This Week's Sponsor:

PowerPhotos

The Ultimate Toolbox for Photos on the Mac

Posts tagged with "regulation"

EU Seeks Input on iOS and iPadOS Interoperability

In September, I wrote about two interoperability proceedings commenced by the European Commission (EC) against Apple. As I wrote then:

In a nutshell, the EC is unhappy with connectivity between iOS and third-party devices and plans to tell the company how to comply. The second part requires Apple to set up a process for third parties to request connectivity with iOS.

Late yesterday, the EC published two follow-up documents requesting input from EU citizens and companies on the interoperability proceedings. DMA.100203 seeks feedback on these technical aspects:

  • The effectiveness of the measures in practice: if implemented, will the proposed measures result in effective interoperability with iOS for each feature
  • The completeness of the measures: if anything else is needed to ensure effective interoperability for the relevant feature
  • Feasibility of the measures: would there be any difficulties or obstacles in implementing each relevant proposed measure in your connected device or app
  • Timelines: is the proposed timeline for Apple to implement each proposed measure achievable?

Under DMA.100204, the EC is requesting input on the following:

  • Is the mapping of existing frameworks adequate to provide developers with prior information to submit a request and to obtain interoperability?
  • Are the proposed timelines adequate to establish a timely and predictable process that takes into account the specificities of the varying technical needs?
  • Are the proposed measures on communication and feedback allowing adequate developers’ involvement in the process?
  • Are the transparency measures allowing developers to be sufficiently informed about the process and its outcome?
  • Would the proposed process ensure a fair treatment of the requests and accountability for Apple’s decisions?
  • Are the proposed measures adequate to ensure that the request process delivers interoperability solutions that are effective and future-proof?

The deadline for commentary on both EC requests is January 9, 2025.

In response, Apple published a document yesterday explaining how it believes Meta and other companies will “weaponize interoperability,” undermining user privacy and security. As Apple puts it (emphasis in original):

If Apple were to have to grant all of these requests, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp could enable Meta to read on a user’s device all of their messages and emails, see every phone call they make or receive, track every app that they use, scan all of their photos, look at their files and calendar events, log all of their passwords, and more. This is data that Apple itself has chosen not to access in order to provide the strongest possible protection to users.

Interoperability is shaping up to be the field where the fight over opening up more of iOS and iPadOS will be fought. There are places where third-party devices, like many wearables, are at a disadvantage when connecting to iOS. However, deep system-level interoperability necessarily raises potential privacy and security concerns. This isn’t going to be an easy balance to strike, and a lot is at stake, which is why I expect these EC proceedings to be the biggest DMA story of 2025.

An App Store First: Delta Adds Patreon Link for Purchase and Perks

Delta, the MacStories Selects App of the Year, received an important update today that allows users of the game emulator to support its development via Patreon from inside the app. Existing patrons can connect their Patreon accounts from Delta’s settings, too, allowing them to access perks like alternative app icons and experimental features.

This is a big deal that goes beyond the new features for Delta supporters. According to the app’s developer, Riley Testut, Delta is the first app he’s aware of in the U.S. App Store to include an in-app link that allows users to make purchases outside the App Store using Apple’s External Purchase Link Entitlement that was introduced in January. I’m not aware of any other app that’s used the External Purchase Link Entitlement in the U.S. either, but even if there is one, Delta is certainly the highest-profile app to do so.

Signing in as an existing supporter.

Signing in as an existing supporter.

The practical effect of today’s Delta update is that it now has a new Patreon section in its settings. Existing supporters can select ‘Connect Patreon Account…,’ which takes you through a Patreon sign-in flow. Once you’re signed in, patron-only features are unlocked, and the Patreon settings section transforms into a button to unlink your account if you need to.

For Delta users who aren’t already patrons, there’s a link labeled ‘Buy for $3 at altstore.io/patreon.’ After tapping through a full-screen warning from Apple that you’re about to embark on a dangerous adventure to the World Wide Web, you’ll see Delta’s three membership tiers, which cost $3, $5, and $10 per month and offer different benefits at each tier. To get the link outside the App Store approved, the Delta team also had to offer In-App Purchase versions of their subscriptions, which they priced at $10, $15, and $30 per month to encourage people to use Patreon.

Running Nintendo DS games using the MacStories DS Skins for Delta, available to purchase [here](https://store.macstories.net/ds-skins).

Running Nintendo DS games using the MacStories DS Skins for Delta, available to purchase here.

In addition to supporting Delta’s continued development, becoming a Patreon subscriber includes perks like alternative app icons by Louie Mantia, Sebastiaan de With, Ben McCarthy, and Sean Fletcher, which are all wonderful. Patrons also have access to a new Nintendo DS online multiplayer feature and other experimental features contributed by third parties to Delta’s open-source project. For all users, today’s update adds dark versions of the app’s primary icons and a Resume button for quickly jumping back into a paused game, too.

As someone who already supports Delta, I find the convenience of being able to sign in from the app’s settings and access patron features fantastic. However, I’m even more pleased to see that new users can sign up to become patrons from inside Delta now.

It’s been quite a year for Delta. As Federico aptly put it in our Selects story last week:

In the 15 years I’ve been covering indie apps on MacStories, I don’t recall a single example of an app that had the same political, economic, and cultural impact that Delta did in 2024. Delta is a symbol of perseverance in the face of hostility from Apple’s older App Store guidelines, an example of the fact that competition in app marketplaces is the rising tide that lifts all boats, and, ultimately, just a really good app that lets people have fun and rediscover their most precious gaming memories in order to relive them today.

That perseverance continues to pay off. With a single link in its settings, Delta continues to lead the way – this time, for developers who want to offer customers options outside the App Store.

Delta is available to download for free from the App Store (it will never stop feeling good to finally write that) with alternative icons and experimental features offered as part of a Patreon subscription or In-App Purchase that’s accessible from the app’s settings.

The European Commission Opens Two iOS Interoperability Proceedings Against Apple

The European Commission (EC) issued a press release today summarizing two specification proceedings that they have commenced against Apple:

The first proceeding focuses on several iOS connectivity features and functionalities, predominantly used for and by connected devices. Connected devices are a varied, large and commercially important group of products, including smartwatches, headphones and virtual reality headsets. Companies offering these products depend on effective interoperability with smartphones and their operating systems, such as iOS. The Commission intends to specify how Apple will provide effective interoperability with functionalities such as notifications, device pairing and connectivity.

The second proceeding focuses on the process Apple has set up to address interoperability requests submitted by developers and third parties for iOS and IPadOS. It is crucial that the request process is transparent, timely, and fair so that all developers have an effective and predictable path to interoperability and are enabled to innovate.

In a nutshell, the EC is unhappy with connectivity between iOS and third-party devices and plans to tell the company how to comply. The second part requires Apple to set up a process for third parties to request connectivity with iOS.

The EC has given Apple six months to comply with its latest proceedings, during which the commission will share its preliminary findings with Apple and publish a non-confidential summary of the findings publicly so third parties can offer comments.

Apple prides itself on its tight integration between hardware and software, and the EC is determined to open that up for the benefit of all hardware manufacturers. While I think that is a good goal, we’re getting very close to the EU editing APIs, which I find hard to imagine will lead to an optimal outcome for Apple, third-party manufacturers, or consumers. However, if you accept the goal as worthwhile, it’s just as hard to imagine accomplishing it any other way given Apple’s apparent unwillingness to open iOS up itself.

The Risk to Apple of OS Envy→

With the rerelease of iOS 18.0, the EU and the rest of the world will have two flavors of the iPhone’s operating system. As Jason Snell writes for Macworld, this is one of Apple’s greatest fears, but there are potentially bigger risks on the horizon for the company. As Jason explains:

…to me, the bigger danger is envy. It strikes me that Apple has tried to make residents of the European Union envious of other regions by withholding Apple Intelligence, at least at first. There are legal reasons to do so, of course, but it’s also a lesson to Europeans that if they support such a strict regulatory regime, they’re going to be left on the side of the road while the rest of the world enjoys the bounty of AI features inside iOS. (Whether that bounty actually exists is beside the point.)

Yet, when I consider everything being experimented with in the EU, I start to wonder if the envy is actually going to flow in the other direction. The Verge said that the iPhone is now “more fun” in the EU. Noted iOS expert Federico Viticci wrote that the EU version of iOS “is the version of iOS I’ve wanted for the past few years,” and that “we can finally use our phones like actual computers.”

As someone who loves clipboard managers and uses several apps that aren’t Apple’s defaults, I am warming up to their point of view.

I’m right there with Jason. At first, the differences between my iOS and Federico’s didn’t seem like that big of a deal. Sure, it was easier for him to access AltStore, but it’s available outside the EU if you jump through some extra hoops. However, over time, the differences have multiplied. I’ve also had the chance to try Apple Intelligence in 18.1, and although there’s more to come from Apple on the AI front, which could change my calculus, from where things stand today, I’d gladly trade iOS 18.1 for the EU’s 18.0.

Permalink

The Epic Cost of Tim Sweeney’s App Store Disputes with Apple and Google→

Source: Epic Games.

Source: Epic Games.

Epic Games launched its iOS alternative app marketplace in the EU today with three of its games: Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe, and Fall Guys. Those games are also available from AltStore PAL and will be available later from Aptoide, both of which offer alternative storefronts in the EU. Epic has also said that third-party games will be added by the end of the year.

According to Stephen Totilo, who interviewed Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and others earlier this week for his excellent newsletter Game File:

The company has spent hundreds of millions battling Apple and Google since 2020 to get to this point, Sweeney told Game File during an interview conducted earlier this week.

And, he added, Epic may have missed out on as much as $1 billion in Fortnite revenue in the process,

Tim Sweeney can be a little over the top at times when talking about his company’s disputes with Apple and Google, but his in-depth response to Totilo’s question about the impact of App Store fees on the mobile gaming industry are excellent and rang true to me. Both he and Altstore co-founder Riley Testut explained to Totilo that mobile gaming and Apple would thrive if fees were reduced, with Testut pointing to changes in App Review Guidelines about emulators and virtual machines as evidence of the positive results of competition.

For anyone in the EU interested in installing the Epic Game Store, Epic has published a walkthrough video on YouTube:

Permalink

Developers Getting Access to NFC Transactions via the Secure Element in iOS 18.1→

Earlier today, Apple announced another major new functionality coming to iOS 18.1: the ability for third-party apps to offer NFC transactions via the iPhone’s Secure Element:

Starting with iOS 18.1, developers will be able to offer NFC contactless transactions using the Secure Element from within their own apps on iPhone, separate from Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. Using the new NFC and SE (Secure Element) APIs, developers will be able to offer in-app contactless transactions for in-store payments, car keys, closed-loop transit, corporate badges, student IDs, home keys, hotel keys, merchant loyalty and rewards cards, and event tickets, with government IDs to be supported in the future.

This is coming in iOS 18.1, which will also mark the official debut of Apple Intelligence. Even better, Apple has published extensive documentation on the new APIs, from which I noticed one detail: in addition to overriding the iPhone’s side button double-click with a different app, a third-party app running in the foreground will still be able to initiate its own NFC transactions, even if you set a different default app.

Eligible apps running in the foreground can prevent the system default contactless app from launching and interfering with the NFC transaction.

And:

You can acquire a presentment intent assertion to suppress the default contactless app when the user expresses an active intent to perform an NFC transaction, like choosing a payment or closed-loop transit credential, or activating the presentment UI. You can only invoke the intent assertion capability when your app is in the foreground.

The irony of all this, of course, is that Apple is under regulatory scrutiny in both Europe and the United States regarding the inability for third-party developers to offer alternative wallets and tap-to-pay systems on iPhone. But as it’s becoming apparent lately, it seems there’s no greater project manager for new iOS features than the fear of regulation.

Permalink

AI Companies Need to Be Regulated: An Open Letter to the U.S. Congress and European Parliament

[CC0: No rights reserved](https://pxhere.com/en/photo/489513).

CC0: No rights reserved.

Federico: Historically, technology has usually advanced in lockstep with opening up new creative opportunities for people. From word processors allowing writers to craft their next novel to digital cameras letting photographers express themselves in new ways or capture more moments, technological progress over the past few decades has sustained creators and, perhaps more importantly, spawned industries that couldn’t exist before.

Technology has enabled millions of people like myself to realize their life’s dreams and make a living out of “creating content” in a digital age.

This is all changing with the advent of Artificial Intelligence products based on large language models. If left unchecked without regulation, we believe the change may be for the worse.

Over the past two years, we’ve witnessed the arrival of AI tools and services that often use human input without consent with the goal of faster and cheaper results. The fascination with maximization of profits above anything else isn’t a surprise in a capitalist industry, but it’s highly concerning nonetheless – especially since, this time around, the majority of these AI tools have been built on a foundation of non-consensual appropriation, also known as – quite simply – digital theft.

As we’ve documented on MacStories and as other (and larger) publications also investigated, it’s become clear that foundation models of different LLMs have been trained on content sourced from the open web without requesting publishers’ permission upfront. These models can then power AI interfaces that can regurgitate similar content or provide answers with hidden citations that seldom prioritize driving traffic to publishers. As far as MacStories is concerned, this is limited to text scraped from our website, but we’re seeing this play out in other industries too, from design assets to photos, music, and more. And top it all off, publishers and creators whose content was appropriated for training or crawled for generative responses (or both) can’t even ask AI companies to be transparent about which parts of their content was used. It’s a black box where original content goes in and derivative slop comes out.

We think this is all wrong.

The practices followed by the majority of AI companies are ethically unfair to publishers and brazenly walk a perilous line of copyright infringement that must be regulated. Most worryingly, if ignored, we fear that these tools may lead to a gradual erosion of the open web as we know it, diminishing individuals’ creativity and consolidating “knowledge” in the hands of a few tech companies that built their AI services on the back of web publishers and creators without their explicit consent.

In other words, we’re concerned that, this time, technology won’t open up new opportunities for creative people on the web. We fear that it’ll destroy them.

We want to do something about this. And we’re starting with an open letter, embedded below, that we’re sending on behalf of MacStories, Inc. to U.S. Senators who have sponsored AI legislation as well as Italian members of the E.U. Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age.

In the letter, which we encourage other publishers to copy if they so choose, we outline our stance on AI companies taking advantage of the open web for training purposes, not compensating publishers for the content they appropriated and used, and not being transparent regarding the composition of their models’ data sets. We’re sending this letter in English today, with an Italian translation to follow in the near future.

I know that MacStories is merely a drop in the bucket of the open web. We can’t afford to sue anybody. But I’d rather hold my opinion strongly and defend my intellectual property than sit silently and accept something that I believe is fundamentally unfair for creators and dangerous for the open web. And I’m grateful to have a business partner who shares these ideals and principles with me.

With that being said, here’s a copy of the letter we’re sending to U.S. and E.U. representatives.

Read more

Apple Says It Won’t Ship Major New OS Features in the EU This Fall Due to DMA Uncertainty→

A new round in the fight between the EU and Apple has been brewing for a while now. About a week ago, the Financial Times reported that unnamed sources said that the EU was poised to levy significant fines against the company over a probe of Apple’s compliance with the Digital Markets Act. Then, earlier this week, in an interview with CNBC, the EU’s competition chief, Margrethe Vestager telegraphed that Apple is facing enforcement measures:

[Apple] are very important because a lot of good business happens through the App Store, happens through payment mechanisms, so of course, even though you know I can say this is not what was expected of such a company, of course we will enforce exactly with the same top priority as with any other business.

Asked when enforcement might happen, Vestager told CNBC ‘hopefully soon.’

Apple made no comment to CNBC at the time, but today, that shoe has apparently dropped, with Apple telling the Financial Times that:

Due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act, we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these [new] features – iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence – to our EU users this year.

Is it a coincidence that Apple made its statement to the same media outlet that reported that fines were about to be assessed? I doubt it. The more likely scenario is that Apple is using OS updates as a negotiating chip with EU regulators. Your guess is as good as mine whether the move will work. Personally, I think the tactic is just as likely to backfire. However, I’m quite confident that you’ll be hearing from me again about fines by the EU against Apple sooner rather than later.

Permalink

AppStories, Episode 382 – A Roomful of Suits: AltStore and Delta with Riley Testut→

This week on AppStories, we are joined by Riley Testut for a conversation about the history of AltStore from side-loaded app to official alternative app marketplace in the EU and Delta’s dominance of the Top Free App chart in the US and elsewhere..

Sponsored by:

  • Tailscale: Secure remote access to shared resources. Sign up today.
  • Notion: Start turning ideas into action. Try it free today.

An Interview with Riley Testut

[Subscribe here.](https://appstories.net/plans)

Subscribe here.

On AppStories+, I propose an optimistic perspective on iOS gaming.

We deliver AppStories+ to subscribers with bonus content, ad-free, and at a high bitrate early every week.

To learn more about the benefits included with an AppStories+ subscription, visit our Plans page, or read the AppStories+ FAQ.

Read more