MacRumors

Apple Maps has been updated with new traffic data in Singapore and Malaysia, providing users with real-time updates about vehicular traffic in the neighboring southeast Asia countries. As usual, highly congested areas will have orange or red dotted lines along the roads to indicate that drivers may face delays.

Apple has yet to list Singapore or Malaysia under Apple Maps: Traffic on its iOS 9 feature availability website, but the page will likely be updated soon. Apple Maps traffic data is available in 30 other countries, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, South Africa, China, and most of Europe.

After launching the Echo over a year ago, today Amazon announced two new additions to the lineup of voice-controlled smart hubs that house the company's personal assistant Alexa. Users will now be able to purchase a more portable version of Echo with Amazon Tap, and even expand the device's power into other rooms with Echo Dot.

The $130 Amazon Tap is a more rugged, pick-up-and-go alternative to the original Echo, housing built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and the company's Alexa operating system. Instead of interacting with Alexa through always-on functionality, Amazon Tap requires users to tap the microphone button on the front of the speaker to access the service's voice commands. If connected to Wi-Fi or a mobile hotspot, users will be able to gain access to all of the normal, cloud-based features the Echo grants at home.

Amazon demonstrated the sound quality to me before Tap went out today and I can say it did provide an impressive musical experience. Duel-firing Dolby speakers enable Tap to provide rich, 360-degree quality sound.

It’s also meant to tote around and comes with a pretty solid battery life for that purpose. A fully charged Tap will last for up to nine hours of playback or three weeks in standby mode.

Alternatively, Amazon also has created a new household expansion to Echo with Echo Dot. The small, palm-sized device will let users expand the capabilities of Echo to different rooms of their house for $90, or half of Echo's $180 price tag. Like the flagship Echo product, Echo Dot uses far-field voice recognition to respond to the inquiries of its user while simultaneously being able to detect commands specified towards it over other the din of a room.

No specific launch date was given for Amazon Tap or Echo Dot, but the company is attempting an interesting release plan for the latter device: users will only be able to buy the $90 Echo Dot from an Echo itself or Amazon Fire TV. The $130 Amazon Tap will be available through the company's traditional online marketplace.

Index has announced that it is upgrading clothing retailer American Apparel's point-of-sale systems to enable Apple Pay, Android Pay, and other NFC-based mobile payment services at its U.S. stores. The new systems will also include point-to-point encryption (P2PE) and EMV for Chip-and-Signature or Chip-and-PIN cards.

American Apparel, based in Los Angeles, California, is a popular wholesale provider of basic t-shirts and other clothing. As of September 2015, the company operated 227 retail stores in 19 countries, although many of its sales occur online. The retailer exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February 2016 with an approved restructuring plan.

American Apparel joins several other popular U.S. brands that have or will adopt Apple Pay by the end of 2016, including Crate & Barrel, Chick-fil-A, Au Bon Pain, Cinnabon, Chili's, Domino's, KFC, and Starbucks. Apple Pay is now available at more than 2 million retail locations in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, and China.

Earlier this week, an unconfirmed leaked document revealed MasterCard's plans to support Apple Pay in Canada, Brazil, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore in 2016. Apple previously announced that it will launch Apple Pay in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Spain this year in partnership with American Express.

Google today announced a pilot program for its "Hands Free" payment service, allowing customers in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area to pay for goods and services over Bluetooth using a photograph for confirmation.

Hands Free, as the name implies, is aimed at allowing people to make purchases without the need to pull out a phone or a wallet. It requires customers to create a profile (with photo) through the Hands Free app, available for both iOS and Android. When in a location that supports Hands Free payments, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and location services on the phone will communicate with the store's cash point-of-sale system.

As with Android Pay, Hands Free does not transmit full card details to retailers, and purchases made send notifications to the accompanying phone. Google says it sends alerts if any unusual activity is detected and suspicious transactions won't go through without approval.

Hands Free payment options are currently available at select locations in the South Bay, including McDonald's and Papa John's Pizza.

The Hands Free app for the iPhone can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Adobe today updated its Lightroom photography app for iOS devices to version 2.2, adding two small but notable features. Lightroom is now able to output full resolution files for any file, whether captured directly on an iOS device or taken on a standard camera and transferred to an iPhone iPad.

Files added to an iOS device from a direct connection with a camera are also able to be transferred in full resolution to other mobile devices that are signed into the same Adobe account. According to Adobe, files captured with iPhone are available for editing and exporting on an iPad in full resolution and vice versa.

Today's update also brings improved 3D Touch support to the Lightroom app on the iPhone 6s. Peek and Pop 3D Touch gestures are available in the Camera Roll browser view, allowing users to quickly preview images in a larger size while browsing through their photo collections.

- New: Full resolution output. Now, export and share photos that were captured on your device or that you added to your device at full resolution.
- Updated: 3D Touch support in the Camera Roll browser view. Quickly preview your image with Peek & Pop when browsing Camera Roll photos in the app.
- Fixed: Issue that lead to a potential crash.
- Improved: Various bugs and issues.

For those unfamiliar with Lightroom, it is Adobe's professional-level photo editing software. Lightroom for iOS devices is a free download, but because it is designed to work alongside the Lightroom app for the desktop, it requires a subscription to Adobe's Creative Cloud Photography plan, priced at $9.99 per month. A 30-day free trial is available.

Adobe has separate Lightroom apps for the iPad [Direct Link] and the iPhone [Direct Link].

Apple's smartphones have been released on a "tick-tock" cycle since 2008. The iPhone 6 lineup represented a "tick" year, which involved a complete design overhaul, while the iPhone 6s lineup was part of a "tock" year, which generally focused on camera and processor improvements, new features such as 3D Touch and Live Photos, and incremental refinements like faster Touch ID, LTE, and Wi-Fi.

From a distance, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s lineups look and feel like virtually identical smartphones. It is true that both models share several attributes, but the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have many features that are not included on the year-older iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. So, which one should you choose to purchase or upgrade to? What about the rumored iPhone SE and iPhone 7? Let's take a closer look.

➜ Click here to read more...

Update: The person who submitted the screenshots and information to MacRumors has admitted that it was a hoax.

Sling TV customers who have been hoping for a tvOS app may soon be able to watch the service on their fourth-generation Apple TVs, as it appears a launch could be coming in the near future. This morning, a MacRumors reader came across a Sling TV app in the tvOS App Store, which he says "works great" after he downloaded it.

The app disappeared from the tvOS App Store shortly after he installed it, but screenshots show the app interface, complete with Sling channels to select from, and they depict the Sling TV app on the Home screen.

For those unfamiliar with Sling TV, it is an Internet-based streaming television service that's designed for cord cutters. Sling TV offers a $20 bundle of channels that can be watched live on a range of devices, from iPhones and iPads to Macs, consoles, and set-top boxes like the Amazon Fire TV and the Roku.

The third-generation Apple TV did not support Sling TV because Apple exercised strict control over the available content options, but with the fourth-generation Apple TV, Apple has loosened up its guidelines to make a much wider range of content available. With an inability to secure its own deals for a streaming television service, Apple has turned to making the tvOS App Store a way for content providers to offer a varied and rich selection of media options.

There was some speculation suggesting Apple had banned Sling from creating an Apple TV app, but a Sling representative later clarified that was not true, saying "We'd like to be on as many platforms as possible."

As recently as this morning, Sling said it had no information to divulge when questioned about the release of an Apple TV app, but the screenshots obtained this morning seem to suggest that an app is in the works and that it could be released in the near future.

According to a new report from Economic Daily News (via DigiTimes), Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has plans to double the output capacity of its 16nm chip production from 40,000 12-inch wafers in February to 80,000 in March. The news corroborates previous reports that suggested TSMC was ready to expand its 16nm FinFET production capacity in the second quarter of 2016, solely for the iPhone 7.

In a recent investors meeting, TSMC's co-CEO CC Wei said that the company's percentage share of the 14/16nm market is expected to increase from 40 percent in 2015 to over 70 percent in 2016. Apple isn't specifically referenced in the report today, but among TSMC's other purported 16nm customers -- Xilinx, MediaTek, HiSilicon, Spreadtrum and Nvidia -- it is one of the bigger names.

The upcoming ramp-up of 16nm production capacity will buoy TSMC's sales performance starting March, the report quoted market watchers as indicating. The foundry's 16nm FinFET processes consisting of 16FF (16nm FinFET), 16FF+ (16nm FinFET Plus) and 16FFC (16nm FinFET Compact) will generate more than 20% of its total wafer revenues in 2016.

Previous rumors around the iPhone 7 production have pointed to Apple picking TSMC to be the sole manufacturer of the smartphone's processor, presumably called the A10. The foundry was said to have won over Apple because of its 10nm manufacturing process, and a likely attempt at avoiding the dual-sourced A9 chip blowback Apple saw in the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.

DxO today announced a new "dramatically enhanced stand-alone experience" for its DxO ONE camera, granting users the ability to take pictures with the miniaturized device without needing to tether it to their smartphone. The DxO ONE's OLED display helps its users line up a shot, which they can then capture easily thanks to the on-board two-stage shutter button.

The connected app allows for full customization of the camera's various settings like aperture, shutter speed, ISO, metering, and white balance. When using stand-alone mode, the DxO ONE remembers the most recent settings of the app and preserves them in the pictures taken without a smartphone. As the company explains in its press release, "For example, if you prefer to capture portraits at f/1.8, the camera will always be ready at f/1.8 when you pull it out of your pocket."

In addition to the stand-alone experience, the new DxO update brings a couple of other features to the camera:

Version 1.3 also introduces a host of other features including motion blur alert, and an elegant new way to dial in white balance, metering and focus modes, which can also be viewed as overlays in the viewfinder along with your iPhone battery level. Browsing photos is faster than ever, with the gallery now sorted in the same order as in iOS Photos.

You can be sure your images were successfully shared thanks to a new visual confirmation message, and you can set a preferred JPEG compression level for photos, and bitrate for videos. Of note, an innovative Message Center now provides a direct connection to DxO, with in-app access to current information designed to help you get the most out of your DxO ONE.

The company has also unbundled DxO FilmPack and DxO OpticsPro from the package, two pieces of software that gives users a more in-depth dive into picture editing, and will sell them separately. The removal of the software has dropped the price of the DxO One by $100, so those interested can buy the camera for $499 from the company's online store.

The DxO ONE app can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]