EA is ending support for its Tetris for iOS apps starting on April 21, 2020, the company announced today in app updates to Tetris Premium, Tetris 2011, and Tetris Blitz.

As noted on the MacRumors forums, updates to the Tetris apps say that the games are being retired, with no word on why. From the app updates:

Hello Fans, We have had an amazing journey with you so far but sadly, it is time to say goodbye. As of April 21, 2020, EA’s Tetris(R) app will be retired, and will no longer be available to play. Kindly note that you will still be able to enjoy the game and use any existing in-game items until April 21, 2020. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of this game and we appreciate your ongoing support. Thank you!

Customers who have purchased in-app items in one of EA’s Tetris apps will need to use those items up before the game is retired on April 21, 2020. Though some apps remain available to play after being pulled from the App Store, it sounds like EA is removing access to the Tetris games entirely.

Tetris has been a staple iOS game since the iPhone launched, offering up well-known and well-loved block stacking puzzle gameplay. EA has offered several updates for its Tetris apps over the years, but prior to today’s announcement about retirement, the apps had not seen an update since the summer of 2018.

This article, “EA Retiring Tetris Apps for iOS in April 2020” first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Twitter has announced support for emoji reactions in its direct messages. The new feature lets you respond to DMs without having to type anything, similar to the reactions available to iMessage users when they want to acknowledge messages without sending a proper reply.

To use the new emoji reactions in Twitter, either tap the small heart icon with the plus sign merging into it that appears to the right of each message bubble, or double-tap a message to reveal an emoji reactions menu.

There are seven emoji at present, including staple reactions like laughing face, sad face, thumbs up, and heart. All participants in a conversation get notified when you lay down an emoji, but you can also undo them at any time.

sliding into your DMs like 😂 😲 😢 ❤️ 🔥 👍 👎

— Twitter (@Twitter) January 22, 2020

Twitter first started testing emoji reactions last year, but the feature has now rolled out on mobile and web. Twitter’s support page notes that anyone using an older version of its official app will only see text instead of emoji.

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Svalt, known for its line of docks designed for Apple’s Macs, today launched a whole new collection of 2020 docks and stands designed for Apple’s latest notebook and desktop Macs.

The Cooling Stand S, designed for the 16-inch MacBook Pro and other Mac and PC laptops, features silent passive cooling, an ergonomic raised design, adjustable feet, and a design that hides accessories and cord clutter.

There’s also a Cooling Stand S Pro, a variant of the Cooling Stand S that comes equipped with a fan for active cooling to complement the passive cooling features. The fan offers dual speeds depending on whether quiet operation or maximum cooling is preferred, and it is user upgradeable.

For the Mac mini, Svalt has a Cooling Stand Mini that offers both passive and active cooling with a built-in dual-speed fan and a design that hides away cords and accessories.

The Svalt Cooling Stand S sells for $179, the S Pro sells for $279, and the S Mini sells for $269, with purchases available now from the Svalt website. All of the stands are modular and can be converted to accommodate other devices with additional add-on accessories.

Svalt also has a new Cooling Dock Model D, which is designed to be used with a ‌MacBook Pro‌ in clamshell mode. It features a sculpted aluminum heat sink and a flexible leaning design for optimized silent passive cooling. The Svalt Dock D can be purchased from the Svalt website for $169, though adding a fan will raise the price.

This article, “Svalt Launches New Lineup of Cooling Stands and Docks for Macs” first appeared on MacRumors.com

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One of the issues that Apple Card users sometimes raise is that while the Wallet app offers plenty of well-organized information about spending, there’s no option to directly share transaction data from the card with third-party money management apps like Mint or Lunch Money.

Fortunately, Apple recently provided a solution – you can now download a CSV spreadsheet from the Wallet app that contains all your ‌Apple Card‌ data, which you can then import into most budgeting apps and get a more complete picture of your finances. The following steps show you how it’s done.

1. Launch the Wallet app on your iPhone.
2. Tap the Card Balance panel under your ‌Apple Card‌.
3. Scroll down to the Statements section and tap on the month you wish to export transactions from.
   
4. Tap Export Transactions at the bottom.
5. To save the data as a CSV file, tap the Share icon in the upper-right corner of the screen, where you can opt to AirDrop it to another device such as your Mac, print it, or Save to Files to save it your iCloud folders or on your ‌iPhone‌.

‌‌Apple Card‌‌ transactions are exported from the Share Sheet options as a CSV document, but in the future, Apple also plans to add an OFX option.

Note that some budgeting apps accept imported transaction data, but may need file format conversions prior to import (Quicken, for example).

This article, “How to Export Apple Card Data to a Spreadsheet” first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Google researchers discovered multiple security flaws in Apple’s Safari web browser that let users’ browsing habits be tracked despite Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature.

Google plans to publish details on the security flaws in the near future, and a preview of Google’s discovery was seen by Financial Times, with the publication sharing information on the vulnerabilities this morning.

The security flaws were first found by Google in the summer of 2019, and were disclosed to Apple in August. There were five types of potential attacks that could allow third parties to learn “sensitive private information about the user’s browsing habits.”

Google researchers say that Safari left personal data exposed because the Intelligent Tracking Prevention List “implicitly stores information about the websites visited by the user.” Malicious entities could use these flaws to create a “persistent fingerprint” that would follow a user around the web or see what individual users were searching for on search engine pages.

Intelligent Tracking Prevention, which Apple began implementing in 2017, is a privacy-focused feature meant to make it harder for sites to track users across the web, preventing browsing profiles and histories from being created.

Lukasz Olejnik, a security researcher who saw Google’s paper, said that if exploited, the vulnerabilities “would allow unsanctioned and uncontrollable user tracking.” Olejnik said that such privacy vulnerabilities are rare, and “issues in mechanisms designed to improve privacy are unexpected and highly counter-intuitive.”

Apple appears to have addressed these Safari security flaws in a December update, based on a release update that thanked Google for its “responsible disclosure practice,” though full security credit has not yet been provided by Apple so there’s a chance that there’s still some behind-the-scenes fixing to be done.

This article, “Flaws in Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention Safari Feature Let People Be Tracked” first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple today seeded the third betas of upcoming iOS and iPadOS 13.3.1 updates to developers, one week after seeding the second betas and more than a month after the release of iOS 13.3 with Communication Limits for Screen Time.

iOS and ‌iPadOS‌ 13.3.1 can be downloaded from the Apple Developer center or over the air once the proper developer profile has been installed.

iOS 13.3.1 includes a “Networking & Wireless” toggle that turns off the U1 Ultra Wideband chip in the latest iPhones. The feature, located in the Privacy > Location Services section of the Settings app, turns off location for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Ultra Wideband.

Apple added this location toggle after it was discovered that the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max continue to track user location even when location services options are disabled. This is because there are international regulatory requirements that mandate the U1 chip be disabled in certain locations.

The new toggle makes sure location tracking is off for the U1 chip at all times. Apple has also added a new “Play Again” button when replaying content that you’ve already watched in the TV app.

Along with these features, the iOS 13.3.1 update also likely includes bug fixes for issues unable to be addressed in the iOS 13.3 update. Specifically, it could address some issues with Communication Limits, fixing a workaround with the Contacts app that allowed children text someone who contacted them from an unknown number.

This article, “Apple Seeds Third Betas of iOS 13.3.1 and iPadOS 13.3.1 to Developers [Update: Public Beta Available]” first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming watchOS 6.1.2 update to developers, one week after releasing the second beta and more than a month after releasing the watchOS 6.1.1 update with bug fixes.

Once the proper configuration profile has been installed from the Apple Developer Center, the new watchOS beta can be downloaded through the dedicated ‌‌Apple Watch‌‌ app on the iPhone by going to General > Software Update.

To install the update, the ‌‌‌Apple Watch‌‌‌ needs to have at least 50 percent battery, it must be placed on the charger, and it has to be in range of the ‌‌iPhone‌‌.

There’s no word yet on what features are included in the watchOS 6.1.2 beta, and there were no new features discovered in the first two betas, but we’ll update this article should anything new be found in the third beta.

This article, “Apple Seeds Third Beta of watchOS 6.1.2 to Developers” first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming tvOS 13.3.1 update to developers, one week after seeding the second beta and over a month after releasing the tvOS 13.3 update.

Designed for the fourth and fifth-generation Apple TV models, the new tvOS 13.3.1 developer beta can be downloaded onto the ‌‌‌Apple TV‌‌‌ via a profile that’s installed using Xcode.

tvOS updates are typically minor in scale, focusing on under-the-hood bug fixes and improvements rather than major outward-facing changes. Apple provides little to no information on what’s included in tvOS beta updates, so we may not discover anything new after installing the software.

While we don’t often know what’s new in tvOS during the beta testing process, we let MacRumors readers know when new updates are available so those who are developers can download it upon release.

This article, “Apple Seeds Third Beta of tvOS 13.3.1 Update to Developers [Update: Public Beta Available]” first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Apple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser Apple first introduced three years ago in March 2016. Apple designed the Safari Technology Preview to test features that may be introduced into future release versions of Safari.

Safari Technology Preview release 99 includes bug fixes and performance improvements for Web Inspector, Web API, Cookies, CSS, Media, WebRTC, Payment Request, Web Animations, JavaScript, Web Share API, WebDriver, and IndexedDB. Today’s update also removes support for Adobe Flash.

The new Safari Technology Preview update is available for both macOS Mojave and MacOS Catalina, the newest version of the Mac operating system that was released in October.

The Safari Technology Preview update is available through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store to anyone who has downloaded the browser. Full release notes for the update are available on the Safari Technology Preview website.

Apple’s aim with Safari Technology Preview is to gather feedback from developers and users on its browser development process. Safari Technology Preview can run side-by-side with the existing Safari browser and while designed for developers, it does not require a developer account to download.

This article, “Apple Releases Safari Technology Preview 99 With Bug Fixes and Performance Improvements” first appeared on MacRumors.com

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At least one iPhone 12 model will come in a new Navy Blue finish, according to XDA Developers writer and leaker Max Weinbach, who shared his information with YouTube channel EverythingApplePro.

Weinbach believes that Navy Blue could replace the Midnight Green finish available for iPhone 11 Pro models. In line with this, EverythingApplePro created a mockup of what the iPhone 12 Pro in Navy Blue could look like.

iPhone 12 Pro in Navy Blue concept via EverythingApplePro/Max Weinbach

Weinbach has accurately revealed a new iPhone color in the past. In May 2019, through his Twitter account PineLeaks, he said the successor to the iPhone XR would come in a new light green color. However, he said the green option would replace yellow, and the iPhone 11 is available in both green and yellow.

Weinbach also accurately predicted that the volume HUD would become less obtrusive in iOS 13, but he has also shared several Apple-related rumors that did not pan out, including the iPad getting a native Calculator app in iOS 13 and the HomePod launching in Austria and Italy within 2019.

The iPhone XR successor will come without the yellow color we saw last year, but with a new light green color.
The shade of this green is comparable with the blue we currently have. It will be a quite bright color, but not too flashy.

— Pine (@PineLeaks) May 10, 2019

So just got some amazing news…

In iOS 13 the volume HUD is gone! Apple is finally fixing their software!
It’s also supposed to be ground breaking but whatever.

— Max Weinbach (@MaxWinebach) February 19, 2019

Weinbach has a more established track record with Android-related rumors, most recently including alleged Samsung Galaxy S20 leaks.

Watch this EverythingApplePro video for a closer look at the Navy Blue concept:

Apple plans to release five new iPhone models in 2020, including the so-called “iPhone 9” or “iPhone SE 2” with a 4.7-inch display in the spring and a higher-end, OLED-and-5G lineup with one 5.4-inch model, two 6.1-inch models, and one 6.7-inch model in the fall, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

This article, “iPhone 12 Lineup Rumored to Feature All-New Navy Blue Color Option” first appeared on MacRumors.com

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