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

Apple today used Beats 1 radio to announce additional acts for its upcoming Apple Music Festival, confirming The Weeknd, The Chemical Brothers, Take That, James Bay, and Leon Bridges will all perform in London later this month during the 10-day event. #AppleMusicFestival announcements continue! Welcome @theweeknd, @ChemBros & @takethat. More info coming soon. pic.twitter.com/vnx8dGbnNh— Apple ...

For our latest video review, we went hands-on with the Solpro Helios Smart, a solar-powered battery pack that can recharge using three built-in solar panels. It sports a 5,000mAh battery that can charge an iPhone 6 from dead to full twice over, and when the battery is exhausted, it can be charged through an included micro-USB cable or by opening its solar panels and sticking it in the bright...

Hulu today revealed a new plan option that will grant subscribers immunity from the service's embedded advertisements by paying $11.99 each month instead of the traditional $7.99 (via Re/code). Available for new and existing users, Hulu's CEO Mike Hopkins notes that it took months for the various companies and providers available on the service to support the new subscription tier, but he still...

Apple updated its Apple Pay participating issuers list today with 18 additional banks, credit unions and financial institutions supporting the contactless payment service in the United States. Apple Pay now has over 450 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...

A new rumor out of Apple's supply chain in Asia suggests that the company could be returning to using ultra-thin glass-on-glass touch panels for next year's line of iPhones, but will remain using in-cell touch panels for the "iPhone 6s" and "iPhone 6s Plus," both predicted to launch this month (via DigiTimes). The sources cite Apple's issues with production bottlenecks of the in-cell technology...

LUNATIK, the company that made a name for itself a number of years ago by creating popular watch bands such as the TikTok and LYNK for the sixth-generation iPod nano, has debuted a similar offering for the 42 mm Apple Watch with its new EPIK lineup. EPIK began as a Kickstarter project that raised over $240,000 and offered a protective anodized aluminum casing for the watch itself paired with...

Instagram today announced a major update to the Instagram Direct feature that it first introduced in 2013, allowing users to send threaded messages and content from their feeds through the private messaging function. Prior to today, Instagram Direct could only be used to send a single photo privately to a friend or a group of friends, where it could be commented on away from the public eye....

Amazon's Prime Video streaming service today announced the ability for its users to download television shows and movies to an iPhone, iPad, or Android device (via Re/code). The service had previously supported such a feature, but it was exclusively available for Amazon's own Fire tablets, with today marking the first expansion onto Apple's smartphones. The feature will let Prime users...

Adonit, known for its range of styluses, today announced the Jot Dash, the company's latest stylus that aims to closely replicate a standard pen. The Jot Dash is a thin-tipped active stylus that has a plastic 1.9mm tip that offers more precision than a standard rubber-tipped stylus. Priced at $49.99, the Jot Dash bridges the gap between Adonit's inexpensive Jot Pro and Jot Mini and the pricier ...

The UK Cards Association announced on Tuesday that the upper limit for Apple Pay and other contactless payments is now £30 per transaction in the United Kingdom (via AppleInsider). Apple Pay transactions were previously limited to £20 since the service launched in the U.K. around six weeks ago. British retailers will be updating their payment terminals starting today and over the coming weeks...

GT Advanced is laying off 40% of its workforce as it negotiates the terms of a $95 million bankruptcy restructuring plan, according to The Wall Street Journal. The cuts will enable the former Apple supplier to save $20 million per year as it looks to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States. The report claims GT Advanced had about 1,000 employees when it filed for bankruptcy...

Epic Games has released Unreal Engine 4.9 with several new features that developers can implement in iPhone and iPad games on the App Store, including efficient dynamic shadows, movable lights and decals, improved in-app purchase functionality, remote push notifications and CloudKit support. Unreal Engine 4.9 supports dynamic modulated character shadows from directional lights on iOS and...

T-Mobile CEO John Legere has announced that the U.S. carrier will begin taking action against customers with unlimited 4G LTE data plans that deliberately violate the company's terms and conditions by masking excessive tethering usage as smartphone data. T-Mobile notes that less than 1% of customers are using apps or other methods to blow past their Smartphone Mobile HotSpot allotment, which...

There are hundreds of different stylus options available for the iPhone and the iPad, but that hasn't stopped new company Stilo Co. from introducing a fresh take on the stylus. The battery-powered Stilo is a fine-tipped stylus designed to pair with a Precision Film to replicate the feel of writing on paper with a pen. According to the company, the purpose behind the Stilo is to create a more...

Just months after the Apple Watch was released, there are dozens if not hundreds of different stand options available on the market. The Bloc Power Bank from Boostcase stands out due to its unique long, flat shape and the fact that it has a built-in battery pack that can charge the Apple Watch while on the go. Made from solid aluminum, the Bloc Power Bank comes in Silver, Space Gray, Gold,...

Belkin announced today that it has introduced a new lineup of Lightning to USB clip-on fashion accessories in time for the back to school season. The new MIXIT charging cables for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch are available now in three designs: a leather tassel, a braided USB clip and a metallic keychain. The MIXIT Lightning to USB Tassel has a chic design made from natural leather and clips...

Instagram today announced that the popular app would begin letting users post photos and videos in both portrait and landscape modes, expanding upon the all-inclusive square format for which the service is well-known. The company notes it discovered that nearly one in five posts aren't in the square format, so today's decision comes from its mission statement of putting each user's "visual story" ...

Apple today announced the company is partnering with PayAnywhere for a new mobile NFC card reader that will be able to attach to iOS devices and support Apple Pay transactions in any retail location, in addition to traditional credit card support (via CNBC). The reader will be available exclusively in Apple Stores beginning in September, with the chance for merchants signing up with a new...