Pixelmator has been updated for Mac to include support for the new HEIF image standard in macOS High Sierra. Once users have updated to Pixelmator 3.7, they'll also be able to make full use of the new Photo app integration available in Apple's latest desktop operating system.
In macOS High Sierra, it's possible to open a photo in a third-party app right from within the Photos Library using the "Edit With..." menu option, after which Pixelmator should appear following the update. Subsequently, any edits made within Pixelmator will be automatically saved back to the Photos library.
Added support for the new HEIF image standard includes the ability to import photos from iPhone 7, iPhone 8, and iPhone X, which save in the more efficient compression format by default. You can find out more about HEIF here.
Other improvements in the 3.7 update to Pixelmator include enhanced support for Photoshop PSD files, an improved Repair Tool, and a return of the ability to drag image assets from Photos and Safari directly into Pixelmator.
Following yesterday's announcement of price hikes in the U.S., Netflix has now confirmed that some U.K. subscribers can also expect to pay more for the video streaming service going forward.
Those on the Basic tier, costing £6 a month, won't see a price increase. However, that's where the good news ends, because anyone on the Standard tier, which includes shows in HD and the ability to watch on two screens simultaneously, will see their monthly bill rise from £7.50 per month to £8.
Meanwhile, users who pay for 4K HDR privileges and the ability to watch on four screens at once are set to pay £10, up from £9. The cost increases will come into effect beginning November. Netflix said it will inform existing subscribers of the price hikes on October 19.
Germany and France are among the other European countries where prices will rise, while subscriptions were tweaked in Canada, Latin America and some Nordic countries earlier this year.
Netflix is set to debut the second series of its hit original series Stranger Things on October 27. This week, the company also released an official Stranger Thingsmobile game, which iPhone and iPad users can download from the App Store for free.
Huawei continued to ratchet up its hype machine on Thursday by revealing on Twitter that its upcoming Mate 10 smartphone will feature a 4,000mAh battery.
The Chinese company divulged the key detail via social media, which it has previously used to troll Apple as well as promote the built-in artificial intelligence capabilities of its forthcoming flagship device. The tweet was accompanied by the phrase, "#ThatFeeling when your battery lasts all day on a single charge".
With Samsung, Apple, and Google all having played their cards in the 2017 smartphone wars, Huawei is hoping to make a big splash to round off the year with its Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, set to be officially announced on October 16.
All indications point to both Mate 10 devices sporting a 4,000mAh battery, which would make their cell capacities larger than those of nearly all flagship smartphones to date, including the iPhone 8 Plus (2,675mAh), Galaxy S8+ (3,500mAh), Galaxy Note 8 (3,300mAh), and the Pixel 2 XL (3,550mAh).
However, it's not clear just how much extra juice beyond a day that would get Mate 10 users, given that the handset is likely to boast an energy-sapping 6.1-inch 1440 x 2880 Quad-HD AMOLED display with virtually no bezels. Having said that, the new Kirin 970 processor in the Mate 10 is supposed to be far more energy efficient, which could balance out battery performance.
As previously reported, this will be the first phone in the company's line-up to feature the Kirin 970 mobile chipset, which is based on the same 10-nanometer technology as Apple's A11 Bionic processor found in the iPhone 8 and iPhone X. It also has a built-in neural processing unit that utilizes of machine learning, making it a lot faster than a traditional processor, according to the company.
The Mate 10 Pro is thought to cost upwards of $900, with the Mate 10 price starting at $849. Both devices will likely feature Leica rear dual-lens cameras, with 64GB of internal storage and 6GB of RAM as standard. The Mate 10 series to be revealed this month is actually expected to include three smartphones, with a lower-spec device bearing the moniker Huawei Mate 10 Lite.
Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac received an update on Thursday to include full compatibility with the new Apple File System (APFS) and HEVC video standard included in macOS High Sierra.
With APFS support, Parallels Desktop 13.1 can take advantage of Apple's cross-platform replacement for HFS+, bringing more security and better performance on devices with flash memory.
New HEVC video support means the virtualization software will be able to benefit from more efficient compression of video files and smoother playback. You can learn more about Apple's new HEVC video codec here.
Elsewhere, there are a host of stability and performance fixes, as listed in Parallels' knowledge database update summary. They include the following:
Enables the user to create a new Boot Camp® virtual machine on a Mac® with macOS® High Sierra. Enables the user to install a High Sierra virtual machine from the Recovery partition on their High Sierra Mac.
Resolves an issue with some Windows shortcuts not working (for example, "Control+Shift+"+"/"-" in Microsoft Excel).
Resolves an issue with installing Parallels Tools on Windows XP (Note: Parallels Tools are used for Windows and macOS integration. Do not confuse them with Parallels® Toolbox.)
Resolves an issue with Windows not starting when opening a file associated with a Windows application on macOS.
Resolves an issue with crashes of BIMcollab ZOOM and TopSolid CAD.
Resolves an issue with Zoom In and Zoom Out in APEX 3.
Resolves an issue with “Sending as Attachment” not working for Windows files and Mac email client after suspending and resuming a Windows virtual machine.
Resolves an issue with OneDrive for Business not shared with macOS, even if that option is enabled.
Resolves an issue with Microsoft Windows Start menu not appearing when clicking the Windows icon if Dock auto-hide is enabled.
Resolves an issue with copying Windows files to Mac.
Resolves an issue with TeamViewer camera not working.
Resolves an issue with maximizing Windows applications in Coherence mode.
Resolves an issue with installing a macOS older than Mac OS X® Mavericks 10.9 in the virtual machine from the installation image.
Resolves an issue with macOS not going to sleep when there is a virtual machine in Coherence mode.
To download the latest update, users can click the Parallels Desktop menu and select Check for Updates.
Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac costs $79.99 for a new license. Existing users of Parallels Desktop for Home and Student can upgrade to V13 for $49.99, with a time-limited offer enabling users of the Desktop Pro Edition to upgrade for the same price (usually $99.99). For more pricing details, see the Parallels website.
Apple today announced that hundreds of new emoji characters will be added to the iPhone and iPad in the upcoming iOS 11.1 update.
The company also showed off some of the new emoji that will be introduced, all of which are part of Unicode 10. Some of the new additions include crazy face, pie, pretzel, t-rex, vampire, exploding head, face vomiting, shushing face, love you gesture, brain, scarf, zebra, giraffe, fortune cookie, pie, hedgehog, and more.
Hundreds of new emoji, including more emotive smiley faces, gender-neutral characters, clothing options, food types, animals, mythical creatures and more, are coming to iPhone and iPad with iOS 11.1.
New child, adult, and older adult emojis in a range of skin tones are included, as are characters for person in steamy room, bearded person, mage, fairy, vampire, merperson, elf, genie, person climbing, person in lotus position, and more, with all of those emoji available in multiple skin tones and genders. While there are 56 distinct new emoji characters, gender/skin tone modifiers and flags bring that total to over 200.
Unicode 10 was first released in June of 2017, but it often takes several months for Apple to implement new emoji characters after a Unicode update as all of the new characters need to be drawn by Apple artists in the Apple emoji style. All of the Unicode 10 emoji are listed on emoji site Emojipedia.
The first beta of iOS 11.1 was released to developers last week. It did not include the promised Unicode 10 emojis, but Apple says they'll be added in developer and public betas of iOS 11.1 next week.
We've also seen evidence suggesting iOS 11.1 could include the Apple Pay Cash feature as employees are testing it internally, so the update is shaping up to be a significant addition to the iOS 11 operating system.
There's no word yet on when iOS 11.1 will see a public release.
Facebook quietly launched two official Workplace by Facebook desktop apps for the Mac and PC, TechCrunch discovered this afternoon. Workplace is Facebook's enterprise collaboration software designed to compete with Slack and other similar business apps.
The apps are available as a beta, with download links located in the Help section for Workplace. The apps are designed to allow users to communicate with their coworkers through chat, messaging, and screen sharing features. A Workplace by Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch that Mac and PC apps were a highly requested feature.
Workplace by Facebook spokesperson Vanessa Chan confirmed the launch of the desktop app to TechCrunch, saying "This was one of the most widely requested features by customers, so we built it. The desktop app is still in beta and being tested by Workplace customers who are providing feedback that we'll use to improve the product before a wider rollout."
Prior to the release of the Workplace desktop apps, Workplace by Facebook was only accessible via a browser window, and as TechCrunch points out, it's easy to lose a single browser tab among many other tabs.
While the Facebook desktop apps are limited to Workplace, it's possible Facebook could be testing the waters for an official Facebook or Facebook Messenger desktop app in the future.
When the Apple Watch was first released, Apple gave Uber what's known as an "entitlement" to run a special API to improve performance of the Uber app on the wrist worn device.
That entitlement made headlines today when security researchers told Gizmodo that Uber could have used it to record a user's iPhone screen even with the Uber app just running in the background.
In a statement, Uber said the entitlement was used for an old version of the Apple Watch app and was provided to Uber because the original Apple Watch couldn't render maps.
"It was used for an old version of the Apple Watch app, specifically to run the heavy lifting of rendering maps on your phone & then send the rendering to the Watch app," an Uber spokesperson told Gizmodo, saying that early Apple Watches couldn't handle this process alone. "This dependency was removed with previous improvements to Apple's OS & our app. Therefore, we're removing this API from our iOS codebase."
The entitlement is no longer necessary and Uber is planning to remove it from the iOS codebase, according to both the statement given to Gizmodo and a tweet from Uber head of security and privacy communications Melanie Ensign.
According to security researcher Will Strafach, who first brought attention to the issue, Apple does not often give out entitlements. Strafach said he could find no other apps on the App Store that have the permissions that the Uber app has.
API was used to render Uber maps on iphone & send to Apple Watch before Watch apps could handle it. It's not in use & being removed. Thx!
— Melanie Ensign (@iMeluny) October 5, 2017
Strafach says there is no evidence that Uber ever misused the entitlement, but it could have been utilized to monitor activity on an iPhone, recording passwords and other personal information. "Essentially it gives you full control over the framebuffer, which contains the colors of each pixel of your screen. So they can potentially draw or record the screen," another security researcher, Luca Todesco, told Gizmodo.
Uber says the app is no longer connected to anything in the company's current codebase, but users will likely be wary anyway as there have been other privacy concerns with the Uber app. There was a feature that allowed riders to be tracked for up to five minutes after a trip, and Apple CEO Tim Cook even went so far as to threaten to remove the app from the App Store after it was found to be secretly recording the UDID of iPhones to identify them even after the Uber app had been deleted.
Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington, who passed away in July, filmed an episode of Apple Music's Carpool Karaoke: The Series just before his death. It was unclear whether or not that episode would eventually air, but Linkin Park announced today on Facebook that the episode starring Bennington will indeed be shown.
In the Facebook post, the band says the episode will be streamed for free on the Linkin Park Facebook page "this time next week," suggesting a debut on Thursday morning.
Apple did not advertise the Chester Bennington episode when it previewed next week's Carpool Karaoke episodes on YouTube, so it is not clear if the episode will be available solely on Facebook or if it will also air on Apple Music.
The episode will be the only episode of Carpool Karaoke: The Series that can be watched outside of Apple Music, and by releasing it on Facebook, Apple ensures it will be available to all of Chester Bennington's friends, family, and fans at no cost with no subscription required. Other episodes of Carpool Karaoke require an Apple Music subscription.
Chester Bennington's episode also features Linkin Park band members Joe Hahn and Mike Shinoda, along with Ken Jeong, known for his role as Ben Chang on the NBC sitcom Community.
Facebook's Messenger service was today updated with a new Apple Music chat extension, allowing Messenger users to link to Apple Music content to share songs and directly within the Messenger app.
The extension can be accessed by tapping on the "+" icon next to the text bar to add Apple Music to a conversation. There's also an option to interact directly with the Apple Music chat bot to ask for music recommendations.
Apple Music subscribers can listen to full tracks from Apple Music, while non-subscribers are able to share and listen to 30 second clips from any music track. There's an option directly within Messenger to sign up for Apple Music.
This feature appears to still be rolling out to users. While Engadget has access, we're not yet seeing full functionality.
Facebook first announced plans for both Spotify and Apple Music integration in Messenger in April of 2017. The Spotify chat extension has been available for months ahead of the launch of the Apple Music extension.
Apple today released a supplemental update to macOS High Sierra 10.13, the first update to the macOS High Sierra operating system that was released to the public in late September. The macOS High Sierra 10.13 update comes just over one week after the release of macOS High Sierra.
The new version of macOS High Sierra 10.13 is a free update for all customers who have a compatible machine. The update can be downloaded using the Software Update function in the Mac App Store.
The supplemental macOS High Sierra 10.13 update addresses a software vulnerability that could expose the passwords of encrypted Apple File System volumes in plain text in Disk Utility.
Apple has released a support document alongside the Supplemental Update that walks users through the process of protecting their data if macOS High Sierra is showing a password instead of a password hint on an encrypted APFS volume.
Steps include installing the new update, creating an encrypted backup of data for the affected volume, erasing the drive, reformatting to APFS, then APFS (Encrypted), and finally restoring the data that was backed up.
A separate security support document says that the update also fixes a vulnerability that could let a hacker steal the usernames and passwords of accounts stored in Keychain using a malicious third-party app.
And finally, according to the release notes accompanying the update, it also improves installer robustness, fixes a cursor graphic bug in Adobe InDesign, and resolves an issue where messages couldn't be deleted from Yahoo accounts in Mail.
macOS High Sierra introduces a new more modern file system designed for flash storage (APFS), Metal 2, Safari improvements that protect user privacy and prevent autoplay videos, and improvements to several apps like Photos, Mail, Notes, and more.
Apple today shared a trailer for "Bang! The Bert Berns Story," an upcoming documentary that chronicles the life of "Twist and Shout" songwriter and producer Bert Berns.
Berns, a well-known record producer in the 1960s responsible for hits like "Brown Eyed Girl," "Here Comes the Night," "Piece of My Heart," and more, started out as a songwriter before moving on to Atlantic Records where he worked with bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
He went on to form BANG Records and Shout Records, where he signed artists like the McCoys, the Strangeloves, and Neil Diamond.
The documentary highlights Berns' career and his relationships with Carmine "Wassel" DeNoia, his manager and best friend, and mobster Tommy Eboli, once the acting boss of the Genovese crime family in New York. Van Morrison, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Ben E. King, Solomon Burke, and more, will all make appearances in the documentary.
Berns' son, Brett Berns, directs, and the documentary is narrated by Bruce Springsteen guitarist and "Sopranos" star Steven Van Zandt.
The documentary will debut exclusively on Apple Music on October 24.
Following the launch of BB-8 in 2015, and R2-D2 and BB-9E last month, Sphero has introduced an all-new iPhone-controlled droid ahead of New York Comic-Con, which begins today. This one is R2-Q5 and is the Imperial counterpart to R2-D2, with a glossy black finish and matte gold trimmings. R2-Q5 first appeared in Return of the Jedi.
Similar to Sphero's R2-D2 droid, R2-Q5 has functional lights, a rotating dome, retractable third foot, on-board speakers, and can be piloted manually via the same Sphero app that controls the other Star Wars droids, or patrol on its own. The app has augmented reality features that place R2-Q5 in settings within the Star Wars universe, including the Death Star. You can watch Star Wars movies with the droid and have it react to certain moments within the film as well.
R2-Q5™ is an Imperial astromech droid from a galaxy far, far away.... Control it with your smart device or keep this nefarious Droid in top shape with augmented reality training. R2-Q5’s signature front and rear LED lights are fully functional, and an integrated speaker means all sounds come right from the droid itself. Watch R2-Q5 interact with other Star Wars™ App-enabled Droids by Sphero, and view films from the Star Wars saga with R2-Q5 reacting by your side. This special droid has been brought to life thanks to Sphero technology.
Sphero is planning R2-Q5 as a much more exclusive model than its previous droids, with only 100 on sale at the company's New York Comic-Con booth today. After that, the droid will debut on Best Buy's site and in stores on November 5 for $199.99. Pre-orders are available now, and the "limited edition" droid is expected to see limited availability throughout the holidays, so once they disappear from Best Buy they'll be gone for good.
Brazilian software developer Matheus Mariano appears to have discovered a significant Disk Utility bug that exposes the passwords of encrypted Apple File System volumes in plain text on macOS High Sierra.
MacRumors confirmed our test password "dontdisplaythis" appeared as the hint
Mariano added a new encrypted APFS volume to a container, set a password and hint, and unmounted and remounted the container in order to force a password prompt for demonstration purposes. Then, he clicked the "Show Hint" button, which revealed the full password in plain text rather than the hint.
A second video with English system language is embedded below
MacRumors reproduced this behavior on a 2016 MacBook Pro running macOS High Sierra, including versions 10.13 and 10.13.1 beta. German software developer Felix Schwarz also shared a video of the issue on Twitter today.
The issue currently only affects Macs with SSD storage due to Apple File System compatibility, but APFS will eventually support machines with Fusion Drives as well. Schwarz believes users who haven't specified a password hint, or haven't used Disk Utility whatsoever, are probably not affected.
For clarity, this appears to be a bug within Disk Utility itself. When creating an encrypted APFS volume in Terminal with the diskutil command line utility, the actual hint is shown, rather than the password.
Mariano said he has reported the vulnerability to Apple. The company did not immediately respond to our request for a comment on the matter, but we'll update this article if we hear back.
Over a year after grandfathered subscribers on Netflix's original $7.99/month plan were introduced to the new $9.99/month pricing, Mashable reports that the standard streaming plan will be increasing by $1 starting for U.S. subscribers in November. This means that those who now pay $9.99/month to stream on two screens at once (the standard tier) will be paying $10.99/month soon.
The top tier option, which provides streaming on four screens at once and allows access to Ultra HD videos, is also increasing from $11.99/month to $13.99/month. The service's basic plan is staying at $7.99/month, letting users stream only in standard definition on one screen at a time.
The exact time that the new prices will show up will vary depending on each subscriber's billing cycle, but starting on October 19 Netflix will send out emails with "at least" 30 days of notice ahead of the bump in price. Regarding the changes, Netflix provided the following statement:
"From time to time, Netflix plans and pricing are adjusted as we add more exclusive TV shows and movies, introduce new product features and improve the overall Netflix experience to help members find something great to watch even faster."
For the last price change, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings wrote a letter to company investors about an "unexpected" loss of subscribers following the price hike from $7.99 to $9.99. At the time, Hastings said that, "Whatever the price is for something, people don’t like for it to go up," while still claiming that the new price tiers were "working great" for new members who were not grandfathered into the $7.99/month model.
Home security camera company Canary has updated the features included in its free and paid subscription packages over the past few days, removing multiple camera abilities that were once free to all users and placing them behind the company's $9.99/month paywall. Subscriptions increase to $14.99/month for 2-3 cameras, and an additional $4.99/month for each added device.
Many Canary customers have emailed and Tweeted us over the past few days pointing out the changes, and now Canary has provided a statement to The Verge regarding its motivations.
The Canary Flex and Canary cameras
Under the terms of the new "Free Service," Canary users can no longer use Night Mode if they aren't paying, meaning they can't set their camera to record clips when motion is detected in the nighttime while they're home. Canary Free Service members can no longer record videos or receive motion alerts in Home Mode, nor can they record a full clip from when motion is detected to when the motion ends. Instead, for Free Service members the Canary Cam automatically cuts off the clip ten seconds after the first motion is seen. Canary calls these "digestible video previews."
Canary Free Service members also can't download and share videos from the iOS app, but can bookmark an unlimited amount of video previews to their timeline. All of these are features that were previously free, and now require users to become a paid "Canary Member." As MacRumors readers have pointed out on Twitter, this means that even if you bought a Canary device months ago under the impression of not needing a paid subscription for basic features, you will now have to pay the company to keep on using the most useful abilities of the security cameras, or attempt to return or sell them.
Some basic features of the cams remain intact for Free Service members, like watching a feed live while in Home Mode without needing to switch to a different "Away" mode. Canary has updated the timeline as well, so that multiple cameras in one home have 24 hours of history for each individual device, instead of those 24 hours being divided up across devices.
According to Canary's FAQ page, the membership update comes with a change in its cloud service implementation, and the prior Free Service tier "will no longer be available." Understandably, the frustrations of many users center around Canary's last-minute announcement of the changes (September 28), which came less than one week ahead of the official implementation (October 3).
Can I keep my legacy plans rather than switching to the new Free Service? No. All customers who are not on Canary Membership will shift to our new Free Service experience. This is a change in our cloud service implementation, and the prior Free Service experience will no longer be available.
Canary co-founder and chief design officer Jon Troutman issued the following statement on the situation to The Verge:
"Today we stream nearly 500 million video clips per day. Most Canary users rely on notifications, Watch Live, and their timeline images to determine what is happening in their homes or businesses, which means that hundreds of millions of recorded videos travel through our platform unwatched, making the system slower, and costing Canary a significant amount in cloud expenses. To address this, we have aligned all free users on a plan that provides Video Previews that are still maintained on a 24-hour timeline. We have also introduced a faster Watch Live experience that can now be enabled while Canary devices are set to Away or Home mode. Our goal with these changes was to maintain a highly-competitive free service option while enabling continuous innovation and new feature development for all users."
Canary's stance appears to consistently state that too many recorded videos were traveling through the Canary platform "unwatched," leading to a slowdown of the service for some users, as well as "costing Canary a significant amount in cloud expenses." As such, the company has adjusted the Free Service tier by paring down to ten second video previews, removing Night Mode, and preventing users from downloading and sharing videos within the Canary app.
Amid all of the turmoil over the new subscription plans, there's also still no word from Canary about when HomeKit support will launch with the Canary Plus. Canary first announced the HomeKit-enabled camera in June 2016 for a release sometime that fall.
Microsoft today announced that its Edge web browser is coming to iOS, starting with a beta version for iPhone available today.
Microsoft Edge will primarily appeal to iPhone users that use a Windows PC instead of a Mac thanks to a "Continue on PC" feature that enables users to push a website from the mobile to desktop version of the browser, like Apple's Handoff.
Continue on PC functionality on the desktop side will be part of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, available worldwide October 17.
The mobile version also includes access to favorites, history, a reading list, and e-books, but The Verge said tabs and history of what you browse on your smartphone are not shared to the desktop version of Edge yet.
"Microsoft's Joe Belfiore says the company still has work to do on the desktop version of Edge to support this, but the company is hoping to enable this at some point in the future," said reporter Tom Warren.
The report added that Bing, Google, and Yahoo can be set as the default search engine in Edge for iOS, which has a similar design as the desktop version. The mobile version doesn't have Cortana or built-in ad blocking.
On iOS, Microsoft is using Apple's WebKit engine, as required for all third-party browsers on the platform. From a compatibility perspective, Microsoft said Edge for iOS should match the version of Safari that is currently available for iPhone.
Keep in mind that, like other third-party web browsers, Microsoft Edge cannot be enabled as the default browser on iPhone.
Microsoft Edge for iOS is currently available in English only, but the company said it will add support for other languages as it expands the preview. iPad and Android support will be added in the future as well.
Access to the Microsoft Edge Preview for iOS is reserved for Windows Insiders. The beta can be installed through Apple's TestFlight program.
Microsoft Edge for iOS should be available on the App Store later this year.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has shared a tribute to late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on the sixth anniversary of his death today.
"Remembering Steve today," Cook tweeted, alongside a picture of Jobs in his younger days. "Still with us, still inspiring us."
Remembering Steve today. Still with us, still inspiring us. “Make something wonderful, and put it out there.” pic.twitter.com/7aOCPkwU0U
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) October 5, 2017
Jobs, who created Apple in 1976 with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, introduced three of the company's most iconic products in its history: the Macintosh in 1984, the iPod in 2001, and the iPhone in 2007.
His passing resulted in an outpouring of grief from family, friends, coworkers, Apple customers, and leaders around the world, ranging from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to former U.S. President Barack Obama.
Jobs actually had a 12-year hiatus from Apple starting in 1985. During that time, he founded computer and software company NeXT, and funded Lucasfilm's computer graphics division eventually known as Pixar.
Apple acquired NeXT in 1997, bringing Jobs back to the company. Under his leadership, Apple went from flirting with bankruptcy in the late 1990s to becoming the world's most valuable company just before he died.
Apple named the Steve Jobs Theater in his honor at its new Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California. Cook reflected on Jobs' legacy and showmanship during Apple's first-ever event at the theater last month.
Steve meant so much to me and so much to all of us. There's not a day that goes by that we don't think about him. Memories have especially come rushing back as we prepared for today and this event. It's taken some time, but we can now reflect on him with joy, instead of sadness. Steve's spirit and timeless philosophy on life will always be the DNA of Apple. His greatest gift, his greatest expression of his appreciation for humanity, would not be a single product. Rather, it would be Apple itself. We dedicated this theater to Steve because we loved him, and because he loved days like this, where we can share our latest products and ideas with the world.
After beginning as a small test in Portugal in September, Instagram this week is beginning to roll out a feature that lets you automatically share the same Instagram Story to your Facebook Story with the tap of a button. TechCrunch spotted the cross-platform Story syncing, and Instagram parent company Facebook subsequently confirmed the feature's rollout will be coming to all United States users this week.
Instagram Stories has grown to become a big success for the company in the 14 months since it launched, with 250 million users interacting with Stories every day as of last June. In April, Instagram Stories surpassed rival Snapchat in terms of daily active users. The feature is the same across platforms, allowing you to post a picture or a video that disappears after 24 hours.
“You now have the option to share your Instagram Stories to your Facebook Stories. We’re always working to make it easier to share any moment with the people who matter to you” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.
While Stories on Instagram have been a hit, Facebook's launch of its own Stories tab has been less successful, with many users pointing out that little to none of their friends share on the platform. Likely because of this, Facebook soon after the feature's launch began populating the Stories tab with grayed-out profile pictures of friends so this section of the app wouldn't be as empty.
With the new update, Facebook Stories should see an uptick in user engagement since it'll be easier than ever to share a quick picture or video Story from Instagram, without having to open Facebook. For now, however, you won't be able post to Instagram Stories from Facebook Stories, but the company "hasn't ruled out" introducing such an update in the future.
Besides its main app and Instagram, Facebook has also added disappearing Story-like abilities into Messenger and WhatsApp.
When the Apple Watch was first released, Apple gave Uber what's known as an "
