Apple on Thursday released a new application for Android and iOS called Beats Pill+. As the name suggests, the app allows device users to manage and control their Beats Pill+ Bluetooth speaker, which was announced earlier this month.
In the description, Apple says the Beats Pill+ app "puts you and your friends at the center of your music like never before." You can use it to easily pair your device with your Pill+ speaker, rename it for fast identification and much more.
Big things are happening with the new Apple TV. Not only have numerous readers received their now shipping notifications, alluding to a Friday arrival, Apple has also made several significant necessary infrastructure changes for tomorrow's big launch.
First and foremost, the App Store is now live for the Apple TV. Twitter is flowing with screenshots and images of the new Apple TV App Store. Although its discovery elements are still questionable, Apple is probably still in the midst of rolling out the categories section and top charts section. Remember, the actual launch isn't until tomorrow, so anything can change between now and then.
Secondly, Apple has released the final build of its tvOS software that powers the new Apple TV. In fact, you can download tvOS 9.0 right now.
Heads up gamers, Apple has just named MildMania's 'rop' its App of the Week for this week. This means that from now through next Thursday, you can pick up the popular puzzler for free for both iPhone and iPad, a $1 savings over its usual price.
For those who haven't played it, rop is described as a mind-bending, minimal puzzler with nearly 200 beautiful levels. In each of those levels, you must rearrange the different pieces of rope on a hexagonal grid to match the shape that you are given.
Good news: when you want to charge your iPad Pro Pencil, you won't necessarily have to look like a doofus when you do so.
Prior to today, it was assumed that the only way to charge the iPad Pro's Pencil stylus was to plug it into the bottom of the iPad Pro itself. The Pencil's cap features a Lightning plug hidden underneath, and Apple showcased its ability to charge it by plugging the device directly into the iPad Pro's Lightning port.
While this method of charging works, and is extremely handy when you need a quick bit of extra juice on the fly, it looks incredibly goofy to have a stylus protruding out of the top of the iPad Pro, especially because the iPad Pro is so big itself.
Today, 9to5Mac is reporting that Apple plans on shipping the Pencil with an adapter that will allow users to connect the device directly to a Lightning cable. The adapter will reportedly ship with all Pencil's, which come as a separate purchase from the iPad Pro itself.
Tether is a new $0.99 jailbreak tweak from Philip Tennen and Evan Luther, and it's pretty awesome. I like this tweak, not so much for what it does, although that's handy as well, but I like it for its originality.
By using a 3D Touch gesture on the Home screen, you can invoke the Tether interface. Tether's interface consists of a clock-like glyph with a line extending from it. As you drag your finger away from the point of origin, you'll see a small time readout spell out a future time. The further your finger is away from the origination point, the further in time your tether will be.
When you release your finger, you have the option to set up an Alarm, Reminder, or Calendar event at the specific time that you selected. If it all sounds little confusing, it's because it's much easier to explain by watching it in action. With that in mind, have a look at our hands-on video walkthrough for all of the details.
Not long after it seeded iOS 9.2 beta 1 to developers, Apple has released iOS 9.2 for public beta testers on its public beta program website. iOS 9.2 is a small update, but as we told you about, it brings some significant new features to iOS 9's new Safari View Controller for embedded web views.
If you're already a member of the public beta, or if you'd like to join, simply head over to Apple's beta website to get started.
Eddy Cue, Apple's Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services, gave CNN a tour of the new Apple TV, which hits Apple's retail stores tomorrow.
Reiterating that to Apple, television is about apps, Cue called the fourth-generation box “absolutely” more than a hobby project for Apple.
“We have over 20 million Apple TV's in households today,” he said. “We think this is really going to revolutionize television. So this is a big deal for us.”
Picture in Picture mode is a cool new feature for the iPad on iOS 9. As we showed you earlier today, you can even take advantage of Picture in Picture mode on the iPhone, if you're willing to jailbreak.
But what about the Mac?
Fortunately there's a Mac app called Helium that does a pretty good job of emulating the Picture in Picture effect on the desktop. It's especially handy for watching YouTube videos. Watch our hands-on video to see what I mean.
Following its official announcement less than two weeks ago, Google today formally launched a new music and video subscription service—YouTube Red.
In exchange for a monthly fee of $9.99, Red provides ad-free access to videos across all of YouTube, the ability to save clips and playlists for offline use and support for background playback. All these perks are available to Red members users across desktop, mobile and the web.
Due to Apple's 30 percent cut on In-App Purchases, Google has decided to raise Red's subscriptions on iOS devices to $12.99 per month in order to compensate for the Apple tax. A free 30-day trial of YouTube Red (US only) is available to those who want to try out the service and see if it's worth the asking price to them.
The iPad has a leg up on other devices in the iOS family, because later model versions can take advantage of iOS 9's new Picture in Picture mode for video multitasking. Picture in Picture mode lets you watch videos or conduct FaceTime calls in a smaller window while using other apps at the same time.
Unfortunately, for those of you on iPads that predate the iPad Air, along with iPhone and iPod touch users, Picture in Picture mode is not available. That's unless you decide to jailbreak and install Pegasus, a tweak by developer Evan Swick. Pegasus is a new jailbreak tweak that enables Picture in Picture mode on previously unsupported devices. Have a look at our full video walkthrough to see how it works.
Developers of Microsoft-owned calendar app, called Sunrise, announced in a blog post that the app won't be receiving updates going forward as the team has worked hard on integrating Sunrise functionality into the Windows maker's much-improved mobile Outlook client for iPhone and iPad.
Sunrise Calendar was last updated in the App Store more than four months ago, adding integration with Office 365 events. Just yesterday, Outlook for iOS received a fresh new look alongside a brand native Apple Watch app built on watchOS 2.
At the same time, Microsoft announced that the mobile Outlook app has gone from a couple hundred downloads to more than thirty million installs on smartphones and tablets.
As the new Apple TV is scheduled to hit Apple's retail stores tomorrow, first reviews are now in. Journalists who were given a chance to spend some quality time with review units are praising evolutionary improvements to the living room experience while highlighting untapped potential for the refreshed $149 device.
One of the common complaints focuses on Siri and its inability to search apps for the Apple TV in a dedicated App Store. In addition, reports are noting that users won't be able to search Apple Music with their voice at launch, the omission Apple claims will be addressed with a software update due at the beginning of next year.