The changes include more than 600 new APIs, expanded app analytics, functionality for alternative browser engines, and options for processing app payments and distributing iOS apps. Across every change, Apple is introducing new safeguards that reduce — but don’t eliminate — new risks the DMA poses to EU users. With these steps, Apple will continue to deliver the best, most secure experience possible for EU users.
The new options for processing payments and downloading apps on iOS open new avenues for malware, fraud and scams, illicit and harmful content, and other privacy and security threats. That’s why Apple is introducing protections — including Notarization for iOS apps, an authorization for marketplace developers, and disclosures on alternative payments — to reduce risks and deliver the best, most secure experience possible for users in the EU. Even with these safeguards in place, many risks remain.
For years, Apple has been preparing for this moment, not just by introducing features like notarization on the Mac, but by denouncing the concept of “sideloading” apps (i.e., loading them from outside the App Store) as a danger to all users. Beginning in March, the entire world will be watching the EU to see if Apple’s warnings were true—or if it was just a smokescreen designed to scare regulators and legislators out of creating laws like the DMA.
Here’s what Apple says is going to change.
The malware and virus portion of the notarization process will be automatic, but there will also be a human review to make sure that apps are functioning as advertised.
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Notarized apps will be double checked during installation to ensure that they have not been tampered with and that installation was initiated through an authorized web browser. An iOS app that is found to have known malware after it's been installed will be prevented from launching on a user's device and new installations will be revoked.
Even in its release announcing the new features, Apple makes clear that it’s mad about them: “This change is a result of the DMA’s requirements, and means that EU users will be confronted with a list of default browsers before they have the opportunity to understand the options available to them,” the company says. “The screen also interrupts EU users’ experience the first time they open Safari intending to navigate to a webpage.” Apple’s argument for the App Store has always amounted to: only Apple can provide a good, safe, happy user experience on the iPhone. Regulators don’t see it that way. And Apple’s furious about it.
Today, Apple is introducing new options for how apps globally can deliver in-app experiences to users, including streaming games and mini-programs. Developers can now submit a single app with the capability to stream all of the games offered in their catalog.
Apps will also be able to provide enhanced discovery opportunities for streaming games, mini-apps, mini-games, chatbots, and plug-ins that are found within their apps.
Starting today Apple is opening up its App Store to allow game streaming apps and services. This means that services like Xbox Cloud Streaming and GeForce Now, which previously were only accessible on iOS via a web browser, will be able to offer full-featured apps. “Developers can now submit a single app with the capability to stream all of the games offered in their catalog,” Apple wrote in a blog post. These changes apply “worldwide,” according to the company.
Here’s what happens when you turn on Stolen Device Protection. Everything works as before when you’re in a familiar location—home, work, or anywhere your iPhone has determined you use it frequently using the device-based Significant Locations system. You can change your Apple ID password, turn off Find My, access passwords in Keychain, and much more with no new requirements.
However, whenever you’re somewhere deemed unfamiliar, critical changes to your account or device require Face ID or Touch ID authentication, with no passcode alternative or fallback. The most important security actions also require a delay of an hour—shown with a countdown timer—before you perform a second biometric authentication. This delay reduces the chances of an attacker forcing you to authenticate with the threat of violence.
By default, Apple’s backend systems will find a new episode of a podcast and transcribe it. When a new podcast episode drops, the transcript won’t be available right away—but will appear once Apple has had a chance to consume it.
iOS 17.4 introduces the ability to assign languages to Siri specifically for when it reads your messages to you. Languages can be different than the assigned language used for Siri for all other tasks. This is useful for when you primarily use Siri in one language, but you chat with people using other languages.
Apple this week updated its website to confirm that the first U.S. vehicle models with next-generation CarPlay support will debut in 2024, but it did not provide a more specific timeframe, or indicate when availability will begin in other countries.
Users can now open the app to identify a song that is playing while wearing headphones. The coolest part is that the new feature works for songs playing around you or in another app, such as Instagram or TikTok.
The app is introducing fully interactive widgets, where you can tap on the forecast displayed on the widget to see more details about current conditions or the days ahead. The idea, explains developer David Barnard, is to “put a whole weather app in a widget.”
Bezel is a very simple app that does something I find really useful, but it’s definitely not for everyone. The app lets you connect your iPhone, iPad, or even iPod Touch to your Mac through a wired connection and mirrors your screen to a window on your Mac that looks like your phone or tablet.
Pro photography iPhone app Photon Camera has received a notable update today that comes with two advanced features – 3D white balance control and gray card detection.
"Not by any unwillingness or lack of desire to do that, but even when you note we look at as close to ubiquity on devices perspective, the decisions that lead to that are we try and be very rigorous about, “What’s the effort to integrate on any given set of devices and what’s the benefit for the members that we serve?”. We have to be careful about making sure that we’re not investing in places that are not really yielding a return, and I would say we’ll see where things go with Vision Pro. Certainly we’re always in discussions with Apple to try and figure that out but right now, the device is so subscale that it’s not really particularly relevant to most of our members."
We are all photographers now, with a phone in our pocket ready to capture life, love and everything in between – which, quite often, is incredibly mundane, such as what we had for lunch. But how can you make sure you are taking the best possible pictures? Here, photographers share their top tips.
When we first have this internet and world-wide-web thing back in the days, many of us, including me, thought that the days of middlemen are soon to be over.
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