MacRumors

Next week, Valve is launching a "Steam Link" app for iOS and tvOS, allowing users in the Apple ecosystem to play Steam games streamed from a host Mac/PC (using either a 5GHz network or a wired Ethernet connection) onto an iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. In advance of the app's launch, our sister site TouchArcade got the chance to go hands-on with Steam Link and came away entirely impressed by the quality of gaming that can come out of Valve's app.

TouchArcade reports that Steam Link works so well that it "feels like there's some kind of actual wizardry powering it all," and once it's set up (a "simple" process) the app is essentially the same as using a physical Steam Link hardware box or Steam's Big Picture mode.

The app doesn't just stream in-game content, but allows gamers to browse the Steam marketplace, purchase games, check their friend lists, play PC exclusive titles, sell things, and more. "There are no corners cut anywhere, it's the complete experience," TouchArcade says.

In the end, the site crowned Steam Link as the current "killer app" for Apple devices.

Overall, I have constantly found myself completely blown away by how well the Steam Link app works. If you have a gaming PC in your house, and an iPad or Apple TV, I do not think it is at all hyperbole to say that this is the killer app for iOS devices.

If you're the kind of person who is always hungry for "real" PC-like game experiences on your Apple device, but have been dismayed by the amount of junk on the App Store, you can basically delete everything else but the Steam Link app. I'm still dumbfounded by Apple apparently allowing this on their platform, as I could see a very real situation where many people just straight up stop buying things from the App Store and exclusively purchase Steam games through Valve instead.

There are a ton of more details to read in TouchArcade's coverage for Steam Link, including tidbits about stream quality, Steam/MFi controller use, the lack of potential for cellular gameplay, and more. To read the full coverage, follow this link: 'Steam Link' App Hands-On Preview - The iOS and Apple TV Killer App Doesn't Even Play Games from Apple's Ecosystem.

Steam Link is launching today for Android devices, while a launch for iOS and tvOS should be sometime next week, pending further approval from Apple.

Instagram today added a feature that's designed to let users share posts from their accounts and public accounts that they follow directly to their story feed as a sticker.

Today, we're introducing a new way to easily share feed posts to your story.

When you come across something in feed that inspires you -- like a post from a friend raising money for a cause or a photo of a new design from your favorite brand -- you can now quickly share that post as a sticker to your story for your friends and followers to see.

Instagram users can share a feed post to a story by tapping on the paper airplane button below a post, which is the same gesture used to send it through a Direct message.

At the top of this interface, there's a new option to create a story. Tapping that option will transform the feed post into a sticker with a customized background that can be shared to a story. Like other stickers, the post sticker can be rotated, scaled, moved, and otherwise customized.

Every post shared to stories will display the original poster's username to make it clear who an image belongs to. Users can also tap on a post in someone's story to see the original post and more content from the person who shared it.

Instagram is only allowing content from accounts that are public, not private, to be shared to stories. Instagram users who do not want their posts shared to stories by other people can opt out in the settings section of the app.

At CES in January, Ford discussed a new partnership with crowdsource navigation app Waze that aimed to bring Waze onto the touch screen of SYNC 3 vehicles through Ford's AppLink. That partnership has been fully realized today with Waze users worldwide now able to connect their iPhones to AppLink via USB and mirror Waze on their infotainment system.

This allows drivers to access their favorite Waze features when following a route, searching for a nearby gas station, and even reporting traffic accidents, all while their iPhone is safely stored and locked. Voice guidance and commands are available as well through a Ford vehicle's speakers and microphone system.

The SYNC 3 integration includes recent Waze app updates like "Talk to Waze" for voice controls, route support for carpool lanes, more accurate arrival times, and more. Waze's crowdsourced navigation features are fueled when users open their smartphones and begin driving, with people typically using iPhone mounts and other products to safely drive without holding their devices.

Ford executive Don Butler explained how partnerships between carmakers like Ford and GPS apps like Waze further improve the safety of driving thanks to reducing potential smartphone distractions.

“Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to access the smartphone features, apps and services they care about most in the car, without having to pick up their device,” said Don Butler, executive director, connected vehicle platform and product, Ford Motor Company. “With Waze, our customers get the benefits they’re accustomed to with the added luxury of experiencing them on a bigger screen.”

To access the new feature users will need SYNC 3 software version 3.0 or greater installed in the vehicle, as well as iOS 11.3 and the up-to-date Waze app downloaded on the iPhone. Ford encourages customers to head to its website for more details on Waze integration.

eBay today announced "Interests," a new feature that tailors the iOS and Android app's shopping experience to your own personal passions, hobbies, and style. The company says that the feature is aimed at making it easier for you to find unique, interesting items you care about among eBay's vast assortment of inventory.

The backbone of Interests is a questionnaire eBay will begin asking shoppers, including topics like favorite activities and styles. Similar to Apple Music, you'll tap bubbles with the answers in them, and when done eBay will match the answers to your pre-existing browsing patterns. This data will be combined to curate "things you love - and things you didn't even know you might love."

In fact, eBay head of engagement Bradford Shellhammer says that the Interests questionnaire was directly influenced by Apple Music's bubble-based user interface (via Fast Company). In Apple's app, you tap genres and artists you like, double tap to love them, and hold to remove the ones you dislike.

As he imagined what eBay could become, Shellhammer looked beyond the retail world to the music industry. For instance, Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” personalized playlists served as an inspiration for Interests. The Interests questionnaire was influenced by the questions Apple Music asks users in order to provide them with the best possible recommendations. “We want you to tell us what you like, let us look at your behavior, and get you into your own personal store,” he says.

eBay also divulged some numbers in its press release today, noting the site has 171 million active buyers worldwide, 80 percent of all merchandise sold on the site is new, and 88 percent of items sold are through Buy It Now, meaning that more people are avoiding bidding on the marketplace. In terms of mobile app usage on iOS and Android, 62 percent of the eBay platform involves users shopping and interacting with the site while on their smartphone.

eBay has been making a raft of improvements to its mobile apps in recent months, including a barcode scanning feature to greatly speed up the listing process and the ability to search for products with images. Amid all of the UI improvements and feature additions, eBay in February detailed plans to install Adyen as its new primary payments processor and slowly phase out PayPal.

The latest Apple Pay promotion grants you free delivery on groceries with Instacart as long as you use Apple's mobile wallet to checkout on the app through 11:59 p.m. PT on May 23, and your order runs for $35 or more. There is no specific promo code, so as long as you meet these requirements the discount should appear automatically during the checkout process in Instacart.

Free delivery will still be subject to availability in certain areas, and service fees and taxes will apply to your order. If your area supports the promotion, you can save $5.99 or more on an Instacart order, with delivery fees starting at that price point and increasing when factoring in the size and time of the order. Delivery fees can also be affected by "Busy Pricing," an added fee during the busiest parts of the day.

Free delivery from Instacart for orders over $35 normally requires a membership to Instacart Express, a service that costs $14.99 per month or $149 per year. Apple's free delivery offers an opportunity for potential Instacart customers to test Instacart Express. Otherwise, this week's promotion highlights grocery stores where you can checkout using Apple Pay: Trader Joe's, Giant, Smart & Final, SuperValu, Food Lion, and Winn-Dixie.

Instacart has been a popular app in Apple's ongoing Apple Pay promotion series, previously being featured through similar offers in January and February. The last few promotions have offered flowers via 1-800-Flowers for Mother's Day, furniture through Hayneedle, and french fries from McDonald's.

Apple Pay launched in Ukraine today. Owners of Apple devices in the country this morning found that they could add credit cards to the mobile payment system, including MasterCard and Visa (via Tehnot).

Ukraine's finance minister Oleksandr Danyliuk took to Facebook to herald the launch, which initially supports cards issued by the country's nationalized PrivatBank, with Oschadbank expected to follow soon.

The last Apple Pay launch took place in Italy in the middle of May, with users in the country able to add Visa and MasterCards issued by Boon, Carrefour, and UniCredit into their iPhone.

Over the last few years, Apple has been working to expand Apple Pay to additional countries, and it is now available in 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, Ukraine, and Brazil.

(Thanks, Oleksandr!)

Google is launching YouTube Music next week, shortly followed by YouTube Premium – a revamped version of its ad-free YouTube Red subscription service with a renewed focus on original programming. Announced on Wednesday in a blog post, the shake-up in services represents a splitting of the original YouTube Red subscription model, which gave users both ad-free music streaming and access to original video content for $10 a month.

The new YouTube Music-only service will also cost $10 a month and replaces Google Play Music – existing subscribers will be migrated automatically (that includes non-paying users who have purchased music via Google Play or used the service to upload tracks and playlists). The rebranded service includes personalized playlists, intelligent search, support for background playback and music downloads for offline listening.

The streaming service will also remove ads from music videos, but not the rest of YouTube. An ad-supported version of YouTube Music will be available for free. As part of the launch, Google is promising a "reimagined" mobile app and desktop player that's "designed for music".

YouTube Music is a new music streaming service made for music: official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio plus YouTube’s tremendous catalog of remixes, live performances, covers and music videos that you can’t find anywhere else - all simply organized and personalized. For the first time, all the ways music moves you can be found in one place.

YouTube Premium, meanwhile, will cost $12 a month, and includes all the benefits of YouTube Music plus access to original shows as well as ad-free viewing for all of YouTube. The extra $2 over the original YouTube Red subscription will pave the way for more YouTube Originals from around the globe, featuring comedies, dramas, reality series, and action adventure shows from the U.K., Germany, France, Mexico, and more. Existing YouTube Red members will continue to pay the current price for YouTube Premium, however.

YouTube Music and launches on Tuesday, May 22 in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea, rolling out to more countries in the following weeks. They will include Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

YouTube Premium will roll out "soon" in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and South Korea, later followed by Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Subscription based music service and Apple Music competitor Tidal is months behind on its royalty payments to record labels according to a report from Norwegian news site Dagens Næringsliv that was translated by Music Business Worldwide.

Multiple sources have said that Tidal has not making timely payments to "three major international companies," claims confirmed by two Norway-based labels: Propellor Records and its distributor, Phonofile, a company owned by Sony.

Phonofile CEO Sveinung Rindal said that reports of delayed payments are correct, while Propeller Recordings CEO Frithjof Boye Hungnes said the company had not been paid since October. "People are talking about withdrawing [their music from TIDAL]; I think there is a pretty upset mood," said Hungnes.

Tidal in December was said to be facing money problems due to stalled user growth, and reports suggested that it could run out of working capital within six months.

Dagens Næringsliv has been investigating Tidal in recent weeks and has also accused the streaming music service of falsifying and inflating streaming numbers for Kanye West's The Life of Pablo album and Beyonce's Lemonade album.

Tidal claimed that Kanye West's album achieved 250 million streams within 10 days and that Beyonce's album reached 306 million streams within 15 days, figures that were said to be false following a year-long investigation conducted by Dagens Næringsliv and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Center for Cyber and Information Security.

During the time that Tidal announced the Kanye West album figure, for example, Tidal said that it had 3 million subscribers. At 3 million subscribers, to reach that streaming number, each Tidal subscriber would have needed to play the Kanye album more than eight times per day, as Music Business Worldwide points out.

Tidal has called the claims a "smear campaign" of lies and falsehoods, constructed from stolen and manipulated information. "We will fight these claims vigorously," the service said in a statement.

Hulu today announced several features that are coming to the web and its mobile apps for iOS and Android to optimize the mobile viewing experience.

Hulu's Live TV guide, which debuted last week on the Apple TV, Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV, and Nintendo Switch, will be added to mobile devices, allowing users to get to live TV with fewer clicks, see what's on, and see what's coming up.

On iOS and Android devices, a portrait player will let users see what's on and switch between channels without having to browse in landscape mode. Rotating the phone horizontally will then launch into full screen mode. When watching on-demand content, Hulu will offer up recommendations on what to watch next when the phone is rotated into portrait mode.

For Watch History, Hulu is adding "Stop Suggesting" and "Remove" toggles to allow users to better tailor their recommendations to their tastes.

Hulu also plans to enhance scrubbing and frame previews, so it's easier to navigate through shows and movies to find a specific scene, rewatch content, or skip ahead.

HDMI support is being added to iOS to allow an iPhone to be connected to a TV with a Lightning to HDMI adapter, and on the web, live TV subscribers will have access to the new Hulu experience for web.

All of these features will begin rolling out to Hulu users starting next week.

Accessory maker Speck today launched a notable sale that discounts products by 45 percent across its online storefront, ranging from smartphone cases to bags, screen protectors, cables, and more. To see the sale prices, find an item to add to your cart, click "View Cart" in the pop-up menu, then enter the discount code SUPER45 in the box at the bottom lefthand corner of the screen.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Speck offers free U.S. shipping and $5 two-day shipping on all orders, and the 45 percent discount will be applied to the total order cost, so multiple products can be purchased at once. Note that if Speck's products already have a promotion running, like the current offer for $10 off MacBook cases, then the 45 percent savings won't get applied in the cart. The company also limits the color options available under the promo code in some cases.

Speck's sale runs through Friday, May 18, so check out a few ideas on items to buy in the list below, and head over to Speck's dedicated Apple section for more discounted Apple accessories. If you have non-Apple products, the sale also covers accessories for products from Samsung, Microsoft, Google, and others.

iPhone Cases

• Presidio Grip iPhone X / iPhone 8 - $21.97, down from $39.95

• Presidio Inked iPhone X / iPhone 8 - $24.72, down from $44.95

iPad Cases

• Balance Folio for 9.7-inch iPad - $21.97, down from $39.95

• Balance Folio for 12.9-inch iPad Pro - $27.47, down from $49.95

• Durafolio for iPad Air 2 - $32.97, down from $59.95

Belkin also has a sale going on this week, offering customers the chance to get 25 percent off select products on its Steals and Deals page using promo code STEAL25. Products available in the sale include USB car chargers, iPhone armbands, iPad cases, Apple Watch bands, USB-C and Lightning cables, and more.

Our exclusive deals with Anker are also ongoing this week, so if you haven't taken a look at the discounted products be sure to visit our blog post on the sale. Anker's devices marked down include iPhone X cases, Lightning cables, wall chargers, a wireless Qi mat, and more. The exclusive promo codes will last through May 31, 2018.

Visit our full Deals Roundup for more information on this week's sales.

Twitter today unveiled new details on its upcoming activity API changes, which will affect how third-party apps are able to access Twitter APIs and provide services to Twitter users who prefer to use apps like Twitterrific and Tweetbot.

Third-party Twitter app developers will be required to purchase a Premium or Enterprise Account Activity API package to access a full set of activities related to a Twitter account including Tweets, @mentions, Replies, Retweets, Quote Tweets, Retweets of Quoted Tweets, Likes, Direct Messages Sent, Direct Messages Received, Follows, Blocks, Mutes, typing indicators, and read receipts.

Premium API access, which provides access to up to 250 accounts, is priced at $2,899 per month, while enterprise access is more expensive, with pricing quotes available from Twitter following an application for an enterprise account.

At least some third-party apps have said they will not be able to afford access to the new Twitter APIs, including Twitterrific.

It is not yet clear what impact all of these changes will have on major third-party Twitter apps, but we should hear updated details soon. Tapbots, the creators of Tweetbot for Mac and iOS, said on Tuesday that its apps will continue to function, but a few features could be slower or removed.

Tapbots says the worse case scenario on Mac is that notifications for likes and retweets will not be displayed, and notifications for tweets, mentions, quotes, DMs, and Follows could be delayed by one to two minutes.