Apple Quietly Blocks Updates for Popular ‘Vibe Coding’ Apps
March 19, 2026
Apple has quietly blocked AI “vibe coding” apps, such as Replit and Vibecode, from releasing App Store updates unless they make changes, The Information reports.
Apple told The Information that certain vibe coding features breach long-standing App Store rules prohibiting apps from executing code that alters their own functionality or that of other apps. Some of these apps also support building software for Apple devices, which may have contributed to a recent surge in new App Store submissions and, in some cases, slower approval times, according to developers.
I had to double-take when I saw that I had written only six weeks ago the piece <a href="https://webdirections.org/blog/here-comes-everybody-again/”>Here comes everybody (again)</a>.
In it, I concluded
Steve Jobs was fond of quoting Wayne Gretzky: “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”
The puck is going somewhere new. The democratisation of software creation is not a minor trend. It’s a fundamental shift in the relationship between people and technology, as significant as the shift from desktop to mobile. From professional to user-generated content. Indeed I’d argue more significant than these.
Software will be created by everyone, often ephemeral. Shared like content, discovered through social and algorithmic channels, and used in contexts we can’t imagine yet. Web technologies will be the substrate for most of this creation, because the web is the only platform open enough to support it.
The mobile platforms that dominate our digital lives were built for a different world. They assume software is a product made by professionals and distributed through official channels. They assume users need protection from the complexity of software. They assume gatekeeping is a feature, not a bug.
These assumptions, however well intentioned when formulated nearly 2 decades ago, are now antiquated. And the platforms built on them — for all their current dominance — may find themselves on the wrong side of a generational shift in how software gets made, shared, and used.
This shift isn’t coming, it’s arrived (like William Gibson said of the future, “it’s just not evenly distributed”).
Which platforms will adapt to support it, and which will discover too late that they were skating to where the puck used to be?
It seems we’re starting to get some answers to that question.
