Archive for May 20, 2026

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Inkwell Rejected From the App Store

Manton Reece:

I submitted Inkwell for iOS to Apple for review on April 21st. It has gone through numerous rejections, code changes, resubmissions, clarifications, one phone call, and one appeal to the review board, which I’m still waiting to hear back on.

[…]

The app didn’t have a way to report objectionable content or block users. This rejection was bizarre to me since it’s an RSS reader where people choose to follow users.

[…]

The app doesn’t use in-app purchase so that Apple can take a percentage of Micro.blog revenue. I streamlined the app by removing creation features such as posting and highlighting, removed sign-up and external links, and even removed the app from all storefronts except the US, where there are different rules thanks to Epic vs. Apple. I believe it should now qualify under either 3.1.3(a) “reader apps” or 3.1.3(f) “stand-alone companion apps”.

[…]

Apple’s [Jaguar-era] Inkwell branding was short-lived, and the trademark is now listed as “dead” by the US Patent & Trademark Office. Yet the name still appears on Apple’s trademark page. This is what the reviewer found and objected to, even though other Inkwell apps have been approved without issue.

John Brayton:

Dealing with the App Store is the worst part of developing for Apple platforms.

Apple:

As powerful AI development tools drive a surge in app submissions, Apple’s App Review process has seamlessly scaled to handle the volume and to help ensure every new app and app update meets the App Store’s high standards for privacy, security, and quality.

Tyler Hall:

Apple keeps emailing me about WWDC when all I want them to do is email me about reviewing my Mac app.

Previously:

Hijacking Apps Using Archive Utility

Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk (Mastodon):

Until macOS 26.4, Archive Utility had nearly unrestricted filesystem access. Combined with a drag-and-drop sandbox quirk, this let an attacker bypass App Sandbox data containers, Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC) protections, and hijack third-party apps — all without special permissions or elevated privileges.

[…]

Here’s one interesting aspect of the macOS app sandbox: dragging and dropping a file or folder onto an application grants it unrestricted access to the dropped item. This is by design. Without it, apps couldn’t access files dragged from protected locations like ~/Desktop or ~/Documents, and drag and drop wouldn’t work in sandboxed apps at all.

[…]

Knowing about the drag-and-drop loophole, an attacker can try to convince a user to drag and drop Archive Utility’s preferences file into Terminal, which lets them rewrite Archive Utility’s output folder. From there, copying a file out of an app data container is a two-step move: compress the target file inside a protected area, then extract the archive into a folder the attacker controls.

[…]

Code signing should have prevented this kind of tampering with the application bundle, but for some reason macOS didn’t complain. We would like to investigate this further.

Previously:

Core Data Lab 3.0

Ron Elemans:

Despite all that, we have done our best to embrace and implement the concepts of the Liquid Glass design in Core Data Lab 3.0, although with a few tweaks here and there to improve the contrast in especially dialogs.

[…]

Identifying rows in data often depends on attributes with names like ‘identifier’, ‘title’ or ’name’, which not seldom requires scrolling or adjusting the column configuration to make them visible. With ‘Favorite attributes’ you can configure default attribute names that are automatically placed in front or on top of other attributes.

[…]

With the new ‘Favorite content’ setting, you can determine which attribute is shown first, and which other attributes must be shown on top of the said dropdown list.

[…]

You can add multiple diagrams to a project, and it’s easy to center each diagram around a few entities by excluding unrelated entities. The design is heavily inspired by the ‘graph style’ editor of the data model designer tool in Xcode 13 and older[…]

Also, you can now see relationships when opening an object in a separate window, and searching now supports the Matches and Like operations. It’s a free update.

Previously:

Updating Shared Shortcuts

Manuel Grabowski:

No actual concept of versioning or upgrades for shared shortcuts. Sharing shortcuts happens via weird iCloud URLs rather than being an actual aspect of the system. So to update a shortcut, do you just add it again? No indication of what that will do before you press the button. Will it error out? Will it create a duplicate? Will it update/replace the existing one?

[…]

Of course this Playmobil-ass UI doesn’t show anything that would be remotely useful for serious people. Imagine wanting to sort your shortcuts by date or see the last modification date, like some rocket scientist.

Needless to say, there’s no version control or diffing, either. There’s so much stuff that apps can get for free if they use the file system instead of opaque storage. Bypassing it in the name of simplicity makes some things easier but blocks a long tail of possibilities—as well as basic stuff like sorting, if the app doesn’t provide it.

Previously:

Apple vs. Indian Antitrust Regulator

Juli Clover (Slashdot):

Apple is fighting an antitrust penalty law in India that could require it to pay massive fines in its ongoing antitrust dispute with Tinder owner Match, reports Reuters.

Last year, India passed a law that allows the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to use global turnover when calculating penalties imposed on companies for abusing market dominance. Apple can be fined up to 10 percent, which would result in a penalty of around $38 billion. Apple said that using global turnover would result in a fine that’s “manifestly arbitrary, unconstitutional, grossly disproportionate, and unjust.”

Jackson Chen:

Apple’s refusal to provide financial data to an Indian regulatory agency as part of an antitrust case will culminate in a final hearing on May 21, as first reported by Reuters.

Hartley Charlton:

The Delhi High Court ruling keeps a probe by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) alive, which found in 2024 that Apple had abused its dominant position in the iPhone apps market. The CCI wants Apple's financial data to calculate potential penalties, but Apple has refused to hand it over so far.

Previously: