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

Netatmo today announced plans to add HomeKit support to its existing Welcome and Presence home security cameras. Both cameras will gain HomeKit compatibility through an upcoming software update that will enable HomeKit for both new devices and those that customers have already purchased."Having both our security cameras compatible with Apple HomeKit through a software upgrade demonstrates our...

Sphero today unveiled all-new iPhone-controlled Star Wars toys, including R2-D2 and a new character from Star Wars: The Last Jedi called BB-9E (via TechCrunch). This latter droid is described as originating from the same astromech series as BB-8, but is instead associated with the villainous First Order. Similar to Sphero's BB-8 droid from 2015, BB-9E (priced at $149) comes with a set of...

Apple today seeded the ninth beta of an upcoming tvOS 11 update designed for the fourth-generation TV, just a few days after seeding the eighth beta and more than two months after releasing the first beta during the 2017 Worldwide Developers Conference. Registered developers can download the tvOS 11 update by connecting the Apple TV to a computer with a USB-C cable and installing the beta...

Contrast and Agile Tortoise, the developers behind popular apps Launch Center Pro and Drafts, respectively, have teamed up to introduce a new weather app called Weather Atlas. Weather Atlas has been developed from the ground up with the unreleased "iPhone 8" in mind, and it is meant to take advantage of the device's taller display. It also incorporates iOS 11-style design elements like bolder...

A collection of ARKit demos have steadily released over the summer following the announcement of the developer platform at WWDC this past June, and now we're merely weeks away from ARKit's debut alongside iOS 11 sometime in September. Today, item tracking company Pixie Technology announced the newest iteration of its "Pixie Point" tracker, which will use a few miniature-sized finding devices and...

Garmin today announced three new wearable devices that it will debut at IFA 2017, including the vívomove HR, vívosport, and vívoactive 3. The Garmin vívoactive 3 closely resembles Apple Watch in terms of features, with Garmin's device tracking heart rate, packing in 15 indoor and outdoor activity apps, and supporting a new "Garmin Pay" contactless payment solution. Garmin Pay supports Visa and ...

Sony today announced a collection of new products that it plans to showcase during the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, Germany this upcoming weekend. One of the biggest additions to the company's line-up is a new smart home speaker, called the LF-S50G wireless speaker, which looks similar to Apple's upcoming HomePod, has a built-in Google Assistant, and is being pitched with a "high...

Bluetooth speaker maker Libratone has announced that beginning this fall, Zipp and Zipp Mini speaker owners will be able to use their devices to invoke Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant as well as tap in to Apple's forthcoming AirPlay 2 protocol. The company said it will make a free firmware download available in the coming months that activates Alexa support in the wireless speakers, which...

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...