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:
Update (2026-05-22): Jason Anthony Guy:
Apple loves its big numbers, and its execs will happily hawk them when it’s to their benefit. But what about the flip side? How about reporting the number of legitimate developers rejected for inane reasons? Should those rejections really be promoted as part of some great achievement? Apple’s proud of the “306,000 new developers” it’s welcomed to the platform, but how many saw their apps deplatformed? Apple brags about how many fraudulent apps get blocked; what about the egregious approvals?
Come to think of it, is Apple really patting itself on the back for finally taking down apps everyone but Apple knew were fraudulent from the jump? Is Apple counting those as both approvals and rejections? My mind boggles.
Radu Dutzan (via Nick Heer):
@doppi for Mac has been stuck there for two weeks. First of all, it takes them at least five full calendar days to review a Mac app. Deplorable.
But not just that, they’ve rejected the app twice, and for the dumbest shit. The second time, they cited one of the same reasons I had already explained, making me feel like it’s worthless to spend any effort trying to treat the process as rational.
Manton Reece:
After a full month of Apple rejections, the iOS version of Inkwell has been approved.
[…]
I care a lot about the names of things. In the App Store, Micro.blog is called simply… “Micro.blog”. No gimmicky taglines appended to the name. So it was a little painful that as a last resort, I’ve decided to temporarily rename the Inkwell app to “Ink•well for Micro.blog”. Yes, with a bullet character in the middle of the word.
I tried a few other renames before that, keeping Inkwell spelled correctly but shuffling it around with other words. “Ink•well” is the only name that Apple approved.
[…]
To more narrowly make the case for Inkwell approval under review guidelines section 3.1.3, I’ve also removed two features from the app[…] These are important parts of Inkwell that exist on Android, macOS, and the web.
App Store App Store Rejection Inkwell iOS iOS 26 iOS App Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar Sign In with Apple Trademark
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:
Bug Code Signing Exploit Mac macOS Tahoe 26 Sandboxing Security Transparency Consent and Control (TCC)
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:
Core Data Core Data Lab Database Developer Tool Liquid Glass Mac Mac App macOS Tahoe 26 SwiftData
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:
Update (2026-05-25): Mike Rockwell:
Apple Shortcuts is such a mess that I’ve actually implemented my own backup system for my shortcuts. That way, if anything goes wrong — and it has several times in the past — I have a weekly backup that I can restore from.
Backup iCloud iOS iOS 26 Mac macOS Tahoe 26 Shortcuts Version Control
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:
Update (2026-06-03): Hartley Charlton:
Apple has agreed to hand over financial data to India’s competition regulator, in a move that could bring a years-long antitrust case significantly closer to a penalty decision.
Antitrust App Store Apple India iOS iOS 26 Lawsuit Legal Match Group
