Jeremy Provost of development firm Think Tap Work:

It’s been 64 days since we first noticed Apple’s second ad position in search results for iPhone and iPad. Our update after two weeks showed consistently less search ad impressions for our apps, unless we invested heavily in paying for Search Ads.

Here are some updated numbers. Just like last time, these numbers only include App Store Search impressions from iOS devices. As you’ll see, these numbers get harder and harder to compare over time.

Chris Lindsay, developer of Nihongo, a Japanese dictionary app:

Before the rollout, my organic and paid downloads had remained pretty steady for most of the last year. After the rollout, my my organic installs dropped, and my paid installs rose. My overall downloads actually stayed roughly flat, but a large chunk of what used to be organic downloads appears to have shifted into paid downloads instead:

The ads themselves still work well. The problem is that many of these paid downloads seem to be users I previously would have acquired organically.

These ads are effectively another surcharge Apple has foisted upon developers for the privilege of distributing software to my iPhone and yours. Far from being premium “curated” experience, the App Store is this way because Apple has every incentive to steadily make it a little bit worse for users and developers — because where else are you going to go for your iPhone apps?

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Jeff Johnson:

I’d like to make an analogy between software development and Apple App Store review. A common, cursory reaction to the obvious failures of app review, the continual appearance of countless scams in the App Store, is to suggest that Apple hire more reviewers. My contention is that adding reviewers is not a solution to the problem of App Store curation, and the belief in such a solution is a myth. I don’t claim that hiring more reviewers would make app review slower. Rather, I think that meaningful, effective curation can’t be measured simply by the amount of available labor, much like [Fred] Brooks argues that the possibility of measuring useful work in units of time, man-months, is a myth.

Apple markets the App Store as a “curated storefront”, but that is not meaningfully true if it is serving up, as Apple says, about two million apps. Meanwhile, as Johnson writes, “nobody worries about scams in Apple Arcade […] a truly curated service”.

The thing is that Apple’s App Store should have a carefully selected inventory of apps. That is Apple’s whole brand: premium, highly-desirable products, and people are willing to pay a little more. The App Store does not match that promise. I think the direction of regulatory and court decisions on the governance of iOS app distribution could be a gift for more selective curation, the kind of thing for which some third-party developers would want to pay extra compared to the competing third-party app marketplaces that would also be available.

Alas, we are on the cusp of another WWDC during which Apple seems unlikely to make major changes to software distribution across its many “post-P.C.” platforms.

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Samantha Cole, 404 Media:

On the morning of December 4, five ninth grade girls, all 14 or 15 years old, showed up for class at Radnor High School. By 8 a.m. — the sun had been up for less than an hour — it felt like the entire school already heard what happened the night before. A fellow freshman boy allegedly created AI-generated sexually explicit videos of the girls using an app, and sent them to his friends. From there, word of the videos and gossip spread from teenager to teenager, school to school, until they made their way back to the girls whose faces were in the deepfakes.

[…]

The images originated from one boy, who used an app called Movely, the girls and their parents believe. The app is similar to dozens hosted in the Apple and Google app stores and advertised on Instagram and TikTok that promise to create AI images and videos of users as superheroes, animals, or influencers; behind a paywall, however, users could edit photos and videos with text prompts.

It almost goes without saying, but the “paywall” is — or was; the app has been removed — an in-app payment from which Apple takes a 15–30% cut.

Apple released its annual justification for running software distribution through the App Store — it told European regulators it actually has five, so maybe this press release only concerns the one accessible from an iPhone — and there are some big numbers in it, as usual. Apple says it “took a number of actions to block bad actors from distributing malicious software, rejecting over 2 million problematic app submissions last year alone”. This Movely app was not one of them. It was only removed after the Tech Transparency Project reported in April that App Store search terms like “nudify” and “undress” displayed results for apps that do exactly that. In its press release, Apple says it has many features for directing kids to age-appropriate apps and restricting them from downloading those which are not but, of the software found by TTP in the App Store and Google Play Store, “31 of the apps were rated suitable for minors”.

Of Movely, the TTP said in its report:

Likewise, an App Store search for “adult AI” returned an ad for Movely – AI Photo to Video. The app offers a suite of AI photo and video editing tools including a try-on feature that will replace a woman’s clothes with outfits including bikinis and lingerie. One tool allows users to select part of any photo and edit it with a text prompt. To test this feature, TTP uploaded an image of a woman in a white T-shirt standing next to a river. After using the selection tool to highlight the woman’s shirt, we entered the prompt “topless.” The app immediately generated four versions of the woman nude from the waist up. It required a paid subscription to download the AI images.

TTP could not reach Movely’s developer, FES2 Inc., for comment. Emails sent to the developer bounced back as undeliverable.

(For clarity, the TTP says it used A.I.-generated images of women to test these apps.)

The search query used to find this app, “adult A.I.”, feels like something Apple should be testing against. If it does not want porn or porn-adjacent apps in its store, it should obviously block these kinds of keywords and flag the apps which are in the results. Moreover, Apple says:

As powerful AI development tools drive a surge in app submissions, Apple’s App Review process has seamlessly scaled to handle the volume and to help ensure every new app and app update meets the App Store’s high standards for privacy, security, and quality.

The Movely app should have raised flags here, too. The developer’s website was, according to the .co whois site, registered in July 2025, and is basically a placeholder. The app’s website was registered a week earlier, and the email address in the privacy policy does not match the one in the terms of service, nor does either match the developer’s website. Also, the blog is full of posts about generating A.I. girls and changing clothes.

These red flags are not obvious in hindsight; they should have been obvious from the time this app was submitted. Meanwhile, apps from longtime and trustworthy developers like Manton Reece and Radu Dutzan are stuck in App Review for dumb and basically invalid reasons.

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Liam Mo and Brenda Goh, Reuters:

A group of 55 Chinese iPhone and iPad users filed a complaint with China’s market regulator on Monday, a lawyer representing the group said, alleging that Apple abuses its market dominance by restricting app distribution and payments to its own platforms while charging high commissions.

[…]

This marks the second complaint against Apple led by Wang. A similar case filed in 2021 was dismissed by a Shanghai court last year.

Imran Rahman-Jones, BBC News:

But the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has designated both Apple and Google as having “strategic market status” – effectively saying they have a lot of power over mobile platforms.

The ruling has drawn fury from the tech giants, with Apple saying it risked harming consumers through “weaker privacy” and “delayed access to new features”, while Google called the decision “disappointing, disproportionate and unwarranted”.

The CMA said the two companies “may be limiting innovation and competition”.

Pretty soon it may be easier to list the significant markets in which Apple is still able to exercise complete control over iOS app distribution.

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Apple issued a news release today touting the safety of the App Store, dutifully covered without context by outlets like 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, and MacRumors. This has become an annual tradition in trying to convince people — specifically, developers and regulators — of the wisdom of allowing native software to be distributed for iOS only through the App Store. Apple published similar stats in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, reflecting the company’s efforts in each preceding year. Each contains similar figures; for example:

• In its new report, Apple says it “terminated more than 146,000 developer accounts over fraud concerns” in 2024, an increase from 118,000 in 2023, which itself was a decrease from 428,000 in 2022. Apple said the decrease between 2022 and 2023 was “thanks to continued improvements to prevent the creation of potentially fraudulent accounts in the first place”. Does the increase in 2024 reflect poorer initial anti-fraud controls, or an increase in fraud attempts? Is it possible to know either way?

• Apple says it deactivated “nearly 129 million customer accounts” in 2024, a significant decrease from deactivating 374 million the year prior. However, it blocked 711 million account creations in 2024, which is several times greater than the 153 million blocked in the year before. Compare to 2022, when it disabled 282 million accounts and prevented the creation of 198 million potentially fraudulent accounts. In 2021, the same numbers were 170 million and 118 million; in 2020, 244 million and 424 million. These numbers are all over the place.

• A new statistic Apple is publishing this year is “illicit app distribution”. It says that, in the past month, it “stopped nearly 4.6 million attempts to install or launch apps distributed illicitly outside the App Store or approved third-party marketplaces”. These are not necessarily fraudulent, pirated, or otherwise untoward apps. This statistic is basically a reflection of the control maintained by Apple over iOS regardless of user intentions.

There are plenty of numbers just like these in Apple’s press release. They all look impressive in large part because just about any statistic would be at Apple’s scale. Apple is also undeniably using the App Store to act as a fraud reduction filter, with mixed results. I do not expect a 100% success rate, but I still do not know how much can be gleaned from context-free numbers.

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Rolfe Winkler, Amrith Ramkumar, and Meghan Bobrowsky, Wall Street Journal:

Apple stepped up efforts in recent weeks to fight Texas legislation that would require the iPhone-maker to verify ages of device users, even drafting Chief Executive Tim Cook into the fight.

The CEO called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week to ask for changes to the legislation or, failing that, for a veto, according to people familiar with the call. These people said that the conversation was cordial and that it made clear the extent of Apple’s interest in stopping the bill.

Abbott has yet to say whether he will sign it, though it passed the Texas legislature with veto-proof majorities.

This comes just a few months after Apple announced it would be introducing age range APIs in iOS later this year. Earlier this month, U.S. lawmakers announced federal bills with the same intent. This is clearly the direction things are going. Is there something specific in Texas’ bill that makes it particularly objectionable? Or is it simply the case Apple and Google would prefer a single federal law instead of individual state laws?

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Last month, Brazilian competition authorities ruled against Apple, finding in an increasingly familiar pattern that its anti-steering App Store rules are illegal. It imposed a twenty-day deadline for compliance.

Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac:

According to a new Valor Econômico report, a Brazilian Federal Court judge has ruled that the decision by Cade, the Brazilian regulator, is “disproportionate and unnecessary.” The judge understood that the measures imposed by the regulator “change, in a sensitive and structural way” Apple’s business operation.

Cade ruled on November 26 that Apple would have 20 days to comply with antitrust legislation, otherwise it would be fined R$250,000 (US$42,000) per day. Apple had previously appealed on the grounds that the changes requested were too complex and would take too long to be made, so the company wouldn’t be able to meet the 20-day deadline.

Twenty days does seem like a tight turnaround. I have obviously no idea what it would take to copy-and-paste the same policies it uses in Japan, Korea, and the United States, but perhaps it would be easier to rip off the bandage and do so worldwide.

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Natasha Lomas, TechCrunch:

One big change Apple announced Thursday is that developers who include link-outs in their apps will no longer need to accept the newer version of its business terms — which requires they commit to paying the Core Technology Fee (CTF) the EU is investigating.

In another notable revision of approach, Apple is giving developers more flexibility around how they can communicate external offers and the types of offers they can promote through their iOS apps. Apple said developers will be able to inform users about offers available anywhere, not only on their own websites — such as through other apps and app marketplaces.

These are good changes. Users will also be able to turn off the scary alerts when using external purchasing mechanisms. But there is a catch.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

There are two fees that are associated with directing customers to purchase options outside of the App Store. A 5 percent initial acquisition fee is paid for all sales of digital goods and services that the customer makes on any platform that occur within a 12-month period after an initial install. The fee does not apply to transactions made by customers that had an initial install before the new link changes, but is applicable for new downloads.

Apple says that the initial acquisition fee reflects the value that the App Store provides when connecting developers with customers in the European Union.

The other new fee is a Store Services Fee of 7% or 20% assessed annually. Apple says it “reflects the ongoing services and capabilities that Apple provides developers”:

[…] including app distribution and management; App Review; App Store trust and safety; re-discovery, re-engagement and promotional tools and services; anti-fraud checks; recommendations; ratings and reviews; customer support; and more.

Contrary to its name, this fee does not apply solely to apps acquired through the App Store; rather, it is assessed against any digital purchase made on any platform. If an app is first downloaded on an iPhone and then, within a year, the user ultimately purchases a subscription in the Windows version of the same app, Apple believes it deserves 7–20% of the cost of that subscription in perpetuity, plus 5% for the first year’s instance. This seems to be the case no matter whether the iPhone version of that app is ever touched again.

I am not sure what business standards apply here and whether it is completely outlandish, but it sure feels that way. The App Store certainly helps with app discovery to some degree, and Apple does provide a lot of services whether developers want them or not. Yet this basically ties part of a developer’s entire revenue stream to Apple; the part is unknown but will be determined based on whichever customers used the iPhone version of an app first.

I think I have all this right based on news reports from those briefed by Apple and the new contract (PDF), but I might have messed something up. Please let me know if I got some detail wrong. This is all very confusing and, though I do not think that is deliberate, I think it struggles to translate its priorities into straightforward policy. None of these changes applies to external purchases in the U.S., for example. But what I wrote at the time applies here just the same: it is championing this bureaucracy because it believes it is entitled to a significant finder’s fee, regardless of its actual contribution to a customer’s purchase.

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