Apple ordered to not block Epic’s Unreal Engine, Fortnite to stay off App Store
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Here's a PDF of the ruling, I think it's worth reading: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21814075/c...
Easy: a link off their site doesn't earn them any money. They want to you stay on their domain.
that’s the site I’d subscribe to.
(and the greatgrandparent comment has the hyperlink from The Verge)
[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https:/...
- "Irreparable Harm: The issue of irreparable harm focuses on the harm caused by not maintaining the status quo, as opposed to the separate and distinct element of a remedy under the likelihood of success factor. Here the court's evaluation is guided by the general notion that “self-inflicted wounds are not irreparable injury.”
- "While the Court anticipates experts will opine that Apple’s 30 percent take is anti-competitive, the Court doubts that an expert would suggest a zero percent alternative. Not even Epic Games gives away its products for free."
- "The Court further recognizes that during these coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) times, virtual escapes may assist in connecting people and providing a space that is otherwise unavailable. However, the showing is not sufficient to conclude that these considerations outweigh the general public interest in requiring private parties to adhere to their contractual agreements or in resolving business disputes through normal, albeit expedited, proceedings."
- "With respect to the Unreal Engine and the developer tools, the calculus changes. The record shows potential significant damage to both the Unreal Engine platform itself, and to the gaming industry generally, including on both third-party developers and gamers. The public context in which this injury arises differs significantly: not only has the underlying agreement not been breached, but the economy is in dire need of increasing avenues for creativity and innovation, not eliminating them. Epic Games and Apple are at liberty to litigate against each other, but their dispute should not create havoc to bystanders."
To add more color to this, the court refused an injunction to force Apple to enable Fortnite with the Epic payment processing. Epic can remove that and be admitted back to the App store. If Apple refuses at that point Epic would likely win an injunction to force them.
Also, Apple has been repeatedly inviting epic to do this, so there is no reason to believe Apple would refuse anyway.
It's unfortunate that the percentage cut ends up overshadowing the real antitrust issue, which is that Apple (and Google) essentially has the power to make or break any arbitrary business that relies on their platform. They base it on vague and loosely enforced rules, which means companies never know if tomorrow is the end. Having a locked platform in itself isn't an issue. Having an expensive locked platform isn't an issue either.
Having an oligopoly of locked platforms (that are important enough that companies can't ignore) with rules that can change or be selectively enforced and have the power to destroy your business model overnight, is a big problem.
Reducing the cut to 0% still wouldn't change that.
This "We'll let you develop software for OUR X out of the goodness of our heart as long as you promise not to do Y and pay us Z" BS really gets under my skin.
lol I have a feeling everyone here will hate me for saying that though.
The success of Apple (etc.) are due to choices that developers have made, closing themselves in and then citing anti-trust when they themselves locked the doors and gave away the keys.
General purpose platforms that become overly closed have roundly been rejected or been forced to open up: Carterfone, AOL, Windows, carrier locked phones, etc.. even iOS itself didn't allow apps at first and now does.
Closed platforms for a specific purpose like consoles, kindles, rokus, etc.. do a bit better because they are 1) more likely to have competitors, and 2) have more limited impact from being specific purpose platforms, though are still capable of maintaining monopolies/duopolies.
The phone market is a iOS/Android duopoly, and both are being forced to open up more. Hardly surprising.
With hardware it is different. Nobody forced you to buy an iPhone. Nobody forced you to buy an Android, Windows, Nokia, whatever phone. Same with laptops. If you want an open platform, buy one. If you want an open OS, install one. Don't buy an iPhone, complain about the platform not being open enough for you, and then demand that all platforms be made common infrastructure so that you're absolved of making decisions about the hardware you use.
Imagine if Microsoft required a 30 percent cut for any transaction that is done on a windows PC.
The same exact arguments you are using could justify this. But, obviously, this is illegal, and similar behavior was proven as such, by the courts.
But it is ubiquitous now. As of last month, the iphone now has 52.4% of the US market.
> The 30% cut was there from the very start, and people were fine with it.
Anticompetitive behavior become illegal when a company has enough market power.
> It's only now that people are turning around and complaining
Well yes, that is how anti-competitive laws work. If a company has enough market power, previously legal practices can become illegal.
The Microsoft case is completely different, in that it favored IE over other browsers based on the APIs the software was allowed access to. Apple allows all apps to access the iOS APIs and uses those same APIs to develop its own apps. Taking a 30% cut of software that Apple distributes on your behalf might be steep, but is certainly not anti-competitive. If you think it costs too much, don't pay it! Nobody is forcing you to distribute software for the iPhone. If you're lamenting that people are stupid enough to buy hardware they don't have full control over, then that speaks more of human stupidity and the fact that convenience will always win.
That is not what the court case is asserting is anti-competitive.
The anti-competitive action is that Apple prevents competing app stores on the platform. Preventing competitors from competing is explicitly the definition of anti-competitive. High prices can be a consequence of anti-competitive behavior but is not really the main issue. The main issue has to do with.... reducing competition by stopping competitors, which Apple definitely does.
Apple doesn't even pretend to claim that it is not preventing competitors, honestly. The question is whether Apple is large enough that anti-competition laws apply to them. (Which they obviously are, given that they now have 52.4% of the phone duopoly, as of last month)
> it allows other platforms to compete on price
No, actually. Competing app stores cannot be put on the iPhone, due to Apple's actions. These competing app stores cannot compete for iPhone users.
> it favored IE
Apple favors its own app store, over competitors, in that it literally prevents other app stores from competing at all on the iPhone.
> Apple allows all apps
No, it does not allow other app stores, no.
> If you think it costs too much, don't pay it!
You should read the lawsuit. The anti-competitive behavior is not the price. This instead had to do with Apple preventing competing app stores.
Also, that is a bad argument, because "just dont use it" is not a valid defense when a company is engaging in anti-competitive practices.
> Nobody is forcing you to distribute software for the iPhone
Another bad argument. This would not at all be valid if Microsoft used it as an argument regarding software installed on the PC. That argument would be invalid, if microsoft prevented competitors from being installed on PC.
> If you're lamenting
No, I am saying that anti-competitive practices should be stopped.
No: it allows very specific kinds of apps that follow very specific rules that are selectively enforced, to use iOS APIs.
That's the problem. You can't, for example, build an app that competes with the app store itself.
Even if you make a case that for Epic it doesn't matter that much, the Hey mail case was another big one: if you try to make a new email service and ignore Apple/Google, you're dead on arrival. That's a problem.
I don't know about legality, but philosophically it's offensive to me that Apple and Google get to be landlords leeching off app developers. I paid for my phone. It should run the software I want it to, and if I want to buy an app for it I shouldn't need to pay Apple for the privilege.
You know why Windows runs code not from the Microsoft Store. It's legacy. There wasn't always a Microsoft Store, running executable straight from floppy, CD-ROM or the Internet was the norm. Changing it now would be changing the product people already bought and break workflows.
iPhone never had that legacy. From day 0 it only ran Apple code. Then it ran 3rd party code via the App Store. There was no such legacy. But there are older products with such a legacy. Didn't your old Nintendo have precisely the same rules from day 0 and so do modern consoles?
It seems to be the industry standard App Store cut.
Consider Spotify vs Apple music. If Spotify has to charge X + 30% to subscriber's on iPhone in order to make X then they absolutely can't compete on price if Apple simply charges X.
I don't know why I keep expecting users here to understand this. It's not going to happen.
If users want they can create an account on Mac (or even on iOS Safari) and set up a subscription with lower fees outside the app and then use it inside the app.
People can easily use the Netflix accounts they created on their Mac on iOS with no extra charge.
What's not allowed is making an iOS app where you are shown a login screen but no way of creating an account from within inside the app, which forces you to use a separate platform to create the account. The idea is that an iPhone or iPad should be a standalone device and not require the help of another platform or device to do basic things like create an account.
I don't use netflix to check.
In other words:
1. If Apple went and talked to Google and Microsoft and they all agreed to set the price to 30%, that would be price fixing.
2. If Apple looked at Microsoft and saw that they had set their price to 30% and decided they wanted to do that too, that is not price fixing.
It's simply a monopoly situation that competition isn't even required to sustain their positions.
It isn't the 30%! It's that there's only a single way into iOS. It's a literal monopoly, and they are large enough that this matters, now.
> The updated ADA includes the new Microsoft Store fee structure that delivers up to 95 percent of the revenue back to consumer app developers. To ensure you receive the full 95 percent revenue, be sure to instrument your referring traffic URLs with a CID.
It was only natural that some successful company would start the fight on behalf of everyone else thinking the cut is too high.
For users, it could mean the reduction of price but users are just too satisfied, they don't care what the developers think but be pets on the platforms.
The merits of the antitrust part are not supposed to be handled in a TRO. Its purpose is to maintain the status quo and limit possibly irreparable damages while the complex issues are debated in court. Here the 30% cut is important because it's a matter of deciding what a reasonable number would be.
In the case most favorable to Epic, it could be reduced to a lower value after a lengthy court process, but it would not necessarily change the nature of the market / economy. In other antitrust cases, you could have situations where the continued infringement by a near monopolistic entity would indeed qualify for a restraining order as the final judgment would arrive after the smaller competitor would be long dead.
No.
The most favourable outcome would be allowing Epic and others who already have their own sales and payment channels to use them alongside the app store payment system.
I think that's the main reason this lawsuit exists. I don't think Epic or Spotify really want to creat their own iOS app store.
> 2. A competing Epic Games Store app available through the iOS App Store and through direct installation that has equal access to underlying operating system features for software installation and update as the iOS App Store itself has, including the ability to install and update software as seamlessly as the iOS App Store experience. [1]
[1] https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21807251/e..., Exhibit D, Page 2, Point 2.
"Epic brings ten claims for violations of Sherman Act, the California Cartwright Act, and California Unfair Competition. Based on a review of the current limited record before the Court, the Court cannot conclude that Epic has met the high burden of demonstrating a likelihood of success on the merits, especially in the antitrust context. However, the Court also concludes that serious questions do exist. Indeed, the Court related this action to the Cameron action because there are overlapping questions of facts and law, including substantively similar claims based on the same Apple App Store policies: namely, the 30% fee that Apple takes from developers through each application sale and IAP in the application."
The judge also commented the case is not a slam dunk for either side.
I expect the case is going to hinge on whether or not Epic can successfully convince the judge that the market of "iOS App Distribution" is in fact a valid antitrust market. This is not something that can simply be assumed, as US courts have generally been reluctant to allow antitrust markets to be defined in the context of a single brand's product unless specific circumstances are met. If Epic can't establish "iOS App Distribution" as the relevant market then the court will instead look at Apple's market power in the overall smartphone market, which will make Epic's case more difficult as Apple lacks monopoly power in that market.
We can only speculate that UE Developer accounts would have been terminated as we don't really know if Apple was going to terminate those too as they belong to a separate company according to the court documents.
It’s a threat in the long term, if Epic and Apple cannot negotiate something satisfying (which they will eventually, there’s just too much to lose for both of them), but let’s keep some perspective.
There is no need for hyperbole.
The OP was not about a constructive discussion of the consequences of that, it was about Apple going after other developers. Which is factually wrong.
Sorry, my sentence was poorly worded. They threatened to revoke Epic’s license, not the other developers’ (which, again, is what the OP claimed and is specifically what I disputed).
I think they did go overboard with the intent to push Epic to settle, yes. And Epic were ready for a mud fight and called their bluff. It looks like the move was a warning, though, and I don’t think they really would do it, at least not for long: they know how important the Unreal Engine is for the platform. If an agreement is found quickly, the impact on others developers is nil. At least in the short term; this brings trust issues over the longer term.
The court isn't saying Apple is wrong for threatening to block Epic fully, including UE. The court is saying that doing say _may_ not be legal and thus Apple should hold off on it until the court has had time to deliberate the issue. It is only prudent of the court to work to reduce the variables in this situation and to prevent potential harm to innocent parties.
Not a single other developer using UE was targeted directly by Apple.
But indirectly. If Epic doesn't have a developer license anymore, they cannot reasonably support their clients in implementing UE on any Apple hardware (and, depending on the licensing terms, they may not even legally support it...).
* Epic Games, Inc. develops Fortnite and has an Apple developer account that it is released under.
* Epic Games International, S.a.r.l. develops Unreal Engine and holds its own Apple developer account.
So if the accounts of Epic Games, Inc. were closed, who cares. If Epic Games International's accounts were closed, then yes that's wrong of Apple to do.
That would be like Google in Mountain View claiming that they don't avoid paying tax and they are the good guys, but Google SA Netherlands & Ireland who are the assholes who scam countries out of their share of tax revenue (The Dutch Irish sandwich tax loophole that they use).
"If your membership is terminated, you may no longer submit apps to the App Store, and your apps still available for distribution will be removed. You will also lose access to the following programs, technologies, and capabilities:"
[...]
"- 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"
That is a statement that Apple made saying they will stop all help they give to Epic getting UE running on all Apple hardware. With the other stuff in the letter it makes it very clear that the problem is not just one for Epic Games, but all of Epic.
You can read it yourself - https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/epic-v-apple-8-17-20-768927327... (Apple's letter starts on page 51 of the PDF)
What's less clear is whether or not Apple would have actually revoked Epic International's developer accounts. You might like to give Apple the benefit of the doubt, but it's ambiguous enough for a court to issue a ruling that Apple aren't allowed to do that. This is obviously not just Epic catastrophizing if the court agreed with them and ruled in their favor on that part.
The problem is that the US judicial system, thanks to its focus on precedent cases no matter how old they are, and "modern common sense" don't always fit together.
Definitely not. If you have multiple apps in the App Store, and one is removed for violating the terms, the rest should not be removed, since the others didn’t violate those terms.
Or put another way, they have two products at different levels of the stack and they have consciously chosen to risk one (the game) to leverage all their customer’s of their other product (Unreal Engine) onto their side in this war.
The fact that fortnite is built on UE doesn't have any significance here.
The court has blocked it because there could be greater harm in the short term (although that is grossly overblown -- the UE wouldn't stop working in the short or even medium term), but don't be confused into thinking this isn't a completely rote, normal response.
>The fact that fortnite is built on UE doesn't have any significance here.
You understand that Fortnite and UE are made by the same company, right? The canard that it has anything to do with what engine Fortnite uses is absurd noise.
No, Epic is two different companies with two different accounts. Apple canceled both the account for Fortnite and the account for Unreal.
You would know this if you read the injunction that is being discussed...
Judges make legal decisions. If a judge says you can't do something, that means it's illegal; judges can rule whether a future action is illegal, including based on a threat, and that's what this injunction does. This injunction references Apple's threat and, ultimately, says that they legally can't do it (for now), just as Epic can't legally force Apple to reinstate Fortnite (for now).
But anyway, as to your original assertion that this injunction is unrelated to Apple's threat to terminate Epic's account with the Apple Developer Program, here's a direct quote from the injunction:
"THEREFORE, APPLE AND ALL PERSONS IN ACTIVE CONCERT OR PARTICIPATION WITH APPLE, ARE TEMPORARILY RESTRAINED from taking adverse action against Epic Games with respect to restricting, suspending or terminating any affiliate of Epic Games, such as Epic International, from Apple’s Developer Program [italics mine]"
Also, re: your assertion that "If Apple wins, then there's another matter to attend to. If they don't, then the status quo is still maintained and the matter is over." — I don't think anyone involved in the antitrust case, including the judge, ruled or believes anything like "the matter is over" and "the status quo is maintained" if Apple is found to be violating antitrust law. The status quo legally could not be maintained by Apple in that case. What exactly Apple would have to do would depend on what precisely the judge ruled, but maintaining the status quo would not be an option.
By contrast, with respect to the Unreal Engine and the developer tools, the Court finds the opposite result. In this regard, the contracts related to those applications were not breached.
And then:
The court also finds that "Apple has chosen to act severely, and by doing so, has impacted non-parties, and a third-party developer ecosystem. In this regard, the equities do weigh against Apple."
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.364265...
Epic relies heavily on deploying Fortnite in order to test the Unreal Engine at scale. Fortnite itself is, in some sense, the test bed from which many improvements and fixes are carried back to the mainline engine. Any studio or publisher relying on the Unreal Engine to deploy to iOS or MacOS would be more or less immediately effected, especially given the volatility of Apple's APIs.
As for the rest, I have seen far too many “this time, Apple is doomed for real” events to agree with your last sentence. Apple could stop selling any device today and still be around in 10 years.
I think this has been inevitable for some time, but I think by making this mistake they have they they've accelerated the process and damaged their monopoly far earlier than they had to.
Note: Perhaps I am just seeing what I want to see here. I am hopeful that I and other independent software vendors will be able to avoid their app store one day.
I think reform of the AppStore is overdue. Some of the rules are counterproductive and with enough of a grey area so that their implementation looks capricious at times. But man, Tim Sweeney is such an arsehole, and Epic’s behaviour is so self-serving...
On the other hand, if this plays out the way they want, then they get 100% of the income (less overheads) which would be an absolute win for them.
I don't think their motivation matters however - as an ISV getting kicked off the app store is no longer a potential death sentence or a wasted investment; you just need to get smart about how you distribute.
It didn't seem like any sort of legitimate offer - for one, the "deal" would be that Apple would host fortnite for free, review it for free, and make 0% on in-app purchases. Epic also didn't edit the letter properly and accidentally left an "Android" in rather than changing it to "iOS", so presumably they presented Google with the same offer.
I have flashbacks of the original iPhone release and the hate it got from established gatekeeping ISPs. "Man, Steve Jobs can be such an arsehole, and Apple's behaviour is so self-serving", but in the end they did the world a favour by pushing back greedy carriers a little bit, forcing them to accept the possibility of distributing largely-untainted smartphones. Kinda the same with iTunes.
Progress is made by unreasonable and often unsympathetic people who are clearly looking after their own self-interest, which ends up actually matching the general interest. I think this is one of those.
When the federal government breaks AppStore off of Apple and forces it to compete with qualified independent app stores, they will have learned from that fiasco and probably have language in the settlement (consent decree) that does not allow it to go around buying up the other app stores and eventually change its name back to Apple. Apple without AppStore will be a media company, since hardware sales aren't/can't be enough to sustain growth (unless we find a planet of aliens), especially if we are losing the Chinese market to another cold war.
Incidentally, there is another case precedent: Disney. There is a reason Disney no longer owns Grauman's/Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, its favorite venue --Disney/Paramount lost an antitrust case that prohibited them from owning both the means of production and the manner of distribution (sound familiar?); however, President Trump has recently terminated those 77 year old consent decrees meaning Disney can do what it wants now. Ironically, Disney might become a suitor for Apple's media business if it doesn't workout. For example, NASA and its contractors buy thousands of Macs from Apple but some phat idiot (won't name names) thinks it's a good idea to have an AppleTV+ series about "what if NASA didn't win the space race" wtaf?!
You must agree to an Apple Developer Program License Agreement to sign and distribute applications and to get access to pre-release SDKs.
1. https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels/
2. https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/5874301/88485840-2...
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/icyif5/apple_silicon...
It's a disservice to users who intentionally download the app to improve their experiences, only to find out that the program is a second-class citizen on macOS, and they need to perform a security ritual to use it. If the users don't know what the ritual is, to them, the app is just broken.
I recognize the writing on the wall, though. macOS isn't a platform to hack around on anymore, it's Apple's platform to extract rents from its developers and users. If your app or use case doesn't fit into that ecosystem, that's just too bad.
Users get a good experience on macOS and iOS so they will continue buying Apple devices which also leads to more people switching to Apple devices due to pressures of things like iMessage. Meanwhile developers are essentially forced to agree to Apple's terms to access an extremely significant portion of the market (especially when it comes to smart phones). Those terms effectively censor developer criticism by preventing developers from explaining their situation to users. If developers don't comply, their apps will be removed and their development certificates revoked on all Apple platforms. As a user Apple feels fair, as a developer it's painfully obvious that Apple is abusing their market position. Look at what's happening with Floatplane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QzHu-sjdB8
Unless things change, I don't think I will choose to purchase an Apple device ever again. But if their market share continues to increase it will be impossible to survive as a developer without releasing for Apple devices and to develop for Apple devices I will be forced to buy their devices. The App Store and everything Apple offers is certainly worth something. Is it worth 30%? Who knows. The market isn't what decided that fee, Apple and all other software storefronts have somehow arrived at that number themselves. With no realistic way for competitors to offer alternative software storefronts on iOS and Android at their own price to compete and bring fees to their true value, we will never know.
The other difference is the message itself. Windows just displays a warning that the software couldn't be checked by smartscreen.[1] Once the app is used by enough people for the app to be in the smartscreen system the warning will disappear. Users will still see that the publisher is "unknown" though.[2] MacOS directs users to contact the developer that the app must be "updated" even if the only issue with the app is that it isn't notarized. A more fair message would be along the lines of "This app has not been notarized by Apple. Only run the application if you trust the source."
Code signing is intended to verify that the app actually came from who you think it came from. If the certificate for MS Word is unknown or something other than Microsoft you know something's not right and it's either been modified by a third party or not MS Word at all. Apple is using code signing to exert control over Epic Games rather than it's intended purpose to verify to MacOS users that their Unreal Engine in fact came from Epic.
1. https://www.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/windows-10...
2. https://www.techspot.com/articles-info/1718/images/2018-10-0...
Exhibit I
From Apple to Epic:
"If your membership is terminated, you may no longer submit apps to the App Store, and your apps still available for distribution will be removed. You will also lose access to the following programs, technologies, and capabilities:
- All Apple software, SDKs, APIs, and developer tools"
We'll see! Until then, revoking certificates is retaliation.
> you have a duty not to enter into them in the first place
This isn't how contract law works.
Neither is this if you're admitting the legality hasn't been determined.
The sad part is that Epic's tactics are nothing out of the ordinary for these silicon valley giants, they love using innocent parties as emotional leverage in a fight to pad their profit margins by another couple percent.
If a company says, "hey, we're a marketplace" and a court says, "actually, you're not" then the company has to figure out how to adapt. There's change and an emotional toll to the drivers in that scenario whether they become employees or not.
California Assembly Bill 5 was signed into law last September and was clearly a "Going to Happen" event for at least a year prior.
There's no surprise here. Uber had plenty of time to figure out how to deal with this. And they did: they aren't dummies, this was their plan. Their considered decision was that it was in the best interests of their shareholders to play brinksmanship games with their employees' livelihoods instead of make a good faith effort to comply with state law.
Rulebreaking is, after all, part of the corporate culture at Uber, and it always has been.
And, on top of that, merely (as relevant to Uber and Lyft; it also added some exceptions that aren't relevant to them) codified the rule the California Supreme Court handed down in Dynamex on April 30, 2018; so the “one week” is off by about 121 weeks or so.
Which is exactly what I said it was, and not consistent with your framing of departure as a "perfectly logical thing to do".
I'm happy we agree.
I genuinely can't follow your point. These goalposts are moving too fast, sorry.
Their shareholders likely suspect California will capitulate. Though it is hard to do research over whether their drivers actually want this, generally the information I see indicates they'd prefer to remain contractors. Yes, some of this is paid for by Uber. I imagine some of the content I read was also paid for by the opposition. But it seems like no matter how you cut it, the drivers generally want to remain contractors, and definitely do not want ~their livelihood~ an income source threatened either way in the midst of a pandemic.
There is no requirement for them to be made full-time employees, just employees, and even if the law was unclear before the Dynamex decision, they've had the requirement under that decision for almost 2.5 years. And they've known about it, because they've been actively lobbying to change it, lobbying for Dynamex to be legislatively reversed, lobbying for an exception when it was clear that instead of reversing it the legislature planned to codify it in AB5 and also lobbying against AB5, and finally funding a ballot referendum to repeal AB5. All of that says that they understood the rule, and how it applied to them, for quite a long time.
Do you mean Uber threating not to hire all it's drivers? Right not they're not employees and they all have become them that's a very different process.
Companies shouldn’t be in the position of offering “benefits” to employees. No sane first world company ties health insurance to your employer.
It's inexplicable to me that both employers and employees seem mostly fine with the current insanity. Do business owners enjoy having to be health insurance brokers? Do employees enjoy having their insurance provider change every few years and having very little choice in policies?
(and no, "just have everybody buy their own policy" is not a realistic answer, virtually every society addresses this on a public policy level because individual purchasers simply don't work well.)
So, if you want your weird gig economy "independent contractor" nonsense, push for medicare for all, it's pretty much that simple. That's the only way having wage slaves be independent contractors isn't going to result in an immediate and massive drop in the quality and availability of health care. But oops lolbertarians don't like that either, they just want to be able to pay someone $0.50 per hour because "free markets are better".
Until the current administration, both Republicans and Democrats supported increasing the EITC.
Fortnite's entrapment move was powerful because Apple's actions are more exemplary than their threats.
Perhaps it's time for some major app makers to have a day or two where they pull their apps.
Epic's actions with Fortnite were effectively this. They were aware Apple would pull the app, but that them doing so would give them clear standing to sue Apple for the contract terms.
For even a lot of "major" app makers though, pulling their apps off iOS in protest would put them out of business. (Even where Android excels in market share, Apple excels in revenue share by a wide margin.) By being a large multiplatform entity with more reliance on consoles and desktops, Epic is one of the few companies that can afford the hit to pick this fight.
Literally Joe Biden would hear about it.
Same day take out an editorial or page-sized ad in the Times.
Apple needs apps as much as apps need them, it just takes enough coordination.
If Spotify, Youtube and Netflix all pulled their apps a day after the release of the next phone, Apple would be in serious trouble that year. It would effectively permanently devalue their phones and by proxy Apple, because consumers wouldn't be able to trust that that it wouldn't happen again. It would certainly spook investors.
This would have a second-hand effect on Epic's ability to provide timely updates to their engine and remain competitive to alternatives like Unreal on the platform. It also would likely lead to a lot of problems with Epic's Game Store on Mac no longer being properly signed.
Apple is likely going down if this goes to trial. Their best interests lie in settling before trial but it doesn't seem Epic is looking to settle.
In this case, the two accounts in question (the one for Fortnite and the one for Unreal engine), while on paper are separate entities, were paid for by the same person, using the same credit card number - so that was Apple's justification for removing both.
As the order shows, the judge still felt it was overreach.
> and just as obviously Fortnite being restored to the app store is a matter for Epic's lawsuit against apple.
They can easily roll back their TOS breaking update and the game will be available as early as today. The reality is that they broke the rules so they could sue.
I think we should speak more about this fact, so that people think twice before they buy some device.
I only make websites, but I am worried, that at some point, Apple would want me to pay them, so that my website is openable on their devices.
(Yes, I know you can buy computers without an OS and you can buy computes with Linux as well - but not enough to be realistic for most folks. I'm pretty sure you can buy phones with a different OS as well but again, not realistic choices).
Maybe that's just the developer in me falsely believing people are more competent than they actually are, though.
At some point, you have to have a pretty deep understanding of how Linux and computers work to Google the right things, and then understand and apply a fix – or worse, you may have to work out one on your own, which may entail things like reading source code and patching stuff; I'd say I'm somewhat competent as far as running Linux goes, and I've had numerous issues over the years that I was unable to fix, mundane but non-negotiable things like "getting sound to work". Best case, that'll just require more or less heavy command line usage, which only a tiny minority of people have ever used before and which is highly non-intuitive at first.
That amounts to building a very comprehensive set of skills that is completely worthless to most people otherwise, and that you don't need for Windows or macOS, let alone Android/iOS.
On PCs, already pretty much no one uses Linux outside of tech bubbles (and even there, seems like it's behind both Windows and macOS [0]), apparently somewhere around 1-2% [1] among the general population; in practice, it feels like it should be even less, at least based on what mainstream websites I'm familiar with see. And this is for general-purpose computers, where an open OS might have tangible benefits for the general, non-developer/ops public (not sure which, but I guess such a case could be made) – but phones don't seem to be general-purpose computers for most; it seems they're used for media consumption, taking photos, communication, maybe some light gaming, and not much else – all thinks where the existing walled gardens offer a very compelling experience with assurances for security and quality that open platforms might have a hard time delivering.
A truly open smartphone platform would probably face an even harder uphill battle than desktop Linux, and that's already failed to gain traction time and again. You'd need compatible apps for it to gain traction, but who's going to make those? It'd have to offer a really polished UX, I don't see many people picking a clunky, ugly, bug-ridden phone based on GPL vs. proprietary – lots of people (including me) buy iPhones in part because they enjoy their design and UX. How do you make sure apps aren't scattered across lots of malware-infested app stores? How do you make sure people don't inadvertently shoot themselves in the foot all the time if you don't wall them off from choices that might lead to that? But how do you wall off people on a platform that is truly open? And so on, and so on. Unless some tech giant decides their interests align very much with a truly open and relevant mobile OS, I have a hard time seeing it happen – and even then.
The current tech world is much different from when the major desktop environments solidified; this time around, the vast, overwhelming, huge majority of computer users are not enthusiasts or IT professionals anymore like in the 90s, but completely uninterested and uninvested in the tech apart from having it work for them to do relatively simple tasks, similar to what most people outside of the relevant enthusiast bubbles feel towards cars or stoves. I don't want to run Emacs on my stove and maybe blow myself up in the process, I want it to work reliably and safely and just heat my food. I'd actully like no one to be able to tinker at will with safety-critical software in their cars, because their segfaulting Formula 1 brake patch they got from some Facebook page might mean they plow into me and I die.
[0] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-de... [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide
As far as malware, I’m not sure why it would be more of an issue on an open platform than it would on Android. I use Linux as a daily driver, and as long as you’re getting software from trusted sources, it’s not much of a concern. I don’t see why it would be different on mobile.
And with regard to you comments about ease of use, I’m not saying an open phone OS should be the only option, or that it should even be the dominant platform. For most people it probably makes sense to go with a widely supported platform which is safe and easy to use. But it would be nice if there was an alternative available for power users, and people who want to experiment with radically different concepts of how to use a smartphone.
Smartphones are basically the main computers people use nowadays. It’s just kind of a shame you have to go through a corporation to use one.
> I use Linux as a daily driver, and as long as you’re getting software from trusted sources, it’s not much of a concern. I don’t see why it would be different on mobile.
Not sure if that's true – doesn't Google keep the Play store mostly free of serious malware? Apart from stunts like sideloading Fortnite, I'd expect the vast majority of Android users to get all their apps from the Play Store, so that should be reasonably safe. Of course, Google can pretty much force everyone into the Play Store by denying access to Play services and their huge customer base if you don't, so it's a one-stop shop for next to everyone.
But if every company, publisher, developer may host their own, including their own OpenPlay Services, how do you tell what is a trustworthy source? How do you tell if OpenRando Store is trustworthy when a Google search tells you it has this TokTuk app you've heard of? This isn't like server Linux, where most people are reasonably careful with what they install, sources are relatively few and policed well, and people tend to be at least somewhat knowledgeable, so tricking them is quite hard; this also isn't like desktop Linux, which doesn't have market share. This would be a reasonably large mobile platform used by everyone and their grandma to run a large part of their lives.
I'm quite sure most people wouldn't want to have to have a thorough understanding of how apps, app stores, installs, updates, the OS, typical malware, scams etc. work, just so they have a chance at noticing when things are off in some way. I've next to no idea how iOS works, and that's fine with me, and I'm someone who runs Kubernetes clusters for fun. Whoever spares people from having to have that knowledge and do that work and actively manage their phone like a piece of complicated corporate IT equipment will get all the users; they'd get me, for sure. My phone really just has to work and be secure.
This is exactly the situation you have now with Android: anyone can install an APK from anywhere if they want to.
As far as establishing trustworthy sources, I would imagine this would work a lot like using Apt on debian. You could have a trusted package manager where there is some vetting process for getting listed, and you would trust the community to identify and report malicious packages quickly.
Also unlike the app store or google play, you'd likely be running mostly open source software you can inspect yourself if you want to make sure it's safe.
My two reasons:
1. I bought cellphones before the iPhone. This is nothing new.
2. I don't need everything to run on my phone. The amount of things I can't run on my phone, but wish I could is incredibly tiny, compared to the perceived additional utility my iphone gives me compared to my last Android or dumbphone.
Moreover, I also own a Nintendo Switch and am considering buying a Playstation. I think as a consumer, I am not alone in accepting that certain devices will only run manufacturer approved software.
Why not demand to be able to have control over your own devices?
Others, in the meanwhile, should be able to install whatever application they want if they want to do that. Just because the current situation aligns with what you want to do doesn't mean that it is the perfect situation for everyone - but as long as your situation isn't affected (assuming what you want is about you and not about forcing everyone else to be like you) then you should be fine.
1. Users have perfect choice in which apps they install.
2. Developers will release their apps on all available app stores.
But many users are compelled to install apps that they would prefer not to and it's not at all obvious that developers would support two app stores instead of one given the choice. The net result of that combination is that some (many?) people would be compelled to use both app stores against their inclination.
The only wrong part is users not being in control over what they can install on their devices and from where they will install them.
Yes, it is possible that people will be forced to install applications they do not want, but this isn't something that is or even should be up to the OS vendor to try and protect against - the person being forced to do that is the one who should and if they cannot, then legal action should be seeked. The entire issue is outside the scope of the OS.
You can argue (as I think you are) that those losses are outweighed by the gains of a more open ecosystem, but to many users they are meaningful losses.
Console hardware doesn't have much value by itself: Computers are plentiful, so if you just want something to run software pick up a Raspberry Pi or Nvidia Jetson. Their value derives from the games that companies make, so ceding power to the game companies(via Nintendo) makes your console more valuable.
The biggest irony of all this is that consumers don't seem to realize the harm Apple is doing, because Apple is busy pulling the wool over their eyes by telling them they are protecting their security and privacy. iOS is a nanny state. Apple maintains a culture of fear among consumers to achieve its business goal, which is to maintain its monopoly position.
That's incorrect. Just don't use it.
What's the argument here, why not just don't use an iPhone then? Why turn an iPhone into more of an Android? I have an iPhone because I don't want to be like an Android. It's a feature to me that this (and other possibilities, bad and good) is not possible, hence why I bought it.
But you don't have to have it be like Android.... All you have to do is not install other app sores.
If I wanted choice in App Stores I would buy an Android phone. I don't care about choice of App Stores and I prefer the consistency of a single, consistent, secure source of Apps. Therefore, I bought an iOS device.
And you can have that. By not installing other app stores.
> reduces fragmentation
You don't have to fragment anything. Just only use the Apple App store.
> If I wanted choice in App Stores
You are not forced into choosing anything. All you have to do is not install other app stores, and you don't have to worry about choice.
> improves the overall user experience of the product.
You can have this improvement! If the Apple app store provides this value, then just only use the Apple app store.
> ...prefer the consistency of a single, consistent, secure source of Apps.
What is consistent when every app player is part of a different app store? Suddenly Microsoft has their own, Google has their own, Epic Games as their own, etc.
No thank you.
What is consistent would be your experience if you choose to only use the Apple App store. That experience would remain consistent.
> No thank you.
Then don't use those app stores?
If the conversation is about your rights, as an Apple user, then other people doing what they want with their own phones does not matter.
Someone can, right now, remove their app from the Apple app store, and nobody would claim that if they did they, then they are infringing on your rights as a user. So I am not sure why you would bring that up.
Nobody would claim that you are forced to do anything, if an app just removed themselves completely from an app store, so that is not relevant.
You have to understand that to many of us it is very much a feature that it's not possible to sideload or allow more control of your device. It's not lack of a feature, it is a feature. Just as much as a feature to you is the ability to sideload or take more control. This is why I should buy an iPhone and you should not. My preferences are different than yours. I do not want you, myself, or others to have some of these abilities; not merely the option not to use them.
I very much like the iPhone because of design architecture differences over Android. It's not perfect but (imo) closer to perfect than Android. We live in a world with many options and not all must subscribe to the same paradigm.
Why don't you just not use it then if you don't like it the way it is?
But yes, the options are too few and things can go like apples - one bad Apple can spoil the bunch.
>Nobody is forcing you to buy an Apple product, and there are plenty of stellar alternative products from numerous other brands.
We want to fix things (even in companies that we otherwise might like) that we think are morally unacceptable. That's how progress is made.
You can advocate your own position too, nothing wrong with both of us doing so.
Look at Macs vs. PCs. There are entire industries dedicated to fixing the problems presented by the amount of options available on a PC. I don't want that. I want a device that I know works to do the things I need it to do. If the day comes where I need to do something I can't, I'll need to find another device.
Also, it's nice that you mention Macs. On Macs, you can install any app bypassing the AppStore. As it should be on a proper computer, and iPhone IS a computer.
The lack of UX-degrading software on the iPad is also the primary reason why I’ve been pushing my friends and family away from the Mac and onto the iPad. With the limited software ecosystem of the iPad, there’s far less things for them to screw up on the Mac.
And yes,I've seen Macs of average users. Never saw anything really wrong there. You are exaggerating the issue.
Why don't you address it then? There is a world of more open software and hardware out there if you want that freedom. Why should everyone be subject to exactly the product you want?
You see, you too want the product I am describing, but you are too myopic to understand it. Maybe it is because you come from a better place than I, where the government does not actively censor app stores. Imagine, that some day Apple will remove the app you use, would you still say 'ok, I knew what product I bought'?
With iOS devices, you don't buy a product that can run a set of apps. You buy a product where the app you use may stop working any day, because some random moderator or executive at Apple will decide this way.
This has happened to me with more products than I can count on both the Mac and PC side and with nearly every mobile device I've ever used. Tons of apps on SymbianOS and Windows Mobile that worked on one device didn't work on the next device I bought. The current environment is a vast improvement on everything that came before it.
Maybe that's why you're being so condescending. We've lived through the evolution that got us here while you, quite clearly, think that open, by default, equals better simply because it's better for you as an individual. There are many, many people that view the iPhone environment and Apple's ecosystem as the better option. They're obviously all wrong.
In a market where both options exist why should one change to be like the one you prefer?
You claim that users 'agree' to this when they buy Apple devices. But to what exactly that agree? That apple can take away any app they use, any time? Even the one that was perfectly available when buying the device?
The 'deal' you get with apple by buying their hardware can be altered at any time, so the only thing you can do is pray that they don't alter it any further.
> You claim that users 'agree' to this when they buy Apple devices.
I claimed no such thing. Read my words directly and please don't put your own spin on them.
In a market where both options exist why should one change to be like the one you prefer?
"Google is apparently taking down all/most fediverse apps from google play on the grounds that that some servers in the fediverse engage in hate speech"
THIS is what you are so tirelessly advocating for
Also, what happens on a Mac has no bearing on what happens on the iPhone even if I made an analogy using the Mac. I need that type of access on my Mac. If they ever remove that, I'll need to find another option. That's not the case with the iPhone so your point is moot.
With Android, at least you can sideload the apps, and firewalls can be circumvented fairly easily. As for laws, well, not all laws are to be obeyed.
Tell that to the people living in China.
It's dangerous to haphazardly disregard that as meaningless, by extension it's such movements that fight for very valid consumer rights, like actually owning the hardware that people pay money for.
When I buy a piece of hardware I expect to own it, to run on it whatever I want, to be able to repair it, not to be a "tolerated guest" with only limited access and everything thrown my way to make self-repair as difficult as possible by design.
Meanwhile, I already have plenty of devices that I have control over.
That's like asking why not insist that your Tesla Model 3 has a diesel engine, a manual transmission and the ability to crawl up boulders. Not everyone buys things for the same reasons.
You can give Apple initial (and practically temporary if you do not want to take it back) control over the device without actually forcing everyone else to do the same.
> I would have simply bought a different product.
What if you liked everything Apple does except the part about not allowing you to install 3rd party applications?
> That's like asking why...
As i wrote in other posts, these comparisons 99.9% of the time miss important details so they're not helpful. E.g...
> ... diesel engine, a manual transmission and the ability to crawl up boulders.
...these having nothing to do with iOS allowing users to install applications from outside the App Store.
Wait a second, why is there all this bloatware on my phone after I turned it on for the first time? How do I get rid of it? Is it really gone even though it says I deleted it? Why do I need to go on a rabbit hunt in deep tech forums to make sure of that? Why is everyone saying to "just" root your phone to take control over it? Why does this tracking feature turn back on after updates? Why do I get the uncertain feeling that this free antivirus program should be run through a separate antivirus program?... etc. x100 other questions I have. I really don't care to have any of them answered, because I have the option not to.
Instead of demanding all this or asking much of these questions, I have the choice to buy an iPhone. I understand the (great) possibilities that I'm giving up in return, and I'm very good with that. I like this choice. I buy an iPhone for what it can't do. This next sentence sums it all up: it's important to understand that an Android can't do what an iPhone by purposeful design can't do.
Google could have this without having Android itself disallow 3rd party applications.
> I also want the manufacturer to have complete control so much that I never need to have an anti-virus. Scratch all that, I demand it. How come I cannot get this?
If you are afraid of viruses on your phone you can avoid that by using only applications from reputable sources (like the aforementioned app store). You do not need to lock down the device for everyone else just because you are afraid.
> Wait a second, why is there all this bloatware on my phone after I turned it on for the first time? How do I get rid of it? Is it really gone even though it says I deleted it? Why do I need to go on a rabbit hunt in deep tech forums to make sure of that?
What does all of this have to do with Android allowing 3rd party applications? All that is up to your device manufacturer.
> Why is everyone saying to "just" root your phone to take control over it?
Because sadly not even Android provides the ability to 100% unlock it out of the box for all devices.
> Why does this tracking feature turn back on after updates? Why do I get the uncertain feeling that this free antivirus program should be run through a separate antivirus program?... etc. x100 other questions I have. I really don't care to have any of them answered, because I have the option not to.
Note that you do not have an option here, the ability to not be able to answer any of those are forced on you by Apple - Apple never gave you any option outside not using their phones, but you cannot both use their phones (because you actually like them) and be able to install 3rd party applications.
> Instead of demanding all this or asking much of these questions, I have the choice to buy an iPhone. I understand the (great) possibilities that I'm giving up in return, and I'm very good with that. I like this choice.
What i refer to in my comments isn't the choice about what sort of device you can buy, what i refer to is being in control of your device after you bought it. Of course you can choose to not buy an Apple device, but after buying it you lose any form of control over your own device.
I think this part is completely tripping you up from understanding all these replies where you dissect comments bit by bit.
People are okay with not having this control. In fact, many pay for it to be done for us, and furthermore, want a more securely, closed environment without the proposed options. To many, this falls apart when more doors and options start to open.
That's not what the situation is, though. I can love everything about my car except the part about it using gas. If they don't make that car in a non-ICE version, then I have no recourse. The same thing applies to this. They don't make a device that allows you to install any 3rd party apps. It's not an option so it's a pointless discussion.
You certainly are not, but that doesn't mean your opinion is the only valid opinion
I don want to be married, I don't think other people should be forced out of marriage because it's ok for me...
Because many of us feel that the alternative (The nightmare that is the desktop PC application ecosystem) would be far worse, especially on a smartphone.
Is being in control and having choice a nightmare?
Like others,I prefer Apple to have a tightly controlled App Store and believe that the benefits far outweigh the ability to install software from a 3rd party App Store.
For example, Apple requiring Sign In with Apple (when signin with Google/Facebook are implemented) where you can hide your email address. That’s not possible with multiple app stores. Apple helps lead the way with privacy.
If you want multiple app stores and all that, just buy an Android phone. iPhone is for people like me who want a tightly controlled experience. That’s the way it’s designed. You don’t buy a Corolla and get mad that you can’t off road with it, do you?
Most ship with maleware that can’t be removed (or can’t be removed without giving up on updating the OS.)
Android still doesn’t let you run a lot of 3rd party software (the latest version breaks Termux for example.)
Apple’s anticompetitive behavior also ties people to the platform (iMessage is a great example of this. My family won’t use any other IM app so even if I buy another phone (which I have, it’s supposed to arrive in September) I’ll have to keep my iPhone just to talk to them.)
Finally the hardware is just bad. Qualcomm does not make nice SOCs (IMO) but it could be just because the software they provide with them is complete garbage. There’s no alternative in the US either.
That would happen if apple allowed other organizations to customize the OS which is a different discussion.
What you describe is possible with multiple app stores and allowing 3rd party apps - you just do not use those other stores and apps. Nobody is forcing you to use a 3rd party app store, but Apple is forcing everyone to go through their store.
You can keep your tightly controlled experience by not using anything else than Apple - but that doesn't mean everyone has to be forced to do the same thing.
> You don’t buy a Corolla and get mad that you can’t off road with it, do you?
99.9% of the time such comparisons ignore details and derail discussion, so they aren't very helpful.
Allowing 3rd-party app stores has predictable negative externalities (privacy, security, etc.). Which is why I and others are not interested in that development. Apple is able to make developers engage in less shitty business practices precisely because they can control the distribution of software through the App Store . It’s no surprise that as Apple has increasingly focused on privacy and removing tracking capabilities and other dark patterns that developers are trying to find a way around Apple’s restrictions. It’s not like they all of a sudden implemented a new fee. It’s been there for years.
> 99.9%....
I guess this is the .1%? You don’t buy something expecting it to do something completely different. You don’t buy an iPhone expecting to install whatever you want. You don’t buy a Corolla expecting to off-road with it.
No.
> You don’t buy something expecting it to do something completely different. You don’t buy an iPhone expecting to install whatever you want. You don’t buy a Corolla expecting to off-road with it.
Apple's current behavior isn't written in stone and dictated by God, it can change.
Being able to have multiple app stores on android is also pretty good. I have an iPhone for work, and it's fine, but I don't know how people live with one. Everything wants to have ads or wants me to pay for it.
I specifically bought an iPhone to facetime my family from another country. I'd love to be able to have my apps from my old android. Or, use facetime from an android...
But yeah, I'd love to install whatever I want and that's what I'd expect instead of having to buy everything twice when I switched OSes.
There's nothing unique about Facetime, except it's Apple exclusive.
That does indeed offer a solution, but I think the result is a fractured ecosystem where eventually apps end up on the "other " app store for one reason or another (They want a feature they can't get on the official one etc.).
With apple, devlopers have to bend over backwards to fit the ecosystem. That's both good and bad of course, but it keeps the ecosystem in one place with all apps being in the "safe" app store. I don't have to wonder whether that one app I want is safe to sideload/get from a third party store etc.
What I think is hard to understand is that I really really don't assign any value to being able to "do what I want" with my device. I absolutely don't want it to be anything like a PC and I don't mind being told what I can and can't do, for very little benefit, such as a tiny bit of security or a tiny bit of simplicity. It doesn't even have to be a lot.
Many employers do that very thing. How many people have been compelled by employment circumstances to install Zoom despite its dubious pedigree? What happens when a corporate timecard app exists only in a 3rd party app store?
Well, in that case, if employers force you to install something then just tell them give you a work phone. Or talk to them, you are adults.
And if that doesn't work, well, tough luck. This sounds like trying to solve a malfunctioning workplace problem by making everyone else suffer - it isn't my or Apple's or anyone else's problem that your boss forces you to install shady apps.
And besides, what different organizations exploring what different tradeoffs? Right now the only practical options are Apple and Android, there aren't really that many options as to have a healthy environment and Google isn't immune to making decisions that can have an overall negative impact to the control that people have over the stuff they buy (see their Stadia console as an example and how it completely and absolutely removes any notion of control from people buying games - not even consoles, let alone PCs, feature such loss of control).
I know people who break from what you call the practical options in both directions -- some who reject smartphones altogether and live their lives without them, doing all their digital work on computers that they have full control over -- and some who use only the stock apps on their phone and wish that app stores were not a thing. They want an entirely managed experience.
Neal Stephenson's essay In the Beginning was the Command Line gets at some of this nicely. Some people are, as he says, Eloi and some Morlocks. That's OK.
Having a choice is better than not having one, all around.
You can argue the changing employers is hard. I can also argue that 50% of my customers use iPhones and so I have to use one and know how they work. I literally cannot have an app business without dealing with Apple. That’s why this is an anti-trust situation.
Having choice about some things is better than not having one, all around. But some people choose (!) to delegate their choosing to others in certain fields. For example, the choice of whether to purchase safe meat or unsafe meat is a bad choice to have. It's doubly bad if you aren't skilled at determining the safety quality of meat. That's a choice I'm happy to outsource to a third party. Similarly, I'm happy to outsource a variety of choices about app terms of use to Apple.
Did you miss the part where I said that 50% of my customers use an iPhone? To be clear: 50% of the general population in the United States uses an iPhone. 90% of the youth market uses an iPhone. That doesn't leave much of a choice for developers at all.
You simply cannot have a successful app business in the US without being on Apple's app store.
Meanwhile, there are millions of potential employers in the United States.
And no harm would come to consumers by giving them that choice.
With a law that requires Apple to open their platform to allow actually usable sideloading and/or competing app stores, we'd have removed more harm than we've added.
[0] Me, for example since I can't even comfortably put a program, that I wrote, onto my own device without paying Apple $100 a year.
[1] Every one of my business customers who wants a native app for their customers who they already had a relationship with before Apple came along and stuck their nose in to say what we could and could not do with our customers customers devices.
There's a spectrum of what you're allowed to do software-wise with various computing devices you purchase.
One the one extreme, you have something like a washing machine. It's a computing device running a particular suite of software that is essentially impossible for the end user to modify or replace. Many (most?) embedded systems are like this.
On the other extreme, you've got open hardware platforms like the Arduino where you can do whatever you want with the software for a very large value of "whatever you want".
The Raspberry Pi is in the middle, but very close to the Arduino. A Nintendo is somewhere in the middle but close do the dishwasher. Android devices are somewhere in the middle, but closer to the Arduino than the dishwasher (though this varies between devices and manufacturers). iOS devices are, again, somewhere in the middle. Much is allowed. Some things are not. OS X devices are closer to the Arduino than iOS devices are. That's also an intentional choice by Apple.
The placement of iOS along that spectrum is an intentional choice by Apple that customers have proven to support by buying iOS devices in prodigious quantity.
It's not obvious to me that taking a market leading choice in that spectrum and removing it produces less harm in the balance. It might, but it also might not. I'd be inclined to let people vote with their wallet as long as viable alternatives abound, which they do.
Not really, because there is no balance. Way more harm is done in the name of protecting people than is done by allowing freedoms.
The rest of your argument is predicated upon there being some kind of balance. There isn't one.
You don't need to look any further than The War on Drugs to see this. It's already been scientifically proven that letting people do what they want is far better for society. The only people who work to keep drugs illegal are those who benefit from them being illegal. Same thing here.
There's not much more to say about this. You're never going to convince me that removing freedom is better for society when people will always have the choice to remove it for themselves by making the right choices about who to associate with or who to do business with.
They're free to try. There's more of us than them though and we're also free to continue enforcing our existing anti-trust laws and make new ones for important digital platforms.
I advocate for freedom for the common man. What are you doing here?
And the "more of us than them" suggests that rather than any principled approach, you advocate something like the mob rule that the Athenians described to the Melians: the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. Fair enough. That position has been common enough throughout history. Right now lots of people appear to like the way Apple is running their company. Does that make it right? You seem to think no, but are articulating reasons why you should think yes. That's perplexing to me.
I'm trying to make sense of what I think about the disagreement between Apple and Epic. I'm not sure. The arguments people are making against Apple so far seem unsuccessful and problematic to me. I think the collective bargaining argument I've cautiously advanced might make some sense.
If you couldn’t tell that I completely disagree with your backwards notion of what’s right and good by now and that nothing you’ll say will convince me that less freedom for common folks is somehow better...even after I’ve told you this directly...yet you keep responding to me, I guess you just need to have the last word?
Have at it!
Off topic rant: I was going to get her Dell. I had forgotten how bad the consumer Dells were. By the time you get a decent one, you might as well get a MacBook Air.
There's a $20 billion/year cryptlocker industry that excludes iPhones thanks to the difference.
No, but I would get mad if the manufacturer told me what brand of gas I could buy and what roads I could drive on.
That is not an artificial restriction. If you take it off road, it will perform as car not designed to be taking off road does. It won't refuse to leave the road to protect Toyota's brand.
Most of my problems have been with restrictions that Apple has put on me in their Mac and iOS product lines.
> Apple requiring Sign In with Apple (when signin with Google/Facebook are implemented) where you can hide your email address. That’s not possible with multiple app stores.
Yes it is. You, as a consumer can choose to stay in the Apple app store where developers have to follow that rule. If a particular developer is only publishing in the non-Apple app store, you can simply use a competing app that is in Apple’s app store. This is the same advice you’d give to someone who doesn’t like Apple products at all... you’d say “Go buy an Android”. In the future though, you’ll only have to say “Go use a non-Apple app store”.
For example, if the only way to fill out my employer's timecard is via an iOS app, should they be compelled to offer the app in all the available app stores?
This is about giving users and developers a choice outside of Apple's app store. If you like freedom and choices, you should get on the right side of this debate.
If some relatively small group of users had a choice, they would always be able to choose Apple's protection.
If you're depending on Apple to stop you from making bad decisions about what kinds of employers to work for, I think you've got bigger problems than what might happen if there were an alternate iPhone app store.
Are you saying that viruses, malware, ransomware, keyloggers, multiple toolbars have not been a problem in general over two decades?
You remember when “reputable” sites like SourceForge were bundling adware?
Not for me.
> You remember when “reputable” sites like SourceForge were bundling adware?
Sure. What's your point?
I think I know: You would gladly trade the freedom of the general population for security.
If so - I'm sorry to hear that. If not, maybe you should think about what you're saying because you're on the wrong side of the debate.
So would Apple be better off serving you or the general population? I think the numbers speak for themselves.
> I think I know: You would gladly trade the freedom of the general population for security. If so - I'm sorry to hear that. If not, maybe you should think about what you're saying because you're on the wrong side of the debate.
Yes because when the founding fathers came up with the phrase they were referring to the “freedom” to save a little money buying virtual currency to buy the Carlton dance in Fortnite.
You are perfectly free to buy an Android device. Most people would gladly choose some type of assurance that they could install video conferencing software and not have a secret web server installed that they don’t know to delete (ie Zoom)
Seems like a better option than just letting big corps do whatever they want. There's more of us than them.
Even in California where they passed laws that were suppose to “help” Uber and Lyft drivers had the effect of making it harder for truck drivers who wanted to contract to do so.
Let’s just come up with “Five Year Plans”, because feels cant fathom that 50% of the US willingly made a choice to be in the “walled gardened”. Just like after everything that happened with the Microsoft and the Justice Department, “the Year of Linux on the Desktop” never happened and everyone is not compiling their own operating system.
If you wanted to download software, why wouldn’t you go to “download.com” (owned by CNET who is owned by CBS) and you see the software you want from a reputable source that is still bundled with crapware.
Let’s not forget that Chrome became popular originally because it was also bundled with third party software.
Are you saying a grandma starts a PC and immediately knows about SourceForge?
So which search engine do you suggest? What if there were a secondary App Store on phones? Selling a “free” version of some popular app?
Why would the same issue of slimy developers who game the system on PCs not do the same on phones?
On the other hand, isn’t that exactly what users are doing? They are purposefully avoiding a Google product - Android - with all of its “openness” to buy an iPhone. Tell me again why we need the government involved?
Your answer wasn't about PCs, it was about flaws in other products/services.
>So which search engine do you suggest? What if there were a secondary App Store on phones? Selling a “free” version of some popular app?
I would suggest them to not install apps unless it was recommended by someone they trust and they were confident that it wasn't junk. This would apply to PC software, smartphone apps and everything else. Its no different than how you go about finding a trusted mechanic, or a pest control service or a trusted handyman or whatever.
Curation can happen in many ways. Apple could recommend it, your friend who knows about "computers" could, maybe its a magazine/website you trust, etc, etc. The point is about choice and freedom.
We get to make the rules of the economy we want to operate in. The entire purpose of the government is to serve our needs, and if its not doing that we should change the rules. Both sides can make their cases. I am happy to oppose Apples oppressive policies (in this case).
You mean like friends recommending Firefox and someone naturally going to Google to search for “Firefox” and the top link being malware? If someone recommended an app and they found a fake version on the third party App Store how would they know the difference?
How has that worked out for the past 30 years on computers where we are always hearing about yet another ransomware attack?
The point is about choice and freedom.
You mean like “freedom” to choose an Android over an iPhone?
We get to make the rules of the economy we want to operate in. The entire purpose of the government is to serve our needs
Actually you don’t. The executive branch is not chosen by “the people” it’s chosen by the Electoral College which has gone against the popular vote twice in the last 20 years.
The Senate is chosen by the states where each state regardless of population gets two Senators. 46% of the Senators represent around 25% of the population.
The judicial branch is chosen by the two least representatives parts of the government - the executive branch and the Senate.
If you think not being able to sideload apps on a device you didn’t have to buy is, I wonder how you feel about the “War on Drugs”, “War on Crime”, civil forfeiture, imminent domain used to take property and give it to more profitable businesses and the President unilaterally telling a business it has to sell to another company? Is this the government you want to give more power too?
Again, if they are not sure how to discern the difference because of flaws in Google, they should not be using Google. Their friend or maybe a curation website or whatever should give them a direct link. Why are you assuming that this is not possible? People share direct links to websites and videos and other things all the time.
>You mean like “freedom” to choose an Android over an iPhone?
No, that is not freedom. When every company is in on the scam, you need government intervention. When all companies are abusing your privacy, you need new laws. The existing laws were made for non-digital marketplaces. You can setup a lemonade stand without Apple robbing 30% of your sales, but if you try to make an app you first need to beg apple for permission to write software, then apple will rob you of 30% of your sales. Sorry, that is not morally acceptable to me, and I don't even work in the software industry anymore. I work in vaccines. We need new laws as goods and services transition over to digital-markets. Modern problems need modern solutions.
>Is this the government you want to give more power too?
By setting the rules of the economy as such, the government already gave too much power to corporations. Its time to change the balance of power to what we think is morally acceptable. I'm not even saying everything has always sucked. Maybe the existing laws did work fairly well for a while, but I don't believe they have any magical power that we can't amend them as we see fit.
Now normally I would say that as a company you have the right to legally abuse your userbase however you want, but when you get this big that your profit margin exceeds that of several democratic countries and your particular flavor of abuse is inspiration for product development in general, than I'm going to support you losing that particular privilege.
As somebody who's been looking and working in it for decades, I don't see it?
To me the actual nightmare are closed walled gardens giving users a false sense of security about the software they offer on their services as supposedly all being "vetted".
And because by now the mobile space is the biggest target there is, malicious actors have shifted their attack vectors accordingly [0].
Even with these walled gardens in place, we've reached a point where the mobile app ecosystem is going trough its own phase of "You need this Norton/McAfee/blah product to keep your device secure/optimized!" just like the PC ecosystem did and still does.
As such the "gatekeepers" have effectively failed at gatekeeping anything that ain't explicit sexual content.
[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/warning-over-hidden-apps-as-mo...
The apple iOS model seems to be the most promising here. It comes with huge tradeoffs in user control but for a large part of the worlds population I think its the right choice.
As for the PC, i think what Apple was doing with macOS until recently (allowing you to run unsigned software you downloaded from the Internet by doing the "right click dance") was a perfectly fine compromise between security for computer illiterate people and still being in control for people who know what they are doing.
Nothing about Apple's model requires Apple to be the only one who can say what you can do with your own device - you can still have Apple be in control by default but also provide a way to take control yourself if you know what you are doing.
But in this case you dont lose any level of control, since the appstore itself there isnt limited. The only thing not allowed is unsecure apps. Thats all.
Yes the iOS idea is great, but there is no need to impose arbitrary restrictions.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/fortnites-android-vu...
Meanwhile the city dweller chooses the opposite for many reasons and makes different concessions, but it suits them.
Neither is these are strictly wrong but to claim one is better than the other _for everyone_ is misguided and is essentially what this argument is here. Pick your own path but don’t presume it’s the right one for everybody and don’t destroy the other’s ecosystem such that they can no longer choose it.
The choice for others to have no choice is not really much of a choice - not only i want to have a choice in what i install on iOS devices but i also want the ability to have a choice available in all of the devices i paid for, especially in an environment where other companies see Apple's success and become too thirsty for it and try to copy them (see Microsoft as an example).
I don't think it's Apple's fault if other companies try to copy them poorly. I'm very familiar with what you mean and it bothers me too, but I don't think that means Apple needs to change.
As a former owner of multiple Maemo devices, avid GNU/Linux and FOSS advocate, and user of F-Droid applications when possible, this "nightmare" is a level of control that I dream about having on my phone...
Even though you can say mobile phones are general computing devices, actually for most of the people they are just media consumption devices.
I believe technical restrictions are not enough in this age alone.
As long as they have rules and it is applied fairly and equally, I prefer controlled and regulated market places.
iPhone does the trick for me in that regard, the app library is huge, the consistent design is great, the way it syncs with my macbook is irreplaceable.
Being blocked from running arbitrary code on a phone is not a big deal to the vast majority of users. If that's a dealbreak, buy an android phone. But lets not pretend that doesn't come with huge tradeoffs if you like what the iPhone provides.
Android does have a poor status though, the value of it's phones drops precipitously every few months until it levels at $100-$200 a year later, or it was cheap in the first place and good like xiaomi. iPhones don't drop like that.
There are so many categories where you cannot load software outside of what the manufacturer provides that you cannot list them. It would also be impractical to allow otherwise for many of these. Then you end up with warranty issues.
Would you allow people to load software of their choice for their automobiles? Tesla is fighting this one now where people are paying a third party to boost their horsepower.
Smart TVs usually are limited by their OS and encumbered by licensing that locks down what can be loaded. This mostly is because of decoding legalities
Who becomes liable if your privacy, assets, or even the device, are compromised because you were able to load software not vetted? Do you want a world where you need a virus scan program for your phone?
I look at it this way, you have a choice in what you buy, because a manufacturer does not adhere to your desire is by no means justification for forcing them to do so.
Obviously yes.
> Smart TVs usually are limited by their OS and encumbered by licensing that locks down what can be loaded. This mostly is because of decoding legalities
It's because of DRM. Nothing here benefits the customer.
> Who becomes liable if your privacy, assets, or even the device, are compromised because you were able to load software not vetted?
You, the owner, of course.
> Do you want a world where you need a virus scan program for your phone?
Like on Android?
> I look at it this way, you have a choice in what you buy
You don't. That's the whole point of walled gardens, taking that choice away from you.
This is a great example of Orwellian doublethink.
Just like people "love relevant ads" that Google provides People never love gatekeepers or ads. They love secure smartphones and relevant web search results. Users enjoy the benefits a gatekeeper can provide, but they would be just as happy to get the benefits without the downsides.
It was reasonable for Apple to use gatekeeping at first. It was simple and workable. But after more than a decade, they should have something a lot better.
Like app sandboxing and web technology-based apps that can be installed from outside the App Store while maintaining the integrity of your device.
Apple is no longer acting in their users best interests, they're acting in their own. And they're exploiting their market share to do so, in an extremely anti-competitive way.
In the short-term it's a cash grab for Apple and in the long-term its a poison that will eat at the company's foundation. They should even the playing field and compete on it as they do so well.
People also want to pay no taxes until the police doesn't show up when somebody breaks into their home. Same with health insurance.
To be fair, that's only for lack of skills (not blaming people for not having them, but it's the main reason)
I can flash most of my devices with the software I want, my cousin is a rally driver and he hacks into cars ECUs all the times, they are not locked by design, you need the tools and the expertise though
> Smart TVs usually are limited by their OS and encumbered by licensing that locks down what can be loaded.
Not if the are android TVs, you can still side load apps.
Anyway they still work as normal TVs if you completely ignore the "smart" part, iOS devices don't work if you don't authenticate on Apple servers
> Do you want a world where you need a virus scan program for your phone?
Tons of photos, videos and private informations are leaked everyday from iPhones
It is a false sense of security
> because a manufacturer does not adhere to your desire is by no means justification for forcing them to do so.
But it could be because it's breaking some law
In Italy ISPs are forced to let you chose between the ISP bundled modem or the one you buy and release all the information you need to make it work on their networks
If they refuse to comply, you can sue them
If I want software freedom I’ll use my laptop.
Oh, the iPhone? Yeah people don’t care. Having Apple vet apps is a benefit, not a curse.
https://gamerant.com/final-sword-switch-eshop-remove-legend-...
It was apparently a $17 game.
All of them distribute games and entertainment apps (music, video, etc). Sony has also distributed apps not related to entertainment, e.g. folding@home.
Saying a console != a smartphone doesn't help discussion when what we're discussing is walled gardens here.
https://www.macstories.net/stories/before-the-app-store-the-...
https://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-...
I believe the (weak) answer to the above is the answer to your question. Features are what matters to the majority of users. The ability to sideload apps itself is not.
I don't mind that Apple keeps a large commission. But I mind the fact, that Apple has a monopoly on iOS software distribution, and the monopoly is always bad for the customers.
The only devices I get SW from other sources is my computer, phone, and watch -- at least as far as I can recall. And while my computer is a Windows PC and my phone an iPhone - I have never once thought that I'd have access to more/better SW if the iPhone was more open like my PC.
I get what you're saying, but it is so far down the list of concerns for most consumers as to be a complete non-factor.
I don't trust the android ecosystem in the slightest bit (to the extent that I don't like people connecting to my wifi with their random android devices) to be secure, but I could install whatever I wanted.
Because the hardware has a lot of direct advantages (Apple has the best chips) as well as user service lock (iTunes, iMessage).
Because most of them don't really care until it directly impacts them, and because Apple spends a huge amount of money on their marketing.
The Fortnite game wanted to avoid this fee of 30% by making the game free to download, but the users could pay directly inside the game (the payment mechanism did not go through Apple).
If more apps or games do that, Apple would lose a lot of money. Also, Apple App store is the only way to get apps and games into iOS devices. So if I make a game and I want you to play it, and you know me and my game and you want to play it too, Apple is a "third person", who can stop us from doing so.
I am sure Apple did it to try and bully Epic into settling.
> This is a quote from the letter that Apple sent to Epic;
>> If your membership is terminated, you may no longer submit apps to the App Store, and your apps still available for distribution will be removed. You will also lose access to the following programs, technologies, and capabilities:"
>> [...]
>> - 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
> That is a statement that Apple made saying they will stop all help they give to Epic getting UE running on all Apple hardware. With the other stuff in the letter it makes it very clear that the problem is not just one for Epic Games, but all of Epic.
> You can read it yourself - https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/epic-v-apple-8-17-20-768927327.... (Apple's letter starts on page 51 of the PDF)
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24269719
So they seem to be very specific and specifically call out work on the Unreal Engine.
So, to be clear, development for the Unreal Engine would absolutely be impacted but that is not the same thing as "blocking Unreal Engine". Apple can't block the Unreal Engine as a whole since developers license that separately from Epic.
> You will also lose access to the following programs, technologies, and capabilities:
> All Apple software, SDKs, APIs, and developer tools
If Apple had carried out that threat (which this injunction prevents), it seems like Unreal's development would have come to a halt, as Epic employees would no longer be able to legally use XCode etc. I suppose they could have kept writing code in a text editor, but there would have been no practical way to test it.
Source: Exhibit I https://www.scribd.com/document/473210410/Email-exhibits-fro...
This was a moonshot by Epic, mostly about the court of public opinion than the actual law.
https://twitter.com/EskilSteenberg/status/129752027579013939...
- safari is a minority marketshare browser and already existed when iOS was created; Windows already had its marketshare dominance before the browser was invented
- Portable music also pre-existed before iOS.
iPhone and Android were laughing stocks in 2008. To say these points are anticompetitive would require proving they achieved their marketshare by parlaying their existing dominance into a new market, and it’s not clear that happened, especially given the thriving of alternatives like Chrome, Spotify, Tidal, etc.
There is also a bunch of not-actually-anticompetitive points
- charging developers for use of the platform
- disallowing competitive tools
- controlling platform access altogether
All of the above would imply the game console makers like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft have been anticompetitive for decades. It’s not likely.
The crux to me is if there is a “right to a market“ for otherwise vertically integrated components. Just beside their was a market in he past for those things, doesn’t mean they need to be enshrined in laws. It would be akin to declaring game platforms or mobile platforms as public utilities so that ISVs in other adjacent platform markets can legally force the extension of their business model on other ecosystems. It’s been done with
power generation/distribution,
alcohol brewing/distribution/sales, and
car manufacturing/sales/service.
But those had massive unintended consequences.
There is one area where there may be a clear legitimate issue: Abuse of private APIs. But it would have to be proven.
Edit: not that Epic isn’t right to sue to see if they can get their way, just that they should have sued without violating current terms. My personal belief is that much of the 30% goes to gift card promotions and markup which brings in funds for all developers.
The developer you are talking about didn't break the rules of the app store. Epic -the one with the development of Unreal Engine- is an entirely different legal entity than the one that broke Apple's rules - the forthnite developer. X broke a rule, Apple got pissy and punished both X and Y because both have the same owners. As the judge also acknowledged in the ruling.
By being forced to reinstate the entire account under anticompetitive scrutiny, its a PR loss for Apple. If Epic had separate dev accounts for its MacOS and iOS presence it would have played out differently.
Non techcrunch link (as I can't access those with ublock/cookie wall blocker)
apple's market position is causing higher prices for consumers. therefore it should be busted.
we just need to keep the same standard (or better: make it more strict; apple has been abusive for a long time) for when epic becomes the monopoly.
In the US, yes. Defacto monopoly.
You can just have no block owners at all. Having two competing kings fighting over the throne isn't "dynamic" democracy.
> Having two competing kings fighting over the throne isn't "dynamic" democracy.
That would be a more dynamic kingship than just having one king with full control over the kingdom. I'm not sure what you want to say here. Dynamism doesn't transform the kingdom in a democratic system. Nor is Apple or Epic part of a democratic battle. You seem to be conflating a bunch of things IMHO.
Apple basically collectively bargains for iPhone users via the App Store. Privacy features, sign-in with Apple, limiting tracking abuse, privacy “Nutrition Facts” and other items will go out the window. Apple will have those in their App Store, but users will make the trade off with privacy to play Fortnite or download a new social media app. Apple makes it so that trade off doesn’t have to happen.
It’s all around awful. I really hope Apple wins this court case.
Why would Apple be less incentivized than another company, like Epic, to protect your data? Apple sells the iPhone and markets it toward pro-privacy and security. Going against that is not in their own best interest. It's in Epic's interest to break through that, because then they can use dark patterns and break privacy restrictions (as other companies will and intend to do).
Again, it's no surprise that as Apple has been more user-focused and privacy-focused in their continued iPhone and iOS development that developers are feeling the squeeze when they want to use dark patterns, so naturally they'll try and break out of that so they can go back to their old bad habits again.
Probably because their store doesn't have to compete? I would say they really are not doing a good job at this considering their track record contains plenty of dark patterns, privacy violations, tracking, data mining, censorship, and so on. If you don't believe me I can provide plenty of examples. The situation might be marginally better than a low-end Android device that typically comes loaded with OEM malware, but that's not saying much.
If you don't want that, that's totally fine: Android is right over there.
> Apple makes it so that trade off doesn’t have to happen.
That's the core of the discussion here: you seem to think that's in the interest of the user to have Apple taking all those decisions for themselves. I firmly disagree, I'm a happy user of an iOS device and do release iOS apps, in both case I would prefer to have more choice of trade-off, and to be able to decide for myself instead of Apple taking a decision for all their user base and developers.
Considering the fact that you prefer Apple to block you from other options: it doesn't follow that they should do this to everyone, just that you would still pick that option if you had the choice.
I respectfully disagree with this statement. I think an analogous situation would be the launch of Disney+: it used to be possible to watch Disney series on Netflix, but after Disney decided to launch Disney+, these series were pulled from Netflix to push the adoption of Disney+. For a Netflix user, their situation would very much be affected by Disney+ existing.
Where the pedal really hits the metal is with the cost of buying zero day exploits. iOS exploits can be had for much cheaper than Android ones.
But who's to say that Apple has your interests in mind, and not their own, and makes a choice for you that is actually detrimental to you and beneficial to them? Let's say, by locking you in, and preventing any competition.
How would you feel if every other company you buy from did the same?
Vote with your wallets doesn't really work since people will put up with plenty of abuses for software that's useful enough to them. Vote with politics doesn't really work either because regulators are very hesitant to regulate tech and kill the cash cow.
People, like me, are so fiercely loyal to Apple because seemingly no other company has been able to strongarm developers into not being shitty to their users.
If they didn't have my interests in mind I wouldn't buy their products (which is why I don't buy any more Google products, their customers are the ad companies, not the people who buy/use their products). Companies make products for their customers with the customer's interest in mind in order to make a product that sells the best.
Mac apps do just fine with other install options while most still choose the App Store for ease and security.
For example, iPhone/iPad users being unable to install Adobe Flash accelerated its demise hugely, by motivating websites to remove Flash, not just add 'please install' links.
If you're the sort of person who releases iOS apps, you're far more technically inclined than the median user and perhaps more willing to engage in individual negotiation of terms of service and privacy (as you'll be plausibly good at it). The median user of an iPhone is in a hopeless bargaining position in the face of dark patterns, and for that user, perhaps the collective bargaining Apple engages in is more valuable.
- Even if other app stores are available (or sideloading, or other potential outcomes that would be more open than the current situation) Apple still control the platform, thus can still impose A LOT of what is possible or not on iOS. If they want to "protect" their users they can continue to do it at that level (there would then be a debate on what is or not considered "anti-competition" at this level)
- Regarding the difference of technical level, yes, I'm more technically inclined. On other systems (such as Android, Windows, and macOS) being more technically knowledgeable means that I can gain more control over my system and take my own decisions. In the world of iOS (potentially also in the future world of macOS), that's not even close to being a possibility.
For example, if I purchase a subscription to a language learning app on an iOS device, my ability to seamlessly cancel that subscription has been collectively bargained by Apple (via the terms of service of their payment processing system). That's valuable to me, particularly given the absurd difficulty of canceling subscriptions that are not collectively bargained like gym memberships.
How would Apple impose that same term of use, that subscriptions can be cancelled on device with one click, for a sideloaded app? If they can't do that, developers would offer their app only via sideloading so as to be able to take advantage of that stream of revenue, like gyms. Now there's less competition for language learning apps in the first party app store, and I, a user of that store, suffer.
That's not to say there aren't tradeoffs for that collective bargaining; there are. As you say, we have much less control over iOS devices than we've historically had over our computing devices. Similarly, workers who collectively bargain have much less control over their terms of employment than workers who individually negotiate. But for many workers (and many users), that tradeoff is a good one. Apple is currently the only organization offering it.
And who do we have to thank for that turn? Apple's culture that "we know better" is a good part of that problem. Developers want to be Apple, and Apple is pretty abusive towards their users. They take the occasional pro-user stance where it suits them, but overall it's pretty clear that the only institutional interest for Apple is Apple's own bottom line.
Here you're effectively defending an absolutist monarch: he can take a good decision here and there, maybe even give you a decade or two of peace and prosperity, but in the long run his family will inevitably do what is good for them, not for the country. Democracy is messy, unstable, often dangerous, but in the long run is more sustainable for the ecosystem at large.
For example, if Apple conducted plebiscites of its users and used those plebiscites in informing its collective bargaining with developers, I think that'd be fine. That would force Apple to articulate the value proposition of the positions it takes.
And it is hardly any different from any other platform.
Classical PCs are the exception here due to IBM's failure to secure their golden eggs, had they succeed and PCs would have been just as like.
It is no surprise that with the rise of laptop and tablets, the classical desktop PC is an species facing extinction, with pizza boxes for server room being the only ones left.
As for how it would be like, just like Acorn, Atari, Amiga and Apple were at the time.
This culture did not start at Apple. It has been predominant tech culture since at least the early 2000s and is absolutely pervasive in the Linux Desktop community.
When I was young I could create small apps and games and share with my friends. But the future seems to be "think at the idiots that might side load malware" so our children will need to create developers accounts, provide IDs , buy certificates just to develop and share some games.
I too used to create small apps and games and share them with my friends. I still do that on a headless raspberry pi, which is a vastly superior environment than the one I had access to as a child. As the economic value of data on computers rises, I think we'll see a split between the device you use to conduct modern digital life and the device you do "old fashioned" computer stuff on. For people inclined to tinker, there will be platforms that enable that. But you won't do your banking on that platform because, as you say, idiots will side load malware. I've certainly made that split in my life (and in my classroom where we use the raspi as a teaching computer and every student has root on their own box), and it works out really well.
Anyway do you have any examples (more then 1) of companies that ONLY offer side loading because they are evil and want to trick the customer (with subscriptions or to steal data).
One example jumps to mind - wasn’t Facebook running a side loaded VPN that was doing some unsavory things until Apple banned it? I think the place to look for that sort of thing right now would be companies abusing the enterprise development system.
The possible bad future I can see is this
- judge decides Apple can do whatever they want
- Google says "Great, then we can do the same" and all Android phones get locked
- Microsoft then also says thinks "Fuck, we are suckers, so they force the PC makers to DRM the computers to run only Windows and say something like "if you don't like it buy Linux"
So we will have tons of hardware that is DRMed and locked, you can run only what american companies approved and only if you have a valid user or developer accounts and maybe you need internet connection so the files are checked before you are allowed to open them.
Happily, there's already a thriving ecosystem of alternate linux-based platforms that allow the sort of freedom that we both want and enjoy.
Here Apple isn’t a benevolent user collective, they have complete control over the entire pipeline, use it to force their rules on both users and developers. Epic, Spotify and others DO WANT to negotiate with their users instead of being forced by Apple. If someone is trying to negotiate, it is Epic & Co. Apple refuses any negotiation, told them repeatedly to follow their own rules. Epic thinks that there is a case to make that Apple has too much power and control and the balance should tip a bit more to developers. And that’s where we are now.
I don’t think that the collective bargaining is a good analogy, but if you want to go with this, Epic and others ARE the bargaining collective, while Apple is the mighty entity that tries to shutdown anything remotely threatening to their current business model.
i.e. the power dynamic should be flipped so that developers have more leverage. This is the core issue. Users have little power on their own and are largely unorganized. So software that's useful to users enables developers to get away with many many abuses before large swaths of users abandon the product. Right now Apple has an extreme amount of leverage over developers and is rich enough to not even notice if they lose even large companies as publishers.
So yes, Apple has been protecting their business model, but the secondary effect is that user's have been benefiting hugely from this since Apple makes more money when users are happy.
Bargained for Apple's benefit, not yours.
The end result is that if you ever for any reason want to manage the subscription without an Apple device, you can't. Which directly feeds into the premium they charge you for their devices. It also means that the vendor is forced to implement Apple Payments, and the surcharge is ultimately paid by you.
You may have lost money due to subscriptions* , but you are definitely losing money to Apple.
* It's easy where I live to call the credit company and block the charge, and the credit company doesn't take 30%.
Payments also come to mind: Apple has strict standards for what you have to explain to users before you take their money. (Granted they're not always perfectly enforced.) And some of the terms (like easy, clear cancellation) are enforced simply by the fact that you must use Apple's payment system. With another App Store, that goes out the window.
On the privacy/data aspect, if Apple forced data to be uploaded to the cloud, I would care. If it was "privacy" where the "privacy" is protected by apple keys I wouldn't really call that privacy. However that's not what Apple does in general where it can avoid it.
For example, in the new iOS version they're adding offline language translation functionality rather than uploading your voice snipets to the cloud to translate them. This is substantially harder engineering problem than doing it in the cloud as it requires significantly more turning to run on a constrained platform like a phone. If Apple actually didn't care about privacy they'd do what basically everyone else does.
> I'm not sure what you want to say here
That the Apple platform with the store model has significant disadvantages.
But if the topic is "dynamism", I can easily manage my expectations.
It just feels like someone is shitting on your plate and tells you, that it at least already looks like chocolate pudding.
The effective solution is stopping dominance in one area from spilling over into another. Can't use iOS control to gain control of app sales and you can't use control of app sales to gain control of payments.
Using that reasoning, they are in the best position to actually open to competition.
To the point that Linux fans that keep pointing to Android as "Desktop Linux" miss the point that no Linux APIs are part of official Android APIs and depending on the Android version, apps get killed when trying to be smart reaching for private APIs.
I think Epic getting what they want will slowly hollow out the available market for smaller indie developers who can't compete with with the scale of the big boys. Insofar as Apple's app store falls short, it's often in the various ways it fails at providing a truly even playing field between Joe Random and the Amazons and Epics of the world. Take the Apple intermediation out of it and the big stores can bring the strength of their reputations and the scale of their logistical capabilities to bear in ways that will make it much more difficult for small, independent developers to thrive.
You can see it in comparing the iOS app economy to the Android one. Even though the vast majority of app installs in Android come through the Play store, the more lax standards and availability of sideloading seems to make people much less trustful of anything they get and, consequently, much less likely to spend any money.
If alternatives were allowed to exist, those stores could be built with better discovery mechanisms or allow a smaller pond where you might be able to be the big fish.
As opposed to a vast ocean (App Store) where you've got to be damn lucky or have major connections to be anything more than a minnow as an independent.
The plain fact is that isn't what the vast majority of customers want. They have time and again showed that what they want is one place where they can all get their apps, and that will also be on their next phone. Google didn't decide that for them, nor did Samsung which has it's own store on it's phones. It's what customers want and have chosen, whether you like that or not.
Yes Google used unsavoury practices, they ran afoul of the EU and were fined Billions, but that's a footnote. We'd be where we are anyway, and stoping those anticompetitive practices hasn't slowed down the consolidation because this is driven by user preference.
a) it is more dynamic than a situation with one king just sitting on his laurels
b) this is not about democracy, this is about competition on markets
But either way that's not my point. Epic establishing a precedent that restricts the degree to which companies can dominate a supply line and then use that position to skim isn't going to make it easier for Epic to dominate you, the consumer. That's not their objective. That is Apple's objective.
https://twitter.com/EskilSteenberg/status/129752027579013939...
And also, it’s up to the DOJ to litigate this, not competitors. They don’t have the standing.
If courts determine that Apples behavior violates anti-trust laws, it is unlikely that they would find that Epic was not an injured party.
It will likely require a new legislation to force the regulation of App Stores as public utilities.
Violating the Sherman act requires demonstration of monopoly or restraint of trade. Any ISV has many channels and platforms with which to sell its wares, so this will be hard to prove. Asking for a retail cut % isn’t restraint of trade.
The ISVs like Epic want more profit for themselves by forcing the regulation of app stores as public utilities, so that like a power generation company, they can compete separately from the distribution system. That is a tall order to prove that it’s more in the public interest than in the ISV’s interest.
Steam on Linux is mostly compatibility hacks so people can play the games they bought. Some games have decent Linux support, but the real value I see in Steam on Linux is all the proton/wine magic/hacks to make games work relatively well without any changes, and frankly it's great.
The rate at which Wine/Proton et al., and Linux gaming in general, has improved in the last few years is staggering.
> GPL software can't even communicate with friends on Steam, isolating the open source community and ultimately turning their devs, if they want to be part of Steam's extensive gaming social network, into serfs for the store.
I have no idea what you mean by this, but I also don't see what the GPL has to do with it. You can easily write GPL software that you sell on Steam which uses all of Valve's features.
Steamworks.
> I have no idea what you mean by this, but I also don't see what the GPL has to do with it. You can easily write GPL software that you sell on Steam which uses all of Valve's features.
Steamworks is needed for that and isn't GPL compatible. You can sell GPL software on Steam, but can't use many features and are isolated from most social/friend stuff.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading/distributin...
> Which Open Source licenses are compatible with the Steamworks SDK? In general, permissive licenses that do not put any requirements on you to redistribute your modifications under an open source license work fine.
This seems fine, GPL is probably not suitable here. I don't think Valve is going out of their way to harm anyone's freedoms.
If you really want to release your game as GPL, then do the usual workarounds: use a shim which RPC's to the proprietary bit.
Sounds like the non-solution to GPL software on Apple's App Store, which restricts GPL (or has in the past): run it on a remote server.
What do you support?
Apparently voting with the wallet means buying status and then complaining about what one has bought.
90% of the youth market uses an iPhone and that's the same market Epic is in. Outside of youths, 50% of the US population uses an iPhone.
I'd rather vote in legislators that will maintain the existing laws of the land, which state that you can't use your Apple-sized market power to keep competitors from doing business.
There are countries with 0% market share for iOS.
Also as a developer whose employer targets Apple devices, I am more than at home with Apple's decisions.
Don't like them? Target Android, Web,..
Check how open are games consoles for a change.
Also, the nation of Apple is larger and much more politically connected to true nation states.
This sounds similar to the current brouhaha happening in the US over America’s inclination towards personal freedom at all cost even when govt regulation could/should step in the make things better.
A concern that once “freedom of choice of App Store” is provided, where does it stop because ultimately those demanding choice will keep demanding aspects be “open up” “for fairness” until iOS isn’t special anymore. Part of what makes it special _is_ it’s regulation, if you don’t want that then “choose” elsewhere. This aspect feels like the problem in the US of big business battling for deregulation which... isn’t always so great.
I’m not saying “Apple is doing it for the people!”, necessarily but Apple is doing it to be Apple, let’s not make everything the same.
No company is allowed to control a market of other companies without oversight. Given that oversight from apple is corrupted it must be provided in other means.
Literally not what monopolized means.
Please steelman the arguments you disagree with.
So it's not really comparable to partisan politics in the US. You could be right that people are conditioned to talk about things a certain way due to partisanship, but I really doubt that's why there's so many people out their taking Apple's side in a contract spat.
Nonetheless some people have this drug relationship with Fox News. But while very few people on HN may even use Android phones, 100% of congress probably uses an iPhone. They probably use their iPhone ~4 hours a day. 0% use Fortnite (the average congressman probably plays less than 1 minute of Fortnite on average a day).
Nobody's going to come out against their drug.
Big businesses actually battle for narrow carveouts of existing regulations along with the addition of more regulations that are easy for them to handle but hard for newer entrants to handle. Big businesses actually like regulations as long as they're carefully crafted to already match whatever outdated practices they're already following, to hamper competition. Most of this has already happened in the past which is why we have companies like Boeing now who cannot innovate anymore.
(I'm just speculating here.)
It's not so much about what's technically possible, but about what's legally allowed.
Unless Epic is filled with developers that never ever launched their own application not being part of the Epic developer account is an annoyance (and a familiar one for most iOS developers) at most.
You don't need to deploy an SDK the only thing you would deploy are test builds of games that use the updated SDK.
Without access to those things, it would be difficult for Epic to produce new versions of the Unreal Engine, and game developers wouldn't want to use it any more.
So "difficult" would mean that you need to improvise a bit, but they're still able to develop just like any developer. If you want to put your own cocoapod out, you don't need a developer license to do so and if someone else wants to use your cocoapod they just need their own developer account.
-[1]:https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/17/apple-terminate-epic-de...
Since XCode is freely downloadable by anyone, does anybody know which tools they are talking about?
You can develop apps for iOS and OS X, and then publish to (a) test device(s) from XCode without one, but that's about it.
As long as my developer account is valid, Facebook's account doesn't enter the equation when I am submitting an app that includes their SDK in any way I can see.
Can someone shed more light on this?
https://github.com/facebook/facebook-ios-sdk
Or, more conveniently, through a dependency manager like CocoaPods.
Did I misinterpret your original statement to mean how would the closure of Epic's Apple Developer account impact others (with their own valid Apple Developer accounts) from using their engine within an app they published to the App store?
I understood your question to be "why do I (an app developer) need an Apple Developer account?" A second reading and your response leads me to believe otherwise.
Correct. My understanding of the situation is that developers who include third party code in their app do not involve the author of that third party code when submitting their own app.
I used the Facebook SDK as a frequently seen example of third party code that is included within iOS apps as they are submitted to the App Store.
In other words, it's a legal restriction, not a technical one.
With that said, I am naturally inclined to believe that businesses should have a lot of control over the products they create. My baseline is that I want to be as unencumbered as possible in my product vision and the experience I offer my users, and I'd like minimal government restrictions on my desired UX unless consumers' physical health or safety is on the line.
I see the choice of how third parties should be able to create and sell code that runs on a platform I have created as sacrosanct, from the drawing board, up to the day the first unit is shipped, the developer gets to decide. As my code is my own written word, it is akin to my First Amendment right to free speech. However, I'm willing to accept that somewhere along the journey from that very first prototype, to the 1,000,000,000th unit shipped, the equation shifts.
Most products, that is to say non-open source software, by their very nature, are non-trivially anti-competitive in some way. It is the same thing to say that the product is differentiated. I have a BA in Economics, but I'm a long time out of school, so I may be clobbering this definition, but "a product is differentiated in the marketplace to the extend that a product has a feature or benefit or functionality that is not equivalently provided by every other substitute in that market." In order for a product to remain differentiated, it therefore must be non-trivially "anti-competitive". Maybe it makes sense to dive into the definition of that word more deeply, but I don't want to waste your time. My point is simply that "anti-competitive" is synonymous with any market that is not perfectly commoditized. Hopefully it's uncontroversial to claim that "anti-competitive" is not fundamentally bad per se.
It's well recognized that anti-competitive behavior which at one scale is fundamental to a diverse marketplace of products and services which drives innovation, value, and consumer choice, at another scale is used to lock-out potential new market entrants, and enable excessive profitability or rent-seeking behavior. The words "monopoly" and "duopoly" usefully describes the ultimate/penultimate theoretical states of such a market, but they don't adequately describe that various ways we can approach such a limit in the real world. Apple is not a monopoly, but that does not mean that there should not perhaps be elevated limits on acceptable anti-competitive behavior on their part based on the specific facts of their market position.
I think it is also self-evident that it is an extraordinary remedy to judicially limit anti-competitive behavior targeted at a specific company in a competitive market. Indeed when we enjoin a company from making their products function in ways that are quite central to that product's highly differentiated user experience, yes it may grant choice to some customers of that product to operate it in new ways, it is also taking choice away from customers who may have chosen the product for exactly the functionality being target. This to me is an extremely heavy handed remedy, and should only be deployed against a company if it is absolutely warranted based on unlawful conduct by that company.
While the case before the judge today was simply a preliminary hearing on a injunction, and therefore not by any means a ruling on the fundamental issue, we can see this balancing act being employed in the current case. The contract that Epic willingly entered into with Apple and willingly violated is placed in one corner (blocking Fortnite) while the separate contract(s) of developers using Epic's Unreal Engine is placed in another corner. All we know today is that this judge was not willing to allow Apple to retaliate against the violating of one contract by withdrawing from the others, and that the judge was not willing to stop Apple from terminating the first contract after it was willfully violated by Epic. The larger discussion will likely take years to play out.
As things stand, the owner of an iOS device doesn't have the final say on what software runs on their device; they can only install apps that Apple allows them to. There are some who would consider that to be wrong regardless of Apple's size or place in the overall market, even though that's not really what this case is about.
It seems a bit hypocritical even if the percent is lower
If I don't like the cut Epic takes in their store I can go with Steam. Or gog.com. Or itch.io. Or sell things myself on my own website. If I don't like the cut Apple takes in their store on iOS I can go with... nothing.
(2) I've said this before and it's important to understand this: just because a contract says Apple can do something (terminate the contract with Unreal Engine), that does not mean they can do it. If that were the case, the entire field of Contract Law need not exist.
Collective bargaining.
I’m surprised (not really) that people are defending Epic but would never defend King (Candy Crush) or the makers of FarmVille.
I would much rather see BaseCamp (Hey) or the company that was selling virtual workouts with real trainers take them to court. If Apple was really about protecting users and cared about the quality of the App Store they would prohibit in app purchases for games with consumables.
I wouldn’t, because they’d be crushed. I’d rather that if someone takes Apple to court, it’s someone with the resources to make a dent.
> I’m surprised (not really) that people are defending Epic but would never defend King (Candy Crush) or the makers of FarmVille.
Even if you think they’re equivalent, the difference is the former is taking an action that—even if for selfish reasons—can have a positive impact on independent developers.
Epic “we want to sell useless virtual goods with 0 marginal cost” or
BaseCamp - “we run a small business, pay our employees well, always sought to be profitable instead of VC funding, etc.”
Everybody eats up the small business angle. Besides DHH is a lot less slimy than anyone who Epic parades out.
If they started a GoFundMe, I would donate to their legal defense. What Epic wants will probably never happen. What BaseCamp wants - just basically to be treated like Netflix and the other “reader apps” is much more realistic and it’s fair to the actual indy developers of cross platform useful apps who could do their own marketing.
Basecamp’s story is irrelevant if they’re forced into bankruptcy before they get the chance to tell it where it makes a difference.
We’re not watching a feel good movie where the righteous little guy prevails. They’d get squashed and tossed aside, and they know it.
What jury is going to care that Epic can’t sell useless virtual currency and make a larger profit?
Only geeks care about “openness”, ordinary people don’t have a problem with any app that Apple is blocking besides probably MS’s streaming game system.
Epic itself released a buggy installer that caused a security vulnerability. Do you really want them to be the poster child?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/fortnites-android-vu...
Out of all the problems that the App Store has. There are other options that would be better for the average consumer and better for the developer.
1. 30% is way too high for any service or app that has marginal cost. If Apple is going to force in app payments as option for those types of apps, it should allow Apple Pay (standard credit card processing fees $0.30 per transaction + 2-3%)
2. Any productivity app should be allowed to have the same “reader app” exemption.
3. I would be okay if any app that has out of store payments not showing up in the store unless the user specifically searches for it by name or navigates via an external link. That means Apple had nothing to do with app discovery.
4. Non game apps that are subscription based start off at 15%
5. Allow upgrade pricing.
6. Allow a scaling percentage. The more you bring Apple, the less of a percentage you take.
7. Any game that only has a one time in app purchase to unlock the game from demo to full version should be able to pay a lower percentage. This is what Apple should be encouraging.
Mix and match any of these suggestions. They are more fair to developers.
Although I was working on a small Swift game to refresh my mobile app dev skills, but it's on the backburner right now anyway.
HTML5 and WASM —and since you will need one for testing anyway, a Pixel 5/4a, S20 Ultra or Note S20 could be fun for learning Android.
As those of us who target iOS know, they're not transparent, but it's not arbitrary. Thank god. We'd never hear the end of unsolicited opinions about the Touch Bar and HN's annual subscription to the year of desktop Linux.
You can see their calculating ways if you look carefully —can’t have too many fart apps you know, too many fart apps are bad for the user. Nevermind if you have the best fart app ever —you can’t even load it on your friends’ phones or show it to the guy deciding whether or not to give you a scholarship because, you know, a prick in Cupertino who has his own reality that’s pretty far removed from the rest if the world thinks that too many fart apps are an unpleasant experience for all one billion potential fart app users.
Yea silly, but the type of app doesn’t matter when considering questions of “arbitrary” consideration.
Then why does Amazon get a special deal?
No, they justify ruining some developers based on some criteria that they then justify with the logic that (a) the developer wouldn’t have had any money if it weren’t for Apple to begin with and (b) they “care so deeply” for the Apple “users” that they can’t allow the developer’s life work (or livelihood) to exist and make any kind of unpleasantness available for consumers to choose.
to wit fortnite code becomes part of the engine
The PR hit?
Plus the more or less: why is this an emergency when you decided yourself when to violate the agreement?
Is that worth 30% till the end of time? Your argument is like crabs in a bucket -- one crab tries to get a better deal and you pull him down because you have to pay.
Lets say, somehow, Epic manages to get that fee lowered to something more reasonable for everyone. Would you not be happy with that?
Generally, historically, no, this is not anticompetitive, especially given there is another ecosystem with far more market share (but maybe not profitability because more people spend money on iOS apps). Inserting yourself to take a cut for a service or a key component is good business practice, and built the empires that every student in business school or in tech entrepreneurship is taught to emulate. So long as the wealth pie grows, it isn’t rent seeking to keep taking your cut.
What amazes me is that people think iOS and Apple (and even Android and Google) are near-permanent fixtures that should be regulated as utilities, rather than a temporary incumbent that will eventually be disrupted as the world changes.
Microsoft’s reign of dictating terms to ISVs a lasted around 20 years. They’re still incredibly profitable and still take a cut of almost every PC sale (or XBox game / movie / tv show sale). They don’t have the clout they used to because the tech changed.
At some point, new things will come, such as AR/VR, and we may see companies such as Valve and Oculus/Facebook become the new tech ecosystem dictators. The winner takes all dynamics of platforms seem to make this inevitable. Why enshrine Apple and Google as utilities now, when they’ll be less relevant in 10 years?
If you would have told me 20 years ago that the creator of an operating system would take a 30% cut of every piece of software sold, I would have thought you crazy. If you would have told me Apple or Microsoft would dictate to me what software I could run, I would have considered that a massive invasion of freedom. But today this model is considered totally normal and encouraged.
We aren't seeing other companies competing with this model on price or freedom -- we see companies wanting to enforce their own control and get their own 30% cut. Microsoft has tried it. Google is doing it. Oculus does it. Apple will certainly bring it MacOS.
As software developers and users, is that really what we want?
As ISVs, clearly there are major downsides to this state of affairs. But I’m not sure I wish for the days where Microsoft reigned and would just put you out of business on a whim.
I don’t think Microsoft’s antitrust consent decree had as much of an impact as some think, it was more about entrepreneurship and new tech (largely the iPhone! But also Amazon, Facebook, and Google) that reduced their clout.
I don’t think Apple will bring this control to MacOS; you can’t put genies back into bottles.
The only feature I can see for this is making Apple a multi-trillion dollar company. Apple is profiting massively off of our labor and yes, we have been so far happy to give that to them, but perhaps now is the time to revisit that relationship.
With Apple abusing their control to deny access to cloud gaming maybe this success is a Faustian deal.
> I don’t think Apple will bring this control to MacOS
I think it will be a function of going to Apple silicon.
Besides, the issue here isn't that Epic doesn't think the Apple rules don't apply to them. They want to raise attention to how unfair the rules are, in the hope of getting Apple to change their stance either voluntary or through the court system. I think too much money is at play here for Apple to make any voluntary concessions here, but even if Apple wins (likely outcome) a track record of being sued for unfair business practices will hopefully benefit everybody in Apple's ecosystem in the long term.