Latest news with #JohnGruber
Time of India
11 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
WWDC 2025: Apple won't follow this ‘tradition' for the first time in 10 years
Apple will hold its Worldwide Developers Conference, or WWDC, on June 9. Following the conference, John Gruber hosts the live " The Talk Show " podcast with the company's senior executives. However, for the first time in 10 years, Apple will not have senior executives participate in Gruber's show -- a decision that breaks a long-standing tradition that has seen high-ranking Apple officials engage in lively post-keynote discussions, offering unique insights into the company's announcements. Gruber, the renowned Daring Fireball pundit, revealed the development while announcing ticket sales for his annual live episode. He did not provide a reason for Apple's refusal, and it's highly probable that Apple offered none, reports macrumors, citing the ticket announcement. "Ever since I started doing these live shows from WWDC, I've kept the guest(s) secret, until showtime. I'm still doing that this year. But in recent years the guests have seemed a bit predictable: senior executives from Apple. This year I again extended my usual invitation to Apple, but, for the first time since 2015, they declined," Gruber said. "I think this will make for a fascinating show, but I want to set everyone's expectations accordingly. I'm invigorated by this. See you at the show, I hope," he added in a blog which notes that the show will be on Tuesday, June 10. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Write Better, Work Smarter With This Desktop App Grammarly Install Now Undo Gruber criticised Apple over 'non-functional' AI features In a March blog post, Gruber critiqued Apple for what he perceived as "vaporware" presented at last year's WWDC. He highlighted that planned Apple Intelligence features, showcased during the event, were not functional at the time, and some may still not be. Gruber expressed self-reproach for not recognising these "red flags" earlier. He said that Apple's credibility is damaged. "Keynote by keynote, product by product, feature by feature, year after year after year, Apple went from a company that you couldn't believe would even remain solvent, to, by far, the most credible company in tech. Apple remains at no risk of financial bankruptcy (and in fact remains the most profitable company in the world). But their credibility is now damaged. Careers will end before Apple might ever return to the level of "if they say it, you can believe it" credibility the company had earned at the start of June 2024," he said.
The Verge
3 days ago
- Business
- The Verge
Posted May 30, 2025 at 1:49 PM EDT
Apple execs aren't going to appear on The Talk Show Live at WWDC this year. John Gruber of Daring Fireball has been hosting a WWDC live podcast session for years, and every year since 2015, Apple senior execs have shown up. That won't be the case for the 2025 edition, and after his recent report on unmet promises of Apple Intelligence, I think I can guess why. If you missed the recent Decoder episode with John discussing Apple, its App Store, and Apple Intelligence, you can listen to it right here.
Forbes
15-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Apple Issues New App Store Warning—Here's What It Means
Apple has started placing warnings on its App Store, seemingly to try to persuade people not to use ... More iOS apps that support alternative payment options. Apple has started placing warnings on its App Store, seemingly to try to persuade people not to use iOS apps that support alternative payment options. First seen by Daring Fireball's John Gruber and reported by esteemed tech site The Verge, Apples' warning comes in the form of an exclamation point. The notice reads: 'This app does not support the App Store's private and secure payment system. It uses external purchases.' Gruber saw the new Apple warning on a Hungarian app that checks the mileage and value of used cars, called Instacar. As The Verge points out, the app isn't available in the U.S.—but it is among the top five apps in the Business category on the EU App Store and has thousands of positive reviews. Taking this into account, Apple's warning seems odd. The only gripe the iPhone maker seems to have with Instacar is that it uses an external payment system. Apple explains its warning further in a support document: 'Apps that use alternative payment options do not use the App Store's payment system for digital goods and services. To make a purchase in these apps, you will provide information and confirm your payment directly with the developer, either within the app or on a website linked from the app. 'If you create or manage your account on that website, or make any purchases using the developer's payment system, you will not be using the App Store's private and secure payment system for digital goods and services. Only purchases made through the App Store's In-App Purchase system are secured by Apple.' When you create an account on a developer's external website, you may have to provide personal information, including payment information, directly to the developer or third party partners, Apple adds. It warns that you will be trusting the developer, as well as any partners and payment providers they work with, to handle your information based on their privacy and security controls. 'Apple is not responsible for the privacy or security of transaction made with this developer and cannot verify any pricing or promotions that are offered,' the iPhone maker adds. I asked Apple for a comment on this article and will update it if the iPhone maker responds. It comes as Apple gets in hot water with the European Commission for its approach to alternative app stores following the Digital Markets Act. The EC told the iPhone maker its complex fee system and overly strict eligibility requirements disincentivises developers. So there you have it, like it or not, the Apple App Store warning is there for a reason, and it's up to you to make the choice based on what the iPhone makers says and your own common sense.
The Verge
15-05-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Apple is placing warnings on EU apps that don't use App Store payments
Apple is trying to dissuade Europeans from using iOS apps that support alternative payment options by making them look scary. Daring Fireball 's John Gruber spotted that a red exclamation mark icon is being prominently displayed on the App Store listing for Instacar, alongside a message warning users that it doesn't use Apple's 'private and secure payment system.' Instacar, a three-year-old Hungarian app for checking the mileage and value of used cars, isn't available on the US App Store. But in Hungary, in the EU, it's listed as one of the top five apps in the Business category, with thousands of positive reviews — not a typical service that would warrant heightened caution. The only gripe that Apple seemingly has is that Instacar uses an external payment system, and that App Store payment features like purchase history, Family Sharing, and unified subscription management won't be available on such purchases. 'When you create an account on a developer's external website, you may have to provide personal information, including payment information, directly to the developer or third-party partners,' Apple says in a support page linked from its warning message. 'You will be trusting the developer, as well as any partners and payment providers they work with, to handle your information based on their privacy and security controls.' Apple is already facing heat in the EU for its practices around scare tactics. In April, the European Commission issued preliminary findings that Apple 'makes it overly burdensome and confusing' for users to install alternative app marketplaces, a process that involves clicking through several scare sheets that ask users to confirm if they want to proceed. This App Store warning message has also appeared in the wake of the recent Epic vs Apple ruling that bans Apple from restricting how developers can link to alternative purchase systems. A notable requirement implemented to address Apple's scare tactics was that the company cannot interfere with consumers choosing to leave an app with anything beyond 'a neutral message' about being directed to a third-party site, though that injunction doesn't apply outside of the US.
The Verge
12-05-2025
- Business
- The Verge
Did Apple get too big for its own good? With Daring Fireball's John Gruber
We're doing something a little different on today's episode of Decoder. I asked my friend John Gruber, of the website Daring Fireball, to come on the show and talk about the future of Apple — and, importantly, the App Store. Gruber and I have been friends for over a decade now. Daring Fireball was one of the first and most influential Apple blogs around, and he has more insight into Apple, its culture, and how it does things than anyone else. Everyone at Apple and in the Apple developer community reads Daring Fireball religiously. In 2010, Steve Jobs himself emailed Gruber's analysis of an early App Store rule change to an unhappy developer and called it 'very insightful.' Personally, I will always remember a moment early in my career when a very excited Apple PR staffer pointed Gruber out to me at an event like a celebrity sighting, which was funny and also deeply humbling. I wanted to have him on the show to talk about the most recent ruling in the Epic v. Apple legal saga. This is the lawsuit about Fortnite on the iPhone and whether developers like Epic can circumvent the App Store's payment system to avoid paying those 30 percent fees on in-app purchases. Well, late last month, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has presided over that case for the past five years, effectively banned Apple from collecting fees on web transactions. She also harshly accused of the company of purposefully disobeying her original 2021 ruling by creating a series of restrictions and hoops to jump through that would basically make it impossible for developers to send people to the web to buy things. The judge's extreme frustration with Apple is obvious in almost every line of her ruling; she even referred an Apple executive for criminal proceedings, saying this executive had lied under oath on the stand. There's a lot of tactical stuff you might talk about in the aftermath of this ruling — about what Apple might do next, how it might impact revenue, and how developers might respond. But I really wanted Gruber to talk about Apple's big picture and how a company that so often prides itself on doing the right thing ended up so fully on the wrong side of the courts. One theme you'll hear throughout this conversation is that Apple often presents itself as small, but the company is actually huge in every way — Apple now sells nearly as many phones in a single quarter as it did in the entire first three years of the iPhone's existence combined. It now operates in a geopolitical context that binds the United States, China, and Taiwan in ways you would have never imagined 15 years ago. And perhaps most importantly, Apple has control over applications on the iPhone, which means it has control over what kinds of businesses can and cannot exist on its mobile phones. That's the context for the other major theme here that you'll pick up on in this conversation: Apple's major shift toward digital services and whether that's fundamentally changed the company's culture. You see, as Apple kept selling newer and better iPhones, it simply ran out of people to sell them to. So, in order to keep growing revenue and keep Wall Street happy, it started squeezing more money from its existing customer base, including the very developers that put apps on the App Store. That made some of the most important developers, the companies that make mobile games and stream media, very upset. But they had no other choice so they kept their apps in the App Store and continued to pay the fees — except for some major exceptions like Amazon and Spotify, which simply refused to sell you ebooks or music subscriptions on iOS at all. (After this most recent ruling, Amazon updated its Kindle app to sell ebooks via the web, while Spotify is working to update its iOS app to do the same for its subscriptions.) All of that combined with Apple's scale created a kind of hubris and, as you'll hear Gruber say, a major blind spot for Apple that has pushed it toward these high-profile and public legal defeats that could reshape its business. If all of that weren't enough to put the heat on Apple, there's also Trump's tariffs to deal with and a Google antitrust trial that could see Google barred from striking an exclusivity deal for its search engine that currently pays Apple north of $20 billion a year. Apple also has to compete in AI with Apple Intelligence and Siri, products that are currently a total mess. Gruber and I got into all that at the end here, and I wanted to know if there was a connection between the corporate culture that produced the App Store debacle and the recent news of Siri delays and dysfunction around AI inside Apple. There's a whole lot going on in this conversation, and there's really nobody better to talk about all of this than Gruber. I hope you like this one; as you'll soon hear, Gruber and I really enjoy talking to each other. If you'd like to read more on what we talked about in this episode, check out the links below:
