A federal antitrust lawsuit over the long-shuttered alternative app store called Cydia has now been given the green light to proceed, after its initial complaint was dismissed. The Cydia app store, which once featured apps and other tweaks that weren’t permitted by Apple’s official App Store policies, is suing Apple over its alleged unlawful monopoly over iOS app distribution — a monopoly that contributed to the end of Cydia’s business, it says.

The plaintiff, SaurikIT LLC, maker of the rival app store, originally filed its legal challenge back in 2020, but U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers — the same judge who recently issued the Apple-Epic ruling now under appeal — granted Apple’s motion to dismiss the first complaint on the grounds that its claims were outside the statute of limitations. But the judge allowed Cydia to amend its complaint, which was filed in Jan. 2022.

That new complaint is now moving forward, as Judge Gonzalez Rogers has rejected Apple’s motion to dismiss it. Apple had again argued Cydia’s allegations fell outside the four-year window allowed under federal antitrust law, reported Reuters, which first noted the lawsuit’s update this past Friday.

In Cydia’s amended complaint, it says Apple more recently implemented design changes that prevented iOS app distributors from being able to provide apps that were usable on iOS devices. These changes were rolled out from 2018 to 2021, the complaint states, which brings the legal challenge into the permitted time frame for an antitrust argument.

More specifically, the complaint cites 2018 and 2019 technical restrictions like runtime code modification prevention, pointer authentication, physical map codesigning, memory tagging extensions, and other control mechanisms designed to target Cydia and other alternative app stores from delivering functional apps. It also references Apple’s contractual restrictions which prevent developers from using alternative payment mechanisms. And it points out that Apple’s numerous restrictions have impacts on other app stores besides itself, like the newer AltStore.

“…[the] plaintiff has plausibly alleged that Apple engaged in changes in its technological updates, which occurred within the four years preceding the filing of the lawsuit,” Gonzalez Rogers wrote in the new filing. “Accordingly, to the extent plaintiff’s claims rely on Apple’s technological updates to exclude Cydia from being able to operate altogether, those claims are timely,” the decision read.

Cydia is ultimately looking to recoup damages and injunctive relief and wants to move towards a trial by jury. Apple has been given 21 days to respond to the amended complaint.

While Apple continues to battle with iOS developers on other fronts, including with the ongoing Epic appeal, the Cydia lawsuit is particularly interesting because it’s focused on whether third-party app stores have a legal right to exist and do business. Cydia is arguing they do, pointing to the decisions made by the U.S. Copyright Office which declared iPhone jailbreaking legal in 2010. Because Apple lost the case to make jailbreaking illegal, it instead moved to make jailbreaking an impossibility through both technical and contractual means, Cydia is arguing.

It’s a creative tactic to reference the jailbreaking decision and one that allows Cydia to point to all sorts of other changes Apple has made in the years since that ruling. For example, the complaint contrasts how Apple has moved against some rival app stores like AltStore and Cydia as well as against cloud gaming services, but then permitted certain apps to distribute apps, as with WeChat and its distribution of “mini-programs.” Arguably, these are all very different types of experiences, but the case being made is that Apple is making choices designed to restrict certain rivals and not others.

While the complaint itself reads a bit like a grab-bag of antitrust concerns — some of which really have nothing to do with Cydia’s right to operate. At one point, Cydia complains about the $99 per year Apple developer fee; at another, it pleads Spotify’s case for pages — which almost makes you wonder who’s paying Cydia’s legal fees!

Still, it’s interesting to have Cydia in the fight, given the outsized role it’s played in iOS innovation over the years.

As longtime iPhone jailbreakers likely recall, Cydia was once a popular and sizable marketplace filled with apps and tweaks that skirted Apple’s official rules. To use Cydia, consumers would first have to jailbreak their iPhones to circumvent Apple’s security protections — a process that required jailbreaking teams to constantly search for new ways to unlock consumer devices to permit sideloading apps.

At one point in 2013, Cydia was used by some 23 million users, according to figures from its creator, Jay Freeman.

Though jailbreaking was sometimes associated with giving users a way to download pirated apps, Cydia also contributed to the development of iOS itself.

Dozens upon dozens of iOS features were seemingly inspired by tweaks being marketed on Cydia, in fact.

Long before users were customizing their iPhones with widgets and custom icons, for instance, Cydia users were downloading theme managers like Winterboard to overhaul their iOS look and feel with custom themes. A popular Cydia tweak SBSettings was iPhone’s first Control Center, before there was a Control Center. Cydia users were also first to have access to things like custom keyboards, private web browsing, dynamic wallpapers, native QR code scanning, screenshot previews, dark modes, auto-updating apps, a card-based app switcher, the ability to delete stock apps, screen recording tools, and so much more.

However, Cydia’s ability to actually win this case could be more of a longshot, given that Gonzalez Rogers already declared last year in the Epic ruling that Apple was not a monopolist.

Ahead of Apple’s big developer conference on June 6, WWDC, new information about what’s in store for iOS 16 has come to light. According to leaks reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, iOS users may expect to see new features like an upgraded lockscreen as well as updated first-party apps, including Messages and Health, updates to notifications, iPad multitasking features, and more.

The report described the software as a “fairly significant” upgrade —  which is notable given the last two updates had included sizable changes, as well. With iOS 14, for example, iPhone users gained support for home screen widgets, leading to a homescreen customization craze that still sees widget and themes apps like Brass, Themify, ScreenKit and others topping the Graphics & Design charts. Last year’s iOS 15 upgrade, meanwhile, delivered Focus Modes — a new way to control what and who is allowed to interrupt you and when.

This time around, Bloomberg says Apple will give particular attention to its lockscreen, a bit of under-utilized real estate currently which offers only the date, time, and buttons to launch the Flashlight or Camera apps.

In iOS 16, Apple aims to support wallpapers that have widget-like capabilities, the report claims. This could indicate that Apple is considering merging what’s today to the left of the homescreen — the “Today View” with its lineup of widgets — directly into the lockscreen itself. This would make sense as the Today View is meant to offer easy access to information you may need throughout the day, like upcoming calendar appointments, the weather, or widgets that can be tapped to open favorite apps. But the Today View isn’t within easy reach because you still have to swipe right to see it, and many users don’t bother to do so.

This change could be beneficial to app developers who support widgets, as it gives them another shot at grabbing users’ attention in a high-profile area. Plus, it would give the homescreen customization app developers a way to extend their offerings. That is, users could now download full theme sets with sets of widgets designed both for the lockscreen and homescreen, along with matching wallpapers and icon themes.

In addition, the updated lockscreen could be preparing for a future where the lockscreen has an always-on display, similar to Apple Watch, though this would likely be tied to updated hardware, the report said. This mode may be exclusive to high-end iPhones at launch, including the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max — if given the greenlight.

Other expected features with iOS 16 include an updated Messages app with more “social networking-like functionality,” which may include some sort of update around audio messages. (Please, Apple, allow us to play audio messages at faster speeds like on WhatsApp!)

The Health app will also be updated, but the report didn’t have further details as to what would be changed. In addition, watchOS will gain changes to watch faces and a low-power mode, while iPadOS will gain changes to windowing and multitasking.

One feature that wasn’t touched on, but is in need of improvement, is iPhone’s Focus Mode. While a solid concept in theory, in practice many who have tried to set up Focus Modes have ended up missing important calls and texts, as well as critical notifications, that had come in via numbers or apps that hadn’t been allowed to punch through “Do Not Disturb” settings for the given mode. Setting up Focus Modes takes a lot of work, too — what could be better, perhaps, would be a Siri-powered Focus Mode that asks users to train the setting over a period of time, allowing it to learn what you consider important versus a distraction for particular times of “focus,” like your workday or personal time. Siri could also suggest Focus Modes based on how you already use apps on your phone or how often and when you “mute” notifications from specific apps.

The Bloomberg report didn’t note any planned changes for Focus Mode, but it would be a big oversight on Apple’s part to not roll out some tweaks to this system with the software update.

Apple’s WWDC 2022 keynote will livestream on June 6.

In a new court filing, Epic Games challenges Apple’s position that third-party app stores would compromise the iPhone’s security. And it points to Apple’s macOS as an example of how the process of “sideloading” apps — installing apps outside of Apple’s own App Store, that is — doesn’t have to be the threat Apple describes it to be. Apple’s Mac, explains Epic, doesn’t have the same constraints as found in the iPhone operating system, iOS, and yet Apple touts the operating system used in Mac computers, macOS, as secure.

The Cary, N.C.-based Fortnite maker made these points in its latest brief, among several others, related to its ongoing legal battle with Apple over its control of the App Store.

Epic Games wants to earn the right to deliver Fortnite to iPhone users outside the App Store, or at the very least, be able to use its own payment processing system so it can stop paying Apple commissions for the ability to deliver its software to iPhone users.

A California judge ruled last September in the Epic Games v. Apple district court case that Apple did not have a monopoly in the relevant market — digital mobile gaming transactions. But the court decided Apple could not prohibit developers from adding links for alternative payments inside their apps that pointed to other ways to pay outside of Apple’s own App Store-based monetization system. While Apple largely touted the ruling as a victory, both sides appealed the decision as Epic Games wanted another shot at winning the right to distribute apps via its own games store, and Apple didn’t want to allow developers to be able to suggest other ways for their users to pay.

On Wednesday, Epic filed its Appeal Reply and Cross-Appeal Response Brief, following Apple’s appeal of the district court’s ruling.

The game maker states in the new filing that the lower court was led astry on many points by Apple, and reached the wrong conclusions. Many of its suggestions relate to how the district court interpreted the law. It also newly points to the important allies Epic now has on its side — Microsoft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the attorneys general of 34 states and the District of Columbia, all of who have filed briefs supporting Epic’s case with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

However, one of Epic’s larger points has to do with the Mac’s security model and how it differs from the iPhone. Epic says that if Apple can allow sideloading on Mac devices and still call those computers secure, then surely it could do the same for iPhone.

“For macOS Apple relies on security measures imposed by the operating system rather than the app store, and ‘notarization’ program that scans apps and then returns them to the developer for distribution,” Epic’s new filing states. It says the lower court even agreed that Apple’s witness on the subject (Head of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi) was stretching the truth when he had disparaged macOS as having a “malware problem.”

Epic then points to examples of Apple’s own marketing of its Mac computers’ security, where it touts “apps from both the App Store and the internet” can be “installed worry-free.”

Apple has argued against shifting to this same model for iPhone as it would require redesigning how its software works, among other things, including what it says would be reduced security for end users.

As app store legislation targeting tech giants has continued to move forward in Congress, Apple has been raising the alarm about being forced to open up the iPhone to third-party app stores, as the bipartisan Open App Markets Act and other international regulations would require. Apple said that mandating sideloading doesn’t comply with its pro-consumer privacy protections.

In a paper Apple published to further detail this issue, it stated that permitting sideloading could risk users’ “most sensitive and private information.”

“Supporting sideloading through direct downloads and third-party app stores would cripple the privacy and security protections that have made iPhone so secure, and expose users to serious security risks,” the paper read. Apple also pointed to Google’s Android operating system as an example of that risk, noting that, over the past four years, Android devices were found to have 15 to 47 times more malware infections than iPhone.

Timed with the release of the new filing, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney was interviewed by the Financial Times where he continued to berate Apple for its alleged anti-competitive behavior. Sweeney said that even if Apple fairly won the hardware market, it shouldn’t be allowed to use that position to “gain an unfair advantage over competitors and other markets,” like software.

“They should have to compete fairly against the Epic game store, and the Steam Store, and let’s assume the Microsoft Store, and the many other stores that will emerge — as they do with any other market in the world, except for digital app stores,” Sweeney said.

Epic’s Response and Reply Brief by TechCrunch on Scribd

Maryland residents will now be able to store their driver’s license or state ID in the Apple Wallet app, Apple announced today. The state is now the second in the U.S. to support the new feature, following the launch in Arizona in March. Once loaded into Apple Wallet, Marylanders will be able to present their ID using their iPhone or Apple Watch to select TSA Security checkpoints at local airports.

Initially, the TSA Security checkpoints at Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) will support these new digital IDs.

To get started with loading a supported ID into the Apple Wallet app, Maryland residents will first tap the plus “+” button at the top of the screen in the iPhone app then choose “Driver’s License or State ID,” and follow the on-screen instructions to start the setup and verification process. The person is verified by taking a selfie, then by scanning both the back and front of their existing driver’s license or state ID card.

There’s also an additional fraud prevention step that asks users to complete a series of facial and head movements during the setup process. The app will present a camera view where the user will need to turn their head to the side. This is a common way that digital services verify a person is actually real and that the user has not held up a photograph to the camera in an attempt to commit fraud.

As Apple previously explained, these scans and the user’s photo are securely provided to the issuing state for verification. Apple additionally sends a numeric indicator of its confidence that the person presenting the ID is the owner of the ID. It does not send the video of the person moving their head, as had been requested during verification.

This whole approval process generally only takes a few minutes and users will be notified when their ID becomes available in Wallet, similar to how you’re alerted after adding a new credit card.

The ID can then be used at the supported TSA checkpoints on iPhone or Apple Watch via the new identity readers. After authorizing with Face ID or Touch ID, the requested information is released from the device digitally. Users don’t have to hand over their phone or watch to the TSA agent.

“Maryland is proud to be a leader once again in safe innovation with the implementation of Maryland Mobile ID in Apple Wallet,” said Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, in a statement about the launch. “As we look to the future, we are committed to enhancing convenience and accessibility while maintaining the highest safety and security standards for our state and citizens.”

The press release noted that the Maryland Mobile ID, as the state is calling the new digital ID, is the only form of mobile phone-based identification issued by MDOT MVA. The digital ID is also only available to individuals with a current, valid Maryland-issued driver’s license or ID and it is meant to serve as a companion to the physical, plastic driver’s license or ID — not as a replacement. In other words, the feature won’t allow Marylanders to skip the trip to their local MDOT MVA office to acquire a license or ID.

According to MDOT MVA Administrator Chrissy Nizer, the state expects the number of locations accepting this mobile ID to grow over time, but for now, the select TSA checkpoints are the only places it can be used.

Google has been working to better integrate its visual search tools from Google Lens into its browser to enable new types of searches that can identify what you see, not just search for things you type. Today, Google is rolling out a new way to use Google Lens on the desktop. Instead of opening a new tab to perform a search, you’ll be able to use Lens on the same page in your Chrome browser to do things like translating an image’s text, identifying an object in an image, or getting the original source from an image.

Previously, Google had offered Lens capabilities in Image search and Google Photos on the web, but its fullest offering was on mobile devices. This April, Google also rolled out Lens-powered multisearch capabilities on mobile allowing users to search with both text and images combined — hinting at the company’s broader plans to further invest in Lens technology to make searches feel more natural.

Prior to this, the company had announced it would be integrating Lens with Chrome on the desktop, as well, in the “coming months.”

Today’s update will allow Chrome browser users on desktop to right-click on any image on a web page, then go to the new menu option “Search image with Google Lens.” This is the same menu where today, you could save or copy the image or open it in a new tab.

Image Credits: Google

This will open a set of search results in a new panel on the side of the web page with more information about the photo. You can then choose to click a button to find the image source, which lets you see other web pages that include that same image. You could also translate text in the image or use Lens to help you identify what’s in the photo.

In other words, it introduces a way to use the image as the starting point for a new search from the webpage you’re on, instead of requiring that you start a new query about the image from Google’s Image search or by typing in a standard text-based search on Google.com.

The feature is similar to a reverse image feature found in Microsoft’s newer web browser, Microsoft Edge, which also allows users to perform a reverse image search in a sidebar without leaving their current tab. The searches themselves are performed by Bing, however.

Google says the new feature is rolling out starting today to all Chrome users and is part of its larger efforts to help people search in more intuitive ways.

WhatsApp is continuing its push into the business market with today’s news it’s launching the WhatsApp Cloud API to all businesses worldwide. Introduced into beta testing last November, the new developer tool is a cloud-based version of the WhatsApp Business API — WhatsApp’s first revenue-generating enterprise product — but hosted on parent company Meta’s infrastructure.

The company had been building out its Business API platform over the past several years as one of the key ways the otherwise free messaging app would make money. Businesses pay WhatsApp on a per-message basis, with rates that vary based on the region and number of messages sent. As of late last year, tens of thousands of businesses were set up on the non-cloud-based version of the Business API including brands like Vodafone, Coppel, Sears Mexico, BMW, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Itau Brazil, iFood, and Bank Mandiri, and others. This on-premise version of the API is free to use.

The cloud-based version, however, aims to attract a market of smaller businesses, and reduces the integration time from weeks to only minutes, the company had said. It is also free.

Businesses integrate the API with their backend systems, where WhatsApp communication is usually just one part of their messaging and communication strategy. They may also want to direct their communications to SMS, other messaging apps, emails, and more. Typically, businesses would work with a solutions provider like Zendeks or Twilio to help facilitate these integrations. Providers during the cloud API beta tests had included Zendesk in the U.S., Take in Brazil, and MessageBird in the E.U.

During Meta’s messaging-focused “Conversations” live event today, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the global, public availability of the cloud-based platform, now called the WhatsApp Cloud API.

“The best business experiences meet people where they are. Already more than 1 billion users connect with a business account across our messaging services every week. They’re reaching out for help, to find products and services, and to buy anything from big-ticket items to everyday goods. And today, I am excited to announce that we’re opening WhatsApp to any business of any size around the world with WhatsApp Cloud API,” he said.

He said the company believes the new API will help businesses, both big and small, be able to connect with more people.

In addition to helping businesses and developers get set up faster than with the on-premise version, Meta says the Cloud API will help partners to eliminate costly server expenses and help them provide customers with quick access to new features as they arrive.

Some businesses may choose to forgo the API and use the dedicated WhatsApp Business app instead. Launched in 2018, the WhatsApp Business App is aimed at smaller businesses that want to establish an official presence on WhatsApp’s service and connect with customers. It provides a set of features that wouldn’t be available to users of the free WhatsApp messaging app, like support automated quick replies, greeting messages, FAQs, away messaging, statistics, and more.

Today, Meta is also introducing new power features for its WhatsApp Business app that will be offered for a fee — like the ability to manage chats across up to 10 devices. The company will also provide new customizable WhatsApp click-to-chat links that help businesses attract customers across their online presence, including of course, Meta’s other applications like Facebook and Instagram.

These will be a part of a forthcoming Premium service for WhatsApp Business app users. Further details, including pricing, will be announced at a later date.

Google Cloud is holding its annual Security Summit this week and unsurprisingly, the company used the event to launch a few new security features. This year, the announcements focus on software supply chain security, Zero Trust and tools for making it easier for enterprises to adopt Google Cloud’s security capabilities.

It’s no surprise that software supply chain security makes an appearance at this year’s event. Thanks to recent high-profile attacks, it’s been the focus of White House summits and, just last week, an industry group that includes Google, Amazon, Ericsson, Intel, Microsoft and VMware pledged $30 million to work with the Linux Foundation and Open Source Security Foundation to improve the security of open-source software.

At today’s Summit, Google Cloud announced the launch of its Assured Open Source Software service, which gives enterprises and government users access to the same vetted open-source packages that Google itself uses in its projects. According to the company, these packages are regularly scanned, analyzed and fuzz-tested for vulnerabilities and built with Google Cloud’s Cloud Build service with evidence of SLSA-compliance (that’s ‘Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts,’ a framework for safeguarding artifact integrity across software supply chains). These packages are also signed by Google and distributed from Google’s secured registry. “Assured OSS helps organizations reduce the need to develop, maintain, and operate a complex process for securely managing their open source dependencies,” Google explains in its announcement today.

Also new today is BeyondCorp Enterprise Essentials, a new edition of Google Cloud’s BeyondCorp Enterpirse Zero Trust solution that promises to “help organizations quickly and easily take the first steps toward Zero Trust implementation.” The company says it includes features like context-aware access controls for SaaS applications and other SAML-connected services, as well as threat and data protection capabilities, in addition to data loss prevention, malware and phishing protection in Chrome.

Finally, Google is also launched a new Security Foundation solution for enterprises that aims to make it easier for them to adopt Google Cloud’s security capabilities. It joins Google’s other ready-made solutions, which so far have focused on specific industries (retail, media and entertainment, financial services, etc.) as opposed to this more general security-centric package. “This solution is aligned to the prescriptive guidance from our Google Cloud Cybersecurity Action Team, and codified in our Security Foundations Blueprint, so that you get the controls you need for data protection, network security, security monitoring, and more to help make your deployments secure from day one–and to do it more cost-effectively,” Google explains.

As the battle for podcaster talent and distribution heats up among providers, Apple this morning announced the launch of several new features for its Apple Podcasts service arriving alongside the latest software updates for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Key among these are features for managing podcast storage across devices, tools to enable annual podcast subscriptions, and the newly announced Apple Podcasts Delegated Delivery system — a feature that will soon allow creators to more easily distribute their podcasts directly to Apple Podcasts from third-party hosting providers.

Apple says this latter addition will save creators time and energy as they’ll be able to authorize their hosting provider to deliver both their free and premium podcast episodes to Apple Podcasts using the provider’s own dashboard. But it also gives Apple a means of competing with services like Spotify’s Anchor, which now provides tools for creation, hosting, and distribution across all major listening apps.

Starting this fall, a select number of hosting providers will support the Delegated Delivery system, including Acast, ART19, Blubrry, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Omny Studio, and RSS.com. Apple says these providers represent around 80% of listening for premium content on Apple Podcasts, and more services will be added over time.

The feature will be available at no additional cost to all creators through Apple Podcasts Connect and creators won’t need a membership to the Apple Podcasts Program to publish their free shows — only to publish premium content.

Apple notes additional details about the new system, including educational resources for creators, will be introduced closer to the service’s launch. In the meantime, creators can visit the Hosting Providers page on Apple.com to stay tuned for further updates.

While the new distribution technology is top among today’s announcements, another new tool will be welcomed by longtime Apple Podcasts’ users — particularly those impacted by the app’s more recent bugs.

Because Apple Podcasts is able to download shows to listeners’ devices, the app can end up consuming a lot of device storage. On iPhones in particular, this can lead to users running out of room for other essential activities — like taking photos or installing new apps and games. This issue was then further complicated by the buggy iOS 14.5 and macOS 11.3 releases, which caused unwanted, older episodes of shows to be downloaded, eating up even more storage.

Image Credits: Apple

With the launch of iOS 15.5, iPadOS 15.5, and macOS 12.4, Apple is launching new tools to solve the problem of more easily removing a show’s accumulated downloads, potentially freeing up gigs of storage on users’ devices’ as a result.

From the Settings app on iPhone and iPad, users will be able to navigate to Podcasts, then tap on “Automatically Downloaded” to choose how many episodes of shows are downloaded and saved to the device. The menu will allow listeners to choose to download a certain number of recent episodes, like the latest 3, 5 or 10; or users can choose to download all episodes published recently, like in the last 7, 14, or 30 days. Or they can select “All New Episodes” or none by choosing the “Off” option. The latter makes Apple Podcasts function as a streaming-only app, which works for most people who live in areas with reliable cellular connectivity or access to Wi-Fi.

By default, brand-new Apple Podcasts users will have the last 5 episodes kept for all episodic shows and all episodes kept for serial shows, the company says. Otherwise, the default will be to keep all new episodes if nothing else is configured.

What’s more is when a user selects their preference, the app will then prompt them to remove the automatically downloaded episodes on the device that now no longer meet the newly selected criteria. That means this feature actually works as a bulk clean-up tool for removing a large number of downloads from the device storage. Before, this was a tedious, manual process that could be tackled in different ways. Users could mark shows as played while having the “Remove Played Downloads” setting turned on, or they could manually remove the downloads for a show or individual episodes one by one.

These new preferences can also be customized at the show level, not just system-wide, for a more personalized experience.

This new functionality will also be integrated into the iPhone’s recommendations related to cleaning up device storage. From iPhone Storage (under Settings –> General), users will be prompted to keep only the last 5 episodes and delete older shows if podcast episodes take up more than 15% of their device storage.

The selected settings carry over to Mac, as well, which gives desktop users the ability to make decisions related to their Mac storage. That means this is the first time listeners can automatically delete old episodes across their devices.

Image Credits: Apple

Finally, Apple says it’s introducing the option for podcast creators to present annual subscription plans for their premium podcasts alongside their monthly options. These appear when a user taps “Subscribe” or “Try Free” on a show or channel with a subscription. Of note, the annual subscription will now be selected as the default. And, when the annual cost is lower than if the listener paid monthly, the annual plan’s savings will be displayed to the user.

Creators are able to set up their annual subscriptions at price points they choose as they do their monthly subscriptions in Apple Podcasts Connect.

The subscriptions and new storage features are rolling out with iOS 15.5, iPadOS 15.5, and macOS 12.4. Delegated Delivery will arrive on supported podcast hosting providers later this fall. 

Other updates to the app in iOS 15.4 include the ability to browse shows by season and filter episodes by status, which will make it easier to find the one users want to play.

The changes follow a Podcasts app update that introduced a new design but also a number of usability issues that drove users to third-party podcast apps, including to Apple Podcasts competitor Spotify, which has been heavily investing in the podcast ecosystem. Those departures could limit Apple’s ability to market podcast subscriptions to users, where Apple takes 15%-30% of subscription revenue, similar to the App Store.

Ahead of this update, Apple last month introduced three new Apple Podcasts Collections — Darkside, tbh, and Popped — which focus on true crime, culture, and entertainment and are available in the U.S. and Canada. It also recently added support for uploaded MP3 files for subscriber audio in addition to WAV and FLAC, tools for getting help with launching subscriptions with Jump-Start, and new analytics around listening and followers in Apple Podcasts Connect.

Following last year’s makeover of the Google TV app, which added features like movie and TV recommendations, critics’ scores and more, the company today announced at its Google I/O developer conference that, later this year, users will be able to cast TV shows and movies directly from their Android phone or tablet to their TV. The company additionally offered updated metrics related to its Android OS’ growing footprint and introduced new Android OS developer tools.

Google has been working to overhaul its connected TV experience and the companion app since 2020, when it first introduced the new Google TV interface for its Chromecast streaming devices. It also applied the Google TV name to the app that was previously known as the Google Play Movies & TV app. Earlier this year, Google also removed the “Movies & TV” section from the Play Store, noting the Google TV app would be the centralized place to buy, rent and watch movies and TV shows on mobile devices.

The company didn’t provide additional details about its plans to add support for casting to the app, saying those would come closer to launch. But in a photo Google provided, it showed at least one of the supported apps is NBCU’s Peacock.

Image Credits: Google

As part of its announcements, the company also offered a few updates on the Android TV ecosystem, noting there are now 110 million monthly active devices on Android TV OS, including Google TV. That’s up from the 80 million monthly active devices figure Google announced at last year’s Google I/O event.

It also said the Android TV OS now offers over 10,000 apps.

Of course, the Android TV OS is not a direct equivalent to something like Roku or Amazon Fire TV, as it’s not only used on the company’s first-party devices, like Chromecast. Instead, Google’s strategy is to license its platform to partners, including TV OEMs and pay-TV operators worldwide. Currently, there are over 300 partners using the platform, including 7 out of the 10 largest TV OEMs, Google said.

But Google’s 110 million active devices figure can’t be directly compared with the metrics shared by rivals Roku and Amazon.

Android TV OS figures are actually calculated by counting the number of devices that were actively used in a month — which means a user with multiple devices could have those devices counted separately, but a family with multiple people watching on one device would be counted once.

Roku and Amazon define monthly active users as “accounts” that have been active during the month. That means, even if that account streams on several different devices during the time period, it would only be counted once. If Roku or Amazon were to calculate active devices as Google is doing, their numbers would be higher.

In December 2020, Amazon said Fire TV had topped 50 million monthly active users — a number still referenced today on its Amazon Ads website. This January, Amazon also noted it had sold more than 150 million Fire TV devices to bring its metrics more in line with Google’s device claims. Roku, meanwhile, said during its Q1 2022 earnings it had ended 2021 with 60.1 million active accounts. It doesn’t count active devices.

Image Credits: Google

Google also highlighted several developer features and tools on Android 13 related to its Android TV efforts. The tools are focused on performance and quality, accessibilty, and multitasking, Google said, and include:

• • AudioManager: This allows apps to anticipate audio routes and precisely understand which playback mode is available.
  • MediaSession: Integration with app allows Android TV to react to HDMI state changes to save power and signal content to be paused.
  • InputDevice API: Added support for different keyboard layouts. (For game developers, added support for different layouts of physical keyboards, such as QWERTZ and AZERTY keyboards.)
  • System-wide accessibility preference: Allow users to enable audio descriptions across apps.
  • Picture-in-picture (PIP) API: PiP on the TV supports an expanded mode to show videos from a group call and a docked mode to avoid overlaying content to other apps.
  • Keep-clear API: Prevents overlay from concealing important content in full-screen apps.

The picture-in-picture API is particularly interesting as it could introduce more co-watching functionality across the Android TV ecosystem, following Apple’s introduction of SharePlay, which allows co-watching over FaceTime across platforms, including Apple TV.

At its I/O developer conference, Google today announced a number of updates to Firebase, Google’s popular Backend-as-a-Service platform. The focus here is mostly on deeper integrations with the rest of Google’s developer tools and platforms, as well as the overall developer ecosystem, as well as a number of updates that will help developers better secure their applications.

One of the first major announcements is that Android Studio will now feature a new App Quality Insights window that gives developers direct access to Firebase’s Crashlytics crash data, which allows developers to see their stack traces and identify the specific lines of codes that triggered a crash. “Now, developers can be in the flow as they are building features. They can also see, ‘oh, this line of code in my last release had a bunch of errors.’ They can click into that, see the Crashlytics data in terms of the severity of crashes, which devices they might have happened on, etc., so that they can really quickly address those issues and reproduce them,” explained Firebase product lead Francis Ma.

Flutter developers, too, will get better Crashlytics support. They’ll now be able to set up Crashlytics for their apps with just a few clicks and get improved crash reports, as well as the ability to log fatal errors in a Flutter app and receive crash alerts from Crashlytics.

Image Credits: Google

For web developers, Firebase it making it easier for developers to use modern web development frameworks like Angular and Next.js but helps them more easily deploy these web apps. Modern web frameworks may be very powerful, after all, but they have also introduced a lot of complexity when it comes to deploying apps. Now, developers can simply use the “firebase deploy” command and Firebase will automatically figure out which part of an application to deploy where, without having to worry about dependencies. Currently, this works for Angular and Next.js, but the team plans to add support for more frameworks in the future.

Across platforms, Firebase is also making it easier for developers to use third-party APIs by allowing them to customize Firebase extensions to use services like Stripe and Twilio. The existing pre-packaged extensions make it easier for developers to tap into third-party APIs, but as is so often the case, developers regularly hit edge cases or want to do something slightly different. “We recognize that developers may use twenty to even forty APIs in their apps — and while extensions have been working really well for developers to quickly deploy these solutions, we’ve heard from them that they would like more customizations to be able to take this baseline deployment and really make it their own,” Ma said.

Image Credits: Google

The team is also now adding third-party extensions for Snap, to allow users to log in with Snap, for example, as well as new Stream extensions to help developers implement chat in their apps and a new RevenueCat extension for managing in-app subscriptions.

On the security side, Firebase is now integrated with the new Play Integrity API, which allows developers to trust that a given Android app that is communicating with its backend hasn’t been manipulated (something that often happens with games).

For Apple developers, the Firebase team is improving its support for Apple’s Swift language. Swift support isn’t entirely new, but as Ma noted, the team has now reached a milestone where it has full coverage of Swift. “Apple developers that are Swift-only can expect the sort of the intuitive, more native support in using the Firebase SDKs Swift,” said Ma.

At its Google I/O developer conference, Google and Samsung today announced Health Connect, a new initiative that will simplify the connectivity between health and fitness apps to allow users to share their data across apps.

Currently, accessing and syncing this data this relatively difficult for developers, so Health Connect will give them a series of services and APIs to make this easier.

“Health Connect lets you store and access health-related information across devices with user consent, taking out all the boilerplate code, taking care of the security issues, but also allowing you to mash up that information,” Sean McBreen, who leads developer experience for Android at Google, told me in a briefing ahead of today’s announcement. He stressed that like with all things Wear OS, Google worked closely with Samsung on this project, so going forward, apps like Google Fit, Samsung Health, MyFitnessPal, Leap Fitness, Withings and others will also start using this new API, which will give these services a new sync surface on the device.

Image Credits: Google

Essentially, Health Connect will function as the on-device clearinghouse for health and fitness data. Indeed, all of the data is on the device and encrypted to ensure privacy. “Users will have full control over their privacy settings, with granular controls to see which apps are requesting access to data at any given time,” Google explains. This also means users can easily shut off access or delete data as they see fit.

One neat feature: if multiple apps provide the same data, users can choose which one to prioritize.

The beta of Health Connect is now available to developers on Google Play so they can start building on top of it and testing their apps.

It’s Google I/O today and as is tradition, the company is using the event to introduce the latest releases of its Android Studio development environment. Launching today are a new beta of Android Studio Dolphin with features like View Compose animations and Wear OS emulators, as well as a preview of Android Studio Electric Eel, which is now in the early access canary channel.

For the most part, all of the interesting announcements are part of Electric Eel, which doesn’t come as a shock. The marquee feature, I think, is Live Edit, which allows developers to make code changes and immediately see the results in the Compose Preview in Android Studio and in the running app on the built-in emulator or a physical device.

Image Credits: Google

Sean McBreen, who leads developer experience for Android at Google, noted that this is something developers have been requesting for a long time, given that it will allow developers to speed up their cycle times without having to wait to test their changes. He noted that Android Studio already featured Live Literals, which allowed developers to change small individual values. Now, however, developers will be able to do things like add new functions and tweak the user interface and see the effect of those changes in real-time.

Also new in Android Studio is built-in support for Firebase’s Crashlytics, Google’s crash reporting service. Using the new App Quality Insights windows, developers can now see their stack traces right in their IDE and even see which lines of codes are likely to cause a crash. The idea here, of course, is to allow developers to do more of their work in a single application without having to switch contexts.

“A pain point for a developer today is that while they’re getting really good insights from Crashlytics, to see what errors are happening and the events that led up to them, in order for them to debug and reproduce some of the errors and fix them, they often need to switch to a different tool,” Firebase product lead Francis Ma explained. “This is a first big step where we’re bringing the Firebase experience into Android Studio.”

Image Credits: Google

Given that Google today announced both its first in-house smartwatch and a new tablet, it’s maybe also no surprise that Android Studio is adding additional support for large-screen devices, including tablets and foldables, as well as wearables. The idea behind Google’s “modern Android development” is, after all, that developers can learn how to write applications for one form factor and then apply that to all of the other ones. But foldables and wearables introduce their own UI challenges and developers may not always have access to them, so Android Studio now offers developers a single resizable emulator that allows them to quickly test an app on different form factors.

For WearOS specifically, the Android team is introducing a new way to create declarative user interfaces with the beta launch of the Compose UI SDK. A couple of other updates related to WearOS include the ability to see Wear Devices in the Device Manager and to pair multiple watch emulators to a single phone. Android Studio will now also remember these pairings after being closed.

In related news, Jetpack, Google’s suite of reusable Android libraries that aims to help developers avoid (re-)writing boilerplate code, is also getting a few interesting updates, especially on the user-interface side of Jetpack Compose, the company’s toolkit for building native Android user interfaces. The updated WindowsManger library now supports multi-windows environments for large-screen devices, as well as the ability to adapt apps to the physical state of a foldable device. There is also a new DragAndDrop library that allows developers to accept drag-and-drop data from both inside and outside of their application. That’s obviously an increasingly common scenario on large-screen devices. Both of these libraries have now hit their 1.0 stable milestones.

And talking about optimizing apps for large screens, Google itself is also currently going through a process where it is updating its own apps like Photos, Gmail, YouTube Music and YouTube for large-screen devices. As McBreen told me, the company is working on getting all of its 50 most used apps ready for large-screen devices by the end of the year. “The idea here is that we’ve got to role model to the industry what we want to do, but we also have to make sure our guidance and make sense — and so we’re working through those apps,” he said.