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

Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed during the company's first quarter earnings conference call that ExxonMobil will be rolling out Apple Pay support in its Speedpass+ app to conveniently pay at the pump with your iPhone. Speedpass+ is currently supported at ExxonMobil gas stations in Salt Lake City, Houston, Charlottesville, Philadelphia and Nashville. The app supports all major credit cards and...

Apple has announced that its active installed base of devices has reached 1 billion, based on the number of iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod touch, Apple TV and Apple Watch devices that have been engaged with the company's services within the past 90 days. Apple said the figure represents a 25% year-over-year increase in active devices. Apple sold a record 74.8 million iPhones, along with 5.3 million ...

Quanta will be the sole manufacturer of the second-generation Apple Watch, according to a few sources out of the China supply chain (via DigiTimes). The same sources believe that the manufacturing company will ramp up mass production on the "Apple Watch 2" sometime in the second quarter of 2016, following reports that it began a trial production on the smartwatch this month. The reason for...

VirnetX Holding Corporation is asking for $532 million from Apple for using patented technology for communication services like FaceTime, iMessage and more, the firm told a federal jury today, according to Bloomberg. “Apple hasn’t played fair. They have taken Virnetx’s intellectual property without permission,” VirnetX lawyer Brad Caldwell of Caldwell Cassady told the jury in Tyler, Texas.Greg ...

Microsoft is working on bringing its Word Flow Windows Phone keyboard to iOS devices and new images shared by The Verge offer a look at some of the included features, such as a one-handed mode for larger phones like the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus. To enable one-handed typing, the keyboard has an arc-like design with letters radiating out from the iPhone's display to be reached with just...

With its lineup of Apple Watch accessories launching since the device's debut last year, Pad & Quill has been steadily expanding its roster of made-for-Apple products with new bands and docks. I've previously gotten my hands on the company's Classic Watch Band and Timber Catchall and Timber Nightstand Apple Watch docks, and while some of them appealed to me more than others -- the Timber Catchall ...

For this week's giveaway, we've once again teamed up with Intrepid Bag Co, a store that sells hand-crafted high-quality leather bags and accessories. We've given away Intrepid Bag Co messenger bags in the past, but this week we have something a bit different -- the Intrepid Leather Tech Roll. The Tech Roll is designed to wrangle and store all of your cords and small Apple-related accessories ...

Apple updated its Apple Pay participating issuers list today with 51 additional banks, credit unions and financial institutions supporting the contactless payment service in the United States. Apple Pay now has over 950 participating issuers nationwide, and several more plan to support the NFC-based mobile payment service in the future. The newly added Apple Pay participating issuers are...

Facebook has begun rolling out support for further 3D Touch actions on compatible iPhones in the latest update to its primary iOS app. The newest iteration in the social media company's series of weekly app updates allows iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus owners to use "peek" and "pop" gestures directly from within a Facebook timeline. A light press or "peek" on a profile, link, page, group or...

Apple today made several updates to its Maps app around the world, adding new Flyover locations, expanding Maps Traffic info, and bringing the Nearby feature in Maps to additional countries. New Flyover locations available today include Aomori, Japan; Bruges, Belgium; Lake Powell, Utah; and Limoges, France. Some of the locations listed may have previously been available as Flyover...

Last year, cartoonist Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal teamed up with Elan Lee and Shane Small to create a card game called Exploding Kittens, which launched on Kickstarter. It received huge amounts of media attention and became the most-backed Kickstarter project of all time, with more than 200,000 backers. Exploding Kittens started shipping out in July, and as of today, it's expanding to iOS...

Microsoft today updated its suite of Office apps designed for the iPad and the iPhone, adding features to take advantage of the iPad Pro's Apple Pencil and the 3D Touch function in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint have all been updated with the new tools. On iPads, there's a new Draw tab that can be found in each of the three apps. The drawing tools in this tab allow iPad ...

A pair of new videos appear to show Apple Pay working with UnionPay bank cards in China for both in-store and in-app purchases. In the first video, a customer appears able to select a UnionPay card in Apple Pay and hold his iPhone near a QuickPass-enabled Verifone payment terminal to complete a purchase at McDonald's. The terminal says "transaction completed" and the self-checkout kiosk...

Apple supplier Foxconn has reportedly offered around $5.3 billion (¥625 billion) to purchase troubled Japanese electronics maker Sharp, according to The Wall Street Journal. The report claims that Sharp is also reviewing a competing offer from the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), possibly in the range of $2.5 billion (¥300 billion). INCJ already owns a controlling stake in...

During its financial results meeting yesterday, Netflix reminded its shareholders that the price-reduced grandfathered plans of long-time subscribers will be ending in 2016 (via Engadget). Grandfathered subscribers can choose to opt out of the imminent price hike, but it means they will lose access to HD quality streams. Beginning in an undisclosed window of the second or third quarter of...

Four years ago, Apple purchased App Store search and discovery company Chomp, gaining Ben Keighran as an employee. Keighran went on to have a pivotal role developing the "look and feel" of the software on the new Apple TV, but according to Re/code, he's now leaving the company. Keighran participated in the development of tvOS, the software that runs on the fourth-generation Apple TV. tvOS...

Hampton Products International today announced plans to introduce its first HomeKit-enabled product under its Brink's Home Security brand, debuting the Array digital deadbolt. The Array is a cloud and app-enabled digital door lock that can be unlocked via an iPhone. Designed to connect to an existing Wi-Fi router, the Array digital deadbolt does not require additional hubs or accessories,...

Child labor is being used in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to mine cobalt, a mineral used in lithium-ion batteries found in devices from Apple, Samsung, Sony, Microsoft and car manufacturers Daimler and Volkswagen, according to a new report by Amnesty International. Children told Amnesty International they worked for up to 12 hours a day in the mines, carrying heavy loads to earn...