Jason Snell:

Apple announced its financial results for its second fiscal quarter of 2024 on Thursday. The company booked $90.8 billion in revenue (down 4% versus the year-ago quarter) with $23.6 billion in profit. Mac revenue was up 4%, presumably buoyed by the release of the M3 MacBook Air. iPad revenue crashed down to $5.6 billion, a 17% drop from the year-ago quarter and the weakest iPad quarter in four years. iPhone revenue was $46 billion, down 10% versus the year-ago quarter.

Services revenue was the big highlight for Apple this quarter, with a new record $23.9 billion in revenue, up 14% year over year. The Wearables, Home, and Accessories category managed only $7.9 billion in revenue, down 10% versus the year-ago quarter.

A funny thing happened as the results were being reported, but I’ll leave that to Zac Hall to sort out.

John Voorhees:

One of the most controversial aspects of Apple’s response to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) was the introduction of a Core Technology Fee (CTF), which must be paid by developers who opt into Apple’s alternative business terms. Today, in a post on its developer website, Apple announced changes to the CTF and regarding the treatment of iPadOS, which was added to Apple’s DMA compliance obligations earlier this week.

The problem was that the CTF as originally conceived applied to all apps, including free apps. If a developer offered a free app and had first annual app installs of over 1 million installations, they would owe the €0.50 per installation fee, regardless of the fact they earned no income from the app. The fee, as proposed, would likewise be a problem for developers with other sources of income that weren’t enough to pay the CTF.

Here are the two changes Apple has made:

• First, no CTF is required if a developer has no revenue whatsoever. This includes creating a free app without monetization that is not related to revenue of any kind (physical, digital, advertising, or otherwise). This condition is intended to give students, hobbyists, and other non-commercial developers an opportunity to create a popular app without paying the CTF.

• Second, small developers (less than €10 million in global annual business revenue*) that adopt the alternative business terms receive a 3-year free on-ramp to the CTF to help them create innovative apps and rapidly grow their business. Within this 3-year period, if a small developer that hasn’t previously exceeded one million first annual installs crosses the threshold for the first time, they won’t pay the CTF, even if they continue to exceed one million first annual installs during that time. If a small developer grows to earn global revenue between €10 million and €50 million within the 3-year on-ramp period, they’ll start to pay the CTF after one million first annual installs up to a cap of €1 million per year.

These are both moves in the right direction, but developers will need to keep an eye on that change that takes place three years in.

John Voorhees at MacStories:

Today, the European Union announced that it has added iPadOS to the products and services subject to the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The designation gives Apple six months to comply with the DMA.

iOS is already subject to the DMA, and Apple’s response meant that actions it took to comply with the law did not apply to iPadOS, leading to incongruous differences between the platforms. With the addition of iPadOS under the purview of the DMA, I expect some of those differences will need to be ironed out.

This weekend, my Mastodon and Thread timelines exploded with people being locked out of their Apple IDs. While it didn’t happen to me, it did to Michael Tsai:

I had another instance of my Apple ID mysteriously being locked. First, my iPhone wanted me to enter the password again, which I thought was the “normal” thing it has done every few months, almost since I got it. But after doing so it said that my account was locked.

Chance Miller also reported on it:

We received our first tip about this around 8 p.m. ET. In the hours since then, the problem has gained significant traction on social media.

Apple’s System Status webpage doesn’t indicate that any of its services are having issues this evening. Still, it’s clear based on social media reports that something wonky is going on behind the scenes at Apple. A few of us here at 9to5Mac have also been directly affected by the problem.

People are being signed out of their Apple ID across all of their devices. If you try to sign in with your original Apple ID password, you’ll be locked out of your account. You’ll then be forced to reset your password before being able to sign back in. There doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason as to why this is happening.

Howard Oakley:

When Apple introduced Fusion Drives back in late 2012, they were an attractive option for many iMacs and Mac minis. At a time when SSDs of 1 TB and greater size were expensive, the Fusion Drive seemed to offer the best of both worlds, with a capacious hard disk and a smaller but much faster SSD working in tandem. Since Apple discontinued the iMac 21.5-inch 2019 in April 2021, no Mac has offered a Fusion Drive option, and most significantly they’ve never been available in any model with a T2 or Apple silicon chip. This article considers whether the Fusion Drive was such a good idea, and why they have gone.

I think it’s finally iPad time:

The event is scheduled for 7 AM Pacific.