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

Last week, a source in the Taiwanese supply chain reported that Facebook has entered into small production on a smart home speaker with a touchscreen, preparing to compete with companies like Apple and Amazon in the smart speaker market. A report by Bloomberg this week has continued that rumor, and added onto it by claiming the company is in fact working on two separate speaker devices to release ...

VSCO, the company behind the popular VSCO photo editing app and photo sharing social network, is today adding a new video editing tool to its VSCO app on iOS. According to TechCrunch, the new video editing tool is designed to allow users to apply pre-designed filters to videos captured with the iPhone. The edited videos can then be shared on social networking sites. Unedited video on left, ...

Last week, United States President Donald Trump told The Wall Street Journal that Apple had plans to build three "big, big, big" manufacturing plants in the United States, a statement that allegedly came from Apple CEO Tim Cook. Unsurprisingly, Cook was questioned about the president's statement during the question and answer portion of today's earnings call, and he deftly dodged it by...

Apple is planning to expand Apple Pay to Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and United Arab Emirates before the end of the calendar year, the company announced in today's third quarter earnings call. No specific information was provided on a potential launch date, beyond the announcement that it's coming later in the year. Apple doesn't appear to have established Apple Pay web pages for the four...

Revenue from Apple's Services category, which includes Apple Music, Apple Pay, AppleCare, iTunes, iCloud, and the App Store, grew an impressive 22 percent year over year according to Apple's third quarter earnings results, reaching a new all-time high. In 3Q 2017, Services brought in $7.3 billion, up from $6 billion in the year-ago quarter. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, the company's...

During today's earnings call covering the third quarter of 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that Apple has now sold 1.2 billion cumulative iPhones since the device was first introduced in 2007. Apple sold its 1 billionth iPhone back in July of 2016, so in the last year, the company has sold another 200 million devices. According to Apple's earnings results, iPhone sales were at 41 million...

Just over a month after originally appearing for a few Apple Music subscribers on both iOS 10 and the iOS 11 beta, it appears that Apple's new "My Chill Mix" playlist is now expanding to many more users of the music streaming service. My Chill Mix recommends music that's both old and new, curating a list of songs for Apple Music users that are supposed to help them "relax and unwind" as they...

Firmware for Apple's HomePod has already given us glimpses into the unreleased iPhone 8, including a glyph representing the basic front-facing design of the smartphone, as well as code that supports rumors of a "split" status bar. Apple Watch has yet to be mentioned in the discoveries, but recently developer Jeffrey Grossman shared a few pieces of information on Twitter that are potentially...

Apple and Google have recently removed over 300 binary options trading apps from the App Store and Google Play store respectively, according to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. A spokesperson for Apple said it removed the apps globally in accordance with its recently updated App Store Review Guidelines:Apps that facilitate binary options trading are not permitted on the...

The U.K. home secretary Amber Rudd has argued that "real people" do not want secure end-to-end encryption on messaging platforms and are more concerned with usability and features than unbreakable security (via Yahoo News). Rudd made her case in a newspaper article, published ahead of a meeting today with technology companies in San Francisco, where she will warn tech giants that their...

Apple this week launched a new limited time discount on its Beats EP headphones, Beats Pill+ speaker, and urBeats earphones, which are all on sale for approximately $20 to $30 off. The Beats EP On-Ear Headphones are available for $99, down from the original price of $129.95. All colors are available at the discounted price, including red, white, black, and blue. The Beats EP are Apples most...

Apple today updated its developer news site to let developers know that TestFlight tester limits have been expanded. Starting today, developers can invite up to 10,000 users to beta test their iOS, watchOS, tvOS, and iMessage apps before the apps are released on the App Store. Developers often use TestFlight to send out pre-release copies of apps to testers and members of the media to suss out ...

Spotify is experimenting with a new podcast initiative that's said to be aimed at gaining ground on the current leader in the field, Apple, as a way to convince Spotify users on iOS to stick around in the Spotify app, and not migrate over to Apple Podcasts. As of now, the podcast initiative is described as a "test," with Spotify launching a few original podcasts and running promotions for the...

Gboard is Google's own keyboard app for iOS devices, and today the company announced that it's integrating Google Maps and YouTube directly within the keyboard. The two new features will be housed behind the "G" button on Gboard, now sitting alongside Google Search. With Google Maps in Gboard, users can share their location, or another location that they wish to serve as a rendezvous point,...

Google's former senior vice president of social, Vic Gundotra, recently made remarks on Facebook about the advantages of Apple's iPhone ecosystem, specifically pertaining to the iOS Camera app and the quality of photos it creates (via Business Insider). Image via Business Insider He said that the "end of the DSLR era" has arrived, and shared pics he took of his family recently with an...

Apple's difficulty in garnering a larger share of the smartphone market in China has been looked at recently by The Wall Street Journal, which described the ubiquitous mobile app WeChat [Direct Link] as the iPhone's "toughest rival" in the country. Citing data from QuestMobile, on average WeChat is said to have captured nearly 35 percent of each user's monthly smartphone usage time, averaging...

Ring, maker of the popular video doorbells and recently launched Floodlight Cam, is today announcing a new line of Spotlight Cams. Similar in function to the Floodlight Cam but with a different lighting system, the new Spotlight Cam features LED light panels that automatically turn on when motion is detected, as well as a 1080p camera with night vision, two-way audio, and a 110 dB siren to...

In April of 2016, Microsoft opened up a beta test and then launched its Word Flow Windows Phone keyboard on the iOS App Store in the United States. Over a year later, some users have noticed that Microsoft has now closed down the app and removed it from Apple's App Store (via WindowsCentral). On Word Flow's Microsoft Garage page, the company notes that "the Word Flow experiment is now...