Apple will not be able to delay a district court battle over fee calculations while it waits to hear whether the U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on the latest developments in its long-running dispute with Epic Games.


On Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed an earlier decision letting Apple keep its current zero-fee link-out commission structure in place while it appeals to the Supreme Court. The reversal means Apple now has to return to a lower court to work out what fees it can charge developers who steer customers to outside payment options.

Apple won the pause earlier this month by arguing that it shouldn't have to overhaul its fee structure twice if the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in its favor. Apple stopped collecting commissions from links to external purchase options in U.S. apps when ordered to do so last year, and the company wanted to keep the no-commission setup while waiting on the Supreme Court.

In response, Epic Games immediately filed two motions: one said it hadn't been given time enough to prepare a response to Apple's stay request, and another asking the court to reject the original request.

The three-judge panel granted Epic's motion for reconsideration. The judges said Apple hadn't shown that the Supreme Court was likely to take the case, and pointed out that the high court already chose not to hear Apple's challenges once back in 2024. They also rejected Apple's claim that being forced into lower-court hearings would cause real harm.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney shared the news in a post on X, adding that "Apple's delaying tactics have come to an end!"


The case now heads back to Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in California, who will determine what commission Apple can collect on purchases made through external links, if any. Apple can still petition the Supreme Court while those proceedings move ahead.

The dispute traces all the way back to the original Epic Games trial, which Apple largely won. However, one exception was a 2021 ruling from Judge Gonzalez Rogers ordering Apple to relax its "anti-steering" rules and let developers point users to outside payment options.

Apple complied with the ruling, but only slightly lowered its fees, which led few developers to even bother adding links. Epic subsequently returned to court, and the judge found Apple in willful violation of the original injunction. Consequently, it barred Apple from collecting any commission on external links.

Apple appealed and dropped the link fees while the case moved forward, arguing that the ruling was unconstitutional and that it should receive compensation for its technology. In December 2025, the appeals court delivered a mixed ruling: Apple had violated the injunction, but the company should still be able to charge something reasonable for its technology. That sent the question of what that fee should look like back to the district court.

Apple is now hoping the Supreme Court will go further and throw out the district court's ruling altogether, but in the meantime, Apple will head back to court to determine the reasonable fee that it will be able to charge for purchases made using external links in apps.
This article, "Epic Games Wins Reversal of Stay in App Store Fee Legal Battle" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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Memory could account for as much as 45 percent of an iPhone's component costs by 2027, up from around 10 percent today, according to a JPMorgan analysis cited by the Financial Times ($).


Apple buys memory for roughly 250 million iPhones a year and has historically been one of the largest customers in the category. But Apple has reportedly now gone from a position where it could set terms to one where it now has to compete with rivals for supply.

The principal reason is the heavily subsidized AI build-out that's underway.

In a race to make data centers that can handle more compute for frontier AI models, AI infrastructure buyers like Nvidia are now reportedly outbidding consumer electronics makers for limited supply from the likes of Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. Meanwhile, cloud companies are reportedly making upfront payments worth billions of dollars to secure capacity.

It's a marked break from the industry norm of committing to volumes with suppliers first and negotiating prices later.

The pressure is already reshaping Apple's product plans, and the rumored split-launch cycle for the iPhone 18 series is said to be part of that new reality. Apple is expected to stagger the iPhone 18 launch, holding the lower-priced model until spring 2027 rather than shipping the full lineup in the usual fall window. Instead, only the iPhone 18 Pro models will be launched in September, with a foldable iPhone expected to be unveiled around the same time.

Apple hardware engineering chief John Ternus takes over from Tim Cook as CEO on September 1, and Cook will transition to his new role as Apple's first executive chair, where he is expected to take a direct role in day-to-day operations. Meanwhile, Ternus's first big decision will be whether Apple absorbs the increasing cost of memory or passes it onto consumers.

Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan reckons the decision could come down to whether Apple holds prices to please consumers or accepts a margin hit, especially in markets like India and China where it competes with local smartphone makers. "By the time September rolls around, Apple has two choices: one, they reprice [products] higher, or two, they say 'let's go ahead and gun for market share,'" Mohan told the FT. He thinks there is a decent chance that Apple will opt for market share.
This article, "Report: iPhone Memory Costs Set to Quadruple by 2027" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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The popular Notepad++ coding editor is now available as a native macOS app, following an unofficial open-source community port of the original Windows codebase. The Notepad replacement runs as a universal binary, so it works on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs.


Notepad++ has been one of the most popular text editors on Windows for more than 20 years. Until now, Mac users who switched from Windows, or who worked across both platforms, had to choose between giving up the editor and running it through a Wine or CrossOver compatibility layer. Now those users have no such dilemma.

The editing experience is identical to the Windows version, right down to the Scintilla engine, tabbed editing, syntax highlighting for 80+ languages, search and replace, macro recording, and plugin support. The only difference is that the menus, dialogs, file pickers, keyboard shortcuts, and windowing all use native macOS Cocoa APIs.

Notepad++ for macOS is maintained by Andrey Letov, who wrote the Objective-C++ Cocoa UI that replaces Notepad++'s Win32 front-end. The unofficial app is available to download from the Notepad++ for Mac website. It's completely free and released under the GNU General Public License, so there are no ads, subs, or hidden costs.

(Thanks, Mike!)
This article, "Notepad++ Code Editor Comes to Mac After 20-Year Wait" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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