MacRumors iPhone and iPad Blog: Apps, News, and Rumors

For this week's giveaway, we've once again teamed up with Intrepid Bag Co, a store that sells hand-crafted high-quality leather bags and accessories. We've given away Intrepid Bag Co messenger bags in the past, but this week we have something a bit different -- the Intrepid Leather Tech Roll. The Tech Roll is designed to wrangle and store all of your cords and small Apple-related accessories ...

Apple updated its Apple Pay participating issuers list today with 51 additional banks, credit unions and financial institutions supporting the contactless payment service in the United States. Apple Pay now has over 950 participating issuers nationwide, and several more plan to support the NFC-based mobile payment service in the future. The newly added Apple Pay participating issuers are...

Facebook has begun rolling out support for further 3D Touch actions on compatible iPhones in the latest update to its primary iOS app. The newest iteration in the social media company's series of weekly app updates allows iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus owners to use "peek" and "pop" gestures directly from within a Facebook timeline. A light press or "peek" on a profile, link, page, group or...

Apple today made several updates to its Maps app around the world, adding new Flyover locations, expanding Maps Traffic info, and bringing the Nearby feature in Maps to additional countries. New Flyover locations available today include Aomori, Japan; Bruges, Belgium; Lake Powell, Utah; and Limoges, France. Some of the locations listed may have previously been available as Flyover...

Last year, cartoonist Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal teamed up with Elan Lee and Shane Small to create a card game called Exploding Kittens, which launched on Kickstarter. It received huge amounts of media attention and became the most-backed Kickstarter project of all time, with more than 200,000 backers. Exploding Kittens started shipping out in July, and as of today, it's expanding to iOS...

Microsoft today updated its suite of Office apps designed for the iPad and the iPhone, adding features to take advantage of the iPad Pro's Apple Pencil and the 3D Touch function in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint have all been updated with the new tools. On iPads, there's a new Draw tab that can be found in each of the three apps. The drawing tools in this tab allow iPad ...

A pair of new videos appear to show Apple Pay working with UnionPay bank cards in China for both in-store and in-app purchases. In the first video, a customer appears able to select a UnionPay card in Apple Pay and hold his iPhone near a QuickPass-enabled Verifone payment terminal to complete a purchase at McDonald's. The terminal says "transaction completed" and the self-checkout kiosk...

Apple supplier Foxconn has reportedly offered around $5.3 billion (¥625 billion) to purchase troubled Japanese electronics maker Sharp, according to The Wall Street Journal. The report claims that Sharp is also reviewing a competing offer from the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), possibly in the range of $2.5 billion (¥300 billion). INCJ already owns a controlling stake in...

During its financial results meeting yesterday, Netflix reminded its shareholders that the price-reduced grandfathered plans of long-time subscribers will be ending in 2016 (via Engadget). Grandfathered subscribers can choose to opt out of the imminent price hike, but it means they will lose access to HD quality streams. Beginning in an undisclosed window of the second or third quarter of...

Four years ago, Apple purchased App Store search and discovery company Chomp, gaining Ben Keighran as an employee. Keighran went on to have a pivotal role developing the "look and feel" of the software on the new Apple TV, but according to Re/code, he's now leaving the company. Keighran participated in the development of tvOS, the software that runs on the fourth-generation Apple TV. tvOS...

Hampton Products International today announced plans to introduce its first HomeKit-enabled product under its Brink's Home Security brand, debuting the Array digital deadbolt. The Array is a cloud and app-enabled digital door lock that can be unlocked via an iPhone. Designed to connect to an existing Wi-Fi router, the Array digital deadbolt does not require additional hubs or accessories,...

Child labor is being used in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to mine cobalt, a mineral used in lithium-ion batteries found in devices from Apple, Samsung, Sony, Microsoft and car manufacturers Daimler and Volkswagen, according to a new report by Amnesty International. Children told Amnesty International they worked for up to 12 hours a day in the mines, carrying heavy loads to earn...

Apple today informed developers that App Store price tiers, including in-app purchases, will be rising in Canada, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore and South Africa within 72 hours (via The Next Web). In Canada, for example, Tier 1 pricing will increase to $1.39, a 20-cent rise over current $1.19 pricing. That means a $1 app on the U.S. App Store will now sell for $1.39 on the...

Popular real-time messaging app WhatsApp today announced that it will no longer be charging customers subscription fees after their first free year with the service. The company noted that the approach of giving users a free year with the app and then removing its features "hasn't worked well," since some customers didn't have credit or debit cards they could use to continue the service,...

Automatic has partnered with us for our next giveaway, graciously offering one Automatic Adapter that provides information about your car's status and performance and your driving habits via a companion app. The Automatic adapter was first announced in early 2013 with recent updates last year bringing a second-generation adapter with additional functionality and the release of an SDK and App...

A new program from Microsoft is encouraging Apple Watch users to switch over to the Microsoft Band 2 with a few tiers of trade-in initiatives (via Cult of Mac). The company is offering "as much as" $150 for the aluminum Apple Watch Sport, $200 for the stainless steel Apple Watch with a Sport band, and $250 for the Apple Watch with Milanese Loop. The Microsoft Band 2 itself costs $250, so the ...

Popular text-based adventure game Lifeline was named Apple's App of the Week, and as a result, it's available to download for free for the first time since it launched in April of 2015. Lifeline is a text-based game that asks players to make life or death decisions to help navigate Taylor, the protagonist, through the storyline. Written by Dave Justus, the story walks players through the...

Night Shift, a major new feature iOS 9.3, is a display-based setting that lets you "warm up" an iPhone or iPad's screen at night to cut down on blue light exposure. Similar to f.lux on the Mac, Night Shift will automatically change the color temperature of an iOS device's display to reflect the time of day. With Night Shift, an iPhone or iPad screen will look bright white with a blue-based...