New top story from Time: Apple Has Loosened App Store Payment Rules as Part of a Lawsuit Settlement

https://ift.tt/38h7s3j

BERKELEY, Calif. — Apple has agreed to let developers of iPhone apps email their users about cheaper ways to pay for digital subscriptions and media by circumventing a commission system that generates billions of dollars annually for the iPhone maker.

The concession announced late Thursday, which covers emailed notifications but does not allow in-app notifications, is part of a preliminary settlement of a nearly 2-year-old lawsuit filed on behalf of iPhone app developers in the U.S. It also addresses an issue raised by a federal court judge who is expected to soon rule on a separate case brought by Epic Games, maker of the popular video game Fortnite.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Apple announced the news in a “background” briefing with reporters in which it insisted on anonymity for participating executives and would not allow any direct quotations.

Under long-standing Apple rules, makers of iPhone apps were forbidden to email users with information on how to pay for services outside the app, which would circumvent Apple commissions of 15% to 30%.

The concession now opens one way for app developers to more aggressively encourage its users to pay in other ways, so long as the companies obtain consumer consent.

Apple will also set up a $100 million fund to pay thousands of app developers covered in the lawsuit sums ranging from $250 to $30,000. App developers will get more flexibility to set different prices within their apps, expanding the options from about 100 to 500 choices.

The compromise addresses a concern that U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers repeatedly raised while presiding over the high-profile Epic-Apple trial. She openly wondered why Apple couldn’t allow developers to display a range of payment options within their apps, much like brick-and-mortar retailers can show a range of different credit cards they accept in addition to cash.

Apple still isn’t allowing developers to use in-app notifications to prod consumers to explore different payment options.

But just being able to email users to explain why they should pay outside the app is a breakthrough for developers who have complained about Apple’s commissions as a form of price gouging for years.

Richard Czeslawski, one of the app developers that filed the lawsuit Apple is settling, hailed the freedom to email users as a “game changer” in a declaration field with the court in Oakland, California. App developers “will take fill advantage of this change in customer communications as a way to further reduce the commissions paid to Apple,'” predicted Czeslawski, CEO of Pure Sweat Basketball.

Apple already has been tinkering with its app store commission system in response to legal pressure and mounting scrutiny among lawmakers and regulators around the world taking a harder look whether the company ironclad control of the store is stifling competition and innovation.

Earlier this year, Apple lowered its in-app commissions from 30% to 15% for developers with less than $1 million in annual revenue — a move covering most of the apps in its store. As part of the settlement announced Thursday, Apple is guaranteeing the lower commission for small developers will be extended for at least three more years.

But the lower commissions don’t help the largest app makers like Epic and Spotify, which are the leaders in a coalition trying to topple Apple’s so-called walled garden that prevents outsiders from offering other options. Apple maintains it prevents alternative stores from offering apps on its iPhone to protect its own customers’ security and privacy while its critics contend the company is simply trying to protect a cash cow that that generates billions of dollars in profit annually.

Those tensions are likely to come to a boil when Gonzalez Rogers issues her ruling in the Epic case.

Gonzalez Rogers will also approve or disapprove the proposed settlement announced Thursday. A hearing on that is scheduled Oct. 12.

Comments

New top story from Time: The Documentary Final Account Is a Rare Trove of Unfiltered Interviews With Former Nazis—Too Unfiltered, Some Historians Say

https://ift.tt/3u2CDYI In 2008, documentary filmmaker Luke Holland was looking for a sense of closure. His Viennese maternal grandparents had perished in the Holocaust and, more than six decades later, he wanted to better understand what had happened. So he decided to ask the people who would know: SS members , Wehrmacht fighters, concentration-camp guards and civilian witnesses. “ At first, I embarked on a project with the completely improbable aim of trying to find the people who had killed [my grandparents]. It was quickly clear that I was not going to achieve that,” Holland wrote in a statement about the project. “But I realized I could actually meet their peers. I could meet people who had also raised their arms and their guns for Hitler , people who had committed atrocious crimes. And maybe through them, I might better understand the context in which the Holocaust played out in the heart of a supposedly civilized Europe.” Holland did more than 250 interviews, bu...

New top story from Time: The ‘Badass Chief of Staff’ of Turkey’s Opposition Faces Years in Jail After Challenging Erdogan’s Power. She’s Not Backing Down

https://ift.tt/2ZKUTZP Snow brings back memories for Dr. Canan Kaftancioglu. Of recess snowball fights in the Black Sea village where she grew up, of warming her hands at her elementary school’s stove before class — and of discovering a poem by Turkish writer Ataol Behramoglu, a favorite of a beloved uncle who would bring left-wing newspapers to her childhood home and discuss the articles inside. “It is about how the snow brings equality between people,” Kaftancioglu says of the poem. “In the snow, we build a new, more equal world.” The Turkish politician is speaking through an interpreter at her friends’ apartment in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district, seated in an armchair with a beige and brown-spotted dog curled up beside her. In a matter of days or weeks but likely not months, Kaftancioglu expects she will be taken to jail. For now, she’d rather focus on her work: the poverty rate is increasing, and people in her city are suffering. Kaftancioglu represents something unfamil...

New top story from Time: Keeping Up with the Kardashians Is Ending. But Their Exploitation of Black Women’s Aesthetics Continues

https://ift.tt/3gahnMY The inaugural episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians , which debuted on E! in 2007, begins with an irreverent domestic scene. Kim Kardashian , the undisputed protagonist of the show, rummages through the fridge as she’s teased by her family for the size of her posterior. “I think she’s got a little junk in her trunk,” says Kris Jenner, the family’s matriarch and “momager.” She calls her daughter’s butt “jiggly,” as Kim’s sister Khloé Kardashian chimes in from the kitchen table, “Kim’s always had an ass.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] That the opener of the watershed reality show—which ends June 10 after 20 seasons—centered on the family’s fixation on Kim’s rear foreshadowed the now-ubiquitous public obsession with her body, and particularly that specific feature of it. This outsize fascination was perhaps best embodied by her controversial 2014 Paper magazine cover, shot by Jean-Paul Goude, where her bare bottom is flanked by the line, “Br...

New top story from Time: City Heat is Worse if You’re Not Rich or White. The World’s First Heat Officer Wants to Change That

https://ift.tt/2Us9kTo Jane Gilbert knows she doesn’t get the worst of the sticky heat and humidity that stifles Miami each summer. She lives in Morningside, a coastal suburb of historically preserved art deco and Mediterranean-style single-family homes. Abundant trees shade the streets and a bay breeze cools residents when they leave their air conditioned cars and homes. “I live in a place of privilege and it’s a beautiful area,” says Gilbert, 58, over Zoom in early June, shortly after beginning her job as the world’s first chief heat officer, in Miami Dade county. “But you don’t have to go far to see the disparity.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] A mile or two inland, in lower income, mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods like Little Haiti, Little Havana and Liberty City, tree cover can be as little as 10%, compared to around 40% in upscale coastal areas, according to Gilbert. Residents wait for buses on unshaded benches. Many can’t afford to buy or run an AC unit. “You ...

FOX NEWS: Man modeled ex-fiancée's wedding dress to try and sell it: Video Sometimes you’ve got to do a little more to snag that sale.

Man modeled ex-fiancée's wedding dress to try and sell it: Video Sometimes you’ve got to do a little more to snag that sale. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3iwCTgo

New top story from Time: We’re in the Third Quarter of the Pandemic. Antarctic Researchers, Mars Simulation Scientists and Navy Submarine Officers Have Advice For How to Get Through It

https://ift.tt/2MtohAV McMurdo Station, an Antarctic research base 2,415 miles south of Christchurch, New Zealand, is a strange place to ride out the COVID-19 pandemic. But it’s been a home of sorts for Pedro Salom since he took a dishwashing job there in 2001, when he was 24. Now an assistant area manager with more than a dozen Antarctic deployments behind him, Salom has grown accustomed to the ebb and flow of life on the ice. There’s the surge of excitement when new arrivals join the camp, the feeling of isolation from the rest of the world when earth and sea disappear in the endless night from April to August; and the joy when the sun finally appears behind the mountains once again. He’s also been around long enough to know that, as people reach the end of their deployments, many begin to struggle—whether they’ve been at McMurdo for over a year, or even just a few months. “One of the things I look for is dramatic changes in people’s habits,” says Salom. “If somebody has...

New top story from Time: China Says It Will Provide COVID-19 Vaccines to Almost 40 African States

https://ift.tt/3f34nYP BEIJING — China said Thursday it is providing COVID-19 vaccines to nearly 40 African countries, describing its actions as purely altruistic in an apparent intensification of what has been described as “vaccine diplomacy.” The vaccines were donated or sold at “favorable prices,” Foreign Ministry official Wu Peng told reporters. Wu compared China’s outreach to the actions of “some countries that have said they have to wait for their own people to finish the vaccination before they could supply the vaccines to foreign countries,” in an apparent dig at the United States. “We believe that it is, of course, necessary to ensure that the Chinese people get vaccinated as soon as possible, but for other countries in need, we also try our best to provide vaccine help,” said Wu, who is director of the ministry’s Africa department. While the U.S. has been accused by some of hoarding vaccines, President Joe Biden on Monday pledged to share an additional 20 mi...

FOX NEWS: Alligator invades Florida post office This gator needs to say later to the post office.

Alligator invades Florida post office This gator needs to say later to the post office. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3gdiGdY

New top story from Time: House Democrats Pass Sweeping Voting Rights Bill Over GOP Opposition

https://ift.tt/3bVXJAY (WASHINGTON) — House Democrats passed sweeping voting and ethics legislation over unanimous Republican opposition, advancing to the Senate what would be the largest overhaul of the U.S. election law in at least a generation. House Resolution 1, which touches on virtually every aspect of the electoral process, was approved Wednesday night on a near party-line 220-210 vote. It would restrict partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, strike down hurdles to voting and bring transparency to a murky campaign finance system that allows wealthy donors to anonymously bankroll political causes. The bill is a powerful counterweight to voting rights restrictions advancing in Republican-controlled statehouses across the country in the wake of Donald Trump’s repeated false claims of a stolen 2020 election. Yet it faces an uncertain fate in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it has little chance of passing without changes to procedural rules that curr...

New top story from Time: How Spirited Away Changed Animation Forever

https://ift.tt/3xVoGP5 Twenty years ago, on July 20, 2001, a film that would become one of the most celebrated animated movies of all time hit theaters in Japan. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, titled Spirited Away in English, would leave an indelible mark on animation in the 21st century. The movie arrived at a time when animation was widely perceived as a genre solely for children, and when cultural differences often became barriers to the global distribution of animated works. Spirited Away shattered preconceived notions about the art form and also proved that, as a film created in Japanese with elements of Japanese folklore central to its core, it could resonate deeply with audiences around the world. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The story follows an ordinary 10-year-old girl, Chihiro, as she arrives at a deserted theme park that turns out to be a realm of gods and spirits. After an overeating incident ...

My precise view

Search This Blog