Hacker News Reader

Comment by landryraccoon | Hacker News Reader

On one hand, it's argued that Apple has an incentive to act against their customers because they want to sell apps on the app store.

On the other hand, it's argued that Apple doesn't care about their developers because they enforce draconian regulations on what iOS developers are allowed and not allowed to do, and don't hesitate even to shut down billion dollar apps (i.e., Fortnite).

I have mixed feelings about Apple's walled garden, both as a developer and a user, but when it comes to user privacy, I'm firmly in Apple's camp. I can't think of a single other large tech company that has a strong stand in favor of user privacy and acted on that. Basically, if Privacy is a killer feature for a consumer, then Apple is literally the only game in town.

View on HN

We just need to look at how they handled the San Bernadino shooting and requests for a phone unlock to find a supposed "lying dormant cyber pathogen".

Every other company would have been falling over themselves to unlock a terrorists iPhone.

Apple said no, hired Ted Olsen, and litigated (along with lots of other less well known cases).

This may have even hurt them in some consumers eyes (hard to understand them protecting someone who killed a bunch of people). So the PR risk was very significant.

So they do seem to have a pretty committed consumer focus (and now make money because of that).

It is virtually inevitable though that someone will go after them (anti-trust etc) because this is a game of billions and folks who for example do in-game loot boxes (fortnite) and marketing (facebook) etc are going to be in regulators ears and in ny times ads and op-eds calling for this horrible situation to be broken up.

> and don't hesitate even to shut down billion dollar apps (i.e., Fortnite).

It's fairly obvious that, given Epic was saying "you can pay $2 less to get the same amount of vbucks" that Apple was going to lose a huge portion of revenue from the App if they didn't pull it, and if they actually left it up, they'd have to allow every other app to institute third-party payment processors as well to not appear like they're playing favorites and the PR nightmare that would come from that.

Given that vbucks are just made up and have no marginal cost, Epic can say whatever they like about how much less they can charge for them.

It doesn’t mean anything at all.

I'm saying that Apple was going to get shafted on payments and making money from Epic anyways if they left it up because Epic was charging $2 less when paying directly via a card and bypassing in-app purchases.

https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/the-fortnite-m...

Apple would have been shafted if they left it up because then all enforcement of their rules would be up for grabs.

Anyone who wanted to flout any rule could claim Apple was playing favorites with Epic.

It has nothing to do with being screwed out of $2 per purchase of in-game currency.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com