MacRumors

After opening up a self-driving car program to the public in Phoenix, Arizona last month, Alphabet-owned Waymo has now officially partnered with ride-hailing app Lyft (via The New York Times). The two will work together in order "to bring autonomous vehicle technology into the mainstream" by launching various pilot projects and helping one another to develop products for the mass market.

Like its rival Uber, Lyft has been looking into autonomous vehicle technology recently, but the company lacked extensive research and development it needed to launch a self-driving car program on a wide scale. Waymo has that tech, but doesn't have the reach of Lyft, which currently operates in approximately 300 cities in the United States. In a statement, Lyft said that the partnership will help forward a "shared vision" that each company has of a self-driving future.

As The New York Times pointed out, it also suggests that Waymo thinks its self-driving-car technology "has moved past the research stage and is ready to be applied commercially."

“Waymo holds today’s best self-driving technology, and collaborating with them will accelerate our shared vision of improving lives with the world’s best transportation,” a Lyft spokeswoman said in a statement.

A Waymo spokesman said, “Lyft’s vision and commitment to improving the way cities move will help Waymo’s self-driving technology reach more people, in more places.”

The specifics of what type of vehicles and products that drivers and riders might see from the collaboration were left unconfirmed, as was a launch window for any related self-driving program. Waymo said that its early, closed test of self-driving cars in Phoenix was a success, which led to the company's decision to expand the test to 600 self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans.

Uber has tested and faced trouble in the autonomous vehicle space in the past, resulting in the removal of its self-driving cars from the roads in California as well as a lawsuit aimed at the company, filed by Waymo. U.S. federal prosecutors are investigating Waymo's claim that former Google employee Anthony Levandowski stole 14,000 confidential files, including data on Waymo's LiDAR system, which the company called "one of the most powerful parts" of its self-driving technology.

Levandowski left Google's self-driving project for Otto, a self-driving trucking company that Uber acquired for more than $680 million last year. U.S. district judge William Alsup partially granted Waymo's bid for an injunction as the case remains ongoing, and could ultimately roadblock any further progress Uber attempts to make in its autonomous vehicle efforts.

Apple is believed to be working on an autonomous driving system as well, with an end-of-2017 deadline for the team to "prove the feasibility" of the tech, so the company can then decide what direction it wants to take in the self-driving market.

Google is planning to launch its smart AI helper Google Assistant on iOS sometime "soon" as its own standalone app, according to sources speaking to Android Police. The rumor is swirling ahead of Google's annual I/O Conference, which will run this week from May 17 to May 19 in California.

According to the sources, the specifics of Google's plans for Assistant on iOS remain unclear as of now, but the app is predicted to combine the chatbot-like features of Google Allo with voice controls found on Android smartphones.

More solid details about the Google Assistant iOS app point towards a United States-only launch, and an official announcement coming "in fairly short order."

According to a trusted source, Google plans to announce that the Google Assistant will be launching on iOS soon as a standalone app. The announcement could come as soon as Google's I/O conference this week, but it's unclear exactly what Google's plans are at this time. The app would likely feature a blend of the "chat" style functionality in the Google Allo version of Assistant and the voice-controlled version found on Android, but again, details are scant.

We do know that the Assistant for iOS will only be available in the US at launch, and that Google plans to make the announcement in fairly short order. I/O would be a pretty ideal venue for such a launch, as Assistant's SDK was just made available to developers late last month. Bringing the Assistant to the world's second-largest mobile OS would likely encourage more developers to integrate with the app's functionality.

Microsoft has launched its own smart assistant Cortana on iOS in the past, allowing more users to gain access to the assistant than if it remained exclusive to the company's own devices. If Google Assistant does come to iPhone and iPad, it'll mark a continued expansion of the AI, after Google first launched Assistant on Pixel devices, Google Home, the Google Allo app, and then expanded to Android smartphones.

Philips today announced a new line of fixtures and table lamps for its Philips Hue White Ambience bulbs, which are specifically designed to provide users with various hues of white light that can be dimmed or brightened throughout the day. Like with all Philips Hue products, the new fixtures and lamps will be HomeKit-compatible, allowing users to control the lights with an iPhone, iPad, or Siri.

The new products include the Philips Hue White Ambiance Being Flushmount and the Philips Hue White Ambiance Fair fixture, which both have a White Ambience bulb built-in with light output of up to 3,000 lumens. The Fair fixture can be purchased in three different styles including flushmount, semi-flushmount, and suspension, all of which are attached to a ceiling.

Enjoy decorating your kitchen, dining room or bedrooms with the brushed aluminum Philips Hue White Ambiance Being Flushmount or three different styles of the Philips Hue White Ambiance Fair fixture (Flushmount, Semi-flushmount and Suspension). The products have the Philips Hue White Ambiance connected lighting technology built-in and feature powerful light output (up to 3000 lumens).

The Philips Hue White Ambiance Wellner and Wellness table lamps are smartly designed to fit with any interior. They come with a Philips Hue White Ambiance A19 light bulb (800 lumens) for customizable white light to support your daily activities.

After announcing a candle bulb for its main Philips Hue line earlier this year, Philips Hue White Ambience is now also gaining a 40W-equivalent candle bulb with 450 lumens of brightness. Philips said that the candle bulbs are built for ceiling fans, chandeliers, and decorative table lamps, and the new bulb will join the White Ambience line that already includes the A19 bulb, GU10 spot light, and BR30 downlight.

Starting today, anyone interested can pre-order the Philips Hue White Ambience Being Flushmount ($199.99), the Wellness table lamp ($99.99), and the Wellner table lamp ($99.99). The full range of products is expected to begin shipping mid-June, while the candle bulb will be up for pre-order in June and launch in July for $29.99.

Apple Maps has been updated with comprehensive transit data in Adelaide, Australia, enabling iPhone users in the city to navigate with public transportation, primarily including Adelaide Metro buses and commuter trains.

Apple Maps gained a Transit tab in iOS 9. The feature lags several years behind Google Maps, but Apple's public transportation support is exhaustive, mapping all station entrances and listing departure times.

At launch, the feature was limited to Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, and over 300 cities in China. Since then, Apple has been working to expand support for public transportation to other cities around the world.

Newer additions include Atlanta, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Kansas City, Manchester, Melbourne, Miami, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Montréal, New Orleans, Paris, Portland, Pittsburgh, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C.

A complete list of cities that support Transit in Apple Maps is available on the iOS Feature Availability page of Apple's website.

(Thanks, Bernd!)

Licensing for MP3, the digital audio coding format that Apple used for music downloads on the original iPod, has officially ended. The announcement comes from The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (via NPR).

The Fraunhofer Institute owns the patent rights related to selling encoders and decoders of the format to developers, and recently announced that its "mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated." This means that developer use of MP3 won't require a licensing patent anymore.

According to the Germany-based Fraunhofer Institute, this is because more modern digital audio coding formats have emerged, namely "Advanced Audio Coding," or AAC.

In an email to NPR, Fraunhofer director Bernhard Grill said that AAC is now the "de facto standard for music download and videos on mobile phones," because it's "more efficient than MP3 and offers a lot more functionality."

We thank all of our licensees for their great support in making mp3 the defacto audio codec in the world, during the past two decades.

The development of mp3 started in the late 80s at Fraunhofer IIS, based on previous development results at the University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Although there are more efficient audio codecs with advanced features available today, mp3 is still very popular amongst consumers. However, most state-of-the-art media services such as streaming or TV and radio broadcasting use modern ISO-MPEG codecs such as the AAC family or in the future MPEG-H. Those can deliver more features and a higher audio quality at much lower bitrates compared to mp3.

Today AAC is the format that Apple uses for music downloading on both iOS and macOS devices, after originally helping popularize the MP3 format with the first-generation iPod in 2001, which could store up to 1,000 songs that were encoded using MP3. The Fraunhofer Institute noted that MP3 is "still very popular amongst consumers" and is expected to stick around on legacy devices for a few more years.

This article was edited to note that the patents related to MP3 have expired, not the format itself.

Following the release of mobile games Miitomo, Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, and the upcoming Animal Crossing iPhone app, Nintendo's next big franchise coming to smartphones will be The Legend of Zelda, according to sources speaking with The Wall Street Journal. The sources said that Animal Crossing will hit mobile devices sometime "in the latter half of 2017," and a smartphone version of The Legend of Zelda would launch afterwards.

That would make The Legend of Zelda the fifth game Nintendo develops for iOS and Android devices in partnership with developer DeNA. Originally, all five games were supposed to launch before March 2017, but only Miitomo, Super Mario Run, and Fire Emblem Heroes made that deadline. Around the release of Fire Emblem Heroes, Nintendo said that it plans to launch two to three smartphone games every year from now on.

It isn't yet clear if The Legend of Zelda will see a 2017 or 2018 launch, or how much Nintendo will charge players for the game. Recently, a Nintendo senior official described Fire Emblem Heroes' freemium model an "outlier," saying that the company prefers the pay-once price tag of Super Mario Run, suggesting The Legend of Zelda might follow in the latter game's footsteps.

Nintendo Co. plans to bring its videogame franchise “The Legend of Zelda” to smartphones, people familiar with the matter said, the latest step by the Kyoto company to expand its mobile-games lineup.

The people familiar with the matter said the “Animal Crossing” smartphone app is likely to be released in the latter half of 2017, and “The Legend of Zelda” would follow that, although they cautioned that the timing and order of the releases could be changed. Nintendo is developing the games with Tokyo-based DeNA Co.

The decision by Nintendo to focus on The Legend of Zelda next follows the recent launch of the Nintendo Switch and success of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. If the company is to continue the pattern it has set by Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes, the iPhone version of The Legend of Zelda is likely to see a simplified, mobile-friendly iteration of the gameplay and mechanics from the franchise, and could potentially communicate with the console version like Animal Crossing is expected to do.

The Wall Street Journal also commented on a new game coming from Nintendo-owned The Pokémon Company, which is described only as a "new card-game app." The sources declined to further comment on The Pokémon Company's plans, but a new iPhone game centered around the popular real-life trading cards that the franchise is known for appears to be a likely explanation for the upcoming game. It's almost been a year since Pokémon Go launched in the New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, and became a hit soon after around the world.

ExoLens and Zeiss have teamed up to create some high-quality lenses designed to take iPhone photography to the next level. At $200, the ExoLens PRO with Optics by Zeiss Wide-Angle Kit for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus is almost the price you'd pay for a standalone camera, but the lens is distortion free, compact, and enhances the range of images you can capture with your iPhone.

There are dozens of inexpensive lenses on the market, but most of the cheaper options are unable to measure up to the quality you get with the $199 Zeiss/ExoLens combo.

Design

The ExoLens PRO comes in a padded box and ships alongside several mounts to fit different sized iPhones, including the iPhone 7, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 6s Plus.

Right out of the package, the ExoLens PRO stands apart from other lens options. It's over an inch tall and similar in circumference to a standard pill bottle, with a solid weight to it. The outside of the lens is made from aluminum, and the glass of the lens itself is protected with caps on each side when not in use. Zeiss branding is on the side of the lens, which looks more like a small DSLR lens than a standard iPhone lens.

Inside the box, there are two carrying bags for the lens and any accessories, along with an aluminum lens hood and an installation guide.

➜ Click here to read more...

Apple is "working rapidly" to expand Apple Pay to additional countries in Asia and Europe, and there's increasing evidence and reports that suggest the service may launch in Italy and Germany in the near future.

Apple recently updated its Apple Pay participating banks and card issuers in Asia-Pacific support document with a new image of Europe that has Italy highlighted. The change isn't visible on the United States or Europe versions of the page, suggesting that it may have been added to the Asia-Pacific page prematurely.

MacRumors discovered a colored version of the image stored on Apple's servers that makes it easier to see Italy highlighted.

Apple's regional Italian website has listed Apple Pay as "coming soon" since March, so it's only a matter of time—WWDC?—before the payments service launches in the country. At launch, Apple Pay will work with Visa and MasterCard in Italy through participating banks UniCredit, Boon, and Carrefour Banca.

Meanwhile, German blog iPhone-Ticker reports that Apple Pay should launch in Germany in the fall or winter. As in some other countries, however, the negotiations between Apple and German banks allegedly continue to be challenging, likely as both sides struggle to reach an agreement over fees and control.

Last October, Germany was similarly highlighted on the Apple Pay availability map, but only for a brief period of time.

Apple Pay launched in the United States in October 2014, and it has since expanded to 14 other countries and regions: Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. There was also a rumor that Belgium could be added this month.

Google this week announced an update coming soon to its iOS Google Allo app, which will introduce neural network-generated stickers that are personalized to match your own distinct look. The company said that the new feature will combine neural networks and the work of artists to turn your selfies into unique sticker packs, which can then be used in Allo, the company's messaging app.

The process to generate the stickers is relatively simple, according to Google, with the sticker packs of your likeness being created "on the fly" after you take a selfie. If you aren't happy with some aspects of the stickers, a few customization options will appear so you can tweak and personalize even more. You can take a selfie with a few filters for a more comical sticker pack, or opt for results that more closely resemble you.

Google went deeper into the process of developing the neural network for the new sticker pack feature in Allo, as well as how the collaborative artists working with the company affected the end results. The pack that will debut at launch is said to be the first in a line of artistic styles -- Google said it "speaks to your sarcastic side" -- and future updates will add different emotive artwork that "might be more cute for those sincere moments."

The first pack was designed by artist Lamar Abrams, who works as a story boarder on Steven Universe, and whose feature designs for Allo help account for more than 563 quadrillion potential combinations of personal stickers.

To create an illustration of you that captures the qualities that would make it recognizable to your friends, we worked alongside an artistic team to create illustrations that represented a wide variety of features. Artists initially designed a set of hairstyles, for example, that they thought would be representative, and with the help of human raters we used these hairstyles to train the network to match the right illustration to the right selfie.

We then asked human raters to judge the sticker output against the input image to see how well it did. In some instances, they determined that some styles were not well represented, so the artists created more that the neural network could learn to identify as well.

Google Allo launched last year and combined standard messaging threads, photo editing, and stickers with the company's AI helper Google Assistant. The AI could be brought up directly within a chat thread to find somewhere nearby to eat (even by using related emojis, like the taco), search for a YouTube video, and more.