MacRumors

In the run-up to the official release of iOS 11 this month, much of Apple's focus has been on touted improvements coming to its built-in virtual assistant, Siri. Apart from becoming more naturally spoken, Siri will allow users to get real-time translation between select languages and is said to boast a greater understanding of the user's needs dependent on circumstance and time of day, with the AI assistant's learning synced across devices.

Apple is hoping these and other improvements will go some way to quashing negative perceptions of Siri, which have led some iOS users to turn to rival assistants for a better experience. One of those rivals is Google Assistant, which as well as powering Google's Pixel smartphones is integrated into Google's iOS Search app. In general tests, Google Assistant consistently beats Siri in areas including language comprehension, responsiveness, and answer accuracy. But like Apple, Google's AI team is not resting on its laurels, and this week at Google Developer Days, the company demoed some of the new features it is working to bring to its flagship assistant in the near future.

Like Siri, one of the major additions coming to Google Assistant is a new translator mode, which once activated by the user with the phrase "OK Google, be my [specify language] translator", repeats everything that is subsequently said in the requested language both vocally and visually. While standard translation as such isn't new to Google Assistant, the new way of interacting with it is designed to be more useful when users are traveling abroad.

Another improvement coming to the virtual AI is better contextual understanding of questions. For example, in the GDD stage demonstration, Google Assistant is first asked to show pictures of Thomas, and the AI returns images of Thomas the Tank Engine. Next, responding to the phrase "Bayern Munich team roster", the Assistant returns details of the German soccer team. Then it is once more asked for "pictures of Thomas", but this time the Assistant pulls up pictures of Bayern soccer player Thomas Müller, putting the results correctly in context to the rolling set of queries.

In a subsequent example, the audience is shown how Google Assistant can help them remember the name of a movie that's on the tip of their tongue. The stage demonstrator asks, "What is the name of the movie where Tom Cruise acts in it and he plays pool and while he plays pool he dances". With little hesitation, The Color of Money appears on the screen and the Assistant relates further details about the film.

In addition to these new features, Google said its virtual assistant can now respond to questions faster and is able to understand a user's voice more accurately in noisy environments. It also claimed that the AI now has deeper integration with Google Search, which should enable it to provide more detailed answers to queries.

It's unclear which of these enhancements will make it over to Google's iOS Search app, or whether the company makes some of the features exclusive to Android. Whatever its plans, the GDD demonstrations show just how much the virtual assistant wars are hotting up. And with Google Assistant now showing up in third-party smart speaker devices, there's every indication that Siri in iOS 11 – and in Apple's upcoming HomePod speaker – will have plenty of competition in the virtual assistant space.

In yet another leak sourced from the iOS 11 GM, developer Steve Troughton-Smith has uncovered a render of the new version of Apple's AirPods. Troughton-Smith noted that while a render of the "iPhone X" has not been discovered within the firmware (yet), the LTE Apple Watch and now the new AirPods each have renders in the golden master of iOS 11.

Unsurprisingly, the new AirPods look a lot like the old AirPods, with an all-white charging case and white buds. The case has the same clamshell design as the current model, but has one noticeable difference: the LED charging indicator "status light" has moved from the inside of the case to the outside.

When the AirPods are in the case, the LED shows the charge status of the pods, but if they are removed from the case then the LED shows the status of the case itself. Green indicates charged, while an amber glow means less than one full charge remains. In today's short video, the LED appears to be flashing white, which Apple's support website currently explains as an indication that the AirPods are ready to be set up with another device, suggesting some of the same LED patterns will be on the new AirPods.

Last night, the first wave of iOS 11 GM leaks included references to "AirPods 1,2," which could be the updated version of the wire-free headphones that have been shared today. Of course, with just one image and a two-second clip it's impossible to say what other new features might be coming to AirPods 2.0, or if Apple is ready to announce the new model as soon as Tuesday's upcoming iPhone X event.

While most of the leaked information from the iOS 11 golden master has hinted at major features coming to the iPhone and Apple Watch, a few smaller tidbits have surfaced online today. One of these is the apparent confirmation that PlayStation Vue will support Apple's Single Sign-On feature once the software update launches to the public later in September. This suggests Single Sign-On will also arrive on the PS Vue Apple TV app for tvOS 11.

Discovered and shared by Daniel Yount on Twitter, Yount mentioned noticing Single Sign-On support coming to both PS Vue and YouTube, but in our testing it appears that YouTube still requires the user's password to sign into individual apps. It is recognized as a provider in search, however, suggesting full YouTube support for the feature could be coming in iOS 11 as well.

Yesterday, Apple also published a new support document listing all of the TV providers and apps that allow for Single Sign-On, amounting to 471 providers and now including PlayStation Vue. New apps regularly gain support for Single Sign-On, most recently including HBO GO and NBC.

Details from the leaked iOS 11 golden master keep on coming today, with 9to5Mac discovering references in the firmware to potential new Apple Watch case colors, which might be announced on Tuesday, September 12. The strings describe an Apple Watch with "Ceramic-Gray" and "AlumBlushGold" colorways, hinting at a new version of the Apple Watch Edition that came out last year in White Ceramic, as well as a new Aluminum Blush Gold for Apple Watch Sport wearers.

The so-called "Aluminum Blush Gold" Apple Watch lends further credence to similar nomenclature we've been hearing about a new color coming to the iPhone line. Blush Gold, also referred to as Champagne Gold and Copper Gold previously, is said to be closer to a copper color than the Rose Gold iPhones currently available.

In regards to "Ceramic Gray," last night's original leaked data included a new Apple Watch with a red Digital Crown, but the casing appeared to be an aluminum Space Gray and not the new Ceramic Gray model. Last year, Apple debuted the White Ceramic Apple Watch, priced at $1249 (38mm) and $1299 (42mm), while also discontinuing the Gold Apple Watch Edition models that sold for up to $17,000.

The leaked data isn't an exact confirmation that a Ceramic Gray and Aluminum Blush Gold Apple Watch will make an appearance at Apple's event on Tuesday. Still, the company traditionally updates the Apple Watch with new collections, colors, casing styles, and bands at these events, so it's likely the "Apple Watch Series 3" will have some kind of new colors for users to choose from.

Apple today donated $5 million to the Hand in Hand: A Benefit for Hurricane Relief Fund to support those who have been affected by both Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma.

Hand in Hand is planning to host a live telethon on Tuesday, September 12 to raise additional money for hurricane relief efforts. Proceeds from the upcoming telethon will benefit the Rebuild Texas Fund, Feeding Texas, Save the Children, United Way, Habitat for Humanity, and DirectRelief.

Celebrities and performers like George Clooney, Matthew McConaughey, Justin Bieber, Beyonce, Stephen Colbert, Julia Roberts, Robert De Niro, Ellen DeGeneres, Drake, Jamie Foxx, Tom Hanks, Barbra Streisand, Oprah Winfrey, and more are set to make appearances during the telethon.

In addition to donating $5 million, Apple is also planning to allow Apple customers to donate to Hand in Hand through the App Store and iTunes as if often does in similar disaster situations.

"On behalf of everyone at Apple, our hearts go out to the millions of people whose lives have been disrupted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and the many more still bracing for Irma's impact," said Apple's CEO Tim Cook. "We applaud Hand in Hand for bringing together people from all over the country to help one another at a time when so many desperately need it. In addition to Apple's direct contribution to the relief and recovery efforts, we're making it easy for anyone in the US to make their own donations to Hand in Hand through the App Store and iTunes."

Apple last week donated $2 million to the Red Cross to benefit those affected by Hurricane Harvey, and raised an additional $1 million through employee and iTunes donations.

Hurricane Harvey caused widespread flooding and destruction in Texas and Louisiana last week, while Hurricane Irma, now a category 4 storm, is forecasted to make landfall in Florida this weekend. Irma hit Puerto Rico and several Caribbean islands over the course of the week, with St. Martin, St. Barts, Anguilla, Barbuda, and the British and U.S. Virgin Islands seeing some of the worst devastation.

Apple today updated its official WWDC app to version 6.0.2, introducing a handful of bug fixes and bringing Handoff support for the app for the first time.

With Handoff, you can begin watching a video in the WWDC app and continue it on another iOS device or in the Safari browser on a Mac by tapping the Handoff icon as you would with any other Handoff interaction.

Along with Handoff support, the app introduces improved navigation on the Apple TV when swiping up and down, it makes sure previously downloaded videos remain available when switching between HD and SD, and it fixes an issue that caused previously downloaded videos to be lost when upgrading.

Apple's WWDC app is the official app for the Worldwide Developers Conference. It houses all of the WWDC videos from sessions that have been conducted over the years and allows them to be streamed on iOS devices and the Apple TV.

During conferences, it also provides times for sessions and labs, indoor event mapping, full schedules, and important news updates.

The WWDC app can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Today we've rounded up some of the past week's best deals that have come to Apple products, accessories, and apps, all of which are still alive at the time of writing. If you're looking for discounts on newer models of the MacBook Pro, B&H Photo has discounted special configurations of both the late 2016 models by up to $700, and the mid 2017 models by up to $200. These include MacBook Pros both with and without the Touch Bar. Check out more details in the lists below:

MacBook Pro

Late 2016

• 13-inch MacBook Pro: 2.0 GHz CPU, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, Intel Iris Graphics 540 - $1,199.00, down from $1,499.00

• 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar: 2.6 GHz CPU, 256GB SSD, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon Pro 450 - $1,899.00, down from $2,399.00

• 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar: 2.7 GHz CPU, 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon Pro 455 - $2,099.00, down from $2,799.00

Mid 2017

• 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar: 3.1 GHz CPU, 256GB SSD, 16GB RAM, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 - $1,899.00, down from $1,999.00

• 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar: 3.1 GHz CPU, 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 - $2,099.00, down from $2,199

• 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar: 3.1 GHz CPU, 1T SSD, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon Pro 560 Graphics - $3,199.00, down from $3,399.00

Accessories

Although Force Friday II was last weekend, many of the toys sold during the promotion have already been discounted. B&H Photo has three of PROPEL's Star Wars-themed drones marked down by $20, including the T-65 X-Wing Star Fighter Quadcopter, TIE Advanced X1 Quadcopter, and 74-Z Speeder Bike Quadcopter. Each drone can be controlled by an iOS or Android smartphone and can fly with speeds of up to 35mph.

Best Buy has discounts on a few Apple accessories, including $10-$30 off a wide variety of Speck cases for the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. You can also get $50-$60 off select Ultimate Ears Bluetooth speakers, including the UE Boom 2 and UE Megaboom. This brings the price of the speakers down to as low as $139.99 for the UE Boom 2, and $249.99 for the UE Megaboom. DailySteals has the smaller UE Roll 2 on sale for $54.99, down from $99.99.

Even cheaper than Speck's cases at Best Buy are two Insignia Hard Shell accessories: one for the 13-inch MacBook Air and one for the older model 13-inch MacBook Pro. Both cases are priced at $6.99, down from $34.99.

At Costco, iTunes gift cards are on sale for members only: get $20 off a $200 iTunes gift card, $10 off a $100 card, and $2.50 off a $25 card. The deal ends September 11, and the codes are delivered to your email.

Apps and Games

Along with the usual iOS app sales, this week The Humble Store has an End of Summer sale occurring with big sales on notable games that you can play on a compatible Mac computer via Steam. Some games taking part in the sale include The Walking Dead: Season 1 for free, down from $24.99; Alien: Isolation The Collection for $12.49, down from $49.99; Mad Max for $7.99, down from $19.99; Broken Age for $3.99, down from $19.99; and Gone Home for $5.99, down from $14.99.

Thousands of more games are on sale through September 21, although sales on certain games will end before that. At the top right of each game's page, you'll find a countdown clock that serves as a reminder of how long before that game's discount ends. Be sure to double check that the games are compatible with Mac by looking for the Apple logo in the "Platform" and "Operating System" fields on the bottom left of each page.

Some iOS apps on sale this week worth checking out include:

• Batman - The Telltale Series - Free (Episode One), down from $4.99

• Streaks Workout - Free, down from $2.99

There are plenty more deals to discover, so visit our Deals Roundup for more discounts on Apple products and accessories, including a list of items marked down for Walmart's End of Summer Sale.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors

This week over on TouchArcade has been all about playing catch up after attending PAX West in Seattle. If you've never been to a PAX event, and are at all into any aspect of gamer culture, I promise you'll have a very good time there. Whether you're into card games, board games, video games, or any other form of gaming you'll find something there for you. It's really sort of incredible just how welcoming PAX events are, and how much there is to do. For our purposes, the show floor was packed with mobile games, even though mobile was by no means the star of the show.

We loved the original Reigns and have been closely following the development of its sequel, Reigns: Her Majesty. We got a walkthrough of the game with its creator, and the sequel is shaping up to be exactly what we wanted: More Reigns. This time around you play as a queen, there are loads more cards, and there's a zodiac system which puts a unique spin on every new play through. It sounds like there are many other secrets and discoveries to be made while playing, but they're keeping those things close to their chest until the game is released.

Hidden deep inside of the Square Enix booth at PAX was a playable version of Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition which we spent a good twenty minutes with. The game is everything we'd hoped it would be, and the first playable episode seems surprisingly one to one with the "full" console version of the game. All of the dialog is there, the quests seem the same, the level-up system feels identical, and overall it looks as if they're delivering on the promise of having a full-featured version of Final Fantasy XV for mobile. Details are still few and far between regarding when it'll specifically be released, but, it's going to be a premium episodic game with the first taste that we played given away for free.

Armello is a digital board game that has had a fascinating lifecycle so far. It was originally pitched as an iPad game back in 2011, but when the game was finally finished it ended up being released on Steam and consoles. The pivot to other platforms turned out incredibly well for developer League of Geeks, who have continued to release loads of additional content for the title. At PAX we experienced one of the things that's the most fun about covering mobile: When a developer just says, "Hey, check this out," and pulls a game out of their pocket. It'd seem Armello is finally on its way to iOS, even if it is a good six years late. The game has been received so well on other platforms, at this point I'm just excited to finally have it on my iPhone.

We saw tons more games at PAX, so if following upcoming iOS titles is something you're in to, check out our full roundup post for links to everything we saw.

For years now, it's felt like Wizards of the Coast has been struggling to figure out what to do with digital versions of Magic the Gathering. Magic Duels was the last attempt, and while we had overall positive first impressions, the game ended up with a unique problem: Due to design decisions and deck limitations, Duels ended up being too casual for hardcore Magic players and too hardcore for casual Magic players. It never seemed to find its audience, and support for the game was dropped this summer.

Yesterday, Wizards revealed Magic the Gathering Arena, which seems to double down on providing a "real" Magic experience while making a client that looks exponentially nicer than Magic Online. This hopefully should allow Wizards to regain some ground in the Twitch viewing and esports department that Hearthstone has stolen away. While the beta is currently only available on PC, they've stressed that it's built in Unity and will be coming to every platform that makes sense — making a Mac and mobile release feel unbelievably inevitable.

Speaking of Hearthstone and esports, this week Blizzard announced a brand new venue called the "Blizzard Arena" in Los Angeles which is said to be a "cutting-edge, live-event destination." There aren't a ton of details yet on what the Blizzard Arena is going to be like, but if nothing else it's pretty incredible that we're living in an age where video games are getting popular enough that companies are building entire stadiums to host their games being played as esports. If you thought this whole "esports" thing was a fad, well, this is one of the (many) nails in the coffin of that line of thinking.

In Pokemon Go news, Niantic is hinting at both Pokemon trading and peer to peer battling coming to the game. The interview with Bloomberg details the vision for the future of the game, which I've got to admit, sounds pretty awesome. That being said, while I realize the game is still very popular, I as well as everyone I know locally eventually ended up getting bored of it and stopped playing. I'd love to see a parallel universe where Pokemon Go had simply launched with all of these features they see in their "vision." I bet it would be significantly more popular than it is now, as Niantic allowed way too many people to get tired of the early game where there really wasn't anything else to do beyond wander around, catch Pokemon, and participate in gym battles.

A ton more happened this week in the world of mobile gaming, but most of my time was consumed with PAX. Definitely check out our PAX roundup, and for way more news, reviews, game releases, and everything else you'd ever need to follow along with iOS gaming be sure to visit TouchArcade!

For this week's giveaway, we've once again teamed up with BlackPods to offer MacRumors readers a chance to win a pair of AirPods that have been painted black to better match darker devices. Our last BlackPods giveaway was one of the most popular we've done, so we thought we'd get a second pair of BlackPods out to one of you.

If you missed our first giveaway, BlackPods takes a set of Apple's AirPods and then paints them using a proprietary coating system that's been designed just for the AirPods. It uses a three-phase finishing procedure for a high-quality finish, and each pair of BlackPods is completed by hand and given a "rigorous" quality inspection.

BlackPods sells the BlackPods Classic in a high-gloss black finish, and the BlackPods Stealth in a matte satin finish. The company charges $279 for the BlackPods Classic, while the BlackPods Stealth are priced at $299. Apple's AirPods are normally priced at $159, so that's a $120 to $140 premium, but the finish is impeccable and is otherwise unobtainable.

Along with selling finished sets of painted AirPods, BlackPods also allows customers to send previously purchased AirPods for customization. The painting service costs $99 for glossy black and $119 for matte black. The process takes approximately 10 days and covers both the AirPods and the Case.

BlackPods are simply re-painted AirPods, so the functionality is the same as standard AirPods directly from Apple, with a W1 chip for simple pairing, long battery life, accelerometer-based ear detection, and gesture support.

We have one full set of BlackPods to give away to a MacRumors reader, with the winner able to choose either the Stealth or Classic finish. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winner and send the prize. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.

Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.

The contest will run from today (September 8) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on September 15. The winner will be chosen randomly on September 15 and will be contacted by email. The winner will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before a new winner is chosen.