you need to know! How to set up Friends on your Apple Watch How to tell if you have u…

The Leather Loop band for the 42mm Apple Watch is made of quilted Venezia leather from Arzignano, Italy, and has a magnetic closure, making it both comfortable and endlessly adjustable. I ordered the black version of the Leather Loop the same time I ordered my Black Steel Apple Watch. I just loved the way it looked at the Apple events and was eager to try it out. The Loop arrived a couple of weeks before my watch, but I had a stainless steel review unit, so it gave me a chance to try that pairing first. Since then I've been wearing the Leather Loop, off and on, for almost a month now and under a wide variety of circumstances. So, how's it holding up? $149 - order n…

This durable skin case absorbs any shock your iPhone 6 Plus may receive from any accidental drops or bumps, keeping it just like new. The smooth silicone provides a sure and lasting grip on your device and minimizes slides on flat surfaces. Choose your favorite color and save 67% Continue reading...

Happy Saturday, iMore! Because Rich is awesome, he's letting us run some of his Mac-themed comics from the Diesel Sweeties archive on weekends. Bonus comics, woo! We hope you enjoy. Read more comics from the Pixel Project on iMore.com. Continue reading...

GOG.com have teamed up with Interplay again to offer discounts on classic Interplay game titles that work on Mac and PC. Recently we brought you news of classic Star Trek games available for OS X and Windows; the games were originally released in the 1990s under the Interplay brand, and are now available for download from GOG.com. This weekend GOG.com and Interplay have teamed up with 60 percent discounts on other classic games from the Interplay back catalog. If you're interested, act quick, because the deals are only available this weekend. The games include: Descent 1 + 2: Classic 3D shooter in which you pilot a spacecraft through labyrinthine tunnels, shoot…

Apple CEO Tim Cook has donated 50,000 shares of Apple Stock to charity. Revealed in a Security and Exchange Commission filing earlier today, Apple CEO Tim Cook has donated 50,000 shares of Apple stock to charity. While the name of the charity wasn't specified in the filing, the large number of shares add up to about $6.5 million. First spotted by The Wall Street Journal's Daisuke Wakabayashi on Twitter, the stock transfer is the latest in several philanthropic efforts that Cook has been involved in since becoming CEO at Apple. Late last year, Cook made what was referred to as a 'generous donation' to an LGBT equality group. Earlier this month, Cook also helped rai…

You can't send email from your Apple Watch, but you can read any email sent to you. While you can use your Apple Watch to dictate text message replies, the inability to edit text makes the same system ill-suited for longer and potentially more complex emails. So, there's no Siri for Mail, but there is a read-only version of the Mail app on your Apple Watch. You can see what's been sent your way, and can even mark mail as unread, flag it, and delete it. To respond, however, you'll have to hand off to your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Here's how it all works! How to set email notifications on the Apple Watch app for iPhone How to set Mail options on the Apple Watch app for…

Help your friends find you by sending your location to them via Messages! Meeting your friends somewhere and can't dictate the address perfectly? You can use your Apple Watch's "Send Location" feature to give them easy directions to your whereabouts. This works especially well for locations that don't necessarily have perfect addresses — say, a spot along the beach, or a certain store in an outdoor mall. How to send your location with Apple Watch Open the Messages app. Tap the conversation you want to send a location to, or press firmly on the display to start a new message with a new contact. For the latter, you'll need to send a quick text message before y…

MooVee is a new app for iPhone that helps you manage a list of movies you're interested in. CrazyApps, the developer behind popular TV companion app TeeVee (one of our favorites), has released a new app called MooVee that works as a sort of guide to the movies you are interested in. Once you create a list of interested movies, MooVee will serve up information on when a particular movie is releasing near you, trailers, and direct links to movies on iTunes. Here's the full breakdown of what MooVee offers: Huge movies database (daily updated). Thanks to themoviedb.org Designed with attention to simple usage. Trailers! iCloud syncing & upcoming Trakt sy…

As I pull the car into the Starbucks drive-thru, my husband says, "Oh, sorry, I thought you said you wanted coffee." "Close enough," I tell him, and order a grande coffee with cream. He orders a breakfast sandwich. It's a Saturday morning and our family is headed to the beach for the day, about an hour and a half west of Portland. That's right: we live in Portland, Oregon, hipster capital of the Pacific Northwest, where you can find some of the best coffee in the country. And yet, sometimes, we go to Starbucks. My husband, Neven Mrgan, asked me to please leave his name out of this article. In most cities, Starbucks is a perfectly acceptable place to go for coffee…

Alternative calendar app Fantastical will soon make its way to the Apple Watch. Developer Flexibits has offered a teaser for Fantastical, its calendar app for iPhone. The developer doesn't mention a release date, simply saying that the watch app is "coming soon". We can glean a little information about the app from the teaser. When viewing a specific task, it seems that Fantastical for Apple Watch will show a horizontal timeline of your day to highlight when your events start, even if it doesn't display the names of all of your events. Fantastical is one of our favorite iPhone calendar apps, and it will be interesting to see what Flexibits does with the Apple…

Apple is reportedly in the process of gathering their own mapping data to build the next generation of their Maps service. Apple has reported deployed specially equipped vans in order to build up their own mapping database, which would reduce the company's reliance on third parties like TomTom. This would seem to be a large-scale version of the approach the company is reportedly taking with indoor mapping. From 9to5Mac: For end users, this change will mean more accurate and rapidly updated data. For Apple, this means more control over the core user experience, and, consequently, less of a need to rely on partners for data to be updated. Apple is notably taking…

Use Nearby Friends? If you don't want Facebook for iPhone tracking your every move, you're going to want to change your settings. I like using Facebook to share what I want, when I want, and it's fair game. But many of us don't fancy a social network tracking our every move, even privately. If you use Facebook's Nearby Friends feature, however, you may be at risk of just that. If you'd prefer not to have a personal map of every place you've been accessible via your Facebook account, here's how to change your settings and put the social network back in its place. Whenever I update Facebook, I do a quick sweep through the account section of the Facebook for iPhone a…

Volvo is the latest company with plans to support the Apple Watch, thanks to an update for its Volvo on Call app in late June. If you own a Volvo and an Apple Watch, you will have some good news in late June. That's when the car company will issue an update to its Volvo on Call app for the iPhone that will include support for Apple's smartwatch. Here's what Volvo has to say about the update: This will effectively allow Volvo drivers with the Volvo On Call app to control settings, lock/unlock, locate and utilize many other Volvo services from their wrist. Volvo on Call is currently available in 21 markets and is a standard for Volvo car buyers in Brazi…

Here are the latest Mac gaming releases, hot off the digital presses! Want to know which new Mac games are worth a look this week? Here are my five picks to check out if you're looking for something new and exciting: Read on for high-stakes narrative adventures, pumping rhythms, and fast-paced strategy. 1. Sunset This Tales of Tales' first-person narrative is set in the 1970s and told from the perspective of Angela, a black university grad who ends up stuck housekeeping for a wealthy client in South America. The game is a meditative exploration of Angela's struggle to acclimate to her current circumstances, her memories of her previous life, and her thought…

Rogue Amoeba has released Audio Hijack 3.1, adding a number of useful features to make working with your recording easier. Audio Hijack 3.1 adds new and powerful features to the app's tool belt. The two major additions in this update are silence monitoring and file actions. Silence monitoring, found under the updated "File Limits" section of the Recorder Block, controls how Audio Hijack handles silence. For one thing, you can control exactly what the app thinks "silence" is by setting a silence threshold in decibels. You can also set when Audio Hijack should remove silence from a recording. You can now take action on files. In the recording tab, highlight a recor…

The SURFACE Case is the ultimate low-profile iPhone 6 hard cover; combining a super-slim design with a protective outer shell. The exterior features a custom soft coating that provides additional grip to help prevent drops, too. Choose your favorite color today for only $14.95. Continue reading...

iPhone, iPads, and Macs are great travel companions, but they're even better ones with the right accessories. No matter where you're going, bringing the right accessories for your iPhone or iPad can save you a lot of headaches while on the road or in the air. If you're traveling internationally, for example, you'll want to make sure you have the right adapters to charge your gear. If you need to bring multiple devices, a manageable way to keep cables in check is a must. Working on your iPad? A solid keyboard option should be considered. If you're not exactly sure what you need, we can help you figure it out. Here are some of our favorite travel accessories for iPhon…

Apple has posted a workaround for the recent unicode crash bug affecting iOS 8 devices. Apple's has published a support document detailing a workaround for the recently-discovered iOS 8 unicode crash bug. The issue causes Messages to crash or reboot when a specific Unicode string was received. Apple's fix involves a three-step process that utilizes Siri. From Apple: Ask Siri to "read unread messages." Use Siri to reply to the malicious message. After you reply, you'll be able to open Messages again. In Messages, swipe left to delete the entire thread. Or tap and hold the malicious message, tap More, and delete the message from the thread. Apple also notes…

Apple will open its newest New York City store location on June 13 at June 13 at 940 Madison Avenue. Apple fans in New York City will have another retail store to check out soon. The company has revealed that its previously announced location at 940 Madison Avenue, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, will open to the public on Saturday, June 13 at 9 a.m. The opening comes even as some local residents have expressed concerns about the new store disrupting the neighborhood with large crowds and people camping out for the launch of the next big Apple product. The company has issued a statement claiming that it will respect the established community, with the store g…

It's the end of the month, and that can only mean one thing: It's time for the Mobile Nations Community Update! As always, we're about to take a look at the happenings around our network, including Android Central, Connectedly, CrackBerry, iMore, and Windows Central. Continue reading...

Tired of email? You may want to give Spark a go. The brand new email client has just been made available for iPhone, offering a new solution for managing email while on the go. Regardless of whether or not you have thousands of unread emails lying dormant in your inbox, Spark is a new client to help you work through your incoming mail "faster than ever before." Spark automatically categorizes incoming mails for more convenient processing, basing its filters on sender and importance. A neat feature of the client is the integration with third-party cloud services, including Dropbox, Box, Evernote, Pocket, and Instapaper. Throw in widgets (calendar, attachments, sm…

Share an intimate moment with a close friend or family member by sending them your heartbeat using Apple Watch and Messages. Your Apple Watch can read and record your heartbeat for health and fitness purposes, but it can also send that heartbeat in haptic vibration form to another Apple Watch wearer — if you'd like it to. Here's how to go about doing it. How to send your heartbeat with Apple Watch Press the side button to open the Friends interface. Select the friend you'd like to send your heartbeat to. Tap the Digital Touch icon in the bottom center of the screen. (This will only show up — and you can only send your heartbeat — if your recipient also has an …