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

A new collaboration between Apple, IBM, and United Airlines was announced today, with the companies joining together to bring "a robust suite of enterprise iOS apps" to United's flight attendants and gate agents as a means to make the customer's flying experience smoother. In total, Apple and United Airlines have issued over 50,000 iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches to front-line employees of...

Apple is weighing up the possibility of developing a wearable battery module to charge an Apple Watch while it's being worn, according to a patent published on Thursday (via AppleInsider). Details of the invention were released by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, under the title "Charging apparatus for wearable electronic device". The module uses an inductive element to transmit power to...

Nintendo's newest mobile smartphone game, Fire Emblem Heroes, is officially out on the iOS App Store in the U.S. [Direct Link], as well as in Japan, Australia, Europe, and over 30 other countries. Announced last spring, Fire Emblem on smartphones adopts the tactical role-playing gameplay of the popular franchise, with a few mobile-optimized tweaks. These changes mainly center around battle maps...

Chromecast users can now control YouTube streaming to their TV from the lock screen of their iPhone, thanks to the latest update to the YouTube app. Like YouTube for Android devices, version 12.03 of the iOS app adds play, pause, previous, next, and volume controls to the iPhone's lock screen whenever YouTube is casting to Chromecast devices, smart TVs, game consoles, and other living room...

The Apple Pay mobile payment system will be available in Taiwan soon, Apple announced on its regional website today. A total of seven banks, including Cathay United Bank, CTBC Bank, E. Sun Commercial Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank, Taishin International Bank and Union Bank of Taiwan, will join Apple to launch the mobile payment service initially, Apple said....

Facebook is rolling out a new section to its mobile app called "Discover People", which is designed to encourage connections between people who aren't yet Facebook friends (via TechCrunch). The new feature, which can be found at the bottom of the navigation section of the app, allows users to scroll through a list of upcoming events to see who else is going, as well as browse through lists of...

Apple is currently working on renovating its iconic Fifth Avenue Apple Store in Manhattan, and when finished, the new store will be more than double the size of the original location, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The store will be expanded from 32,000 square feet to 77,000 square feet, giving Apple more space to work with. The company's plans were shared by Douglas Linde,...

Olloclip has been making lenses for the iPhone since 2011, expanding the range of tools at an iPhone photographer's fingertips. For the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus, Olloclip has redesigned its product lineup, offering the same lenses in a new package that better fits the latest iPhones and provides more utility, like a stand. I've been using Olloclip to spice up my iPhone photographs since...

Snap is said to be working on a collection of "smarter lenses" that would let users overlay virtual images and objects onto landscapes in the real world, "not just faces," and let them interact with the virtual objects similar to augmented reality (via The Information). The smarter lenses are an advancement of the "world lenses" that came to Snapchat last year, which placed various simple...

Smart payments company Coin this week announced the shutdown of its various product services, officially closing product support, social media channels, and the connected Coin app on iOS and Android devices on February 28, 2017. The news follows the discontinuation of all Coin products last May, when Coin was acquired by Fitbit and the company subsequently ceased selling its line of smart payment ...

Popular calendar apps Fantastical 2 for the iPhone and Fantastical 2 for the iPad are both being updated to version 2.8, adding support for many new features introduced in iOS 10. Fantastical 2 now includes a set of stickers that can be used within the Messages app. The stickers feature an animated, smily calendar icon with useful sayings like "I'm on my way!" or "I'm running late!" so users...

Nintendo announced on Wednesday that it plans to launch two or three mobile games every year, a day after the Japanese company made a one-third cut to its full-year operating profit outlook (via Reuters). Yesterday, Nintendo was able to report its first quarterly profit in a year as its mobile games division started to generate revenue, but it wasn't enough for disappointed investors who had...

Prince's catalog of songs is headed to Apple Music and other streaming services, like Spotify, Pandora, Google Play and more, on February 12, reports the New York Post. Currently, Prince's songs are only available to stream on Tidal. It would be the first time in 19 months the singer's music would be available on that many streaming networks. Prince pulled his music from all streaming...

Social networking site Facebook is currently working on an app for set-top boxes like the Apple TV, reports The Wall Street Journal. The new app is said to be part of a series of projects aimed at expanding Facebook's video content offerings and expanding revenue sources. Citing sources with knowledge of Facebook's plans, The Wall Street Journal says Facebook is speaking with media companies...

Apple does not break out sales of the Apple Watch like it does for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, but according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, the Apple Watch set all time unit and revenue records during the first fiscal quarter of 2017, suggesting significant sales during the holidays. Cook said holiday demand was "so strong" that Apple "couldn't make enough." He went on to say the company is thrilled...

During today's earnings call for the first fiscal quarter of 2017 (fourth calendar quarter), Apple announced that its services revenue is up an impressive 18.4 percent year-over-year. Services brought in $7.17 billion during the quarter, up from $6 billion in the year-ago quarter. Services revenue now nearly matches Mac revenue, which was at $7.24 billion. The "Services" category includes...

Google today announced that the code for Chrome for iOS is being added to its Chromium project and will be available through the company's open-source repository going forward. According to Google, Chrome for iOS was previously kept separate from the rest of the Chromium project because of the "additional complexity" required for the platform, such as the need for the browser to be built using ...

Streaming media application Plex today announced its acquisition of Watchup, a free app that offers viewers a collection of local, national, and world news videos from 160 trusted news sources that they can further personalize by liking and disliking each news story (via TechCrunch). Watchup originally began as an iPad app back in 2012, and since launched apps on iOS, Apple Watch, Apple TV,...