Miles Kruppa:
Google recently invited employees to begin testing a new YouTube product called Playables, which gives users access to games on mobile devices or desktop computers, according to the email, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The games available for testing include titles such as Stack Bounce, an arcade game in which players attempt to smash layers of bricks with a bouncing ball, according to a screenshot of the product. Users would be able to play the games instantly via the YouTube site on web browsers or the YouTube app via devices running Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS mobile systems, according to the email.
Juli Clover:
Playables does not offer the same cloud based gaming as Stadia, focusing on simple games rather than console titles.
Tim Sweeney:
Apple will let YouTube host streaming games in the YouTube app while blocking Microsoft XCloud and NVIDIA GeForce NOW?
Previously:
App Store Game iOS iOS 17 iOS App Web YouTube
Howard Oakley:
Most of the flurry of updates is in response to recent reports from Kaspersky about malware, in what they refer to as Triangulation or TriangleDB. Its researchers have discovered evidence of infection of iOS devices going back as long as four years, in a series of attacks that have continued with iOS 15.7. In a series of research articles published this month, Kaspersky’s researchers have revealed how devices have received iMessages with an attachment containing an exploit. Without any user interaction, that attachment has run and exploited vulnerabilities in iOS to launch the malware payload, gain control over the device, and install persistent malware that’s remotely controlled.
Although there’s still much to be learned about this malware, it’s now believed to be targeting macOS as well as other platforms. Apple has thus patched the vulnerability in the kernel that is thought to be exploited by the initial iMessage and its attachment. A second vulnerability in macOS affects WebKit, and is also believed to be used in an active exploit, although probably not Triangulation.
[…]
Apple would have preferred to accomplish these urgent fixes without having to release full macOS updates, using its Rapid Security Response (RSR) mechanism, as was done with macOS 13.3.1 a couple of months ago. However, that couldn’t address the vulnerability in the kernel, which still requires a proper update.
Previously:
Exploit iMessage iOS iOS 15 iOS 16 Mac macOS 13 Ventura Rapid Security Response Security
Neil Long:
“The way to solve that inconsistency – and I hate to say it – is: let’s take a page from Google,” he told us. “Especially now with the AI tools that are out there. You can do probably 80% of the work the review team does.”
[…]
“Phil [Schiller] wants a set of eyes on every single app. I believe he is still basing that on one of the last things Steve [Jobs] told him, which is that you’ve always got to have a set of human eyes on every app that goes in the store. And Phil maybe carries that with him all the time.”
[…]
Shoemaker also questioned why app review guidelines have somehow become more vague over time. “The guidelines were written in a very grey way,“ says Shoemaker. “We wanted to have wiggle room to be able to shift our approvals or rejections…the idea was to start that way and then refine them over time.”
“They were rewritten in 2017 and they did none of that. In fact, they opened up more grey areas – it should be pretty solid right now, the guidelines should be very black and white.”
Via John Gruber (Mastodon):
App Store review times have decreased from an average of about 5 days to 1 day since Shoemaker left Apple in 2016. (And my understanding is that new automation tools are a big part of that process improvement. Shoemaker’s gripes about App Store review seem stuck in 2016.)
I think review times are not the main problem with App Review. But the average is definitely not the right way to look at them. It tells nothing about the likelihood of a maintenance update getting stuck in review for 61 days for no reason or of being blocked by a store bug for 54 days. Also not included in the average: apps and entitlement requests that never make it out of review but are just stalled indefinitely.
Billy Mabray:
As someone who submits to both stores, I very much do not want Apple to automate the review process.
Google’s review process seems to run at random times, and will pull your app from the store for bizarre reasons. And when it does that there’s nobody at Google you can talk to about it.
Michael Love:
I don’t think App Review does much good anyway - it’s incredibly easy for malicious apps to hide bad behavior from reviewers. And I know for a fact that they haven’t so much as looked at the paid portion of my app in more than a decade.
I think you could easily develop an automated system that would detect whether an app had changed enough to justify a human review, which would both give reviewers more time to focus on big stuff and let developers get bug fixes out faster.
Previously:
Update (2023-06-28): Rob Jonson:
If you ever thought it was tough communicating with Apple, it’s a million times harder with Google.
My apps have been pulled multiple times for the most stupid random (wrong) things.
If I didn’t have friends in Google, things might never have been resolved.
They spot some random technical infraction, then just remove your app entirely. Communication is just emails into the void with unthinking “computer says no” responses.
App Review App Store Artificial Intelligence Entitlements Google Play Store iOS iOS 16 Phil Schiller
