Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account | Hacker News Reader

Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

9to5mac.com

521 pointsDespegar601 comments

Amazing how fast this decision was reversed. It's truly awesome to see regulators standing up to walled gardens. This will greatly benefit both developers and consumers.

This is one of those things where there is only upside for everyone involved.

Apple (and Google) need to be saved from themselves sometimes.

Meanwhile the repeated reversals are making Apple look guilty and nefarious.

Apple and Google are for-profit corporations. Im sure they would protest that they don't need saving

I want an iphone but if they want to end the industry i cant buy one

Then buy 51% of shares, do a hostile takeover and stop their anti-competitive madness before it is too late.

You don't need to do radical changes, just small actions like do not steal the tips students send to teachers.

Going full-goblin mode and demanding 30% of all the money that moves through a phone is what is destroying Apple.

Students are tipping teachers now? Tipping culture really has gone off the rails.

Can someone please explain how this isn't bribery in disguise? I'd have graduated with honors if my teachers accepted tips

If you tip enough they even put your name on one of the buildings.

It's not bribery because it's not degree courses. You can go on countless apps and sites and pay to have people teach you stuff.

I don't know what the op is referring to but just a guess. I know one app, HelloTalk where I think you can get paid to teach language. Think of it as zoom + twitch but centered around language learning. You can run a channel (twitch style) and you can take private "zoom" calls for money. Apple is probably taking 30% for those calls.

To people confused about "students tipping teachers", this is the context:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/21/in-a-reversal-apple-is-now...

They aren’t a single person. There are no doubt people in those orgs who might wish to do away with all the anticompetitive strongarmsmanship in the spirit of shared technological innovation. But, its not like they have agency to change anything and the shareholders just want a growth stock not actual technological progress, so thats how they end up managed.

A lot more ideological fights boil down to internal factions pushing things one way or the other than one would think.

Smart people can make mischief visible or invisible without necessarily getting caught defecting or cooperating.

Oops did I draw that regulator’s attention to the room where we keep the bodies? Silly me.

I must be missing something, how does the second sentence logically follow from the first one?

I liken good regulation as a way to prevent markets from getting stuck in a local maxima. That's generally what people mean from "saving them from themselves.

Yeah we get to choose between google and apple. Lucky us...

Would you rather have no choice?

I get the sentiment, but it's nice to finally have lawmakers and regulators standing for what's right - for once.

Aren’t regulators by definition establishing regulations which make all choices more similar to each other?

More similar in that they force them to obey the regulations, yes. But regulations cover things like interoperability & anti-competitive behaviour, and here retaliatory actions. I'd very much like _all_ choices to be forced to behave the same w.r.t. not being able to retaliate against protected action, or all be forced to follow the same laws.

Sure. In the same way that all sports are similar in that most have regulations against fighting.

But we’re not in a situation where there are very few sports, where many people complain about the lack of choice in sports, and where regulators are attempting to eliminate one of the very few meaningful differences between the existing choices.

There are plenty of ways to differentiate in a competitive market. Good regulations set baselines for fair play, both toward customers and competitors. Whether or not that makes some aspects of those choices more similar isn't really relevant. Or if it is, it's because it makes them similar in good ways. Ways that are pro-customer and pro-competition, but they won't do unless legally required.

I agree that there are plenty of ways competitors could differentiate themselves. But in the current market, I think there are very few competitors, and even fewer ways they currently differentiate themselves. And the most notable recent regulations would eliminate one of the more meaningful differentiations.

Differentiating on percent of app / subscription price taken by app store?

That’s not what I had in mind.

I would rather that developers do not have the choice to choose an app store where anything goes.

It’s funny how when Apple threatens a European company the EC can act within days, but when a German company is violating the GDPR, it takes 4 years for them to act. What a strange coincidence.

> I would rather that developers do not have the choice to choose an app store where anything goes.

That's not up to you. What you get to decide is which stores you're willing to install apps from. If lots of people refuse to install apps from unrestrictive stores then developers who want to reach those users will have to meet the requirements of more restrictive stores.

You would only not have this choice if the app has a dominant market position, and then can force you to get it from a store you don't want to use. But then your problem isn't an overabundance of trust busting, it's an insufficiency of it.

No Apple nor Google doesn't mean no other. Someone/something will step in.

Other titans tried, they all failed to capture. Blackberry lagged for too long and Microsoft simply lacked the network effects since early advertisement was based on how large the app stores were.

The only solace is that you can modify Android to the point where there's almost no Google interference whatsoever. But of course some apps choose to rely on that (e.g. Banking).maybe one day Apple will begrudgingly get to that point.

> Microsoft simply lacked the network effects

Microsoft execs had their heads buried too deep in their own asses to be able to understand what was needed at the time.

They pushed a platform (Windows phone) that lacked interesting features out of the box, lacked cloud services integration to fill the gap left by the lacking base features, and required Windows as a development platform (and, iirc, C# as well?). It didn't even have any particular windows-ecosystem speciality: no special exchange integration, no special windows pc integration, nothing. Microsoft could have exploited the same reasons they exploited with Azure, Office365 and the general enterprise: microsoft phones should just integrates perfectly with other microsoft stuff. It could have been the no-brainer choice: we use ActiveDirectory and Office365 as a suite, we'll get a Windows Phones as everything just works immediately. No, nobody had thought of that.

The value proposition was just not there.

So basically another walled garden, but dumber. And the hardware didn't have anything special to make it "worth".

I think there’s more to it than this, and it’s subtle: The iPhone was cool.

Seriously, the original iPhone had little going for it technically. No GPS, poor data bandwidth, no apps, and minimal ability to make phone calls. (It took the combined efforts of Apple and AT&T a couple generations before you could reliably place a call.)

But it had a touch screen that felt nice, and you could watch videos and play music! The web browser actually performed well despite the low bandwidth. It could zoom. And Steve Jobs marketed it well, whereas Steve Ballmer was terrible at marketing.

IMO the iPhone was considerably worse for business use than Windows Mobile, and neither one held a candle to the BlackBerry. But it didn’t matter.

>Steve Ballmer was terrible at marketing.

you could have just shortened that to "Steve Ballmer was terrible" and been more accurate.

> But it had a touch screen that felt nice, and you could watch videos and play music! The web browser actually performed well despite the low bandwidth.

Basically an observation that consumers were interested in digital media players, which Apple had some expertise in building (iPods, for younger folks).

And that a usable browser was a killer feature (most of the web not having reactive mobile sites, and no apps, then).

And if you combined all of the above with a cell phone, customers would rather carry 1 device than the 3 it previously took.

> And if you combined all of the above with a cell phone, customers would rather carry 1 device than the 3 it previously took.

And not coincidentally this is exactly how Jobs pitched the original iPhone unveil.

An iPod, a phone, an internet communicator, an iPod, a phone…

> iPhone had little going for it technically. No GPS, poor data bandwidth, no apps, and minimal ability to make phone calls.

Things that apparently were not that important at launch. Apple did negotiate "unlimited" data plans with Cingular/AT&T.

> But it had a touch screen that felt nice, and you could watch videos and play music! The web browser actually performed well despite the low bandwidth

Better UI, better media playback, web browser that worked. Sounds like a classic example of Apple taking what is out there and simply doing it better.

Windows Phone (as opposed to Windows Mobile, which was basically moribund at the time the iPhone came out, and was replaced with the incompatible Windows Phone) wasn’t competing with the original iPhone; it came out shortly after the iPhone 4.

IMO the real problem with Windows Phone was the complete failure to produce an actual platform. Windows Phone 7 was incompatible with Windows Mobile, and _Windows Phone 8 was largely incompatible with Windows Phone 7_! The whole thing was comically developer hostile.

(Second mistake; Windows Phone 7’s UI ran at 30fps, presumably in an attempt to save battery. This made it feel a lot worse than iOS and Android.)

Microsoft failed because they weren't persistent enough. When you are the third entry in the market, you need to stay on the race and improve. Windows phone was profitable - $3.8 billion in a quarter using Lumias. But Nadella wanted to make Microsoft a cloud services company and leave the OS behind, so he axed the Phone.

Now, Apple is achieving per-eminance in the cross-device consumer OS market in the latop+tablet+smartphone space and Windows is slowly dying. Microsoft will just set to become yet another boring cloud services company.

> Apple is achieving per-eminance in the cross-device consumer OS market in the latop+tablet+smartphone

Only in the US and global high-end market. This is an extremely profitable market to be leading and I'm not trying to minimize Apple's achievement, but globally relatively few people use their phones and tablets, and ever fewer use their traditional computers.

Apple has a sizable lead, but I think the "idea" of what a smartphone is has been locked in essentially in the mind of consumers and their technological lead will only last so long as time passes. They are Microsoft but of smartphones and 20 years younger than windows desktop PCs. They know this, which is why they constantly make new things and try to develop new products (vr headsets, etc).

> Microsoft simply lacked the network effects

MS beat Apple to market by a considerable margin. Windows Mobile substantially predates the iPhone, and it was actually usable. (I had one of their flagship devices.)

But MS’s OS concept was incoherent, their UI was laggy, their web browser was unbearably slow despite arguably superior hardware, their form factor was not snazzy. And, unlike Apple, they utterly failed at marketing to consumers.

Also, Apple out their foot down against carrier nonsense, so Apple users didn’t have to deal with $14.99/mo for Verizon Location or whatever they called it. (Although, to be fair, the original iPhone didn’t have GPS. Blackberry had far superior hardware at the time and really ought to have been able to compete, but they didn’t.)

By the time the App Store showed up, it was pretty clear that Apple was beating MS.

blackberry didn't seem to care about regular consumers until it was to late, instead relying on corporate customers and relying on integration with enterprise messaging software.

windows was well windows 8 and everyone hated it and everything about it. (and pre-windows phone 8 it was to fragmented with to many incompatible versions and little 3rd party support)

Palm/HP WebOS was the real mobile OS with the best chance to win but failed because well HP... need i say more.

> blackberry didn't seem to care about regular consumers until it was to late, instead relying on corporate customers and relying on integration with enterprise messaging software.

Has trapped so many businesses.

Enterprise customers can afford to pay enough to support good profit margins...

... but there are many more regular consumers, and regular consumer demands tend to produce better solutions than baroque enterprise demands (usually company- or VP-specific).

I think a lot of lessons learned around iPhone 2007-2012 have to do with looking at the elephant in the room.

Blackberry was doing great with keyboards and refused to sell more of. Windows Mobile had tons of muscles as market share they just trimmed off. Windows Phone had Marketplace trust issue that couldn't be solved. Nokia burned itself down before Google. Palm did most of it right, but couldn't be bothered with exclusivity reneg.

I can't say solving any one of them could have saved each of the brands, but they all had one giant elephant each that were enough to drag them down.

A PalmOs user myself, I remember thinking the iPhone should have had no chances against the Palms. Although, might be the reason I went the Android way when that arrived;-)

There was no way big enterprises were going to allow those ‘toy’ iPhones on their network.

That was the attitude for a minute until the CEO got a cool iPhone.

Same with Macs. And jeans.

> Also, Apple out their foot down against carrier nonsense

This is the main point, not the "also". Apple's revolution was actually getting it in the hands of real life consumers who paid for cell phone plans. The tech was already there with blackberry, but you had to have business to afford it. Yes, the original iPhone itself was a technical marvel, but it would have been a dead fish if it wasn't for the at& t deal that came out as part of it.

>the original iPhone itself was a technical marvel

Apple didn't invent anything in the original iPhone, except the software. And the first version was really lacking and very buggy.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/steve-jobs-rigged-first-iphon...

Other phones that predated the iPhone release had more capabilities and more software. There was nothing really "marvelous" about the original iPhone, it was many years behind Microsoft.

The HTC Wizard was a "technical marvel" in 2005. Apple was playing catch-up in 2007.

You're right. The "technical marvel" of the iPhone was the size of its battery. Treo's and Blackberry's were already there with the hardware. But the software. Apple's pretty good with software, so their implementation also made a difference.

The iPhone had a non-removable battery, which was a step backwards for consumers. And there was nothing special about it.

At the time I had an HTC TyTN 2 phone that did everything the iPhone could do and more, and had a removable battery, about the same size as the battery inside the iPhone 1. If you look at photos of the TyTN 2 battery, and the iPhone 1 battery, they are very close to the same size.

There was very little difference between those batteries. The TyTN 2 had a 1350mA hour lithium battery. The iPhone 1 had a 1400mA hour lithium battery. Practically no difference there in size or capacity.

So, no, the iPhone's battery was not a "technical marvel" any more than other phones of that era.

And in fact Apple's was a step back by being non-removable. I absolutely loved having a removable battery, because I could bring 2 or 3 with me on a long trip and never have to charge the phone. Apple was less functional in that way.

I can't comment on the TyTN2, but I'm thinking back to Blackberry employees (CEO?) saying

> "The iPhone "couldn’t do what [Apple was] demonstrating without an insanely power hungry processor, it must have terrible battery life," Shacknews poster Kentor heard from his former colleagues of the time. "Imagine their surprise [at RIM] when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it."

https://www.redmondpie.com/blackberry-maker-rim-thought-appl...

That's your rebuttal?? The engineers at blackberry were pretty inept and stuck in the past, which is why they're no longer in business. That article contributes nothing towards your claim that the first iPhone was a "technical marvel". I cited an example of a phone released in 2007 that had the same battery tech that Apple had. Was that also a "technical marvel"? And the model before it and the one before that? Apple didn't do anything groundbreaking in the first iPhone except maybe a capacitive touchscreen, which wasn't anything they invented, they were around long before the iphone.

> but you had to have business to afford it.

This was a marketing and perception issue, not a price issue. When the original iPhone came out, I had a very nice blackberry, with a personal plan, effectively unlimited data, and the full blackberry suite (minus corporate integration, obviously). And I think it was less expensive than the iPhone plan. But it was a pain in the neck! I had to pick the correct phone plan, add the correct data supplement, negotiate the correct discount (basically everyone was eligible for a discount, but you had to find your particular reason for being eligible in a ridiculous menu), and then convince the sales person to add the special $3.99/mo supplement for blackberry services. It clearly never occurred to anyone involved that this was not a competent way to sell to consumers!

I did make fun of my friends for paying several dollars more per month for a device with no keyboard, no GPS, slower data, less efficient text input, and dramatically worse performance in marginal network conditions.

When I finally switched to an iPhone 3G, I could do real in the browser, but wow, the ability to make phone calls was seriously downgraded. I feel like my old blackberry may have had the best behaved cellular modem of any smart device I’ve ever owned.

I think that, if RIM had gotten YouTube and a music player working, had improved the web browser, and stuck a capacitive touch sensor on their device, and if they had marketed it competently (make it so that customers could walk into a store, pay $55/mo, and walk away with a working device without a fight!), they might have remained competitive.

Microsoft repeatedly tried to put Windows on a phone and it didn’t stick.

Apple didn’t bother, they used an entirely different UI from the start, and it was a UI aimed at everyone from kids to grandparents, not just tech people.

> put Windows on a phone and it didn’t stick.

that's because they half assed it.

There's always the risk that mobile phones supersedes the desktop, and thus cannibalize the desktop windows sales. Microsoft also likely not able to force OEM licensing in the same way that they could with windows on PC sellers.

If you could literally run windows apps on a phone back then, i reckon the MS phones would've at least grabbed some marketshare. Of course, the mobile hardware back then isn't as powerful, so there's the excuse that win32 cannot run there.

There are also GNU/Linux phones. Sent from my Librem 5.

Speaking of.. how is Librem these days as a daily driver? I am genuinely debating trying to make a jump again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39451467

> This is one of those things where there is only upside for everyone involved.

Except all of us who value privacy and security.

Face it: the major competition between app stores is not going to be on price, but a race to the bottom on who can allow apps to fuck over users the hardest.

You really think Apple is just going to abandon everything it believes in and trash their brand in a race to the bottom?

If there's one company I don't expect that from, it's Apple. They may have highly dubious ethics but they are damn good at business and marketing, and I would be utterly shocked if they don't position themselves as the safe, privacy-friendly official app store. For people who don't enable side-loading, I wouldn't expect they'll even notice any changes.

It's not whether Apple will, it's the other developers that you might not have a choice to interact with. Sure, in the tech space, we're all imagining the great open source on iOS revolution. Gamers are anticipating their Fortnite.

And I'm sure Facebook is anticipating not having to ask for permission to hoover up all your personal data. Sure you don't need facebook, but if you want to be using WhatsApp to communicate with your friends and family, you might not have a choice. Shady companies that sell shady spyware to schools "for the children" are looking forward to a much easier time rolling out the most invasive ideas they have. The ad companies are I'm sure salivating over telemetry libraries with extra detailed modes for non-Apple app store installations.

That would certainly be an interesting turn of events if major apps like Facebook or Whatsapp decided to d-list from the app store and require their own store. Given Apple's current heavy fees and disincentives to do that, I'm guessing epic is probably the only company that will. I think a lot of people would refuse to install an alternative app store to get most apps.

But most of all, I look at Android where alternative app stores are possible with essentially no cost, and even with Amazon's enormous resources behind it, they could not get an alternative app store to catch on. I can't think of any reason why it would be different on iOS, so ultimately I suppose I expect this to go nowhere and a few years from now there will be the epic game store and the main app store and everything for nearly everybody will just be on the app store like it is now. The alternative stores will just have the apps that Apple wouldn't approve, like porn apps or privacy invasive, etc

> Facebook or Whatsapp decided to d-list from the app store and require their own store.

Considering this hasn't happened on Android yet, I doubt you are in real trouble. Like it's not that they can really gain extra permissions (other than I guess tracking anything the app already has access to, but that isn't any different than currently) because they are sandboxed by the OS and limited in access through the permission system... I HOPE? RIGHT? @APPLE

And on the side of other app stores: there is F-Droid which is decently popular for OSS apps.

Android app stores failed because there's actually not much of a need for middlemen: you can just get an APK from the source, like you would on Windows.

As far as I can tell, Apple doesn't plan to let this happen.

Hey, maybe Apple should have thought of that and reduced their app store fee to 5% years ago then.

Nobody would be going after Apple if they had simply stopped their monopoly pricing scheme.

Its too late for that now. Now Apple is going to be forced, under threat of government action, to stop its anti-competitive actions.

At 5% devs like epic would still complain about all the other rules or that 5% is too high.

I don’t think the EU should be able to say what Apple or Google can or cannot do in terms of their products. You don’t see the US constantly fining Airbus.

Why not? They tell US car makers what their products should do. The same for fruit growers, clothes makers and thousands of other businesses selling into the common market. It's called regulation and it's a normal part of modern life.

We're a society of laws and they apply equally to everyone. If you don't like the laws either vote accordingly, talk to your representative, organise a political action, or leave for a more agreeable jurisdiction.

Also, the US fined Airbus $582 million in 2020.

I find it funny them bringing up aviation companies when it feels like every month Boeing appears in the news for something falling off their plan while in flight, be it doors or wheels. That is what happens when you let companies "do what ever they want" and mind you aviation is VERY REGULATED.

The regulatory regime for Boeing has not changed; Boeing has.

According to the article it was because Epic met with Apple and gave better assurances that they'd play ball rather than deliberately break their contract like they did last time.

Regulators don't seem to have had anything to do with it.

---

So what changed? Apple tells 9to5Mac that it has held further discussions with Epic. The result is that Apple has received proper commitment that Epic will play by the rules as legally defined.

“Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies. As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program.”

Honestly what you describe seems to be an attempt by Apple PR to save face.

They fear the spotlight on the fact that even on alternate stores only accounts controlled by Apple can publish apps, which might become the focus of new regulations

There’s no way that the EU permits Apple to control this going forwards.

*only accounts controlled by Apple can publish apps… and have to pay an installation fee of 0.5$ per app per user per year.

Regulators immediately started calling for an investigation and we're going to look into Apple’s termination of Epic’s developer account as a matter of priority.

I’d like to believe that, and it’s probably true. Do you have a source though?

The EU did say that they would look into this. Several articles in all the usual places. Doubt they got far enough to actually consider a fine, though.

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

This is the EU commissioner.

It's linked from TFA in the More section.

https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/08/apple-threaten-epic-illegal/

Two days ago I wrote that didn't fully trust Epic's version of the events posted on EpicGames.com, and by the same logic I'm sure not going to trust Apple's version as posted to 9to5Mac.com

"""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.""" — works just as well in either direction.

Regulators have to look closely, if they take it on trust it's one Tim's word vs. the others'.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39620099

> I wrote that didn't fully trust Epic's version of the events posted on EpicGames.com, and by the same logic I'm sure not going to trust Apple's version

This fallacy plays out a lot in politics. "Epic has lied in the past, so all parties involved must be lying."

That's not what I'm saying.

I can't take both of them on faith alone, because at least one of them must be wrong. I'm not qualified to decide between them, so I should weight them equally. Public statements from the parties, or fans of the parties, are reasonable to suspect of being tactical with the truth even when no falsehoods are stated, rather than giving a complete picture.

FWIW I found your parent comment to be quite clear. I think it's only hard for people with a black & white/good & evil view on the world to consider that maybe both parties in a conflict might not be entirely pure/perfect.

It was quite clear, just a bad take. If you have a coworker Bob that lies about everything at work, you can't use that as justification to treat Fred like he is always lying with no evidence.

Epic makes false statements because they have a megalomaniac CEO running the show, Apple on the other hand generally tries to avoid legal and PR troubles and has multiple teams of lawyers who review every public statement on an issue.

> According to the article it was because [...]

Not fully the truth, however -- according to APPLE, who are quoted in this one article. Tim Sweeny tweeted that the change was due to the EU DMA political proponents applying pressure to Apple.

The truth is not known, and it's not limited to Apple's side.

> Thierry Breton, the EU’s industry chief, said regulators had warned Apple about the iPhone maker’s move earlier this week to block Epic’s potential return.

> “I take note with satisfaction that following our contacts Apple decided to backtrack its decision on Epic exclusion. From Day 2, #DMA is already showing very concrete results!” Breton said on Twitter/X.

We can't be certain it was the EU's pressure that made Apple react, but anything else seems rather unlikely.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/08/fortnite-...

> Regulators don't seem to have had anything to do with it.

This smells, you know? The timing is just so precise to be a coincidence.

This was an overreach by the EU. Android is open source, let Epic launch their own phone, or their own Android store.

Methinks this crowd loves regulation a bit too much.

It's unlikely that "regulators" had anything to do with it, given the quick resolution. I'd be more inclined to think that Epic went back to Apple hat-in-hand and begged to be let back in, probably promising to muzzle Sweeney.

Sure, Apple takes a strong decision which breaks a just-enforced law, and two days later they back down because they had a nice talk with Epic. /s

The EU told Apple that breaking the law would have dire consequences. That's the only reason Apple backed down.

Stop spreading Apple propaganda.

It's good scrutiny to have, but I'm surprised that there are now at leat 3 users here that really believe that Apple reversed course in 3 days out of the goodness of their hearts. I can't even get a response from many customer services in 3 days. No company thst big turns on a dime without extreme arm twisting.

Can confirm. I've been waiting for Apple's developer support to reply to me since before this debacle. I finally got a response 2 hours ago – after I resolved my issue – that stated they are busy right now.

> The EU told Apple that breaking the law would have dire consequences. That's the only reason Apple backed down.

You have no idea that this is what happened. You're the one spreading propaganda.

Why propagandize it at all?

EPIC hates Apple and wants to see the App store dead. Apple reasonably didn't trust EPIC not to play games with the DMA. The EU asked EPIC to give an assurance that they would play by the rules and then forced Apple to accept that assurance. Neither of them won anything. Apple is forced to let EPIC in, and EPIC is forced to accept that Apple is complying with the DMA.

That fits the facts. EPIC isn't a good guy. Apple isn't a good guy. The EU isn't a hero. Why try to paint any of them this way?

> EPIC is forced to accept that Apple is complying with the DMA.

No they don't. They are absolutely still able to start a lawsuit, as is the EU.

We likely won't have to wait more than a couple weeks to see the lawsuits filed.

until that lawsuit is filed and we have a judgement, yes, they are.

> until that lawsuit is filed

So then this would be the process of not accepting Apple's interpretation of the DMA.

Thats my point. That is the exact process for which they would be rejecting Apple's interpretation.

So no, they don't have to accept Apple's interpretation, instead they can go through this process.

> Stop spreading Apple propaganda.

Please don't try to start flame wars on HN. You should read the guidelines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Very unlikely, knowing who Sweeney is. And he is pretty much in control of Epic.

>It's unlikely that "regulators" had anything to do with it, given the quick resolution.

Disagree. EU regulators act quickly. Here's the commissioner for Internal Market of the Eu: "I take note with satisfaction that following our contacts Apple decided to backtrack its decision on Epic exclusion. From Day 2, #DMA is already showing very concrete results!" https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1766167580497117464

Yes very unlikely, that Apple didn't want to try out the new 10% penalty of global turnover, after the commission said she is looking into it and days after Apple was bonked with a 1.8bn fine for violating antitrust regulations

From the article

> “Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies. As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program.”

This needs to be higher up. Apple didn't budge, or cave, and regulators did not get involved.

Epic could have avoided all this by just responding to Apple and signing the EU Addendum affirming they would stick to the laws. Instead they wanted to get into the news cycle.

This is the policy they have to agree to: https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/download/alterna...

Regulators did get involved: https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1765793776692326891

And news article https://www.reuters.com/technology/eu-regulators-seek-detail...

Includes the tweet as well as confirmation they that the commission did talk to Apple on Thursday

He tweeted something. There was some reporting he might have sent a letter asking questions too, the same as you or I could do.

If any official action was taken it would have to be documented with a case: https://digital-markets-act-cases.ec.europa.eu/search

It is incredibly naive to suggest that someone with that power "sending a letter asking questions" would be remotely similar to you or I doing the same.

The EU has an long tradition of "conversations" and "questions" with an unstated "give the right answer and you can avoid an unpleasant official action".

You're right there is no official casework. That is also entirely irrelevant to the issue of whether or not Apple caved under pressure.

> "give the right answer and you can avoid an unpleasant official action"

You are thinking of the mob. Thankfully here in the US official actions are generally done in view of the public.

No. We're thinking about a government that doesn't rush into potentially irreversible actions without working out a solution for a problem with the parties involved.

Eh? No; the US works broadly the same. For instance, a rather amusing recent one: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/31/tesla-reportedly-facing-doj-...

The “probe” here would be, at least in the first instance, usually mostly letters asking questions. Note that it is “reportedly”; the media didn’t find this out because the DOJ had a banner on its website saying “we are investigating an alleged glass house”. That comes later, if things are not resolved.

The reason we know EU officials has spoken to Apple is because at least one has said so in public.

You’ve clearly never interacted with a regulator before. When a regulator send you a letter with difficult questions, there is an extremely strong implication that a failure to answer those questions correctly will lead to more difficult questions, and, undoubtedly, official investigations.

You don’t want an official investigation, they are a complete nightmare that eat up months of work hours. Much better to spend a couple of days making sure you can give the correct answers on the first pass. Unless of course you genuinely believe the regulators are pushing beyond their remit, but know you’re voluntary signing up for an expensive and protracted fight.

_Most_ regulatory enforcement, in practice, is “letters asking questions”. The formal cases you see are generally where the response to the letters was unsatisfactory.

(In some cases this is itself somewhat formalised.)

Yes, the EU immediately stepped in and explained them what the consequences of breaking the law would be, and Apple budged, caved, backed down. Not getting out of this one.

You have no idea that this is what happened. You are literally just making this up.

It's entirely possible the regulator asked EPIC to make an assurance that they would comply with Apple's rules, which are legal under the DMA, and then told Apple they'd need to accept the assurance.

If EPIC does now pull a stunt like they did in the US, the EU will now have reason to treat them with suspicion, and Apple will be able to point to the assurance as evidence that they accepted Apple's rules.

That only makes sense if we assume Apple’s world class legal team didn’t see what every lay person could. Rolling back the decision is not going to get them out of the eyes of the regulators and they must have assumed that going into it. Why give the EU even more ammo against you.

My guess is that they saw that all happening but Epic provided them a letter saying they double pinky promised, cross their hearts, will obey by the rules this time, which Apple will later try to use in court later on. Otherwise it doesn’t seem worth the risk prompting clearly foreseeable regulator action.

> That only makes sense if we assume Apple’s world class legal team didn’t see what every lay person could.

Apple banned Epic the day before DMA came into effect when doing this sort of thing was still legal, they 100% saw this. They did probably bet on the chance EU would overlook it if they did it before the law came into effect, they lost that bet but they thought it was worth a try.

No, they banned Epic's account after the DMA took effect.

No they didn't, Apple banned Epics account March 6, DMA took effect March 7.

The DMA has been in force since November 2022 and became applicable in 2023.

There was a grace period for compliance for companies found in violation, because that determination was made after it came into force, not before.

You can't find a company to violate a regulation that's not in force, and it's reasonable to give a company in violation of complex piece of law (that's never been tested) some period to comply.

But that doesn't mean the law is not already in force.

Or maybe Apple is not infallible, they took a shot because they are very arrogant and thought they could get away with it, and it failed miserably because now there is a law which makes their abusive behaviors illegal?

I think you're probably right, but in fairness to Apple it is reasonable to expect that the future will resemble the past. They've been wildly successful with their abusive behaviors in the past, so it probably was reasonable to think they might get away with it this time. I can't think of any company that gets more of a pass and has people willfully take up their PR releases as gospel truth than Apple.

I sure that Apple world class legal team saw everything you think they saw. But thing is, Apples legal team only provides legal _advise_, they don’t make decisions like this. There’s absolutely nothing preventing a senior leader getting perfectly good legal advice, and choosing to simply ignore it.

After all, legal advice can usually be summed up as “if you do anything, someone can fuck you”, and do nothing isn’t a good business strategy.

> That only makes sense if we assume Apple’s world class legal team didn’t see what every lay person could

Legal doesn't make decisions like this. That's not what they are paid to do.

Legal advises the executives of the consequences of decisions like this.

And if there's one thing that you should expect from people in positions of incredible power (executives), it's that they often believe that they are immune to the consequences of their decisions.

Most of the time they are right. Sometimes, they are not.

Companies often push their luck with regulators, because sometimes it works, and, as here, the consequences for failure often aren’t significant. For practical purposes Apple’s back where they were a week ago; from their point of view why _not_ chance their arm?

That Addendum has caused considerable consternation among game developers and — to my knowledge — few are prepared to sign it.

The main points of contention are: - the technology fee (the cost of advertising has already cut badly into their margins in the wake of identifier reform); - the clause making the Addendum also binding on any corporate parents and subsidiaries — the game industry is pretty consolidated and this limits the options for independent game studios which are also subsidiaries;

The fee is particularly nasty for hypercasual games, where a very realistic scenario has you paying for millions of installs, only to find your monetization lacking and you paying additional fees to the platform, of all things.

There are very real concerns with the Addendum and making signing only about Epic’s bona fides is reductive and wrong.

This is Apple's propaganda to try and save face. What happened is the EU stepped in and explained to them what the consequences of breaking the DMA would be.

Apple backed down, like they did a week ago with PWAs.

> Apple backed down, like they did a week ago with PWAs.

Eh. Backing down would be Apple allowing non-WebKit browsers to run PWAs.

They had entirely removed support for PWAs. Putting them back was backing down. They will have to open them to other engines eventually.

It’s not clear that’s the case. Speculation on the HN thread when it happened was that there had been back channel talk with the EU to clarify that this wouldn’t be the case.

Speculation on HN has little value compared to the letter and spirit of the law.

There are two sides to EU directive compliance: Commission action and legal action through the European Court of Justice.

Apple can talk to the Commission all they want and persuade them not to take action. However, they cannot bend the ECJ's ear. If someone forces the issue through the courts (yes, it's a slow procedure and yes the ECJ can choose not to pick up a case, but that's down to the skills of the involved legal heads), what will matter is the directive as written.

Apple will likely continue to drag their feet, but the outcome looks fairly inevitable. It might well come when we've all moved on to "AI, show me data" instead of using browsers, but it will very likely come.

Correct me if I’m wrong but PWAs were only ever “broken” in beta versions of iOS, never in a release.

It was feature toggled without an update too.

So? They removed them without any announcement for two weeks (hoping no one would notice), then officially announced it on their website when the backlash was growing.

They then backed down after Open Web Advocacy ran surveys, an open letter and the EU started a investigation.

Why would they announce if it's a beta? For all we know it could have been a bug or something, or an unfinished attempt to change it in some ways. I'm having a hard time imagining Apple just willy nilly nuking a fairly prominent feature many people use. Including myself, by the way.

You seem particularly willing to ignore the facts in order to paint Apple's actions in a good light.

Apple releases developer notes containing changes included in its betas. Such a change should obviously have appeared right away when iOS 17.4 beta 1 was released. It did not.

After two weeks of backlash, Apple did confirm it was removing the feature in a public statement. They just did not want to announce it publicly before.

After two other weeks of bigger backlash and the start of an EU investigation, they publicly announced they would not remove the feature after all.

They 100% intended to remove the feature, and 100% backed down.

Definitely just Apple trying to save face. Without the threat of fines and lengthy legal proceedings Apple would not have cared about "epic's commitment to follow the rules"

Difficult to imagine what Apple were thinking in the first place. Did they actually think there was a chance the EU would let this slide? Best I can tell, all they've achieved is bringing even greater scrutiny on themselves.

When reason fails to explain people's actions, it gives you a measure of the strength of their ideology on something. In this case, you can see how deeply they believe in the concept of complete authoritarian control of their ecosystem. Enough that logic and practical outcomes barely matter in comparison.

Or the tech gossip scene, sorry, “tech press”, doesn’t have full visibility over the circumstances.

Chaining one sole thought-logic all the waaaayyyyy...untiiiilllll zap

I think Apple may behave more creditably from here on out.

I admire your optimism.

That ideology hasn't stopped them from becoming the most valuable company in the world, so I wouldn't disregard it from the point of view of practical outcomes.

Dictators and monopolies are always very rich.

That's a baby and bathwater conflation. Did they succeed despite this cultural aspect or because or both.

As of 9th March 2024, Microsoft is the most valuable company in the world, followed by Apple and Nvidia (which might take Apple's position soon).

I think they are struggling to adapt to a new situation that has resulted from their own success.

An ideology that helps you build and grow a new platform may not be equally suitable for running a dominant platform on which significant parts of the world economy depend.

That would be plausible if they stuck to their guns for as long as possible.

In this case, they suspended the account, put themselves further into the spotlight, and then reactivated the account.

Well... all corporations [0] are modelled after authoritarian states. The only model that seems to work is a single person with dictatorial power and a tree shaped hierarchy. Pretty much everyone does that, and the exceptions prove the rule. It isn't weird that they have authoritarian views of how their assets should be managed.

Hold in mind that everything involves trade offs. Authoritarianism is really good at monomaniacal focus on something that the dictator thinks is important, they just tend to fail at all the other stuff. And it is fine - indeed, remarkably effective - as long as people can leave when the focus isn't benefiting them.

Democracy sucks at pretty much everything except being flexible in the face of change and empowering voters. You do not want your food supply being run according to democratic principles, you want it to work.

[0] And most open source projects AFAIK

Authoritarian states are a very ineffective model. A leader can lead their small band of merry man to rob the highway alright. But it doesn't scale up to larger groups of people.

If you talk to the CEOs of large companies or miltary leaders, you find that they are unable to exert effective control of their organisations. The organisation will do whatever it wants to do. The leader can make their command but at every level through the organisation that command will be slightly subverted. The more layers, the less of that command will get through.

Since it's in the news, take for example Putin and Russia, Putin thought he had tank battalions that his lower downs had sold for parts decades ago. Based on the information in front of him, he should have taken Ukraine in several days regardless of resistance by the locals.

And whilst you might think it's impressive that he cut the budget in US congress to Ukraine, back-handed deals to send old Soviet equipment from 3rd party countries to Ukraine were made and now they are exhausted London is loaning Ukraine, Russia's money.

Putin's authoritarian Russia might be able to cut off the head of democracy but he's up against a five headed hydra. Democracy is a lot more scary than Authoritarism from a military perspective.

"You do not want your food supply being run according to democratic principles, you want it to work."

This is something that people don't really get, what's important is that the people delivering the food get the sack if they failed to do it. As long as that happens it's okay.

That's the reason why socialist and overly authoritarian countries have supply problems, they don't have an effective mechanism to replace failing organisations. Venezuela isn't able to extract Oil because the Oil dereks are run by the local dictator's family members.

> Democracy is a lot more scary than Authoritarism from a military perspective.

Yes. But note that armies are a hierarchy with little flexibility once orders start coming down. When democracies want to achieve outcomes they set up (subordinate) dictatorships. The army does not stop to vote in the middle of a war. Indeed, sticking to the Ukraine example, they suspended elections as I assume is usual in war.

Democracy is a better model of governance because the military can focus on winning wars. In a dictatorship, the military has to focus on keeping the dictator in power - otherwise the dictator will get rolled. Since authoritarianism can only do one thing at once, generally they have a weak military at the expense of stability.

Democracy without what you term 'subordinate-dictatorship' would just be anarchy. Democracy is the _collective_ will of the people, it necessarily includes compulsion to do things one doesn't precisely align with which you seem to consider as "dictatorship". But, when the demos compells you to obey orders, that's still democracy.

There is a hierarchy and a single person at the peak of it who has ultimate executive power (a Chief Executive Officer, if you will) then it'll perform roughly the same as as authoritarian system except in some highly unusual circumstances. A military coup by the army would play out differently for example, but day-to-day operation would be largely the same. And most of the performance differences between democracies and non-democracies come down to democracies having more freedom not to worry as much about generals getting too powerful.

It doesn't matter where the power officially stems from, the decision making bandwidth and incentive structures govern results - and for companies that is a clear authoritarian model.

>There is a hierarchy

There can be, but it's not necessary in a democracy and you can design a democracy in which any action is subordinate to the demos should they choose to operate against it.

> Since authoritarianism can only do one thing at once, generally they have a weak military at the expense of stability.

I wouldn't say Nazi Germany had a weak military. They had problems with too many tank models (to appease Hitler?) but they only begain losing the war when everyone else that was against them got their act together. And of course, invading Russia. That one was stupid.

Difficult to imagine what "companies" are thinking. I was working as an executive for subsidiary of eBay Inc. but would never imagine something like this happenening:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

They think they're above the law, as evidenced by their repeated poking and misrepresenting facts.

Why wouldn't you think the EU would let that slide? Until recently all they've done is fine these companies amounts of money that are nice for headlines but not really that painful. Regulators with teeth is - new for apple

Imagine if the US had equivalent regulators as well...

We would all be carrying around government approved Windows Mobile phones.

Remember all this DMA stuff is coming from the same organization that wants to force Chrome and Firefox to accept TLS certificates issued by governments for any website they want: https://therecord.media/eu-urged-to-drop-law-website-authent...

This brings me the regret of all the time I spent building windows phone apps.

Just because a government organization wants to push some bad laws, it doesn't mean they can't also do good, and enact useful policies that are actually good for people.

Apple should offer 2 versions of the phone. One version for the consumers who appreciate the extra level of security and another for the rest.

Apple should follow eu laws if it wants to do business withe eu. I know, sounds crazy right?

My suggestion would give consumers an additional choice. Sounds like that is something you are against? I thought that this was what this was all about.

Dma offers exactly that. Consumers can (or will be able to) choose to use apple defaults or not at any time of owning the device

As long as consumers can choose to download WhatsApp from the App Store and are then not forced to use some tracking Meta store.

Dma is mostly about choice for a couple of developers. Not for users. No way will Epic publish games on their own and Apples store, they did not do it with the Epic Store either. Consumers did not have a choice where to buy when Epic bought exclusive access.

You make it sound as if the Apple App Store did not track you.

Afaik on Android exactly this happens, consumers can download Whatsapp from google play or if they want, they may sideload it. Epic was not allowed to publish games on app store after avoiding 30% tax, so consumers were not able to install it from app store anyway so again, with this law, consumers in eu that may want to sideload instead of doing nothing at all, will be able to So just as I said, consumer takes decisions what apps to install and how to install them instead of apple. If you don't want to use sideloading - don't use it

Exactly. Just like Apple follows Chinese laws, they should follow EU laws.

Apple really didn’t make this easy for themselves. In addition to all the legal stuff, they literally gave “the finger” to every EU developer and customer of theirs.

How would this benefit consumers?

I think this was all a distraction to give regulators some way to pretend they are doing something while retaining their ridiculous pricing structure and avoiding discussion on that.

I don't think they can possibly hope for that distraction to work. They know they will be under massive pressure to change this absurd pricing structure.

I think their strategy is to move the point of reference for future negotiations to an extreme end of the spectrum of what could still be considered to comply with the letter of the law.

EU regulators show be noted for once. Because the US regulators are on their second siesta.

It reminds me of like two kids having a huge argument and regulators are their parents

From DF a few days ago[0] :

> The termination of Epic Games Sweden AB’s Apple developer account was communicated in a letter from Mark Perry, a lawyer representing Apple, to Epic’s lawyers:

> Mr. Sweeney’s response to that request was wholly insufficient and not credible. It boiled down to an unsupported “trust us.” History shows, however, that Epic is verifiably untrustworthy, hence the request for meaningful commitments. And the minimal assurances in Mr. Sweeney’s curt response were swiftly undercut by a litany of public attacks on Apple’s policies, compliance plan, and business model. As just one example: https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1762243725533532587?s=20.

Maybe Tim sent more than a two sentence reply to Phil to get it straightened out. It's anyone's guess at this point.

—

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

More likely that the request for more information on this case from the EU commission to Apple triggered the walk back. At least the EU Commissioner for the internal market is happy about the reverse: https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1766167580497117464

Yikes I hate that Thierry is using "#freefortnite". You can be completely on board with the DMA but still see Epic's behavior as entirely profit motivated and "freeing Fortnite" should not be any official's priority. Epic is not some oppressed minority that needs saving.

> You can be completely on board with the DMA but still see Epic's behavior as entirely profit motivated and "freeing Fortnite" should not be any official's priority.

The Digital Markets Act is all about profit-motivated businesses. It regulates markets, not charities. It's not anti-profit at all, just pro-competition, and Apple was attempting to stifle competition.

Precisely! This all about market competition which may both spur new technologies and lower prices for consumers.

The entire point of DMA is to make sure platforms can’t use lock in to prevent others from joining the market for digital goods and services.

What terrifies Apple isn’t Fortnite, it’s that Epic will make a *better* AppStore.

I hope the folk at Valve have been busy working on this - Steam for iOS and Vision Pro could be great!

VisionOS is not consider a gatekeeper my the DMA, and despite the platform supporting it Valve has made no effort to expand their game store to Android. It is doubtful that they will work on an iOS game distribution platform.

Same AppStore, and it runs iPad apps.

"better"? You're giving Epic too much credit. Just see the Play Store competitors like Samsung or Huawei: Full of ads, and in general a terrible experience.

Not saying they can: saying that’s Tim Apples worst nightmare.

It's literally a Digital MARKETS Act. Markets are all about developing healthy profitable businesses. They certainly are not going to be bothered that Epic, a profitable business, wants a fair playing field to compete on.

Isn't that the functional purpose of hashtags? So that people interested in a topic can find information about it? Wouldn't this tweet be highly relevant to people searching with that tag?

It's not about Epic. It's about Apple wantonly violating EU laws. The target simply happened to be Epic.

That being said: it's probably a good thing it was Epic that Apple went after; Apple would probably have gotten away with going after a smaller company.

Every large company is, by nature, amoral. All the pro-social stances or whatever are generally just window dressing and PR. Individuals can be moral, but for-profit corporations past a certain size just are too abstract of an entity with too many people of competing interests to ascribe morality to. We shouldn't care about intentions, just whether they're doing something we agree with or not.

While the outcome as it stands might be okay, they should still proceed with the request for more information so that they can better guard against removal of access in cases that they do not agree with.

What's to prevent them from changing their mind and blocking Epic again? What if Tim Sweeney says something else to hurt Apple's feelings in the future? Apple has too much free rein over removing access to this market, and while it may be a market that Apple has made, the EU is clearly requiring Apple to open up the market for others with the only restrictions being those where the app store or the apps themselves are damaging to consumers in the marketplace.

> they should still proceed with the request for more information so that they can better guard against removal of access in cases that they do not agree with.

They almost certainly are, which is why the reasoning of EU’s predictable involvement was what triggered Apple’s reinstatement of Epic’s account seems dubious to me.

I would posit that Apple is the "untrustworthy" and unhinged party here.

I don't really understand the notion that Sweeney's original response was terse or insufficient. He said exactly what needed to be said (good faith effort to follow the rules) succinctly and professionally. Should he have offered a pinky swear or a blood oath? Or an essay pledging his allegiance? I generally like Apple and their products but in this instance they came across as bitter and petty.

I agree, but this is missing the point. It was never about Sweeney’s response. Apple was never going to accept any response given, in the same way that an Alabama cop who pulls over a driver for being black is not going to leave without finding some “reason” for an arrest.

Apple believes this is an existential threat and they are fighting against it as hard as they can. But is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? These actions come with a cost. This gives Epic visibility and it harms trust in Apple’s brand. How do they balance these costs against the perceived threat?

They balance with the arrogance of Cupertino.

Does it harm trust in Apple's brand? From what I can gather, people who already love and trust Apple want them to do this. They view the status quo as better, and would likely lose trust if Apple didn't fight this as much as possible.

I love my Apple products. I think the walled garden improves my experience on the device. I do want Apple to exert control over the platform. But I also believe they are fallible and the app store is anti-competitive. I think some competition in the browser and app store space on iOS would be good for everyone, including Apple. They need to be humbled occasionally. I definitely think less of Apple based on their actions here. It shows they care more about exerting control than their users, regardless of how they have justified their actions to themselves.

Interesting, thank you. That seems an extremely reasonable position to me

Definitely don't feel obligated to answer, but may I ask what country or region you're from? And if you do any ios or Mac development?

I live in Seattle, WA. I use a MacBook professionally as a data engineer but I do not develop anything for the Mac or iOS ecosystems.

> Does it harm trust in Apple's brand?

The government's trust, yes.

>From what I can gather,

You're almost certainly listening to loud voices online, who do not reflect majority opinion

I love Apple but this whole mishegoss has completely undermined the brand for me, and it'll take a long time before I trust Apple again. I don't even play any games, it's about respecting the rule of law with some grace instead of like a petulant child.

I think there are certainly some people like this, but only some.

I think there is these 2 things to consider:

Obviously this will change nothing for most people. Baseline, 99.9% people will not be doing anything different today than yesterday. I think the way Apple acts is ridiculous and outrageous, but I already thought that and already don't have an iphone. My wife doesn't even know who Epic is or anything about ios developers or 30% or any of that, and nothing is changing about her iphone. Nothing changes in either case.

But there will be some subset of current Apple customers who see these actions as exposing an attitude they don't want to reward, enough to stop being Apple customers. Maybe it's the latest thing that adds to the constant stream of other criticisms that they've always heard but have been just excusing or dismissing but eventually they see something they decide is "see enough smoke, maybe time to stop doubting there's a fire". It's not a large group but not zero either.

But will there ever be anyone that goes the other way? Is there any such thing as a current Android user who sees Apple do this, and specifically because of the way Apple treats developers, that convinces them to switch TO Apple? Well there's at least one of every imaginable freak out there but there certainly can't be a class of these.

> will there ever be anyone that goes the other way

I'm sure that some teachers, as well as parents who have seen large credit card bills for Fortnite lootboxes, are grateful that Apple is aggressively targeting one of the banes of their existence. If anything, they'll be disappointed that Apple blinked and let Fortnite continue to exist!

In seriousness, though, I do wonder if some of the sheen of "you need to have blue iMessage bubbles to be one of the cool kids" has been irrevocably damaged by this. Perhaps Apple reversed its decision rapidly enough. I suppose only time will tell, but at minimum it's the type of risky move that seems desperate on Apple's part.

I used to love Apple, but through these actions over the years they transformed me into someone who hates them.

It feels like the initial ban decision was driven by some high level exec (probably Phil Schiller)? If it was happened to be reviewed carefully by lawyers and public relations, they cannot really ban Epic so quickly. There are too many uncertainties and if you do something wrong, that puts government relations at huge risk. Typical employees cannot be held accountable for such decisions, not even low tier VP.

If a VP is "low tier" then isn't calling them a VP at all just title inflation? At what point is a person responsible for the consequences of their actions regardless of intent?

A large company has a ton of VPs. They're really not that special at scale, VPs don't fly private etc.

> If a VP is "low tier" then isn't calling them a VP at all just title inflation?

Apple is a big company and they have more than 100 VPs. This naturally creates "tier" between them, since a single CEO cannot manage all of them.

> At what point is a person responsible for the consequences of their actions regardless of intent?

It depends, but when it's something like fighting back against one of the most powerful supranational government entity like EU, the most senior leadership as well as the board must be involved. Not even Tim Cook cannot decide it alone and they clearly didn't want to escalate this matter to that level so quickly pulled it back.

It’s not uncommon for VP to be a lower level exec title at massive companies like Apple.

They’re not low tier by any stretch compared to most employees. They’re still high level leaders.

Recent and related:

Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618673 - March 2024 (980 comments)

Granted, the real reasons they refused to reinstate the account may not have been because of the unflattering tweets. Maybe it really wasn't. But Apple definitely goofed when they said that was one of the reasons. +1 for developers and consumers, -1 for Apple.

Apple’s behavior largely makes sense given what a huge share of their profits their racketeering of customer access earns them. If you ever wanted to see regulation pains as the cost of doing business, this is it.

But banning epic was just pathetic baby behavior.

I hope epic launches the epic game store for iOS and its dogshit but cheaper and the gacha gravy boats all jump ship

Why does Epic get the privilege to force me to buy things through their store?

How would they force you to buy anything? If you don't want to use their store, then don't install it?

If you don't want to use Apple's store, then don't buy an iPhone?

if you don’t want EU laws applied to you don’t sell phones on that market.

Epic has the privilege to allow you to buy things from their store.

Because everyone else basically said "the new conditions are bad, I won't risk my business", but in the particular case of Epic they're banned from Apple's walled garden, so even the terrible terms are better than nothing.

They aren't banned from the App Store. The agreement that Epic's Swedish subsidiary is the standard developer agreement, and they can publish whatever they like in the App Store as long as they follow Apple's guidelines.

Apple has said as much for the main developer account in the past.

It is highly unlikely Epic would publish anything in the App Store, however, even ignoring the bad blood.

Part of operating an App Marketplace is that you are agreeing to the EU rules which include a core technology fee. So even an app with no in-app purchasing on the Apple App Store would cost them a substantial amount to publish.

Remember that the EU Commission has not said a word about the new fee that Apple added, but that fee looks against the spirit of the DMA, so it is likely that Apple will be forced to give up that fee considering they already charge an annual membership for the developer account.

Apple overplayed their anti-competitive card, so now they'll be permanently scrutinized.

The joke, what do you have when you have a group of lawyers up to their necks in dog shit? Not enough dog shit...

It's just so insane how fast lawyers can bring the image, will and industry at large to it's knees. I think Apple's legal team should really take a hint (and a hit) from all of us in this industry. You're hurting Apple and the entire dev community more than you're helping.

It's entirely possible that Apple's legal team advised the executives of this outcome and more generally the risks involved with the Epic ban move, but were ignored as a strategic decision.

I doubt its had any impact at all to iphone sales or their service subscriptions.

Their stock took a major hit.

What are you on about? Today they were in the green and on the day this played out, March 6, the needle barely moved.

The dip started 2 days prior on March 4, the day the EC announced their ~$2B fine based on TFEU, which has nothing to do with the DMA. One the appeal is filed it’ll go back up, as it’s already almost back to before that news. And then a week later when Cook farts, it’ll dip again.

Such is the nature of stocks, at least on the short term. On the long term, 1Y and up, it’s solidly in the green.

Not to mention that stock prices and revenue (which is what they’re talking about) are two separate things.

Apple's stock dip is mostly unrelated to the EU - it is primarily related to Apple losing double digit percentages of sales to Huawei in China, after they had disappointing numbers in the prior fiscal quarter reporting.

2 bil € is a fair bit of change but also something that will be in appeals for years.

I find it amusing when Apple says they vet their developers and block those they don’t trust when you can’t even trust for them to not go through your public comments and bring it up against you.

You find it amusing that Apple vets their developers by … vetting their developers?

By going through their public comments where they complain about what Apple is doing? Sounds like a poor way to vet developers.

This is hardly out of the blue. Epic's CEO testified how they not only premeditated breaking their contract with Apple, but arranged a PR campaign around it and orchestrated a 'grass roots' effort at the same time.

Blocking Fortnite updates on iOS devices was an inconvenience for users compared to terminating the use of an entire gaming marketplace due to the next round of vigilante contract violation by Epic.

Ok, but it's not like breaking a contract like this is unheard of. Apple did literally the same thing to Qualcomm, for example, back when they decided they didn't want to pay money for modems. "You said some bad words about us and decided that you didn't like the contract" is literally business. Companies are not people that you are doing a personal affront to.

Vetting them for what? How much abuse they can take?

Clown car.

They were a threat yesterday, but they're not a threat today?

They weren't a threat yesterday either but, what, an automated process or a rogue intern wrote those pr statements? You leave the keys to those accounts just lying around for any flunky to post from like that?

There is no non-clown-car way to explain it away.

We won't know, because just one side is releasing selective communications as part of their PR.

There was communication before Apple approved Epic's Swedish subsidiary to get an account, and there could very well have been other omitted communication as part of this exchange and after as part of the resolution.

What has happened here is all about the personalities involved, not a business strategy, not a legal strategy.

It is "Forming, Storming, Norming, ... " (Tuckman's stages of group development)

Forming = setting up the technical and business solution for DMA

Storming = arguing due to the newly experienced dynamics of power/control

Norming = CEO stepping in the get a resolved balance in what to do next

Phil Schiller would have been the point man on the business solution (you can hear his tone of voice in the News communications and now see his private messaging as released by Sweeney).

The regulator involvement would have gone via the CEO route, who would have had to resolve the conflict with his deputised point man (Phil).

Companies are just collections of people. Maybe they share world view or a values system, but they are still just people. So human psychology is a relevant (and I argue the most significant) factor coming into play here.

If there was a market logic, I think it would be that they'd prefer the alternative marketplace provider be someone like Amazon, and then have Fortnite be an app in that store. So the commercial disputes then are deflected away from Apple/Epic animosity.

The original business case for 3G wireless networking was "Girls-Games-Gambling". The business case for alternative app marketplaces is a similar content argument "Games-Gambling&Crypto-Porn". Maybe this is part of what is keeping Meta/Amazon/Google away. Those folks can swallow a Core Tech Fee (although would be a significant friction point for sure).

I think the fundamental root problem here is EC are trying to lower prices to businesses by attempting to foster competition which might lower prices. But the actual solution is to directly mandate lower prices, and keep the gatekeepers with their current control points and systems. In other words, consider App Store commissions as actual Taxes. And we know from history that "taxes without representation" lead to revolution.

There might be parallells with group development research or terms used, but neither Tuckman’s stages, the research it’s based on, or later research in the area apply outside of the internal dynamics of individual working groups.

Well, that was quick.

This is super great. Apple had it coming for years now. Fck the monopoly.

That didn’t take long.

Just yesterday they were a "threat" to iOS or whatever.

"Yes" because we value our users' safety, and "No" because we value our users' safety. And they just toss one of their billions of coins.

Played their card too soon. They want to take it back so they can play it again in the future.

I kind of expected that they wouldn’t push through with that silly ban.

Very depressing to see y’all cheering when the state gains more power. We should cheer when the state is kept in check.

You have the choice to buy a Samsung phone instead of an Apple phone; most people don’t have the choice to switch governments.

I'd rather trust a democratic state than a greedy company, directed by a few individuals, who's sole goal is to maximize profit.

Not everyone is a Libertarian.

Some had a nice childhood or brain cells and recognize the difference between a dictatorship and a government working in their favor to protect them from big duopols disrupting competition

> And the minimal assurances in Mr. Sweeney’s curt response were swiftly undercut by a litany of public attacks on Apple’s policies, compliance plan, and business model.

So according to Apple [edit] one isn't allowed to say bad things about a company publicly or they are allowed to ban your account? Interesting view.

> So according to DF

I don't really think that's according to DF, more so Apple.

At least in the U.S. business owners have the right to refuse service or turn away a customer to protect their patrons and business.

That's the issue with all these providers. Every couple of weeks there's a story from someone whose Google account was suddenly closed with no way to access their emails or pictures again.

Yes, and that's why monopolies must die, in practice desolved by governments.

Once you buy a smartphone today you and everybody who wants to do further business with you are at the mercy of a monopolist. For Apple 100%, for Google only 98% because you could side-load. But not a secure and practical solution today.

I don't think monopoly is the right word here.

Yeah, duopoly is a better word.

Maybe, in the context of smartphones as a whole. In the context of the App Store (which TFA is about), Apple is a gatekeeper and this is an instance of vendor-lockin. Technically not the same as a monopoly (because, as you mention, you can always use Android).

How about oligopolist?

True. I like the term "gatekeeper" the EU defines and uses.

Combined with the "must be very big" requirement it better fits what is going on in the tech world.

Vendor lock-in is what wecall it in the IT-sector.

Not really. Gatekeeping is applied because you must pay Apple the tax to access its customers; not use its tech.

I saw it from end-customer perspective. Somebody who buys an Apple device cannot choose other app stores, nearly the same with Android.

So you change your smartphone every time you are not happy with Apple or Google Android?

Yes, you have a choice once every couple of years while you might want to install an app several times a year. Free markets would also be the wrong word to describe the situation.

I think monopoly is the right word because their really are two markets.

A customer is only looking for either iOS or Android apps, and isn't going to choose an Android app if they have an iPhone, or vice versa (IOW, iOS apps don't compete with Android apps).

Imagine only one company sold diesel fuel, and only one sold gasoline. Wouldn't you say they each had a monopoly?

This is an example of vendor lockin, which is a troubling practice that needs to be stopped, but it is legally and practically distinct from monopoly as defined in antitrust legislation.

We shouldn't limit our use of language based on laws written 100 years ago. It's pretty clear that those laws are inadequate to restrain the monopolies that exist now.

Said another way, you might be right about US antitrust law, but when that law was written the technology didn't exist to create "vendor lock-in" on millions of products at once.

I am curious about the example though, from a legal perspective. Would the only seller of gasoline have a monopoly, even if other fuels were available, and the only barrier to using them was the switching cost of buying a new vehicle?

Edit: For what it's worth, wikipedia uses the word monopoly when "a single vendor controls the market for the method or technology being locked in to".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

It's not a monopoly though. My point is that there is a relevant technical difference, and we should be accurate in the words that we use.

The fact that every single company that wants to run code on my device needs to be in the good graces of Apple makes no sense.

Why can I run code Apple loathes on my Mac ?

You are correct, although there’s plenty of room for Apple to engage in evil anti-competitive behavior without having a monopoly over any sanely defined market. EU regulators seem to think they’ve crossed that threshold!

Right; I think the correct frame is, major operating systems are utilities. They must be regulated the same way that all systemically important utilities are regulated; heavily. Monopolies are natural, and arguably desirable, with utilities; but they need to be subject to extremely strong regulation to maintain the right balance.

The DMA was always phrased from the wrong perspective (which is just classic EU, they literally cannot ever get regulation right). The correct phrasing is: once a computer operating system achieves a certain level of market adoption (say, 50M+ active installations), it is designated as a systemically critical operating system. Among other regulations, one thing systemically critical operating systems must allow is the independent and unrestricted installation and execution of applications from the internet.

Regulating the market (App Store) itself is just dumb. Apple should not be forced to have Epic Games as a customer. It destroys trust in the App Store's review process, and legitimately does from my perspective infringe on Apple's rights as a business to do business with partners as they please. There's a gulf of difference between "forcing the App Store to distribute some application" and "allowing that application to be freely distributed on the internet". Regulation should be specifically targeted toward the second situation; and leave the App Store alone.

The EU did not compel Apple to have a comercial relationship with Epic.

It is Apple who decided that third-party software distributers must comply with certain restrictions, and must sign a contract with them.

And it was Apple which tried to prevent Epic from signing that contract, and who's now backtracking… before it's forced to do so by the EU.

While this is an interesting idea and I personally would welcome such regulation it probably wouldn't solve the problem the EU is trying to address.

Android allows the installation of alternative app stores but Google still retains large effective control over the app market.

I would argue that the EU recognised that and therefore regulated Operating systems and app stores because the former one isn't enough apparently.

If things continue along this trajectory we may see the utility argument at the store level and at the OS level.

Looking at how the electric power distribution industry is regulated it already works like this (at least here in Germany).

On the one hand grid operators are heavily regulated (as you say) and must allow companies without infrastructure to resell power to end customers.

On the other hand the actual owner of the last mile infrastructure is also forced to do business with all customers and has very little freedom to refuse(e.g. non-payment is a temporary valid reason).

We may very well see something similar in the software distribution market since it's becoming such an integral part of life.

The power of Apple and Google is literally monopoly power. As in, government-granted copyright and patents that allow the holders to restrain the conduct of competitors.

Decades ago people were crying out against it, but nobody with power listened because they thought we just wanted to steal music[0]. Well, we did, but that didn't make us wrong. Now the world economy is owned by a handful of oligopolist-elected dictators who have maximally exploited the laws in question to make meaningful competition literally illegal.

No, seriously, try and ship a phone without big tech's blessing. It won't work. Hell, Amazon and Microsoft both tried and failed. Everyone only writes apps for Google Play and iOS, and any attempt to make them work elsewhere is a criminal felony.

[0] To be clear, their real concern was finding ways to legally bind China to pay us for "our IP" on pain of being shut out of world markets. Dictatorship is fractal.

Conversation needs to shift to "market power" which is where the EU has gone. The fact that Apple shares the App store market with Android evenly in terms of users for example is meaningless when they nonetheless hold the vast majority of the influence through their market power.

It is a double-edged sword. A right to refuse service is great when you have an unruly patron in a pub or restaurant that is ruining the evening for everybody else. But on the other side it is really easy for a company like Google to just kill your smaller company because they decided they do not want to allow you access to an account anymore.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of this whole issue is watching people with a vested political interest in Apple's fundamental point of view criticize their dealings with Epic.

> But on the other side it is really easy for a company like Google to just kill your smaller company because they decided they do not want to allow you access to an account anymore.

It sounds like the problem isn't Google being able to refuse service, but instead that Google doing that has the power to kill your smaller company. No one company should be allowed to have the power to decide which companies live or die.

If you found a company that depends on Google APIs or products, that's a risk your company carries. I don't see why we need legislative intervention to mitigate such risks.

If I founded a company that specializes in manufacturing Pokemon toys under contract, and Nintendo (for whatever reason) pulls the contract, it's perfectly normal for the business to no longer be viable and to be liquidated.

Rules should be different if you're running a platform. A platform is essentially a market within the free market, so special regulative care is required.

This is very problematic when monopolies are involved. “You are banned from Taco Bell for the rest of your life” is very different from “You are banned from all restaurants anywhere for the rest of your life.”

If all restaurants are Taco Bell, is it reasonable to allow such bans by taco bell?

Actual monopolies (utility companies forex) are required to do business with people. Utility companies which almost always are regional monopolies have to deal with customers so long as bills are paid. There's also processes for halting service in the case of non-payment. The utility can't cut your power because you were mean to them on Twitter.

Apple is not a monopoly anywhere on the planet and has no such requirement.

But it should have some of those requirements, because it's close enough to the space of being a monopoly.

> At least in the U.S. business owners have the right to refuse service or turn away a customer to protect their patrons and business.

But this is not about Apple's right as a company to refuse any business with Epic, they still have that right.

This is about Apple not complying with a law that targets them due to their anti-competitive behavior; a law that requires them to give the means to operate an App Store competitor to anyone who requests it.

Apple is the one who decided to require an Apple developer account in order to operate an App Store competitor, so they effectively gave up their right to refuse any business with Epic by adding this unnecessary requirement.

As was said, this is normal in the US. Private businesses can refuse service to anyone for any reason. There's that paint color that is allowed to be used by all but one person because the inventor doesn't like them.

On the other hand, I'm definitely not saying this is okay or sane just because it's standard practice in the US. It's also how we got legalized segregation and we had to pass laws carving out exceptions to create protected classes such that you're not allowed to refuse service because a person is black, for instance. Just doing this splintered the country and created the modern GOP with its southern strategy.

So it's nice to see these large web companies having to respect the laws of other jurisdictions and not just the US with its hallowed history of property rights over all else, going all the way back to chattel slavery. If the EU can force saner norms on the web, I'm all for it.

> Private businesses can refuse service to anyone for any reason.

There are enough really obvious counterexamples to that statement that I wonder why you'd write it.

Any that's just the first sentence.

Indeed. I think this "Private businesses can refuse service to anyone for any reason." as been repeated so many times, that a lot of people think of it almost as a tautology.

In particular in this case, we have many pass example where even in the US, companies have be found to violate anti trusts law be either refusing or strongly conditioning doing business with a third-party.

Like the ones they went into in the following sentence?

Hey now, they’d have to read all the way to the second paragraph to get to the nuance. You can’t expect people to read two paragraphs before starting to argue.

Contradicting yourself isn't "nuance," it's bad writing.

They present prior art on both sides of the issue then provide their interpretation of the matter. If that’s bad writing, then so is every court decision ever.

> There's that paint color that is allowed to be used by all but one person because the inventor doesn't like them.

I think you mean Black 3.0 (or the other versions from the same artist) which cannot be used by Anish Kapoor.

Worth nothing that the artist making that paint is british and not american.

> So according to Apple [edit] one isn't allowed to say bad things about a company publicly or they are allowed to ban your account? Interesting view.

No, according to Apple, they believed Epic was going to violate their developer agreement again, and when they asked Sweeney for a commitment he sent them a two sentence email. His public actions were only a modifier on top of his seeming lack of committal and previous history of being a bad actor on Apple’s platform.

Spotify says bad things about Apple all the time, but they've never been banned because they've never violated Apple's rules.

I’m not defending Apple’s stance here, but I think the point they were making is that Epic had already admitted to intentionally breaking their previous agreements with Apple for their own gain. The court then ruled that Apple could ban Epic for any reason. Sweeney essentially called the new terms illegitimate while at the same time entering a new agreement where those terms applied to Epic. It’s somewhat understandable that, when seeing that, Apple would not trust Epic to not intentionally break the rules again.

I personally think it’s silly to believe that Apple cares even a little about Epic’s criticism. They probably thought they had a legitimate case that would let them stomp out a potential big App Store competitor before it could get off the ground.

They believed in good faith that Apple's terms were illegal. There is nothing wrong with breaking an illegal contract. Yes, they lost in court but it wasn't a foregone conclusion. Apple's continuing retaliation is petty and likely to get them in trouble.

But Apple's terms and contract weren't illegal.

Actually they were, partially

Oh yeah, forbidding developers from telling their customers that they can buy a subscription for less money in their website is definitely not illegal.

The fact that Apple is now regulated is definitely not a symptom of the illegality of their terms. Definitely not.

Google and Facebook are among others now regulated as well.

The European Economic Zone sets regulations around economic policy. Their creation of the DMA was that while the markets did not have monopolistic abuse, that there were areas that still did not have _enough_ competition.

Now I would argue the DMA is misguided, because they are basically trying to regulate in a counter to the network effect. The problem is (for example) that even with barriers lowered, an upstart messaging app cannot compete with WhatsApp because they still cannot grow by the network effects the way WhatsApp did, because WhatsApp already exists and is popular. An upstart will still have to already be on target to become larger than WhatsApp in order to supplant them.

Alternative Marketplaces have been possible on Android for years and really haven't succeeded except in markets where Google Play is unavailable. Why would developers put time and effort into being where nobody is? How does anything in the DMA change their minds - better transaction fees on no sales?

The DMA does give companies an opportunity to innovate, such as how MacPaw is going to have a SetApp Marketplace which is a subscription service for mostly utility apps (similar to Apple Arcade as a first-party marketplace for games). But I would argue there is no way SetApp will be as popular as the App Store - it is a business opportunity, not market competition. I would say this is akin to F-Droid - it is an alternative marketplace on Android, but not one that really competes with Play.

> There is nothing wrong with breaking an illegal contract.

It is not an illegal contract. It is a contract that Epic _hopes_ is illegal.

I don't get to ignore my home mortgage payments without consequence even if I believe in my truest of heart that giving money to a bank is wrong. In this metaphor, Apple here is the bank saying that Epic has a habit of not paying back loans, and has publicly stated how they think the loan they are applying for is 'hot garbage'.

Epic didn't just feel it was "wrong". They had legal arguments with merit. And they did prevail in one of them, so in fact the contract was illegal in part. Equating legitimate legal disputes with simply not paying your mortgage for no good reason is absurd.

The main point made is "Epic is verifiably untrustworthy". You're quoting a secondary factor.

This is better than many novel

All parties involved want to flex their muscles and most here argue based on how impressed they are by the flexes displayed.

Apple wants to show that they can’t be brought to their knees.

Epic wants to show that they can get away with shit.

The EU wants to show that they have teeth and are to be feared.

In the meantime, the only organization with the actual final say, the CJEU, is off forgotten in these debates and is currently warming up to accept and adjudicate Apple’s appeal for the ~$2B fine based on art. 102 TFEU.

Apple and Epic are private parties, and the EC is just an executive body. The CJEU in this is analogous to SCOTUS.

The best we can do as bystanders in the meantime is asses on existing principles whose flexing actually has some power behind it.

Epic’s contract with Apple was terminated prior to all this. The US courts have their blessing for this. Epic tried to get unbanned, most notably after changes in Korea, and Apple said they weren’t interested.

Now Epic pulled a stunt and was stupid enough to publish the emails. Based on the time and date of those emails and their public announcement that they “got their dev account back,” we can surmise that Epic just created a new account with the information of their newly erected Swedish entity. This process is 99% automated.

Afterward, they emailed Apple. Not to get permission to return but to state that they are back. That’s when the ball started rolling.

To enter into a valid contract, there needs to be mutual assent. Leaving nuance by the wayside, that means that both parties needed to actually want to enter into a contract with one another.

In the US, this used to be measured against a subjective standard but later shifted to an objective standard that boils down to whether a reasonable person would consider it an acceptance of an offer. In the EU, it’s still a subjective standard where intent to enter a contract is essential.

All of this is to say that if push comes to shove, no court, especially not a European one, is going to consider Epic simply creating a new account when Apple has made it clear time and time again that they don’t want to do business with them, to be sufficient for forming a valid legal agreement.

Without a valid legal agreement, the status quo prior to this event is leading. This being a situation in which Apple and Epic don’t have an agreement.

The DMA doesn’t have provisions that would force parties to enter into an agreement and force them to do business with each other. This is because it wouldn’t be able to withstand adjudication by the CJEU but also because the EU would never want to open Pandora’s box like that. The implications of that would be quite literally beyond comprehension.

So if there’s no valid contract and the EU doesn’t have the power to force one, ask yourself whose flexing is merely a flex and whose flexing is backed by the power of the CJEU? Who’s doing who a favor here?

We know at least of one party that they consistently go out of their way to make a point, even when the underlying issue they use as motivation is already moot. The point being made is that their teeth are truly sharp. So why not use those teeth in this instance and chomp into the flesh. Are we to believe that they’ve lost their appetite for their favorite meal?

Right as their latest pet project has gone into effect no less?

After being embarrassed by their prey who was able to convince the courts to reach into their mouth and reveal that those teeth are not as sharp as they’ve been made out to be almost a decade ago? An embarrassment that they’re still trying to undo in court at this very moment?

If someone who was so shamelessly neutered had the actual power to draw blood by chomping down into the flesh, would it be likely they’d rather growl?

I don’t think so.

The DMA imposes FRAND obligations on gatekeepers and free interoperability requirements ("interoperability" here meaning literally everything from using the installation APIs to install apps from the web to being able to call all OS APIs for free on your app. That's why Apple's "Core Technology Fee" is screwed)

Do you know which sections of the DMA address this? Genuinely asking because I’d like to read from the source here.

Article 6(7):

> The gatekeeper shall allow providers of services and providers of hardware, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same hardware and software features accessed or controlled via the operating system or virtual assistant listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9) as are available to services or hardware provided by the gatekeeper. Furthermore, the gatekeeper shall allow business users and alternative providers of services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same operating system, hardware or software features, regardless of whether those features are part of the operating system, as are available to, or used by, that gatekeeper when providing such services.

So are you saying that Apple is not providing the same API to third party marketplaces as they leverage in their own App Store?

Pretty much, plus to independent developers who wish to use the IPA installation off the web feature. (The Article speaks about "features", not just APIs)

Remember that it says "free of charge". 50 cents/install past 1M installs is not free of charge now is it?

I can't understand the cost basis for that fee that apple is imposing. If I install an thrid party app from a third party store to my phone, it wouldn't cost apple anything. Even the bandwidth cost to download is from the third party store. In this transaction, actually Apple will be the unrelated "third party"that has nothing to do with that transaction. So isn't this fee just an extortion attempt?

There is no cost basis. It's just another way to making the point that, if you do anything serious on their platform, you owe Apple some serious cash. Extortion is a strong word, I prefer the more objective "parasitical rent-seeking".

Strictly speaking, it costs Apple nothing to run third-party software on your device. The closest thing to a compulsory fee is whatever Apple has to pay for the notarization process (which is pennies on the dollar).

> So isn't this fee just an extortion attempt?

That's up to the courts to decide, but Apple certainly hasn't painted themselves a favorable picture. When Dutch regulators tried pressing them to include alternative payment services, Apple continued demanding 27% of those transactions. Their disrespectful and obstinate behavior in the Netherlands is what made the DMA such an urgent act in the first place.

So all this will be well-worth keeping an eye on. The iPhone already turns record-breaking profits off hardware sales alone, it will be difficult for Apple to argue they're inherently deserving of taxing aftermarket transactions. At this point, "0%" is starting to seem like the only logical software fee for iOS.

DING DING DING DING DING DING unless that was sarcasm. Then, cheers

That's a very defensive interpretation of the events. All of the parties involved have complex motivations, as is made evident by whatever-the-fuck just happened over the past 24 hours.

Apple's instigating act was a last-minute reversal on the eve of the DMA, it was never going to go unnoticed. Right or wrong, an inquiry was issued and Epic's complaint was resolved - it's up to Apple to "respond" now. Despite your logic, I don't think it would be wise for Apple to see this as an opportunity to flex. Europe is not going to change their mind, and punishing Epic isn't worth the money they would make Apple anyways. It's less about flexing at this point, and more envisioning what a smart path forward even looks like for Apple in a post-DMA reality.

> The DMA doesn’t have provisions that would force parties to enter into an agreement

> Are we to believe that they’ve lost their appetite for their favorite meal?

So? Apple is seeing things if they think any of this will (or should) stop a motivated competitor. Turning this into bloodsport does not benefit the butchering pig, Apple's reversal here is easily explained as an act of self-preservation. Their initial stance was hardly defensible unless you could feel the $AAPL weighing down your performance index. Crushing Epic is not a reasonable goal given the extraordinary legal danger it exposes them to.

The Apple shareholders are not having their eyes light up with dollar-signs in light of the recent response. This is a dangerous and petty road to walk, with ostensibly no financial benefit and the possibility of setting a negative precedent.

Please just let me get Infinity Blade back.

I’m so tired of this Apple tax, I think nobody would be this annoyed if Apple were saying 10% or something around that. 30% is more than most companies pay in tax on profits and this is a tax on revenue. I don’t think abusing your market position like some kind of protection racket should be allowed and if you don’t like it we’ll delete your App is quite frankly just as bad as the mafia smashing in shop windows. I doubt anyone will stop them but we can hope…

If only it was just about the money. The review process itself is beyond ridiculous sometimes, and sometimes has you remove things from your apps that you want and your users want, but Apple doesn't like.

30% isn't some outlier share though? It also has been that way since the beginning, so it's not like they achieved their market position and then jacked up the prices; it's been this way the whole time - and, in fact, they've added programs where smaller businesses only pay a 15% commission..

Not an outlier and is pretty standard. When it was originally announced it was one of the best deals out there for developers writing software for phones. The WWDC audience cheered at getting 70%.

Wasn't the market for mobile app small at the time. Almost everyone was focused on desktop and web applications. If you're looking to make millions, even preferential deals don't look like a good deal.

The WWDC audience cheers at everything.

Doesn't matter. Why does the developer of the operating system get to take anything from a sale between an app developer and the owner of the actual cellphone? It is not Apples phone anymore after they sell it to a customer. Imagine if your car manufacturer wanted 30% of revenue from the shops you drive your car to.

Replace "developer of the operating system" with "curator of the ecosystem of highly affluent, paying customers" and you'll start to understand why Apple thinks they should have a cut. They see themselves as the headhunter, finding paying customers for the developer.

> I think nobody would be this annoyed if Apple were saying 10% or something around that. 30% is more than most companies pay in tax on profits

Almost every developer pays 15%. You only pay 30% if you earn more than a million dollars a year from the App Store.

This is an extremely long tail problem. When you count the absolute numbers on the revenue, it's much larger. Perhaps the absolute majority of the app store revenue would be subject to the 30% tax. Money matters, not the number of apps.

This is just so weird to watch. Apple is literally throwing a tantrum on a continent-wide stage. Like, it's one attempt at escalation after another, and they keep losing (either their legal fights, or their nerve) and having to reverse course.

Like, there's no strategy at all here? Just keep swinging and hope you land a blow that breaks through the armor? This is how my 15 year old plays VR games.

That's the confusing part. With the DMA policy at least there's a strategy, even if it's a strategy that will ultimately be rejected as non-compliant.

Picking these petty fights or whining about getting fined is not helpful, certainly not to Apple and their shareholders. It's hard not to conclude that Apple leadership is making stupid emotional decisions rather than rational ones, which is especially dumb when you're running a trillion dollar company.

Clearly long past time to fire Tim, Phil, and Craig.

My impression is they got used to just bullying everyone into submission by virtue of their market power and they found an opponent where that won't work. Now everyone can see that the emperor has no clothes.

I don't think there is a strategy, this is all theater so he has some pushback if investors file complaints or lawsuits during the next quarterly results meeting. They can't say that Tim Cook didn't do everything in his power to make them even *more* money.

Since, ultimately, his duty as a CEO is to prioritize the financial wealth of shareholders. If he just complied with the EU then he'd be voted out by the board by the end of the week.

Is he going overboard? I think so. But I've also never owned a $2T+ company with investors and an entire government breathing down my neck.

> If he just complied with the EU then he'd be voted out by the board by the end of the week.

Most companies like Facebook and Microsoft quietly comply with the rules as best they can with as little fanfare as possible. Maybe after paying a fine or two. As far as I know, there hasn't been any oustings because of that.

Apple hasn't faced a fine yet for this, so there's really no material harm to them for acting like this. And it's great theater for shareholders. I'm sure once we get to the point where the EU is going to begin issuing fines for DMA violations then Apple will change their position.

Microsoft was acting like this in the 90s. I think history is just repeating itself with Apple.

> Microsoft was acting like this in the 90s. I think history is just repeating itself with Apple.

So... the difference was Microsoft was winning those fights because their enemy was other products in the market. They'd tell Dell not to ship Netscape, and Dell would yank the product. They'd clone java, and websites would code to that to get IE compliance. They'd push ActiveX and bribe web properties to implement it, and they would. This wasn't fair, but it was at least in some sense "competition". (I mean, eventually MS would go on to lose control of all those levers, but over decades of timescale and generally due to market motion.)

Apple here is just flailing. It's a regulatory action, not a competitor. There's no feasible path to beating or evading EU law. Surely they know that, right?

True, trying to reason why Apple is acting like this is just making my head hurt lol

Breton asked his team to look into the Epic / Apple case with _high priority_ yesterday.

Apple stands to lose a lot more due to the DMA and parties like Spotify and Epic are doing everything they can to make Apple look bad in the public eye.

I'm not sure Apple needs anyone but itself to look bad.

I mean, Facebook has been repeatedly fined for various non-compliance, for years. Apple, at least for the moment, isn’t really there yet.

Microsoft and Google seem to be able to comply without publicly embarrassing themselves. Investors are not stupid, they understand that companies have to comply with the law. This behavior is totally on management. If I were a big investor I’d be more worried by this since it seems like management are acting irrationally without any plan.

Microsoft's compliance is largely to allow for Bing to be removed as their built-in search, and ability to uninstall Edge. They are also only allowing this within the EU market, not globally.

Google just needs to allow for the selection of a default browser, provide links in Google search to competing sites (which Google will still make money off of with their ad delivery network anyway), opt-out option for sharing data between YT, Search, Maps, etc. As well as allow outside payment processors for apps.

For Microsoft and Google, none of these changes are affecting their cash cow. Cloud computing for MS, and ads for Google.

These DMA changes are affecting Apple's cash cow, the iPhone. and their second largest cash cow, Services and IAP. Apple has a LOT more on the line with these DMA changes than MS or Google do.

DMA does affect Google's ad business. See https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/an-update...

If it’s not this then it’s that. I.e. https://time.com/6835975/google-gemini-backlash-bias/

None of the large tech companies lack of embarrassment.

> Since, ultimately, his duty as a CEO is to prioritize the financial wealth of shareholders.

I feel like the whole fiduciary responsibility bit is always the foundation of terrible arguments. As if every individual choice that earns a dollar is therefore forced.

Earning multiple billion dollar fines is not serving shareholders. Sabotaging the future is not serving shareholders. Destroying goodwill is not serving shareholders.

Apple's various tantrums and desperate clutching onto their market hasn't remotely been beneficial for the company, and I'd argue it is a big reason the company has started plateauing. Like how Valve went from being a game maker to being a purveyor of gambling crates and keys, Apple is desperately pimping for every bit of rent-seeking and service fees.

I also hate fiduciary responsibility as a foundation for arguments, but it is a responsibility that will be 100% utilized by any of the shareholders who feel strongly enough that Cook didn't do everything in his power to generate more money. So it's still something that has to be taken into consideration.

> Earning multiple billion-dollar fines is not serving shareholders.

Correct, and until Apple is threatened with fines, I believe they'll continue doing this until it no longer serves them.

I don't find the tantrums to be the cause of the plateauing, I think they're a response to it. The iPhone is their #1 money-maker (by a massive margin at that), and the smartphone market as a whole has been plateauing. That's why we've seen a shift over the years towards services, which is their #2 money-maker now. When the DMA strongly affects both of these revenue streams, tantrums will ensue.

I'm not agreeing that what they're doing is correct, and I think it's shitty for a company that I consider the reason I got into the dev/design space to begin with to start acting like this. But I do see some business logic behind why they're doing what they're doing, even when it goes against what I know is correct.

> Correct, and until Apple is threatened with fines, I believe they'll continue doing this until it no longer serves them.

Commission fines Apple over €1.8 billion over abusive App store rules for music streaming providers.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...

Maybe tripping up the same entity that's already on to you with other fines for similar behavior is not that smart.

I think the board and shareholders probably want them to avoid picking needless fights with the world's most powerful competition regulator in the week when its most powerful regulations went into effect.

It works in American courts, where you can file appeal after appeal, during which time you don't have to comply with the court's original verdict.

Trying again and again until you get what you want seems to be how it works. Seems to be the same for when adversarial change causes enough public backlash. Oh no we were called out for <bad thing>, let’s wait a few months and try again, until it gets through unnoticed enough to show up on the radar.

So I guess regulation is good after all... perhaps we can get some traction with that in US?

I think it's too early to draw any conclusions. It's going to take some time before you can definitely say if consumers are better off.

Just out of curiosity, in your eyes, how could this regulation not be good for consumers?

Different people have different things they are worried about. I’m personally concerned about Chrome’s dominance and I think iOS not allowing alternative browsers is the only thing holding back Chromium’s total victory.

I know some here would welcome a single browser target, but I personally think it concentrates too much power with Google.

Privacy is a related concern. I think it’s only going to take one killer app to really launch an alternative App Store. A few years ago when Fortnite was super popular, Fortnite fans would have installed an Epic store in a heart beat if it meant they could play Fortnite.

Once an alternative App Store has significant power, I think they are going to be able to start eroding some of the iOS privacy guarantees. That will be done in the name of consumer interest - things are cheaper here because we can give you better, targeted ads! - but in the long run I don’t think teenagers getting some special Fortnite loot is in their best interests if it means tighter surveillance.

I could also see school districts and/or testing organizations require installations of super invasive anti-cheating apps. There have already been cases of school districts getting caught spying on kids with school issued laptop webcams.

In the end, Apple’s stubbornness and greed brought this on. If they would have been more reasonable, I think both the company and their users would be a lot better off.

Thank You for not regurgitating the same "mwahh all apps will be on 3rd party app stores!! terrible!!" argument I keep seeing. These are some solid points.

I believe that overall the DMA is a good thing, there are some things I would change, but this gives me new perspective on the matter. Cheers.

Too bad in the US they often just hand the pen for the regulation to the entity being regulated

Regulations CAN be good. But Europe tends to have better regulations than the US lately.

What a bunch of clowns! Seriously, Apple? Are they so full of hubris that they could not see how their haste would backfire?

Given the compensation level of their legal team I’d expect that they could see it coming and spare the public humiliation and brand damage.

I can’t believe this is real.

Maybe they've finally realized that the $38 billion fine for failing to comply was in fact not a joke.

The stock dumped 10% almost immediately after the announcement, might also have something to do with it.

Like any mafia bosses in Scorcese movies, they fail to see when they lost hand.

I’d love to see the faces of Cook and Schiller at this point.

you have to give it to the guy - he continued coding even after loosing in the court and having to read tons of legal papers -

Sept 10, 2021: Lost a court case, climbed a mountain, read hundreds of pages of legal papers, wrote some code. Just as determined as ever to fight on until there is genuine developer and consumer freedom in software, and fair competition in each mobile platform software component.

https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1436583527290654720?s=20

At least it is now completely obvious that Apple is "verifiably untrustworthy" as a gatekeeper for third party stores.

It really hurts to watch Apple shoot themselves in the foot like this.

A time will come when Apple will have legitimate reasons to crack down on third-party app stores. Someone like Meta will invariably try some crap like sneaking VPNs into their apps so they can get complete surveillance on their users (ex. https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/).

Apple is going to have less credibility when they say "no, this is wrong" when this eventually happens if they keep screwing with Epic like this.

Tracking users without their consent is wrong and also forbidden in at least the EU.

Instead of letting Apple make and enforce the rules, we should have laws in place that hold App Stores accountable for what they are selling, just like physical stores.

I wont even play it probably, but i look forward to buy that game via the Epic Banana store just to vote with my wallet.

I have not played Fortnite in years, but I am buying the new battle pass.

from a practical sense this is insignificant, unless collectively organized

I, for once, love living in the EU

"for one" or "for once"?

Finally. One thing they can truely appreciate.

Truely or truly?

I think they meant once. Besides digital lollipops what else is going so great in EU? jobs? economic growth? housing? immigration?

Quality of life, work-life balance, good schools, good transport, lots of consumer protections, human rights & rights for minorities, 70 years of peace.

Economic growth isn't great but could be a lot worse if I look at the rest of the world.

Energy transition for sure has some huge challenges but again, we're doing pretty great compared to other places in the world.

Housing is an issue, but where isn't housing an issue?

>70 years of peace.

Which 70 years?

The 70 years the US paid for of course :)

I think Europe paid for it with interest, see the huge US government debt financed by printing petrol dollars

After the gold standard everyone except the US has been paying for it

Yes? Housing is infinitely better than the US, job security can be better, work life balance is better, cities are nicer to look at, architecture is better, people are more active, fitter, have lives beyond work. The bread is better, so is the cheese. There is real food available. Public transport is plentiful. Society feels a bit less polarised.

The EU is infinitely better than living in the states. At least for this third world immigrant.

Interesting. I thought housing in the EU has been a challenge for generations with home ownership a difficult to impossible goal for most people, with this being the case across the region. In the US the housing affordability issue is in a few highly desirable urban areas, but not being generally case across the country.

I think the bread in the US, sans the supermarket stuff, is generally exceptional with bakeries throughout most cities that are top notch. Some of the best creameries in the world are in the US now. Beer is also generally more innovative and better. There is also a much broader food community in that I can eat food from every culture on earth with pretty high quality in every city. Europe tends to be much less diverse and less creative in its foods. However, yes, if you only eat fast food and shop at big box grocery stores (which also exist in Europe) staples are pretty low quality.

The US has a very strong and thriving food movement, and isn’t a strict monoculture by geography. There are layers upon layers of cultures intertwined throughout the country. Generically “American culture” is essentially a marketing regime for large companies selling their stuff. But the reality of America is much more complex than that, and that’s accelerated since the 1950’s, and was completely broken down in the 1990’s.

Most of the polarization stems from that destruction of the American monoculture belief system and a reaction against that. It’s the last gasp of people who see a way of thinking falling apart. But what comes out of that cultural change is excellent bread, cheese, beer, etc.

" But the reality of America is much more complex than that, and that’s accelerated since the 1950’s, and was completely broken down in the 1990’s. " You complain a lack of seing the complexity of American food but instead you have a simple view of the European cultures. Have you been ever in any European country and when? I have the feeling you havent been.

fnordpiglet posted virtually nothing about Europe. Where are you drawing your opinion of his/her view of European cultures from?

This whole thread is just bizarre.

Well, except for: "Europe tends to be much less diverse and less creative in its foods."

I’ve traveled through most of Europe and the UK for pleasure but also regularly visit Germany, Italy, France, Ireland, Scotland, England, and Switzerland for work.

If I go to your average Italian city I simply won’t find good Thai food. I’ll get a lot of great Italian food for sure. But no Malay, no Nepalese, no afghan, no Peruvian, etc. I’m sure you’ll find counter examples, but the US genuinely is a melting pot with well established ethnic subcultures of all cultures on earth and the general society is pretty open. There’s no French nationalism etc. The thing is there’s no established cultural monoculture like you find in most of the world - what people mistake for a lack of culture in America is that it’s a palimpsest of hundreds of cultures, and they all bring their foods to the American table.

This isn’t a knock on the modern multiculturalism in Europe, it’s more a statement that the established historic cultures in Europe squeeze out the diversity more than in the US with its lack of established historic culture that has almost entirely evaporated in the last 80 years.

I can’t say I agree with this assessment. There’s good Thai food in NYC, but probably less so in rural New York. In the same way, there’s amazing Thai food in Berlin, but probably not in rural Bavaria.

Also, in your average Italian city, the average meal will still be healthier than the average American meal. The idea of food deserts is what doesn’t exist in Europe, at least not Western Europe. The local mom and pop shops still have veggies and fruits, and I was amazed to find none within biking distance when I was in the US.

I don’t want to have to need to shop at Trader Joes, Whole Foods, or live in a posh city to avoid having to eat over-processed food and be constipated all of the time.

Even my city in germany that has ~25k inhabitans has: italian, greek, turkish, chinese, and I think thai as well. And that is just off the top of my head all within a ~5min walking distance.

One thing to bear in mind; if you’re a tourist in a place, you tend to be exposed to the touristy stuff. Italy actually is an example where getting good non-Italian food may be difficult even in many large cities (this broadly makes sense; it has the oldest population in Europe and one of the lowest immigration rates), but it’s a bit of an outlier there; most large European cities will do better.

> I thought housing in the EU has been a challenge for generations with home ownership a difficult to impossible goal for most people, with this being the case across the region.

Who told you that? I mean, it’s certainly the case in some places (particularly in large affluent cities), but, much like in the US, it’s variable. If you take EU countries and the US and rank by home ownership percentage, the US is on the low end (even Ireland, with its long-running nationwide housing crisis, beats the US here). Notably _Germany_ is much lower (65% of US homes are owner occupied, 50% of German homes), but Germany’s an outlier in Europe on this; to a large extent it’s driven by below-cost social housing.

It appears you lived in the US for a while and have some resentments, but the parent comment didn't even mention the US.

But apart from the housing, fitness, public transport, cities, work life balance, architecture, job security and cheese, what has the EU done for us?

As someone who recently bought a house in the EU, IMO the best place to make money is the US. But, the best place to spend it is the EU. Much like doing the location/CoL arbitrage in the US, it's even better if you can get higher end US salaries and do a quality of life arbitrage to the EU.

The EU is on a roll politically, it's much more agile and expertise-focused than most governments. Also he ceiling is a lot higher than in the US given that half of the EU is underdeveloped. Look at Estonia's potential for example, Bolt is the fastest growing transportation company globally.

There's a ceiling?

There is, it's called workforce. Incase you need an example, TSMC recently pushed back its fab plans in the US by atleast a year because they couldn't find enough specialists.

Economic growth can come from productivity gains without any material change in workforce.

TSMC's delays have to do with not offering enough pay not a lack of people capable of installing wafer fab tools or building electrical or mechanical systems for fabs.

If you can't have successful tech giants, you can have principles. If Apple/Meta/Alphabet were European companies the EU regulators would have absolutely no scruples about these things.

Every country talks 'free trade!' out of one side of their mouth, and implements protectionism via various concerns about health/safety/fairness out of the other when it's expedient. The US isn't any different, it's just not tech companies we're worried about (except some clock app that the Gen Z kids are obsessed with).

I wish my government had hired developers to create useful Linux tools, they gave money to nextcloud instead of paying tribute to Microsoft.

But guess who pays the best bribes?

The US used to have huge oil or railroad companies, but also scruples to regulate them when they grew too big.

You mean how the US regulated them out of business after giving them huge subsidies?

No, I was talking about 100 years ago.

I really don't think the oil and railroad monopolies were broken up for the benefit of consumers, or due to some high-minded principles. They were broken up at the behest of other domestic industries which they were strangling, and those industries had the political clout to take on the monopolies. Arguably the same thing happened with the AT&T monopoly.

At least our planes can fly.

(that was free, I’ll take the downvotes)

The US came very close to passing similar legislation recently and it still could. This bill had bipartisan support. Apple was able to kill it using relationships with leadership, but the votes were there. My organization Fight for the Future worked on lobbying for this, and while it's super difficult to pass legislation over big company opposition, it's not impossible. We can have similar rules in the US if we keep pushing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_App_Markets_Act

Is it dead? I see nothing to that effect in the article.

All legislation not voted on dies at the end of each Congress.

> Democrat Dianne Feinstein expressed concern that the legislation would disproportionately impact Apple and Google

How did I know that she was the one opposing it? I'm not glad she's dead, but I am glad she isn't on the Senate any more.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39644788.

Between this and the PWA decision, Apple seems to be flailing. What is leadership doing?

Right? They make so much money, what’s the deal. Seems like they let the MBAs take over. I get that not all money they make is liquid, but a rounding error to Apple would be enough money to change someone’s life.

Engineers who do not actively purge bean counters from their orgs will end up being ruled by them.

What was the deal with PWAs?

EU rules say Apple can't prioritize their own browser. PWAs only work with WebKit due to the iOS security model, and the amount of work necessary to try to support PWAs with third-party browser engines securely was way out of scope for the time frame to support the DMA. Because Apple can't prioritize their own browser, they had to remove PWA support entirely in the EU.

Naturally there was a lot of backlash, and so Apple reversed their decision and will continue to support PWAs with WebKit in the EU. This suggests that perhaps the European Commission told Apple that it was okay to do this as it does seem to violate the "don't prioritize your own browser" rule, but as of the last I saw on this it was still unclear.

I don't really see it as prioritising your own browser.

It's a system level feature and uses the system provided web engine.

Microsoft doesn't let you swap out EdgeHTML or Trident for applications that use the native OS web frame.

But apps shouldn't be forced to use that web frame is the issue the commission had and the DMA attempts to resolve.

> Microsoft doesn't let you swap out EdgeHTML or Trident for applications that use the native OS web frame.

I remember quite clearly a gecko (firefox) implementation of the trident COM interface

However, there wasn't a flag by Microsoft to give applications this implementation rather than the one they requested.

you mean the LocalServer32 value?

Notably, Android does let users swap out the system webview. So clearly such a thing is possible.

Yes, but Google did that so they could update the WebView via the Play Store because OEMs were slow to distribute updates.

But the system still needed a WebView for when Play Services were not available, so they made a way to toggle between them.

> the amount of work necessary to try to support PWAs with third-party browser engines securely was way out of scope for the time frame to support the DMA.

Rubbish. The DMA became law in November 1st 2022. A trillion(!)-dollar corporation had approximately a year and a half to work this out.

I mean, lots and lots of software goes through decades of development and yet still contains major security exploits. A year and a half isn't necessarily a huge amount of time to develop a full sandbox for code you don't even control.

Apple has had more than a year and a half to work on it, and they didn't.

Other posters have covered the gist of the events, but what creates the impression of flailing for me is Apple taking a hard stance in one direction, underestimating the backlash, and promptly recanting and changing course in exchange for (as best as I can tell) no advantage or concessions. That happened with PWAs, and now has happened with Epic.

Maybe there were behind the scenes concessions made and I'm completely wrong, in which case I owe Apple management an apology. But my impression as an outsider is that there is no real strategy here; executives at the company seem to be throwing their weight around and picking fights at random, getting slapped down, and immediately retreating.

The penalties for Non-Compliance are up to 10% of the global turnover of a company.

If you are flexing your muscles and end up loosing, you are probably loosing your jobs, because shareholders and everyone else will be angry with you

They want to minimize the amount of control lost. You cant find the limit without testing the limit.

They seem to maximizing the amount of face lost though.

If you act like a bully, and then recede at the slightest resistance, you just come off looking like a fool.

The vast majority of iPhone and airpod users have no idea any of this is even happening I imagine. Even among the people who know its happening, even fewer know enough about how these systems work to actually have much of an opinion beyond parroting a headline.

This will all blow over in a week. But once the control is lost, it’s gone forever.

Apple is losing control though. No company should have this level of control over a market.

Developer grievances about Apple have been simmering for years, and even longtime Apple fans aren't happy about what's been going on lately. This is not a smart path to follow.

They need enthusiastic small developers to help build the Vision Pro ecosystem, and so far it doesn't seem to be going that well.

If developer grievances about Apple have been simmering for years, perhaps they can simmer longer.

Apple will make the change that they're forced to make. Developers aren't forcing anything at the moment, but what exactly are they being forced to do by the EU? That's what's being learned.

As a long time Apple fan myself I'm certain, Apple fans have never been happy. :)

Enthusiastic small developers existed while there was a profitable market. Third party app stores allow piracy and make being a small developer much tougher, I doubt there will be much enthusiasm going ahead

What is happening seems to benefit mostly massive competitors like Epic or Amazon.

The grievances have been simmering, but anecdotally at least I haven't known a single developer who is unhappy about it enough to actually switch. Also programming languages/frameworks/platforms are highly sticky. Apple was very smart to make their language/framework non-cross platform (generally speaking. By that I mean, try finding jobs doing Android or even web development in Objective C or Swift. I know it's possible but it's not very practical) and unique to their system.

At the end of the day, developers are users first and foremost, and as users they are thrilled with Apple. Things would have to get pretty damn bad before Apple would need to worry about losing developers.

Culture is a very hard thing to change at any company, including in the face of existential threats. Look at what's happening at Google with AI.

"We are a walled garden and will not interoperate or tolerate alternatives" is in Apple's DNA, and no decision maker at any level at the company will risk suggesting otherwise for fear of being branded a traitor, even if it is a very good idea.

    We are a walled garden and will not interoperate or tolerate alternatives"

No. Before Apple got their monopoly they absolutely begged developers, even tried to shame them, for not developing for MacOS. They evened threatened lawsuits against Microsoft.

Yes this is true, GP should have specified "iOS" where it's in Apple's interest to be a walled garden. Apple argument in any case is not based on logical consistency, but rather what is in Apple's interest. If they really viewed unauthorized apps as so dangerous, I would expect they'd lock down macOS more too. When it's Mac where they would be harmed from being hyper closed, they are open and compatible because it suits their interest, and this is something Steve Jobs learned the hard way. Apple is definitely very good at learning from the past.

> They evened threatened lawsuits against Microsoft.

Because Microsoft reneged on a deal. You make Apple sound petulant when they were standing up to a 800lb coercive monopoly.

they don't seem to realise that they can't win against a sovereign power that is actively legislating against them

The legislators for that sovereign power have to win elections though, so it's a political game. If Apple can win/influence politics enough, they can win against the sovereign power.

politicans on all sides in the EU share the opinion that US tech companies need reigning in

Apple is finding out they do not have more power than government. Apple isn't flailing at all, their competition limiting decisions are forcing government to regulate them.

Showing their true colors. "Going mask off" as the kids would say.

There's an observation that computer programs tend to reflect the organizational structures of the company that developed them. I would go further and argue that company cultures are a reflection of the founders that built them.

In the case of Apple, Steve Jobs was an emotionally manipulative psychopath that was very good at conning people, making anyone he talked to buy into his bullshit. When he didn't get his way, he'd cry like a child and throw tantrums. Everyone at Apple absolutely lionized the shit out of Jobs, even during the interregnum period where the company was being torn apart by idiots. All of the upper management was his own hand-picked successors, who have largely continued doing exactly what Jobs was doing, just with higher scale.

The world largely did not notice this because the actual product (at least, when Jobs was actually in the driver's seat) was good. Part of the capitalist social contract is that we don't care about how the sausage was made so long as we aren't assuming the risk[0]. But this is still very much a religious cult that just so happens to be shaped like a for-profit corporation, run by people who were hand-picked by its dogmatic, emotionally unstable founder[1]. It just so happens to also employ actual geniuses.

In the Apple religion, there are commandments, and one of them is "thou shalt not install unauthorized third party software, for it is the malware of the beast". Like other religions, the commandments are based in some kind of plausible system of rules, we can absolutely Chesterton's Fence them, but that rationale has been forgotten by true believers who take them to axiomatic extremes. Apple is not exactly going to die on this hill[2], but they are going to try to make the system as restrictive as possible within the DMA's constraints, because they've RDF'd[3] themselves into thinking their greed is protecting users.

[0] Also, most of the people Jobs really fucked over were the kinds of people society did not care so much about in the 1980s.

[1] This also applies to the FSF, except it's rules are "thou shalt not bind the user to your tech cult". It's an anti-cult cult.

[2] Though I've had the urge to make fake sales pages for an Apple Nuclear weapons program and photoshop the words "POOR IMPULSE CONTROL" on Tim Apple's head.

[3] Reality Distortion Field, not Resource Description Framework

Tim Cook managed to be cool calm and diplomatic when dealing with Trump and his trade war with China. Why is Tim Cook suddenly acting irrational and child-like when dealing with EU? This behaviour we're seeing from Apple recently is happening in front on investors and everyone else's eyes because Tim Cook is personally green-lighting this behaviour. What's going on inside Apple? Is it because none of their hardware is growing anymore and they don't have an AI strategy to offset their stock which is currently in free fall and is about to be bypassesed by nVidia?

EU trust watchdog is less trusting than FTC.

While Mr Perry prefers to parry words before a material blow lands, Mr Cook naturally avoids cooking an antitrust case.

Aside from their spectacular laptops with arm, they seem like they are being left behind.

Vision Pro is probably a gimmick along with the whole VR world right now, which will change soon too but overall I don't see anything exciting about apple.

Their pricing is infuriating and so are their decisions (laptop 8gb ram in 2024???)

To me it looks like they got stuck in the "this is what worked for us, so let's only do this" mentality and take no risks.

They stand on the shoulders of giants and most importantly on their cultural presence...

I’m a mac user at home, and I don’t get their AI story/path now that they’re not supporting AMD/Nvidia GPUs since the Apple Silicon transition.

Maybe they’ll manage to get LLMs running well locally with the new low-bit developments? Not my area. But for training/learning it seems like Apple is DOA. They have the same problem as AMD, no one is doing research with their hardware or software.

Intentionally shipping low RAM/unified memory quantities seems short sighted too. Maybe with a 16GB baseline they could do something special with local LLMs.

I think you are looking at a very narrow use case and deciding that because they do not make a system you'd be happy with for your niche use that they are DOA. Someone selling just under 6.5 million units of anything seems like the opposite of dead to me. Are there vendors selling more? Of course, but there are also vendors selling less. Not every Mac user cares about AI and training or fine tuning a local LLM.

Very true, my needs are niche for sure. But I’m more thinking about the near future. AI/LLMs are going to have some general applications that users are going to want, and will become the norm, and I think it’s clear that will shake out soon. Apple is at risk of being left behind because the only people working on that stuff for Apple, work at Apple. Hobbyists and researchers are on Linux/Windows for the most part. Software development doesn’t have such a large platform difference, lots of developers use macOS. But ML is different and I think they should care.

> But ML is different and I think they should care.

It’s totally this time I promise, just like, one more ~~lane~~ model.

I’m sure they do care. I wouldn’t be surprised if they land significant support for on-app processing of models, they’ve already got the chip, dropping in local models is a sensible next step, and if close to zero effort for them.

> LLMs are going to have some general applications that users are going to want, and will become the norm

I have yet to see anyone, in my personal or professional circles, use any LLM:

- for more than a week

- for anything more than cutesy trivial things.

I’m sure there’s people around stapling models into their toaster, but this is so far from the normal.

Part of Apple's problem is that they're expected to vendor support for third-party stuff. Who accelerates Pytorch or ONNX for Apple silicon, if not Apple?

They've done an okay job of that so far, but their flagship library is diverging pretty far from industry demand. At best, CoreML is a slightly funkier Tensorflow - at worst, it's a single-platform model cemetery. No matter what road they take, they have to keep investing in upstream support if they want Nvidia to feel the heat. Otherwise, it's CUDA vs CoreML which is an unwinnable fight when you're selling to datacenter customers.

I think it's possible for Apple to make everyone happy here by reducing hostilities and dedicating good work where it matters. Generally though, it feels like they're wasting resources trying to compete with Nvidia and retread the Open Source work of 3 different companies.

> an unwinnable fight when you're selling to datacenter customers.

didn't Apple pretty much throw in the towel in this market simply by choice of form factor for their computers? The sheer desperation of their users wanting a device in this space is shown in the "creative" ways to mount their offerings in a rack.

all of the user friendly things they've done by shrinking the footprint, making them silent, etc are all things a data center does not care about. make it loud with fans to keep things cool so they can run at full load 24/7 without fear of melting down.

so from that lead alone, we can make the next assumption in that Apple doesn't care about vs CUDA. as long as they can show a chart in an over produced hype video for a new hardware announcement that has "arrows go up" as a theme, that is ALL they care about.

I mostly agree, which is why I question their strategy of even "competing" at all. The existence of CoreML feels strictly obligatory, as if the existence of Pytorch and Tensorflow spurned FOMO from the C-suites. It's not terrible, but it's also pretty pointless when the competing libraries do more things, faster.

Users, developers, and probably Apple too would benefit from just using the prior art. I'd go as far as to argue Apple can't thread the AI needle without embracing community contributions. The field simply moves too fast to ship "AI Siri" and call it a day.

> The sheer desperation of their users wanting a device in this space is shown in the "creative" ways to mount their offerings in a rack.

Well you and I both know that nobody is doing that to beat AWS on hosting costs. It's a novelty, and the utility beyond that is restricted to the few processes that require MacOS in some arbitrary way. If we're being honest with ourselves, any muppet with a power drill and enough 1U rails can rackmount a Mac Mini.

>I mostly agree, which is why I question their strategy of even "competing" at all.

If it makes their camera "smarter", it's a win. If they can make Siri do something more than "start a timer", then it's a win. If they can have images translate text more accurately, it's a win. There's a lot of things that an on device AI could help users without having to do all of the power hungry creation of a model or the fine tuning. They can do that in the mothership, and just push models on their device.

Not everyone needs to do AI the way you are trying to do it

I think that's a mistaken way of viewing it. Apple's failure in the gaming space is entirely a matter of policy; you look over at the Steam Deck and Valve is running Microsoft IP without paying for their runtime. Some people really do get their cake and eat it too.

Any of the aforementioned libraries could make their camera smarter or improve Siri/OCR marginally. The fact that Apple wasted their time reinventing the wheel is what bothers me, they're making a mistake by assuming that their internal library will inherently appeal to developers and compete with the SOTA.

The reason why I criticize them is because I legitimately believe Apple is one of the few companies capable of shipping hardware that competes with Nvidia. Apple is their only competitor at TSMC, it's entirely a battle of engineering wits between the two of them right now. Apple is going nowhere fast with CoreML and Accelerate framework, but they could absolutely cut Nvidia off at the pass by investing in the unified infrastructure that Intel and AMD refuse to. It also wouldn't harm the customer experience, leverages third-party contributions to advance their progress, and frees up resources to work on more important things. Just sayin'.

They missed AI along with everyone else except for OpenAI and MS. But, it's hard to say they're being left behind when they have products that are the defining product of the category. Obviously there's the iPhone, but also AirPods, iPad, and Apple Watch.

And the ARM changeover in the laptops has been so seamless, people seem to ignore the huge risks with switching architectures. And now everyone is chasing them for the same power/battery life.

They've had some missteps, but we need a few more years to really know if they have been left behind. Apple was never one to be first to do something.

Without a doubt, they have one hell of an engineering team.

After a life on windows and some periods on linux, apple managed to refine their os and hardware to the point where I can say, it doesn’t get in the way and it “just works”, which, I think, is what most professionals want.

Seems to me they ran course of strategic layout set by Jobs and are cruising on play it safe and more of it now. Hence wide variety of the sameness in their product offerings. Cook is a good operative, but not a strategic visionary. As for what's the hot topic about, Apple was always heavy handed, only now is the era they got a chance to have that hand be real heavy.

Because Apple's share price growth now depends on services, not cool hardware.

The App Store monopoly generates billions in ad revenue from app vendors advertising their apps on search results. That will take a huge hit if there's an alternate app store they can potentially pay a lot less to gain exposure.

Getting pretty huge clown face painting meme vibes.

A childish move, unexpected from such a company like apple especially with timing.

Which probably boils down to one overzealous middle/higher manager trying too hard to be a good boi for superiors to get extra bonus... I don't think it panned as expected. Otherwise apple corporate culture is quite rotten.

There is no way such a decision was not approved by the upper echelon of management. That has both legal ramifications and monetary for a huge client.

> A childish move, unexpected from such a company like apple especially with timing.

Especially when you add the failed PWA move before, they're starting to look pretty bad.

I just like nice computers and don’t really care about the inter-corporate mudslinging.

Now not paying an equal share of tax, on the other hand, is criticism I can join in on.

Serious question, what PWAs are worth using on Android that don't work on iOS?

It's not about whether it's worth using, it's about having the mere option of building an app without the overhead of paying developer fees to Apple.

So it's not about PWAs at all then, it's just a handy complaint?

I don't think we can really know the potential of PWA, since most developers aren't going to put effort into PWAs if they won't work for a big chunk of the market. Apple is effectively strangling the technology on all platforms by refusing to support it on theirs.

If PWAs had any merit at all, why would anyone build a native Android app today where all these magic features are inhibited?

What's actually missing that's stopping this from working?

> What's actually missing that's stopping this from working?

Proper support on all platforms. No point working on PWAs that have janky tooling (reason: see previous sentence) when they're only going to work decently on Android devices anyway.

So why would you build a native Android app if PWAs work better? There’s way more web developers than Android developers, and you would avoid the Play Store fees. Sound cheaper to me. What part of iOS is invalidating the value proposition for Android here?

You also didn’t answer what is missing. What is missing? What’s this insurmountable problem that’s solved everywhere else? Why is janky tooling attributable to Apple?

Try reading my post again, maybe? The tooling is pretty janky because no one does this yet. No point to torture yourself with janky tooling when you only get to target android anyway...

Again, not answering a thing but a making up a claim you aren't willing or able to support. How is this supposed web development tooling jankiness attributable to Apple today? Feature detection is a solved problem. What tooling are you even referring to? You aren't even trying to support this with a concrete claim. This is nonsense and you know it.

PWAs are the perfect scapegoat of infinite nebulous whining. The definition of a progressive web app might as well be "whatever Chrome has but Safari doesn't, no matter what year it is or how those features change, and no matter how terrible of an idea they might be even on Chrome".

> Proper support on all platforms. No point working on PWAs that have janky tooling (reason: see previous sentence) when they're only going to work decently on Android devices anyway.

If you need it spelled out for you:

* WebUSB

* WebBLE

* WebSerial

* WebGL

* Many more standards Apple refuses to implement because it would let developers break free of their walled garden

Without being able to target apple devices why would I, or anyone, bother using these technologies and invest in their tooling? Just make a native android app with quality tooling that's been around for a decade and be done with it.

Right, I wanted you to spell it out because I was expecting you to write that exact sort of nonsense. Your first three examples aren't even web standards they're experimental features in Chrome that not even Firefox supports. The fourth actually is supported by Safari/iOS. What missing standards are stopping you from writing Progressive WEB Apps? Be exact please.

And.... even if you wanted to build a serial-port enabled "Works only in Chrome" PWA today (lol, we both know you're not) there's no tooling jankiness stopping you from doing so, checking for `if ("serial" in navigator) { ... }` requires no tooling at all it's just plain javascript, you'd just choose to show an error message for browsers like Safari and Firefox that don't support it.

I'm not convinced you're even arguing in good faith here. Well, I never was because PWA whiners never are, but you've proven you're not.

The Epic blog post shows emails with Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi. This was all approved by upper management.

Those are the two that seem like pure poison.

It was mind-blowing to me that in previous threads, Apple fanatics were defending Apple, saying that Epic had broken the developer agreement. It hadn't. Schiller clearly stated that he banned Epic because he didn't believe Sweeney when Sweeney literally said that he would abide by the agreement. I don't see this behavior with any other company.

Please stop picking stupid fights, Apple. You keep losing them.

What's the catch? (Given they tried to destroy PWAs in their last tantrum.)

No catch, just the threat of "and if you keep trying to violate EU law, we're going to keep levying billion dollar fines on you until you either obey the law, or you cease all operations in Europe. Which will get you sued some more because you're still on the hook for support after you leave"

It's more like the EC told both sides to get some adults in the room and work it out. Since they clearly didn't force Apple to change any rules and Epic agreed to follow Apple's rules, I have no idea where all this chest-beating is coming from. Apple is still winning and the EC is still feckless.

The EC heavily hinted at swift enforcement and it's most likely that Apple retreated after that.

So technically they "worked it out" but only after a "parent" threatened to send them to bed without dinner.

They'll try harder to find an excuse next time.

Given that the EU is now making laws that are purposely designed to target them specifically, good luck with that.

In the best case they are learning that, due to their own behaviour, they are now sharing custody of the EU app store with an adminstrative bureocracy.

But I suspect it'll take them more time until it fully sinks and until they are done testing their new boundaries.

Well done.

So happy to see the will of elected officials usurp a multinational. There is literally nothing to dislike about this.

Oh horror, the laws exist and apply to a trillion dollar company! How tragic and terrible. Anyways...

I can’t even tell if I should apply Poe’s Law here.

I’m not subject to Poe’s Law as a free, sovereign national of the Americas.

You should probably do a few cuts with Hanlon's Razor in this case.

The simplest explanation for what happened with Apple this past few weeks is that there's no master plan. The EU told them the rules, they didn't take them seriously, now they're realizing a bit late that they can't afford not to respect the rules and they're scrambling to figure out what that means.

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.

One of the worst gaming user experiences on Windows is how every publisher wants their own store. And depending on where you get a game, it may or may not have certain features. And if you get into modding, sometimes one version of the game just won't work with some mods.

I understand everyone feels good about increased competition with Apple—and hopefully it turns out well for users—but iOS is hurtling toward the same situation that exists on Windows, and I think the iOS experience is worse for it. It's definitely worse with the browser nag. So I don't call this a total win. It's a theoretical win, but I foresee it being about as much of a win as cookie banners are, when it comes to the actual, practical, day-to-day experience people have using this technology.

It's a much better experience on windows to not be stuck with a windows store. Third party stores like steam are way better

Imagine if we had to download the Windows Store on iOS just to get Outlook, Word or Excel though. That's what the OP is predicting.

And yet that never happens on Android. All of the major players use Google play store because regular consumers aren't gonna install another app store just to use some apps.

Clearly Epic thinks they'll do it. Different ecosystem, who knows?

Sadly this comparison is very misleading. Steam was a thing for a decade before the windows store and it has been basically the default. The more game stores that appeared over time the worse it has been for the gamers.

>has been basically the default

It came pre-installed on your operating system?

I wish it did

Microsoft isn't forcing anything upon the devs other than signed binaries. This is not the same thing at all.

If Google or Mozilla release real versions of their browsers for iOS/iPadOS and offer long support for them, then I see it as a win. I've seen so many usable iPads turn into e-waste because Safari is out of date and can't be updated.

iOS Safari is the only thing that prevents a Chromium/Blink hegemony. A popular Chrome on iOS would be a return to the IE6 days (Firefox has such a minuscule market share, no one even notices it)

I don't want to give one company a monopoly just to prevent a potential monopoly. I want better anti-trust to handle both and all monopolies. And handling the existing and real monopoly is how that starts.

It's not a potential: we know this is going to happen, because we've seen it happening before.

The _marketed_ intent behind those regulation is a good one. The actual regulations are just favoring one player over the other: I guess the lobbyists were ahead of the process this time (good for them). As much as everyone would claim ignorance later, I'm not willing to give them the credit of being that stupid.

iOS Safari is also the only thing preventing those iPads from still serving a purpose.

You must be the only person on Windows who likes the Windows store. I'm personally really glad alternatives like steam exist.

I don't think you realize your very own example is proving that it's actually bad. If Microsoft did what Apple did, you wouldn't have steam as the one gaming store, you would have the windows store.

Open store competition in the gaming area leading to steam being far in the lead, not the OS gatekeeper, is a proof that it allows for more choices for consumers and the better one taking the lead.

Outcompete them all by creating an amazing store with 3-4% fee and you will be the last one.

The mandated monopoly with 30% fee alternative is unreasonable.

Nice, make 'em find other ways to make money than rent-seeking.

I hope they can learn to love each other. Makes me so upset when developers and business people can't figure out how to solve this outside of court.

Epic and Apple famously had a close relationship. A few years back, Epic was onstage at every Apple keynote. They were showing off games on iOS on macOS, talking about API development. I understand why Tim Sweeney felt like they were getting ripped off, but it seemed like they had a strong relationship.

I wonder if something happened behind the scenes.

Sweeney vastly overestmated how much Epic mattered. Apple called his bluff.

I'm sure Apple's 30% cut couldn't possibly be sufficient to explain the rift. I mean, what is this money thing, and why is Epic so worried about it?!?

Surely Apple's legal team counseled them against closing the account in the first place. Now that the EU commission made an inquiry, the execs folded?

Not trying to start a flame war, I'm asking this earnestly. Where does this command over hardware (USB-C mandate), software (sideloading/AppStore), and prices (recent 2bn decision) end?

You want to sell in their house, you gotta play by their rules. It’s that simple.

If only it were that simple!! Isn't the central problem that you're not allowed to sell in anybody elses house. I mean, if you're prepared to accept that you are leasing the device and that the lease will dictate what you can add can't do with the device, then I think your position holds, otherwise, it's a little tenuous.

I interpreted the parent comment as referring to the EU's house and rules?

Their house is in part in the EU so they have to play by the rules of the EU there, or remove that part of the house.

It's not their house. Someone bought an iPhone (not leased, bought, they own it now). Someone else made an app that that person wants to install on their iPhone (solely thanks to app developer's own marketing efforts). But Apple thinks it's appropriate to have their finger in the pie too.

Now there are fewer (or none) apple followers defending the old argument: Apple is entitled to profit for their platform. Thank EU for Striking some sense on that.

Nobody bought the Apple SDKs or OS though and every app depends on them.

I get people are use to free, but plenty of companies license software for royalties that does a lot less.

> Nobody bought the Apple SDKs

That's what the $99/year fee is for. Apple set that price themselves. It can also be argued that some of the cost of the SDKs is included into the price of the Mac that any iOS developer has to have.

> or OS

That's included into the price of every iPhone because you can't even buy an iPhone without an OS or install your own, like you can do with PCs.

Does apple having designed, developed, and manufactured the phone as well as having built, maintained, and serviced the App store mean nothing?

The App store is a highly trusted place to download things on your phone, and that's a value that apple provides and that costs money to maintain. Pretending that it's as isolated as you pretend feels very disingenuous.

I'm an Android developer myself, but the app store is commonly seen by my iOS colleagues just as a stupid hurdle they must clear to get their app out to the world. Not as the godsend that Apple portrays it.

If the app store is truly as immensely useful as Apple wants everyone to believe, why not enable full-on Android-style sideloading on iOS and let the app store compete with that on its own merits? Surely everyone would still prefer it if it's so great?

This argument is trotted out frequently and it misses the point. These are NOT Apple’s customers. Yes they bought the phone from Apple but they are Epic’s customers. No one wants Apple inserting themselves in the middle of the transaction. It is not necessary.

If it were really that simple, we'd all be leasing AT&T cell phones. The only reason Apple can sell iPhones and run an app store is because AT&T got broken up 40 years ago for similar issues.

Why would it end? Governance is a continuing process.

When devices aren't sold in the EU. If it's sold in the EU, the EU can regulate that model.

It ends when Apple learns to balance the interests of their shareholders and the interests of their customers better. I would go as far as saying that the way Apple banned even any mention of alternative payment methods for in-app services was clearly abusive and faudulent.

> It ends when Apple learns to balance the interests of their shareholders and the interests of their customers better.

The interests of their shareholders are literally the interests of their customers.

Apple makes incredible products, that billions of people pay significant money for, with many competitors that are much cheaper. Their shareholders reap the rewards of this.

If Apple customers hated Apple, they would not be Apple customers, and Apple would not be one of the most valuable businesses in human history.

> The interests of their shareholders are literally the interests of their customers.

There would be no need hide information from customers if that was true. Their censorship, the fact that Apple desperately wants to hide what they are doing, is very revealing and incriminating.

What information are they hiding/censoring?

Per Apple’s rules, app developers are not allowed to explain the App Store rules and pricing models within their apps, leaving customers in the dark - a form of censorship, to be sure.

It shouldn't end, we shouldn't let them do whatever they want.

Not where, when. And the answer is never, because the EU regulates what companies themselves either can't regulate themselves because no one's willing to adopt the other's standard, or there's a position of dominance that doesn't even require collaborating with anyone else. And they do that for a pretty simple reason: to ensure that businesses do right by the EU citizenship.

And they do that across _all_ sectors of industry, you only noticed the tech one because it's in the news you pay attention to, but everything from farming to textiles to tech to pharmaceuticals are heavily regulated so that the people that live in the EU can enjoy a reasonable standard of living.

In Europe unlike in America the government makes regulations that benefit the general public. That's it.

That's probably to generalised since the EU is still a political entity with lots of lobbying from different sides.

But in this case benefiting the general public is easy because it does not hit a European company ( production in China, development in America) that is working hard to extract money which it sends abroad while avoiding paying taxes here (probably legally).

A good opportunity to reign Apple and friends in and score some "greater good" points in particular since the US government is also sceptical and mostly concerned with internal affairs at the moment.

Different sides there being Microsoft.

Why should it end? So far it's awesome.

Where does the command over minimum wages, minimum maternity leave and minimum consumer warranty end?

Where democracy decides it ends.

Apple is in the wrong here, at least in my opinion, but equating the ability to have a 2nd app store on your iPhone and the end of democracy is... wow.

Edit: Misread the comment, sorry.

He didn't say anything about the end of democracy. Apparently the media zeitgeist is so strong with this now that even just saying "Democracy" triggers the thought.

All he said is that it's the democratically elected officals that decide what laws companies have to obey. Just as they decide everything else about what what laws people have to obey.

>He didn't say anything about the end of democracy.

You're right! I misread.

>Apparently the media zeitgeist is so strong with this now that even just saying "Democracy" triggers the thought.

Or I just misread the comment.

I'm no lawyer, but it seems like it ends and begins at wanting to sell in the european market. It doesn't seem that different from mandating that cars obey certain emission standards, contain digital radios etc. Or how food packaging contain nutritional information. Mandating 2-year guarantees for sold goods. There's quite a lot of legislation on specific requirements on sold goods.

One can argue whether this specific legislation is wise, but legally i don't think there's any limit to what the EU can mandate for goods sold in their market.

Ideally, as a consumer, in a market where commodity computer hardware is not arbitrarily restricted to extract the maximum attainable profit from consumers? It has been shown time and again that both volunteers and competitors can quickly and easily build and ship software, including entire OS's that run on the hardware, the only thing preventing them from doing so is anti-consumer and anti-competitive controls.

It's asinine that I, as a consumer, can pay over $1000 for a device and not be able to choose which software I can run on it because the developer of that device locks out access. It's even worse that the company I bought it from can arbitrarily disable the device, features, and services that I have paid for, and I have little to no recourse.

The USB-C mandate is nothing to do with Apple. It’s ensure interoperability and reduce waste.

Setting standards is one of the oldest forms of regulation, ever since weights and measures were standardized to ensure people could trade more easily, ensuring that when you bought a pound of flour from one vendor it would be the same pound as the vendor across the street.

It probably ends with happy consumers :) At least, I'm very happy that the EU is trying to avert the worst anticompetitive behaviour and restoring my control over the hardware that I purchased.

If enough shareholders vote in favour of Apple leaving the EU and its overbearing regulations, that's when it would end.

They won't because they know Apple exiting would simply hand the market to those that can bear the harsh yoke of consumer regulation.

I think tech, particularly the digital landscape, is one of the few industry that are not regulated. Everything else from transport to food has strict regulation. It's not like anyone can build housing whenever and however he wants in the US.

It won't end, Apple is too big now, the alternatives are:

  1. Split Apple into smaller companies
  2. Operate Apple like an utility company

They did this to themselves, and it's only downhill from this point.

> They did this to themselves

What...by being successful?

No, by being anti-competitive. Most countries have laws against monopolies, and it was naive to expect that countries would wait until you destroy the competition to enforce those laws.

> Most countries have laws against monopolies

They have less than 25% smartphone marketshare. What monopoly do they have?

They don't.

That's why the regulation targets "gatekeepers" with revenue in the billions and at least 45Million European users.

The EU decided that this is large enough to be limited in what they can do.

It is curious that there are no European gatekeepers either.

They do. That’s why the EC had to create a new class named “gatekeeper”: because Apple isn’t a monopolist.

That's what I meant. Sorry if it was unclear

Yes. It's the reality of capitalistic end game. You start with a great product, innovate for 30 years and then when you think you got it and can endlessly extract the rent from the market, while adding another megapixel and megaherz and buying out or bulling competitors, then the government knocks on your door and gives you the award of the biggest asshat in the town and asks to retire.

Congrats, you won, now let somebody else play the game and become a boring public utility. And by the way, your research lab is now a public university. And the taxes is what government does, not you.

> And the taxes is what government does, not you.

Because the role of the government (in theory) is to use these taxes for public utility services and projects. Companies only care about their owners and shareholders, a very small subset of the population. If you're not contributing to society, but just profiteering, you should retire. Especially if your position lead you to have a say to what succeed or not in the economy.

> Split Apple into smaller companies

Curious, how would you split them up? A lot of their stuff is very intertwined, I guess Beats, Shazam are easy to split into their own, but the rest?

My expectation is that a government would do an investigation first, but I believe that a split would look like this:

  - The computing hardware company
  - The accessory hardware company
  - The operating system company
  - The software company
  - The cloud services company
  - The app store company
  - The music & video company
  - The messaging company

So yeah, a split looks scary.

For starters, it's Apple the phone making company, Apple the software making company and Apple the (software) distribution company. The cloud, the payment processing, the bank whatever else is there.

They can still be quite integrated, they just have to a allow a different distribution company compete without using the phone company's monopoly as a leverage against them and not use distribution company as a leverage to compete with other software developers i.e. pay the same 30% fee, bid for promotion in the store and use fair ranking in the search.

It's not the first time a huge corp gets split up once they reach end game and can't innovate in their own field anymore.

Personally, I've like to get the old audio jack socket added back to iPhones and laptops.

Maybe that's just me though. ;)

Where smartphones end effectively being a public utility, is my guess.

Apple's statement:

If you think the EU got their shit together in 2 days, you're day dreaming.

Phil Schiller invited Epic to make assurances that they'd follow the terms of the agreement. Epic did. The EU didn't even have their shoes on.

You can safely ignore Tim Sweeney's twitter chest beating - it's marketing.

All sides are marketing and trying to maintain an image. It's up to you to figure out what's actually happening without bias.

Epic led with an ad campaign while Apple stayed silent.

Then did it again by publishing their correspondence with Apple.

Tell me more.

Yes, Epic "led". So what? Of course the one in the favorable position would like to minimize talk about anything that would disrupt the position.

You 1 minute ago:

> All sides are marketing

You 10 seconds ago:

Nah, only one side is marketing.

Marketing isn’t limited to ads. Obviously.

Correct!

Such as Tweets: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic

Blogposts: https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/free-fortnite-faq

Press junkets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKsNf5bA1bU

World-wide ad campaigns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPn_PGuYesw

In-game events: https://www.polygon.com/fortnite/2020/8/13/21367955/fortnite...

So how have Epic performed when the facts were before a judge? hmmm. Looks like the marketing worked on some.

Breton posted on X that his team would look into this case with high priority yesterday. Apple noticed they are about to get a beating and decided to handle this case proactively before they get fined and regulated even stronger

Yep I'm aware of the tweet.

He now confirmed contact

"I take note with satisfaction that following our contacts Apple decided to backtrack its decision on Epic exclusion."

From Day 2, #DMA is already showing very concrete results!

https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1766167580497117464

The EU reacted immediately and asked Apple for clarification. That means, they reminded Apple that the law is the law, which they seemed to have forgotten. You're the one dreaming if you think Apple got their shot together by themselves.

I agree. I feel like this was really a muscle flex from Apple in terms of preventing shenanigans. The most critical part of this for Apple is the message to others who are thinking about opening a app marketplace:

- You're still going to be paying us our 27%

- You screw around and we will clip your wings.

Incidentally, if you don't like the rules Apple has set up, start pushing for a law that you do want. If you happen to be in the US, actually write your representatives rather than just whine about it online to a bunch of other people.

Epic already made assurances that they'd follow the terms of the agreement before their account was terminated. It did it very professionally and concisely. Apple basically responded with "we wanted a 10-page essay equivalent to grovelling and begging in dogeza position instead of a professional response" and terminated their account.

There is zero evidence of Epic doing anything on their part after that. There is, however, evidence of the EU Commission warning (if you can't parse "Under the DMA, there is no room for threats by gatekeepers to silence developers" as a warning, you may need to improve your functional reading skills) Apple and inquiring for explanation.

Tim Sweeney isn't chest beating. He is attributing this development to the EU. Chest beating would mean attributing this development to their own actions, which he is not claiming at all.

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