<p> <i> 15.56 pm </i> Apple’s official stores to house ‘safes’ to protect Apple Watch gold edition

Apple Watch is all set to launch in April as we had noted in this post earlier and the tech giant is also sprucing its stores to display and keep these watches safe.

According to an exclusive report on 9to5Mac, Apple’s flagship stores will have “safes to house the more expensive, gold ‘Edition’ variants of the upcoming Apple Watch.”

Both inventory for sale and demo units will kept in the safe for storage purposes, says the report. The safes have been custom-designed with Apple Watch MagSafe chargers built-in them to keep the demo unit charged for the next day, adds the report.

The April-arrival date was announced by Tim Cook when he released Apple’s spectacular Q1 results which saw the company post a record-breaking $18 billion in profits. Tim Cook also revealed that he was wearing a Apple Watch and is already hooked to the smartwatch.

“I’m using it every day and love it, and I can’t live without it. I see we’re making great progress on the development of it. The number of developers that are writing apps for it is impressive, and we’re seeing some incredible innovation coming out there,” Cook said.

The smartwatch was announced in September, but the company didn’t reveal much about when it would be available to the public at large, except that it would come in ‘early Spring’. Later, Apple retail chief, Angela Ahrendts,was more specific and revealed the Watch would come only after the Chinese New Year. She had also disclosed how Apple had started planning marketing strategies and all retail employees would be trained to help customers try out the new watch and its features.

More recently reports about the watch have hinted that its battery life will fall well short ofApple’s four day target. According to 9to5Mac, the processor and screen meant a constant battery drain for the watch and the company was targeting “2.5 hours of ‘heavy’ application use or 3.5 hours of standard app use” for the Watch.

Unlike Motorola’s Moto 360, which has a round dial, Apple’s square watch didn’t win too many brownie points on the design front. The Watch is crafted from custom alloys of polished or space black stainless steel (Apple Watch), space gray or silver anodized aluminum (Apple Watch Sport) and 18-karat rose or yellow gold (Apple Watch Edition). The Watch has been priced at priced at $349 , although limited editions will cost more and comes in two different screen sizes:38 mm and 42 mm.

The Watch also has Apple’s custom-designed S1 SiP (System in Package) miniature chip. It features Wi-Fi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 4.0 to pair with the iPhone. Apple has also introduced something called the Digit Crown, a little round button on the side, which will allow users to scroll, zoom in, navigate in the apps in the Watch. The good thing about this that you don’t have to cover up the entire tiny Apple Watch Screen, as you try to zoom into an app. The Digital Crown is also the Home Button and a way to access Siri.

It remains to be seen if the Apple Watch will set the market on fire like the iPhones have done, although it is unlikely that the first couple of versions will outsell any other Apple product.</p>