Apple’s Search Ads business is becoming an increasingly important part of its Services revenue. In a presentation to advertising clients today, obtained by 9to5Mac, the company emphasizes that even as Search Ads continue to grow, the vast majority of users are opting for an experience that doesn’t rely on personalized advertising.
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Customers in India are no longer able to use a debit or credit card for subscriptions and app purchases using their Apple ID. This means they can no longer purchase apps from the App Store, subscribe to Apple services, or buy any Apple media with credit or debit.
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The man of the hour, Elon Musk, is tweeting as much as he can in these past few weeks – and might be related to his deal to buy Twitter. In his latest tweet, Musk is once again attacking Apple’s App Store fees to developers. This time, he compares it to having a “30% tax on the internet.”
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Apple’s antitrust mess keeps getting worse, with today’s Apple Pay announcement as the latest example. The company is now under fire on so many flanks in so many countries that it spends half its PR life trying to defend its stance – and legislation is ultimately going to force it to change anyway.
To me, the most baffling thing about the company’s stubbornness on this issue is that the mess could so easily be resolved, and my bet is that it wouldn’t even cost the company much money.
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After being fined 10 times by a Dutch watchdog group, Apple is still under fire for its actions regarding App Store policies relating to dating apps, with the Netherlands Authority for Consumers & Markets (ACM) saying they are “insufficient.” The ACM says it will need up to several weeks to see what actions it will take next.
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As a response to recent coverage of software being purged from the App Store, Apple is sharing its criteria for how it chooses to remove abandoned apps. The company is also reiterating that the practice is not new but instead part of an initiative that started six years ago. Developers will also have more time to comply after being notified.
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There’s no denying TikTok’s growing popularity. In a Sensor Tower report on Store Intelligence Data for Q1 2022, TikTok was named the top downloaded app worldwide. Surpassing Instagram for this spot, it reached 3.5 billion all-time downloads in Q1 last year. This made it the first app to cross that threshold that is not owned by Meta.
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A new Japanese antitrust report into the smartphone market has raised the possibility of new legislation intended to reduce the dominance of Apple and Google. It calls for multiple app stores for each platform.
Additionally, it suggests that the preinstallation of Apple and Google’s own web browsers on smartphones means that competitor apps are disadvantaged …
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Last year, Apple announced a handful of changes coming to the App Store in response to a class-action lawsuit from US developers. In addition, the company had unveiled a Small Developer Assistance Fund, which would pay out between $250 to $30,000 to developers making under $1 million per year in the App Store. Now, this assistance submission request for small developers is due by May 20.
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“Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day,” would sing The Mamas & The Papas – if you are able to check lyrics for songs using Apple Music. Some are experiencing downtime for Apple Music. Not only that, the App Store is also facing an outage this Monday, as 9to5Mac reported earlier today that privacy labels are now missing from apps.
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Update: A source familiar with the privacy labels missing from the App Store tells 9to5Mac that this bug will will be fixed as soon as possible.
A year and a half ago, Apple’s App Store privacy labels went live. At that time, Apple wanted to provide a more detailed and easy-to-read view of app privacy practices. Now, mysteriously, these labels are all gone from apps on the App Store and the Mac App Store.
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Apple has been sending some developers an email titled ”App Improvement Notice,” warning that the company will remove from the App Store apps that haven’t been ”updated in a significant amount of time.”
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With an enormous amount of apps on the App Store, it’s sometimes hard to decide which ones are worth downloading. I’ve been a college student off-and-on for some time now, and I’ve come to realize that certain apps can really make your life easier.
As a current graduate student, here are the top free apps I use the most for school. Keep in mind, this is coming from someone who uses a mixture of both Apple and non-Apple devices.
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A campaign group has criticized Apple’s twice-yearly transparency reports, saying that in one very important respect they are not very transparent.
One section of the report covers App Store Takedown Requests, and Apple is accused of deliberately concealing information about the apps it removes …
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Apple has called out Meta for its hypocrisy in taking close to a 50% cut from metaverse content providers despite having criticized Apple for its own 30% cut of App Store sales.
Meta has often commented disparagingly about Apple’s ‘fees and taxes’ on app sales …
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Apps whose business model is based on subscriptions and in-app-purchases are becoming increasingly popular, and even Apple supports this practice on the App Store. However, some developers have been abusing this system to trick users into paying upfront for macOS apps that are allegedly free.
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Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is taking a cut of up to 47.5% on digital assets sold within its virtual reality platform, Horizon Worlds. Horizon Worlds is a free VR game that lets users build and explore virtual worlds. While it’s all part of Meta’s plan for creating its virtual “metaverse,” it comes at a cost to creators.
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NFT apps have been on Apple’s App Store for a while. Those that remained only allowed the browsing of NFTs – not selling them. While there’s no official guidelines surrounding NFTs on iOS, it is difficult for app developers to know what they can and cannot do.
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On Thursday, Apple released a press release and report conducted by the Analysis Group on the success of third-party apps on its App Store. Scrolling through the report, you may see some apps that look familiar and some that may not. Just what exactly are these apps? Also, why would anyone use them over one of Apple’s apps? Why are they popular?
Let’s take a closer look at some of these popular third-party apps used on iPhones within the United States.
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Apple has defied Russian threats and restored to the App Store the Smart Voting app it removed in September. The app was created by jailed opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, in order to help strategic voting against Putin.
In September of last year, Russian agents had threatened to imprison both Apple and Google staff unless the app was removed within 24 hours – including a particularly chilling threat against Google’s top exec in Moscow …
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Apple was recently required to let developers redirect users to third-party payment platforms instead of using the App Store’s in-app purchases system. Now 9to5Mac has discovered that the iOS 15.5 beta adds support for apps with external purchases following the announcement of a new entitlement option for “reader apps.”
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After first announcing the news last fall, Apple has started accepting requests from developers of reader apps to allow the use of external links for customers to sign up and manage their accounts outside the App Store. Meanwhile, Apple has also changed its policy on dating apps in the Netherlands after coming under fire by Dutch regulators.
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Apple has already been fined $55M by Dutch antitrust regulators, but a new Dutch class action lawsuit is going after the Cupertino company for billions rather than millions.
The lawsuit alleges that the 15% or 30% commission Apple charges makes app prices higher than they should be, and that the total cost to consumers is almost €5B ($5.5B) …
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This week has seen Apple fined for the ninth time as it again failed to satisfy the Dutch antitrust regulator ACM that it was complying with the law in respect of the App Store.
Fines now total €45M ($49.7M), and if a tenth one is issued, that will hit the legal cap of €50M ($55M) – but that won’t be the end of it …
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