[Update: See the retraction below.]

Terry Godier:

On the web, if I build something that works within the standards, it works. Whether people use it is up to them. On iOS, there is another question entirely: whether Apple decides it should exist.

[…]

In the past couple of years I’ve built three apps that were rejected from the App Store on various grounds.

[…]

A while ago I tried to submit an iOS app for Dark Hours, my astronomy website for normal people. It was rejected on the grounds that it was astrology.

[…]

I see countless ChatGPT wrappers with nearly identical icons and eye-watering subscriptions. I see astronomy apps requesting permissions that have nothing to do with looking at the night sky. My kids download games that interrupt play every few minutes to advertise the developer’s other subscription apps, each with their own $20–50 yearly plans.

Via John Gruber (Mastodon, Hacker News):

But if you actually look at Godier’s Dark Hours, for even just a few seconds, it is instantly obvious that it pertains to the science of astronomy and has absolutely nothing — zero, zilch, nada — to do with astrology.

[…]

Godier proceeded through a series of escalations up to the App Review Board and the Review Board responded that they determined the original rejection was valid because, I shit you not, “We understand that the app includes a live tarot reading feature.” Which isn’t even about astrology. It’s straight out of Kafka.

[…]

This isn’t just contrary to the benefit of developers, like Godier. It’s obviously contrary to the benefit of Apple itself, which should not just accept an app like Dark Hours, but celebrate it as an exemplar of the platform.

Mistakes happen. But in a functioning system mistakes get corrected, and mistakes as obvious as this one get corrected almost instantly and include a quick apology for the conflation. The App Store is not a functioning system.

Previously:

• Chrome Browser Default at the Top of the Mac App Store
• Apps for YouTube℠™®•!
• Struck Rejected From the App Store

Update (2026-08-10): John Gruber:

To the best of my recollection, this is the first post I’ve retracted in the 24 years I’ve been writing Daring Fireball. I hope it’s the last. I was misled, both overtly and through omissions[…]

[…]

The truth is, the app, as originally submitted by Godier to the App Store (under the name “Asterly”, not “Dark Hours”), was entirely dedicated to astrology, not astronomy, and did in fact include a “Tarot card of the day” feature amongst other occultist horseshit.

[…]

I wrongly took Godier at his word, both in his public blog post and in private iMessage correspondence yesterday, that the rejection wasn’t just merely debatable, but completely and rather preposterously ungrounded. Whether Godier ever submitted a build of “Asterly” to the App Store that contained no occult horseshit and only the hard-science astronomy features that were present in his “Dark Hours” website that was available for the last week, I don’t know. But I have no reason to believe that he did.

[…]

In an uncomfortable exchange between Beher and Godier on Bluesky, Beher pointed out that Godier’s Dark Hours had the same bug as Beher’s that routed people to “random fields in Mexico”. Earlier today, Godier took his web app down and redirected his darkhours.io domain to Beher’s darkhours.app.

I’m really unhappy about this, both for my role in spreading a false story and because I think it will hurt the cause of reforming App Review. I know there are many crazy rejections and have experienced some first-hand. This story was believable because of that well-known history and because Godier didn’t seem like a nobody trying to get attention—he was the developer of another highly regarded app. But now people are going to point to true developer stories and accuse them of being fakes, too.

Jeff Johnson:

Terry Godier has just published a so-called “Mea Culpa” blaming Claude for cloning an open source app and denying foreknowledge.

There’s no mention of or apology for how Godier deceived Gruber and the world about the astronomy/astrology App Store submission/rejection.

The blog post essentially confirms that this person cannot be trusted.

Update (2026-08-11): Colin Cornaby:

BOTH projects were generated using Claude. So you have two people - both generating the same app from the same training data - having a public throw down over who copied who.

[…]

The “original” developer does claim to know how to code - which wasn’t clear from my research. That still doesn’t necessarily mean the original app was the source of the training data. They both may be a result of the same training data.

Nick Lockwood:

Holy shit, so the “Claude plagiarised an app” story is actually “Claude produced the same app twice when prompted to do so by two separate developers” 😅

It’s not clear to me exactly how much each developer relied on Claude or which training data was used, but I wanted to note this angle of the story.

Update (2026-08-14): Rosyna Keller:

With all this talk of an astrology app being rejected by App Store review I’m reminded there’s still a flat Earth/astrology app on the App Store that actively leaks the location of all of its users.

Hartley Charlton (The Verge):

Apple briefly removed Telegram from the App Store on Monday night after a review found content that violated its guidelines against child sexual abuse material (CSAM), but restored the app a short while later, according to Reuters.

It seems like this was a symbolic gesture. Removing the app didn’t affect any of the customers who had already downloaded it. Probably none of them saw the image. And restoring the app doesn’t mean that it’s completely free from CSAM—probably none of the major platforms is. It just means that Telegram did the obvious thing after the violation was reported, which presumably they would have done, anyway.

Jeff Johnson:

They removed an entire app for ONE app user???

And before even contacting the developer? Telegram banning the account is what actually prevented users from potentially seeing the CSAM. Apple’s action seems like either a mistake or trying to send them a message.

I would note, by the way, that the Telegram app was apparently never removed from the Mac App Store. Which goes to show how little Apple cares about the Mac App Store.

Telegram:

I’m sure this stance will be applied equally to all other apps in the store, in the future right? @Apple

Pavel Durov (Telegram, MacRumors):

Because Telegram quickly removes illegal content from public groups using all kinds of moderation tools, the attacker had to resort to a technical trick. He inserted AI-modified illegal content by editing an old message in an active group chat. As a result the content was effectively hidden from the group’s members, preventing them from seeing/reporting it.

The attacker was a takedown extortionist: someone who demands ransom from group owners in exchange for not targeting their communities. These extortionists use automated accounts to plant illegal content in public groups and then report it directly to Apple, attempting to trigger the removal of legitimate communities whose owners refused to pay them.

[…]

Extortionists have found a way to manipulate Apple into overreacting. Apple removed Telegram from the App Store before contacting us. This creates a potential systemic risk for every mobile app that hosts user-generated content. If an app used by more than a billion people can be removed from the App Store without prior warning, any app can be.

Marcus Mendes:

During the time the app was unavailable, many speculated that the move was politically motivated, or perhaps in response to the recent discovery that Telegram has allegedly been using an obfuscated private UIKit API to animate its emoji picker.

It’s sad but kind of hilarious that both of these so disparate theories were considered possible. Durov really does have political enemies, and Apple really does seem to have it out for Telegram. But, also, using private API to animate emojis totally seems like something that Telegram would do and that Apple would overreact to.

Previously:

• Telegram Founder Arrested
• Telegram Stuck in App Review
• Apple Forces Telegram to Close Channels Run by Belarus Protestors
• Apple Hasn’t Blocked Telegram App, But Won’t Allow Updates

Update (2026-08-06): Matt Burgess (Hacker News):

Over the last nine months, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has run dozens of paid ads that include explicit AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and images of minors alongside sexually suggestive statements, according to details of the ads shared with WIRED. The ads, which in some cases reached several thousand accounts, were targeted at people living in the United States, United Kingdom, and more than a dozen European countries.

This is much worse than what happened with Telegram, yet Apple didn’t overreact.

There’s also the Twitter/Grok case.

Previously:

• San Francisco Demands Removal of Nudify Apps

Apple briefly removed Telegram from its App Store late on Monday after detecting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in a public group. The messaging app was restored within about 40 minutes once Telegram deleted the content and banned the responsible user. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov later described the incident as the work of a “takedown extortionist” who deliberately planted AI-modified illegal content to trigger the removal and pressure online communities.

According to Durov’s statement on X (see below), the attacker edited an old message in an active public group chat to insert the prohibited material. Because the edit was backdated, the content remained effectively invisible to ordinary group members, limiting their ability to report it through normal channels and helping it evade some of Telegram’s automated moderation tools. The perpetrator then reportedly flagged the material directly to Apple.

Durov characterized the actor as a takedown extortionist—someone who demands payment from group owners in exchange for not targeting their communities. These operators, he said, rely on automated accounts to seed illegal material in public groups and then report it to platform gatekeepers such as Apple in an effort to force the removal of legitimate communities whose administrators refuse to pay.

“From a practical standpoint, illegal pornographic content in Telegram’s public groups is not a systemic problem,” Durov wrote. “Our moderation is effective. The fact that attackers must resort to backdated, effectively invisible content and other technical tricks proves this.” He emphasized that Telegram routinely removes illegal material from public groups using a range of moderation tools.

Apple confirmed that a content review had identified CSAM that violated App Store guidelines. The company stated that Telegram “promptly removed the content and banned the user,” after which the app was returned to the store. Apple has not publicly addressed Durov’s claim that an extortionist manipulated the process. Durov noted that Apple pulled Telegram before contacting the company.

Durov framed the episode as a warning for other developers. “Extortionists have found a way to manipulate Apple into overreacting,” he said. “This creates a potential systemic risk for every mobile app that hosts user-generated content. If an app used by more than a billion people can be removed from the App Store without prior warning, any app can be.” He also cautioned that the tactics used by such coordinated reporting groups are evolving and that other platforms may be less prepared to identify and counter them.

The incident underscores ongoing tensions between large platforms that host user-generated content, the moderation challenges they face, and the policies of mobile app marketplaces that can unilaterally restrict distribution. Telegram continues to operate normally on iOS following the short-lived removal.

Pavel Durov via X:
‎

Last night Apple briefly removed Telegram from the AppStore because a user had planted illegal porn in a public chat.

Telegram was restored within hours. But I want to explain what happened — to warn other app developers and help protect online communities from similar attacks.

Because Telegram quickly removes illegal content from public groups using all kinds of moderation tools, the attacker had to resort to a technical trick. He inserted AI-modified illegal content by editing an old message in an active group chat. As a result the content was effectively hidden from the group’s members, preventing them from seeing/reporting it.

The attacker was a takedown extortionist: someone who demands ransom from group owners in exchange for not targeting their communities. These extortionists use automated accounts to plant illegal content in public groups and then report it directly to Apple, attempting to trigger the removal of legitimate communities whose owners refused to pay them.

From a practical standpoint, illegal pornographic content in Telegram’s public groups is not a systemic problem. Our moderation is effective. The fact that attackers must resort to backdated, effectively invisible content and other technical tricks proves this.

However, there are two important lessons here for app developers and online communities:

— Extortionists have found a way to manipulate Apple into overreacting. Apple removed Telegram from the App Store before contacting us. This creates a potential systemic risk for every mobile app that hosts user-generated content. If an app used by more than a billion people can be removed from the App Store without prior warning, any app can be.

— The tactics used by takedown extortionists are evolving, putting communities across social platforms at risk. Telegram has extensive experience identifying the tricks used by coordinated reporting gangs and protecting legitimate communities (even when doing so risks our own app being temporarily removed from the App Store). Other platforms may not be equally prepared.

Stay vigilant!

‎
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s App Store really is one of history’s most profitable cans of worms.

It’s an astonishing money machine: the broader App Store ecosystem facilitated over $1.4 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2025 alone. Physical goods and services (retail, food delivery, travel, etc.) made up the bulk (~$1.1 trillion), where Apple takes no commission. Digital goods and services accounted for about $149 billion, and in-app advertising another $151 billion. On the digital slice Apple typically charges 15–30%, generating many billions in high-margin revenue that helps power its Services business.

Yet the same walld garden that produces those results is a perpetual source of headaches. Apple’s near-total control over iOS distribution and payments has fueled years of antitrust battles — Epic Games, the U.S. DOJ, EU Digital Markets Act enforcement, court findings of non-compliance, and ongoing developer lawsuits. Critics call the commission the “Apple Tax,” complain about arbitrary review decisions, limited sideloading or alternative stores (outside certain regulated markets), and the risk that a single content flag can yank a major app offline without warning.

The recent Telegram episode fits the pattern perfectly. A brief App Store removal triggered by planted illegal content (which Telegram says was the work of a takedown extortionist) showed how Apple’s gatekeeper power can be gamed or lead to rapid, high-stakes reactions.

‎
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The App Store is evolving at a breakneck pace not seen since its earliest days. We saw the first glimmers of what was to come early in 2025, but it wasn’t until late last year that the tsunami of apps developed with the help of AI agents really took hold.

Since then, veteran developers are releasing new apps and updating existing ones faster than ever, and new developers are releasing their first apps in droves. Today, supply is dramatically up, demand is flat, and quality is seemingly simultaneously up and down, depending on where you look.

How these forces play out long-term is anyone’s guess, but it’s worth examining because, just as Federico’s link to Bryan Irace’s post about agentic coding tools foreshadowed the rise of tools like Codex and Claude Code, today’s trends are sparks that have the potential to become tomorrow’s App Store wildfires or simply fizzle out.

Utility apps are on the front lines of this change. The TechCrunch story I linked in April picked up on this trend:

Another interesting tidbit from Appfigures is that the Utilities app category moved up the top five chart.

If anything, the trend has accelerated in the months since.

It’s not surprising at all that utility apps have taken off. They’ve been a staple of new developers since long before agents came along. That’s because many are UI wrappers around command line tools. That isn’t a knock against the developers of those apps; most users don’t want to open Terminal to convert a video or audio file to another format using ffmpeg, for example. By building a great UI around command line tools, developers have made them far easier to use.

However, the relative simplicity and narrow scope of many utility apps have made them a natural fit for AI agents, too. That’s why the App Store (and my inbox) is deluged with Mac menu bar and single-screen iPhone and iPad utility apps.

On the one hand, the abundance of utilities has been great for users. More choice means you’re more likely to find the app that perfectly fits your needs.

On the other hand, though, I don’t think what’s happening in the category is sustainable and expect to see it dramatically shift again in the coming months. As we’ve seen from reporting by The New York Times, app supply is outstripping demand by orders of magnitude, which will drive down prices. That alone is likely to cause the utility app market to shrink. But there’s more to it than that.

Remember, the demand shifts that The New York Times reported, based on Sensor Tower numbers, are for the entire App Store, where download numbers have grown 2-3% this year and last. I expect utility downloads to actually shrink in the coming months – again, because of agents. Utilities, especially simple ones, are exactly the sorts of apps that are becoming trivially easy for power users – the very users these utilities are made for – to create themselves. From frontier labs‘ model improvements to a growing number of app-building tools from those same labs and third parties, it’s never been easier to build a web or native app yourself.

And although I agree with people, like Nilay Patel, who say the notion that everyone will build their own software is overblown, the utility market is different. Your average person is not downloading apps to adjust the frame rate and file format of a video or downloading YouTube videos to watch later. But those are exactly the sort of things that people who are using agents are doing with them, whether they’re having an agent do those things directly via a command line tool in an app like Codex or Claude Code or building an app to do the same thing. That’s going to put even more pressure on the category.

That said, I think there will always be a cohort of users who would rather pay for an app than build it themselves, so I’m not predicting the demise of utilities in general – just the end of today’s frothy market. I also think there remains a place for simple utilities that solve hard problems with clever solutions. Not every utility is a UI wrapper for a terminal command. Plenty of apps feature original solutions or thoughtful and unconventional remixes of disparate tools.

Utilities aren’t going away, but just like other App Store deluges, the trend will recede. It’s just that this time, it’s likely to flip faster than usual.

Telegram was temporarily removed from Apple’s App Store worldwide after the iPhone maker identified content from one user that violated its rules against child sexual abuse material, the messaging service said on Tuesday.

According to a report from Reuters, the episode mirrors a similar brief suspension in 2018, when Apple pulled the app over what Telegram founder Pavel Durov at the time described as “inappropriate content.” The app was restored then after Telegram strengthened its safeguards.

An Apple spokesperson confirmed the recent short-lived removal, stating that its review found content violating guidelines that prohibit child sexual abuse material. “The app was subsequently restored after the developer promptly removed the content and banned the user who posted it,” the spokesperson added. The removal and restoration occurred on the same day once Telegram acted.

Telegram, which counts more than a billion monthly active users, maintains a zero-tolerance policy on such material. It said it has blocked nearly 338,000 groups and channels for related content this year.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose company has long clashed with Apple, also weighed in on X. “Apple has stated they removed the app from availability to a billion users because a Telegram user posted something horrible and illegal,” Sweeney wrote, according to Reuters. He continued: “They did not elaborate on how, if that is the standard for app removal, any communications app could operate at scale, including iMessage.”

An Apple spokesperson did not respond to further questions about the guideline violation, Reuters reported.

MacDailyNews Note: The incident comes amid ongoing regulatory attention on Telegram’s handling of illegal content. Britain’s Ofcom opened an investigation in April over concerns about the sharing of child sex abuse material; Telegram has categorically denied the accusations and said it has virtually eliminated the public spread of such material since 2018 through detection algorithms. In February, Australia’s online safety regulator also fined the company for delays in responding to queries about measures against child abuse material and violent extremism.

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Russia’s anti-monopoly watchdog has opened a formal case against Apple after the U.S. technology company failed to comply with an earlier warning requiring the pre-installation of Russian applications on its devices, state news agency RIA reported on Monday.

All mobile phones and tablets in Russia must have the state-backed MAX messenger app pre-installed, the Russian government announced in August 2025.

The case centers on Apple’s alleged non-compliance regarding the mandatory pre-installation of Russia’s MAX messaging app and a domestic Russian app store. The move follows a warning issued by the regulator that the company did not fully address.

The development marks the latest escalation in Moscow’s efforts to enforce rules aimed at promoting local digital services on foreign devices sold in the country. No further details on potential penalties or next steps were immediately available.

Reuters
‎
MacDailyNews Take: MAX is criticized for potentially enabling user tracking which aligns with Moscow’s push for tighter internet control amid tensions with the West over Ukraine.

As Glenn Greenwald said, “The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals.”

But, the Russian government obviously fears its population, hence its diktats.

‎
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