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

Apple today began sending out emails to students and STEM organization members who have won a scholarship to attend the 2017 Worldwide Developers Conference, which will take place in San Jose, California from June 5 to June 9. Scholarship winners receive free tickets to WWDC, a huge benefit as a ticket is normally priced at $1,599. Apple is also providing scholarship winners with free lodging...

Santander Bank recently announced that it is launching Apple Pay support to its customers in the United States for the first time, allowing any MasterCard branded credit or debit card distributed by Santander to be added to Apple's mobile wallet. After being added in Apple Pay, Santander MasterCard holders can use the service on a compatible iPhone to pay at participating retailers, purchase...

Apple CEO Tim Cook today tweeted out a message as a means of celebrating National Sovereignty and Children's Day in Turkey, which will take place on April 23. Cook's tweet includes a picture of a few billboards that are up in Turkey, which showcase photographs taken by "young talents" within the country in order to celebrate the national holiday. Türkiye'de Ulusal Egemenlik ve Çocuk ...

As of today, third-party podcast app Overcast lets users sync downloaded pods to their Apple Watch for standalone playback. The latest 3.1 update brings the much-requested feature to the popular podcast app, which was designed by Instapaper developer Marco Arment. To take advantage of the new feature, users should access the Queue Menu (⁺≡) and select the Send to Watch option. Pending ...

WhatsApp users on iOS can now ask Siri to read to them their latest messages when they go handsfree, following the latest update to the chat app. Version 2.17.2 brings the feature to users running at least iOS 10.3 on their devices, along with some other tweaks and updates to the messaging platform. In the My Updates screen, it's now possible to select multiple statuses at once and forward ...

Google Home received a major update to its voice recognition system on Thursday that lets owners set up the smart speaker to recognize multiple account holders. The software update means that up to six people can connect their Google account to one speaker and Google Assistant will be able to distinguish users by the sound of their voice. Amazon is said to be working on a similar feature for...

Puzzle game Cut the Rope: Magic has been named Apple's App of the Week, and as a result, it will be available for free for the next seven days. Normally priced at $0.99, this is the first time Cut the Rope: Magic has been available for free since it was released in December of 2015. Anyone who has played a game in the Cut the Rope series will be familiar with the gameplay mechanics in Cut the...

Apple Maps has had a Transit tab since iOS 9, enabling iPhone users to navigate using buses, trains, and other forms of public transportation. At launch, the feature was limited to Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, and over 300 cities in China. Since then, Apple has been working to expand support for...

Back in January, accessory maker Elago launched the W3 Charging Stand for Apple Watch, which housed Apple's modern wearable within a silicone shell that looked just like the Macintosh computer from 1984. This week, Elago is launching another nostalgic accessory, this time allowing users to turn their iPhone 7, 6s, or 6 into an old Mac. Called the M4 Stand for iPhone, the charging stand...

At Shopify’s Unite developer conference in San Francisco today, the software-focused e-commerce company has debuted a new hardware product, which it simply calls the "Chip & Swipe Credit Card Reader" (via TechCrunch). Similar to other card readers, Shopify's product allows merchants who run small businesses to accept a wide variety of credit cards as payment options, although it lacks Square...

During its F8 Developers Conference in San Jose, California this week, social media company Facebook revealed an ongoing project in which it aims to launch a product that will allow users to send emails, texts, and post status updates using only their thoughts (via Reuters). Conducted in a new wing it calls "Building 8," Facebook said that any final hardware launch is a few years away, but...

Aircharge and BMW have teamed up to offer a customized wireless charging case for iPhones to take advantage of the new in-car wireless system that debuted in the BMW 5 Series Sedan earlier this year. The BMW 5 Series Sedan was one of the first cars to include wireless CarPlay support, allowing iPhones to integrate with the BMW iDrive ecosystem over Bluetooth instead of a Lightning cable....

MasterCard today unveiled a biometric chip-and-pin credit card featuring a built-in fingerprint sensor that takes cues from mobile payment systems such as Apple Pay. The card can be used to make purchases like any other, except rather than keying in a PIN number, card holders can choose to place their finger over the square sensor to approve the transaction. Alternatively, users can take a ...

Amazon on Wednesday made the AI and voice-recognition software that powers the company's Alexa virtual assistant available to all its cloud-computing customers. Called Amazon Lex, the service will allow developers to make chat bot applications using Alexa's voice recognition technology and leverage the AI's deep learning abilities to enable their apps to understand more text and speech...

MasterCard added its digital wallet Masterpass to Facebook Messenger this week, enabling consumers to place online orders via the chat platform with just a few clicks. The rollout is still in the initial stages but the payment system is already available for some food merchants, including Subway, The Cheesecake Factory, and FreshDirect. The transaction process involves searching for and...

Bose has been hit by a lawsuit that accuses the company of spying on its wireless headphone customers through its Bose Connect mobile app and violating consumer privacy rights (via Reuters). The complaint was filed on Tuesday in a Chicago federal court by Kyle Zak, who is seeking an injunction to stop Bose's "wholesale disregard" for the privacy of customers who download the app to their...

Microsoft today announced the preview launch of a new "intelligent task management app" that's designed to make it easier to plan and manage a day's activities. Called "Microsoft To-Do," the app was designed by the team behind Wunderlist, which Microsoft purchased in June of 2015. To-Do is designed to replace Wunderlist, which Microsoft plans to retire after all Wunderlist features have been...

Hulu's upcoming live streaming television service could launch as soon as early May, reports TechCrunch. Hulu has already confirmed the service will launch in the spring, but has not given a more specific public launch date. Internally, the company is said to be telling employees that the first week of May is being targeted for launch, but TechCrunch says this is a rolling target date that...