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

Earlier this week, it was reported that Apple had been ordered to share with Samsung terms of the contracts it held with Australian carriers. As part of its lawsuit attempting to have sales of the iPhone 4S halted in the country, Samsung sought information about subsidies being paid to Apple by carriers and whether the amounts of those subsidies might somehow result in anti-competitive behavior. ...

Several years ago, Jon Briggs took a voiceover job for a company called Scansoft. Scansoft later merged with Nuance, which makes the voices that Apple used for Siri. Briggs tells the UK Telegraph: “I did a set of recordings with Scansoft five or six years ago, for text-to-speech services,” says Briggs. “Five thousand sentences over three weeks, spoken in a very particular way and only ...

As highlighted by AllThingsD, T-Mobile USA acknowledged yesterday in discussion of its third quarter earnings that the lack of an iPhone 4S offering for the carrier may have an impact on customer retention, labeling churn rates as an "area of concern".“Earnings improved as we continued to focus on making smartphones affordable to all Americans through our unlimited Value plans, improvements...

Beyond the Panorama view, it seems Apple left out another small feature in the final version of iOS 5. The bar appears while typing into the field as shown above, giving you a number of autocorrection options. Per 9to5mac, the feature can reportedly be enabled on a non-jailbroken phone with the following...

The Swivl is an iPhone dock that uses motion tracking to swivel the phone -- and thus the front-facing camera -- to follow your every move, both horizontally and vertically. It also comes with a wireless remote to control the camera and start-and-stop recording, useful for video-bloggers. The Swivl can be used for a number of different tasks. Need a video of you skateboarding but have no...

Walmart is updating its iPhone app with a number of new tools to make shopping easier at the world's largest retailer, reports GigaOm. Walmart released its first iPad app at the beginning of this month. From GigaOm: The new iPhone app, which should be available in the next few days, packs in a number of features, including a new smart shopping list tool that allows people to speak their...

Last week, we noted that as part of its case seeking to have sales of the iPhone 4S banned in Australia, Samsung had requested access to both the iPhone 4S source code and Apple's agreements with the country's wireless carriers. Samsung's interest in the carrier contracts related to device subsidies, with the company curious about whether the amount of subsidies paid to Apple by the carriers...

Apple yesterday announced the release of version 2.0 of its iAd Producer software that help developers create ads for use in the company's iAd program for mobile devices. The new release brings a number of enhancements to the software first deployed last December.New tools and animation effects in iAd Producer 2.0 make it even easier to build great iAds. Create sophisticated animations with...

AT&T has launched a new app to allow its customers to make inexpensive international calls over Wi-Fi. With the AT&T Call International app, customers can get the "lowest international calling rates" that AT&T offers. Calls to the UK, for example, cost $0.04/minute for calls to wireline numbers and $0.27/minute for calls to mobile phones. Calls to China are $0.04/minute. The price list for all ...

The Associated Press reports that Apple has donated five iPads to the state of Oregon in support of a pilot program to help disabled voters more easily fill out their election ballots. Combined with a $75,000 investment by the state for software development, the iPads allow voters to adjust font size and screen colors to help them read the ballots, among other accessibility improvements made...

As noted by CapitalVue, China Unicom is planning for an introduction of the iPhone 4S before the end of 2011, hoping that official certification of the device from regulatory authorities comes through in time to meet the timeframe.China Unicom (600050, 0762.HK) will endeavor to introduce the iPhone 4S into the Chinese market by the end of 2011, reports sohu.com, citing company president Lu...

Digitimes reports that Apple is currently evaluating a pair of options for addressing issues with LED backlighting on the iPad 3, noting that the current backlight bar design used in the iPad 2 is insufficient for the higher-resolution display reportedly set to debut in the next-generation tablet.One of the new LED light bar designs has proposed to keep the light bar in a single-bar form factor ...

Case-Mate is taking on Otterbox for the claim of best super-protective case. The Otterbox Defender series has long-been the go-to case for those looking to keep their iPhone free from harm -- but Case-Mate says the Tank provides military-grade protection for the iPhone 4 and 4S. Modeled after motorcycle helmet engineering, Tank is designed with a hard, impact resistant exterior and a shock...

Bluetooth headset manufacturer Jawbone has released the UP wristband to track users activity, sleep, and food intake to "encourage healthier living". The water-resistant wristband, which is designed to be worn constantly, has a built-in motion sensor that tracks movement (steps, distance, calories burned, pace, intensity level and active vs inactive time) and sleep (hours slept, time to fall...

While Apple revealed as part of its notes on the new iTunes 10.5.1 beta 2 released earlier today that iTunes Match is now available for testing on Apple TV, the option is appearing not just for developers but also for regular users. The general public is unable to activate the feature, however, as subscriptions to iTunes Match must be initiated through iTunes 10.5.1, which has yet to see a...

Yahoo has launched an iPad app they call a "living magazine". The app, called Livestand, is vaguely like Flipboard, but pulls content from Yahoo websites and more than 100 publications. One of the stars of the show was Livestand from Yahoo!, a personalized living magazine designed first for iPad and available to download today, free from the App Store in the U.S. Livestand weaves together...

The native Gmail client for iPhone and iPad has been released: Waiting. Walking. Watching TV. Working out. Winding down. Waking up. We check email pretty much everywhere these days. And when we do, we want easy access to our important messages so we can respond quickly and get back to life -- or slinging birds at thieving green pigs. With that in mind, we’ve created a new Gmail app for...

Apple's new Cards app makes it very easy to send real, physical greeting cards through the mail. For just $2.99 (within the U.S.), Apple will print and mail a custom card. But the implementation has some faults. For one, when sending cards to multiple addressees (holiday cards or event invitations, for example), Apple treats each card as an individual purchase from the Apple Online Store,...