Category: Apple Insider

Apple is currently embroiled in a legal battle against Epic Games over the iOS game “Fortnite,” sparked by Epic’s decision to add a third-party payment option for in-app payments. Apple responded by pulling the game from the App Store, which then triggered a lawsuit from Epic as well as a marketing campaign to mobilize “Fortnite” players against Apple.

Since then, there have been two court hearings, multiple arguments, and a framing of the disagreement by Epic that Apple is being anticompetitive in a number of ways. This includes Apple charging its usual 30% transaction fee for in-app purchases within the App Store, as well as preventing Epic from launching its own separate app marketplace on iOS.

Amid these arguments, Epic sought after potential allies to form a “coalition,” a group of firms that want Apple to change its ways. This resulted in the creation of the Coalition for App Fairness, an official-sounding group that wants to pressure Apple into making the same sort of changes Epic demands Apple to perform.

Becoming the target of a pressure group isn’t new to Apple, as it has faced accusations and demands across various subjects and parts of its business, ranging from the conditions of Chinese factories for workers to the sharing of map data.

In the case of the Coalition for App Fairness, Apple has to take on a collection of its biggest App Store and competitiveness critics, in an organization that was created barely a month after Epic’s initial suggestion.

According to the group’s website, it is an “independent nonprofit organization founded by industry-leading companies to advocate for freedom of choice and fair competition across the app ecosystem.” Its members “want every app developer to have an equal opportunity to innovate and engage in commerce, free from draconian policies, unfair taxes, or monopolistic control.”

The Coalition for App Fairness logo [Twitter]

The Coalition supposedly “represents all innovators – from startups to small developers to indie studios to first time creators.”

While that description sounds quite general and could apply to other app marketplaces, such as Google Play, the group’s arguments largely center around Apple and its App Store.

For example, the front page alone declares “Every day, Apple taxes consumers & crushes innovation,” before attacking Apple over a number of issues. It also features a mini infographic highlighting the 30% “tax on most app purchases” in the App Store, which is “500% more than the upper limit of 5% charged by other payment providers for purchases.”

There’s also mention of how Apple earns over $15 billion in revenue from the transaction fee per year, citing a report from CNBC. To further emphasize and influence users into it being a vast amount of money, the page writes out the number in full to show the number of digits Apple’s App Store revenue takes up.

The company lists a total 13 companies as its “Founding Members.” The list obviously includes Epic, but also a number of others who have complained about Apple in the past.

• Basecamp
• Blix
• Blockchain.com
• Deezer
• Epic Games
• European Publishers Council
• Match Group
• News Media Europe
• Prepear
• ProtonMail
• SkyDemon
• Spotify
• Tile

Basecamp got into an argument with Apple over App Store policies and fees, with in-app purchase requirements limiting the ability for developers to assist consumers with “exceptional customer service.” CEO Jason Fried argued in favor of freedom from Apple’s payment system in June, believing it would equate to a better consumer experience in assisting with payment issues.

Blix has sued Apple over its introduction of Sign in with Apple, under claims it copies BlueMail’s “Share Email” feature by allowing users to communicate via a public email address without revealing their private version. The company has also attempted to find more companies who underwent similar “Sherlocking” events.

Blockchain endured a removal of its iOS Bitcoin wallet app from the App Store in 2014, but it was later reinstated. At the time, CEO Nicholas Carry claimed it was due to Apple preparing to launch a competing revenues service, before declaring Apple a “gatekeeper to innovation.”

Deezer and Spotify are direct competitors against Apple Music, and have various disagreements with Apple, but primarily it centers around the App Store fees. While Spotify and Deezer subscriptions are subjected to the transaction fee, it is argued that Apple Music does not.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has complained about the App Store in the past.

Spotify’s disagreement with Apple has led to the European Commission launching a pair of formal investigations into alleged anticompetitive practices, with one dealing specifically with the App Store. Spotify made a formal complaint to the regulator in 2019.

The European Publishers Council and News Media Europe are likely to have joined due to publishers having major problems with how Apple handles various matters. Along with allegedly seeing few revenue benefits to the Apple News subscription, publishers have also been unhappy with settings in iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur that would automatically redirect users to the Apple News app when they click a link from a News+ publisher, bypassing the publication’s website completely, as well as other privacy-related features.

Match Group operates numerous dating services, including Tinder and OkCupid, which all offer various in-app purchasing and subscription options. It is probable that Match will want changes so it can reduce costs and increase revenues.

Prepear is a meal planner app that had its trademark application objected to by Apple, as its logo was deemed to be too close to Apple’s own. Naturally, Prepear’s logo is a pear with a leaf.

Secure email provider ProtonMail has complained about Apple’s alignment with “oppressive governments and curtailed digital freedom,” accusing it of being a monopoly that abused their market dominance. In a June blog post, the firm railed against Apple over its control, the transaction fee level, and helping to “propagate authoritarian laws globally.”

SkyDemon is a VFR flight-planning and navigation software for multiple platforms. In a Coalition press release, SkyDemon founder and managing director Tim Dawson said “When a platform imposes its own payment system on services like ours and actively prevents us from informing potential customers that they can transact with us directly, nobody wins except the platform.”

The founding members of the Coalition for App Fairness

Tile produces app-trackable accessories, which may find competition from Apple in the form of “AirTags.” It has complained to EU regulators and to a House Judiciary Committee in April about Apple’s supposed anti-competitive behavior, which stemmed from a breakdown in the relationship between the two companies in 2019, following reports of “AirTags” existence.

Apple ceased selling Tile products in stores and also poached a Tile engineer, though it is unclear if the person was hired for the development of a competing product. There are also accusations of unfairness in that Apple locked out third-party access to the U1 chip’s ultra-wide band radios, which would be used for position tracking for “AirTags.”

The vision of the Coalition for App Fairness is for companies like Apple to adopt a set of “App Store Principles” The list of ten seem to be fairly straightforward on face value, but practically all of them seem to attack Apple in some way. The issues can be broken down to covering a few problem areas.

Some of the principles attack Apple’s policies regarding exclusivity, namely the use of only the App Store and its payment mechanism for in-app purchases, and the discouragement of creating rival app marketplaces. Apple doesn’t allow for secondary app stores, or for an app store to be offered within the App Store itself, as well as forbidding the use of third-party processing for in-app purchases.

There are also digs at Apple’s own apps, where developers should have “timely access to the same interoperability interfaces and technical information as the app store owner makes available to its own developers.” Read this as wanting third-parties to have access to the same tools as internal Apple teams working on apps like Maps and Apple Music.

Furthermore, there is the suggestion for app stores and platforms to avoid engaging in “self-preferencing its own apps or services,” namely the App Store should not offer up Apple’s Maps app first when it could easily suggest Google Maps or other competitors, for example.

On this point, Apple has faced repeated claims it was favoring its own apps, though these are largely found to be inaccurate in their accusations. One investigation by the Wall Street Journal was attempted to be replicated by AppleInsider, but the results weren’t able to be duplicated.

Apple has denied App Store Search juices results in its favor, with executive Phil Schiller insisting in September 2019 there was “nothing underhanded about the algorithm.” Instead, it was claimed apps ranked higher due to their popularity and Apple’s habit of using generic names like “Maps.”

The App Store fees are also raised in the list, where developers shouldn’t be “required to pay unfair, unreasonable, or discriminatory fees or revenue shares, no be required to sell within its app anything it doesn’t wish to sell, as a condition to gain access to the app store.”

There are some common-sense items in the list of ten principles, such as app stores needing to be “transparent about their rules and policies” and to apply them consistently with a quick and fair dispute resolution process. There’s also mentions of allowing access to app stores so long as it meets standards of quality, security, and privacy, the right to communicate directly with users via the app, and that a “developer’s data should not be used to compete with the developer.”

As well as creating the smaller list, the Coalition has spelled out its position on a collection of three issues.

The first big topic for the group is its claim “The App Store is ruled by anti-competitive policies.” It accuses Apple of favoring itself by “controlling the products or features that are available to consumers,” as well as forcing vendors to “limit options,” forces developers to use the App Store, and “even steals ideas from competitors.”

To prove its point, the group uses a pair of case studies for two companies that have fallen afoul of Apple’s policies.

The first is Tile, which the group starts off by calling a “scenario that harkens back to the browser wars of the 90’s.” It first highlights how Find My is installed on all iOS devices by default, giving Tile an immediate disadvantage. Then, at the same time as enhancing the Find My app to “compete more directly with Tile,” Apple updated iOS to make it harder “for consumers to access to the location data needed for Tile to work, while leaving Find My’s streamlined data access intact.”

Apple also started to serve “disarmingly frequent prompts to Tile customers to disable Tile location data access,” though the same thing wasn’t done for Find My.

This is in reference to an app tracking alert added in iOS 13, which warned users about apps that tracked their location in the background, offering users the opportunity to change their privacy settings for location data or to leave it as it is. The notification was helpful in cutting down the amount of location data shared with marketers, ensuring privacy for users, but simultaneously it meant apps that relied on ongoing location tracking like Tile could have found that functionality disabled by users seeing the prompt.

Tile objected to notifications about location tracking in the background in iOS 13.

As to why it wasn’t shown for the Find My app, it is likely due to it explicitly warning users about location tracking when it is turned on, as well as its enhanced management of who has access to the data. Apple probably thought that was enough for Find My, especially as it didn’t hand over location data to marketers.

However, this does give Apple a perceived advantage in that it isn’t held to the same location tracking limitations as third parties like Tile. Developers have complained about this before, with it amounting to a “double standard” for Apple’s own rules and guidelines.

In August 2019, Apple emphasized that it holds apps to a “high standard for privacy, security, and content” to maintain the trust of its users, with changes made “in service to the user.”

Tile has already complained to the European Commission on the matter, accusing Apple of preparing for the release of “AirTags” by selectively disabling features of rival products.

The argument is somewhat disingenuous as there’s a world of difference between disabling a feature entirely and changing how it acts. In the case of added location tracking notification, Apple didn’t pull access to it for Tile, but laid out to the user that their location was being tracked, and gave the user the option to disable it.

While you could argue this was a weaponization of a feature against Tile, this doesn’t take into account that the same tool is being used on vast numbers of other apps that don’t really need location tracking to be on all of the time.

The case study also delves into the use of ultra-wideband chips in the iPhone 11, and possibly being used in “AirTags” to enable enhanced location tracking, but Apple is “prohibiting competing apps like Tile from using UWB.”

Apple does commonly limit access to features of its hardware to third parties, as a security precaution. For example, the Secure Enclave on an iPhone is off-limits for direct access by apps, while Apple also heavily limits what can be done with NFC, which is primarily used to power Apple Pay.

It’s certainly down to Apple whether it enables access to UWB down the line to other developers, but the locking down of the feature for now could easily be due to security concerns.

The Find My Network is also an issue for Tile, as while Apple is enabling third-party access to Find My Network data to the same extent as Apple, the Coalition focuses on requirements that the data access goes through the Find My app, and not others. This means the Tile app wouldn’t be able to access the network, but a user could feasibly see the location of a Tile accessory from the Find My app.

The Coalition reasons this will mean Apple will “own the relation” with the Tile customer, which it blusters as a move “aimed at eradicating competition at the app level.”

By every legal definition, it is Apple’s network, which it came up with and is servicing, so therefore it gets to dictate the terms of engagement for data. Providing open access to a closed or restricted network relies on the benevolence of the entity that owns said network. It’s not a government-operated network with general public access.

The second case study revolves around Amazon’s Kindle app, which allows customers to read ebooks bought from Amazon on their iOS devices, along with the Kindle ereader range and apps on other platforms. The anti-competitive accusation this time arrives by the Coalition pointing out you can read Kindle books via the iOS app, but you cannot buy them from Amazon via the app itself.

Furthermore, the app doesn’t provide any extra instructions to the users about how they can acquire the ebook in the first place. “Is this just an odd oversight by Amazon, one of the most sophisticated companies in the world? Or is there something more nefarious happening here?” the group insinuates.

Kindle books can be read from an iPhone, but not bought.

This is in reference to two parts of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines, relating to how in-app purchases function. Apple requires developers to use the in-app purchase mechanism it supplies, but it does offer a long list of exceptions that it allows developers to use third-party payments.

The list includes retailers that offer physical goods and services outside of the app, such as Amazon’s retail app, as well as “Reader” apps, which the Kindle app would be covered by. In this latter case, Amazon is allowed to use the app to read content bought elsewhere, such as through its website via a browser, which can use any payment mechanism in existence.

Under the same 3.1.3 element of its guidelines, these reader apps and other exceptions are not allowed to inform consumers about other payment systems for in-app purchases at all, even outside the app.

On this point, it’s hard to argue Apple’s case to stop explaining that you can pay for items elsewhere, especially if it’s an app that facilitates the consumption of content bought elsewhere in the first place. Encouraging in-app purchases makes sense, but blocking what would be common sense information to users does seem mean.

And that Books app itself? It accepts industry-standard epub and PDF books with no digital rights management from anywhere, just fine.

While not a case study in its own right, the Coalition does use the end of its page on anti-competition to discuss the BlueMail situation, where Apple removed the app for alleged violations of App Store requirements. At the time, Blix sued Apple with claims it stole the idea for “Sign in with Apple,” alleged Apple had suppressed BlueMail in App Store search results, and and removed the app for violations of App Store Guideline 4.3, which covers “spam” apps that duplicate another app’s content and functionality.

Apple believed BlueMail copied features from TypeApp, developed by a company affiliated with Blix co-founder Ben Volach and voluntarily removed before BlueMail’s launch. Months later, Apple reinstated the app.

The Coalition spins this as an attempt by Apple to “outright steal developers’ ideas and make them its own,” then accused Apple of making it “part of a long and well-documented pattern of theft.” Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is also quoted as admitting “We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

Blix’s BlueMail dropped off the Mac App Store for months.

“Sherlocking” is a continuing problem for developers, where Apple develops a feature for its operating systems or apps that does the same job as their app. Some developers have managed to work around the instances by coming up with new ways to offer services, but others naturally fall out of fashion when faced against Apple’s free version.

The problem on Apple’s side is that it is practically impossible to further develop its software without some element of “Sherlocking” taking place. Apple’s self-developed app and feature ecosystem is so vast, that there’s going to be points where it will develop something that will tread on another developer’s toes.

Given the sheer quantity of apps on the market, it’ll be an unavoidable problem and repeated accusation that Apple will have to deal with for quite some time.

The fees of between 15% and 30% Apple charges apps for sales in the App Store is the Coalition’s second bugbear, and it takes aim at the policy in two different ways.

The first is that it is “unfair” to developers as it “stifles developer revenue,” simply by taking a large cut of the transaction for itself. It is suggested the proportion is an “enormous portion” of a developer’s revenue, and potentially “an untenably large one.”

This is viewed as being even more unfair due to it being applied to only non-Apple apps, which puts apps at a “competitive disadvantage and thus drives up the prices for consumers.”

When Apple introduced the 30% fee, which the group repeatedly refers to as a “tax,” it did so in 2011 after three years of the App Store’s existence. It is claimed the introduction of the charge forced apps to “go completely out of business,” with online training platform Treehouse claiming Apple “just dropped a nuclear bomb on all of us.”

A graphic Apple created to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the App Store in 2018

The obligatory Steve Jobs quote is from an internal email sent a decade ago, where he told other executives “Bottom line – we didn’t have a policy and now we do, and there will be some roadkill because of it. I don’t feel guilty.”

Its second point is to the size of the transaction fee in the first place. The 30% figure is far higher than other payment service providers, the group claims, with credit card networks averaging 3%, Square charging between 2.65% and 3.4%, and the upper limit for fees reckoned to be around 5%.

There is also a quote from an “Anonymous developer” that claims it has data showing consumers dislike in-app purchases in general, instead preferring PayPal or credit cards. The 30% fee is deemed to be “insane” when compared to the single-digit charges of other payment processors.

If Apple’s 30% only covered the cost of the transaction to make a purchase, then the argument it is too high would be extremely sound to make. However, it doesn’t take into account a variety of other factors at play.

Apple’s transaction fee not only covers the cost of the transaction, but also other costs as well, including everything that went into the creation and running of the store, its maintenance, support teams, and other associated systems that cost money to run.

It’s easier to compare the Apple transaction fee to the costs of selling goods in a store. The retailer has to factor in the cost of the property, insurance, staffing, payment processing, and other elements before adding on the cost of purchasing goods in the first place.

You can add on top of that profit for Apple itself.

Taking all of these into account, it makes sense for Apple’s transaction fee to be higher than the cost of payment processing, as it covers a lot more ground. There could be an argument for reducing the amount, but that would depend on how much it actually costs Apple to run the App Store, and how much profit it wants to give up in the process.

As for why the App Store transaction fee exists in the first place, it’s simply the cost of running business. Apple needs some level of revenue coming in to cover the cost of operating the App Store at all.

It also has to take into account apps that can be downloaded but rely on in-app purchases or advertising for revenue instead of initially charging the user at the time of download. Apple could lower the fee, for apps with in-app purchases or initial download prices, but then it would have to try and recoup the cost of the completely-free apps it doesn’t earn revenue from somehow.

In the case of “Fortnite,” the game itself was free to download from the App Store, but still earned revenue via the in-app purchases for game currency. Apple still has to shoulder the cost of hosting the game in its store, including the bandwidth costs associated with users downloading the app and updates, so they have to be covered in some way, namely the cut from in-app purchases.

While Epic does lose out on some of its in-app purchase revenue, it also benefits from revenues generated for hosting promotional in-game events for major brands, a source of funds that it does not share with Apple despite it being visible within the iOS game.

The argument that the level of fees goes against antitrust laws isn’t really much of one, as such laws specifically allow licensing or distribution fees. If Apple were to have raised the cost of its cut over time, then a court could suggest there’s an anti-competitive element to it.

Since Apple instigated the fee at 30% and hasn’t moved it higher at all, the laws don’y really apply to it. Doubly so as Apple has even lowered the fee in some cases, such as charging 15% for long-term repeat subscriptions that go beyond one year in length.

Apple even offered to cut the fee in half for Amazon, to try and encourage it to bring Prime Video to the App Store in 2016. In this case, it is extremely difficult to argue that Apple was reducing competition, especially when it was effectively welcoming one of its video store rivals onto the platform.

The Coalition’s last main issue is the accusation that the App Store limits consumer freedom.

It is argued that software on other platforms be bought from anywhere and used on any supported computer and operating system combination. However, for the App Store, and similar “walled gardens,” it is described as an idea that a consumer “could only use software sold through the same manufacturer as their laptop” or mobile device.

For apps sold through Apple’s digital storefront for an iPhone or iPad, the developers have to follow the “rules, taxes, and requirements of Apple,” but consumers would still be able to buy software through other means for a computer where the same rules don’t apply.

To the Coalition, this is a “crazy house of cards.” To anyone with any experience in gaming, the most prevalent example of “walled gardens” this is quite normal.

If you were the developer of a game intended for play on a game console, such as Microsoft’s Xbox systems or Sony’s PlayStation line, you have to agree to create games based on their own respective developer guidelines. This includes not only making sure the game abides by specific rules, such as localization requirements, security, and how the game handles user data, but also being included in the console’s respective digital storefront.

Want a game you made for PlayStation 4 listed in Sony’s online store? It has to abide by guidelines Sony creates, allow Sony to handle transactions for the initial purchase and downloadable content, and so on. This is the same for Xbox, Nintendo’s Switch, and previous generations of consoles — and neither Epic nor any coalition participant are suing Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony.

There’s also no alternative on consoles. If you want to sell a digital copy of your game on a PlayStation, your only choice is to go through Sony, as it’s the only storefront that will work with it, similar to the App Store and iOS.

Indeed, it’s arguable that the concept of a walled garden for gaming existed long before digital storefronts were a thing. In the early days of disc-based console gaming and cartridges, you had an effective “walled garden” for content without Internet access, one where developers had to work with console makers to create the media playable on consoles in the first place.

Of course, the console producers also took a chunk of revenue from the sale of these physical media games, for using their proprietary formats and technology.

You could argue that you could buy codes online to download content from each of the stores, so you’re making the actual purchase from a different retailer and using a different transaction mechanism than Sony or Microsoft’s stores, but each company will still earn money from the transaction in the end, as they will still take a cut of the purchase. Arguably, this is the same as buying an iTunes gift card from a retailer, as again Apple will profit from the transaction in the end.

On PC, a platform that Epic also functions within, you can download games from one digital storefront, or the developer directly, and apply aftermarket downloadable content purchases without too much trouble. This is pretty much what Epic would want, but that ignores the activities of the console gaming industry.

A screenshot of Epic’s ‘Fortnite’ showing an alternative payment option.

The example given this time is the “Fortnite” saga itself, where Epic added a second payment mechanism to the iOS version of the game, disobeying the App Store guidelines. Epic’s payment option allowed players to buy in-game currency for $7.99 instead of paying $9.99 via the App Store’s mechanism.

There’s a reference back to the “arbitrary app tax” applied to the purchase by Apple, without mentioning that Epic would be shouldering the cost of the transaction instead of Apple for its lower-priced alternative payment system. The group tacks on the issue of Epic not being allowed to say there’s an alternative non-Apple transaction system they could have used, one that they wouldn’t have been allowed to use anyway because of App Store guidelines.

As an aside,attempts by Epic in the courtroom to paint Apple as violating antitrust laws puts the line down as affecting Apple’s users in general, wheres Apple and antitrust law instead draws the line as “smartphone users” instead.

During litigation in its second hearing, Epic claimed the 30% fee taken by console producers was fundamentally different than Apple, despite consoles effectively consisting of a walled garden market with no competition on the same platform. Epic also pressed that iPhone gaming was different from console gaming due to the iPhone being portable and playable on a bus, while also completely ignoring the existence of portable hand-held consoles such as the Nintendo Switch.

The Coalition then goes for an analogy to explain what’s going on, via the medium of a coupon for Cheerios cereal being used at Kroger by a consumer. It reckons Apple is doing the equivalent of Kroger telling Cheerios they aren’t allowed to offer coupons, and risk being thrown out of the store’s cereal aisle if they do.

The analogy falls flat as it’s not the same as giving a coupon to a consumer. In the analogy, if Kroger accepted the coupon, it would still have to handle the costs associated with the transaction and having the cereal on standby, and would have to apply to the cereal producer for the value of the coupon.

You cannot transpose Epic and Apple into the same analogy, as Epic wasn’t offering a coupon, it was offering an entirely separate payment system that was cheaper to consumers than the same purchase via Apple. They were actively diverting custom away from Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism to its own.

To correct the analogy, it would be the equivalent of Cheerios walking into a Kroger and, secretly, putting a sticker on the shelf next to the cereal telling consumers the same box can be bought from a stand in the car park at a cheaper cost.

Like the manager at that hypothetical Kroger, Apple wasn’t too keen on what transpired.

Regardless of whether it’s a Kroger, WalMart, Amazon, or app store like Apple’s, Microsoft’s, Sony’s, or even Epic’s, there are always rules and guidelines that you have to abide by if you want to be included. If you go against the grain, expect the store manager to throw you out.

Revealed on Twitter on Saturday, Brandon Azad confirmed he was leaving Project Zero in favor of a position at Apple in the following week. He will be joining Apple to “continue my work improving Apple device security.”

Project Zero is Google’s security research team that concentrates on finding security issues and vulnerabilities in software, both in Google’s own products and of other major firms. The team works to improve the security of devices and software the general public uses by pointing out the issues to device producers, before performing an ethical disclosure of its findings.

This includes a collection of zero-click bugs in Apple’s Image I/O framework affecting all of Apple’s major platforms, and discovering exploits in hacked websites targeting iPhones.

Azad is known for his work on iOS issues, and has been credited in Apple’s patch notes for both iOS and macOS releases multiple times. By moving to Apple, Azad may be able to assist in plugging some of the security holes he finds externally before they get discovered by research teamd like Project Zero.

In tweets, Azad calls his time at Project Zero “amazing” and says it’s “been an honor to share in this wonderful mission.” His teammates were among “the kindest and smartest people I’ve met, and I’ve learned so much from them,” he adds, before thanking them and urging to “keep on hacking.”

Recently made available to watch via the Apple TV+ video streaming service, “Tiny World” is a nature documentary program that showcases the smaller creatures on the planet. The show, which is narrated and executive produced by Paul Rudd and made by filmmaker Tom Hugh-Jones, uses high production values and goes to great lengths to capture footage of the often hard to see wildlife.

In a behind-the-scenes video posted to the Apple TV YouTube channel, videographers for the show are seen setting up cameras in very close proximity to the creatures they want to film. For typical nature documentaries, cameras are set up at a distance and rely on zoom lenses so as to not disturb the creatures, but such techniques are largely impractical for “Tiny World.”

As well as using standard macro lenses, the team had to also employ lenses that are meant for “scientific purposes” to capture some of the extremely close-up shots. In some cases, such as filing thumbnail-sized strawberry poison-dart frogs wrestling, the creatures would sometimes interact with the lens itself, climbing on or inside as if it is part of the existing environment.

To capture footage the point of view of a goshawk flying through trees, a first-person-view drone was used, one reinforced to take the high-speed knocks from branches. One filmmaker also took three years to film a specific gecko in the wild, using a motion control rig to perform highly precise motion shots that are still cinematic at such a small scale.

The show compiles footage that took almost ten years to collect, filming over 200 species of animal. It has been compiled into six 30-minute episodes, which can be viewed on Apple TV+.

You have to go back to 2011 to find the last time that Apple didn’t bring out a new iPhone in the month of September. Even then, it was close — the iPhone 4s was announced on October 4, 2011.

So bumping the iPhone to October does have a precedent, but of course the coronavirus does not. And if Apple wasn’t able to bring out the “iPhone 12” on schedule, still it did a remarkable job releasing anything at all.

September 2020’s “Time Flies” event was another virtual one instead of the old in-person, on-stage, live presentations. Apple does these videos so extremely well that you can forget how hard they are to make, and you can forget how devices have to be ready to show in time for filming.

In its second longform video launch of the year, Apple again whisked us around Apple Park — with Craig Federighi having to duck out of our way — and released four major hardware releases. Plus there was a bundle of services, and a new fitness addition, too.

This was arguably the major announcement, the tentpole for the whole launch — or at least, according to Apple. The new Apple Watch Series 6 got a lot of attention, a lot of noise, and it is without question the very best Apple Watch ever made.

It’s also, without any question at all, the best smart watch that there is. And yet for all it added, for all the new health features and improvements, it wasn’t a giant leap forward.

Whereas the Apple Watch SE is likely to have more of an impact. Depending on how you look at it, the Apple Watch SE is an Apple Watch Series 6 with some lower-cost case options, and fewer key health features.

Or if you’re Apple, it’s the big step up from the Apple Watch Series 3. All of the comparisons Apple made were to that model, the oldest Apple Watch still being sold.

Apple also came as close as it ever does, or perhaps ever will, to using the word “cheap.” The Apple Watch SE is aimed at everyone who hasn’t yet got an Apple Watch, and for them the key feature is its lower cost.

That would always be a factor, but Apple added some extra leverage to the appeal of that lower cost by introducing Family Setup. Now for less than the price of an iPhone — and considerably less than the price of an Apple Watch Series 6 and an iPhone together — your children or elderly relatives could stay connected.

So Apple wants to spread the appeal wider, it wants to grow the market for Apple Watches. That’s hardly a new thing, but September’s event also seemed to press down hard on this with the new iPad releases.

It was expected that a new iPad would be announced, chiefly because it was clear from regulatory filings late in August that some were coming. However, Apple managed to make a big deal out of its updates to the regular 10.2-inch iPad — and then an even bigger deal about the new iPad Air 4.

That’s quite a feat that Apple managed. Here’s a brilliant new product, but then here’s one that’s even better. The new iPad Air 4 is indeed better than the new 2020 iPad, which shouldn’t be a surprise given their $270 price difference.

What perhaps was a surprise was how you can now make a really strong case that the iPad Air 4 is a better buy than the 11-inch iPad Pro. That costs $200 more and it does offer benefits, but so few that Apple might as well have put a sign up saying a refreshed 11-inch iPad Pro is coming soon.

Apple’s plan for its September event was less “Time Flies,” and more “Make Things Affordable.” That makes great sense given the current world situation, except that can’t be why Apple is doing it — or why it began doing it a surprisingly long time ago.

The Apple Watch SE follows the iPhone SE, and the MacBook Air, in keeping to Apple’s repeated emphasis on quality, but adding a new cost-conscious element. And Apple also brought that same approach to its services with the announcement of Apple One.

This is the reasonably long-rumored bundle of Apple services under one fee. It means you get ones you want, like Apple Music, together with ones you’re not that fussed about, like Apple Arcade, and in theory you pay less.

Apple is determined to keep us fit

In practice, the varieties of bundles that will be available, when this launches later in 2020, are pretty specific and limited. You may save, but you may not, and it all comes down to precisely the collection of Apple services that you have now — or that you want.

Perhaps tipping the scale, though, is how Apple’s list of services has now grown by one. Apple Fitness+ was announced this September and it is either $9.99 per month — or is included “for free” in the most expensive Apple One Premier bundle.

Apple One still sounds like a starship, but in the right circumstances, it is a good deal. If you don’t happen to use a mix of Apple services that would get you a saving, then that’s a shame, but you don’t lose out.

You might well have expected there to be some complaints from people who’d like more options for Apple One. But what you surely couldn’t have foreseen was that it would be Apple One that anybody would get upset about.

Spotify leapt on the new Apple One bundle as somehow being Apple stifling the market. Apple replied by saying “Eh?”

Okay, Spotify actually said that Apple One “threatens our collective freedoms to listen, learn, create, and connect.” And Apple actually responded that “customers can discover and enjoy alternatives to every one of Apple’s services.”

“We’re introducing Apple One because it is a great value for customers and a simple way to access the full range of Apple’s subscription services,” continued Apple. “We’ll be recommending the Apple One plan that saves you the most money based on the subscriptions you already have.”

In case that didn’t persuade Spotify, Apple also threw in the fact that “you can cancel anytime.”

Apple would’ve obviously liked September to be the month where its “Time Flies” event dominated, and where its lack of an iPhone launch wasn’t a problem. Instead, right alongside its launches, Apple got more and more of companies like Spotify basically dissing it.

None more so that Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, whose dispute with Apple goes back to August. In September, though, Epic Games first warned its users that Apple was going to shut off the use of Sign In With Apple — and then told them that Apple had backed down.

Apple told the US District Court for the Northern District of California that Epic Games was really just using all of this as a “marketing campaign” to boost flagging interest in Fortnite.

In a hearing, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers repeatedly said that the whole case was of Epic’s own doing. However, she also said that there were antitrust issues to consider.

The judge proposed that the case should go forward, and be decided in a jury trial. Apple had wanted that, but reportedly then agreed with Epic Games to have the case be decided without a jury, in order to speed proceedings.

But, speed is relative. The trial looks like it will start in July 2021, but the appeals and so forth may take years.

After months of people complaining about the App Store, and Apple attempting to defend it, the company rolled up its sleeves and amended its rules. Not by a giant amount, but one of the changes does mean that streaming game services could now be allowed.

Some users reported losing GPS tracking data in watchOS 7

It wasn’t just big companies who had complaints, though, as some Apple Watch users were seeing problems too.

The problems with Apple Watch failing to record GPS data when you’d just been on a nine-mile hike, were down to issues with watchOS 7. However, overall the reception for both that and iOS 14 have been mostly very positive.

Apple did make developers choke on their lunches, though, when it decided to announce the imminent availability of iOS 14 during the “Time Flies” event. Developers suddenly had 24 hours to make their final updates to ensure compatibility, and few made it.

Predictably, but still disappointingly, developers did get criticisms from users for not being ready for iOS 14.

Whereas Apple got a lot of praise for how iOS 14 now let users choose to replace key Apple apps with third-party ones that, presumably, were ready. While there are still limitations and security conditions, Apple has made it possible to switch away from Mail, and Safari.

It’s a bigger internal iOS change than it might appear, though, and it wasn’t done without some bumps along the road.

You could say the same thing about TikTok in September, which initially seemed to have been given a choice by President Trump. Either sell to a US company by September 20, or be banned.

In August, it had been less than the clear choice it seemed, but in September it became simultaneously clearer and more acrimonious. TikTok secured a deal with a US consortium of Walmart and Oracle, but President Trump said no anyway.

Then he said yes. But a judge also stopped his executive order banning WeChat on similar grounds, and on the same date.

This story keeps going, but on the surface it appears to be an issue between the Government, TikTok, and WeChat. It’s potentially crucial for Apple, though, as a WeChat ban is likely to severely damage iPhone sales in China.

WeChat on iOS, for now.

September also saw another deal which doesn’t involve Apple directly, but which the company will have been watching carefully. As we all wait for Apple Silicon to launch with Apple’s own design of ARM processor, the ARM company has been sold.

Nvidia announced that it is buying the company for $40 billion. It plans to build an Artificial Intelligence supercomputer.

AppleInsider‘s reviews of the month tend to ignore rumors that circulated at the time. Often by the end of the month, such rumors have been confirmed or when there’s an Apple event, either proved or disproved.

However, September did see a lot of predictions about the future and if most of them will be settled whenever Apple releases the “iPhone 12” range, one will not be. It’s the question of what will happen to Tim Cook.

In September, we learned that Apple is increasingly looking at its succession plan for whenever Cook steps down.

Just as happened when Steve Jobs handed over to Cook, we can only really know that Apple does have a plan, we can’t know what it is. But speculation is that Cook’s obvious replacement is Jeff Williams, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer.

It won’t happen in October, though. Whereas the “iPhone 12” launch will — and we can get on with looking for more rumors about the “iPhone 13.”

The Digital Services Act is designed to curb anticompetitive behavior by major tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google. It would mark the first significant overhaul to the EU’s standards for regulating the internet in two decades.

One proposed measure would be to force larger companies to share customer data with their smaller competitors.

According to the Financial Times, the draft features a line that states tech giants “shall not use data collected on the platform… for [their] own commercial activities… unless they [make it] accessible to business users active in the same commercial activities.”

It’s anticipated that many of the large companies will push back against the Digital Services Act. Google has gone on record stating that it believes the existing regulatory rules should be modernized, instead of providing entirely new frameworks.

They also claim that regulators are overestimating the power companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple have in the digital market. According to Google, the digital ecosystem is “extremely diverse and evolving rapidly.”

Regulators in Europe are drawing up a “blacklist” of activities that technology companies would be required to stop, as well as a “sliding scale” of penalties for non-compliance. Some of the antitrust rules include policies that prevent users from switching platforms or systems that force users to rely on a single service.

These two new mobile USB-C drives are major upgrades over what were already well recieved drives including better performance, better warranties, and higher security.

The most impressive of the two new devices is the SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable SSD. Relying on custom NVMe technology, SanDisk says it can get up 2000 megabytes per second read and write speeds, up from 1050MB per second.

It retains the popular design with an aluminum core that acts both as a rigid structure as well as a heat sink. It is coated in liquid silicone for good grip and two-meter drop protection and carries an IP55 water and dust resistance rating.

Another change is the move to 256-bit AES hardware encryption, rather than the software-based encryption it used to have.

The USB-C SanDisk Extreme Pro comes in a 2TB capacity at launch for $499 and a 1TB version will launch this holiday season.

The Pro version pushes the limits of an NVMe drive but may be above what’s necessary. That is where the SanDisk Extreme comes in. It is cheaper and still has twice the performance of its predecessor.

SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD V2

Many aspects of the SanDisk Extreme have been upgraded, including from a SATA SSD to NVMe media like the Pro. The move to NVMe as well as the move from USB 3.1 Gen 2 to USB 3.2 Gen 2 aids a massive boost in performance. It has improved from 550MB per second to 1050MB per second read speed and 1000MB per second write speed.

SanDisk has increased the warranty now to five years and the drive is protected with two meters of drop resistance and an IP55 rating. It too has 256-bit AES hardware encryption for securing your files.

The SanDisk Extreme V2 is available in 500GB and 1TB sizes at launch for $119 and $199 respectively. A 2TB configuration is arriving this holiday season.

If you blinked in confusion at the claim widgets were this great security risk, we’re with you. If you looked at your iPhone and wondered what a calendar widget could possibly do with the information that you tapped on it once, we’re still right there with you.

The idea, though, is that having installed a rogue widget, it doesn’t just notice when you tap on it. Instead — and trust us, we cannot underline enough that this is such nonsense that we want to use a stronger word — it enables a keylogger.

That is, after you’ve installed this, anything you type is recorded and sent to a nefarious developer. All your passwords, all your account details, every one of those Messages — who knows, maybe even including emoji — now in the hands of a bad actor.

If there’s a department in Apple collating reactions to all of the new features in iOS 14, they’ve just opened a document they’ve called “Give us strength.” They might also be scribbling into it that you just can’t please some people.

Apple was doomed for not having Android-style widgets, now it’s destroying our lives and wrecking our children’s future. Or something.

We don’t come to knock widgets, they are a great and useful addition to iOS that we are all having a very good time playing with. But really the only thing that is different between a widget and the app icons we’ve had since 2007 is the size, and what they use that size for.

Aside from Apple’s own Clock app, which has always displayed the current time, apps show an icon which you tap on to open the app. Widgets show very big icons which you tap on to open the app.

No widget does anything else but show big icons and open an app when you tap on them. And that’s because no widget can do anything else.

The big icons are great because instead of just being an app developer’s logo, they can be actually useful. Widget icons can display text, images, news headlines, anything.

It is precisely this which makes them useful — and it is precisely that which makes them actually slightly less useful than you’d hope. It would be brilliant to be able to tap on, say, a Notes or a Drafts 5 widget and start writing something immediately.

You can’t.

A widget may display lots of different information, but it is only displaying it, and it is only waiting for you to tap to open its app. Every widget might as well be an app’s icon, because there is nothing else going on here at all.

Apple’s logo for WidgetKit, the developer resource for making widgets.

We are tempted to say, “search us,” but there are reasons some people have thought widgets are doing this, and why others have agreed they must be. The first is that on upgrading to iOS 14, some users are getting notifications that their passwords have been compromised.

This is not iOS 14 shouting out your passwords to everyone, it’s iOS 14 doing a good job of notifying you of a problem. If you’re really lucky, it’s a recent problem. More likely, you’ve been using passwords on sites that have long since been compromised.

Then most people who are adamantly saying online that widgets are evil, are saying it because their phone slowed down suspiciously when they installed the widget.

They didn’t install the widget. They installed iOS 14 and then they installed a third-party widget, or they added one of Apple’s built-in ones.

The key thing there is iOS 14. Any update of the operating system is a huge difference and it will regularly slow down your device at first while it rebuilds the indexes that make search work. The indexes that mean when you want to launch an app, iOS knows where it is and opens it immediately.

People who think it’s more than this are convinced that anyone capturing your keystrokes must have done it so badly that they visibly slow your phone. People who are certain that this is what happened have even been known to completely wipe their iPhones of all data and start again from nothing.

Yes. Your iPhone will be faster. It would be faster anyway if you’d just waited a while, but a completely wiped iPhone with nothing on it will feel faster because there’s no search index rebuilding going on. Because there’s nothing there to search.

We would love for widgets to be more interactive, to be more than posters for their main apps, but they’re not. Right now, they cannot be.

It’s not as if it’s arduous having to swipe left or right on your Apple Watch to change the face. Not unless you have 30 faces and 6 of them are the Infograph one with different complications to suit different jobs you do.

Now, though, with watchOS 7 and iOS 14, you can tell your Apple Watch to display Infograph number 3 on Mondays, Modular number 29 from Wednesday-Thursday. Or to just switch from any face with complications to a simple one at the end of the working day.

It’s all done via Shortcuts, and whether you’ve ever or never used iOS’s Shortcuts before, this is about as simple as that gets. You can choose to have the face change at certain times — or certain locations.

Part 1 – set when (or where) you want the Watch face to change

1. Open Shortcuts on your iPhone
2. Tap the Automation tab at the bottom of the screen
3. Tap the plus sign at top right
4. Choose Create Personal Automation
5. Tap to select Time of Day
6. Choose from Sunrise, Sunset, or Time of Day to tap in a specific time
7. Choose whether to repeat this Daily, Weekly, or Monthly
8. Tap Next
9. Tap Add Action
10. Scroll or search for Set Watch Face and tap that
11. Tap on the box at the end of the words Set active watch face to
12. Choose from the list of faces that are on your Apple Watch
13. Tap Next
14. Turn off Ask Before Running
15. Confirm by tapping Don’t Ask in the dialog that appears
16. Tap Done

You may hit a problem when you reach the section where you have to choose what face you want to switch to., because the faces are shown to you in a list by name. The name is that of Apple’s official title, and if you do have six Infograph faces then the list will just say, “Infograph” six times.

However, the list is in order of how the faces are arranged on your Watch. The top one on the list is the one that you get if you swipe all the way to the left.

Note, too, that if you choose Sunrise or Sunset instead of a specific time of day, you’ll be prompted to say more. You can choose exactly sunrise or sunset, and the change will happen at the right time any day, or you can elect to choose options such as 45 minutes before sunrise.

Then it’s important to be sure you switch off Ask Before Running. If you don’t, then at sunrise, sunset, or whatever time you’ve specified, the face won’t change. Instead, your iPhone will ask you if you want to run this Shortcut.

That rather takes away the whole point of automation, having to manually say yes, you want something to happen automatically. Curiously, Apple does not give you the option of this Ask Before Running if you instead want the face to changed depending on your location.

Part 2 – set what face you want to change to

1. Open Shortcuts on your iPhone
2. Tap the Automation tab at the bottom of the screen
3. Tap the plus sign at top right
4. Choose Create Personal Automation
5. Tap to select either Arrive or Leave
6. Tap on the word Choose
7. Search for a map location, tap Current Location, or choose from recent destinations
8. Tap Done
9. Choose between Anytime or Time Range to specify what times or days you want this change to happen on
10. Tap Next
11. Tap Add action
12. Scroll or search for Set Watch Face and tap that
13. Tap on the box at the end of the words Set active watch face to
14. Choose from the list of faces that are on your Apple Watch
15. Tap Next
16. Tap Done

Now, for instance, you can have your Watch automatically switch faces when you leave home in the morning, or leave work in the afternoon, but not on Thursdays. This is how you can have your Watch face switch to one that has travel apps, or podcast ones, for your commute, and so on.

Note that whenever you do it in this particular way, you are telling the Watch to change to a particular face, and that’s it. You can’t tell it to change to that for an hour, for instance, and then change back. Not using this method.

So if you do want a face to appear only during work hours or just on the weekends, the easiest thing is to do all of this twice. Once for the start when you want the face to change to something, then once again for the ending time or the ending location when you want it to change to something else.

There is a way to make it start and stop automatically, though. It involves diving a little deeper into Shortcuts.

You can have your Watch face change every time you go to a particular theater.

That Add action step is how you make any Shortcut. Actions are the steps and the building blocks of all Shortcuts automations, and as well as making something happen, they can be used to check things.

You can only use one action when you go through the Automation step, but you can have have action be Run Shortcut. Then you can build up as complex a Shortcut as you like, and have it automatically be run when you leave or arrive somewhere, or at certain times of day.

So your shortcut could first check whether today is a weekday or the weekend, for instance, and then switch faces. Or look to see if it’s Wednesday afternoon, your calendar is empty, the surfing conditions are great, then change your Watch face to the Solar Dial — and text your partner to say you’ll be late.

That can be arduous to set up, especially when you compare it to swiping left or right on your Watch. But it is also excellent fun and what’s more, when you’ve done it once, you never have to do it again.

From then on, a single glance at your Watch will remind you that you should be at your desk or that you could be out at the beach.

The latest in an occasional AppleInsider series, looking at the world of Apple-related crime.

Surveillance video surfaced in mid-September of police from New York City’s Department of Homeless Services handcuffing a Queens man after he photographed them without masks. The video also shows the officers pulling off the man’s mask and attempting to unlock his iPhone with FaceID, but the man said he was able to swerve out of their way.

According to Patch, which obtained and published the video, the footage contradicts earlier statements by the officers, who have since been suspended.

An alleged drug dealer in Wisconsin is accused of beating a man with a glass bong, as part of an alleged home invasion that included the theft of two iPhones and an iPad. The Racine Journal Times reports the incident arose out of a dispute over THC vaping cartridges, and the stolen items include an iPhone 7, an Apple iPhone XS Max, an iPad Pro, an Xbox One, and $2,700.

The accused assailant, who is only 18 years old, was charged with two felony counts of armed robbery, a felony count of substantial battery, and a felony count of burglary of a building or dwelling, the newspaper said.

Forbes reported September 16 that Apple agreed to hand over iCloud data to the FBI, to apprehend a man accused of firebombing two police cars in Seattle. The firebombing took place on May 30, during the early days of the protests following the killing of George Floyd.

The data included screenshots of both the suspect in the act, a list of “ingredients” for a Molotov cocktail, and even incriminating videos. The man was arrested and brought up on federal charges of unlawful possession of a destructive device and arson.

A student who lives in Malaysia lost his iPhone for a day in early September and feared that it had been stolen. But it’s not the kind of theft that’s going to lead to an arrest, because the phone was actually taken by a monkey, who proceeded to take several selfies.

Per The Hindustan Times, the man found the phone after losing it, and a relative suggested that he check the photo library for clues, since more than one iPhone theft has been solved that way in the past. But instead, the culprit turned out to be a monkey, who had retrieved the phone from a jungle behind the man’s house:

Police in Calgary said September 15 that a cache of 192 smartphones was stolen from an area warehouse in August, and that customers should be aware of any phone they buy and make sure they’re not stolen.

In addition to phones from Samsung, LG, and Huawei, the missing phones include iPhone SE, iPhone XR, and iPhone 11 models. Police added that the phones cannot be activated on a wireless network, although they could work with Wi-Fi.

Those who followed Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation closely may remember that multiple people indicted by Mueller, including Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, were incriminated by material found in their iCloud accounts. Now, there’s controversy related to the iPhone security habits of Mueller’s team.

Per Fox Business, Congressman Doug Collins of Georgia on September 15 demanded that Tim Cook provide information about iPhones belonging to Mueller’s staff, following the release of Justice Department records showing that several members of Mueller’s team wiped their iPhones due to “forgotten passcodes, irreparable screen damage, loss of the device, intentional deletion or other reasons.”

Nefarious as the wiping of the phones may sound to Mueller skeptics, journalist Julian Sanchez found a note in a report from the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General which stated that the office investigating the origins of the Russia investigation was able to get most of the data it needed. In addition, per that report, “the [Justice] Department routinely resets mobile devices to factory settings when the device is returned from a user to enable that device to be issued to another user in the future.”

A police officer in Wisconsin was at a nightclub investigating a stolen iPhone when an apparently drunk driverstruck his squad car. The incident, according to Patch, took place at 3 a.m. on September 12, and the driver was arrested.

Panyaza Lesufi, a regional member of the Executive Council in South Africa, claimed an iPad Pro with “sensitive information” was stolen from his state-owned BMW in a break-in.

Opera News reports Lesufi had parked his car at a country club.

An Ohio woman who was indicted on charges that she embezzled $65,000 from a Band Boosters club over three years used some of the money on an iPad and two laptops. According to The Dayton Daily News, the woman was the treasurer of the organization and was caught after her successor found discrepancies in financial records.

TikTok is facing a rapidly approaching deadline as Trump’s executive order calling for a ban of the popular social media app takes effect at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday. The company attempted to stop the measure by filing an emergency injunction with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia this week, and now the DOJ has responded.

The Justice Department argues that blocking the ban will “infringe on the President’s authority to block business-to-business economic transactions with a foreign entity in the midst of a declared national-security emergency,” reports The Verge. Today’s late-night filing was heavily redacted, but snippets show an aggressive defense of Trump’s order.

Referring to the supposed security threat that TikTok poses, the agency called Zhang Yiming, CEO of TikTok parent company ByteDance, a “mouthpiece” for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He is allegedly “committed to promoting the CCP’s agenda and messaging,” according to the DOJ.

The argument for banning TikTok in large part deals with user data, specifically where said information is stored. While a section detailing where the agency believes TikTok is holding U.S. data is redacted, a legible portion notes “US user data being stored outside of the United States presents significant risks in this case.”

TikTok is looking to avoid an all-out U.S. ban and is in the middle of hammering out a deal with Oracle. A tentative version of the agreement was approved “in concept” by Trump last week.

Terms of the arrangement call for Oracle and its partners to receive a 20% stake in a U.S. TikTok entity, with the remaining 80% held by ByteDance. Oracle will also be granted access to TikTok’s source code to ensure the software does not include backdoors. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week said the new business would be “controlled by Americans,” with ByteDance acting as a “passive shareholder.”

Following news of the deal, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross delayed enactment of Trump’s executive order by one week to Sept. 27.