Apple’s Vision Pro is here — along with a solid collection of third-party launch apps. Although there are some big-name omissions (Netflix, YouTube and Spotify), the headset already supports over a million compatible App Store apps, Apple’s first-party offerings and over 600 apps developed specifically for the “spatial computing” device. Here are the notable third-party Vision Pro apps you can install on day one.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft

Microsoft didn’t skimp on its entry into the Vision Pro era. Seven of the company’s Office apps are available to install on launch day. These include Microsoft Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and Loop.

The Windows maker added several tools unique to the mixed-reality headset. For example, Word has a focus mode to block out distractions, PowerPoint includes an immersive environment for practicing presentations in front of a virtual audience and Excel lets you quickly move documents to other apps using Vision Pro’s pinch-to-drag gesture.

Microsoft Teams uses Vision Pro’s “Persona” feature, which gives you a digital avatar. Persona matches your digital representation’s facial expressions to yours; this may give off uncanny valley vibes to your colleagues, but it could also make your virtual self appear more lifelike. In addition, Microsoft’s VisionOS apps include Copilot, the company’s generative AI assistant that can draft text, create summaries and generate PowerPoint presentations.

Disney+

Disney

Given Disney’s longstanding collaboration with Apple (Steve Jobs sat on the company’s board, and Bob Iger sat on Apple’s until 2019), perhaps it isn’t surprising Disney went all-out with its Vision Pro app.

The app lets you stream Disney+ content in one of four 3D virtual environments: the Disney+ Theater (inspired by Hollywood’s historic El Capitan), the Scare Floor from Monsters Inc., Tony Stark’s Avengers Tower and Luke Skywalker’s land speeder on Tatooine. Although we’ve seen virtual environments in countless Meta Quest (and other VR) streaming apps, Vision Pro’s higher resolution should make them feel more immersive.

Disney’s VisionOS app also includes a selection of supported 3D films. The library consists of “dozens of popular movies,” including Avatar: The Way of Water, Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Elemental and Encanto. (Disney promises the list will expand over time.) You can also buy or rent more 3D movies from the Apple TV apps’ Store tab.

Zoom

Zoom

Zoom is also an early Vision Pro supporter. Like Microsoft Teams, Zoom’s VisionOS app will use Apple’s Personas, displaying you in calls as a 3D virtual avatar that matches your facial expressions and hand movements. The company says you can scale the app’s spatial setup “to the perfect size,” ensuring you feel like you’re in the same room as your colleagues.

A future update to the Zoom app will add support for 3D object sharing, letting designers share and collaborate on 3D models in their virtual space. The app will also eventually include Zoom Team Chat and the ability to pin your fellow meeting participants in space around you. Zoom says the latter will help you “feel more connected to the people in the meeting.”

MLB and NBA

MLB

America’s second and third most popular sports leagues are represented on Vision Pro. The NBA app lets you stream up to five live broadcasts in multi-view while glancing at other game scores and stats off to the side. Meanwhile, the MLB app offers fully immersive environments, including a ballpark with a view from home plate and stats for each pitch. A future update (scheduled for around Opening Day) will add access to “additional MLB.TV content” for subscribers.

The world’s premier baseball league shared its enthusiasm for the app. “If there is an opportunity for a baseball fan to enjoy our sport on any given platform, then we need to have a presence where we can deliver unique storytelling experiences,” wrote MLB Deputy Commissioner Noah Garden.

Max

Warner Bros. Discovery

Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max is available on Vision Pro, offering access to the streaming service’s movies, series, news and sports. The company says select titles will be available in 4K and Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos.

Like other VisionOS apps, Max will offer at least one virtual environment in which you can stream content: the Iron Throne room from Game Of Thrones and House of the Dragon. “The intricate Targaryen-era adornments will make fans feel like they’re watching the programming available on Max in Westeros during the height of their reign,” wrote HBO / Max Content Chair Casey Bloys.

Lowe’s Style Studio

Lowe's

Lowe’s will use the Vision Pro to make it easier to imagine ways to spend money in its stores. The Lowe’s Style Studio app lets headset owners “step into an immersive, interactive 3D kitchen scene,” allowing you to “experiment in ways that weren’t possible until now.” The idea is to inspire you by stepping into a virtual space “curated by Lowe’s professional designers” with hundreds of customizable real-world materials.

Game Room

Resolution Games

Stockholm-based studio Resolution Games launched the Game Room app, which lets you play tabletop classics in mixed reality or fully virtual environments. Games include chess, solitaire, hearts, yacht and (the Battleship-like) Sea Battle.

It supports one to four players in online play against foes using different Apple devices (not just fellow Vision Pro owners). It also supports single-player against AI opponents.

Other confirmed apps and games

Here are more highlights from Vision Pro’s collection of over 600 launch apps:

• AmazeVR Concerts - Front-row virtual concerts

• Animoog Galaxy - Create music in 3D space

• Apple Arcade games (more than 250 games, including NBA 2K24 Arcade Edition, Sonic Dream Team, and TMNT Splintered Fate)

• Blackbox - Spatial puzzles

• Box - Cloud file management and collaboration, including with 3D objects

• CellWalk - Tour a bacteria cell

• Complete HeartX - Anatomy, diagnoses and treatments

• Decathlon - Shop in 3D

• djay - Turntables and mixing

• Exploring Mars - Explore Mars with NASA rovers

• Fantastical - Calendar and tasks

• Healium - Relax in nature scenes

• IMAX - View 2D and 3D content

• Insight Heart - Learn about the human heart

• J.Crew Virtual Closet - Immersive shopping

• JigSpace - Interactive presentations in 3D

• Lego Builder’s Journey - Build with 3D LEGO bricks

• Loóna - Relaxing 3D dioramas

• Lungy: Spaces - Breathing exercises and meditation

• MindNode - Mind maps in spatial reality

• Mytheresa: Luxury Experience - Shopping with live consultations

• Navi - Real-time translation with live captions

• NowPlaying - A peek behind the music

• Numerics - Live business widgets

• Odio - Personal sound spaces

• OmniFocus and OmniPlan - Project management visualizations

• PGA Tour Vision - Immersive golf experience

• Red Bull TV - 3D maps of races / immersive videos

• Sky Guide and Night Sky - Your personal planetarium

• Skatrix Pro - Physics-driven skateboarding

• solAR - Explore the solar system

• Spool - Make music videos

• STAGE+ - Classical music performances

• Super Fruit Ninja - Slice and dice

• Synth Riders - Immersive gameplay

• tappr.tv - Discover new music and choreography

• Void-X - Retro arcade shooter

• Wayfair Decorify - Redesign your space

• Webex - Immersive meetings

• Zillow Immerse - Virtual home tours, interactive floor plans

For more on the Apple Vision Pro, you can read Engadget’s early impressions from Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar and a second hands-on with Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low and Editor-in-Chief Dana Wollman.

Earlier this week, the team behind the Arc browser for Mac (and recently Windows) released a brand-new iPhone app called Arc Search. As you might expect, it's infused with AI to power an experience where the app "browses for you"—pulling together a variety of sources of info across the internet to make a custom webpage to answer whatever questions you throw at it. That's just one part of what The Browser Company is calling Act 2 of Arc, and the company gave details on three other major new features its bringing to the browser over the coming weeks and months. 

The connective tissue of all these updates is that Arc is trying to blur the lines between a browser, search engine and website — the company wants to combine them all to make the internet a bit more useful to end users. In a promo video released today, various people from The Browser Company excitedly discuss a browser that can browse for you (an admittedly handy idea). 

The Arc Search app showed off one implementation of that idea, and the next is a feature that arrives today called Instant Links. When you search for something, pressing shift and enter will tell Arc to search and automatically open the top result. This won't have a 100 percent success rate, but there are definitely times when it comes in handy. One example Arc showed off was searching for "True Detective season 4 trailer" — pressing shift + enter automatically opened the trailer from YouTube in a new tab and started playing it. 

You can easily get multiple results with this tool, too. I told it to "show me a folder of five different soup recipes" and Arc created a folder with five different tabs in for me to review. I also asked for the forecasts in Rome, Paris and Athens and got three pages with the details for each city. It's handy, but I'm looking forward to Arc infusing it with more smarts than just simply pulling the "top" search result. (Side note: after testing this feature, my browser sidebar is awash with all kinds of nonsense. I'm glad Arc auto-closes things every day so I don't have to sort it out.)

In a similar vein, the upcoming Live Folders feature will collect updates from sites you want to follow, like a sort of RSS feed. The idea is anticipating what sites someone is going to browse to and bring updated results into that folder. One example involved getting tagged in things on GitHub — each time that happened, a tab would be added to the folder with the new item. The demo on this feature was brief, but it should be available in beta on February 15th for further testing.

I got the sense from the video that developers would need to enable their sites to be updated via Live Folders, so it doesn't seem like you can just add anything you want and expect it to work. In that way, it reminds me of some other Arc features like the one that lets you hover over a Gmail or Google Calendar tab to get a preview of your most recent messages or next appointment. Hopefully it'll have the smarts to do things like drop new posts from your favorite site into the folder or open a new video from a YouTube channel you subscribe to, but we'll have to wait to find out. (I also reached out to Arc for more details on how this might work and will update this story if I hear back.)

Finally, the last new feature here is also the most ambitious, and the one that most embodies that "browser that browses for you" vibe. Arc Explore, which the company says should be ready for testing in the next couple of months, uses LLMs to try and collapse the browser, search engine and site into a singular experience. In practice, this feels similar to what Arc is already doing with its new browser, but more advanced. One example the company gave involved making a restaurant reservation — starting with a query of wanting to make a reservation at one of a couple different restaurants, the Arc Explore interface brought back a bunch of details on each location alongside direct links to the Resy pages to book a table for two at exactly the time specified. 

Another demo showed off how using Arc Explore can be better than just searching and clicking on results. It centered around soup, as all good demos do. Having Arc Explore bring up details on a certain kind of soup immediately provided details like ingredient lists, direct recipe steps and of course related videos. Compared to the pain of browsing a lot of sites that get loaded down with autoplaying ads, videos, unrelated text and more distractions, the Arc Explore experience does feel pretty serene. Of course, that's only when it brings back the results relevant to you. But using a LLM, you can converse with Arc to get closer to what you're looking for. 

After using Arc Search on my iPhone, I can appreciate what The Browser Company is going for here — at the same time, though, breaking my old habits on how I browse the internet is no small thing. That means these tools are going to need to work pretty well when they launch if they're going to supplant the years I've spent putting things into a Google box and finding the results I want. But that sums up the whole philosophy and the point behind Arc: to shake up these habits in an effort to make a better browsing experience. Not all these experiments will stick, and others will probably mutate a lot from these initial ideas, but I'm definitely interested in seeing how things evolve from here.

Google is adding generative AI to Maps. The feature's in early access and only available for certain areas and for select Local Guides members, but it looks to be an interesting use of the technology. Basically, the tool allows you to speak to the app using natural language to discover new places in your hometown or when traveling throughout this great country of ours.

Here’s how it works. Ask the app what you’re looking for, like a restaurant to meet the needs of your friend group with various dietary restrictions. The company’s large-language models will analyze information about more than 250 million places along with insights provided by community members as part of its Local Guides program. It should be able to spit out the perfect spot.

Google says the system will work “no matter how specific, niche or broad your needs might be.” The company gives a far-reaching example involving thrifting in San Francisco. It describes a scenario in which a person asks the app for vintage thrifting spots in the city. The AI models analyzed nearby places, along with photos, ratings and community reviews. The app spit out a range of options, complete with photo carousels and review summaries.

Because this is a generative AI, you can go even further. If you ask the app to find a good lunch spot, it’ll automatically look for something that matches the retro vibe of the aforementioned vintage shop. In other words, it remembers the stuff you like, within reason. 

This feature can also be used on the fly, with Google giving an example of asking the AI for activities in the case of a sudden rainstorm. You can further refine search results by asking followup questions. This all seems pretty neat, but the feature is certainly limited for now, as it's just for US users and only in select areas. Once early access users give enough feedback, it should start popping up in more places.

Of course, this isn’t Google’s first AI rodeo. The company recently added generative AI features to the Chrome browser and made its AI-powered note-taking app available to everyone in the US. It’s also continuing to refine its Bard chatbot and stuffing Pixel phones with all kinds of AI tools.

Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro AR/VR headset will have a bunch of dedicated Microsoft 365 apps at launch on February 2, including Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and Loop. Apple has long described the Vision Pro as primarily a productivity device, so the addition of Microsoft products should make users, well, more productive.

These aren’t just slapdash remakes of correlating iPads apps, as many have built-in tools that take advantage of the headset. For instance, PowerPoint features a custom immersive environment that allows users to practice delivering a presentation to an actual audience. Excel will let users quickly move documents to other apps by using the headset’s pinch and drag functionality.

Microsoft

Microsoft Word will include a focus mode that blocks distractions so you can actually finish that novel you’ve been talking about for 15 years. Teams will take advantage of the headset’s persona feature, so your digital avatar can attend work meetings and creep everyone else out via the magic of the uncanny valley. The Zoom app on Apple Vision Pro will also include this feature.

Headset owners will also be able to access Microsoft’s AI-powered Copilot service. In other words, you’ll be able to use natural conversation to instruct the digital assistant to create drafts, summarize documents and even generate PowerPoint presentations.

Each of these apps will be available via the official App Store as soon as you unbox your expensive new gadget. There has been plenty of chatter about what software won’t be available at launch, like Netflix and YouTube, so it’s good to see that early adopters won’t be forced to exclusively use Apple-branded apps.

Apple recently announced the changes it's making to the App Store in order to comply with the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) that goes into full effect on March 7. The company's critics quickly denounced its plans and requirements for alternative app stores, with Spotify calling the changes a "total farce." Microsoft's Xbox is one of the latest companies to call out Apple's compliance plans. In response to a post on X by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek talking about the changes at Apple, Xbox president Sarah Bond said the company's new policy is "a step in the wrong direction" and that she hopes it listens to feedback to create a "more inclusive future for all."

Under DMA rules, platform owners like Apple and Google have to open up their systems to competing app stores. Apple, however, requires these alternative app stores to have stringent rules and moderation tools comparable to its own. Their operators will also need to be able to prove that they have access to a minimum amount of around $1.1 million in credit that they can use to pay developers. Apple has a new rule for developers, as well, requiring them to pay a Core Technology Fee of €0.50 (around 54 cents) per install after an app reaches a 1 million download threshold for the year. That rule applies whether the app is distributed through Apple's App Store or through an alternative marketplace. 

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said Apple's plan "is a devious new instance of Malicious Compliance." He added that Apple is essentially forcing developers to choose between App Store exclusivity and a new "also-illegal anticompetitive scheme rife with new Junk Fees on downloads," as well as new taxes on payments the company doesn't process itself. The App Store is a massive business for Apple, which takes a 15 to 30 percent commission from developers' earnings. For the fiscal year of 2022, for instance, Apple said the App Store ecosystem "facilitated $1.1 trillion in developer billings and sales." 

Epic pulled Fortnite from the App Store in 2020 after violating its rules on purpose and offering discounts to players making purchases outside of Apple's ecosystem. The developer recently announced that it's bringing Fortnite back to the iPhone and iPad in Europe this year after the DMA takes effect and that it's launching its own store for iOS. Spotify, which has also been a vocal critic of Apple, plans to launch its own in-app payment system for iOS users in Europe, as well. 

Yelp just released a substantial app update with more than 20 new features, and several of these tools are packed with, wait for it, AI. The biggest news for regular users is the addition of summaries of business automatically written by AI, which Yelp says will help people find the perfect restaurant or service to meet their needs.

There’s also new visuals for the home feed and revamped search experience, which the company says will also help users find that perfect dinner spot. This home feed incorporates AI to provide more relevant content to users and will also display images from nearby restaurants that match previous user queries, in addition to videos posted by local businesses.

The AI tomfoolery extends to business users. The app now offers business owners “AI-powered smart budgets” to optimize ad spending. There’s also new data insights available for business owners that deliver “valuable market and competitive” information.

Yelp

Yelp’s expanding the Recognitions feature to encourage user engagement. Now, users can earn official kudos by regularly reviewing certain types of foods. You can nab one of these coveted digital trophies by reviewing three restaurants that offer the same type of cuisine in one year. You’ll find these credentials in the Achievements section on the app.

The update’s only available on iOS for now, but Yelp says an Android version will be released in the coming months. This isn’t the first time the service has dipped its toes into the wading pool of AI. Back in April, the company announced it was integrating AI and natural language models to improve search.

The Apple Vision Pro will be missing some major native apps at the outset, including Netflix, Spotify and YouTube. One notable app to which users of the mixed-reality headset will have access when it debuts later this week is Zoom, which will support the Vision Pro's Persona feature.

Vision Pro users will be able to create digital versions of themselves. If you have said Persona, others on a Zoom or FaceTime call will be able to see your facial expressions and hand movements via your avatar. So while you may not be using a traditional webcam, other folks might notice your persona cringing at one of your boss' bad jokes.

According to Zoom, the app's spatial experience can be "scaled to the perfect size," so it shouldn't seem like you're miles away from someone's Persona. Although Vision Pro users will be represented as a Persona (if they choose to be), those joining the call from other devices will be represented as a floating tile. 

Zoom will be one of the first major third-party apps to use this tech. Apple said Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex are getting in on the party too. The company claims that it only takes a few minutes to set up a Persona with a Vision Pro.

There are more features coming to Zoom's app this spring. You'll be able to share 3D object files and view these in a virtual space through Vision Pro. Team Chat is also coming to the app, as is a tool called real-world pinning. Zoom says you'll be able to use this to pin five meeting participants anywhere in the virtual space and have the option of removing their background. The company suggests this will help Vision Pro users "feel more connected to the people in the meeting."

While Zoom might not be the most exciting app for those who are picking up a Vision Pro primarily for entertainment purposes, it's interesting to see what third-party companies are starting to do with the tech. A Zoom call might not be too much different from a FaceTime chat out of the gate, but the addition of features like 3D object sharing could make it a more intriguing prospect for mixed-reality use.

Arc, a browser initially built just for the Mac, has been expanding lately. The Browser Company announced a beta of its Windows version last month, and today they're bringing the Arc experience to the iPhone with Arc Search. As the name implies, the new app is focused on searching — when you open the app, you're met with a keyboard and search field, not your usual collection of tabs. And rather than just serving up simple search results from Google or your engine of choice, Arc scans the internet for various sources and creates a "page for me" that pulls together a bunch of info on your desired query.

For example, I just searched for "What happened in the Detroit Lions game?" and was met with details about a controversial two-point conversion that was overturned and how it ultimately affected the game's outcome, which was a three-point Lions loss. It follows with some top search results, team reactions, more details about the referees involved in the confusing call, fan sentiments and more links to dive into. 

It's not dissimilar to the sort of summaries you get in Google's generative AI search results, but so far I find results to be very hit or miss. For example, in the above-mentioned Lions query, the actual final score of the game was nowhere on the page that Arc generated. That's pretty basic info that you'd expect to see up top. Other queries I tried brought back a decent overview but not a whole lot of deep detail, and sometimes there weren't other links to click on to continue researching. That felt odd, because the results I received were far from comprehensive. 

If you aren't interested in these sorts of summary pages, however, you can still just type in a query and hit the "go" button on the keyboard to search Google; you only get the Arc-created summary pages if you tap the "browse for me" button. You can also just put a URL right into the search field and go straight to a site if you're so inclined. Like the desktop Arc browser, the Arc Search app archives your tabs after 24 hours so you don't rack up a never-ending log of sites you're not going to go back to (you can also choose to have tabs stick around as long as 30 days, if you need more time with what you've pulled up). And there's a nice "reader" mode like you'll find in Safari that strips away the mess found on many modern websites to make it easier to read an article. It also blocks trackers, ads and banners by default, which is pretty handy.

From what I can tell, there's no way to sync Arc Search with the desktop browser — there's no way to see opened tabs from another machine, and I don't even think there's a way to sign into Arc Search with the account you make for your desktop browser. The only thing you can do with your open tabs is star one so it doesn't get closed, but there's otherwise no bookmarking or "read later" features. 

As the name suggests, it's a way to search and find info you need on your phone without offering the expected tools you'd get in a full-featured web browser. This makes it a bit of a tough sell to me — I love Arc on my Mac, and this so far feels like a significantly less useful experience than the full version of Arc, not to mention Safari or Chrome on iOS. While there's something to be said for the simplicity, I don't think the AI-generated summaries are worth making this my default mobile web browser.

That said, the Browser Company likes to get things into the wild so its users can test them and prod them and figure out what isn't working, so I'm sure iteration and improvements will come quickly. The company already says its working on sync with desktop, and they also plan to merge the app with features found in the "Arc Mobile Companion" app that launched last spring. That app, which has now been removed from the App Store, only shows you what tabs you have open on other devices and bounces them to Safari (or other apps) for viewing. So it's safe to say that the new Arc app will be more capable soon. And even though it's not something I want to use as my default browser yet, Arc's quirky view on how a browser works is enough for me to keep an eye on it and see how it grows.

Instagram is testing yet another feature meant to give users an alternative to finstas. It’s called “flipside” and it allows people to create a secondary photo grid that only designated friends can see.

If that sounds somewhat familiar it’s probably because Instagram already makes it pretty easy for users to create posts intended for a more limited audience. The app added the ability for users to share grid posts with “close friends” back in November (Stories for close friends has been a thing since 2018). More recently, it tested audience lists for Stories, so users could create multiple lists for small-group sharing. The app, of course, also makes it fairly easy to create an actual finsta.

Flipside, somewhat confusingly, offers yet another way of doing essentially the same thing. Users create a separate list of friends, distinct from “close friends,” to add to their “flipside.” They can then choose to post to their main grid or to their “flipside,” which is also accessible from their profile but only visible to the aforementioned list of friends. People will know if they have access to someone’s flipside if they see a key icon in someone’s grid, according to screenshots shared on Threads. (You can see a video of it in action over on Threads.)

Apparently, even Instagram head Adam Mosseri realizes this is all a bit redundant. “On one hand it feels good to create a clear space that feels more private,” he wrote in a post on Threads. “On the other, it's yet another way to reach a smaller audience on top of secondary accounts and Close Friends.”

He added that “we're not even sure we'll launch it,” which might explain why the company has been relatively quiet about the test. Flipside was first spotted back in December but was an internal prototype at the time, according to TechCrunch. However, it's now started to appear for actual users, with a number of reports of it appearing on Threads over the last day.

Early reactions seem to be mixed, with some enthusiasm for the update and some wondering why on earth they need yet another social media profile to maintain. Others seem to be, understandably, confused.

While finstas have (sometimes hilariously) been maligned, Meta’s recent obsession with creating “more private” spaces on Instagram is likely about more than simply adding convenience. Mosseri has noted many times over the last couple years that Instagram users simply aren’t posting as much as they used to, especially in their feeds. For an app that relies on advertising — much of it in users’ feeds — that’s less than ideal. So it’s not all that surprising Instagram would be looking for new ways to get people to spend more time posting to and scrolling their feeds.

Last year, the European Union implemented new laws to make big tech open up its platforms to competitors. The deadline for compliance is March, and all eyes were on how Apple, which is famous for not playing nicely with others, would react. Now the company has set out how it will comply with the law, and the result is the sort of malicious compliance everyone was expecting. Similarly, the reaction from the coalition of well-heeled critics who were all hoping to get a slice of Apple’s pie for free has been similarly predictable.

The Digital Markets Act

In 2023, the EU laid down a new regime to prevent big tech throwing all of its weight around in the bloc. The Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act govern what it calls “gatekeepers,” the big platforms who get between users and businesses. That includes Meta, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon and (TikTok owner) ByteDance, who all have big user bases, deep pockets and a lot of power. One key provision of the law was to get platform holders like Apple and Google to open their systems and allow competing services, such as alternative app stores, a topic we covered in depth back in 2020.

On January 25, Apple published a statement explaining how the DMA would impact iOS, Safari and the App Store. The document is laced with references to how the law makes iOS less secure and that Apple needs to take steps to mitigate those risks. And while Apple does not say how much each part of its business makes specifically, the App Store is a key part of its services division which earned a combined $22 billion in its most recent quarter. Consequently, Apple will happily let you set up a competing iOS app store, but in order to do so, you will have to vault Mount Everest, dig a tunnel to the center of the Earth and front a million dollars in cash.

Okay, not quite that.

You can compete, but you won’t want to

The creators of a would-be rival app store can’t simply turn up and sell their wares without any oversight. It was obvious from the get-go that even if Apple did open up its platforms, no third party app store would be allowed to do an end-run around the company’s basic rules. If you were hoping to run Honest Doug’s App Store (Not A Scam) and take the world for a ride, then you’re out of luck.

Would-be rivals will still need to meet Apple’s Notarization requirements and have tight rules and moderation tools governing quality, piracy, fraud and payment disputes. (Notarization will mean these apps will be checked by Apple to look for “known malware”, with the ability to shut the app down if any is detected.) They will need key rules around data collection and to offer users the same level of control they enjoy in the App Store proper. Not to mention complying with the Digital Services Act, GDPR and a number of other acronym-heavy EU regulations around digital services and online privacy. Essentially, if you want to run your own App Store, you’ll need to do it to the same level that Apple does.

Apple has also said app stores need to ensure they can meet their obligation to pay app developers. In this case, it means sharing a letter from a top financial institution with proof they have access to a minimum of €1,000,000 (around $1.1 million) in credit. And to avoid third party app stores taking advantage of Apple’s platform without Apple benefiting, developers will need to pay a Core Technology Fee once an app has been downloaded more than a million times. This is a per-install fee of €0.50 (around 54 cents) which renews every 12 months the app is installed for. You can decide for yourself if this reminds you of Unity’s aborted Runtime Fee payment scheme.

At the present time, Apple charges developers either $99 or $299, depending on if they are for an individual or a company. Apple then takes a flat commission on any transaction, either to buy the app itself or with an in-app purchase. For small developers making less than $1 million per year, Apple takes a 15 percent cut, while bigger names pay 30 percent. There are exceptions, including “reader” apps which are downloaded for free and tie to subscriptions elsewhere. So far it's not clear under what circumstances the sideloading fees might be preferable (if ever) to the vanilla "Apple tax" through its proprietary storefront.

The Expected Response

Naturally, Apple’s statement and all of the explanatory detail in its developer notes was controversial. Its critics, many of whom feel that Apple has too much power over its platform, were incensed.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who has previously sued the company about this matter, was quick to denounce the changes. He said the new rules were “a devious new instance of malicious compliance.” Adding that it is forcing app developers to pick between App Store exclusivity or an “anticompetitive scheme rife with new junk fees on downloads and new Apple taxes on payments they don’t process.”

The Coalition for App Fairness, a lobby group backed by Epic, Spotify and Match Group, was quick to support one of its biggest backers. Executive director and former Republican spokesperson Rick Vanmeter said Apple had “no intention” to comply with the DMA. And added the move was a “shameless insult to the European Commission and the millions of European consumers they represent,” and urged officials to reject the move.

Despite Sweeney’s personal objection and that of his lobbyists, Epic Games has already said Fortnite – which was pulled from the Apple Store when Epic deliberately violated Apple’s Terms of Service – will return to iOS. The company said it would launch its own Epic Games Store for iOS in 2024, through which it would distribute its own titles. It added in the announcement tweet it would continue to “argue to the courts and regulators that Apple is breaking the law.”

But it’s not just Apple’s well-heeled rivals who feel the company is thumbing its nose at the EU with these changes. Andy Yen, the founder of privacy service Proton, told Engadget that Apple’s compliance with the DMA is “done in bad faith,” and that the iPhone maker is “fighting tooth and nail to maintain its profits and monopoly." Yen added that the “strings attached to Apple’s new policies mean that in practice it will be impossible for developers to benefit from them.” And that the moves erode “the fundamental rights of users by giving Apple the ability to review apps downloaded outside the App Store.” He added that the “European Commission can’t let this blatant bending of the rules fly.”

But despite the chorus of calls demanding the European Commission to Do Something, the body hasn’t budged just yet. “We take note of Apple’s announcements ahead of the compliance deadline,” a commission spokesperson told Engadget “We do not comment on these announcements.” The spokesperson added they “strongly encourage designated gatekeepers to test their proposals with third parties.” And that these comments were “without prejudice to the Commission’s own assessment of these proposals.”

At the time of writing, there has not yet been a comment from any high-profile EU figures about the matter. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Margrethe Vestager, who handles technology and competition matters, have been active on social media but not about this topic. Similarly, we are waiting to hear back from Spotify and Deezer, who have both previously urged the European Union to act. Not to mention that, before Apple’s announcement, Spotify published its own announcement saying it will offer app downloads directly from its site.