The European Union is watching the Apple versus Epic Games trial closely, says the head of the EU’s competition watchdog, but its own investigations will proceed regardless of the outcome.
European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said that both of the EU’s antitrust investigations into Apple were progressing …
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Apple Fellow Phil Schiller officially took the stand today in Apple’s legal battle against Epic Games. The Apple veteran focused heavily on the early days of the App Store, but also provided some interesting tidbits on what it costs to run WWDC, a new developer center coming to Apple Park, and more.
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Last month we learned that Apple had approved the latest update that Parler had submitted, giving the green light to allow the social media platform back on the App Store. However, Parler hadn’t released the update and the app wasn’t available – until today. Here’s how Parler was able to “address Apple’s concerns without compromising” its “core mission.”
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Amid growing scrutiny of the App Store and the prevalence of scam and rip-off applications, Apple has published a new press release today highlighting the measures it takes to protect users. In the press release, Apple claims that the App Store stopped more than $1.5 billion in “potentially fraudulent transactions in 2020.
Apple also says it recently deployed new tools to combat fake reviews on the App Store.
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The Epic vs. Apple court case started on May 3. As it still has two more weeks to go, here’s what we’ve learned this week with the trial.
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As the Epic court case goes on, we have been learning more details about internal discussions within Apple business. With the testimony of Trystan Kosmynka, one of the heads of the App Store, on Friday, we have been able to discover more about the App Store numbers, and we can say that the iPhone App Store is Apple’s only big hit. Here’s why.
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You may not remember, but a modified copy of Xcode that surfaced on the web in 2015 was responsible for injecting malware into several iPhone and iPad apps that were subsequently uploaded to the App Store. Now, thanks to the Epic vs. Apple trial, internal Apple emails have revealed that more than 128 million iOS users were affected by the “XcodeGhost” malware.
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As the Epic Games v. Apple court case goes forward, we have been learning more details about internal discussions within each company about their business models and more. With the testimony of Trystan Kosmynka, one of the heads of the App Store, more information about the App Store review process has been revealed.
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Microsoft tried to launch its xCloud game streaming service on the App Store for iPhone and iPad users, but Apple rejected the app due to its strict guidelines. Now emails revealed in the Epic vs. Apple trial on Wednesday show that Apple even removed a similar app from the App Store after its existence was mentioned by Microsoft.
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Apple announced on Monday some changes coming to App Store taxes and prices in Kenya, Nigeria, Peru, and Sweden. While Apple will increase the price of apps and transactions in most of the mentioned countries, one of them will soon have prices decreased.
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Epic Games has announced that it has acquired artist portfolio and sales site ArtStation, for an undisclosed fee. In a move likely designed to strengthen its antitrust case against Apple, Epic has told artists that it is reducing its standard commission from 30% to 12%.
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The long-awaited App Tracking Transparency feature became available to iPhone and iPad users this week with the release of iOS 14.5, and users can now opt out of being tracked by third-party apps. Now, app analysis firm AppFigures has revealed some statistics on the adoption of this feature.
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Apple appears to be testing a notable change to the App Store as part of its efforts to improve the Search experience. While not fully rolled out yet, some iPhone users are now seeing tags in the App Store when searching for popular terms.
Update 4/29: Apple is officially rolling out the feature starting today.
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Back in 2018, Apple started cracking down on third-party iOS parental control apps. In the wake of that, the Russian Federal Anti-monopoly Service (FAS) investigated Apple and found the company guilty of market abuse. Now the official fine has been announced with Apple owing $12 million to the Russian government.
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On the heels of last week’s Senate antitrust hearing with Apple, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has appeared on Nilay Patel’s Decoder podcast at the Verge. In the interview, Klobuchar outlines a variety of ways in which she hopes to rein in the power of big tech, particularly in regards to Apple and the App Store.
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Apple has updated its Developer’s page to again waive the App Store requirement for paid online group services to use App Store in-app purchases for payments. This comes as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause businesses to pivot to digital services rather than in-person.
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The latest antitrust hearing looking into concerns about Apple and Google’s market power is underway. Along with the companies getting a grilling from the Congressional subcommittee on antitrust, representatives from Spotify, Tile, and more are testifying about how they see the two tech giants as stifling competition.
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After removing Parler from the App Store back in January, Apple has reportedly decided to allow the app to come back. According to a new report from CNN, Apple has approved Parler’s latest attempt to return to the App Store follow improvements to the moderation system…
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Developer Kosta Eleftheriou has developed a knack for finding App Store scams over the last few months. And the latest one he’s exposed is quite interesting. The app disguises itself as a kids’ game but in reality, it’s an online casino that bypasses Apple’s in-app purchase system and appears to be scamming users out of unknown sums.
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Apple has shared a Newsroom post today featuring four Canadian App Store developers as well as highlighting the growth that the platform has seen in the country over the last year.
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At the end of last week, it was reported that Apple had refused to send a witness to a senate hearing on the state of app store policy and industry competition. Representatives from the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee said that Apple had “abruptly declared” it would not provide a witness, and that lack of participation was unacceptable.
However, Apple says that this is inaccurate and Apple had simply asked for more time to arrange scheduling matters. The company will in fact be sending chief compliance officer Kyle Andeer to the proceedings.
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Internal documents released as part of the Epic Games lawsuit reveal an Apple anti-fraud engineer suggesting that App Store checks were grossly inadequate.
Epic cited two particularly damning quotes from Eric Friedman, head of the company’s Fraud Engineering Algorithms and Risk unit, in internal documents …
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FlickType and Fleksy founder Kosta Eleftheriou has been pretty busy over the past few months exposing scam iOS apps, some of them bringing in millions of dollars of revenue. The latest of these is a VPN app that is promoting itself as “recommended by Apple” and which is estimated to be earning a million dollars a month.
Eleftheriou highlights six eye-opening aspects of the app, which not only made it through Apple’s vetting process, but was given significant visibility in the App Store thanks to the number of (fake) reviews …
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The UK government’s introduction of digital taxes on companies like Apple and Google could provoke a new trade war between the US and UK.
The digital taxes apply to online products sold within the UK such as App Store purchases, and have been estimated to total of almost a billion dollars a year …
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