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

Philips today announced an expansion of its Hue smart lighting range, bringing two new fixtures and two additional starter kits to its Apple HomeKit-compatible family of products. The Philips Hue White Ambiance Cher Suspension is the largest new fixture – a hanging pendant light made for a kitchen island or dining table. The fixture outputs 3000 lumens and costs $230. Meanwhile, a new...

Qardio today announced the second-generation version of its QardioBase Smart Scale and Body Analyzer, introducing design upgrades and new features. QardioBase 2 has been designed with a wider base for more stability on any floor surface, a welcome change as the unstable base was one of the main features we disliked when we reviewed the original version last year. It continues to feature...

Bang & Olufsen today unveiled a pair of $299 truly wireless earbuds called Beoplay E8, the Danish company's pricier luxury alternative to Apple's $159 AirPods. The E8 Bluetooth in-ear headphones are a mixture of aluminum and polymer, making them splash and dust-proof, while each earpiece features a touch surface that supports fingertip gestures to play/pause music, take calls (a mic is...

Nest today announced the $169 Nest Thermostat E, a more affordable version of its original $250 smart home thermostat from 2011 with most of the same features, but with a less conspicuous design. Replacing the metallic look of its predecessor, the new HVAC energy-saving device features a soft-touch plastic white control ring around a black display, which lies behind a frosted screen to make...

Western Digital today introduced a new 400GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card, which it says is the world's highest-capacity microSD card available on the market. The new 400GB card comes two years after the company introduced its 200GB SanDisk Ultra microSD card, with the new version doubling the storage capacity. According to Western Digital, this new milestone was achieved through...

Western Digital today announced its latest SanDisk product, the SanDisk iXpand Base. The iXpand Base is designed to make it simple to back up an iPhone's photos, videos, and contacts, offering storage and an intuitive nightly backup setup. The iXpand Base is designed to look like a small iPhone dock, with a flat rubber-coated base where the iPhone rests. At one side, there's a Lightning cable...

Multiple high-profile Instagram accounts belonging to celebrities may have been breached due to a bug related to an Instagram API, reports TechCrunch. The bug, which has since been fixed, allowed at least one hacker to access the email address and phone number on an unknown number of "high-profile" Instagram users. According to Instagram, the only data accessed was email address and phone...

Back in January at CES, Chamberlain announced plans to release MyQ Home Bridge, a hardware hub to allow connected garage openers in the company's MyQ ecosystem to work with HomeKit. The MyQ Home Bridge was initially scheduled to launch in April, but as is common with these types of products needing to gain HomeKit certification, it was pushed back a bit and had a brief quiet launch earlier this...

Bidding for Toshiba's much-sought-after memory chip unit was supposed to end in June 2017, after first kicking off in March, but the manufacturer is still fielding bids from multiple interested parties, most recently including a $17.4 billion offer from Western Digital. Likely due to Western Digital's legal action against Toshiba's decision to sell the NAND chip unit, talks surrounding that offer ...

Amazon and Microsoft today jointly announced that Alexa and Cortana will soon be able to communicate with each other. Microsoft said the collaboration will allow access to Alexa via Cortana on Windows 10 PCs later this year, and via the Cortana app for iOS and Android at an unspecified point in the future. Similarly, users will be able to access Cortana on Alexa-enabled devices like the...

In early 2016, AT&T began its first test of a fixed wireless 5G cellular network within Austin, Texas and expanded that test to new local businesses this past June, including a car wash, an apartment unit, and a church. Today, the carrier announced that its test of next-generation 5G cellular connectivity will be expanding to new businesses and residential customers in three new U.S. cities by...

Bicycle sharing service Citi Bike released version 6 of its iOS app on Tuesday to bring Apple Pay support to customers in New York City and New Jersey. Now that Apple's mobile payment system is supported by the service, riders using the app are able to purchase a single pass or Citi Bike membership using their digital wallet instead of plastic. The app includes a color-coded map of New...

Xiaomi has announced that it will unveil the second-generation version of its nearly bezel-free Mi MIX smartphone on September 11, just one day ahead of Apple's expected "iPhone 8" launch event in California. The Chinese mobile maker confirmed rumors of its event in Beijing next month by sharing a launch poster over microblogging site Weibo featuring a profile of the "full screen" Mi MIX 2 and ...

Western Digital today announced the launch of its latest personal cloud storage solution, the My Cloud Home. My Cloud Home is designed to make it easy for customers to set up and use a personal cloud storage solution to meet all of their storage needs. The company is aiming to make My Cloud Home the one stop storage destination for all of a person's devices, aggregating photos, videos, and...

As two new episodes of "Carpool Karaoke: The Series" air tonight, Apple has shared trailers for next week's episodes, which will pair Michael Strahan with Jeff Gordon and Shaquille O'Neal with John Cena. The first trailer features media personality and former football player Michael Strahan and Fox NASCAR announcer and former professional race car driver Jeff Gordon. The two dress up with...

Amazon today added a new Alexa feature that allows several Amazon Echo devices to be synchronized and controlled across multiple rooms in a home. Echo owners can now target music to a specific Echo device or play the same music on more than one Echo. The feature works with a variety of music services, including Amazon Music, TuneIn, iHeartRatio, and Pandora, with support for Spotify and...

Instagram has allowed users to share multiple photos in a single post since February, but those photos have been limited to the traditional square aspect ratio, preventing users from sharing landscape or portrait mode images in a multi-photo post. Starting today, that limitation is changing. Instagram is now allowing users to share multi-photo posts in any aspect ratio, including taller...

Apple today updated its developer site with new sample code for ARKit, providing developers with additional details on what can be done with the upcoming feature. According to Apple, the new code is available alongside new ARKit "best practices" published in the Human Interface Guidelines. Apple also asks developers working on an "amazing" ARKit experience to share it with the company. Design ...