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$100 kit lets you plate Apple Watch with 24K gold DIY-style (Video) | 9to5Mac The Midas Touch Kickstarter project, started by chemist Eric Knoll, offers a step-by-step kit for applying a 24K gold plating to your Apple Watch. The kit starts at just under $100, and goes up to $150 if you have a steel band to cover in addition to the watch casing itself. If it's your bag, baby. It's not my bag, baby.

Gold Apple Watch Editions arrive for regular customers with new box, booklet, gold pairing screen [Gallery, Video] | 9to5Mac Nearly a month after the Apple Watch officially went on sale, gold Edition models have begun arriving for non-celebrity customers who placed the earliest online orders. As expected, the Apple Watch Edition’s white external packaging is nearly identical to the cardboard box for the stainless steel Apple Watch, save for the box noting the color of the 18-Karat gold casing and unique band on the side. Almost enough to make you forget that the richest company in the world can't be bothered to market OS X the way it did in the Mac vs. PC era. Let's be clear: desktop and laptops are not going away. Nor did mainframes. Can't we be dominant in multiple areas? Just a thought.

This guy put Windows XP on an Android smartwatch | VentureBeat | Mobile | by Emil Protalinski YouTube user Dave Bennett loves everything about his Android smartwatch, except for the operating system. It has too many smartwatch-relevant functions, adapts properly to the small screen size, and is frankly just too modern. People love to hate it, but Windows XP is the Windows I'm most familiar with. Time warp.

Apple Watch sales started with a bang, tailed off into a whimper, shopping tracking firm says | 9to5Mac : "Slice Intelligence, which monitors purchase receipts in the email inboxes of a panel of two million online shoppers, has published a chart showing that the majority of Apple Watch orders were placed on the first day of pre-orders, and have since fallen to far smaller numbers than some analysts have predicted." I'm not even sure what happened the company when you can't even buy one in an Apple Store. That's my favorite way to buy Apple.

Apple to hire up to 500 more workers for Mesa, Ariz. 'global command center' According to The Phoenix Business News, Apple will to take on between 300 and 500 more employees than planned to staff its upcoming data center in the East Valley area of Arizona. Original plans called for 150 executive-level positions. Love the wording here. Global command center with only 500 people. Now that's dominance.

How we made ... Grand Theft Auto | Culture | The Guardian : "Mike Dailly, programmer, artist I was DMA Design’s first employee. Dave Jones, its founder, took me on in 1989 and we started bringing all these young people into our Dundee HQ. By 1994, I was working on a game engine that evolved into something called Race and Chase. You could play as the cops or you could play as the criminals." Food for thought.

China goes wild during Tim Cook’s week-long Apple Store tour | Cult of Mac : "Tim Cook just finished a week-long tour of China, complete with stops at new Apple Stores across the country, as well as a visit to the elementary school at Communication University of China, and a meeting with China’s Vice Premier." Phileas Fogg aka Tim Cook around the world in 80 units.

How to capture screenshots and screencasts from your Android device using Android Tool | 9to5Google If you’re an end-user, you’re probably very familiar with the key combinations used to grab screenshots, and have an app to make those screencasts. Whether you fall into one of these categories or somewhere in between, there’s now a better way to accomplish these tasks—using a brand new app called Android Tool… A tool for every job.

No Bubble Here: $1.5 Million 750 SqFt. Flat; Rent-A-Bed $1,000/Month Or 20 Beds In 7-Bedroom House $21,000/Month | Zero Hedge : "If you've managed to escape China with $5 million in bribes, what's $1.5 million? If you work for a tech start-up that just got bought out by a cash-rich tech giant, and your options are now worth $10 million, why wait around while that flat goes from $1.5 million to $2 million? Better to buy it now before it becomes even more expensive in a few months." Silicon valley.

Apple Watch S1 processor uses older 28-nanometer process, Chipworks confirms | 9to5Mac Chipworks has updated its earlier Apple Watch teardown to note several significant details, most notably that Apple’s latest processor uses a 28-nanometer building process that has already been leapfrogged by newer technology. Is nothing sacred? Put the girl's top back on.

Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts was America's top-paid female executive in 2014 : "The achievement for Apple's retail chief was revealed thanks to data compiled by Bloomberg, which estimated Ahrendts's total compensation for 2014 amounted to $82.6 million. She joined the company in May of last year, with the official title of senior vice president of Retail and Online Stores." Most likely a PC fan until recently.

Opinion: Here’s why Apple won’t offer internal upgrades for the Apple Watch | 9to5Mac : "At the height of my Apple fandom, I purchased one of the company’s most iconic and quixotic designs: a used Power Mac G4 Cube, the beautiful floating computer Apple initially described as ‘revolutionary’ before putting it on ice — Apple’s words — less than a year later. Like many other people, I had fallen in love with the Cube’s design the first time I saw it, but wouldn’t spend $1,800-$2,300 to own one. So I waited until the price fell significantly and bought it used on eBay. OTOH, the new MacBooks are orgiastic in a certain way.

Microsoft hopes to court iOS apps to Windows 10 with Objective-C support : "n addition to Project Islandwood, Microsoft also announced 'Project Astoria,' which will also allow Android applications to run on Windows devices. Microsoft revealed that the Windows Mobile platform, for screen sizes smaller than 8 inches, will include an Android runtime layer capable of running software for Google's platform in both Java and C++." Competition among these behemoths is going to be great for everybody.