Other Monitor Arms We’ve Tested

Photograph: Jacob Roach

Wali Heavy-Duty Monitor Arm for $75: I made the brilliant decision to buy a 42-inch monitor without thinking about actually using a 42-inch monitor. Most monitor stands can’t support that kind of size, regardless of whether you’re using something like a 42-inch LG C4 or Samsung’s massive Odyssey OLED G9. This arm from Wali looks inconspicuous, but it’s kept my monitor—the KTC G42P5—stable for over a year without even a hint of droop. —Jacob Roach

Photograph: Luke Larsen

Branch Monitor Arm for $129: As I’ve discovered while testing monitor arms, many of them use the same exact parts with only minor differences in branding. You likely wouldn’t know that just by looking at the Amazon listing or even the company’s photos. I tested the Branch Monitor Arm, for example, and discovered that it’s nearly identical to the BenQ Ergo Arm. It’s a solid option and slightly cheaper, but it doesn’t come with the reinforcement plate to protect your desk, and the dual-arm version isn’t as versatile.

Monoprice Workstream Single Monitor Arm for $83: I’m using this dual version of this monitor arm to hold a 32-inch ultrawide monitor and a wide vertical monitor, and it’s been treating me wonderfully for several months. The arms move smoothly and don’t sink under the weight of the screens. It’s also one of the few monitor arms that has a clamp large enough for my thick 5-inch desktop. —Julian Chokkattu

Pout Eyes 12 Monitor Arm for $55: This was previously my pick as a solid budget monitor arm option. You have to be very careful with super cheap monitor arms on Amazon, but that’s not to say there’s nothing good out there. I tested this one out based on the clean look and cheap price, and although it’s far from perfect, I found a lot to like about it. First, there’s the design. It’s a simple touch, but the dual-tone, gray-and-black aesthetic has a bit more flavor than your average all-black monitor arm. The mechanism in the arm is mechanical, or “spring-assisted,” as the company says, meaning the motion isn’t as fluid as a gas spring. Unfortunately, it appears it’s no longer being sold directly to consumers, and is primarily a business-only product

AmazonBasics Adjustable Desk Mount Arm.

Photograph: Luke Larsen

AmazonBasics Adjustable Desk Mount Arm for $29: I’ll set aside the fact that the first version of this I received was beat up and busted, like it had been used (and even the replacement box had a big hole in it). But really, when it comes down to it, your monitor (and your neck) deserves something better than this. It might function better than some of the plastic, bottom-of-the-barrel stuff you’ll find on Amazon, but this old-school pole design means adjustments are inconvenient to make. It’s also pretty shaky, and I couldn’t get it to be as stable as other monitor arms I tested.

Mount-It! Heavy Duty Dual Monitor Arm for $322: I used this mount to hold up my 34-inch ultrawide monitor for years, and it worked like a charm. It can hold screens between 15 and 34 inches (up to 20 pounds). It’s adjustable, has built-in cable management, and doesn’t look hideous. It uses the VESA mounting standard, so make sure the monitor you have supports that. —Julian Chokkattu

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I tested the Premium plan extensively in the UK and briefly in Europe. It was quick and easy to set up in the Saily app and kept me connected as I roamed, offering decent speeds up to around 300 Mbps on 5G networks in city center locations, inevitably dropping off to 4G and around 15 Mbps in more rural spots. The specific speeds you’ll get depend entirely on the local network. Saily piggybacks on local providers, mainly connecting to EE and Vodafone during my month of testing.

The Ultra plan includes 30 GB of high-speed data. In this case, high-speed simply means unfettered; the actual speed you get depends on coverage where you are. After that 30 GB is gone, you get unlimited throttled data at up to 1 Mbps. In practice, I found this lower speed was enough for messaging, web scrolling, and navigation, but anything data-hungry, like video, is out.

It’s worth noting that the 30 GB limit is for the month. Most folks use around 20 GB of data in a month, so 30 GB sounds like a lot. But consider that you are probably connected to Wi-Fi most of the time at home or work, and you may not be when traveling. That 30 GB can disappear surprisingly quickly, and you should take advantage of Wi-Fi whenever you can on your travels. One of my top travel tips is to download videos and maps before you go, or when you’re connected to Wi-Fi.

If you’re only visiting one or two countries, it’s probably better to get a pay-as-you-go plan for that specific region or country. For example, Saily offers unlimited data in the UK for 15 days for $49, but there’s a fair usage policy that will throttle you after 5 GB in a single 24-hour period (until the next day). Unlimited data across Europe (35 countries) for a month will cost you $72, with the same 5 GB daily limit. You could also just buy 20 GB of data to use over 30 days for $23 in France or $31 in the UK.

Having used a few different international eSIM and regular SIM services for travel over the years, Saily compares favorably on performance and ease of use but is relatively expensive. That said, most other eSIM services don’t come with a bundle of extras.

Plenty of Perks

Saily Ultra will be a hard sell for most folks simply looking at the data, but frequent travelers will appreciate the plentiful perks. Here’s what you get:

Screenshot

• 1x Airport Lounge Pass per month: Airports can be noisy and uncomfortable, but airport lounges offer quieter spaces where you can work or relax, with fast Wi-Fi, comfier seating, and complimentary food and drink. If you’re stuck in an airport for a few hours, a lounge pass can make your wait as painless as possible. With Saily Ultra, you get one free pass per month for one person. It generates a QR code in the app that’s valid for 30 minutes. Here’s the complete list of supported lounge destinations. You also get a free lounge pass for that trip if your flight is delayed for more than two hours (contact support in the app).
• 1x Fast-Track Pass per month: You can skip the long security queue with fast-track and get straight through into the terminal. With Saily Ultra, you get one free fast-track pass for one person, generated as a QR code in the app. Here’s the complete list of supported fast-track destinations. Availability is far more limited than with the lounge pass, so I was unable to test this.
• Online Security Tools: You get access to NordVPN, NordPass, NordLocker, and Incogni with an activation code in the Saily app. Saily’s parent company is Nord Security, so it makes sense that its popular VPN service, password manager, and secure cloud storage are included. Incogni is a privacy tool that can help you remove personal data from the internet.

Saily lists several other perks on its website, including priority support, an ad blocker, and 8 percent back in Saily credits. The ad blocker is handy and also reduces your data usage, and you can use any credits you accrue to buy data plans or extra perks, like additional lounge passes. It’s also worth noting that lounge and fast-track benefits rollover for up to three months if unused, though you can’t share them. Saily also lists a ClassPass subscription on the site right now, but that wasn’t available when I tested. The perks are subject to change, so it’s important to check what’s included at the time of purchase.

An Apollo analysis of 321 occupations found that wages in jobs highly exposed to AI grew 6.7% more slowly after 2023, with no statistically significant employment effect. The gap was 10.7% in the lowest-paid quartile and absent in the highest.

The first measurable mark AI has left on the labour market is not unemployment. Apollo’s chief economist Torsten Slok says the employment effect so far is insignificant, and that the visible damage is to pay.

His analysis with Sania Edlich found that wages in occupations highly exposed to AI grew 6.7% more slowly after 2023 than in low-exposure work. Employment in those occupations showed no statistically significant change.

The distribution is the part worth sitting with. The gap was 10.7% in the bottom wage quartile, 5.4% in the second and 4.0% in the third, and there was no significant effect at all in the top quartile.

The method is unusual and worth stating. The authors matched 321 occupations to labour statistics data from 2015 to 2025, using the Anthropic Economic Index, which measures observed AI usage from actual model interactions rather than theoretical exposure.

They are candid about the limits. Exposure is measured from one company’s usage data, only 321 of roughly 800 occupations were matched, and their most dramatic figure, a 24.3% gap for service workers, is flagged as a small subsample to be treated with caution.

Other evidence points the other way. US statisticians found a 0.2% fall in jobs across 18 exposed occupations while payrolls overall grew 0.8%, and Goldman Sachs reported faster declines in openings in fields exposed to AI substitution, in a market where new entrants are already being squeezed.

Diane Gherson, formerly IBM’s chief human resources officer, offers a reason the job losses may be hard to see. Companies are quietly hiring fewer people into high-attrition, lower-wage roles rather than announcing layoffs.

She also names an accounting distortion that pushes the same way. Severance can be booked as a one-off restructuring charge that investors discount, while retraining lands in operating expenses every quarter, which makes cutting look better on paper than reskilling.

The counterexample she reaches for is European. Ikea retrained call centre staff as remote interior design advisers after automating much of their previous work, and the resulting service has been widely reported as a business worth around €1.3bn.

Slok’s wider claim is that the economy is getting more dynamic rather than smaller, with business formation at the highest rate on record. He also concedes the productivity payoff is unproven, since margins outside the largest technology companies have not yet risen.

Europe has no equivalent study, which is the gap worth noticing. The wage channel Apollo describes would be invisible in most European labour data, and TNW has already reported what AI is actually doing to jobs here without anyone measuring pay this way.

Uri Tuchman decided a musician friend needed a present that could actually make noise. He chose the Hammond organ, that old electromechanical machine whose spinning iron disks and magnetic coils once filled churches and stages with pure tones. Instead of a full console, he built a single octave version he could turn by hand. The result sits somewhere between a careful reconstruction and a living demonstration of how sound can come from metal moving past a coil.

He began with these keys, the white ones made of strong maple wood and the black ones from a denser hardwood that didn’t have a fancy name. Each key boils down to a simple on/off switch; press it, and the circuit closes. Twelve keys, twelve switches; that portion seemed almost routine until you looked closer at the woodwork, how clean the cuts were, and how perfectly the entire mechanism fit inside the brass frame.

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Next came the pickups. Each is a coil of copper wire wrapped around a steel rod, similar to how a guitar pickup works. The coil is up against a revolving tonewheel. When the edge of the iron disk moves past the rod, the changing magnetic field creates a little current. The little current is the note. Uri coiled the coils carefully to ensure that the signal was powerful enough to drive a standard guitar amp with no further electronics in between the pickups and the amp. One key, one tonewheel, and twelve notes.

The tonewheels themselves had to be built of iron or steel because it was the only metal that had enough of an effect on the magnetic field to produce a useful signal. Uri had them laser cut to ensure precise results. The edges are not sharp gear teeth, but rather smooth rounded profiles designed to produce something similar to a sine wave when they spin past the pickup. The tough part is finding the perfect spacing between those profiles. Equal temperament necessitates ratios based on the twelfth root of two, which is a tall order considering you’re working with metal; gears and cut disks can only scrape the surface of those ratios. Hammond’s first machines never quite achieved perfect equal temperament, but they came close enough that the ear was content to accept the result, and that minor imperfection became part of the instrument’s character. Uri’s smaller set operates on the same principle: the disks rotate on a common shaft powered by a hand crank and a few gears.

Because everything can spin at any pace you like, tuning is entirely up to you. If you spin it too slowly or too fast, every note begins to tremble. That constraint becomes a feature in the finished instrument. Changing the speed of the crank while a key is still held down causes all of these sliding warbling effects that a fixed speed motor could never achieve. The device simply plugs into a guitar amplifier. No fancy Leslie speakers, no drawbars, and no frequency doubling. You get the raw output of twelve mechanical oscillators.

The finished organ is pretty compact, made largely of brass and wood, with dark iron disks poking out from the inside. It appears more like a well-made tool than a polished musical instrument. Which is suitable for the project. Uri has a long history of creating things that clearly demonstrate how they work. This organ does the same. The wheels spin, the keys close the circuit, and the pure tones appear as soon as the crank reaches the proper speed. The sound is a little thin compared to a full-on Hammond, and it’s intentionally faulty, but the mechanism is obvious.
[Source]

“In a perfect world, field and maintenance workers would go right to the system, search for a part, find it, and be on their way. However, many have a hard time locating what they need.”

 — Robbie Thompson, EY Americas Energy Supply Chain and Operations Leader

ERP modernization programs rank among the most capital-intensive initiatives in asset-intensive operations. The business case rests on automation, predictive maintenance, integrated procurement, and real-time inventory visibility. However, each of these capabilities depends on something a new platform cannot improve on its own : the quality of MRO data in the material master.

A new ERP changes how data is processed, connected, and used.. The content of that data stays exactly as it was on migration day. Duplicate records, unstructured descriptions, missing classifications, obsolete part numbers, and broken bills of material travel into a modern system intact, and the platform then acts on all of them.

“In B2B and MRO contexts, incorrect product data creates duplicate ordering, wrong-part procurement, and downstream operational disruption.”

 — SunTec India

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In ERP modernization programs, those consequences take five recurring operational and financial forms.

➔ Inflated Working Capital: Duplicate SKUs hold the same physical parts under separate records, which raises carrying costs while availability stays where it was.

➔ Procurement Leakage: The organization sources the same item from multiple suppliers at variable price points, because spend sits fragmented across duplicate records and resists consolidation.

➔ Extended Mean Time to Repair (MTTR): Incomplete bills of material and broken spare-to-asset linkages delay parts identification during repair events, and asset availability falls as a result.

➔ Inaccurate Financial Reporting: Duplicate and obsolete records overstate inventory and asset values, which creates exposure during an external audit.

➔ Constrained Planning Accuracy: Inconsistent attribute and classification data undermine demand forecasting, criticality scoring, and inventory optimization at the catalog level.

How Modern ERP Platforms Compound Poor Data Quality

Modern ERP platforms remove the manual intermediary that legacy systems relied on. Automated reordering, predictive maintenance algorithms, spend analytics, and inventory optimization operate directly on master data and skip per-transaction human review. The platform acts on the inputs it receives, and that behaviour represents the core value proposition of modernization in MRO master data management.

The same behavior turns existing data gaps into larger operational liabilities.

In a legacy environment, humans filter data quality issues at the point of transaction. Modernization hands that filtering job back to the data itself.

“When humans step too far back, a small system error can quickly turn into a wider operational problem. AI systems don’t fail only because of bad data; they can also fail by pushing a correct process in the wrong direction.”

 — Forbes

The Real Question: What Does an ERP Modernization Need in Order to Deliver Its Business Case?

The answer is MRO data cleansing, completed before migration and governed after go-live. Clean, deduplicated, and classified MRO data determines whether automated workflows deliver the business case or compound the failure. The platform inherits the data problem and passes it straight through to every process that runs on it. That work belongs upstream, in the data itself, before it ever reaches the new system.

Modernize MRO Operations: Cleanse, Govern, and Migrate

Phase 1: Cleanse MRO Data in Dependency Order Against a Stable Baseline

The team cleanses the current material master before it finalizes the migration design. The order of activities carries as much weight as the activities themselves, because each one consumes the output of the one before it:

1. Description normalization to ISO 8000-compliant noun-modifier-attribute format. Structured descriptions come first, because deduplication, taxonomy mapping, and catalog search all read these fields.

2. Deduplication across item masters, vendor masters, and cross-site records. Structured attributes turn duplicate detection from string matching into attribute comparison, which surfaces the pairs that free text hides.

3. Taxonomy mapping to UNSPSC, ECLASS, or another industry classification standard. Mapping runs once per surviving record, which spares the team a second round of adjudication after merges complete.

4. Attribute enrichment from OEM catalogs and verified supplier databases, applied to the records that survive consolidation.

5. Obsolete record identification and deletion flagging, carried out after consolidation so that the accurate record survives and its weaker twin retires.

6. BOM-to-asset linkage for critical spares, built last so that every link points at a stable, classified, enriched record.

Subject-matter experts review records after automated processing. Their review covers ambiguous duplicates, criticality classifications, regulated items, and BOM linkage decisions that call for field-level expertise of specific assets and operating environments.

Phase 2: Establish Governance Before Migration

Governance established before migration embeds itself in the new platform’s configuration. Teams that retrofit it after go-live find it harder to enforce and easier to bypass. The work includes:

• Mandatory attribute sets enforced at the point of record creation
• Restricted creation rights held by assigned data stewards by item category
• Duplicate-check workflows embedded in the material requisition process
• Change-control procedures governing the addition, modification, and deletion of records

Phase 3: Migrate Clean MRO Data

Clean, governed data turns validation into confirmation rather than discovery. Predictive maintenance, automated reordering, and spend analytics receive the structured, complete, and deduplicated inputs they need to deliver the operational returns the modernization promised: reduced downtime, optimized inventory, and consolidated spend.

MRO Data Cleansing: Automation with Human Oversight

MRO data cleansing has historically faced four constraints: timeline, cost, expert availability, and consistency at scale. Manual review at enterprise catalog depth ran slowly, cost heavily, and produced inconsistent results across thousands of records handled by multiple analysts.

AI-assisted approaches changed each of these constraints. Capabilities now standard in MRO cleansing programs include:

• NLP-driven deduplication that identifies semantic duplicates across records whose descriptions and abbreviations differ
• Machine learning classification engines that map items to target taxonomies at enterprise volume
• Automated attribute enrichment against OEM catalogs and supplier databases

Human oversight remains essential throughout the cleansing process. Subject-matter experts review confidence scores on automated decisions, audit samples drawn from high-volume operations, and apply full adjudication to records that carry operational, safety, or compliance stakes.

The Business Case: Four Constraints Shape the Build-or-Buy Decision

➔ Material masters at enterprise scale demand a time commitment that internal teams manage only by keeping attention away from their primary operations.

➔ Domain expertise spans equipment, parts, suppliers, regulatory standards, and industry taxonomies, and few internal teams hold that combination end to end.

➔ The supporting tooling stack covers NLP deduplication, ML classification, agentic enrichment, and validation databases, and building it for a single program ties up substantial capital.

➔ Consistency across thousands of records depends on standardized workflows that mature over repeated engagements, not a single one.

Specialized MRO data cleansing services close these gaps. They provide domain expertise, technical infrastructure, and standardized workflows for assessment, cleansing, enrichment, and governance, leaving internal teams free to focus on core business operations and enterprise growth.

Conclusion: Clean MRO Data Is Critical to ERP Modernization 

The bigger question for modernization leaders is the data, not the platform. Every modern ERP processes MRO data at scale. The decision that matters is whether the data arrives clean, complete, and governed well enough for the organization to trust the maintenance, procurement, inventory, and reporting processes the platform will run on it.

MRO data cleansing therefore needs to be completed before migration, when defects can still be resolved without disrupting live workflows. Prioritize records with the greatest operational impact, establish clear ownership, and embed validation rules in the new environment before go-live.

It reduces the need for manual workarounds, gives automated processes more dependable inputs, and makes future data issues easier to identify and correct. In this way, data quality becomes part of how the organization sustains the value of ERP modernization after implementation. 

Crystal ball: Oura is facing a proposed class action lawsuit over the accuracy of its sleep-tracking claims. Filed this week in San Francisco by Clarkson Law Firm, the complaint argues that Oura’s smart rings can’t directly detect the physiological signals needed to assess sleep quality or identify sleep stages, and instead lean on AI-generated estimates the suit says amount to “a coin flip’s chance of being correct.”

The lawsuit takes aim at a core feature of the product: its ability to turn data collected from a wearer’s finger into scores for sleep, readiness, and activity. Oura rings track measures like heart activity and skin temperature, then run that data through software to generate sleep reports.

But the complaint argues this approach can’t deliver the same information as a clinical sleep study. Sleep stages, it says, are determined through brain and eye measurements that require electrodes on the scalp and sensors near the eyes.

“Sleep happens in the brain, not on one’s finger,” the complaint states.

Oura has marketed its ring as “built for accuracy” and offering “unparalleled accuracy,” according to the filing. The complaint says the company has claimed 79% accuracy in its measurements and, more recently, 95% sleep-staging accuracy compared with clinical sleep labs.

The complaint alleges Oura marketed rings costing $300 or more as tools capable of tracking sleep and identifying its four stages. It argues those claims overstate what a finger-worn device can do, since determining sleep stages requires the scalp electrodes and eye sensors used in clinical sleep studies.

The plaintiffs argue that Oura’s marketing leaves consumers with the impression that the ring can measure sleep the same way a lab can. They say consumers may use the device’s reports to shape health-related decisions, even though its estimates may not reflect their actual sleep.

The lawsuit follows years of online complaints from Oura users questioning the accuracy of the ring’s sleep reports. Some have said the device logged a strong night of sleep when they felt exhausted. Others have questioned its ability to identify REM and deep sleep.

The complaint asks the court to stop Oura from making what it calls misleading claims about the ring’s capabilities, and seeks restitution for consumers who bought Oura products based on those claims. Oura did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apple doesn’t even seem to be trying with App Store Review. Users should not be the ones who find problem apps, but over and over, that is what is happening. And, it’s happened again with a renovation app hiding Russian bank functionality.

No question, Apple has the resources to protect us from bad apps, and, no question, it keeps telling regulators that it has. As regulators around the world press for third-party firms to run iPhone App Stores, Apple consistently protests that only it can do a good job of keeping bad apps at bay.

It is absolutely true that if, or when, the door is open to rival App Stores, there will be a flood of apps that set out to defraud users. But if you’re going to hold up the App Store Review process as the last thin line of defense, you have to make it work and Apple is repeatedly failing.

Staggering and repeated mistakes

In August 2026, after countries such as the UK outlawed “nudifying” apps, for instance, The Independent has found several still on the App Store. One unnamed example lets users upload images into scenes called “bedroom rape.”

As keeps happening, Apple has now removed that app. But it passed App Store review and was only taken down when Apple was asked about it by that newspaper.

There are ways that developers can try skirting around the App Store Review process. They can, at least in theory, present an app that retrieves images and other assets from a website.

And then once the app is in the store, they can change those assets, or redirect the website. Apple would need to keep checking apps after they’ve passed the review process.

There are an incredible number of apps being submitted to the App Store every day, so periodic rechecking is time-consuming and expensive. But Apple cannot claim to be this protector of us all and then say except where it costs too much.

It appears, too, that in the case of that abhorrent “bedroom rape” app, Apple may have been able to catch it during the regular review process. That’s because the listing for the app reportedly featured descriptions and even graphic videos.

If the developer originally listed the app with something innocuous, then surely it uploading anything else should have triggered a new review. Developers have legitimate reasons to update their listings, but those listings are hosted on Apple’s servers so any change should be spotted and at least flagged for attention.

Gaming the system

There are too many apps being submitted and it’s at least conceivably possible for developers to make certain changes after being accepted. But it really does not appear as if Apple’s App Review team is doing its job.

For instance, long-time developer Jeff Johnson has detailed how he spotted and investigated a suspicious app. He dug into developer’s company and checked the validity of cited reviews. There were obvious clues from the start.

Five-star reviews purportedly from the App Store, but including dates months before the app was released. Image credit: Jeff Johnson.

Johnson has two Safari extensions in the Mac App Store, and noticed that the same section includes one with a 4.9 out of 5 star rating. However, TabControl, which is still available in the App Store, unquestionably was not showing a genuine App Store rating.

Instead, the whole “4.9” part was a banner in the poster image, it has nothing to do with the App Store. At time of writing, there is no genuine App Store rating.

“This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview,” says the App Store listing.

That’s a little odd when the app’s official website says that the extension is currently being used by “5,000+ Safari users.”

Johnson also found a number of purported App Store reviews listed on that site. These now appear to have been removed, but Johnson shows screengrabs including reviews that are dated from before the app was on the App Store.

“Do I expect Apple App Store review to do the research that I’ve done in this blog post?” writes Johnson. “Well, yes. Yes I do!”

We do too. It just isn’t happening with enough regularity.

“Practically speaking, App Store review didn’t even need to go as far down the rabbit hole as I did,” he continues. “The ‘4.9 out of 5’ stars in the App Store screenshot should have been a red flag.”

As he points out, Apple has all the details of all the ratings and reviews of every app from every country, so the App Store Review team should know it’s false advertising.

Even among more legitimate-seeming apps, though, Apple is ignoring clear problems. In AppleInsider research, for instance, we found that many price tiers listed for the “Simply Piano” app bore no relation to what the developer actually charges.

In that case, the developer first nonsensically claimed that it was a currency conversion issue. Then when that didn’t wash, they said that Apple keeps listing old prices because some users remain on those subscription rates.

Left: Simply Piano’s listing for a one year individual plan in the UK App Store. Right: the same plan as charged inside the app downloaded from the App Store. Note the difference, it equates to $109. Screenshots taken 13 August 2026.

We reported this to Apple in June 2026, but the issue has not been addressed. Right now on the UK version of the App Store, Simply Piano’s listed price for an individual annual subscription is about $109 less than the app then charges.

It can’t go on

Apple is actually right about third-party App Stores, it is a dangerous and even frightening prospect that apps will not be tested and reviewed. It is true that we can’t automatically trust an app and just download it to see if we like it.

We’re already there in the official App Store. Trust in the App Store is already eroded, and it’s entirely Apple’s own fault.

The positive side is that for now it is under Apple’s control and so Apple can do something about all of this. There was the recent moment, for instance, when it pulled Telegram practically the moment that a user posted porn on it.

Apple also quickly restored it after the issue was resolved, so that’s another positive thing. But the Telegram issue was one user reportedly doing this deliberately to take down the app.

Grok flooded X with AI-generated porn in January 2026, some of it featuring minors. Reportedly Apple did threaten to remove Grok, and it did reject an update.

But the app remained on the App Store throughout. Apple rattled the sabers, and threatened removal. It didn’t actually do anything to prevent a horrific situation.

Maybe you can make a case that the App Store Review team gets tricked by developers replacing their listings or assets. And Apple surely isn’t lying when it proclaims that its App Review process prevented more than $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2025.

What we cannot know, though, is how much fraud actually got through. We cannot know how much of that $2.2 billion was only prevented because of users like Johnson.

The Grok incidents were in your face headline news that caused global outrage, and the world’s richest man was publicly laughing about it. If that isn’t enough to get an app blocked, it’s no longer that the review process is about safety, it’s apparently about which developers have the most clout.

You shouldn’t have to be the one to investigate apps you want to try. That is the future of third-party App Stores, and that is a future to be fought.

But that future is here with the first-party App Store we already have. And this inability to trust an App Store is here, right now, because Apple will not do what it keeps saying it is doing and what it is charging developers to do.

Updated August 21 1:00 PM ET: The Russian T-Bank client “K8chen Pro” has made it to the top of the app store, masquerading as a 3D-rendering kitchen renovation assistant.