Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS | Hacker News Reader

Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

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970 pointsmadtrax1,000 comments

Epic perhaps thought Apple might show them grace after the lawsuit in the US. A kind of repeat of the Apple-Samsung litigation where everyone has a "it's just business" attitude and keeps doing business together while simultaneously suing each other. Apple on the other hand has decided they will show them no quarter. I don't think they're being emotional about it. I think it's to show every other developer that they will actually enforce the DPLA that everyone signs, and they won't turn the other cheek.

Parts of Apple's DPLA are likely unenforceable in the EU going forward.

Attempting to enforce an "illegal" contract provision seems pretty "emotional" to me. Apple is finally in a position to lose their monopoly grip on a platform software store, and they clearly will stop at nothing to stop the loss of that revenue, this is obviously an existential problem for them.

It certainly threatens their app store revenue, and by extension market value, so it's rational for them to push back, but by no means is it an "existential problem". Apple is quite a bit more than just the app store.

There's probably risks on both sides here, too: Playing hardball with EU regulators and courts could cost them a lot of money.

> so it's rational for them to push back

If your vision for your company only extends to the next quarterly earnings report, sure, it's "rational."

If you consider the fact that every other participant in the market dislikes this practice, that this dislike has finally risen to the level of government involvement, and that laws are about to be written taking it away from you, then clutching it to your chest is best understood as an emotional position.

It's rooted in a desire to not lose the past while attempting to deny that any other future could possibly exist. It's classic denial, on a trillion dollar corporate level.

I fully agree that what they’re doing now is absurd and way too much. But no resistance at all might expose them to shareholder action in the US.

Still, about 10% of the pushback they’ve been showing so far would have probably been plenty.

Epic doesn't care whether Apple shows "grace", or needs them to, they are going in by force with the backing of the EU legislation. It might just take a year or two longer to get through the courts. They can hold out that long without any problems, preparing their store in the background.

I'm not aware of any duty to deal in the DMA.

You don't have a duty to hire in USA, but you can still get in trouble for illegally firing someone for the wrong cause. Same applies here, this isn't rocket science.

Right, the major difference being that Epic is not an employee of Apple and thus cannot benefit from employment law. The terms of their relationship is governed by contract law, and now the DMA.

DMA, Apple can't just retaliate for Epic complaining about them, this doesn't mean that Apple is forced to deal with everyone they are just banned from retaliating for certain things:

> 6. The gatekeeper shall not directly or indirectly prevent or restrict business users or end users from raising any issue of non-compliance with the relevant Union or national law by the gatekeeper with any relevant public authority, including national courts, related to any practice of the gatekeeper. This is without prejudice to the right of business users and gatekeepers to lay down in their agreements the terms of use of lawful complaints-handling mechanisms.

I am not 100% certain that would apply here, but if the DMA doesn't protect against these things then I am pretty sure that EU will plug that hole to ensure gatekeepers can't retaliate unfairly.

Even if the "hole" is plugged you'd have to prove in court you were being retaliated against. Vibes are not going to be enough. You'd need a decision maker's e-Mail saying "you know what, fuck Epic cancel their account". Without that smoking gun all Apple needs to do is show all the instances of Epic violating their contract. Same if they canceled your account because of violations.

Here it is easy since Apple admitted to it. Them bringing up all of Epics recent criticism of them here works against them, it is like talking a lot about someone's race when you fire them, that doesn't look good in court even if you also gave another reason. For example firing someone with the reason "He was a lazy black guy" could be read as you firing him for being lazy, but I doubt courts would see it that way.

Holy shit what hyperbole. Apple asked for a realistic assurance Epic wasn't entering into a bad faith agreement. Epic decided they couldn't do that so Apple terminated their account. Pretending Epic is a faultless victim is just ludicrous. Not only have they previously violated the developer agreements they've given every indication they're incapable of entering any good faith agreement with Apple.

They've been throwing tantrums against every company they deal with. They want to charge fees on their store and platforms. They want their IAP. But they act offended when any other company wants to charge them to be on their stores.

You should read the US ruling [1]. This is not about Epic criticising Apple.

This is because Epic did things like pushing a hidden IAP system inside Fortnite to evade review and then at a later point switching it on. This sort of thing has been forbidden since the early days of the App Store. It is a fundamental part of the Apple-Developer contract that you allow reviewers access to all functionality.

[1] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/21...

You keep repeating this, but I don’t see how it is relevant. Apple’s rules are not relevant anymore under the DMA. Under the DMA, companies are allowed to set up alternative app stores period. It doesn’t matter if they violate Apple’s App Store rules prior. The point of the DMA is exactly that you can make your own App Store that doesn’t have to comply with Apple’s rules.

I can understand that Apple wants to safeguard their platform by requiring notarization, etc. But they are playing with fire here. One outcome of misbehaving could be that the EC will require full sideloading (Android-style), so that Apple cannot sabotage third party stores anymore, like they are doing now.

> 12. The gatekeeper shall apply fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory general conditions of access for business users to its software application stores, online search engines and online social networking services listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9).

Apple don't get to deny access to their main competitor in this space just as a show of force. That is not fair, reasonable or non-discriminatory.

This will be another issue determined by EU courts, but Apple is not justifying it as a show of force. They're justifying it based on Epic's prior breach of contract and statements they've made. I think based on the record, courts will side with Apple.

Why would a 4 year old breach of contract warrant a ban today instead of 4 years ago? The trigger was that Epic criticized Apple, that doesn't seem like a warranted reason to ban someone even if they did something bad 4 years ago.

Also since the DMA bans arrangement that Epic breached before, there is no reason to suspect that the EU account will breach anything new now, I really doubt EU will let this slide.

> The trigger was that Epic criticized Apple

Epic has been criticising Apple almost every single day.

Apple themselves said that the trigger was Epic criticizing them.

… according to Epic

no, according to the emails that we can all read clear as day

The email I've seen from Schiller presents it as a combination -- it says that Epic has previously broken its agreement with Apple because of disagreements about the rules, and that Epic has publicly disagreed loudly with Apple's DMA rules. The disagreement wouldn't be a problem without the history of violations.

No idea where this will actually go with the EU regulator, but US courts said it was okay for Apple to keep Epic's developer account suspended based on this.

>Apple shared the following statement:

>Epic’s egregious breach of its contractual obligations to Apple led courts to determine that Apple has the right to terminate ‘any or all of Epic Games’ wholly owned subsidiaries, affiliates, and/or other entities under Epic Games’ control at any time and at Apple’s sole discretion.’ In light of Epic’s past and ongoing behavior, Apple chose to exercise that right.

emphasis mine.

presumably apple's ban on epic games is for life, not just for a year or two. and registering a new account doesn't change that - it's just ban evasion.

to wit: you are still banned from reddit or paypal or any other online service, even if you create a new account. if they can link it they'll ban that one too.

and this is a new account that epic games tried to register recently. so it got banned too. Not that complex/hard a concept really, unless you're trying not to understand it.

again, do you think you have a right to create a second reddit account after your first one got banned from the service? how about a bank account, do you get a do-over if you do some fraud and get your first account banned?

> presumably apple's ban on epic games is for life, not just for a year or two. and registering a new account doesn't change that - it's just ban evasion.

They didn't ban every epic account back then, just the violating account. I am pretty sure most of epic games accounts are still there, just the fortnite account got banned.

If Reddit were in the kind of market-dominant position than Apple is, then yes, absolutely, it should have been a right.

Apple has nothing on their side aside from a few tweets criticizing them, that just won't cut it as an exemption to the DMA. It's not like Epic released malware or anything.

Remember that the whole goal of the DMA is that actors like Apple and Google can't decide to block competiton on a whim, the exact thing they are doing right now.

According to the article, they have the official court ruling…

In the US and in most countries, sure that'll be enough but in the EU, the DMA superseded their contracts. Apple might have got away with it if they had limited the ban to outside the EU but as I understand, they didn't.

They don't have a court ruling on this that has any relevance in Europe.

Since the article was talking about Epics worldwide license….

The article is talking about the license for Epic's EU subsidiary, which would have been used to launch an app store only in EU (as the only region where Apple is obligated to make competing app stores possible). When the EC, and possibly later the courts, evaluate whether this is breaking the DMA, a US court ruling permitting the closure of Epic's developer accounts has no bearing.

The EU is a sovereign entity, enforcing its own laws in its own territory. A US court ruling can't compel the EU to allow Apple to violate EU laws when operating in the EU. How would that even work?

> The EU is a sovereign entity, enforcing its own laws in its own territory. A US court ruling can't compel the EU to allow Apple to violate EU laws when operating in the EU. How would that even work?

In a word: treaties. Usual disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer yada yada, but treaties are generally why one country's laws or legal proceedings might affect another country in some way. Think stuff like US copyright law being applied to Europe [1]. I don't actually know how or if anything would even apply in this specific scenario (not a lawyer and I think it's pretty unlikely that the US court ruling would affect the EU DMA here), but treaties are what you'd look at to find out.

[1] Technically those countries passed their own versions of the US law, but it's all hammered out in the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty.

Do EU courts consider sworn foreign testimony entirely inadmissible as evidence? It is a fact that Epic swore before a court of law, a foreign court but still a recognized court of law, that they did all this on purpose. EU law might still not allow for its submission into evidence, I don’t know, but that isn’t nothing either. Unless prohibited by law, a Judge in his professional judgement might still allow it.

Depends on the ruling, judge, and arguments. Law does pay attention to overseas precedence, but it's just another piece of evidence to consider, not final worldwide judgement.

In the case here, Epic doing a behavior to go around a store policy that EU specifically is considering bad may mean they cast aside the US rulings.

I think we’re at least 95% or more in agreement here.

I suspect if the disagreement is in Epic refusing to commit to honoring a contract and the CEO referring to it as requiring "sworn fealty", the actual resolution would be for Apple to show the actual harm in a marketplace violating said contract.

From there a lot of things can happen to negotiate a resolution, such as negotiating penalties for not following said contract.

I don't think Epic will be able to convince a court that there is no resolution when Apple has already said before and now what they would require for Epic to resume their business relationship with Apple.

The EU courts won't, nor will the Commission.

The courts and 49% of people would side with Apple even if it turned out they were grinding up orphans to make iPhones.

a) It is fair and non-discriminatory. Epic was found by the courts to have violated the terms of the agreement that they signed and Apple had the right to terminate it. They have done this with other developers as well.

b) Epic is not their main competitor in anything.

Have any other companies announced credible plans for a competing app store? I'm at least not aware of any, which would absolutely make Epic their main competitor.

It is pretty hilarious how people think some US court judgement would have any relevance on EU anti-trust regulation.

I think you're confused how this works.

Apple doesn't need a court judgement to terminate a contract. They can just do it if they believe terms have been broken. Epic sued them in the US to reverse this decision and the courts found in favour of Apple. The process in the EU starts the same way.

And this is a basic contractual dispute seperate from the DMA which is why the many other parties have not also had their contracts terminated.

Also running an App Store is hard. It's going to take more than a few days to see competitors.

Well, yes, clearly I think you're confused about how this works given you keep thinking that a US court ruling is going to overrule the DMA on EU soil.

The entity that Epic will be complaining to about this will not be a US court. It will be the EC. The EC will look at the text and the intent of the DMA: to permit competing app stores. They'll also note that Apple has (arbitarily and without any technical justification) made a developer account a requirement for launching a competing app store. And finally, they'll note that Apple is terminating the developer accounts of the company most vocal about intending to launch a competing app store.

It doesn't matter what text Apple has in their contract about how they're permitted to close developer accounts for any reason they want to. It doesn't matter that they have a courting ruling from some other country. Apple chose to gatekeep app store competition on membership in the developer program. To prevent this from being used as an end-run on the DMA, the EC just an't allow Apple to terminate the licenses on a flimsy pretext. And "Tim Sweeney tweeted mean things about us" is not going to work.

a) No one has said that a US court ruling has jurisdiction over the EU. Developers have to sign seperate contracts in the countries that their apps are being sold in.

b) Epic's actions e.g. pushing hidden IAP features were a fundamental breach of the contract in all countries where it was signed including EU. It was never about Epic criticising Apple.

c) Apple takes the first move in terminating the contract. Then Epic sues. And then the EU legal system will settle the matter. That is the process.

You keep hammering on point c but nobody in this thread has disagreed about the sequencing.

a -> that is the clear implication of one of the above comments, ie. if it was a legsl use of the contract in the US that somehow will shield them from dma violation, but dma supersedes contracts

How is that at all relevant to future litigation over the DMA, which is what this thread is discussing?

It sounds like you lost the thread, not GP

You’re missing a key point by calling this a “competing app store”. That’s not what it would be. It would simply be Epic’s app store with Epic’s apps in it, the purpose being to maximize Epic’s revenue on Epic’s games. Apple, in case you haven’t noticed, isn’t a game company — they don’t compete with Epic. Microsoft does. Steam does. Apple doesn’t. In fact, given that Epic games haven’t been on iOS in ages, there’s literally zero competition even there.

It’s kind of silly to think that other companies that actually compete with Epic would choose to publish via the Epic store, since they’d just be giving money to their competitor. Either they’ll build their own stores or they’ll continue business as usual, using the device manufacturer’s stores.

To your other point, while a US court judgement is unlikely to have direct relevance to EU regulation, it does help establish a pattern of behavior on Epic’s part.

It’s also important to note that the provisions for establishing an alternative app store are designed to protect the consumer. Repeated violations of contractual agreements is clear evidence of a company’s untrustworthiness, and it would be irresponsible for Apple to do anything other than exercise the termination clause as a result..

Apple absolutely competes with Epic. Mobile in general and iOS in particular are massive markets, both player base and profit wise, for gaming.

On iOS apple has decreed that they deserve 30% of that action. And is now banning the developer of one of the most popular games (on any platform).

By that definition every app developer is a competitor.

And Apple is basically a trillion dollar company. Tens of millions in lost revenue from Epic isn’t going to cause them to lose any sleep at night.

> By that definition every app developer is a competitor.

In a sense, yes. The term "sherlocked (by Apple)" exists because Apple routinely releases its own version of various apps

It's not about these tens of million, it's about control over all of the money, and about control of everything on the device more broadly.

No, it wouldn't be an Epic-only store.

One reason we know this is that Epic Games Store on PC isn't Epic-only.

Another reason we know it is that Apple has (arbitrarily) forbidden app stores that aren't open to third parties. Even if Epic wanted to make it a first-party only store (why?), they couldn't.

You claim that Apple isn't a gaming company. It's true that Apple doesn't really develop or publish games. But the App Store is the world's largest games store, larger than e.g. any of the console games stores or Steam. Every estimate I can find is that significantly more than half the App Store revenue is from games.

Finally, you suggest that nobody would publish games on Epic's store. That might be true on iOS just due to the unreasonable terms Apple set for that (in particular the core platform fee), but it certainly won't be true due to competitors not wanting to give 12% to Epic rather than 30% to Apple. This fear hasn't stopped companies from publishing their games on the PC EGS.

Apple claim that all their requirements are there just to protect the consumers. They might be telling the truth, they might be lying and actually just want to make life as hard as possible for the competing app stores. It's hard for anyone on the outside to be sure which. But terminating the developer account of the most credible competitor on the day DMA enforcement starts is a pretty bad look, and makes it quite hard to believe Apple's story on why the requirements exist.

> Another reason we know it is that Apple has (arbitrarily) forbidden app stores that aren't open to third parties. Even if Epic wanted to make it a first-party only store (why?), they couldn't.

That's a circular argument. Apple is arguing (maybe wrongly) that Epic won't follow the rules. You can't refute that argument by saying "but the rules say they have to follow the rules".

The GP wasn't making an argument about why Epic's account was terminated.

They were making an argument about why Epic wasn't a competitor to Apple. That argument was based on the mistaken belief that Epic was looking to launch a store only for their only games.

In that context it's not a circular argument to point out that a first-party only store cannot be launched on iOS, so obviously that's not what Epic is intending to do.

Yes, such as MacPaw's SetApp marketplace. https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/29/24086792/setapp-subscript...

"it happened via operation of private contract so it is thus presumptively fair and non-discriminatory" is not how the DMA works, at all.

Epic also intentionally broke agreements with Apple before. Non-discriminatory doesn’t mean they have no grounds to terminate Epic’s developer accounts, and Epic is continuing to make themselves look untrustworthy by trying to publicly and explicitly shank Apple. Spotify is also trying to shank Apple in all the same places Epic is, but they also didn’t go behind Apple’s back to deceive the prior review process in contravention to a signed agreement, file suit and spin-out a pre-prepared publicity stunt-filled PR campaign and then go on to court to testify that all of that was done on purpose. Tim Sweeney and Epic did.

It sucks because I was hoping this fight was basically in the rear-view mirror now, but it’s hard to argue Apple has no grounds for calling Epic untrustworthy and not even maintaining an arms-length business relationship in one jurisdiction with them. Who’s to say Epic wouldn’t try something similar again? Apple can still set terms under the DMA, and Tim has been publicly campaigning that these terms violate the DMA which isn’t actually his call to make.

Also one other point:

> Apple don't get to deny access to their main competitor in this space

As of today, and yesterday, and going back to the dawn of the iPhone: Epic isn’t anything in “this space” let alone Apple’s main competitor. They have stated that they intend to compete, and want to compete with Apple in this space, but Epic’s iPhone app marketplace is vaporware. It hasn’t shipped, it doesn’t look like they’re going to be able to ship now, and in its entire history of being discussed, has earned Epic €0.00 to date.

>Epic also intentionally broke agreements with Apple before.

This is funny to point out since they did it specifically to sue over it (you pretty much can't other wise).

So Apple has their draconian 30% cut or there's literally no other way to have an application run on iOS policy, you can't challenge it without breaking it so you can sue, and because you broke it to sue you are now permanently barred from every making another iOS app.

Yea that seems fine, no monopolistic behavior here, it's only 49% of the phone market so it's fine.

They had the alternative of pulling their software on principle and suing, but they wanted the fight they would have by having Apple suspend and then terminate their developer accounts to bring more public opinion to their side, and they sure got the fight. As a developer enrolled in the program, it would have been hard to argue they didn’t have standing as long as what they were arguing had plausible legal merit (it did, it may not have been the winning argument in the end, but it was at least plausible at the beginning and they won on one count).

The goal wasn’t just to sue Apple, it was to shank Apple with one hand while filing suit with another and they had multiple opportunities to get their account unsuspended at the beginning of the lawsuit even while the case proceeded, before it was eventually terminated.

There is no alternative to mobile computing. Both vendors have draconian rules.

These are devices so essential to modern functioning that the regulators need to come and tell both Apple and Google that unlimited web installs are user rights.

Epic is right. Apple and Google are monopolies over an entire class of computing, and it's a 100% artificial racket.

> These are devices so essential to modern functioning that the regulators need to come and tell both Apple and Google that unlimited web installs are user rights.

This might be what you want but without new legislation, because the DMA ain’t saying what you want, regulators are not within their rights to impose this requirement.

You can sideload apks on Android and have alternate app stores too. I don't think the situations are in anyway similar or comparable.

Agreed. Google's lock-in is much more through bundling and must-default agreements.

> You can sideload apks

Just because you can ask your users to build a nuclear fission reactor, doesn't mean that they can or will.

F-droid gets ~3M MAU, with a 70% bounce rate. It's pitiful.

This is a pathetic case for mobile rights and freedom. Practically nobody knows how to make use of this model.

Installing software should be first class, not buried in the settings. It shouldn't have scare walls, either.

Google knows exactly what they're doing with the "freedom" they're letting end users have. 0.1% of users even know about or can leverage it.

I am sorry to push back on this, but this is just incorrect.

The truth is the vast majority of users do not care about sideloading apks. Apple knows this. Google knows this.

However, it is important that it is allowed without any major hurdle (a warning dialog that you need to click OK on is not a major hurdle for me once you consider that many malicious actors will use this sideloading for nefarious purposes).

Google allows it and you are free to use it without major hurdles. Yes, most users don't care to, and that's fine.

> The truth is the vast majority of users do not care about sideloading apks.

You can't really say that since it isn't a common deployment strategy. If web installs of APKs were normal and had no road blocks, then the practice would be commonplace.

The users care about software. There is only one blessed path to get it.

F-Droid is not a good comparison here because the primary motivator for people to use it is ideological, not because it has a wider selection or cheaper prices. The many different app stores in China is a better example of how a somewhat competitive app store landscape could look to the average user.

The largest android manufacturer ships their own alternative galaxy store...

> They had the alternative of pulling their software on principle and suing, but they wanted the fight they would have by having Apple suspend and then terminate their developer accounts to bring more public opinion to their side

I think that gave them much stronger standing and claimed damages.

It's a weaker argument if they voluntarily removed themselves from the AppStore.

Apple could have trotted out some 'We typically work well with developers in Epic's situation, but they never approached us so there was nothing we could do' excuse.

By forcing Apple to take an action, it concretely showed that Apple does in fact remove access if companies tried to forward users to alternate payment methods.

Sure, maybe this was the better strategy given either strategy was going to be a long shot, but they high rolled for what was ultimately a contract renegotiation and lost worse than if they had played their cards differently. Higher risk can mean higher rewards, but in this case it just worked out to be a bigger loss. They were never entitled to the outcome they fought for, but it was their right to fight for it and Apple’s right to defend themselves and their policies.

There is no such thing as “stronger” standing. You either have standing or you don’t. It’s the rule almost everywhere that a party to a contract can seek a declaratory judgment regarding the contract without breaching.

This idea that Epic had to breach to sue is part of a well crafted PR campaign by Epic.

I realize the gravity is a lot less here, but consider Civil Rights protests where people intentionally but peacefully broke (bad) laws in protest. I would consider what Epic did in a similar way.

This isn’t Segregation. Epic isn’t Rosa Parks. Apple isn’t a legislature. Epic’s actions until now have been for a B2B contract renegotiation, not a human rights movement.

People who did fight for civil rights were also punished with the force of law for their civil disobedience. The laws were unjust, but they still had consequences for those who lived under them, otherwise they wouldn’t have had to fight. Epic is also facing the consequences of their actions, but it’s only really important to them that they win. Everybody else invested in this fight (within the EU) will probably be able to get anything they want but Fortnite from some other app marketplace.

Trying to reduce a monopoly isn't as important as civil rights, but it's a lot more important than "B2B contract renegotiation".

Epic wants better terms for everyone, not just their app.

That's Epic's PR spin, but I ain't buying. This was a chance to reduce the fees they pay to Apple, not subject themselves to the customer relationship rules set by Apple and expand into another line of business. The legal, political and PR campaigns were tools in their arsenal to put pressure on Apple.

They lost, but good news for all the not-Epics out there because there's other companies who stand to benefit from the recent Court and Commission-induced changes Apple made to their policies. It just won't be Epic specifically.

That's why I said I realize the gravity isn't the same. I'm trying to point out it's in a similar category, not the same level of importance. Apple might not be a government, but they have a LOT of power and very little accountability. Epic's rule breaking was done to force Apple to show their ugly side, much like how the protests were designed to show how ugly the law and law enforcement was.

Here's the thing when you have a highly asymmetric power relationship, whether it be with a government or a business or any other large organization. You can point out how bad their policies are, and never break a rule, and people will just sort of sadly nod their head in agreement and go back to doing what they do. Or, you can force them to show just how ugly their rules/laws are on in real life -- not just theoretically. The latter actually gets things done, which is why I made the relation between the two things.

Or put more simply: show, don't tell.

Apple's App Store policies are, in my opinion as both an iPhone user and a developer, bad for everyone but Apple. So no, it's not important just for Epic that they win, it's important for the broader community of developers and users. Apple clearly is punishing Epic for fighting them and securing some victories, and personally I don't think we should tolerate that sort of behavior from Apple.

> This is funny to point out since they did it specifically to sue over it (you pretty much can't other wise).

This is simply wrong.

Many have sued Apple over the legalities of the development agreement over the decades. They just always lose.

And Epic could've chosen to follow Spotify and lobby behind the scenes but instead chose the PR move.

> Yea that seems fine, no monopolistic behavior here, it's only 49% of the phone market so it's fine.

iPhone marketshare in the EU is about 22%.

> This is funny to point out since they did it specifically to sue over it (you pretty much can't other wise).

Are you a lawyer? You sound awfully assertive in making this claim, especially with the slight contempt/patronizing tone.

> So Apple has their draconian 30% cut

This notion that 30% is 'draconian' is curious since Steam -- on supposedly open PC -- costs devs more, and even 30% is wrong since it's not 30% below a certain revenue level or in the second year onwards, again in line or less than stores on other platforms.

The PC isn't "supposedly" open, but open. Steam do collect a 30% fee but crucially, they have to work for that fee by competing on core service quality and quality of life features (like cloud saves).

Apple is perfectly entitled to ask for a 30% fee, as long as they allow for competition on equal footing (for clarity, this means they don't try to collect exorbitant rent from their competitors first). Let the free market sort it out.

> and quality of life features (like cloud saves)

You mean like CloudKit?

Apple SDKs exist and do things - including everything Steamworks does and quite a bit more.

If Apple decided to only allow apps distributed through them to use their SDKs or services, then would it would be fine because they'd be like Steam?

As a user, I have to pay for iCloud storage for apps that use it. There is a free tier, sure... which most users will fill very quickly just with device backups and photos alone.

I don't recall ever playing for cloud storage on Steam, though.

They have different QoS levels.

Steam Cloud is truly a backup service. It's not fast even for tiny amounts of data. They'll even kick you over to an even slower lane if you store anything over 250 MB.

Meanwhile, you can do near real-time app synchronization over iCloud between devices.

But yeah, it'd be great if Apple bumped up the free tier size. That said, I've never actually had any problems storing app data on iCloud. Apple users seem to either pay for more storage or not backup to iCloud, so from a developer perspective, eh.

CloudKit uses the user’s iCloud storage for private containers and bills the developers (although it’s usually free) for "public" CloudKit containers[1].

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/icloud/cloudkit/

If you don't like Steam's cut, you can go to Epic or GoG or Origin or Microsoft.

If you don't like Apple's cut, you couldn't (effectively still can't because of the absurd 1 000 000 installs/updates rule) go to any other storefront.

Before you bring up Xbox or Playstation: those devices are not essential computing devices. You can't function in modern society without access to both a computer and a smartphone. That puts a special burden on the companies that effectively own the software stack on those devices.

Not that I see it happen, but lets paint a PC horror scenario:

- Microsoft starts demanding to motherboard and laptop manufacturers to include their Pluton security chip

- Secure Boot can no longer be disabled

- They restructures the Windows kernel in such a way that DirectX is much faster than Vulkan

- They only allow games on the Microsoft Store access to DirectX 12.3 and 13

- Hell, _anything_ not installed from the Microsoft Store has dark-pattern warning pop-ups that make it both too confusing and too scary for the layman to install things from outside the store

- Microsoft also starts to demand a €0.50 fee from any developer that gets more than a million installs - with some updates counting towards installs. _This includes free applications_.

Do you see the problem now? Apple is essentially doing all of these things.

> Before you bring up Xbox or Playstation: those devices are not essential computing devices.

Dude cmon this is not how the legal system works, you can't just pretend that there's such a thing as an "essential computing device" as if iPhones are a human right or some shit

Human right? No. Human necessity in the modern world? Kinda yes. Some businesses are mobile-only now, not just mobile-first. And you need either a computer or a smartphone for many things now. You're really going to be locked out of a big part of normal life without a general computing device.

An Xbox or PS5 is not needed to live a normal life (if you ask my girlfriend it's even the opposite :)

> Dude cmon this is not how the legal system works, you can't just pretend that there's such a thing as an "essential computing device" as if iPhones are a human right or some shit

If I want to file my taxes (in Australia), I need an authentication app that's only available on iOS or Android. I can't use an Xbox or a Playstation. That's the difference.

There are authentication apps on windows, Mac, etc, and you also have the option of using something other than an electronic device.

Before you say desktop OSs are not the same thing, it is to the government. The difference between iOS and macOS is the same as Windows XP and Windows Vista legally, Google only got dinged as a monopoly in the Epic case because of preferential treatment, not because it was "essential" or that the smartphone market is any way distinct or unique enough for that. Microsoft got dinged because it was 95% of the personal computing market in general. Apple is not even close here.

It is fine to suggest abuse and sending warnings, but if you've even remotely looked at any of the legal cases the US government brought against tech companies in the past, you'd know how much of a joke it is when people talk like this.

The app is explicitly not available for desktop:

"Will there be a desktop version of myGovID?

No, a desktop version or browser-based version of myGovID will not be supported. To use myGovID, you will need your own compatible smart device."

https://www.abr.gov.au/media-centre/featured-news/business-s...

And given I'm overseas, I also do not have the option of using something other than an electronic device. To be honest, I don't even know if I could if I were living in Australia.

In the real world, Apple/Android devices are in a completely separate category from gaming consoles.

Sounds like your problem is with your shitty government, not Apple for not accommodating your shitty government.

If we as a society collectively decide that they are, then they are.

I mean, they’re considered so essential that city / municipal governments will give them to poor people either for free or at extremely subsidized prices. Classes are given to tech illiterate or less able people to learn to access governmental services. That pretty much hits the threshold of a legal definition.

Try it out, for the duration of a month only use your smartphone for texting and calls and do not touch any PC. If you balk at that idea, well, there you go.

They give people flip phones, not iPhones.

Why would I not touch a PC? You're just moving goalposts, Apple is not stopping you from buying a Chromebook. That's what anti-trust legislation is about.

> They give people flip phones, not iPhones.

No, they give them smartphones. You are so woefully ignorant.

> Why would I not touch a PC? You're just moving goalposts

I am not, you are. We were talking about how essential these devices are to daily life. My post even explicitly talks about locking down PCs.

It doesn't matter anyway, you are just looking to argue. I wish you good luck in life with that attitude.

Jitterbug (Lively) is the main contractor for these devices, yes they are getting flip phones. Just spend 30 seconds googling before lying because you just make yourself look like a fool.

More to the point, everything you've said is just a lie. I don't want any luck from you.

Sorry dude, this is how the world is working today. A truckload of my local government apps only function on iOS/Android. They don't even have a web-site. They used to have one on the past, but due to "bad experiences" on mobile devices, they shuttered it.

So, yes a smartphone is now an "essential computing device". This is no longer a matter of opinion. Its now a matter of fact.

So your government physically blocks you from entering the government building to get something done? No? Congratulations, you just have a bad government.

I can only watch cable news on TV, am I going to call that an essential computing device too?

I mean we have laws that regulate cable networks so I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

Just read any anti-trust case against FAANG if you want to know how ridiculous your thought process is.

>I can only watch cable news on TV, am I going to call that an essential computing device too?

If that is the only way you can find out about what is happening to the government responsible for your safety and wellbeing or alerts about impending disasters... absolutely!

Phones are literally essential computing devices in modern society as it is the primary source of important information whether it be about family, government, or national emergencies for a large swath of the population.

> Phones are literally essential computing devices in modern society

Cool, it doesn't matter because US courts disagree with you, even if they did agree with you, there's nothing in the constitution that says the welfare of American society is in jeopardy because Apple sets rules on their own devices that you don't have to buy.

Your argument literally only makes sense if you pretend Android doesn't exist. It is not possible to exhibit monopolistic behavior if you are not a monopoly, and Apple is not a monopoly by any stretch of the definition.

Yes except Steam: * Takes their cut for games purchases on their store

* Doesn't have any rules about in game payments/utxns, if you want to use steam wallet for that they'll take 30%, if you want to process the payment yourself or direct users to a website they don't care at all

The last point is Apple's monopoly, along with no sideloading; because if I don't want to use Steam then I can use whatever else I want to.

But I agree, 30% even just on games purchases is too high, and we should reduce this profiteering across the board, Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. Good thing we can multi task, right?

It's not 49% of the phone market in the EU. More like 36%, and in some markets like Italy and Spain, far far smaller.

It doesn’t matter. A company does not have to be a monopoly to be a gatekeeper under the DMA. The DMA defines gatekeeper (among other things) in terms of the number of users in the EU and revenue in the EEA. According to those definitions Apple is a gatekeeper and the DMA applies to them, monopoly or not.

I'm not a lawyer so please excuse this potentially dumb question, but why do they have to break the agreement to sue them?

Also not a lawyer, but my understanding is that in order to have standing to sue, you must be able to show that you were damaged by the behavior you are trying to file suit against.

Epic does have a history as an app store. They are the main competitor to Steam on Windows, famous for giving away games every week to drive traffic.

Apple doesn’t compete with the Epic Games Store on Windows anymore than the Epic Games Store competes with the App Store on iPhones.

EDIT: just realized I originally mixed up Origin and the Epic Games Store. My bad.

>Origin competes with the App Store on iPhones.

I guess we'll see in the light of the DMA. Apple didn't allow EA to compete before, but who knows now.

But this seems to be missing the point. Epic Games wants to put their store on mobile, they had android on the roadmap for years. They very much want to compete.

First, thank you for posting this because this was my first clue that I mixed up EA’s thing with Epic’s thing. My bad.

Second, wanting to compete and competing aren’t the same activity. They are not presently a competitor to the iPhone’s App Store. They may become a competitor in the future, pending presumably at least some discussions between Apple, the EC and Epic, and possibly a legal fight, but calling them an app marketplace competitor in the present-tense is not accurate nor justifiable.

These words have a specific, narrow meaning and your laymans impression is the opposite of helpful in interpreting them.

In the context of standards essential patents, yes. In the case of DMA compliance, it’s a bit more TBD until the EC issues more guidance and actual legal precedent is set, but what we do know is that the DMA still allows Apple to set terms that 3rd parties must both agree with and abide by which means having an active developer account with Apple. If Apple believes Epic will not abide by the terms in good faith, they don’t have any reason to maintain a relationship with Epic, and Epic has given Apple plenty of reasons.

The real and interesting question is whether they can do this before they prove Epic’s non-compliance with the new terms.

I find it hard to see Apple being in the right here. While I'm not so naive as to think one company is "good" and the other "bad", I do think that as developers Epic is fighting for our best interests. Apple's app store monopoly serves only Apple.

I do not. Tim Sweeney testified that had Apple offered a special deal just for Epic, they would have taken it.

Maybe I should rephrase that, they're indirectly fighting for our best interest. Obviously their motives are selfish, but their wins are generally good for the rest of us in this context.

In the right and within their rights are two separate things. I’m not exactly happy with all of Apple’s App Store policies either, but they have their rights.

I also don’t believe Epic is doing this for anything other than Epic’s self-interest. They have no duty to other developers, and this is a potentially new line of business for them, not a liberation of iPhone app developers.

Criticize Apple vigorously and criticize Epic vigorously. Epic's been fined for dark patterns, data collection on minors below 13, and their entire business model relies on getting children to buy worthless cosmetic skins out of peer pressure, while optimizing for engagement and addiction. It's a predatory business model that should be illegal.

One of their main goals in bypassing IAP is to make these microtransactions non-refundable, so parents are screwed. They're the great satan.

Source for your last point there, please.

Fortnite V-Bucks are nonrefundable (at least they're still marked that way on their site). Their Epic Games Store policy says: "Also, most in-app purchases are non-refundable", so that seems to extend to other games in their store. Epic used to ban Epic accounts after parents used chargebacks (so you lose all your other games, even ones you paid for); it became a big enough controversy (since chargebacks are the only option) that they softened it and now they just ban the credit card. In comparison, every Apple IAP is eligible for refunds and Apple is pretty liberal about granting them.

I assume that one of the reasons Epic isn't as hated as EA is that "the TotalBiscuit audience" is too old to be in the target market for Fortnite.

Given there's no hard source that this is their intended plan for their own store I would still count it as conjecture.

That’s very much a Pyrrhic victory if Eoic doesn’t have access to the US market. The court ruling in the US said that Apple has the right to terminate their account.

From the linked article

> This judgment stated that “Apple has the contractual right to terminate its DPLA with any or all of Epic Games’ wholly owned subsidiaries, affiliates, and/or other entities under Epic Games’ control at any time and at Apple’s sole discretion.”

This is about Epic having access to the EU market.

That’s why it’s a Pyrrhic victory. They have access to the EU market which is much less profitable than the US market.

Pyrrhic implies that the battle is over. I see it more as a foothold for a much longer battle. I'm sure North America and Asia aren't ignoring this whole ordeal.

It should also be noted that this article specifically talks about Epic's Sweden AB account being banned. It doesn't affect the state of the US account (which may very well be banned anyway).

> Pyrrhic implies that the battle is over

Other way around, "victory" implies the battle is over, Pyrrhic as a modifier implies a victory that inflicted such a devastating toll that it was tantamount to defeat.

Right now they have access to neither. A less-than-complete win is not a Phyrric victory.

"Thin edge of the wedge" might be the better way to see it?

Epic have cracked open the walled garden in one part of the world (EU).

They need to consolidate that win in the EU so it doesn't disappear, then leverage it to break open the walled garden in other places as well.

Epic is just Tencent which is an organ of the Chinese state. They might have been able to break open Apple like an egg in Europe but the final boss battle is going to be much harder for them.

This is total nonsense, Tencent only has a minority stake in Epic, like they do with most other gaming companies.

Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account (USA)(2020) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24309632

Yeah, its really weird to appeal to the noble intentions of a corporation.

They're both just engaged in business.

I can believe that Apple is acting incredibly badly in this case without needing to fluff up Epic Games at all.

Apple and Samsung could sue each other and do business with each other because the stakes were lower and they were more codependent.

> Yeah, its really weird to appeal to the noble intentions of a corporation. They're both just engaged in business.

This is what's wrong with the current overly capitalist system. Companies are totally allowed to have no conscience, and externalise whatever they please to consumers and the environment. And you could even argue they are 'forced' to do so by due diligence legislation.

If we let this continue there will be no world left to fix. We have to change the game. I'm not saying we should go full communism. Capitalism isn't bad but there needs to be a balance between business and society with actual accountability (rather than the current 'green' initiatives basically just being PR without any kind of enforcement). It can't be all about money.

I think for US culture it's hard to imagine doing this but here in Europe society has always had this balance, at least in most countries. Initiatives like RoHS, GDPR, DSA/DMA are often called anticompetitive but we are actually trying to improve things for the benefit of society, not just the shareholders.

> Companies are totally allowed to have no conscience

I don't think companies are going to form a conscience any time soon.

We need to deal with the fact that they're best viewed as being inherently sociopathic and regulate them effectively.

Perhaps a better alternative would be to stop anthropomorphising abstractions, and not try to weirdly attribute intentionality, independent agency, or sociopathy to the same thing we're acknowledging is incapable of conscience because it isn't a person.

Corporations are organizational models employed by humans in pursuit of human motivations. They are not entities unto themselves. Everything is humans, all the way down.

Corporate personhood means that legally they are. If we stripped that away and let the board of governors go to jail for doing blatantly illegal stuff, then they might stop being sociopathic.

I'd also like a pony.

No, they'd still be sociopathic. They'd do the absolute minimum they have to do under the law, and no more than that - exactly as a sociopath would if watched by someone with the ability to hurt them.

Conscience is fundamentally a trait that requires some kind of physical personhood - an actual self-identity with empathy attached to it. Corporations, being pure legal fiction, have neither.

This is why it is imperative to keep them as small and toothless as we possibly can as a society, even beyond issues with monopolies.

But in the case of the boards being mentioned, the sociopathy is combined with competition between members that doesn't exist right now. If one board member suggests doing something that would be negatively viewed but another doesn't, they are then competing with each other for the direction of the company as opposed to working together to do whatever sociopathic things serves both their best interests.

Sociopathy is all about driving the interests of the individual. Boards not being liable for the actions of companies allows those interests to always be aligned. Taking that away would require them to think about what's good for the business but also what's good for themselves and those things won't always align for all board members the way they do now.

I wasn't referring to board members being sociopathic as people, but to the whole entity being sociopathic as a whole. That is generally the case for any organization in direct proportion to its size, even if none of the constituent members are sociopaths.

The problem is that the more people you have working together on something, the less you can rely on informal human interactions to keep things running, and the more written rules and rigid processes you need. Those written rules and rigid processes increasingly take out human factors (such as empathy) out of the equation, and the result is that the entity as a whole behaves in an increasingly sociopathic manner even when its goals (as set by e.g. the board) are ostensibly beneficial.

> Conscience is fundamentally a trait that requires some kind of physical personhood - an actual self-identity with empathy attached to it. Corporations, being pure legal fiction, have neither.

And, for the same reason, they have no capacity for autonomous thought and action. Corporations are just organizational models for coordinating human activity, but all of the agency still originates with individuals, because there's nothing else that it could originate with.

All malicious acts you are attributing to corporations actually originate from the malicious intent of individuals who are merely using the corporation as an organizational model.

> This is why it is imperative to keep them as small and toothless as we possibly can as a society, even beyond issues with monopolies.

Keeping organized forms of social coordination "small and toothless" is inherently antagonistic to the concept of society itself -- the proper solution is to constrain malicious behavior without interfering with non-malicious behavior, regardless of how that behavior is coordinated or formalized.

There's also a paradox here, in that I have not seen any mechanism proposed for combating the implicit sociopath of one kind of organization that doesn't rely on creating even greater concentrations of monopoly power in the hands of an essentially equivalent form of organization.

Corporate officers who commit criminal violations in the conduct of their job are already legally liable for their behavior. The corporation they work for might also incur liability under the law of agency and vicarious liability.

Corporate personhood applies primarily to private law -- contract liability, civil torts, financial obligations and the like.

If you want to dedicate your company to a purpose over profit, it should be something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_purpose_corporation

It's entirely a matter of incentives. Companies are like machines whose sole purpose is to make a profit. Pretty much everything they do apart from that (make products, employ people, pollute, etc) is, strictly speaking, a side effect.

If they could make just as much money (or more) without doing any of those other things, they absolutely would, and any company that wouldn't do the same would eventually be put out of business via competition, barring some kind of external intervention, say from the state.

If you want companies to grow a conscience, you're first going to have to figure out how to change their incentives, which means changing the environment in which they operate.

The mechanism we have for this is supposed to be competition. If one company is screwing you over, you patronize a different one.

This, of course, doesn't work in consolidated markets, and so what is necessary is for consolidated markets to be deconsolidated.

> It's entirely a matter of incentives. Companies are like machines whose sole purpose is to make a profit. Pretty much everything they do apart from that (make products, employ people, pollute, etc) is, strictly speaking, a side effect.

What do you base that on? Sure corporations take on a life of their own, but there's much more to most of them than purely making profits. They're made up of humans too, and usually it's some executive making a final call. There are many corporate agendas that have little to do with profit.

The meme that corporations are purely about profit needs to die, because it encourages that exact behavior by giving free reign to morally devoid executives, IMHO. Corporations can and should also be held to account legally and ethically for being good stewards of public interests in addition to profitability. In the end they're just tools for organization, and a rather effective one, but they're still run and accountable to humans and human values.

> What do you base that on? Sure corporations take on a life of their own, but there's much more to most of them than purely making profits.

Do corporations do other things besides make profits? Yes; I previously said as much. The point is about why they do the things they do.

> There are many corporate agendas that have little to do with profit.

Perhaps in the short term, if they can afford to economically, but isn't this kind of like the exception that proves the existence of the rule?

Is Tesla a car company that wants to make great cars and help reduce carbon emissions for the benefit of all? Maybe, but their primary goal must be profits, because they can't do any of the other stuff if they aren't profitable.

> The meme that corporations are purely about profit needs to die, because it encourages that exact behavior by giving free reign to morally devoid executives, IMHO.

I disagree that it encourages that behavior. If you want to change that behavior then an accurate understanding of the current state of affairs is a necessary prerequisite.

Like if you're going to say, "I want <insert company here> to do less of X and more of Y", then surely your first order of business must be to understand why they are doing X in the first place and not so much of Y (hint: it's usually because of profits).

In the case of corporations, because being profitable is necessarily the first priority, it follows that the most effective way to change the behavior of a corporation is pretty much anything that affects their profit, as opposed to appealing to the moral/ethical/whatever values of their leadership. If you want ethical corporate leadership, then you have to make it unprofitable to be unethical.

people don't act out of conscience because there's a particular incentive for them to do so. They act out of conscience, because there's a disincentive, naturally, in doing something wrong as an individual, or as anyone with any amount of accountability at all. But as long as entities shield or provide a mechanism of free absolution to those responsible for harming others and the environment, then there never will be such a disincentive. They can always hide behind the organization, or perhaps the manipulative, false rhetoric that they are simply looking out for shareholder profits.

A false, ill-justified argument can be disassembled from multiple angles. One of the trivial counterarguments to our current wrong state of affairs is that the above mentioned profits are not actually real profits. It's actually people stealing from others. So many people engage in the same behavior that they can't call out the serious offenders without giving up their own mask.

Humanity en masse actually does not deserve better. That's why we're in this situation. If we did give up our lies, we would demand others do too, as we demand a good world.

None of the DEI initiatives have anything to do with pure profit. If pure profit was the prime driving initiative, Google Gemini would not turn out like it did.

No, DEI is mostly implemented to be political correct, so that they are somewhat protected from being targeted for those kind of controversial topics. In other words, very important commercial incentive.

Besides generating profits for shareholders, let's amend the law to require that business activities also avoid causing harm and benefit society. This means every decision would need to balance the interests of shareholders with those of society at large. Such a requirement could lead to reduced profits for shareholders. Moreover, this change would need to be implemented worldwide, otherwise, capital might simply shift to regions with less stringent regulations.

> Companies are like machines whose sole purpose is to make a profit.

I think I understand that you mean to say "Corporations", whose governing body is made up of board members and executives. In that sense, there certainly seems to be a strong correlation.

In my case, however, I started a game company this year, and my goals are not profit driven. I haven't sat down to write things out but I probably should. Loosely, my company's two main goals:

- To make fun/mindblowing/entertaining pieces of Art. This is done by working on the gaming dreams that myself and my employees have.

- To give my employees a future where they care about the company as much as I do, feel financially well compensated and satisfied in their career, and have support for their aspirations and ideas.

Those are your goals, and your company's profits may enable you to achieve them. Your company's sole purpose is getting you those profits.

That's economics 101, stop idealizing business entities.

I agree, 'corporations' is definitely a better fit for the argument I'm trying to make.

It's perfectly fine if making a lot of money is not the most important thing to you personally. However, your company will obviously have to at least be at least breaking even in order to continue to exist so that it/you can do the things that you do care about.

From that viewpoint, profitability (defined as 'at least breaking even', as opposed to 'maximizing $$') is still the most important thing because the very existence of the company depends on it.

Companies aren't often started just to make profit. Founders are usually passionate about the product / service they are creating, and want to create it to make a nice contribution to the world, and also make their living from it: best of both worlds.

It starts to change when a company is becoming too big. The original founder(s) usually leave or they themselves become infected by the money. In any case, everything becomes more nasty: people are being treated more like numbers, clients too, less personal contact, more lawsuits, etc.

I think the solution is very simple: just make a size limit to how big companies are allowed to grow. They'll have to split up and compete with each other. Way more healthy economy.

Most senior leaders I've experienced are preserving profits so they can maintain headcount. Is it without conscience to make sure thousands of people retain jobs? Even if it's ego driven it's still mutually beneficial.

"Capitalist" is a nonsense term that no longer carries any meaning.

There is a revolving door between government and corporate leadership.

There is no functional difference between corporate America and public service at this point in time.

One does not rule the other: they are one and the same.

Social media companies have entire teams run by Federal law enforcement.

Federal leadership draws its senior staff from companies like Google.

It is impossible to conduct business without thoroughly invasive involvement of multiple layers of government telling you what you can do, how you must do it, tracking your actions to ensure you comply, and levying obscene punishments if you don't.

For this "service" you are charged a level of tax that would make the Pharaohs green with envy.

Hard not to act as they do when its consumers happily reward them with their money.

If only there were someone, or some institution that could think more long term than mindless consumers. We could call it a Governing board or something!

Capitalism is a system of private property and voluntary exchange. There's tons of accountability - people can stop buying and interacting with these companies.

This isn't always the case. Some of these companies own and run the only methods of doing certain things. There are some places, for example, where you can't use cash to pay for things. That means that, in those places, you cannot stop buying and interacting with Visa and Mastercard, for example.

Honest question, can you provide a single example of a company that came to dominate an industry only to then go out of business purely because people chose to stop buying and interacting with them?

I honestly can't think of a single example of a monopoly, cartel, or industry leading company which has ever crumbled due to everyone collectively deciding not to do business with them. (without some sort of government regulation or technological advancement facilitating the change)

What is a "overly" capitalist system? Where we would find companies with a conscience for example? Argentina?

That's just the opposite kind of naive. Companies are still for the most part run by CEOs, and many of those CEOs have tremendous egos and most of them have a tremendous ability to direct the actions of those companies. Look at Tesla and Twitter lawsuits- they're clearly in Musks's interests.

Companies aren't minds of their own directing their own actions. Tim cook or some other high level executive is deciding these actions. Stop abrogating the direction of the literal directors

Twitter is a private company and Apple has a board of directors very interested in not rocking the boat

A board can only really exert soft pressure. Their options are very limited outside trying to fully replace a CEO unless they have something to use as a stick. Apple in particular prints money unlike any other company on earth and its board is not going to stop Tim Cook from doing pretty much whatever he feels like.

Epic isn't squeaky-clean, but Apple is making dangerous and dumb decisions in this whole debate.

Banning third-party payments was one thing, but then Apple banned publishers from TELLING people about the ability to pay through a Web site.

That is not just unnecessary from a business standpoint (since the vast majority of people opt for the most convenient thing); but it's so offensive that it invites crackdowns, implemented by ignorant politicians and legislative bodies... hurting Apple's bottom line.

Apple is tarnishing its image and earning it a place among the true offenders of "big tech," a place it mostly doesn't belong because it's not a gatekeeper to huge swaths of the Internet and commerce the way Google, Amazon, and Meta are.

>but it's so offensive that it invites crackdowns, implemented by ignorant politicians and legislative bodies... hurting Apple's bottom line.

Apple is a billion (nay trillion) dollar company with the best lawyers and accountants in the world. They clearly believe that the added uncertainty and negative perception that could be attached to their brand by allowing systems that can increase fraud and malfeasance is more harmful to their bottom line than maintaining their walled garden with all the accompanying "crackdowns".

I, for one, agree with them. I would much rather keep the existing system for both myself and my extended family members and people who rely on me as their tech person than allow these third-party vultures to further complicate and enshittify the system. In the current case, if my parents bought something on their phone, I know exactly where to go to see the purchase and can easily help them refund it or, if it's a subscription, cancel it. Corporations misleading people into using external payment systems and channels in order to make a quicker buck (and keep more of that buck) is easily a worse experience for everyone involved except the vultures.

It seems pretty clear what should happen here: Apple should be able to require you to accept their payment system, but not to require you to charge uniform pricing across payment systems, and not be able to charge you anything for sales outside of their payment system.

Now you can continue to use Apple's payment system all you like, but if Apple continues to charge 30% when e.g. Stripe charges ~3%, you're going to pay the difference for the privilege.

And with any luck that would encourage Apple to match Stripe's fees, but either way, now the choice is yours instead of the extra fees being hidden and mandatory.

How does that seem clear? Apple should provide services and support for people using the payment system without getting any gain from that system?

You're being disingenuous to suggest that the only benefit Apple provides is a payment system.

The test of whether they're in compliance should be whether it's feasible to sell an app to an iOS user without paying anything to Apple.

Apple can charge for whatever they want, but they can't put up a troll bridge between other businesses and their customers. Then you can choose whether to use their service or not. If they want to charge for payment processing, you can use Stripe or Paypal. If they want to charge for XCode, you can use VSCode or emacs. If they want to charge for app distribution, you can use the Epic Games Store -- or Google Play -- or host it yourself on AWS or your own servers. Whatever they want to charge for, they have to open up to competition.

If their services are good and well-priced then people will choose them even when they have an alternative. If they're not, they won't.

As long as Forkknife continues to print money, they can afford the battle.

Apple is asking for a clear commitment to honor its contract this time. I'm pretty sure a court ruling on reinstating the account isn't going to also require a clear commitment to honor the contract.

I think with Samsung, Apple had little choice. If you need to buy over 200 million high res mobile screens per year you have very few choices. Exact numbers on Samsung’s end aren’t readily available, but semiconductor components are by far their biggest segment and Apple is probably their only significant external customer.

I am absolutely sure Apple would love to cut Samsung off at the knees, but not if they do it to themselves at the same time. Samsung poses a much greater threat to Apple than all the third party app stores that could be dreamed up.

It’s a really interesting mutually assured destruction situation.

Epic and Apple, on the other hand, can both be fine without each other, so I wouldn’t expect them to work through the animosity

Epic is sending a strong signal to regulators that they're malicious, and can't be trusted to police themselves. It's a terrible look under the circumstances.

You misspelled Apple

> I don't think they're being emotional about it

It's hard to read it as anything but emotional. It's pure display of power, Apple is willing to hurt iOS users to make a point to other developers.

Epic Games was willing to hurt their iOS users by knowingly, wilfully, and strategically breaching Apple's developer agreement in a way they knew would result in Fortnite being removed from the store. Then they manipulated their customers into directing their anger towards Apple even though it was Epic's wilful actions were to blame.

I'd be a little emotional too.

Apple has manipulated the entire global population into thinking what they are doing is reasonable. It's BS and someone has to stand up to them.

Maybe correct, but the GP's point that Epic instigated this knowing full well it will likely end up in their users being "hurt" is valid. If we're trying to find the point of who decided to do something to hurt users, we look for the first to make that concious decision.

This is a well-timed account deactivation by Apple to prevent Epic from publishing its app store in Apple's app store with iOS 17.4

>A kind of repeat of the Apple-Samsung litigation where everyone has a "it's just business" attitude

Very different. Steve was taking Samsung to court partly ( or largely ) taking Android with it. But Tim wasn't a supporter of that, or at least behind the scene he was dealing with Samsung ( or Samsung Display, Samsung Foundry and Samsung Memory divisions directly ). So yes it was all it's just business in large because Tim was there to smooth things out. Or partly because Tim knew they cant do it without Samsung. Zero Chance at the time and they wasn't a trillion dollar company then.

I dont see any similarities here with Apple and Epic.

It is quite unusual to cheer for Goliath putting a David to the knife. Sure, Apple makes great premium hardware but IMO, their monopolistic actions in the digital space is something to be truly wary of.

This is the tweet that Apple cited as warranting removal from the App Store:

> Apple leadership faces some massive decisions in the coming weeks as the contradictions between their stated principles and the intended and actual consequences of their present policies are reckoned with: the app store monopoly, the digital goods payments monopoly, the tax, the suppression of true information about competing purchasing options, the blocking of competing web browser engines and outright destruction of web apps.

> It doesn’t have to be this way. Apple is a few bold and visionary decisions away from being the company they once were and that they still advertise themselves to be: beloved brand to consumers, partner to developers, and overlord to none. [1]

Damn, that's probably the least caustic tweet I've ever read on Twitter...

Ruthless.

[1] https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/176224372553353258...

I was expecting a full on rage-tweet too. Must have hit one of Apples sore spots.

Gruber has a good take on this: [1]

> That Tim Sweeney tweet cited as an example doesn’t seem out of line to me. [...] Apple ought to stick to Epic’s deliberate breaking of the App Store rules with Fortnite back in 2020. It’s not even in dispute that they flagrantly broke the rules then. If Apple wants to make that a “lifetime” ban, they should just say so.

> Citing recent tweets, like Sweeney’s, that are simply critical — even scathingly critical (or to borrow Schiller’s term, “colorful”) — just makes it look like Apple’s policy is that if a developer criticizes the App Store’s rules, Apple will punish them for speaking out. I don’t think that’s Apple’s policy at all, but some people think it is, and this situation with Epic just reinforces that.

[1] https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/apple_epic_developer_acco...

Na. Not a good take. Apple already said the reason was because they had revoked epics account for breaking rules and did so after being made aware of the account from Timmy boys tweets.

Anything else is just Timmy adding fuel to the fire which reinforces apples decision to not allow epic to have an account.

Timmy is desperately trying to become steam.

Must be a rough news cycle for you, this morning.

(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39617729, but we merged that thread hither)

If I had a Customer that spent years relentlessly complaining about my Company, I know I wouldn't want to have them as a Customer.

It does present an interesting question on whether a Company can be forced to have a bad actor as a Customer, I guess this will be decided in the lawsuits to come.

App vendors aren't customers. They don't pay Apple anything more than the license fees for Xcode. The app's users are the customers, and if you start throwing out the partners you lose customers. Now, sure, the calculus might change depending on your relationship with each partner, but you absolutely cant say that Epic doesn't bring revenue to Apple. They do.

Epic isn't apple's customer. They just use their tools.

Your company is likely not considered a core platform service, so your analogy is not relevant.

The key difference I see in Apple's app store business is that it's a monopolistic marketplace model. If Apple allowed an alternative to the app store then this wouldn't be an issue. Take Microsoft and Windows as an example, they have the Microsoft store which operates as a marketplace with rules but they don't get the same scrutiny because there are alternatives. Don't like what MS is doing with their app store? Fine just release the binary yourself.

With Apple though, the bring it on themselves by having a monopolistic marketplace. Since they are the sole gatekeeper to getting apps on the iDevices, there is no alternative like there is in the MS ecosystem. Apple could end all scrutiny tomorrow if they allowed a way to install apps on iDevices that bypassed the app store and Epic would have no case.

But as of iOS 17.4 they do allow alternative app stores in EU.

No, you need an Apple developer account to set up an alternative marketplace.

You still need a developer account to notarise apps that are published on alternative app stores. Plus you need to agree to pay Apple the Core Technology Fee.

Why didn't the EU force the removal of those requirements? Apple will keep playing games to make alternative stores uncompetitive and keep away unwanted developers.

I think 8 was intended to stop that sort of thing, but maybe Apple thinks it doesn't apply?

8. The gatekeeper shall not require business users or end users to subscribe to, or register with, any further core platform services, as a condition for being able to use, access, sign up for or registering with any of that gatekeeper’s core platform services listed pursuant to that Article.

You are probably right, and now I wonder if this doesn't also apply to the standard Apple developer program.

I have not read the DMA but in the gatekeeper section of the official website the Core platform services listed are AppStore, iOS and Safari. Let's suppose that you single out iOs, why should I sign up something about AppStore to develop apps?

Because it's still Apple's platform.

And they have a right to prevent apps that harm the integrity of the overall platform which is what notarisation is designed to prevent.

Also companies have always charged a fee for using their SDKs. Even today Epic does this i.e. 12%.

> Because it's still Apple's platform.

It's not Apple's devices, though.

As long as Apple has a higher level of access to the device than the user does, it's still Apple's device. They've just done a great job at making the user think they own it.

Technically yes, legally no.

DMA enforcement only started today. Until today, all these plans were just words on a paper. The EC will only look at the real state of the world now that enforcement has started, and make their enforcement decisions based on that and the public feedback. They aren't giving any kind of pre-approvals or pre-denials to the plans.

(If they were pre-evaluating plans, the optimal play for the gatekeepers would be to propose something totally unreasonable, and then negotiate it to something that's mostly unreasonable but just barely acceptable to the EC. That would be a bad outcome for the EC. So from a game theory perspective, they're better of making the companies guess at what will be acceptable rather than negotiating, since the companies will want to be conservative.)

Here are some articles that specifically discuss what is wrong with Apple's approach in allowing alternative app stores.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/

https://proton.me/blog/apple-dma-compliance-plan-trap

> Introducing the Core Technology Fee (CTF), a junk fee that serves no purpose other than trapping popular apps in Apple’s current shakedown scheme. By charging a €.50 fee for each install after the first 1 million, Apple effectively uses a popular app’s scale against it to prevent it from using an alternative payment system or app store.

> If you decide to use anything other than Apple’s in-app purchase system, you’re forced to display a “scare screen” designed by Apple, which you cannot modify.

> Once you choose which policy you want to implement — the current App Store policy or Apple’s proposed new policy — your decision is permanent. So if you decide to take the risk of trying out alternative payments and it ends up working worse for your business, Apple doesn’t allow you to go back and instead traps you permanently.

The CTF is the exact same thing as the Runtime Fee that Unity tried to force on devs last year. Caused a massive outroar that got Unity to reverse course and sack the CEO.

In iOS 17.4 Apple allows you to apply to create an alternative store. Apple can still deny your request and kill your alternative store, and this is exactly what happened.

Epic opened a developer account under their european subsidiary company, which applied for this, and Apple just banned that account, so Epic can't create a store. Perhaps if someone else (Google, Microsoft, Meta) made a store, Epic might be able to upload apps to that store, but because in the Apple world everything traces back to the developer accounts, I'm pretty sure that would be blocked by Apple as well.

As much as it might seem like Tim Sweeney was exaggerating about Apple's DMA "compliance" changes being hot garbage, a horror show, and malicious compliance -- he really wasn't. Apple are in full on villain mode here.

The part that doesn't make sense, is why Apple are choosing to be such dicks about everything, when the EU is already breathing down their necks. They're inviting more and harsher regulation upon themselves and making the rest of the world hate them in the process.

Epic has a long history of breaking the terms of contracts they are sign.

Most companies won't deal with actors who continually do this.

Most companies don't own market-dominant platforms so locked down that large economic blocks pass special legislation to address the matter.

Which they are preventing Epic from creating because it requires an Apple developer account.

They don't really. Money matters aside, the apps still need to be approved by Apple. They could drop all fees and it would still mean they don't allow alternatives.

Do you still need an AppleID to use these alternative stores?

> Don't like what MS is doing with their app store? Fine just release the binary yourself.

Whip up a small windows binary and send it to your mom. See if she can run it without any help from you. MS is doing the same thing from a different angle.

Eh, you create a msi including all dependencies with tools provided to you by Microsoft free of charge and without restrictions. And mom gets a start menu icon.

Can you do the same on iOS?

If I don't think of cost as a fundamental issue, what differences would I see between either approach? They're both barriers to my intent and I'm not on board with the reasoning behind erecting those barriers.

You missed the "without restrictions" part. You do not need to get the msi approved by Microsoft to distribute it.

It's an extra step in the process I only need to do on Windows, and the rationale behind it solely benefits Microsoft.

I'm not comparing Microsoft to Apple, I'm judging both of them against my intentions. Both companies throw up barriers to interfacing with their systems.

* Signed .exe works but has a cost.

* Unsigned .exe gets a security prompt to Run/Don't Run for the first time.

* MSI has an installation wizard.

* MSIX has a simple Install prompt like PWAs.

Are you saying I can distribute an unsigned MSI or MSIX without a SmartScreen warning? Are you sure about that? Others are saying the same thing, but I didn't think that was possible.

Can someone explain it you happen to know?

Not even close. MS is allowing the end user alternate means of installing software. Apple is trying to rob each iOS developer of 30% of their sales.

Companies in quite a few industries have a duty to do business with you, with very few limitations. For example, in some countries/cities, taxis generally can't refuse transportation to you, assuming you're able to pay and not endangering the driver. Having publicly and repeatedly expressed a dislike for taxis, or even wearing a t-shirt saying "taxis in $city are an overpriced monopoly" would not be a valid reason to be refused transportation.

In the EU/under the DMA, Apple now very likely has a duty to transact even with app developers saying mean things about them. That's certainly a very new situation for Apple, but not an unprecedented one.

I'm not sure if throwing more hissy fits and breaking more of their playmates' toys is a good idea now that adults are in the room.

Taxis in many cities operate under the authority of a government institution [0], so it makes more sense that they have a duty to do business with the public.

Whereas one can often experience waiting for a Lyft/Uber where drivers repeatedly decline service after initially accepting.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_medallion

This doesn't really have anything to do with licensing. There are laws that prohibit businesses from e.g. refusing customers on the basis of race or sex and it doesn't matter if you're a restaurant or a hardware store or a flower shop.

That's true, but is there any reason to believe Apple is acting in such a discriminatory fashion against a protected class of citizen?

This is a different set of laws, different set of protected things that you aren't allowed to discriminate or retaliate against.

"taxis generally can't refuse transportation to you"

The fact that it happens says nothing about whether it's right or not. In my opinion it's wrong and immoral that taxis can't refuse to service you. But taxis are very regulated in many places. In fact, for example, Uber is illegal in Colombia. And still, despite their legal status, Uber is not only very used in Colombia, but it's also safer than getting a normal taxi.

When there's a big power imbalance, putting the onus on the service provider to give a valid reason for denying customers can be more impactful than laying the burden on a user to prove there was discrimination.

Depending on your race/ethnicity/disability/socioeconomic status, taxi drivers might refuse service even though it is against the law. It is easier to win against a taxi driver if they're obligated to explain why they didn't help someone in a wheelchair.

I respectfully disagree because that goes against individual freedom. I understand that historically in the US there's been racism but that's no reason to erode individual freedom.

A taxi company is not an individual.

A corporation is not a person, though. It is a "legal person", which is a really unfortunate term precisely because it confuses the matter of natural rights and freedoms.

Now, I would agree with you if we were talking about individuals. In that case, yeah, I think you should be able to refuse service for any reason or no reason at all to whoever you want. But if you go and get a corporate charter from the government that, for legal and fiscal purposes, creates an entity that is distinct from you-the-actual-person, then I don't see any problem with the same government telling that distinct entity what it can and cannot do. That entity has no natural rights.

A corporation is just an abstraction over a bunch of people. So yes, it does restrict individual freedoms.

Criticizing defects in a product or criticizing a vendor's misbehavior doesn't make you automatically a "bad actor". A healthy vendor/customer relationship involves having channels where this criticism can be exchanged without putting the vendor or the customer in a bad position, and the criticism results in a better product.

Instead, bug reports go into a black hole because Apple doesn't care, and they especially don't care about game developers, unless those game developers are running casino games or gacha games that bring in a billion dollars a year. Then Apple cares a lot - about 30%.

If a billion-dollar company is so thin-skinned that they can't handle having their policies criticized they're run by children.

Epic has historically brought in a lot of money for Apple, both directly - via titles like Infinity Blade and Fortnite - and indirectly - by enabling the developer ecosystem so more people can release titles on Apple platforms. In the past Epic helped promote new Apple product launches. Calling them a bad actor is ridiculous.

> Criticizing defects in a product or criticizing a vendor's misbehavior doesn't make you automatically a "bad actor"

Doing so publicly certainly does. I would terminate business with a client if they started airing out their issues about me on Twitter.

That said, I’m not Apple. At a certain size, you lose the right to reject bad actors.

Like I said, Apple gives you no other choice. They don't have proper channels for communication on things like software defects or policy. You have to kick up a public outcry to get any help.

> Apple gives you no other choice

Sweeney and Schiller were emailing. Apple will read a letter you send addressed to their legal team.

You don't control access to half of the world's mobile devices do you? :)

Epic is trying not to call attention to it, but in the emails they published from Apple, Epic's history of violating an agreement with Apple was cited as why Apple has reason to not trust Epic. That may not be sufficient justification under EU law, but it's unquestionable that Apple has more underlying their concerns than just Epic's recent public complaining.

> Calling them a bad actor is ridiculous.

This is an absurd take. They very deliberately and publicly breached their agreement with apple, sued them when they got kicked out for it, and lost.

If that isn’t a textbook description of a bad actor then what the hell _would_ count for you?

By what metric is Epic Games having an account a "threat" to iOS? Are they going to hack end-users' devices? Collect their private information without permission and sell it to third parties? All just by having a developer account?

Isn't the app review system combined with iOS's robust security infrastructure supposed to prevent such an outcome? If a company as big and legally accountable as Epic, with a long track record, is so dangerous - by that standard lots of other developer accounts should be closed down too, just to be safe.

It's perfectly reasonable to go "I don't want to do business with Epic due to how they've treated me" but being your opponent is different from being a bad actor. Using language like this pointlessly inflates the magnitude of what Epic actually did and misrepresents the nature of their conflict with Apple.

If your company has a market segment captured, you should not have any right to do that, irrespective of your feelings.

In Europe there is the concept of “Forced to contract”. You can be forced to accept a customer. Applies to many monopolies.

Single payer health insurance, for example :)

Why not? There will be more complaints because of your action

Epic also doesn't want to be Apple's customer. No one would describe the relationship between Microsoft and Epic as "Epic being Microsoft's customer" because they distribute the Epic Games Store and Fortnite on Windows (Xbox console distribution notwithstanding; there it is more of a customer relationship).

Apple forces everyone who wants access to 50% of the mobile computing market into a customer-oriented relationship, and then complains when not everyone Thinks The Same as they do. Its disgusting behavior.

The issue is that Epic doesn’t want to be Apple’s customer in the first place. They want to publish iOS apps. The fact that this requires them to be an Apple customer is the core problem.

Imagine if everyone wanting to publish a web app would have to be a customer of the respective browser vendors.

Everyone complains about Google and Mozilla and Safari and Edge. Luckily, that doesn’t prevent us from having our web apps running on those browsers.

Publishing a Chrome browser extension more-or-less requires being a customer of the Chrome Web Store. There are plenty of other examples, folks tend to give Playstation/Xbox/Switch stores in these conversations as well.

> Publishing a Chrome browser extension more-or-less requires being a customer of the Chrome Web Store

Emphasis on more-or-less, though. You can use Chrome developer mode (which is NOT a paid option and doesn't require an account) to import extensions from files. You can't do that in iOS. That's Epic's point.

you don't need a developer account to sideload an app on ios, and it wouldn't change anything legally if you did (feature tiering is legal)

another classic example of android users who don't understand the things they're talking about. go on, tell me more about how "you can't copy and paste between applications in ios" or "there's not even a file browser" please.

(now, still not being able to figure out a calculator app on ipad? that's a fair one lol)

I didn't believe you so I looked it up, and this[0] is what I found

> AltStore then signs the application with your Apple ID so the app can run. You'll need to trust the developer certificate in your device settings, but when you do, any apps that you install through AltStore will work... for seven days. Apple has put several restrictions in place to make the process as difficult as possible, but the developer managed to work around those restrictions. As the clock nears closer to the end of the seven-day period, AltStore will refresh the signing key on the app so that you can get an extra seven days of usage. This can also run in the background.

> AltStore makes use of a feature Apple introduced that lets you install *up to three apps* for free using your Apple ID.

> However, AltStore relies on a computer on the same network running AltServer, so you'll need both iTunes and iCloud installed on that device. [...]

Is this seriously what you're talking about? Because after reading that I still don't believe you can install apps on iOS without Apples splash of iHoly Water TM.

[0] https://www.xda-developers.com/how-to-sideload-apps-iphone-a...

Do you think this is a viable distribution model for web extensions, e.g. an alternative to the Chrome Web Store?

Yes, for user like me. I checked most of the extension I use. They directly come from github, and I generally don't update extension, so there is no fear of some sketchy website buying the extension company.

I think the point is that an alternative installation method is already provided in the browser

Of course it could be better, so why doesn't Apple show us all what really streamlined and well implemented third party app store support looks like?

I use userscripts/violent-monkey for my stuff and I don't have to deal with any of them. I grant you, it's harder for people to use my stuff.

Yes, this is indeed increasingly common.

All the more reason to legislatively nuke it all as fast and as forcefully as possible before it entrenches.

Then they should just not publish for iOS lol.

Don’t like it? Don’t publish to it.

As a consumer I want and like the tight restrictions apple puts on the App Store.

It’s not like users can’t purchase stuff without paying the 30% premium added by developers to offset the apple tax. Just go to the website and buy there. And save the 30%.

My parents who are older use iPhone. They don’t have to wade through trash like android play store. Most apps are good in the iOS store.

If epic wants kids to buy more stuff have their parents pay the 30% premium. If your kid is glued to the phone I’m sure you enabled that and can continue enabling it. Sorry not sorry.

Apple should just not sell in the EU lol.

The Supreme Court ruled that apple must allow users to purchase from vendor websites. Apple takes a 27% cut instead of 30%

They never said they didn't like iOS. You're hallucinating.

Ah yes, the classic "Think of the innocent children and grandmas" . Sorry, that isn't an argument anymore. It never was convincing before and isn't now either.

>Don’t like it? Don’t publish to it.

Yeah, why protest at all? Just leave the country. Why fight corruption? Just go somewhere else where there is less of it. Really, why complain at all?

The number of bad faith arguments here is impressive.

> Don’t like it? Don’t publish to it.

That's not how laws work, Epic have a perfectly valid complaint against Apple because Apple isn't complying with EU law. As far as valid outcomes go, Apple can either comply, face fines, or leave the EU market.

> As a consumer I want and like the tight restrictions apple puts on the App Store.

That's great, but it causes demonstrable harm to the proper functioning of our supposed "free market", so we've outlawed them.

> It’s not like users can’t purchase stuff without paying the 30% premium added by developers to offset the apple tax. Just go to the website and buy there. And save the 30%.

Except they ban you from even mentioning that this alternative exist. More harm to the free market.

> My parents who are older use iPhone. They don’t have to wade through trash like android play store. Most apps are good in the iOS store.

Nobody is forcing them to wade through alternative app stores. If most good apps are indeed on iOS, and Apple's fees are indeed reasonable, then those apps will stay in the iOS App Store. Nothing to worry about!

> If epic wants kids to buy more stuff have their parents pay the 30% premium. If your kid is glued to the phone I’m sure you enabled that and can continue enabling it. Sorry not sorry.

This legislation benefits everyone, not just Epic.

We don't have to imagine, we have 40 years of game consoles existing.

Which is also wrong, especially given how most modern consoles are basically PCs. Just see what all you can do with Steam Deck in comparison to the locked down consoles.

I was wondering around a local store, MediaMarkt I think, and I saw a random handheld games console — two sticks, a D-pad, XYAB buttons — with the well-known video game Microsoft Excel pre-installed and visible on (I think, I'm not a Windows person) the start menu.

>especially given how most modern consoles are basically PCs.

people always obsess over the hardware in these arguments when the value is in the software. You probably can eventually run windows on a PS5, but that's not what people buy a PS5 for. They don't advertise it as being able to install whatever OS you want (they made that mistake on PS3, took it back, and then got fined for taking it back), and the value for most customers is playing PS5 games. The onyl non-gaming thing you can do these days on a PS5 is watch streaming services. So at best it's a media center

Just because you can install doom on a pregnancy test doesn't mean a pregnancy test is a general purpose computer.

Still as long as you buy the hardware, you should not be prevented from running whatever you like on it.

A case of this is the Nintendo Switch, which does not even have a Web Browser (possibly due to Nintendo being scared to death of JIT exploits breaking their walled garden). Want to look up a game guide from the Internet, on a device perfectly able of doing so ? Fat chance, need another device for that!

You mentioned consoles supporting some streaming services - why should the manufacturer of the hardware be in business of deciding what streaming services you can use ?

>as long as you buy the hardware, you should not be prevented from running whatever you like on it.

Nothing is stopping you from gutting a switch and putting steam deck components in it to run Windows. You can do all that without bypassing Nintendo OS encryption.

>Want to look up a game guide from the Internet, on a device perfectly able of doing so ? Fat chance, need another device for that!

But that's a software problem, not a hardware one. If you want a browser on the Nintendo OS you either need some exploit on how it renders web pages (legal) or a way to install an app that goes around the Nintendo store (dubious, depending on how you approach it).

>why should the manufacturer of the hardware be in business of deciding what streaming services you can use ?

To be fair, Nintendo does allow streaming services. If your favorite one isn't on Switch, it's a business issue, not a store regulation issue. No different from a game you want not having a switch port.

Netflix wants market capture so it's everywhere. Hulu, not so much. Disney probably would have gotten on it if it didn't launch a few years after the Switch.

You are in many respects a customer of the browser vendors.

They can choose at any point to harm your business e.g. Apple restricting first party cookies.

They're not a monopoly though. Apple can disable safari's video playback capabilities, but somehow I doubt that would kill YouTube's business.

To be fair, Apple isn't killing Epic's business by denying them to bypass the app store, or even by kicking them off the app store. Epic's doing just fine without apple.

That’s a lot closer to a desktop OS update possibly breaking your software. This doesn’t make you a customer of Windows/macOS/Linux.

If an OS vendor would target a specific software that way, however, that also would likely have legal consequences.

A better analogy might be if a tire company could only sell its tires through the Ford/GM "store"/dealership. Nobody would put up with that.

Yet people put up with hardware lock-in on printer toner and cartridges (which is also very wrong).

Not willingly.

Theres plenty of uproar and lawsuits around that one too.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/hp-sued-again-for-bl...

I don't. I barely have a need to print to begin with but just enough that I have a printer. Printers aren't continually iterating in what and how they can print so I can survive on 10+ year old printers.

I don’t quite understand why they happily subscribe to this model with Xbox PlayStation and Nintendo, but are adamant about getting their way with Google and Apple.

The arbitrary limitations on computers that are obviously general purpose is more clear than the arbitrary limitations on general purpose computers that are marketed as special purpose computers (gaming machines). In reality they're all equally bad.

Gaming consoles are not really special purpose anymore.

They pretty much are. They don't even had facilities that older consoles had like an accessible web browser or custom theming.

Just because they have general computing hardware doesn't mean they are general purpose computers.

That's why I called them "general purpose computers that are marketed as special purpose computers".

Oh, my bad.

No worries, I feel like the way I worded it was weird :D

Are you saying that the laws governing digital markets should vary based on a manufacturer's current marketing strategy?

What if they market it one way this month and a different way next month?

I wonder, would a Chromebook be considered a general purpose computer for the purposes of this argument? Should the rules change for the Xbox if Microsoft ever mentions that the Xbox is a great platform for browsing the web on a TV? You can plug a keyboard and mouse into it and Google Docs (among others) works perfectly.

Yes the rules should change. Otherwise it will increasingly go other way and what used to be general use devices will be turned into limited use computers that users wont own.

Apple has been heading in this direction with iOS, iPadOs and lately with MacOs too. I think their main reason though is to be able to force users to upgrade/trash otherwise perfectly fine devices using software. Computers are fast enough for most users already but then there is no reason to upgrade.

> Are you saying that the laws governing digital markets should vary based on a manufacturer's current marketing strategy?

Definitely not. Hence why I said:

> In reality they're all equally bad.

People who own a computer should have full control over their devices, full stop. I don't care if it's Apple, Google, Nintendo, whomever. They shouldn't have any say in what a computer can and can't do after they sold it.

To be fair though, Apple doesn't "have a say" in what you do with your computer after it's sold to you. You can do whatever you want with your computer hardware. Where they DO have a say is in what their software does, software which you don't own. You're merely granted a license to use it. It sucks, but that's how intellectual property works in today's world.

If you want to make an argument for requiring Apple (et al) to provide straightforward mechanisms for rejecting the supplied software and installing alternative operating systems (e.g. Asahi Linux) then I'll support it to the ends of the earth. I'd be your most vocal supporter. I'd be delighted if this was a legal requirement of all computer hardware, from mainframes to microwaves.

If you want to make an argument for software developers (operating system or otherwise) to be legally required to make their software do anything their customers demands it do (or what another billion dollar corporation like Epic Games demands) then I think that's utterly mad. What would be the self-limiting principle other than to only apply it to exceptionally successful products, with the threshold of success defined by lobbyists of competitors/opponents?

> You can do whatever you want with your computer hardware.

You can't swap the batteries between two iPhones that you purchased directly from Apple. It's probably true of other components too, but I am certain about the batteries.

> If you want to make an argument for software developers (operating system or otherwise) to be legally required to make their software do anything their customers demands it do (or what another billion dollar corporation like Epic Games demands) then I think that's utterly mad.

I think they should be legally required to not impose restrictions on what the user does with the software that is on the hardware that is sold to them. That means: Free Software all the way down. Obviously Apple shouldn't be legally obligated to do what people want them to do with their software. What I am saying is that it should be illegal for Apple to stop others from doing what others want with their software.

> You can't swap the batteries between two iPhones

You absolutely can. Whether the software likes it is another matter. If you don't want to be under the thumb of an operating system, don't use it.

> What I am saying is that it should be illegal for Apple to stop others from doing what others want with their software.

And that's where I simply disagree. I am an immense fan of the GPL (version 2 especially) and I recognise that the GPL license requires intellectual property rights in order to work. You want copyleft worth a damn? You need copyright. And that means you get copyright. Apple has intellectual property rights over their software and that doesn't give anyone else the right to "do whatever they want" with it.

If you want to cancel all intellectual property rights with respect to software, that's an interesting argument to make. But cancelling it under a few rare circumstances when some software irritates you seems like the height of absurdity.

> If you don't want to be under the thumb of an operating system, don't use it.

How do you do that without replacing the hardware?

> You want copyleft worth a damn?

I don't. I want a world without copyright, and I recognize that means taking copyleft with it.

> If you want to cancel all intellectual property rights with respect to software

My desire is more radical: I wish for a world without intellectual propery. Yes, that includes patents, trademarks, and creative copyright. Of course they all have different implications, but I really believe the world with be a better place without all of them. They each mainly serve to better their "owners" (almost exclusively not the creators) rather than better humanity.

> How do you do that without replacing the hardware?

As I said earlier—

If you want to make an argument for requiring Apple (et al) to provide straightforward mechanisms for rejecting the supplied software and installing alternative operating systems (e.g. Asahi Linux) then I'll support it to the ends of the earth. I'd be your most vocal supporter. I'd be delighted if this was a legal requirement of all computer hardware, from mainframes to microwaves.

> I wish for a world without intellectual propery.

Cool, but appreciate that this places you in an extreme minority position, and one which destroys your own argument. Without copyright, you don't get to assert any implied rights which normally come from "buying" software. Without copyright, you received nothing of value from Apple except the hardware. If Apple don't own the software that's on YOUR device, they cannot be held responsible for what it does.

iOS/iPadOS devices have never been marketed as general purpose computers though.

They have increasingly become that, and I’m not arguing that the limitations are good, but the limitations of the app store have always been core to the marketing of these devices.

The Mac product lines are the only “general purpose” devices.

You don't remember the "What's a computer?" ad?

iPads are most definitely marketed as devices suitable to take the place of conventional computers.

To me, that ad underscores the point somewhat. Apple is marketing these devices as something other than a computer. Something that makes a computer unnecessary.

The underlying implication being: “You don’t need a computer”, and “our ecosystem is so good that the new generation won’t even know what a computer is”.

As a tech and Linux nerd since the early 2000s, I can understand why other tech savvy people could interpret this as “this is no different than a computer”, but I don’t think this is the right framing, and I don’t think we’re the intended audience.

Their claim has always been that this ecosystem makes general purpose computers unnecessary for a wide array of use cases, because “there’s an app for that”.

From the perspective of a layperson, I think the message is: “Computers are for tech people (and/or outdated). This is for the rest of us”.

The term “general purpose” means something very different to the HN crowd than it does for the majority of Apple customers.

I want to reiterate that I’m not endorsing their position, just trying to point out that their marketing has been consistent in trying to differentiate the i*OS products. The difference between “you don’t need a computer” and “this is a general purpose computer” is subtle but important I think.

I also don’t think it’s a good direction for tech in general, even though I value some of the benefits of the locked down ecosystem. I do most of my productive work on a Linux system and think it’s critically important to continue having this option.

I’m just not trying to use an iPad for this purpose.

I don't think they happily subscribe to the console bullshit either - rather, the console vendors are next once Epic is done with Apple.

Consoles have managed to get special pleading in every law of this sort so far. It’s a Trumpian level of avoiding consequences.

This.

Game developers and console makers tend to have a much cosier relationship because they actually care about each other. Console makers will engage in co-marketing deals or other things to entice and make good on their relationship.

> Game developers and console makers tend to have a much cosier relationship because they actually care about each other.

lmao, in what world? Apple used to bring Epic games on stage during it presentations.

The difference between a gaming console and a phone is that your phone is in your pocket and the console isn't. Both provide libraries and tools for development, both provide support, both provide distribution channel, both provide free marketing, both provide and cultivate user base.

The main difference is: console makers have publishing divisions (that btw put even worse restrictions sometimes) and as of very recently started buying every developer they can afford.

Have you actually published a console game? The process is night and day.

Well, duh. How different it is between publishing on PC? IMO, more useful synergy comes from developers have a good relationship with Nvidia/AMD than with publishers.

I'm not arguing about that. I'm saying that "carrying about each other" is a stretch.

Apple used to bring Epic games on stage during it presentations.

That seems to be the full extent of their collaboration. No specific deals, no specific adjustments, just having them at PR events and nothing more.

The weirdest thing to me is they couldn't even come up with a deal with Microsoft and the Xbox streaming app when historically MS saved Apple's bacon at the most crucial time.

The difference is that people buy a phone because you need a phone to function in the modern world and then play games on it because might as well. Whereas people buy a console specifically to play games. That means the gamedevs have more leverage in the latter scenario.

It's a good question.

From the EU point of view it may be simply one of scale. If any of those held the amount of market power Apple does, I suspect the EU would designate them Gatekeepers and we would be off to the races.

From the games publisher point of view, the console manufacturer is actually adding significant value and taking a fair (or not so fair) margin in exchage. Apple detracts value, contributes nothing and then charges a huge margin for it. I can see why Epic views it differently.

>the console manufacturer is actually adding significant value and taking a fair (or not so fair) margin in exchage.

I don't get this. What does a game console manufacturer do that Apple does not? Both provide hardware, system-level APIs, dev systems, developer support, customers. In the old days, game manufacturers didn't even provide a sales channel.

And when you say Apple provides nothing, my above list is pretty solid. In the old days, developer margins were way slimmer, with physical stores taking a 50% cut on top of the console licensing fees and physical manufacturing.

> What does a game console manufacturer do that Apple does not?

Take it to the other extreme: what does a PC manufacturer do that Apple does not? Why not let Windows close down and take 30% on any program installed on Windows? Or go along with its old plans to enforce only signed Windows Store apps to be installed on Windows 12?

It's ultimately just history and culture. We consider general purpose computing to be open and specialized computing to be closed. Apple wants to keep claiming it's just a phone when in reality it's basically a PC. They even unified their hardware so that Mac and IOS run on the same architecture; hardware and software wise there isn't much a mac can do that an iPhone can't do.

> Take it to the other extreme: what does a PC manufacturer do that Apple does not? Why not let Windows close down and take 30% on any program installed on Windows?

I mean, why not? They did so in the past (Windows 10 S).

I think it turned out to be a terrible business move on Microsoft's part that didn't pan out, but why would it be regulated against now?

>I mean, why not? They did so in the past (Windows 10 S).

probably because they don't want to bring up old wounds regarding antitrust. 10 S was trying to go around it by more or less making a mobile device with some desktop functionality. Worked out about as well as Windows 10 mobile.

>but why would it be regulated against now?

well, IOS is being regulated against now, so there's your reason.

They create dedicated hardware designed to excel at gaming and then sell it at or near cost. In a very real sense they create the market that games producers sell into, and the business model is explicitly centered around those software sales. They participate in marketing, branding, etc. There's a genuine holistic value exchange that happens. Apple's value exchange is almost negative. They invest nothing in gaming as an industry, charge a premium for the hardware and then add burdensome restrictions on how the software is delivered. And then they try to take the same cut that authentic gaming ecosystem players have as their whole revenue source.

> They create dedicated hardware designed to excel at gaming and then sell it at or near cost. In a very real sense they create the market that games producers sell into, and the business model is explicitly centered around those software sales.

So like Apple releasing the iPhone, increasing graphics performance by double-digit percentages consistently year after year?

> They participate in marketing, branding, etc. There's a genuine holistic value exchange that happens.

You would need to give me examples for non-AAA games of console makers providing exceptional value here. My understanding is that this is primarily the role of the publisher, not the console maker.

Apple does showcase _certain_ apps on stage at keynotes, during commercials, with prime placement on the App Store, promoting special events, and so on. This is the level of promotion that I'm used to with game consoles as well.

> Apple's value exchange is almost negative. They invest nothing in gaming as an industry, charge a premium for the hardware and then add burdensome restrictions on how the software is delivered.

What is Playstation's big investment into gaming as an industry, if not for the hardware and the platform creating an ecosystem for games the same way iPhone/iOS have?

Microsoft created DirectX the same way Apple created and promoted Metal. Could you elaborate on the differences?

> And then they try to take the same cut that authentic gaming ecosystem players have as their whole revenue source.

Yes, could you elaborate on what additional work console makers have done here to justify their cut that Apple hasn't?

Just wanted to point out that Metal is another source of lock in from Apple. Although DirectX is Windows-only you can still use Vulkan natively.

Kind of... Windows itself actually has zero native support for Vulkan, it's all implemented through backdoor APIs exposed by the three major graphics drivers. In practice that works well enough in Win32, but it doesn't work at all in the UWP sandbox, so if UWP had succeeded in the way Microsoft wanted it to then Vulkan would be locked out. Luckily UWP was a complete flop.

Apple make a huge profit on the iPhone, they make back R&D costs and then some, just from hardware sale. The same cannot be said for the game console industry. Don't be disingenuous.

> contributes nothing

Other than cultivating a base of iOS users spending 7x more than Android users on apps[1]. That sounds like significant value to me and not dissimilar to what the console manufacturers pitch to developers.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2023/09/06/iphone-users-spend-apps/

> Other than cultivating a base of iOS users spending 7x more than Android users on apps[1].

Those iOS users certainly aren't spending 7x more on AppleTV and iTunes albums. It's because of third-parties that Apple can convince users to spend money in the first place.

> That sounds like significant value to me and not dissimilar to what the console manufacturers pitch to developers.

If console manufacturers had the hardware margins Apple did, they wouldn't be console manufacturers anymore.

Cool, so all the 3rd parties can move to Android and the affluent users will follow. Oh wait.

The problem is assuming that either party is the one providing all the value. Of course the app developers are providing value, but so is Apple.

> If console manufacturers had the hardware margins Apple did, they wouldn't be console manufacturers anymore.

Margins are irrelevant in this discussion.

I mean, if all the third party app developers did stop developing for iOS, I would imagine a significant amount would move to Android.

Right, but looked from the other angle, if Apple didn’t provide an easy enough experience for developing apps, less 3rd party developers would develop and they wouldn’t have access to a luxurious market. It’s a two way relationship, these things don’t exist in a vacuum.

If Apple didn't provide an easy experience for developing software, nobody would want to buy an iPhone. That's why the web browser portion was essential from the start - Apple needs third-parties in order to sell their hardware.

that’s not entirely true. there was no 3rd party software in the first year and people still bought it. On another note they managed to create a luxurious market although the other platform also allows 3rd party apps. What I’m trying to say is, yeah it’s undeniable that 3rd party devs bring something on the table, but so does Apple

There absolutely was third-party content and software on iPhone, at launch. The web browser was one of the biggest selling-points when it was announced, alongside the phone and music-player functionality.

> On another note they managed to create a luxurious market although the other platform also allows 3rd party apps.

Many proven monopolies seemingly "improve" their user experience to get users to defend it. Famously, Bell Telephones had imposed a severely-limiting monopoly on phone hardware, but made long-distance calling free as a consolation to users. Bell's new "luxurious market" didn't excuse their prior market abuses, though.

> it’s undeniable that 3rd party devs bring something on the table, but so does Apple

I'm trying to say the opposite. If Apple was providing first-class support to any of their hardware-products, then they wouldn't need to impose anticompetitive limitations on third-parties. What Apple brings to the table is deliberately gimped to manipulate software margins and reduce user choice as a consequence. Third party devs are the only ones bringing things to the table; Apple is charging them for the privilege.

Again - if you want to test this, ask around and see how many people would buy an iPhone with just first-party content. Nobody would, and the clear and eminent reason is that Apple does not provide a superior experience by removing user choice.

> There absolutely was third-party content and software on iPhone, at launch. The web browser was one of the biggest selling-points when it was announced, alongside the phone and music-player functionality.

That point is quite moot. If there were only first party content on the phone today, there would still be a browser. Also, this content is not specific to the Apple platforms, you can access all of them from Android too, so it’s not the kind of content that would make an iPhone particularly interesting.

> Many proven monopolies seemingly "improve" their user experience to get users to defend it. Famously, Bell Telephones had imposed a severely-limiting monopoly on phone hardware, but made long-distance calling free as a consolation to users. Bell's new "luxurious market" didn't excuse their prior market abuses, though.

I don’t see how Apple is a monopoly with less than 30% of market share in the EU, so this comparison is not apt. Even the DMA talks about gatekeepers not monopolies. I’m of the opinion that kind of dynamics do not apply here - especially because you can switch platforms and go to the other side quite easily nowadays.

> I'm trying to say the opposite. If Apple was providing first-class support to any of their hardware products, then they wouldn't need to impose anticompetitive limitations on third-parties. What Apple brings to the table is deliberately gimped to manipulate software margins and reduce user choice as a consequence. Third party devs are the only ones bringing things to the table; Apple is charging them for the privilege.

It’s the hardware and the conscious decisions that were made along the way by Apple that partly played a role in creating this lucrative market and it doesn’t seem very out of place to me for a business to charge for a market that they partly enabled. I don’t see what’s wrong here. Third parties still come and try to make a buck, so it also seems to be working for them. The third party creates apps to make money, which in turn makes the platform more attractive and hence increases the amount of customers. Apple continues investing in the hardware and software stack that takes advantage of even better technologies and capabilities each year, enabling people to come up with even better apps and experiences. They also consciously make it a closed platform, the opposite of the other platform that has much more market share, to give a choice to customers who prefer this kind of product. Two sides in this relationship feed each other, one wouldn’t be better off without the other.

> Again, if you want to test this, ask around and see how many people would buy an iPhone with just first-party content. Nobody would, and the clear and eminent reason is that Apple does not provide a superior experience by removing user choice.

Again, you’re assuming things are in a vacuum. If only Apple had first party apps and all the other platforms still exist as they are today - sure, there would be much less people buying iPhones, although I believe some still would. But that’s not a fair comparison: if we assumed all other platforms also had only first party apps and nothing else, then I’m sure people would still buy iPhones in droves. But this is still not a very apt comparison, and the reason is the App Store and third party aspect is part of the product, and it has been for a long time. It’s not a separate entity, it’s a core part of the value proposition of an iPhone for the consumer. It’s akin to asking “how many people would buy a car if cars didn’t have engines” so trying to draw conclusions from assuming they didn’t exist shifts the discussion to be something else. The question is how much this relationship between Apple and third parties feed each other - and to me it doesn’t seem like only one side is doing all the work without getting something from the other side in return.

Also, let’s not forget, the sides who are fighting here are both greedy companies and they try to improve their bottom lines at the end of the day. It’s not like Epic is fighting this just for the common good, also it’s not like Apple is obligated to do charity work for free.

> If there were only first party content on the phone today, there would still be a browser.

And nothing to browse on. Not sure anyone would want an iPhone like that.

> I don’t see how Apple is a monopoly with less than 30% of market share in the EU, so this comparison is not apt.

It's been said hundreds of times on this site, but I'll repeat it for posterity. You do not need total control over a market to be charged with monopoly abuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabash,_St._Louis_%26_Pacific_...

> I don’t see what’s wrong here.

[...]

> They also consciously make it a closed platform

Are you starting to see what's wrong here? Apple is the regulator of their own internal market, and they haven't made their closed platform a competitive ecosystem. They are directly responsible for ensuring that third-parties are offered fair terms to compete on, and they do not: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/image/conten...

> and to me it doesn’t seem like only one side is doing all the work without getting something from the other side in return.

"All the work" in this case, meaning creating an anticompetitive platform where they gimp their competitors? Again, looping back around to Ma Bell - you cannot excuse an exploitative system with it's benefits. Apple must first remediate the issues with their internal market if they intend to keep shipping iPhones in Europe. I don't see what's wrong here.

> the sides who are fighting here are both greedy companies

Which stage of grief is bartering, again?

You don't need to desperately appeal to us by comparing Epic and Apple. We know they're both greedy opportunists, but this time Epic is right. Apple is operating on a double-standard that will tear their company apart if they fight it.

> also it’s not like Apple is obligated to do charity work for free.

Here's an incomplete list of times Apple did charity work to support the whims of another market regulator:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/1/22361762/iphone-russia-sta...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/111754

https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-govt-demanded-app...

https://www.reuters.com/legal/brazil-court-fines-apple-order...

https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-pay-c144-mln-settle...

I smell crocodile tears, Tim Cook.

lol Tim Cook yeah. I mean thanks for the links and the discussion, but I'm trying to argue respectfully without name calling. I have things to say but I don't think it's going in a productive direction when you are assuming that I'm somewhat grieving or have a skin in this at all. Anyway, thanks for the respectful parts of your message, not so much for the others. Have a good day.

Trust me, if I knew you were Tim Cook I would have said a lot uglier words to you.

Epic doesn't want those users. It is not asking for any placement in the app store. It just wants it's own users who have iPhones to be able to access its software which it will funnel to them through their own channel. Apple contributes nothing to cultivate the gaming market overall. No marketing, no investment, no PR, no subsidation of the hardware etc. Apple simply gets in the way, making it harder, adding restrictions, invading Epic's customers privacy and then to add insult to injury takes a huge slice of the profits.

and all Epic has to do is commit to honoring a contract (this time) to do that.

> Apple contributes nothing to cultivate the gaming market overall.

https://www.apple.com/apple-arcade/

Lmao, that's an Ad for Apple. It has nothing to do with supporting the gaming industry itself.

Thank goodness then that the parent comment mentioned the gaming market rather than the gaming industry!

> No marketing, no investment, no PR

How is Apple Arcade not at least marketing and PR for gaming?

Logistically speaking: By the time the dust settles on such lawsuits, the next generation is here while the companies can use whatever loopholes to stall out for another generation. Consoles are so ephemeral in the grand scheme of things, and lawsuits take so long, that it's not worth it.

Meanwhile, mobile OS's have been around for 15+ years and seem to be there for the long run. Playing the long game makes sense.

----

Emotionally speaking: Tim Sweeny is a game dev at heart and probably respects dedicated console gaming (despite coming to notoriety via PC gaming). They sell consoles at a loss to make gaming more accessible which is many devs' goals at the end of the day. IOS and Android are closer to a PC than a dedicated console, so closing down those environments make no sense. Android inherently isn't closed but Google was strong arming 3rd parties behind the scnes (which Epic won in court over). Apple... well, many people reading this probably know that history.

> Consoles are so ephemeral in the grand scheme of things, and lawsuits take so long, that it's not worth it.

SOME consoles are sold at close to margins or even a loss at launch, making up for it later.

Other companies like Nintendo have gone many generations selling at a profit at launch.

So should Nintendo not be allowed to make the same revenue cut that other console makers get?

That's not really what I'm talking about. Nintendo doesn't have a "Nintendo OS" it updates for 40 years. It effectively makes a new OS each time. Any restrictions added to the Switch OS can be worked around with the Switch 2 OS.

The longest lasting console would in fact be the switch with 8 years behind it. And given how Sony is already making plans for the PS6, I don't think that will change soon. the epic/apple lawsuits took over 4 years, so any resolution would come mid-way into the lifetime of a console. Is 4 years of burning a bridge worth potentially 4 relevant years of having an epic store on the Switch? Probably not.

Getting a console game published is just not the same as a mobile app. Say what you will about the specific value but the process is much more involved and exclusive for consoles. Everything published to a console is of much higher quality than the app stores despite the mobile approval process. In this way its much easier for the console platform owners to argue that they are providing clear value.

Mobile app store approval is really a joke by comparison. Its easier to argue that mobile app approval's main purpose is to provide market control.

That said, its just about what is easier to argue in court and where to start. Epic would probably ask opt to put the store on consoles if they were given the chance.

Apple provides a general purpose computing device. Their big mistake was offering an App Store that allows developers nearly every type of app for nearly every use case (except for the ones Apple doesn't like, but Apple can ignore them and not lose money).

If Apple had run it more like MS or Sony, the only way to get on the platform would be for developers to spend millions of dollars making their case that they deserve to be on the platform. This is obviously very limiting.

Apple sells iPhones for a profit even before the app store is involved. Consoles rely on game sales.

I'm wondering how you're thinking this distinction should apply in the real world. Would you say that if a game console is ever sold at a profit, the rules should change for that console platform?

I think these rules should apply to consoles too.

I never said how I felt about how the rules should be applied, I was just making a distinction between the two industries.

Stop em all from charging a percentage. All of em. Every industry.

One difference is that most (all?) consoles are sold at a loss and they survive on profits from games. Apple would do perfectly fine with no income from games while Xbox and PlayStation would be DOA.

Strictly my opinion, but I also believe that where Sony sends engineers to help developers that struggle (case in point, Helldivers 2 mass influx of gamers after it became a social media darling causing the servers to bog down), Apple would be more likely to use their massive data from iPhones to launch a direct competitor to any app that became a big hit rather than help them out (case in point, Spotify Vs. Apple Music and the other apps Apple tried to buy, and when denied, cloned).

Everyone who publishes software that runs on iOS devices is an Apple customer, though. This isn’t the same thing as a browser — apps running on iOS devices consume APIs on the device, utilize Apple services, etc. Also, when it comes to web apps, in most cases, the developers are also customers of the browser vendors -- from using browser developer tools and SDKs, for example, https://www.google.com/chrome/dev/ , https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/ , and https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/?form=M... to name three. Safari’s dev tools etc. you get with your Apple Dev subscription.

And those browser vendors, like Apple, also provide developer training, developer support services, early access to upcoming product versions, opportunities to provide input into future product designs and features, etc.

In other words, this is not a problem, much less the “core problem”. This is normal industry practice. In fact, on some platforms, there are royalty fees due for the SDK runtime components that are required to run the software a third party developer provides. Just look at mainframes — you might buy XYZ Accounting system from them, and have to pay an additional annual license payment for the cobol runtime it requires.

That fact, by the way, is what the half a Euro per ‘download’ technology fee is about. Part of the DMA requires separation of the “app store fee” from the fee for using iOS services.

It’s also important to note, when people talk about the 30% app store fee as being high — the app store is essentially the same thing as a retail store. Back in the days when you bought software in a physical store, rather than downloading it, the margin at the retail level ranged between 30% and 50%. E.g., we would pay the distributor $25 and sell it for $49.99. The distributor in turn would buy the software in bulk from the manufacturer, for somewhere around $20-$22.

Software developers get a lot bigger share of what the consumer pays in the current model. Some, however, are greedier than others, and leverage governments to their advantage. Epic Games doesn’t want any competition - they want to be the sole retailer of Fortnite on all platforms so that they can raise the price to whatever they want.

What you are saying is that software industry is a mess, and Apple just happens to be the poster child of many things that are wrong with it.

I agree. Let's deal with all the other extortion schemes while we're at it and make the free market actually free.

> The issue is that Epic doesn’t want to be Apple’s customer in the first place. They want to publish iOS apps. The fact that this requires them to be an Apple customer is the core problem.

Indeed. It all boils down to: if I buy a product from company A, then want to use that product to do business with company B, why does company A have anything to say about it? Am I not the owner of my device?

Increasingly in this modern world, no, you are not the owner of the device. You're more like purchasing the right to use it for a time, in the way that the makers want you to use it. This applies across PCs, Macs, and Phones where Microsoft, Apple, and Google all try to up-sell you on their online services and now their "AI tools".

Had me until 'AI tools'

Hopefully changing laws will cure companies from this delusional take. Most reasonable people don't think this way.

> Hopefully changing law

the problem with having consumers take action is that they are completely shortsighted and will take the path of least resistence - a path that the companies will have charted out to make this transition as smooth and painless _for the consumer_ as possible while retaining as much monopolistic power as possible.

There needs to be public institutions with the backing of the state to enforce property rights, including purchased devices.

To offer a modest counterweight here, every iPhone owner bought the product knowing damn well that Apple keeps the OS locked down. If you don’t want that, don’t buy an iPhone. There’s no confusion about what the product is and what you can do with it.

> every iPhone owner bought the product knowing damn well that Apple keeps the OS locked down

No, average owner has no idea. But they will be relentlessly asking why your application is not supporting iOS

Average owner with no idea is the exact person who benefits most from a locked down OS.

The rest of us are free to choose something else.

So how is a 3rd party going to give support to a customer with iPhone, if Apple will ban such 3rd party for whatever reason?

Let's say that given 3rd party is making a device, which can be controlled via Bluetooth from Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS. They don't make any money on any applications, but from the device.

If you buy technology that treats you like a product and has a rape mentality because it's popular and easy, you don't deserve technology.

Enjoy your android phone then I guess? Because Google definitely doesn’t treat its users like a product. Oh wait, that’s their entire business model.

I use a Pixel 5a with CalyxOS and do not have a Google account.

You're conflating the operating system with the hardware there. My PCs are not beholden to any of those companies

You buy a car but now you move your TV in it. The car manufacturer prohibits you because you didn't buy their truck and sues you for it. This cannot be allowed to become the norm.

>The issue is that Epic doesn’t want to be Apple’s customer in the first place. They want to publish iOS apps. The fact that this requires them to be an Apple customer is the core problem.

The issue is that General Mills doesn't want to be Costco's customer in the first place. They want to sell to Costco shoppers. The fact that this requires them to be a Costco customer is the core problem.

Then you shouldn't position yourself as a gatekeeper. I also don't want to pay taxes, but have to comply with the law anyway.

If I had a Customer that spent years relentlessly complaining about my Company, I know I wouldn't want to have them as a Customer.

Epic aren't a customer. They're a supplier. They provide Apple with software that Apple's customers buy.

Apple are denying their customers, iPhone users, the option to buy Epic apps through Apple's app store. You should never lose sight of who actually loses here. It's not really Apple or Epic. They're massive corporations that will continue to make billions regardless. The loser is iPhone users who want to use their devices to play a game they enjoy.

If someone spends years badmouthing Microsoft, would you say its ok for Microsoft to block their apps from Windows?

Depends on the ruling and laws. I'm sure someone who didn't allow homosexual couples would not want to welcome them even after it was ruled as unconstitutional to discriminate to them in the US (even if they are middle eastern and laws in their homeland do allow for that). They were technically rowdy customers but the law allows them to be in as long as their rowdiness was due to their identity and not other neutral actions (although we know they will be judged much more harshly on those actions as an attempt to disciminate).

A bit of a crude comparison, but I hope it gets the point across that the behavior depends. retaliating against rules that the EU later determines to be bad rules may open a case to allow them, as long as they don't break other rules.

Epic isn't Apple's customer. Apple is just the local (techno)feudal lord / rentier wanting to tax all merchants trying to sell goods to Apple's serfs.

If one stretches ones leverage to the point where it is considered by authorities as excessive and is forced to make concessions one is not in the position to attack those who attacked ones monopolistic behavior. The technical term is is "sitting in a glass house" and while one figures out the layout of the panels one is advised to refrain from throwing rocks.

The way I see it Apple is lumping past behavior and current behavior of Epic together to make an exclusion decision. But there was a big change between the past and now so the market situation has changed and access to this changed market should not overly depend on information from a very different world otherwise it can be considered at best arbitrary or an attempt to exclude competitors with irrelevant facts. The latter could get expensive.

Epic is only a customer because Apple's policies forces them to be.

Are you serious? So you think it's okay for Unity to terminate my dev account because I complain about Unity on hacker news?

(Replace Unity with Windows, Photoshop or whatever software people constantly complain about.)

It's not even that, if I was Apple I wouldn't want to have them as a customer simply to deny them standing for their constant lawsuits. If the two companies have absolutely no business relationship at all, ties completely severed then it's a lot harder to demonstrate harm. All you could really sue about is that they won't do business with you.

I'm actually surprised it's not SOP to stop doing business with people who sue you after the lawsuit ends. I mean you took the nuclear option.

Things look a bit different if you are one of two for example electric utility companies in the country.

You can't deny someone service just because they said mean thing about you.

Companies should be forced to service law abiding customers.

> "Apple is retaliating against Epic for speaking out against Apple’s unfair and illegal practices, just as they’ve done to other developers time and time again," Epic said in its statement today.

The retaliation is shady, but is the retaliation illegal? Even if a whistleblower would show an Apple internal conversation that looks like "Let's retaliate against Epic", the fine print everyone probably has some "we can terminate the account for any reason" clause, which would include retaliation as well?

DMA requires that (stated informally) large enough online marketplaces do not retaliate against developers or users without a good cause.

The DMA requires that companies like Apple provide fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory access for competition.

The account is really neither here nor there, it's only an issue because Apple has chosen to make it a requirement to distribute an app marketplace. It's pretty clear that they can't legally freeze out Epic as a competitor, but how they solve that is up to them.

That's good to hear. Let's hope a whistleblower would step up then, because it looks an awful lot like retaliation.

Retaliation goes against the spirit of the DMA.

> But Apple told Ars that Epic Games Sweden's access to a developer account was granted through a "click through" agreement that was not evaluated by Apple management.

I’ve never heard this type of argument before. Presumably Apple considered their “click through agreement” suitable for developers to “click through” and agree to.

It means Apple would never have approved the Epic Sweden account if management had known, and for the past 3 weeks they were just looking for excuses to backtrack.

Which is supported by the fact that they justified the new ban with "they'd just break our terms again!" If you really believed that, Apple, you'd wait, and ban Epic Games Sweden after they broke your terms, which minimizes legal risk. They don't believe their own FUD.

Seems like the message is, sure we lost our case against the EU so we have be more open on the platform/store, but we're just going to ban any developers who even try to take advantage of that. I suppose they're leveraging their duopoly/luxury positions to give everyone the finger. And once again I'm glad I have nothing to do with the Apple ecosystem.

They really seem to be making a mockery of the EU regs here. Will the EU respond quickly and forcefully, or (essentially) admit that Apple is too big to regulate?

IMO, little column A, little column B. EU is good about bringing lawsuits, but because of how law works, judgments are delayed, appealed, reduced, etc. Eye-watering fines are watered down and don't end up meaning much. Viewing the Big Tech names as nation-states by virtue of the sheer power they hold cuts through a lot of BS when people wonder why they do any action that might seem mind-boggling. It's because they think they can get away with doing it, and how often are they proven wrong?

Turns out it was all column A.

https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1765793776692326891

So, good on the EU. And what the heck are Apple thinking?

Again, IMO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39645538

"I never give any Big Tech with nation-state influence the benefit of the doubt. This is a legal/PR stress test. They failed this one, but they won't fail others."

John Gruber's take:

https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/apple_epic_developer_acco...

I wonder why Apple doesn't open up their platforms to have everything best on their devices instead of fighting and agonising developers and governments. Yes yes, the commission is nice but they might be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

I mean, Apple is amazingly good in some areas but in some other areas their products are used only because they don't give a choice and they intent to keep it this way. They also want to control everything and provide all the services.

A bit short sighted and futile IMHO because the competition is catching up with their user experience but Apple doesn't catch up as quickly with the "smart" bits of the modern tech.

I recall a Steve Jobs speech about Apple doing a few things %20 better and other things worse and how he intents to change this by embracing the industry standards because they simply can't do everything by themselves.

I feel like Apple is doing the same mistake again where their products are becoming slightly better at few things and worse in others simply because you can't have the better stuff installed on Apple devices.

Steve hated industry standards.

The only time he ever said anything else was when every web site in the world ran on flash and iphone couldn't do flash.

Every iphone user was reminded daily about how kneecapped it is when they can't pull up the web site for the restaursnt to check hours or call up for a reservation. That kind of life experience was his entire focus and his showpiece product failed utterly at it.

And so he said flash is bad and html5 and pwa is the better way to do what flash does.

Since then they only say anything even slightly similar only as a defense against monopoly charges about native apps "what? you can use pwas" but only on Safari and castrated functionality.

If Steve could have sold a product that didn't even use the same tcp/ip and html as everyone else, he would have. The only time he allowed the tiniest shred of interoperability is when there is no way to sell the product without it.

Maybe the word he used wasn't "industry standards", I couldn't find the video now. The idea of the speech was that you can't do everything by yourself because you have just this much capacity and if you stretch yourself too much you end up with overall worse experience even if you do some things better. I think he was explaining why he is abandoning some internal Apple projects in favour of the established ones made by others.

Right but the point is he never said such things sincerely, only ever in service to some goal.

He absolutely could not stand to share anything. But he could say anything necessary to attain goals.

Flash WAS crappy - it had so many vulnerabilities (and probably would have run terribly on the early iPhones)

Just as importantly, Apple and Steve learned not to rely on someone else’s technology. PowerPC and all that (when Motorola stopped keeping up with Intel and Apple suffered)

Look at things through this lens and their behavior over the past decade makes a lot of sense.

flash was crappy, had poor compatibility and tons of vulnerabilities

but it was replaced with.. nothing. and there is still a gap in that market for novice creators that all the webgl/html5/toolkit-of-the-week has yet to cater towards.

Jobs interest in bad-mouthing it in the early days had more to do with cutting development costs on his side, if flash and adobe is the devil there is no need to spend time and effort developing compatibility layers for it, and it's a chance to wedge the populous towards a solution he can control more closely.

'vulnerabilities' was just the talking point he used to do so.

> but it was replaced with.. nothing. and there is still a gap in that market for novice creators that all the webgl/html5/toolkit-of-the-week has yet to cater towards.

The reason Flash (and Director before it) was so popular is that it had a very low barrier to entry for creatives.

I still miss Director because of how easy it was to quickly create cross platform apps that could do just about anything.

> Flash WAS crappy - it had so many vulnerabilities (and probably would have run terribly on the early iPhones)

Flash was the great battery killer. I hated it on laptops. I'd have hated it on phones if it were available. I even hated it on desktops because it made the fans turn up. Sometimes more than a proper 3d native game that used all the hardware you could throw at it.

Of course now we have Javascript and Unity games on the native side so we just changed what screws us up.

"this lens" is quite transparent and no problem to understand at all. "makes a lot of sense" is not the question.

Flash was crappy, but so what?

The fact that flash was crappy didn't matter to him. If he wasn't artificially prevented by copyright, he could have and would have just wrote his own implementation that wasn't crappy.

The only problem with flash was that Adobe did to him exactly the same thing he did to everyone else. Flash was a proprietary thing that didn't happen to work the way he'd like, and he wasn't allowed to just make his own better version, and so, "This needs to be an open standard!"

That statement doesn't mean he endorsed or preferred or recognized the value and virtue of open standards. All it means is that he was a huge hypocrite who would say anything at any time, and actually do the opposite the instant he can devise a way to.

He only ever recognized a standard when he is the beneficiary of it and there was no physically possible way to get around it, and only until he manages to devise a way to get around it.

One day he says "bicycle for the mind" and that much is absolutely true.

But the next day tries to sell a bicycle that the user can't repair or add a luggage rack, and conveniently declines to acknowledge that a large part of what makes a human with a bicycle so efficient is that the bicycle is simple and user-serviceable in the field and adaptable. The human is more efficient and powerful because they are literally empowered.

The advantage of the wheels turn completely the other way into the disadvantage of a piece of broken machine you have to carry, after you also paid money to aquire it in the first place, when you can't fix it's bent wheel, or add a headlight or a luggage bag or a lower set of gears or fatter tires etc etc to adapt it to your individual slightly different needs.

He said "bicycle for the mind", but never sold a bicycle for the mind once.

> Steve hated industry standards.

> The only time he ever said anything else was when every web site in the world ran on flash and iphone couldn't do flash.

NeXTSTEP, the Steve Jobs thing that got renamed as Mac OS X when Apple bought it, was based on BSD Unix. In the early 2000s, Apple produced and used a lot of open standards. "Darwin" was open source. Bonjour is mDNS. Apple developed CUPS and open sourced it.

Then they got big and greedy and stopped.

The BSD use in there wasn't because of love of standards but permissive licensing. Apple didn't develop CUPS. Apple's relationship with 'standards' has always been pretty complicated although it's mostly worked out for them.

They used BSD because then it could run Unix/POSIX applications instead of the ~0 third party applications that would have existed for a new operating system.

Apple hired the maintainer of CUPS and provided the resources necessary to make it good enough for the publishing market, while continuing to publish the source code. They had enough involvement in RFCs 5227, 5387, 6761, 6762 and 6886, among others, for their company name to be listed in the RFC.

The Unix 'applications' they got for free. The OS itself shipped with a bunch of apps plus the various bits and pieces that now form the Voltron of Xcode and those were all Nextstep apps. Did the Unix part help to market the thing as a workstation? Sure. But, again, this wasn't for love of standards. The actual machine didn't ship with X11. Next didn't, I dunno, join Motif or whatever. The thing was one of the more non-standard workstations around.

X11 shipped on the OS X install discs.

X11 was as good as dead by then. It did not ship with Next machines.

X11 didn't even exist when NeXT was founded and its contemporary predecessor wasn't available under the MIT license.

It was often used in the early days of OS X before it had native applications because the X11 version was often better than using Classic, especially after the Intel transition basically killed Classic but not X11.

Could just as well say they stopped being desperate. They cobbled together what they needed from where they could.

There are a lot of big companies that continue to produce and use open standards. In general it benefits them, because it's "commoditize your complement." Google sells advertising so they want web standards so that more things use the web and therefore Google ads. Intel sells server CPUs so they contribute to Linux to keep customers from being locked into proprietary Unix on proprietary RISC architectures.

Doing the opposite is generally short-sighted. In the short term you lock customers in and make more money, but then you get everyone else in the industry lined up trying to find a way to cut you out, and eventually one of them succeeds.

Oh sure. How compatible are IBM machines?

They now run linux only because they simply have to. And so they do, in the least compatible way possible.

Almost everyone tries to do this as much as possible, not just Apple.

Initially everyone could make their own stuff 100% unique, hardware and software. Like the early HP machines, a total universe of their own. It's only over time that customers gradually insist on a few standards here and there after they get burned bad enough, and so some things get standard, but even then only incompletely and begrudgingly and always trying to find some way claw back or obsolete get around some other way.

> How compatible are IBM machines?

What do you mean? You can install arbitrary third party Linux distributions like Ubuntu on IBM POWER hardware and they work fine.

Meanwhile they've been conceding most of the server market to Intel and AMD for a long time, because the OS is a commodity and then what matters is who makes the best processors, which isn't IBM.

> It's only over time that customers gradually insist on a few standards here and there after they get burned bad enough, and so some things get standard, but even then only incompletely and begrudgingly and always trying to find some way claw back or obsolete get around some other way.

That's what the walking dead platforms try to do when they're set on continuing to die. Milk every last dime out of the companies foolish enough to buy something that wasn't standardized to begin with.

Then their customers flee to open systems as soon as they can get out from under the lock-in and the legacy vendors, having ruined their own reputations, can't replace the customers they're losing and slowly bleed to death until they go bankrupt or get bought out.

Building on BSDs open software was just the same playbook as building on Woz's open hardware before that.

Any flexibility left in the final product is not because of Steve, it's in spite of Steve.

It starts with there is already something good and useful and unencumbered that engineers built for themselves.

It's good and useful, so it's saleable, and it's unencumbered, so it's free to be simply harvested like an apple (haha).

But then he takes that starting point and foundation, and tries to do the saleable part as much as possible and the useful part as little as possible.

He does invest a lot of further work, but most of that work other than the ux is not in service to the user.

So now the truth.

Adobe claimed that if Apple had let them, they could have gotten Flash running on the first iPhone that had 128Kb of RAM and a 400Mhz processor. Safari could barely run on the phone. If you scrolled fast, you would get a checkerbox while waiting for the page to render.

When Adobe did finally bring Flash to mobile in 2010-2011 on Android, it required a 1Ghz processor and 1GB of RAM and it still ran badly. An iPhone with similar specs didn’t come out until 2011.

The iMac came with only USB in 1997 before most PCs fully adopted it. The original iPod played MP3s and later AAC files and even later standard H.264 and MPegs files.

The original iPhone only supported HTML5.

An Andoid user could actually afford a phone that could run flash.

Well, the high end phones in 2011 that could run Flash…badly… in 2011 were the same cost as iPhones.

> That kind of life experience was his entire focus and his showpiece product failed utterly at it

As did every other phone and tablet ecosystem, even the ones that tried to add flash. Turns out it was bloated, slow, insecure and battery hungry - all the reasons he stated!

He was always willing to use any true fact that served his goal.

A rational position is different from a rationalization, even though they both involve making a rational statement along the way.

> Steve hated industry standards.

> The only time he ever said anything else was when every web site in the world ran on flash and iphone couldn't do flash.

This is wildly inaccurate. Flash was never anywhere near that popular and it wasn’t an industry standard. The industry standards were HTML/CSS/JavaScript, and sites that used those were way more common than sites that ran on Flash. We’re not talking a lot more common, we’re talking at least 30–40x as common. Flash-only sites were an annoying but small minority.

The iPhone was the first phone with excellent support for the HTML/CSS/JavaScript industry standards. It literally changed the web development industry it was that good. In 2007, mobile sites tended to sit on m.example.com separate from the main site, and use WAP/WML. The “really good” ones had a severely cut back plain HTML version. None used Flash, that wasn’t even a factor on mobile at all.

Then along comes the iPhone with Mobile Safari. Practically overnight, people were asking for “iPhone-compatible” websites to be built, which were really just normal websites with CSS media queries to offer a mobile-friendly layout. That’s what Steve Jobs was talking about when he was describing a “desktop-class web browser” in his keynote speech.

And because WebKit was open-source, all the other smartphones started using it and got the same capabilities. In the space of a year or two, the mobile web transformed from something virtually nobody wanted to something useful and fun – all using industry standard HTML/CSS/JavaScript.

Ignoring the fact that Flash was terrible quality, which other people have responded to, that whole era of the iPhone is practically defined by Steve Jobs betting hard on industry standards instead of Flash and other proprietary stuff.

It is incredibly hard to change a culture of a corporation. Apple is not a thinking human, it's a bunch of people that have their own egos, preferences and wishes. It may not even be currently feasible to propose an idea like you have because the person doing so would be unpopular internally in Cupertino.

Culture is hard. This is why you see corporations and businesses fail constantly despite "obvious" choices being ahead of them.

The point is not to create the best possible user experience.

Apple's goal is to build the best possible vending machine and put it in all our pockets.

Tim Cook’s Apple is all about increasing the Services Revenue. The line has to go up. Apple exists for their shareholders, not users.

> The line has to go up. Apple exists for their shareholders, not users.

Who does Epic exist for?

This "they exist for the shareholders" is an argument that cancels itself out, as it's true of all firms.

So you have to look at who's next on the list. Is the company for people looking to place ads? Is the company for publishers of games? Who is it for?

#1 is major shareholders

#2 is senior management and senior employees (so minor shareholders and OG value creators)

#3 is probably a tossup between regular employees and customers, e.g. doing the bare minimum not to alienate either one.

Epic is privately owned with Tim Sweeney having a majority. One man's whim is a lot more dynamic than a mass of public shareholders' expectations.

For a while Apple existed for Steve to make products he’s proud of.

I have a very deep resentment for the App Store, because that was a turning point towards controlling the platform, and start of a feudal relationship with developers.

They’ve went from (half-assed) open source efforts to outright banning GPL completely. They’ve went from trying to use open protocols to putting DRM throughout entire stack on everything they could.

Apple has been high margin company with expensive products, but arguably worth the cost if you appreciated their style and attention to detail. But the OS and services side has shifted to just extracting as much money as they can, because they can. Their 27% cut on purchases made outside of iOS is just pure greed and spite.

I've argued before that Apple should've semi-opened up iOS in a way that they could manage it to their interests. Now they've forced the hand of regulators to do it instead.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32170848

it didnt work for google, who is also in the sights of regulators despite having a considerbly more semi-open OS

Maybe it would've delayed this for longer- less of a casus belli for the likes of Epic. Apple was lucky for avoiding App Store scrutiny for over a decade.

It's arguable that one of the issues Android has in this regard is it has become less open as time goes by, making it look just as bad in regulatory eyes.

More locked down and more core functionality being put into proprietary apps in the play store in the name of timely updates, they could have achived the same effect with open source apps in the play store but chose not to.

Yes they are now quickly pivoting to allow side-loading to be simplified but if the EU wasn't cracking down on such things I imaging they would have eventually removed side loading in it's entirety.

If there is an anti-culture youth movement against iPhones, apple will be in serious trouble. Their revenue is heavily dependent on selling iphones and people using the app store.

Fortunately for Apple, there definitely is not a movement against iPhones. If anything, the youth associate status with iphones, and if you don't have one you are a loser deserving ridicule. My kids have stopped asking as they know I'm not going to give Apple any of my money, but for a very long time they begged for iphones because kids made fun of them for "having a droid." Today's youth are definitely not the rebellious counter-culture youth from my younger days. They are very much conformists.*

*Speaking very generally of course, and only from anecdotal experience which is a very small slice of the market that my kids know

Kids are fickle and run with trends though. Apple has a good foothold, for sure, but banking on teenagers to carry your banner is an idea that would have me sweating.

Older people tend to care much less about what phone they have, and care much less about upgrading.

Yes fair points all around. It's quite possible that 10 years from now the youth are rebellious again and could cause quite a stir.

>Today's youth are definitely not the rebellious counter-culture youth from my younger days.

They absolutely are, you have just become part of the culture they’re countering. Of course there’s conformity within a group or it wouldn’t really exist, but the main reason young people are so turned off by Android phones is that they are mainly associated with older family members who wanted to save a few bucks and substantially compromised on utility in the process. I’m in my 20s and I know this from experience, my mom gets substantially more utility out of her iPhone than my dad who’s an order of magnitude more technologically literate gets out of his Android phone. It doesn’t matter to teenagers that an Android phone could be as good as their iPhone when the optics are so bad. It doesn’t help that, for them, there isn’t a meaningful difference between the platforms beyond price and maybe piracy either. The actual movement among youth against iPhones is against phones in general, it’s a trend to use “dumbphones” because many feel smartphones are taking too much space in their lives.

Thank you, this is very interesting indeed and does make a lot of sense given my anecdotal experience. I suspect a good marketer could do wonders for Android's brand image given the misperception, although I doubt such thing ever happens. I get the impression that Google is only half-heartedly behind Android, controlling the reins tightly to ensure their own interest isn't harmed, but by no means truly fans themselves of Android. Every year it seems the great things about Android are slowly tightened away. I hope this changes because as it stands I worry the difference between Android and iOS is becoming an implementation detail.

I too hope Android thrives. Even though I enjoy my iPhone for it’s design choices and it works for my use, I do understand the issue of ceding so much control to a single entity. Android’s existence as an “escape hatch” is certainly part of the value proposition of the iPhone to me.

> embracing the industry standards

The iPhone has legendary levels of crapitude.

Consider every app you use on the iPhone that is authored by Apple. Would you or its stakeholders still use it if you weren't forced to?

Mail? Calendar? Safari? Photos? Music? Fucking Messages? No, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't misunderstand me. I am talking about access to the exact same first party APIs and integrations Apple's software has, and giving it to third party developers. The functionality is so painfully basic, but nonetheless gated, of course a third party would be able to author something better. Like you think Spotify wouldn't give you Siri compatibility? It's just not allowed to.

The App Store is just the crappiest of them all. I don't think people realize how fees and its absolutely horrible discovery is responsible for the shitty state of apps today. I have been in this business a long time, and have met a lot of people, and it is absolutely, 100% Apple's fault that App Store games suck, and Steam's don't. The device is as powerful as a Nintendo Switch nowadays!

Safari, Photos and Music are apps that I legitimately like and enjoy using. I wouldn't use anything else.

I'm generally happy iPhone user. From Apple's offerings, the one I don't like is iCloud because lacks any granularity whatsoever. I want my photos synced but I don't want to waste my space and bandwidth with the videos.

I also would like to have full API access to everything so I can experiment with stuff. Also I want to be able to re-purpose my old iPhone but its too much locked down for the things I would like to do.

However, I'm generally very pleased. I can't stand the Android experience, honestly.

> I can't stand the Android experience, honestly.

The average Android phone is like $180. You can't stand cheap phones, which is legit, but that's what "Android" is.

I don't know if this is in the zeitgeist yet. People spend more on a pair of airpods as people spend on a whole Android phone. That works because 10% of a $1,400 phone is $140. It doesn't work when 10% of $180 is $18.

Where is there space for a third party ecosystem if there's only $18 on the table? Android users used to be 2.5x less valuable than iOS, and maybe it's closer to 5x-10x now.

This is essentially Apple's value proposition to developers: "We have the rich users." And it's true, that's valuable. But do they deserve 30% of every transaction, to the most disfavorable agents in every software category? The way Apple and Steam conduct themselves is apples to oranges.

> Safari, Photos and Music

The Photos app is profoundly shitty. Lightroom Classic is like 13 years old now. How long did we have to wait for Lightroom Classic's 2009 featureset? The sharing features are abysmal. Why not open the API to the same shared photos backend Photos uses? Apple doesn't charge for access to the API, it charges users for storage - what difference does it make to them? It only matters because they are smart people, they know their software sucks, and if they allowed that level of compatibility, people would immediately abandon Photos, and yes, there would be a cross compatible Photos-like experience with Android and desktops, it would be superior, and it would harm Apple's primary idea of forcing people to use their trash.

You say these apps are shitty, but you haven’t posted any specifics. What is it that makes these apps so bad? I don’t mind any of the apps you mentioned. I vastly prefer the music app to Spotifys UI (at the least the last time I’ve used it which is admittedly several years ago). Mail notifications are sometimes buggy but I can read my mail just fine. Most calendar apps I’ve tried, even paid once, started spamming me with subscriptions. I do see the issues with photos, namely that Apple pretends that downloaded images are just as important as photos I took myself.

> I don't think people realize how fees and its absolutely horrible discovery is responsible for the shitty state of apps today. […] it is absolutely, 100% Apple's fault that App Store games suck, and Steam's don't.

AFAIK Steam fees are 30% as well at least for the average developer + 100$ for publishing a game. So I don’t think the fees are responsible for the shitty state of apps. I think it’s more about customers not wanting to pay for mobile apps in general. Looking at a few successful indie games, they tend to be free (and ad or iAP supported) on the App Store but are sold directly on steam. For example vampire survivors is free (+ Ads) on iOS but costs 5€ on steam. Other games release full price on IOS but the UI is so bad that it’s barely playable.

Whether or not Tim Sweeney has a legal leg to stand on, I'm so happy he keeps fighting this. Likewise with Spotify. I love that the EU is pushing legislation to give at least some people back control of their devices.

I'm curious why Tim Cook thinks Apple can continue to treat developers they way they do for years on end and it won't slowly but surely come to bite them hard one day.

Look, this is confusing. Can I just call them Tim Epic and Tim Apple?

Yes, mr. President

Tim Sweeney could lead by example and remove Unreal royalty fees and make his app store free for all. There's no freedom fighter here. Just another greedy troll.

> Tim Sweeney could lead by example and remove Unreal royalty fees and make his app store free for all. There's no freedom fighter here. Just another greedy troll. -zyang

Unreal Engine is free up to $1 million revenue and 5% after that.

How is that a "greedy troll"?

Why is it bad for people to profit off their work? You can use unreal engine for non-commercial use for free. The source is open.

Meanwhile US FTC is totally asleep at the wheel.

What is Lina Khan even doing?

Apple is clearly being a bully in daylight.

This is why I sold my APPL stock a few weeks back. The experience on iPhone is shit. The web is broken on Safari. They broke PWAs. The vision pro is not a big hit. The notification system on MacOS is a poor experience as it gets in my way all the time. Apple want to extort devs to build apps. The arm macbook chips are amazing but that's old news now. Too much abuse of their customers and not much innovation. It has since slid 10% and I'm not surprised.

I love my iphone more than any other tech device I own. Can you elaborate on "The experience on iPhone is shit"? Seems like hyperbole to me.

Fish don't know they're in water until they're out of it. See Android.

I switched a few years ago. The realistic non-hyperbole take is that iOS and Android are really, really similar.

Only real difference is Firefox, is that turns out nicely on iOS I might try the other side again.

> Only real difference is Firefox, is that turns out nicely on iOS I might try the other side again.

Note: this only applies if you're in the EU. Everyone else still gets Apple's webkit.

I was on Android for years before I switched to iOS. Did the switch largely due to Apple providing updates for longer than the Android devices I owned. Stayed because I found I preferred iOS.

There are a bunch of little things that would just work on my Android but do not work on iPhone. I already mentioned the web - every browser is just a safari skin. So I can't use my favourite firefox plugins. The YouTube app is not as polished. It won't connect to by cars bluetooth every time and the bluetooth menu takes a lot more taps to access. Siri is really bad it'll often misfire or do the wrong thing. The camera has a shutter sound which is impossible to disable unless I use live photos which take up more space.

The android back button is genius. A stack of views that you pop with a button that is always in the same easy to reach spot. With iPhone sometimes the back link is top left, sometimes top right so I cannot use my muscle memory for navigation.

While I wouldn't describe it as "shit"...

Android Camera > iOS Camera

Google Photos > iCloud Photos

Finger ID > Face ID

My gripe with Android is that no one offers the quality and form factor of the iPhone SE. (Though to be fair, even Apple no longer offers the quality and form factor of the iPhone SE...)

Android Camera > iOS Camera

Are spatial videos available on android cameras, out of the box?

Macbooks are years ahead of the competition though. I doubt you can name one laptop that comes even close in terms of build quality, performance and battery life. There’s just no alternative.

I totally agree but I think this is already priced into the stock.

> The vision pro is not a big hit.

You have verified sales statistics? Why are users around the world clamoring for vision pros in their countries? Why are Chinese entrepreneurs renting out vision pros by the hour?

My wife and I marvel at the vision pro experience.

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-vision-pro-china-renta....

Sony didn't pay for them to do anything in this case.

Apple should avoid destroying developer trust as developers aren't forced to write ios apps. Apple needs developers.

Developers aren't forced to write any apps. They write apps where the revenue makes sense.

And the revenue makes the most sense on ios for a large share of developers.

95%+ of developers don't care if Apple doesn't allow Epic on their store. That's just reality.

If my boss tells me "we're launching an ios app" I'm not going to tell him about how I disagree with Apples principles and refuse to build it.

They care about their own accounts being deleted over some disagreement. The risk of having your account banned changes how you invest in the platform.

> They care about their own accounts being deleted over some disagreement. The risk of having your account banned changes how you invest in the platform.

I wish it did but it really doesn't. You can see countless "I lost my google account for a random reason" and yet everyone I know has a google account and probably uses gmail.

No but a lot will start building PWAs wherever they can instead because they no longer need to write an entire second copy of their app that only runs in one place and can’t share code and they don’t have to just pay 30% of their revenue to someone for no good reason.

Trust me, Apple pissing off developers is absolutely going to have serious implications for them.

Then they should just code for Android, stay there and leave us in the Apple Ecosystem alone.

I have no effin need for a second store, or a third or a fifth.

Well then, with that argument you can also stay with apple store and leave those second, third and fifth stores alone for those who want them.

I am not sure I follow.

What was stopping companies from doing PWAs before? Were they not annoyed at 30% cut? Was the cost of maintaining a separate app for a single platform too small to care about?

Lack of support from Apple's monopoly iPhone browser engine Safari. It didn't even get notification support until 2 years ago. And then there was a recent attempt by Apple to remove PWAs altogether from iOS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39299007

Apple was and is stopping companies from doing PWAs.

Trust me, you're overweighting how much your feelings matter in this and most developers simply do not give a shit.

At this point Apple's view of what "developpers" means is probably Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Activision etc.

Smaller devs and midrange gaming companies tremendously helped launch the iPhone, but there's clearly just an afterthought in current Apple's mind.

Why is it okay for Apple to ban Epic but allow other devs when it would likely be illegal for Samsung to refuse to sell displays to Apple but sell them to other manufacturers?

>would likely be illegal for Samsung to refuse to sell displays to Apple but sell them to other manufacturers?

Not entirely sure why that would be illegal? You can argue Apple cant do that because there are only two Smartphone ecosystem. But there are plenty of OLED display supplier out there.

There are, but none are as desirable as Samsung. If Apple wanted it to, it could fall under refusal to deal, Apple are very good at twisting courts to their advantage.

Remember when I think it was iPhone 11 or something, they had to use LG and Samsung screens to meet demand, but the consumer reaction was for people desperately trying to hunt down units with a Samsung screen because the quality was noticeably better.

Samsung is probably Apple's biggest competitor, you can bet that they would most certainly rather pay LG, or literally anybody other than Samsung if they could, right?

Samsung could probably get away with not selling displays to Apple if they had successfully sued Apple for breach of contract related to selling displays to Apple. But it's a lot more plausible that Samsung would still want to take Apple's money even if their relationship were worse.

I think Apple holds developers and third parties to “click through” agreements, so I hope Epic does the same towards Apple (it there has been any breach).

Feels like it is a weak legal argument (even though some jurisdictions may have special “ticket cases” doctrines).

It is not Epics concern if Apple by mistake would enter into a contract with them or not. It is up to Apple to whom they offer such agreements and how.

Haven't seen much discussion about Unreal Engine here.

Epic stated in court filings that it would consider Unreal a failed business if it lost the ability to maintain unreal for ios.

Many 3d enterprise apps need to run on ipads. This is hughe blow to unreal.

They f'ed around and found out.

Wondering how this affects Apple employees. Back in the day, working for Apple seemed cool. (Pirate flags on building etc).

Previously MSFT used to be (maybe they've turned that around?) the most hated tech company (becz of their very aggressive attitudes to competitors especially Netscape).

One thing they didn't FU and is represented by the infamous sweaty Balmer video [0] of him shouting "Developers, developers, developers", is pissing of people who build on their platform.

Well Apple seems to have topped that with this and other malicious compliance shenanigans in the EU.

I can't every imagine developing an iOS/native app on that platform going forward.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs

From working at apple, I remember that most engineers just work hard to make good hardware and software. I've heard very few mentions of what anyone outside of apple thinks of it

You'd assume making good hardware and software requires outside feedback. "Thoughts", one might say.

Apple has been driving developers away for quite some time now

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19966135

> Wondering how this affects Apple employees. Back in the day, working for Apple seemed cool.

Most employees are trying to pay bills and keep ar roof. Especially in today's tech job market, people are trying to avoid getting laid off. Very few people have the luxury of being able to think about apple seeming like a cool place to work or not.

So I would say this doesn't affect most apple employees in anyway.

well, I've published iOS apps but every time I have to go through the app review process I ask myself: is this really worth it? To have an inscrutable and vaguely hostile process tell me whether my customers are allowed to run my code? Increasingly often, my answer is no. Maybe the fight with Epic doesn't affect me directly, but it's just another thing that colors my impression of the "fairness" of the app store.

Apple, not unlike a modern-day ecclesiastical authority, excommunicates a heretic who dares to challenge its scripture.

Actual source: https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/apple-terminated-e...

Hypothetically, what if a multinational like Apple just doesn't pay the fines, assuming they have no subsidiary presence? Will they go after their EU-resident payment processors and infra providers?

Apple's market cap is important enough to the U.S. economy that I wouldn't be surprised if our intelligence community sabotages the DMA. We've done this for Boeing, why can't we do it here?

https://www.economist.com/special-report/2003/06/12/airbuss-...

Apple has enough subsidies in EU, starting with 5G modem developers purchased from Intel.

I'm so glad a big player is pushing Apple's buttons, but I do wish they didn't have the Tencent, and thus Chinese government, ownership stake.

There's just always going to be a trust issue there

Bringing up the Chinese government card is weird in this specific fight.

Epic could get away with moving their shares from Tencent to somewhere else, Apple can't move their core manufacturing from China to anywhere else.

Apple seems to be very scared that Epic's App Store might have been working. So much so, that they are going to risk another huge fine from EU.

Perheps Apple judges the fine less than the likely loss the the Epic store.

Apple is a monopolist on a service that is public.

Termination of developer account in this case merits FTC action.

Citation needed.

Apple is not a monopolist. The judge in the Epic Games suit even said so[0]. It also isn't a public service. It's a private service operated by a private company where you have to pay to play. And part of paying means agreeing to certain terms and conditions before you're allowed access. Violating that agreement is grounds for termination of your access.

[0]https://www.npr.org/2021/09/10/1036043886/apple-fortnite-epi...

> by a private company

Apple is, in fact, a public company.

As a US-based company, there are many things that Apple is not able to do——for example, they cannot refuse to sell to Black people, despite violating Apple's freedom to "associate" with whoever they want, for whatever "private" reason they may have.

The US government can decide that Apple must provide equal access to all of its citizens, and in fact, the 14th Amendment and the various Civil Rights acts that it enables seems to require that every company that sells "to the public" treat members of the public equally.

We need some competition in the mobile/tablet space. Apple hardware and performance is incredible. Google is inept at best and getting worse.

> Google is inept at best and getting worse.

Hard disagree. I've used Pixel phones for years and they're generally great phones. Biggest previous complaint was their software upgrade support window was too short, but now they offer 7 years of upgrades.

Pixel phones imo are like gaming on linux. Yes it’s passable, yes it’s getting better, but if you’re fooling yourself if you think it’s comparable to gaming on Windows.

Pixels phones are some of the best Android phones on the market. Unlike gaming on Linux, Pixel phones run everything in the Android ecosystem quite well, as they are intended. If you're going to compare it to gaming on linux, then Pixel phones are the Steamdecks of that world;

Tbh as someone who's bounced between Nexus, iPhone and Pixel, I really don't think so

All ios users say the same as you the first time they use a pixel, but it's the same when an android user tries an iPhone. They're extremely different experiences, far more different than we expect (because on the surface they're both smartphones), and we mistake the differences for general shittiness.

Overall I probably prefer ios by a small margin, but people like what they're used to

Useless analogies are just useless analogies. Care to explain, with specifics, why you feel that way?

The Pixel has a fantastic camera (e.g. https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/google-pixel-7-vs-apple...), and it's "smart calling features" (e.g. better handling of spam calls, transcripts for call menus, "hold for me", etc.) are hugely important features for me.

Not GP but FWIW, I went from a 2020 Huawei P30 Pro to a 2023 Pixel 7 Pro, and the camera feels like a downgrade... I know on paper it's not, but there's just something about the tele mode in particular that is off somehow.

What? No. I have always used android except for a brief while I had to use an iPhone.

I much prefer android. And the pixel is particularly good, much as I dislike google.

MS threw in the towel unfortunately. Now we are stuck with Apple and trash. People desperately cling onto this false ideology that Android is good and Apple is bad when they are at fault for ignoring Windows Phone which was better with their excuses that “I need thousands is fart apps or I can’t use windows phone”

> when they are at fault for ignoring Windows Phone which was better

Hell no it wasn't. The UI/UX was a complete unmitigated disaster, the choice of device models was ... very limited, and barely anyone made apps for it, much less games, with Microsoft not doing nearly enough to woo developers over.

Apple and Android, in contrast, had a decent UI/UX, healthy app stores, and Android a wide ranging hardware selection from "too bad to put it in a bargain bin" to "holy smokes people actually spend that much money on a phone that's not Apple?".

The UX was superior to Android and iOS. All the main apps were available. But people couldn’t live without their fart apps and all the junk in Android store.

Main issue was MS couldn’t release flagship phones world wide. Their flagship phone showed up in Asia 13 months after release. No one is going to wait year to get a flagship outdated phone.

> MS threw in the towel unfortunately.

I’m surprised Microsoft isn’t making a second go for a phone actually. With all of their WSL work, they could release a Linux / Windows phone and say this is like the original PC, but also a phone, install what you want on it, and also it integrates seamlessly with Azure for power users that want to program on their phone, and also integrates with AD for Microsoft enterprises focused on securing their corporate devices, not to mention the Office Apps and so on. They could even partner with Valve and release the Steam store on their phone, it could be similar to the Steam Deck, but a phone also… Not to mention the possible integrations with ChatGPT as a voice assistant and all of the benefits that come with that.

TLDR; the phone market is ripe to be disrupted and Microsoft is the best positioned to do so.

I'm typing this on my Microsoft Surface Duo 2. It's the best phone I've ever had for actual work. It's not all your describing, but the fact you don't know about it goes to show how far behind Microsoft is at marketing their tech.

Yeah, this is the first time I’ve even heard of it, it looks great though.

Power users that want to program on their phone? That sounds like Ballmer-level thinking on mobile.

> Power users that want to program on their phone? That sounds like Ballmer-level thinking on mobile.

Even if you could plug a monitor, keyboard, and mouse into your phone..? Just like you can with a Steam Deck..

You can plug all that stuff into iPhone and Android phones too, but very few people are excited about it. Samsung even made a laptop shaped accessory for their phones, I can’t find it but this company is making something similar: https://nexdock.com/samsung-dex-laptop/

I don’t think the power rangers transforming phone product is a good product for most people. If you asked me to choose between a regular M3 MacBook Pro and a full DeX phone based docking setup built around a top-line smartphone, I’m going to pick the MacBook’s 4x more RAM, 3x bigger CPU, 6x bigger GPU, and much better thermal dissipation. Why settle for a much less powerful device that is fiddly and annoying to “set up” for real work?

I also have a Steam Deck and the only thing I’ve ever plugged it into is a power adapter. If I was gonna plug it into a monitor, I’d use my vastly more powerful desktop PC instead.

> With all of their WSL work, they could release a Linux / Windows phone

I don't think "we need to run a VM with a distinct OS to have a chance of being successful" is really a great basis for building a mobile phone.

The "developers developers developers developers" company did an incompatible rewrite of their API what, 4x over? At one point even Osborneing themselves, announcing the new incompatible version of Windows Phone just before putting out the first devices that used the current version. You can only screw over your app makers so many times; sure you may not need thousands of apps, but Windows Phone didn't have YouTube, didn't have WhatsApp; at some point it's just untenable.

It had what’s app and YouTube. YouTube wasn’t an official app though it was created by MS using the same apis from Google.

> YouTube wasn’t an official app though it was created by MS using the same apis from Google.

It had a YouTube app briefly, but Google cut it off and stopped it working.

Misinformed you are.

MS created a YouTube app. Google got upset cos it wasn’t compliant. MS removed the app temporarily and re-released it in the months later when it was compliant with Google, including new features that lacked in the older version.

The app existed for most of windows phone life. It didn’t get cut off. It was removed from the store for several months while MS fixed it. Anyone who had the app still had it.

Epic is learning the lesson that Nvidia had to learn. Apple holds grudges. Honestly, it was idiotic of them to expect anything else. Maybe they thought that they were more Samsung-like and after being a huge pain to apple, life will resume normalcy. Apple needed Samsung. They do not need Epic.

people really think bumpgate was about some issue that also affected AMD too and not closing the door on NVIDIA building a platform inside Apple's platform and shifting the balance of power?

you've been reading way too much semiaccurate lol

https://blog.greggant.com/posts/2021/10/13/apple-vs-nvidia-w...

like, we have the benefit of a decade of retrospect and watched nvidia do exactly the thing that apple refuses to let their partners ever do (namely: wear the pants in the relationship), and you're still taking charlie's takes at face value. Do you really think it's the bumps and not Apple taking action to protect themselves and their future products against the threat of competitive lock-in posed by NVIDIA and CUDA?

it is just amazing that people continue to take the guy seriously. How is that "NVIDIA is 4+ years behind AMD in the mid-term, and GV100 and GP100 are bumpgate 2.0" working out for you? Was ~2015-2020 a good period for Radeon Group?

https://www.semiaccurate.com/2013/05/20/nvidias-volta-gpu-ra...

https://www.semiaccurate.com/2015/05/19/amd-finally-talks-hb...

https://www.semiaccurate.com/2016/05/03/thing-go-bumpgate-in...

https://www.semiaccurate.com/2016/06/08/nvidia-p100-gpu-upda...

https://www.semiaccurate.com/2016/08/01/nvidia-finally-shows...

https://www.semiaccurate.com/2014/09/15/amds-mantle-api-goin...

it's amazing that people will sniff out a MLID quote from a thousand paces and yet still uncritically babble Charlie's nonsense like it's the word of god. Dude is a stopped clock who occasionally happens to be correct in his NVIDIA/Intel hatewagon, and that's given him enough reputability that he's apparently beyond reproach with a significant portion of the Gaming Public (tm) who are just looking for reasons to be upset about NVIDIA/Intel.

Grudges are unproductive and bring no benefit to the shareholder - this move is almost certainly going to result in a lawsuit that Epic would be in a good position in (assuming there aren't massive skeletons in the closet). This is an irrational move - especially in an election year when politicians have a lot to gain by demonizing late stage capitalism.

> late stage capitalism

The folks who were using this term are being successfully primaried.

> Apple holds grudges. Honestly, it was idiotic of them to expect anything else.

I'm sure upon first hearing this news Epic's management collectively lay down and curled up into the fetal position, awestruck and weeping in surprise at the sheer, unprecedented nature of this blow.

There are a lot of conversations about Apple's "monopoly" on smart phones and I always find it so interesting.

I used to use an iPhone, then switched to an android a few years ago, and I felt like there was basically full feature parity between the two of them. I'm not aware of any "killer app" or other use case that elevates one significantly over the other. They both have app stores with all the most popular apps, web browsers, nice cameras, phone calls and messages, etc. So it seems to me like there are plenty of alternatives if you don't want an iPhone that are just as good and often more affordable.

Globally Android has a larger market share than iPhone, but iPhones seem to have a "social" factor that pushes them heavily in certain demographics (particularly any intersection of wealthy, young, and US American). Something about this social factor makes it feel to many people like a complete monopoly with no alternative even though there are tons of alternative phone models made by many other companies.

For me, of course I think it would be great if iPhones were better compatible with things like RCS chat, open app stores, USB instead of proprietary chargers, etc. But I feel like that can all be worked out long term by the market instead of pushing regulation on one specific company. If any of those things bother you just get a non iOS phone, and if they're truly bad things over time more and more people will gravitate away from the company until they change. If Apple wants to make certain decisions around remaining a walled garden I think they should be able to (and there are arguments that their strategy could make their product better for certain audiences rather than worse, even if we might disagree with the take).

The fines Apple is going to collect for intentionally failing to comply with the DMA are going to be of Epic proportions, exceeding any profit they could have gotten by continuing to steal 30% from society. Ready your popcorn buckets for the next few months/years. They will likely be making an example out of Apple - after all Apple and Google are the reason for this legislation to exist in the first place.

> In the non-compliance decision, the Commission may impose on a gatekeeper fines not exceeding 10 % of its total worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year where it finds that the gatekeeper, intentionally or negligently, fails to comply with [...]

Sounds like Apple should exit the European market then. No one is forcing them to do business there, and it only accounts for 10% of their revenue.

Apple bent over pretty hard to stay in China [1] and they'll do the same for EU.

Because if they don't, the network effects of an entire important continent without Apple's strong presence would be devastating long-term.

[1]:

- "Apple tells suppliers to use 'Taiwan, China' or 'Chinese Taipei' to appease Beijing" https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/05/apple_warns_suppliers...

- "The problem with canceling Jon Stewart: Apple bowed to Chinese government censorship" https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2023/10/26/jon...

- "Apple pulls Taiwanese flag emoji from iPhones in Hong Kong" https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-10-08/apple-taiw...

Using China as a comparison doesn't work b/c Apple manufacturing is so intertwined with China. There is no Apple without China right now.

What percentage of their sales does the China market represent?

That would be a monumentally stupid decision when they could instead simply comply with the law and continue making slightly fewer billions of revenue. Investors won't let them do that, heads would roll.

Tim Cook would be deposed if he pulled out of the EU market. There’s no way that shareholders are going to allow Apple to leave that much money on the table, it’s unthinkable.

They should just comply to be honest because it won't actually change things. Barely anyone in the EU is going to use an alternative app store, nor is anyone but a few select hackers going to sideload apps.

Lots of brands of Android phones come shipped with alternative app stores, but those places are wastelands.

The main issue is that you can't develop an iOS binary without an Apple developer account.

Maybe they should. Because that's exactly the kind of attitude that they're enforcing upon their developers.

Instead, they want to have it both ways, "my way or the highway" when it comes to the App Store rules and monetization cut, but on the other hand minimal, extremely cynical "compliance" towards the rules EU has laid out for them.

Total revenue is 30%, not 10%. For App store its only 7% tho.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/382175/quarterly-revenue...

https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/01/apple-says-eu-represents-7...

Pretty bad timing of Apple if they tried to avoid to look like hindering competition.

Why are investors seemingly blind to the fact that Apple is fighting tooth and nail to protect their App Store revenue (while looking like jackasses in the court of public opinion and pissing off regulators and their relationship with developers) because if the App Store money in their pocket dries up, all hell breaks loose because all of their hardware products are no longer growing. The stock will crash and the executive team will be in trouble.

Pretty sure the savvy investors know this. But why would they kill the golden goose?

A walled garden is difficult and expensive to maintain. In Apple's case, it also requires a constant battle against the public interest, because they've carved out various niches in domains that intrude on interoperability, consumer rights, privacy, censorship, surveillance, tax evasion, child slavery, and so on. If they cede ground, they lose money, so they develop and execute strategies that minimize or mitigate loss in conjunction with maximizing gain.

Apple has no principles or ethics or morals to which it is bound; it's governed by an optimization algorithm that pits the profit incentive against the constraints of resources, legislation, and their public image.

Apple's only as effective as the humans who execute their assigned roles within the overall algorithm, so the organization is subject to the usual human weaknesses and foibles.

Pride. Arrogance. Bullheadedness. Complacency.

If these weaknesses infect the culture, spreading across many roles, then many things can degrade and spin out of control. Apple is just as mortal and vulnerable as MySpace, Yahoo, Sears, Blockbuster, or any other big company or institution.

Without the advantages afforded by the unsavory, unethical, and unprincipled aspects of their business, Apple might not be able to maintain their walled garden effectively. Apple's particular variety of golden goose may not continue to be compatible with the markets in which it currently dominates, since much of the regulation, litigation, and legislation will focus on Apple's effects on the world.

Lots of things could happen outside their control that would kill the golden goose. Lots more things could happen if they fall prey to human failure modes.

This is indeed an analysis that we don't see often enough. Apple is viewed as a "tech company" and tech companies are all about innovation and growth. And their stocks are priced accordingly. But, Apple is actually extremely conservative with product rollouts and new markets (c.f. having essentially missed the boat on AI). They make phones and sell phone apps. They do a few other things, but at the end of the day their balance sheet says "Apple sells phones".

And the phone market is saturated now. Everyone's got one. They keep getting better and people keep them longer. And Apple already has a 50% share of units sold, and a much higher proportion of total revenue. This market is tapped out. It's not going to grow.

Really the mess happening in Europe (mostly in Europe anyway) is best seen as a desperate struggle to push the growth reckoning far enough out for them to roll out a new successful product. They're rent seeking just to keep the balance sheet clean, but it won't work forever.

Really this happens to all big tech companies. Eventually the original product set starts to commoditize and there's nothing left to fill the void.

As long as new people are growing up, they're going to need their own phones, so there will always be a market. The same of course with many other consumer goods.

But not a growing market. You don't get a 27.27 P/E ratio by selling phones to the same fraction of the general population. Indeed, that's "the same as many other consumer goods", so go check valuations of Nestle or Proctor & Gamble or whatever.

The point is that an Apple stock priced at a level commensurate with a static market would be a catastrophic loss of shareholder value.

Well of course nothing can grow forever. But Apple can still keep making profits every year and pay dividends. Why should I or anybody else care any more than that for the shareholders? Boo-hoo?

I'd recommend looking at P/S, Gross Margin and Operating Margins. They're more robust measurement tools than P/E and Net Margin, because – unlike Net Income (Earnings) – Revenue, Cost of Revenue and Operating Expenses are not accounting magic.

Today, Apple trades at 6.94 Price/TTM Sales per Share. P&G trades at 4.7.

Apple's TTM Gross Margin and TTM Operating Margins are 45% and 30.7%.

P&G's are 50% and 22%.

Apple's TTM Operating Margin is 1.395x of P&G's, and their P/S is 1.476x of P&G. This is the explanatory variable for the higher P/S – higher operating efficiency. Which makes sense because their blend of revenue includes services and insurance, not just high-margin physical products.

IDK the point you're trying to make, because these companies have essentially the same multiples today. Apple's market cap is higher because their TTM revenue is $386B and P&G's is $84B. But their key ratios are not so far apart.

I wrote all this up to show you the perils of P/E comparisons... before realizing that Apple and P&G actually have essentially identical P/E valuations (~26-27). In this instance, there's not a lot of peril, because they're both in a similar phase of corporate life: operating as late-stage growth companies surfing the wave separating innovation from profit-maximization for as long as they can – where generating income is important (so net income is not hovering around zero) but not the end-all/be-all (there're still expectations of YoY revenue growth).

Besides, Apple's customer and revenue composition is also not at all static, and you'd understand this if you read their earnings reports. They are not a dam that's waiting to burst, in spite of some people willing them to be. On the contrary, they've never been stickier or more mass-market than they are today.

That's an interesting thought and makes me think, because of declining birth rates and an ageing population, Apple will have fewer and fewer people to sell phones to as time goes on.

> c.f. having essentially missed the boat on AI

What boat? Not being first to market with a fancy commercial-grade model and charging $20/mo for consumer-style access (a la OpenAI)? Not having a cloud offering (MS, etc)? Not having a fancy in-your-pocket AI (like… no one? Siri is behind the times, and a better Siri would be great, but IMO the issue isn’t so much the quality of the language model but that Siri is oddly limited in what it can interact with).

I agree that Apple hasn’t been amazingly innovative in the last few years, but being off the AI hype boat seems off the mark.

AI is producing shareholder value like crazy. No, that's not the same thing as a new market, exactly, but it speaks to the same need in the C suites. Apple didn't get on that boat, and so is being forced into squeezing their partners and fighting in the trenches on essentially unwinnable regulatory points just to preserve the illusion of growth. AI is a much more effective illusion of growth!

The did mention AI 12 times in the PR announcing the updated MBA earlier this week.

I think the cracks will start to show the longer big apps don’t come to Vision Pro. Apple has spent the last decade pissing off developers and partners, and just when they need them the most - during the fragile time of getting an entire new platform off the ground - they are doubling down on being assholes.

Every single review I’ve seen mentions that Netflix and YouTube aren’t on Vision Pro. One of the biggest applications of VR is gaming and they’re going nuclear with Epic instead of developing a great partnership to bring high value gaming to Vision Pro. Hubris before the fall.

From it's issues I bet you it's infighting from a group trying to kill the vision pro from apple.

The fact that they went to market with a $3.5k price tag tells me they just aren’t serious about wide adoption, period.

The original Mac cost about $7k in current dollars.

I remember thinking the original iPhone was hugely overpriced, too.

Valid point, but this is the first new product from them where I haven’t seen a lot of sustained excitement.

Huge technical leap, but to where? I don’t think Apple has figured that part out.

We’ll see what Gen 2 brings, but if they don’t have a lot more content and apps at launch it’s going to be a hard sell at any price

The reality is it's a dev demo unit but pride doesn't allow them to say it.

It's over speced with hardware as it won't be mass sold for a few more years at which point the price for the components will have naturally dropped allowing selling it for a more "reasonable" price. This is apple so it still won't be cheap.

It's made with metal to get the brand of being the "best" build, but watch them drop it on future units (while folks still keep thinking of it as best in build)

Apple themselves seem to forget that a huge selling point for the iPhone/iPod Touch was video games. Seeing those bright flashy games rendering on such a beautiful screen in the palm of your hand- it blew everything else out of the water.

Social media eventually took over as the killer apps, but for a while it was Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja on everyone's phone.

Exactly - and many of the Vision Pro reviews talk about Fruit Ninja being great!

> Social media eventually took over as the killer apps, but for a while it was Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja on everyone's phone.

... not to mention the countless fart sound players, virtual beer glasses and other such low-quality stuff.

People put their kids through college with those apps! It was a lottery, funny time.

Epic's Infinity Blade got me to buy an iPod touch when I was in middle school

Blind? I assumed that the monopoly on iphone app distribution (and the corresponding growth in fee revenue) was why the stock has been so high recently.

The investors aren't interested in Apple selling more phones each year than previous. The investors are interested in people using the iPhone as a yearly or bi yearly upgrade cycle product in their life and giving Apple money without much bother and accepting it as a part of culture, especially American.

I wouldn't have thought India, a country that is so price sensitive, would be a place you find so many iPhones. But Indians love what America does and follow them blindly.

The iPhone might not be the next big thing, but for most invested in the cloud and app ecosystem, the choice they have to make is whether you upgrade this year or next. It's like Visa or Mastercard. You can cry all you want about high transaction fees. America is still going to keep using it and give them money.

Investors are loving this trend. Starbucks, Visa, Mastercard, Nike, American Express, Bank of America, Coca Cola and what not. Investors love companies that become part of the culture and despite their horrifying practices, people seem to still go back to them.

> I wouldn't have thought India, a country that is so price sensitive, would be a place you find so many iPhones. But Indians love what America does and follow them blindly.

This is extremely wrong.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/india suggests Android has 95%+ market share in India (and largely unchanged for years).

https://www.statista.com/chart/22702/andoid-ios-market-share... lists India as one of the least iPhone-using countries in the world.

iPhone's are more than 3x more popular across Africa, South America and the rest of Asia than they are in India (https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/africa, https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/south-amer..., https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/asia).

Our population is too large to even 5% be enough of a market segment. 5% is still a hell lot of phones. In Tier-1 cities and urban centers, you would see iPhones everywhere in offices and restaurants. Nobody cares about blue messages here but the phone itself is definitely a status symbol here.

On the other hand, Indian government loves doing what EU does. After USB-C and moving towards AI Safety laws, we expect a DMA-like law soon.

I said 'find so many iPhones' I didn't say they were leading. Apple sells millions of units in India and with a 5% market share in a country where average annual household income is about 5 iPhones you must realise that this is a very significant and important share. I see a lot of resell market customers preferring iPhone 7 and 8 at around 100$ over similarly priced Android phones. the top 5% income households generally buy new iPhones and that trickles down to the masses after 3-5 years in the resell market. Thats how it works here as a lot of labour population seems to also have some old iPhone.

This is some spicy shit from Apple:

> “In the past, Epic has entered into agreements with Apple and then broken them,” Schiller reminds the game maker in the letter dated February 23, 2024. “You also testified that Epic deliberately violated Apple’s rules, to make a point and for financial gain. More recently, you have described our DMA compliance as ‘hot garbage,’ a ‘horror show,’ and a ‘devious new instance of Malicious Compliance.’ And you have complained about what you called ‘Junk Fees’ and ‘Apple taxes.”

Somehow I doubt that the EU competition authority will appreciate Apple’s logic that criticizing their implementation of pro-competition regulation is valid grounds for preventing a competitor from accessing said implementation.

It’s like if your parents forced you to give a slice of your birthday cake to your little brother, and in spite you intentionally cut him a slice with no frosting. When he complains, you go: “No cake for you then!”

but epic was spitting on the cake. neither party is holy here

> In the past, Epic has entered into agreements with Apple and then broken them

That sounds like a legitimate reason to not do business with Epic to me?

Epic’s past behavior didn’t occur in the EU and was aimed at getting Apple to make the kind of concessions that the EU is now forcing upon them.

Epic seems to have followed the letter of the DMA by setting up a European subsidiary that deals with Apple’s European subsidiary. My feeling is that the antitrust people at the European Commission won’t be happy with Apple’s refusal to give them access.

If I'm an app developer, am I not allowed to complain about Apple's policies on social media?

I have seen quotes from execs that they heavily frown upon devs publicly criticizing them.

Given that notarization is basically required to run apps on all Apple platforms these days, that is deeply troubling.

At one point the official App Store guidelines outright included a threat to not complain publicly about Apple's policies, because why not.

"If your app is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps."

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1580732/000119312514...

They may have removed the text but there is still the silent understanding that they hold grudges.

It's incredibly petty and other companies should take lesson. Oil companies should refuse to sell you gas if you talk about global warming. Musk should disable your Tesla if you own him on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/aarongraves/status/1765441652120834112

Apple’s justification isn’t too unreasonable.

Feels like a mob boss sending a message.

"We own this platform, we make the rules, and we don't care who you are or how big you are, you mess with us we'll terminate your account and revenue stream."

C'mon EU, do something. <poking EU with a stick>

We own this platform, (we built this platform), we make the rules

I don't see the issue with this... it's not like they're exploiting an inherited platform like Oracle with (everything), IBM with Red Hat or Broadcom with VMware.

Would you also defend Microsoft of the 90's with the same argument for the similar issue?

At least Microsoft had no way of stopping you selling apps for Windows but Apple is a next level of nefarious.

Microsoft didn't have competition in the 90s. Apple has plenty of competition, they've just built up a competitive advantage which is their fully-integrated platform. Googles been trying to build one on the Pixel for years and haven't come close to their success.

Apples been doing this "next level of nefarious" since the App Store's introduction in iPhoneOS 3.0, and it's been fine up to this point, otherwise the platform (and consequentially the apps on these platform -- spotify) wouldn't have thrived the way it did.

>Apple has plenty of competition

What competition? Apple has a 87% market share amongst US teenage population[1], Epic's core gamer market. It's basically a monopoly amongst their core demographic which will grow up to be adults with jobs and paycheck and guess what they'll buy? More Apple. With <13% market share Android isn't even in the race.

[1] https://www.barrons.com/articles/apple-stock-teens-iphone-e5...

But is anyone prohibited from going out and buying an Android? I see plenty of Samsung ads on TV.

Does Apple stop you from downloading Signal and communicating with your Android friends that way?

It's called "competitive advantage" in the US.

I find it frustrating when people think something can't be a trust just because one can imagine hoops a consumer could jump through to find an alternative. Switching from iPhone to Android is onerous, and most users are locked into multi-year payments contracts for the device they have.

A healthy competitive environment should have 10+ options. The fact that two massive corporations have the entire space locked up is not sufficiently competitive nor healthy for consumers.

The previously existing competition should have competed rather than completely fucking up. Both Apple and Google started as complete underdogs in the phone market.

Many current Android manufacturers used to built phones running their own platforms or Windows Mobile. Symbian, Windows Mobile, PalmOS, and BlackBerry all died not because Apple or Google somehow hamstrung them but because they sucked compared to what Apple and Google were selling.

I agree that would have been nice. But that is not the consumer's fault; it is however in the consumer's interest to have strong antitrust laws which restore a competitive environment.

What anti-trust laws are going to restore a "competitive" environment? The competitors couldn't compete. They failed. They failed with a huge head start and incumbent advantage! Apple and Google were the underdogs. They made better products people wanted.

Microsoft even tried a second (well, fourth) time and failed again! All these companies failed for their own issues and not any sort of action on Apple's part.

No legislation is going to make a company fundamentally understand the smartphone market, consumer electronics, or help them understand effective operations. No law is going to help them avoid visits from the Good Idea Fairy or executive hubris to avoid stupid business decisions. You're not going to regulate your way into finding investors willing to put up the cash to make a realistic play in the current smartphone market.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

> But is anyone prohibited from going out and buying an Android?

Yes, through social pressure.

I think what Apple is doing is more similar to Nintendo I the 80s with their "seal of quality".

There where a couple of companies that circumvented their security mechanisms and went to court. Was that wrong of Nintendo?

My opinion is that, as long as people keep buying and using it, Apple can do whatever they want in their platforms.

They will change when most app devs coordinately delete their apps from the store, in a mass "strike" or when customers stop paying for their shitty phones.

> They will change when most app devs coordinately delete their apps from the store, in a mass "strike" or when customers stop paying for their shitty phones.

(Android user here.)

Apple doesn't make shitty phones, far from it. Solid build quality, performance and stability across the board... there are very few Android devices that can compete with Apple and almost all come from Samsung.

> At least Microsoft had no way of stopping you selling apps for Windows

what are you talking about? microsoft literally created and sold versions of windows that could only access apps sold through their own app store lmao

microsoft also has the exact same policies as apple does on their own "platform", try selling an xbox app without doing it through microsoft's store

they are possibly the worst example you could have given, and yet here you are doing the victory lap. cringe.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39619432

Since Epic is fighting Apple, let’s overlook the fact it is charged by the FTC for using dark patterns to sell virtual costumes for billions; an interesting choice for a champion of consumer rights.

How does that apply here?

It's hard to compare anything else to MS in the 90's because Windows (and Excel) had 90%+ marketshare. MS was able to strong arm companies into doing what they wanted by threatening to withhold Windows licenses.

The MS case and recently lost Google case are closer to each other than anything going on with Apple.

In the EU, the EU owns the platform and makes the rules (controls and regulates markets). The question is: which platform needs the other more?

As an EU citizen, I would choose Apple without hesitation.

Are you in Stockholm?

No. Why?

Well, perhaps in Syndrome then?

> We own this platform, (we built this platform), we make the rules

I own my phone, I make the rules.

If Apple doesn't want Epic on the App Store, fine. But their current level of control over what people can do with the devices they purchased and own is absurd and has nothing to do with market size.

No no, you see the restrictions are there for YOUR protection.

"Won't someone please think of the children?"

"Anytime someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes, and doesn't give you the key, they're not doing it for your benefit"

HN's collective opinion: "Hey, if you don't like Apple's walled garden, the you can giit out! [and move to Android]"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2bOXQibamM

It's a variation on the temporarily embarassed millionaires.

HN is full of temporarily embarassed walled garden magnates.

The say I don't want oligopolies or walled gardens punished because one day I could own a walled garden money making machine!

You say that like someone who didn't have to periodically clean/erase/throw away their parents' malware-infested Windows machine (which was already bogged down by anti-virus software) in the early '00s. Not that I agree with every Apple policy, but it's hard to argue that their customers aren't generally more "protected" than they have been on other platforms. The fact that my mom can safely use an iPhone for 4-5 years with little to no support from me is incredible.

>You say that like someone who didn't have to periodically clean/erase/throw away their parents' malware-infested Windows machine (which was already bogged down by anti-virus software) in the early '00s.

Yes I have, you don't know me. And that's not an argument. Apple's MacOS is open unlike iOS and that's not full of malware or users getting scammed daily then what makes you think they'll suddenly start getting scammed on iOS. Explain that please.

Seems more to me like someone built a beautiful walled garden where people are walking nicely, and some rowdy pirates are trying to break it down because they see a lot of money inside.

>someone built a beautiful walled garden where people are walking nicely

Just because you build something nice doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it. You're still bound by the rules of the state where you operate and earn revenue.

If I build a nice house for me I still have tones of regulation how I can build it and what I can do with it, including activities inside. For example, I can't fire guns(EU) or cook meth in my house, even though it's my property and I pay taxes on it.

Tech companies for some reason think that just because they don't build with brick and mortar but with bytes instead, then somehow the local laws don't apply to them. So just because you built a nice walled garden, the state will want to make sure you don't get to screw over everyone who enters there.

Apple is just acting increasingly stupid. There's no word for it.

I feel strange having watched from afar as apple abused their users over and over, and then see apple users be surprised and horrified at this more recent behavior.

They have not changed one bit. This was always apple, behavior which everyone who purchased their status symbol focused products at insane markups supported.

Hard disagree on basically everyone you said beyond this move not being too surprising. Apple holds grudges. Always has.

But this is just asking for trouble without any real benefit.

Maybe they want the fight, I guess. But it's a dumb fight.

> I feel strange having watched from afar as apple abused their users over and over, and then see apple users be surprised and horrified at this more recent behavior.

I’m deeply ingrained in the Apple ecosystem and feel thoroughly unabused right now. But I’m in the US and only watching this play out with mild amusement and schadenfreude at Tim Epic continuing to give and get the middle finger from Apple.

It's only stupid if it results in some kind of consequences. If not, then they are just flexing, and they seem fairly confident that there won't be any significant consequences for this kind of behavior. Whether that's true, or just extreme hubris, remains to be seen.

Interesting, is there a possibility of something like class-action where iPhone owners sue Apple for restricting access to Fortnite? I bet there should be a plenty of angry gamers.

With all the money Epic has spent, and lost, on this, along with the billions they're making from Fortnite and Unreal, they could have made their own phone and platform by now.

It would be trash like their EGS. No one would use it.

Maybe Epic should just come out with their own Android-based phone and ignore Apple.

EDIT - I don’t mean this flippantly. I really think a gaming phone made by Epic would be fantastic. They have some great games that I enjoy, including Rocket League and Fortnite. Would love to see what they could do with a phone, especially how well they did on GM’s Hummer ( https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/7/21506572/epic-games-unrea... )

Something like Steam Deck? https://www.steamdeck.com/

No. A phone.

EDITED to add for context:

Here's my deal - we're locked into 2 basic choices. The choices are fine, but it's like a Ford vs Chevy thing - boring.

I really want someone else to com into the market and make a phone feel special. Like when Air Jordan's first came out. Nobody thought about a shoe as being special before that.

Red had a phone, but didn't execute as well as I would have expected. Image what a phone would be like from Epic - fantastic UI, great feel in your hand. Like Fortnite? cool, they have one that looks like it came right out of the game. Like Rocket League? Cool - they have one for that too.

remember the razer phone? that actually looked genuinely interesting, but it got killed off by the time i was in a position to actually buy an expensive phone :<

If Microsoft would have called their Windows Phone the Xbox Phone and focused it on gaming, I think they would have been way more successful.

I think they still could. . . And still might.

I have to think that somewhere in a lab they have an android device with all the Google bits removed. I truly believe that Edge is a test run for this, and given how successful it has become, they will press further.

Embrace & extend never dies.

Sounds like the EU needs to give Apple the Microsoft treatment and threaten to split it apart. Have the App store business be completely separate from everything else

Last I heard, Microsoft is doing great and still in one piece.

After changing course cause of legal troubles they caused by believing they are above the law

M$ received a modest also with a silk glove. It somewhat curbed what Balmer could do, but never changed his intention.

That is to say: I'm hoping the regulators will come down way harder on Apple (and Amazon, Google et al) this time. Apple leadership will need serious intervention to understand that the way they currently operate isn't in their own interest long term.

In a sense, I believe regulators better understand the significance of developers, customers, publishers, content owners and advertisers in Apples ecosystem than Apple does.

The only explanation Apple can give is "Money!!!"

It strikes me as very weird that it supposedly took weeks for Apple management to learn that Epic had acquired a developer account.

Desparate obfuscation in recent PR statements. 24 hours ago, they were more straightforward about ex. getting Epic on a phone call to confirm via voice they'd follow the rules just a few days ago. Back when they were proud of it and thought it'd be smooth sailing.

They got kicked out for willingly breaking the rules in the past. Not for criticizing Apple. Actions have consequences.

From the article:

> Apple said one of the reasons they terminated our developer account only a few weeks after approving it was because we publicly criticized their proposed DMA compliance plan. Apple cited this X post from this thread written by Tim Sweeney. Apple is retaliating against Epic for speaking out against Apple’s unfair and illegal practices, just as they’ve done to other developers time and time again.

The difference is that Apple is now largely no longer in control of the rules, at least in the EU. It seems like they haven't come to terms with that yet.

so apple gave them green light _after_ breaking the rules and decided to go uno reverse after several weeks to red light the epic, because epic criticized apple, lol)

Apple wanting a cut of everything is… well, it's nothing new anyway. We all have our opinions about that, and this event isn't going to change anyone's mind about that.

Apple not trusting Epic is another, and the wording suggests that Apple thinks third parties would agree. What's that about?

Apple doing Apple things.

'You get in the car to go to the store. The car drives you to church instead, because the store has mysteriously exploded.'

https://avaruusmies.com/jokes/if-operating-systems-ran-your-...'

Though I’m in favor of forcing Apple to do certain things (right to repair, sideloading apps, and more), this is one case where I can’t take a side. Epic (and actually Tim Sweeney), for all its bravado and underdog pretense, is a bad actor, a loose cannon and a dishonest player. Epic Games and Tim Sweeney thrive on drama and theatrics, and somehow seem to be driven solely against Apple while not batting an eyelid when it comes to other platforms where it pays 30% (or more?), such as Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo. [1] I have no sympathy for Epic Games as long as Tim Sweeney and his drama goes on. This doesn’t mean that I believe Apple to be innocent. Tim Sweeney has a grudge against Apple. I don’t see anything more in the history of this saga.

[1]: https://daringfireball.net/2020/08/sweeney_hand_waving_game_...

Sweeney is the only one that seems to have the guts, the smarts and is willing to put his money where his mouth is against Apple and other bad actors. Whataboutism about console gaming is frankly laughable as is the notion that they have to fix all problems by the themselves at once or none of them count.

In other news, Apple continues its quest of suicide.

I can't decide who do I hate more? Epic, desperately attempting to portray their acts as Holy sacrifices by being martyred in the hands of blood thirsty, evil Apple corporation or perhaps Apple double downing with malicious compliance, scummy tactics and lording their mob-boss like attitude towards EU and its citizens?

Meanwhile people here are arguing over which sport team they belong to rather than the actual issue at hand which is the fact that computing ownership is being taken away from normal people by tech companies and frankly all of them are at fault (Amazon, Google, Apple, Epic, Ubisoft,..).

You no longer own anything, you have to rent it and smile. You are prohibited from modifying the devices you purchase or even attempt to repair it. Your movies and music libraries can be removed by the whims of the corporation and your books can be deleted should an executive feel like it does not align with the DEI flavor of de jours

My point is this, computing is no longer a niece for nerds and people literally have their lives tied to these systems and devices. We are in serious trouble if strong laws and regulations are not implemented (not only within EU but frankly everywhere) to prevent these corporations taking away people's rights, privacy and freedoms.

I don't know how this will pan out but the silver lining is that it may start a discussion at the world stage regarding these issues.

Things will have to get a lot bleaker before they can even stand a chance of getting better.

At first I was surprised Epic's shareholders tolerate CEO Tim Sweeney – Epic had this all wrapped up, they got a large portion of what they wanted, but Sweeney just couldn't help but keep the drama going, at risk of their business.

But then I realized that Tim Sweeney owns more than half of Epic. If he wants to risk his company for a fracas/kerfuffle, then that is between him and his minority shareholder.

I don't think he's risking anything other than having to pay his team of lawyers. Apple is not a major platform for Epic, in fact earnings from sales outside of Windows and consoles is probably so tiny they wouldn't notice it if it disappeared.

> Apple is not a major platform for Epic

Well it's not a platform for Fortnite at all for the last few years.

Literally all of Epic's biggest shareholders are on board with treating the problems with Apple as more than a "kerfuffle." They've attracted quite a bit of investment in spite of the ongoing lawsuits.

Actually I'm sure Tencent is really glad Tim Sweeney is doing this as they make a bunch of games already eg. pubg mobile (partial ownership there I think). Having an alternative story as an option is probably a strategic benefit for them

Customer! We won't sell you electricity even if you abide by our stated arbitrary rules because we frankly don't like you and you've said mean things about us.

more empty words from the king of the glasscastle

This is going to be an epic battle. Speak truth to power.

First, it’s weird that anyone would take the side of Epic in any argument.

Second, it’s obvious that no one had actually read the article. Epic admitted that they have deliberately broken the App Store rules. That’s enough to have anyone sanctioned in any system.

Apple are certainly not unimpeachable here, but this blind hatred of Apple is out of control.

At least get the facts close to right before spewing your uninformed BS.

Epic broke the rules 3 years ago, they were reinstated recently cause of the european union decision. They haven't done anything to break the rules except write a tweet complaining about apple. I don't see how apple has any footing in this argument

Even setting aside the dubious morality of Apple's rules on iOS, I feel like I'm going insane watching Apple be maximally aggressive. The EU loves regulating! There's nothing they love more! It seems supremely unwise to give them additional excuses to do something they clearly want to do anyways.

Regulatory accelerationism. I never thought it would come from Apple.

> Apple be maximally aggressive

From an observation standpoint seeing how Microsoft behaved in the 90's and onward, they (Apple) are behaving very similarly - almost exactly with what MS did for Windows back then. I have a growing distaste for Apple corporate/mgmt each day even though I am surrounded by their devices.

Apple has been dragged kicking and screaming into more consumer friendly positions since the iPhone was released. It took years for them to simply switch to a more open charging port standard.

Not just years, it took a law requiring it to happen.

Before the iPhone and maybe blackberry the majority of phones used random proprietary charger. The iPhone was the first mass market consumer phone to come with a cable that connected to a standard usb charger.

> The iPhone was the first mass market consumer phone to come with a cable that connected to a standard usb charger.

And had a device end connector that didn’t change every other model. Some phones used standard connectors for that but plenty didn’t, and manufacturers would sometimes change the connector without rhyme or reason.

My Sony Xperia phone had a cable that connected to standard usb charger, this was before the first iPhone. From my memory Moto Razr 2 used micro usb b cable to standard usb. There where plenty of phones before iPhone that had charging cable that connected to standard usb charger.

I’m pretty sure my motorolas had a usb charger on device side before iPhone was a thing .

While I think they should've switched earlier, it's often forgotten how angry people got when Apple switched from the 30 pin connector to Lightning. There were piles and piles of devices that used the 30 pin connector - it had been on every iPod, iPad and iPhone for nearly a decade. Entire hotel chains had iPod Docks in every room. Switching cost isn't limited to just goes in the device. It doesn't surprise me that Apple was hesitant to switch the port again.

Transfer speeds by year 2001 USB: 480Mb/s

    2012 Lightening 480Mb/s

    2023 USB 80,000 Mb/s

    2023 Lightening 480 Mb/s

Apple wasn't hesitant, they knew it was an inevitable switch so never invested in to Lightening.

They were quite happy knowing once you bought Apple, you kept Apple or you lost all your accessories.

They're still playing the same game now. My Airpods work grate on iPhone, but they only connect to some non-apple devices over bluetooth (not PS5), and when they do connect, if the mic is on the audio is awful.

And like MS they will just pay a few billions in PR and Foss to make a come back in 10 years and all will be forgiven.

They will get away with this, we let them. They have no incentive to be better.

Microsoft already notified EC that they stop their browser shenanigans and will ship windows without their browser pre-installed to save on endless lawyering game they can’t win.

> watching Apple be maximally aggressive

Sweeney allegedly tweeted that he would breach his contract with Apple. Apple reached out and asked if he was being hysterical for public display. He didn’t clarify. At that point, Epic credibly threatened breach of contract.

This is a commercial dispute between multi-billion dollar companies, both of whom charge outrageous platform fees, both of whom seem to enjoy being dramatic, and both of whom are being maximally aggressive. It’s fair to remain emotionally uninvolved.

> At that point, Epic credibly threatened breach of contract.

A threat of a breach of contract is not a breach of contract, which will be a sticking point if the EU gets involved again.

> threat of a breach of contract is not a breach of contract

I don’t know EU law. But anticipatory breach is enough to trigger damages under American law, and “is an excuse for non-performance by the non-breaching party” [1].

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/anticipatory_breach

There's nothing about some random contracts I can see in DMA. DMA however does say that the gatekeeper (Apple) isn't allow to block or retaliate against competitors. Or users for that matter.

> nothing about some random contracts I can see in DMA

There are laws other than the DMA?

(Anticipatory breach is incorporated into EU law through the UN CISG [1].)

[1] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/16247_2020_13

And how exactly does that then allow breach of DMA provisions?

This is flatly false.

Schiller emailed Sweeney asking for assurances and Sweeney responded with:

> Epic and its subsidiaries are acting in good faith and will comply with all terms of current and future agreements with Apple, and we'll be glad to provide Apple with any specific further assurances on the topic that you'd like.

Without reply, Apple summarily terminated their developer account a week later. It seems obvious, in retrospect, that Schiller's email's goal was to establish a fig leaf of Apple having reached out before doing this.

It is indeed true that Sweeney has tweeted many criticisms of Apple's DMA plans but there haven't been any threatening noncompliance.

> there haven't been any threatening noncompliance

Do we have neutral sources for these claims and emails?

Apple said Sweeney threatened to breach contract and didn’t repudiate in private. Epic claims it didn’t threaten and did repudiate. We’re in a he said she said absent independent sourcing.

Epic provided screenshots of the emails. Are you seriously suggesting there's even the tiniest chance they're forgeries?

The emails are from this post (https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/apple-terminated-e...).

The source for the tweets (from your original comment: "Sweeney allegedly tweeted that he would breach his contract with Apple") are Sweeney's Twitter feed which you can read as well as I did. Did you find any threatening non-compliance?

Perhaps it's just me, but my gut says that EpicGames dot com might, possibly, just might, not be an entirely neutral source on the topic of "was Epic naughty?"

Even with screenshots, and assuming no false claims (which IIRC are entirely legal so long as you don't swear under oath), there's plenty of ways to mislead by omission while saying only true things.

> It is indeed true that Sweeney has tweeted many criticisms of Apple's DMA plans but there haven't been any threatening noncompliance.

Let’s not forget that Epic has previously breached contract with Apple in the past. That’s why Fortnite isn’t in the store today.

Surely this must be the true source of Apples suspicion?

Epic has a 12% fee, while Apple has a 30% fee - I don't think those are equally outrageous and I would go so far as to say one is extremely reasonable.

> Epic has a 12% fee, while Apple has a 30% fee

Epic’s fee is global. Once you sign with them, you pay that on every install. There is also the 5% royalty, which brings the actual fee to 17% since we’re comparing non-small developer figures.

The 5% royalty is for using the unreal engine - they don't enforce that the engine be used in order to appear in their game store, nor do they enforce that unreal engine games can only be sold on their game store.

The outrageous part of Epic’s model is the global application.

What is the alternative to global application?

Charging per install through their store. Like Apple does (or used to).

Do you have a link to the tweet from Sweeney saying he would breach the contract?

No. Graham says it’s this one [1]. I see no threat of breach, so if that’s in fact the tweet, Cook is off his meds.

[1] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1765431238985187525

Yes but there's two of them, and they're competing against each other.

That increases consumer choice and weakens the market power of both.

Having worked for many bosses, never ever never undersestimate the power of ego of an executive. It's only second to the ego of a lawyer.

Many of them will tank their company and their client if they get their ego bruised and feel publicly humiliated. Those are hyper competitive people which see live as zero sum game and are trained in life to never, ever, lose a challenge or competition for domination. ESPECIALLY in public.

The myth of a rational businessman is just that - a myth.

Being publicly regulated is exactly that scenario for Apple. There's execs in that very company that are frothing at their mouth in irrational anger ready to throw their weight around and WIN. Stomp on the opponent. SPLAT the unimportant fly that DARED challenge them.

(I'm exaggerating... but not by much. This seems more of an emotional than thoughtful response Apple is doing here.)

It's hard to avoid any conclusion but this one.

What if, and hear me out, execs could go to jail instead of just their company paying fines as if they're parking tickets? Would they still be as cocky?

> execs could go to jail instead of just their company paying fines as if they're parking tickets?

You want to send an executive to jail for cancelling a contract?

I’d be curious for a jurisdiction to try this. In my opinion, I wouldn’t want to do business in a place where commercial disputes can be twisted by a political insider into jail time.

Do you also not drive a car in a place where your driving can be twisted into jail time when you hurt people?

Why does the concept of personal responsibility for decisions insult you so deeply?

> Do you also not drive a car in a place where your driving can be twisted into jail time when you hurt people?

If you believe figurative and actual violence are identical, this analogy makes sense.

People can and do go to the prison in many instances when companies are just fined for similar offense.

What are those kind of offense which company or individual commit equally?

Tax evasion. Bribes (sorry, I meant lobbying). In case of self-driving cars, literally running over people.

Economic violence is a form of violence - it isn't identical to physical violence... but violence can take many forms.

> violence can take many forms

This is a bogus modernist interpretation that dilutes the meaning of violence. Fortunately, it’s being rejected after having a moment that peaked during lockdown.

Earlier in the threat someone mentions PG & E and how their negligence resulted in deaths.

How should this be treated? Fining the company for someone’s actions that caused deaths doesn’t seem enough.

People go to jail for non-violent crimes as well.

Again, why does personal responsibility for harm to others bother you?

> why does personal responsibility for harm to others bother you?

Personal responsibility is irrelevant. You’re constructing a lower threshold for criminality. I know the first thing I’d be trying to figure out is how to put my competitors in jail.

Let’s take Epic v Apple. Epic went to court. It lost. This entire saga has cost Epic’s shareholders billions. Should Sweeney go to jail? Would the world be better if an Apple-friendly prosecutor could take up that challenge?

If we have a cultural failing in America, it’s having a reflexive urge to turn outrage into jail time.

> I know the first thing I’d be trying to figure out is how to put my competitors in jail.

Provide an incentive for companies to regulate each other! Let rational self-interest clean up the market while the state steps back and looks on!

> Provide an incentive for companies to regulate each other

Do you think there is a reason every modern democracy resists privatising criminal prosecution? (They had it in Rome. We probably need a history of law section in the basic high-school curriculum.)

The justice system in this hypothetical would not be private, it's just that companies would be trying to sue each other for breaking the rules, accidentally advancing the public interest.

> companies would be trying to sue each other for breaking the rules

We already have private enforcement of many rules. Environmental ones, for example. We’re specifically discussing criminality, putting people in jail.

Fair enough. I just see it as an escalation in deterrence.

Does not this already happen in case of fraud pretty much everywhere?

Fair enough, no jail time then but how about the personal liability in money. You fuck up, it's your own money you gotta pay with, not the company's bottomless war-chest.

> it's your own money you gotta pay with, not the company's

I agree with this, and it could be constructed out of shareholder rights. Perhaps it could only be applied past a certain threshold of compensation, say, 100x the median wage. ($4.6mm [1].)

I’d argue the threshold should be final, unappealable regulatory penalty or criminal conviction of the corporation.

[1] https://usafacts.org/data/topics/economy/jobs-and-income/job...

> You fuck up, it's your own money you gotta pay with, not the company's bottomless war-chest.

Sort of good and sort of bad - some percentage of the time this would lead to zero money changing hands as the executive is bankrupt or has no assets.

> I wouldn’t want to do business in a place …

And that's rather the point. Apple earns a lot of money in the EU and much of that seems to be through abusing their position.

So yes, if you're the executive who signs off on something that is so clearly anticompetative, you should own the penalty. Ignorance of the law is not a defense.

That, or leave.

It’s still to be determined if this is illegal.

It’s also to be determined whether somebody will go to jail for that and criminal law already errs on the side of defendant.

It changes the risk appetite, sure, but that’s the point.

You're ignoring the second half of that sentence, and pretending like the laws will only ever be enforced morally.

I'm not ignoring it, it's just irrelevant.

Anything you do —atomically legal or not— becomes illegal if it smothers the chance of competition by using you market dominance.

The thing I'm arguing here is that the person taking those decisions faces consequences.

> twisted by a political insider into jail time

No - you seem to be assuming such a law would only be invoked in cases where the company legitimately did something wrong. But that's not what's at stake here. We're talking about what happens when someone with political clout and a vendetta is able to use that law to wrongfully get a a CEO tossed in prison. Because sometimes laws get twisted for personal gain, and you're raising the stakes pretty high.

I wouldn't want to do business under those conditions, not because I might violate the law, but because it could be used wrongfully against me.

Do you want to send executives to jail when their products kill people? The line has to be drawn somewhere, and if there is no (functioning) regulatory oversight then businesses will absolutely not self-regulate.

PG&E caused the death of hundreds and the loss of hundreds of homes, and they've done it multiple times. Is there regulatory oversight because I'm not seeing it. They will happily cut corners in the name of profit even if it means killing people.

Considering how impactful some executive decisions can be why would this be so inconceivable? A CEO can definitely cause more harm to a community than a shoplifter and we have no qualms about sending them to jail. If there was a clear mens rhea to cause harm or awareness of that harm and a disregard for the consequences to others then why shouldn't we treat it similarly?

> If there was a clear mens rhea to cause harm or awareness of that harm and a disregard for the consequences to others then why shouldn't we treat it similarly?

Yes, and we do. That’s well below the threshold of commercial disputes.

Public servants can and do go to jail for corruption, so should private sector officials for certain acts.

It’s much better for a shareholder too, as I for example don’t want to pay with my money for ceo’s ego trips.

The question you should be asking is: would execs still exist? And we know the answer to this from before the advent of corporations: yes, just as tycoons and barons with barely any checks on their political and financial power instead of as execs.

> with barely any checks on their political and financial power

I fail to see the difference?

When was the last time a warlord stole your children?

Personally - never... but illegal adoptions are a very dark side of human trafficking so you may want to be more careful with your example. The truth is that we live in a far better society than fifty or a hundred or a thousand years prior - we have far more access to justice. But if you think that access to justice is universal then there are some hard truths in your future.

When this question is asked, it's always with an implicit bias that executives are all morally bankrupt demons that would be beaten to death by the public if not for police.

My response to that is: we should change the laws.

Nobody ever asks this question thinking about multi-generation family businesses where the executive is the head of household and if everything works out, the business will be passed down to their progeny.

Of course, it also begs the question why do we accept this?

Interestingly countries that jail people for corruption still have corruption. For example in China you can be jailed and even executed for corruption but there is still a lot of corruption there. Here's an example I read about a few days ago where a city government arrested someone who demanded to be payed for their construction contract. (Obviously the real story may be more complicated.)[0] And there are definitely petty execs there as well. I think it may be because you need more power in enforce corruption laws, and power itself multiplies the effect of corruption. That is why I think the civil law vs. criminal law is an important distinction.

[0] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3253705/c...

Seems current laws look civilized/weak for your taste.

I think you'd rather prefer Sunday gala of past where convict would be covered with oil soaked rags and then set on fire. So while that person ran crying, howling it provided tons of entertainment to hardworking folks gathered there. And in that process of course justice prevailed.

This is what one call win-win proposition.

I think it would be wise to reflect on whether the next logical step from "I think fines are not effective enough and decision markers should face jail setences" is "I think we should set people on fire as punishment and public entertainment". Do you genuinely believe that a person arguing for the first, would agree or would be close to agreeing with the second?

I'm willing to believe Apple may be like that behind the scenes, buuuuuut while reading this:

> Many of them will tank their company and their client if they get their ego bruised and feel publicly humiliated. Those are hyper competitive people which see live as zero sum game and are trained in life to never, ever, lose a challenge or competition for domination. ESPECIALLY in public.

… I thought you were going to name Sweeney as the petulant man-child chafing at rules and being told "no".

Let's go with both and even more on top? The exec positions attract the personality type.

This is egregious and deeply disturbing behavior from Apple. At this point it feels wrong to own an iPhone. I'm at a loss for words describing what Tim and their leadership team has done to this company that I used to admire so much.

They're addicted to bad revenue here.

Once they started with the App Store revenue and especially taking a cut on all transactions, they were locked in. It's a public company so number must always go up. If number doesn't go up, executives are gone and replaced with people who will make number go up. That means it's impossible for them to back out of the App Store revenue channel. They'll have to be forced out by government action, in which case they can write it off as unavoidable and appease the shareholders and maybe not be replaced.

The basic principle here is that when a company takes on a revenue stream, it becomes addicted to it and it's incredibly difficult to give that revenue stream up even if it's destructive to other aspects of the company or brand. This is very closely related to the innovators' dilemma. In fact that might be seen a special case of the same failure mode.

If Apple ever goes really into advertising, that'll really be the end of them as a good brand. Advertising revenue destroys everything it touches. It's possible that they could recover from this debacle but a pivot into ads is the end.

They already have an ads business, fwiw.

And ads is the one line of business that is growing.

All of the privacy and app tracking restrictions conveniently relate to them having all of the tracking data and third parties not having it. Your data is "private", to everyone except Apple.

This is the reason Apple is violently opposing any software coming from sources they don't control.

The way the DMA was written is a convoluted joke. It could have been a lot simpler: hardware device makers shouldn't be able to block third party software. A more extreme case could prevent companies over a certain size from manufacturing hardware and the operating system.

Then Apple would simply say they are not blocking third party software from their hardware (iPhones), they are just blocking it from running on their software (iOS).

Making a law is inherently a messy job, if you think you can replace a 100 page document with 100 words, there's a good chance you are overlooking a lot of complexity.

The issue for Apple is that their hardware business is slowing down due to market saturation. Their recent attempt at growth into a new hardware market (Vision Pro) seems like a huge dud. Their last successful new product was the Watch which at about 100 million sales in total is only half of a single year’s iPhone sales (and likely less profitable).

So where do they go from here?

They've tried becoming a bank (or banking reseller at least) with Apple Card which now has savings accounts and such. They're also apparently doing some AI work that could be interesting. But yeah, this is the real issue. Number must always go up and mobile is a saturated market now.

They should do more acquisitions. Buy Anthropic for starters. Absolute no brainer. Make Claude the new Siri and roll out powerful on-device models too.

More acquisitions? Why? They're already a $3 trillion company. As parent comments say, they have saturated the market, maxed out the app store at the expense of good will, and are engaged in a duopoly spiral with Alphabet. How long will "number go up"? Until the planet is piled up to space in paperclips?

They may have to realize that unlimited growth is simply not possible.

It works for cancer, at least until the patient dies.

Can't sell more iPhones - only option is casino games for children!

Focus on not slaughtering their golden goose. Public companies absolutely do not need to grow revenue and many industries remain in states of decline for decades. However, lack of growth means the stock option party is over for employees.

Dunno why you are being downvoted. Regardless of what one thinks of Apple charging 30% tax on their dominion, the fact that it's now become a sort of dependency is correct.

Governments have the same problem. Once you start taxing, it becomes hard to give up the revenue stream.

I just don't understand what Apple expects out of the situation at this point. What's the best-case scenario here, that the EU will say "yeah that checks out" and let Apple have their way after all? This is going to backfire horribly.

Apple just prepared the ground for the next billion dollar EU fine...

Maybe US govt will protect Apple?

Maybe. But it feels like the sentence is formulated in a wrong way in this context, it should be, "Maybe US govt will help Apple to continue to screw its customers".

The only thing I can think of is that Apple is trying to do whatever it can to continue to generate income from developers to make sure its quarterly reports look good until it has another plan.

In 2023, they processed $89.3bn in IAP, a 2.8% increase from 2022. Their top-grossing app was TikTok with $1.9bn in IAP. At a 30% split that's $520m to Apple. And that's just from one app that doesn't really push IAP as egregiously as games like Fortnite.

I think Apple is trying to ensure a new product cough Apple Vision Pro cough to offset losses from the alternative app stores.

They know the EU won't ever allow them to do what they're currently doing to "comply" with the DMA. But all they have to do is stonewall long enough to Vision Pro or some new service/product/etc to replace the revenue lost from the DMA.

A company failing to meet revenue goals due to governmental compliance? No investor wants to take that sort of gamble, their stock would take a massive hit.

Couldn't agree more. I think the iPhone 15 Pro may be my last iPhone. Apple's entire reaction to the DMA has left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth.

I used to think these were my devices, but Apple has been making it crystal clear lately that they consider them to be their devices.

"We own the customer" is the new mantra of Apple.

Maybe it was always that way, with the iPod and iTunes, etc.

Thankfully I've never felt that way when using a Mac.

What you gonna use tho? I've been degoogling and pooling most of services like email to iCloud for a while now. Should I just get rid of smartphone altogether?

There are other options.

I switched last year to a slightly older Android phone running Graphene OS and have been using that but have realized there are drawbacks to doing that.

Depending on what carrier you have, you can also check out some of the other Chinese imports that are competing well with Samsung and Apple. A lot of people I know are just using a personal cloud storage with their phones and just offloading their stuff there which is pretty easy to set up. Hell, even Microsoft OneDrive is easy to set up syncing with. iCloud is just one solution for backup and storage these days.

>> but Apple has been making it crystal clear lately that they consider them to be their devices.

This is a great point. The thing that sucks is the market is down to two main phone companies - Apple and Samsung. Unless you're on a carrier where some of the import phones like Xiomi or ZTE work, we're all stuck between two companies who increasingly are abusing their positions in the market because they can.

Apple seems not to care any more about customer sentiment and does things more so for the bottom line than anything else right now. I guess that's what we should've expected when the guy who ran the supply side of the company with an iron fist gets promoted to CEO.

The fact that Apple (the 3rd party in the interaction between you and the developer) has a say at all in what people do with their computers at all is already egregious. I couldn't imagine letting someone else control my computers like that.

It's enough of an issue where I honestly don't understand how a single user on a site called 'hacker'news could be okay with it.

Imagine if you couldn't run software of your choosing on Windows either. And the only way to publish an app on Windows was to agree to give Microsoft 30% of everything. That's the exact behavior your enabling by using Apple products.

The thing is, we all have laptops within our vicinity most of the time.

The people who are really affected by these policies are the normal people who don’t own computers. For many people their phone is their one and only computing device.

Especially for kids, if I had grown up with only an iPhone I doubt I would have become a programmer.

No offense but if this is what broke the camel's back for you then you seem like live in a different planet.

Ummm lol. So now sideloading is allowed (with lots of costs associated mind you) and if someone wants to use it Apple will just kick them off the platform? :')

So first malicious compliance with all the inflated costs and then they don't even allow people to use it. I really hope the EU will crack down on this BS and force Apple to allow real sideloading.

But anyway I've written Apple out of my life a long time ago.

There’s no way the EU allows Apple’s interpretation of the DMA after they did this, Apple really made a mistake here. As you say, how can you be sure that alternative app stores won’t just be booted off by Apple for $REASON?

Made a mistake, why? They either comply right away, or just pretend to be deaf with their own interpretation, make Epic sue them again, pull the situation for a few years keep profiting off developers with their 30% rent, maybe at the end of it the EU will fine them some peanut and the rest is just profit, can’t understand what the mistake is here

The potential fines aren’t peanuts. From memory, they are up to like 12% on global annual revenue (not profit), or something.

Ah didn’t know it, that would be cool, fingers crossed

> how can you be sure that alternative app stores won’t just be booted off by Apple for $REASON?

The EU law allows for consumers to sideload other app stores on hardware they control. It has no provision that compels Apple to continue doing business with a company in their own app store.

Yes, it is a business decision you need to make to offer a sideload app store and opt-out of the Apple app store. Does it suck for Epic? Yes. But this is the path they chose.

Edit: If you read the Apple letter Epic cites it refers to App Store Review Guidelines, clearly they are terminating an App Store developer account. Nothing stops Apple from minting a fresh Developer Account with only Marketplace capabilities if they apply for a Marketplace account.

Epic is unable to make their own app store without a developer account.

It is unclear exactly what Epic lost access to, but you can have access to the CIP section required to get a certificate with an Alternative Marketplace entitlement without having access to the App Store Connection section which allows you to publish to the App Store.

That's not how things work, you can only make an alternative app store with Apple's consent, not without. Deleting Epic's dev account means they can't make an alternative app store.

Alternative app marketplaces are required to accept an agreement including payment terms to Apple. It is still a business relationship in Apple's DMA implementation.

app store =/= developer account

Just need some context here...one of the biggest companies in the world, ever, with all the financial and legal resources available to them, and you think they aren't playing 5D chess?

I agree the mobile ecosystem is cancerous, I have never given a dime to Apple for anything but their MacBooks for work reasons.

The thing that gets most on my nerves is the ridiculous "protecting users security and privacy".

Because if I go along this line of thinking then the conclusion is that they don't give a damn about it on the Mac line because there I can install what I want.

It's not up to Apple to decide how I use their products and I will never ever buy their phones albeit I need to use one to test mobile websites and applications for work.

> The thing that gets most on my nerves is the ridiculous "protecting users security and privacy".

There's a distinction between "secure for users by default" and "secure from users"

Apple (and Apple fans) really like to muddy the two.

You can build a perfectly secure ecosystem by default... that still has an escape hatch (covered with warnings) that the user retains the right to use.

Apple chose in its mobile ecosystem, and continues to choose, not to do this.

Ergo, what they're really in favor of is "security from users"

PS: To head off the 'users are the most insecure part of a system' apologism, (a) we're talking about personal devices, not managed ones & (b) with great power comes great responsibility.

This complaint is valid for Google's Android as well for building a remote attestation system apps can use to see if the user has modified the operating system.

"Bring Your Own Device" has honestly been pretty pathological in this regard. I like only having my phone on me, I very much dislike the various levels of invasive that corporate compliance software is designed around (Google do...not a bad job here in just having the domains separated, but I'd be much happier if it all had to live in it's own VM with only the access I grant it back to the main device).

In Google's case, at least they have the technical fig leaf of being able to blame third parties.

I.e. Google only implements Play Integrity (nee SafetyNet) attestation. Third parties decide what to use it for. Google has no control over those third parties.

That said, in practice it's 90% about controlling and limiting open source / third-party Android forks.

> But anyway I've written Apple out of my life a long time ago.

I love my iPhone and my Mac. They are great devices. I’ve been using Apple products happily despite having pretty few acquaintance with the Apple brand (which I feel incredibly arrogant).

All of those stories about the DMA and the total lack of good faith from Apple when it comes to respect the rules are making me strongly reconsider buying new Apple products in the future. In fact I’m starting to regret my investment in a Air M2 last year because while it’s not new that Apple consider my devices to be their own, they are not even trying to act like it’s not the case anymore. They are actively and publicly fighting against my (their customer) interests.

Similar here. I like their products, their design and don't have anything better to my needs. I even find some sense about this whole DMA thing to their respect. But their user hostility and "you are wrong we are always right and we never accept that we are wrong" kind of gaslighting attitude of them as a company really makes me lose trust in them as a customer.

While I still use Apple devices, I wouldn't have thought of switching to another ecosystem, say, 8 years ago.

Now, if there was a good alternative, I'd seriously consider.

The reason I haven't bought into the Apple mobile ecosystem wholly is because of the power they could exert.

My friends' counterarguments were always that they did not currently exert that power to the detriment of users.

To which my reply was "Show me a few down quarters, missed growth targets, or a threat to one of their primary sources of revenue and see what they do."

Any company should always be expected to pathologically leverage all forms of control it can, if it needs to generate profit.

You are right and that’s something I knew when I bought. It’s not that I liked it but rather than in my opinion, it wasn’t better on the Android side (I mean, at least Apple don’t sell my health data). Windows is worse than everything else.

(In fact I’m really grateful that Linux is even existing because otherwise the situation would be catastrophic. But I digress)

The point is that now, Apple is exercising this control to (try to) actively defeat public regulators. I do believe It’s pretty serious when a company actively tries to circumvent the rules made by the public powers.

And I say that as someone who ideologically tolerates civil disobedience when needed. But corporations are not humans, they must respect the rules in all circumstances. Because respecting the stupid regulations and the stupid laws is the only thing that distinguishes them from mafioso systems.

> if it needs to generate profit.

And especially if it needs to retain control of its platform.

Just look at Microsoft’s dark patterns when it comes to browser control. And this is after the EU find them like a billion dollars on the exact same pattern 15-20 years ago with IE.

Well, they do exert that power to me. I have the Apple Watch Ultra because my Series 6 got water after 3-ish years of swimming and died (while I think it shouldn't have happened, that's OK, I know it hasn't been designed for that much water exposure), I decided to get the "more durable" Ultra as I was getting more serious on my swims.

I had the S0, S3, S6 and never had any problems otherwise. In Ultra, their flagship and most durable watch, it's problematic as I can imagine: the original loop started to wear out in 6 months, the action button sometimes just does nothing, GPS (which should have been more accurate due to more band support etc) goes crazy while swimming (which never happened with S6) and records incorrect data (I see physically impossible "jumps" in recorded swim daya) and most importantly, the screen sometimes goes black (after months of debugging I've realized that it is wrist detection, but no solution other than turning off always on display which for some reason "solves" the problem but I can't have always-on display).

Despite all those problems on the most expensive and "durable" watch which I didn't have on any other watch before, Apple support did a diagnostic and told me there is absolutely nothing wrong with the device, and don't offer a replacement.

A friend had similar problems and they "found nothing wrong" with his AWU either and refused to replace it too (he then switched to Garmin).

As Apple is a company that blatantly refuses problems with their own devices I now hesitate to buy another Apple Watch, or the AVP for instance, simply because I can't trust them anymore.

> They are actively and publicly fighting against my (their customer) interests.

If Apple allowed unrestricted sideloading or third-party app stores, then it loses its leverage to hold apps accountable to any guidelines.

A few major players would switch to using the alternative method (eg Amazon would want to sell digital items and use its own payment system), legitimizing it, and then everyone who wants to ignore the guidelines for less admirable reasons would follow suit.

Less technically savvy users would follow the prompts to install an app with extremely mixed results. And once there's no one way to install apps, it makes it that much harder for them to tell if an app is legitimate or not.

That's maybe fine for more technical users, but for people who just want to use their phone as an appliance rather than verify the chain of trust for an app, there's no discernible benefit. The time required to verify an app is non-negligible, and the risk is pretty much infinite with respect to what information they give it.

And sometimes you don't really have a choice whether to use an app or not. Your employer or locale may make or imply decisions on service providers for you, and the reason for choosing those service providers likely has nothing to do with how their app treats end users. They won't need to clear any quality bar to offer an app at all, and a locked-in customer has less negotiating power than Apple.

Apple has positioned itself as a premium product which is going to make things simpler (ie reducing executive overhead) by making decisions for you. Saying "no" to features to keep things focused for the largest group of users is hard, and those decisions are going to trend towards the largest demographic using the platform, which is probably less-technical users who don't hang out on HN. If you want to customize the platform, then that's Android's competitive edge.

You can even sideload apps with a developer license - that's essentially how UTM is installed: https://docs.getutm.app/installation/ios/

While that does mean you have to put down more $$, it also effectively narrows the people sideloading apps to people who "know what they're doing" (or at least have demonstrated a higher bar of tech-savviness and clicked through more legal waivers)

What do you want to do now that you can't do with the current state of affairs?

> What do you want to do now that you can't do with the current state of affairs?

I want to own the object I paid hundreds to own.

You are serving me the « you can still use android » argument. But that’s a false choice : I know both platforms, I know their pro & cons (at least relatively to my opinion). I choose iOS because Android had other cons that I couldn’t tolerate. Making this choice doesn’t tie me to agree with every decision Apple make on my device.

The thing is that I’m stuck between two actors and I don’t like any of them for various reason. Because those two actors actively used their previously accumulated financial power to block new competitors on the market. Your argument of « you can go elsewhere if you are not happy », would be valid if we still had Windows Phone, Palm Pre, Symbian OS or if it was doable for new actors to emerge tomorrow, heck I would even accept it if you could install Linux on my phone (in fact I do believe that regulators should enforce the right to install another OS ok any phone). But we are not in this situation of choice and that’s precisely why those regulations are coming.

They’ve already approved others for third-party App Store implementations:

https://mastodon.social/@rileytestut/112039139930789909

Are any of them game stores?

Call me when Xbox allows side loading.

It's somewhat locked down as you need to apply with Microsoft for a Developer account, but you can technically sideload UWP apps onto your Xbox hardware by entering Developer Mode. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/devk...

It's not convenient and you need to reboot your console to go back to running commercial apps, but it is present. At least it's a one-time payment to get the developer account.

And what percentage does Microsoft charge for games on the Xbox?

How is that at all different from what you could already do with Apple devices?

Would anyone who's calling for iPhone sideloading be upset about Xbox sideloading? I wouldn't. By all means, let's regulate both Microsoft and Apple. The more the merrier.

I don't think I've ever looked at a video game console and thought, "I'm sure glad that I can't sideload games onto this." This is a slippery slope that I am happy to go down.

Idk, subjectively it feels as end of Apple we all know.

Clear stagnation in terms of innovation; no new fundamental interface (no smart glasses, AVP looks too expensive and too narrow); abandon on car project; AI for Apple is nowhere close to others; sales decrease; Apple Watch sales ban; Epic Games court; DMA — after taking a leading position at the market, Apple clearly fails to offer anything new and instead invest too much resources into protecting their market position.

Wonder what will replace Apple. Will we see a slow stagnation here or radically new interface for human-to-technology interaction is around the corner?

Maybe they should make cars.

Apple has consistently made laptops and development environments that creative types enjoy and admire. It’s too mad our economic system is setup to only care about infinite growth and monopolization at Apple’s size. It’s too bad just “being a great maker of great tools for great people” isn’t possible when you’re publicly traded.

> AVP looks too expensive and too narrow

I bought the first generation and agree with these points, but boy is it really cool tech. I thought it’d be super gimmicky and dumb before I got it, I changed my mind within a couple of hours after using them.

I ended up sending mine back, but only because I bought them to develop vOS apps for it and simply don’t have the time after taking on a new client. I really hope they make a second generation and continue improving on it, I already know I’m going to buy it.

(I know it’s ironic hoping they’ll make more of their fledgling platform after I just sent mine back and potentially helped kill it, but I really loved it.)

> Idk, subjectively it feels as end of Apple we all know.

You do rationally realize the cognitive dissonance in your subjective feeling, right?

A company that is accused of abusing their market position, competitors trying to break into their platform, isn't an indicator that the company is close to an end at all.

If it were really the end of Apple, you'd see something like "Epic withdraws legal claims against Apple due to dwindling interest in developing for iOS platforms".

Here we go again...

> According to Epic, Apple reportedly told the company that it’s “a threat to their ecosystem.”

Note they're not saying Epic is a security threat or has a product that endangers Apple customers. Instead, they're calling Epic, the company itself, a threat to Apple's ecosystem.

This quote makes sense, if you replace "ecosystem" with "monopoly."

To be more specific, it's likely that Epic is a threat to Apple's business/technical ability to steer/shape/profit from the iOS ecosystem.

Actually, replace "ecosystem" with "revenues".

I think it is <insert-expletive> to make Epic out to be the villain.

At the same time:

> This quote makes sense, if you replace "ecosystem" with "monopoly."

In the US, iPhone has a 57.93% market share. As of 2023, Android has a 70.29% global market share.

They have a monopoloy on distribution channels of iOS Apps. There is no way, other than through the App Store, for a developer to sell software to the owner of an Apple device such that the owner can execute that software on their own device.

So create another phone platform and compete.

What about the users who purchased an iPhone with the expectation that they would be able to execute software from Epic on their phone?

They were wrong in their supposition. It's part of free market process, asymmetric information.

The only regulation we need here is a right-to-repair law, that requires hardware manufacturers to provide users root access to any firmware or software flashed onto the device.

Or maybe you think that if Apple went out of business, or simply decided to shut down the App Store tomorrow, then all the users with bricked devices should have no legal recourse.

They are free to return their phone and buy one that meets their needs.

I hope you will understand that this is not a valid argument when dealing with monopolies.

It's a subjective monopoly. In fact everything is a subjective monopoly. And nothing is.

Some people just like regulating everything.

Monopolies are not a bad thing, except when they are enforced with violence=government.

Fortunately no one forces you to use Apple's products.

Clearly the recent 1.8B Euro fine the EU levied against Apple didn't send a message. Perhaps the EU needs to ratchet it up by an order of magnitude.

Quite an authoritarian take.

Both sides are authoritarian. One is a private company with more money than most countries, one is an economic union nominally representing the people of many countries.

I don't know where I fall on this issue personally, but siding with Apple is probably more authoritarian.

People defend Apple like its the underdog. Apple has been Goliath for almost a decade. Apple under Tim Cook is more about making money than it is about making the best product.

Yep and i think the market is saturated, but they still need the number to go up for the big shareholders. I mean they have a gross profit of 150 billion, it's not like this is helping the workers making apple's products and services.

I'm old enough to remember when they were the underdog.

I still find it weird that people spent the last 5 years complaining about practices that started when they still were an underdog, and which were applauded at the time, and which don't even fully apply now to all developers anyway.

But you're right, they're not underdogs any more.

It's two private companies, in this case one is using their local government to try to force the other to change, in order to make more money.

People think Apple is a struggling company still making iPod and PowerMacs to stay afloat.

Oh, authoritarian EU. What is it, 2016 again?

The unelected 'authority' being Apple, of course.

Apple's choice was apparently to die as a hammer-wielding hero or live long enough to become the patriarch on the telescreen.

More likely, Apple needs to withdraw entirely from the EU and see what happens.

Watch as your shares slide down as you withdraw from one of the worlds largest markets?

The EU is Apples least profitable market.

Totally wrong. Europe is Apple's 2nd biggest market. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2024-q1/FY24_Q1_Consol...

And it’s their least profitable.

Is it less profitable than China? Doesn't look like it. They operate in more than 2 markets.

What are you basing that claim on? As far as I can see Apple's financials only break out revenue by geography, not net income.

What will happen if they exit the EU? They will loose more revenue and tank their stock and Tim Apple will get the boot ad EU users will move to Samsungs, Pixels and Nokias and life will go on.

You're acting like the EU is some poor country in the outback and not their second biggest market after the US.

Or better yet, we fork Android and have a non-Google EU-only appstore similar to Huawei's Andorid fork OS and appstore but with EU's privacy rules. If so many companies bother to make apps just for Huawei's separate appstore, then they'll definitely do that for the EU as well. Of course, then Google will go bitch about it to "daddy", and the US will probably start a trade war with the EU.

> Or better yet, we fork Android and have a non-Google EU-only appstore similar to Huawei's Andorid fork OS and appstore but with EU's privacy rules.

No one would use it and no developers would publish to them. All brands have their own appstore already, but no one uses them so they also all ship with the Google app store.

Unless you can't ship with the Google store.

You're wrong. A lot of Apps are on Huawei's store in EU.

> Of course, then Google will go bitch about it to "daddy", and the US will probably start a trade war with the EU.

If Google can do this, certainly Apple can do it too. Biden doesn’t strike me as having much appetite for a trade war with the EU (he famously has a lot of soft diplomacy skills instead), but if Trump were reelected? Maybe that’s something Apple’s holding out for, who knows. Wild speculation on my part.

Apple stock price will drop. IPhone usage in EU will drop instantly. Apple revenue will be severely hit.

People will get over it switch to alternative services.

I think the main danger would be a (new?) competitor trying to become Apple, to fill the niche of premium devices, simple lineup, i.e. whatever image apple currently has. And they could do so in europe in all peace and once they are ready expand to other markets and compete with Apple. To me that seems like one of the biggest dangers of withdrawing from the EU.

And how long would that take to happen?

My guesses: A big party at Google, a wave of so-so smartphones from companies that will try their luck in the high-end smartphones segment, a grey market of iPhones imported from other countries at high prices without warranty.

Grey import is usually cheaper due to higher taxes in EU.

Apple's last quarter results: $30 billion in net sales from Europe, their second largest market behind the Americas. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2024-q1/FY24_Q1_Consol...

The idea of leaving Europe is nonsense. Apple is a publicly owned corporation, and Tim Cook would be immediately dismissed for such financial recklessness.

what are their margins? an $18B fine starts to make it seem possible that it would be profitable to not sell there.

Or, you know, they could just comply with our laws...

How much of that revenue is threatened by DMA? If they stand to lose most of their revenue or profits by complying with the laws, why bother?

It seems crazy that Apple is going to die on this hill, but I’m really curious what the accountants are sending the execs. I could see them willing to gamble a chunk of revenue to prevent every other market from trying to write similar laws, especially if they’re losing that revenue regardless.

80% of Apple's revenue is hardware.

I think their point of view would be that they’re selling a global product and the value of serving a market needs to exceed the cost of the peculiarities of serving it.

Maybe there’s a complex solution here, but the naive one of global compliance to local demands needs an evaluation of cost vs reward. There’s also the somewhat possible concern that the EU might actually just be hostile to Apple and cutting losses now against possible future losses makes sense. (Again, remember we’re presuming order of magnitude increases in fines).

> Maybe there’s a complex solution here,

There's an extremely simple solution here. Just comply with the EU regulation in good faith. Sure, you lose some revenue that you'd otherwise get, but only for extremely popular games/apps like Fortnite etc, but your overall margins remain very thick. The vast majority of users would keep using only the App Store and vast majority of developers would publish there, so what's the big deal?

Instead it seems that what Apple is afraid of, is that this would lead to a chink in their armor, _eventually_ leading to their no-compromise attitude being re-evaluated in other markets as well, both by users (just a couple of TikToks from high-profile influencers would be enough to bring this issue into a more public light) and regulation bodies.

Hahaha, have you seen the firing frenzy the US execs were expected to execute for a SLIGHT DIP in revenue and a few % in cost of a loan? :D

And you expect those same share holders to just support leaving of a massive market? Cook would be taken through NYSE by his nether regions by just thinking that. This whole idea is nonsense.

And even if, by any bizarre chance (it's 2020s after all) it happens, we'll suffer with... *checks list*... Samsung Galaxy Phones? Lenovo, Samsung and ASUS laptops? Sony headphones? Huh. What horrible existence. I'm sure that would be an end of the Union. Imagine using a great Samsung foldable instead of an iPhone.

Motorolas are a thing again and are quite good.

The lose of revenue would not be the biggest problem, they could afford it. The problem would be the loss of applications, most EU based developers would stop supporting iOS and focus on Android. That would hurt

I'd love to watch that!

I so wish they would do that. Apple thinks it's more powerful than government, let's test that theory!

Most people would understand that these huge, aggressive corporates must be brought to heel. The sooner the EU establishes credibility in this respect, the sooner we all win.

> More likely, Apple needs to withdraw entirely from the EU and see what happens.

This uniquely American type of arrogance where TikTok/Huawei is guilty even if it complies will the laws, and American companies are innocent even if they break all our laws.

There are, I am afraid, only two ways to respond - aggressively or subserviently. As US economy loses its position as the centre of the universe, the second option becomes less appealing.

Well here's another possibility.

What if Apple complied with the law.

They don't want to lose all those sales anyway.

I suppose they could do that, but wouldn't they still need to pay the 1.8B?

[Added] ... And continue to support products and services already sold?

Why would they? They’d be beyond any courts jurisdiction, but of course they could never return.

That’s not how cooperation treaties and jurisdictions work. They will totally pay that 2B and also pay for the privilege of running after them and the interest rate too.

It’s not a five year old who can do something mean and then just quickly run home.

Investors will be very angry and the entire C-suites will be at risk of losing their jobs. They're doing this only because it will maximize their revenue/profit through market control.

It’s a FAFO suggestion, nothing more, but I have not seen anyone consider (or care?) whether Apple’s EU customers support the various decisions, which is the point that interests me.

There seems to be a libertarian slant to a lot of the comments on this. It reads as if most people believe they have an inalienable right to extend Apple’s products. In other words, it doesn’t matter what I do, what I say, or how I treat Apple, I have an inalienable right to extend their platform. A pretty bold take in my opinion.

i mean, sounds fine? if i buy a physical product, i must be able to do whatever i want to do with it, no? who are apple to decide what i do with a device once i own it?

It's not Apple's platform. It's mine. My device, my platform. I allow Apple to install software on my device, but it's my device. I own it, full stop.

This whole idea that a company can sell you a product but still retain exclusive ownership and decision making over that thing that they sold you needs to die. It's such an abusive relationship and deeply anti-user.

> deeply anti-user.

You mean anti-owner, since you really own the device

I've spent ~$7000 on Apple products last year.

I think it'll be $0 this year and going forward.

Tired of this kind of crap. (Not only this, but Apple's behavior with EU, etc.)

Je suis Sweeney!

-- sent from my iPhone

I ditched iphones for a Google Pixel 6 when it came out.

Ditched my macbook for a Windows 10 beast machine running linux mint in VMWare Player. Flawless.

I had _zero_ issues ditching apple. Especially since everyone I speak to uses Whatsapp anyways. This "green bubble" thing never affected me.

Who you going to replace them with that's better/same level of ecosystem/user experience? Genuinely interested.

Frankly me too.

I use terminal, vscode and firefox, docker to do development. Linux (specifically popos) works well for that and a lot of other stuff.

For that I use a Thinkpad X1 Carbon.

I am an Apple customer because I have loved using a Mac since before Steve Jobs returned to Apple and made it a trendy luxury item. But I can no longer support with my money "90s Microsoft 2.0".

> Apple said one of the reasons they terminated our developer account only a few weeks after approving it was because we publicly criticized their proposed DMA compliance plan.

Not a valid reason to terminate it.

Are you believing a “trust me bro” comment?

Say what you want about Tim Sweeney, but he has integrity.

In what sense did the submarine delivery of functionality clearly in violation of their contract with Apple—the inspiring incident for all this drama—represent integrity?

It was very obviously intended as a launch pad for the lawsuit, not a genuine attempt to skirt App Store rules.

If my contractual partners were to violate agreements I had entered into in good faith in order to gain PR advantage in a pre-planned legal dispute, I wouldn't tend to think of them as displaying integrity.

Yes, from the perspective of a corporation being sued for acting unethically, Sweeny lacks integrity. I’m not sure that reflects poorly on Sweeny’s character.

Apple says they did it for no reason other than that they could, not because Epic violated anything.

> “Epic’s egregious breach of its contractual obligations to Apple led courts to determine that Apple has the right to terminate ‘any or all of Epic Games’ wholly owned subsidiaries, affiliates, and/or other entities under Epic Games’ control at any time and at Apple’s sole discretion.’ In light of Epic’s past and ongoing behavior, Apple chose to exercise that right.”

https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/06/apple-terminates-epic-game...

> no reason other than that they could

That's statement is wrong given the quote you posted right after. They clearly state it's due to perceived breaches of contractual obligations.

FWIW, I have no horse in the race, just pointing out what I would assuming is a misapprehension in your statement.

That quote didn't show the whole part, I realized it looks a bit strange out of context there. Here I'll break it down with some more:

> Schiller suggests that Epic’s “colorful criticism” combined with its past actions “strongly suggests that Epic Sweden does not intend to follow the rules.”

So, the main transgression here was "colorful criticism", that is the ongoing behavior by epic, nothing about safety or contractual breeches. If they believed Epic would break contract they would have banned them 5 years ago when that breech happened, not now, nobody can argue that a 5 year old breech of contract on another account actually warrants a random ban of this account today.

In some ways it makes me question if it's impossible to have one without the other - can you have a company that is as obsessive about quality as Apple at the same time as one that won't attempt to exert monopolistic control over its whole ecosystem? Are these two sides of the same coin?

I'd like to embrace something like the Vision Pro. But as long as it's an iPad strapped to your face fully locked to this controlled ecosystem that I fundamentally disagree with, I can't stomach it. There's something visceral about giving a company that exerts this obnoxious level of control complete control of every photon entering your eyeballs.

So Apple, in case you ever care, you are at -1 Vision Pro users.

But this isn't about quality at all.

It's about Apple trying to milk the system for all it's worth.

You can absolutely build a great product w/o trying to maximize profits to the extreme. That's just frowned upon in the current business world.

Quality and openness are not in tension at all. I can buy cheap third party brake pads for a BMW, it doesn't make the OEM any less "obsessive" about quality.

Apple views every instruction executing on iPhone as something they own, control, and tax.

It'd be cute if iPhone was a toy used by a million people. However, mobile computing has become a cornerstone of modern communications and societal function. You use these devices to book flights, buy goods, order food (at restaurants), date, do banking, send texts, emails, -- literally everything.

And Apple controls and taxes all of it. All the innovation. All the connections. Everything.

And they control how you write and deploy that software. It's a game of constantly jumping through hoops and stressing out over release trains.

With a press of a button, a change in policy, Apple can nuke your product from orbit. And there's not a thing you can do.

And Google, even with their "unlocked APK installs", isn't really any different.

This is a new kind of monopoly. A solid chunk of the connective tissue of our planet and species is controlled, taxed, and ruled over by two overlord companies.

I am so glad the Internet itself isn't like this. Except, these devices practically are the internet for many or most folks. So these to, in a way, do control and tax the internet.

An obsession over quality would have Apple open the door to better audio services like Spotify to integrate with the phone's audio database for instance. Or have Kindle like apps let their user have the better purchasing experience. Or better browsers to have deeper system integration. Better messaging platforms interoperate with iMessage. A 3.5mm jack to have the best latency and highest potential audio quality. The list goes on and on.

Apple values quality, but not above everything else. This is obvious and totally normal for a company, it's just weird it bears repeating so much.

Yeah it's a great point. In some ways here we are seeing the exact illustration of that point. If they only cared about user experience and quality they wouldn't sacrifice their user's interests by forcing them through convoluted processes to buy content outside their own store. That's far from a high quality experience. So they value quality highly but it's a distant second to their own desire for control. They still present a very thin veil of pretending this is in their user's interests, but they are barely trying any more.

>In the past, Epic has denigrated Apple’s developer terms, including the Developer Program License Agreement (DPLA), as a prelude to breaking them.

>Given that pattern, Apple recently reached out directly to Mr. Sweeney to give him an opportunity to explain why Apple should trust Epic this time and allow Epic Games Sweden AB to become an active developer. Mr. Sweeney’s response to that request was wholly insufficient and not credible.

From Apple’s letter to Epic.

This will not fly in the EU.

I am actually very annoyed about their behavior. My next phone will likely not be an iPhone. All the paid apps are subscription based now anyway, it's quite easy to switch.

Yikes, you might be disappointed:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/google-asks-judg...

I hear Huawei makes nice phones.

android can sideload

You can install any store (ex: fdroid, aurora, etc) on Android already.

Yes, but no-one does. Those stores only make sense if you have installed a de-googled AOSP, and their offering is maybe half a percent of what's on Google Play. It's an option for hackers, tinkerer and developers.

I guess it's nice the option exist, but in practice it make no difference. Most consumers are not even aware that you can sideload apps or that there's alternative app stores.

But the point is always about the capability. I am using Android because ios is lacking the things I want. For example, granular volume control ( even the lowest volume on iphone is still too high for me sometimes), firefox

Android's store management is not different from windows. You can completely ignore it/install your own store/install your own apk. Not sure why people keep bring it up in Apple's case.

I am still waiting for Apple to let me install the real Firefox

I'm totally ok with their behavior. My next phone will likely be an iPhone.

If I wasn't okay with it, then I'd buy one of the multiple other options.

There are alternatives to Android even. They're terrible phones with terrible platforms: that's why people don't want them.

Apple makes an excellent phone with an excellent platform. I'm fine with letting them do that to the maximum degree they're able.

I may get rid of my iPhone, this is just horrible continued behavior on Apple’s part. Nothing can be worth the damage this is doing to their reputation

At least thanks to Unreal engine and their content in the PC space, Epic is big enough to survive this, but think of poor small indie devs who can have their revenue streams shut down at any time because $REASON and have no way of fighting back.

Apple needs to be brought down a peg or two.

I'd rather people dump Apple products over their anti-repair practices or the whole concept of locked-downd devices tied to monopolistic App Stores, rather than the Apple vs Epic vs EU fight.

This is an Apple vs. developers fight. Epic is just the one spending money on it.

I have been feeling the same way. Apple has been dropping the ball a lot lately. This whole malicious compliance thing they are doing with the EU is childish. Apple 100% should have lost the court case to Epic the same way Google did.

When your stock is traded like the stock of a company with a stranglehold on a huge market it can press seemingly at will, what can you do other than pressing?

Publicly traded companies are mercenaries bound to the highest bidder, nothing they can do about it.

apple cars, vr, losing out big time in china. cheerio tim time?

Tim Cook has overseen Apple's most profitable years - It makes and continues to make obscene piles of money. Why would the board or the shareholders vote him out?

If things go sideways, sure. But things haven't gone sideways. Day traders freak out about news stories, but the stock price has been a pretty solid to-the-right-and-up.

What even is a phone in the future anyway.

> (...) the U.S. judgment expressly provides that "Apple has the contractual right to terminate (...)

Yeah good luck with that in an EU court.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39617729 (1 hour ago, 72 comments)

Mysteriously not on the front page.

That is indeed strange.

I was going to start an Ask HN post on this very thing just this morning, so instead I’ll just reply here.

The last few weeks, HN seems to be suppressing Apple headlines. They will be on the front page, but then drop off minutes later - despite being fresh, growing in votes and engagement, and being high quality articles.

Meanwhile, positive headlines about OpenAI will be up for hours…

Also, don’t blame the mod tools. This should be fixed, that’s not normal

I didn’t flag this one, but a lot of the debates wind up with pro-Apple/anti-Apple generalities. Which isn’t interesting. Even in this thread, it’s mostly people expressing outrage and disgust or reflexive dismissal; few actual thoughts.

Thank you for not posting an off-topic Ask HN. As the site guidelines ask, you should email hn@ycombinator.com if you want to ask or tell us something (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

There's no special treatment of Apple stories or any other $BigCo stories on HN; the dominant variable is simply random fluctuation. If you're seeing otherwise, it's almost certainly because random fluctuation provides a rich set of datapoints to confirm whatever perception you're inclined towards. Mostly we're all primed to notice, and weight more heavily, the things we dislike. (Endless past explanations about this here, for anyone who cares: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

For example, if you dislike $BigCo then it will seem like negative stories about $BigCo are being suppressed. Indeed there are tons of examples of such stories not staying on the frontpage—but there are also tons of examples of exactly the opposite. How one weights these is a function of one's own perception, which is governed by what one likes and dislikes. People who like $BigCo are just as convinced that HN is biased against $BigCo, and find just as many datapoints to support it, and post just as many complaints about it.

These dynamics are as old as the hills and impossible to stop. All we can do is answer specific questions when we happen to see them. I only saw this one randomly; in the future, please use the reliable mechanism (hn@ycombinator.com) to get your question answered. It's not as if any of this is secret!

It’s not mysterious. Every time this happens it’s because the thread triggered a flame war filter.

That’s not true. A story can disappear from the front page for a variety of reasons, including user flags and manual moderator intervention. There’s no reason to suspect this particular story triggered the flamewar detector.

The number of comments exceeds that number of votes. IIRC, that's one of the factors in the flamewar detector.

You’re right, but they didn’t at the time.

Normally we'd merge into the earlier thread, but in this case I'm going to merge those comments hither, because the current submission is (presumably) a more neutral article.

That hot tempered decision will cost them a lot of money. They were already in a bad situation for essentially making the alternative stores worthless but cutting off Epic over a few tweets will further cement the idea that there's a competition problem going on here, this is also directly contradicting the DMA.

Apple makes incredible products, but their teenage angst corporate temper tantrums are vomit inducing. Might be time to vote with my dollar on other tech.

I just finished the last episode of The Talk Show podcast, where John Gruber says that Apple doesn’t hold a grudge and is only doing things because they make business sense. He said that because Apple approved Epic’s account and that they would be allowed their own App Store. I already that it was a bad take, but this shows it.

I find that Gruber occasionally has some interesting insight but it’s often hard to take him seriously these days — he’s effectively an unofficial PR outlet for Apple.

(Fun fact: he co-created Markdown with Aaron Swartz)

Edit: Swartz not Schwartz

It's a sad evolution. Gruber's blog is entitled Daring Fireball and in his early blogging days in the '00s he was in fact pretty daring and posted a lot of criticisms of Apple. Over time he had so thoroughly assimilated himself into the Apple way of thinking that he seldom notices whatever Apple is doing wrong.

> posted a lot of criticisms of Apple

His criticisms were all about how the NeXT folks were ruining Apple with their mach-o binaries, file paths & extensions, etc. You'd have thought that Avie Tevanian ran over his dog or something.

He now gets exclusive 1 on 1 interviews with Apple execs and the blog is a full time job.

You got to shill to pay the bills.

Really? I've always considered Gruber to be an Apple fanboy. He might write criticisms, but they read to me like a Deadhead penning an essay on why Aoxomoxoa isn't as good as Terrapin Station or something.

Ultimately, Gruber knows his audience is Apple enthusiasts and his material comes from being given access by Apple.

Swartz. Aaron Schwartz was in Mighty Ducks and Heavyweights.

Thank you. That’s an embarrassing mistake.

He's pretty critical of them in some areas. Mostly in developer-relations these days -- he doesn't like the anti-steering App Store rules, and Apple's general "we provided the successful platform; your apps contribute nothing to that" attitude.

John Gruber @gruber@mastodon.social ‪@stroughtonsmith @macrumors So much for my theory that Apple was making nice with Epic.‬ https://mastodon.social/@gruber/112050165133240095

There is no point having rules and contracts if you aren't going to enforce them.

It is inarguable that Epic broke the terms of the contract. They could've simply done what Spotify and others did and lobby governments whilst honouring the terms of the agreement that they voluntarily chose to sign. Instead Epic chose to be petty in order to prove a point.

Is Spotify banned ? No. And they are 100x a competitor to Apple than Epic is.

Apple doesn’t hold a grudge

Nvidia

Really curious what Apple's end game is here, they must know that being this anticompetitive will bite them pretty hard in the long term.

I wish there was button I could press so the eu/courts would address this immediately. So I don’t have to wait months/years.

The raw emails are linked at the bottom of the post.

Phil Schiller accuses Epic of intentionally violating its agreements and concludes "Please tell us why we should trust Epic this time." Epic founder Tim Sweeney replies that Epic "will comply" and offers to provide "any specific further assurances."

Finally, Apple's lawyers tell Epic's lawyers that Apple is terminating the account because a judgement in Epic v Apple says they can, and that Tim did't sufficiently plead his case in his reply to Phil.

So apple are now deciding who can be an App Store. That’s not going to work out well for them.

We need % of revenue based punishment for such acts to see fast this attitude can change.

What a monster big tech has become.

It is probably a good description of what society has become, there are a lot of people who go on repeating that these big tech are just corporations for profit and don’t have to signal any good intention, because it doesn’t make them any profit, and being bad doesn’t make them lose any profit, because we’ve become just a bunch of ignoring consumers going after the next gadget blindly, these companies are shit, because it doesn’t cost them anything anymore

What I keep wondering is why iSheeps don’t complain, like they’re the ones who are buying these overpriced crap, then being squeezed of 30% every time they get an app, who they think is going to pay for the apple tax at the end of the day

> What I keep wondering is why iSheeps don’t complain

Because the costs and detriments are obscured, dispersed, and nebulous. The consumers here are largely boiled frogs who don't know what they're missing. If users were used to an open system; an app store that functioned as an intuitive frontend for multiple distribution channels, a messaging app that supported all the protocols their friends and family use and seamlessly joined their conversations, a social media app that aggregated all the content from the people in their lives and creators they follow, and documents/photos/etc that sync across all of their devices. And then Apple et al took that all away; now you can only have apps we approve of, now all of your chats are split between platform apps with UIs that compete for your attention and try to upsell you features, now you have to use the Twitter app to read tweets (and see our ads), Instagram to see your friends' posts their (and our ads), YouTube to see new videos (and our ads), Twitch to watch people live (and our ads), oh, and also now all of your photos only sync to some of your other devices (the ones we sold you). Then you'd see outrage and indignation. iSheep don't know what is being kept from them, don't understand how cohesive and empowering a digital interface to the world should be. They have been trained not to expect a User Agent, but instead an appliance that allows them access to little islands and digital fiefdoms. And it isn't just Apple device users that are subjected to this. Apple is the most rigid in licking down their computers, but all major platforms add friction and roadblocks meant to discourage users from owning and tailoring their systems.

I wonder why Apple doesn't open up. Or else just switch to a Costco model where membership means they get to dictate what’s sold at what margin using which credit card network?

Is the end game to force regulation on everyone (Google, etc) and then switch to a Costco model themselves?

Money.

Why give up 30% of everything on your store?

In the immortal words of Rod Blagojevich, “I've got this thing and it's fucking golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for fuckin' nothing. I'm not gonna do it.”

PG said that a previous tweet by Tim Sweeney is one of the reasons..

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1765431238985187525

I wouldn't pick a side in this one... it looks to me like there are two bad guys here, and I hope they both get taken down a peg.

Dismantling Apple's Appstore monopoly would positively impact the freedom of users and developers.

Agreed.

And Epic is an actively deceptive business partner that forms agreements with the intent to break them.

Both bad, as I say.

Isn't Apple providing side loading for customers in Europe now? Sure, Apple is being petty, but I thought this is was what Epic asked for. Can anyone ELI5 this one?

All side loaded apps still need to go through Apple notarization. It's malicious compliance from Apple.

No. There is no sideloading at all.

Apple very begrudgingly allowed creation of alternative AppStores (marketplaces) instead, which are still completely under Apple’s technical control, and still go through Apple’s review.

Apple requires having a 1 million dollar credit line to allow opening a 3rd party AppStore, so consumers or small devs can’t just bypass Apple’s AppStore.

You still need a developer account and application to be signed by apple in order to be able to side load it. Whether that requirement is legal remains to be seen.

They aren't actually allowing sideloading, but the ability to install "marketplaces", which can only be provided by verified developers under very strict rules regarding government. It's a huge disappointment.

I would think this is a money game where it will force Epic to become a European developer/entity instead of just an American developer, to access the DMA market.

More hoops and more BS is entirely on brand for Apfel in this exercise.

Didn’t they only terminate the Swedish account?

Shielding the Epic game store under a different account is not the bravest move from Epic.

I would ban other Epic accounts if I was Apple.

Which Epic Games account would you prefer they use, the American one?

If you want to talk about cowardly behavior, we should discuss Apple's anti-steering policy. At the root of this brouhaha is an indefensible double-standard that Apple cannot sustain in a fair market.

epic is being a dick. you don't usually be a dick like this and expect zero repercussions.

this is akin to apple and samsung making up but one party or both parties running to the media and calling each other a 'ch*nk, slant eyes' or whatever colorful language Samsung would paint the american apple...

you can insult in business speak! it's common, but epic decided on normal speak --- is it because sweeney is pulling an Elon? Or is this a sign there are others movements the public is not aware that epic is doing? I would bet on the latter.

I don't think this is a big deal. But I do wonder if fortnite is struggling more than expected and maybe there's an options play I should begin looking into

Sounds like they violated a non disparagement clause and signaled they will not adhere to policy. All they had to do is keep quiet and launch to minimize their liability.

Guess they will need to fight in the EU to see if they can claw back.

Where are you seeing a non disparagement clause?

A non-disparagement clause is not valid under the DMA.

Perhaps Apple needs to separate geographies in its account setup. Let Epic have the EU account, but disable them everywhere else.

Because in the US/Asia, Epic has no DMA protections.

This is indeed about an EU-specific account by Epic Games Sweden.

Do you have a legal citation for this assertion?

There's no chance the DMA includes a non disparagement clause. That's totally against free speech.

I don’t understand how free speech relates to the DMA?

Not "free speech" as part of the US Bill of Rights, free speech as in "the EU ethics would never have such language in the DMA to forbid it or allow such a violation to stand."

Free speech has nothing to do with any of this

Apple terminated Epics account for Epic criticizing Apple, not for anything Epic did with the account. That is a free speech violation, retaliating for unrelated speech is against the ideal of free speech.

USAs free speech laws mostly just bans governments from retaliating, but a more encompassing law would also ban corporations from doing so as well, there is no reason you should fear speaking up just because the corporation might retaliate and ruin your life. USA already has such anti retaliation laws for companies in some cases so there is nothing unreasonable about it.

"Free speech" is all about the government not persecuting an individual for something they say.

It offers no protection in a case like this between two non-government entities.

You are talking about the US's first ammendment. That doesn't exist in the EU.

True, but they raise a valid point in that even in the US, the government has no standing to intervene with private individuals limiting each others' speech contractually. NDAs are very much enforceable in the US.

> even in the US, the government has no standing to intervene with private individuals limiting each others' speech

In Europe the government does that though, so "even in the US" is a nonsense argument here, the US is horrible at protecting individuals rights against oppressive companies.

I am not certain about such laws that could apply to this case, but there are already plenty of laws around what you are allowed to retaliate for etc. Just like USA makes it illegal to fire based on race or to fire union organizers, it is the same principle.

>You are talking about the US's first ammendment.

Then the "freedom of speech" argument is even more irrelevant, in my mind.

Companies can't fire you for unrelated speech in most of Europe, their laws doesn't protect you as much from governments but they protect speech significantly more against private corporations.

So just because US freedom of speech is limited to government doesn't mean that applies everywhere.

I still don't see how that is relevant at all between Apple and Epic...

This is Apple retaliating for Epic criticizing them. You aren't allowed to do that without a more reasonable cause, Apple argues that it isn't illegal retaliation since they have reason to suspect Epic will breach contract, so it isn't entirely clear. But it is clear that free speech is highly relevant to this case and the courts will decide if you are allowed to retaliate for this kind of speech or not.

The point is that EU employment law (whether somebody can be fired upon saying things) isn't relevant to a dispute between two business entities that are not in an employer/employee relationship...

I don't think it applies in this case for the exact reasons stated, but the EU does indeed have a charter on fundamental rights that covers freedom of expression, among other things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Rights_...

> Sounds like they violated a non disparagement clause

Where do you get this? No third-party developer is under such legal obligation.

Apple's lawyer states no such thing, only that they have the right to revoke anyone's developer account for any time and for any reason. They believe Epic will violate their rules in the future and affect iOS users' privacy and safety, so they banned them.

I know this is the internet, and no one actually reads the linked articles, but I really wish people would do so before weighing in. You did not need to make up a non-disparagement clause.

>safety

the past few years made me really fucking hate that word.

Apple should get out of the European market entirely. Their product offering is literally incompatible with the laws that govern EU commerce.

There's plenty of money to be made in Asia/Pacific and the Americas.

Apple's walled-garden approach is innovative especially on the security and stability fronts and anyone who doesn't like that or wants alternative launchers should jailbreak their ios device or just use Android, which does fit better into EU market.

Apple has literally never cared and should never care what outside bodies (including to a large degree -- their own customers) want their products to be. It's what has made them unique in the past.

If Apple backs down on their vision then they are no longer Apple.

Apple is making many billions selling hardware and services in the EU - investors would cook them for that move.

Apple's last quarter results: $30 billion in net sales from Europe, their second largest market behind the Americas. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/fy2024-q1/FY24_Q1_Consol...

> Apple's walled-garden approach is innovative especially on the security and stability fronts and anyone who doesn't like that or wants alternative launchers should jailbreak their ios device or just use Android, which does fit better into EU market.

This how I feel completely.

I use quite few different devices & operating systems on a daily basis (MacOS, iOS, Android, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD) and they all have their place. I use a Mac for my primary workstation and an iPhone for my primary phone specifically because I want security, stability, and usability on those devices. Also, the Apple ecosystem & iCloud, are very convenient for sharing / collaborating with household family members.

Don't get me wrong - many Linux distros are very stable and secure. But the "year of the Linux Desktop" is still far out. I actually feel it's further out now than it was 5 years ago. Which is too bad, because I am an avid Linux user and have used it since Slackware 3.0 / kernel 1.2.13. Easily 50% time spent on my Mac is just using a terminal logged into Linux or BSD based servers.

If I wanted a single phone, for fun, learning, hacking, etc, it would definitely not be an iPhone. But that's not what I want / need in my phone at this point in my life.

It often seems that the people pushing so hard for Apple to change its ways are not the people that actually use Apple Products, but rather individuals projecting their own beliefs and preferences onto others.

As an EU citizen, I love Apple products and would hate if I had to use subpar alternatives like Windows/Linux laptops or Android phones, so I for one would like if this would end in a way that Apple would remain in EU.

It won't end with Apple, you know. The EU's arrogance is going to impoverish the entire continent.

They didn't get out of China despite having their iCloud servers owned by the CCP, don't worry they won't get out of the EU.

Apple investors would publicly crucify tim cook in the middle of their spaceship campus if he were to take the company out of Europe.

Apple hasn't left China. They'll rather compromise both their product vision and their Chinese users than then leave a market that's smaller (for them) than the EU.

They should totally allow users to jailbreak/root their device. This is what people were expecting, not Apple-authorized alternative stores.

> If Apple backs down on their vision then they are no longer Apple.

They already did it in China.

This seems like a publicity stunt to me. No one would rationally expect Epic to have a developer account with Apple. The terms allow them to remove you for any reason and not disclose it.

Given the DMA, Apple are required to allow people to develop other App Stores. If they can kick off anyone who decides to do that, then the law is entirely pointless (and the EU commission are likely to be upset).

Sure, they are required to allow people to develop other App Stores.

They can also add any number of other policies which you probably run afoul of several times a day. Then terminate you for that. You can still develop your app store, you just can't break all the rules to develop your app store.

...which is exactly the kind of thing the EU Commission will punish them for.

If they create a bunch of new rules and only punish those who are developing their own app stores they haven't given themselves a magic get out of jail free card, it'll be very obvious to everyone what is going on.

> Then terminate you for that

And then the EU takes them to court and fines them billions of dollars.

The rest of the world doesn't have to stand still. They can just confiscate Apple's money using threat of government force.

> The rest of the world doesn't have to stand still. They can just confiscate Apple's money using threat of government force.

But surely the US would not just stand still either while the rest of the world plunders one of its most successful megacorps/source of American influence.

The USA is likely to side with the EU, actually.

The US government is literally right now trying to sue Apple for similar anti trust crimes.

If anything, what would happen is that the USA would finish its lawsuit and force Apple to end its illegal and anti completive behavior worldwide, instead of just in the EU.

Interesting, I didn't know the US was suing Apple right now for similar things. I don't follow it too closely, just what I see here on HN. Thanks for the info, I'll read up on it.

> No one would rationally expect Epic to have a developer account with Apple.

Really? I would 100% expect most any large company selling anything into the computing or computing-adjacent space to have an Apple dev account and a Play Store account.

My supermarket chain has an Apple dev account. Target has an Apple dev account. (Both presumably have Play Store accounts as well.) If those brick-and-mortar companies can manage to reach their customers that way, it was more surprising to me that Epic didn't have one previously than the converse.

Is Target actively hostile to the platform provider they have dev accounts with?

I doubt your supermarket chain has done things which rise to Phil Schiller responding to Epic with —

> We welcome all developers to the Developer Program so long as they follow the rules. Those rules, including the DPLA and the App Store Review Guidelines, are intended to protect the integrity of the ecosystem, developers large and small, and - most importantly-users. Accordingly, developers who are unable or unwilling to keep their promises can't continue to participate in the Developer Program.

> In the past, Epic has entered into agreements with Apple and then broken them. For example, you testified that Epic Games, Inc. entered into the Developer Program with full understanding of its terms, and then chose to intentionally breach the agreement with Apple. You also testified that Epic deliberately violated Apple's rules, to make a point and for financial gain. More recently, you have described our DMA compliance plan as "hot garbage," a "horror show," and a "devious new instance of Malicious Compliance." And you have complained about what you called "Junk Fees" and "Apple taxes."

> Your colorful criticism of our DMA compliance plan, coupled with Epic's past practice of intentionally violating contractual provisions with which it disagrees, strongly suggest that Epic Sweden does not intend to follow the rules. Another intentional breach could threaten the integrity of the iOS platform, as well as the security and privacy of users.

> You have stated that allowing enrollment of Epic Games Sweden in the Developer Program is "a good faith move by Apple." We invite you to provide us with written assurance that you are also acting in good faith, and that Epic Games Sweden will, despite your public actions and rhetoric, honor all of its commitments. In plain, unqualified terms, please tell us why we should trust Epic this time.

It is not relevant whether Apple trusts Epic - they are not legally allowed to block them while running a core platform service.

The sooner this "ecosystem" crap dies, the better.

The sooner not needing Apple dev tools or an Apple developer account to make software for an Apple device, the better.

The sooner I can use my Apple Watch with an Android phone, the better.

The sooner Apple stops (basically) requiring me to use icloud instead of literally any other better, cheaper, higher performance cloud service for my photos, videos, settings, and etc without nagging me 24/7 and trying to default to icloud storage, the better.

As a long time user and buyer of Apple products, I'd really rather they have robust security, stable APIs, good UI design standards (once again), and create/support open standards. All of this "ecosystem" "It's secure if you use it our way and only our way" and "it just works (most of the time)" BS is annoying me.

It's annoying, because over the last 20 years I've watched their products become weirder and more gimped and full of dark patterns in an attempt to force you to buy their services and/or lock you into buying nothing but Apple products.

And don't even get me started about the thriving group of Apple-Stans that play the "YOU DON'T LIKE IT?! THEN LEAVE! I LOVE IT! ITS PERFECT AND YOU SHOULD TOO!" game lol. TBH they're even more vicious than tesla/spacex-stans....

They went from making premium products to buggy objects filled with ads

I think the hardware still feels pretty fancy. I recently bought a macbook air and iphone 13 and they feel really nice.. the imacs I got my brothers have been excellent as well....

But buggy software filled with ads. Yes. That much I agree with!

I have an android phone (galaxy fold 4) that I've been using as a secondary for like 14 months now. When my iPhone XS finally developed a swelling battery, I decided to retire it and switch the GF4 to my primary phone. I've been bouncing between Android and iOS for many years, but this time I felt a little bit heartbroken.....

One of the reasons I like using iPhones is you can send & receive sms/imessage on a Mac. But if you use the google messages app on an android phone, you can use a webapp on any computer (any OS) that IMHO works better (kind of). For one, it works on anything!

For another: MS Windows' link-to-phone thing is pretty sweet.

For another: I like the android/samsung oneUI way of handling phone calls. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's way less obnoxious. Especially because the speakerphone button ACTUALLY JUST WORKS! At some point iOS decided to make that button pop up a menu. Caller ID also works... and the scam phonecall blacklist thing works WAAAAY better on Android.

I still don't like any other OS as much as I like MacOS, but I miss the days of 10.4/10.5/10.6... it feels like the OS has gotten heavily enshittified since then. Honestly it feels more like Windows XP lol. I blame it all on Notification Center. Notification Center is a badly programmed turd. It steals focus, the hotkeys don't work right and aren't obvious, the notifications are like constant nags and you generally have to opt out of them instead of opting into them.... I just fucking hate it.

buy an android man. All this grief you have has a solution and you are smart.

Finding this issue so cankerous to post your reply means you should find another port to anchor your ship

I don't want to live in a world where everyone has to live in fear of upsetting Tim Cook's fragile ego.

Their terms are not relevant, Apple has no authority over the DMA.

so if I set up my own app store with nothing but apps designed to scam people, Apple has to allow me to do it?

You could, but few people are going to fall for that. Are you offering something that would entice people away, something huge like Fortnite? Most non-technical people will stick with the App store.

My guess is that since fraud is presumably illegal in the EU, scam developers are not protected by the DMA. But I don't know EU law and didn't read the full text of the DMA although I did read some of the English version a while ago,

App Store is already rampant with scams so nothing new under the sun.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/06/apple-a...

https://mashable.com/article/apple-mac-app-store-scam-forces...

https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/84-dangerous-scam-...

This doesn’t answer the question though.

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