LTA 148: December 2025

Panel:

• Bart Busschots (host) – @bartb.ie

The show starts with a few followups to previously covered stories, followed by a rundown of Apple’s interactions with regulators and the courts, before quickly summarising some developments in Apple’s services and original content business. The three main stories are India’s failed attempt to force-install a government app on all cellphones, an eventful month for apple’s App Stores, and an even more eventful month for Apple’s HR department. The show finishes with a quick rundown of a few other smaller stories that made the news in December.

You’ll find detailed show notes below the fold, and if you enjoy this free show, please consider clicking on the donate button at the top of the left side bar – the show is free for you to listen to, but not for Bart to Produce!

Updates & Followup

Quick updates to long-running stories the show continues to track, and to stories covered in recent shows.

• 🇺🇸 Trumplandia Update:

  • Apple will supply senior managers to advise feds on new US Tech Force — appleinsider.com/… (Tech industry to lend US government technical leaders to replace those over-enthusiastically fired by DOGE)

  • Visa-holding staff should not leave the US, warns Apple — appleinsider.com/… (Going home for Christmas could land fully legal foreign workers in prison for weeks while they prove they are legal)

  • Some tariff news: Steep US tariffs on Chinese chip imports won't hit Apple until 2027 — appleinsider.com/…

    • "In a Federal Register filing on Tuesday, reports CNBC, the Trump Administration confirmed it will take action against China under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, and the response will be a tariff on semiconductors. However, rather than delay the actual tariff's implementation, the Trump Administration is applying it immediately, but is setting the rate of the additional tariff at zero. Instead, the Trump Administration plans to increase the tariff level on June 23, 2027, effectively delaying the impact."

• 🇺🇸 Apple Manufacturing Academy goes nationwide with new online training — appleinsider.com/… (📣 Apple PR)

• 🇺🇸 Apple's rollout of digital IDs in the US is continuing apace: Apple Wallet Plans Driver’s License Support in 7 Additional States — www.macobserver.com/… (Connecticut, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah, Arkansas & Virginia)

Regulatory Rundown

• 🇪🇺 Two more EU countries take issue with App Tracking Transparency

  • 🇩🇪 App Tracking Transparency under the gun by German antitrust investigators — appleinsider.com/…

    • "Germany's antitrust regulator is reviewing Apple's revised tracking rules after asking the company to address concerns about unequal treatment of third-party apps."

  • 🇮🇹 Italy fines Apple $115 million over App Tracking Transparency — appleinsider.com/… (they claim Apple does not apply App Tracking Transparency to themselves, which I can't correlate with reality)

• 🇨🇭 Switzerland opens antitrust probe over iPhone NFC access — appleinsider.com/…

• The push for age verification continues:

  • 🇺🇸 The App Store Accountability Act is making its way through the early stages in congress, and would mandate nation-wide age checks on all mobile app stores — www.theverge.com/…
  • 🇬🇧 UK wants iPhones to require age verification for any nude images — appleinsider.com/… (Unverified reporting by the FT, which has a very strong track record when it comes to reporting on UK government orders to Apple)
  • But it's not all bad news for Apple: 🇺🇸 Texas App Store Age Verification Law Blocked by Federal Judge — www.macrumors.com/… (implementation on hold while the case against the law proceeds)

Apple Services & Original Content Highlights

• Apple marked the end of the year by showing users their year, releasing charts, and presenting awards

  • Apple Music Replay 2025 Is Now Live for All Subscribers — www.macobserver.com/…
  • Apple Music Replay 2025 Reveals Most Played Songs Worldwide — www.macobserver.com/…
  • How to see all the books you read in 2025 with Apple Books — appleinsider.com/… (Apple Books Year in Review)
  • Apple unveils the winners of the 2025 App Store Awards — 📣 Apple PR
  • 'The Rest is History' crowned Apple Podcasts show of the year — appleinsider.com/… (📣 Apple PR)

• ApplePay: Tap to Pay for incoming transactions continues to roll out around the world

  • 🇸🇬 Tap to Pay on iPhone Launches in Singapore for All Sellers — www.macobserver.com/…
  • 🇭🇰 Tap to Pay on iPhone comes to Hong Kong — appleinsider.com/…

• Apple Car Key continues to roll out:

  • Coming to Rivian — appleinsider.com/…
  • Porsche is bringing Apple Car Key support to two 2026 EVs — appleinsider.com/…

• Apple's Fitness+ Comes to New Countries and Gets New Language Support — www.macstories.net/… (28 new markets, and Spanish, German & Japanese dubs)

• 🇯🇵 Messages via Satellite has launched in Japan — appleinsider.com/…

• Apple TV dominates Golden Globes race, eclipsing Netflix and HBO in prestige TV — www.cultofmac.com/…

  • "Three of the six nominations in the coveted Best Drama TV series category belong to Apple"

• Dive deeper into Sneaky Sasquatch on Apple Arcade this holiday season — 📣 Apple PR

• Apple Health: 🇦🇺 Australians will be soon able to use Apple Watch hypertension notifications — appleinsider.com/… (approved by regulators, no date announced by Apple)

Main Stories

1. 🇮🇳 India tried, but failed, to become the first country to succeed in forcing a government app to be pre-installed on effectively all smartphones — appleinsider.com/… & www.macobserver.com/… (Specifically Apple, Samsung, Oppo, Vivo & Xiaomi phones)

   • The app in question is Sanchar Saathi, an app designed to combat phone theft and SMEI cloning (enables government tracking of every phone)
   • The India Ministry of Communication issued a secret directive to Apple and other smartphone manufacturers to pre-install the app on all new and existing phones, and to prevent users from disabling it, and to do so within 90 days — www.reuters.com/…
   • Apple & Samsung reportedly resisted the order — appleinsider.com/…
   • Opposition politicians, and Cybersecurity & civil liberties organisations strongly criticised the plan
   • The ministry withdrew the secret order a week after it was issued, ending the threat, for now.

2. An eventful month for Apple's App Stores

   • Two additional regions gain 3rd-party App Stores & External payment options

     • 🇯🇵 To comply with Japan's Mobile Software Competition Act (MSCA), Apple is allowing 3rd-party App Stores and external payment options in their app store — 9to5mac.com/… (📣 Apple PR)

       • A good overview: New third-party iOS App Stores in Japan preserve user privacy, child safety — appleinsider.com/…
       • Analysis: a useful contrast with the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA), which is a much more far-reaching law from John Gruber — daringfireball.net/… (notably, fees do not go all the way to zero, but can be as low as 5% in some situations)
       • Predictably, Epic Games is not happy: Epic Games CEO slams Japanese App Store 'junk fees' — appleinsider.com/…

     • 🇧🇷 Apple Accepts New App Store Rules to End Brazil Antitrust Probe — www.macobserver.com/…

       • Original sources are in Portuguese, but best as I can tell, this is an unconfirmed report
       • Details are very sparse ATM, but the changes, as reported, will allow 3rd party app stores and external payment options

   • 🇺🇸 Apple -v- Epic: an three-judge panel on the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld up most, but not all, of the injunction preventing Apple from charging any commission on external in-app payments in the US app store — appleinsider.com/… & arstechnica.com/… (this was Apple's appeal)

     • The ruling is nuanced, but on the whole, seems like a loss for Apple:

       • The judges agreed with Judge Gonzalez Rogers that Apple violated the anti-steering injunction she placed on them by setting the commission on external in-app payments at 27% (in response to which she blocked all commissions)
       • But the judges disagreed with the remedy (removing all commissions), say Apple can charge something, but it needs to be reasonable.
       • Rather than deciding on what would be reasonable, the panel ordered that Apple propose a new fee structure which Epic must then agree to before the collection of commissions can resume.

     • Predictably, Epic thinks anything more than zero is too much — appleinsider.com/…

   • 🇪🇺 🇳🇱 Apple Faces Huge Dutch Antitrust Damages After EU Court Ruling — www.macobserver.com/…

     • "The decision opens the door for two consumer rights groups to pursue compensation linked to Apple’s App Store rules. The case centers on years of complaints about high commissions and restricted payment options."

3. A month of Staffing Changes, planned and Unplanned

   • Apples planned, orderly, transitions:

     • Amar Subramanya is replacing John Giannandrea as Apple's VP of AI — www.cultofmac.com/…

       • John Giannandrea to retire from Apple — 📣 Apple PR

       • Subramanya spent 16 years with Google before spending the last year with Microsoft — www.macstories.net/…

       • Interesting Opinion & Analysis:

         • Apple owes its greatest strength in AI to Giannandrea — appleinsider.com/… (on-device processing)
         • Apple’s new AI chief has his work cut out for him — sixcolors.com/…

       • Related:

         • Apple continue to publish interesting AI research: Apple's AI & ML research papers show instant 3D image conversion, more — appleinsider.com/…
         • Apple had launch-day integrations ready: OpenAI Opens Up ChatGPT App Submissions to Developers — www.macstories.net/…

     • Apple announces departure of both general counsel and environmental chief — sixcolors.com/… (📣 Apple PR)

       • "Apple said on Thursday that its general counsel, Katherine Adams, and vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson, would both be stepping down next year. The two will be replaced by a single executive: Jennifer Newstead, who most recently served as Meta’s chief legal officer … Newstead was the legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State during part of Trump’s first term in the White House. She also previously worked in the White House as Associate Counsel in the George W. Bush administration, and subsequently served as General Counsel of the Office of Management and Budget … Newstead will not head up environmental and social initiatives—those will instead transfer to newly installed chief operating officer Sabih Khan"

   • Apple's Christmas Surprise: VP of Human Interface Design Alan Dye leaves Apple to join lead Meta's design team, to be replaced at Apple by veteran designer Steve Lemay — www.macstories.net/…

     • Unnamed current and former Apple staff have told John Gruber they are both delighted to see Dye leave, and by the choice of Lemay to replace him — daringfireball.net/…

       • "The sentiment within the ranks at Apple is that today’s news is almost too good to be true."
       • Cult of Mac's reporting backs this up — www.cultofmac.com/…

     • Opinion & Analysis:

       • Meet Apple’s new UI chief, the man Steve Jobs called ‘Margaret’ — www.cultofmac.com/…
       • Dye's departure doesn't mean Liquid Glass is going anywhere — appleinsider.com/…
       • In a major coup for someone, Alan Dye leaves Apple — sixcolors.com/…
       • The real reason Meta poached Apple’s UI design chief — www.cultofmac.com/… (he lead Vision Pro, and it has a much better UI than anything Meta have come up with so far)

   • Apple's chip boss squashes exit rumors, says he's not leaving the company — www.cnbc.com/… (Johny Srouji, SVP of Hardware Technologies)

   • Opinion & Analysis:

     • 4 top executives who ditched Apple to join Meta in 2025 — www.cultofmac.com/…

       • Alan Dye
       • Ruoming Pang: AI models architect
       • Jian Zhang: Robotics research pioneer
       • Ke Yang: Search and reasoning specialist

     • Dozens of staffers quit Apple, leaving behind only 164,000 — appleinsider.com/… (Best headline of the month!)

       • Subhead: "Apple Park does not have a big "Exit" sign in it."
       • "The only thing we can learn from LinkedIn and the many reports of departures is that people move around in the industry."

Quick Stories

• Apple release their OS 26.2 OSes — tidbits.com/…

  • iOS 26.2 is here with one-time AirDrop codes, alarms in Reminders, more — appleinsider.com/…

  • iPadOS 26.2 brings better Split View, AirDrop codes to iPad — appleinsider.com/…

  • New Edge Light and urgent Reminders come to macOS Tahoe — appleinsider.com/…

  • Sleep scores sharpen and EU Wi-Fi setup shifts in watchOS 26.2 — appleinsider.com/…

    • In the EU, newly paired Apple Watches will no longer automatically learn all the WiFi networks the paired iPhone has access to knows. Users will need to explicitly add networks.
    • This is the first time the DMA has resulted in the removal of an existing feature rather than simply a delay in the rollout of a new feature.

  • tvOS 26.2 brings kids mode to the Apple TV app — appleinsider.com/… (Profiles not linked to an Apple ID)

• Shazam unlocks what makes chart-topping songs unforgettable — www.cultofmac.com/… (new Popular Segments feature)

Legend

Note: When the textual description of a link is part of the link it is the title of the page being linked to, when the text describing a link is not part of the link it is a description written by Bart.