An appeals court has issued a ruling in the long-running antitrust tussle between Apple and Epic Games. As Bloomberg reports, the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling, which rejected most of Epic's claims that Apple violated federal competition law by prohibiting alternative app stores on its devices. The three-judge panel also upheld a part of the original ruling that was in Epic's favor.

“There is a lively and important debate about the role played in our economy and democracy by online transaction platforms with market power,” the panel wrote in the decision. “Our job as a federal court of appeals, however, is not to resolve that debate — nor could we even attempt to do so. Instead, in this decision, we faithfully applied existing precedent to the facts.”

The ruling maintains the status quo, unless further appeals move the case to a higher court. One added wrinkle is the fact that Epic may now be on the hook for Apple's legal fees, as Axios' Stephen Totillo pointed out.

“Today’s decision reaffirms Apple’s resounding victory in this case, with nine of ten claims having been decided in Apple’s favor. For the second time in two years, a federal court has ruled that Apple abides by antitrust laws at the state and federal levels," Apple told Engadget in a statement. "The App Store continues to promote competition, drive innovation, and expand opportunity, and we’re proud of its profound contributions to both users and developers around the world. We respectfully disagree with the court’s ruling on the one remaining claim under state law and are considering further review.”

In the original 2021 ruling, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers determined that although Apple prevented users from being able to pay less for apps or in-app purchases, it wasn't running the App Store like a monopoly. Still, Rogers told Apple to let developers direct users to alternative payment systems, which would have enabled them to bypass the 15 to 30 percent cut Apple typically takes from in-app purchases.

Apple won a last-gasp delay on the implementation of those changes. However, in 2022, it started allowing the makers of certain apps to redirect users to their own websites for payments and to fully manage their accounts.

Engadget has contacted Epic for comment. The company has made similar antitrust claims in a lawsuit against Google and that case is set to go to trial in November. 

Epic kickstarted its battles against Apple and Google when it offered Fortnite mobile players a cheaper way to pay for in-game currency that bypassed the iOS and Android payment systems. Apple and Google removed Fortnite from their app stores, and Epic responded withlawsuits against both companies.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome in both cases, Apple and Google may support third-party app stores on iOS and Android anyway. Regulators in other markets have scrutinized both companies' app store practices. As a result of new European Union laws in particular, Apple is reportedly preparing to allow third-party marketplaces on the iPhone as soon as next year. If and when it does, Epic's own mobile app store is ready to go, according to CEO Tim Sweeney. Microsoft is preparing its own mobile app store too.

Your Google Authenticator one-time codes are no longer trapped if you lose the device that stores them. An update to Authenticator for Android and iOS now stores backups of codes in your Google account. You won't have to reauthorize all your linked apps (or scan a QR code) just because you got a new phone.

Once you have the latest version of the app, you only have to follow prompts to sign into Google and enable syncing. Of course, you'll also want to be sure your Google account is secure to prevent intruders from misusing Authenticator.

Google is still pushing for password-free logins that use technology like passkeys. However, it also acknowledges that people still rely on one-time codes. The Authenticator update promises to reduce some of the headaches of using those codes until you're ready and able to move to another system. This might also encourage the use of two-factor authentication if you were previously afraid of what would happen if your phone was lost or stolen.

This isn't a novel concept. Apps like Microsoft Authenticator also have cloud backups. However, it's no secret that Google's tool is popular. Cloud syncing should make a tangible difference, particularly when many apps can use Authenticator as an alternative to the conventional password.

BeReal, Apple's iPhone app of the year for 2022, wants you to know that it's still going strong. The app sends users a notification at a different time each day, prompting them to drop everything and share photos taken with their phone's front and rear cameras simultaneously. You have a two-minute window to do this, with the idea that you'll share authentic updates from your life (you likely won't have enough time to fix your hair or find a spot with great lighting first). Your friends are notified when you post late or retake your photos.

This approach has caused some teething issues. It has led to people sharing mundane photos of their computer screens or taking out their phones simultaneously during a class, as The New York Times reported recently. Citing data from an analytics company, the publication suggested that the app's user numbers have nosedived by around 61 percent in recent months to under six million as the novelty factor waned and biggerrivals started to copy BeReal.

On its new blog, BeReal claims it actually has more than 20 million daily active users. In its inaugural post, the BeReal team notes it has been quiet as it's been busy. "But [that] means people have been guessing about what we’ve been up to and how things are going, and not always accurately," the post reads. 

BeReal

Meanwhile, BeReal has debuted a feature that could lead to an uptick in engagement and perhaps keep wavering users onboard. Bonus BeReal, which the company is testing in the UK before expanding to the rest of the world soon, allows users to post two extra snapshots per day at times of their choosing — as long as they share their regular BeReal on time.

The move could undercut the spontaneous authenticity that BeReal strives for, as it will give users a chance to pose for and edit their extra posts. However, BeReal notes that it may make changes to the feature.

Gamers who want to post clips of a cool multikill they pulled off in Halo Infinite or something ridiculous that happened in Sea of Thieves to Twitter may need to take an extra couple of steps to share their captures. Microsoft said it had to switch off the option to upload screenshots and clips directly to Twitter from Xbox consoles as well as the Game Bar on Windows.

There are other options, though they're a little more inconvenient. You can use the Xbox mobile app to download console captures and share them to Twitter. Nintendo and PlayStation offer similar ways to share screenshots and clips. Alternatively, you can copy your Xbox captures onto a USB drive and access them from your computer.

Engadget has contacted Xbox for comment, but it seems likely that Microsoft dropped the built-in sharing option due to Twitter's decision to start charging for API access. That move is breaking functionality for all kinds of organizations, including disaster response services.

This week, Microsoft said it would soon remove Twitter integration from its social media management tool for advertisers. Twitter is said to be charging at least $42,000 per month for enterprise access to its APIs.

In a response to a tweet about Microsoft's API move, Twitter owner Elon Musk suggested that Microsoft had "illegally" used his company's data and that a lawsuit is forthcoming. "They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time," he wrote. Musk noted in December that ChatGPT operator OpenAI, whose tech Microsoft is using to power Bing's chatbot and other AI features, "had access to Twitter database for training. I put that on pause for now."

Musk recently set up his own AI company in the hopes of taking on the likes of Google and OpenAI. As it happens, he co-founded OpenAI but later disowned the company and publicly criticized ChatGPT.

Apple allegedly plans to release a journaling app for the iPhone, The Wall Street Journal reported. The app, codenamed "Jurassic," would align with Apple's desire to expand into healthcare, with internal documents tying journaling to improved mental health. 

This app could act as a life tracker of sorts, analyzing what your typical day is like, where you go, who you interact with and when you differentiate from a standard routine. Supposedly, it might attempt to even determine the difference between who your colleagues and friends are, using a feature called "All Day People Discovery." It could work by picking up your proximity to other individuals, though it's not clear if they would also need an iPhone and the app. 

The comprehensive information Apple may collect isn't exactly new, but could be very obvious, with a personalization feature using the data it collects to suggest relevant journaling topics. Basically, it seems that if you bring your iPhone on a run, it will suggest writing about a workout. All data could apparently be stored solely on-device, with journaling suggestions automatically deleting after four weeks. 

If Apple does release a journaling app, it could be in direct competition with Day One. The feeling and activity tracker has spent over a decade growing to 200,000 premium subscribers — much with the help of Apple. It received a 2014 Apple Design Award and received repeated App Store promotions. Paul Mayne, its founder, told the WSJ that Apple's support noticeably dropped off about three years ago, leading him to assume it was making a similar app. Apple has previously been accused of creating its own versions of popular apps — also known as Sherlocking — or taking meetings with companies only to drop off and produce something akin to their idea. 

Apple has not publicly announced anything about the alleged journaling app, and likely won't until, at earliest, its June developer conference. 

Bluesky, Jack Dorsey's alternative to Twitter, is now available by invitation only on Android devices after arriving on the App Store in February, The Verge reported. The app has a number of Twitter-like functions, letting you search for and follow other users, create posts (with photos) and more. It's currently in beta, though, so has a limited number of users (reportedly around 25,000) and is missing features like direct messages. 

Bluesky first came about in 2019 as a Twitter-backed side as a new type of decentralized standard for social media platforms. It officially broke off from Twitter in 2021, and has since joined the ranks of upstart Twitter clones like Mastodon that appeared following Elon Musk’s takeover. 

The app is designed to let users decide how they want to see and consume social media. "For developers, an open marketplace of algorithms will provide the freedom to experiment with and publish algorithms that anyone can use," CEO Jay Graber wrote last month. "For users, the ability to customize their feed will give them back control of their most valuable resource: their attention."

Graber has said that moderation is one of the last pieces of the puzzle to solve before the app opens to the public "because we wanted to prioritize user safety from the start," he wrote in a recent blog post. It'll apparently use a mixture of automated filtering and server-level moderation controlled by admins. Then, "we will let users subscribe to additional sets of moderation labels that can filter out more content or accounts." 

Marvel announced today that its Comixology-operated Marvel Comics app is shutting down this June. Fortunately, comic fans who bought issues in the app can access them in the company’s self-operated Marvel Unlimited app. The shutdown comes several months after layoffs at Amazon (Comixology’s owner since 2014) reportedly hit the comic storefront especially hard.

The Marvel Comics app will shut down on June 2nd. Exactly one month before that — May 2nd — is the cutoff date for new purchases in the old app. Any purchases made up to that date will transfer to Marvel Unlimited.

Android users who bought digital comics through the Comixology Marvel Comics app have an effortless transition: do nothing, and your comics should appear in Marvel Unlimited. (That’s because the Android app already required a Marvel account.) But iOS users have a few extra steps. First, you’ll need to open the Comixology Marvel Comics app on your iPhone or iPad. Then, follow Marvel’s instructions to link a Marvel account to the old app. After that, your old purchases should appear in Marvel Unlimited.

You won’t need a Marvel Unlimited subscription to access your purchases from the old app. But to entice you to buy into its service, Marvel is offering a discounted price of $5 per month for the first year with coupon code UNLIMITED. (It’s usually $10 / month or $70 if you pay for an entire year.) Marvel Unlimited is like Netflix for Marvel comics, offering access to over 30,000 issues from the Marvel universe. Like the Comixology-run app, there’s usually a delay of around three months between an issue’s initial release and its availability on the subscription platform.

Although Marvel has apparently gone out of its way to make this transition relatively smooth, it still illustrates the potential for chaos when digital content shifts platforms. We don’t own any of this stuff, so when parent companies mismanage apps, lay off workers and shuffle priorities, we’re left to hope mega-corporations want to do right by their customers — a trust factor worth bearing in mind any time you buy a comic, game or any other digital media.

Snapchat’s ChatGPT-powered AI personality is expanding to all the app’s users. An upgraded version of “My AI,” the in-app chatbot that was previously limited to Snapchat+ subscribers, is now launching globally, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced at the company’s Partner Summit event.

With the expansion, My AI has a number of new Snapchat-specific features. It can provide Snapchat users with recommendations for restaurants and other activities based on what’s popular in the Snap Map, and can suggest augmented reality lenses. Users can also add the AI to group chats, and set a custom name and avatar (via Bitmoji) for the AI persona. My AI is also now able to respond to photo and video snaps. For now, it can only respond with text messages, but Snap says that “soon” it will be able to respond to snaps with its own AI-generated art. (That feature will, however, be exclusive to Snapchat+.)

While My AI’s rollout has been limited until now, the company says that My AI has already been a hit with users, who exchange 2 million messages a day with the bot. Snap’s implementation of OpenAI’s technology has also been criticized, though. The Washington Post reported that the bot engaged in inappropriate conversations and gave questionable advice to researchers posing as teens.

Now, Snap says that My AI uses “additional moderation technology” so that users’ can be temporarily restricted from the feature if they “misuse the service.” The company also says the AI has been trained to consider the age of the user it’s messaging with to help prevent chats from veering into unsafe territory. Additionally, parents will eventually be able to use the app’s parental control feature, Family Center, to track how much time their teens are spending chatting with their new AI friend.

Even so, Snap seems to be well-aware of the limitations of My AI, which it has previously described as “prone to hallucination.” Even Spiegel, who has suggested that interacting with AI like ChatGPT will soon be an everyday activity, was somewhat cautious in his endorsement “My AI certainly makes plenty of mistakes, so you can’t rely on it for advice, but it’s definitely entertaining,” he said.

Android users in the UK may get the choice to pay for apps and services on the platform through a billing system other than Google's. Ten months after the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an investigation into the tech giant's payment system for in-app purchases, Google offered to give developers in the region the choice to use alternative options. The probe came following a separate investigation in which the CMA found Apple and Google held an "effective duopoly" on mobile ecosystems, and that Google's Play Store in particular could potentially lead "to higher prices and reduced choice for Android users."

At the moment, the CMA is asking for feedback on Google's proposals and will continue accepting them until May 19th. If the organization decides to make the proposals legally binding based on people's feedback, then developers will be able to offer a payment system of their own choosing, known as "Developer-only Billing" or DOB, in the UK. They could also offer an alternative payment system next to Google's in a scheme known as "User Choice Billing" (UCB). 

That said, Google will still collect service fees from developers, which typically cost them between 15 to 30 percent of their earnings — it will just be a bit lower than usual. When developers don't offer Google Play billing at all, their service fee will be reduced by 3 percent. If they choose to offer an alternative payment method alongside Google's, and a customer chooses that, their service fee will be lowered by 4 percent.

The tech giant explained in a post about its proposals: "The service fees for distributing apps via Android and Google Play will continue to be based on digital sales via our platform. The service fee is how we support our ongoing investments in Android and Google Play, reflects the value provided by Android and Google Play, and is how we earn money as a business."

Last year, Google allowed Android app developers to use third-party payments in several European Union states. The company also collects service fees in the EU no matter the billing system a user chooses, though the rates are also reduced if they pay using the alternative billing method.

Google says its commitments will be implemented in phases if the CMA decides to adopt them. The ability to add non-Google billing will initially be available to developers of non-gaming apps. Gaming app developers will be able to add alternative billing systems no later than October 2023.

Less than a month after debuting its new suite of Firefly generative AI editing tools, Adobe announced Monday that it is already working on a host of upgrades to further empower its users through Creative Cloud video and audio applications. The additions should be coming to Firefly's beta program later this year.

Built from the company's long-running AI program, Sensei, Firefly is a suite of generative AI models that can both create and transform audio, video, illustrations and 3D models using text prompts in the same way that Dall-E and ChatGPT do. Firefly's features are already available across Adobe's ecosystem including Premiere Pro, Illustrator, After Effects and Photoshop, though they're currently only accessible through the closed beta program. 

The new features announced Monday are designed to help professional editors cut down on their drudge work, boosting color levels, inserting placeholder images, adding effects, autonomously recommending b-roll for a given project — simply by typing their ideas into Firefly's AI text prompt and letting the algorithm do its thing. This will include "text to color enhancements," a broad-ranging capability that can adjust the brightness and saturation levels, shift the time of day — even the time of year — using natural language prompts. 

The generative AI features will extend to audio as well, with the capacity to insert background music and sound effects by describing the editor what they want through text. The animated font features that we first glimpsed at last month's debut event are expected to arrive shortly as well as an automated b-roll feature that analyzes the content of the script to generate storyboards and suggest video clips. Most impressive, Firefly will even throw together personalized how-to guides to walk new users through the process of using these features.