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Re/wind: Getting Ready for the Apple Watch, Samsung’s New Phones and More

Plus Re/code’s revamped newsletter, the Game Developers Conference and more.

by Noah Kulwin
Anthony Quintano for Re/code

Hello there!

Everyone is get worked up about Apple’s new wearable, famed venture capitalist John Doerr took the stand during the Kleiner Perkins gender discrimination trial and a bunch more happened this week. Here’s the news that powered Re/code:

  1. Tomorrow, Apple is holding an event where it’s expected they’ll launch the Apple Watch, a new Macbook, maybe some Beats news and possibly even more. Here’s your guide on what to expect. On Friday it was announced that Apple would be taking AT&T’s place in the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index, and you should pay attention to the positive vibes that music labels and Apple are sending one another.
  2. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Samsung unveiled the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, with a few pleasant surprises. HTC also introduced its first fitness tracker, as well as a powerful new phone — the HTC One M9.
  3. The Ellen Pao-Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers gender discrimination trial carried on this week. On Monday, testimony revealed that the high-profile Internet analyst Mary Meeker was among the women excluded from lucrative positions. We live-blogged Tuesday and Wednesday, when legendary investor John Doerr took the stand and somehow ended up helping both sides.
  4. Virtual reality was the dominant topic of conversation at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. And that might not be a good thing. Oculus VR CTO John Carmack said the Facebook-owned company would go “full consumer” by the end of 2015. Sony announced its virtual reality headset will ship in early 2016, which is around the same time HTC’s and Valve’s will too. Nvidia pulled the curtain on a $199 smart TV and game streaming device, game developers are getting more tools for free and the gaming writer and Gamergate critic Leigh Alexander said she’s going to be launching a new website with BoingBoing.
  5. We’ve rebooted our daily newsletter Re/code Daily! Sign up here to get a quick roundup of the big stories in tech and what’s happening at Re/code delivered straight to your inbox every morning.
  6. Not comfortable with Apple, Samsung and Google hogging the mobile payments spotlight, Paypal paid $280 million for the retailer-supported payments service Paydiant.
  7. Honest is an eco-friendly diaper and baby products company that sells stuff both online and in brick-and-mortar stores. With hundreds of millions in revenue and a celebrity founder in Jessica Alba, Honest is catching fire.
  8. Looking to work on a side project outside of the company proper, a group of female Twitter execs started a new angel investment group called #Angels.
  9. The online crafts and vintage goods marketplace Etsy began the journey to an IPO this week, according to filed paperwork. How’s it going to get there? Well, it’s already past the hard part, which is when it let manufacturers start selling goods on the site.
  10. The Dish Network’s $20-a-month Web-TV service Sling TV has netted over 100,000 subscribers since launching just over a month ago.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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