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.
Tuesday September 8, 2026 7:15 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Earlier this year, Apple acquired California-based startup Sonera, according to a notice published today on the European Commission's website.
Sonera previously announced that it had developed "breakthrough sensing technology" that "non-invasively measures magnetic fields" generated by the brain and body. The company said its technology can analyze neural data without direct skin contact,...
Tuesday September 1, 2026 4:50 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today informed developers that universal Mac App Store apps that require macOS 13 or later can remove support for Intel-based Mac computers.
We're reaching out to let you know that universal macOS apps on the Mac App Store that require macOS 13 or later can now remove support for Intel-based Mac computers.
By removing support for Intel-based Mac computers, you can simplify your...
MapQuest is in the spotlight this week after refusing to change "Lake Ontario" to "Lake America" on its map following an executive order issued by U.S. President Donald Trump last week. As of Monday morning, the MapQuest app is the top free iPhone app on Apple's App Store charts in Canada and fourth on the equivalent U.S. chart.
For our younger readers, MapQuest was once a popular service...
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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