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

Uncertainty over which company will end up with Toshiba's much-sought-after NAND chip unit -- the second-biggest in the world -- has deepened today with a report by Reuters, which states that the Japan-based Toshiba is now facing legal actions from its business partner and chip unit bidder Western Digital. The U.S.-based data storage company is claiming that Toshiba has violated a contract by...

WhatsApp has bolstered the security of the iCloud backup feature in its messaging platform, in an attempt to protect archived chat logs from being accessed in a readable form (via TechCrunch). WhatsApp has offered end-to-end encryption on its messaging service for some time, but that encryption did not previously extend to iCloud backups of messages. Given that Apple holds the encryption keys...

Alipay, the mobile payment system offered by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, is coming to the U.S., thanks to a deal brokered with credit card processing service First Data Corp. The expansion follows limited trials in California and New York, and will bring Alipay into direct competition with Apple Pay, Android Pay, and PayPal. Alongside online payments and money transfers, Alipay users can ...

Amazon has started running and promoting its own live music gigs in the U.K. as an extra incentive for customers to sign up to its Prime membership (via Engadget). Called Prime Live Events, the initiative will offer music concert tickets at iconic London venues by major artists performing "up-close and personal". Tickets to the music shows will be exclusive to Prime subscribers and all of the...

In celebration of Mother's Day, which takes place on Sunday, May 14, Best Buy is having a major sale and dropping the price on the iPhone 7, Apple Watch Series 2, 9.7-inch iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and more. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy and may earn commissions on purchases made through these links. All of Best Buy's Apple Watch Series 2 models are available at a...

Instagram made a major change to its service recently, allowing photo uploads from its mobile site for the first time. When accessing the Instagram website on an iPhone or iPad, there's now a new photo upload button. Prior to the update, Instagram only allowed photo uploads from its mobile apps, and the iOS app is limited to the iPhone, so iPad users were forced to download an iPhone-only app...

A year after the public disagreement between Apple and the FBI, which centered on the passcode-locked iPhone 5c of the San Bernardino terrorist, one of the major questions remains how much the United States government and the FBI paid for the tool it used to crack open the iPhone. That question became so focused upon that a trio of news organizations filed a lawsuit to find out the exact amount...

It's been a few months since the last few rumors regarding Foxconn's potential manufacturing expansion into the United States, with company chairman Terry Gou placing uncertainty on the reports at the time. Now, sources in the Taiwan supply chain are once again claiming that Foxconn -- one of Apple's biggest suppliers -- is currently talking with both the U.S. federal government as well as...

Harman Kardon has teased its upcoming Cortana-integrated connected smart speaker with a product page that revealed a little more about the device's design and features. The web page for the Invoke speaker appears to have been removed since it was spotted by Thurrott.com this morning, but it offered a better glimpse at the device's sloping cylindrical design, which appears to fall somewhere in...

An alleged leak of a draft technical paper prepared by the U.K. government contains proposals that endorse the "live" surveillance of British web users' online communications, it emerged this week. Civil liberties organization the Open Rights Group received the document on May 4 and decided to publish the draft, which states that telecommunications companies and internet service providers...

Facebook is actively developing around two dozen television shows with plans to premiere some of them in mid-June, according to a report on Saturday. The social media company has big-budget marquee shows geared towards a TV audience in the works, alongside a tier of less expensive shows that will span about 5 to 10 minutes, according to sources who spoke to Business Insider. The news comes...

For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with BiteMyApple.Co to give MacRumors readers a chance to win an iPhone-connected Bionic Bird, which was originally an Indiegogo project. BiteMyApple.Co didn't develop the Bionic Bird, which actually comes from French company XTIM, but it is a site that is a one-stop shop for all manner of successfully funded Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns that...

An unreleased Prince concert film and a documentary about the making of the film could be heading exclusively to Apple Music, according to sources close to the Prince estate (via Billboard). The late singer's estate is said to be shopping around the rights to the concert film and doc to a variety of streaming services, namely including Apple Music and Spotify. The agreement for the two films...

ExxonMobil this week announced an update to its Speedpass+ iOS app, which gives users the ability to pay for fuel and car washes using their Apple Watch and Apple Pay at over 10,000 participating Exxon and Mobil refueling stations across the United States. For the Apple Watch payments process, users will have to navigate to the Speedpass+ watch app, select the pump they are at, authorize it...

Uber found itself in more hot water on Thursday after Reuters revealed that the ride-hailing service is facing a criminal investigation by the U.S. government. The Department of Justice has reportedly begun an investigation over the company's use of "secret" software that allowed its drivers to operate in areas where Uber was banned or restricted. First reported by The New York Times, the...

Bosch has won orders to supply Apple with some of the motion sensors in its next range of iPhones, according to a report by Bloomberg, potentially loosening Invensense's position as the primary supplier of the smartphone components. California-based Invensense exclusively supplied the gyroscopes and accelerometers in the iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 7, but Apple's new deal with Bosch could ...

YouTube has announced plans to produce a raft of original programming beginning this year, as the Google-owned video site moves to counter the rising tide of premium streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. The difference in YouTube's approach to original content is that its shows will be free to view on its website and apps through an ad-supported format, rather than being tied to...

Puzzle game Zip-Zap has been named Apple's App of the Week, and as a result, it is available to download for free for the next seven days. Zip-Zap is normally priced at $1.99 and this is the first time it's been free since its September 2016 launch. Zip-Zap is a puzzle game that asks users to solve puzzles using Rube Goldberg-style hinges and levers that are put into place via well-timed taps. ...