MacRumors

Over on our YouTube channel, we're continuing on with our new monthly series that highlights new, interesting, and useful apps that we think are worth checking out.

Because there are so many apps available on the iOS App Store, it can be hard to find new content, and it's also easy to overlook great older apps. Our app lists are designed to include apps -- both new and old -- that we personally recommend and have used over the course of the month.

• Hooked (Free) - Hooked is actually a book app that offers up short stories in a unique format -- chat messages. Hooked stories are all presented as text message conversations, so it's a little bit like you're reading someone else's chat history. With Hooked, you can read little bits at a time in moments when you have a free minute or two, and the stories are always engaging. Hooked is free to download with a free trial period, but unlimited access costs $14.99 per month.
• App in the Air (Free) - Whether you're a frequent or infrequent traveler, App in the Air is a useful app that serves up details like real time flight status, airport maps, security wait times, walk time to your gate, airline point tracking, and more. It works with more than 1,000 airlines around the world, and key information like gate changes and updates to flight status are delivered via SMS. The app is free, but there are premium features like real-time flight status updates that require a subscription, which is priced at $34.99 per year.
• Timepage (Free) - Timepage is a calendar app from Moleskine, the company that makes those handy notebooks. Timepage combines data like events, maps, contacts, weather and more into a simple interface that's easy to parse at a glance. There are monthly, weekly, and daily views, along with a heat map that lets you know when you're busiest. Timepage is a free download, but only on a trial basis. A monthly subscription is priced at $1.99, or you can pay $11.99 for the year.
• Confide (Free) - Confide is a private and secure messaging app that's a great way to communicate with people when you want to keep your messages entirely private. Messages sent through Confide use end-to-end encryption and disappear after a set period of time, plus there's screenshot protection so no one can snap an image of what you've written. Confide is a free download, but access to features like unlimited attachments and themes requires Confide Plus, priced at $29.99 for three months or $59.99 for a year.
• Alto's Odyssey ($4.99) - Alto's Odyssey is the highly-anticipated sequel to popular 2015 game Alto's Adventure. Like the original, Alto's Odyssey is an endless runner with gorgeous graphics, but this time it takes place in the sand instead of the snow.

If you're looking for great Mac apps that are worth downloading, make sure to check out our February list of essential apps for the Mac. And if you have favorite iOS apps, make sure to share them with us -- we'll be highlighting interesting, useful iOS apps on a monthly basis.

In iOS 11, Apple Maps gained a new lane guidance feature, which is designed to let Maps users know which lane they should be in to avoid missing a sudden turn or an exit.

The feature was initially limited to the United States and China, but since the release of iOS 11, Apple has been working to expand it. As of this week, Apple has made lane guidance features available in Austria, South Africa, and Switzerland.

With the addition of these three countries, lane guidance features are available in a total of 14 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the United States.

Other iOS 11 Maps features, such as the addition of speed limit information, remain limited to the United States and the UK.

Spotify today filed to go public and plans to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the name SPOT, reports CNBC. Shares of the company have privately traded as high as $132.50, giving the company a valuation of ~$23 billion based on ordinary shares traded in private transactions.

According to Spotify's filing with the SEC, the streaming music service boasts 159 million monthly active users and 71 million premium subscribers as of December 31, 2017, which Spotify claims is "nearly double the scale" of its closest competitor, Apple Music.

As of the last update at the beginning of February, Apple Music boasted 36 million paying subscribers.

Spotify says its number of premium subscribers has grown 46 percent year over year, and its monthly active users has grown 29 percent year over year. The company earned $2.37 billion in 2015, $3.6 billion in 2016, and $4.99 billion in 2017, but posted a loss of $1.5 billion in 2017.

Spotify also says it is able to draw consumers because it provides "unique data" for a differentiated and personalized experience.

Many music services have large catalogs, but we believe Spotify is differentiated from other services because we provide Users with a more personalized experience, driven by powerful music search and discovery engines. We have a large and growing base of Users that are highly engaged on Spotify, which enables us to continuously learn about their listening behaviors throughout the day.

We use this information to create a more personalized and engaging experience for each incremental visit to our platform. We believe this personalized experience is a key competitive advantage as Users are more likely to engage with a platform that reflects their real-time moods and activities and captures a unique understanding of moments in their lives.

Going forward, Spotify plans to grow its business by heavily investing in research and development, further penetrating into existing markets, entering new geographies, continuing to invest in its advertising business, and expanding non-music content.

Spotify is going public through a direct listing, which means the company did not hire an underwriter and thus there is no set opening price for Spotify shares.

Twitter today announced the official launch of a new Bookmarks feature, which is designed to allow Twitter users to save tweets for later access.

All tweets now feature an updated "share" icon that's used for both bookmarking and sharing tweets, and Twitter says the share icon is meant to make it easier to save and share privately or publicly.

Bookmarking a tweet to save it for later can be done by tapping the share icon under a tweet and then choosing the "Add Tweet to Bookmarks" option. All saved tweets are located under the "Bookmarks" option that can be accessed from a person's profile icon menu.

The new Bookmarks feature was first introduced in October and was developed as part of a company-wide Hack Week. Ahead of the debut of Bookmarks, Twitter shared regular details on its development.

Twitter says Bookmarks are now rolling out globally on Twitter for iOS and Android, Twitter Lite, and mobile.twitter.com.

Apple today on the iOS App Store shared a new interview with the founders of MoviePass, touching on the service's origins and its integral ties to the iPhone and modern smartphone app development. MoviePass debuted in 2011, but grew in popularity last August when the company dropped its subscription price to $9.95/month, which lets customers see one standard 2D film every day in the theater

In Apple's new interview with Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt -- the pair of entrepreneurs who founded MoviePass seven years ago -- the conversation eventually focuses on where the idea for MoviePass emerged. According to Spikes, the kernel of the idea that would become MoviePass originated from art-house theaters in New York City that let customers see unlimited movies for a flat donation fee.

He tried to install a similar model for his own Urbanworld Film Festival in the late 1990s, but admitted it was "too early," and that iPhones, apps, and the advances in development that emerged from this technology were all needed to address the technical roadblocks of such a service.

"The idea was almost too early," says Spikes. "We didn't have iPhones and apps to figure out payment and interfacing. If it weren't for that development, MoviePass would never have happened."

MoviePass works through the use of both the iPhone app and a paired debit card that is sent to subscribers through the mail after they sign up. If you want to see a movie, you travel to your local theater (MoviePass is supported at over 90 percent of theaters nationwide), select a 2D showtime, "check in," and at that time MoviePass transfers the exact cost of the showing to your MoviePass card. Then you can buy a ticket at the box office or a kiosk like any normal ticket purchase.

Although the service is growing, many reports in the months following its August price drop have questioned how long the company can keep up the $9.95/month subscription fee (currently $7.95/month paid annually), as well as its public conflict with theater chain AMC. What MoviePass lacks in profit it hopes to make up for in accrued user data, selling a majority stake of itself to data company Helios and Matheson Analytics, which sees "big potential in the type of information it can glean from MoviePass members," with "no plans to sell user data to outside parties."

As of January 2018, MoviePass had 1.5 million subscribers. According to CEO Mitch Lowe, MoviePass will hit three million subscribers by the end of April, and turn a profit once four million subscribers sign up for the service.

MoviePass updated its iOS app [Direct Link] to support the iPhone X this month, providing a revamped user interface with more emphasis on images from popular films, better navigation, and an updated screen for the check in process. If you want to read the full interview with the creators of MoviePass, you can find the discussion with Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt at the top of the Today tab on the iOS 11 App Store on iPhone or iPad.

Apple Maps has been updated with transit data in Columbia, Charleston, and Greenville, enabling navigation and directions with public transportation in South Carolina's three largest metropolitan areas.

By selecting the Transit tab in Apple Maps on iPhone, iPad, or Mac, users can now access bus routes from The COMET in Columbia, CARTA in Charleston, and Greenlink Transit in Greenville. These local bus routes complement existing support for Amtrak train service in South Carolina added to Apple Maps in late 2016.

When the Apple Maps transit feature launched in 2015, it was limited to Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, and around 300 cities in China. Since then, Apple has expanded the feature to dozens of additional cities around the world.

Google Maps has also supported navigation via public transportation for several years now, including in Columbia, Charleston, and Greenville. One advantage of Apple Maps is that it lists departure times for bus routes in each city, whereas Google Maps doesn't have timetables available in every location.

In related news, Apple Maps lane guidance on iPhone and CarPlay recently expanded to Austria, South Africa, and Switzerland, in addition to existing support in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

(Thanks, Ram!)

Today marks the official transfer of Apple's Chinese iCloud services from a hosting location in the United States to servers owned and operated by state-run Chinese company Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD) (via CNN). With the move, all Chinese users' iCloud accounts will now be hosted on GCBD's servers, along with the iCloud encryption keys needed to unlock an iCloud account.

Apple made the transfer to comply with the latest laws enacted in China regarding regulations on cloud services, requiring foreign firms to store data within the country. At the time of the original announcement, Apple said, "While we advocated against iCloud being subject to these laws, we were ultimately unsuccessful."

Still, Apple remains adamant about its users' privacy:

"Apple has not created nor were we requested to create any backdoors and Apple will continue to retain control over the encryption keys to iCloud data," the Apple spokesman said.

"As with other countries, we will respond to legal requests for data that we have in our possession for individual users, never bulk data," he added.

The company decided to obey the new law in China, instead of outright discontinuing iCloud services in the country and causing a "bad user experience and less data security and privacy" for its Chinese customers. Now, starting today, any iCloud accounts on a device with location settings set to China will have their accounts switched to host GCBD, which is owned by the Guizhou provincial government in southern China.

Because of the move, the Chinese government will be able use its own legal system to ask Apple for its users' iCloud data, whereas before the government had to go through the U.S. legal system. This has been the focus of controversy regarding the move, with human rights and digital security advocates questioning whether Apple will be able to maintain and protect its customers' privacy under the new Chinese laws.

"The changes being made to iCloud are the latest indication that China's repressive legal environment is making it difficult for Apple to uphold its commitments to user privacy and security," Amnesty International warned in a statement Tuesday.

Speaking to CNN, Ronald Deibert, an expert on human rights and global digital security from the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, said that Apple customers in China will need to take "extra and possibly inconvenient precautions not to store sensitive data on Apple's iCloud." Apple has noted that users can terminate their iCloud account if they don't want their data stored by GCBD, but a company spokesperson said that "more than 99.9 percent" of iCloud users in China have decided to continue using the service.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Images of Fitbit's next smartwatch have been obtained by Wearable, following the fitness firm's recent confirmation of a new device launch later this year.

During an investor's call yesterday revealing weaker-than-expected results, Fitbit CEO James Park said the company will introduce a smartwatch in 2018 that will have "mass appeal", seemingly confirming lackluster sales of its Ionic smartwatch (reviewed here).

According to Wearable, the new device will be the successor to the two-year-old Fitbit Blaze and will run the same Fitbit OS that first showed up on the Ionic – software that was largely the result of Fitbit's acquisition of Pebble back in 2016.

The actual name of the new smartwatch remains unclear, but Fitbit is said to want to appeal more to the female market, which is one reason why this device will be smaller than the Ionic and closer to the dimensions of the original Blaze.

Otherwise, the new smartwatch is said to be water resistant to 50 meters and will have an Sp02 sensor for monitoring sleep apnea, but GPS won't be included. The watch will be more affordable than the Ionic, according to Wareable's sources, and will come in four colors: black, silver, rose gold, and charcoal, with a range of straps available.

In iOS 11 and later, it's possible to add an Apple TV Remote interface to the Control Center that will allow you to quickly navigate and control playback on your 4K Apple TV or fourth-generation Apple TV using your iPhone or iPad. It's a great solution if you just can't get on with Apple's Siri Remote, and doesn't require you to install an app. In this article, we'll show you how to set up the Apple TV Remote on your iOS device and explain how to use it once you've done so.

Before continuing, make sure that your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is updated to the latest version of iOS: Open the Settings app, tap General -> About, and look for the version number. If you need to update, tap back to Settings, select Software Update, and follow the onscreen instructions, then meet us back here when installation is complete.

➜ Click here to read more...

Amazon is acquiring Ring, the company that makes a range of WiFi-enabled home security products that include video doorbells, reports GeekWire. The two companies are expected to officially announce the acquisition news later this afternoon, but provided a statement to GeekWire.

"Ring is committed to our mission to reduce crime in neighborhoods by providing effective yet affordable home security tools to our neighbors that make a positive impact on our homes, our communities, and the world," a Ring spokesperson said in a statement. "We'll be able to achieve even more by partnering with an inventive, customer-centric company like Amazon. We look forward to being a part of the Amazon team as we work toward our vision for safer neighborhoods."

Many customers who own Ring products have been eagerly awaiting integration with Apple's HomeKit platform, and though Amazon is purchasing the company, Ring has this afternoon promised on Twitter that support is still coming. According to Ring, HomeKit support is being tested for Ring Pro and the Floodlight Cam, with the company promising to offer details on a release date following once testing is completed.

HomeKit support is a feature that Ring has been promising for some time. In October, for example, Ring said bringing HomeKit support to its Ring Pro and Floodlight Cam was an "ongoing project" but had "been delayed." Ring support for Amazon's Alexa products has been available for months now.

Amazon has recently become interested in smart home-related companies, and back in December, purchased Blink, another company that offers home security cameras and video doorbells. Amazon has also released its own home security camera, the Cloud Cam.

Amazon's interest in smart home products stems from its Amazon Echo line of products, which offer Alexa integration and allow users to control their third-party smart home devices. Alexa works with many of the smart home products on the market today.