Weekly sponsorships have been the top source of revenue for Daring Fireball ever since I started selling them back in 2007. They’ve succeeded, I think, because they make everyone happy. They generate good money. There’s only one sponsor per week and the sponsors are always relevant to at least some sizable portion of the DF audience, so you, the reader, are never annoyed and hopefully often intrigued by them. And, from the sponsors’ perspective, they work. My favorite thing about them is how many sponsors return for subsequent weeks after seeing the results.

At the moment, I’ve only got four openings left through the end of September:

• June 30–July 6 (next week)
• August 18–24
• August 25–31
• September 1–7

I don’t know why next week remains unsold, but that’s just how it works out sometimes. If you’ve got a product or service (or, perhaps, a just-opened blockbuster car-racing movie) you think would be of interest to DF’s audience of people obsessed with high quality and good design, get in touch.

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Apple Developer:

By default, apps on the App Store are provided Store Services Tier 2, the complete suite of all capabilities designed to maximize visibility, engagement, growth, and operational efficiency. Developers with apps on the App Store in the EU that communicate and promote offers for digital goods and services can choose to move their apps to only use Store Services Tier 1 and pay a reduced store services fee.

What follows is a long chart, making clear which features are excluded from Tier 1.

Like I wrote in my larger piece on Apple’s new DMA compliance plans, I don’t think Tier 1 is intended to be a feasible choice for any mainstream apps or games. The whole thing is just a way to assert that 8 percent of the commission developers pay is justified by various features of the App Store itself.

It’s a natural consequence that an overly complicated law (the DMA) has resulted in an ever-more-complicated set of guidelines and policies (from Apple). It’s all downright byzantine.

Joe Rossignol:

The company has promoted its Brad Pitt racing film with advertisements across at least six iPhone apps leading up to today’s wide release, including the App Store, Apple Wallet, Apple Sports, Apple Podcasts, iTunes Store, and of course the Apple TV app.

Most of those apps have ads in them all the time. It’s certainly fine for Apple to use those ad spots to promote their own movie. Even with Apple Sports, which most of the time has no ads at all, I think it’s fine for Apple to occasionally drop a promotion in there for something of their own. And F1 The Movie is a sports movie. The Apple Wallet push notification isn’t just a little different, it’s a lot different.

I will also note one other sort-of promotion. I play the mini crossword every morning in Apple News. Today’s 1-down clue was “F1 The Movie star Brad ____”. I think that’s a clever on-brand tie-in. Fun, not obnoxious. But with the smell of that Wallet push-notification fart still hanging in the air, not as much fun as it otherwise would have been.