Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th | Hacker News Reader

Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

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699 pointsMBCook945 comments

What took me aback was the withdrawing permission to notarise their apps for Mac. That was only meant to be a check for known vulnerabilities/malicious software. Apple was more within their rights to kick Fortnite until the dust has settled from the iOS store, that was the retaliation, but now a mechanism supposedly for security has been repurposed as punishment.

That's a pretty nasty move and I feel the mask has slipped slightly here for Apple.

Yeah, it's fucked up if Apple is going to start disabling macOS apps regardless of distribution if the developer has violated their App Store rules in some way. Definitely undermines my trust in macOS.

They are also being sued by Epic. Would you keep doing business with a company suing you?

Curious to your thoughts regarding the mafia whacking witnesses who are about to testify in court.

What on earth are you talking about?

My response was based on the OP suggesting the account closure was based purely on the App Store policy violation. I’m pretty sure it’s based on more than that, such as the fact that Epic is suing them in bad faith.

There’s probably a million app developers which have violated the policies in some manner at some point and yet very few get blacklisted by Apple.

You shouldn't require a business relationship in order to publish software on a general purpose computing platform.

macOS was always a general purpose computing platform, anyone could publish software for it.

iOS has not been seen as a general purpose computing platform, merely "a phone", and hence Apple's tight control has been seen as justifiable.

Apple added notarization of software to macOS last year, and in response to fears that this was another step on the path of "iOS-ification" of macOS, promised that it was not going to be used for anything but to stop bona-fide malware.

This stunt shows that that was bullshit, and the iOS-ification of macOS is complete. macOS is no longer a general purpose computing platform, it is now also a software console, with Apple as a gatekeeper.

Yep. This action ensures my next computer purchase won’t be a Mac. Time to learn to love a Linux distro.

If Apple retaliated against their publishing on iOS that would be one thing. Taking away their ability to notarize macOS software is my line in the sand.

And so that's why I never liked nor trusted this whole idea of code signing with non-self-signed certificates, especially on desktop OSes. This notarization mechanism introduced a single point of failure: Apple. And now there is concrete evidence of how exactly this is bad.

On a device I own, there should be no parties that are trusted more than myself. It's ridiculous I even have to write this.

Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for this very reason. You might think it's ridiculous but the fight for the right to modify the software running on devices you own has been raging for 35 years and is bigger than ever.

It hasn’t been a quarter in which i haven’t told myself how richard stallman was right, and a visionary, and how much we were fools to consider him an extremist.

And many of the things that we thought he was pointlessly complaining about, instead grew into big issues a few years later affecting all of us.

That's why he was kicked out by people the like of Garreth who named him "enemy of the FSF" and mocked him on Twitter calling Stallman "bad" but he's a former Google employee...

Sometimes he's off his rocker, but a lot of the time he's right. We can have both.

I was riding my bicycle and stopped for Stallman at a pedestrian crossing; he grunted positively in my general direction.

Stallman is a difficult person to like and he is wrong about many things, but not about this, the central issue of his career.

What do you find him wrong about?

His public image has been degraded from toe-jam eating and supposedly outrageous riders for speaking engagements (which I think everything in was pretty level headed but some people think it was 'nuts')

For anyone who hasn't read the rider: https://github.com/ddol/rre-rms/blob/master/rider.txt

> "GNU" is pronounced as one syllable with a hard g, like "grew" but with n instead of r.

TIL I learned "GNU" is somehow pronounced with one syllable ("gnew") and not two ("guh-noo"). (I know lowercase "gnu" is pronounced with one syllable.)

He seems really insistent on not being ID'd for buses or trains, but its a requirement for flying which has a whole section. Is there something going on with buses and trains that are under more scrutiny? Also, if he can get around the ID with fake names via buses and trains why would he even accept flying?

> everything in was pretty level headed

It starts out reasonable, but then has gems like "please buy bus tickets only with cash under a fake name", "find me a parrot", "go to the hotel and figure out if their phone jacks do dial-up because that's most likely the only thing that will work with my machine".

The latter may have adjusted with the times, since the document is old; but then again, the demands he places on streaming technology etc. are perfectly reasonable nowadays, but a massive obstacle back then.

> please buy bus tickets only with cash under a fake name

This is because he's actively against surveillance. It's not a hard requirement, I've lent him an anonymous (i.e. pre-paid) public transport card before, and while he didn't like the requirement to both check on and check off, he did it anyway.

> find me a parrot

That's a misrepresentation. It's a "it'd be nice if" type thing. There's also the "don't buy one" comment, because you can be sure someone has done that.

> go to the hotel and figure out if their phone jacks do dial-up because that's most likely the only thing that will work with my machine

That might be really old, his machine definitely has wifi. And if the request is from the pre-wifi with free software drivers days, it's completely reasonable for someone who lives a chunk of their life on the internet to request internet access.

It's much, much more reasonable than you're making out, especially if you consider it in the context of why you're probably asking him to speak at some event.

> It starts out reasonable, but then has gems like "please buy bus tickets only with cash under a fake name",

That's exactly what protesters did in Honk Kong in 2019 to avoid retaliation from China

So he was right, again

He has expressed skepticism that "willing participation" in pedophilia harms children. And given a couple of bizarre quotes on bestiality (essentially, "if the animal initiates it then what's the problem?").

More recently, he was pushed out of MIT and the FSF last year for questioning whether one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims was truly a victim or not.

He prefers Emacs over Vim.

There are probably other examples, but that's off the top of my head.

> He prefers Emacs over Vim

He's a monster.

Well, at least he didn't create emacs. ;)

`ed` is better than either.

`cat>newfile.txt` - teaches you not to make typos.

> He prefers Emacs over Vim

I wasn't expecting to laugh, haha. This is great, good stuff!

...But seriously why? How could such a thing be possible?! I would like to know his reasons.

You get irrationally attached to things you are one of the authors of, I guess.

> questioning whether one of Jeffrey Epstein's victims was truly a victim or not.

I’ve never really been much of an RMS fan beyond admiration for what he has done for free software, but this is not what he said, at least according to his words as quoted in the post that initiated his cancellation[1]. I’ve pasted it from that post below [2]. The author of that post quoted this and then somehow inferred this [3]. How she (and everyone reading it thereafter) went from one line to the next from “she PRESENTED herself as willing” (not that she actually was willing), “assuming she was being COERCED by Epstein” somehow got reinterpreted as “she was entirely willing”.

Nothing RMS said stated he thought she wasn’t a victim, just that Minsky may not have known due to how Epstein coerced her to present herself.

But hey, the witch hunters got their burning.

[1] https://medium.com/@selamjie/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec2...

[2] We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates.

[3] and then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.

This is exactly what my issue is with many of his detractors. He's brave enough to state his opinions good and bad, and most people don't think beyond the first step of why or the context and continue the myth of it being a fact. It is depressing to see how this is not common news even here and people have every reason to dislike him for other reasons but they just wanted a reason to hate him.

I'm an RMS fan overall & think he's been fairly prophetic over the years even and respect him for sticking to his Free Software guns even when his views were unpopular, but these comments of his regarding the Epstein case were stupid. Yes, RMS is correct, the term "sexual assault" is perhaps too vague in this case–the legal term for sex with an underage person is "rape."

The context also make his comments strain credulity beyond the breaking point. "We can imagine many scenarios, but the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing." So this 73 year old man has a 17 year old approach him for sex on one of his patron's famous young-girl-harem flights, and I'm to understand that Minsky can't apply his AI-pioneering genius to figure out what's going on? Like, am I supposed to believe that he thought this girl young enough to be his granddaughter was just attracted to his magnetic personality? Give me a break.

> Minsky may not have known

Can you really look me in the screen and tell me you believe that? Again I say: give me a break.

I think it's better to call a spade a shovel here and concede that Minsky knew what he was doing. The fact is Stallman probably _didn't_ consider Minksy to have done anything wrong, and that's why he spoke up, and he was "cancelled" because it was pretty plain to everyone else that it _was_ wrong.

> because it was pretty plain to everyone else that it _was_ wrong.

I think you’re relying heavily on hindsight here. Yes it’s obvious to us looking in from the outside, but thinking back to any large events/conferences I’ve been at, especially if alcohol was involved, if somebody pretended to be willing because they were coerced to do so, I’m not sure it would have been so obvious and it’s easy to get caught up in the moment and not realise something was off.

But, that’s not the issue here. I don’t necessarily disagree with you and if the argument had stated what you said then it would have been ok to call RMS out.

But that’s not what happened, instead people twisted his words to make him out even worse. Nobody said “how can you believe that Minsky didn’t know something was wrong?” They said “you said she was willing and not a victim! How dare you!”, when he very clearly did not say that.

Fair enough regarding the word twisting.

So you figure 73 year old Minsky was on this plane or whatever, a highschooler offers to have sex with him and he just figured, what, she was caught up in the heat of passion? Maybe high schoolers offer to have sex with him in the normal course of his geriatric affairs?

I think you’re still not really being honest by trying to construct some scenario where Minsky could have not realized this young girl was either paid or ordered to have sex with him. Walk through it in your head and I defy you to come up with a scenario where Minsky could have not known this was a girl being either paid or ordered to have sex with him.

> a highschooler offers to have sex with him and he just figured, what, she was caught up in the heat of passion?

No, I meant he might have been caught up in the moment and ignore his better judgement. Also, I dunno about you, but I iften find it very dificult to tell the difference between a somewhat mature looking highscooler and someone who is 19 — 21 ish. Of course, I also don’t have sex with people in that age group, but my point is that its often very hard to tell if someone is late teens ir early twenties, so, again, in the heat of the moment, especially with alcohol or other substances, its not hard to think that she’s young, but not underage.

I’ve been in plenty of situations where there were “groupies” willing to sleep with much older guys because of fame or oerceuved money or power, where nothing nefarious was going on. So, no, I don’t think its a stretch at all that he could have thought this. I obviously have no idea what the reality was in thus particular situation; neither of us know what Minsky was or wasn’t thinking. I’ve also heard reports that withesses said he turned her down, but I can’t find anything to back that up now, so could be BS.

I’m not saying he’s innocent, he could have been completely willful in the situation, but I do not believe its a 100% clear that he’s definitely guilty either.

And in the context of RMS, I think what he said, in context, wasn’t particularly unreasonable. I think people should have challenged his views and had a conversation like we’re doing, instead if twisting his words to tell a false narrative because they don’t like him and wanted an excuse to attack him.

Agreed that people shouldn't have twisted his words, and agreed that his comments were, at least from a very technical read, not inappropriate.

To be honest you've changed my mind a bit here & I'm a bit more on RMS's side now. Agreed that a witch-hunt was in progress, which caught some "actual witches" and lots of others along the way.

But from an optics perspective, ffs why would you defend an Epstein associate & fellow-traveller at that point in time. I mean he's dead, he's not going to be hurt by the accusations at that point. ️ oh well.

I completely agree. RMS clearly has trouble knowing when something is or isn’t appropriate.

> essentially, "if the animal initiates it then what's the problem?"

Note that this is current law in Germany.

> He prefers Emacs over Vim.

Does he also prefer apples over oranges?

A direct quote of RMS from his website[0]:

The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.

[0]: https://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html

---

I don't think child pornography should be legal.

A much more recent quote from his website[0]:

14 September 2019 (Sex between an adult and a child is wrong)

Many years ago I posted that I could not see anything wrong about sex between an adult and a child, if the child accepted it.

Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that. I am grateful for the conversations that enabled me to understand why.

[0] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...

---

Stallman's former view on this was always wrong. But it is good to hear he has changed his mind, and I think to be fair to him, if one brings up his former views, one should also bring up his more recent disavowal of them.

To be fair, that disavowal came after his former behavior and views - which went not only accepted but defended by his peers and followers for years (including on HN following his "cancellation") finally became too much for people around him to bear. No other public figure with a history like his would be given even a shadow of a benefit of the doubt over nothing but a brief blog entry. If he were a politician or a celebrity HN would want to see him hanged with the rest of the degenerate elites.

I hope that he has changed his mind, but until there's some evidence that he's changed his behavior, there's no reason to assume he was doing anything but covering his ass (possibly at the behest of someone else) and trying to save his position and status. That's what would be assumed of anyone else, that's what should be assumed of him.

When I was a teenager, back in the 1990s, I idolised RMS. The GNU project and FSF were what I idolised him for, back then I'd never heard his views on these issues. As I grew older, I started to think that the hardline position of the FSF was impractical, at least for my own life. I wouldn't say I idolise him any more.

I think his former views were completely wrong, but I try to understand where he was coming from: RMS comes out of a progressive 1970s cultural milieu in which a lot of people were willing to question all aspects of traditional moral values, including age of consent laws. I can think of a number of now-mainstream European politicians, who in the 1970s were willing to associate with (or at least tolerate) "pro-pedophile" advocacy groups, and that way they behaved in the 1970s has come back to bite them – Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey, Patricia Hewitt. Someone like Allen Ginsberg, who was an open member of NAMBLA – and, by at least some accounts, actively abused underage boys – was nonetheless an acceptable figure in polite society – something that would be quite unbelievable in the year 2020. In the 1970s, a lot of what is now the mainstream gay rights movement was willing to associate with organisations like NAMBLA; by the 1980s, the mainstream gay rights movement had fully severed those ties, which was a prerequisite for the cultural and political successes of the LGBT movement of today. In the 70s, the victims of child sexual abuse were largely invisible, they were not being heard in the conversation in the way they are now, and society (including much of the radical left) had not yet begun to take their experiences seriously.

What makes RMS a bit different, is that figures like Cohn-Bendit, Harman, Dromey and Hewitt, realised their mistake (or at least cared enough about social acceptability to move with the times.) RMS clung to this view long after it had become seriously socially unacceptable in a way it had not been in his twenties. Why?

Well, it is obvious to me that RMS has a lot of autistic traits (as do I myself). I'm not the only person to notice this – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20969320 – to arrive at and defend socially unpopular positions through application of abstract reasoning, completely divorced from real world human experience, and then to cling to them pigheadedly, is something a lot of people with autistic traits end up doing at some point. So I think his autistic traits are another big part of the picture here that other people may not be seeing.

RMS' former views were always wrong: I'm the father of two young kids myself, to me their wrongness is completely obvious. But I can understand how something which is completely obvious to me, even to most people, might not have been obvious to him, and why it might have taken some real world interaction with abuse victims for him to understand it. And, to the best of my knowledge, these wrong views of his were purely theoretical, I've never heard any claims he's actually acted on them, or even had any personal interest in acting on them – unlike someone like Allen Ginsberg.

I'm not saying this because I think he should be the leader of the free software movement. I think he has done an enormous amount for that movement, but it probably now would be better served by someone younger and more attuned to contemporary culture. But he's a human being, and I feel the urge to understand him sympathetically, rather than join in a mob out to get him.

For what it's worth I think the right thing happened to him for possibly the wrong reason, and the community around him is as much to blame as he for enabling the damage he's done for as long as they did. If not for that whole debacle of an email conversation being leaked and made public, he would still be in a position of authority and still be normalizing the acceptance of behavior like his in tech culture.

There should always be room in society for someone to see the error of their ways and amend, but it's going to take more than a tweet's worth of text to make up for decades of - and let's be honest - sometimes passionate advocacy for reprehensible behavior, and the anecdotal evidence of creepy behavior towards women IRL, and that's not unreasonable. Sympathy doesn't mean one shouldn't expect growth.

What makes you think that there's only been a tweet's worth of text on the matter? Furthermore, why should the movement he spearheaded suffer because others can't be bothered to try to understand a brilliant, eccentric, neurodivergent individual?

Frankly speaking, I think most of the "normal mainstream" that condemned Stallman without even bothering to check up on and verify the facts of the accusations made against him outed themselves as easily manipulated, savage, and unstable individuals with little or no consideration for the damage they heaped upon a man who was doing nothing more than trying to encourage postponing of judgement until the facts were all in. In that one, tragically twisted-by-the-media email, Stallman did exactly what any civilized person who believes in the tenets of our system of justice should have done. He called for calm, and to give his friend the benefit of a doubt until all the facts were in. The "weird creepy guy" acted more in line with the ideal of normalcy than anyone else!

I'd take 100 more people just like him with all the inherent quirks than any of the mob who rushed to condemn him without even so much as getting to know him. I mean, good God. Show me someone who hasn't had a questionable view in their life from lack of reflection, and I'll show you someone who hasn't actively tried to get to know all the many facets of their species, or consciously come to terms with their own capacity for atrocity.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone! Til then, people need to nut up, shut up, and take a damn number. Thank who/whatever they worship they woke up this morning, and give thanks but that there for the Grace of $Subject_of_Worship go I.

Now get off my lawn, and keep your damn chickens out of my garden! They may be cute, but they're ruining my sprouts!

grumble grumble

>What makes you think that there's only been a tweet's worth of text on the matter? Furthermore, why should the movement he spearheaded suffer because others can't be bothered to try to understand a brilliant, eccentric, neurodivergent individual?

If there were anything else, fanboys like you wouldn't hesitate to mention it every time you want to pull the "autism sympathy" card to make anyone who's been creeped out and offended by his behavior out to be " easily manipulated, savage, and unstable individuals" who can't comprehend the tragic, broken genius who's too good for this world.

The movement will be fine. The movement doesn't need him, and if it does, it's not a movement, it's a cult.

>I'd take 100 more people just like him with all the inherent quirks than any of the mob who rushed to condemn him without even so much as getting to know him.

Yes, well, you can have your hundred quirky middle aged pedophile apologists, as society seems to have enough to go around. I'll be satisfied when they're kept away from positions of authority and their behavior stops being defended by people around them. Just be sure to burn your sheets after they stay over.

Jesus Christ, get some perspective.

I suspect part of the explanation is: Part of what manifests as brilliance is early development of the mind. Consequently, brilliant people tend to think, "Well, I was mature enough in my early teens, and surely there must be others like me—perhaps some even younger. The law should not restrict those who are mature enough; that is like restricting adults." The train of thought may continue with something like "There are already mechanisms for having a child make an adult-level decision: parental approval, child emancipation", or "The legal age of consent varies enormously around the world and throughout history, and is clearly arbitrary". (The biologically non-arbitrary age points would seem to be "puberty"—probably around age 12-16 depending on which pubertal milestone you choose—and my 7th grade science teacher's favorite, "when the brain's frontal lobe finishes developing", which would be age 25 or so.)

If the person is also resistant to discarding views merely because those views are hated, then, well, it's easy to see how their beliefs might end up where they do.

> If he were a politician or a celebrity HN would want to see him hanged with the rest of the degenerate elites.

you may be surprised at some of the names here:

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/French_petition_against_age_of_c...

Its not surprising that elites are for sex with children. We see that in 2020, too.

The consequence of power is such that it emboldens an individual to believe that limits on themeselves, are a moral wrong. The common knowledge acceptance of sexually deviant debauchery, has been pervasive across time (Caligula to Epstein). It is much harder to expose, with the extreme wealth disparity.

I'd bet you have to be really sloppy nowadays to get caught.

If only it were possible to expose the behavior of such people through some public channel and then use collective action and social pressure to force some degree of consequence on them.

I've always thought of Stallman as the canary --- the extremist at the edge. I don't agree with a lot of things about him, but I think it's important that such people exist in order to "delineate the boundaries". Him changing his views towards "acceptability" should be taken as a bad sign, regardless of what those views are.

fwiw I don't think framing everything in as a sign in the sad story of a society on the way to 'X', is a particularly productive way to think about this kind of story. I could be that this is just a personal story of an individual who is internally consistent, and changed a view based on discussion and new information.

I'm curious if he's also changed his views on polygamy.

Why? It's one of the only things that you can get in trouble for without even knowing it was there. You could have taken them yourself or your children, did, it's seen in your house and they assume it's yours, now you can have a big lawsuit. With the quality of cameras and common usage of them I see a huge problem looming. It's used to plant investigations on innocent people. It's turned innocent people into jobless hated people for something they didn't do or simply were accused of.

I don't think it is a black and white issue as much of a tool of entrapment. I am not pro possession of it, but the laws are clearly entrapping innocent people. Romeo and Juliet laws exist for underaged people, should a similar law exist if you make it yourself so you don't get labeled a sex offender for making a video of yourself?

During his time it was about not legislating everything. Dworkin who was anti pornography debated a conservative judge, who saw no difference of exploitation of children as of women. Here she debates a conservative judge on wanting to make it illegal. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zt8KVB8AunQ

Sure. I don't think you should be arrested or put on the sex offenders list for taking / possessing a picture of yourself as a minor. I think it's clear from context that this is not what RMS was referring to, and I don't think your strawman argument is helpful.

You said child pornography should be illegal, and ignored how it can be planted.

I do not think that whether you think that people should be prosecuted for thought crimes has much to do with him being right on wrong.

That's not "many things"

I can find one thing I disagree with on anybody

Btw he wasn't even completely wrong on this one...

Not this shit again...!

He is an extremist and he is also a visionary.

I am fine with this for most things except my phone.

I trust Apple more than any party in the world. Even the government. Fortnight devs, Epic, whatever are not even on the same radar. They'll sell your privacy in milliseconds if they can get 2.5 cents for it.

I would never ever own an open source phone. Not because the operating system is open source (probably good that it has eyes on it) but there is no way to control third-party apps. Even the os builds can get hacked and I cannot trust it. I have so much personal stuff on my phone on it that I cannot afford to entertain Richard Stallman and his righteousness.

>I trust Apple more than any party in the world.

That opinion is likely to be a bit of an outlier, heh.

I honestly do. Who would you trust more?

Myself.

If not for IME, I could have a computer under my control, running software guaranteed to be free from the Trusting Trust attack, right now.

I respectfully disagree in my case. I don't consider myself a security expert at anything, especially at computers. This is probably 99.999% of the Apple customers.

People like yourself can probably manage their own security, have a secure NAS, multiple firewalls, etc.

Do you see it from the perspective of average Joe (or me)?

I trust Debian to supply and maintain the software on my machine. But, at any moment, I can choose to add other trusted parties, or remove the Debian repositories, or add my own patched version of some app.

I usually choose to trust them, because it's convenient and because they probably know better than I do. But my trust in Debian is completely voluntary, non-exclusive and revocable.

That's fine, but you're telling everyone else that, because you personally are not willing to take responsibility for the security of your devices, it's ok for a corporation to dictate that no one is.

This doesn't need to be an either/or situation. You can outsource your security and privacy decisions to Apple while simultaneously allowing others to take full control of their devices.

No, that's not a fair take. I am saying that everyone is probably more akin to not knowing a darn thing about security (outside of HN caccoon) than people who are commenting here to setup their own security infrastructure.

Given the conditions of how ignorant large percentage (~ 99.999%) of the Apple customers are, I would trust Apple more than any other party to keep them and myself safe.

Can you imagine third parties siphoning off data, metrics, photos, etc. without Apple safe guarding user's interest?

I would pay a lot of premium for security if I don't have to do it myself.

A lot of HN users are hackers. That doesn't mean that there are no hackers outside of HN, nor that only hackers can keep a phone secure.

I think maybe you're missing the point? I don't even disagree with what you're saying, but we can have it both ways: the alleged 99.999% (I suspect you're exaggerating) can have by-default strict security with no apps allowed unless installed through Apple's App Store, and the rest could do whatever they want.

Android has that, but you can also side-load apps if you think you are knowledgeable enough to want to. That's the main contention with how Apple runs things, there is no proper escape hatch.

Do note that trusting other people is not incompatible with trusting yourself. Often you can trust yourself to the point where you know you will be over your head, and then hand off that trust to someone else.

And what about giving people choice? Androids often come with locked bootloader and users can unlock it. Unlocking permanently deletes all user data. Apple is not giving any such choice!

Now that you know that Apple will abuse the security mechanism for their own self-interest do you still trust them more?

Free and open source software.

More than... yourself?

Yes, when it comes to keeping things secure, I honestly trust Apple more than myself (I've forgotten to lock my car upteen number of times) and my family.

I am not saying that Apple is not prone to hacks, gov influence, but based on their past record, their stance on privacy - who else could be more trust worthy?

Can you provide examples of whom you would trust more if you owned an iPhone to manage your phone?

It's not comparable to locking your car, unless you're in the habit of re-writing your phone's operating system every few days.

Right now, if I was running some open source OS on an open source hardware, with random 3rd party unverified apps, etc. - I would have no confidence in myself to keep that thing secure.

I agree that things like openssh can be more secure because there is a huge number of individuals and corporations using it, there are a lot of eyes on it. It is open source and secure.

That's not the same as something as big as an iPhone. iPhone is an ecosystem of apps, cloud data, biometrics, hardware encryption (secure enclave), etc. and finally the physical device.

For some reason a lot dev's cannot seem to comprehend that a lot of people(Including myself) are not capable/wish to maintain/keep up with security.

I rather use my brain cycles for something else. This is compounded for people who have no interest in tech but rather just want to use them to perform certain tasks.

Are some of practices unfair sometimes to a small subset of companies/developers. Definitely yes, But what are the other options that have this level of privacy or trust worthiness with a similar ease of use/setup. I don't know of any.

It's more or less choosing the lesser evil.

If we want something objective, how about sampling HN commenters Android and iPhones for security exploits?

It would be interesting to see if these users views stack up in practice or these are just beliefs that are not practically demonstrable.

My guess is just beliefs. It's pretty similar to what happens in code at-least where i work at.

Dev tries to make it super flexible, tries to make it fancy, implement DRY like one's life is dependent on it ultimately resulting in a hard to read/maintain messed up spaghetti code.

Also i don't see how can a person know all of the security stuff with a beast like Android unless they spent/are willing to spend an insane amount of time on keeping up latest exploits, architecture etc.

Sometimes choices are not a good thing.

But there could be a switch to allow installing apps from untrusted sources" default off. It's sad that people are so ignorant and gave apple so much power. :(

Never underestimate the ingenuity of users trying to install malware onto their computers.

I think you're over-generalizing. Most people with an iPhone do not care about side-loading apps. They may be ignorant, but they also do not care. The same reason I am ignorant about the rules of NBA, or Cricket - I simply do not care.

The power you're talking about (and the risk you're not talking about) are of no value to me.

I do not want that option. Especially non-tech users really do not care for side loading.

Fortnite tried pushing people to side-load on Android is a perfect example.

Even though that step failed, still a lot of people did side-load without knowing what they were doing and that's a problem.

For what it's worth, I agree with you. I work in software and the number of times I have inspected the source of something I'm running could be counted on one hand. I trust Apple, I trust the open-source community to look for me, etc.

Even if Apple allows people to install apps on their phone bypassing the official app store, noone is forcing you to do it on your phone.

Your phone's security will not be compromised by adding an extra optional feature.

You're right, but that fundamentally changes how I look at apps on my iPhone and my device or the ecosystem as a whole. Right now, any app icon I see on my phone, or any Apple device, I implicitly trust, because I have outsourced my trust to a corporation. This does not mean there are not scummy/weaselly apps out there (tiktok/Facebook/etc. for example).

Like root certificates, you have to trust someone, at some point. I am choosing to trust Apple.

By allowing side-loading apps, that is eroded, even if the tiniest bit.

How is it eroded at all if you don't install or use those apps? What changes?

Richard Stallman has been way off the rails and a detriment to his own cause for years.

I'm not talking about the pedophilia comments, the sexual harassment of women in tech, or the toe jam. All those are well documented and don't need restating. No, if you look at the FSF's recent policies regarding software freedom, they are also bass-ackwards.

The FSF had a "respects your freedom" certification which is designed to encourage devices to be less free, thanks to a concession for blobs and proprietary firmware. Effectively, they know that it's impossible to build modern hardware without blobs, so instead what they did is require those blobs to be hidden, immutable, un-freeable, un-auditable. That way they can claim, for all the clueless free software evangelists, that the devices are 100% Free (because there are no closed blobs in /lib/firmware! They're just... elsewhere, where you can't see them, audit them, touch them, or actually replace them with a free version). I wrote up the story in this Twitter thread, it's crazy:

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1040626210999431168

Then there is also the AGPL, which isn't a Free Software license, but rather an end-user license agreement (EULA), because it violates Freedom Zero: the freedom to use software however you want. All free software licenses only impose restrictions on distribution, making them copyright licenses - you can use original or modified versions of e.g. GPLed software at will, with no condition, as long as you don't redistribute them to others. The AGPL requires advertising and offering source when used as a network server, which is a condition on usage, and thus incompatible with the Free Software definition. rms will never admit to this, but AGPL-licensed software is, by any reasonable reading of the Free Software definition, not Free Software, and shouldn't be included in the Debian main repository, for example. It's just that nobody seems to be able to read past the "AGPL is from the FSF so it must be free software" idea.

These are just some ways in which the FSF and rms are hurting their own cause. If you want to support an organization, I would recommend the FSFe instead of the FSF. The European branch is actually doing good work for free software advocacy, instead of all the nonsense the FSF is doing which only makes the movement look worse.

I think you have formed a rather negative opinion of rms without having ever met him or spoken with him.

This is common in politics, so I don't blame you, but I don't think you're serving yourself or anyone else well.

I fail to see how meeting someone in person is a requirement to form an opinion on them based on their public actions.

Claiming that it is, though, sure sounds like a common dismissive tactic in politics, and especially when defending people who otherwise commit undesirable, even detestable public actions ("but he's a great guy, he'd never hurt anyone" etc).

What I'm saying is that politics distorts everything about a person, and makes them appear as something they are not.

> Then there is also the AGPL, which isn't a Free Software license, but rather an end-user license agreement (EULA), because it violates Freedom Zero: the freedom to use software however you want.

If you have this opinion of the AGPL, then you should also have it about the GPL, since the only difference between the two is section 13 of both of them (seriously, just diff them) which says that conveying over a network also triggers copyleft. This is just a modernisation of plain ol' copyleft from the days when conveying was mostly done on physical media instead of over a network. If some day we discover a way to distribute software over neither a network nor physical medium (I can't imagine what that could be... quantum entanglement?), then the definition of "conveying" should be updated to reflect the new technology.

The GPL has long been considered open source by OSI and free software by the FSF. You are free to use the software however you want -- you're just not free to deny this freedom to your users or clients, with neither the GPL nor the AGPL.

The AGPL section 13 isn't about conveying the program itself, it's about making it available as a service for network interaction. It may be just a one paragraph difference, but that difference is what makes the AGPL into an EULA. It's a requirement on users. The GPLv3 has zero requirements on users, only on distributors.

You might think this is a valid clause to include, and like its effects, and that's fine (though a close reading of that AGPL clause reveals a myriad of problems; it's extremely poorly thought-out and I find it unlikely that it would survive in court if properly challenged, with many workarounds possible, or causing problems for normal usage, depending on interpretation). But it doesn't change the fact that, suddenly, it makes it into an EULA, since it imposes a condition on usage, not distribution.

The GPL and other Free Software licenses strictly give you rights. You have no right to copy software by default under copyright. Those licenses give you the right to do so, subject to certain conditions.

The AGPL removes rights. It removes the right to use (not distribute) the software as you wish if you do not follow certain conditions (that you don't modify it without making those modifications available to remote users who are otherwise not receiving a copy of the program anyway, and not invoking copyright).

Linux distributions should be including the AGPL as a click-through license when users request to install such software from the repositories. In the current status quo, users are required to abide by terms they haven't been required to read, and might accidentally violate the license by doing something that is otherwise legal, such as editing a script in /usr that is part of such an app and exposing it over the Internet.

No.

It's not a requirement on users anymore than the GPL requiring you to distribute corresponding source on CDs was a requirement on users. Morally and legally, the distribution medium does not make a difference. When you make the software available over the network you are no longer the user -- the users of the software over the network are the users. When you convey the software over the network you are a network operator and a distributor. Being a network operator and a distributor imposes obligations upon you.

It is not a EULA. The AGPL even says, in the same section that the GPL says (to wit, section 9) that you don't need to accept it in order to be granted its rights.

You seem to have trouble understanding the difference between network usage and distribution.

If I give you a CD with nginx, I'm distributing it.

If I send you a .tar.gz with nginx, I'm distributing it.

If I bring up nginx on a server, put some HTML files in the webroot, and give you a URL to it, I am not distributing nginx. I am merely using nginx, and offering you a service using nginx. I am not offering nginx itself. I am distributing my HTML website, and I am merely using nginx for it.

Cases 1 and 2 invoke copyright. Case 3 does not. In the absence of a license, you are not allowed to do 1 nor 2, but you are allowed to do 3. I can give you software I created, say nothing whatsoever about its license (which means, implicitly, "all rights reserved"), and international copyright law says you can not do 1 nor 2, but you can do 3.

The GPL, BSD, and other free software copyright licenses say you can do 1 or 2, under certain conditions.

The AGPL, and other EULAs, says you can NOT do 3, unless you meet certain conditions (other EULAs may, for example, limit the number of users, which would be typical for typical proprietary software server EULAs; the AGPL limits how you can serve the software, in that you must provide source changes to users of the service).

Therefore, the GPL and BSD strictly grant rights (to copy). The AGPL both grants rights to copy and restricts rights to use. It is therefore not a copyright license, but a contract, an EULA, a click-through usage agreement. And anyone who treats it as a copyright license (i.e. users are not expected to care) is doing a disservice to their users, because they are, in fact, not allowed to use the software without abiding by that contract (license).

If nginx were AGPL-licensed (thankfully it isn't), and I made a change to the source for personal use, then the AGPL would require me to stick a download link to that modified source in the footer of every website served using that copy of nginx, even if I am not serving the nginx binary itself.

The GPL is already perfectly suited to cover distributing software on the internet, as tarballs or whatever. The GPLv2 had some outdated provisions referencing a "medium" and written offers (e.g. the CD story), and the GPLv3 already covered that by saying you can just send the source via the same medium as the binary, e.g. from a network server.

The AGPL is a very different beast, and it has nothing to do with updating the GPL to allow for network transmission of the source, as you seem to imply.

Have an example: I run a Nextcloud instance for personal use. It is AGPL-licensed. Thankfully I have not made any changes to the code. However, if I touch a single php file in my /var/www/nextcloud (other than config files - hopefully, the AGPL is too vague to say for sure), that means I now need to figure out how to package and distribute that change to literally every visitor to my instance, which could be anyone on the internet (even if they just hit the login page). This is NOT possible with a purely copyright license. And my distribution did not warn me about it (like they did for proprietary software EULAs, which require an explicit ack), because they erroneously believe that the AGPL is not an EULA, because the FSF wrote it.

Does this make sense now?

>If nginx were AGPL-licensed (thankfully it isn't), and I made a change to the source for personal use, then the AGPL would require me to stick a download link to that modified source in the footer of every website served using that copy of nginx, even if I am not serving the nginx binary itself.

People add links to the source code because it's much less work than responding to emails. It's entirely voluntary. Users have a right to the source code of AGPL software you make accessible to them and you can satisfy that constraint any way you see fit.

You haven't read the license, have you? :-)

> your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network [...] an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge [...]

An email does not cut it. It has to be a direct link to the source, or some kind of equivalent mechanism to directly download it from a server. Merely providing you the opportunity to ask a human for it does not cut it (an email bot might, but that'd be dumb).

This kind of sillyness of calling AGPL a contract is incorrect because it assumes that copyright law only care about distribution. It does not.

It is an copyright offence to perform any of the following acts without permission of the owner:

    Copy the work.
    Rent, lend or issue copies of the work to the public.
    Perform, broadcast or show the work in public.
    *Adapt the work.*

A person who take a copyrighted software and adapts it into a online service need to get adaptation permission from the author. If the work is given out under a AGPL license then that license is proof of permission as long as the person follow the terms, just as with any other copyright license.

You do not need permissions from a copyright license unless the action a person does falls within the scope of copyright. If a person don't copy, rent, lend, issue copies, perform, broadcast, show, or adapt the work, then the AGPL conditions are irrelevant because the user do not need permission in the first place. An EULA or contract however is not limited in this way and can restrict usage of a program outside the scope of copyright.

Do you have any case history supporting this interpretation of copyright law?

While it is true that copyright protects the right to create derivative works, that is, in practice, usually applied to creating such derivative works and distributing them. Otherwise, scribbling with a pen on a book you bought would be a copyright violation.

Similarly, while technically running a program requires copying it into memory (and thus requires a license), no court in this day and age is likely to rule that running software which was acquired legally, but which does not come with a license to run it, is a copyright violation.

Scribbling with a pen on a book you bought would be a copyright violation if it would qualify under the definition of recasting, transforming or adapting the book. It must be substantial and original. A full translation, scribbled on the side, would be a pretty obvious violation regardless if you made further copies. Similar if you bought the movie rights to distribute you still need additional permissions to add translations or to cut it into new versions. There has also been cases where a broadcasting station got sued because they added commercial breaks without having copyright permission to create new adaptations (the author had a very public opinion against commercial breaks).

The memory issue has been well discussed and handled in the past. The law has an explicit exception made with this in mind where legal owners of the software has a right to both copy and adapt software if it is an essential step towards utilization of the program. licensees however does not have this right and are restricted to the terms under the license. Naturally this is designed more towards the world of proprietary software where such distinction is more clear.

In the broadcasting case, obviously broadcasting/distribution was involved, which is not the case here. Do you have any examples where someone making a private modification to a copyrighted work without distribution was legally liable for it after it was discovered?

The AGPL attempts to control any changes made to the code, not just, say, a substantial refactoring or reworking. So in principle a one-line patch is sufficient to trigger AGPL clause 13.

You seem to have trouble understanding that you are not the user of nginx: the users who visit your website and use nginx to serve files to themselves are the users.

Does it make sense now?

Copyright law doesn't say anything about users of software, it talks about copying, performing (no, you are not "performing" nginx for your remote users, that's not how it works), etc.

In fact, courts have repeatedly ruled that the output of software (i.e. the packets nginx sends over the network, but which aren't its own code) is not covered by the software's copyright itself.

If I lend you my phone, in the absence of more restrictive EULAs, and excluding media (which is reproduced verbatim by the phone), you are free to use any software on it without being subject to the copyright of said software.

Does it make sense now?

You seem to have trouble understanding that copyright is irrelevant to determining who the users of the software are. The users are the ones using the software. That there is a network between them and the software they're using is irrelevant.

Does it make sense now?

So you're saying that the license does not impose restrictions on users of the software, but I am not the user, so it can impose restrictions on me? Then what am I, and why does the license get to impose restrictions on me beyond copyright obligations without violating Freedom Zero?

You're grasping at straws here. There's provisions based on copyright, and then there's everything else. Redefining users to exclude the person running the server and implying that means the person running the server loses all rights under the Free Software definition is ludicrous.

You are free to run our hypotheticlly AGPLed nginx for whatever purpose you want. You can serve a military website or an online shop from our hypothetically AGPLed nginx. There are no limitations on usage. You are the user as long as you are operating and using nginx.

Once you serve to other users, though, they also become users of nginx. In this regard, you have an upstream/downstream relationship between you and the other users of nginx that you've made users by giving them access over the network.

You are still free to use nginx for your military website or your online shop or whatever. Your usage of nginx has not been restricted for any purpose.

By granting network accesss to our hypothetically AGPLed nginx, though, you now have an AGPL obligation to provide a link to the source code of nginx, in case you modified that source yourself. This isn't taking any rights away from you -- indeed, the AGPL is only granting you rights. You wouldn't have the right to even serve nginx to other users or to modify its source code if it weren't for the AGPL.

None of this is substantially different from the GPL except for the method of interaction with the software.

> This isn't taking any rights away from you -- indeed, the AGPL is only granting you rights.

Note that a shrink-wrap end-user license agreement from Adobe also doesn't take away your rights; it only grants you rights.

At least, according to copyright rhetoric.

This is not correct. Those agreements are based on the idea that your license to use the copyrighted software is predicated on accepting a large number of conditions outside of copyright.

Merely receiving a license-free piece of software (i.e. "all rights reserved") with no strings attached gives you a certain set of default rights (i.e. anything not in violation of copyright), such as to run it for any purpose. EULAs like a shrink-wrap agreement from Adobe, or the AGPL, then attempt to remove some of those rights.

Though, sure, you can look at it from the point of view that in the absence of a license at all, nobody would've been able to distribute the software to you in the first place, and therefore you'd have had no rights as a result.

The doctrine under copyright law is that you have no right to have a copy of a work without the copyright holder's permission. From that basis, various forms of asshole on the face of this Earth, and their lawyers, have come up with various licenses that inject all sorts of behavioral conditions, far outside of the scope of copyright law, on the granting of a permission for you to have a copy. The idea is to turn the non-compliance with those conditions into copyright infringment. "Oh, you're violating clause 37? And still have a copy of the work? That's not allowed! You must comply, or else destroy the copy!"

Yet, the copyright law is what the AGPL is trying to wield as its basis.

It does not seem valid. Has anyone tested it in court?

I don't think that copyright can assert use restrictions. You cannot say that someone is not authorized to have a copy of something if they do not use it in such and such a way.

It's exactly like a "license" written in the flap of a book which says that you must read only the even-numbered pages. If you read any odd-numbered page, then you are breaching the license under which you're permitted to have a copy, and must destroy the book.

I would cheerfully deploy a modified AGPL program and not reveal the code to anyone. Nothing would happen at all.

I'm surprised Google are so allergic to the AGPL. If it came down to it, they could crush this bullshit in court like swatting a mosquito.

Is this that thing, where someone posts something controversial that is bound to generate lots of discussion, to deflect and derail the discussion from the real topic at hand.

I trust the device maker more than myself to keep my data safe and secure.

Then don't install unsigned apps.

The notion that the platform owner is somehow doing you a favor by denying you that choice is nothing but a manifestation of Stockholm Syndrome in action.

That advice might be feasible for the average HN reader, but what about the average person? How resistant do you think they will be against a social engineering attack telling them to disable code signing?

Some sites have big scary warnings if you try to open the dev console in the page for this reason. I don't know how well that works though.

We can put all the warnings on bleach we want, someone out there is still going to drink it.

> We can put all the warnings on bleach we want, someone out there is still going to drink it.

If we went with the Apple solution, this means nobody gets to use bleach.

More like, you have to pay $100/yr to be a Bleach Safety Expert, which allows you to handle bleach. Actually come to think of it, don't we have the same thing, but for cars?

Except Apple engineers.

So let them install that malware and have their data stolen despite all warnings because they deserve it? We can't have safety nets everywhere, and we, in fact, don't. We allow everyone to drive, use knives and handle all kinds of potentially dangerous stuff every day, but for some reason can't trust them with their own phones.

Some mistakes are costly, but people learn from them. Such is life.

>We allow everyone to drive, use knives and handle all kinds of potentially dangerous stuff every day, but for some reason can't trust them with their own phones.

Can you get social engineered into crashing a car or stabbing yourself? The difference here is that people most likely know the consequences of their actions, unlike with phones/computers where the consequences are nebulous.

> unlike with phones/computers where the consequences are nebulous.

So maybe they need to be educated on that? Or just, in general, to think critically at all times?

> Can you get social engineered into crashing a car or stabbing yourself?

There were cases of people "social engineered" into wearing bomb belts and blowing themselves up. It's just that this social engineering was much more sophisticated than telling someone to send bitcoin to have it doubled.

> We allow everyone to drive, use knives

Ah, these are pretty simple things. We don't allow to sell any drugs, or some drugs without prescription, because drugs are hard and require education. So do computers.

The risk coming from malware to end users on laptops is about 0.1% of the risk from cars, and following the message in scary red letters is pretty simple too.

The big question here is one simple thing: property.

Imagine someone selling you a house and despite that you think you own the house the seller defines what things you can or cannot have in your own house, and even the ones he let you have, you must buy through them (so they can get a tax and force control) and if suddenly they are not ok with that anymore, it can simply vanish from your home.

"Hey look, you cant have that knife that its not from Apple Houses, it will hurt your kids.. we are always thinking on your safety"

Then you buy a car that you think its the one you like, but its not on you Apple Home store, so you are not allowed to drive that car.

But hey Apple homes have said its for your own safety, because that car was evaluated and could kill your wife.

In this case its clear "Apple Homes" succeeded in through marketing in psycological tatics to influence the house owner to do be ok with those things and still think he actually owns the house while the property is in reality leased where they define what you can access to or what can simply vanish even if you bought them.

I just cant understand how people can try to defend this sort of behaviour even when its clear it goes against their self interests and can damage them in several ways.. as the parent have said, just some sort of "stockholm syndrome" can explain this.

The infantilization of users with regards to tech is profitable for a lot of companies.

> Imagine someone selling you a house and despite that you think you own the house the seller defines what things you can or cannot have in your own house

That's exactly like housing in developed world works, lol. When you buy a flat in Germany, you implicitly agree on a huge set of rules.

No one would allow you to buy a flat and turn it into a brothel or a disorderly house, or even run a pretty legal business in it) And many have additional rules, like not playing piano too loud.

But your analogy is wrong. Apple doesn't prohibit you to do something with your phone, they regulate the service they provide to you on a constant basis. Following your analogy if you've bought a flat, nobody is obliged to deliver food to you, especially when some food vendors do not comply with delivery's rules.

Rules for society and commutative living is understandable, as the rights of a collective should be as equal or bigger than the rights of a individual.

This line of thinking doesnt apply in the relationship between Apple, its developers and its consumers.

Its a direct relationship and we are trying to understand here what rights Apple have vs. the rigths their developers and consumers have.

> Following your analogy if you've bought a flat, nobody is obliged to deliver food to you, especially when some food vendors do not comply with delivery's rules.

What you are lacking here is that theres a conflict of interest going on. The better scenario would be "Apple Homes Inc" also owning a fast-food chain, having the power to define, the food delivery you have access to.

The key thing here, is that they do it before you are even aware you are lacking options. So you wont feel as freedom of choice is being taken from you, because when you look at the "food store", you have options. And having options make you feel that you have choices and freedom, while you actually dont.

Some people like you, could be fine with it. But my main point is that its breaking foundamentals laws our societies are built on. Freedom, property, etc..

There is no specific law yet, because its unregulated. But im pretty sure that once law experts decide to really tackle this issue, some of those things will get much clearer.

A company like Apple or Google have too much power with this, and you can imagine the mess if somehow the powerful of the world get their hands on this powerful pipelines that can control the lifes of so many..

Without good and effective laws to really regulate them, we can be in a mess real quick.

(And im not even debating the rights of people who create apps and are dumped with clients wanting their products but not being able to reach them, because Apple forbid them with bogus reasons)

> We allow everyone to drive

Don't people normally get qualified to drive, controlled by the Government? Is that what you are advocating?

They do, but a car is still a very dangerous thing. Judging by /r/IdiotsInCars on Reddit, there are people who don't quite realize that despite having a driver license.

I support you wholeheartedly, survival of the fittest and evolution show us it's the only way to ensure getting better as species, but current point of view (equal opportunities, maximum protection) all but guarantees those who scream louder survive, not those whos skills are more useful in a long run .

We shouldn't be allowing everyone to drive. Autonomy will fix this. Apple will bring it to us, just like they have kept our phones safe.

> Then don't install unsigned apps.

The problem is that most people know nothing about software distribution, signatures etc etc, and would become an easy target for fishers, as they do on Windows or Android. People oft underestimate how little avg user knows about computers and basic hygiene.

The problem is that most people know nothing about software distribution, signatures etc etc, and would become an easy target for fishers

That doesn't sound like my problem, or, frankly, yours.

If you create an environment where careless people never experience the consequences of their carelessness, then rest assured, you won't get fewer careless people or less careless behavior as a result. You will get more of both.

You will have bred a culture of dependency... which is certainly financially convenient for Apple.

> careless people

They are not careless, they are uneducated on topic. Are you advocating for finishing FDA and drug regulation, because if people bought wrong drugs, it's their carelessness and consequences are just?

That's nonsense. Historian should not know much about computers, just like me, a computer guy, should not know much about drugs. If there is a company allowing safe computing, which Apple is, people are better to stick with it, and you are better choosing linux or something and stop advocating for reducing people's choice.

Anti-phishing and malware mechanisms should just be "recommendations" to users and not straight blocking and banning. It's sad people don't see that difference. Browsers warn you about potentially harmful websites but still give you the choice.

> malware mechanisms should just be "recommendations"

Not when people don't thoroughly understand the possible consequences, no. Same as why drug prescriptions are not just recommended, and driving license is not optional.

It's either the enforcement of training, or the walled garden.

> They are not careless, they are uneducated on topic.

Making mistakes is a crucial part of learning.

It's usually better to have a choice than to not have it. It's the same argumentation as with a headphone jack in phones.

Safety over Liberty - the motto of the world today. Kneel before the master!

I wonder what Franklin would think if he was alive today...

Probably something along the lines of "I said essential liberty for temporary safety, you nitwits."

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

Should we not have the liberty to choose a locked-down platform?

Should you have the liberty to sell yourself into slavery?

Choosing iOS is an entirely reversible decision.

When 99% of the mobile space is locked-down that is a spurious argument. Locked-down platforms will never be a rarity.

Do you then agree with the decision to prevent installation of Fortnite or any other software from which Apple wants to extract more revenue?

Because Apple has shown that they will use that mechanism to exert commercial control, not just to secure your data.

Apple is the curator of the product. They can do what they want. Maybe at some point I won't buy it. But totally agree they have every right to do this.

Is John Deere the curator of the "tractor" product, so they have every right to determine who can repair it?

Is Chamberlain the curator of the garage door opener product, so they can determine what remotes can be used?

You may prefer a world where DRM and the DMCA can be leveraged beyond preventing copying to constrain consumer choice, but I consider that a poorer and less innovative world.

https://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-under-dmca/ar...

Great, there is a phone for you. It's based on Android.

What would my freedom to step outside the walled garden on my iOS device take away from your curated experience?

It's important to note that you can still run unsigned Mac apps. Apple isn't preventing users from running a tool they want to run, it's just showing them a big scary warning and making them jump through some extra hoops.

It's incredibly scummy and inappropriate, but I would put it more along the lines of an attack-ad than an outright ban.

Edit: Now, one thing that isn't totally clear is whether or not devs who have their own developer accounts, and use Unreal Engine to target iOS, can still make iOS builds. If not that's a much bigger deal, though the fundamental issue would still lie with iOS, not macOS.

Notarizing has been mandatory since Catalina: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09032019a

You can bypass it: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491

You can also disable AMFI, the component that enforces signatures and entitlements, altogether, but you have first to disable SIP completely by either booting into Linux of by patching the kernel and then setting the requisite NVRAM variable directly.

(`spctl` does not, in fact, disable it completely.)

>by either booting into Linux

I don't think thats an option on newer MacBook Pros any more.

You don't need to do it that way. Boot to macOS Recovery and use csrutil(1) to disable SIP.

Sorry, I mixed up spctl and csrutil. SIP state is stored in an NVRAM variable that is a bitfield of what is allowed. You can't change all bits with csrutil, and you can't set the variable from within macOS, both main and recovery. You have to bypass that mechanism by either patching the macOS kernel to allow setting whatever you want, or booting into an OS that doesn't perform these checks in the first place. And you need to set the bit for IIRC kernel debugging for it to honor the `amfi_get_out_of_my_way` argument.

I am not sure if you can flip the bits in the NVRAM variable, but you can disable SIP from recovery mode including the flag for kernel debugging.

The pop-up box you get when you try to run unsigned applications gives the user absolutely no hint as to how they can jump through those hoops to run the thing. You need to know what to google for to find the right magic incantation to enter into the macOS terminal.

On Windows, at least, the “Run anyway” button is merely behind the “More information...” link.

Right. I'm just saying, user-freedom is technically preserved. This is a huge inconvenience, and bad for Epic's business, but it's not a ban. As an owner of Mac hardware, I still have control over what I can do with my machine.

The point is though that they have the ability to 'ban' it for 99.99% of users who don't know that.

This isn't a social app, it's a professional tool that multimillion-dollar businesses are built on (most of which have in-house engine programmers). They'll figure it out if they have to. Heck, Epic could publish instructions for doing so.

Unreal Engine isn’t a shared iOS component. Apple doesn’t care about signatures on individual lib/so files: only the signature on the published app package. When you make an app or a game using an existing engine then only you become responsible for it.

A ragtag band of devs all banned-for-life from Apple’s stores could put together a new app-engine or game-engine that other devs use as the basis for their app and provided that those apps don’t break the rules about undocumented APIs or malware (and no-one in Apple’s higher-ups gets suspicious...) then those apps will appear. I don’t believe Apple has any way to automatically ban or delete all apps that use the same third-party libraries by using their macOS Notary system or iOS Certificate revocation system - they’d have to inspect every published app-package individually (granted, this would be automated, but you know what I mean).

Do you honestly think Apple is going to keep this true for Macs in 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? I think there is slim to none chance that they give a shit about the "openness"of Mac.

As far as I'm concerned, Mac openness is just a cat that got out of the bag, before anyone knew they could produce a _mint_ from rent seeking walled garden platforms. I find it highly unlikely Apple is not looking to correct this mistake on Mac, even if it's done so gradually that by the time the pull the trigger, no one even bats an eye.

Even Steve Jobs knew you needed "trucks" of computing. I'm generally fine with my phone being locked down, because I use it for straightforward tasks. I (and the many other developers who use Macs) need my laptop to be a "truck". If it stopped being that, I'd stop being a customer. But we're not at that point yet and I think Apple would be really dumb to go there and alienate a huge market.

I believe they’ll likely keep this the case, not out of generosity, but because the most valuable thing Mac gets them is developers writing apps for iOS. This will only become more true in time unless there’s a sudden reversal of the trend towards phones and tablets over laptops. They may not care about power users in general, but allowing developers to run their own code to target their platforms is crucial, and there’s no mint to be made on macOS by fully locking it down due to the reduced marketshare.

I would not be shocked however if at some point they switched to developers having to buy special Macs to have this capability, and normal Macs would cease to be able to turn off secure boot and SIP and would require code signing/store distribution universally.

Given you need to be a bona-fide security researcher to qualify to gain access to a partially-unlocked iPhone[1] - I think you’re on to something: having DRM built-in to the lowest levels of the hardware means it’s possible for Apple to truly control the system.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/programs/security-research-devic...

That's not freedom. Most users are going to think the unsigned app just doesn't work, and almost none of them are going to know that there is a magic ritual they need to perform in the Settings app to launch the program they wanted to run in the first place.

> You need to know what to google for to find the right magic incantation to enter into the macOS terminal.

You right click it and select “Open”...

Almost all MacOS users even the non-technical types encounter this at some point unless they go 100% Mac App Store which almost no one does if they have a job.

I tested this just now on my Mac and “right-click -> Open” on an untrusted .app gave me the same warning message with no obvious way to force-open the app.

Because it's “right-click -> Open” not once but _twice_. It's exactly the reverse of intuitive. There's also going to the Settings app and allowing the app, but no signs given to the user about that.

And in that situation you have the much less obvious solution but still not Terminal: go in System Preferences -> Security and you will see a new button appear to allow the specific app to open

I think you need to be connected to the network for the button to show up.

At first, it was "are you sure". Then later versions of macos wanted right-click open. Newer ones ... I don't even know.

I gave up on catalina when I couldn't install little snitch without a network connection.

(Apparently there's a way, but I don't know it - it wasn't csrutil)

This sounds like a 'deprecation tatics' to me.

You use a pavlovian adequation mechanism on your users for some time, labeling as "dangerous", until you completely ban the thing.

By then users wont miss.

I´ve never used anything Apple by this same reason. Apple seems to think that once you by one of their products, they own you.

Its not just inappropriate, for me its pretty scary and humiliating.

Its like that girlfriend or boyfriend who thinks it owns you, and want to say what you should dress or if you can hangout with our friends.

It dont get it how people can be ok with this kind of stuff (as this is just one example) and later just say it snarkly as if it was your kid being naughty, where actually it can have severe consequences if they can get away with it, and future generations wont even argue because its already normalized for them.

IMO, it’s about the moral equivalent of using dark UI patterns to trick users into performing actions they don’t want to do.

The scary warning and convoluted workaround for running un–notarized apps is ostensibly to prevent non–technical people from compromising their computers. Now Apple is abusing that security mechanism for Business Reasons that have nothing to do with protecting users.

The fact that users can technically bypass it is a weak defense; if it’s an effective way to stop malware, it’s probably an effective way to prevent people from running Unreal Engine games as well.

This is completely off-topic, but isn't the regular hyphen what you want in "non-technical"? I don't think the en-dash is correct.

> if it’s an effective way to stop malware, it’s probably an effective way to prevent people from running Unreal Engine games as well.

Probably only one or the other. If Epic produces legitimate software that users have a legitimate reason to run, some of them will become accustomed to clicking through in order to run a legitimate program. Then, they will become more likely to click through on other programs: "Oh, they're probably banned for business reasons like Epic, not for security reasons like malware".

Apple is clearly hoping that is not the outcome, and that Epic simply loses as close to 100% of their Apple-based customers as they reasonably can.

Apple, with code-signing signalling, will actively be telling users Fortnite is a security danger. It is not the same as code signing, which would be vendor-agnostic and politically neutral. I would be surprised if the European Commission does trigger an inquiry into abuse of dominant position.

> Apple, with code-signing signalling, will actively be telling users Fortnite is a security danger.

Sounds like Apple will rather teach young consumers to ignore security warnings.

According to the court filing, Apple is denying Epic access to any development tools, software betas, APIs and the like. Epic will not be able to keep Unreal Engine up to date. Including on MacOS.

The end result will be that Unreal Engine, and all applications developed with it will be dead in the water on MacOS/iOS/iPadOS.

From the the legal filing:

>... when Epic sued Apple to break its monopoly on app stores and in-app payments, Apple retaliated ferociously. It told Epic that by August 28, Apple will cut off Epic’s access to all development tools necessary to create software for Apple’s platforms—including for the Unreal Engine Epic offers to third-party developers, which Apple has never claimed violated any Apple policy. Not content simply to remove Fortnite from the App Store, Apple is attacking Epic’s entire business in unrelated areas.

and...

>Apple stated that unless Epic capitulates, Apple will also block “[e]ngineering efforts to improve hardware and software performance of Unreal Engine on Mac and iOS hardware [and] optimize Unreal Engine for the Mac for creative workflows”.

PDF link: https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/epic-v-apple-8-17-20-768927327...

Weaning myself off Macs has been on my to-do list for the last year. It just moved up to top position.

> On a device I own...

And that's the issue. The overwhelming body of evidence in recent years suggests Apple does not consider the devices they make to be "yours." Rather, their attitude seems to be that those devices forever belong to Apple, and Apple simply allows you to pay for the privilege of using them.

Why didn't they make it a subscription at this point? Pay $100 per month, or your iPhone would lock and demand that you return it to an Apple Store.

It basically is that - most owners replace their iPhones regularly, and if you replace your iPhone with purchase price $P every M months, that's just as good for Apple as you paying P/M per month, with some additional benefits:

The user is locked in to a large minimum spend; the user is responsible for EOL disposal of the device; the users perform self price discrimination, where more wealthy users replace their phone more often so effectively pay a higher monthly rate.

Too overt. Why not just keep slowing it down until it compares poorly and you upgrade to the new snappier version?

Owh wait they do

Also, this is true for windows OS. Once you installed it, the computer would not belong to you. They would force updating, updating, and updating. Even if you were in meeting, that speaker stopped the talk and went back to find another computer.

It is ridiculous. Nowadays, physician could do a surgery in remote. How about during operation there is an update.

No they won't. You can configure windows out-of-the-box to completely disable updates (it won't even check to see if there's updates). And there's all kinds of settings in-between.

By editing 3 places in Regedit manually because disabling Update Medic in Services says "access is denied" despite being an admin account. Yes, you totally can. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59077619/how-to-disable-...

That's to disable the services, which is not what this is about. You don't need to do any of that to stop updates/update checks.

Uh... How? In my memory, different version of windows needs different approach to disable windows update. Although you manually disabled updating it would somehow turned on by other process/service/reboot... And, it might not be able to apply to next version. Like a Tag game.

Some of versions does not have ability to stop updating (maybe current version of Windows 10 Home?).

> On a device I own, there should be no parties that are trusted more than myself. It's ridiculous I even have to write this.

This is only true if you contain at least the minimum amount of knowledge to built said device yourself. If you cannot design the type of CPU required, you must trust the vendor. If you cannot design the RAM, you must trust the vendor. If you cannot design the motherboard, you must trust the vendor.

You must also have the ability to supervise every step of construction. If you don't have that ability, then your knowledge is worthless.

You can only be the most trusted party in your system if you can be personally 100% certain nothing was inserted into the system without your knowledge. This is not restricted to the software, which theoretically you could inspect the source code to.

Maybe there SHOULD be systems where you are the most trusted party, but realistically, there are almost none. You have to trust the engineer who designed the road, the worker who delivered the package, the maker of the chips that go on the board, the company who makes the air filter in your home HVAC, etc.

Society is built on trust.

Of course. But from my point of view, Apple designed a capable device and deliberately limited its capabilities for its own advantage. They have the private key to sign apps that iOS will run, but you do not. They empowered themselves, while depriving the user of that power at the same time.

It's as if you bought a house but couldn't repaint the walls and rearrange the furniture to your liking. You'd have to call a special person from the company that built the house.

The misunderstanding here is because the word "trust" has been misappropriated in this context to mean something slightly different from its everyday meaning.

You do indeed have to trust the designers, manufacturers and suppliers of your equipment, in the sense that they are in a position to cause you harm without a realistic way to prevent that beforehand.

However, when "trust" is used in the sense of "what is allowed", what we're actually talking about is sovereignty or authority, not "trust". I believe the word is used in this context because giving a third party authority over your device necessarily puts them in a position of trust, but it is actually the authority that is important here, and the fact that you have some measure of trust in a party does not imply that the party should also be granted authority.

If you recast the GP's comment in these terms, I believe it captures the essence without muddying the waters with "trust":

> On a device I own, there should be no parties with more authority than myself. It's ridiculous I even have to write this.

That's why in different industries there are third-party independent, trusted entities. Apple controls it all completely itself.

I agree with you in principle, but disagree in practice.

For every person who knows what they're doing and can trust themselves, there are 1000 who will install malware and other crap and end up at an Apple store getting it fixed, and they'll blame Apple instead of themselves.

You talk like this is some unique problem. This has been solved for a long time. Warranties have terms of service. If your car is under warranty and the engine fails due to a defect, warranty covers it.

If your engine fails because you drove it into a river, then the warranty don't cover it and you'll pay out of pocket for repairs.

So you're effectively saying that Apple must allow a user to install malware (likely unintentionally), but then Apple is also responsible for paying to fix it?

I feel like I have to be misunderstanding you because that makes no sense.

What it seems like they're saying is that Apple should operate like a car manufacturer, wherein if you put some aftermarket shite in your engine, you can't get a warranty service, and likewise if you don't do your due diligence with what you put on your PC, Apple should be able to deny service.

While perfectly fair, it would still lead to unhappy customers, which aren't exactly known to be receptive to reason.

While I may not always agree with Apple's approach I can understand their reasoning and don't believe that it simply comes down to earning a few extra bucks with the 30% cut in question and all the seemingly drastic measures that come with it.

Apple is put in the position of a judge right now. They decide what malware is, and the user has no say. The problem is, the user should be allowed to choose not to delegate the task of setting definitions.

Most users do not want this, but some do.

Some users will consider a RAT a way to fix things, while others will consider some game to be a malicious drug. Both should be allowed to make their own decisions if they really want to.

That's not a good analogy, though. What's the car equivalent of a ransomware app that pretends to be a video game?

And, now that I think about it, I don't even know what the equivalent of "driving into a river" would be, and that's as a software engineer who's been working with computers for 25 years.

A car with cut brake lines? A remotely controlled car?

I'm forcibly reminded of how one jackass forgetting to renew a certificate stripped almost every Firefox installation on earth of all its extensions, resulting in probably thousands of malware infections and possible identity theft.

In Windows world, you can just pick a new certificate vendor. In Apple world, they have a monopoly and get to dictate who gets 'full access' to both their mobile devices and their desktops/laptops. They could still do unsigned MacOS apps from here out, but Apple has purposely made it difficult for end users to run them.

Lock-in was their business model back in the 80s, it still is to this day. It got them to the verge of bankruptcy then, it will be their downfall now.

One may hope, but I doubt it.

They make a majority of the money in mobile.

How was Apple’s business model from the 1980s right through until the App Store got popular about “lock-in” though? You could say that any platform vendor’s business model is predicated on some form of lock-in.

Apple’s poor financial state under Sculley was more because they had an objectively poor product (going by the technical merits alone), a confusing product line-up, a failure to recapture the education sector that was quickly switching to Windows due to its enterprise-friendly features like Group Policy and compatibility with Directory Services like NetWare, and because it didn’t have a plan going forward into the 21st century.

I do note that in the 1990s under Sculley they both licensed macOS to third-party hardware vendors and were fine with PowerPC being adopted by other platforms (even Microsoft, and evening when it was incompatible with Apple’s architecture) - that’s the very opposite of the vendor lock-in-in that you’re describing. It can be argued that Apple’s “nice guy” approach further contributed to their decline - it certainly didn’t help raise sales nor their share-price.

Aldo consider when Steve Jobs returned they made deals with Microsoft to ensure Office would still be available for the Mac. Apple’s stewardship of WebKit was about driving open web-standards, even though Safari is very much Apple-exclusive. Apple also made a big-deal about how the then-new Mac OS X was a POSIX-compliant BSD system.

I think you’re confusing Apple’s aggressive control of the user-experience with IBM and Oracle-style lock-in. With IBM/Oracle a company or gov dept will have sunk $lots into a system that they cannot take away to a different vendor: there is literally no alternative than to continue with whatever gargantuan system their sales reps convinced the customer to buy. This is why banks and insurance companies are still rocking IBM Z-series today after 30+ years even though a system that’s just as resilient could be built for a fraction of the price on commodity hardware (I’m not going to pretend that Linux was a viable option back then, but systems like VMS or a project requirement to use POSIX were options back then). When people say that banks/insurance companies are “conservative” when it comes to technology I think it’s better to describe them as being technically inept or even corrupt which led to them being caught in vendor lock-in which paralysed them internally: I feel the arguments that they don’t want to risk losing billions over a bad technology move are just excuses for being unable to make a technology move even if they wanted to.

I believe that Apple sees that their controlling of the user-experience of its customers creates value for the user - whereas IBM/Oracle-style lock-in rarely does. I reckon 90%+ of non-developers using Apple hardware today (iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc) could switch to Android, Surface, and Windows PC respectively without losing much in the way of capability - but they would lose a cohesive and well-thought-out user-experience, which is Apple’s moat.

> Safari is very much Apple-exclusive.

Nit: Safari shipped for Windows for a few years

>In Windows world, you can just pick a new certificate vendor

I mean if they really wanted to they could blacklist your CN or O value in the certificate, or add you to the windows defender/smartscreen detection list, which will effectively kill your app for a good segment of the windows userbase.

Which is why this certificate system is completely useless, making people expend a lot of effort to prove nothing.

Security-in-depth though.

Having to pay money introduces a money-trail and a paper-trail. If a payment for a certificate is made with stolen CC details then the certificate gets revoked. This also effectively stops opportunistically-written malware taking advantage of current events (click bait email subject lines) to spread via email attachments.

The value from code-signing isn’t just the (I agree: very weak) attestation of the software’s author’s identity - but because it introduces a revocation mechanism and a reputation system - and creates barriers-to-entry that burden malware authors more than legitimate software vendors.

It’s not perfect, but don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

Also remember that the only proven successful alternative to the current open PKI/CA system is the closed walled-garden approach favoured by Apple. I don’t think any Web-of-trust system has ever really been demonstrated as being feasible long-term without some WoT nodes evolving into pre-trusted/super-trusted nodes with the same power that CAs have today.

And at least with PKI+CAs you can add your own trusted root certificates and remove those you don’t trust.

I’m not aware of that ever happening though - and the workaround is just to get another certificate from another CA vendor.

I have code-signing certificates myself: the verification process did not fill me with confidence that the system is trustworthy - GlobalSign had me email them details of my DUNS/ UBI / business registration and a notarised copy of my driving license and checked that my name matched, and that was it. I could easily fraudulently obtain a code-signing certificate with a fake ID matching the name and state of some other vendor I just took a disliking to.

(I recognise that this system’s adding of barriers-to-entry does eliminate large numbers of opportunistic malware and provide a means to quickly disable installation and execution of revoked certificates - so I’m not calling for the system to be torn down!).

Isn’t it a bit naive that we ever believed the notarization feature would not be used to blacklist developers for business reasons? I feel like a chump now.

It is definitely clear that apple does not have the best interest of me, their customer, at heart. Epic were being very sneaky towards Apple, but not malicious towards users in any way. Apple is being malicious. If I want to run Epic’s software without disabling security features of the OS I feel I’ve definitely spent enough money on my iMac to get a say in that. This is the sort of thing 90’s microsoft would have done. “It’s just business, they knew what they were getting into.” would have been Gates’ excuse for throwing them from the windows platform.

It cuts both ways though, doesn't it? Either Apple spends time / effort vetting all applications, including those made by people that don't pay Apple and aren't sold through their store.

Or Apple doesn't vet all of these apps, and refuses to notarize any app that is not associated with a valid developer account.

It's a whole other can of worms if you want to get into the merits of being able to install and run any app you find. Apple made the decision to not allow the average user to do that, and I don't see the mass exodus of people showing that the public doesn't agree with this design choice. Just like iOS and the app store, the average user seems happy with a curated and largely vetted selection of things to use that... 'just work (TM)'.

Or, a third manner, which is not forcing notarization at all. Not simple making it disableable, but not enforcing it at all.

Epic expressly snuck code through the door to activate a user-visible feature in direct prohibition to App Store rules. Apple could have revoked their developer certificate in response, which would have essentially killed all installations of Fortnite iOS/Mac worldwide within 24 hours. That they are merely revoking their ability to sign new code and giving them 2 weeks to perform an orderly shutdown is far less draconian than they're capable of being here.

Notarization is about protecting users who are not capable of making an informed decision about code safety from developers who refuse to comply with Apple's terms of service. Epic willfully violated their terms with Apple to make a point, and Apple is responding in the same way that they did to Facebook: taking away their access to the users, because they cannot be trusted to comply with the restrictions placed on their behavior.

Most (if not all) of the restrictions on the App Store exist to protect users from app developers who prioritize their own greed over the rights of privacy and safety that Apple promises the users of the App Store. Developers are the threat model, and there's nothing inherently wrong with Apple's response to Epic declaring themselves a rulebreaker — and, thus, a threat.

(If Epic was not trying so hard to be able to sue for damages, they might have been able to negotiate, same as Facebook did. But they wanted to be a martyr for the cause, so here we are.)

Consider this thought experiment: At your employer, an IT employee goes rogue and installs malicious code on your computer to read your email. How would you feel if IT leadership said "they promised not to do it again" and allowed them to continue unsupervised work on your computer while you're away? Most people would feel awful, because you can't trust the IT employee's word — they literally just broke their agreement not to snoop! — and because your leadership clearly doesn't care about your privacy.

Should Apple "fire" Epic, now that Epic's word can no longer be trusted? This answer should, in theory, match the answer above. I bet for most software developers, it does not. I encourage thinking through that dissonance rather than rejecting the thought experiment.

> Notarization is about protecting users who are not capable of making an informed decision about code safety from developers who refuse to comply with Apple's terms of service.

No, notarization is about preventing malware. That's all. This has been promised to us by Apple many many times. Malware prevention only. Fortnite is not malware.

I'm sorry, it sounds like we're saying the same thing.

Notarization is not a stick-less carrot. Anyone can sign up and agree to the rules and pay the fee begin notarizing apps. If you break the rules you agree to when you sign up, you lose access to notarization.

It seems like we disagree about this basic understanding, so I'll take a couple guesses at it.

Are you, perhaps, arguing that Apple should not be allowed to terminate developer access to notarization under any circumstance — regardless of their behavior? Or are you arguing that Epic's behavior is "acceptable" rule breaking, but other kinds of behavior are "unacceptable" rule breaking?

I'm happy to consider that I could be wrong here, but I'll need a few more sentences from you to do so.

Yes, Apple should very obviously not have a completely unchecked right to disable arbitrary software from running on millions of computers for whatever reason they want. This is so obviously an abuse of power that I can't believe I have to spell it out so clearly.

At the very least such decisions should be subject to appeal to an independent board, and failing that the legal system.

The only time in the past decade that I can think of where they used that power to remove anything other than malware on any platform, was to remove the Zoom daemon that Zoom was using to bypass Installer.app permission checks, which made sense to Apple — and to HN, at the time — because it was considered malicious/exploitable.

Should they have not exercised that right, and left us all at risk — even though the daemon itself wasn't malware, nor had it been abused for such purposes by anyone?

The decisions should be transparent and subject to review and appeal by an independent board. Zoom should be free to appeal Apple's decision to the board, yes.

Checks and balances are not a new concept.

That was a bug, Apple worked together with Zoom, and Zoom still distributes software on all of Apple's platforms, including the Mac. Their developer account was not revoked.

I'm arguing that Developer ID should be entirely separate from the App Store. That they involve the same Apple developer accounts and programs is merely a matter of convenience, but until now we never had the worry that App Store disputes would lead to problems with Mac software distribution outside the App Store. It's clear now that they should be entirely separate developer programs.

If Apple wants to suspend someone's App Store developer account, fine. But you should be able to distribute outside the App Store regardless.

The whole point of distributing outside the App Store is to avoid all that nonsense with Apple's rules.

The problem is that App Store is the only distribution method on iOS, so it's almost inevitable that you butt heads with Apple if you make iOS apps. How many App Store developers haven't had some kind of fight with Apple? So if App Store and Developer ID accounts are tied, you're always risking your Mac distribution if you make iOS apps too.

Or just development on the platform period, iOS won’t let you run code at all unless you sign it with a developer account and macOS makes it somewhat annoying to do so.

Sure, I'll bite. My mental model of notarization is strictly a means to fight malware (which, yes, is a nebulous word, but I think we can all agree that Unreal Engine games don't blanket qualify).

Since most people are essentially prevented from running non–notarized macOS software, Apple should treat notarization as a rubber stamp. As long as your app is not literally malware, Apple should notarize it.

Apple's use of notarization as a stick for Epic here certainly goes against if not the letter, then the spirit of their developer documentation: [1]

> Notarization gives users more confidence that the Developer ID-signed software you distribute has been checked by Apple for malicious components. Notarization is not App Review. The Apple notary service is an automated system that scans your software for malicious content, checks for code-signing issues, and returns the results to you quickly. If there are no issues, the notary service generates a ticket for you to staple to your software; the notary service also publishes that ticket online where Gatekeeper can find it.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/notarizing_m...

I think that'd be ideal.

1. You can submit software anonymously, or with a free account, or with a paid account.

2. Apple can refuse notarization for the usual reasons they do now.

3. Apple can, in the future, revoke notarization and notify you.

3a. If you choose to submit anonymously, notification is impossible.

3b. If you choose to submit with a free developer account, they'll notify you of revocation and why.

3c. If you choose to submit with a paid developer account, they'll allow you to contest the revocation.

> Fortnite is not malware.

Well, it kinda is, isn't it?

> Programs are also considered malware if they secretly act against the interests of the computer user.

Is convincing children that they need to spend money to not be a "default" really in the interest of a computer user? Is taking advantage of gambling addictions with lootboxes really in the interest of a computer user (or society at large)?

I get what you really mean, and I'm probably stretching the definition a bit much; Yet it's worth considering if Fortnight is really a good thing in the first place.

> Yet it's worth considering if Fortnight is really a good thing in the first place.

IMO that's a fine conversation to have, but it is not Apple's place to make that decision for me.

It's worth remembering that this is due to Epic, not Apple. Epic broke the TOS (and then some), with the full knowledge that they would be removed from both major app stores.

Apple and Google are hardly faultless, but Epic is is the one who started this dick-measuring contest.

You're arguing that Fortnite is harmful to children and society due to its invocation of gambling reward techniques.

That's a fine argument to make, but it's nothing to do with what we're discussing here :)

If you wrote a blog post about how Apple and Google should ban gambling reward techniques from their app stores, I'd read it if you posted it to HN!

> but it's nothing to do with what we're discussing here

Well, except we're talking about how these measures are generally reserved for malware. Thence my (pseudo) logic chain.

An application that suddenly changes behavior due to no action taken by the user, triggered remotely by the developer, is getting very close to the "malware" line in my book.

It greatly depends on what that new behaviour is for it to be considered malicious.

Any automatic software is a malware, according to that definition. That's weak.

Seriously. We generally release most of our new features at 10% of the users and then gradually increase the percentage on the server end. If there's any issue we can turn it off immediately rather than potentially waiting days for the app store to approve our fix.

The use of feature flags to show/hide features is arguably against the App Store guidelines [1]:

"2.3.1 Don’t include any hidden or undocumented features in your app; your app’s functionality should be clear to end-users and App Review."

1: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Mac malware, come on. There's no Developer ID or notarization on iOS, it's App Store only.

This is a pretty broad brush. It puts a lot of installable desktop or mobile apps into that bucket due to things like code push. And of course every web app falls in this territory.

What is the definition of sufficient when it comes to protecting non-technical users from harmful code?

In old sci-fi books, there's a couple that describe a future where connecting an old device to the Internet without having first installed updates will result in the device being exploited and/or ruined within a few seconds.

I notice that the Xcode worm was reposted again this morning, which seems like the perfect mechanism for covertly preparing for a worldwide hack of all iOS devices through a backdoor that has been compiled into all software. (You could get a similar effect by introducing malware into CocoaPods, and with similar reach.) All of these protections Apple has with Gatekeeper and Notarization would, to many extents, protect end users against that attack.

As you said, it's definitely a broad brush. The risk is absolutely real, though I imagine we all disagree on how important it is. It's the same problem as the risk of Python/Ruby/Node dependency compromises. Any solution that would work for protecting us against an NPM compromise would also work for protecting us against a macOS software compromise. Apple's solutions have a higher total value of protection, in exchange for a higher total value of bothersome.

Is the NPM model (you can ship any code worldwide, have fun!) safe enough for non-technical users, such that Apple could just drop Gatekeeper and let us all go back to the wild west macOS days? If not, what model is acceptable, given that Apple's model isn't?

A one day 10% off sale is a change in behavior due to no action taken by the user triggered remotely by the developer. Is a sale very close to malware?

Depends.

Does the sale require me to submit payment details to a not-already-trusted platform?

The change remotely triggered by Epic redirects users to a third-party (Epic) payment system, but what if it were, say, a malicious Epic insider? How much user payment info/cash could they grab before they were detected and disabled?

They actually gave 2 options. If you didnt trust the game maker and their discount you could continue paying the premium to Apple directly and continue feeling safe.

It's funny that this choice wasn't "offered" to console users who got the 20% discount even as 30% still went to Sony/Microsoft. The two-tier pricing on iOS was purely a stunt and had nothing to do with Epic's costs.

This behavior is now the norm in my experience, including browser extensions, mobile apps, and websites. I experience breakage through no action of my own, triggered remotely by the developer. While I agree that it's very much like malware, I'm simply pointing out that this is the rule, rather than the exception, with commercial software today.

A feature flag. You're describing feature flags.

This isn't being fought over a data breach or privacy concerns and that's why Epic is smart to fight at this angle.

Apple says "you can't do this", but Epic does the thing and says "I should be allowed to do this. As you can all see, this is what happens when I try to put my foot down on it and here's this target audience of people who are benefited by the thing I'm trying to do". This works for them because they are advocating for a freedom of software choice and to rebel against the massive profit line that has made Apple the target of Spotify's legal hate as well.

The rules they broke prevent Epic from doing a thing that consumers would prefer (lower prices) and has been argued against by other parties (30% cut). It doesn't really matter that they broke the rule if the court of public and legal opinion is that the rule was not good to begin with.

Redirecting user payment info is totally a data/privacy breach.

They gave 2 options the original through apple and then via tem. How is paying them different from when i pay uber or lyft through an app? Apple doesnt get 30% in that case.

Why?

Forcing me to give them to Apple is, if I prefer to give them to Epic and hide them from Apple

Guess which one is the only Apple approved option

> revoked their developer certificate in response, which would have essentially killed all installations of Fortnite iOS/Mac worldwide within 24 hours

Yeah isn't that what people see as a problem?

> Notarization is about protecting users who are not capable of making an informed decision about code safety from developers who refuse to comply with Apple's terms of service.

My family owns a Mac on which we have played Fortnite in the past. We have no desire to be "protected" from Epic Games. I thought to point of notarization was to prevent malware, not to punish companies which Apple doesn't like.

> Notarization is about protecting users who are not capable of making an informed decision about code safety from developers who refuse to comply with Apple's terms of service. Epic willfully violated their terms with Apple to make a point, and Apple is responding in the same way that they did to Facebook: taking away their access to the users, because they cannot be trusted to comply with the restrictions placed on their behavior.

You're conflating two things here: code safety, and what Epic did. At no point did Epic do anything unsafe, nor did they put their users in any danger. They simple violated a business rule Apple enforces.

If Epic chooses not to follow the rules, then Apple chooses not to trust them to deliver executable code to users.

You are arguing that Apple is incorrect to assert that rulebreakers should not have privileges to deploy code to end-user devices worldwide, when the rule is not one that protects users.

Apple's counter-argument would presumably be that this business rule exists specifically to protect users from being harmed by developers, given the prevalence of "free trial" subscription scams over the past X decades of Internet marketing (and before that, TV commercials).

So, I don't buy the argument that Epic did nothing unsafe. It takes seconds to construct multiple scenarios where users have been abused by third-party payment systems, such that Apple would consider them "malicious behaviors that impact the user".

ps. There's a technicality branch here on "malware" != "malicious behaviors", but, like, malicious payment processing is implemented using software, "malware" is "malicious software", so "malware" still applies to the scenario I constructed above — and that flexibility demonstrates why "malware" is a terrible abbreviation for whatever everyone individually thinks it means.

You can make the case that using other payment systems sub-optimal from a security perspective, but malware? Would you also consider Uber, Lyft, and Amazon malware since they accept other payment systems?

The problem is the Apple, who owns the whole platform is deciding here on behalf of users. Taking 30% is like paying taxes to IRS. At the same time look at Apple's marketcap and tax evading practices in Ireland. Why is there still government and police if Apple can protect users themselves and dictate what users can and cannot do on their devices?

Imagine the wild west it would be if every app could redirect payment info to what ever their sketchy payment processor was.

I shudder at the thought.

I very much categorize Epic's actions in the "unsafe" basket.

How would that be any different than general Internet e-commerce, where there is no landlord forcing everyone to use its services? It wouldn't, and nothing disastrous would happen.

It would be the same as browser based e-commerce: stolen credit card information, fraud transactions, leaks of credit card information due to non existing security

This is exactly what apple tried to prevent (snd is earning a shit ton money with it): manual credit card entry because except the big ones almost no one would be safe

The constant leaks of celebrity private documents (including videos and pictures) happen because Apple servers are too secure?

For sure, I'm shuddering right now just thinking about all the software packages I've had installed on my linux box the past decade that have (or could have had) donation buttons that send me to their sketchy payment processors. Can't believe I trusted them!

Yeahh

Imagine that

Imagine a world where people buy things on a website let's name it Amazon

Or pay for online auctions using something very sketchy, something like a PayPal

Imagine paying online for cabs, food delivery, books or to rent a movie or a BnB on the other side of the World, to buy a flight, theater, museum ticket

What a wild wild west it would be, we will be fighting each other like crazy if it wasn't for Apple that saved us all from ourselves...

Agreed. This is a calm and well reasoned post. Epic knew what they were doing, knew what they were risking, and did it anyone. Now there's nothing to do but wait for the courts to figure it out while Epic cries crocodile tears over their perceived grievances with Apple (and Google lets not forget).

> Epic expressly snuck code through the door to activate a user-visible feature in direct prohibition to App Store rules.

I don't think "snuck" is accurate. They did intentionally do it, but it was likely pretty obvious to the app reviewer. This was necessary, because you can't sue a company because they'll harm you for something you'd like to do, but haven't done yet. You have to do the thing, get harmed, and then sue.

> Apple could have revoked their developer certificate in response, which would have essentially killed all installations of Fortnite iOS/Mac worldwide within 24 hours. That they are merely revoking their ability to sign new code and giving them 2 weeks to perform an orderly shutdown is far less draconian than they're capable of being here.

Don't pretend they're doing this to be nice to Epic; they know that if they cut off all existing Fortnite users, they'd get a huge amount of customer complaints and bad press. At least here they can appear like they're being reasonable and only hurting the company that violated their policies.

In two weeks, when the developer access goes away, so will all in-app purchase. I'm not sure whether Restore Purchases will work or not at that point. I don't think they're trying to avoid complaints, or they wouldn't have taken this step at all.

> so will all in-app purchase.

Well, presumably only in-app purchases made with apples payment system.

> Most (if not all) of the restrictions on the App Store exist to protect users from app developers who prioritize their own greed over the rights of privacy and safety that Apple promises the users of the App Store.

If Apple was about user protection then one would expect there to be a way for users to opt out of their safety sandbox if it didn't fit users needs.

Their OS and store restrictions are about monetising the ecosystem as much as anything else, calling developers who try to circumvent the apple tax greedy while pretending Apple is doing this purely for user experience is some cognitive dissonance.

Rather than building a platform that empowers developers to build the apps that best serve the varied needs and preferences of individuals, Apple have constructed a corporate walled garden in which they impose a drab lowest-common-denominator conformity on all developers and users.

It takes a real sucker to fall for the “its for your own safety” propaganda while they arbitrarily tax you 30% on the fields you tilled like some medieval feudal lord.

Nah, the relevant part of the lawsuit is that Apple is revoking not only the Fortnite developer account (which could be considered fair) but that they threaten to revoke the developer accounts of everyone working on the Unreal Engine, too.

I used to do consulting work as part of which I submitted Mac compatibility patches into the Unreal Engine source code repository. As is, it is not clear to me if I'll be hit by the Apple ban-hammer, too, or if they will limit it to "only" the 4000+ people directly employed by Epic.

Who was harmed by Epic change? Only the monopolist! I can see Apple getting cut down yo size by a 1982 AT&T-style antitrust consent decree within 6 months! Goodbye walled Golden.

Are Apple fanboys this dumb?

This is why I want Epic to lose.

This type of people need protection.

> Epic expressly snuck code through the door to activate a user-visible feature in direct prohibition to App Store rules

That's not even the case here.

Epic built an app using webviews and the web part of the view is loaded from a remote server controlled by Epic.

Which is the most common way to build multiplatform apps nowadays.

Epic simply updated the web part on the remote server.

Which also proves Apple can't even provide the basic safety they are promoting to push notarization.

Unless they ban webviews completely, we will never know how many apps are already doing it exploiting the less tech savy users, but still bringing profit to Apple.

According to Apple:

"Upon further review of the activity associated with your Apple Developer Program membership, we have identified several violations of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement"

So it doesn't sound like it was just for this Fortnite issue.

That's what they want you to think. Which is why they say it. Sounds better than "Tim made the order to retaliate, sayonara"

Given that there are lawsuits in place pretty sure they aren't going to lie about it.

Question is how serious the multiple infractions are.

It's possible for one action to violate the terms in multiple ways. They probably mean the following two:

1) not giving Apple their 30%

2) publishing code without prior approval by Apple

I don't think you understand how the App Store works.

You simply can't pay Apple the 30% cut nor can you publish apps without Apple approving it. So it's impossible for a company to violate either of those.

Not sure why you think it is impossible when Epic literally did it. They hid the payment infrastructure in the version of the app that went through review, therefore it wasn't rejected during review. Then after it was approved, they enabled it it via a server side mechanism.

Lawyers don't do anything so gauche as lying.

They might "creatively interpret the facts and make novel legal arguments in a way that paints their client's position in the best possible light", though.

> Given that there are lawsuits in place pretty sure they aren't going to lie about it

They probably won’t lie in court or in depositions, but the same assumptions shouldn’t be made about all statements.

Doesn't that just make it worse for Apple for having arbitrary rules with nebulous requirements that they sometimes tolerate or at other times enforce?

> withdrawing permission to notarise their apps for Mac

Where do you see this specifically, or are we just inferring it from that fact that Epic will lose access to the developer portal?

> What took me aback was the withdrawing permission to notarise their apps for Mac. That was only meant to be a check for known vulnerabilities/malicious software.

When I brought up that Notarization was going to be used to gatekeep (literally with Gatekeeper[1]) access to the macOS platform, I was assured it would only be used for security and never for evil.

Apple only made Notarization mandatory this February, too, so that didn't take long at all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatekeeper_(macOS)

AFAIK it is still possible to run entirely unsigned apps on macOS.

Sure, but for how long.

I expect development, offline, (and thus execution of novel/unsigned binaries) to remain possible on ARM Macs, so for at least the foreseeable future.

People have been claiming the iOS-style trusted/treacherous computing cancer will hit macOS “any day now” for most of a decade at this point, and it’s still not even on the horizon.

They just have to make it so dev builds are self signed but allow installing that certificate on a machine. Complicated enough to keep out normal users while still allowing developers to do their jobs.

This would be horrific of course, but I could totally see them doing this.

That is actually a very good solution.

> and it’s still not even on the horizon.

What? It's basically all there. Apple just needs to remove the last workaround of popping up the preference pane and clicking allow for untrusted apps. I'm sure there's a flag for this somewhere.

This is what I expected out of the notarization. It was DRM the whole time.

>> , but now a mechanism supposedly for security has been repurposed as punishment.

And you thought it wouldn't be used as punishment... I wonder, why people are so naive? I'm pretty sure that any kind of software that is not deemed good for the guardian's business(i.e. Apple in this case) will be blocked/suspended. DMCA related suspensions are the first that come into my mind.

This seems way beyond the "hyper-competitive" excuse (that I didn't buy in the first place). Claiming control of the store is one thing, but they have locked Epic out of the platform entirely. This is shameless anticompetitive behavior.

Can you confirm that it is no longer possible to install or run unsigned binaries on macOS, even if you enable it in System Preferences?

Or has that setting been removed?

It is possible, but it is becoming progressively more difficult.

While Epic can be accused of starting this intentionally to prove a point, this just goes into the territory of chilling effect now. I have always been wary of their power over iPhone/iOS ecosystem, but if they are going to use a mistake and their power there into a largely different ecosystem MacOS, that is beyond scary. Consider that the same company has many other ecosystems like TV, speakers too.

Apple is too scary at this point for big developers like Epic who are well diversified on other platforms. Imagine the fate of small/upcoming developers who might start with Apple's products itself.

Apple needs to be really reined in either by regulation or customers, latter being way harder because it is harder to convince people of long term detrimental effects. I stopped using iPhone long time back, but now I will make a conscious effort to not even live in the MacOS ecosystem.

If a business partner is acting in bad faith (violating terms) I think it’s fair for the impact to spread across the organization.

We can debate about the validity of Apple's concerns on iOS, but since Epic violated terms of iOS, for now Apple is within its right to take action there.

If they had stopped with just suspending their iOS publishing powers, it could have been understandable. Taking action on all platforms just seems like abuse, it is not like Epic was doing something like distributing malware, they broke the payment terms of iOS.

I don't know what the right word for it is, but calling them Apple's business partner is like calling a statutory rape victim a sexual partner.

This just shows that no matter how comfortable your walled garden may be it's all too easy for it to become a gilded cage.

I've been warning my friends for years that giving Apple this much control was risky but without concrete examples like this those warnings were too easy to ignore.

I am sorry, but I am puzzled of the naiveté of people thinking code signing like this is for extended security and not market lock in. Sure, instead of just checking the integrity of an archive/package/executable, you can also add info to identify the developer and source. But it just isn't worth it on the current software market.

Create a public key register if security +++) is that important to you and you get the same features but don't try to tell me a developer certificate from FAANG isn't for business purposes.

+++) completely neglecting the fact that malware was even introduced in signed software...

From a preliminary statement of Epic's motion:

> Just over two weeks ago, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook was asked during a Congressional hearing whether Apple has “ever retaliated against or disadvantaged a developer who went public about their frustrations with the App Store”. Mr. Cook testified, “We do not retaliate or bully people. It’s strongly against our company culture.”

Some might see a difference between "a developer who went public about their frustrations with the App Store" and a developer who deliberately violated the policies and then filed a lawsuit and started an extensive PR campaign.

> a developer who deliberately violated the policies

Are you talking about Netflix?

I'm unaware of any current legal action Netflix is taking against Apple.

That's not what the parent said.

I listed three conditions: "[1] violated the policies and then [2] filed a lawsuit and [3] started an extensive PR campaign"

Netflix arguably did the first, but I don't recall them doing either of the other two things.

Because they were not kicked from the app store for doing so.

Come on, I don't think anyone is pretending that this wasn't a deliberate provocation by Epic

I guess so, but so what? Deliberately provoking a potentially illegal act to litigate it is fair game. It doesn't legitimize the move by Apple, nor does it invalidate Epic's claim. If they want to play high-stakes poker, they better have good attorneys, but that's life in the American judicial system.

But... it does describe the difference between Netflix, which is what the thread is about?

Suffering a harm is how one gets standing to sue.

Suffering harm is how one sues and wins, yes. Anyone can sue for anything and quickly lose, but to have any hope of winning, you must be harmed.

It was an invitation for Apple to screw up. They could have just banned the app. Instead they went full nuclear. Apple stepped in the trap.

A PR campaign geared towards kids... which is quite embarrassing

All that really will matter is how the government and courts see it. Those words will be used in court.

Epic needed to demonstrate that they and consumers were harmed in order to have standing to sue. If Apple's policies are illegal then Epic is not bound to follow them and retaliation is unjustified. It won't be known until it's decided in court. That's why Epic's motion should be granted to prevent retaliation until the court decides.

Yes, this exactly. I hope everyone reads this.

How would Apple's policies be illegal? Epic entered a contractual agreement with Apple and then knowingly and intentionally broke it in order to benefit themselves.

I'm not a lawyer, but presumably because there's US antitrust law, under which the courts may find Apple's contractual impositions to be illegal. They may also find they are legal, but if the court has any doubt they should grant Epic's request to stop retaliation.

I doubt this is antitrust. There's a zillion other places to sell a game (as Epic has shown). If you want to claim the entire market in question to be Apple products, I doubt that will get very far. Everything is a monopoly when you make your market hyper specific.

Well that’s Epic’s argument, so it’s the question that the courts will resolve in this case.

This isn't some hyper specific market. Mobile games are a $76 billion industry (and rising) with the overwhelming majority of users only having access through either the Google play store or Apple store.

$76B is world market. US law doesn't apply to a significant part of that.

Neither Apple nor Google is a monopoly in mobile games. By revenue Apple has about 60%. Check [1], search threshold to see what cases often require.

Taken together they would be, but then you cannot prosecute Apple and win without showing collusion between them and prosecute them both for collusion.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-...

Epic is specifically arguing that Apple's policies violate the Sherman Act, the California Cartwright Act, and the Unfair Competition Law of California. For more information, refer to the complaint: https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/apple-complaint-734589783.pdf

You realize that contracts don't override the law, right?

If we sign an agreement where in exchange for my services you have to give me your first daughter, you can break the contract and refuse to pay, even if you signed it, because it's illegal.

In legal terms, a contract is an enforceable agreement; by definition if it is illegal or void or unenforceable, it is not a contract. Breach is a thing you do to a contract. Therefore you can't breach an illegal contract - you never had a contract.

Epic's motion is to allow them to continue to deliberately flout the rules of the App Store, which opens up a lot of other issues.

Apple has signaled that Epic is welcome to submit a version of their app which does not violate their rules, and they will approve that. They're walking a fine line, but I think their legal argument is sound on that score.

We can agree or disagree about the overall right or wrong of Apple's rules, that's separate from the issue of Epic's motion, which is absolute nonsense.

Your sentence for today to write 100 times, Bart Simpson style, is: "I shall never use my monopoly power to restrict access to justice for my clients".

Its a little surprising how effective that PR campaign has been so far.

Some might also see that to breakthrough a totalitarian platform good coordination of efforts (lawsuits, PR, etc) are needed.

Some might. But Tim Cook seems not to, because his answer, "We do not retaliate or bully people", was unequivocal.

It’s still retaliation. No way around that.

Some would consider this enforcement, which is not the same as retaliation.

How so ? They are pulling access to all platforms including desktop, also unreal is sdk/library used by ton of third parties , all of them are impacted too

It's equal enforcement among all developers. Every other time that a developer has intentionally broken app store guidelines Apple has terminated their entire Developer account.

epic size orgs would not just use one account. It includes preview access and to clot products .

In my experience , I usually sign different agreements with different products for such diverse access . Sometimes it is with different legal entities .

I don’t know if Apple does an MSA which is the kind of document which covers the general engagement , so unless such a MSA exists and allows for this kind of termination , I am pretty sure this cannot be done for violating guidelines of single agreement to cancel other contracts in place.

Apple probably has clauses to unilaterally terminate agreements and is invoking that, but that is not remotely the same as closing down a account for violating guidelines

Well mafia could say the same thing

But if you use a gun like Apple did...

The acceptable punishment part is when Apple closes the Fortnite developer account.

The unacceptable retaliation is that Apple threatens to close the developer accounts of everyone working on the Unreal Engine, which is used in millions of projects in addition to Fortnite.

What Apple is doing here is akin to mafia punching your sister to get you to pay up.

Why closing Fortnite developer account is acceptable? If they have one app that was banned for 'violating guidelines', and another one that doesn't violate anything, why should the second app be removed, too? Because the unruly developer must be punished?

This is their standard TOS.

https://twitter.com/slasher/status/1295434558112960519?s=21

This may have consequences for Unreal Engine too.

Without a dev account, how can they maintain it?

They can still build and test on-device, they just won't be able to publish anything to the app store.

Specifically, in XCode, they can add an Apple ID (any Apple ID) and use that to build on a device.[1] This creates a "personal team"[2] which you can use to test on your devices.

[1] https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/devaf282080a [2] https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/dev17411c009

Or, alternatively, use a jailbroken device for testing and modify the SDK to not require code signing when building for ARM.

I’m fairly sure the SDK is only meant to be used by approved developers.

Why then all those monopoly-discussions? Cannot any program be 'side-loaded' by creating a personal team?

Or the other way round: What good would be a personal team for epic if they cannot test their games on actual phones?

If personal teams allow side-loading of apps, why isn't this a way to distribute apps? Why is there no app store for personal team apps?

> Why is there no app store for personal team apps?

Honestly, for most people the App Store is good enough. For a long, long time, it wasn't good enough, and Apple was much stricter. As it got better, Apple started loosening the restrictions around deploying whatever you want to your device. People didn't really notice, and that's because the App Store was good enough. I suspect this was the game plan all along.

You need to re-sign it frequently because the certificate is only short-lived, and I think there are difficulties in signing existing binaries that make it mostly only useful for things you can distribute the source for.

It's not really an alternative to an app store. There are also enterprise signing certificates for distributing custom apps within large companies without these restrictions, along with cases in the past where people have abused this to distribute; these are usually shut down pretty quickly as a blatant violation of the licencing agreement.

How can they shut down distribution? If a personal team can install any sourcecode, how could apple block the distribution? Even if they scan for a binary hash, all it takes are some minor modifications to have a different program to install.

Oh, no there are a few of things here, and I think I got slightly confused. There is local signing, which I believe is short term - e.g. your own machine and device, which doesn't require paying anything to apple for a developer membership. This is for on-device testing.

There's also Ad-hoc signing, which I believe is longer-lived, requires a developer account, but has restrictions on how many people you can send it to.

As an enterprise user you can also distribute apps yourself to company employees without going via app store verification, though I think it's much harder to get onto this program https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/ . This is what has occasionally been abused, I don't know how the certificate is revoked centrally though, but it's not for [user] self-compiled code.

It's possible that my knowledge of this is slightly off, because it was a few years since I worked with this stuff.

They can’t shut down distribution of source code, but:

- your typical user wouldn’t know what to do with it

- every install would run only for a limited time (only apps distributed through the App Store have a certificate that doesn’t expire), so those users would have to reinstall the app every week or so.

- it would make it harder for them to make money from it (they would give away the game for free. The in-game store wouldn’t give away stuff, but the source likely would soon be changed to support alternative stores)

>but the source likely would soon be changed to support alternative stores

Which is only fair for those who circumvent the original store.

Re-signing iOS binaries is tedious, but ultimately scriptable (including creating certificates, provisioning profiles, etc.). Android’s sideloading is significantly easier, and it still hasn’t led to anyone competing with their App Store.

Amazon at one point made a strong attempt to compete, and I actually bought a few apps from there. Also, on Android Epic made their own app store you had to sideload to download Fortnite.

>still hasn’t led to anyone competing with their App Store.

F-Droid.org?

Other people have pointed out that the certificates don't last as long and you need to constantly re-sign your apps. This can be worked around, for sure, but it does mean that if you're out of the house when the cert expires, you cannot use that app until you get home.

It also requires a Mac; Windows or Linux owners of iPhones are out of luck.

Lastly, you lose access to a lot of features; push notifications, IAP, automatic updates, iCloud, etc.

Basically, if Epic wanted to do this, they'd have to let everyone download the code and assets for Fortnite (likely hundreds of GB), then users would have to build it on their devices (which probably would take hours), then install it on their devices, then they would have to pay via Epic and not through iTunes. Whenever they wanted to update Fortnite they'd have to update the source tree and assets and rebuild the app again.

And again, all of this would have to be on a Mac. I know a lot of people who own Macs which don't even have enough disk space to build something like Fortnite, even if they used it for literally nothing else.

TL;DR Epic would have to open-source Fortnite and users would have to jump through irritating and potentially impossible hoops basically every day.

That would work technically, but legally would a company that has been banned from the developer program have their developers use "Personal Teams" also be against the Terms of Service?

You can’t use Apple’s developer tools, period.

You absolutely can use Apple's developer tools without a developer account, and you absolutely can build and run code on a device without a developer account. I'm not sure why Epic claimed otherwise (other than that losing their developer account makes it far more inconvenient), but it's really just fearmongering to try to get the public on their side.

The tools have EULA on them, though.

Apple told Epic they will lose access to "all Apple developer tools" https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/12954667012204666...

Just because you're physically able to download, install, and run something doesn't mean you have the legal right to use it. The developer tools come with a license agreement in which Apple legally grants you the rights to use the tools, and those rights can be revoked.

Are there Apple Arcade games that use the Unreal Engine? Is Apple shooting itself in the leg to punish Epic?

Many of the biggest Apple games use Unreal Engine, including many that Apple features in the Arcade.

Slasher isn't and never will be a trusted source.

This isn't retaliation though for Epic going on Twitter and being angry about the App Store practices, or the situation like Hey where the was a lot of press and negativity.

Epic breached the terms of the agreement for their app, so their app was removed from the App Store. Other than needing to fix their app to no longer be in violation of the guidelines, they could have cured that breach of the contract.

Instead Epic decided to sue Apple in court.

According to the Apple Developer Program License that you agree to (section 11.2 specifically) states:

> This Agreement and all rights and licenses granted by Apple hereunder and any services provided hereunder will terminate, effective immediately upon notice from Apple: > (a) if You or any of Your Authorized Developers fail to comply with any term of this Agreement other than those set forth below in this Section 11.2 and fail to cure such breach within 30 days after becoming aware of or receiving notice of such breach;

and section (f):

> (f) if You engage, or encourage others to engage, in any misleading, fraudulent, improper, unlawful or dishonest act relating to this Agreement, including, but not limited to, misrepresenting the nature of Your submitted Application (e.g., hiding or trying to hide functionality from Apple’s review, falsifying consumer reviews for Your Application, engaging in payment fraud, etc.).

This is not retaliation, this is simply following the license agreement that Epic agreed to.

A one-sided agreement containing a retaliation clause, followed by exercising that clause, is retaliation.

Say you're desperate and need water in a crisis, and I offer you some, but only if you sign an agreement which gives you water, but says I can punch you in the face whenever you say something I don't like. Say you say something I don't like, and I punch you in the face. Did I just retaliate? Or did the contract make it not retaliation?

Apple is clearly retaliating, and I think it's gonna cost Apple way more than it realizes. Removing Epic games is one thing. This is a whole different can of worms.

I'd imagine there's a spectrum of "retaliation clauses" that includes acceptable things and unacceptable things, and that whatever is happening in the App Store is pretty different than withholding water from someone who would die without it.

Epic may be smaller than Apple, but they are by no means a "little guy".

This isn’t the sort of lawsuit a “little guy” can win.

The idea that "it was in the contract that Epic agreed to" is ridiculous. It wasn't a contract that Epic could've disagreed to.

This is the same for end users, but we don't have the power to start a lawsuit against Apple.

It's a "standard form contract", aka "contract of adhesion".

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

> we don't have the power to start a lawsuit against Apple.

Of course you do. You can go to small claims court for a claim of up to ~$5000. Or you can file a class action lawsuit.

> You can go to small claims court for a claim of up to ~$5000.

Until there is forced arbitration. You're not really going to say I as an individual have any power in the legal system against Apple, right? This is just a bonkers statement.

In US, maybe. Forced arbitration is just not a thing elsewhere - you can take Apple to a small claims court in UK and they can't really do much about it other than actually respond.

The legal term you are looking for is "contract of adhesion": https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adhesion_contract_%28contrac...

However, a lot of the text around those contracts you'll find centers around a powerful entity like Apple adhering the contract to a nearly-powerless entity, like an individual consumer. I'm not up enough on the details of what case law has been created to know what happen to a contract of adhesion legally when the signer (Epic in this case) is not powerless themselves. Since Epic is at least nominally capable of negotiating their own contract with Apple on roughly equal terms, the contract may be treated more like a normal contract.

My uninformed, personal guess is that Epic isn't conceptualizing this as a legal fight; I bet they think of this as a PR fight where the lawsuit is part of their PR narrative trying to get Apple to back down on their take. As a pure legal fight this doesn't strike me as a strong hand, but as a part of a larger PR fight... who knows. They may be trying to create a position to negotiate a settlement from.

(If this is correct, and I were Epic, I'd be looking to partner with other very large and peeved developers, and create a de facto app producer strike... but maybe they think they have enough market clout to go it alone.)

>(If this is correct, and I were Epic, I'd be looking to partner with other very large and peeved developers, and create a de facto app producer strike... but maybe they think they have enough market clout to go it alone.)

This would actually be a violation of the antitrust laws. And it'd be a straightforward Section 1 Sherman Act cartel case.

I hope Epic doesn’t have a strategy that hinges on a PR win forcing apple to back down, because (A) as this thread is showing there are still a lot of people on apple’s side and (B) apple is usually quite vengeful in these things and will not back down here until compelled by court or law.

Just look at what happened to nvidia, for far minor offenses. They were blacklisted from apple’s platforms very thoroughly, and people still mostly side with apple on that one.

Erm, people blame Nvidia because that one was Nvidia's fault?

Neither Apple nor the PCB manufacturers specified the failing solder balls that Nvidia used. Nvidia made and packaged those chips.

And then Nvidia failed to take responsibility when they failed because it was going to be so expensive.

> (A) as this thread is showing there are still a lot of people on apple’s side

HN is unlikely to be an unbiased sample of the general population, along many axes.

> My uninformed, personal guess is that Epic isn't conceptualizing this as a legal fight; I bet they think of this as a PR fight where the lawsuit is part of their PR narrative trying to get Apple to back down on their take. As a pure legal fight this doesn't strike me as a strong hand, but as a part of a larger PR fight... who knows. They may be trying to create a position to negotiate a settlement from.

IDK. The jaded part of me asks whether Tencent pulled some strings here; a US company with Mindshare (Epic) is a better looking actor than the swaths of shovelware publishers that would stand to benefit from the long-term effects of a victory here.

This. Some people seem to be on the "Apple deserves a cut of 30% because they run the app store and 30% is reasonable etc." but what if tomorrow Apple just said: "OK we've bumped up the 30% to 90%".

The exact same set of arguments would follow. The users already own the phones so for the "market to adjust" to such changes would take years.

Apple said "Here are the terms, you can use our services if you agree to them, and if you break them we'll close your account."

Epic said "Okay, we agree.", then broke the terms they agreed to, so Apple is closing their account.

This seems like pretty straightforward break of the terms of use to me.

The reasonable way Epic could have proceeded is to have submitted an update with the "third party store" stuff added, gotten it rejected, and then rolled it back while suing Apple.

Instead, Epic pulled a publicity stunt by sneaking it in, specifically so that Apple and Google would remove their app, and then suing, in an attempt to make themselves look like the good guy (which, depending on your perspective, might be true).

It doesn't feel any more mature than goading someone into throwing a punch at you so you can claim to be "defending yourself" when really you were just being a douche and you got what you asked for.

What are the damages in your hypothetical?

Because Epic knows the damages in this real situation and everyone agrees what they are.

> It doesn't feel any more mature than goading someone into throwing a punch at you so you can claim to be "defending yourself" when really you were just being a douche and you got what you asked for.

Still, illegal, and that's the question being litigated here.

You can stick anything you want in an EULA but it's not automatically enforceable. If Apple started adding a stipulation that your first-born would be a slave to Tim making iPhones for life, that wouldn't be enforceable. In general you can't sue until there's damages -- so you couldn't sue just for that term existing in the EULA. You wait for your first-born to enter slavery, then sue.

> Instead, Epic pulled a publicity stunt by sneaking it in, specifically so that Apple and Google would remove their app

I definitely remember cases from the early years of the App Store where people would deliberately sneak e.g. tethering apps into the App Store in the guise of a game, and usually came to public attention when their account was banned.

There's a reason contracts of adhesion are very often not binding. I'm not saying that's the case here (as B2B it will be more likely that the oppressive terms in the terms of use could be upheld) but it's worth considering when saying Epic agreed to the contract.

Like it or not IOS has 2/3rds of revenue in the mobile apps market and how many businesses can afford to leave 46%(0.7*0.66), of their revenue on the table?

It's pretty obvious that epic has goaded apple into punching them. But there's plenty of people who feel it's the equivalent of apple saying you have to give me your lunch money every 3 days or I'll beat you and epic making sure the teacher is watching when they maliciously don't hand over their lunch money (I'll add I'm not arguing that the schools football team wouldn't have much fewer wins without apple, to stretch the metaphor to breaking).

>This seems like pretty straightforward break of the terms of use to me.

And closing the account is retaliation.

I think people are giving different meanings to words, with moral judgment tied to some of these meanings, and these meanings are causing confusion.

Let's take the word discriminate. Is it wrong if I discriminate when hiring someone? Many will say yes, but because they are thinking of specific forms of discrimination such as based on race or gender. But if I choose to not hire someone because of a lack of programming skill, that is still discrimination, but isn't wrong.

So back on topic. The action of closing the account is retaliation. So the question becomes is it wrong, but to answer that clearly depends upon if Apple's terms are right to begin with and if it is possible to offer someone terms that are wrong to uphold.

>And closing the account is retaliation.

What good is a terms of use if that use cannot be rescinded upon breaching the terms?

Implicit in your question is that the terms are valid. Epic will make the case that they’re not.

And if they succeed, then the terms will be worth nothing, and Apple would have to explain why they go around signing illegal agreements that for example allow them to punch people in the face.

If Epic fails, then yeah, the legal terms say for example that the punishment for what Epic did is a punch in the face, and Apple is just enforcing that legally.

>Implicit in your question is that the terms are valid. Epic will make the case that they’re not.

What law would you claim disallows limiting payment systems?

Clearly not retailation. It may be an unconscionable contract, but it's not retaliation.

So any action what-so-ever in response to an action you claim is called retaliation? Fine, call it whatever you want, it is reality. Epic clearly picked this fight, let's see how it goes for them.

This argument seems to hinge on the assumption that two parties are experiencing similar "levels of desperation": a person dying of thirst, and the developers of a video game which is available on half a dozen platforms and is probably the most financially successful video game of all time.

Could it have been "probably the most financially successful video game of all time" if it hadn't agreed to the terms of the various consoles and phone stores?

I'm not sure why that's relevant. Am I only not dying of thirst because I agreed to the terms offered by the local water company? I think it's not contradictory to believe two things simultaneously: that people should not be held to the terms of a contract they signed when they were dying of thirst, and that it's okay that I needed to agree to certain terms with the water company in order to have running water in my home.

> Am I only not dying of thirst because I agreed to the terms offered by the local water company?

It is if they have a monopoly on water.

Imagine their terms were manifestly unreasonable. If you want water service you'll have to pay $50,000/year. What would you do? If the answer is that it's reasonable to dig a well or something like that, they haven't got a monopoly. If the answer is to pay the $50,000/year because the only alternative is to die of thirst, there you are.

Right, and as discussed in this thread and others, Apple does not have a smartphone monopoly under any remotely reasonable definition of the term.

We're not talking about the smartphone market, we're talking about the app store market.

If there actually was competition between app stores then you could put your app on Google Play and people with iPhones could get it there. People with PlayStations could get it there. They would be the same market so that you could use one app store instead of another to reach the same customers, rather than needing to be in all of them in order for your product to be available to all of your customers.

It's like the water company having a local water monopoly, you're not allowed to dig a well, and your proposed solution is to move out of their service area. Which is not only unreasonable, it doesn't even work if you're the water source because your business is to provide water to customers in every service area.

Which is why in real life, water utilities are considered monopolies and are regulated as such so that they can't impose unreasonable terms on providing water service.

It is really bizarre to think that language in a contract that says "if you break the agreement, the rest of the agreement terminates" is one-sided or retaliation when it's included in basically every contract ever written.

>Instead Epic decided to sue Apple in court.

This gives the impression that suing them is what led to Apple terminating their relationship, but that isn't the case. Epic could have sued Apple without the theatrics and they'd have been fine. They didn't even need to violate the terms of the developer agreement to bring their antitrust lawsuit, which is largely about the developer agreement.

I imagine what Epic did helps them out in the legal proceedings considering how the antitrust laws in the US are based on consumer benefit.

Epic introduces a new payment system and passes on the savings to the consumer. Thanks to payment system competition, consumers can save 20% when buying the same items. Apple sees this and completely removes Epic's game to protect its own interests.

It's not hard to see how Apple's behaviour is harming consumers.

> Epic could have sued Apple without the theatrics and they'd have been fine.

Without the "theatrics" epic would not have had standing to sue and the case would have been dismissed.

Is this true? Can't you claim standing based on something you would do except for an illegal contract or illegal law?

I don't have a good quick cite for you on contract law, but here's an example for criminal law

https://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2015/05/07/judge-...

As a party to the developer agreement with Apple they clearly have standing to sue. And since one of the counts in their complaint is that they're being denied use of an "essential facility", they wouldn't even need to have a contractual relationship to have standing to sue.

I would understand Epic being banned from the iOS App Store, but why is their dev account being suspended for macOS development too?

I'm not sure I see what you've quoted actually matches Epic's behaviour. They've certainly breached the agreement and failed to cure it, but it hasn't been 30 days. I don't think they've hidden functionality, the way their game engine works and lets games update without new review isn't secret. They haven't falsified reviews or committed payment fraud. The wording there is obviously super vague, you could argue what they did is "improper" in the same way you could argue literally anything is improper.

Can you be a bit more concrete? What exactly of what you quoted in section (f) do you think applies to Epic?

And actually on your first part, they broke the rules and their app is off the store. Is Apple’s usual policy that if you do that and you choose not to put the app back up in a compliant form within 30 days then you get permanently banned from developing for all their platforms?

Just because two parties agree to a few things, it doesn't necessarily mean those things are enforceable or even legal.

If that were the case, the entire field of contract law wouldn't exist.

The contract is almost entirely besides the point.

Either Apple is violating the law, any contract terms related to this violation are void as a result, and Apple is illegally retaliating.

Or Apple is not violating the law, and they are generally free to do as they please.

I say "almost" for the same reason I say "generally". It might be the case that if Apple is not violating the law and they wrote the contract badly then they aren't free to do what they want. But no one is arguing that because it's highly unlikely to be the case.

Not all agreements are enforceable. For example, non-compete agreements are not enforceable in California. There's nothing honorable about Apple, it's just like every other company [1].

Apple uses being a secure device manufacturer for marketing to geeks in US, with a completely different stance in Chine [2]. Do people in China have access to VPN apps in Apple's app store? "Today, Epic Games ... violating the App Store guidelines that are applied equally to every developer and designed to keep the store safe for our users." Safety first, unless you're a citizen of authoritarian regime where Apple's profits justify to look elsewhere.

[1] https://venturebeat.com/2014/05/23/4-tech-companies-are-payi...

[2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/china-has-apple-by-the-iphones...

Epic isn't suing because Fortnite was removed from the App Store...

Epic should have done this a week or two before the hearing.

Missed opportunity for sure, the video was probably taking longer than expected.

Do you mean to imply Tim Cook lied in that statement?

That doesn't work, though. Epic clearly, purposely, and egregiously violated Apple's TOS. It seems like that is the reason Apple's terminating their accounts, not in retaliation for "going public".

(BTW, I think Apple needs to let companies control their own payment systems outside the App Store.)

Epic needed to demonstrate that they and consumers were harmed in order to have standing to sue. It's not illegal to "violate" a TOS that is itself illegal. The legality of what Epic did is yet to be decided in court.

I'm not at all on Apple's side in the App Store battle, but on this point, Apple is still consistent. Anyone breaking the App Store rules this blatantly would have their developer account terminated, wether they went public or not.

It's not consistent at all. App Store rules are basically whatever Apple deems it to be. Why do you think Amazon, Netflix, et al can get away with some "violations" while small developers cannot?

Epic added the violating payment system to the app in an update internal to the app (not through app store review). Doing an end-run around review is what gets you terminated.

Amazon, Netflix etc submitted their payment systems to app review and got those updates rejected, which Apple is fine with.

OK, but does that have something to do with my comment or the comment I replied to?

This clearly and unambiguously crosses the line into abuse of market power. Apple's actions before? Maybe? Sort of? Apple needed that 30 percent cut to monitor for fraud and quality or something, going above-and-beyond other payment processors.

This? This has absolutely no basis in anything. It's simple retaliation designed to kneecap Epic from Apple's dominant control of a market. Apple can refuse to let Epic release games, without stopping Epic's Apple development dead in its tracks. That accomplishes all reasonable business purposes.

This clearly and unambiguously crosses the line into abuse of market power.

Epic is taking them to court. What did they expect, a nice thank you and a pat on the head.

You don't get to use retaliatory behavior to discourage lawsuits, in this form, especially as a service provider.

If they wanted to sue Epic back over frivolous patent violations, they're allowed, but if you're going to engage in retaliatory behavior you can't do it in a way that violates your own ToS.

It's not retaliation although that's how Epic are trying to portray it. It's a straightforward breach of contract on Epic's part and Apple are invoking the termination clause.

Apple has terms and conditions for developer accounts, which, if broken, result in account termination.

Epic agreed to, and then broke, those terms and conditions. This results in account termination.

I'm not sure how this is retaliatory behavior. If I had an app and snuck violations into my app to get past review, then had my app removed, then instantly released a PR campaign and filed a lawsuit, I think it would be pretty clear to most people that:

1. I broke the rules and having my account terminated is the obvious result.

2. I didn't break the rules accidentally, but instead broke them very deliberately.

3. I am not interested in discussing this through normal channels, and instead broke the rules to get my app removed as a PR power play so that I would look like the good guy.

That's what happened here. Epic sneaking the IAP workaround into their app shows they broke the rules; Epic filing a lawsuit and launching a PR campaign instantaneously shows that they broke the rules deliberately, knowing the consequences, and are not interested in following the App Store T&C. Doing anything other than closing their developer accounts would be preferential treatment that other developers are unlikely to get in the same situation.

Whether you agree with the rules or not (Epic obviously doesn't), according to the terms and conditions Apple is doing the correct and obvious thing.

Terms and conditions can say whatever they want, but illegal terms in a contract are not binding. The problem is that this type of dispute usually takes years to litigate, so I have to think there is much more to this strategy.

Companies shouldn't be allowed to fire customers that blatantly break rules the customer agreed to?

Of course they should. But, market dominance means agreement to such terms are not 'fair'.

Yes, total market dominance with 10% market share.

In the US?

60% market share by revenue in 2019.

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/

Isn't that just because Apple's customers are more willing to spend money on apps than other customers?

Willing is not the right word. They generally have a greater means to do so.

Of course. My point is that this doesn't seem to be related to any anticompetitive behavior on Apple's part. If Apple was using market power to force smartphone competitors out of the market to increase Apple's own market share, that would be one thing. But to accuse Apple of anticompetitive behavior because their small smartphone market share spends more money on apps than other smartphone owners does not seem reasonable.

Epic is not suing Apple because Apple used nefarious means to achieve dominance. You, I and Epic would probably all agree they earned that dominance fair and square.

But once you have dominance different rules apply.

That's fair enough. I'm actually pretty sympathetic to the subjective argument "Apple is really big and profitable now, and I don't like their App Store rules, so let's try to get them to change it." I find it less ridiculous than arguments that attempt to construct some supposedly objective principle like "iPhone are general-purpose devices and therefore they must allow running unsigned code."

Ideally, I'd prefer that this kind of back-and-forth between developers and Apple would happen strictly through negotiation, rather than invoking the court system, but I realize that not all markets are functioning well enough for this to be practical.

One could argue that they still have monopoly for the iOS part of the market. A bit like retail store having monopoly on certain geographic area.

Not sure what's the business model behind Apple Arcade, but it looks Apple is in a way also competing on the gaming market. From this point of view their 30% cut from competitors' sales looks a bit worse.

Epic very specifically defined the "market" as iOS devices. Their argument is based on the assertion that Android is not an alternative to the App Store since it's a completely different operating system. So, Apple actually has 100% market share of the iOS market.

> Epic very specifically defined the "market" as iOS devices.

That is true, but I think it is debatable whether that is a reasonable way to define "market".

It would be as if a vendor wanted to sell their goods in a grocery store. The grocery store says no for some reason. The vendor disagrees and sues them, saying they have a monopoly on all grocery store sales on that particular corner.

"Wait, but there is a grocery store across the street?"

Well, in their law suite they defined market to be just that corner---they excluded the other corner where the Android grocery store is selling things.

That is not an apt analogy because the switching costs for grocery stores is no where near as high with iOS. If you want the full argument I highly recommend reading the full legal filing.[1]

[1] https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/apple-complaint-734589783.pdf

You don't need a monopoly to be struck with an antitrust lawsuit.

Antitrust laws start applying long before total market dominance, and one of their goals is to proactively ensure that total market dominance is never reached.

It certainly can be argued that they have a dominant position in a particular narrow market, and the court will look at these arguments and determine whether they do or not.

If the rules are possibly illegal, yes, a question which will soon be litigated.

Usually when you fire a customer they can go to one of your competitors. This just proves Epic's argument. There is no competing App Store on iOS because it's not allowed. If Apple "fires" you then your users can no longer install the app onto their own phones.

Imagine if Microsoft "fired" Adobe and as a result nobody could install Photoshop on Windows anymore.

Fortnite is available on several different game consoles and platforms (most of which, by the way, have a 30% commission fee). It used to be the case that it wasn’t available on iOS, and it was a planetary success already. Customers that had a iOS device and absolutely wanted Fortnite had to resort to use another platform, eg. buy a PC or a PlayStation. Now we’re back on the situations where we were before: Fortnite won’t be available on the iOS platform (like it’s not available for others), and customers will have to play it in other platforms.

I’m not sure how this shows a monopoly. On the contrary, I think it will be hard for Epic to prove that Apple has a “monopolistic power” on Fortnite distribution when they got billionaires through it even before it was ported to iOS.

EDIT: downvotes on HN for stating an opinion?

Antitrust doesn't require a monopoly.

Okay, then since we've failed to argue that Apple is a monopoly, what's the next antitrust argument, and how does it apple to iPhones but not to game consoles (which have the same if not stricter restrictions to third-party software developers)?

Game consoles are toys, smartphones are an integral part of people's lives and livelihoods.

That's a very flimsy definition of the difference. Game consoles are generally much more powerful general-purpose PCs that can do everything an iPhone can do (except connecting to cell networks). They tend to be full multimedia consumption devices and can also manage other electronics in your home (lights, security cameras, etc.). Any supposed benefit iPhone owners would gain from being able to run unsigned code would also apply to console owners.

True, but your Tesla has a super-powerful general purpose computer in it that connects to cell networks, and is likely way more powerful. Nobody's going to argue a Tesla is a PC.

I'm curious how someone could argue that Apple's App Store rules are anticompetitve and that they should be forced to change them, while also arguing that the same doesn't apply to Tesla's media computer(s). Is it just because there are more iPhones than Teslas?

FWIW I personally don't.

However, I see the argument to be made that in selling a Mac or an iPhone, you're being sold a general-purpose computing device with explicit value added by third-party software vendors. Also, on macOS, you were sold the explicit ability to run whatever software you want. It's purpose is to run software from third-parties.

When you bought a Tesla, that wasn't how the car was represented to you. It's purpose is to drive, and yeah it's got a sweet big screen that happens to run apps, but that's ancillary.

Legally, I think that matters. From a free-software perspective, I agree, I would also like to run whatever I want on my car.

> Also, on macOS, you were sold the explicit ability to run whatever software you want. It's purpose is to run software from third-parties.

I agree with that, and I think there would be a much stronger argument if Apple changed MacOS to remove this ability when it is a very well-established ability of the Mac platform. Of course, Apple almost certainly will not remove this ability, not because they want to be nice or they want to dodge antitrust allegations, but because they know that doing so would lose them customers.

But with iPhone, my argument is that this is absolutely not the expectation fostered by Apple's marketing or held by the vast majority of iPhone owners. Apple has always been very proud of its App Store and its (supposedly) strict vetting process to protect iPhone owners from malware, privacy violations, and other junk. Now, I personally think Apple should be much more restrictive about what apps it allows in the store, because there is a vast wasteland of abandoned apps and junk apps. If anything, the iPhone seems to have gotten less and less restrictive over time (the first iPhone didn't even support any third-party software, after all). I have a lot of trouble buying the argument that any significant number of iPhone owners expected to be able to run any third-party software they want to.

> I have a lot of trouble buying the argument that any significant number of iPhone owners expected to be able to run any third-party software they want to.

While I agree with the overwhelming majority of your reply, I'd suggest that the significant majority of iPhone owners expect to be able to run "any third-party software they want" because they expect substantially any third-party software they would want to be available in the App Store. Removing Epic is violating that implicit understanding.

I see your point, but surely it's not controversial that Epic very deliberately broke the rules in order to get its app removed from the App Store, right? Epic is probably just hoping that iPhone owners will take Epic's side and blame Apple for the removal (or even more likely, Epic only cares about the effects of the PR on the court case). I can't predict how every iPhone owner who plays Fortnite will react to this, but it seems like any slightly inquisitive person would look at the situation and think, hmm, it seems like Fortnite existed on the App Store for a long time, so what changed?

Games on smartphones are not integral part of people lives and livelihoods.

Perhaps, but the lawsuit isn't specifically about games either.

What's preventing a console being used as a productivity platform? Isn't it just the artificial restriction on where you can get software for it from?

Its stated purpose. Sony once tried to get some tax advantages by classifying the PS3 as a general purpose computer, which they achieved through the "OtherOS" feature, which allowed you to run Linux.

They later removed that feature, causing a class action lawsuit, which they settled.

Is it simple to find out what category Apple is importing iPhones under in various places? I had a quick search but not hitting anything relevant.

You are free to make and sell games for the PlayStation and Xbox without going through Sony or MS...

However, in order to get a key that works with their DRM or console OSs, you do need a license.

>Antitrust doesn't require a monopoly.

Yes, it does.

https://www.justice.gov/atr/monopoly-power-and-market-power-...

Did you read the link you just posted? Seriously. It clearly states what I said, and contradicts what you said. As per YOUR LINK, you don't need a monopoly for antitrust; just "the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market."

Apple unambiguously has this with their app store.

Not all antitrust violations require monopoly power, that is true. For example, price fixing is illegal even if the companies involved do not have monopoly power.

However, several of the claims Epic made in their lawsuit do require proving that Apple has monopoly power, which is going to be a difficult argument with their current 46% market share.

Which ones? I only skimmed the case, but it looked like market power would suffice.

In either case, the standard legal approach is to throw the kitchen sink of claims, to see which ones stick. Most claims get rejected by the courts, but if you have a few that work, it's enough.

It also helps settle. If I have a dozen $10 million dollar claims, with a 5% chance of success each, a rational opponent will throw me $6 million to go away. If the parties settle, the kitchen sink approach is not a bad one to get a better settlement.

The claims of "unlawful monopoly maintenance" in particular. But you're right, I think their best chance of success is the tying claim between "iOS App Distribution" and "iOS In-App Payment Processing" which only requires market power.

I don't think Epic cares to settle here though, they have more than enough money to keep this suit going for the next decade.

>As per YOUR LINK, you don't need a monopoly for antitrust; just "the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market."

Instead of picking one sentence out of context, why not quote the entire thing? Does it still support your claim?

Here is your sentence in context for those who care about truth:

"the Supreme Court, in other cases, seems to have articulated standards for 'monopoly power' and 'market power' that, at least linguistically, are incompatible. In NCAA v. Board of Regents, [FN33] the Court defined 'market power' as 'the ability to raise prices above those that would be charged in a competitive market.' [FN34] By contrast, the Supreme Court has consistently defined 'monopoly power,' at least for section two cases, in accordance with the definition articulated in United States v. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. [FN35]-i.e., as 'the power to control prices or exclude competition.' [FN36] Strictly construed, the Court's language appears to require a higher burden of proof to establish 'market power' than to demonstrate 'monopoly power,' because proof of a defendant's ability to exclude competition would not suffice to demonstrate the existence of 'market power.' Moreover, even the price portion of the du Pont monopoly power definition is broader than the NCAA market power standard because the latter ignores the ability to prevent price decreases."

Did you ignore what is current case practice? Did you ignore that the article cited more cases supporting my position than yours? Your out of context quoting is intellectually dishonest.

Some more quotes you ignored - go ahead and post them in context if you like.

"Most antitrust rules require the plaintiff to show that the defendant has or is likely to obtain 'market power' or 'monopoly power.' The offense of monopolization requires, of course, proof that the defendant has monopoly power."

"According to the Supreme Court's latest formulation, a tying arrangement is not illegal unless the seller has 'market power' in the tying product."

> Seriously. It clearly states what I said,

Yes, indeed. It's so clearly stated you removed the context that clearly states the opposite of what you said.

I guess I should have found a clearer explanation, since you quote things out of context.

Here's an easier read [1], and here's some legal standards applied from there with case citations:

Under cartels and collusion: "if the enterprise (as an economic entity) has not acquired a monopoly position, or has significant market power, then no harm is done."

Two questions:

1) Why did you remove the context of your quote?

2) Can you cite a successful anti-trust case where monopoly power was not shown in the proceedings?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

Holy s* this is a surreal comment to read on Hacker News. Once upon a time we believed in general-purpose computing devices that allowed users -- their owners! -- to run whatever software they pleased.

Now you speak of "platforms" that charge a tax in return for preventing users from installing software -- on their own devices they actually literally own, mind.

Can you imagine if your car would only operate on roads approved by Ford?

I believe in general purpose computers, I see them every day and I know they exist.

I also believe in choice and experimentation when it comes to business models. If I want to buy some systems with trade offs and benefits that don’t always include being able to root and run Linux on them, who are you to prevent me?

Believing that all systems must be maximally flexible is a scarcity mindset that felt more reasonable when families had to save to be able to afford a desktop computer that would be in use for several years.

> Believing that all systems must be maximally flexible is a scarcity mindset that felt more reasonable when families had to save to be able to afford a desktop computer that would be in use for several years.

This is a good insight and it's entirely possible that general purpose computing was a historical aberration.

You say you want to be able to choose between a real computer and a restricted appliance, but how long will the market allow you to make that choice?

Selling locked-down terminals with access to a pay-to-play "platform" is obviously very profitable. How much longer will MacOS and Windows allow you to install unverified software?

I don't think there is a cogent risk that general computing open platforms will go away soon.

PCs can be self-assembled without buying them as an appliance from a specific vendor, and you can at the very least install Linux on them. If you care about Windows, Microsoft is adopting open source more and more, you can have install Ubuntu within Windows right now, I doubt they will change course on software installation.

I do have a Linux box in my home and successfully use it for many tasks. This doesn't mean that I feel that all devices that have a CPU in my home must absolutely run unsigned binaries compiled by me.

But why shouldn't they? Why would anyone on a site called "Hacker News" be advocating for deliberately gimped devices?

I'm not saying manufacturers need to expend money and effort to support tinkers and hobbyists, but why deliberately go out of their way to block them?

> PCs can be self-assembled without buying them as an appliance from a specific vendor

For now.

Every year, integrated SoCs become cheaper and more powerful. Self-building a PC is more and more niche.

Or tunnels that only your tesla car can drive through?

I mean, per-car roads probably aren't a good business model, but if it's a privately owned road you can probably make up your own rules, and there would be nothing to stop you doing that, right? And nothing to stop car owners using different roads.

So let's hear your argument on why Nintendo should allow you to run any software on their switch.

And even if you do think that, let's see some evidence of you arguing that case as passionately as you argue this one.

> your argument on why Nintendo should allow you to run any software on their switch.

Begging the question. Why should the manufacturer have any say at all over what software I run on hardware I own?

To paraphrase your question: Let's hear your argument why General Electric should allow me to heat any food in their microwave?

If a user wants Epic apps on his iPhone, and Epic wants said user to have those apps, Apple should not be asked for permission. That should not have control over the device after sale. It is no longer theirs.

Microsoft can fire game developers from Xbox.

But doing so wouldn't make that developer's software unusable on Windows.

Being banned from the iOS App Store also doesn't make your software unusable on Windows, or Mac, or any other non-iOS platform. The App Store's exclusivity is precisely the same as that of nearly every video game console.

> The App Store's exclusivity is precisely the same as that of nearly every video game console.

I don't understand why you keep bringing up video game consoles in this discussion.

1. You seem to believe people actually agree with the way console stores work. This is not the case.

2. The fact that the situation is also terrible somewhere else doesn't absolve Apple of anything. That's not how justice works.

If you are consistent in your claims and believe that all computing devices, including smartphones, game consoles, e-book readers, GPS watches, car entertainment centers, etc. should be required to provide a way for owners to run unsigned code, then my accusations of inconsistency do not apply to you.

In fact, I see much much less vitriol aimed towards game console store policy than iOS App Store policy. That's why I mention it.

You are intentionally muddying the water by bringing code signing (a technicality) and devices for which software distribution was never part of the economics. Nevertheless, yes, I think making ebook readers tied to a single store illegal would be a net positive from consumers. It would let stores compete on their merits as stores and readers as readers. More competition is always good.

Pointedly, my argument is simple: the modern concept of plateform, as has been pushed by management consulting firms for the past two decades and successfully been exploited by hightech companies, is a blatant attack against anti competition laws and I believe the whole thing only started because the US government decided it would only meekly enforce them. Rebranding barriers to entry moats shouldn't make artificially building them more acceptable.

As you rightfully pointed, plateforms seem to be popping everywhere nowadays from game consoles to cars. I don't find that surprising: reducing competition is like crack cocaine to companies. It both means less need to innovate and differentiate and a larger share of customers surplus (theorically all customer surplus but it might be too blatant then). Customers are the ones losing there.

As the whole thing strongly goes against one of the core tenant of modern capitalism, it seems obvious to me it is going to end with more regulations as soon as the political zeitgeist regarding economy will lean less towards extrem laissez-faire. Unless of course, we decide to go full-bore towards nineteenth century style capitalism...

They're clearly picking their battles. If they are able to win this case against Apple, they can use it as precedent to (hopefully) pressure consoles to open up too.

They cannot fight all battles at once. They probably think they have a better chance of winning this battle and setting the precedent for the next battles for other "app store" issues.

And all these devices certainly should be able to run the code their owner wants them to run, full stop.

That this is often not possible is stupid but also incredibly dangerous. Not by the standards of the evil Apple just did, but what even more malicious actors can do to you is they can run code on your device & you can't do anything about it.

It could be state actors pressuring the company making the think & or exploiting vulnerabilities in the closed source firmware running on it.

TBH, the console makers are probably thinking 'shit, Apple is going to end up ruining it for all of us.'

Not that it matters, but the Amazon app store has the worst policies IME.

We actually have Nintendo to blame for this whole thing. They started the walled garden situation, and people seem oblivious to it and love them as a company.

https://www.filfre.net/2016/04/generation-nintendo/ ->

> In a landmark ruling against Tengen in March of 1991, Judge Fern Smith stated that Nintendo had the right to “exclude others” from the NES if they so chose, thus providing the legal soil on which many more walled gardens would be tilled in the years to come.

All walled gardens suck.

> people seem oblivious to it and love them as a company

In the same way people love Apple.

Epic's developer account will be suspended, meaning they can no longer use Xcode (!) or sign/notarize apps to run on the Mac.

The fact that Apple is going to kill Epic Games' ability to notarize macOS apps does actually make their software unusable on Macs.

Nope. I personally run with this setting:

https://it.nmu.edu/docs/allowing-third-party-applications-in...

Amazingly it then lets me run all the open source I want that I download from the internet but am too lazy to build myself.

This setting has been removed from recent macOS versions.

Yup. In the Mac OS security settings window, for "Allow apps downloaded from:", you can only choose "App Store" or "App Store and identified developers". The workflow is now:

1. Try to open the application. Get a window that says "APPLICATION can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.", and below that, in a smaller and non-bold font, "Your security preferences allow installation of only apps from the App Store and identified developers." The window only has an "OK" button. (There is also a small "?" button in the lower left, which is present in lots of notification windows and presumably points to a generic help page.)

2. Open Security & Privacy in System Preferences. There is now, magically, a line in it saying "APPLICATION was blocked from opening because it is not from an identified developer", and an "Open Anyway" button.

I only discovered that workaround by accident. Before that, I believed that Mac OS had completely removed the option to run such applications. (As I recall, back when "Allow apps downloaded from: Anywhere" existed, if you did choose it, it would show some kind of warning and also revert itself after 30 days; it seemed obvious they wanted to remove the option entirely.)

I'm tempted to bring out the word "gaslighting" to describe this. Because that line about "Your security preferences allow ..." is in a context where it should be an explanation of why "APPLICATION can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer", yet your security preferences about apps have only two choices and neither one would permit opening the application; and because a System Preferences pane now shows different options depending on what unrelated user applications you've opened recently, which is insane.

... Turns out there is a second, faster workaround. Right-click (or control-click) on the application, and click "Open". Then, instead of getting the liar window with only the "OK" button, you get a window that has an "Open Anyway" button. This workaround is, in fact, documented in the generic help page that the liar window's "?" button points to. This is also insane because it makes "Open" in its different forms (double-click, command-O, command-line "open", and the right-click "Open" option) no longer a single, uniform operation.

No, it doesn't. It just means it's users have to take extra steps. I use non-notarized software every day on a Mac.

For the sake of argument, is there a limit to the number or kind of extra steps before you'd call it unusable? If "downloading VirtualBox and running a VM of an earlier MacOS version" became necessary at some point, would that be over the line?

I suspect there are corporate users who have policies that forbid running non-notarized software. That probably shouldn't apply to a game like Fortnite—most companies wouldn't consider it important, or perhaps even a positive, for their employees to be able to run Fortnite on their company laptops—but it would apply to other apps.

> For the sake of argument, is there a limit to the number or kind of extra steps before you'd call it unusable?

Surely this comes down to what reasonable expectations are held by the customer. There are microcontrollers you can buy that require a soldering iron and USB breakout board in order to run your own software on them. I think that's pretty reasonable, but it would be a ridiculous requirement for a desktop PC purchased at Best Buy.

The question becomes: what are the reasonable expectations for installing third-party software on an iPhone. Personally, I think the overwhelming majority of iPhone owners expect and even highly value the fact that Apple (supposedly [0]) vets all third-party software on the iPhone, and it's generally more difficult to accidentally install malware or break your device than it is on other computing platforms.

[0] As I've said before, I think Apple actually needs to be more restrictive, because a lot of useless/broken/scammy stuff makes it into the App Store.

Well, this subthread is about running non-notarized software on Macs. And my expectations on that, which I will proclaim to be reasonable, come from using Macs since before Apple notarization existed: i.e. I could run whatever I damn well wanted.

Apple changed behavior on that at least twice. (I skipped several Mac OS versions, so I may have missed intermediate changes.) First, it switched to requiring you to choose, in security preferences, an option to allow apps from anywhere—which, I think, would show a scary warning, and would also revert itself to the default after 30 days. Later, it switched to removing that "Anywhere" option, and instead shows a misleading "you can't open this because of your preferences" error, and provides a couple of insane hidden workarounds. I consider the first change reasonable, if unnecessarily annoying; I consider the second change unreasonable.

It's technically possible yes, but Epic's position is much much worse than that. They won't be able to legally build any app because the SDK is proprietary and only available to registered developers.

The SDK for iOS, sure. The comment was about Mac apps though.

"Oh you can install the software, you just have to do a handstand and say 'I love Apple' in front of your computer, no biggie"

Xbox isn't central to modern life like a smartphone is. Also, the game consoles use a razor/blades model, they're sold at a loss and make money through the sale of games. Smartphones are not sold at a loss.

Fortnite isn't central to modern life.

A cheap source of entertainment for kids that are locked down because of a pandemic isn't central to modern life?

It's a bit of a stretch. There are plenty of alternatives.

IIRC most modern consoles are no longer sold at a loss, though the margins are not very high.

There are many factors that are relevant to the question whether Apple has a dominant market position and these actions would/should be limited by antitrust laws, or if their competitive actions are within the bounds of fair play. These two factors are not.

The rights and legal limitations of Apple (regarding App Store) and Microsoft (regarding Xbox) are exactly the same no matter if iPhone or Xbox is considered "central to modern life" or not; and whether the hardware was sold at a loss. These aspects are simply not relevant for the antitrust case, they should not and would not change the decision.

You might be correct, from an ethical perspective, but this isn’t the way US antitrust law works today.

If different rules should be applied to companies that are essential to modern life, such as classifying them as essential services, that should be a new law that’s explicit about the qualifications, gets debated, and has to reconcile the tradeoffs inherent in that classification. It should definitely not be something defined by a court of law (and it’s unlikely to be in this case).

The outcome of this case may change that possibility.

They are trying here to separate iOS from Apple devices which is being deceitful. There is nothing Apple is doing that prevents them from running on an Android phone.

That is the key here, Epic and some others are trying to change how Apple has implemented their device. iOS and the hardware are part and parcel. You don't get to choose which OS you run as it was never designed to support such action.

iOS was never an open OS, you cannot legally install it on other devices either.

Arguments of this form always rely on nebulous definitions of what counts as a "choice." Sure, if you're banned from a specific app store, you cannot use that specific app store, because that's just what is means to be banned. You can, of course, still access any other app store.

Imagine if Google decided tomorrow to ban App Stores other than Google Play Store on Android.

This would mean that there's only two app stores: Apple's and Google's.

Google doesn't do that because that would be an abuse of their market position and they would get rinsed in the courts. Since the same laws apply to Google as Apple, and Apple clearly has significant market power in smartphone and tablet computers, it stands to reason that Apple should be prohibited from doing the same thing.

> Google doesn't do that because that would be an abuse of their market position and they would get rinsed in the courts.

Are you sure that Google doesn't do that because the Android platform is an extremely viable and lucrative alternative to iPhones, and that people who value the ability to sideload software on their smartphones flock to Android for precisely this reason?

Whether they want to or not is beside the point, which is to consider whether it would be anticompetitive for Google to ban other app stores from Android.

As far as I can see, what distinguishes Apple from Google is status quo. Apple never did allow app distribution other than through the Apple App Store. i.e. "We've always been doing it"

> which is to consider whether it would be anticompetitive for Google to ban other app stores from Android

That's what I'm getting at. Is it anticompetitive to deliberately make your product worse by removing a key differentiator between your product and its closest competitor?

Or come at it from another angle: would it be "anticompetitive" for Apple to (in new iPhones) completely remove the App Store and thus all reasonable expectation to be able to run third-party software? Is it anticompetitive to sell a handheld computer than can do email, play music and videos, etc., but not run third-party software?

Google is abusing their market position as well, because they purposely hinder third party app stores by putting restrictions in Android that prevent them from implementing features that the Play Store has had for years.

A simple litmus test:

Is F-Droid in Google Play ?

It is not.

Not only is it not in Google Play, but it can't update apps in the background the way Google can.

For every update, times every app you have to click through a stupid screen "Are you sure you want to install this update? It requires no special permissions."

Ironically this onewould be super helful for the recent Firefox update disaster where they switched from the bit outdated Fennec to the new and faster but totally unfinishec Fenix.

With auto updates this was quite a wakeup call...

Another nice thing is F-Droid listing multiple versions, another thing sorely lacking in Google Play.

If Epic thinks that Apple's and Google's store conditions are onerous, just wait until they find out what it's like to ship a game on PS4 or XBox.

Actually shipping on Xbox one is quite simple and mostly free with the ID@Xbox program or the Creators program.

And if you slip stuff that’s against the rules on Xbox and sue Microsoft, they’ll just let you keep your accounts open and keep selling your applications?

Depends on what rules you break, but yes generally they will.

The ID@Xbox program is for indie developers, not multibillion-dollar corporations.

If only Epic had ever published a game on PS4 or the Xbox…

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

This whole thing is about Fortnite which is already on both of those platforms.

That’s pretty core to any anti-trust argument that is built on monopoly: is the iOS market distinct from the smartphone and tablet markets?

A company that have a dominant position in a large ecosystem and can make or break an entire business model?

When the rules themselves are illegal? No, no they should not.

I personally thought they were already in abuse of market power.

But on this latest development, I want to hear Apple's argument first. That said, I didn't find their argument on the first action compelling so not optimistic. But maybe they discovered some abuse, for one random, made-up example -- my point isn't to trust Apple but just to see what the reasoning is first. This tweet doesn't say if they were given any reasoning for the latest action.

Yeah to be honest while I think Apple clearly has monopoly power here that should be reined in, I also get the feeling that Epic will have a pretty weak argument for why they purposely violated the Terms of Service and then expect to continue using the SDK tools.

If you argue a company doesn’t allow behavior X, doing it and getting punished is the best course of action to prove the point.

To your point, they have a whole lawsuit filling explaining why they think X should be allowed.

According to the law, the best course of action is not to break the law to prove you don't like the law. While the Terms of Service are not the law, you agree to follow them when signing up and the terms didn't change after Epic signed up.

Practically, you may be correct that this is the most expedient way to try to fix the problem but you can get burned as Epic has in the short term with a sharp drop in revenue as Apple & Google have both booted them and may refuse to work with them in the future.

I'd draw a parralel with civil desobediance.

I'm aware this case is between two behemoth, the point to them is not civil rights but future revenue and there's a lot to say about each side's behavior, but on the principle it's the same I think.

The important point here I think is they are bearing the consequences of their act (not that they have a choice either), so it's not like it's unfair to Apple or Google. On a scale of "breaking the rules", it's closer to sitting on a forbidden bus bench than looting stores.

I’m unconvinced that there should be repercussions beyond the App Store tbh. While Apple get to set the App Store rules fine you get taken off there, but then what’s the actual criteria for this all out permanent ban? Just not reinstating your app in a compliant form? What if you decide the deal sucks and don’t want to go back on their store? Then you just get permanently banned forever? Presumably it doesn’t work like this if you try to upload an app that breaks the rules and they catch it at app review - sorry, you broke rule xyz and if you don’t have a compliant app up within 30 days we’re permanently banning you from developing for any of our platforms. I don’t get why breaking App Store rules matters beyond the App Store at all.

Its a matter of intent. If I've caught you trying to subvert the rules, then I have no reason to think you won't abuse them again. It is reasonable someone wouldn't want a frequent abuser to be able to submit new apps via their SDK. In the extreme case, I could submit a new app every minute just to waste their reviewers' time.

Apple’s argument was what was in their TOS and acting on it. I don’t know what they would say apart from that? Open question now is whether their TOS violates any law, since law > TOS.

On the contrary, there is a very solid basis. Epic has access to Apple's platform and dev tools because it has (or had) an agreement with Apple whereby it paid a percentage of profits earned in exchange for said access.

Epic, btw, has the exact same kind of agreement with Sony, Microsoft, and Google, for access to their gaming platforms. All three of those companies are extracting the same 30% fee that Apple is.

But now Epic has decided to grandstand and pretend that Apple has a "monopoly" and protest paying Apple, while still happily paying the exact same fees to its other gaming partners, including to Sony (for PlayStation), which just invested $250M in Epic.

So to say that there is "absolutely no basis" for Apple's action just isn't true.

> Epic, btw, has the exact same kind of agreement with Sony, Microsoft, and Google, for access to their gaming platforms. All three of those companies are extracting the same 30% fee that Apple is.

You don't have to agree to Epic's terms to access the platforms from Sony, MS and Google. You do, however, have to agree to Apple's terms to access their Platform.

Nitpicking, and I'm not even sure that's correct. Regardless, it's not relevant. What Epic is griping about here is the 30% fee, but they're not acting or speaking in good faith about that. They're pretending that fee is somehow onerous, but they pay that exact same fee to every other platform, too.

The Epic Games Store takes a 12% commission on all games sales though.

https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/tim-sweeney-epic-games-...

And I'm sure they're not happy about the fees on other platforms, but they can't fight everyone at once.

They can believe that many actors are injust but can be simply choosing their battles. And phones > consoles in terms of impact. They're also less arbitrary about which purchases take a 30% cut or not compared to phones.

Epic had to agree to Sony's, Microsoft's, and Google's terms, however, which seems more relevant.

Isn't that extremely coincidental that they all just stumbled upon that same 30%? I'm sure there is no collusion whatsoever.

It's the status quo, the first one to make it lower will force everyone to go lower, and none of them want that.

There is no incentive to stay competitive by cutting down on your slice of the pie.

>Epic, btw, has the exact same kind of agreement with Sony, Microsoft, and Google, for access to their gaming platforms. All three of those companies are extracting the same 30% fee that Apple is.

Tim Sweeney has stated in the past that he feels like there's a better argument for game console makers taking a 30% fee.

>"There's a rationale for this on console where there's enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers. But on open platforms, 30 per cent is disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service.

Basically, he feels that these platforms might actually be doing enough work to earn a 30%. It's not that crazy to criticise one company taking a big slice and approve another company taking a same slice if they are bringing different value.

And the iPhone doesn't have an enormous investment in hardware/R&D/marketing? The only point would be the sold below cost, but I even thought this was illegal (dumping) no?

My problem with this is it's a very ad hoc argument without a brightline standard to anchor your judgments. It's not really clear why anyone who can get a slice of your work deserves any slice, and society has conventionally allowed the market to determine this.

You appeared to have carved out a convenient exception for the Playstations and Switches of the world because your intuition tells you that the industry isn't healthy, and that wobbling it a little could kill company interest. But we still have nothing to anchor the belief that 30% is right for gaming consoles but not elsewhere.

> Apple needed that 30 percent cut to monitor for fraud and quality or something, going above-and-beyond other payment processors.

How much do Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Steam, Gog and etc. take from publishers on their stores?

Roughly the same, I think the variance is about 10% with Steam being an outlier working in tiers tied to revenue. At least one allows developers to name the cut (including 0%) but 30% is the most common number.

This is a valid question - if the answer is a fraction of what Apple charges then it strengthens the case against Apple.

It’s the same. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all charge 30%.

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...

> if the answer is a fraction of what Apple charges then it strengthens the case against Apple.

The answer is the same. What now? Will you put down the pitchforks?

My comment was actually intended to play a bit of devil's advocate - I'm not convinced that Apple has a monopoly, and I kind of don't mind living in the walled garden.

It's all private, of course, but they're all generally in the 30% ballpark. There may be lower rates for big clients, but there's no way for us to know that. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/08/as-epic-attacks-apple...

In other words, Apple and Google are bad for taking a 30% cut, but Sony and Microsoft are not bad for taking a 30% cut plus having a (reportedly) vastly more onerous set of policies than Apple has.

When console makers start making the same profit margin on their devices as Apple does, as opposed to selling them at or even below cost, this argument will begin to make sense.

It is not fixed , depending on how large you are MS or Sony will pay you to launch on their store . There is volume discounts , AAA does not pay indie rates

They all take 30% of IAP.

Microsoft takes 5% since last year.

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2019/03/06/update...

Except games and Xbox:

"The new fee structure excludes all games and any purchases on Xbox consoles."

This is misleading, it doesn't apply to games and it's only if you link your customer directly into the app store (not if they go to the store and search for your app or find it some other way).

That's a misleading question, because on other platforms you can choose to avoid the store. A better question would be "what's the lowest cut you need to give up to distribute to users of these other platforms?". And the answer to that is zero on basically all of them except iOS.

> That's a misleading question, because on other platforms you can choose to avoid the store.

That's definitely not true. You cannot run unsigned code on most video game consoles.

And for PC game marketplaces, those platforms still have market power. Surely there's a big difference between being banned from Steam and being banned from the Discord Store.

> That's definitely not true. You cannot run unsigned code on most video game consoles.

And I'm pretty sure many people would be quite against this practice and believe this is an harmful monopolistic practice. The thing is though, no one had the balls and/or the cash to defends this like Epic does right now against Apple.

Let's hope this will bring a more open future on video game consoles too.

Most people I've seen commenting on this Epic vs. Apple debate seem to think that it's okay on game consoles but not okay on iPhones, which is just preposterous. At least you're consistent. But what about e-readers, GPS devices, car entertainment systems, etc.? Should all Turing-complete computing devices be forced to provide a way for the owner to run unsigned code?

The difference is that those other devices have a specific use. Smartphones are general purpose devices, so it's not the same at all

That's a bizarre argument. It seems to imply that Apple could avoid these allegations by either increasing or decreasing the restrictions they place on third-party developers.

How does it imply that? Which of those devices you mentioned (e-readers, GPS devices, car entertainment systems) have a store for downloading apps? If they do, then yes I would like to be able to put whatever I want on there without the approval of some corporation.

Isn't that specific use mostly artificial by restricting your ability to install things though?

If it's a CPU in a box, then it's purely a matter of what software you are allowed to install on it, right?

IMHO that would be a really good thing. We are not there yet, but that seems like a laudable goal to me.

Video game consoles are specialized hardware. They do one thing and they do it well. It's kind of understandable that these companies want to review anything released for those. They want to ensure that games are of high quality so as to not hurt the reputation of the platform itself. They want games to help sell consoles. And that's how video game consoles always worked.

iPhones, on the other hand, are not specialized. They're general-purpose devices at this point — both by design and by how Apple markets them. The problem is, both developers and users see the app store and its policies as a nuisance.

> They want to ensure that games are of high quality so as to not hurt the reputation of the platform itself. They want games to help sell consoles. And that's how video game consoles always worked.

And my argument is that an overall better (according to each individual buyer's preference) software experience is a major (perhaps the single largest) differentiator of iPhones over competing smartphones. This has always been a major part of Apple's marketing and indeed is the primary reason I use an iPhone. Yes, on the iPhone it's "games and other apps" instead of just games, but I don't see that being a major difference (particularly since game consoles can serve other purposes too, like media consumption and home automation).

My argument is that iPhones are and have always been essentially "the game console of smartphones" or "the appliance of smartphones." In fact, that type of description is often used both pejoratively by iPhone haters and lovingly by iPhone fans. They're simply not made for or marketed to people who want a general-purpose Unix PC with a cell phone antenna built in, even though technically they are essentially that (note, of course, that iPhones and game consoles are technically general purpose computers, but that's not really relevant).

> They're general-purpose devices at this point — both by design and by how Apple markets them. The problem is, both developers and users see the app store and its policies as a nuisance.

I strongly disagree with your impression here. My impression has been that complaints about App Store rules have overwhelmingly come from a small number of extremely large developers (unsurprisingly, developers that are big enough that they want to make a play to shift some of Apple's market power toward themselves). I don't see iPhone owners complaining about App Store rules, and I suspect one reason is that anyone who values being able to sideload any software on their smartphone has many very nice Android options.

> I don't see iPhone owners complaining about App Store rules

Well, as someone outside of US and its culture, I see every now and then how people dislike Apple enforcing its morals on apps. Example: even if your app is rated 18+ and contains UGC, you still can't have any porn in it. Even if it's censored by default but there's a setting to show it. They demand that you completely obliterate any content that is even slightly erotical, let alone overtly pornographic, or have your app banished from the app store.

And don't even get me started on "illegal file sharing".

I've seen this from both sides. As a user, you blame Apple for seeing a placeholder when trying to view a VK group that contains suggestive imagery in one of its photo albums. As a developer, you roll your eyes when your bug fix update gets rejected an umpteenth time with the reason being "we turned safe search off, typed 'porn' into the search box and naked people came up". It just feels like a dictatorship state, and a very prude one.

> Video game consoles are specialized hardware.

No.

> They do one thing and they do it well.

Look up console jailbreaks and home-brew.

> The problem is, both developers and users see the app store and its policies as a nuisance.

Apple does a lot to protect users from unscrupulous practices. Look up the App Store policies and see for yourself.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24154647 and similar comments:

> the magnitude of this is not immediately apparent unless you’ve worked in an agency / freelanced building iOS applications. You have no idea how many user-hostile and abusive things I’ve seen blown completely out of the water with the golden phrase "Apple won’t allow that". It wins arguments in favour of the user instantly and permanently.

> I’ve run up against Apple’s capricious review process more times than I can count, so I’ve got more reason than most to complain about it. But it’s impossible for me to argue that these rules don’t help the user when I’ve personally seen it happen so many times. It’s a double-edged sword to be sure, and I believe the best way of balancing things in favour of the end-user is to be more open than Apple is, but there are undeniable benefits to the user with the current system.

> No.

You and I know that they're locked-down computers with hardware DRM and a bit of custom silicon, but most users don't see them like that. To them, it's a device that is only capable of running games.

> You have no idea how many user-hostile and abusive things I’ve seen blown completely out of the water with the golden phrase "Apple won’t allow that".

I'm an Android developer myself but I've seen iOS apps released, and I'm friends with many iOS developers. You're going through this bureaucracy lottery every time you release an update. You can never be sure of its outcome, and you can never know how long it would take. Even most governments are more predictable.

Sure there exist rules that are genuinely in the interest of the user. But then there are rules that are in the interest of Apple as a business (the 30% cut for digital goods). There also are rules that are following US laws, and they're stringently enforced regardless of your target market because Apple happens to be a US company.

> To them, it's a device that is only capable of running games.

And Spotify, YouTube, Netflix, live TV, Plex, home automation, web browsing, Skype, etc. In other words, nearly everything an iPhone can do and probably very near 100% overlap with how iPhones are actually used.

By this definition, surely as long as Apple didn't market it free from the App Store, it doesn't qualify as a general purpose device?

If I could install a web browser and libreoffice on an xbox, would that meet your definition of a general purpose device? And isn't that an artificial, monopolising restriction that I can't?

Even if that were true (which is highly debatable given than an Xbox is basically a rebranded PC), there is no provision in US antitrust law that treats "general purpose devices" as different than "specialized hardware".

> because on other platforms you can choose to avoid the store.

> And the answer to that is zero on basically all of them except iOS

That is a lie: Microsoft's Xbox Marketplace, Sony's PlayStation Network, Nintendo's eShop.

Since when? You cannot side load apps onto modern consoles, to the extent of manufactures like even Nintendo releasing updated hardware revisions to block homebrew exploits.

The thing is, this starts the taxi meter running; every dollar that Epic would have expected to make will get added to their demand for damages.

Source? They specifically state that they're not suing for damages and I doubt they have changed their case in the last few days...

> Apple’s conduct has caused and continues to cause Epic financial harm, but as noted above, Epic is not bringing this case to recover these damages; Epic is not seeking any monetary damages.

https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/apple-complaint-734589783.pdf

That's in the middle of the document, but at the end:

> C.Awarding any other equitable relief necessary to prevent and remedy Apple’s anti-competitive conduct;and

> D.Granting such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper

It's also totally normal for a course of action that was deemed unlawful and resulted in losses for one party to be compensated. Anyway, we have a decade or so to find out; these cases are not quick.

Only D is arguably on point, and probably wouldn't reverse a statement in the same filing that they are specifically not seeking a specified class of damages, instead it basically keeps open anything not specifically excluded tomwhich they might be entitled; equitable relief as mentioned in C is a legal term of art that does not overlap with money damages, so that certainly cannot be read as a claim for money damages.

So, Epic should get special treatment? They don't have to pay the fees? Just everyone else? How is apple supposed to run the app store? They kinda know what they are doing or why else would so many people buy their iphones?

Their app isn't on the store, so no they shouldn't pay fees beyond whatever Apple charge for the privelege of being a developer on their platform. Not sure why not paying App Store fees (because of not having an app on the store) would justify removing access to all developer accounts and tools.

Well it used to be dude, that is the whole situation here.

No one should have to pay 30% as long as Apple also competes in the same "marketplace".

> They kinda know what they are doing or why else would so many people buy their iphones?

Or maybe it's something that people merely tolerate. Kind of like how ISPs are almost universally derided in the US for crappy service and high prices, yet everyone seems to be paying for their serivece. If you asked people when they're buying an iphone whether they want 30% of app and in-app purchases to go to apple, with no way around it, how much % of them would say yes?

Yes I see that, and you can apply that to all sorts of things in our lives. It’s still arbitrary where the line is that keeps everyone happy, I guess Epic thinks it’s < 30% but I am just not with them on this fight

The thing is, Apple probably isn't the only one to do this. Apple is actually very graceful by the standards of platforms. Note that Epic did not attempt to surreptitiously introduce a "direct payment" feature into Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo platforms. That's because you don't even get developer documentation without signing an NDA. Had Epic even thought about doing this on console, the question wouldn't be "will the console manufacturers retaliate", as much as it would be "how many months until the console manufacturers start banning new game submissions that use Unreal Engine"?

Apple did this before, BTW. Remember "Thoughts on Flash"? That wasn't Jobs railing against an aging browser plugin. Adobe had figured out how to get Flash to export iOS apps, and that really pissed off Jobs. So it was really Jobs attacking a strawman (the buggy Flash Player) in order to justify banning all third-party development tools. The FTC threatened to sue and the rule was removed about 3 months later.

How is this legal? Apple is so blinded by their arrogance that they don't see that this will lead to the App Store getting severely regulated.

Look at Uber for a great example. It took years, but Uber and Lyft were finally handed a business-destroying law that will hurt them. It will only take a few months for the rest of the US to adopt similar strategies as well.

After the congressional hearings a few weeks ago, Apple still doesn't understand what is going on around them. If they keep going this route, they will absolutely get themselves regulated and frankly I hope this happens. Their arrogance is disgusting to me and I hope this eventual come-to-Jesus moment will scare the shit out of them.

I hear ya, but something smells real bad about how Epic decided to wage this war. They were clearly picking this fight, now I am not sure that was such a good idea.

It's not dissimilar to how civil disobedience in the 60s thoroughly planned and tuned for maximum PR impact. Rosa Parks went on that bus knowing she'd make a scene. Does that change the reality being uncovered?

Really? Sorry, that is not what I think of at all regarding this situation.

Maybe elaborate your comment further to prevent confusion? When you commented

>"I hear ya, but something smells real bad about how Epic decided to wage this war"

I read it as

"I agree that the situation is unfair but I disagree with how they decided to uncover it because it was deliberate".

Yes exactly, I don’t know how much effort they put in to just discussing it with Apple, but it is clear they planned this out and that’s why I don’t like about it. And their plan seems a bit melodramatic to me.

Okay and do you think that there's an analogy with Rosa Parks who also intentionally broke the law to highlight how it was unfair?

There are a number of facets in common here:

1. What is legal is not necessarily what is right.

2. You can intentionally break a rule/law and then use the press to highlight your case.

Maybe you would disagree with Rosa Parks and the civil rights movement's methods as well, and that's fine, certainly many people did disagree at the time (more then than now though).

I'm just pointing out that there are parallels in history for this kind of intentional rule-breaking and subsequent PR campaign.

I dont think a massive company like Epic with all the bad practices they've implemented themselves suing another mega rich company is anything like Rosa Parks getting on that bus, though.

Intentions are important considerations with something like this.

The part which OP disagreed with was the intentionality, and I likened it to another example where the disobedience was deliberate. Of course with any analogy other factors will be dissimilar.

It's interesting you point out the bad practices they have themselves as being important though. The civil rights movement in the 60s boosted Rosa Parks above Claudette Colvin even though they both could have had similar legal battles only because of optics:

> For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. She was an unmarried teenager at the time, and was reportedly impregnated by a married man

Epic certainly shouldn't get to score virtue points here, but we shouldn't require someone to be a saint to point out unfairness.

Agreed that Epic is no stranger to corporate shittiness. I think the parent's point is that somebody looking for a fight is how lots of unjust practices are ended. Complaining that Epic went into this trying to start a legal battle, and is making a PR push, is kind of looking a gift horse in the mouth imho.

Epic's goal of creating a competing app store would be a huge boon for consumers. Obviously they picked this fight, and I'm happy they did, because if they're successful app prices will come down due to the reduced fees markets provide.

It will all make sense when we can have F-Droid and GOG instead of $8/week guitar tuners.

It's impossible to truly know their motives (although money is the most likely candidate). I usually judge these things on a personal/consumer level:

"Who is fighting for the consumer?" Epic. It doesn't matter their motives.

Apple is aggressively anticonsumer and it's time someone took them on. They keep handing out concessions for big players, while hurting newcomers. It's time for it to stop.

> "Who is fighting for the consumer?" Epic. It doesn't matter their motives.

Epic is using their customers as pawns in a contract dispute with a platform vendor (Apple). How else do you explain that console customers got the full 20% discount on "V-bucks" despite Sony/Microsoft still taking their 30% cut? Epic is basically selling V-bucks at a premium on iOS if you choose not to give Epic your credit card information. This is not a pro-consumer stance, it's a pro-Epic stance.

Apple should start allowing side app stores. I hope this is what comes out of this battle

How could a normal Joe User know which side app stores are reliable and which will sell your info and credit card number to the highest bidder?

This just seems like a dumb move on Apple's part. It's self-sabotaging. It hurts their legal case, it hurts their public image, and it hurts their platform, as Unreal Engine is used in both iOS and macOS games. Not that many people were getting Apple platforms for games before, but they've just shoved one of the most popular engines off the platform.

If the judge grants Epic a TRO, Apple is going to be in deep crud. Should be a good early sign of how the judicial system sees the case.

Agree 100%.

I also think Apple should stop collecting commission fees from all App Store sales starting today. They have billions in the bank. What are those billions for if not to invest back into the company and its developers. Foregoing all commission fees is an easy way to do that and would make Apple a hero and help developers. I’m also willing to be there would be a resurgence in the App Store and bring in more sales and more developers.

To be fair, I think they should probably still charge reasonable payment processing fees. They need not depend on the App Store for profit though, they should be able to drop the rate, and they should at minimum allow alternative payment processors.

I think commissions are the smallest part of the problem. The problem is that you are buying what seems like a general computing platform, but then you will be prevented from using apps that Apple doesn't find helpful to their business.

Not allowing another in-app payment solution is just one of the many things that they are preventing.

My prediction is that this will backfire so badly for Apple.

Apple clearly underestimated how popular Unreal Engine is to game developers. Apple probably expect developers to just switch to other engines when they took UE away from them, but in reality most of the developers currently using UE will just stop publishing on Apple's platforms because that's no longer a profitable platform (consider the investment for developing for Apple's platforms with new engine against the profit they can get there).

Given that game porters currently chose Metal over alternatives specifically to support the lucrative Apple market better, I'm pretty sure they'd jump ship instantly to Unity or something else that isn't an engina non grata.

People have been bending over to Apple in their choice of technologies for at least as long as OSX is a thing. A gaming engine (not even the most popular one on mobile) isn't gonna change that at all.

Jumping ship instantly from one engine to another isn't possible. You're talking about developers doing a full rewrite of their games. Sure, plenty of mobile games are crap that can be cranked out in a coke-fueled weekend (see Zynga). But there are also mobile games that required significant development effort to build.

Oh, of course. I meant it more in case of newly written games. The ones that already run UE4 may likely meet a slow, neglected death.

They didn't take Unreal Engine away from anyone and every other platform also charges 30%.

1) They are also suing Google

2) Android allows them to distribute Fortnite from other venues if they chose to

Because if there's one thing Apple customers choose Macs for, it's to play games...

That's exactly my point. When a game developer made a game using UE, their investment to also making a Mac port is negligible, so even if the market on Macs are small it's still worth doing for most cases. When UE on Mac is no longer an option, if they want a Mac port they need to pour some real resources into the Mac port. Consider the small market they are more likely to just skip that.

I'm sure that Tim Sweeney has talked with Tencent (owns 40% of Epic) about his plans beforehand. Tencent owns Riot Games (League Of Legends) and parts of several other gaming companies. They also own WeChat,WeGame, QQ, etc.

Epic may be just a test case. Everyone else is watching and if Apple blinks, they will side with Epic and Apple must give up huge revenue stream.

And if they don't and courts side with Apple, Tencent might be willing to pay the damage. The upside across their companies is large enough to justify the damage.

If courts side with Apple, Google might be next depending on their behavior (Google has banned them but doesn't appear as aggressive yet).

Are you sure? iOS is something like half the US market and its userbase is likely more wealthy on average, I don't think any normal game developer could sacrifice that to keep using what is essentially an implementation detail at the end of the day, no matter how good it is.

half the US market but how much of gaming market? Personally I have always used macs but I have a windows desktop specific for gaming. I don't think anybody somewhat into gaming would have bought an apple machine for that purpose.

A cursory google search indicated that mobile gaming represents about 45% of the total games industry [1]. That's quite a lot, I'd say that the potential risk here is well into "unacceptable" territory.

[1] https://kommandotech.com/statistics/mobile-gaming-statistics....

For more serious/less casual games, they generally primarily target computers and consoles than mobile devices. I believe Unreal is more popular for these types of games (whereas Unity and others are more favoured for mobile games). If you are not targetting mobile, Apple has far less representation.

From Epic's filing, here is an excerpt from Apple's notice listing the Developer Program features that Epic will lose access to when its membership is terminated:

    - All Apple software, SDKs, APIs, and developer tools
    - Pre-release versions of iOS, iPad OS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS
    - Pre-release versions of beta tools such as Reality Composer, Create ML, Apple Configurator, etc.
    - Notarization service for macOS apps
    - App Store Connect platform and support (for example, assistance with account transition, password reset, app name issues)
    - TestFlight
    - Access to provisioning portal for certificate generation, and provisioning profile generation
    - Ability to enable Apple services in-app (i.e. Apple Pay, CloudKit, PassKit, Music Kit, HomeKit, Push Notifications, Siri Shortcuts, Sign in with Apple, kernel extensions, FairPlay Streaming)
    - Access to Apple-issued keys for connecting to services such as MusicKit, DeviceCheck, APNs, CloudKit, Wallet
    - Access to Developer ID signing certificates and Kernel Extension signing certificates - Developer Technical Support
    - Participation in Universal App Quick Start Program, including the right to use the Developer Transition Kit (which must be returned to Apple)
    - Engineering efforts to improve hardware and software performance of Unreal Engine on Mac and iOS hardware; optimize Unreal Engine on the Mac for creative workflows, virtual sets and their CI/Build Systems; and adoption and support of ARKit features and future VR features into Unreal Engine by their XR team

The final item is very specific to Unreal Engine so it is clear that this is not simply a template e-mail and was crafted specifically for Epic. Thus we can assume that Apple legal, marketing, the executive team, etc. have pored over every line intently (despite misspelling iPadOS).

My guess is that this is intended to enumerate everything that Apple contributes to earn its 30% cut.

Epic themselves have now entered this list into the legal record, claiming that it would be incredibly damaging for them to lose access to these features. Perhaps it is now harder for them to argue that Apple's cut is excessive.

Besides the Unreal the game engine, Epic has been making huge inroads leveraging Unreal as a virtual movie set, as seen on Mandalorian.

I would assume most of the hardware used in movie production is Mac hardware, so that entire initiative just went up in smoke.

The Unreal Engine backdrops for The Mandelorian were engineered and driven used multiple sync'd PCs, not Macs.

Or Epic hoped for that reaction as it shows Apple's reaction to be out of proportion. Just banning the game would've been a logical move but destroying other businesses not related to the 30% cut in Fortnite could give them a much stronger case and convince a judge that Apple's actions are retaliation, not just a reaction to the violation.

I'd be very surprised if Epic hadn't considered this reaction by Apple.

Apple's 30% cut is not based on those other services (the services related to Mac, and the "services" involved in collaborating to make Apple devices more friendly to games). The 30% cut only applies to Fortnite. Epic would not owe Apple more than a few hundred bucks for all the rest, because Apple is doing that work to benefit themselves.

Apple is giving a bunch of stuff at cost or for free in exchange for the $100 developer fee in the hopes that one of those applications will become the new Flappy Bird and rakes in billions in 30% cuts.

It's fascinating to see the replies to the tweets. It appears most people don't care. They just want their game to work.

A lesson in how your customers don't care about how your product is made.

I experienced that myself first hand. Players are no activists, only some who make a lot of noise. You simply mustn't instrumentalize them.

As you said: people see that the game does not work anymore. Who is to blame? And what can we do about it? Install another game, because what they see is that other games are available and in the end, this is not about Epic, it is about fun for people.

A cursory scan of the Twitter thread suggests most people who have expressed an opinion are on team Apple, blaming Epic for violating Apple's term of service.

This is exactly what we get so mad at journalists about: we look at Twitter and just assume it accurately reflects reality, when there’s no evidence whatsoever that this is the case.

Ditto. Twitter and Reddit both.

That's right. Epic is trying to use it's user-base as pawns against Apple, but it isn't working. Is Epic planning on lowering the cost of games on iOS by 30% if the fee goes away? I don't believe they are.

Edit: Thank you save_ferris for for correcting me. Here is the blog post announcing the discount. https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/the-fortnite-m...

They did announce a permanent, store wide discount in Fortnite for users that adopted their payment system (20% I believe). So they are passing some cost savings on to users.

It's legitimately difficult for me to comprehend anyone being on apple's side here. I'm not talking legally, I'm talking about which companies preferred outcome would be better for consumers. Epic being allowed to open their own app store would mean every app has 18% less fees. That is nothing but good for consumers. It's legitimately an improvement for everyone except apple.

Epic is acting in bad faith. They've spent millions of dollars over the last 2 years securing dozens of platform exclusives for the Epic game store, in some cases forcing the cancellation of customer's pre-orders on other platforms. They're not GoG. They're very happy to support and fund anti-consumer behavior and closed platforms as long as they're the beneficiaries.

This is why I think this should be regarded as a contract dispute between two huge companies and not some David vs. Goliath struggle for freedom or consumer rights.

I'm not saying it is better for customers. Lower prices in profitable companies would almost always be better for consumers. Apple created a language, IDE, and infrastructure and is charging a price they have decided upon since day 1. I don't believe Epic has the right to decide what Apple charges, the same way I don't have the right to pirate software because I don't believe PhotoShop is worth $600; I can pay it or use a worse product.

Maybe, but it’s hard to glean anything concrete from just tweets these days.

Anecdotally, I’ve played fortnite for almost two years and most of my fortnite friends are pretty team-Epic on this controversy. But most of us are software devs professionally.

This is literay a life lesson. No one cares of your struggles in general

This doesn't surprise me in any bit, but I don't understand why people on HN, a much better informed audience, keep defending Apple's walled garden practice until now, while being very critical against any slightly anti-competitive conduct Google, Facebook, or Amazon did/do.

The people defending Apple are different from the people attacking Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

Oh, definitely. The point is they are both more common compared to the opposite opinions.

Just from looking at the tweets a lot of people do care about the why. I see a lot of people blaming Epic for breaking the contract and some of people blaming Apple for completely kicking Epic off all Apple products. Maybe the reactions would be different if Apple had just arbitrarily kicked off Epic. And there are probably a nonzero number of people who would like to pay less money for VBucks on iOS which is how this whole conflict started anyways.

Can someone give me compelling reasons for disallowing side-loading of applications on iOS?

Hypothetically, if side-loading were to be allowed it could be buried under a configuration+confirmation flag for security reasons just like with Android or Windows 10.

Thinking more abstractly about this, I already do "sideload" iOS applications when I sign them with enterprise/developer certs and perform OTA installs from systems I control. Presumably, there is still some communication with the mothership going on (certificate revocation checks), but the principles are very similar...

A single human is smart, people are stupid.

They’ll install ANYTHING, no matter how hard it is and how shady the site is. They can’t help themselves.

Then their phone is rooted by a bad actor and spreading malware. Who do they blame? Themselves? The shady site? The creator of the trojan?

Nope. Apple. They’ll shout from the rooftops how Apple ruined their life and business and remand restitution.

The easiest and most reliable way to prevent this is to lock people in a walled garden and make sure they don’t poke themselves with anything sharp. Yes, it sucks for the smart ones who know that shart things hurt, but that’s the way it’s gotta be.

That's hyperbole. People can sideload Android apps for a decade now and I have yet to see someone complain that sideloading did something bad let alone blame the OS for it.

That is such a rare case that I have a hard time trying to justify the loss of freedom.

There are dozens of Android manufacturers. If an Android phone breaks, people complain about the manufacturer or maybe the telco they bought the phone from.

Apple is a singular target, unlike anything in the Android ecosystem.

That sounds plausible but I've never seen it happen. Maybe you could provide some examples to back up your claim?

Yeah that's my point. Never seen it happen. Surely can't be enough to justify the loss of freedom.

So what I am hearing is that if I were to put a warning label and process around something that is potentially dangerous, it is no longer enough of a disclaimer for some arbitrary reason.

How is the process for enabling side-loading on Android unsuitable for consumers of Apple products? It is off by default. I don't think anyone is advocating for allowing iOS users the ability to run arbitrary executable images found in Safari without going through some process first.

People can “sideload” on mac os x and nobody is making a scene about their mistakes of mac os x being insecure.

Different market, different historical reasons, and typically a much smaller user base for MacOS than the iPhone.

Also, “sideloaded” apps on MacOS are most certainly suspect in Apple’s eyes, so much so they put opt-in requirements around them. While I do see that as an argument for allowing iPhone sideloading with similar opt-in requirements, you can at least understand the market is considerably different for iPhone users than for Mac users, even if there is an overlap between the two.

iPhones also, from a support perspective, are an order of magnitude (or close to it) greater than that of MacOS. Seems reasonable to me for them to keep their appliance locked down in this way.

A walled garden doesn't stop the fact that iOS exploits are cheaper than Android exploits because there are an abundance of iOS exploits, and many of them use Safari to gain root by visiting a website.

If I see an app in the App Store that I might be interested in trying then I can download it and be pretty sure it's not malware, it does roughly what it's advertised as doing, and I can see from its price and the IAPs listed in the store whether it's reasonable value.

By contrast every time my mum clicks a Facebook advert and downloads an app on her Android phone it makes her phone noticeably worse to use. Apple is seemingly the only company able to maintain a reasonable certainty that an app they're hosting/advertising isn't deliberately malicious.

If Apple allow sideloading then I genuinely expect millions of people will have malware on their phones within days of Facebook being able to replicate their malicious Android app advertising business on iOS.

If it is such a valuable service maybe Apple could let you pay $50 to lock your mom's phone after purchase, or whatever dollar value people value the lockdown at.

I am still not seeing the argument relative to mine.

If the ability to side load an app is not enabled by default, how would novice users accidentally install apps they may not have intended to?

Step 1: User clicks ad that says they can download this app super easily and improve their phone's battery performance.

Step 2: User clicks and navigates to a side-load page/alternate store.

Step 2a: Pop-up appears - please adjust your settings to enable access to this app

Step 3: User does so and now downloads malware.

Step 4: Gets upset and blames Apple or calls up their more tech informed Hacker-News-using family member and asks how to fix it.

(this genuinely happens with my mother and chrome extensions - she somehow CANNOT avoid those "search engine takeover" extensions no matter how much I try to educate her on how to avoid it)

What if the permission enablement was made more difficult? Perhaps like how you get to access Android developer tools only after tapping the build number a bunch of times. Or even, making it something you have to run from a CLI while connected to a computer.

My point is, there are many options that preserve safety for the vast majority of users without making it a total non-starter to use alternative app stores.

Few years ago before Apple implemeted Night Shift, F.lux used to use an ability for non-paid developer accounts to compile and run an app on their phone to distribute. They provided a source code for a small program that serve as a shim to F.lux. User need to compile this code with Xcode and put it on their phone.

People followed tutorial videos downloading Xcode, making a developer account, figure out how to get signing profile works, etc. just to get F.lux installed on their phone. Searching for "Flux iOS 9" on YouTube yields some video with over 100k views. In some community there are people who are willing to do it for you (by VNC into user's machine) at $10 per installation.

It’s very simple: support. Apple does not want to take any more needless support calls than they have to. When you run a trillion dollar company that handles, I would speculate, tens or hundreds of thousands of active support tickets, and consider adding in a virtually unsupportable mode in your appliance (keeping in mind that iPhones are considered an appliance to Apple), I would hope you would choose the sane option.

Also, Apple prides itself on quality. Side loading, whether you agree with allowing it or not, degrades quality because Apple loses its end to end control. See Android phones as an example of this.

All that being said, sure I would love to have the option of side loading, but if I really care that much, I’ll jailbreak.

I can "side load" my Mac too. And users know that if a 3rd party application fails or causes problems you don't call Apple. To me this line of thought doesn't hold up.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

If you sue me, and go out of your way to publically attack me, I'm not willing to do business with you until it's settled, if ever again.

But can you be banned from doing business with millions of other people for offending the gatekeeper?

Apple's grudge with Nvidia comes to mind, so maybe yes?

Why should Epic get to enjoy a market that Apple built without giving Apple anything or following the rules of the platform?

Should anybody be able to post anything they want on HN or YouTube or Facebook etc.? They can't.

Does Epic allow anyone to sell content for Fortnite without giving Epic any money? They don't.

All I can do is throw up my hands and say "Stallman was right."

Consumers bought the phone which can be be considered a general computing device.. so we should be free to run whatever software we want on it. That's the real argument.

This situation is a very large part of the reason I would never buy an iPhone.

The walled garden isn't a surprise, it's a feature.

I agree with that, but it’s then also a broader question that covers all computing devices. Should I be able to run free whatever software I want in my car, in any of its systems? How about medical devices or any of the gaming consoles? It’ll probably end up being an argument on what a general computing device is.

I mean... yes? I think we should have the right to modify / tinker with things we buy, with the understanding that doing so voids any warranties or manufacturer liability.

I wish I could say yes to all of those, as long as the risks of unintended behavior and damage are clearly explained.

> Should I be able to run free whatever software I want in my car, in any of its systems?

You already do. Mechanics do this all of the time with aftermarket firmware.

> How about medical devices or any of the gaming consoles

Jailbreaking is explicitly legal.

They should have access to it, because Apple is engaging in anti-competitive practices that are illegal, thats why.

Does Epic allow anyone to sell content for Fortnite outside of Fortnite, without giving any money to Epic?

Anti-competitiveness becomes worse, and illegal, if a market is larger.

Many practices which would be perfectly legally normally, become illegal if your company is large enough.

The market for iPhone apps is much much larger than the market for fortnite skins.

If the market for specifically fortnite skins was 50 billion dollars a year, then maybe you would have a point, but it is not.

Apple have hundreds of millions of loyal users buying new iPhones every few years as a result of that market. I think from that alone they are plenty compensated, and it's a perfectly good reason for Apple to provide a decent SDK. Or should successful developers send them a cake, too?

Apple should ask for compensation proportionate to the value they are providing Epic. Which they do, in the form of paid Apple developer accounts, and a 30% cut on services Epic is using.

For instance, if you choose to make your app free, Apple won't get that 30% cut on sales. This doesn't mean they are magically entitled to money as compensation - the transaction simply didn't happen. If they don't like that arrangement, maybe they should charge more for developer accounts?

Actually developers built the market. Without that Apps on the App store, the iPhone is worth almost nothing.

Yep, lack of apps is why Windows Phone died

Not to clients like myself who bought it because of the security provided by that locked-down environment. I'm not concerned about a game not being sold on it. It provides for a host of other purposes.

If executed properly, those two seemingly opposed features could be achieved and make more people happy.

Make it possible to unlock iOS ability to sideload apps, either through a unique code, a security certificate, or a simple toggle and allows businesses to lock down (but not remotely enable) this ability using their MDM.

Of course, put the usual disclaimer that enabling this feature could weaken the device security, and don't simply enable it because an app or a website told you so.

It would still be a phone.

That said, of course developers built the market, but not every developer built the market. Apple developers built it. Other developers have chosen to sell inside of it.

Without Apple Developers creating the store itself those developers couldn't sell anything. Apple could 100% do that if they wanted. In fact, the first iPhone was as such.

Yup. Exactly. Think of it this way. You manufacture product foo and it's sold to customers via some national store chain. If you anger the owners of the store chain, they can simply refuse to carry your product anymore. This happens all the time. The app store is no different. It's a national chain that Epic sells through and they've poked the bear one too many times. Lucky for Epic that it's privately held. Otherwise they'd have a shareholder revolt.

Apple doesn't own those phones anymore though, the users do. Whereas, I don't get to own my own best buy.

Users own the hardware, but not the software - they are grante a license to use the software. This is not about the hardware, it's about a single App, the App Store, which the user does not own.

And to which no alternative is permitted.

Correct. And this is not illegal.

Using the store analogy - when you purchase at a store, the store has a markup on the product (usually 40%) - you cannot demand the store take a different markup because a store down the street is selling it for less, you can't set up a sign in the store telling patrons they can get a better deal down the road, and you can't say you want to pay in a particular currency because you don't have any of the local currency in your wallet. The store can establish policies like this for any patron that enters.

I dont get this store analogy. Best Buy can't suppress the existence of Fry's, so I can go do business with Fry's if a bridge with best buy is burnt. Apple suppresses all competition.

And the legality has yet to be determined.

And Apple can't suppress the existence of Google or any other platform company.

Personally, I bought an Apple device specifically because it was so locked down.

I don't understand the desire to dictate how a piece of software should operate in this case. Why should Apple be forced to make their software operate like Google's?

There are alternatives so nobody is forced to use Apple's platform if they don't want to. They can buy another. How is this not a case of buyer's remorse?

I'm sorry, i don't follow your argument.

E: and Google is no better.

> And this is not illegal.

Maybe it should be. This isn't just about Apple. It's about all e-waste as well.

The idea that I can't do anything with a perfectly workable device once the company providing software to it cuts it off is ridiculous.

How much waste are we producing because we think the company that made a physical device should have 100% say on what happens on said physical device?

Then customers that want that product go to another store chain. This makes stores think twice before banning some products or brands.

There is only one store in iOS country.

But there are several stores in mobile country, and more again in platform country. Drawing the boundary of the market around iOS seems circular. "They're a monopoly because they have 100% of the market share on the market that's specific to them."

Because the cost of going to another platform is far higher than the cost of going to another physical store.

You don't invest ~$1000 to go to a physical store.

The truth is because there are only two stores in our example, it really does make sense.

Imagine there were only Walmart and Costco and literally nothing else, even small business. Now someone violates Walmart’s rules for a specific item in the store, and they not only ban that item, but also ban every item they sell.

Here’s where it gets dystopian. In all platforms that allow competitive stores, the fees settle way down from 30%. Look at windows, epic, steam. 5-20%. That’s what a competitive price looks like.

But because there exists literally only Walmart and Costco, they have 0 incentive to compete. That’s abuse of market power, and exactly what Antitrust concerns itself.

The tired analogy of “it isn’t a monopoly” just doesn’t hold up in two dimensions: there are only two major players, both disallow competition within their marketplace, and yet in alternative platforms (game consoles, windows, linux) you have alternative routes to delivery that show us the “real cost” of managing a platform.

Apple and Google are running their companies with 0 foresight. It’s a shame that Tim doesn’t have the foresight to pre-empt this, it’s terrible brand strategy and they are supposed to be good at it.

There is some irony here though, no? For example, if Apple is the only market-place in the country, and rules keep it open and free and available, then there is no need for a 2nd market-place: we've forced Apples to be how we want.

If Apple was allowed to make stupid mistakes like making it very hard to develop Unreal Engine games for iOS, or being jerks in general, then there would be much more justification for building a 2nd market or switching to a 2nd market.

I'm not pitching for no regulation, but the unintended side-effects of force Apple to play well with others is that there is now _no need_ for a competitor who is more open...

I'm not really following the logic here, what rules are keeping it open? Apple is allowed to make stupid mistakes, there is an alternative market, just only one, and, it's clear no force is keeping Apple from doing exactly what it wants currently.

Steam charges 20-30% depending on volume. Epic pc store charges 12%.

Can I bring back my iPhone back to the store if the app I want is banned after the sale happened?

Platform country? How does another viable store in Canada help me if I live in the US?

Or even, how does another viable store in Nevada help me if I live in Illinois? I know I can "just move" anytime, nothing's stopping me, but it's expensive...

It's a lot easier to switch which store you shop than what phone you use. Switching iOS to Android costs a non-trivial amount of money. There's also a lot of lock-in, migrating from apps in Apple land to Android land. Some people may have multiple Apple devices even. These people face a very high barrier to switching.

To me this is like asking someone dissatisfied with the grocery store that has a monopoly over their town to just move to another city.

> The app store is not different.

Really, where can iPhone users go obtain Fortnite from now? What? No place? Not the same.

This analogy would only be valid if there were only one store chain in each region. For a better analogy, look at energy distribution, where there are rules that the monopolists have to follow.

Actually, the scenario you describe "one store chain in each reason" is a common scenario. Outside of major urban centers it's not uncommon to have a single grocery store, hardware store, etc.

Energy distribution is different because it's a government granted monopoly.

That's quite often illegal, unfortunately.

I seriously hope you meant fortunately?

Believe it or not, there are people whose opinions on market regulation differ from yours.

Why would it be fortunate to be compelled to do business with someone who's suing you?

Fortunate for those of us who don't wield monopoly power over a marketplace.

Does the little guy enjoy doing business with an adversarial customer any more than the big guy? I can't see why that would be the case.

So that your legal rights aren't undermined. Especially companies dependent on single large companies have the legal system as their only protection against abuse.

It sounds like a double-edged concept.

This regulation sounds like it could create a channel for abuse. Specifically, if someone sues me, then I can't fire that customer for any reason.

Apple are the one that made sure that people had to do business with them for anything relating to their platform. After getting my Windows license, I can works on stuff compatible with Windows without ever interacting with them, hell I could do that without even interacting with them at all if I used open source software. I could sue Microsoft and they could decide like you to no longer do any business with me, and it wouldn't affect my capacities in any way to make a Windows compatible software.

It doesn't work like that. As a business you cannot refuse serving customers just because they sue you (especially B2B).

Note that this applies to Mac systems, not just IOS. Apple is trying to prevent Unreal Engine from working on any Apple-controlled platform.

So, if you're a gamer or a game developer, do not buy a Mac. Developers now using Macs need to be planning an exit strategy.

Or switch to Unity

ugh... unity is a pain

The engine is open source isn't it? They can't stop you from downloading the source and compiling it, right?

Source available, not open source.

Ok, but is the general point accurate?

No. You would be free to compile your copy of the Unreal Engine, but without the ability to use Apple development software, it would be impossible for Epic to continue developing the engine on Mac. The end result is that the engine would not continue to develop on Mac, and would eventually likely stop functioning.

Already with new ARM-based Macs, or have they already published a fully working version?

It's not clear how the Epic vs Apple war is going to come out, but both sides have doubled down on their positions, so it's probably going to take a while to resolve. So the worst case scenario, third party UE4 game devs being unable to get their game's code signed for MacOS or IOS installation, could happen.

That sounds improbable, and if enacted, grounds for a much heavier suit against Apple. Even if Apple has beef with Epic, I don't see how Apple could refuse third parties who want to use Epic's software as part of their product in Apple stores. There's an element of people using UE4 being in contract with Epic by default, but presumably Apple has no basis to say you must not have a business relationship with Epic in order to publish on the app store.

The unreal game engine itself shouldn't have anything that apple dislikes.

See Washington Post coverage: "Apple cuts off Epic from its tools, endangering future Unreal Engine projects on iOS and Mac".[1] There's a certain amount of posturing here, but if neither side backs down and the court doesn't issue an injunction, further development with Unreal Engine on Apple platforms stops.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/08/17/apple-...

Coverage on Forbes.[1] "Even if Epic anticipated the Fortnite ban, and were ready with a cute parody video and a sixty page injunction, they do not seem to have anticipated Apple coming after Unreal itself. "

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/08/18/does-apple...

This is a wake-up punch to the face for every indie game studio considering iOS.

I mean if Apple kicks out Fortnite and rejects access to the Fortnite team, that seems like a reasonable retaliation for Epic breaking their rules.

But no, Apple is happily throwing hundreds of thousands of unrelated indie developers under the bus, who started building their next game with the (previously praised by Apple) iOS Unreal Engine and are now unable to release updates and security fixes because Apple is actively preventing Epic from building such fixes for the Unreal Engine.

Roughly 10 years ago, I used to be a happy Apple user and developer.

Clearly, the current Apple leadership considers iOS developers to be nothing more than expendable minions.

Apple should allow alternative app stores. And they aren't going to do that for as long as they can. So, it's good that some customers are publicly complaining.

I don't think they can force Apple to allow alternative payment methods. But, alternative app-store is reasonable.

Apple has been pushing for "services" under Cook ever since he took the helm. Being forced to allow secondary app stores would undo all of that work.

I'm not surprised by this.

From Apples perspective, Epic meaningfully bypassed key terms of the App store which have been in force since the App store was created. Epic then turned around and sued Apple. It also became clear they were planning for this sequence to occur, in effect, trying to publicly shame Apple. I think I would be surprised if Apple DIDN'T suspend their accounts. The signing on Mac is just a side effect of loosing dev tools due to Epic's actions. Maybe they should have sued first before taking action that would get them suspended.

That said, I am glad someone with the means is pushing back against the 30% App Store rates. I value what Apple provides, but it is excessive for a general computing device (unlike an XBOX, Leapfrog, etc).

If you released an iOS app against the guidelines, such as counting up US drone strikes, wouldn't it suck to have your unrelated OS X apps unnotarized rather than just having your app removed? Notarization was supposed to be about security.

I don't understand the comparisons to game consoles.

You buy an Xbox or a playstation, and it's a game playing machine. It just plays video games.

You buy a mobile phone. And it's a general computing device.

It's very much arguable that it's necessary for modern life.

The only thing that makes a game console only a game playing machine is that it is limited by its producer. All the hardware is there for it to be a general computing device.

So when you spool this argument out, it becomes: Google/Apple don't hobble their devices as much as Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo do, therefore Google/Apple should have to open them up more and Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo should not.

Well it's what it is up front. A games consoles plays games and streams some video.

A mobile phone is a camera, gps, web browser, telephone, messaging, food delivery, music listening, video watching, taxi calling, banking tool etc etc etc device.

living your life, Apple and Google get 30% of your transactions.

> A mobile phone is a camera, gps, web browser, telephone, messaging, food delivery, music listening, video watching, taxi calling, banking tool etc etc etc device.

I'm sure you know that you can do most if not all of those also from a game console. Sure, it doesn't always have a camera or GPS but that's true for many other general purpose computers as well. You can absolutely listen to music or watch videos or do online banking from an XBox or Playstation.

You're not seriously trying to equate Xbox and iPhone usage in the same category

Gaming consoles are a different breed since they are usually subsidized by the manufacturer. The PS4 was sold below the bill of materials cost at launch (which is waaaay lower than the manufactured unit cost) and remained relevant for 7 years and will continue working for many more. Meanwhile the iPhones that were sold at a premium in the same year are now landfill. You can't convert game consoles into general computing devices without shaking the business model of that industry.

That you expect that the xbox and playstation are not general-purpose computing devices is a massive PR win by Sony and Microsoft, and one that Apple wants to copy. Apple doesn't want you to think of an iPhone as a general-purpose computing device. They would prefer you to think of it as an Apple Store app-running machine, to say that it just plays Apple apps.

Consoles don't open themselves up to any developer nor advertise themselves as such.

Apple, however, definitely advertises the hell out of the App Store, which is open to anyone.

Consoles also sell the hardware at a loss, and use game sales to subsidize it. There's different expectations, advertisements, and economics in play here.

Open to those with an Apple Developer account. It's not open to everyone. The licensing process is just easier than for consoles.

You pay a nominal fee and can publish an App. There's no selection process. Consoles however won't just let anyone on their platform.

AFAIK consoles were never open to any game. Phones only became walled gardens with Apples Store. And they remain completely shut off to external apps only on iOS.

> It's very much arguable that it's necessary for modern life.

Not even arguable. You need a smartphone running iOS or Android + a cellular plan to maintain an acceptable standard of life in America or most other countries today, and the costs of switching from one to the other in the middle of the cycle are prohibitive for most.

You really don't, unless your standard of an acceptable life is absurd.

You can make a good argument for the internet being needed but you would be able to live a fantastic life with 'just' a laptop and a non-smart phone.

Once when I wanted to take a ferry, the only way to buy a ticket was through android / iOS app. Many times you need 2fa app including for work, or to access government services or online banking. Some stores only accept mobile payment.

Hard to interpret this as anything but petty spite from Apple’s side. There’s no need to terminate their developer accounts for a violation of the App Store policy, nor does Apple usually do so.

I don’t generally like Epic, and used to be a big Apple fanboy, but in this matter, I really hope the judge tears Apple a new one, this kind of abuse of monopoly power needs to end.

Doesn't Epic ban kids when they violate the Fortnite TOS? Epic knew what they were doing. I have no sympathy for them.

Epic doesn’t allow kids to use custom community made skins either. Kids are afraid of getting banned.

I've been wondering about that. So, by Epic's logic, doesn't that make them a monopolist in the Fortnite in-app purchase market?

Those kids just create a new account. They're not businesses with thousands of employees that are dependent on TOS enforcement by Epic.

A lot of this feels to me like Rpic thinks they’re a bigger deal than they are. No doubt they make a lot of money, and they’ve made Apple a lot of money. I think though that their attempt to take Apple in the court of Public opinion is going to fall flat, because there are a lot more iOS users than Fortnite on iOS players.

This is all PR before Epic stops selling vbucks in-app. They can’t advertise where to buy in the app.

This will get the word out that you can buy vbucks through their website.

You can't do that... Hey got taken down for exactly this.

What I find confusing about Epic's approach is taking on Google at the same time. It seems like you'd have some leverage at forcing Apple to the table if you were exclusive on Google, for instance -- and then, after winning, you could be exclusive on Apple for a while to cut a similar deal with Google.

All your leverage comes from kids wanting to only have a device that plays their favorite game where they hang out with their friends.

I think Epic are going to announce a new piece of hardware in the coming months. A phone that can play many games in their library.

Both Google and Apple are trash at games and Epic know this. Theres a lucrative niche.

Is it going to be called "Nintendo Switch"? Because Fortnite is on there, plays really well, and I'm not sure what Epic is going to bring to the table to outclass it.

Free games? That's what they do on PC. Nintendos biggest weakness on it's handhelds since the beginning has been almost no sales (as in Steam sales).

Nintendo never puts their games on sale but Fortnite is free, plenty of games go on sale all the time, and Epic is welcome to add to that list of free and discounted games if they're so inclined.

Yeah as an iPhone user I really hope Apple makes this a very, very, example-making costly mistake for Epic.

You really hope Apple keeps charging 30% app tax and forbidding us from installing apps from outside of App Store?

most iPhone users love the idea of a single app store with apps vetted by apple

I for one am glad that they ban all alternative web browsers, so I don't have to deal with issues like using addons I like or not having pages randomly reload because ios thinks they should. Enforced lack of choice is awesome. I wonder what jailbroken app idea Apple will steal next...

Yes.

In particular, I don't ever want to be in the position that PC users are stuck in, where they can be forced to install certain stores just to get access to the games they want to play.

And I certainly don't want to be stuck in the position that Android users are in, where they have to worry about what store they're using, where the software comes from, and whether the app they're about to install is legitimate and free of malware.

There are freedoms to and freedoms from, and they're both important. As an iPhone user, I knowingly and willingly chose freedom from.

> where they can be forced to install certain stores just to get access to the games they want to play.

Nobody "forces" us to install certain stores. We are able to if we want to. Whereas there are a ton of apps you cannot install on iOs. Ever.

> There are freedoms to and freedoms from

You know you're not supposed to sympathize with the fascists in Handmaid's Tale, right?

At least PC users have a large range of playable games. I don't want to be in the position of a Mac users to hope and beg for a Mac port of a game. And the Apple app store has malware too.

None of that requires 30%.

> I don't ever want to be in the position that PC users are stuck in, where they can be forced to install certain stores just to get access to the games they want to play.

You realize that the alternative... is no game, right? That's what Epic is showing to consumers...

I'm pretty sure you answered yes here, now you do realize that you aren't forced to install certain stores, not installing them would only remove your capacities to... get that game that wouldn't happen either way in your better scenario.

The only time you are forced on anything, is right now with Apple, where you can't install that others app store that would allow you to get that game. On Android, you got that choice. I don't have the Epic Launcher on my Android phone, just like you don't on your iOS device, the difference is that I chose not to.

Yeah or Epic could not be pricks and just put the game on the stores like every other app developer. That’s the mysterious third option you’re missing and that we lived with for literally years up until this point.

Apple has the capacity to protect me from stores like origin, steam, epic, and everyone else who wants to install crap on my device. Microsoft doesn’t, so I’m forced to install that shit to get access to games on PC.

Folks saying they had no problem on Android, they just had to install a forked OS and a custom store are proving the point.

Epic is misreading the situation and trying to take advantage of Congress’s poor understanding of technology. I hope they capitulate just like Hey, but if they don’t want to, their shareholders should be paying a pretty penny for the mistake.

> Yeah or Epic could not be pricks and just put the game on the stores like every other app developer

So contesting an absurd fee is being pricks now? Wow...

Like every other app developer? Many can't accept payment in the app as this fee would increase the cost too much. Many can't have an app at all because Apple politics over moderation are unfair and absurd (see Floatplane from Linus Tech Tips, they are struggling to get their app approved with comments as they "couldn't moderate it well enough", while Twitch has no issue getting approval).

Epic has the current luxury to do not depends on Apple and be quite comfortable financially to contest what they are doing. Many app developpers would do the same if they had the same luxury, sadly they can't afford the move Epic did.

> That’s the mysterious third option you’re missing and that we lived with for literally years up until this point.

China population has lived with CCP for years too! Why not inspire our laws on theirs?!

It's not because something keep happening that it's a good thing, you know? It's keep happening because of their position of power, for once there is someone that has the means to contest it.

> Apple has the capacity to protect me from stores like origin, steam, epic, and everyone else who wants to install crap on my device.

First, you can build an OS that won't let crap happens. You don't need any curation to not allow something to happens. I will decide whether an app can get my GPS, not Apple, not you, not the developper of an app, just me.

Second, if any app follow Apple standard, why wouldn't they still be on the official app store? This is what most people will use, thus not being there would be incredibly absurd. Fees could be a reasons, but that would just prove that the fee is quite unreasonable.

> they just had to install a forked OS and a custom store are proving the point.

Proving what point? That they have control over what happens on their own device? Are you forgeting that we are arguing about not being able to get control over our own device here?

> And I certainly don't want to be stuck in the position that Android users are in, where they have to worry about what store they're using, where the software comes from, and whether the app they're about to install is legitimate and free of malware.

what? i'm an Android user and i've never had to worry about multiple stores. well, not until Google kicked [a YouTube client i like] out of the official store; but luckily, i could just install F-Droid and get it from there :)

> I think though that their attempt to take Apple in the court of Public opinion is going to fall flat, because there are a lot more iOS users than Fortnite on iOS players.

This naively assumes an iOS user is on Apple's side, and assumes that the court of public opinion excludes those users with neither iOS nor Fortnite yet have general opinions and business-stake on iOS options.

I should also note that, for some of us, the court of public opinion and the court of legal opinion are different. I can disagree w/ Apple and disagree w/ their practices being deemed illegal.

I think most iOS users don't actually care, but they know that they get their phones from Apple, and some game company is trying to mess something up.

I agree that the legal and the PR plays are separate, but if Epic were just trying to handle the legal issue, they wouldn't be making as big of a deal out of it. They're expecting to get something else from this.

Eh, I don't know. I think they've got a lot of positive momentum. I would bet generously on their future.

* I despise fortnite. I don't know if it has longevity. But it's pretty damn ambitious and is closer to the metaverse than anyone has gotten in a frustrating sort of way

* Unreal Engine is getting better by the day, is very dev friendly, and is likely going to grow in popularity as some of it's neat-o UE5 features take yet another chunk out of the pain of game dev for indies. Unity feels like takes one step forward, one step back every update.

* Their app store has been on a roll lately with lots of games for free that I actually want to play(Civ 6, Overcooked, Total War Troy, Killing Floor 2, Torchlight, 20xx, Remnant, Enter the Gungeon). I've basically switched all of my attention from Steam to Epic and would probably purchase from there over steam if a game were available on both for the same price. The UI is worse, the networking client is worse, and the store pages are less informative; however I find their library of games to feel relatively well curated whereas steam has pages of crap that you need to sift through to find anything.

What do you mean that FN is closer to the "metaverse"?

Metaverse as described in Neal Stephenson's "Snowcrash" which was one of the first novels to describe a multiplayer VR world. Fun book.

By closer I mean it's developing this weird culture as a place to just hang out in besides just playing rounds of the games. People watch movies and concerts and what not in the game. It has a higher level evolving plot line and culture. Like second life but mainstream; social media in video game form.

What the f*ck is going on at Apple?

It's more like, why did Epic decide to file a spurious legal action when their situation with Apple is exactly the same as their situation with Microsoft (for XBox) and with Sony (for PlayStation) and with Google (for Android).

The only difference is that Sony just invested $250M in Epic. I'm sure that minor fact has no relevance here, though. (sarcasm most certainly intended)

Are the various cuts (both sale, and in-game) for each platform known, either informally or publicly?

Everyone is 30%, always has been

Xbox, Playstation, Steam, Google, Apple, they're all 30%.

Everyone is 30%

Not everyone. Epic Games Store is 12%, Humble Store is 5% and itch.io lets the developer choose.

Due to Epic's pressure Steam already offering lower fees for more than two years now. Both Sony and Microsoft are also likely to make custom deals for popular titles the same way as they allowed them to have cross-play.

Tactics Epic using might look dishonest from outside, but it's will really help industry long-term.

Epic's intent is clear. No need to ask why.

Apple's handling of the situation is baffling. "Let's martyr the smaller company!"

Every company is smaller than Apple (for certain definitions of "smaller").

Isn't it the case that game publishers often will invest in game developers for their platform? I read elsewhere this was the case, but I haven't found a good source online.

> It's more like, why did Epic decide to file a spurious legal action when their situation with Apple is exactly the same as their situation with Microsoft (for XBox) and with Sony (for PlayStation) and with Google (for Android).

It's not spurious and their situation on Android, at least, is not exactly the same, because they can (and have previously) distribute to Android via their own website or third-party stores (and have announced intent to bring their own store to Android.)

Of course, they are suing Google on similar grounds.

As why only Apple, it's not only Apple, and this kind of litigation is expensive and it doesn't really scale in cost with the potential reward, so if you are going to devote resources to one first swing at it, it make sense to do it where the immediate rewards of winning are the greatest, which is iOS, first and foremost, and I expect for Epic right now, mobile more generally.

> The only difference is that Sony just invested $250M in Epic. I'm sure that minor fact has no relevance here, though.

Well, yeah, that's a pretty important difference, and quite possibly legally relevant, too. Aside from the political reasons not to sue a major investor, investment agreements might well have terms that change why relevant legal rights and duties of the parties.

>Sony just invested $250M in Epic

less than 2 months revenue from mobile, yes, your argument makes sense!

Mask fell off.

Are they more contagious now? /s

Seriously though, imagine Apple actually wins this one. How long before Microsoft will pull something like this off?

The real question is why do they get a warning ahead? No indie dev would.

Epic's "trap" seemed terribly tonedeaf. This will not end well for them.

Really? I got the opposite impression. Apple's tonedeafness and developer hostility is finally being challenged by a (comparative) underdog.

Do you think that Google, Microsoft, and Sony are also hostile and tone-deaf, then? One assumes so. All those platforms extract the same kinds of fees from Epic that Apple does.

But mysteriously, Epic only wants to go after Apple.

Because on Android Epic can still have users install their games via a different app store.

But Google is still extracting the same 30% if users make in-app purchases.

Only if it uses Google's built in payment system - which is what started all this (EPIC using their own).

Not if you use a different payment processing infra. You are not obligated to use Google's app store or their in-app purchasing system if you install the app through a different channel.

No. You are not forced to use Google to make in app purchases like Apple does. There's a choice.

Only if it's installed through the Play Store. You can IAP with your own payment platform if your app is installed from outside.

They are suing both Google and Apple

Google is being sued for a different reason. I think it is for blocking a deal with a phone maker where they would have epic store installed

Epic is suing Google as well, but not Sony or Microsoft.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21368363/epic-google-fort...

They managed to break Steam's grasp over PC gaming (at least enough to get their own games and some exclusives), they're trying for mobile now by taking on Google and Apple, it's hard to think the next step won't be to stick it to the console manufacturers if they have succeed

> Do you think that Google, Microsoft, and Sony are also hostile and tone-deaf, then?

Yes, they are all trying very hard to get regulated. The situation is not particularly far from the one that gave rise to the Sherman Act. Provided the situation is not already covered by existing anti competition laws, I am ready to bet it soon will be.

Easier to win 1 battle and set precedent for the next battles. Trying to fight 5 battles at once seems unwise.

When I buy an Apple device, it isn't a computer, it's a rented Apple shelf. That is what this roughly means.

Imagine Microsoft saying that I can not install Steam because Steam doesn't agree to MS payment setup. You can't imagine because MS doesn't have that control, it wanted to though, long back.

Apple has this control. It is bad for consumers.

"Epic flagrantly disobeyed Apple's terms."

I keep reading this all over the Internet and it makes me so irrationally angry that so many people are so ignorant.

Seriously, it seems like a very large part of people online think this behavior from Apple is okay "because they set the rules".

A large part of the population are bootlickers who want nothing more than for a strong authority figure tell them how the world should work.

The same person then turns on a dime to protest Trump...

It is so frustrating that Apple has gotten away with such developer and user hostility for so long. Maybe this will be the breaking point?

What if Epic had decided it didn't want to support iOS anymore...

Is this all just something they may have wanted to achieve anyway?

So if the government doesn’t side with Epic or bail them out at this point are they done for?

Seems like Epic put everything on the line.

Epic has more revenue streams than just Apple's ecosystems.

Didn’t Google just shut down their deal with OnePlus though?

I mean if they’re no longer on good terms with Apple or Google that has to be a big chunk of their revenue stream?

EPIC does exist outside of the mobile space.

They produce one of the top Cross Platform Game Engines, and produce many high quality games, including Fortnite which was massive well before any mobile version was produced.

It could be really bad for Epic in the long term if Apple decides to completely and permantly prevent Unreal Engine from running on Mac and iOS. Game developers may be less likely to use Unreal Engine if they know it doesn't have support for Apple OSes.

You can still play on PS4, XBox, and PC. I think Epic will be fine.

If Epic devs are running macs, do you need a developer license to run XCode?

I'm not sure the repercussions of losing their Apple developer accounts, but I imagine it's not pleasant.

https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1295434558112960519

> Epic says that included in the tools that Apple will revoke is the Unreal Engine that hundreds of third party developers use. "Apple’s actions will irreparably damage Epic’s reputation among Fortnite users and be catastrophic for the future of the separate Unreal Engine business"

I run a mac and I don't use XCode.

You can run Xcode. Basically anyone can run Xcode. But distributing software on the Mac is another matter.

Epic could try distributing unsigned, giving users instructions on how to bypass Gatekeeper, which is possible.

Relevant: https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/epic-v-apple-8-17-20-768927327...

I wonder what the story is behind the scenes and why Epic felt the need to make this Hail Mary play.

Someone looked at how much money they are making on iOS and multiplied it by 0.3

Imagine getting X% of everything you sell going forward without adding any extra features - just by complaining

I saw somewhere that Epic earned $500MM from the iOS version of Fortnite alone in 2019 -- so Epic was looking at potentially $150MM USD/year.

Apple takes 30%, in this case, like, $500M+.

Apple doesn’t always get 30%. Retailers selling iTunes gift cards get a cut. You can guess their cut when they have 15% discounts.

Let me rephrase it: Epic loses 30%. In this case, like, $500M+.

Epic can sell iTunes gift cards and earn back some of that 30%.

This makes as much sense as saying "just work extra hours to earn back taxes".

Another analogy would be “work extra hours for the government to earn back taxes.”

We pay taxes and government pays employees and contractors.

Epic pays Apple and Apple pays retailers.

Epic literally does sell gift cards: https://smile.amazon.com/Fortnite-V-Bucks-Gift-Card-40/dp/B0...

Fortnite is big enough that Epic fills as many sales channels as they can with ways to buy their in-game currency.

They have the infrastructure to sell vbucks gift cards, so they can sell iTunes and Play store gift cards.

As noted in their initial legal filings ("if we could we would", basically), what they really want is their own app store on iOS. They want to cut out the middleman and process their own payments.

And I'm sure Tencent (40%) would be very happy for there to be an alternate App Store with the familiar Epic branding as well. Epic on its own only has one title on iOS: Fornite.

The timing of all of this is definitely strange.

When will they start erasing apps from people's devices? That's what I'm waiting for.

App store is an utility in iOS users hands as such it should be regulated as utilities are.

It seems to me Epic's goal here is to get Apple to allow side-loading on iOS. But I happen to disagree with this remedy. I see no reason to set aside Apple's Property rights with regard to their app store. My solution to this issue would require Apple to be forced disclose all technical documentation needed to write an independent operating system. Of course to be fair, this would apply to every computerized device sold in the USA.

As a game company I would expect Epic to have a massive strategy already laid out just waiting to unfold and win this one otherwise it will all feel very ironic.

If Apple really wanted to screw with Epic, they would do this while simultaneously encouraging Mediatonic to port Fall Guys to iOS.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I'm going to buy all of Epic's games tonight for my PC. In the past, I was a bit annoyed that they plan to remove Rocket League from Steam but now that they're fighting Apple, I love this company.

If this whole lawsuit thing doesn't work out, maybe they'll develop a phone so I can buy that too.

Spite's amazing. "I don't like Apple's walled garden, so I'm going to jump into Epic's (Tencent's) walled garden instead." At no point does using, or advocating for, a non-walled garden product come up as an alternative.

What an extremely shallow and thoughtless comparison you've made.

So, you don't think that supporting your enemies enemies is a good strategy?? Because it's a well-known and time-tested basic strategy that's been used the world over.

Are you aware how much more impact Apple's products have on society than Epic's does?? Do you understand how big Apple is compared to Epic?

Yes, I'm absolutely fine with a walled-garden for a bunch of games that are sold across many platforms. Not for a piece of basic infrastructure, for something that is so essential to all of our lives.

As a user, I want to be able to compile and install software on a device that I own without having to re-up it every 7 days. As a developer, I want to give my customers software that they asked for without having to negotiate with a picky, asshole, power-hungry middle-man.

I have nothing against Tencent. Apple's done so much more to limit my freedom while Tencent has hardly entered my thoughts for any amount of time.

I know it’s incredibly wishful thinking, but perhaps an end result of this saga will be for Apple to massively reduce their payment fees. I would love to see Apple Pay deployed to more websites and online stores.

It is a real pleasure to use.

(The one downside is that it does mean I have to use the same email address for each vendor.)

As usual in these corporate pissing matches, those harmed are the customers. Neither Epic nor Apple come out looking particularly good. Epic's publicity stunt amounts to a marketing ploy and an attempt at hardball negotiation of app store terms. But it does put the negative aspects of Apple's tight-fisted control of iOS software into sharp focus and demonstrates why consumers should be wary of total platform control by a vendor.

Stuck in the middle is anyone who enjoys[1] playing Fortnite on their iPhone. I would love to see some kind of class action against both Apple and Epic if Fortnite becomes unusable on iOS as a result of this contract dispute.

[1] Disclaimer: I think Fortnite sucks, but customers don't deserve to be used as pawns in a contract negotiation.

How else do you propose they go after Apple? Go through this process without violating the app store?

Then most people would turn a blind eye to the issue because it hasn't actually impacted them.

Yes the customer is impacted, but by impacting the customer with the right message Epic can turn their customer base against Apple in the process.

Not only does it hurt the customer, but it also hurts Epic by cutting off a massive chunk of their player base.

> How else do you propose they go after Apple? Go through this process without violating the app store?

Epic is a huge company with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, not some 10-man operation. They can hire lawyers and try to negotiate with Apple for more favorable terms.

> Then most people would turn a blind eye to the issue because it hasn't actually impacted them.

Imagine if this was happening with Adobe and you're a professional that depends on Adobe products (that you pay a large monthly fee for) to do your job. Would you care who is "right" while your boss is breathing down your neck for that project you can't do because Adobe decided to get in a pissing match with Apple? I think you'd think twice about using Adobe products in the future. So why is it OK for Epic to harm their own customers in an effort to apply pressure on Apple? Personally, I'd feel pretty used.

And don't forget. Epic seems OK with continuing to pay Sony/Microsoft 30% on their respective consoles.

Firstly, this isn't just about Epic negotiating more favourable terms, as they have said in the court papers. They're doing this to set a precedent for all other app developers using the Apple app store, and of course trying to help themselves in the process. However, Epic are not the only company to experience these problems and therefore they believe they're standing up on behalf of all others as well.

To your second point, all I can say is that this isn't Adobe. This is not a professional piece of software which businesses pay a pretty penny for, this is an early access video game. At the end of the day Epic would have weighed up the risk associated with this case and its implications and yes it is unfortunate that there are people in the firing line. But heck, its drummed up a lot of news and discussion as a result of it, which is I'm sure exactly what they want.

I hope they become a martyr and this turns public opinion.

I can feel Epic's pain, the 30% matters a lot when you are making big money. Giving up 30% of 10 million feels very different than giving up 30% of 10k. Giving the fact that the cost of reviewing apps, maintaining app stores are fixed, Apple should have a cap for each app.

After crippling Mac gaming by refusing to allow Vulkan/OpenGL, isn't Mac already a niche platform for gaming? This is just Apple being petty in every way imaginable, even if it doesn't hurt Epic Games at all.

What's the practical impact of this on Unreal support for MacOS/iOS?

>That said, I do find one aspect of this second suit to be troubling for Epic: Apple is threatening to terminate Epic’s developer account only if Epic doesn’t revert Fortnite to the version that didn’t include its own in-app payment system.[0]

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. But Epic's PR game is strong.

[0] https://www.thurrott.com/apple/239199/apple-retaliates-again...

Apple is looking to squeeze coin out of a stone to keep their stock holders happy and financials looking good, rather than growing their products and customers.

As someone who has not played Fortnite, I have a question. Can I as an independent developer create mods or addons equal to what Epic sells using their in game currency and have my mods, skins, etc work in the game? If not, then are they not acting even more egregiously than Apple since Epic has now a "Monopoly" on the Fortnite platform and refuses to allow others to monetize it?

To bring up unfair issue, epic must first raise the issue legally, fight it in court.. NOT breach TOS first then claim got abused.

They created urgency. A case otherwise could've taken years for a first decision and would've been purely theoretical. They now need a decision within 14 days and can prove significant damage if the courts rule in Apple's favor (whereas Apple's damage is negligible if they're forced to leave Epic alone for a bit). The court case will be long either way but Epic can now show how harshly Apple reacts to enforcing the 30%, something they couldn't have done before.

I dont think government intervention is the solution to resolving the problem here. Epic is going to have to abandon Apple and suffer losses. What this exposes is deep centralization of devices and app platforms and its disgusting and I would expect a strong decentralized reaction to follow. It may not be immediate, but it will happen.

Apple is abusive. long words, conversations.

I bought a device but do not control it - it's not legal or it shouldn't be.

Will that break their existing installs?

Wouldn't it be REALLY interesting if Unity stood by Epic?

i.e. if Epic is forced to stop making games, Unity will no longer support our engine on Mac either.

This I think would put a huge dent in games on the Mac platform. I wonder if Apple would change their mind?

It would be interesting but why would they?

Generally standing up to a bully is noble, :) Or maybe if they stick together they can change Apple's mind.

The number of Apple fans who don't understand what is happening (I'm talking only about the facts, not opinion) is mind-blowing.

"Fan" is short for "fanatic" in this context, and that is an apt description.

I wonder if Epic could compile UE to WebGL in such a way that games would be playable via web in Safari, not requiring a native app to be installed.

Are the limitations of WebGL too intractable for now?

This feels like watching the tech business equivalent to the run-up to WWI. All these giants tangled up in contracts and economic leverage, bristling to carve each other up.

This reminds me of the Facebook vs Zynga debacle.

It did not go well for Zynga.

I'm done with Apple. They have lost me as a customer.

I love a good drama. This is movie material

Don't see any evidence that this has actually occurred other than Epic saying so.

Too little too late. Now there are competing emotive arguments that bury the lede.

I give Apple 6 months before they get broken up as an antitrust Monopoly!

Apple took the "Fire your bad customer" way too seriously...

Christ, what assholes.

Epic should revoke Apple’s access to unreal engine ;)

This is not retaliation, it is consequences.

First comes an action, then a re-action.

(you can't switch 'em round for your own satisfaction)

> "Millions of developers rely on the Unreal Engine to develop software, and hundreds of millions of consumers use that software," argues Epic.

> "Developers that intend to sell their apps for use on iOS or macOS devices will have to forgo the Unreal Engine in favor of other engines," reads the motion.

That is what I was expecting after Epic went after Apple. They had to know it would hurt them and all the devs using the engine.

Unity many times has feared not being able to build to Apple like in 2010 for the JIT/AOT item which led to more AOT and eventually C++ IL2CPP to get the requirement of native over virtual machine based engines (it was ultimately unnecessary and later Mono included AOT). [1]

Epic had to know this would be VERY risky and now they have put all their devs at risk who target iOS. Who knows that type of fallout this will have long term. It is a battle of greed and not better products and that is what sucks. I don't like the way Epic is going about this at all. Not only is Epic being used by Tencent, they are using devs and their engine to mount a greed based attack on Apple.

No one is happy fully with all the App Store rules, and likewise no one is happy with all the Epic Game Store rules, but the platform maker has immense power and Epic knew what would happen. They pull the same type of stuff like when they blocked Miguel de Icaza's Mono/C# extension to UnrealEngine. https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/1294445857266372611

Yeah I mean look at what Epic/Tencent did, they baited Apple hard. This was a play all along.

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/12939179293654138...

The worst is Epic/Tencent is going about this like they are doing it altruisitcally when their end goal is more power/take. They want their own app store on Apple and they want to have their own approval and their own take (Epic store is 12% as they are trying to catch Steam/Origin/others).

Thanks for thinking of the devs Tencent/Epic /s

The biggest bummer is I really look up to Tim Sweeney and respect all he has done for gaming. I hate that he ok'd this. Epic has 3 seats on the board and Tencent has 2, with 2 "observers" which are probably Tencent loyal. So at some point along the line Sweeney had to ok this... Looks like the Tencent money leverage got to him. He knew this would cause problems for devs that chose HIS engine. Why Tim Why. The battle of the Tims but ultimately greed that I am sure will lead to regulation that makes it worse for devs long term.

[1] https://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/07/02/unity-and-ios-4-0-updat...

Epic also allows free to play games to set up their own payment systems and pay 0%.

If Apple waived the 30% take if you used GameCenter or their game kits you think that would be seen as anti-competitive? Yes. What you have described is Epic engaging in anti-competitive behavior that isn't yet because they are the smaller of the store players.

I think people are short-sighted in what Apple did for gaming. Just go back to 2007.

Before Apple the only way to make a game was flash/PC with no markets other than sites.

Consoles and handhelds were for selected larger game studios only. Consoles always took 30% and it was near impossible to dev on them, very few indie programs.

Apple changed the game.

Apple opened up game development especially handheld.

That success of the App Store led to Google Play!.

It led to Unity and Unity Asset Store (which also takes 30%).

That led to Steam opening up (which also takes 30%). It even led to Epic Games store.

It also led to engines like Unity/Unreal being simplified. Unreal at one time was $300k per title, same with Valve, same with other engines. Now those are essentially free.

I sometimes think that Apple takes heat, yes some of their rules are annoying, but compared to consoles and the way it was before Apple it is massively better for indies/small/medium game companies. Mobile is in a space between open and console.

Epic is biting the hand that feeds here, and Unity would never even attempt something like this. I think Epic is pushed by Tencent to do this and there is deeper reasoning for this, but they are selling it as "for the greater good" which is a lie.

> Apple opened up game development

No, Apple II already had game devs selling stuff by mail without paying Apple 30%, in a much more open way.

Who cares about that? Steve Wozniak also gave away the design for free at first, does that mean that apple has no copyright protection on their computers?

No, but if true it does mean Apple closed future designs, not opened them.

crocodile tears

It seems strategically stupid to cut off the company developing the engine that a lot of iOS games use to run from development tools. It's almost as if they want iOS to be the worst platform to develop for.

As an iOS user, I hope Apple's stranglehold on the platform gets destroyed. I didn't practically care for the longest time, but I'm starting to lose self-respect here.

I don’t have a side in this fight, but I do admire how Epic has clearly planned this out to wring every ounce of publicity and goodwill they can.

I don’t find this particular measure (shutting down the accounts) particularly sinister. Epic has made it abundantly clear they don’t like the App Store’s rules and regulations. That’s fine but it means you won’t be selling on the App Store. I see this as Apple taking them seriously on that point.

We are well past the point of negotiations here. And following from the planning point, there is zero chance Epic did not see this coming.

I don't think they planned this well at all. It feels like rage fueled flailing they didn't think through.

What is it going to do for Epic's cash flow if they're not allowed on any app stores for literal years while court cases filter through? What is it going to do for their game store and engine selling business to be indefinitely evicted from the Apple ecosystem entirely?

Were I a company using Unreal Engine to develop a game, expecting to target Apple hardware, I would not be very happy about the stunts Tim Sweeney is pulling.

Apple just showed that it is game developer hostile. Gamers will just migrate to whatever platform their games are available. Devs will lose tons of money, users will lose their investment in the ios ecosystem and apple will lose its cut. It’s a lose lose lose situation and Apple is the one to blame.

At this point in the fight, Epic has not fired its biggest cannon: announcing that Unreal Engine 5 will not support any Apple hardware.

So at this point, there is uncertainty, but no clear harm done to any developer using Unreal engine and currently targeting Mac hardware.

Apple just did worse than that to them.

Now developers can't even work on Unreal Engine from Apple hardware, and those developers aren't going to blame Apple for it happening.

UE5 not supporting any Apple hardware would hurt Epic far more than Apple as a result, as it would just drive mobile games back to Unity, which is already the market leader in the mobile space.

You sure about that? Apple already has a bad rep for software not working on Mac. Not many are gaming with macs. I own one game that's mac-compatible and it crashes a lot. Mac is great for dev and design/art related pursuits... and that's about it.

There is nothing here that says the companies using Unreal Engine will be affected.

There's a follow up tweet saying this would be catastrophic for their engine business

https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1295434558112960519

Cutting off access to Mac tools prevents them from developing for MacOS too, not just App Store. If you're a developer and you don't find this chilling I don't know what to say.

Apple doesn’t get 30% when retailers sell iTunes gift cards.

But they do once the consumer spends that gift card. So charing 30% for the gift card would sort of be charging the Apple tax twice, wouldn't it?

If retailers get 20% of a $100 iTunes gift card, then Apple gets $10, the developer gets $70, and the retailer gets $20.

Epic should sell iTunes gift cards.

For years, people have applauded the walled garden of Apple and this is the end result. Without flamethrower you wil not get out of it. The walls have to go down. They are probably beting on that by this charade the entire industry turns against Apple and a boycott ensues, leaving them no choice to change their margins (and other marketplaces will adjust accordingly or the angry mob comes for them).

I doubt Epic stands any chance in court. Apple's case seems to be water sealed as with every ToS signed, you waive any and all of your rights away. Clearly the ToS have been violated so they seem to be in their right.

> For years, people have applauded the walled garden of Apple and this is the end result. Without flamethrower you wil not get out of it.

I applaud apples walled garden on iOS and have no intention of getting out of it. I’m happy that at least one of my parents is in that garden, and my wife, too. There’s everything they need in that garden and at least it’s comparatively easy to keep up to date and safe. Otherwise I’d have to go play tech support even more often than I still need to.

ToS doesn't mean you can break federal antitrust laws.

What antitrust laws are they breaking?

I suggest taking a look at Epic's lawsuit, which was written by several antitrust experts.

Epic is trying to shine a spotlight on what they think is unfair, and I flat out disagree. They want to now sue the same company that provides them tools to develop, as if it’s some inherent right? Apple owns the Apple store, and they can choose to charge what they want. Epic can choose to raise their pricing if they feel the millions they’re already making isn’t enough.

Bring on those downvotes :) I’m looking forward to an ‘epic’ court ruling siding in Apple’s favour.

Is it bad that I hope they do kill Epic's account?

Epic launches a preconceived plan with media attacks and the most ridiculous 1984 reference that actually doesn't make sense in the current context against Apple. If I'm Apple, even if this is a straight up attack on me, I just follow the rules in my TOS and block them like I do others who don't follow the TOS. If you don't like the TOS, fine you don't have to be on my platform and have access to my users. It's as simple as that. The fact that so many are rebelling against this, is actually good for consumers in the long run, they may flock to other platforms albeit there's now only two viable platforms, Apple and Android. Windows got bit by the dust, but I do wish they were still around to create a healthy three ecosystem battle.

Epic's a billion dollar company with huge resources fighting another billion dollar company. It's kind of hilarious watching this pan out, with Epic pretending to be some small indie corporation fighting a huge conglomerate.

>the most ridiculous 1984 reference

To be fair, it's a reference to Apple's own ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

That ad is incredibly dumb and incredibly awesome.

How doesn't it make sense? Seems pretty on-point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(advertisement)

In his 1983 Apple keynote address, Steve Jobs read the following story before showcasing a preview of the commercial:[21]

"[...] It is now 1984. It appears IBM wants it all. Apple is perceived to be the only hope to offer IBM a run for its money. Dealers initially welcoming IBM with open arms now fear an IBM dominated and controlled future. They are increasingly turning back to Apple as the only force that can ensure their future freedom. IBM wants it all and is aiming its guns on its last obstacle to industry control: Apple. Will Big Blue dominate the entire computer industry? The entire information age? Was George Orwell right about 1984?"

> I just follow the rules in my TOS and block them like I do others who don't follow the TOS

I'm fairly sure Apple doesn't terminate the developer account simply for failing an app review. I think this is a specific executive decision based on the fact that Epic is unlikely to rectify the issue, which could be seen as retaliation.

That's what's in the Developer Program License Agreement though:

Section 11.2 Termination, subsection (f):

In this case Epic hid functionality from Apple's review, with the intent to bypass further rules in the Developer Program License Agreement.

Apple is allowed to terminate the agreement at that time.

Sorry, to clarify, I wasn't trying to imply that what Epic did wasn't against the TOS. My point was that Apple has the authority not to terminate Epic, but has chosen to do so, even when they've allowed other apps that have done things against the TOS to retain their developer account.

There's a way to cure a breach in the license agreement, and other developers that have run afoul of the rules and were notified made fixes that brought them back into compliance with the agreement.

Epic has made it particularly clear that they do not intend to cure the breach, and Apple has made it clear that in that case they are not welcome to have an Apple Developer Program account and the permissions that grants a user.

I think we're on the same page here. Are you saying that the application of Apple's TOS can't be considered retaliation since it's something Epic agreed to be held to?

For failing app review? Apple would certainly be in the wrong for deleting Epic's accounts.

This was explicitly not a case of a failed app review. Epic rolled out their direct-purchase option with a server-side update (specifically to side-step Apple's rules), which falls afoul of Apple's developer agreement in two ways -- it would be classified as misrepresentation of the app as well as an attempt to mislead Apple during its app review. Apple reserves the right to block updates (which they haven't done _yet_, as Epic hasn't submitted any updates), delist the app (which they have done), remove the developer's account to block updates, and to blacklist the app entirely (eg: the app will stop working even if users already have it downloaded).

I also want to see Epic crash and burn, this was a PR plan from the very beginning.

If this were just Epic trying to get press as a "stunt", like a giant bluff or expecting to lose, I might agree with you... but Epic has filed the lawsuit and is certainly going to follow through on this: only an idiot does that--at such a heavy cost to their customer base, which otherwise might cause blowback--without having all their ducks in a row on basic PR. Seriously: if you want to be able to take Apple on in a lawsuit like this and win, you need to demonstrate that Apple is serious about the behavior you think is illegal and then sue them for that, not some vague idea that Apple probably wouldn't let you do something: between the two giant companies, both of which are kind of reprehensible, let's focus on this one issue and root for the correct side here.

If Epic was being honest they would have sued Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.

This way this is just PR stunt.

The 1984 spoof feels like it misses the mark. I think it caused more people to go watch the original ad than anything else.

Epic is a $17-billion-dollar company fighting Apple, a $1,300 billion dollar company. They're two orders of magnitude larger. If Apple thought that this conflict really risked losing their app store cut they could just buy Epic without worrying much and take 100% of the transactions...

Epic's antitrust case against Apple is very weak, but they're well within the right to sue Apple to resolve their dispute. The developer agreement actually stipulates the venue, Northern District of California, for any lawsuits. However, Epic demonstrated particularly bad faith in how they've dealt with this matter so I'm not surprised that Apple is terminating their relationship (which they're allowed to do under the terms of the developer agreement).

Yes I also believe its a lousy case, but that what courts are for, to decide things. But Apple can easily point to all the times Epic agreed to the Agreement (my employer's large legal dept always reads any changes before agreeing), to the agreements Epic is fine with from the console companies paying the same percentage but did not sue, the long history of each and every clause in the agreement in the world of contract law (Apple has a billion lawyers I doubt they miss much).

Winning such a case based on complaining its an antitrust violation is rather quixotic and normally only a government would do this.

Maybe in the end both relent and the rate goes down, but I don't think Epic wants to pay anything and still be available.

I believe Epic's entire case revolves around phones being a general computing device, so they'll be using the Microsoft antitrust case law.

>I believe Epic's entire case revolves around phones being a general computing device

Legally this doesn't matter at all. It's just something for people to talk about on Twitter.

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