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 July 23, 2026 5:39 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Google was today fined €890 million ($1 billion) by the European Union for breaching antitrust rules with regard to its search and Google Play store services.
The European Commission found that Google had broken the Digital Markets Act (DMA) by using its dominant position in the search market to favour its own services, like shopping and hotel deals, over those of rivals.
The Commission ...
Apple is facing a new lawsuit from three customers who allegedly lost a combined $1.8 million after falling victim to a fake Bitcoin wallet app in the App Store, according to a complaint filed in California federal court on Friday.
The complaint alleges that Apple violated California's Consumers Legal Remedies Act and other laws by failing to adequately review and monitor apps distributed...
Wednesday July 29, 2026 3:43 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple said new UK App Store rules would give regulators a "highly intrusive" role dictating how it runs its business, reports Reuters. Apple submitted feedback to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority as it considers forcing Apple to change its App Store rules around steering.
The CMA wants Apple to let developers link to payment options outside of the App Store, which the CMA says will ...
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.
Apple's first foldable iPhone, with a book-style design featuring a ~5.5-inch outer display and a ~7.8-inch inner display with a minimal crease down the middle.
