App Store

South Korea may be close to approving an amendment to its Telecommunications Business Act that would force companies like Apple and Google to allow third-party payment options in their app stores. With a final decision coming as soon as Wednesday, August 25, Apple has shared concerns about what the bill would mean for the App Store.

FlickType announced today it’s discontinuing its iPhone keyboard app for blind users after Apple didn’t approve its latest update and failed to reply back to the developer.

Earlier this week, a group of bipartisan US senators introduced a sweeping piece of legislation taking aim at Apple’s App Store. The US House of Representatives is now following suit, with a group of bipartisan representatives introducing a similar companion bill dubbed the Open App Markets Act.

It’s been a few months since the last bill tried to break Apple and Google’s app store monopoly on their respective platforms. Now, a bipartisan bill seeks to bring more competition to the app store market and would require Apple to open the iPhone to third-party app stores and sideloading.

App Store users and developers in Australia have reported today that Apple has featured scam apps on the App Store. This time, in a “Slime Relaxations” story, the company is promoting apps that have $10+ weekly subscriptions, many of which don’t do anything.

One of the features coming with iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 is the possibility to discover in-app events through the App Store. As spotted by graphic designer Brahm Shank, while running iPadOS 15, he found a featured TikTok in-app event. This feature is launching with iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 later this fall.

Apple has removed an app called “Unjected” from the App Store for violating its guidelines around COVID-19 and misinformation, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The app, which billed itself as a place for “like-minded people that support medical autonomy and free speech,” was available in the App Store until Bloomberg reached out for comment.

In the process of denying he asked Tim Cook to be CEO of Apple during an alleged conversation about a Tesla acquisition, Elon Musk has turned his attention to Apple’s App Store, saying Epic Games is right and that Apple holds a “de facto global tax on the Internet.”

Right after Snapchat went down, it seems that some Apple services are also experiencing issues on Thursday night. Apple just confirmed that the App Store and iTunes Store are not available right now for some users, as shown on the System Status webpage on Apple’s website.

Update (4:43 PM PT): Apple says the outage has now been fixed. You can read the original article below.

After a lot of back and forth and Apple rejecting Facebook’s standalone iOS app version of its gaming service, the social media platform has followed in the footsteps of Microsoft and launched a web app of its young gaming platform for iPhone and iPad.

Apple on Friday removed the Fakespot app from the iOS App Store. Fakespot, which is a service for filtering and hiding fake product reviews on Amazon, launched its iOS app last month, but now, the app has been taken down following a request from Amazon itself.

A new study has been published that aims to show how popular Apple and Google’s first-party apps are and to specifically make the case that they limit competition as they’re preinstalled. The Verge got an exclusive look at the study that was paid for by one of Apple and Google’s biggest critics. However, Apple says the study was “seriously flawed.”

In a new interview, Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of worldwide developer relations, and Andreas Wendker, Apple’s vice president of tools and frameworks engineering, talk about the new tools developers have available after WWDC21.

On September 17, a French court will be hearing a case brought by the finance ministry against Apple, according to a report by Reuters. Similar to what happened with the Epic Games vs. Apple case, the French finance ministry alleges abusive contractual terms imposed by Apple for selling software on the App Store.

Apple is currently busy trying to extricate itself from an App Store mess. It’s making calls, writing letters, publishing white papers, and conducting interviews, all in an attempt to reverse the antitrust tide.

Some of the moves it is making frankly signal desperation, and it’s astonishing to me that the company missed an opportunity to enjoy a PR dream instead of its current defensive nightmare.

It’s not like Apple couldn’t see this coming – it had internal discussions about the issue a full decade ago …

Alongside a 16-page essay on why App Store protections are good and sideloading is bad, and lobbying calls to Congress by Apple CEO Tim Cook, the company’s head of user privacy is also arguing its case in a Fast Company interview.

While those in favor of third-party app stores for iOS apps argue that they would offer users and developers alike greater choice, Eric Neuenschwander suggests the exact opposite is true …