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

Chinese car-hailing service Didi Chuxing revealed today that it has secured a $600 million investment from China Life Insurance Company Ltd, one month after it raised $1 billion courtesy of Apple (via Fortune). China Life is the largest insurer in the Asia-Pacific region by market value. The agreed investment reportedly includes equity of $300 million and a long-term borrowing commitment of...

Facebook has begun notifying users who upload photos from their iOS devices that their synced albums will be deleted next month (via TechCrunch). Facebook's iOS photo syncing feature was launched in 2012, and let users automatically upload all photos on their mobile devices to a private album called 'Synced' or 'Synced from Phone'. The idea behind the feature was that copying the photos...

Amazon is planning on launching a new standalone music streaming service that would compete against Apple Music and Spotify, reports Reuters. The new service will be priced similarly to rival services and will feature a "competitive catalog." The service will be offered at $9.99 per month, in line with major rivals, and it will offer a competitive catalog of songs, the sources said. Amazon is...

Earlier this year, rumors suggested Apple would expand Apple Pay to allow iOS users to make purchases from websites, and now Digital Trends says Apple will indeed introduce such a feature at WWDC. Starting on Monday, Apple Pay will reportedly be able to be used to make purchases from select partner websites, serving as an alternative to PayPal. As with all Apple Pay transactions, purchases...

For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with Internet of Things platform Stringify to offer MacRumors readers a chance to win a Philips Hue white and color ambiance starter kit to use with the free Stringify app. [Direct Link] Stringify is a pretty popular home automation app that's able to link together a long list of Internet-connected devices and apps, connecting products like the Nest...

Apple is planning to introduce new versions of tvOS and watchOS at the Worldwide Developers Conference, but unlike iOS 10 and OS X 10.12, we haven't heard any details on new features that could be bundled into the releases. A lack of rumors hasn't stopped our forum members from dreaming up a list of most-wanted features in the two operating systems, so we took a look at some tvOS and watchOS...

While Niantic and The Pokémon Company's much-anticipated iOS and Android game Pokémon Go is still a few months from launch, TechCrunch recently got to go hands-on with the app to discover how it plays in a real-world scenario. Walking around San Francisco, TechCrunch's Greg Kumparak particularly liked the game's endearing ability to encourage hometown exploration, alongside its more intense,...

After Apple announced a handful of new changes heading to the App Store under Phil Schiller's reign -- including a new revenue split for subscriptions and ads in search results -- Spotify recently commented its opinion on the announcements. Speaking with The Verge, Jonathan Prince, Spotify's head of corporate communications and global policy, said simply, "It's a nice gesture, but doesn't get to...

Earlier this week, Google released a new app called Motion Stills, designed to turn Live Photos captured with the iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPhone SE into GIFs or videos. Over the past couple of days, we spent some hands-on time with Motion Stills, and have been really impressed with the way it transforms Live Photos into a more useful, shareable medium. Motion Stills isn't just an app...

Apple is planning to announce an iMessage app for Android users at WWDC, according to a report from MacDailyNews citing sources "familiar with the company's thinking."Apple will announce that iMessage encrypted text messaging is coming to Android users at WWDC next Monday at WWDC 2016, according to a source familiar with the company's thinking. [...] Apple is increasingly focused on services...

Philips today announced the launch of the Philips Sonicare Flexcare Platinum Connected toothbrush, the company's first brush that includes Bluetooth connectivity and connects to an iPhone to track brushing habits. The Flexcare Platinum Connected toothbrush includes "Smart Sensor technology" to track specific brushing locations in the mouth, making sure all teeth get proper attention. It also...

HealthKit-enabled Apple Watch app Cardiogram has received its 1.0 release, bringing native watchOS 2 compatibility, 3D Touch for supporting devices, and a redesigned interface. The app has been developed in collaboration with researchers at the University of California San Francisco's Health eHeart study, which aims to help end heart disease. The program wants to develop a way to detect atrial ...

Pebble has published the algorithms that drive its native fitness tracking app, following the launch of its crowdfunding campaign for three new fitness-focused smartwatches, the Pebble Core, Pebble 2, and Time 2. The move is a first in the wearables industry, and appears to be an effort by the company to demonstrate serious ambitions in the burgeoning "quantified self" and health data tracking ...

Just hours after Apple announced plans to implement App Store revenue sharing changes that will see developers getting an 85/15 revenue split for subscriptions maintained for longer than a year, Re/code says Google is planning on implementing a similar change for Android. According to unnamed sources, Google is going to implement the same 85/15 split, but unlike Apple, Google will make the new ...

The United States Department of Justice today urged the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court ruling that was in Apple's favor and send the Apple vs. Samsung case back to trial court, reports Reuters. The DoJ submitted an amicus brief on Samsung's behalf as the Supreme Court prepares to hear the long-running Apple vs. Samsung case. Apple's dispute with Samsung made its way to the Supreme...

Apple analyst Brian White of Wall Street brokerage firm Drexel Hamilton has issued a research note to investors in which he estimates that Apple will reach a bottom in iPhone sales, and overall revenue and profit, in the third quarter of the 2016 fiscal year, a three-month period that ends in late June. White claimed that all of Apple's supply chain partners that his firm tracks reported May...

The United Kingdom's House of Commons this week passed the controversial "Investigatory Powers" bill, which gives spy and government agencies the ability to "engage in bulk surveillance and computer hacking," and has met stern opposition from various technology companies, including Apple. In the House of Commons, the bill passed by a vote of 444 to 69 (via Bloomberg). The original wording of...

Image messaging and social media app Snapchat has had its Stories page redesigned to increase exposure of commercial publisher's content and boost the company's ad revenue. The new look, which goes live today, enables publishers to include an image and headline with each daily story in user feeds to increase visibility. The more popular user-contributed Live Stories will now compete for...