#app store

Apple has tightened the App Store Review Guidelines to address AI-generated nonconsensual intimate imagery and apps that change behavior after they pass review. The company announced the update on its developer news page on October 16.

Guideline 1.2, which covers user-generated content, now explicitly names nonconsensual intimate imagery, including imagery produced with AI tools. According to Apple, apps must proactively prevent and remove this kind of content. Developers who fail to put adequate safeguards in place, or who do not fix violations after being notified, risk breaking the Developer Code of Conduct and being removed from the App Store.

Bloomberg reported on August 31 that longtime Apple executive Phil Schiller is no longer running the App Store or overseeing Apple's product events. MacRumors covered the report.

Schiller is not leaving Apple. He keeps the title of Apple Fellow and is said to be working on unspecified projects. Employees quoted by Bloomberg suggested the 66-year-old appears to be moving towards retirement, though that is an interpretation rather than an announcement.

Responsibility for the App Store goes to Eddy Cue, who oversees services and ran the store until 2015. Carson Oliver, a longtime member of the App Store team, will handle day-to-day operations.

The EU General Court in Luxembourg has ruled against Apple in its challenge to how the App Store is treated under the Digital Markets Act. Apple had asked the court to remove the store from the law's scope.

Apple's central argument was that it does not operate one App Store but five separate ones, covering iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch. The court disagreed, finding that each version connects developers with users and distributes software, so the App Store remains a single regulated service.

A separate part of Apple's case concerned iMessage. The court called that objection inadmissible, because iMessage has not been designated as an important gateway and is therefore not currently regulated as a DMA gatekeeper service.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up Apple's appeal in the long-running App Store dispute with Epic Games. At issue is a civil contempt finding against Apple for violating a 2021 injunction.

That injunction came out of Epic's 2020 lawsuit. Apple won most of the original case, but the court ordered it to let developers put links in their apps pointing customers to outside payment options. Apple complied with the links, then attached a 27 percent commission to purchases made through them within seven days, against its usual 30 percent rate. Epic argued that this undercut the order.