Proton (PDF):
We believe that Apple’s conduct, as detailed in the complaint we filed, constitutes further violations of US antitrust law. Without this case, Apple could get away with behavior in the US that is already outlawed in the European Union. If this were to happen, American consumers, and developers focused on the American market, would have to pay higher prices for fewer choices, and be left at a disadvantage.
There is also urgency to act now because of a parallel class-action suit by app developers against Apple on May 23, and any settlement there could be binding on all other developers. By joining that lawsuit, we can ensure that this suit will not only be about monetary damages to compensate app developers for the harm caused by Apple’s conduct, but also changes to App Store policies that will improve the state of the internet. We are seeking to permanently end anti-competitive behavior on the App Store, and we are joining this lawsuit to ensure that any future settlement enforces real changes to Apple’s practices and policies to benefit all consumers, developers, and competition, and not just cosmetic changes.
[…]
Companies that monetize user data in exchange for “free” services that abuse your privacy aren’t affected by this, as they don’t process payments through the App Store. However, privacy-first companies that monetize through subscriptions are disproportionately hit by this fee, putting a major barrier toward the adoption of privacy-first business models. Naturally, these are also the very companies Apple is directly competing with through its disingenuous privacy marketing campaigns.
[…]
Apple argues this control is necessary for security reasons. But the reality is that this has made Apple the single point of failure for free speech and a tool of dictatorships. There have been numerous incidents where Apple has removed or censored apps at the behest of authoritarian governments, in order to continue profiting from those markets.
[…]
In 2020, Apple threatened to take Proton VPN out of the App Store unless we removed language from our App Store description that said the app could be used to “unblock censored websites.” We don’t question Apple’s right to act on behalf of authoritarians for the sake of profit, but Apple’s monopoly over iOS app distribution means it can enforce this perverse policy on all app developers, forcing them to also be complicit. We believe it is critical for the future of the internet to end the monopoly on app distribution, so that developers and companies who are prepared to fight for democracy can do so.
Apple also blocked their security update unless they would change the app’s description. The app description had been previously approved with no issues, and the rejection didn’t point to an actual rule violation. This was all after Apple had said that it wouldn’t block bug fix updates.
Proton is also upset that users can’t set Proton Calendar as the default calendar app and that iCloud Drive gets to do background processing stuff that Proton Drive can’t.
Andrew Orr:
Proton seeks an injunction that would require Apple to open iOS to rival app stores and payment services. It also demands monetary compensation for what it calls excessive commissions and the broader competitive harm imposed on developers.
However, they say they will donate any money received from the lawsuit.
Manton Reece:
At this point, I don’t think there’s any doubt that eventually, all around the world, it will be possible to install third-party apps, or use external payments, with minimal interference from Apple. It might still be a bumpy road to get there. This lawsuit is an unfortunate but likely necessary part of the journey.
Previously:
Antitrust App Store Apple iOS iOS 18 iOS App iOS Multitasking Lawsuit Legal Privacy Proton Drive Proton VPN Virtual Private Network (VPN)
Adi Robertson:
Age verification is perhaps the hottest battleground for online speech, and the Supreme Court just settled a pivotal question: does using it to gate adult content violate the First Amendment in the US? For roughly the past 20 years the answer has been “yes” — now, as of Friday, it’s an unambiguous “no.”
Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is relatively straightforward as Supreme Court rulings go.
[…]
Even the best age verification usually requires collecting information that links people (directly or indirectly) to some of their most sensitive web history, creating an almost inherent risk of leaks. The only silver lining is that current systems seem to at least largely make good-faith attempts to avoid intentional snooping, and legislation includes attempts to discourage unnecessary data retention.
Previously:
Children Legal Privacy Web
Riccardo Mori:
I’ve been trying to make sense of Apple’s latest user-interface redesign — Apple calls it Liquid Glass — that will affect all their platforms in the next iteration of their respective OS versions. But it’s hard to make sense of it when, after checking Apple’s own guidance, I’m mostly left with the feeling that at Apple they’re making things up as they go.
[…]
Now take a look at the area I’ve highlighted in the image. Why would you want to “focus on the underlying content” here? Tab bars and toolbars still cover the underlying content, and the more transparent/translucent they are, the worse. When something fades to the background, it literally ceases to be in the foreground, so there’s no point in focusing on it. This is like proposing an interface that helps you focus your sight on your peripheral vision.
[…]
Another thing that irks me about this obsession with icon simplification is that when you abstract things this much, you dilute their meaning instead of distilling it. Take the progressive degradation of the Dictionary icon, for example. In its subsequent iterations (as soon as it loses the ‘book’ shape), it could just be the icon for a font managing app. Because it ends up losing a lot (if not all) of its uniqueness.
Louie Mantia:
People really expected Apple to shift back toward the kinds of things that made us all fall in love with their platforms and products to begin with. […] But the pendulum never swung back. Instead, we got Liquid Glass.
[…]
And so it seems to me that the people who spearheaded both iOS 7 (2013) and iOS 26 (2025) either did not understand that the visually-rich style from 2001–2013 played such a significant role in Apple’s success or they simply did not care that it did.
[…]
Yet as years go by, we seem to lose more of OS X’s good things. Year after year, draggable borders and frames became thinner until they disappeared. Scrollbars vanished. Stronger contrast softened. We lost the visually rich design in applications and icons. And now, we’ve even lost the ability to make unique icon silhouettes that Apple once specifically retained when introducing the iOS 7 aesthetic to macOS because that was a distinct element of its heritage.
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It’s asking a lot. For almost nothing in return. I keep looking at all the changes Liquid Glass brings, and I cannot find one instance where it has markedly improved the experience in any way.
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But what I am now absolutely sure of is that if the last decade represents Alan Dye’s vision for this platform, then I disagree with it. I don’t trust this direction. I didn’t need the last ten years to see that, but I’m disappointed that in ten years he still doesn’t see it.
Riccardo Mori (Mastodon):
In the past, technology used to be my coping space. A place for a knowledge worker like me to nerd about his tools and related passions — user interfaces, UI/UX design, typography, etc. And if I have developed these passions and interest is largely because of Apple. Apple had a huge impact on my life ever since I started using their computers. I carried out my apprenticeship in Desktop Publishing on a workstation that was comprised of a Macintosh SE, a Bernoulli Box external drive, and a LaserWriter printer back in 1989. I’ve always appreciated the care and attention to detail Apple put in their hardware design but also in their UI design.
But it’s true — something important died with Steve Jobs. He was really Apple’s kernel, for better and for… less better. This Apple has been dismantling Mac OS, as if it’s a foreign tool to them. They’ve bashed its UI around. And they seem to have done that not for the purpose of improving it, but simply for the purpose of changing it; adapting it to their (mostly misguided) idea of unifying the interface of different devices to bring it down to the simplest common denominator.
Francisco Tolmasky:
Well I think it is very clear that Apple does not believe there are new ideas to be had. This is a much deeper discussion, but to me all of their actions are representative of a company that believes technology is “mature” and all that is left to do, at best, is polish. Setting aside whether one agrees with Apple’s decisions/taste/whatever, I think it is not up for discussion that while these changes may be disruptive, they are not, nor are intended to be, “transformative”.
Baked into the explanation that Liquid Glass “frees your content from the tyranny of the UI” is the inescapable admission that you have determined that the highest priority item left for iOS is to “return roughly 40px of screen real estate, or 3% of the vertical space of an iPhone, to users”. That is the important part here. Not whether LG does or doesn’t deliver, but rather that Apple did not find, and thus does not believe there exists, anything more interesting to do in all of 2025.
Dave Polaschek:
Also, there are bugs that have been around for more than six years (I was still working when I reported them) that they could have been fixing, but those don’t even get looked at. They’re too busy making new bugs instead.
Previously:
Alan Dye Design Icons iOS iOS 26 Liquid Glass Mac macOS Tahoe 26
Zhenyi Tan (via Kyle Howells):
A few months ago, I posted this image on Mastodon, because the Apple documentation website sometimes feel… err, underwhelming. Many people have already pointed this out, so I won’t repeat their complaints. When people complain about Apple’s documentation, they often compare it to php.net, saying that php.net has sample code for almost every function and community notes that explain details when the code alone isn’t enough.
So I thought, what if we just make Apple’s documentation more like php.net? I posted the question on Mastodon, but not many people were interested. Oh no! Anyway, two months later, I decided to give it a shot because I still thought the idea was good enough to try. I then called it Technotes.
Technotes is a Safari extension that adds user-contributed notes to the Apple documentation website. The notes can include sample code, warnings about common pitfalls, and other useful stuff.
Developer Tool Documentation Mac Mac App macOS 15 Sequoia Programming Safari Extensions Web
