Apple changed its App Store rules late Thursday to allow third-party iPhone application developers to steer customers toward their own websites to make purchases. The move comes after a years-long delay in complying with a court order.

The alteration in the rules should result in many iPhone apps allowing customers to pay for services and subscriptions without giving Apple a cut. Streaming music service Spotify became one of the first to take advantage of this major change to the App Store. The modification gives customers more buying options, and the hope is that this will save them money.

May 2, 1995: Apple enters the wearables space with its first watch. However, the first Apple watch is a timepiece with no fitness-tracking tech, no on-screen notifications and a whole lot of 1990s styling.

The device comes two decades before wearables actually will become a thing. A regular wristwatch, the freebie gadget is available via a special mail-in offer to Mac OS upgraders.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said Thursday that he expects the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump to add at least $900 million to the company’s costs during the current quarter, which ends in June.

Speaking with investors after the company announced its quarterly earnings results, Cook also said Apple will assemble most of the products it sells in the United States outside of China this quarter to avoid the tariffs fueling an ongoing trade war between the two countries.

Apple revenue increased 5% annually to $95.4 billion during the first three months of 2025, and profits grew 8%. Those are the top takeaways from the March-quarter financial results Apple revealed after Wall Street closed Thursday. Both numbers beat analysts’ expectations.

“Today Apple is reporting strong quarterly results, including double-digit growth in Services,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in a statement.

May 1, 2008: The iTunes Store takes a gigantic step toward cinematic relevancy, selling new movies on the day of their DVD releases for the very first time.

“We’re thrilled to bring iTunes Store customers new films for purchase day-and-date with the DVD release,” says Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes, in a press release. “We think movie fans will love being able to buy their favorites from major and independent studios.”

Movies out that week include Cloverfield, Juno, Alvin and the Chipmunks and American Gangster.

The new Apple Passwords app makes it easier than ever to save login details for your apps, start using passkeys and create shared groups.

iCloud Keychain has been around for years, saving your passwords for you. But if you’ve ever had to copy a password out of the system to enter on a different computer, you had to dig through Settings — if you could even figure out how. The functionality discouraged a lot of people from using Apple’s password manager. It’s easy to find in iOS 18, thanks to a dedicated Passwords app you can put on your Home Screen.

The time of using the same password on all your internet accounts is over. Apple’s password manager is free, syncs everywhere (even with Windows PCs) and is incredibly easy to use. It creates strong passwords and automatically fills them in so you never need to.

Here’s how it works.

When companies talk about quarterly earnings, executives often deploy language designed to puff up, excuse or obfuscate their companies’ recent performance. The goal is to excite investors over implied future success. And ultimately to give the company more money. Always. More. Money. The Apple quarterly earnings call takes place Thursday afternoon.

But when you’re the iPhone giant — with a mind-blowing market cap and a seemingly never-ending supply of hit products, including ongoing growth in services — you typically don’t need to craft hopeful-yet-non-material statements or deflect questions designed to get at the true bottom line.

So CEO Tim Cook and new CFO Kevan Parekh will report on all the numbers (former CFO Luca Maestri stepped down January 1, 2025). Because many tariff impacts are yet to come, analysts predict a 4% revenue increase year-over-year, plus a jump in earnings per share. Note that Apple starts its fiscal year with Q1 in the previous year’s holiday season, so calendar quarters trail its fiscal quarters.

Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, hopes to strike a deal with Apple to bring Gemini to iPhones by the middle of this year. The CEO revealed this during his testimony in an antitrust trial against Google.

Pichai discussed the possibility of bringing Gemini to iPhones with Apple CEO Tim Cook last year.

In a major blow to Cupertino, a judge ruled Wednesday that Apple “willfully chose not to comply” with a 2021 injunction that required the company to let developers include in-app links directing users to third-party payment options on the web.

“Apple’s continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated,” said U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the ruling.

She also found clear evidence that an Apple executive lied under oath in his court testimony, and asked U.S. attorneys to investigate whether Apple’s vice president of finance should be charged with criminal contempt of court.

Wall Street is putting out positive vibes about the March quarter results Apple will announce Thursday. Analysts anticipate a 4% increase in Apple’s revenue, plus a jump in earnings per share.

That might seem surprising in the wake of President Donald Trump imposing a 20% tariff on electronics coming in from China. However, the Apple financial results about to be revealed are for the quarter that ended in March. Trump didn’t announce the tariffs until April, so they don’t affect these numbers. That won’t happen until Apple provides its June quarter results.