Enlarge/ A Vision Pro on display at an Apple Store in Tokyo.
Apple
Apple’s Vision Pro headset went on sale outside the United States for the first time today, in the first of two waves of expanded availability.
The $3,499 “spatial computing” device launched back in February in the US, but it hasn’t taken the tech world by storm. Part of that has been its regional launch, with some of the biggest markets still lacking access.
Apple announced that the product would be sold internationally during its keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month.
The first new markets to get Vision Pro shipments are China, Japan, and Singapore—those are the ones where it went on sale today.
A second wave will come on July 12, with the headset rolling out in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
When we first tested the Vision Pro in February, we wrote that it was a technically impressive device with a lot of untapped potential. It works very well as a personal entertainment device for frequent travelers, in particular. However, its applications for productivity and gaming still need to be expanded to justify the high price.
Of course, there have been conflicting rumors of late about just how expensive Apple plans to keep its mixed reality devices. One report claimed that the company put the brakes on a new version of the Vision Pro for now, opting instead to develop a cheaper alternative for a 2025 launch.
But another report in Bloomberg suggested that’s an overstatement. It simply noted that the Vision Pro 2 has been slightly delayed from its original target launch window and reported that the cheaper model will come first.
In any case, availability will have to expand and the price will ultimately have to come down if augmented reality can become the major computing revolution that Apple CEO Tim Cook has predicted. This international rollout is the next step to test whether there’s a market for that.
Enlarge/ Apple has a lot to say about the third-party battery market in “Longevity, by Design,” specifically about how many batteries fail to meet testing standards.
Apple
Earlier this week, Apple published a whitepaper titled “Longevity by Design.” The purpose, Apple says, is to explain “the company’s principles for designing for longevity—a careful balance between product durability and repairability.” It also contains some notable changes to Apple’s parts pairing and repair technology.
Here is a summary of the action items in the document’s 24 pages:
True Tone, the color-balancing screen feature, can soon be activated on third-party screens, “to the best performance that can be provided.”
Battery statistics, like maximum capacity and cycle count, will be available “later in 2024” for third-party batteries, with a notice that “Apple cannot verify the information presented.”
Used Apple parts, transferred from one to another, will be “as easy to use as new Apple parts” in select products “later this year.”
Parts for “most repairs” from Apple’s Self Service Repair program will no longer require a device serial number to order.
Changes timed to “later this year” may well indicate their arrival with iOS 18 or a subsequent update.
Apple’s take on repair focuses on scale
To whom is Apple’s document explaining its principles? Apple might say it’s speaking to consumers and the public, but one might infer that the most coveted audience is elected representatives, or their staff, as they consider yet another state or federal bill aimed at regulating repair. Earlier this year, Oregon and Colorado passed repair bills that stop companies from halting repairs with software checks on parts, or “parts pairing.” Other recent bills and legal actions have targeted repair restrictions in Minnesota, Canada, and the European Union.
Apple came out in support of a repair bill in California and at the federal level, in large part because it allows for parts and tools pricing at “fair and reasonable terms” and requires non-affiliated vendors to disclose their independence and use of third-party parts to customers.
“Longevity, by Design” stakes out Apple’s position that there are things more important than repair. Due to what Apple says is its unique combination of software support, resale value, and a focus on preventing the most common device failures, the company “leads the industry in longevity” as measured in products’ value holding, lifespans, and service rates, Apple says. Hundreds of millions of iPhones more than five years old are in use, out-of-warranty service rates dropped 38 percent from 2015 to 2022, and initiatives like liquid ingress protection dropped repair rates on the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus by 75 percent.
“The reliability of our hardware will always be our top concern when seeking to maximize the lifespan of products,” the whitepaper states. “The reason is simple: the best repair is the one that’s never needed.”
Photos from Apple’s “Longevity, by Design” document showing the water ingress testing as part of its design.
Apple
Consider the charge port
Apple offers the charging port on iPhones as “an internal case study” to justify why it often bundles parts together rather than making them individually replaceable. From the independent repair shops and techs I’ve talked to in my career, iPhone charging ports, and the chips that control them, are not an uncommon failure point. “Cheap charging cables from 7-11 are serial killers,” one board-level repair shop once told me. Apple disagrees, saying it must consider the broader impact of its designs.
“Making the charging port individually replaceable would require additional components, including its own flexible printed circuit board, connector, and fasteners that increase the carbon emissions required to manufacture each device,” Apple states. This could be justified if 10 percent of iPhones required replacement, but Apple says “the actual service rate was below 0.1%.” As such, keeping the port integrated is a lower-carbon-emission choice.
In a recent blog update, iDOS developer Chaoji Li said that the latest version of the DOSBox-based MS-DOS emulator was finally rejected from the iOS App Store this month after a lengthy, two-month review process:
They have decided that iDOS is not a retro game console, so the new rule is not applicable. They suggested I make changes and resubmit for review, but when I asked what changes I should make to be compliant, they had no idea, nor when I asked what a retro game console is. It’s still the same old unreasonable answer along the line of “we know it when we see it.”
The developer of iOS Virtual Machine app UTM told a similar tale of App Store rejection on social media. The reported two-month review process for the UTM app ended with “the App Store review board determin[ing] that ‘PC is not a console’ regardless of the fact that there are retro Windows/DOS games fo[r] the PC that UTM SE can be useful in running,” the developer said.
The April revision of Rule 4.7 in Apple’s App Review Guidelines is very specifically worded so that “retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games [emphasis added].” Emulating a more generalized PC operating system falls outside the letter of this regulation, even for users interested in emulating retro PC games using these apps.
Since that narrow exception doesn’t apply to classic PC emulators, they end up falling afoul of Apple’s Rule 2.5.2, which states that iOS Apps may not “download, install, or execute code which introduces or changes features or functionality of the app, including other apps.” That rule also applies to third-party iOS App Stores that were recently allowed under new European Union rules, meaning even so-called “alternative app marketplaces” don’t offer a useful alternative in this case.
What’s the difference?
While the specific language of Apple’s App Review Guidelines is clear enough, the reasoning behind the distinction here is a bit more mystifying. Why does Apple treat the idea of a DOSBox-style emulator running an ancient copy of Microsoft Excel differently than the idea of Delta running a copy of NES Tetris on the same device? Is loading the Windows 95 Version of KidPix Studio Deluxe on your iPhone really all that different from playing an emulated copy of Mario Paint on that same iPhone?
Enlarge/ Now that I can emulate Mario Paint on iOS, why would I buy Photoshop?
A virtual machine or emulator running a modern PC operating system under iOS could theoretically offer some generalized competition for the apps Apple offers in its official App Store. But surely there’s a limit to how much that applies when we’re talking about emulating older computing environments and defunct operating systems. Just as Apple’s iOS game emulation rules only apply to “retro” game consoles, a rule for PC emulation could easily be limited to “retro” operating systems (say, those that are no longer officially supported by their original developers, as a rule of thumb).
Alas, iOS users and App makers are currently stuck abiding by this distinction without a difference when it comes to PC game emulation on iOS. Those looking for a workaround could potentially use an iOS Remote Desktop App to access games running on a physical desktop PC they actually own. The Internet Archive’s collection of thousands of MS-DOS games will also run in an iOS web browser, though you may have to struggle a bit to get controls and sound working correctly.
The European Commission today said it found that Apple is violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA) with App Store rules and fees that “prevent app developers from freely steering consumers to alternative channels for offers and content.” The commission “informed Apple of its preliminary view” that the company is violating the law, the regulator announced.
This starts a process in which Apple has the right to examine documents in the commission’s investigation file and reply in writing to the findings. There is a March 2025 deadline for the commission to make a final ruling.
The commission noted that it “can impose fines up to 10 percent of the gatekeeper’s total worldwide turnover,” or up to 20 percent for repeat infringements. For “systematic infringements,” the European regulator could respond by requiring “a gatekeeper to sell a business or parts of it, or banning the gatekeeper from acquisitions of additional services related to the systemic non-compliance.”
Under the DMA, developers must be free “to inform their customers of alternative cheaper purchasing possibilities, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases,” the commission said. But Apple’s business terms prevent that, the commission found.
Apple’s rules prevent developers from providing pricing information within their apps and from communicating “with their customers to promote offers available on alternative distribution channels,” the commission said. Apple lets developers include an in-app link that redirects users to a website, but this “link-out process is subject to several restrictions imposed by Apple that prevent app developers from communicating, promoting offers and concluding contracts through the distribution channel of their choice,” the commission said.
Excessive fees
Apple was further accused of charging excessive fees. The commission said that Apple is allowed to charge “a fee for facilitating via the App Store the initial acquisition of a new customer by developers,” but “the fees charged by Apple go beyond what is strictly necessary for such remuneration. For example, Apple charges developers a fee for every purchase of digital goods or services a user makes within seven days after a link-out from the app.”
Apple says it charges a commission of 27 percent on sales “to the user for digital goods or services on your website after a link out… provided that the sale was initiated within seven days and the digital goods or services can be used in an app.”
We contacted Apple today and are waiting for a response. In a statement quoted by the Associated Press, Apple said that during the past few months, it “made a number of changes to comply with the DMA in response to feedback from developers and the European Commission” and will “continue to listen and engage” with regulators.
“We are confident our plan complies with the law and estimate more than 99 percent of developers would pay the same or less in fees to Apple under the new business terms we created,” Apple was quoted as saying. “All developers doing business in the EU on the App Store have the opportunity to utilize the capabilities that we have introduced, including the ability to direct app users to the web to complete purchases at a very competitive rate.”
As reported on Friday, Apple is delaying its Apple Intelligence AI tools and other features in the EU because of what it called “regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act.”
EU also probes Apple “Core Technology Fee”
The commission today also announced it is starting a separate investigation into Apple’s “contractual requirements for third-party app developers and app stores,” including its “Core Technology Fee.” Apple charges the Core Technology Fee for app installs, whether they are delivered from Apple’s own App Store, from an alternative app marketplace, or from a developer’s own website. The first million installs each year are free, but a per-install fee of €0.50 applies after that.
The commission said it would investigate whether the Core Technology Fee complies with the DMA. This investigation will also probe “Apple’s multi-step user journey to download and install alternative app stores or apps on iPhones,” and the eligibility requirements imposed on developers before they are allowed to offer alternative app stores or distribute apps from the web on iPhones.
The probe includes Apple’s requirement that developers have “membership of good standing” in the Apple Developer Program in order to benefit from the alternative distribution methods required by the DMA. The commission said it is also probing the “checks and reviews put in place by Apple to validate apps and alternative app stores to be sideloaded.”
Enlarge/ Features like Image Playground won’t arrive in Europe at the same time as other regions.
Apple
Three major features in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia will not be available to European users this fall, Apple says. They include iPhone screen mirroring on the Mac, SharePlay screen sharing, and the entire Apple Intelligence suite of generative AI features.
In a statement sent to Financial Times, The Verge, and others, Apple says this decision is related to the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Here’s the full statement, which was attributed to Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz:
Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are excited to bring to our users around the world. We are highly motivated to make these technologies accessible to all users. However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year.
Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security. We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety.
It is unclear from Apple’s statement precisely which aspects of the DMA may have led to this decision. It could be that Apple is concerned that it would be required to give competitors like Microsoft or Google access to user data collected for Apple Intelligence features and beyond, but we’re not sure.
This is not the first recent and major divergence between functionality and features for Apple devices in the EU versus other regions. Because of EU regulations, Apple opened up iOS to third-party app stores in Europe, but not in other regions. However, critics argued its compliance with that requirement was lukewarm at best, as it came with a set of restrictions and changes to how app developers could monetize their apps on the platform should they use those other storefronts.
While Apple says in the statement it’s open to finding a solution, no timeline is given. All we know is that the features won’t be available on devices in the EU this year. They’re expected to launch in other regions in the fall.
A report by tech news site The Information suggests that Apple is shifting its augmented reality priorities. The next high-end version of the Vision Pro has purportedly been canceled while work continues on a more affordable version with a reduced feature set.
Citing both an employee in Apple’s headset supply chain and one working in headset manufacturing for Apple, the report claims that the cheaper Vision product—perhaps around the $1,600 mark—is due before the end of 2025. Apple had originally intended to present this headset alongside the Vision Pro, similar to the models available in each iPhone release. The more affordable model would likely have fewer cameras, smaller speakers, and weigh less, though Apple has struggled to bring down the cost of the unit’s displays.
Apple’s efforts in augmented reality are closely watched by other players in the headset space, so even a momentary, situational step back from high-end headsets could have significant repercussions. The Information cites current and former Meta employees in describing how the company had killed plans for its own higher-end headset in January 2023, but it then began work on a new premium model five months after Apple’s Vision Pro debut.
The Vision Pro will launch in China, Japan, Australia, and many European countries later this month. The Information’s sources suggest that Apple has produced roughly 500,000 Vision Pro headsets and will not make significantly more, despite the entry of these new markets.
Apple has not responded to The Information or other outlets. Ars contacted Apple for comment and will update this post with any response.
In Senior Editor Samuel Axon’s extensive experience with the device, the home theater aspect of the Vision Pro, and specifically its high-quality display units, is the “one use case that’s a slam dunk.” Reducing the quality of the Sony micro-OLED displays in the Vision Pro, and their “staggering 3,386 PPI (pixels per inch)” density, would seemingly cut at a solid selling point for the device. It is otherwise not made for walking around, and while working in the Vision Pro is possible, it’s not ready to replace anyone’s standard setup yet, especially if they have regular web meetings.
Apple has abruptly discontinued its “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) service, Apple Pay Later, which turned Apple into a money lender when it launched last March in the US and became widely available in October.
The service previously allowed users to split the cost of purchases of up to $1,000 into four installments that were repaid over six weeks without worrying about extra fees or paying interest. For Apple, it was likely a move to increase total Apple Pay users as the company sought to offer more core financial services through its devices.
Now, it appears that Apple has found a different route to offer short-term loans at checkout in Apple Pay. An Apple spokesperson told 9to5Mac that the decision to end Apple Pay Later came ahead of the company’s plan to start offering new types of installment loans globally.
“Starting later this year, users across the globe will be able to access installment loans offered through credit and debit cards, as well as lenders, when checking out with Apple Pay,” Apple’s spokesperson said. “With the introduction of this new global installment loan offering, we will no longer offer Apple Pay Later in the US.”
Apple also noted its decision to kill off the service on a support page posted Monday, confirming that “Apple Pay Later is no longer offering new loans.” Apple specified that all “existing Apple Pay Later loans and purchases are not affected,” and loans can continue to be managed through users’ wallets.
One of the biggest challenges for BNPL customers is often seeking a refund for returned purchases, but Apple has assured Apple Pay Later customers that the refund process has not changed for any existing purchases. Customers can contact Apple Support if they have “trouble with a refund,” Apple’s support page said.
Apple announced its new installment loan program at its recent annual developer event, confirming that it had partnered with banks, including Citi in the US, to provide short-term loans as a payment option in its upcoming iOS 18 operating system due out before the end of 2024. Apple’s spokesperson told 9to5Mac that unlike Apple Pay Later, which was only available in the US, installment loans will be an option offered in more countries.
“Our focus continues to be on providing our users with access to easy, secure, and private payment options with Apple Pay, and this solution will enable us to bring flexible payments to more users, in more places across the globe, in collaboration with Apple Pay enabled banks and lenders,” Apple’s spokesperson said.
In a blog post, Apple described new features “available for any Apple Pay-enabled bank or issuer to integrate in supported markets.” These features allow users to “view and redeem rewards, and access installment loan offerings from eligible credit or debit cards, when making a purchase online or in-app with iPhone and iPad,” the blog said. For users in the US, Apple will soon make it easy to “apply for loans directly through Affirm when they check out with Apple Pay.”
A brief history of short-lived Apple Pay Later
The iPhone maker rolled out Apple Pay Later in March 2023, just after BNPL services fell under scrutiny by regulators globally, The Verge reported in 2022. Early studies found that “BNPL users are twice as likely to overdraft” and estimated that 43 percent of younger BNPL users have missed a payment.
A fear quickly arose that Apple Pay Later might “normalize” reliance on BNPL lending for frivolous large purchases that customers might then struggle to repay, The Verge reported. BNPL had already become hugely popular with Gen Z shoppers eager to purchase the latest TikTok fashions they may not otherwise be able to afford, The Verge noted.
In 2021, the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) launched an inquiry into BNPL, flagging emerging potential consumer risks in 2022. Those included privacy risks from data harvesting and excessive debt accumulation from frequently reported borrower overextension.
However, despite emerging concerns about BNPL, Apple Pay Later was immediately popular, according to a JD Power survey of 8,000 consumers. In the first three months that the service was available, nearly one-fifth of BNPL customers used Apple Pay Later. With its BNPL offering, Apple attracted new customers who were interested in trying a new BNPL service from a trusted brand, JD Power reported, posing an immediate threat to BNPL services offered by “traditional payments juggernauts” like PayPal.
At that time, Apple was well-positioned to provide short-term loans, JD Power reported, finding that the “average Apple Pay Later user tended to be more financially healthy than most other BNPL customers, potentially giving it a more sustainable user base than its competitors.”
Enlarge/ Apple bragged about the thinness of the M4 iPad Pro; it’s apparently a template for the company’s designs going forward.
Apple
Though Apple has a reputation for prioritizing thinness in its hardware designs, the company has actually spent the last few years learning to embrace a little extra size and/or weight in its hardware. The Apple Silicon MacBook Pro designs are both thicker and heavier than the Intel-era MacBook Pros they replaced. The MacBook Air gave up its distinctive taper. Even the iPhone 15 Pro was a shade thicker than its predecessor.
But Apple is apparently planning to return to emphasizing thinness in its devices, according to reporting from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman (in a piece that is otherwise mostly about Apple’s phased rollout of the AI-powered features it announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference last week).
Gurman’s sources say that Apple is planning “a significantly skinnier iPhone in time for the iPhone 17 line in 2025,” which presumably means that we can expect the iPhone 16 to continue in the same vein as current iPhone 15 models. The Apple Watch and MacBook Pro are also apparently on the list of devices Apple is trying to make thinner.
Apple previewed this strategy with the introduction of the M4 iPad Pro a couple of months ago, which looked a lot like the previous-generation iPad Pro design but was a few hundredths of an inch thinner and (especially for the 13-inch model) noticeably lighter than before. Gurman says the new iPad Pro is “the beginning of a new class of Apple devices that should be the thinnest and lightest products in their categories across the whole tech industry.”
Thin-first design isn’t an inherently good or bad thing, but the issue in Apple’s case is that it has occasionally come at the expense of other more desirable features. A thinner device has less room for cooling hardware like fans and heatsinks, less room for batteries, and less room to fit ports.
The late-2010s-era MacBook Pro and Air redesigns were probably the nadir of this thin-first design, switching to all-Thunderbolt ports and a stiff-feeling butterfly switch keyboard design that also ended up being so breakage-prone that it spawned a long-running Apple repair program and a class-action lawsuit that the company settled. The 2020 and 2021 MacBooks reversed course on both decisions, reverting to a more traditional scissor-switch keyboard and restoring larger ports like MagSafe and HDMI.
Hopefully, Apple has learned the lessons of the last decade or so and is planning not to give up features people like just so it can craft thinner hardware. The new iPad Pros are a reason for optimism—they don’t really give up anything relative to older iPad models while still improving performance and screen quality. But iPad hardware is inherently more minimalist than the Mac and is less space-constrained than an iPhone or an Apple Watch. Here’s hoping Apple has figured out how to make a thinner, lighter Mac without giving up ports or keyboard quality or a thinner, lighter iPhone or Apple Watch without hurting battery life.
Apple has spent years “intentionally, knowingly, and deliberately paying women less than men for substantially similar work,” a proposed class action lawsuit filed in California on Thursday alleged.
A victory for women suing could mean that more than 12,000 current and former female employees in California could collectively claw back potentially millions in lost wages from an apparently ever-widening wage gap allegedly perpetuated by Apple policies.
The lawsuit was filed by two employees who have each been with Apple for more than a decade, Justina Jong and Amina Salgado. They claimed that Apple violated California employment laws between 2020 and 2024 by unfairly discriminating against California-based female employees in Apple’s engineering, marketing, and AppleCare divisions and “systematically” paying women “lower compensation than men with similar education and experience.”
Apple allegedly has displayed an ongoing bias toward male employees, offering them higher starting salaries and promoting them for the “same behaviors” that female employees allegedly were punished for.
Jong, currently a customer/technical training instructor on Apple’s global developer relations/app review team, said that she only became aware of a stark pay disparity by chance.
“One day, I saw a W-2 left on the office printer,” Jong said. “It belonged to my male colleague, who has the same job position. I noticed that he was being paid almost $10,000 more than me, even though we performed substantially similar work. This revelation made me feel terrible.”
But Salgado had long been aware of the problem. Salgado, currently on a temporary assignment as a development manager in the AppleCare division, spent years complaining about her lower wages, prompting Apple internal investigations that never led to salary increases.
Finally, late last year, Salgado’s insistence on fair pay was resolved after Apple hired a third-party firm that concluded she was “paid less than men performing substantially similar work.” Apple subsequently increased her pay rate but dodged responsibility for back pay that Salgado now seeks to recover.
Eve Cervantez, a lawyer for women suing, said in a press release shared with Ars that these women were put in “a no-win situation.”
“Once women are hired into a lower pay range at Apple, subsequent pay raises or any bonuses are tracked accordingly, meaning they don’t correct the gender pay gap,” Cervantez said. “Instead, they perpetuate and widen the gap because raises and bonuses are based on a percentage of the employee’s base salary.”
Apple did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.
Brussels is set to charge Apple over allegedly stifling competition on its mobile app store, the first time EU regulators have used new digital rules to target a Big Tech group.
The European Commission has determined that the iPhone maker is not complying with obligations to allow app developers to “steer” users to offers outside its App Store without imposing fees on them, according to three people with close knowledge of its investigation.
The charges would be the first brought against a tech company under the Digital Markets Act, landmark legislation designed to force powerful “online gatekeepers” to open up their businesses to competition in the EU.
The commission, the EU’s executive arm, said in March it was investigating Apple, as well as Alphabet and Meta, under powers granted by the DMA. An announcement over the charges against Apple was expected in the coming weeks, said two people with knowledge of the case.
These people said regulators have only made preliminary findings, and Apple could still take actions to correct its practices, which could then lead regulators to reassess any final decision. They added the timing of any announcement could also shift.
The EU could also decide to announce charges against other tech groups, with regulators still investigating whether Google parent Alphabet is favoring its own app store and Facebook owner Meta’s use of personal data for advertising.
If found to be breaking the DMA, Apple faces daily penalties for non-compliance of up to 5 percent of its average daily worldwide turnover, which is currently just over $1 billion.
The move comes as competition watchdogs around the world increase their scrutiny of Big Tech companies and their market dominance. In March, the US brought an antitrust case against Apple for allegedly using its power in the smartphone sector to squash rivals and limit consumer choice.
Epic Games, which sued Apple over the App Store in 2020, is also awaiting a decision from a California federal judge on whether Apple failed to comply with a US injunction prohibiting its steering rules, following a series of court hearings over recent weeks.
In January, Apple announced historic changes to its iOS mobile software, App Store, and Safari browser in the EU.
The changes were an effort to placate regulators in Brussels and meant Apple would allow users to access rival app stores and download apps from other sources. The changes also included slashing the fee paid by companies using the App Store to sell digital goods and services from 30 percent to 17 percent.
However, the EU is also looking at whether these fee changes properly adhere to its new digital rules. Apple introduced new charges in Europe, including a “core technology fee” of 50 cents on developers with apps that have more than 1 million users for every first installment by a user. Apple will also charge an additional 3 percent fee to app developers that use its payment processor.
Some developers have argued they could face higher charges as a result of the fee changes. The EU could also announce initial charges over these developer fees, people familiar with the commission’s thinking said.
According to analysis by Sensor Tower, consumer spending on Apple’s App Store throughout the second quarter of 2024 was “relatively flat,” suggesting the EU rules have yet to affect the company’s bottom line.
Apple declined to comment but pointed to an earlier statement that said: “We’re confident our plan complies with the DMA, and we’ll continue to constructively engage with the European Commission as they conduct their investigations.”
On Monday, Apple announced it would be integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI assistant into upcoming versions of its iPhone, iPad, and Mac operating systems. It paves the way for future third-party AI model integrations, but given Google’s multi-billion-dollar deal with Apple for preferential web search, the OpenAI announcement inspired speculation about who is paying whom. According to a Bloomberg report published Wednesday, Apple considers ChatGPT’s placement on its devices as compensation enough.
“Apple isn’t paying OpenAI as part of the partnership,” writes Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, citing people familiar with the matter who wish to remain anonymous. “Instead, Apple believes pushing OpenAI’s brand and technology to hundreds of millions of its devices is of equal or greater value than monetary payments.”
The Bloomberg report states that neither company expects the agreement to generate meaningful revenue in the short term, and in fact, the partnership could burn extra money for OpenAI, because it pays Microsoft to host ChatGPT’s capabilities on its Azure cloud. However, OpenAI could benefit by converting free users to paid subscriptions, and Apple potentially benefits by providing easy, built-in access to ChatGPT during a time when its own in-house LLMs are still catching up.
And there’s another angle at play. Currently, OpenAI offers subscriptions (ChatGPT Plus, Enterprise, Team) that unlock additional features. If users subscribe to OpenAI through the ChatGPT app on an Apple device, the process will reportedly use Apple’s payment platform, which may give Apple a significant cut of the revenue. According to the report, Apple hopes to negotiate additional revenue-sharing deals with AI vendors in the future.
Why OpenAI
The rise of ChatGPT in the public eye over the past 18 months has made OpenAI a power player in the tech industry, allowing it to strike deals with publishers for AI training content—and ensure continued support from Microsoft in the form of investments that trade vital funding and compute for access to OpenAI’s large language model (LLM) technology like GPT-4.
Still, Apple’s choice of ChatGPT as Apple’s first external AI integration has led to widespread misunderstanding, especially since Apple buried the lede about its own in-house LLM technology that powers its new “Apple Intelligence” platform.
On Apple’s part, CEO Tim Cook told The Washington Post that it chose OpenAI as its first third-party AI partner because he thinks the company controls the leading LLM technology at the moment: “I think they’re a pioneer in the area, and today they have the best model,” he said. “We’re integrating with other people as well. But they’re first, and I think today it’s because they’re best.”
Apple’s choice also brings risk. OpenAI’s record isn’t spotless, racking up a string of public controversies over the past month that include an accusation from actress Scarlett Johansson that the company intentionally imitated her voice, resignations from a key scientist and safety personnel, the revelation of a restrictive NDA for ex-employees that prevented public criticism, and accusations against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of “psychological abuse” related by a former member of the OpenAI board.
Meanwhile, critics of privacy issues related to gathering data for training AI models—including OpenAI foe Elon Musk, who took to X on Monday to spread misconceptions about how the ChatGPT integration might work—also worried that the Apple-OpenAI deal might expose personal data to the AI company, although both companies strongly deny that will be the case.
Looking ahead, Apple’s deal with OpenAI is not exclusive, and the company is already in talks to offer Google’s Gemini chatbot as an additional option later this year. Apple has also reportedly held talks with Anthropic (maker of Claude 3) as a potential chatbot partner, signaling its intention to provide users with a range of AI services, much like how the company offers various search engine options in Safari.
Enlarge/ The classic Mac OS wallpaper in macOS 15 Sequoia mimics the monochrome user interfaces used in System 1 through 6.
Apple
I’m still in the very early stages of poking at macOS 15 Sequoia ahead of our customary review later this fall, and there are quite a few things that aren’t working in this first developer beta. Some of those, like the AI features, aren’t working on purpose; I am sure some of the iCloud sync issues I’m having are broken by accident.
I’ve already encountered a few functional upgrades I like, like iCloud support inside of virtual machines, automated window snapping (at long last), and a redesigned AirDrop interface in the Finder. But so far the change that I like the most is actually a new combo wallpaper and screen saver that’s done in the style of Apple’s Mac operating system circa the original monochrome Mac from 1984. It’s probably the best retro Mac Easter egg since Clarus the Dogcow showed up in a print preview menu a couple of years ago.
The Macintosh wallpaper and screen saver—it uses the animated/dynamic wallpaper feature that Apple introduced in Sonoma last year—cycles through enlarged, pixelated versions of classic Mac apps, icons, and menus, a faithful replica of the first version of the Mac interface. Though they’re always monochrome, the default settings will cycle through multiple background colors that match the ones that Apple uses for accent colors.
If you’re too young to be familiar (or if you were using MS-DOS in the mid-’80s instead of a Mac), this Mac theme hearkens back to the days before Mac OS (then Mac OS X, then OS X, then macOS) was called Mac OS. The first seven versions of the software were simply called System or System Software, all the way up through 1991’s System 7. The Mac OS name didn’t appear until the System 7.5.1 update in 1995, and the name was formally changed in the 7.6 update in 1997 (OS updates were obviously released at a more leisurely pace back then).
If you want to poke at a live, interactive version of the monochrome System Software, developer Mihai Parparita’s Infinite Mac project hosts classic System, Mac OS, and NeXTStep versions that will all run in a browser window using ports of various emulators.
My only complaint is that now I want more of these screen savers. As a millennial, my exposure to Systems 1 through 6 was fairly minimal, but I’d definitely take a color version of the screen saver modeled on Mac OS 9, or an early Mac OS X version with shiny candy-colored Aqua-themed buttons and scroll bars.
