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

Google and Facebook have announced new measures to fight "fake news," a term recently popularized by U.S. President Donald Trump. Google today said it will be making its "Fact Check" label in Google News available everywhere, rather than in the United States only, and expanding the feature to its traditional search results globally in all languages. The "Fact Check" label identifies...

Facebook announced its first virtual assistant on Thursday in the form of "M", which privately interjects in chat threads on Messenger to offer users suggestions related to the conversation. The feature goes beyond the platform's chat bot technology, offering recommendations for relevant stickers, GIFs, payments, rides and meeting times now appear to each user above the message composer in...

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has withdrawn its offer for Toshiba's highly sought-after NAND flash memory business, leaving major Apple supplier Hon Hai in the driving seat to acquire the unit. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn, has offered up the highest bid so far, with almost 3 trillion Japanese yen ($30 billion) said to be on the table, according to Japanese paper Asahi...

Live video broadcasting service Periscope on Friday announced full support for 360-degree broadcasting from its iOS app, following testing with a small number of users. The change means that iPhone users with compatible 360-degree camera equipment, such as the new Samsung Gear 360, can broadcast immersive video feeds of their entire surrounding environment. As a broadcaster, 360 video allows...

Apple CEO Tim Cook visited his alma mater Auburn University this afternoon, where he held a talk with students at the Telfar B. Peet Theatre. Auburn University student paper The Auburn Plainsman shared details on the talk, which covered topics like diversity and inclusion, subjects Cook is passionate about and often covers in speeches. Cook told students that it's important to be prepared to...

Adobe today shared a video from its Adobe Research team, demonstrating what future selfies could look like using artificial intelligence and deep learning technology. Using its Adobe Sensei technology, Adobe demonstrates tweaking a selfie photo with perspective effect editing, automatic masking, and photo style transfer technology. The end result is a standard selfie that's been edited to ...

Showtime today announced that users will now be able to download offline versions of the network's shows on smartphones and tablets, thanks to a new download button that will enable users to stock up on episodes to watch even when they're not connected to the internet (via Variety). Offline viewing will be available for both customers who subscribe to Showtime through a cable bundle and use Showti...

A proposed settlement revealed in court documents this week could lead to a collection of eight companies -- Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, Kik, Gowalla, Foodspotting, Yelp, and Path -- contributing a grand total of $5.3 million to a collection pot for consumers claiming the companies violated their privacy in the early years of the iOS ecosystem (via Fortune). The settlement is the bookend to a ...

Amazon today announced it is launching its Fire TV media streamer stick in the United Kingdom, approximately six months after the device first launched in the U.S. The redesigned Fire TV stick, which costs £39.99, is the first of Amazon's media streamers to come with an Alexa-enabled voice remote. It features a new quad-core processor that makes it 30 percent faster than the previous version, ...

Twitter announced a faster version of its mobile service on Wednesday with the launch of "Twitter Lite", a web-browser based experience that aims to mimic the social media app's main features while minimizing data usage. Twitter Lite can be accessed on mobile browsers from mobile.twitter.com and takes up less than a megabyte to load up, according to the company. It also features a further...

Last week, Facebook launched its new camera-focused update that brought along "Facebook Stories" into the main iOS application. Like Snapchat and Instagram Stories before it, Facebook Stories let users post a picture or video onto their feed, which disappears 24 hours later. Facebook Stories at launch Unfortunately, adoption of Facebook Stories appears to have been fairly low and users have...

Thanks to AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, customers on the network's Unlimited Plus data plan will now have the chance to watch HBO programming at no additional cost. Beginning tomorrow, April 6, customers on Unlimited Plus data plans who already subscribe to HBO through AT&T video services like DirecTV, DirecTV Now, or U-Verse TV, will no longer have to pay for the premium channel. For the ...

Netflix has announced that users will today begin noticing its new thumbs-up and thumbs-down rating system as it appears across various apps and on desktop computers, following a reveal earlier in March that the streaming company was planning to ditch its 5-star rating system. In the previous system, users had to choose between 1 and 5 stars to determine how much they liked a show, and using...

Payment services company Western Union today announced that United States users can now pay with Apple Pay within its iOS app when sending out money transfers from the U.S. to domestic recipients, or to over 200 countries worldwide. The company said that Apple Pay will allow for easier-than-ever domestic bill payments within its iOS app, with users able to access their stored bank card...

Swedish truck and bus manufacturer Scania today announced that it will begin introducing Apple's CarPlay system into some of its heavy trucks beginning in June 2017, as well as revealing that some of its older model vehicles will be upgradeable with aftermarket CarPlay infotainment systems. Scania is among the first in the industry to introduce CarPlay into big rig trucks. Scania trucks that...

Popular writing platform Ulysses was updated to version 2.8 on Wednesday, bringing some notable new features and improvements including Touch ID and password support. The release of the new version means iOS users can now protect their text library via Touch ID, while Mac users without access to fingerprint recognition, or who prefer not to use it, can alternatively rely on a personal...

Samsung is on course to record a three and a half year high in first quarter profits this year, with analysts predicting record earnings for the rest of 2017 as the company gears up to start selling its Galaxy S8 smartphone (via Reuters). Shares in the tech giant are nearing record highs after gaining nearly 17 percent since the beginning of Q1, coming on top of a 43 percent surge in 2016. The ...

Amazon has won the rights to broadcast 10 National Football League Thursday night games live online this season, as part of its video content strategy exclusive to Prime subscription members. The company paid $50 million for the one-year deal, according to Bloomberg, taking over from a similar agreement Twitter had last year that saw the social media service sprout an Apple TV app for users to ...