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ExtraBITS for 27 April 2015

For your ExtraBITS reading pleasure this week, Apple will exchange Apple Watch bands, iFixit rips apart the Apple Watch, Comcast abandons its bid for Time Warner Cable, the mysterious Error 53 is killing iPhones, and YouTube has dropped support for the second-generation Apple TV.

Apple to Offer Band Swaps for the Apple Watch — Have you received your Apple Watch, only to find that you hate the band? The good news is that Apple may be willing to exchange it. According to internal Apple documents obtained by MacRumors, Apple is planning to allow Apple Watch customers to exchange just the band, instead of having to return the entire watch. However, there are a few restrictions: you must swap bands within the 14-day return window, the new band must be from the same collection as the watch, and the watch must have been purchased directly from Apple. Also, the swap
won’t be handled entirely in store — Apple Store employees will verify your eligibility, initiate the swap online, and a new band will be shipped to you.

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iFixit’s Apple Watch Teardown — A new Apple product hasn’t officially arrived until the boffins at iFixit tear it apart and document every component — which they now have. This probably won’t come as a surprise, but the Apple Watch isn’t easy to repair. And the idea of upgradeable watches can be put to rest: you have to tear the entire watch apart to reach the S1 chip.

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Comcast Gives Up On Time Warner Cable — Comcast Corporation has officially given up on its $45.2 billion merger with Time Warner Cable. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission was reportedly concerned about the ramifications of the top two cable companies merging, which would have given Comcast control of up to 50 percent of American broadband access.

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Error 53 Will Kill Your iPhone and No One Knows Why — There’s a mysterious issue affecting iPhones. The Daily Dot’s Mike Wehner happened across it when he tried to update his iPhone 6 Plus to iOS 8.3. The iPhone wouldn’t install the update, and when he tried connecting it to iTunes to update, he was presented with error 53. After that, the iPhone entered a reboot loop, which rendered it unusable. Error 53 isn’t mentioned in Apple’s list of numerical error codes, and Genius Bar employees seem unaware of it. So far, the only fix has been to replace affected iPhones.

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YouTube Drops the Second-Generation Apple TV — If you use a second-generation Apple TV, be aware that Google has dropped support for its built-in YouTube channel. Google overhauled the channel on third-generation Apple TVs last year, but the second-generation model has been effectively abandoned by Apple. However, the old YouTube channel was never great, and as Josh Centers advised in “Take Control of Apple TV,” a better option is to use AirPlay to broadcast YouTube content from an iOS device.

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