Enlarge / The classic Sega Genesis game Sonic the Hedgehog running on an iPhone—in this case, as a standalone app. (credit: Samuel Axon)

When Apple posted its latest update to the App Store's app review and submission policies for developers, it included language that appears to explicitly allow a new kind of app for emulating retro console games.

Apple has long forbidden apps that run code from an external source, but today's announced changes now allow "software that is not embedded in the binary" in certain cases, with "retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games" specifically listed as one of those cases.

Here's the exact wording :

Enlarge / EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton talks to media about non-compliance investigations against Google, Apple, and Meta under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). (credit: Thierry Monasse / Contributor | Getty Images News )

Not even three weeks after the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) took effect, the European Commission (EC) announced Monday that it is already probing three out of six gatekeepers—Apple, Google, and Meta—for suspected non-compliance.

Apple will need to prove that changes to its app store and existing user options to swap out default settings easily are sufficient to comply with the DMA.

Similarly, Google's app store rules will be probed, as well as any potentially shady practices unfairly preferencing its own services—like Google Shopping and Hotels—in search results.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan )

Epic Games yesterday urged a federal court to sanction Apple for alleged violations of an injunction that imposed restrictions on the iOS App Store. Epic cited a 27 percent commission charged by Apple on purchases completed outside the usual in-app payment system and other limits imposed on developers.

"Apple is in blatant violation of this Court's injunction," Epic wrote in a filing in US District Court for the Northern District of California. "Its new App Store policies continue to impose prohibitions on developers that this Court found unlawful and enjoined. Moreover, Apple's new policies introduce new restrictions and burdens that frustrate and effectively nullify the relief the Court ordered."

The permanent injunction issued by the court in September 2021 said that Apple may not prohibit app developers from including external links to alternate sales channels "or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms" that aren't Apple's in-app purchasing system. The injunction also said that Apple may not prohibit developers from "communicating with customers through points of contact obtained voluntarily from customers through account registration within the app."

Enlarge / The iPhone 15 lineup.

To comply with European Union regulations, Apple has introduced sweeping changes that make iOS and Apple's other operating systems more open. The changes are far-reaching and touch many parts of the user experience on the iPhone. They'll be coming as part of iOS 17.4 in March.

Apple will introduce "new APIs and tools that enable developers to offer their iOS apps for download from alternative app marketplaces," as well as a new framework and set of APIs that allow third parties to set up and manage those stores—essentially new forms of apps that can download other apps without going through the App Store. That includes the ability to manage updates for other developers' apps that are distributed through the marketplaces.

The company will also offer APIs and a new framework for third-party web browsers to use browser engines other than Safari's WebKit. Until now, browsers like Chrome and Firefox were still built on top of Apple's tech. They essentially were mobile Safari, but with bookmarks and other features tied to alternative desktop browsers.

Enlarge / The peer group benchmarks dashboard within Apple's analytics suite. (credit: Apple )

Apple has introduced a new way for developers for platforms like the iPhone to track their apps' performance. It's a new dashboard called peer group benchmarks that shows percentile data on how an app compares in certain metrics to other similar apps.

The new dashboard will appear within App Analytics, a tool that is already offered as part of App Store Connect . This is Apple's portal for a suite of services that developers can use to manage their apps across the tech giant's various app stores.

The metrics tracked in the dashboard include conversion rate, proceeds per paying user, crash rate, and retention—all of which are displayed in weekly intervals. Apple automatically sorts an app into a peer group based on three criteria, according to a developer support document the company has published.

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

Twitter CEO Elon Musk was planning to bring back Twitter Blue this week, but then he got frustrated with Apple, and now nobody knows when the subscription service will relaunch. But it seems Musk has decided that when Twitter Blue—initially exclusively offered to iPhone and iPad users—comes back, the service will likely not be available for purchase in the Apple App Store.

According to a Platformer report , a Twitter product manager shared an internal message saying that Twitter Blue is being further delayed to “make some tweaks.” The biggest tweak seems to be requiring phone number authentication for Twitter Blue subscribers, while the smallest tweak is raising the price from $7.99 to $8. Forbes reported that this version of Twitter Blue was intended to be available this Friday, but Musk’s push to quickly get as many paid subscriptions as possible shifted when Apple suspended advertising on Twitter and, according to Musk, threatened to drop the app from its store.

If Musk’s feud with Apple continues heating up, it could mean that the No. 1 smartphone , which more than half of Americans use, would only be able to access Twitter through a web browser.

Enlarge / Apple's HQ, as seen in Apple Maps. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple is looking into significantly ramping up its ads business, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, and has already internally explored adding ads to the iPhone's Maps app, with other potential expansions also on the horizon.

The shift may be driven in part by a recent change within the company's reporting structure: Gurman wrote in his email newsletter this week that Apple advertising VP Todd Teresi began reporting directly to Apple services head Eddie Cue a few months back. He also wrote that Teresi plans to increase Apple's advertising revenue from $4 billion annually to billions in the double digits.

As Gurman notes, advertising is already a part of Apple's strategy, but it's limited in scope and to certain places. The most traditional advertisements you'll see in an Apple-made app are the ones in the Stocks and News apps. There, you'll see display ads just like those you see on news websites—both outside of stories and inside of them.

Enlarge / Art from Various Daylife , one of the games that left Apple Arcade in August 2022. (credit: https://variousdaylife.square-enix-games.com )

Several games that were previously available as part of the Apple Arcade subscription service have been removed.

Fifteen titles have been dropped, and all of them are games that were introduced in the early days of the service. Since mid-July, these games had appeared in a "Leaving Arcade Soon" section of the Apple Arcade tab in the App Store. That section is now gone, suggesting that these are the only games that will be removed in the immediate future.

Apple revealed that these games would be leaving Arcade within that section, so subscribers had a little over two weeks' notice. But there's a little more time for those currently playing the games.

Enlarge / Apple's App Store. (credit: Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images )

Throughout the short history of smartphone apps, games have consistently driven more revenue than non-gaming app categories. But that has finally changed in the United States, according to new data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

The shift began in May 2022. By June, 50.3 percent of US consumer spending on apps was on non-game apps like TikTok, Netflix, and Tinder. Spending on non-game apps has recently grown at twice the rate as spending on games. Game spending was exploding at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 and early 2020, but by late 2020, non-gaming apps caught up, and they surpassed games in 2021.

This has been driven in part by the shift so many apps have made to a subscription-based model of late. For years, games generated more revenue not necessarily because they got more downloads (though they often did) but because their long-term monetization was clearer, more consistent, and more robust thanks to in-app transactions. Other types of apps didn't have that going for them, and many were sold for one-time purchase prices or offered a limited number of premium upgrades.