The Major League Soccer season began February 21, and for members of adiClub, you can now enjoy a free 1-month trial of Major League Season Pass on Apple TV. Keep reading below to learn more.

Strava, the popular app that tracks your workouts and lets you share them with your community, today expanded its Best Efforts feature to include more categories for cyclists. Keep reading below the fold to learn more.

Yesterday, the US House of Representatives swiftly voted on a bill that would force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or risk being banned in the US. In light of the bill moving onto the Senate, TikTok CEO Shou Chew has tapped into the app’s 170 million users, telling them to protect their constitutional rights and let their voices be heard.

In celebration of Heart Month, the Apple Heart & Movement Study released updated trends in activity and cardio fitness, including which states are – and are not – meeting the recommended 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise per week threshold. Head below the jump to learn more.

It was recently announced that Gympass, a leader in corporate wellness, would be integrating Apple Fitness+ for its subscribers with a Basic plan and above, giving them access to everything Apple Fitness+ has to offer. Head below to learn more.

Withings is late to the game when it comes to giving users the ability to track their menstrual cycles, but with the release of its ScanWatch Light – a hybrid smartwatch – users can now not only track their cycles with the ScanWatch Light, but also within the Withings app itself. Keep reading below for more details.

Strava, a leading digital community for athletes with over 120 million members, today announced its new partnership with Fi – a smart connected dog collar and health platform. Head below to learn more.

When my dad called me a month ago to tell me we were getting new phones because we were switching cell phone providers, he informed me that he would be getting the iPhone 15. I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly. “Wait, you’re getting an iPhone?” I asked, twice. “Yeah, what’s the big deal?” he countered, as if this was normal, as if he hadn’t been a decades-long Samsung devotee.

After just over a month with his new iPhone 15, my dad’s got a respectable list of things he’s enjoying, and some things that he believes Samsung did – and does – better.

Strava, a leading digital community for athletes with over 120 million members, is doing The Spotify and allowing members to show off their personalized Year in Sport. Head below for more details.

After having spent the last month with my Oura Ring and the Oura Ring companion app for iOS, I can definitively say that despite a beautiful app and some helpful features, unless you are someone looking to track or improve your sleep, I don’t think that the Oura Ring is worth it. Head below the fold to learn why.

After having spent a month with my Oura Ring and many more months than that with my Apple Watch, there are a few features that both the Oura Ring and its companion app have that Apple Watch and Apple Fitness would be keen to pay attention to.

SwingVision, an Apple Design Award-winning app in innovation, today introduced its expansion into pickleball. Initially an app meant to act as a tennis coach helping users to perfect every aspect of their game, SwingVision is making its way into America’s fastest-growing sport.

Strava, the popular social networking app for athletes and a leading digital community, today released its newest feature in the latest update – Messaging. Messaging allows Strava members to connect with one another and motivate each other in ways that they couldn’t before today. Head below the fold for more details on Strava’s Messaging feature.

With Spotify Wrapped having launched this past week, I can’t help but think of three specific feature requests I’d like to see implemented into Spotify. As someone who works from home and spends a lot (76,589 minutes this year, to be exact) of time with Spotify on in the background, I am intimately familiar with the app and its foibles.

iOS 17 was only just released in September with some major updates that we love, including customizable contact posters, additional Tapback replies, and voice note improvements. Not only that, but with the recent announcement that RCS messaging is coming to Apple later in 2024, it’s safe to say that iPhone users are going to be seeing some massive updates in iOS 18. That said, there are of course additional features I’d love Apple to implement in iOS 18 that would be huge wins for iPhone users. Head below the fold to read more.

As far as health trackers go, there is a lot to love about the Oura Ring and its companion app. The ring’s 200+ biometrics sync to the Oura Ring app, giving users detailed analytics and insights into their overall health and wellness, in addition to various meditations, breathing exercises, and more. However, after only having had my Oura Ring for a couple of weeks, there are some obvious changes that Oura could (and should) embrace to improve the iPhone user experience.

Leading connected smart ring company, Oura, has hired Apple’s Health executive Jason Oberfest as head of Oura’s clinical strategy and healthcare work. The move from Oura is a part of its expanding network of partners, as reported by Bloomberg.

I do realize that it is far too late in the year to make a wish list that might get any traction re: things I’d like to see Apple implement into iOS 17, and that’s fine – I don’t care – but I have to document my hopes and dreams as a consumer and Apple loyalist somewhere, and with WWDC happening next month, I remembered that I have ideas. Read on to see what I would love, would absolutely die for, should Apple choose to implement any of the following into any of their products at any point in any future iOS release ever.

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The post My iOS 17 wish list: FaceMails, expanded Tapbacks, more appeared first on 9to5Mac.

Instagram this week rolled out a new feature to users they are calling “Notes,” a way for users to leave a sort of status update – or Away Message – to their followers or to their Close Friends.

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The StoryGraph – an app that lets you track, rate, and review the books you’ve read amongst many, many other things – is something every book lover should have in their app library. Complete with beautiful analytics, personalized recommendations, and a 1.2 million-member community, The StoryGraph is everything Goodreads isn’t. We spoke with cofounders Nadia Odunayo and Rob Frelow to dig more deeply into everything we love about our new favorite book app.

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The post Finally, a formidable response to Amazon-owned Goodreads: Introducing The StoryGraph appeared first on 9to5Mac.

BeReal – a social media app that launched in 2020 – is quickly gaining popularity among users and generations. Touting an opportunity for people to “be real,” I downloaded the app to see if it was worth the hype, and, spoiler – it isn’t.

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The post Opinion: Viral ‘BeReal’ app designed to capture real-life moments, but how authentic is it really? appeared first on 9to5Mac.

About a week ago, I had Alpine’s newest version of its popular multimedia receiver – the iLX-507 – installed into my beloved nine-year-old car, providing a much-needed upgrade. Head below for more details.

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The post Alpine iLX-507 review: CarPlay retrofit appeared first on 9to5Mac.

Apple doesn’t offer truly individualized customization of its products or interfaces to its users, and if anyone wants to customize the look of their Apple products – specifically their home screens – they’re in for A Time. With iOS 16 coming in September, there’s an opportunity for Apple to give consumers needed autonomy.

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The post Apple should make iOS 16 customization more like Android’s: Here’s what I want to see appeared first on 9to5Mac.

When communicating with people, no matter the platform – be it iMessage, Slack, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. – we have the ability to utilize audio messaging. I get why a lot of people don’t use them (probably?), but I’m here to tell everyone why they should embrace their own voice – and everyone else’s – when messaging one another.

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The post Why I love iMessage audio clips, or, why I love your voice appeared first on 9to5Mac.

Kevin Boroumand, an entrepreneur, automation expert, and TikToker, has created a free, downloadable shortcut for iOS that will help to get you out of trouble if you find yourself in an unsafe or potentially dangerous situation. Below, we look into the details of “DoorDash Express.”

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With over 380 million users and 172 million subscribers, Spotify continues to dominate the streaming music market. While there are plenty of features to love about the service (curated playlists and podcast integration, to list two personal favorites), its Friend Activity leaves a lot to be desired.

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The post Spotify doesn’t want us to be friends appeared first on 9to5Mac.

For reasons unbeknownst to users, the ability to organize your favorite videos (into what TikTok calls “Collections”) is available to some, was taken away from others, and for the rest of us, the “Collections” feature simply never existed. TikTok users have been lamenting over the loss of – or the inability to – organize their favorite videos for months, and we all want the ability to put our favorite videos where they belong.

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The post Why is TikTok gatekeeping this fundamental feature for the majority of its user-base? appeared first on 9to5Mac.

Contrary to popular opinion, linguists know that texting isn’t destroying the English language, even if there aren’t hard-and-fast rules. In fact, texting is a language in-and-of itself, and like any language, it allows us to express exactly who we are.

Think of it like this: the ways in which we format our words, how we respond to our friend’s texts, and the emoji we choose when texting are the parallel versions of our inflection, our non-verbal communication, and our facial expressions, all of which are highlighted when having face-to-face conversations.

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The post Three things that would dramatically improve iMessage, and probably also my personality appeared first on 9to5Mac.