Welcome to 9 to 5 Mac Daily for Thursday, December 4th, 2025.

I'm your host, Chance Miller.

We are sponsored this week by Narwal.

Leading off today, there's been growing pressure to protect children from age and appropriate content in both apps and websites at state and federal levels.

A new proposal in the United States called the App Store Accountability Act

aims to shift the responsibility from individual developers

to app store operators themselves and its gaining momentum.

Currently, it's the app developers who are legally responsible

for ensuring that they carry out age verifications of their users where required.

But we've already seen some state-by-state legislation in the U.S. that makes Apple and Google responsible for age verification instead, including Utah and Texas.

A new federal bill, however, proposed in the United States

aims to make app store operators like Google and Apple responsible for that verification,

not individual app developers. Apple historically has been opposed to this. Apple says that the right

place to address age verification and to prioritize data

minimization is on a per app level, not on a marketplace level. Apple likens this to how

alcohol sales in a mall require ID verification at the store level rather than asking every

mall visitor for their date of birth. Apple says that requiring age verification at the app marketplace level isn't data minimization.

Apple would have to collect sensitive personal information from all users,

even if they don't access age-restricted applications.

But still, Apple has already complied with legislation in Texas and Utah that require it to be the source of age verification.

So if something like this gains nationwide momentum, then it too would be forced to comply.

Next up today, a new report from Counterpoint Research shows that the iPhone's comeback in China is still going strong. For the past few months,

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