In February, Apple notified the European Commission that it would be acquiring certain assets from and have the right to hire certain employees from Rabbit 3 Times, the company behind the award-winning app design tool Play. The notification was published on the European Commission's website this week, following a four-month waiting period.
Play was a Mac and iPhone app that allowed designers to prototype iPhone app interfaces using Apple's SwiftUI frameworks, and then send them to Xcode.
"Play is a sophisticated yet accessible tool that lets users build interactive prototypes with SwiftUI frameworks," said Apple. "Its thoughtfully crafted user interface is both powerful and easy to navigate, helping designers create interactive prototypes and collaborate across Mac and iPhone, all synced in real time for seamless creativity."
Play is no longer available in the App Store, presumably due to Apple's acqui-hire.
Apple could use the intellectual property that it acquired from the Play app to improve Xcode, but its exact plans remain to be seen.
Thursday October 22, 2026 11:01 am PDT by Juli Clover
Apple has temporarily removed Keynote, Pages, and Numbers from the App Store, just after releasing an update that added iPhone Duo support and a new Intelligent Assistant.
It is not clear if the apps were removed intentionally, or if it is a bug. Apple has not said when the apps will be reinstated, but if it was in error, they should return soon.
Update: The Mac versions are back without...
Thursday October 22, 2026 6:04 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple today highlighted more than 50 third-party App Store apps that are or will soon be fully optimized for the iPhone Duo and its various layouts and poses.
You can hold the iPhone Duo and set it down in a number of ways, such as partially folded like a book, placed down on a surface, or standing on its edges:
With the Netflix app, for example, Apple said iPhone Duo users can scroll...
Friday October 30, 2026 6:06 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple this year acquired Ascend.io, a California-based company that developed technology to help businesses automate the collection and analysis of data, and more recently introduced AI agents to help engineers manage this data.
The acquisition was revealed in a notice posted on the European Commission's website today, and Ascend.io's own website mentions "winding down operations as we prepare ...
Play was ahead of its time. I really admired the product.
I think they were never able to make the leap that Framer did from prototyping tool to full native app builder because code wasn't the source of truth for their data model. That's no surprise, because this is much harder to do on the native Apple stack than the web.
With generative AI, I'm hoping we can finally get there. I'm excited to see what the team accomplishes at Apple.
confusing that they would take such an ostensibly useful app off the App Store post-acqui-hire but I guess that’s how it goes, hopefully Apple just repositions it as a first-party app and doesn’t let it go to waste
Likely it will be integrated into Xcode and/or Swift Playground.
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