Victoria Song (via Hacker News):
The company has been one of the most prolific makers of Wear OS smartwatches over the years, and its absence will leave a large gap in the market.
[…]
This shouldn’t come as a huge shock if you’ve been paying attention to Fossil the past few months. Some Reddit users had been reporting Fossil retail employees as saying Fossil was pulling out of the business, while others on the platform claiming “insider” knowledge said the company was waiting for a new chipset. The company regularly put out smartwatches through Wear OS’s toughest years and was often a permanent fixture at CES. However, the company was notably absent from the show earlier this month. What’s more, Fossil was expected to announce news of a new Gen 7 featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Plus platform in 2023 — however, it was nothing but crickets the entire year. Well, now we know why.
Previously:
Android Sunset
AltStore:
We’ve started the process of becoming a legitimate “app marketplace”, allowing our European friends to download @delta and other AltStore apps officially for the first time ever!
See you in March ☘️
Jacob Kastrenakes:
Epic plans to launch the Epic Games Store on the iPhone this year in the European Union — and it’s bringing Fortnite back to the platform along with it.
The announcement comes after Apple shared how it will open up iOS in response to the EU’s crackdown on Big Tech. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney described Apple’s rules as “hot garbage,” but they are clearly not so hot as to keep Epic away altogether.
Juli Clover:
Apple is charging an 0.50 euro fee per user per year for apps installed outside of the App Store (and in the App Store for developers who opt in to the new terms and also still choose to use Apple’s system), but there are no App Store commissions or in-app fees. While Apple is waiving fees for the first one million installs, the 0.50 per user fee will cost app developers like Epic Games a notable amount of money. Sweeney called Apple’s payment “junk fees.”
Manton Reece:
Reviewing news coverage of the Core Technology Fee, usually glossed over is that the CTF applies to every install of a marketplace.
[…]
Because marketplaces will usually be free, this makes it nearly impossible for them to work without charging developers just as much as Apple does, or having enough cash that it can lose money. Everything in Apple’s rules is designed to prevent anyone from using this.
Benedek Kozma:
Marketplaces have to pay CTF for all “first annual installs”, not just 1M+. Non-profits don’t have to pay the CTF but can only install apps from developers who also have the fee waivered.
Epic would have to pay the Core Technology Fee twice, both for the Fortnite app itself and for the marketplace app that’s used to download Fortnite. Plus, since marketplaces are supposed to be open to apps within a given category, Epic would also have the overhead of managing and reviewing whatever apps other developers submit to their marketplace.
See also:
Previously:
Update (2024-01-30): John Gruber:
One problem I see with the Core Technology Fee is that it doesn’t seem compatible with the concept of completely free-of-charge apps from developers who aren’t registered non-profits, educational institutions, or governments. What we used to call freeware back in the day.
Update (2024-03-01): Joe Rossignol:
MacPaw today announced that Setapp will be available as an alternative app marketplace on the iPhone in the EU starting in April. Those wanting access to the beta version can join a waitlist, and developers interested in the platform can apply on this page.
Update (2024-03-05): Filipe Espósito:
As detailed by the company in a press release, mobivention’s App Marketplace will let developers distribute B2B and B2C apps to their customers outside the iOS App Store. “The mobivention App marketplace is primarily aimed at business customers who are looking for an alternative solution for distributing their apps,” mobivention explains.
Developers and companies working with mobivention will have “simplified rules for publishing apps” compared to Apple’s App Store, which makes the platform more appealing to enterprise apps.
[…]
Not only that, but mobivention will also provide white label solutions so that large corporations can offer their own App Marketplace to iOS users in the EU.
Update (2024-03-22): Juli Clover:
For games distributed through the Epic Games Store, Epic will collect a 12 percent share of revenue, which is the same fee that it charges on Windows and Mac machines. Apps will get 100 percent of the revenue they earn for the first six months, with Epic taking no cut, and there are no fees for apps that offer in-game purchases and use their own payment processing method.
Update (2024-03-29): Steve Troughton-Smith:
One thing @altstore does that should really get you thinking about alternative payment systems that Apple never would have considered: it has Patreon integration, and can tie access to apps to your Patreon pledge — which gives you an entirely different, personal relationship with your users, and lets you use the same reward system you use for videos, blog posts, merch etc. Alternative app stores don’t just have to recreate Apple’s model. And this provides a CTF-friendly avenue (and 1M user cap)
Update (2024-04-09): Callum Booth:
Currently, the new version of AltStore is deep in Apple’s approval process and will be ready to go live once it gets the thumbs up from the company. Thankfully, we’ve already had a chance to preview the marketplace and spend some time kicking its tires.
[…]
Another potential roadblock to widespread third-party marketplace adoption is just how fiddly it is, with each store taking around a dozen screen interactions to install.
AltStore App Marketplaces Business Epic Games European Union Fortnite iOS iOS 17 iOS App Mobivention Patreon Setapp
Apple:
This spring [with iOS 17.4], Apple is introducing transcripts on Apple Podcasts, making it easier for anyone to access podcasts.
With transcripts, your audience can read the full text of an episode, search the episode for a specific word or phrase, and tap the text to play from that point in the episode. As an episode plays, each word is highlighted, making it easy to follow along. Transcripts can also be accessed from the episode details page. Touch and hold a podcast episode to reveal an option to view a transcript.
Apple automatically generates transcripts after a new episode is published. Your episode will be available for listening right away, and the transcript will be available shortly afterwards.
[…]
When you submit your show to Apple Podcasts, transcripts will be automatically created. If you would like to provide your own transcripts, you can change the transcript setting for your show in the Availability tab on your show page in Apple Podcasts Connect.
John Voorhees:
I’ve experimented with OpenAI’s Whisper for creating transcripts of MacStories’ podcasts, and although the results are good enough for creating a searchable episode database for our internal use, they haven’t been good enough to publish. As a result, I’m very keen to see how well Apple’s solution works. If they prefer, podcasters will be able to upload their own transcripts, too.
The transcripts generated by Apple are saved as VTT files, which is a W3C standard for displaying timed text using HTML 5’s track element. I looked at AppStories, and sure enough, there’s a transcript available for the latest episode already. As one of the show’s creators, I can access, download, edit, and re-upload the transcript. Based on my preliminary scan of the latest episode, though, the transcription is very good, including timestamps and identification of each speaker, although not by name, which isn’t surprising.
Ben Thompson:
Apple’s new ToS for podcasts claims that you can opt out of transcripts, but there is no option to do so in Podcast Connect.
It seems to be a per-episode setting, though that sounds like it creates a race condition where you would have to wait long enough for Apple Podcasts to see the episode so that you could opt out but not wait so long that the episode and transcript have already been distributed to listeners.
I carefully consider every word I write down. Podcasts are a freer medium in part because they are not screen-shottable.
I don’t think that will be the case long-term, regardless of what Apple does here.
Jason Snell:
Speaking as a prolific podcaster, I’m really happy that Apple has provided this feature because it dramatically improves the accessibility of our podcasts. Transcription technology has only recently gotten good enough to make automated transcripts readable, but the ideal solution to the problem was always to have platform owners like Apple build in this technology themselves.
Update (2024-03-08): Jason Snell:
As was foretold back in January, with the release of iOS 17.4 Apple’s Podcasts app now supports podcast transcripts. This is a pretty big breakthrough in terms of access to podcast content and accessibility of podcast to audiences who might not be able to listen.
[…]
Apple’s not just running that podcast through a standard transcription engine like the one I use to generate transcripts on my Mac, but one that’s been built to detect some detailed information about how the podcast is structured.
[…]
The only thing that’s really missing is support for private podcast feeds, which is where most members-only versions of podcasts live these days.
Update (2024-04-11): Marcin Krzyzanowski:
Apple Podcasts app got text transcript, but Voice Memos did not?
Update (2024-06-18): John Voorhees:
Ari Saperstein, writing for The Guardian, interviewed Ben Cave, Apple’s global head of podcasts and Sarah Herrlinger, who manages accessibility policy for the company, about Apple Podcasts transcripts. […] “Apple’s journey to podcast transcripts started with the expansion of a different feature: indexing.”
Matt Birchler:
My one big hope for this is that it can one day get the ability to transcribe your custom feeds. As it stands today, transcripts will not appear for shows you manually enter their feed URL into the app. I’m guessing this is because the transcript processing is happening on Apple’s servers, and feeds you add yourself never touch Apple’s servers, so Apple doesn’t know about them. If they could move the transcription on-device like they do for Voice Memos in iOS 18, that would be a great feature for people like me who have a few Patreon feeds that don’t get the benefit of this awesome feature today.
Accessibility Apple Podcasts iOS iOS 17 Podcasts Speech Recognition Voice Memos
Mozilla (via Mike Rockwell):
This dashboard tracks technical issues in major software platforms which disadvantage Firefox relative to the first-party browser. We consider aspects like security, stability, performance, and functionality, and propose changes to create a more level playing field.
Previously:
Update (2024-01-30): Thomas Claburn (Hacker News):
“For years, Mozilla has engaged in dialog with platform vendors in an effort to address these issues,” the development group declared. “With renewed public attention and an evolving regulatory environment, we think it’s time to publish these concerns using the same transparent process and tools we use to develop positions on emerging technical standards.”
[…]
At the top of the dashboard – by virtue of alphabetic order and coincidentally by actual importance – is Rule 2.5.6 of the Apple App Store Review Guidelines, which requires that all browsers on iOS use Apple’s WebKit rendering engine.
[…]
Google gets called out for failing to allow third-party Android browsers to import browsing data, for sometimes ignoring a user’s default browser choice, and for integrating Android with Google Search in a way that makes search results worse when users search with Firefox.
Microsoft is not spared either. The Windows biz stands accused of failing to allow third-party browsers to set themselves as the default browser, for allowing Edge to set itself as the default more easily, and for opening certain features in Edge regardless of the user’s choice of default browser.
Android App Store Firefox iOS iOS 17 Mac macOS 14 Sonoma TestFlight Web Windows
