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

During a quarterly earnings meeting yesterday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg briefly commented on the status of the company's mobile app experience, mentioning a belief that "a text box is still the default way we share." As reported by Bloomberg, the CEO said that the next step for Facebook on smartphones is a camera-first experience that changes status updates from simple written...

The creators of discontinued short-form video service Vine have announced a new live streaming app for iOS called Hype. Hype will have to compete with existing live video streaming platforms including Periscope and Facebook Live, but its creators Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov are betting on its success because it offers some additional features that the others don't have. Going in its favor,...

Elgato today announced the latest product in its line of HomeKit accessories, debuting the Eve Motion wireless motion sensor. The Eve Motion is a small square-shaped accessory that can be put anywhere in your house, indoors or outdoors. It works in tandem with other HomeKit accessories, allowing you to create scenes that can be set off using automatic triggers. When placed in an entry way, for ...

The latest data from market research firm Strategy Analytics claims Android captured a record 87.5% share of the worldwide smartphone market in the third quarter, reflecting the period between late June and late September. Strategy Analytics director Woody Oh on Android's continued dominance:Android's leadership of the global smartphone market looks unassailable at the moment. Its low-cost...

Microsoft today debuted its latest product, Microsoft Teams, which is a chat-based workspace designed for Office 365 users. Designed to compete with chat platforms like Slack and HipChat, Microsoft Teams provides a chat interface that integrates with Office 365 apps and services and other third-party services like Zendesk, Asana, Hootsuite, and Intercom. According to Microsoft, Teams is...

Twelve South today unveiled its latest Apple accessory, a headphone charging stand designed to cut down on desktop clutter. Available in black or silver, the Fermata is crafted from aluminum and is designed to house a set of on-ear or over-ear headphones such as Apple's Beats Solo2 and Solo3 wireless models. The headphones rest on a leather-covered hook, which is designed to make sure the...

Wireless headphone company Bragi today announced an incoming update to its flagship Bluetooth device, The Dash, which will bring with it an all-new way for users to interact with Bragi's "Kinetic User Interface." Coming November 21, Bragi OS 2.2 will introduce users to a beta of "MyTap," which lets them control the headphones through tap-based gestures placed directly on their cheek and not on...

Announced back at CES earlier this year, Netatmo today is officially launching its smart outdoor security camera, called "Presence," for $299.99. Using a "breakthrough deep-learning algorithm," the Presence security camera detects people, cars, and animals that appear outside the home, and reports all activity via notifications and recordings through the connected Netatmo Security app. [Direct...

Password manager LastPass today announced that all users are now able to sync their passwords across multiple devices for free, whereas previously the service's multi-device feature was locked behind its $1 per month subscription service. Now, users can gain access to their most secure sign-in information on a smartphone, tablet, desktop, or laptop using any of the company's free mobile and...

Glide recently announced a new Apple Watch band that includes both a 2MP front-facing camera, as well as an 8MP outward-facing one, with the ability to capture crisp images and HD videos "in a tap." Called the "CMRA," users simply have to tap a button built into the band to snap a photo or long-press to begin recording a video, and on one charge the CMRA can take "hundreds of photos," or about 30 ...

Twitter has begun rolling out its opt-in Highlights feature to all iOS users. The feature notifies users via push notifications (up to two a day) about the most interesting content from Twitter, tailored just for them. Highlights are based on a number of different factors, says Twitter, including but not limited to: Conversations among people users follow and popular tweets from their...

The premium version of popular app Instapaper, designed to allow users to save notable news articles to read at a later time, has officially become free to all users. The company behind the app has emailed all account holders to tell them that, as of today, it is opening up Instapaper Premium features to all users, free of charge. Users of Instapaper now get access to full-text search for...

ROLI today introduced a fun new music creation system called BLOCKS, which is scalable, modular, and designed to give people a simple, visual way to create music. Each square-shaped Block has a different function, and multiple blocks can snap together so users can build the music system that's best for them in terms of skill, price, and musical style. ROLI is announcing three Blocks today,...

Apple Pay launched in Russia last month in partnership with Sberbank for MasterCard cardholders, and today the mobile payments service has expanded to nine additional financial institutions in the country. Today's additions include Tinkoff Bank, Bank Saint Petersburg, Raiffeisenbank, Yandex.Money, Alfa-Bank, MTS Bank, VTB 24, Rocketbank, and MDM Bank. Russian Standard Bank is listed as coming...

In iOS 10, Apple Music lost the star rating system that allowed users to personally rate a song on a scale of 1-5, which was then saved in their library so they could remember and later sort tracks via the ranking system. Following the release of the iOS 10.2 beta yesterday, iTunes expert Kirk McElhearn discovered that star ratings have returned to the Apple Music app on iOS, now appearing as a...

Twitter for iOS is currently testing a new way of opening web links in Safari with the Reader mode automatically turned on (via TechCrunch). Safari's built-in Reader mode, usually activated by tapping an icon in the browser's search bar, enables users to load a distraction-free version of websites minus formatting, ads, links, and so on, with font type and size custom options available. ...

Apple has hired Duke's Dr. Ricky Bloomfield, one of the early proponents of both HealthKit and ResearchKit, for its health team, according to MobiHealthNews. The hiring was first announced by Dr. Bloomfield's colleague on Twitter and confirmed by Apple to MobiHealthNews. As Duke's Director of Mobile Strategy, Dr. Bloomfield helped Duke become one of the first hospitals to integrate HealthKit....

Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming tvOS 10.1 update to developers for testing purposes, one week after releasing the tvOS 10.0.1 update and more than a month after launching tvOS 10. Designed for the fourth-generation Apple TV, the tvOS 10.1 beta can be obtained by connecting the Apple TV to a computer with a USB-C to USB-A cable, downloading and installing the software from a...