Apple’s crackdown on AI apps puts it wrong side of history
Steve Jobs was founded Apple 50 years ago this week, a simple idea emerged: to democratize computing by putting personal computers in everyone’s hands. Now Apple is defying that founding mission by standing in the way of what could become the most empowering tool for ordinary people in the history of software: AI coding, or vibration coding.
Apple must be at the forefront of this moment. Instead he holds her back.
Apple blocked at least two Vibe encoding apps, including Replit, were blocked from being updated on the App Store, and one was removed due to security concerns. Apple says it wants more people to develop apps. But by blocking the most popular and accessible tools, the company is abandoning its founding ethos and risks alienating the next generation of builders from the iPhone.
Why is this different?
Apple fiercely protects its App Store. The review process shows how Apple scans for malware, privacy violations, and apps that access sensitive data like your camera, contacts, or location without permission. That’s a big part of why people rely on the iPhone. While Apple runs a closed, tightly controlled ecosystem, Android phones and Google Play Store is more open and tolerant.
However, what the Replit user creates is not uploaded to the phone. It is displayed inside the app using the same web technology. Facebook and X is used whenever you tap a link. Apple has never blocked these apps because they display unreviewed web content.
Apple says this isn’t pressure, just consistent enforcement of rules that have been around for years. It mentions fine print in its rules to avoid applying them against other apps with similar features. Anthropic’s Claude, for example, also allows users to build, preview and use applications, but within the app and not in a browser like Replit. (Two other popular AI coding tools, Cursor and Lovable, do not have iOS apps.) And Apple isn’t opposed to AI-powered coding. It added AI tools from OpenAI and Anthropic to its own development software, Xcode, in February, just a few weeks after blocking Replit’s update.
Apple has previously struggled with threats to its walled garden. It has battled Epic Games over payment rails, resisted EU sideloading mandates, clashed with Tencent over WeChat’s mini-app ecosystem. In each case, Apple was defending the store against companies trying to breach the wall.
Vibe coding doesn’t have to be successful. He can just move around. A developer can use Replit in a browser on their computer rather than an iPhone app; However, using the app would have been more useful.
The risks for Apple are real. The App Store is the centerpiece of a Services business that generated $109 billion in revenue last fiscal year and has a gross margin of more than 75%, nearly twice what Apple makes from product sales. Apple takes a 15-30% commission from every purchase on the App Store. But every app that goes to the web instead of the store (the ones you open in the browser) is revenue that Apple never sees.
Also, if the discussion is really about security, preventing Replit from updating doesn’t make the app any more secure. Banning it completely should be the solution.
Democratizing Coding
The scale of prominence of vibration coding is already significant. 18 months ago the market barely existed. Companies developing these tools today gained billions in value.
And the impact is playing out in Apple’s own backyard, too: App Store releases are up 60% year over year, according to Sensor Tower and Wells Fargo data compiled by VC firm Andreessen Horowitz; Last year, there were more than 550,000 applications, the highest number in the last decade. But this is a very small fraction of what has been built. The majority of Vibe-encoded software is found on the open web and never goes through Apple’s review process. In other words, it is filling Apple’s store and building a new one at the same time.
Apple’s strongest counterargument is that it would be welcome if jitter coding apps did the same thing Xcode does: build on Mac, ship via review, distribute via store.
But this answer reveals a gap in Apple’s thinking. The people using Replit are not professional developers working in Xcode on Mac. They are building for the first time.
Ruth Heasman, a graphic designer in the United Kingdom, has been thinking about ideas for websites and apps for the last 20 years. Replit didn’t finally implement these until it introduced its mediated coding agent last year.
“I’m not a coder. I had no experience before this. It’s hard to get coders, programmers, to make time for you,” he said.
Heasman, who estimates he has published and added payment options for a dozen websites, recently released his first iOS app with the help of Replit, an augmented reality game about ghost hunting.
“Before Replit, I had a really hard time doing this because I don’t have an Apple Mac,” he said. “This is one of the true walled garden requirements of the App Store.”
The whole point of vibe coding is to meet people where they are. Apple’s response is asking them to go somewhere else.
messing with the future
If this is a deliberate platform strategy, Apple’s execution has not been consistent.
According to a person familiar with Replit’s dealings with Apple, the company has changed its reasoning for the delay multiple times since January; Even after addressing previous objections, Replit raised new objections. Apple says its App Review team has maintained consistent communication with Replit, including three phone calls in the past two months.
Replit was unable to update its iOS app during this time. It rose from number one to number four in developer tools on the App Store. A person with knowledge of the issue, who did not want to be named because the information is confidential, said that Replit experienced a loss of income during the period.
Replit said in a statement that it has been on the App Store since 2022 and has approved its application, which contains the same features that Apple currently blocks, more than 100 times.
“Given that we have been working on the platform following its rules for years, we are surprised and disappointed that Apple has prevented us from releasing updates,” the company said.
From the outside, Apple looks like a company arguing with itself: an App Store team capitalizing on Vibe coding’s surge in submissions, and a developer tools team that doesn’t want competition for Xcode and no one at the top can reconcile them. Shares have underperformed all megacaps except Microsoft since ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022.
Why should you care?
This is important beyond the developer tools corridor because dither encoding will happen whether Apple allows it on iOS or not. The question is not whether a new wave of software will be created, but whether it will be created inside or outside Apple’s ecosystem.
Economists have long observed that monopolists encourage competition on their platforms only up to a point, said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a Vanderbilt antitrust professor.
“They want to control the direction of innovation, away from things that would disrupt their monopoly,” he said.
If Apple continues to block these tools, builders may be gone. They will develop on and for the web, where no one needs Apple’s permission to ship. The iPhone user may face a worse app ecosystem as Apple chases away the people who populate it.
Apple has been here before. In the 1990s, Microsoft locked down its hardware while opening up the computer to everyone. This was existential. Jobs came back and saved the company by doing what Apple does best: empowering the user, not restricting them.
The company founded on putting power in the hands of the people is now trying to take it back.
WRISTWATCH: Experimenting with AI vibration coding
