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Comment by rbecker | Hacker News Reader

> I completely agree with it. Epic publicly and blatantly bypassed multiple App Store restrictions with their move today.

App Store policy is not law - its terms are unilaterally set by Apple. Citing it as justification makes no sense.

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company policies are a funny thing.

I know of a business that had a policy that fired someone for missing work 3 times without notice. So... an employee missed work 5+ times and then got fired. That employee sued AND WON because the company didn't fire at 3, they waited until 5. If a company has a policy or ToS they need to enforce it.

The own the platform, they designed it, built it, and maintain it. They have every right to set the rules for it.

And they operate within the legal framework of various jurisdictions, which can and will force Apple to change their behavior.

Yeah! Get that government boot on their necks!! /s

Yes, in fact, this is one of the reasons government was created.

Apple's marketcap exceeds the GDP of most countries, it's hard to feel sympathetic given its size.

https://www.investopedia.com/news/apple-now-bigger-these-5-t...

Until regulations steps in, and mandates to be more fair and open, or to break up the company, or to allow multiple app stores (by competitors).

At the end of the day, and iPad is a general computing device, and it will probably be treated as such in courts, where there are precedents on this.

And Apple markets the iPad and other various apple devices as general computing too.

What does it being a general computing device have to do with anything? Is it the only general computing device available? PC's and Androids exist, how is Apple in anyway a monopoly when they don't even have control of the market?

The are abusing a dominant position (as the only seller of iOS devices) to cross subsidise their software business and muscle out competitors in the services space (Apple Music vs other music services). That is a fairly clear breach of antitrust rules.

The prohibition of third party transactions or third party App stores are less clear to breach, but there is a case to be made...

Pandora, Spotify, Tidal, and Amazon music are all available on the App Store - they are not muscling any competitors out. If they were those apps would simply not be available.

a) There are no rules that mandate that a "general computing device" must be open in whatever arbitrary way you've not defined.

b) There are no precedents that state that a platform must have competing App Stores or make them freely available for anyone to publish. In fact the opposite is the default in companies today e.g. PSN, XBox, Tesla, Shopify, Salesforce.

If you have case law that contradicts this please by all means provide it.

Perhaps a case related to open source licensing? Here's one that's still in progress:

https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog-whitesource/t...

Of course, Apple had the foresight to purge GPL apps from its store:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990

Even if this is true, the doublespeak of this being about protecting the user (as opposed to the shareholder) is tiring.

> They own the platform

And the users who buy Apple's devices, what do they own? Clearly not the devices, if Apple still decides how they may be used.

Barring clauses that are deemed unenforceable, Terms and Conditions are effectively the same as the law when it comes to interacting with Apple's services. Citing them is actually fair, since the courts will uphold enforceable clauses if someone sues.

If you want to argue that Apple’s TOS are unenforceable, then that’s a different argument.

The law allows for Apple to do this. You don’t have to use Apple products. You don’t have to use the Apple transaction system. It is not a commons, it is not a monopoly. There are other platforms and e-commerce solutions.

If you want to regulate Apple’s behavior, introduce a law (I would support a law to regulate Apple’s cut of App Store transactions). Fortnite getting booted isn’t going to get a bill sponsored or have antitrust regulators take notice. It’s a breach of contract currently, no more no less.

Except there was literally a hearing last week, and multiple plans in EU to stop this sort of behavior, exactly because of the evidence that companies like Epic Games bring to light.

It is simply an investigation.

There are no plans in place to force Apple, Google etc. to do anything. And it's not even clear what outcome the EU is even seeking.

If past cases are something to go by, there is a very real risk here for Apple and they're digging their own regulatory grave by behaving like this.

Not doing anything might be worse. Within a month, all major money-making apps would make a similar move, hiding the functionality from Apple’s review process and then activating it once most of their users have upgraded.

Apple could spend time and money trying to find such hidden features, but that would mean many major apps would see no updates. That’s a losing game, too, even if they are successful at detecting such hidden functionality.

They must have thought about this and decided this is their optimal initial response (it need not be the final one. They can put the app back in their store in seconds)

I can understand that. Allowing this is guaranteeing the end of the App Store. Fighting gives them a chance salvaging it, parts of it, or at least, delay the inevitable.

> Allowing this is guaranteeing the end of the App Store

Is it though? Has the play store ended because Google allows side loading?

The issue here is Apple simply doesn't really take risks and innovate to be the first in an industry. They take existing tech, polish them VERY well, and then try to make a lot of money off of it.

Problem is they're trying to leverage their position to run other companies out of business (Spotify and Apple music for example, or Netflix and Apple TV+)

End of the App Store because all high-grossing products would stop bringing in money.

Doesn’t take risks? They spent lots of money on hardware for machining aluminium (a move that turned out good, I think), developed the Touch Bar (got mixed reviews), a new keyboard (not that successfully), decided to move to ARM CPUs in the desktop (potentially, that could bite them in the future. If x86 CPUs ever become faster than Apple ones, the speed difference with Windows may lose them customers for their high-margin devices), etc.

None of those are really innovations with new products, but yeah.

I guess this is moving away from the main conversation. But I don't really see the App Store going anywhere even if third party app stores were allowed.

And they can't dig fast enough IMO. This should have been handled years ago when it was already obviously a problem.

Last I checked the Sherman Antitrust Act is still a law.

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