There’s an old adage in poker: If you look around the table and you can’t tell who the fish is, that means you’re the fish.
If you’re surprised at how this publicity stunt from Epic has turned out, especially if you’re a reporter and ran a piece accepting Tim Sweeney’s word that Fortnite was — not might be, but was — coming back to the US App Store as a fact, then you are Tim Sweeney’s fish.
Earlier this week Nilay Patel was working on the show notes for the episode of Decoder I guested on, and he texted me to ask if I could recall the time Steve Jobs sent some random developer a link to an article I wrote about the App Store. He wanted to cite it as an example ...
Nilay Patel:
There’s a lot of tactical stuff you might talk about in the
aftermath of this ruling — about what Apple might do next, how it
might impact revenue, and how developers might respond. But I
really wanted Gruber to talk about Apple’s big picture and how a
compa...
Speaking of Jacob Eiting, his company RevenueCat today posted some interesting findings from a test comparing conversions rates for IAP vs. web checkout for the same app:
Two weeks ago, there was a court order in the Apple vs Epic case
that forced Apple to allow develope...
Andy Allen, of Not Boring Software, last week on Threads:
While the focus on the App Store injunction has been mostly on the
commission rate, what’s been overlooked is just how far the tools
of the App Store have fallen behind.
There’s a long and growing list of feature...
Some interesting follow-up on that piece yesterday about the warning — with a prominent red “!” icon — in App Store listings for apps in the EU that use their own payment processing. Apple told me that exact same warning has been in place since the very beginning of their DM...
Dr. Drang, writing at And Now It’s All This:
Back before the LaserWriter and PostScript (it’s an all InterCaps
day here at ANIAT) made resolution independence commonplace, most
printers were of the dot-matrix variety, usually at a fairly low
resolution. The original Imag...
Jacob Parry, reporting last week for Politico:
“We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made
dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users
have asked for,” said Apple spokesperson Emma Wilson. “Despite
countless meetings, the Com...
Arjun Kharpal, reporting for CNBC:
“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said. “I
said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming
here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over
India.’ I don’t want you building in India....
Apple Newsroom:
Starting today, CarPlay Ultra, the next generation of CarPlay, is
available with new Aston Martin vehicle orders in the U.S.
and Canada, and will be available for existing models that feature
the brand’s next-generation infotainment system through a softw...
Variety:
The surprise announcement, made less than two months after Max
tweaked its logo to look more like the classic black-and-white HBO
color scheme, was revealed at Warner Bros. Discovery’s upfront
presentation to ad execs in New York on Wednesday.
In a press releas...
The app in question, Instacar, is not available in the US App Store, but multiple people in the EU have confirmed this warning on its App Store page is real:
This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure
payment system. It uses external purchases.
The wa...
Following up on my gripe regarding the alternative a glyph used in Apple Notes, here’s Kevin Fox, tweeting on Threads:
While we’re waxing nostalgic on the Original Mac, a Daring
Fireball post today (below) reminded me of another piece of Mac
128k trivia.
Until shortly b...
Major League Baseball on Tuesday removed Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson — two of the sport’s most famous players who were previously kicked out of baseball for gambling on the game — from the league’s permanently ineligible list.
The historic decision by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred allows Rose to be considered for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, an honor that had been ruled out as part of the settlement he reached with Major League Baseball. Rose died in September, and Manfred ruled that his lifetime ban ended with his death.
Like a stopped clock displaying the correct time twice a day, even Rob Manfred occasionally makes a correct decision for baseball.
My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring last week at DF. Modern authentication should be seamless and secure. WorkOS makes it easy to integrate features like MFA, SSO, and RBAC. Whether you’re replacing passwords, stopping fraud, or adding enterprise auth, WorkOS can help you build frictionless auth that scales.
New features they launched just last month include:
Nathan Ingraham, writing for Engadget:
There are a lot of rumors flying around about a big iOS and macOS redesign coming this year, perhaps as a distraction to the continued issues around Apple Intelligence. And while I’m game for a fresh coat of paint across the softwar...
Benedict Evans, tweeting on Threads this week:
Apple thinks an awful lot about customer delight and customer satisfaction…
And separately, a whole other part of Apple treats its suppliers with quiet ruthlessness, squeezing them for every penny of margin.
And at some po...
CBS News:
The Trump administration is “actively looking at” the possibility
of suspending the writ of habeas corpus to handle people the
administration says aren’t in the country legally, White House
deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said Friday.
A writ of habeas cor...
Kif Leswing, reporting for CNBC:
Epic Games said on Friday that it submitted Fortnite to Apple’s App Store, the month after a judge ruled in favor of the game maker in a contempt ruling.
Fortnite was booted from iPhones and Apple’s App Store in 2020, after Epic Games up...
William Gallagher, writing last week for AppleInsider:
Judge Rogers maintains that Apple had successfully made as few
developers as possible benefit from the court’s original
anti-steering ruling. “As of the May 2024 hearing,” she wrote,
“only 34 developers out of the ap...
Tim Hardwick, reporting for MacRumors:
Apple has filed an emergency motion asking the Ninth Circuit Court
of Appeals to pause key parts of a recent ruling that dramatically
changes how the App Store operates, following a contempt finding
in its long-running legal battle ...
Co-hosts Stephen Robles and Jason Aten were kind enough to have me on their podcast earlier today, and the show’s already up:
Special guest John Gruber joins us to break down Eddy Cue’s statements on AI replacing the iPhone in 10 years, using AI search in Safari, Apple’s continued fight for App Store control, and what we’ll hear about Siri and Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2025.
Iain Thomson, for The Register:
According to Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s senior veep in the counter
adversary division, North Korean infiltrators are bagging roles
worldwide throughout the year. Thousands are said to have
infiltrated the Fortune 500.
They’re masking IPs,...
Micah Lee, in a spectacularly detailed post:
On Thursday, 404 Media reported that in the Reuters
photo showing former National Security Advisor and war
criminal Mike Waltz checking his Signal messages under the
table, he was actually using an obscure modified Signal app...
Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. is “actively looking at” revamping the Safari web
browser on its devices to focus on AI-powered search engines, a
seismic shift for the industry hastened by the potential end of a
longtime partnership with Google.
Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice pres...
Aftermath:
Welcome to Aftermath, a worker-owned, reader-supported news site
covering video games, the internet, and the cultures that
surround them.
You might remember most of us from Kotaku, where we broke news,
covered events, and brought you hard-hitting investigatio...
Kyle Orland, reporting for Ars Technica last week:
Vox Media has sold video game specialist website Polygon to
Internet brand aggregator Valnet, the publisher of
content-churning sites including Game Rant, OpenCritic, Android
Police, and Comic Book Resources. The move co...
Andrew Liszewski, The Verge:
Contrary to prior limitations, there is now a prominent orange
“Get book” button on Kindle app’s book listings. [...]
Before today’s updates, buying books wasn’t a feature you’d find
in the Kindle mobile app following app store rule changes ...
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