Epic Games Inc v Apple Inc
judgments.fedcourt.gov.au
judgments.fedcourt.gov.au
Having (alt store) presence in Australia, Brazil, EU and Japan is in fact more than enough for many indies - one can even begin to imagine ignoring the US as a region.
Installing something is a perfectly normal operation - it's the App Store that's the special case :).
Lets call it what it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_neutrality
I guess Apple prefered the pejorative "sideloading"
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetoo...
First, Apple does not follow the same rules they set for developers.
Second, Apple does not treat all developers equally. We have functionality we’re unable to offer to iOS users.
The same feature, including technical implementation mechanism, is available in Claude and Gemini. It’s unfair.
https://github.com/PoomSmart/YTUHD/issues/72#issuecomment-46...
Right now we have a relatively high confidence that as long as the devices are not jailbroken and are kept up to date they are relatively secure.
What this change means for people like me is that either there is some capability to detect whether third-party app stores are in use on a device and we will set a policy that disallows anyone using such things from accessing company data/services, or we have to lock out the devices altogether.
> Moreover, because iOS apps are sandboxed, as implemented in other jurisdictions, apps available through alternative distribution will be sandboxed, which further strengthens security and reduces the likelihood that any app will compromise other apps [...]
Personal devices shouldn't be used for work purposes to begin with. If work has security requirements regarding what phone and what condition it is in, they better be supplying their own phone to ensure those requirements are satisfied.
No, they don't benefit (cause it means they check work mail on weekends or evenings), but their employer do...
On the contrary, it allows app and payment security to be better than what Apple offers.
As someone from that region, this is probably a good idea for all parties, right now. I'm not fond of our current trajectory, and the outside pressure to change isn't sounding unreasonable.
Combine with that other markets also getting bigger like South America.
The reality is that NA had their smartphone / mobile boom already and the rest of the world is still catching up. There are more smartphones, apps, features, services, etc. to be gained by selling to the massive influx of new customers versus trying to cater to the old audience of North America.
In the vast majority of cases, Asia and SA won't touch your product if you don't have deep familiarity with their markets, their idiosyncrasies and have a competitive business model there. Getting folks in these markets to pay isn't easy, friend.
And that's why we keep having these conversations in English on a US site about products made by US companies.
I agree that if you just check a few boxes and make your app available in those markets you won't see much success.
So notarisation is still on the table? I won't be surprised to see Apple using that for all the loophole its worth.
That is, unless that's already covered by the ruling and I just didn't see it while skimming. Maybe the Alternative Distribution Channels is that, although it doesn't seem to be defined beyond 'a suitably qualified third party', which I'm sure Apple would love to say is no-one.
Still, the rest of it is very nice. The altstores for Apple have seemed kind of useless to me just through either costing money to use or needing to connect to a PC every so often, or needing to perform some other stupid dance. If we can get the F-Droid of iOS and an option to just download and install an IPA if I want to, then I'll be pretty happy.
That has already happened on several occasions (Apple refusing notarisation, since you still need to be a member of their Developer Program thus subject to their ToS and all the crazy in it).
Hopefully, the next revision of EU's DMA and equivalent in other countries will close the loop hole.
Or maybe... John Ternus would wake up one day and decide to be a better human being and just fix this globally for everyone.
/s
The nuance is the Online Safety Act 2021 does not have an "app distribution blocking notice" or "app blacklisting notice" or similar, therefore, I think the effect is Apple can't stop a Russian website distributing apps to Australian users who seek them out, but Apple can use a received "app removal notice" to then blacklist the relevant app on existing devices?
I have a reasonable amount of confidence in Apple's due diligence around vetting apps on the app store. I can't think of another major brand that I would trust on this matter.
However, the looming threat of that being possible, and Apple not being able to block it from happening, will hopefully prevent Apple from making the App Store experience worse than it needs to be, both from the user's perspective, and the publisher's perspective.
Chances of my aging parents installing an alt store and getting duped are slim to none.
m'okay bye.
Seriously, what are you trying to accomplish by saying this? Do you think you or app developers have any leverage with Apple? A corp that's the size of several countries?
We need choices and alternative options.
Or hell, anybody from AU should really spin up a tech company or build a phone
Where? Apple and Google are a cosy cartel engineered to never let you out.
I don't have a super strong opinion here. I lean a bit more towards thinking that the current status is better than the alternative: Based on what I see in news / tech news / in general it sounds like "the price of apps"* is less of a problem in today's day and age than "app _X_ tracks every thing you do and your location, sells that data and now [elections are skewed | supermarkets implement dynamic pricing | ICE can track you], etc".
* I am aware that is more than "price of apps", I'm simplifying a bit here. I'm not a fan of Apple imposing restrictions on how you can purchase stuff.
Its similar with apple, I have the reasonable assumption that whatever I install from the app store is not going to brick my phone, steal my data or be a giant resource hog that just runs in the background.
You should try submitting an app on the app store just to prove to yourself how not true this is. Even in the AI era. They do vet, but it's not as substantial as you think
You have a CHOICE now
How is that unlike developing an attachment to/sympathy for your captors?
AppStore is filled to the brim with scam apps. See https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/9/9.html
An Open Source / Free Software Only app store on iOS which only allowed reproducible builds would be so much better than the iOS app store for security.
I would trust that so much more, and I feel like anyone even marginally technically competent would too.
If Mozilla made its own app distribution platform for Firefox and Thunderbird, I'd also naturally trust that.
At this point, I do not trust apple at all. The iOS app store sells ads. If I search for my bank's name, a different bank comes up as the first result.
If you search 'Ledger Bitcoin Wallet' on the app store, someone who pays more for the ad slot can present you with a crypto stealer (which has happened in the past! the app store review didn't catch that obvious bullshit).
The app store's "due diligence" and "vetting" all went out the window as soon as they started selling the top search spot to the highest bidder.
Payment fees for App Store apps seem to be affected in section 9(c) - I have trouble parsing it but it seem to eliminate any fee difference between purchasing physical goods through an app (currently 0% fee) and digital goods (currently 30% fee). There's a carve out for "reasonable costs" for hosting and distributing the digital goods - this could be sensible in certain scenarios (like Netflix asking Apple to a free CDN for them).
We'll see how much malicious compliance the above produces. Otherwise I'm feeling like a happy Aussie today :)
If the rules are good enough for Apple, they are good enough for everyone.
This might sound like a defence of Apple, and to a small extent it is. But actually, I’m being deadly serious. I think the world would be a better place if these rules applied to everyone.
“But poor Nintendo” rings as hollow to me as “but poor Apple” probably does to you.
Apple is the largest abuser that I can think of. If anyone else approaches their damages, I trust that they will be treated accordingly.
Beach's ruling determined that Apple should not be allowed to block, as a policy, competing app stores. Beach also recognised that Apple's commission is not merely a payment-processing fee, but a means of recovering its investment in the broader ecosystem, including developer tools, security, app verification, distribution infrastructure and intellectual property. He also acknowledged Apple's entitlement to a commercial return on those investments.
The question remains how Apple can get the commercial return which Beach acknowledged Apple is entitled to, given the weirdly arbitrary restrictions defined in Beach's order. This contradiction is left unresolved and is begging for an obvious overturn on appeal.
I personally have no problem with competing stores, so long as they're not just a mechanism for redirecting money previously going to Apple into their own pocket. But this ruling doesn't establish competition, because there's not competitive reason for alternative stores to exist except to avoid fees which Beach acknowledged Apple is entitled to.
I think the legal side of it is, once a precedent like this stands, the cost of going after others reduces significantly. One could argue Nintendo created a closed market for Nintendo apps and abuses their monopoly power in a completely analogous way, and ask the court for completely analogous recourse.
A _better_ solution though would be legislation around freedoms and rights for general purpose computing on any general purpose computing device, rights to repair owned hardware, rights to "own" software paid for, etc. Then you wouldn't need to rely on any monopoly-abuse arguments. The powers that be would have to give up their control (e.g. governments like the notorization thing because they can ask Apple to stop something they consider harmful from being distributed easily, but the requirement to seek notorization clashes with what I perceive as my right to run any program I want on any computer I own) and to be fair having some way to protect the (non-techie) public from malicious software is a reasonable goal (where we could argue over different solutions).
The way this should work is that Apple can charge whatever they want for whatever they want but then nobody can be required to use them instead of a third party. So if they want to charge 30% to distribute your app then that's fine, but then you have the option of having someone else distribute your app to customers with iOS (or hosting it yourself), in which case Apple gets 0%.
At which point they might want to get e.g. 5% of something rather than 30% of nothing.
I agree, the end effect should be them charging say "5% of something" and the developer choosing not to bother thinking about external payments. They seem to avoiding this outcome on purpose though. (I dare say Apple might prefer to chase advertising revenue from the app store rather than accept small fees, but they'd risk trashing their own garden).
I want to run so my agents have a local sandbox on device.
https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/law-and-practice/appeals/from-co...
> * Who hears appeals? *
> Usually a Full Court of three or more Judges sitting together will hear an appeal. However, appeals from a judgment of a Judge of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia or from a Court of summary jurisdiction will be heard by a single judge unless a judge considers that it is appropriate for the appeal to be heard by a Full Court.
The ruling is pretty clear that malicious compliance won't be accepted. There's a whole section on all the things apple isn't allowed to do to get around this ruling, starting with this:
> the first respondent must not (including by procuring any act of any related corporation) prohibit, prevent or take any action (including by imposing a fee or condition) which is likely to hinder users of iOS devices from discovering, obtaining and updating iOS apps, including alternative app stores, via Alternative Distribution Channels, or from using iOS apps obtained in that way on iOS devices, or prohibit, prevent or take any action (including by imposing a fee or condition) which is likely to hinder app developers from distributing and updating such iOS apps to such users via Alternative Distribution Channels, ...
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/08/as-epic-attacks-apple...
Of course, this will never happen, it's Apple... they can't even spell competition let alone "libre".
Who do you suppose is the primary entity responsible for making it so that you haven't been able to do this on iOS using the variety of open source and proprietary third party development tools that people use on platforms like Linux and Windows?
If they want to charge for an SDK, they have to invest some money to make it feel that we're paying for something.
Just do it worldwide. I go regularly between AU and HK and sorry but it'd be ridiculous half of functionality works in one but not the other
> 4. Subject to orders 12 and 13, the first respondent must not (including by procuring any act of any related corporation) prohibit, prevent or take any action (including by imposing a fee or condition) which is likely to hinder users of iOS devices from discovering, obtaining and updating iOS apps, including alternative app stores, via Alternative Distribution Channels, or from using iOS apps obtained in that way on iOS devices, or prohibit, prevent or take any action (including by imposing a fee or condition) which is likely to hinder app developers from distributing and updating such iOS apps to such users via Alternative Distribution Channels, including but not limited to: ..
Then it goes on to list all the ways Apple isn't allowed to quietly break 3rd party app stores - like, they can't make developers or users pay money to use them. They can't restrict which APIs are allowed to be used via 3rd party stores. They can't require that people who publish apps in the official store remove their apps from 3rd party stores. And so on.
Unfortunately, I still expect Apple to invent new ways to circumvent that :( But really good on court's part.
I like how the court’s declarations are punchy, factual, and dare I say obvious. I’d suggest giving section 1 a read.
There’s going to be a million “what ifs”, from walled gardens to security to ‘you don’t have to use iOS’, but it’s blatantly obvious this is all about competition and money.
It’s anticompetitive, illegal, and the remedy is to cease these anticompetitive actions.
The ruling is consistent with Australian law and precedented in European and Japanese courts. Nothing about this is payback or suggests unfair or biased ruling. You need a better coping mechanism if your only outlet for disagreement is pearl-clutching on an American tech website.
You did this a week ago in the other Apple thread, writing indefensible nonsense about Apple manufacturing their own memory fabs. Do you have any factual contribution to make to these conversations? If you're going to write hysterical nonsense, can you at least defend it in the replies so we understand your perspective?
Will I install an app from a third party store? Hell no lol.
Good. Apple can't say "I don't like your app because [vague reasons], it's not allowed on the App Store so nobody can use it".
> "...provided those iOS apps have undergone an automated scan for genuine security and/or privacy reasons and been notarised by Apple or a suitably qualified third party (Alternative Distribution Channels)..."
Seems bad, can't Apple say "I refuse to notarise your app for 'security' [vague reasons]"?
Or does the cryptographic signatures Apple presumably gives an app uploaded to the App Store count as "notarised"? I'm picturing the following situation:
- January: Alice uploads to App Store, Apple produces a signature S of H(app), Alice downloads the bytes of S
- February: Apple says "Alice we're kicking your app out of the App Store for [vague reasons]"
- March: Alice says "Fine, then I'll put it on Bob's Alternate Appstore." Apple says "I refuse to 'notarise' your app for 'security' [vague reasons]". Alice then uploads her app to Bob's Alternate Appstore along with Apple's cryptographic signature S that Bob authenticates against a known Apple public key.
Now there are two contradictory narratives about whether Alice is notarised.
- (a) Apple says "I refuse to notarise Alice, therefore she's not notarised."
- (b) Alice says "S exists, here are its bytes, the hash and signature validate, therefore I'm notarised."
Presumably if (a) wins, Apple would be within its legal rights to block Bob's Alternate Appstore because it allowed Alice to upload an un-notarised app. This would make the whole ruling effectively toothless, because Apple still gets a veto, the veto is just renamed to "notarisation."
If (b) wins, it provides clarity for developers. In this world signing an app is effectively a no-takesies-backsies moment: Once S is published, Alice knows for sure she's notarised forever. Apple won't later be able to block Alice on a whim by hiding behind a vague "security" excuse.
Which narrative wins?
If (b) wins it seems like there's an opportunity here to create tooling for Alice to pull the S for her app on the app store as soon as it's approved. Maybe someone should spin up an observatory to constantly download S for every app as it's uploaded to the app store -- the observatory would be able to rescue Alice if she didn't have the foresight to download S herself before Apple banned her app.
(Lines starting with > are quotes from OP PDF)
They’re just going to keep losing. And every time they fight they make it worse. They had a chance to get off way easier years ago. They destroyed it by fighting tooth and nail.
I don’t want any of those features myself, I don’t think. Small chance at side-loading.
But everyone, even diehard Apple pundits, realized long ago this was a very stupid hill to die on.
It is punishing Apple for building too great of a product.