MacRumors

Smart home tech company Brilliant today launched its touchscreen-based "Brilliant Control" light switch priced starting at $299.00. Announced in early 2017, Brilliant Control replaces any existing light switch to enable touch and voice control over smart home devices from Amazon, Google, Nest, Ecobee, Honeywell, Ring, Philips Hue, and Wemo, but at launch not HomeKit.

Amazon Alexa is built directly into Brilliant Control, making it easy for those in the Amazon ecosystem to control their products with their voice using the light switch. For whatever light switch you are replacing, Brilliant Control also turns these bulbs into smart lights through the touch and voice control system.

Brilliant Control is compatible with Sonos, allowing the light switch to act as a hub for music playback on Sonos' line of smart speakers. The device also acts as a speaker system if you have two or more installed, so one person can make announcements to the rest of the house or use it as a video intercom between specific rooms.

Connected smart features include being able to see who is at your door by displaying the feed from a Ring doorbell, adjusting the temperature of Nest with touch or voice control, controlling Hue scenes, and more. Brilliant Control's display can also act as a picture frame when not in use, displaying family photos, art, or even seasonal themes.

Next to the touch screen are grooves that represent the traditional light switches you've replaced using Brilliant Control. Users can slide their fingers along each area to adjust the lighting for each respective fixture.

We reached out to Brilliant regarding future HomeKit support, and the company told us that it has hardware support for HomeKit built directly into Brilliant Control. This means that a future software update for the switch will include HomeKit support, but the company didn't divulge a release window for this update.

This should make Brilliant Control more enticing for those in Apple's ecosystem when HomeKit support launches, allowing you to control your scenes and accessories through the touch panel or Siri. As usual, if you're interested in Brilliant Control for HomeKit support, it's probably best to wait until the update has rolled out since we aren't sure how long it will take.

Brilliant Control comes in six colors and begins at $299.00 for a one light switch panel, and then rises to $349.00 for a two switch panel, $399.00 for a three switch panel, and $449.00 for a four switch panel. More information about Brilliant Control can be found on the company's website.

The European Commission today announced it has approved Apple's proposed acquisition of music recognition service Shazam.

"After thoroughly analyzing Shazam's user and music data, we found that their acquisition by Apple would not reduce competition in the digital music streaming market," said Margrethe Vestager, European Commissioner for Competition.

The regulatory body concluded that Apple and Shazam mainly offer "complementary services" and "do not compete with each other," and that a merged Apple-Shazam entity would not adversely affect competitors in the European Union:

In particular, access to Shazam's data would not materially increase Apple's ability to target music enthusiasts and any conduct aimed at making customers switch would only have a negligible impact. As a result, competing providers of digital music streaming services would not be shut out of the market.

The regulators were concerned that the merger could reduce choice for users of streaming music services in Europe. In particular, they were concerned that Apple might gain access to sensitive data that would allow it to directly target competitors' customers and encourage them to switch to Apple Music.

While the Commission did not name any specific companies, Apple Music's biggest rival in Europe is Spotify, headquartered in Sweden. Shazam is currently integrated with multiple services, including Apple Music, Spotify, and Deezer.

Apple announced its plans to acquire Shazam in December, describing the two companies as a "natural fit" with "exciting plans" ahead. In February, however, the Commission received requests from Austria, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain, and Sweden to assess the deal under European merger law.

Shazam is a popular service that can identify the name and lyrics of songs, music videos, TV shows, and more. It has apps across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, iMessage, and Mac, while the service has been built into Siri since iOS 8.

Via: Reuters

With the latest Apple Pay promotion you can get 10 percent off your next order from Under Armour through Wednesday, September 12. If you're in the United States, you can shop in the Under Armour app and then place your order before next Wednesday to see the discount automatically applied when you check out using Apple Pay.

Apple is promoting the beginning of football season with the new Apple Pay offer, which also points users towards apps like Fanatics, Gametime, and Grubhub, offering sports apparel, tickets, and food respectively.

The last few Apple Pay promotions have included partnerships with Postmates, Nike, StubHub, TGI Fridays, and Adidas. As we enter the fall, users can likely expect some of the same promos we saw last holiday season, potentially including free Postmates subscriptions, savings on Fandango tickets, free Instacart deliveries, and more.

Apple has temporarily halted plans to launch Apple Pay in India after facing troubles with regulators in the country and a few technical hurdles, according to The Economic Times. Specifically, Apple is said to be concerned about the Reserve Bank of India's recent data localization rule, which requires companies to store all of their payments data for local users only in India.

Because of this rule, numerous companies -- including Apple, Amazon, PayPal, WhatsApp, Visa, and MasterCard -- have faced uncertainties regarding the rollout of their respective mobile wallets in India. Apple is said to have gone so far as to meet with a few leading banks and the National Payments Corporation of India, which manages the country's Unified Payments Interface platform.

In addition, Apple has reportedly encountered a few technical and design hurdles surrounding Apple Pay's India launch, relating to the inclusion of Touch ID as a mode of authentication for payments in India on supported iPhones. The NPCI did not agree to this plan, because the country's UPI is based on a six or four-digit passcode to authenticate transactions and does not have support for smartphone-based biometric security features yet.

Following these hurdles, plans as of now have been shelved, according to two people familiar with the matter.

“Apple will not launch payments in India yet. They are waiting to see how the regulatory landscape shapes up,” one of them said.

The Apple Pay news is just the latest in a string of negative reports regarding Apple's attempt at expansion in India, one month after the company faced a potential legal threat over noncompliance with the Indian government's anti-spam iPhone app. Otherwise, the company has had trouble in the country due to ever-increasing taxes on imported smartphones, rising iPhone prices because of such taxes, and user frustration with poor Apple services like Apple Maps.

In an attempt to finally rectify these issues, Bloomberg in August reported that Apple is planning a completely revamped India strategy led by Apple executive Michel Coulomb. This includes better and longer-lasting retail deals with higher sales targets, the opening of official Apple retail stores in India, "overhauling" the company's relationship with independent retailers, and improving apps and services "aimed more closely at Indians."

Apple Pay was never mentioned as part of that strategy, so it doesn't appear that users in India will have a chance to use the company's mobile wallet anytime soon. Otherwise, Apple Pay is available in over two dozen countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong, France, Russia, China, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, UAE, Brazil, Ukraine, Norway, and Poland.

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.

In March, Feral Interactive announced that its latest video game port for macOS would be the adventure game Life is Strange: Before the Storm, and at the time said it would launch in the spring. After a delay, the prequel is set to release next week on Thursday, September 13 on macOS and Linux.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm was originally developed by Deck Nine and published by Square Enix on consoles and PCs in August 2017. The story takes place three years before the events of the original Life is Strange, tracking the friendship between rebellious sixteen-year-old Chloe and a popular schoolmate named Rachel.

Gameplay puts players in the shoes of Chloe as she must make choices that ultimately shape a branching story with multiple endings influenced by every decision. One of the main gameplay hooks of the game is "Backtalk," which the developers describe as a "risk and reward-based system" in which Chloe uses her wit to provoke NPCs or get her way.

• All Mac Minis since Late 2014
• All 13" MacBook Pros released since 2013
• All 15" MacBook Pros released since mid 2012 with a 1GB graphics card or better (Mid 2015 models with an AMD 370X are not supported.)
• All 21.5" iMacs released since late 2013
• All 27" iMacs released since late 2013 (Late 2012 models with Nvidia 675 or Nvidia 680 graphics are also supported.)
• All 27" iMac Pros released since late 2017
• All Mac Pros released since late 2013

Life is Strange: Before the Storm includes three episodes that make up the base game, and will also come in a Deluxe Edition that includes all three episodes as well as all available additional content, including the bonus episode "Farewell." The Deluxe Edition will be priced at $24.82 and is available to pre-order beginning today on the Feral Store.

Logitech today announced that its Crayon stylus, which was previously only available to schools, is coming to Apple retail stores, which means it will be available for everyone to purchase for the first time.

Introduced in March alongside the 6th-generation 9.7-inch iPad, the Crayon is designed to operate as a lower-cost alternative to the Apple Pencil.

Logitech designed the Crayon with students in mind, so it has a flat surface to prevent rolling, a tethered rubber end cap, a comfortable grip for small hands, and the ability to withstand drops of up to four feet.

The Crayon does not need Bluetooth to connect to the iPad, and it's able to last for up to seven hours before needing to be recharged with the built-in Lightning port.

It's worth noting that the Crayon is designed to be compatible only with the sixth-generation iPad.

We were able to get our hands on one of Logitech's Crayons ahead of its Apple Store availability, so if you're considering picking one of these up for your 9.7-inch iPad, make sure to check out our review video above.

The Crayon will be available in Apple retail stores, on the Apple website, and on the Logitech website starting on September 12 before expanding to additional retail outlets in October.

While schools can purchase the device for $50, customers who purchase the Crayon from Apple or Logitech will need to pay $70.

Apple today updated the Events app on the Apple TV to prepare for next Wednesday's "Gather Round" iPhone-centric event, which will see the debut of the 2018 iPhone lineup, new Apple Watch models, and new accessories.

The Events app, along with the Events section of Apple's website, will be used to live stream the product unveiling. Apple's Gather Round event will kick off at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time at the Steve Jobs Theater on the Apple Park campus.

To see the updated Events app on the Apple TV, it needs to be updated through the Apple TV App Store.

Apple is set to introduce the new 2018 iPhones, which will include the 5.8-inch OLED iPhone Xs, the 6.5-inch OLED iPhone Xs Max, and the lower-cost 6.1-inch LCD iPhone, which we don't yet know the name of. All three iPhones are expected to adopt edge-to-edge designs with a TrueDepth Camera System that will replace the Touch ID Home button.

We're also expecting to see new Apple Watch Series 4 models with smaller bezels for more screen real estate, refreshed AirPods with "Hey Siri" support, new Apple Watch bands, and perhaps the long-awaited debut of the AirPower, which is able to charge the iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods all at once.

For those who are unable to watch Apple's live stream, MacRumors will have live coverage of the event on MacRumors.com and on our MacRumorsLive Twitter account.

Just ahead of when Apple plans to release new 2018 iPhones, the company has quietly updated its AirPort Utility app to introduce support for the longer display of the iPhone X.

AirPort Utility is one of the last remaining Apple apps that have gone for months without an iPhone X update.

For those unfamiliar with the app, it is designed to allow AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and AirPort Time Capsule owners to manage their devices.

Apple has discontinued development on all of these products, but has pledged to continue to support them for the next several years. Today's app update follows a major firmware update for the AirPort Express that introduced support for AirPlay 2.

Video platform Vimeo today is expanding its recent focus on software tools for video creators, part of a continued pivot away from earlier attempts to get into original content creation itself. Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud confirmed the move to Axios today, explaining that the company saw "so much organic growth" from software tools it already sells that the pivot "became a no-brainer."

Currently, Vimeo calls itself "the high quality home for video hosting and watching," with many videos like short films, documentaries, and more residing on the service. Vimeo found a niche for smaller content creators to host their videos on its site, since they could sell their content to interested viewers and take 90 percent of the revenue each video earned after fees.

Now, as more tech companies enter the already "saturated" video viewing market, and are willing to invest billions in original content, Vimeo has pulled back from competing in that space to focus on helping professional creators through the launch of tools such as stock video clips.

The pivot allows Vimeo to go after a less competitive social “SaaS” (software as a service) market that focuses on stock video, as opposed to the saturated original content viewing market, which is dominated by massive tech companies investing billions in original content to win eyeballs.

“Today 100% of our business model is software as a service, like a Dropbox or a Slack … We just saw so much organic growth from the software tools side among the creators that it became a no-brainer that this is what we should focus on.”

Although Apple is not directly mentioned, the company has set aside a "$1 billion war chest" in planning its upcoming streaming television service, and Vimeo has recognized that this expensive pursuit of original content is making for a very crowded marketplace. Ahead of a rumors 2019 launch, Apple has hired executives from Sony Pictures and Amazon Studios, prepared a lineup of over a dozen original shows, and is said to be "completely all in" on original content, according to iTunes chief Eddy Cue.

Vimeo does have a small collection of original series, but its Vimeo Originals platform never took off in comparison to rival video services. Ahead of the pivot, over the past year Vimeo has been "trying to pull back" from being a video viewing platform by "no longer investing in original content." Instead, Vimeo will now present itself as an "agnostic and independent home" full of tools and services that let creators edit their work, to then be shared on other platforms like YouTube or Facebook Watch.

“Most large video-viewing destinations, like YouTube and Facebook, are ad supported, and are focused on keeping content and eyeballs on their platform. But if you’re a creator, you need an agnostic and independent home to create and distribute your work and there really are no other creator platforms that do that at scale.”

Vimeo's new tools will be called "Vimeo Stock," with HD clips starting at $79 and 4K clips starting at $199. Vimeo is also offering paid memberships with various upload limits, tools, and team member limits, with memberships and clips available at discounted prices when purchased together.

On the other side of the equation, Vimeo says it will offer contributors of stock footage for the service a "higher revenue share" than its competitors, as much as 60-70 percent of revenue generated from their content.

As part of its quiet year-long move away from its own original content creation, Vimeo in April launched a dedicated macOS app aimed at Final Cut Pro users. The app gives these users "more control over file formats and video codecs," and integrates Vimeo with Final Cut Pro to export ProRes videos, manage uploads, share videos for team reviews, and more features that are exclusively focused on content creation and editing.

For Apple devices, Vimeo is available on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, but the company did not give any word regarding how these apps will change following the pivot.

Update: This article has been updated to clarify that Vimeo is not moving away from its traditional video hosting platform for creators. The company's ongoing shift away from its own original content is being augmented with today's launch of Vimeo Stock tools to assist independent creators with producing their own content.