MacRumors

Apple Music started rolling out across Israel today, over a year after the streaming service was launched in 110 countries simultaneously. The splash screen for a three-month free trial began appearing on Macs and iOS devices for a number of users in the country this morning.

Once the free trial is up, Apple's individual plan starts at 19.90 ILS ($5.21) per month, with a family plan costing 29.90 ILS ($7.83), putting Apple Music at a similar price point as existing services in the country, such as Pelephone Musix.

Rumors that Apple Music was coming to Israel first appeared in November last year, although initially it was thought the service was debuting in the first quarter of 2016.

In June, it was reported that Apple was gearing up to launch the service in Korea next, although the company still has some strict copyright law hurdles to overcome in the country.

Apple's streaming music service is an evolution of the Beats Music service it acquired in 2014, and has steadily gained listeners over the past 12 months, reaching over 15 million paying subscribers as of WWDC 2016 in June.

Currently it is available in over 100 territories including Africa, the Middle East, India, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, and Canada.

With iOS 10, Apple is revamping the design and UX of the Apple Music app, aiming to give its content and features a more logical organization, introducing a new section for downloaded music, and making the Connect aspect of the service less prominent.

(Thanks, Jozz!)

For the past year, I've exclusively used Bluetooth earbuds while out and about. For me, the convenience of not being tethered to my phone outweighs any downside in sound quality, but all the pairs I've owned before haven't been truly wireless; they're always connected with some sort of cable.

These are the VerveOnes from Motorola, and they're the first pair of truly wireless earbuds I've used. In the package you get the two earbuds and a carrying case for charging. It's a simple setup that affords you portability and battery life.

The sound quality is mediocre. There's a decent amount of bass, but the sound is generally muddy with no real depth and the highs have a tendency to clip at higher volumes. These are a pair of earbuds for convenience, not stellar sound.

After a few weeks of testing, it's hard to recommend the VerveOnes. They can be purchased from the VerveLife website for $199, but for that price, the connectivity issues and sound quality make the earbuds a hard sell.

Apple today released new international versions of the Smart Keyboard designed for the iPad Pro, which could previously only be purchased with a United States English layout.

As 9to5Mac points out, the Smart Keyboard can be purchased in British English, Norwegian, Czech, Slovak, Swiss, Dutch, Korean, Spanish, Italian, German, Danish, Swedish, French, Arabic and other language layouts when ordering a Smart Keyboard alone or as part of an iPad Pro purchase in different countries.

The new language-specific Smart Keyboards are available starting today through Apple's online store and are priced the same as the U.S. English Smart Keyboard. Retail Apple Stores will also likely start carrying the new Smart Keyboards in the near future.

Bloomberg today announced that its Bloomberg Radio service is now available on Apple Music in over 100 countries around the world, including the United States, Germany, Hong Kong, and Japan.

Bloomberg Radio features global business and financial news coverage from top Bloomberg journalists 24 hours a day. Regularly scheduled shows include "The Bloomberg Advantage," "Taking Stock," "Bloomberg Law," and more.

For more than 20 years Bloomberg Radio has been known for its breaking business coverage, global news, market updates and interviews with economists and world leaders. As Apple continues to innovate with new apps and products, we are excited to be able to offer their customers new ways to engage with Bloomberg Radio and other Bloomberg content.

Bloomberg Radio, accessible via the Radio tab in Apple Music, is one of the few Apple Music radio stations that offers news rather than music. Listed in the "Sports & News" category, Bloomberg Radio is free for all listeners like other news stations. An Apple ID is all that is required to log in and listen.

At the beginning of this year, Apple stopped offering free iTunes Radio streaming and began requiring an Apple Music subscription to listen to radio channels. An Apple Music subscription is required for music-based radio stations, but it is not required for news-based radio stations.

Bloomberg Radio is available to all Apple users with an Apple ID as of this morning.

The Kudelski Group today announced that it has "entered into a comprehensive patent license agreement" with Apple, stating that both parties agree to finally dismiss all current and pending patent litigation. The case stems from an original lawsuit back in 2014 that saw software maker OpenTV -- a wholly owned subsidiary of The Kudelski Group -- sue Apple in a German court due to its alleged violation of three streaming video patent violations.

OpenTV kept going after Apple throughout the years, with a lawsuit filed in the United States in 2015 that focused on five new patent violations enacted by the Cupertino company, including the claim that iTunes infringes upon one of its patents. Earlier this year, the same German court from the original 2014 case ruled that Apple violated OpenTV's digital streaming patents and was subsequently ordered to cease selling products that included software potentially infringing on OpenTV's patents, namely the iPhone and iPad.

OpenTV was founded in 1994 and sees its primary business focused on the creation of operating systems and software for set-top-boxes. The company is currently focused on its broadcast and digital television platform -- also called OpenTV -- that's available as an on-demand video service for users around the world. Although the turmoil between Apple and OpenTV appears to be dying down, the specific financial terms reached between the two companies weren't disclosed in today's announcement.

Twitter today revealed a change in how its "Moments" feature will work during the weeks of the Summer Olympic Games being held in Rio de Janeiro beginning August 5. A new tab for the Rio Olympics will be added to Moments -- and every platform the Twitter feature is available for -- but now users will be able to pipe news from the tab and into their own timeline for the entirety of the Olympic Games, which run until August 21.

Previously, Moments would only fill up a user's timeline with news from any particular channel for a couple of hours, sometimes as long as a few days, but the Rio Olympics mark the first time the feature has been extended to nearly a month (via TechCrunch). Like with traditional Moments, when the event is over, the tweets and news disappear from your timeline completely.

Twitter hopes that this will allow those interested in the Olympics to follow along with news and updates coming out of the ceremony with minimal hassle, since they won't need to go in and specifically follow individual news personalities, media companies, and olympians -- whom they might just end up unfollowing when it's all over anyway.

You’ll see the option to follow country specific Moments, which will last throughout the Games, so the best of what’s happening with your team will appear in your timeline for the entirety of the Olympics. You can also just opt to follow your favorite sports and events to see these Tweets in your timeline, or catch up on what you missed every day with recap Moments that will highlight results, medal counts and more. Of course, when a Moment that you follow ends, so do the Tweets, leaving your timeline the way it was before.

The following mechanic in Moments isn't restricted to blanketed "Olympics" coverage either, since users will be able to temporarily subscribe to "their favorite sports and events," like coverage of a specific country's results or news out of the Gymnastics finals. In addition, when users visit Moments during the Olympic Games, each day it will be updated to include recaps of event results, medal wins, "and other notable newsworthy items."

The Moments tab is currently available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom and the United States. These countries, in addition to Germany, France, and Japan, will also get "country specific Moments" during the Rio Olympics this year. The bolstered Olympics tab in Moments will begin rolling out "in the coming days," but users can already prepare for the Olympics by reading its dedicated tab in Twitter's lightning bolt Moments menu right now.

In order to take advantage of the massive influx of tweets and users during the Olympics, and battle some recent negative growth statistics, Twitter is also preparing 207 team emojis for the social network, activated when users tweet with the appropriate hashtag of their favorite country. Of course, the company's own Periscope and Vine apps will have featured Rio-related channels and content to keep fans engaged throughout the month of August.

Twitter can be downloaded from the iOS App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Canadian bank Tangerine has updated its Mobile Banking app today to enable Apple Pay support for its Tangerine Money-Back MasterCard credit card.

Tangerine, a direct banking subsidiary of Scotiabank, is the seventh-largest bank in Canada with approximately 2 million customers as of last month.

Tangerine credit cards -- no debit yet -- can be added to Apple Pay by tapping the "Add Credit or Debit Card" option in the Wallet app on iPhone 5 and later running iOS 8.1 or newer. Verification can be completed with the updated Tangerine Mobile Banking app, available now on the App Store [Direct Link] for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

Apple Pay can be used virtually anywhere contactless payments are already accepted in Canada, including at Aldo, Apple Stores, Canadian Tire, Chapters, Coles, Giant Tiger, Indigo, London Drugs, Mark's, McDonald's, On The Go, Petro-Canada, Pizza Hut, Rona, Staples, Tim Hortons, and hundreds of other merchants nationwide.

Apple Pay expanded to Canada's five largest banks in May and June, including BMO, CIBC, RBC, Scotiabank, and TD Canada Trust. The iPhone-based tap-to-pay service is also available to ATB Financial, Canadian Tire Bank, and non-bank-issued American Express cardholders.

Update: PC Financial MasterCards can also be added to Apple Pay starting today.

Apple Maps has recently been updated with all-new traffic data in Greece, providing users with real-time updates about vehicular traffic in the southeastern Europe country. As usual, highly congested areas will have orange or red dotted lines along the roads to indicate that drivers may face delays.

Apple Maps traffic data is available in over 30 other countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, China, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, Switzerland, and other European countries.

Google yesterday posted an entry on its YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog, detailing the increased encryption achieved by the company for its video streaming site. Over the past few months, Google has slowly bolstered the encryption for YouTube, and now 97 percent of the service's traffic is encrypted using HTTPS.

The encryption-enforcing protocol provides "critical security and data integrity" for any website that uses it, and all of its visitors. YouTube said that three reasons it took the company so long to reach this high level of encryption was because of the heavy traffic the site receives daily, the breadth of devices that HTTPS needs to work on due to YouTube's ubiquity, and "mixed content" that leads to lots of potentially non-secure requests.

We're also proud to be using HTTP Secure Transport Security (HSTS) on youtube.com to cut down on HTTP to HTTPS redirects. This improves both security and latency for end users. Our HSTS lifetime is one year, and we hope to preload this soon in web browsers.

In the real world, we know that any non-secure HTTP traffic could be vulnerable to attackers. All websites and apps should be protected with HTTPS.

YouTube also pointed out that its website isn't at a full 100 percent encryption rate yet because "some devices do not fully support modern HTTPS." It's doing its best to support the widest number of smartphones, tablets, and browsers with the new security protocol, but admitted that down the line, to ensure the safety of all its users, it plans to "gradually phase out insecure connections."

Ride hailing company Uber is planning to spend $500 million on a global mapping project in an effort to reduce its reliance on Google Maps, according to The Financial Times.

The San Fransisco-based company already has mapping vehicles recording geographical data around the U.S. and Mexico. With Uber's presence in over 60 countries, the significant expansion reflects its continuing growth and adds to its existing investment in original research like driverless cars.

Last year, it hired world-leading digital mapping expert Brian McClendon, who previously ran Google Maps and was one of the creators of Google Earth.

McClendon will be responsible for the mapping project, and recently commented on the plans in a blog post without mentioning the $500 million figure:

The ongoing need for maps tailored to the Uber experience is why we're doubling down on our investment in mapping. Our efforts are similar to what other companies including Apple and TomTom are already doing around the world.

The street imagery captured by our mapping cars will help us improve core elements of the Uber experience, like ideal pick-up and drop-off points and the best routes for riders and drivers.

Address data in Google Maps is typically less accurate in developing countries, resulting in some Uber drivers having to call passengers to ask for their location before a pick-up. Uber hopes to nix these problems and feed the traffic pattern and location data already gathered by its cars into its own mapping system, thereby also avoiding charges for using Google Maps.

News of Uber's multi-million-dollar mapping investment was partially eclipsed by reports over the weekend that Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing is to acquire its Chinese operations in a $35 billion deal.

Apple's own $1 billion investment in Didi Chuxing back in May gave the Cupertino company access to data and expertise on electric and autonomous car technology, which is likely to help with its own car-related project, dubbed Project Titan, now led by veteran Apple executive Bob Mansfield.

Logitech today announced that it is expanding its CREATE Keyboard Case with Smart Connector to the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, making the keyboard available for both of Apple's iPad Pro models.

As on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, the CREATE case for the 9.7-inch iPad Pro connects to the three-dot Smart Connector on the tablet, allowing for both power and data transfer. Because it's powered via the iPad, the CREATE case does not need to charge and it does not need to connect to an iPad using Bluetooth.

The CREATE Keyboard Case for the 9.7-inch iPad Pro features backlit keys, a protective case that protects the iPad when it isn't in use, iPad-specific function keys, and an integrated holder for the Apple Pencil. It is available in black and blue.

"CREATE is like the Swiss Army Knife of keyboard cases," said Michele Hermann, vice president of tablet accessories at Logitech. "It puts all the tools you need at your fingertips, and the keyboard charges through the Smart Connector so you can just set your iPad Pro into a typing position and go. It brings typing on the iPad Pro to a whole new level."

When the 12.9-inch iPad Pro launched, Logitech was the sole company to introduce a keyboard case that's able to use the Smart Connector on the tablet, and it continues to be the only company that offers a third-party Smart Connector keyboard solution.

We went hands-on with the CREATE case for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro when it was released. We loved the backlit keys and the general key feel, but felt like it added too much bulk to Apple's thin and light ultra powerful tablet.

The CREATE keyboard case for the 9.7-inch iPad Pro can be purchased starting today from the Logitech website, the online Apple Store, and Apple retail stores. It is priced at $129.99.

R&B singer Frank Ocean's next album, "Boy's Don't Cry," is set to be released this Friday through an exclusive deal with Apple Music, reports The New York Times. The release will include a major music video and a printed "Boys Don't Cry" publication to be distributed at Apple retail stores.

According to a source who spoke with The New York Times, Frank Ocean's album will be an Apple Music exclusive for two weeks before it becomes available on other music services.

"Boys Don't Cry" is Frank Ocean's first album since his 2012 release "Channel Orange," which won a Grammy Award for best urban contemporary album. The album has seen several delays so far and The New York Times warns that its release could potentially be put off. Ocean's website was, however, updated this morning with a new promotional video hosted by Apple Music.

In addition to "Boys Don't Cry," Apple has secured a number of high-profile exclusive releases for Apple Music in the past, debuting content like Drake's "Views" album, Taylor Swift's "1989 World Tour LIVE" film, and Katy Perry single "Rise."

Apple Music, now over a year old, boasts more than 15 million subscribers as of June 2016.