Apple and Google have removed a total of 330 binary trading apps from their respective app stores, following intervention from the Australian Securities & Investments Commission.

Australia’s securities regulator requested the removal of the apps based on fraud investigations, concerning certain apps which allow users to make bets about whether or not shares and currency will rise or fall. While some apps that do this are legitimate, others have been linked to scams.

Yet more information about the iPhone 8 has been discovered in Apple’s HomePod firmware. We now know the device will have a split status bar designed to fit its edge-to-edge display and tap to wake functionality like its Android-powered rivals.

However, the future of Touch ID still looks bleak.

Five men from Romania have been arrested after stealing $600,000 of iPhones from a moving truck in an astonishingly risky late-night raid that ultimately didn’t pay off for them.

Who needs the Fast and the Furious movies when you’ve got real life?

Apple is now protecting enough sustainable forest land to cover all its paper packaging needs. The news is a major milestone for Apple, which has been buying up massive swathes of forest around the world for the past couple of years as part of its sustainability drive.

It means that Apple has already hit its goal of protecting 1 million acres of responsibly-managed forest by 2020 — two-and-a-half years ahead of schedule!

Spotify has extended its lead on Apple Music when it comes to paid subscribers, according to a new report that claims the streaming music service has broken the 60 million threshold.

Google today rolled out a nice new Gboard update for iPhone, adding the ability to send drawings, Google Maps, and YouTube videos. The additions make the best third-party keyboard on iOS even better.

A judge has ruled that a lawsuit against Apple for breaking FaceTime in iOS 6 can continue.

It is alleged that the iPhone-maker purposely allowed the feature to be disabled on older devices in an effort to force users to update to iOS 7.

This post is presented by Today Weather.

Your weather app is probably the last thing you daydream about upgrading. After all, iOS comes with a pretty straightforward, reliable weather app. But when we tried free alternative Today Weather, we found some interesting features we didn’t even know we wanted.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the HomePod speaker Apple announced at WWDC last month. But thanks to the firmware that was released to developers on Friday, we now know a little bit more about its internal hardware.

A lot of people who enjoy listening to podcasts or music while jogging will agree that it’s inconvenient to carry an iPhone. While music lovers can sync playlists from their iPhone to their Apple Watch, Apple’s Podcast app doesn’t do the same for podcasts.

That’s unfortunate. However, it’s simple to send podcasts to Apple Watch using third-party apps.

Apple shows off the celebrity pairings that will rev up Carpool Karaoke in a new spot for the upcoming show.

The first star-studded episode premieres on Apple Music on August 8. But you can get a preview of the sing-along show in the trailer below.

Apple is set to unveil its latest earnings report on Tuesday, and Wall Street analysts predict it will probably be the most boring earnings call of 2017.

This will likely be Apple’s last public announcement before it unveils the next generation of iPhones. Apple CEO Tim Cook might drop some hints on what to expect, and when, as investors look forward to Apple’s next big blockbuster quarter. As usual, Cult of Mac will be here liveblogging the entire event with all the analysis and wit we can muster.

Watch for these five things during the call:

Here’s one reason we still don’t know whether the next iPhone will be called the iPhone X, iPhone 8 or something else entirely. A loophole that allowed intrepid investigators to dig up secret Apple product names has been closed.

It’s like Apple loves secrets or something!

iPhones and iPads are great platforms for movies, TV shows and music. That is, if you can get them on there and working. iTunes doesn’t always make it easy, and some popular formats like FLAC don’t work at all.

Microsoft’s Word Flow keyboard for iPhone has been pulled from the App Store now that the company’s “experiment” is over.

The unique keyboard, which made its debut last April, was designed for one-handed typing on larger displays. Now Microsoft is advising fans to switch to SwiftKey instead.

Every year, we see some fancy new Android handset try to challenge the iPhone camera, whether it be in sheer number of megapixels or some smart AI image processing technology.

However, Vic Gundotra, Google’s former senior vice president of social, says there’s only serious contender when it comes to making him replace his DSLR: the iPhone.

Samsung may be providing 100 percent of the OLED displays for Apple’s iPhone 8, but according to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, LG Display will be playing an increasingly big role in iPhone OLED display manufacturing in the years to come.

Specifically, he thinks that LG will to supply 10-20 percent of the iPhone’s OLED supply by 2019, and 20-30 percent by 2020.

Code confirming the existence of Apple’s infrared facial recognition technology has been discovered by intrepid developer-turned-iOS sleuth Steve Troughton-Smith.

Troughton-Smith discovered the code in the HomePod firmware Apple released late last week. It suggests that previous reports about face unlocking on the iPhone 8, possibly as a replacement for Touch ID, may be accurate.

A stunning minimalist iOS puzzle game, in which you must guide a beam of light through a network of pipes, is just one of the great App Store picks we’ve highlighted for this week’s “Awesome Apps” roundup.

We’ve also selected a great music-making app for iPhone and iPad, a smart Bluetooth device finder for tracking down your lost Apple Pencil, and an entertaining parkour endless runner. Check out our choices below.

Beneath that shiny Mac exterior is an incredibly complex machine. Unlike an old car, when something falls out of whack, you aren’t likely to fix it yourself.

Capo touch is the iOS version of Capo, an amazing Mac app that lets you slice and dice a song, slowing it down so you can learn it on guitar or another instrument.

Developer SuperMegaUltraGroovy added some great new features to Capo touch version 2.5. If you’re a long-time user, you’ll appreciate the interface tweaks, the Apple Music support and the new audio-scrubbing engine. If you never used Capo, and you play a guitar, you should buy Capo touch right now.

In this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, amateur podcaster and video-tutorial creator, Chris Ward, shares what he’s learned, along with recommendations on the hardware, software and techniques to get you started podcasting using your Mac.

We’ve got video of iOS 11 beta 4 changes, and how the flashlight mode on iPhone helped a photographer light the simulated workspace of European astronaut Paolo Nespoli. Check out the long-awaited Rainbow Apple Watch Band from Juuk, and more.  Get your free subscription to Cult of Mac Magazine from iTunes. Or read on for this week’s top stories.

We’re right in the middle of the dog days of summer. But the hottest place you’ll find is at the Cult of Mac Store. We’ve been busy stacking up a bunch of new deals that are ideal for digital creatives. We’ve got a set of lessons in coding for the all new iOS 11, and Adobe’s suite of graphic design apps. There’s also the industry standard app for screenwriters, and a rugged phone tripod for mobile photography and video. Discounts range from 40 percent to 95 percent off, read on for more details:

The launch of Apple’s new HomePod speaker isn’t slated until the very end of 2017, but after digging into the software that powers the new device, one developer has revealed a number of features fans can expect.

Notorious iOS sleuth Steve Troughton Smith has done some serious research into HomePod and discovered that it’s basically like another iOS device only it doesn’t have a big screen. That could open HomePod up to some exciting capabilities in the future.

Your iPhone isn’t slacking off when it sits in your pocket. No, it’s industriously counting your every step, ready to tell you the total so you can celebrate by buying cake if you hit your daily goal. The good news is that the iPhone pedometer comes built-in, and requires no third-party apps to do its stuff. The even better news is that there’s a free app — Pedometer++ — that makes it even better.