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

Apple has hired a former reporter and columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Wei Gu, to its public relations department in Shanghai, China. Gu's role, per LinkedIn (via TechCrunch) will be PR Director, which she began this month. Gu's professional history spans 18 years and includes jobs at CNN and Reuters, working as a video journalist and reporter to break news regarding technology companies ...

Apple's Swift Playgrounds app received its first update today, introducing a new set of coding lessons and a few new features to enhance the coding experience. Included in the update is the "Learn to Code 3" module, which features a fresh guided learning experience designed to walk children and adults through basic coding with Apple's Swift programming language. Learn to Code 3 features...

Popular automation app Workflow is being updated today with a new design, a much-improved Gallery experience, and a streamlined on-boarding process, all of which help to make the app more powerful and easier to use. For those unfamiliar with Workflow, it's an automation app that can essentially do anything. It lets you create workflows to accomplish a wide variety of tasks like creating GIFs...

PlayStation today announced that its PlayStation Vue television service has expanded to the fourth-generation Apple TV, allowing PlayStation Vue subscribers to watch live TV and access other Vue features on Apple's set top box. Priced at $30 to $65 per month, PlayStation Vue provides several different live streaming television packages that include live TV, sports, movies, and more, plus it...

Twitter's first-party iOS app recently began rolling out support for rich notifications for anyone on iOS 10, letting users get a larger glimpse at their incoming notifications without having to open their iPhone or the Twitter app. The new notifications include a few formatting retouches, as well as the inclusion of images in relevant posts. With the new notification set-up, users will get...

While the iPhone 7 Plus has a dual-lens camera, only the wide-angle lens supports optical image stabilization. However, that could change next year. In a research note obtained by MacRumors, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo maintains his belief new dual-camera iPhone models in 2017 will support dual optical image stabilization. Kuo believes Apple will redesign the telephoto lens to...

Mozilla today launched a new app called "Firefox Focus," which automatically blocks advertisements as well as online trackers. The company said that due to the new app's removal of heavy ads and tracking software by other companies, "web pages may require less data and load faster." The privacy-focused web browser also comes with an easily accessible "Erase" button at the top of the app, which ...

Apple is looking into integrating its Siri virtual assistant into the company's Messages platform, according to a patent published today, enabling the AI to provide directions, retrieve movie times, and assist with peer-to-peer payments, among other potential uses. Picked up by AppleInsider, Apple's application for a "Virtual assistant in a communication session" appeared on the U.S. Patent...

Facebook has temporarily halted the collection of WhatsApp user data across Europe after pressure from privacy watchdogs, according to the Financial Times. The move follows news last week that the social media company, which owns the popular chat platform, agreed to pause data collection in the U.K. while a government probe there inquired into WhatsApp's privacy policy. The Irish Data...

Apple is researching whether iPhone and Apple Watch can be used to "passively monitor data" from patients suffering from Parkinson's Disease, according to Fast Company. Those with Parkinson's often see their doctors every six months, leaving wide gaps between visits where symptoms could improve or worsen, putting some on the wrong dose of medication. Stephen Friend, the Sage Bionetworks...

Twitter today introduced Snapchat-style QR codes, which are designed to make it easier to find and follow friends on the social network. Each Twitter QR code is unique to an individual Twitter user, so when scanned, it'll bring up the person's account. To access your Twitter QR code, you'll need the official Twitter app for iOS. In the app, go to your profile, tap on the gear icon, and select...

T-Mobile has announced a limited time promotion offering four lines of unlimited talk, text, and 4G LTE data for $120 per month. The deal offers new and existing customers with at least two lines an additional two more lines free, including families or individuals adding a smartphone and/or tablet to their plans. T-Mobile ONE regularly costs $70 per month for the first line, $50 per month...

An incoming update to Google Translate on the web and mobile app will enhance the service's ability to translate whole sentences at a time, instead of going word by word. With the help of "Neural Machine Translation," Google said that Google Translate will be able to look at the "broader context" of a phrase to parse out a more naturalistic representation in the native language of the app's user. ...

Amazon today has expanded its Music Unlimited streaming service with a new subscription tier: $14.99 per month for a "Family Plan." The option supports up to six family members (at least 13-years-old) for simultaneous listening and personal recommendations. There's also an alternative payment option to pay $149 upfront for an entire year of the Family Plan, cutting the subscription down to about...

Popular task-managing app Todoist today announced a new AI-powered feature called "Smart Schedule," which intelligently takes into account user habits and pre-existing tasks to organize and schedule tasks on its own. The company said that it created the feature because so many of its users -- 70 percent in total -- face unfinished tasks each day. With Smart Schedule, Todoist hopes that...

Reddit today updated its official iOS app to version 2.0, fixing a few bugs for Reddit Live as well as introducing full support for the iPad. The first-party app, which launched in April of this year, has been available only for the iPhone and iPod touch until today. On the iPad, Reddit keeps essentially all of the same features and tabs that users can expect: timeline, subscriptions, inbox, ...

Google today launched a new app called PhotoScan, which is designed to make it easy to scan printed photographs using your iPhone's camera. PhotoScan instructs users to take four separate quick images of a printed photo, stitching them together to create a perfect high-resolution digital copy. Google's multi-image capture method eliminates issues that normally plague digital photos of print...

Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming watchOS 3.1.1 update to developers for testing purposes, just over a week after seeding the second watchOS 3.1.1 beta and three weeks after releasing watchOS 3.1, the first update to the watchOS 3 operating system. watchOS 3.1.1 can be downloaded through the dedicated Apple Watch app on the iPhone by going to General -> Software Update. To...