While most Apple acquisitions become public knowledge shortly after they happen, there are acquisitions that go largely under the radar until months or years afterwards. TechCrunch has recently learned of one such acquisition, which may have happened in 2013. Apple is said to have purchased Ottocat, a small startup specializing in search technology.
Ottocat's technology is said to be behind the "Explore" app discovery function in the App Store. The Explore tab in the iOS App Store lets users find apps in different categories plus nearby apps.
TechCrunch has learned that Apple quietly bought a startup called Ottocat some time ago, which had developed a system to organize and surface apps on the app store based on "nested" categories of increasing specificity. A version of that system now powers the "explore" tab in Apple's app store.
According to TechCrunch, though there's little evidence on LinkedIn to suggest the acquisition happened, Ottocat co-founder Edwin Cooper was the author of a patent that was granted to Apple, which Cooper appears to have filed as an Apple employee. The patent, "System and Method for Divisive Textual Clustering by Label Selection Using Variant-Weighted TFDIF," which is related to the App Store's explore feature.
TechCrunch has some information on how Ottocat worked, explaining that its technology aimed to introduce categories for better app discovery to assist users looking to find apps in specific areas when they didn't have an app in mind to search for, which sounds very similar to what the Explore feature in the App Store does.
The premise was to do away with keywords by categorizing apps into increasingly more specific subcategories that worked on a "drill-down" principle -- eliminating the guesswork and potential inaccuracy of keywords altogether.
The Ottocat website originally went down in October of 2013, so that may have been around the time that the acquisition occurred. The original error message stated "Ottocat is no longer available," but the website is now completely defunct. Explore was announced as an App Store addition in June of 2014.
Thursday July 10, 2025 4:54 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple will launch its new iPhone 17 series in two months, and the iPhone 17 Pro models are expected to get a new design for the rear casing and the camera area. But more significant changes to the lineup are not expected until next year, when the iPhone 18 models arrive.
If you're thinking of trading in your iPhone for this year's latest, consider the following features rumored to be coming...
In select U.S. states, residents can add their driver's license or state ID to the Wallet app on the iPhone and Apple Watch, providing a convenient and contactless way to display proof of identity or age at select airports and businesses, and in select apps.
Unfortunately, this feature continues to roll out very slowly since it was announced in 2021, with only nine U.S. states, Puerto Rico,...
Thursday July 10, 2025 12:38 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple does not plan to refresh any Macs with updated M5 chips in 2025, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Updated MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models are now planned for the first half of 2026.
Gurman previously said that Apple would debut the M5 MacBook Pro models in late 2025, but his newest report suggests that Apple is "considering" pushing them back to 2026. Apple is now said to be...
Three out of four iPhone 17 models will feature more RAM than the equivalent iPhone 16 models, according to a new leak that aligns with previous rumors.
The all-new iPhone 17 Air, the iPhone 17 Pro, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max will each be equipped with 12GB of RAM, according to Fixed Focus Digital, an account with more than two million followers on Chinese social media platform Weibo. The...
Since the iPhone X in 2017, all of Apple's highest-end iPhone models have featured either stainless steel or titanium frames, but it has now been rumored that this design decision will be coming to an end with the iPhone 17 Pro models later this year.
In a post on Chinese social media platform Weibo today, the account Instant Digital said that the iPhone 17 Pro models will have an aluminum...
Production of foldable OLED displays for Apple's first foldable iPhone have begun ahead of its expected launch next year, Korea's ETNews reports.
The first foldable iPhone's displays are being produced by Samsung Display, who are establishing a production line dedicated to the upcoming Apple device its A3 factory in Asan, Chungcheongnam-do. The production line will make displays exclusively...
A new Apple TV is expected to be released later this year, and a handful of new features and changes have been rumored for the device.
Below, we recap what to expect from the next Apple TV, according to rumors.
Rumors
Faster Wi-Fi Support
The next Apple TV will be equipped with Apple's own combined Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. He said the chip supports ...
iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max models with displays made by BOE will be sold exclusively in China, according to a new report.
Last week, it emerged that Chinese display manufacturer BOE was aggressively ramping up its OLED production capacity for future iPhone models as part of a plan to recapture a major role in Apple's supply chain.
Now, tech news aggregator Jukan Choi reports...
I'd like to see Apple find a way to make this kind of intelligent app organisation help us organise our apps on each device. Our iPads have hundreds of apps, and it makes sense to have similar apps grouped together on each screen. Manually dragging each app between 10 different screens is laborious and prone to frustration (apps sometimes refusing to go where you want, flow on effects when an app goes where you didn't mean it to, sometimes weird and unpredictable placement of apps that were previously hidden when you hit the maximum number of screens, etc). Managing apps has become the most cumbersome thing about using an iOS device IMO. I'm surprised Apple hasn't responded to this challenge with a really clever Apple-like solution yet.
Too bad they didn't have some sort of folder-like system that you could drag everything into, with custom names and everything.
I guess we'll have to wait and see what Apple has in store for us when iPhone OS 4 rolls out.
Can you purchase apps and selectively install to any owned device from any browser like Google Play?
The closest you can do to this is selecting "Automatic Downloads" on the iOS device in Settings > iTunes & App Store. This way when you purchase an app on another device, it will begin to download automatically on said iOS device. You cannot selectively send to a specific device.
Remember Apple's exclusive license for Liquidmetal--all that initial speculation and excitement from 5 years ago? So when that stuff officially starts showing up in Apple products, that will really blow people's minds....(Yup, still waiting.)
Biggest design overhaul since iOS 7 with Liquid Glass, plus new Apple Intelligence features and improvements to Messages, Phone, Safari, Shortcuts, and more. Developer beta available now ahead of public beta in July.
