Apple Can Keep App Store Rules-For Now; YouTube Will Break Home Feeds If You Turn Off Watch History; Big Slack Redesign; BlueJeans Shuts Down

Apple has gotten a reprieve with regards to changing App Store rules…at least for now. The Supreme Court will let them keep the status quo while the appeal of their case with Epic Games is considered by the high court. Macrumors.com reports that Apple’s anti-steering rules prevent developers from directing customers to make purchases for digital goods outside of the ‌App Store‌. In the Epic vs. Apple case that started in 2020, the judge decided that Apple should change its ‌App Store‌ rules to allow developers to direct customers to purchasing mechanisms outside of the ‌App Store‌, which paves the way for alternate payment methods. Nope…Apple isn’t interested in losing any of that 30% cut they skim off the top from every single paid app in the store. Apple has 90 days to file with the Supremes, and won’t need to change its rules until the Supreme Court decides on whether to hear the case. 

Apparently YouTube really, really wants to kind about everything you’re watching. So much, that if you turn off your watch history, the Home tab won’t show any videos at all…not from your subscription, not from trending…nothing. According to bgr.com, you will get an alert that says “Your watch history is off. You can change your setting at any time to get the latest videos tailored to you.” Google says that it is rolling out this change over the next few months, so you may still have a home feed for a little while before it is taken away from you (if you have your watch history turned off, of course).

Slack is preparing to unveil its biggest ever redesign. The Salesforce platform hopes that the changes will make things easier to find and manage on the sprawling app. Theverge.com says that many of the changes are designed for the heaviest slack users. Chief Product Officer Noah Weiss says “for end users, you end up having to switch to all these different workspaces just to see channel activity, the mentions you have, the threads you’re part of, and so on.” The redesign was all about making Slack a little easier to maneuver. When the app first opens, you well get a Home section that looks much like the present interface. Frankly, those that have seen the interface say it looks a lot like Microsoft’s Teams. What we need…another Teams! 

After dumping hundreds of millions into it during the pandemic, Verizon has decided to shutter BlueJeans. We had used the Zoom wannabe, and it worked fine. In fact, it played more nicely with Safari and Firefox for me than Zoom…which seems to prefer Chrome…at least on my Mac. Techcruch.com reports that Verizon is killing the app quote “due to the changing market landscape.” Of course the use is way down since a lot of people are back in the office, at least a couple days a week. Zoom and Google Hangouts use is down too…but BlueJeans never really got the traction. Basic and free trial tiers will be turned off August 31st. BlueJeans will continue to operate for other users until December. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.