Along with releasing the first ever public beta of iOS 9, Apple has also opened up OS X El Capitan to the public for beta testing as well.

Developers have been toying around with Apple’s latest iOS 9 betas for over a month now, but starting today, everyone can download and install the latest iOS 9 beta, even if you’re not a developer.

Slack is ingraining emojis even deeper into your work environment whether you like it or not. Users were already able to send emojis casually while chatting, but now anyone can specifically react to messages in Slack with emojis. It’s pretty easy to get creative with this, and it’s sure to spice up the chat with your co-workers.

Conan O’Brien and sidekick Andy Richter head off to Comic-Con International this week on the late night television show.

Instead of taking the train down, Richter decides to take a road trip. Conan is excited!

What happens next is a thing of beauty, as Team Coco blasts on down the Fury Road in a auto-monster straight out of Mad Max’s latest big-screen adventure. Check it out in the video below.

Chinese gadget maker Meizu today announced its new flagship, the aluminum-clad MX5, and it couldn’t look any more like an iPhone. The device sports a unibody design and high-end features, including an “mTouch 2.0” fingerprint scanner that’s integrated into its home button.

After previewing its productivity suite to testers for the past four months, Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac is now available to anyone with an Office 365 subscription.

Microsoft announced this morning that the final version of Office 2016 is ready for primetime, marking the biggest update to come to Office for Mac since the last version was released nearly five years ago.

The new version of Office boasts a number of huge features that were designed with Mac in mind, including an improved user interface that feels like it’s part Windows, part Office for Mac 2011. The familiar Ribbon user interface is still around and plays nicely with OS X features like sandboxed, apps, Retina screen optimization, Multi-Touch gestures, and full screen views.

Check out some of the new goodies:

Too many of us are familiar with the resonant thud as our iPhone takes a faceplant onto the ground, letting us know without even looking that it’s been busted. It’s a huge inconvenience and expensive to get fixed properly, not to mention the psychological ache at having something we rely on taken out of commission. All of those issues are soothed with iCracked’s iPhone 6 DIY Screen Repair Kit, available now for $114.99, a meaty 36% off of the normal price.

Apple will announce a larger “iPad Pro” later this year, according to countless reports, and Samsung is already preparing its Android-powered competitor. The device is likely to be a larger addition to the flagship Galaxy Tab S family.

Apple is known for its uncompromising demands on quality, and now it appears that the iPhone-maker is helping third-party accessory makers learn the magic of making beautiful packaging too.

Apple Stores have begun stocking third-party accessories with redesigned packaging that was created with help directly from Apple. The new packaging aims to reinforce the Apple Store’s image as premium retail location by matching the color of Apple Stores’ storage wall.

Here’s a look some of the new packaging:

Spotify and Apple Music are now the two major players in the battle for music streaming supremacy, but if Facebook has its way the world’s most popular social network may also become the best place to discover and listen to tunes.

Facebook is in early talks with record labels to develop a music streaming service of its own, according to a new report that claims the social network has some bold plans for the future of music.

Facebook is making a pretty big update to its iOS app today — for the first time ever giving users a major say in how their News Feed is organized.

As anyone who has ever agonized over whether to unfriend that one person who keeps on posting incomplete statuses like “had a bad day :(” will know, up until now Facebook’s News Feed have been pretty much left up to the company’s algorithms.

That’s about to change. And about time, too!

The history of music is full of stories of inventors – from Edison to Apple – trying to improve the listening experience. Even formats and devices that became obsolete, such as 8-track tapes or iPods, have a lasting place in the soundtracks of our growing up.
 
There were also interesting ideas that flopped. Such is the category reserved for instruments like the Tefifon. If you haven’t heard of the Tefifon, then that means you probably didn’t grow up in West Germany during the 1950s and 60s.

Imagine if the 8-track tape and a vinyl record could produce offspring. The music player’s cartridge known as a Tefi would be it.

Law enforcement has a love-hate relationship with the iPhone. Features like Activation Lock have helped crack down on smartphone thefts, but there’s always the lurking threat of someone asking Siri about 9/11 and accidentally dialling 911 in the process.

The latest issue police are butting heads with Apple about relates to the company’s late-2014 decision to no longer maintain decryption keys which let Apple unlock iOS 8 devices for police as part of active investigations.

And New York’s cops aren’t happy about it!

Steve Jobs may have been adamant that the iPad would never ship with a stylus, but more and more evidence is mounting that the upcoming 12.9-inch iPad Pro will do exactly that.

Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published an application from Apple for something called “Continuous Handwriting UI,” describing how a future iPad could be geared toward picking up and understanding handwriting.

You might hear people talking about declining interest in the iPad, but try telling that to kids — who have expressed so much love for Apple’s tablet that last year it was named the #1 brand among children aged 6-12.

Now a new piece of research suggests that little ones are so use to using tablets as their primary “screen” that it’s a punishment to have their iPad privileges revoked and be made to watch regular old, non-touchscreen TV instead.

That Apple logo on your iPhone sure is pretty, but it doesn’t do a whole lot other than remind you who made your phone in case you forget. It’s kind of lazy that way, really.

But a recently published patent suggests that Apple might put that shiny bobble to use in future models of its hardware.

If you think it’s amazing that your iPhone can recognize your thumbprint and take your pulse, apparently you’re in for some future shocks.

Dr. Justin Sanchez, program manager of the Biological Technologies Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency says that these basic biometrics are just the beginning for how our bodies could one day interact with technology.

“Many of you are just getting things back like, ‘This is what your heart rate is right now’ or ‘You took 6,000 steps today,'” Sanchez said at DARPA’s annual conference last month. “Who cares about that stuff? What you really want to do is use that information to help you interact with machines in a much deeper way.”

You can see the full presentation below.

It’s a little late to the party, but three betas in Apple released the News app it announced at WWDC 2015. Soon to be on every iPhone and iPad running iOS 9, News lets users customize the topics that are most important to them, then browse and read distraction-free news articles.

If you’re not running iOS 9 beta 3 or in a supported country like the U.S., fear not, we have the full tour.

Some comments from mobile-gaming platform DeNA chief Shintaro Asako suggest that Nintendo is taking a catch-all route when it starts bringing its beloved characters and properties to iOS and Android later this year.

Nintendo’s first five mobile offerings will all be in different genres to attract the maximum number of players across the board.

Those with an Apple developer account can download iOS 9 beta 3, and therefore experience Apple’s new Flipboard-style news app, News, right now.

The problem is, if you’re not in a supported country, like the U.S. or U.K., you may not see the News app in your beta 3 installation.

Luckily, there’s a quick and easy workaround that you can make happen right on your iOS device.

A new e-mail campaign from music streaming app Spotify is aiming to hit Apple right where it hurts — its service fees.

Spotify is notifying its iOS customers to let them know about the 30 percent extra Apple tacks onto its Premium service when listeners pay $12.99 a month through iTunes. It directs them instead to Spotify’s own website, where the same option with the same features only costs $9.99. You can see the image accompanying the e-mail below.

Another day, another iOS beta. Two weeks after Apple released iOS 9 beta 2, here arrives iOS 9 beta 3 for developers. If you haven’t already yet, go download it on your iPhone and iPad. Most notably, this is the first iOS 9 beta that includes support for Apple Music and the redesigned Music app. However, iOS 9 beta 3 brings many other changes and improvements like Apple News and even a photo album just for your selfies. Take a look.

Just when you thought the “Guess where I’m at?” post on social media was a thing of the past, Japan’s government may install free Wi-Fi on Mount Fuji

The government is working with regional officials to set up eight hotspots on the mountain, including the summit for climbers who must first take a selfie before taking in the view.

If you’re a user of a local or regional credit union like I am, you’ll be excited to hear that Apple continues to add smaller financial institutions to its ever-growing list of places that will let you pay for things using your iPhone or Apple Watch.

With these 23 new additions, Apple now has 255 Apple Pay partners available to those of us who love the future of payments.

The best feature about Apple Music has to be the incredible playlists the app builds for you based on your music tastes. But if you’ve been using Spotify for the past few years, you’ve probably got a lot of carefully curated playlists of your own.

You could rebuild you Spotify playlists manually when you switch to Apple Music but no one’s got time for that, so some clever developers have created a brilliant set of tools that will let you export Spotify playlists and add them to Apple Music. The process is a little tricky, but it makes the move to Apple Music so much better.

Here’s how to import your Spotify playlists to Apple Music: