MacRumors

A small group of users have begun noticing a new voice control feature appearing within the Spotify app for iOS devices, and The Verge this week got a chance to see how the music streaming service's new voice commands work.

As expected, the voice control allows users to call up their favorite artists, songs, albums, and playlists without having to navigate around the app with taps. Voice control is initiated by first navigating to the magnifying glass icon at the center of the app's bottom tab row.

The Verge was mostly impressed with the time spent asking Spotify to play various songs, comparing it favorably to Siri on HomePod: "It all happened as quickly as Siri does the same thing on a HomePod." It should still be noted that Spotify's solution as of now isn't a fully talkative AI assistant, but simply voice controls.

I spent the past hour spitting queries at the microphone, with mostly accurate results. I queued up the Gold School and Top Hits Today playlists, artist radio stations for Radiohead and Wilco, and the magnificent strains of “Despacito.” It all happened as quickly as Siri does the same thing on a HomePod.

And I did encounter some errors. I created a playlist for songs I found on Spotify that I call “Spotifinds,” and when I searched for it the very confused app asked me if maybe I was searching for “Spotify memes.” (I am now!)

The voice commands are said to be limited to music only inside Spotify's catalog, and queries like "Who are the Beatles?" were met with the app playing a Beatles playlist, "without telling you anything about the band."

Spotify's voice control test follows rumors that the company is planning to launch its first hardware product, expected to be a smart speaker of some kind and compete with Sonos, Echo, and Apple's HomePod. Particularly for the HomePod, Spotify users face a lesser experience due to Apple's decision to only allow native streaming for Apple Music.

If these new tests roll out to a wider audience, it could be an indication of the technology users can expect to see in a smart speaker built by Spotify. For now, The Verge noted that "the early version works well enough to make it a core part of my music listening."

The latest Apple Pay promotion has launched today, and this time Apple is preparing users for Spring Break. When using Apple Pay in the TouchTunes jukebox iOS app [Direct Link], users can get three free song credits. The offer is valid through 11:59 p.m. PT on March 27, 2018 in the United States and Canada only.

TouchTunes uses a network of digital jukeboxes across 65,000 bars, restaurants, and other social venues across North America, which users of the app can control from their iPhone. Users amass TouchTunes' "credits" and spend the credits when choosing which song they want to play next, creating a community-built playlist of songs with anyone else using TouchTunes at the same location.

Now, with the new promotion users can purchase in-app credits using Apple Pay and with the three free credits they should be able to play one song at a bar for free (TouchTunes notes that the number of credits required for song plays may vary). Other springtime apps promoted by Apple include clothing brands lululemon, J.Crew, and Zara. Apple also encourages users to "get back to the beach quicker" when using Apple Pay in apps for Reef, Ray-Ban, and Abercrombie & Fitch.

The developers behind read-it-later service Pocket this week announced a new update for iOS and Android that will give users a simple but useful glimpse into how long each article will take them to read. After updating to version 6.6.16 on the iOS App Store, the Pocket app for iPhone and iPad will display time estimates "for every article and video" that has been saved.

The time estimates will be located below the titles of each saved piece of content, to the right of the URL. At launch, time estimates are available on devices set to English, but the Pocket team said that it plans to add support for more languages "in the near future." The developer is also working on introducing time estimates to Pocket for Web down the line.

You’ve told us that it would be helpful to know how long it takes to start and finish each item in your list, and now you can! When you open Pocket on your phone or tablet, you’ll see time estimates for every article and video you’ve saved, right below the title.

So the next time you have 3 minutes waiting for an appointment, 10 minutes on your commute, or are unwinding on the couch after a long day, open up Pocket and find a story that suits your moment.

Pocket is a service available across multiple platforms that lets users save any web page to revisit later, be it an article, video, recipe, shopping item, or other similar pieces of content. This way, users can save an article on Safari for iOS using the Share Sheet extension, and then look at it a few days later on the Mac app, even when they're offline.

Just over one year ago Pocket was acquired by Mozilla, and at the time Mozilla stated that the Pocket would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Corporation and part of the Mozilla open source project. Mozilla said that Pocket's core employees and technology would help accelerate its Context Graph initiative, while promoting the discovery and accessibility of high quality web content.

One of Pocket's biggest rivals in the read-it-later app space is Instapaper, which itself was acquired by Pinterest in 2016.

Pocket is available for free on the iOS App Store. [Direct Link]

The European Commission today announced it has set a provisional deadline of April 23 to decide on Apple's proposed acquisition of Shazam.

Last month, the regulatory body said it would consider whether Apple's purchase of the popular music identification service may lead to a significant adverse effect on competition in Europe, after Austria, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain, and Sweden requested the deal be assessed under European Union merger law.

The European Commission didn't specify how the deal could hurt competition, but Shazam does have partnerships with European companies like Spotify that could be affected by the acquisition. However, it's standard for major acquisitions to be subject to review, so the deal will likely be approved without any scrutiny.

Apple announced its plans to acquire Shazam in December in a statement provided to MacRumors and other publications:

We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple. Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS. Today, it's used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, across multiple platforms. Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our users. We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today's agreement.

Shazam is a popular service that can identify the name and lyrics of songs, music videos, TV shows, and more. It has apps across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and iMessage, while the service has been built into Siri since iOS 8. The app is also integrated with streaming music services like Apple Music and Spotify.

In addition to Shazam, Apple this week announced it plans to acquire digital magazine subscription service Texture to be integrated into Apple News.

Via: Reuters

Medical ID is a built-in feature of your iPhone's Health app that gives ambulance crews and other emergency first responders fast access to potentially life-saving information about any allergies or medical conditions you have, even if your iPhone is locked.

Even if you don't suffer from any health conditions, it's still worth enabling Medical ID, because it can also provide other vital information about you to emergency services, such as your blood type and who to contact in an emergency. This article shows you how to set up Medical ID in iOS 11.

➜ Click here to read more...

Amazon's U.S. audience for all movie and TV show programming on Amazon Prime Video was about 26 million customers in early 2017, according to company documents seen by Reuters.

Amazon Prime Video is provided as a benefit to Amazon Prime members who subscribe to Amazon's $99 per year Prime service, and features thousands of TV shows and movies, along with original content produced by Amazon.

Amazon has never revealed figures for its total Prime Video audience, but the documents provide an insight into the success of Amazon's successful original programming strategy, which involves producing content to entice consumers into Prime membership and boost merchandise sales.

For example, the documents cover late 2014 to early 2017 and compare metrics for 19 shows exclusive to Amazon, including cost, viewership and the number of people they helped lure to Prime. Known as Prime Originals, the shows account for around a quarter of what analysts believe to be total Prime sign-ups over the same period.

Video has grown to be one of Amazon’s biggest expenditures at $5 billion per year for original and licensed content, two people familiar with the matter said. The company has never disclosed how many subscribers it won as a result, making it hard for investors to evaluate its programming decisions.

The internal documents show what Amazon considers to be the financial logic of its strategy, and why the company is now making more commercial projects in addition to high-brow shows aimed at winning awards, the people said.

According to the documents, season one of alternate history drama "The Man in the High Castle", which is based on Philip K Dick novel, had 8 million U.S. viewers as of early 2017. The program cost $72 million in production and marketing, and attracted 1.15 million new subscribers worldwide.

Amazon's accounting reveals that the show drew new Prime members at an average cost of $63 per subscriber. A Prime subscription costs $99, while Prime members often go on to buy more goods from Amazon than other consumers. The documents also reveal that Amazon drew over 5 million people globally into its Prime subscription membership by the beginning of the 2017.

Apple announced Amazon Prime for Apple TV last summer, but owners of the set-top box had to wait six months for the service to eventually drop. Amazon Prime Video supports Apple's centralized TV app, meaning users can use Siri Universal Search to find Amazon Prime Video content, and add it to their "Up Next" queue of shows and movies.

Google Maps today announced the availability of new "wheelchair accessible" routes in its transit navigation directions for several cities around the world, recognizing that using trains and buses can present challenges for people who use wheelchairs or have other mobility needs.

Information about which stations and routes are wheelchair friendly isn't always readily available or easy to find. To make public transit work for everyone, today we're introducing "wheelchair accessible" routes in transit navigation to make getting around easier for those with mobility needs.

To access the new "wheelchair accessible" routes in the Google Maps app, enter a desired destination, tap Directions, select the public transportation icon, and then tap Options. The new route type can be found under the Routes section.

After selecting the "wheelchair accessible" option, Maps' directions list routes that take mobility needs into consideration, such as if a transit station has accessible stops, platforms, entrances, and exits.

Google says the feature is rolling out across London, Tokyo, Mexico City, Boston, and Sydney, with other major metropolitan transit centers around the world to follow.

In addition to the new feature, Google has been updating its Street View imagery of transit stations and city centers to allow users to preview locations ahead of time. Google says it hopes the expanded coverage will make life easier not only for people who use wheelchairs, but also for anyone who's using crutches or pushing a stroller.

Google Maps can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Apple supplier Wistron has dismissed a report claiming operations at its China-based iPhone production plant have been suspended by Apple for alleged use of "unauthorized components".

Taiwan's Chinese-language Commercial Times reported on Thursday that Apple ordered Wistron to halt production of iPhone 8 Plus handsets at its plant in Kunshan, China for two weeks pending a probe into alleged use of water-proof components from a supplier not certified by Apple. Wistron penalized several high-level executives in an attempt to regain Apple's trust, according to the report.

In a morning filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange this morning, Wistron said it wouldn't comment on matters between specific clients and denied there had been a "two-week production suspension as reported", maintaining that operations remained "completely normal". Wistron shares dropped on the report by more than 5 percent during early TSE trading, before recovering to close at NT$26.50, down by NT$0.45.

Wistron provides Apple with a smaller portion of iPhone 8 Plus models compared to rival supplier Foxconn, which makes up to 80 percent of the handsets, although Wistron has recently emerged as Apple's principal iPhone manufacturer in India.

The Taiwanese firm has reportedly invested around $157 million to build a new assembly unit in the tech hub of Bengaluru, where it plans to manufacture iPhone SE and potentially iPhone 6s models for the Indian market.

(Via DigiTimes.)

Logitech's G brand today announced the launch of a new gaming speaker, the G560. While primarily designed for gaming PCs, the G560 Gaming Speaker has unique features that may also be appealing to Mac users.

The G560, which features two light-up speakers and a subwoofer, is the first of Logitech's gaming speaker systems to come equipped with Logitech G Lightsync, designed to synchronize light and sounds to gameplay, movies, music, and more for a more immersive experience.

With Lightsync support, the lights built into the speaker can light up while you're playing games that have implemented the Lightsync API to add ambiance to gameplay. Many game developers have added support for Lightsync and have custom chosen the colors that will be displayed during various aspects of the gameplay. Supported games include Dota 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto V, and more.

Developer-supported Lightsync options are mainly for PCs, but Lightsync also works based solely on the colors on your display. Using the screen sampling tool in Logitech's Gaming Software for Mac, you can tie the lights to four different zones of your Mac's display, so while you're playing a game or watching a movie, the G560 lights will light up with colors that are linked to whatever colors are in the media you're using.

If you're watching a colorful movie, for example, the colors of the movie will be reflected through the G560's lights, and the same is true for when you're playing a game. If you're playing music, you can also set the lights to change in time with the beat of the music, and colors can be customized using Logitech's app. The lights support 16.8 million colors and several animation effects, and sound can be customized using a detailed equalizer tool.

According to Logitech, the G560 offers "amazing sound" with 240 Watts Peak/120 Watts RMS power, making it suitable for all kinds of media on PC and Mac. On PCs, it also includes DTS:X Ultra 1.0 support for precise positional audio.

Along with these features, the G560 supports Logitech's Easy-Switch technology, which allows you to connect several devices to the speaker at once and then switch between them. You can connect one USB device, one device through the 3.5mm input, and two Bluetooth devices at the same time. So, for example, you could connect your Mac, your iPhone, and your iPad to the speakers and then easily swap between them, allowing you to use the G560 with all of your devices.

Logitech's new G560 Gaming Speaker will be available for purchase from retailers around the world starting in April of 2018. It will be priced at $199.99, and it will be sold alongside the new $150 G513 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard, which also supports Lightsync.

Netflix has decided to stop testing a new gamified TV streaming experience for children, which offered kids "patches" (aka stickers) for watching episodes of certain television shows.

Netflix started testing the feature in February, but it received widespread attention last week after the beta test was highlighted by various media sites. Given the negative attention Netflix received over the feature from parents concerned about their children watching too much TV, Netflix has decided not to move forward with development.

"We've concluded the test for patches and have decided not to move forward with the feature for kids. We test lots of things at Netflix in order to learn what works well - and what doesn't work well - for our members."

During the beta testing period, there were several complaints about the feature from users who encountered it, with customers sharing their negative opinions on Twitter and other social networks. Netflix was accused of attempting to turn children into "binge watchers" through the patch program.

Users who were part of Netflix's test group will no longer be seeing patches when watching TV shows.

There are a lot of hidden little tricks and tips for all of the native apps on the iPhone, including the Calculator app. If you're typing in numbers and make an accidental mistake, you don't need to start all the way over -- there's a simple gesture to delete a single number.

You can do a few other things with the Calculator app. To copy a sum that you've calculated, simply press a finger over the number displayed on the calculator until the "Copy" option pops up. And in case you've never turned your iPhone to landscape mode while using the Calculator app, give it a try. You'll see a lot more functions to work with.