MacRumors

Tony Fadell, widely known as the "father" of the iPod and the creator of the Nest Learning Thermostat, today announced he is leaving Nest and Nest parent company Alphabet.

Fadell, Nest's founder, has been with Google since it acquired Nest for $3.2 billion in 2014 and has worked on projects like Google Glass in addition to continuing to run Nest Labs.

In a blog post, Fadell says he has decided the time is right to "leave the Nest," a decision that was originally made late last year. Fadell will not be present for day to day activities at Nest, but he plans to remain involved with the company as an advisor to Alphabet and Larry Page.

While there is never a perfect time to transition, we've grown Nest to much more than a thermostat company. We've created a hardware + software + services ecosystem, which is still in the early growth stage and will continue to evolve to move further into the mainstream over the coming years. The future of Nest is equally as bright given the strong and experienced leadership team in place, as well as the two-year product roadmap we've developed together to ensure the right future direction. [...]

I will miss this company and my Nest family (although I'll be around to provide advice and guidance and help the team with the transition), but I am excited about what's coming next, both for Nest and for me.

Fadell says his new role as advisor will provide him with "time and flexibility" to pursue new opportunities and "create and disrupt other industries." He's leaving Nest with a two-year roadmap in place and Marwan Fawaz, a former Motorola executive, will be joining Nest as CEO.

According to Bloomberg, Fadell's departure follows some recent issues at Nest, including a long length of time between product releases and software issues with the Nest Protect smoke detector that led to a recall.

In recent months, Nest employees complained publicly about Fadell's management, while claiming the business had missed sales targets, botched upgrades and delayed future products

Tony Fadell, in addition to being known for his work at Nest Labs, is credited as one of the original creators of the iPod, heading up the project as senior vice president of the iPod division from 2006 to 2008. Fadell started at Apple in 2001 and helped to produce early versions of Apple's iconic music player.

Ahead of its Worldwide Developers Conference, set to kick off on June 13, Apple has updated its official WWDC app with a new look and a new version that works on the fourth-generation Apple TV. The update also adds support for live streaming on iOS and tvOS and adds multitasking support on compatible iPads.

A tvOS version of this app is now available, so you can stream and download videos from WWDC 2016 and previous conferences on Apple TV. This update supports live streaming on iOS and tvOS. It also supports multitasking on iOS 9 on iPad.

The WWDC app is designed to be used by both conference attendees and developers who were not able to obtain tickets for the event. In addition to providing on-site tools for viewing start times for labs, sessions, and events, the app also offers the ability to watch live streaming sessions with Apple engineers.

With the new tvOS version of the WWDC app, developers who are not attending the San Francisco conference will be able to virtually attend sessions through their television screens.

Apple has also released a schedule of sessions that will take place during the conference, many with humorous names to conceal information that won't be available until iOS 10 and OS X 10.12 are unveiled at the keynote event.

The Worldwide Developers Conference starts on June 13 with a keynote that will take place at 10:00 a.m. at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. Apple will likely live stream the keynote on both its website and on the Apple TV, and MacRumors will also provide live coverage on MacRumors.com and through the MacRumorsLive Twitter account.

Apple's WWDC app can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Food delivery company GrubHub has added Apple Pay as a payment option in the latest update to its GrubHub and Seamless apps (via TechCrunch).

The company follows in the footsteps of rivals Caviar, Door Dash, and Postmates in supporting Apple's mobile payment platform, and means that users of its two apps can now pay for their food using cards registered in the native iOS Wallet app.

Originally founded in 2004, GrubHub began as a website where users could order from local restaurants offering home delivery services. It later merged with rival company Seamless and expanded to offer its own service for restaurants that don't otherwise usually deliver. Last year GrubHub processed $2.4 billion in sales, 60 percent of which was generated through its mobile apps.

The move signals another domestic win for Apple's mobile payment platform, and appears to confirm that the company's recently stated aim to aggressively expand the service both at home and abroad is making progress.

Speaking to Fortune yesterday, Apple said its mobile payment platform is gaining a million new users each week, but the company stopped short of revealing the overall number of Apple Pay users. It also said that transaction volume through the service is five times what it was a year ago, and that payment volume within apps more than doubled in the second half of 2015.

In related news, The Verge reported today that Walmart has announced its intention to partner with ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft in order to trial a new grocery delivery service, in a move that will put it in direct competition with Amazon's recently expanded AmazonFresh service.

Customers will soon be able to place their food orders online, for Walmart staff to prepare their groceries and then call local Uber and Lyft drivers to deliver the items, at a delivery charge of between $7 to $10, which is paid to Walmart. According to the company, the pilot program will begin within the next two weeks and initially operate in Denver and Phoenix.

The Unicode Consortium recently approved 72 new emoji for inclusion in Unicode 9, set to be released on June 21. New emoji range from expanded smileys and people to new animals, food, and sports.

Notable smileys include rolling on the floor laughing, drooling face, and nauseated face, while the people/body category gains shrug, selfie, and face palm. New animal emoji include gorilla, fox face, deer, shark, and owl, and some of the new foods include avocado, potato, croissant, pancakes, salad, and bacon.

There are a line of new medals, objects like a scooter and a canoe, and emoji to represent boxing gloves, martial arts uniforms, wrestlers, fencing, juggling, and more. Emojipedia has shared mockups and a full list of upcoming emoji.

The emoji above serve as simple mockups and are not representative of what the actual emoji will look like on various devices, but Emojipedia has created them in the Apple style. Apple and Google's designers will actually custom design emoji based on the Unicode Consortium's guidelines for each character, crafting them to fit in with existing emoji.

Though the Unicode Consortium is releasing Unicode 9 on June 21, the new emoji will not be available on iOS and Mac devices until Apple implements support for them, which can sometimes take several months. Apple currently supports Unicode 8, which introduced emoji like taco, burrito, unicorn face, and popcorn, along with emoji skin tone modifiers.

With the release of Unicode 9 on the horizon, the Unicode Consortium has already begun considering candidates for Unicode 10, with dumpling, takeout box, fortune cookie, orange heart, sled, and more under consideration.

Samsung today introduced the Gear IconX, a set of wireless earbuds that are similar in style to the Bragi Dash. The IconX earbuds have no wires to connect them to one another and no wire to plug them into a smartphone or other device, instead communicating wirelessly over Bluetooth.

Priced at $199.99, the IconX earbuds feature 4GB of internal storage to hold music and use hooks to securely fit into an ear. There are also built-in fitness sensors for monitoring movement and heart rate, with the data able to be synced to Samsung's S Health app, and there's a built-in voice coach feature. Touch gestures like tapping and swiping on the earbud are used for skipping tracks and changing the volume.

When not in use, the earbuds can be placed into a pill-shaped case which also serves as a backup battery, offering two full charges. The battery inside the IconX lasts for one and a half hours when streaming music or for three and a half hours when playing music stored on the earbuds themselves.

Samsung debuted the new earbuds at an event in New York and gave several tech sites a hands-on demo, giving us a first look at some early impressions. According to The Verge, IconX is "pretty good" at blocking outside noises, while TechCrunch points out Samsung is marketing the earbuds as a workout-only accessory given the "dismal" battery life.

Samsung's Gear IconX earbuds come as rumors suggest Apple is preparing to remove the headphone jack from its iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus devices, set to be released this fall. There have also been rumors indicating Apple is working on its own set of wireless Bluetooth earphones that would be sold alongside the iPhone 7 as a premium accessory with many of the same features in the IconX.

Samsung plans to debut the Gear IconX in blue, black, and white in the third quarter of 2016.

The company has also announced an updated waterproof Gear Fit 2 fitness tracker with a wider 1.5-inch curved Super AMOLED display, 4GB storage, GPS, a heart rate monitor, a barometer for measuring altitude, and features for automatically detecting exercise activities. The Gear Fit 2 will be available for pre-order starting tomorrow at select retailers and available in stores on June 10.

According to Apple's system status page, multiple store services are currently experiencing an outage. The App Store, Apple TV App Store, Mac App Store, iTunes in the Cloud, and the Volume Purchase Program are unavailable for some users.

The outage started just after 12:30 p.m., and we have also heard reports of problems with Apple Music and Apple News, though those are not service outages currently listed on the system status page.

Apple is investigating the issue and will bring the services back online as soon as possible.

Update: Several more iCloud services are now experiencing issues, as seen on Apple's system status page.

Update 3:40: The App Stores and some Apple services are back online, but iCloud Backup, iCloud Drive, Mail Drop, Photos, and a few other service remain offline.

Apple recently hired Sinisa Durekovic, a software engineer with expertise in satellite navigation systems, reports Bloomberg. Durekovic, who was hired in October, previously developed satellite navigation systems used in a range of luxury vehicles from BMW, Volkswagen, and Mercedes-Benz while working at Harman/Becker Automotive Systems and NAVTEQ.

Durekovic’s LinkedIn profile does not offer up details on what he is doing at Apple, nor does Bloomberg have insight into his role, but given his expertise, it’s likely he has joined the company to work on the Maps or CarPlay team. He specifically lists his areas of expertise as digital maps, car navigation systems, and map-enhanced advanced driver assistance systems.

I am the Software Architect, Engineer and a Team Leader with more than 25 years of experience in design and development of software systems. After 8 years as Principal Engineer in a mid-sized company, I assumed role of Senior Principal Architect and later Chief Engineer at major premium Navigation System supplier. My main work is in area of the Map-Enhanced Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, Digital Maps and Car Navigation Systems.

Since Maps debuted in 2012 to criticism and poor reviews, Apple has worked to introduce significant improvements. New Flyover locations are added on a consistent basis, errors are fixed in a more timely manner, and iOS 9 introduced transit directions. Apple also made multiple map-related purchases, snapping up companies like Coherent Navigation, Placeable, HopStop, Locationary, BroadMap, and Embark.

In December, Apple said Apple Maps is now used three times more than Google Maps on the iPhone, and there are several projects in the works to further improve Maps. Apple will open a new development center in Hyderabad, India, where 4,000 employees will focus on Apple Maps development, and over the course of the last year, Apple has been using vans with mapping equipment to obtain street-level imagery for future mapping use.

Earlier this week, rumors and speculation suggested Apple was working on a 5K Thunderbolt Display with an integrated GPU that could potentially debut at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, but new information from iMore suggests that is not the case.

According to iMore's Rene Ritchie, Apple does not plan to introduce an Apple Display with an integrated external GPU. Ritchie does not provide a specific source on this information, but he is well-connected and occasionally shares accurate details on Apple's plans.

There'd been some speculation on Twitter and rumor reports about Apple possibly introducing a display with an integrated eGPU. Theory being, it would take some of the graphical processing overhead off MacBooks and/or facilitate a single-cable connection that could drive 5K.

While it sounds cool, it can also create expectational debt. So, scratch eGPU off your list for now, but keep your eyes locked to the keynote on Monday, June 13, for lots of other amazingly cool stuff.

Ritchie's statement does not appear to entirely dismiss the possibility of an upgraded Thunderbolt Display at the Worldwide Developers Conference, so it is possible some kind of display-related announcement is still in the works.

As we explained yesterday, Apple could introduce a 5K display alongside Thunderbolt 3 Macs, using both DisplayPort 1.2 streams in the Thunderbolt 3 specification to drive a 5K display using Multi-Stream Transport. Apple used a similar setup internally for the original 5K iMac.

In recent weeks, Thunderbolt Display stock has been dwindling in many Apple retail stores across the United States, in Canada, and in the UK, leading to speculation that a refresh is on the horizon. It is still not clear if the stock shortages are indicative that a new model is coming, but the Thunderbolt Display is long overdue for an update and WWDC would be an ideal time for an unveiling.

Apple today released a new version of iOS 9.3.2 that's specific to the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, presumably resolving an issue that caused some iPad Pro devices to become bricked after installing the original iOS 9.3.2 update.

The new version of iOS 9.3.2, build 13F72, can be downloaded over-the-air on any 9.7-inch iPad Pro that has not previously been updated to the latest version of iOS 9.

iOS 9.3.2 was originally released to the public on Monday, May 16, but shortly after it came out, we began receiving complaints that the update was bricking some 9.7-inch iPad Pro devices with an "error 56" message.

Later in the week, Apple pulled the iOS 9.3.2 update for the 9.7-inch iPad Pro and advised customers who had been affected by the error to contact Apple support. No simple fix was available, and some users who were impacted by the bug had their iPad Pro devices replaced by Apple.

Alongside the removal of the iOS 9.3.2 update, Apple said it was working on a fix and would release a new version of iOS 9.3.2 "as quickly as possible."

The launch of a new version of iOS 9.3.2 suggests the issue is now resolved, and with a fix in place, the next version of the iOS 9.3.3 beta may also be seeded to 9.7-inch iPad Pro users. Released earlier last week, the first iOS 9.3.3 beta was not available for the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, presumably because the bug had not yet been fixed.

Update:Apple has published a support document outlining the steps to take if the error 56 message shows up when attempting to update a 9.7-inch iPad Pro from iOS 9.3 or iOS 9.3.1 to iOS 9.3.2 or later. Error 56 will require restoring through iTunes.

9.7-inch iPad Pro users may run into a related issue asking them to disconnect or turn off the iPad Pro during the update, which Apple also covers in the document.