Hands-on with watchOS 4.1 beta 1: Music streaming, new Radio app, and LTE music support [Video]

As we reported earlier, Apple has just released watchOS 4.1 beta 1 to developers, which brings the promised LTE music streaming to the Series 3 Apple Watch with LTE.

WatchOS 4.1 contains three notable features: First and foremost, the updated Music app allows access to your entire iCloud Music Library. This means that you’ll no longer have to sync songs in order to play them directly on your Apple Watch. It also means that you can use Siri to directly request playback of any song from Apple’s vast collection of 40 million tracks. Have a look at our hands-on video as we take Apple Watch music streaming for a test drive. more…

watchOS 4: How to stop Now Playing and audio apps from automatically opening on Apple Watch

watchOS 4 includes a new default behavior to auto-launch audio apps when you wake the screen while playing audio on your Apple Watch or iPhone.

Auto-launching Now Playing can be useful when you’re playing music from the watch or a podcast from the phone for example. Instant access to play/pause and seek controls on the watch screen and the ability to spin the Digital Crown to adjust volume is really great when using AirPods since they lack physical controls. It’s sort of like the Now Playing card on the iPhone lock screen.

But this behavior isn’t always ideal on the Apple Watch. Luckily there’s a simple way to turn it off.

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Amazon debuts new Echo speakers and $70 4K Fire TV to rival HomePod and Apple TV

Amazon took the stage in Seattle this morning to unveil a handful of new devices ahead of the holiday season. Today’s announcement includes the all-new Echo and Echo Plus Smart Speaker, a smaller Echo Connect, two updated models of its Fire TV streaming media platform and more. It was a big day in Seattle, and we have all of the details for you down below along with pre-order information.

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New betas show off iPhone X lock screen and home screen experience

The new Xcode 9.1 beta has also been released by Apple today with support for the new operating system updates: iOS 11.1, watchOS 4.1 and tvOS 11.1. It also includes a more fully-fledged iPhone X simulator, which demonstrates the new lock screen and home screen experiences.

There are also some onboarding videos, for things like activating Siri or revealing Control Center, which will be shown to iPhone X users upon setup …

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