Category: Apps

Apple Reduces App Store Comission to 15% for Small Developers⇢

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This morning, Apple announced a change coming to the App Store next year:

Apple today announced an industry-leading new developer program to accelerate innovation and help small businesses and independent developers propel their businesses forward with the next generation of groundbreaking apps on the App Store. The new App Store Small Business Program will benefit the vast majority of developers who sell digital goods and services on the store, providing them with a reduced commission on paid apps and in-app purchases. Developers can qualify for the program and a reduced, 15 percent commission if they earned up to $1 million in proceeds during the previous calendar year.

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On Running Virtual Machines on M1-Powered Macs

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With M1 Macs mere days away for early adopters, those who need to run virtual machines on their Macs may have a bumpy time ahead.

Here’s Nick Dobrovolskiy with Parallels:

It is important to note that currently available versions of Parallels® Desktop for Mac cannot run virtual machines on Mac with Apple M1 chip. Good news: A new version of Parallels Desktop for Mac that can run on Mac with Apple M1 chip is already in active development.

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Alfred Ready for first Apple Silicon Macs⇢

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Good news about my app launcher of choice:

Alfred has an exceedingly clean code base, so we were hoping for it to be reasonably easy to create our first Universal build. To our pleasant surprise, it was as straightforward as loading up Alfred’s code into Xcode 12 Beta, selecting the Universal architecture, and compiling. That was it, no other changes were needed, and we were immediately able to take full advantage of the new architecture.

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The Computer Chronicles: HyperCard⇢

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In 1987, The Computer Chronicles did an episode all about HyperCard:

It is a fascinating watch, but a few things really jumped out at me:

  • HyperCard could do about anything.
  • Bill Atkinson’s passion for users to shape the Macintosh into their own personal tool was inspiring to watch.
  • The Macintosh II was huge.
  • I don’t think today’s computing has a true spiritual successor this, but the closest thing may be Shortcuts.

Don’s miss this 2019 Ars Technica post about HyperCard, which was written by Matthew Lasar.

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Dropbox Launches Family Plans⇢

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Dropbox:

The Dropbox Family plan has 2 TB of storage space that can be shared by up to 6 members, ages 13 and older. With Dropbox Family, you and your family can securely organize and share content, like photos, videos, and important documents.

With Dropbox Family, each member of the plan has their own Dropbox account. They can manage their own files and folders and decide what to share with other family members. A single person, the Family manager, will manage the billing and memberships for the entire Family plan.

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Matt Mullenweg: Apple Wants 30% of In-App Purchases That Don’t Exist [Updated]⇢

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The WordPress founder says the company has been unable to update its iOS app until it gives Apple a cut of its in-app purchases.

There’s one small detail worth knowing. Sean Hollister at The Verge:

Here’s the thing: the WordPress app on iOS doesn’t sell anything. I just checked, and so did Stratechery’s Ben Thompson. The app simply lets you make a website for free. There isn’t even an option to buy a unique dot-com or even dot-blog domain name from the iPhone and iPad app — it simply assigns you a free WordPress domain name and 3GB of space.

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Apple Threatens to Remove Epic from Apple Developer Program by August 28⇢

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Jacob Kastrenakes at The Verge:

Epic says that Apple has threatened to cut off its access to all iOS and Mac developer tools as retaliation for sneaking a new payment option into Fortnite last week — a stunt that ended in the app being banned from the App Store and Epic filing a blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Apple, claiming it places illegal restrictions on the distribution of iOS apps.

Apple will terminate Epic’s inclusion in the Apple Developer Program, a membership that’s necessary to distribute apps on iOS devices or use Apple developer tools, if the company does not “cure your breaches” to the agreement within two weeks, according to a letter from Apple that was shared by Epic. Epic won’t be able to notarize Mac apps either, a process that could make installing Epic’s software more difficult or block it altogether. Apple requires that all apps are notarized before they can be run on newer versions of macOS, even if they’re distributed outside the App Store.

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