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Comment by Despegar | Hacker News Reader

Then we're in agreement that Epic's breach of the developer agreement wasn't actually required to have standing or to bolster their antitrust claims.

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Then it should be obvious that, Apple could write whatever it wants in its god damned agreements, it doesn't actually matter w.r.t. anti-trust claims.

Epic had to get Apple to go do an anti-trust thing - in their opinion. So it's definitely required to bolster the claim.

When I refer to consumer welfare I'm referring to the "consumer welfare standard" that is relevant to antitrust cases. Epic's breach doesn't actually aid them in demonstrating that Apple has harmed consumer welfare. The same holds true for Spotify when they charged more on iOS to cover Apple's commission.

It will be interesting to see how consumer welfare standard will evolve to accommodate people paying more for IAP because of app store fees. It's likely that it will.

Probably 100% of congress uses an iPhone. 100% of judges. Every lawyer. It's right in their face. 100% of them use Google, 0% use Bing. I don't think I know a single non-engineering professional, English as a first language adult who uses an Android device.

It's not some abstract situation the consumer welfare standard didn't anticipate; it's the now. Nobody is going to sympathize with arguments about choice because that hasn't been true for a while - nobody makes the choice, not among these people, for alternatives, so is there really a choice?

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