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

PayPal this week announced plans to acquire the Swedish-based payments hardware company iZettle for $2.2 billion, with a plan to expand its presence in brick and mortar stores thanks to iZettle's technology. The acquisition will also help PayPal bolster its business across iZettle's main markets of Europe and Latin America (via Bloomberg). Notably, the purchasing deal marks PayPal's biggest...

Next week, Valve is launching a "Steam Link" app for iOS and tvOS, allowing users in the Apple ecosystem to play Steam games streamed from a host Mac/PC (using either a 5GHz network or a wired Ethernet connection) onto an iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. In advance of the app's launch, our sister site TouchArcade got the chance to go hands-on with Steam Link and came away entirely impressed by the...

Instagram today added a feature that's designed to let users share posts from their accounts and public accounts that they follow directly to their story feed as a sticker. Today, we're introducing a new way to easily share feed posts to your story. When you come across something in feed that inspires you -- like a post from a friend raising money for a cause or a photo of a new design...

At CES in January, Ford discussed a new partnership with crowdsource navigation app Waze that aimed to bring Waze onto the touch screen of SYNC 3 vehicles through Ford's AppLink. That partnership has been fully realized today with Waze users worldwide now able to connect their iPhones to AppLink via USB and mirror Waze on their infotainment system. This allows drivers to access their...

eBay today announced "Interests," a new feature that tailors the iOS and Android app's shopping experience to your own personal passions, hobbies, and style. The company says that the feature is aimed at making it easier for you to find unique, interesting items you care about among eBay's vast assortment of inventory. The backbone of Interests is a questionnaire eBay will begin asking...

The latest Apple Pay promotion grants you free delivery on groceries with Instacart as long as you use Apple's mobile wallet to checkout on the app through 11:59 p.m. PT on May 23, and your order runs for $35 or more. There is no specific promo code, so as long as you meet these requirements the discount should appear automatically during the checkout process in Instacart. Free delivery will...

Apple Pay launched in Ukraine today. Owners of Apple devices in the country this morning found that they could add credit cards to the mobile payment system, including MasterCard and Visa (via Tehnot). Ukraine's finance minister Oleksandr Danyliuk took to Facebook to herald the launch, which initially supports cards issued by the country's nationalized PrivatBank, with Oschadbank expected to...

Google is launching YouTube Music next week, shortly followed by YouTube Premium – a revamped version of its ad-free YouTube Red subscription service with a renewed focus on original programming. Announced on Wednesday in a blog post, the shake-up in services represents a splitting of the original YouTube Red subscription model, which gave users both ad-free music streaming and access to original ...

Subscription based music service and Apple Music competitor Tidal is months behind on its royalty payments to record labels according to a report from Norwegian news site Dagens Næringsliv that was translated by Music Business Worldwide. Multiple sources have said that Tidal has not making timely payments to "three major international companies," claims confirmed by two Norway-based labels:...

Hulu today announced several features that are coming to the web and its mobile apps for iOS and Android to optimize the mobile viewing experience. Hulu's Live TV guide, which debuted last week on the Apple TV, Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV, and Nintendo Switch, will be added to mobile devices, allowing users to get to live TV with fewer clicks, see what's on, and see what's coming up. On iOS...

Accessory maker Speck today launched a notable sale that discounts products by 45 percent across its online storefront, ranging from smartphone cases to bags, screen protectors, cables, and more. To see the sale prices, find an item to add to your cart, click "View Cart" in the pop-up menu, then enter the discount code SUPER45 in the box at the bottom lefthand corner of the screen. Note:...

Twitter today unveiled new details on its upcoming activity API changes, which will affect how third-party apps are able to access Twitter APIs and provide services to Twitter users who prefer to use apps like Twitterrific and Tweetbot. Third-party Twitter app developers will be required to purchase a Premium or Enterprise Account Activity API package to access a full set of activities related ...

Apple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser Apple first introduced over two years ago in March of 2016. Apple designed the Safari Technology Preview to test features that may be introduced into future release versions of Safari. Safari Technology Preview release 56 includes bug fixes and feature improvements for JavaScript, WebAssembly, Web API,...

Facebook today announced three new mobile app features aimed at helping its users better "create and save memories," with a launch in India first and then rolling out to the global community "shortly thereafter" (via The Verge). The first feature allows photos and videos taken with Facebook's in-app camera to be saved directly to a user's Facebook account in the cloud, and not onto their...

Netgear's line of connected smart home cameras, called "Arlo," currently only support HomeKit for the Arlo Baby camera. However, this could be changing in the near future as release notes posted by an Arlo community manager on the company forums suggest that support for HomeKit will be part of a soon-to-launch firmware update for the Arlo Pro camera. There are a variety of wire-free and...

Instagram is developing a Usage Insights feature for its social media platform that will let users know how much time they're spending in the app. TechCrunch on Tuesday highlighted code buried in the Android version of Instagram that reveals the new time management controls headed for the app, and Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom has since confirmed the features are indeed in development for the...

Logitech today announced the launch of a new accessory for the wired and wire-free versions of its Logitech Circle 2 camera, the Magnetic Mount. With the Magnetic Mount, which attaches right to the bottom of a Logitech Circle 2 camera, you can stick the Logitech Circle 2 on any magnetic surface, like a refrigerator, a metal door frame, a light fixture, a rain gutter, or any other compatible...

At its Google I/O developer conference last week, Google debuted a revamped Google News app focusing on balanced news delivery with personalized news suggestions, and as of today, the new Google News app is available for download on the iPhone and iPad. According to Google, the News app is designed to use "the best of artificial intelligence to find "the best of human intelligence" by taking...