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Comment by mulmen | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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.

>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.

> Does it harm trust in Apple's brand?

The government's trust, yes.

They balance with the arrogance of Cupertino.

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