Epic Games today said that the ‌Epic Games‌ Store can now be downloaded on iPhones in Brazil through the ‌Epic Games‌ website. In its announcement, ‌Epic Games‌ complained about the third-party store installation process, which requires nine steps and includes screens warning customers about downloading apps outside of the App Store.

Apple is imposing a 9-step install flow for alternative app stores in Brazil. The additional screens were designed to deter users from downloading alternative app stores and preventing competition. In the EU last year, Apple reduced their installation flow from 15 to 6 steps after facing regulatory pressure. After they made this change, Epic saw a 60% decrease in player drop-off during attempts to install the Epic Games Store. But Apple now has increased the steps in Brazil to thwart competition.

‌Epic Games‌ also took issue with the fees Apple is able to collect. Apple has a 5% Core Technology Commission on sales of digital goods and services in third-party app stores and apps installed from third-party app stores. Because of the fees, Epic says it is only offering its own games for now. Players can download Fortnite and Rocket League Sideswipe.

Brazilian customers who opt to purchase Fortnite through the ‌Epic Games‌ Store can get 20 percent back in Epic Rewards, an incentivizing bonus not available through the ‌App Store‌ version of Fortnite in Brazil.

‌Epic Games‌ says it has informed Brazilian regulators "how detrimental the requirements and restrictions are to creating a competitive mobile app ecosystem on iOS."

Apple changed its App Store rules in Brazil in June to comply with regulatory action requiring support for alternative app marketplaces.
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U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer has teamed up with several of his Senate colleagues to demand Apple commit to not purchasing chips from Chinese companies ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) or Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC). [PDF]


With memory shortages causing Apple to raise the prices of Macs and iPads, the company has been talking with CXMT and YMTC about a chip deal. The two companies are on the Defense Department's list of Chinese companies that are suspected to have ties to the People's Liberation Army. Apple is not required to get U.S. approval before buying chips from CXMT, but YMTC is also on the Commerce Department's Entity List, which means Apple would need an export license before being able to work with the company.

Apple has been lobbying the Trump administration to greenlight its plan to buy Chinese chips, and Apple also wants to ensure the government won't add CXMT to the Entity List in the future.

Schumer wants Apple to pledge not to use chips from CXMT or YMTC in any Apple product sold anywhere in the world. He says Apple's plan would harm the U.S. semiconductor supply chain and set a dangerous precedent for other companies to follow.

Rumors have suggested Apple is already testing chips from CXMT, and Schumer has also asked Apple to answer questions about the reported testing and the company's efforts to lobby the Trump administration to prevent national security restrictions on Chinese semiconductor suppliers.

Fueled by investment from my Chips & Science Law, workers in Central New York and across the country are carrying out the largest domestic expansion of domestic memory chip production in a generation, and American companies, like Apple, should be buying chips stamped 'Made in America,' not from companies linked to the Chinese military. I wrote my CHIPS & Science Law, so we would make American microchips again, with American workers, and not be over-reliant on semiconductors from overseas. That's why I'm leading a bipartisan group of senators calling on Apple CEO Tim Cook to commit to not using memory chips produced by Chinese military-linked companies. I've long sounded the alarm on the grave national security and economic threats posed by YMTC, CXMT, and other companies backed by the Chinese Communist Party. Apple integrating these Chinese chips into its supply chain would send a dangerous message to other American companies that they, too, should turn to Chinese-made chips.

Apple has told lawmakers that it will use the chips in devices for the Chinese market, leaving more Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron chips available for products sold in countries like the U.S. Schumer claims the limitation "cannot be expected to hold" because Apple could extend the chips worldwide with a "single procurement decision." Schumer also said supplying chips to Apple would give CXMT "revenue and reputational gains" regardless of where the chips were used.

Back in 2022, Apple attempted to ink a deal to purchase chips from YMTC, but Schumer led an effort to stop the agreement and to add YMTC to the Entity List. Schumer has also been pushing for CXMT to be added to the list, which is the action Apple is aiming to stop. Schumer has asked Apple to respond to his letter by August 21, 2026.

Other senators who signed the letter are Jim Banks, Mike Crapo, Jeanne Shaheen, Andy Kim, James Risch, and Pete Ricketts.
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The FCC this week banned all new "foreign-produced advanced robotic devices" because of an "unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States." The government says networked robotic systems lead to vulnerabilities that allow bad actors to control the devices and collect surveillance data from Americans.


Advanced robotic devices are defined as software-controlled autonomous robots that can move, navigate obstacles, and have a sensor that can perceive the environment.

The ban isn't focused on just humanoid robots, and it includes robot vacuum cleaners too. Almost all robot vacuums are sold by companies located in China or are manufactured in China. Even Roomba maker iRobot, once a flagship American vacuum company, is now owned by a Chinese company after bankruptcy.

Companies are able to keep importing and selling robot vacuums already on the market, but new models will need to get approval from the government. As The Verge notes, getting approval requires a commitment to invest in U.S. manufacturing, but no investigation into security practices despite multiple mentions of national security concerns.

Future Matter-enabled smart vacuums that work with HomeKit from companies like Roborock and Ecovacs may not be able to be sold in the U.S., leaving few options for U.S. consumers unless the companies pledge to move manufacturing to the United States.

Along with robot vacuums, the FCC has banned new humanoid and quadruped robots, plus foreign-made power inverters.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook today said Apple would be making a donation to support earthquake relief efforts in Japan.


A magnitude 6.8 earthquake (per the USGS) hit the Kumamoto prefecture on Kyushu island on Tuesday, collapsing buildings and killing at least 34 people.


Aftershocks continued on Wednesday and Thursday. Kyushu is the third largest of Japan's four main islands, and it has the second-highest population.

Apple often donates to the Red Cross for relief efforts during natural disasters, but donation amounts are not shared. Last night, Cook said Apple was donating to wildfire relief efforts in France, Spain, and other countries.

Kumamoto was previously hit with a deadly earthquake in 2016, and Apple collected donations for Japan through iTunes.
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Qualcomm expects its Apple revenue to decline faster than it previously anticipated, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told Reuters in an interview following the company's earnings call for the third fiscal quarter of 2026.



Amon chalked up the loss to supply constraints, which will reduce the share of Qualcomm components used in the next iPhone launch well below its earlier 20 percent estimate. Qualcomm expects the drop in Apple revenue to start in the fourth quarter.

Qualcomm is raising its prices starting September 1 to improve its margin because of increasing costs across the supply chain. "We're just passing through big cost increases that we have," said Amon.

In fiscal 2027, Qualcomm is expecting most of its chip sales to come from categories other than smartphones, and growth in its data center business will replace the Apple-related revenue it collected in fiscal 2026.

Apple developed its own modem chips, which have been used in the iPhone 16e, iPhone 17e, and iPhone Air. Rumors suggest Apple could transition to using more of its own chips starting with the iPhone 18 lineup. Apple is working on a C2 modem chip rumored to deliver faster speeds and better power efficiency than Qualcomm modems.

Apple and Qualcomm have a patent licensing agreement that lasts through March 2027, and it is not clear if Apple will extend it again or move to using its own modem chips across its entire product lineup.
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Apple said new UK App Store rules would give regulators a "highly intrusive" role dictating how it runs its business, reports Reuters. Apple submitted feedback to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority as it considers forcing Apple to change its ‌App Store‌ rules around steering.


The CMA wants Apple to let developers link to payment options outside of the ‌App Store‌, which the CMA says will cut fees and boost competition. Developers in the UK are not currently able to direct customers outside of the ‌App Store‌, even though that's allowed with the current U.S. ‌App Store‌ rules and the EU ‌App Store‌ rules.

UK regulators said Apple can charge developers a fee, but it must be fair and reasonable, and below existing ‌App Store‌ commissions, so developers can pass savings to customers or reinvest them in innovation.

According to Apple, the CMA's proposed rules would undermine innovation and investment, and would amount to price regulation because of the restriction on fees. Apple claims there is no evidence that allowing developers to direct users to purchase options outside the ‌App Store‌ would result in savings for customers. Apple said the ‌App Store‌ facilitated over £46.5 billion in UK billings and sales in 2025, and commissions accounted for less than 3.5 percent of the total.

The CMA denied that its proposal is price regulation. "Our consultation proposes principles to ensure that ​the fees Apple and Google charge for steering are fair and reasonable, not to directly set prices," a CMA spokesperson told Reuters.

The CMA is assessing feedback before making a final decision on the proposal. The changes are also applicable to Google, as both Apple and Google were designated with strategic market status (SMS) in the UK last year. Under the designation, the CMA can impose requirements meant to open up the platforms to greater competition.
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Tapbots recently launched Pastebot 3, the newest version of its popular clipboard management software.


Like prior versions of Pastebot, Pastebot 3 records everything you copy so that it's easy to find and paste when needed. You can store links and other content that you often paste, and organize the snippets by category in Custom Pastebins.

There are also rule-based Smart Pastebins for automatic organization, like every link or image copied from Safari. Smart Pastebins can be filtered by clipping size, type, file extension, creation date, text, text length, and more. Multiple parameters can be combined for detailed filtering, and custom notes can be added to clippings to make them easy to find via search.

You can create more powerful custom filters and apply them to text you've copied before pasting it. You can do things like convert to plaintext and remove smart punctuation, wrap what you're pasting in paragraph tags, convert to upper or lowercase, nix emojis, find and replace, extract URLs or phone numbers, remove empty lines, sort, and translate. Multiple filters can be combined and keyboard shortcuts can be assigned to the filters you use most often.

A quick paste menu can be activated with a Shift+Command+V keyboard shortcut for bringing up your most frequently used clippings in any app, and there's a Stack function for copying multiple items and pasting them one after another.

You can add apps to Pastebot's blacklist, and content copied from the apps on the list is never saved to Pastebot, which is useful for protecting passwords. All Pastebot content and filters sync across Macs with iCloud, and there are options for customizing how many clippings are saved. You can keep up to 1,500.

Tapbots says Pastebot 3 was built to work with Apple's Universal Clipboard feature, and when enabled and active, anything you copy on your iPhone is saved in Pastebot automatically. Clippings saved in Pastebot can also be pasted on iPhone. Pastebot 3 supports Apple Shortcuts and CLI access for automating clippings.

Pastebot 3 requires macOS Tahoe or later. It can be purchased directly from Tapbots for $39, with a year of updates included and the option to buy another year of updates for $19. There's also a Mac App Store purchase option with a $24.99 per year or $2.99 per month subscription. Pastebot customers who enter a Pastebot 2 license key can get a $12.99 upgrade discount on the direct purchase option. New customers can try the app for 14 days.
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Apple today released a new update for Safari Technology Preview, the experimental browser that was first introduced in March 2016. Apple designed ‌Safari Technology Preview‌ to allow users to test features that are planned for future release versions of the Safari browser.


‌Safari Technology Preview‌ 249 includes fixes and updates for Accessibility, Animations, CSS, Editing, Forms, HTML, JavaScript, Media, Rendering, Spatial Web, Web API, Web Audio, Web Inspector, WebAssembly, WebDriver, and WebRTC.

The current ‌Safari Technology Preview‌ release is compatible with machines running macOS Tahoe and macOS Golden Gate, the newest version of macOS.

The ‌Safari Technology Preview‌ update is available through the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences or System Settings to anyone who has downloaded the browser from Apple's website. Complete release notes for the update are available on the Safari Technology Preview website.

Apple's aim with ‌Safari Technology Preview‌ is to gather feedback from developers and users on its browser development process. ‌Safari Technology Preview‌ can run side-by-side with the existing Safari browser and while it is designed for developers, it does not require a developer account to download and use.
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