MacRumors iPhone and iPad Blog: Apps, News, and Rumors

Nanoleaf's new 12-sided light-up remote joins its existing Nanoleaf Light Panels and Nanoleaf Rhythm, adding a whole slew of smartphone-free physical control options for your HomeKit setup in one easy-to-use accessory. The Nanoleaf Remote is bigger than button and remote devices from other companies, but it offers access to many more scenes and as you'll see in my review, it's a great value if ...

Apple Maps vehicles equipped with LiDAR sensors have begun collecting street-level data in Japan for the first time this month. Apple will be surveying the Tokyo and Urayasu areas between June and October of this year, according to a new Apple Maps vehicles page created specifically for Japan, first spotted by Japanese blog Mac Otakara. Japan is the 11th country where the vehicles are...

Microsoft has announced a new visual search feature for its Bing app that lets users snap a picture with their phone's camera and use it to search the web. The new visual search function builds on the AI-powered intelligent search capabilities already used by Bing, and works pretty much like Google Lens: Users take a photo of something or upload one from their camera roll, and then the search...

eBay today launched its latest sitewide coupon code, offering customers the chance to save $15 on orders that reach or exceed $75. The code isn't as enticing as eBay's previous sitewide sales, but could still give shoppers the chance to save money on a variety of items, excluding video game consoles, laptops and netbooks, coins and paper money, gift cards and coupons, and real estate. Note:...

Facebook today announced it is expanding chat translation within Messenger to all users in the United States and Mexico. When you receive a message in a language that is different from your default language in Messenger, Facebook's artificial intelligence assistant M will automatically offer a suggestion to translate the message. When you tap on the suggestion, you will be asked to enable...

Movie subscription service MoviePass today confirmed that it will soon introduce surge pricing into its business model, charging customers from $2 and up for films that the company deems popular. The news comes from MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe, who confirmed to Business Insider that surge pricing will affect monthly subscribers while annual subscribers will be exempt from what he describes as...

Siri rival Google Assistant received a major update today across the Google Home speaker ecosystem with a feature Google revealed at I/O in May, called "Continued Conversation." Now, when you speak to Google Assistant and wake it up with a "Hey Google" or "OK Google" phrase, you don't need to repeat the phrase again for a follow-up request. For example, you can ask "Hey Google, what's the...

Apple has partnered with Adidas for this week's Apple Pay promotion, allowing customers to save 15 percent on items purchased in the iOS Adidas app until June 28. There's no promo code this time around, and some exclusions apply in regards to the products that can be discounted, but the companies didn't provide specifics. To take advantage of the promotion, download the Adidas app for iOS [Di...

One week after completing its acquisition of Time Warner, AT&T today announced the impending launch of an all-new live TV service called "WatchTV," which unsurprisingly includes many channels under the Time Warner umbrella (via Engadget). This appears to be the service not focused on sports that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said in April would be coming very soon. The announcement came...

With so many paid-for and free apps available on the App Store these days, it's easy to reach a point where you have so many of them on your iPhone or iPad that a sizable proportion are simply forgotten about, and soon storage space starts to become an issue. Fortunately, there's an easy way that you can keep tabs on which apps you use the most and which ones have basically become redundant to ...

AMC today announced the upcoming launch of a new movie-watching service that's designed to compete with MoviePass, allowing AMC customers to watch several movies per week for a monthly fee. While MoviePass permits customers to watch one movie per day for $9.95 per month, there have been questions about its long-term sustainability. AMC's "Stubs A-List" offering will let customers watch three...

Instagram today announced the launch of IGTV, a new video streaming service that's designed to compete with YouTube. The news was shared during a live broadcast from Instagram's headquarters in San Francisco. With the launch of IGTV, which is mobile first and built with smartphones in mind, content creators on Instagram can now upload videos that are as long as one hour to Instagram, up from a ...

Apple today announced that this Friday's episode of "Carpool Karaoke: The Series" will feature James Marsden (Teddy) and Evan Rachel Wood (Dolores), two of the main characters in HBO's popular "Westworld" series. A trailer for the new episode was shared on YouTube, depicting the duo singing songs like "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette and an improvised version of Salt-N-Pepa's "Shoop," renamed to...

Microsoft today announced a rebranding of its news engine that's been powering sites like MSN.com since 1995, which the company is simply calling "Microsoft News." The name will replace the previous "MSN News" smartphone app beginning today across devices for iOS, Android, Microsoft Edge, Windows 10, Skype, Xbox, and Outlook.com (MSN.com will retain its name). The revamped app curates news via ...

21st Century Fox and the Walt Disney Company today announced a new deal that increases the value of Disney's original December 2017 offer from $28 a share at $52.4 billion to $38 a share at $71.3 billion, with a new cash component. This agreement "is superior to the proposal" from Comcast made earlier this month, according to an unnamed representative speaking for Fox (via The Wall Street Journal)...

Feral Interactive today announced the release of Tropico for iPad, scheduled for a debut sometime "later this year." Originally published by Kalypso Media from Tropico 3 onwards, Feral noted that this will mark the first time Tropico has been ported to iPad. Tropico is a city building game set on an island in the Caribbean, where the player takes on the role of the island's dictator El...

Popular battle royale game Fortnite has earned more than $100 million in revenue in its first 90 days of availability on iOS devices, according to new data shared by app analytics firm Sensor Tower. The figure means Epic Games' title for iPhone and iPad has become the second-fastest app to reach the milestone in its category. Clash Royale retains the top revenue record, earning the same...

Just a day after launching in Poland, Apple Pay has debuted in Norway, bringing the total number of supported countries and regions to 24 by our count. Apple has updated its list of participating banks to note that Nordea and Santander Consumer Finance are currently supported in Norway. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced on Apple's earnings conference call last month that Apple Pay would be...