Author: Max Milella

Apple’s been at loggerheads with developers over its App Store practices for a while now. Most notably, the 30% (or 15% if you’re one of the luckier devs) cut it takes in commission on all in-app purchases, as well as its forcing of developers to manage in-app purchases through the App Store’s billing platform, rather than a third-party one. Naturally, the two go hand in hand.  Well, Apple is backing down ever so slightly, and will now let developers of “reader” apps with their own subscription services dodge the App Store tax by linking to their own sign-up sites. Apple…

Like many other social media platforms at the minute, Twitter has been on a bit of a roll when it comes to releasing features to help its users feel safer. The micro-blogging platform has now revealed its newest, and possibly most assertive safety feature yet: Safety Mode. Twitter’s a safe(r) space A feature with the name ‘Safety Mode’ doesn’t sound all that threatening to would-be harassers, but in practice, it seems like it has a lot of firepower. According to Twitter’s official announcement, the feature will temporarily block accounts for a week if it catches them using “harmful language”, or…

Both Google and Apple have been facing increased criticism recently concerning the Play Store and App Store forcing developers to use their in-house in-app purchasing methods. Now, The Wall Street Journal reports that South Korea has passed a bill banning this practice, allowing developers to bill users through third-party methods. South Korea sides with devs The bill is an amendment of South Korea’s Telecommunications Business Act, and intends to prevent Apple and Google from taking advantage of their positions as hosts for app developers.  Apple and Google have historically taken significant cuts from developers through their in-app purchase billing systems.…

We were expecting the next Apple Watch to make its debut in the next few weeks, but a new report from Nikkei Asia indicates that it may not be likely. The Californian tech-maker has reportedly run into several critical issues, and will delay mass production in order to solve them.  Apple needs more time on the next Watch Manufacturers reportedly began small-scale production of the Series 7 watch sometime last week, but have been unable so far to produce products with suitable performance. The major contributing factor appears to be the Watch’s new and more complicated design, which has changed…

Netflix has finally released some tangible content for its games development and streaming aspirations. It announced via Twitter that its Polish user base can now try out Netflix mobile gaming for Android for themselves.  “It’s very, very early days and we’ve got a lot of work to do in the months ahead, but this is the first step,” the streaming giant said. Netflix gaming is here — kind of Netflix explains how the new feature works in it’s Polish tweet, but here’s a quick run-down for you. Games can be found in your main home feed alongside movies and shows.…

Following the California DFEH’s sexual harassment lawsuit, Blizzard recently let go of former-lead designer Jesse McCree due to his involvement with the infamous ‘Cosby Suite’ first reported on by Kotaku about a month ago. Now, the controversial games studio has announced that it is also changing the name of a character named after McCree in its popular hero-based shooter, Overwatch. Blizzard says goodbye to McCree for good The Overwatch team announced the name change via its Twitter account.  https://twitter.com/PlayOverwatch/status/1430964453865046025 “As we continue to discuss how we best live up to our values and to demonstrate our commitment to creating a…

Yesterday, the 25th of August, Google attended the White House Cyber Security Meeting along with several other big names in tech (such as Apple, Amazon and Microsoft), which US President Joe Biden called to address the continuing wave of cyberattacks across the world that have taken advantage of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Biden met with these tech goliaths to “discuss opportunities to bolster the nation’s cybersecurity in partnership and individually.”  Following the meeting, Google has now committed $10 billion to advance cybersecurity in the US.  Google goes all-in on cybersecurity “Today, we are announcing that we will invest $10 billion over the…

The spread of misinformation on popular social media platforms has been an important discussion point for some time now, particularly concerning the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Misinformation concerning a deadly disease and the handling of it could potentially be harmful to people’s health. YouTube is taking a hard stance against COVID-19 misinformation and has removed 1 million videos for spreading such information. Misinformation isn’t welcome here, says YouTube Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, shared the figure in a post on the platform’s official blog that also goes over YouTube’s policies and commitments concerning misinformation. https://twitter.com/nealmohan/status/1430593906941448192 “No longer contained to the…

Activision Blizzard has been shaken up quite profoundly since the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a lawsuit alleging rampant sexual discrimination and harassment in the workplace back in July. Since then, the studio’s employees organised a walkout in response to the suit, several members of upper management left, and the company was on the receiving end of another suit served by its own shareholders.  Now the DFEH has updated its initial suit to accuse Activision Blizzard of “withholding and suppressing evidence”.  Activision Blizzard tries to sweep it under the rug The updated suit (which we read…

WhatsApp has a number of features in the oven at the moment, and it’s added one more to the mix: message reactions. Which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. The feature, spotted by WABetaInfo, is currently in the early stages of development.  WhatsApp is looking for a reaction Now, that’s not to say you’ve never been able to ‘react’ to a message before, but now you can show it in-app. This will, presumably, provide you with a dedicated button for specialised reaction emojis or images. We imagine it will look similar to Facebook’s own take on ‘reactions’. Facebook’s…