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Comment by LeafItAlone | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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.

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.

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 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.

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