Apple countersues Epic, seeks punitive damages
wsj.com
wsj.com
The claim that Epic has “lined [its] pockets at Apple’s expense” implies that Apple deserves to sit in the middle of every transaction that happens on their devices and take a margin. This is the world’s most valuable company we’re talking about here; assertions like this demonstrate an unbelievable lack of self-awareness.
Let’s also not forget that Apple already extracts huge amounts of money from developers even if they don’t make a cent on transaction margins.
It’s not possible to develop for iOS without a Mac, and therefore even the smallest developer making free apps has paid Apple for at least: one computer, one of each device class they develop for, and the cost of their developer account subscription. Large companies like Epic buy thousands of computers and test devices from Apple. The idea that anything is happening “at Apple’s expense” is preposterous.
Maybe next Toyota will decide that they deserve a percentage of Uber’s revenue because Toyota's cars help facilitate Uber’s business?
In some states its illegal for the car manufacturer to directly sale to the consumer, they have to go through car dealerships.
The local dealerships are small businesses incorporated in the states so they can be subject to more political pressure and local control.
It has been eroded over the years but originally the dealerships protected consumers from the sort of bad behavior you see from Telsa and Apple.
Not that I love the dealership model but there is real competition at the local level on car repair in a way that there doesn't appear to be with Telsa.
That depends. Is the car dealership making it impossible for me, as a buyer, to buy from different car dealerships, and forcing me to only buy it from them?
That would be a more similar analogy.
Epic would likely not have any problem at all, if it was possible to easily install the epic app store on the iPhone. But its not. Because Apple makes it almost impossible for competitors to install other app stores on the iPhone.
You can switch to Android, and in fact Android holds the global majority of smartphone users (yes yes, iOS is the majority in the US by a small margin).
I think we need to rethink the whole vertical integration thing entirely, instead of trying to reason about vertically integrated platforms in terms of non-vertically-integrated platforms. It doesn't seem to work.
No, not really. I am pretty sure that it is perfectly legal for other people to buy and then resell teslas.
I do not believe that Tesla is suing people who resell Teslas.
> the global majority of smartphone users
In the USA, the Iphone has about 50% of the smart phone market. And when it comes to US anti-trust law, thats all that matters.
We're not talking about reselling — we're talking about people selling brand-new product. Most people don't buy a Toyota new from Toyota directly; they go to a local Toyota dealership. But you can't buy a new Tesla through a dealership, because Tesla doesn't allow it. You can only buy a new Tesla through Tesla directly.
> In the USA, the Iphone has about 50% of the smart phone market. And when it comes to US anti-trust law, thats all that matters.
You missed my point. I was saying that Android is a viable alternative to iOS, as shown by the fact that most people in the world (and many people in the US) use Android instead of iOS. If the policies of iOS are not to your liking, you can choose to not support the platform.
And tesla does not prevent someone from buying a Tesla that is brand new, and selling it.
> because Tesla doesn't allow it.
False. it would be perfectly legal to immediately sell a new tesla that you just purchased. That would be a brand new tesla.
Thats brand new, that would be no different than buying from tesla.
> I was saying that Android is a viable alternative to iOS,
Apple has ~50% of the market share in the US. Anti trust law does not require a literal, singular monopoly, in order for certain anti-competitive behavior to be illegal. Instead, 50% of the market, is within the realm of when certain behavior can become illegal.
> If the policies of iOS are not to your liking
If the policies are anti-competitive, then Apple can be sued for having illegal policies, due to their market share. 50% of the market, is wihin the realm where anti-competitive practices become illegal.
Since the extra cost between selling 1 copy and 1 million copies is not the same as between selling 1 car and 1 million cars.
There are many car manufacturers that Uber could choose from in just the same way that there are many platforms that developers can develop for.
Stop trying to spread the idea that the ability to make apps for the iPhone is an inalienable right.
If we are talking about platforms and not codebases there are waaay more than two.
iOS (App store)
Android (Google Play)
FireOS (Amazon App Store)
LineageOS (Fdroid)
One UI (Galaxy Store)
To name a few. These all have distinct and thriving marketplaces for apps with decent market share (some can overlap). The code base they use is irrelevant for this context.
Just to demonstrate that this is the variable that matters, consider the case where there are exactly three devices that have each of the other marketplaces installed on them, respectively. Would they present a meaningful competitive alternative to the big two?
4/5 in the examples I gave.
Google, Apple, Samsung and Amazon all have decent market share.
> How many of those are installed on more than 1% of mobile devices (however broadly construed)?
> I doubt that they do more than 1% of the total app transactions
These goal posts keep moving
I couldn't find robust stats on Amazon's market share overall but I did find that they sold 5.3% of all tablets in Q3 2019. So if its true that the phone market is 20 times larger than that it would mean its unlikely that The Amazon App store is installed on 1% of all mobile devices.
Yes, but neither should Apple have the right to prevent users from using alternative app stores and applications on their own iPhones.
Does Sony not have the right to prevent users from using alternative game stores to run unofficial games on their PS4?
Does Nintendo not have the right to prevent users from using an alternative to the eShop to download games for their Switch?
Does Tesla not have the right to prevent users from downloading and running whatever random applications they wish on their Tesla?
Because the phone belongs to the consumer, and the courts have already said that it is perfectly legal to jailbreak your phone, even though apple attempted to sue people who were doing this.
It is pretty horrible that Apple was trying to sue people, for modifying property that the consumer owned, and it required the courts to get involved, to clarify that it is perfectly legal to jail break your own property.
Houses can’t be arbitrarily changed. Cars have governors. Scissors shouldn’t be run with.
Ownership of an iPhone is not different. It just has special rules attached.
If you don’t mind breaking the warranty, please jailbreak your iPhone and install whatever apps you’d prefer.
None of these regulations are decided by the company that manufactured the device, they are all decided democratically by an elected state.
How about...
Houses can't have arbitrary appliances installed that weren't made by someone approved by the house-builder
Cars can't fill up gas from a stand not paying 30% by the car manufacturer
Scissors can't cut paper sold by someone unaffiliated by the scissor manufacturer.
Sounds reasonable to me!
> If you don’t mind breaking the warranty, please jailbreak your iPhone and install whatever apps you’d prefer.
No, Apple wanted jailbreaking to be "go to jail" illegal, not just voiding your warranty.
The Strata/HOA regulates the appliances, the customizations, even the “look and feel” of my patio.
Of course, going by evidence in these threads, people would defend Scissors Corp to the death, arguing "but that's a feature which makes these scissors safe so people don't injure themselves, and sure they own half of the scissors (and paper) market but you can always bring your own scissors (and paper) and avoid interacting with people who use Scissors Corp stuff, so what's the problem?"
“Ownership” of a tool has always been limited to the feature set the manufacturer originally intended for it. This entitlement over the tools Apple creates, accurately advertises, and legal sells is the only problem I see.
If there was a scissors duopoly, in which a company that controls 50% of the market, implemented practices that are anti-competitive, then this could be illegal.
> has always been limited to the feature set the manufacturer originally intended for it.
Actually, no. Once you purchased the item, you can do whatever you want with it, regardless of what the manufacture wants.
> This entitlement
This is about anti-trust law. Apple should follow the law. They are not entitled to break the law, without consequences.
If you want to jailbreak your iPhone you can and you should! I even agree Apple should be forced to create more tools to create jailbroken iPhones.
However, the warranty should be void. Same as if you use scissors as a hammer, which is your right, the warranty is void. Expecting the original warranty to hold, or expecting the manufacturer to help you misuse the tool is the entitlement.
If their actions are anti-competitive, then they absolutely have obligations, under anti-trust law, which does not require a literal monopoly, and only instead requires significant market power for these laws to apply.
Apple is subject to the law. They have to follow it, or they will suffer consequences.
I hope Apple doesn’t need to remove the AppStore entirely. But that would definitely be better than the alternatives of allowing sideloading.
This is the entire point of the lawsuit and the debate.... That Apple's action were anti-competitive. You haven't actually given any reason as for why thats not true.
> where Apple continues to curate the AppStore on my behalf.
They will still be able to do that. They simple won't be allowed to make it extremely difficult for alternative app stores to be installed on the iPhone, if another user chooses to do so, if and when the lawsuit is resolved.
You will still be perfectly allowed to continue to not install any other app stores that you don't want installed on your phone.
> I hope Apple doesn’t need to remove the AppStore entirely
They won't. Instead, as long as it is simple and easy for competitors to install apps stores on the iPhone, then the anti-competitive arguments will go away.
> than the alternatives of allowing sideloading
If you don't want to install competing app stores, then don't install them. Its pretty simple. Your rights are not infringed on, if Apple is forced to allow people who are not you, to install competing app stores.
This is my position on this matter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24287042
Meanwhile, we clearly disagree. It’ll be more productive for us to wait for the results of the lawsuit.
Best of luck to you and Epic’s position, but I truly hope the court isn’t misled by the short term “needs” of some iOS developers at the expense of the long term needs of Apple’s customers.
Thats is an absolutely ridiculous claim to make.
The fact that I would be allowed to easily install apps on my phone, that I paid for, is a ridiculous claim that this is somehow taking away your choice.
No. That is dumb. It is my phone. Not yours. Don't install apps that you don't like, if you don't want them. But me installing them on my phone, does not infringe on your rights.
> of the long term needs of Apple’s customers.
Those customers don't have to install anything that they don't want to install on the phones that they own. Easy. Me, as a 3rd party, being allowed to modify the phone that I own 100% is not related to that.
> It’ll be more productive for us to wait for the results of the lawsuit.
You did not make a single argument against the idea that Apple has significant market power.
Because you did not make a single argument against that, I am going to assume that you agree that Apple has significant market power, and has used it to harm competition. (Which would mean that Apple's actions are illegal)
My argument is that Apple has significant market power, on iOS devices. There is no denying that. In fact it is a feature for me as a customer to pool my buying power into a “customer’s union” of sorts.
I also agree that Apple has built a large barrier to entry, i.e. it has built trust with customers like me. I truly believe you’ve never tried both Android and iOS in earnest, or else you’d feel similarly.
However, Apple has no monopoly on the devices market. I play Fortnite on my PS4 and always have.
Additionally, Apple has overall increased competition rather than hamper it. That said, I would like to see Apple compensate applications when it replaces poorer quality apps with better in-house versions, even though it doesn’t need to.
It would be a sincere set back for the entire economy if Apple was forced to sideload applications on iOS.
That said, as I have previously agreed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24419752
A monopoly is not required for anti-trust law to apply. Instead, only significant market power.
And the "market" in this case will likely be defined as the smartphone market in the USA, of which Apple has ~50%. Having 50% of a duopoly is within the realm of when anti-trust law applies, as a singular monopoly is not required for anti-trust law to apply (as defined by section 2 of the sherman act).
- used an iPhone as your primary device?
- used an Android as your primary device?
- played Fortnite, and on what device?
For me it was 6 years of Android before switching to an iPhone for the last 4 years. I've been playing a lot of Fortnite (less during the waterworld season) on a PS4 over the last 11 months.
Edit:
Especially because you're arguing for sideloading and Android already allows that, yet Epic is still suing Google. I ask because when you keep saying you're arguing "for customers" and "pro-competition", that Epic is just requesting a "basic right" (which they don't seem to be given the Google lawsuit).
I'm just wondering what background experience you have with all of these different companies and platforms that helps you judge what is best "for competition and the customer".
It is well established that a participant does not have to be a singular monopoly, in a market, in order for anti-trust law to apply.
And in this case, Apple has ~50% of the smartphone market, in the USA, which is enough that anti-trust law can apply.
> yet Epic is still suing Google
Google also has large amounts of market power. Anti-trust law applies to them as well, given that they argueably have large amounts of control over the other 50% of the US smartphone market (even if it is a bit less direct of a control, as compared to Apple which is vertically integrated, and controls both the hardware and software. But sure, the case is less clear cut with Google, if you want to make that argument.)
> So then you have no response then, on my comment regarding anti-trust law it seems.
Ok, sure. You win!
Well yeah, you just ignored the things that I said, multiple times.
We cannot make productive arguments about anti-trust law!
I have done my best to respond to you respectfully and with my best ability.
I have previously responded to your specific questions with, “If then yes. But it seems unlikely” and “It’ll be more productive for us to wait for the results of the lawsuit.”, etc.
Are you willing to answer the questions I asked?
The entire discussion of all of this, is about anti-trust law....
Also, we can absolutely make reasoned judgements on things, based on the evidence.
I am not sure why people have a tendency to think that law, precedent, and court cases are somehow completely impenetrable to people who have not spent decades of their life studying it.
In fact, speaking as someone who has read the legal documents in this court case, as well as attended the public zoom call court case (The epic vs apple trial is public! You, yourself can listen in on it in a zoom call!), what I can tell you is that the arguments that people are making are not complicated legalese. Instead, the lawyers and judges are making reasonable, and understandable arguments, that are pretty easy to follow along.
In fact, our entire justice system is built on the concept of juries, which are full of people who are not legal professionals, just like you and I, who decide based on listening to the arguments, and making a judgement themself on who was right or wrong.
If a jury is entrusted with the legal power, to determine the outcome of our justice system, then I think it is ok for individuals, who have listened to the trials, read the court documents, and done research on the law, to make reasonable judgements themselves on the matter, when having casual conversations regarding the topic.
> But it seems unlikely
For which you provided poor supporting arguments.
> answer the questions I asked
You tried to ignore the main point that I was trying to make, regarding anti-trust law, for which I providing well reasoned arguments, and you tried to ignore it by engaging in what was effectively an implied ad hominem by trying to attack me based on perceived (and false!) notion regarding how much I may or may not use certain devices.
You even literally used the word "character" to describe this. Which was effective admitting that you were not attacking the substance of my comment, but were instead trying to investigate my "character".
I reject that. When you cannot respond to the substance of someone comments, I do not think it is valid to try and switch things up by interrogating someone's character, based on false perceived notions of their character or experience.
Your house example is wrong, because that has public viewing concerns on a plot of land.
And your car example is incorrect. I could make any changes at all to a car, that is not put on public roads.
That has nothing to do with the manufacturer putting restrictions on your car.
If you want to cherry pick arguments we can do this all day. The reality is Apple is just doing what every manufacturer has done for millennia!
Certain actions are illegal if a company has too much market power.
Anti trust law does not require a literal, singular monopoly, in order for some anti-competitive behaviors to be illegal.
Instead, Apple has ~50% of the market share in the US, and that is within the realm where certain actions become illegal, according to anti-trust law.
The same applies to all private houses, installing in a home a powerful transmitter to broadcast noise is certainly illegal without approval.
All computing devices should be free and open.
Stallman was right.
The world is trending toward a corporate-owned hellhole.
I'd say you also have an inalienable right to repair and modify things that you own, and that includes running code on computers you own, like the iphone
Which will place Apple in a much more difficult position than if they unilaterally reduced their commission level to 15%.
The whole argument about them promoting an app „for free“ is a bit ridiculous. They clearly knew the amount of commission they were going to earn from pushing that app through their App Store - so please admit that you clearly didn‘t do this out of the good of your hearts.
The same goes for the portrayal of „look how much money they made through us“ - yes - and look at how much money they made you along the way. I mean if Epic made 600 million, than you made about 260 million - from the very same people that paid you for the hardware.
I think if the App Store is such a tremendous value, why don‘t you ask users to pay for access to that App Store directly. Let‘s see how valuable everybody thinks the App Store is when they actually have to pay an access fee directly to Apple.
They do, it’s called buying an iphone
Also, remember that in practice, the vast majority of people downloading applications on Android are doing so through Google Play, which charges the same 30% fee for both apps and in-app purchases. If people resent Apple more than Google in this context, it's probably more to do with the companies' respective public images than concrete reality.
I suspect you're remembering recent news about Apple preventing Facebook from putting a notice in the Facebook iOS app about Apple taking 30% of the cut from event tickets purchased through the app. While that was arguably a bad move on Apple's part from a PR standpoint -- lately they've been seriously violating the First Rule of Holes[1] -- there's little indication it's a change in policy.
[1] When you're in one, stop digging.
Right now I am experimenting with an android phone, and its hardware is not bad (very good) for its 0.3x price of an actual iphone with similar specs. It also allows all that "control over the device" that everyone wants here. But after an iphone I don't really feel that I'm finally free. It is a constant fight for privacy, for being adfree, for apps that do not abuse permissions and/or "cloudness", etc. I wait for a new iphone because I got nothing out of promises of a freedom that android users around told me with an excitement. It is basically the same brick, but with a jerky scroll and an ability to install ads and low-functional spyware after hours of searching and comparison.
If there was a way to install apps outside of the store this would not be an issue. Most users and developers would still use the app store since it provides value but devs who feel that they can supply their own marketing and payment processing can do it themselves.
The issue I have with that is that then a ton of companies think it's a good idea to ship a crappy "launcher" that needs to run on startup, taking up resources in the background while providing little to no added functionality. We can see that with PC games; it used to be just Steam, but now there's the Epic Games Launcher, Origin, GoG, and a bunch of more obscure launchers that need to be installed to play particular games.
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I'm not necessarily saying I think Apple is in the right, but your argument doesn't hold because it works equally well when applied at a higher level, which runs counter to your point.
This is not the main issue, its on the other end. If you are a developer, and you don't like the App Store, you have no options. You can't publish on an alt store because those are not allowed. So your only option is to not provide services to 50% of your customers and thats assuming the google play store doesn't have the same issue you are avoiding.
A real world example of this is vape companies provide an app which lets you do things like lock your vape so kids can't use it. Apple said those apps are not allowed on the app store. The vape company has no options, they just can't sell products to apple users now.
The problem is these tech companies hold way to much power. It would be like if 2 landlords owned literally every single block of land in the entire country. Now normally it would be fair for the landlord to pick which types of businesses to rent out to but when both options say your business isn't accepted and the only alternative is to build your own island in the ocean and create a civilisation on it so you can open your store then something is seriously wrong.
Quite frankly, the lockdown of the OS and rejection of this is one of the primary reasons I'm on iPhone.
Case and point, Swipe keyboards. It was the biggest missing feature for three years when I moved from Android to iPhone. I still preferred my iPhone!
There is no need for them to ask for my payment information in a way that can be fraudulent.
There are many reasons for them why they’d want to reduce subscription cancellation and other dark patterns.
There is no reason for them to be able to install anything, or run arbitrary code on my device.
If epic wants to do business with me, they can go through my secretary/lawyer/firewall (Apple).
I’m more than 10x likely to spend money on apps, so I think that more than evens it out.
Which apps are missing? I’m so t see any added value in another AppStore. Heck, I’d love for Apple to lockdown OS X so that adobe’s store/updater is banned. Wishful thinking
_You_ are neither the vendor OR the citizen in the parent comment's metaphor, trying to build or be part of a civilization in the middle of the ocean.
Please do not try to justify a restriction because you happen to personally be happy with the current offering, the world is larger than you. There being more freedoms for others will not stop you from restricting yourself.
Case in point: "Satisfactory". I was pretty excited about the game when it was first shown, then found later
* it would be removed from Steam,
* I'd have to get an account for another store,
* use a store made by some incompetents who couldn't implement basic functionality like a "shopping cart" even months after release (does it have one by now?)
* give part of my money through Epic to fucking Tencent and install a piece of Chinese spyware on my PC in order to run it. Also no implicit Linux support because no Proton and because Sweeney loves to bend over for Microsoft exclusively.
Compare to Iron Harvest, for example.
You could invest in the development via Kickstarter. Which boils down to making the project happen (due to lack of otherwise investors aka due to crowdfunding). Now, basically right after release, you can buy the game from Steam, too, but you pay full price for it (in contrast to the crowdfunders).
Contrast this to EGS. Stuff gets released on Steam many months later, say 6 months or a year, due to EGS getting the sack of money for being the sole distributor. Then, they release for full price on Steam. Why would I pay full price for a 6-12 month old game? I won't.
Borderlands 3 I bought when it came out on Steam, I believe in start of Steam release it was on sale. Else I wouldn't have picked it up, simple as that. They release DLCs for the game, so that's nice, and keeps it a little bit alive I suppose.
Guild Wars 2 recently launched on Steam (like 8 years after release). I cannot merge my Guild Wars 2 account to Steam though, so its useless to me.
Humblebundle, in contrast to platforms like EGS, yields you serials you can apply to a launcher, usually Steam. That's convenient, but I suppose it isn't for people who don't want to use Steam.
Though I'm a heavy Steam user, so Steam being the defacto standard is fine with me.
I don't want another launcher, therefore I either use Steam or use Lutris to abstract all other launchers (and emulators and such).
The "needs to launch on startup" is FALSE , you can have this launchers set no to start at all and you launch the game and the launcher will start if needed (not all Steam games need Steam in background).
FYI GOG launcher is optional, you can just download the game from the website with a browser and then install it as in old times.
Competition is good and except the Epic drama I did not see anyone complaining the GOG, HumbleBundle, itch.io or downloading from Patreon is a bad thing for PC. I expect though if Apple blocks all launchers on the new OSX for ARM then an army of people will say that downloading a small game directly from Patron is too complicated and insecure for the average Apple user mind.
The only store that has a place on my devices is the OS vendor store.
If iOS doesn't offer what they want, don't buy Apple, plain and simple, there is nothing more to discuss and the judge will set this straight.
I am curious if TikTok gets banned and then will Apple remove the app from existing phones or somehow block it and will they do it for non US citizens (inside and outside US).
I also don't get to choose what goes into my cable tv box software although it runs some strange Linux distribution, and I really don't care.
Consider that there will be a judge and a trial and you can't claim that someone else started it , you need to show the judge that the users are not hurt by Apple businesses and IMO if we are lucky a law will be passed that will also fix console issues too.
People in Bielorussia are being hurt.
Apple is not hurting anyone, beside a couple of people that has been giving money to Apple because they do UNIX, instead of supporting Linux OEMs, and now complain that Apple isn't the hippie they came to expect.
I will be OK if it is cleared what rights you have on your device, can Apple update the TOS whenever they want? are those pages of TOS you agree when you buy a device enforceable? What is the limit Apple can censor information that user receive from third parties.
If being more open magically offered the same quality all kind of third party open platforms would have flourished.
But even in the semi-closed Android you have 95% of mobile malware according to surveys, devices abandoned without updates after 1-2 releases, tons of crap trojan apps, widespread spyware, and so on...
A third party app store can be fine at first. "You can chose whether to use it or not" after all.
Then some major software only comes for that store, and now you don't have either a unified store, or a way not to use 2 stores (since you need the software).
Then each major vendor (Google, Adobe, Amazon, etc) make their own app stores on the platform. Because, why not?
Oh, and Facebook can demand you get their app from their store, where it comes with all kinds of private API abuse and surveillance (some of this might be solvable with stronger sandboxing, if it's not deemed "anti-competitive" itself).
Then there are all kinds of minor stores, luring your less tech savvy parents, siblings, etc, with BS offers, more malware, pirated versions of software, etc.
Oh, and there are "free" stores, you can just install, all kinds of shady stuff that ocassionally roots your iPhone with 0-days and is not revocable.
Suddenly app developers don't feel so good about this ability to have multiple stores. They mainly wanted lower Apple rates, but now they have to ship to different stores, track different vendor rules, and so on. And if they stick to a store or two, they're less discoverable. Now you have meta-services that ship your app to many stores and handle the hassle. But they can not do much for the free stores that give pirated copies of your app, or full title+branding+UI rip-offs of your app by small e.g. Chinese devs.
And if one of the big app stores gets popular, they now have control over the platform too. Apple wants to move forward with an API change? Not so fast, the big app store doesn't agree (similar to how Apple was beholden to the goodwill of Microsoft and Adobe back in the day).
If you or any consumer feels lied to, misled or falsely advertised to, they should return their device to Apple.
If enough people choose non-Apple products then Apple might change its position. Until then, buy a different brand.
I specifically bought Apple vs Android for these reasons. I run my life and business form my phone, I trust Apple to provide me with a working experience and support when needed.
Imagine having to use another App Store outside Apples control, and an app causes my phone to crash. Who will support me? I have to go digging to the app developer, or the App Store developer, or Apple?
Apple went this route to specifically remove the fragmentation of the PC market, and what you see similar in the Android market. The closed system provides better quality. That is why Apple is where it is today.
As far as the MacBook goes, it's a different target market. MacBooks are targeted for professionals that do all sorts of things with them.
Instead they are beefing up the iPad, which has the same target market as the iPhone. That target market doesn't care about all this crap and just wants their tech to work.
However, I would not purchase such a MacBook Pro. I would purchase such a MacBook or iPhone though.
Don't use one, install only Apple approved content from Apple approved stores but don't force everyone to do so. If you want to pay 15-30% more for stuff from the Apple Store then you are free to do so. On PC you can use only Steam, if say you want to buy Fallout 3 today and is 75% of on GOG you are not forced to buy it from GOG, you can buy it from Steam and give Valve their cut.
But you should have bought Android if you want freedom ... I think it does not make sense that a judge should decide if somebody is abusing their power should depend on the market share of Andoid and would include a condition like "When Android market share gets under X or when Google locks down Android then the current Apple good abuses become over night bad).
No, all the websites I seen that offer mobile apps have 2 links, one for Apple and one for Google store . I never seen an app forcing a different store but I know Epic is trying to do that and offer some needed competition.
This is only an issue when they use their monopoly power to undermine consumer interests.
Maybe I should complain that Sony abuses the PS4 market so I can't run Switch titles on the PS4.
But can you write me a logical phrase about what should happen if a judge declares that Apple can continue locking the phones because there is a duopoly and the next day Google does the exact same thing since now is 100% legal.
It has been legal since ever, game consoles have 40 years of history by now.
And back in the 16 bit days, one would need to pay for SDKs.
PCs only became open due to IBM's failure to keep ownership of their creation, and Compaq's cleverness in clean room reverse engineering.
Since Windows 8 I am a big fan of Windows store app.
Other giant difference between smartphones and consoles is that smartphones and internet are required for a majority of people (banking, messaging/email, COVID apps, 2FA apps ) I can't tell my bank please make an app for this free OS, or my company please make a 2FA app for this free OS and the reverse the company/bank can tell us "use Android because Apple banned our app because the small bug fix update triggered someone"
A few years ago some money exchanges were abusing the users by having large commissions rates, then a law was passed so this commissions will be printed in large fonts outside the exchange, this worked so maybe we can force Apple to print with large fonts on the box "30% of all future transactions go to Apple" (Apple can add with smaller fonts that they have some special exceptions) or "Apple decides what can you install and can change it's mind at any moment".
Banking, one can walk to the bank office, use any phone model to call them, use the mobile Web site no need for an iPhone specifically.
Alone the fact that iPhone only matters to 22% of the world population pretty much validates the fact that is isn't water.
> Since Windows 8 I am a big fan of Windows store app
Do you think it would have been better if PCs were not open (so going through IBM or Microsoft was the only effective way to distribute software)?
In certain ways the freedom that PCs allow is less convenient than having everything go through a central authority, but as one example I don't think web browsers would have been allowed to develop as they did under this model (since forcing more areas of software development to use platform-specific native apps would be more advantageous for the platform owners with market share).
If anything the iPhone was responsible for driving everyone down, as developers abandoned J2ME, Brew, Symbian, Blackberry into iOS.
I'd be interested to see whether any jurisdiction would hand down a consumer mandate for unbundling the DRM component from the storefront app; the former only updates occasionally.
Launcher apps are garbage, but you just move right past that to one single game that can be downloaded directly out of hundreds that can’t.
You are ignoring that except the exclusives you can game most of your games on one store. I do not support exclusivity for one store either and I would prefer I always had the option to buy the products directly from the developer. Like my Intellij subscription I don't want that Microsoft or other big american company gets 30% of the money this hard working developers deserve because I am forced to use a middle man.
By contrast, if I want iMessage on my phone, Epic has to distribute Fortnight to me though Apple.
- as a developer you don't get "a sack of money" but you get a 30% tax (larger then Epic
- as a user you don't get free games, discounts or the option to wait for the exclusivity to expire. On top of that you will never(probably) have the option to touch the game files and mod it.
The App Store also pays out more revenue to developers than other stores, a major reason being that you can literally access all the users on iOS by publishing on just one store.
But that doesn't require you to use EGS for anything else, and the cost of using multiple game stores is minor, because installing them is free.
And how do you mean that Apple doesn't force you to use only their own launcher and platform? If I want iMessage, I not only have to buy their phone hardware, and their platform, and get it from their store, I also have to get everything else from their store even if I don't want to. To avoid this I would have to buy two separate phones at a cost of hundreds of dollars, with two separate phone contracts and phone numbers, and then carry them both around. Nobody is going to do that, whereas installing multiple game stores on your PC is the rule rather than the exception, exactly because you can easily have more than one on the same device.
> To avoid this I would have to buy two separate phones at a cost of hundreds of dollars, with two separate phone contracts and phone numbers, and then carry them both around.
I believe you can use iMessage on iPadOS and macOS as well. You can even use a Mac as relay via Airmessage [1]. Its true that some Apple software is specific to their platforms though.
Its annoying having to use different IM clients or different e-mail addresses or different store launchers. They each use their own resources, each have their own attack surface, requires maintenance, and I need to remember who/which to use where. An abstraction layer like Lutris (or Pidgin/Bitlbee/Jabber/..., or (Neo)Mutt instead of e.g. Yahoo Mail) is my preference. This way, you stick to the same UI.
Just to be clear, I don't necessarily disagree with your disliking of Apple's practices. Its just that I find Epic's behaviour also annoying, and its precisely them who complain.
So you get it from whichever store has it early. That's kind of the point. But as long as that store isn't requiring you to buy their particular kind of device or preclude you from using other stores on your device, it's not the same problem.
> I believe you can use iMessage on iPadOS and macOS as well.
It's a messaging app. It goes on your phone. And that would still require you to spend hundreds on an Apple device, then hundreds more on an Android device.
> You can even use a Mac as relay via Airmessage
Which not only requires you to buy both devices, now the Apple device has to be a desktop which you have to leave turned on and burning electricity at all times in order to receive messages on your phone.
It isn't not a problem just because you can work around it by walking up hill both ways in the snow every summer, it's a problem because people aren't actually going to do it that way.
> Its annoying having to use different IM clients or different e-mail addresses or different store launchers. They each use their own resources, each have their own attack surface, requires maintenance, and I need to remember who/which to use where.
None of that stuff is huge. It doesn't prevent people from doing it in practice.
> An abstraction layer like Lutris (or Pidgin/Bitlbee/Jabber/..., or (Neo)Mutt instead of e.g. Yahoo Mail) is my preference. This way, you stick to the same UI.
Yes, exactly, which then addresses your concerns with having multiple stores -- but only if you can have multiple stores and use a single interface for all of them.
For example, where is the version of Pidgin which runs on Android and is compatible with iMessage without using some kind of farcical relay system? Who is the party that prevents this from existing?
> Its just that I find Epic's behaviour also annoying, and its precisely them who complain.
It turns out that if you apply "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" to the legal system, nobody would have standing and perpetrators could never be held to account. Fortunately that's not how it works.
Some of the titles on the store allow peer to peer connection multiplayer which doesn’t have any drm checks. But most titles that use servers to simplify matchmaking or connection with other players have a check that validates that gog galaxy is logged into an account that has purchased the game.
I don't understand how this is supposed to be compatible with GoG's marketing as "the DRM-free home for games".
EDIT: even googled it, found out Darkest Dungeon by default install a version that does need GoG Galaxy, but the DRM-free version is available on GoG site too, just need to choose that downloader instead. But that was it. Didn't found any other obvious complaints of GoG Galaxy being required.
Your response says more about what you can tell with a quick google search than anything else.
I'm fascinated that I've been complaining about this here on HN for months, and the only response I ever get -- which comes up every time -- is "what are you talking about, that's not true". This isn't a matter of opinion. It's not even difficult to check. And yet, there are so many people whose worldview apparently rests on the opposite of the facts.
However, I haven't found any evidence that Galaxy is required for single player. In fact, I found evidence to the contrary: the game has a Linux version, where Galaxy is not available.
Here's a prominent forum thread in the Northgard forum on GoG: https://www.gog.com/forum/northgard/warning_gog_galaxy_is_re...
Note that title: "Warning: GOG Galaxy is required to use conquest mode."
Conquest mode is a single-player mode. In fact, it's the only mode that allows you to use any of the Northgard DLC content. Without running Galaxy, all you can do is run through the story campaign.
What is your mental model of my commenting here? I posted a rant complaining about deluded people contradicting the basic facts every time I bring this up, and that's the comment you responded to in order to... demonstrate an example? Did you really think I was just making it all up?
It is similar to Diablo 3, SimCity 5 and Anno 2070 that have single-player features that are processed server-side, maybe like these ones it is a disguised DRM too.
So your original argument is still wrong.
Galaxy is not required to play "many newer games", it is required to play one, maybe a bit more games, where the dev made some questionable decision.
Also you asked about GoG being a platform for DRM-free games, even Northgard would still fit some definition of that: skirmish mode and campaign mode work even in the Steam version without the DRM. Seemly that particular game online shenanigans is purely to add DRM to the DLC, not the main game. (I still think that this is shady, but the original argument others were making still stands, Galaxy is not DRM, and you usually don't need it.)
https://www.gog.com/forum/northgard/warning_gog_galaxy_is_re...
Developer's do have a choice: abide by the ToS and enjoy the trappings of a user base that tends to spend more on applications be they subscriptions or one-offs than Android or vote with your wallets and don't abide by it but to cry foul and try to usurp one's will on the company that built the platform makes no sense.
Some counter arguments:
If the ToS of the app store are likened to the tax laws in the USA then failing to abide the law that requires taxes to be paid is the same thing here as Epic using their own payments system to subvert the iOS tax of 30%.
The game is like a car that drives on a road. The car is Epic's Fortnite. The road is a toll road. The road was built by Apple. Many cars can drive on this road but must pay a fee. (The analogy isn't 1:1 but work with me a bit).
After years of investment in the iPhone and building the ecosystem around it the AppStore is just one way to monetize that. A 30% cut might sound high but they did spend tens(hundreds?) of billions in R&D and this is just one way, among many, that the iPhone is being monetized, this is just a return on investment on top of the sales price of the phone.
All of the arguments I have heard from those in the Epic camp strike me as temper tantrums thrown by children.
When there's only two companies fully controlling the next era of computing platforms, there's some argument that they have way too much power in their hand.
> The game is like a car that drives on a road. The car is Epic's Fortnite. The road is a toll road. The road was built by Apple. Many cars can drive on this road but must pay a fee. (The analogy isn't 1:1 but work with me a bit).
Except the phone isn't owned by Apple, and that's why every analogy similar to this one fails.
I doubt non-tech people even know about the walled-garden or the anti-competitive practices of both companies, they just buy their device based on features, screen and camera and that's it. Just have a look at a mainstream phone review video on YouTube, only those points will be detailed.
To consumers it's clearly the next area of computing. Smartphones are even fully replacing computers in developing markets. To developers however, it's an unhealthy market owned by two uncountable companies where they could be banned from at any point very easily.
There's multiple angles where the current situation is an issue, there's the anti competitive nature of the market where an increasing chunk of the economy is based on but there's also the limited propriety rights of the owners of the phone.
Also, I get the sense that people are trying to impose OSS-isms on Apple when they both have no power to and also Apple has no reason to abide.
> Also, I get the sense that people are trying to impose OSS-isms on Apple when they both have no power to and also Apple has no reason to abide.
That's why we need anti-trust investigations to both Google and Apple, having a good chunk of the modern economy relying on just two companies which don't even appear to have any competition pressure is just unacceptable.
If Microsoft had as much power over software distribution in the nineties as Apple does now, they would probably have (smartly for them) severely limited or eliminated web browsers, and forced developers to write their internet applications as Microsoft-specific native software instead (or some other proprietary technology). We take the cross-platform internet for granted now but earlier it was not a sure thing.
If many of (what are now) web services only worked on the Microsoft ecosystem, this would have not only deeply entrenched their position in the PC market but also given them a huge advantage in mobile (if Apple even survived long enough to compete there). One of the early iPhone's biggest strengths was having a full web browser (especially since there was no app store initially). If the real draw was MicrosoftNetwork and not the open web, this wouldn't have been a big selling point for the iPhone and it would have been much harder for them to get the ball rolling. Microsoft would have had an enormous amount of time to come out with a phone that can access the MicrosoftNetwork that everyone wants.
And this is all assuming that anti-trust is still enforced enough that Microsoft can't just demand exclusivity from everyone else, or that companies aren't afraid to associate with competitors since they live or die by subjective Microsoft processes.
Despite not being Tim Sweeney I think as a developer and a consumer I would prefer having the option to install alternative app stores. I'd like to be able to buy apps in a way that lets me install them across platforms, and don't like solely depending on Apple for curation when they ban apps like streaming / emulators etc that don't seem to be a real security concern.
I don't care about mobile as much as laptops and future platforms like VR/AR, but it seems like the trend in general is for things to be more locked down with a few companies acting as gatekeepers. Strong sandboxing with permissions seems great but I don't see why that has to be coupled with everything needing to go through one company for approval.
IMO this should extend to game consoles too. You should be able to run homebrew games and tools on a console.
However, I am curious about what happens when you force xbox to run unauthenticated 3rd party software. The reason why consoles can be priced the way they are (very low, usually taking losses) is because the company makes it back on game sales.
So what happens? Microsoft is in a solid position with its "stream to system" upcoming hardware, but I think this will force console prices to go up.
As soon as you can run anything on a console, the creators of the console no longer have the same LTV per customer (gamers will buy from cheaper app stores). Additionally, you'll have new demand for consoles for eg deep learning applications on xbox (this increases the value of a console)
I think this is fundamentally bad for the console ecosystem, although I think Microsoft (and its console division) will be fine because of their investments in "x cloud"
> IMO this should extend to game consoles too. You should be able to run homebrew games and tools on a console.
That argument there appeals to me emotionally a lot more though, I will admit! It's easy to admire Commodore 64 programmers before my time, or when I wrote Xbox 360 games using XNA in university.
But legal changes also need to come from above as well to ensure a fair computing market. I'm doing it more as a symbolic protest than any hope I will contribute towards that.
Because that what smartphones has become.
Actually nothing on my phone is essential to daily life.
Additionally, maybe we should have higher standards for technology which a good chunk of the world economy is relying on rather than applying some entertainment standards.
And you examples for taxes and roads are socialist services. The rates on tolls and taxes are decided by people elected representatives. Apple decided the rates on their own, not by Government mandate.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21368395/fortnite-epic-ga...
Many apps compensate for the apple fees by increasing the IAP prices. So they already do but may not be aware of it I guess.
if the App Store is such a tremendous value, why don‘t you ask users to pay for access to that App Store directly
Because the value is not in the appstore itself, but in an inability to push uncontrolled spy/trick/crap-ware through side channels, so that thieves and con artists have no way to trick or force a user out of safety.
All of the games and apps that are either not profitable or are free also need to be paid from the money earned on whales like Fortnite.
They now want Apple to serve 116 millions of users updates that usually run into the hundreds of megabytes for games without paying more than US$100 a year.
Epic runs it's own game store on 12% commission, but most of those games are paid and games are the biggest earners in any App Store, so only the most profitable category.
Also the 30% "rent seeking" happens on any platform Epic is on except the PC and Mac. They tried to go around the Google Play Store and pivoted on that decision.
I would like to see the % go down, I think they can run it for 20% without much trouble but when the kickback on titles goes down the price of the hardware goes up. So you can have a "cheap" Playstation with expensive games or an expensive Playstation with cheaper games.
What makes you think this? How do you know they cannot do an App Store for less than 12%? Also there is such a thing as economies of scale - the app store probably sells many times more things than the Epic version.
You seem to mistakenly think the cost of selling X items on an App Store has a cost that is "cost of app store per thing" * "number of things sold". This isn't true, the cost of the App Store is fixed and has almost NOTHING to do with number of things sold.
I just think using your market dominance to squeeze developers who provide services for your users is kind of sick. Apple should be providing the App Store for free and thanking developers for selling so many phones, not ripping people off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_Store "Epic Games had settled on a 12% revenue cut for titles published through the store"
> This isn't true, the cost of the App Store is fixed and has almost NOTHING to do with number of things sold.
OK so you say the whole % of sale model is completely wrong and people should just pay a fixed fee to be in the App Store? Explain it to Epic please.
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/tony-hawks-pro...
45 euro means they cash roughly 5.40 on the sale of this item at 12%. The item is a game comparable in size so has comparable hosting fees as Fortnite in the iOS App Store. Yet charge more than twice as much to host it, not changing the fee even if they have more than 117 million people that buy it.
So what's really fair to you?
-------
Can't reply anymore, so I'll update here instead:
It's fairly simple. Fortnite and Tony Hawk are comparable AAA game titles, with the same amount of updates, same download size, etcetera. Yet Epic manages to milk the double out of each sale of Tony Hawk because of it's retail price. But retail price has _nothing_ to do with the cost Epic has to distribute Tony Hawk (as you argumented so well).
Epic pays a bit more than 2 bucks to Apple to host their AAA title, but couldn't turn a profit on it's own store if it had to distribute Tony Hawk for the same amount of money.
1) The value that Epic have decided to charge for an App Store has nothing to do with the costs of running an App Store.
2) I said no such thing about a fixed fee - I said your mental model for understand the costs of selling something on an App Store is mistaken. Once the store exists your costs are largely fixed, I don't need to explain it to Epic - they do not represent my views and they can charge what they want on their app store.
3) Why do you think hosting costs loads of money - it's virtually free at the scale of Epic or Apple? It has nothing to do with the charges and each sale.
4) I explained what I think is fair for Apple - be grateful for the huge developer community and stop trying to charge people for content built outside of each app (i.e. you can't buy books on the amazon app or audible due to this stupid profiteering). You can't even purchase Netflix from the Netflix app due to Apple wanting a cut.
Anyway, I think I've tried to explain why you're not correct about the maths on the value/costs App Stores create for Apple and running them like a protection racket due to market dominance is ethically wrong.
Isn't this the entire concept of amicus briefs?
For every other purpose like getting proper recommendations, you have to consult the internet.
Imagine having a “we think you will like these games because you played...” feature that works as well as Spotify’s or Steam’s recommendation engine. That will be a game changer for everyone, both consumers and developers.
I hope Apple will be forced to allow 3rd party stores, so we can get an Epic Games Store app, or a Steam Games Store app on our mobile devices.
The only thing worse than having multiple game launchers like we have on PC is having only one, and you cannot bypass it, and it’s awful, and it still asks for 30%.
I want multiple stores. Or I want Apple to seriously rethink their shitty store app. Preferably both.
Good grief, Amazon is terrible for finding things, but the Apple App Store is several degrees worse. I do a search for an app that is in a top apps list, and it doesn't show up in the search results. WTF?
The whole App Store experience shows major contempt for your customers, Apple. That sound in the distance is chickens coming home to roost.
Every time I think "I bet there's an app for that", I go away disappointed.
It sounds so hollow when the Supreme Leader of Apple brags about their store having 10.000.000.000 apps. Sure you do, and maybe 20 of them aren't total crap.
Let other store on iOS, then we will see which one provide the best value.
Right. If the problem is that people are insufficiently appreciative of having access 'for free' and should therefore leave complaints unstated and unaddressed, Apple can fix that by imposing a fee, so they can no longer use "for free" as something to hold against app-store users to short-circuit complaints.
It seems that Apple has forgotten that each iPhone user already paid Apple hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars for the iPhone itself. It is reasonable to charge developers for development tools, but if that's what you want to do, just charge them for development tools. Meanwhile, I bought an iPhone so that I can run the software that I like. If it costs money to develop a platform, it doesn't seem that strange to just charge that upfront when someone buys an iPhone.
>In a ruling late last month, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers largely rejected similar arguments Epic made in seeking a restraining order against Apple regarding Fortnite development on iOS. There was no "irreparable harm" to Epic, Rogers wrote, because "the current predicament appears of [Epic's] own making."
> "Your client created this situation," Rogers told lawyers for Epic in an August hearing. "Your client does not come to this action with clean hands... in my view, you cannot have irreparable harm when you create the harm yourself."
> "The court recommended that Epic comply with the App Store guidelines while their case moves forward, guidelines they’ve followed for the past decade until they created this situation," Apple said in a statement earlier this month." Epic has refused. Instead they "repeatedly submit Fortnite updates designed to violate the guidelines of the App Store."
EDIT: @gpm The status quo you refer to is Epic abiding by the agreement they argue is unenforceable. I have to be mindful about my reply quantity, HN throttles me otherwise, hence the edit.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/08/judge-issues-restrain...
The idea is just that the judge is generally going to maintain the status quo during the TRO phase (this policy exists because there has been such little time for legal argument at the point that a TRO is requested).
I don't see that any of these quotes are at all responsive to the person you are responding to.
> EDIT: @gpm The status quo is Epic abiding by the agreement they argue unenforcable.
Heh, just so you know you can reply to new comments by clicking on the timestamp and then clicking reply.
Anyways, I think I must be missing your point? The person you replied to appeared to be arguing about what the final ruling should be not about whether or not a TRO should be granted (which is where the status quo arguments come in).
A contract may not be enforceable, but only if it contradicts the law. In this instance, I don't see how.
I suppose if you don't like it you can go buy an Android phone and just give away all your data in addition to the 30%.
Also worth considering: How much of Apple's intellectual property here could exist without them harvesting decades of free/open software development history unpaid? And now they're complaining that someone used their SDK after paying the license fees?
I suggest you read up on this dispute then, because the whole cause of this dispute is that Epic believes the contract violates anti-trust law.
The only difference is people want to change the rules because they feel Apple (and Google) have won the game forever and App Stores should now be regulated like utilities.
Which makes me wonder : is there any way to distribute your own game to playstation users, without having to ask or pay anything to sony ?
Same for any console, though some are very restrictive and have very specific pricing guidelines (eg. Nintendo).
It's called an unconscionable contract. Epic's argument is that you cannot enforce unfair things even if you signed on it. Of course, the court is going to decide if it's really unfair, neither Epic nor Apple.
I would be interested to see a solid case decided on unconscionability where both parties are multi-billion dollar companies with substantial resources to spend on negotiating contracts.
If "I really want what you're selling, but it's kinda expensive" is the new standard for unconscionability, then we're all in big trouble.
It denied both Apple and Epic revenue by decreasing sales.
It moved revenue from Apple to Epic by moving the commission on the sales that did happen from Apple to Epic. I believe this is what they're complaining about with the "lined Epic’s pockets at Apple’s expense", i.e. they are arguing that they are entitled to that commission on the transactions that went through the 3rd party payment provider.
Thing is, Apple still charges $100 USD per year for a developer license which lets you distribute your app, so this is already happening! :)
Google asks for $25, once, for a team that can be an individual or an organization, as you wish.
That is less than the coffee bean budget for a month at most of these organizations. They probably spend more than that a year on parts and labor for the coffee equipment.
That organization fee is a token fee. A little friction so that it makes you serious and it stings a bit if it gets cancelled. To maybe not faff about and get down to shipping a product. A few bucks to cover things like CA maintenance and help fund some outreach programs I suspect.
$100 for individuals might be a bit on the steep side, I'll grant you. Or a stick to get you to become an organization as soon as possible.
There is a second program called the Apple Developer Enterprise Program, which is $299 per year, and is only required if you wish to deploy apps for internal use across your organization without using the App Store.
From the court documents, Apple said there are 27M AppStore registered devs. Even if only half of those pay $100 per year that's still about $1.3B per year.
Edit:
It's even worse than with consoles as every dev needs at least a Mac. When developing for consoles most work is not done on the dev kit itself.
Some apps choose to make their apps free, others choose to charge fees. Some want to have their in-app purchases charged 30%, others don't.
Lots of products charge you an upfront fee, and then more fees for various things in addition. I don't think you've got much of a leg to stand on with that argument. That would be like saying, I paid for my cell phone, I don't think that cellular carriers should charge me again for the monthly service -- they should bundle it all one.
It's a design and pricing choice. And you buy in or you don't.
And that's a problem. I am buying an iPhone, per Apple, not renting it. Therefore I should be allowed to run whatever I please on my hardware.
Well, that can definitely be your opinion. But whether that's fact or supported by our current laws is not at all certain. Let's at least be clear what's fact and what's desire.
> ...buying the iPhone comes with access to apps through the the App Store, not any software that you like. That's clear to almost everyone I would think....
> It's a design and pricing choice. And you buy in or you don't.
This follow up:
> ...whether that's fact or supported by our current laws is not at all certain
Appears to at least be an explicit moving of the goal posts, if not claiming advantage from both sides of the argument. Is it clear that the relationship is a legally enforced 'take it or leave it', or isn't it?
Right now, it's totally within a company's rights (and a consumer's rights) to review the terms of a sale of a product/service, and agree to them or not.
On the other hand you and I don’t have the right to dictate to Apple what software they write and what features it has. That includes features for installing and managing software packages, software upgrades, security features, etc.
The Apple/Epic fought reminds me of when sometimes content owners and cable networks are fighting over affiliate fees and it spills into PR campaigns targeting the public. Typical consumers don't want to think about it, but they can end up effective leverage in the negotiation occurring.
Companies on one side of it will always try to frame it as a principled fight over consumer access, etc. etc. And the other company will frame it as a cost of doing business / business model. But it always boils down to dissatisfaction about the prices they're paying or receiving.
Don't buy into the claimed principles. They're just dressing on the argument that is always about the $. Both sides.
Bad analogy, it'd be like buying the cell tower and getting charged for using it.
(Especially since... come on, punitive damages for something that was live for less than 24 hours?)
The punitive damages are about the what was caused by the ad campaign. Judges have a lot of leeway here if they don’t like how companies act.
This isn't how the software development eco-system works. There are tonnes of examples of providing free development tools with restrictions on use and revenue sharing agreements. For example, there's this little known company called Epic Games which provides the Unreal Engine for free- but with the following clause:
> This license is free to use and incurs 5% royalties when you monetize your game or other interactive off-the-shelf product and your lifetime gross revenues from that product exceed $1,000,000 USD.
And Epic doesn't even provide quality control, a discovery mechanism, or payment processing.
The proper analogy to Epic charging for its game engine is Apple charging for its developer licenses - which it already does separately from the app store.
FWIW, Google (illegally? according to Epic, anyway) blocked Epic's attempts to address this through partner deals with phone manufacturers, so their hand was relatively forced.
If Google and Apple didn't require all installs to go through a blessed path, people would just type "fortnite" into their search engine of choice and install that way instead. Of course, Google & Apple have good reason for not allowing that, but in the case of Fortnite they really are not delivering much for the 30%.
More importantly, Google does not prohibit sideloading. It simply does not make it convenient to do it.
In essence Apple is running an Apple App incubator :) Getting 30% of anything, anybody ever makes on it, with basically no risk on it since the actual cost of reviewing the apps and hosting them is pretty fixed.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. A game produced with the Unreal Engine could just as easily be created through a natively developed engine or another licensed engine instead of Unreal. Unity, for instance:
I agree. Operating systems are not App Stores.
I imagine if Apple tried to restrict third party apps from doing that through the legal system, we would see another suit but this time about "graphics" instead of "payment processing".
This is false; unless theoretically means there's no concept of "money" involved in our world.
A game deployed to an iPhone must be compatible with the hardware chip supplied on the iPhone, must be built using APIs designed, built and committed to be supported by the iPhone.
Apps can't be built out of thin air. Programming languages, debuggers, IDEs, distributions channels, commitment to support cost money, time and people's energy. Apple, as a private business, can choose to monetize however they wish to. It would be really dumb for the govt or other parties to dictate what pricing policies Apple has to set for a product they're building. Heck, they're free to ask for a million dollars for each copy of Xcode people use.
Apple is trying to balance the costs of building an iPhone ecosystem with the benefits of ease of accessibility to that ecosystem.
Customers pay Apple to handle _everything_ from rearranging sand to naming functions accessible to developer to make the iPhone.
> This is false; unless theoretically means there's no concept of "money" involved in our world.
I am fairly sure that Apple has already produced a general purpose computing device that also requires applications deployed to it to be compatible with its CPU and to be built using APIs designed and built by Apple, but nonetheless lets applications be acquired for it through other means, including direct download.
Ultimately, it's their product. I mean, can you imagine the world we'd live in if some arbitrary group of people (who are _not_ the product developers) decided that the iPod should be opened up to side-load any arbitrary software, such as a music store, run by some other company.
In what world is that legal? Just because the iPhone has majority profits of the smartphone market doesn't mean they ought to share that platform with everyone else. If developers don't like Apple's policies they should not build for Apple's platforms. It's pretty simple.
Go make your iPhone, and App Store, and Retail distribution channels and marketing that works to your specification. Isn't that what competition means?
Apple has a monopoly... on Apple products?
It was made from a bygone era, where the digital concept didn’t even exist.
Does iOS make the success of any app?
Apple has earned trust with me as a user. When I download an app from Apple’s stores it extends its trust to those apps.
I feel more comfortable spending money on iOS because of that trust. Take away the trust, and I promise there is significantly less money to be made.
This is all my opinion and most importantly feelings about spending money though the AppStore and through any other channel.
I will say, for me no other company has built the good will that Apple has. I really doubt that Epic understands the “trust” I speak about. Both because of the general sentiment I see online and as a Fortnite player.
Have any of you actually played Fortnite?
Do any of you know how many bugs exist in that game? I’m not even talking about “wall hacks”, rendering issues, difficult collision detection stuff or the many in game broken mechanics. I’m talking about the many, many out-of-game user interface bugs. Logging in fails 1/4 the time (need to reboot the app). Matchmaking fails 1/10 the time (just stuck in an infinite loop). Matchmaking for groups fails 1/10 the time (at least one person in the party will not be in the same game!!! How does a software company fuck up atomic transactions for the full party?)
lol Epic is not a company I want handling financial transactions. I’m very happy to buy Vbucks from Apple/Google/Sony and then “safely” use Vbucks in the Fortnite store.
The type of trust building Apple does is a “value add” that a company like Epic doesn’t understand yet.
Epic choosing to make this decision isn’t data about Apple’s ability and mindset to earn trust. Epic choosing to make this decision seems to be a short term play at rent seeking before Fortnite stops being popular.
Also please read my other comments in this thread for anecdata about my experience/feelings as a customer of both Apple and Epic.
You're not even making a coherent argument. Epic is making a short-term play at rent seeking? That doesn't make any sense. They're trying to be able to charge for individual products the way they do on any other open platform. Platforms that do not filter through single monolithic app stores, and which - surprise - are successful and enjoyed by millions of users and developers.
- used an iPhone as your primary device?
- used an Android as your primary device?
- played Fortnite, and on what device?
For me it was 6 years of Android before switching to an iPhone for the last 4 years. I've been playing a lot of Fortnite (less during the waterworld season) on a PS4 over the last 11 months.
Rationale:
Especially because you're arguing for sideloading and Android already allows that, yet Epic is still suing Google. I ask because when you keep saying you're arguing "for customers" and "pro-competition".
I'm just wondering what background experience you have with all of these different companies and platforms that helps you judge what is best "for competition and the customer".
He copy pasted the exact same comment in a conversation with me, which is why I am bringing it up. Instead of actually saying anything related to what I said, he just posted that copy-paste comment.
Likely, because they had nothing to add, related to the actual comments and points that you or I brought up.
It’s the same for Epic on PlayStation, Switch and Xbox.
I pretty happily try out subscription apps on iOS (which I rarely to never do online). Why? It's darn easy to cancel. I get a reminder in advance even. This contrasts in my experience with nearly EVERY other auto-billing approach out there. The time I sometimes spend calling people to cancel stuff (that I could sign up for online) is ridiculous.
Another nice touch that builds trust. I once deleted an app and iOS reminded me to cancel the subscription if I wasn't going to reinstall! I mean, every other store will keep the auto-bill going forever.
But you guys aren't arguing the actual point anyway. The question is whether the forced app store is always a plus for developers, not users. The answer is certainly no. And the answer is also no for users who can manage their own trust, and could happily live with direct downloads outside of the app store. They pay higher prices, and are forced to effectively subsidize everyone else.
But Apple believes the opposite of you, has direct contact with nearly a billion customers, and spends massively on safety/security which they wouldn’t do if it wasn’t important to customers.
Do you have a record of that (your emails and their cancellation notice)? Would be very interesting to see how that went down.
> Purchasing the same app more than once on the same device shouldn't even be possible.
It’s not and I don’t think it has ever been.
One result - they have a pretty high level of trust among users. And so they can charge a pretty remarkable premium. This level of control has also made them popular for developers. Their ecosystem has a much more consistent development experience, many more users are on a relatively recent iOS and the per user spending is far higher to name just a few elements.
Many of these things are benefits for DEVELOPERS. Sony and Microsoft make the PS and XBOX, also closed systems with networks they hope benefit developers.
And finally, does apple have an obligation to help developers make money or is their focus more properly on consumers?
You're comparing Epic's dev tools to XCode.. but then you're also comparing them to the App Store later in your comment?
Epic has an equivalent of the App Store that does the things you listed: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/about
(saying either does QC is a little disingenuous imo. Apple does "QC" insofar to make sure you're not trying to submit a flaming hunk of garbage, they're not there to be your QC. Epic does the same.)
The "the app store pays for libraries" argument is total bullshit. Apple wants 30% of your Spotify subscription because they saw it, they wanted it, and now they're having a temper tantrum about it. Not because they laid the foundation for Spotify.
Sony and MS games can be programmed without licenses or devkits (which make it much easier to debug games by providing debug access not available on retail consoles).
Moreover, devkits are frequently made available for free by both companies to indie developers and even major partners.
In Microsoft's case, UWP on XBox doesn't count as it is castrated to the actual OS capabilities, and hasn't been updated for a while and most likely it won't.
In some version of Visual Studio the SDK can be downloaded from within the program.
XDK: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/xbox-live/get-starte...
The XDK (aka HDK) includes physical hardware and is intended for more demanding games.
Sony SDK: https://www.companyregistration.playstation.com/SCEInternetA...
The Sony SDK and HDKs are available to registered partners only, though registration is free and the SDK (but not the HDK) is free to all partners.
Xbox developer mode [1] appears to require a valid, current Partner Center app developer account [2]. Individual accounts are $19 and "With a developer account, you can submit apps and games to Microsoft marketplaces, including the Microsoft Store."
so you dont need a devkit but would need an Xbox and you do need an account to publish. so yes, while you dont need a xbox dev account to program, you dont need an apple dev account to program either. you just need a dev account on either platform to publish.
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/devki... [2] https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/store/register/
> And Epic doesn't even provide quality control, a discovery mechanism, or payment processing.
Apple takes 30% off all purchases upfront, and maybe they'll cut you a deal if you're Netflix-size.
On top of that, Apple's "quality control" allows through scam apps with scam IAPs, while they will reject your well-established app if you don't change the wording for your IAP copy for the second time in one year.
Or if you have no presence, they may well just reject you for not meeting the ambiguous minimum functionality requirements or for functionality they don't want users to have access to. After you've already paid them $99 for the privilege of being rejected, of course.
And then on top of that, Apple's "discovery mechanism" puts other people's ads above your app when people search specifically for the name of your app.
Epic, however, takes 5%..... after you pull in $1mil in revenue. That's it.
Do you really not see the glaring issue with your comparison here?
That's it, for now. Epic is trying to set themselves up as publisher like Steam. Once they can get first-party status as an app store on iOS their tune will change.
This is about money, and one way to make money is to get people hooked on your product then jack up the price.
How does Epic store become first-party, they get bought by Microsoft? I don't get what you are claiming
I suspect that where the line is drawn depends on what benefit you feel you get from one side of the line versus the other.
Nipping it in the bud was wiped clean off the table the moment Trump won the Republican Party presidential nomination for a second term..
As far as I'm concerned, now, it's a complete free-for-all.
But this is the worst/dumbest/most off-topic reply to a comment I have ever read on this site, and maybe the entire internet. I regret having had to read it.
Netflix, like Kindle & Spotify are "Reader" Apps which pay 0% Royalty.
[1] https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/principles-practices/#:~...
All the "reader" designation does is allow this off-site option to exist at all, still with the restriction that you are not permitted to even imply that you can sign up elsewhere.
The only thing this does is make the customer experience worse. Now we have a Netflix app that can't tell you how to sign up, and a Kindle app that can't sell books. The alternative is the customer has to pay more, or the company has to eat the cost. Nobody wins except Apple, but you could make the argument that they're harming their own platform with this stuff.
Which is just _one_ of _many_ licensing terms available for that product. You can just buy a license outright and avoid the royalty fee if you so choose.
Which, in fact, they can-- if you use their products.
There is, however, a straightforward way to stop them: Don't use their products.
If others aren’t happy with it that’s fine too, just get a different phone. I don’t see any justification for coercing Apple into entering into commercial arrangements and developing product features they don’t want to support.
I‘ll admit that having the Apple iOS ecosystem is of certain value, but Apple doesn‘t even allow you to install your own OS. My point is that if I buy a hammer, should I be forced to use it only for hammering nails or could I use it for other things as well?
The reality is, you bought a product that accurately advertised its features. Were you ever misled into thinking that an iPhone could download non-AppStore apps? If so, please return your phone you are owed a refund and maybe even sue for false advertising.
Meanwhile, if you bought the product like me knowing the product’s features. It feels disingenuous to now want more from the product.
If you want to jailbreak your iPhone, do it. But you really shouldn’t expect Apple to provide updates or support your warranty once you choose to. The same as if you opened up a hair dryer, and disabled the part that heats the air the warranty would be void.
Epic runs their own digital distribution platform, in which they also take a cut of the sales. Their terms are different than Apples, but they still do take a cut of sales.
Epic also takes 5% royalties for any (non-free) game built with Epic's Unreal Engine.
Epic and Apple have the same business model, however Epic's terms are not as high as Apples.
On the other hand, Epic makes a lot of money selling "cosmetics" and loot boxes. In effect, you have a company that has profited immensely from gambling, going after a company that has profited immensely due to their own closed ecosystem.
(also not to mention Epic blatantly ripped off the success of PUBG when they switched Fortnite to be a Battle Royale game)
> (also not to mention Epic blatantly ripped off the success of PUBG when they switched Fortnite to be a Battle Royale game)
I think Epic did it better. That's why we don't give intellectual property rights to vague ideas like "100 players parachute into an island and shoot each other" or "after a certain amount of time a circle kills people outside of it". PUBG had their take -- super boring stakeouts to get hyper-realistic weapons. Fortnite had their take -- cartoony jumping around while you build forts. Players can choose which they want to play. (And, of course, there are like 8 billion other battle royales.)
And, likewise, Apple, as the platform owner, should be able to deny access whatever software they want.
You can of course, jailbreak your iphone, or install PWA's that work.
Afterall, you just paid for the car, they still own the software that controls the engine.
Maybe just don’t buy that car then?
They do this to an extent already.
Aftermarket ECU Tunes can often invalidate your warranty.
Most OEM infotainment headunits are not user upgradable.
GPS Maps must be refreshed through the dealer.
In the US there is a governor that limits how fast a car can go.
Android is by far the most dominate mobile platform worldwide.
That's your opinion. That is not what's supported by our current technology/copyright/intellectual property-related laws.
Please be clear about that.
That is your opinion. Please be clear about that.
Currently, what Apple is doing violates EU and US antitrust laws. It's not a matter of what the user wants. It's a matter of Apple abusing its market position.
Please provide legal documents equivocally stating this.
Sort of. There are two possible avenues of attack here against Apple. And it depends on how the market is defined.
1: if the "market" is defined as you have, which is a "monopoly on apple services", then it absolutely true that Apple does have a monopoly on the specific market as defined by "Apple services", and I would accept 10 to 1 betting odds on that.
BUT, I think it is a bit of a stretch that the "market" will be defined that narrowly. Instead I think that the market will be defined as the smartphone market share of the USA.
2: If the market is defined as the smartphone market, in the USA, then the argument will be that Apple has control of ~50% of the market, in a 2 entity duopoly. It is a common misconception, that anti-trust law only applies in cases, of a overwhelming singular monopoly. Instead, anti-trust law, applies even in cases where there is not a singular monopoly, and the company in question only has significant market power.
Controlling 50% of the market share, is a bit on the edge of whether anti-trust law applies, or does not apply, as according to government guidance. So the case is far from a slam dunk, and I think that there will be interesting arguments brought up in court.
But, even though Apple has less market share than, say Microsoft did, when Microsoft lost their anti-trust case, I think that Apple's actions are significantly more restrictive than Microsoft's was, and thus this contributing factor will push them over the edge into losing the case.
I expect that this case will be a landmark case, that will determine future court actions, and will be even more significant than the microsoft case was.
Similar antitrust violations of the same nature: iMusic vs Spotify, iChat vs Hey/other chat programs, Apple Webkit vs all other browsers.
I would have included Apple Pay but in that instance Apple lost, largely because their actions in other markets made it extremely undesirable for merchants and payment processors to get behind Apple's vision of Apple Pay in which Apple skimmed X% for providing absolutely no value to the transaction. In fact, so many retailers found Apple to be an undesirable partner that a number of major retailers disabled Apple Pay integration on their NFC-capable payment terminals. For example, most Kroger locations (like Ralphs) take Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Garmin Pay, and most other app-based NFC payment methods...but not Apple Pay. (Apple's situation is similar to American Express, which also charges significantly higher rates to retailers than its competitors, but unlike Apple, Amex actually processes transactions and theoretically provides valule to retailers, just not enough to justify its Appleesque rates.)
It's the followup laws broadening the Sherman Antitrust Act that Apple violates. The amendments to the Sherman Act target anti-competitive behavior that results in market distortive effects, even in the absence of a monopoly. This includes price-fixing, collusion, and using leverage in one market to interfere with the market dynamics of another (usually smaller) market (see, e.g., Microsoft). There is at least one landmark case in which minor market participants were found to have violated the antitrust laws because their collusion would have anticompetitive effects even though their combined market share was less than half of the market, though the case dates to a more active time in antitrust jurisprudence.
Apple is no stranger to anti-competitive behavior; they are in fact the banner case for the last big antitrust case...which similarly did not involve a monopoly of any sort. (The book price-fixing case.)
The majority of antitrust claims are brought under the Sherman Act. Apple's ebook price fixing case was brought under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.
All of Epic's federal claims against Apple are alleged violations of the Sherman Act.
And you can. You just need to bypass Apple's security mechanisms.
Could one not argue that you are able to do this by jailbreaking your iOS-device, which the courts have deemed perfectly legal?
It seems to me that one owns the phone, but not necessarily the operating system it runs.
Different sides, different business concepts.
I am an advocate for open source, but I am just wondering in principle what is your argument exactly?
What about forcing someone or some company to use a service (apple's payment systems)?
If the market is video games in general, Apple is but a tiny sliver of control of that market.
If the market is iOS devices, yes of course Apple controls 100% of that.
Where does the line get drawn? How many outlets does Epic have to sell what it develops? I think that's for the FTC/SEC to determine.
Epic's in the fairly unique position of having a "killer app" that a large portion of the iOS user base would want to install to get the ball rolling on a competing store. Given their rates a much better than Apple's, I imagine a lot of game studios would want to distribute through them, and they could offer cheaper prices and still make more profit, so people would be incentivized to install and use the competing store.
You know, actual competition.
You know, actual innovation.
Creating a phone OS wouldn't actually let them compete on the same level, because you can't run anything but iOS on Apple hardware.
The only companies that actually compete at the same level as Apple and Google and Amazon, since they both create the hardware, run an OS on it, and provide a store on it. Any while it's a pain to do (and they take steps to make it not work well, even if it does work), you can install their stores on each other (Amazon Fire store on Android, and Google Play store on Kindle Fire devices).
Not to say that those companies are paragons of openness in their platforms, but Apple is quite it bit farther along the spectrum in locking down their devices, in that you can't run any software other than what they approve on them (unless you jailbreak, but I'm but sure that's legal in many jurisdictions).
> You know, actual innovation.
There are plenty of locations to innovate. Why should epic have to create an OS (which they can't actually run on the hardware the people they are trying to reach are using) just so they can try to provide a better store experience for people. They could "innovate" be being more deterministic in what they accept or reject than Apple and being cheaper. Those are innovations that many customers and developers would welcome.
I'm sure Apple will be thrilled with this line of reasoning and will definitely argue it (/s).
(In case it's not clear, I'm agreeing with the person I'm responding to, sarcasm over the internet is hard).
Yep. That's the argument I've been making for a couple weeks now. Mainly, that Apple's actions are anti-competitive, even if they may not match the current definition of monopoly. If the harm is great enough though, then we should maybe think about extending the definition of monopoly or enacting some more specific laws restricting anti-competitive actions that match the modern market more accurately. It's not like the current laws from the the constitution, they were added in the late 1800's and early 1900's.
At a minimum, some consumer laws that protect us from people locking down hardware to specific software in some instances (and thus allowing competition on Apple hardware) may help in some small ways overall, even if it doesn't directly address the App Store and OS coupling. Being able to (legally) run Android (or something else) on an Apple phone would change quite a lot, IMO, even if it took a while to do so.
How to deal with the warranty is the tricky part. Custom software can degrade the hardware. It seems fair that Apple should provide easier access to dev tools for bare-metal iPhone programming and jailbreaking but is no longer liable for the device.
I thought of this the other week, since it's not a stretch to think Epic will want to go after those marketplaces as well if they can.
It feels a little different, but I'm not willing to let that make me a hypocrite. We should have control over that hardware if we bought it, full stop. If that means we can't get those platforms as cheap anymore because they can't recoup their money from store fees, so be it. The world will be better off.
You can't trust any company to have your best interests at heart. You can barely expect this a miniscule amount of the time with your elected representatives, and that's their whole job. The market is for providing competition and innovation. Laws are for providing safety and security (and that includes keeping the market functioning well enough to provide those legitimately). Let's not forget that.
For instance, you can buy games for your switch from amazon or best buy. They have no such restriction where you can only buy games through Nintendo's store
The choice between fortnight and a good camera seems like a strange one.
Why couldn't Netscape have just made their own computer, instead of relying on windows boxes?
Nothing prevented them to do so, in fact that is what ChromeOS and FirefoxOS are all about.
For units sold: https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
I'm a huge Apple fan, but they have been digging themselves a grave in terms of developer goodwill with their reaction to these lawsuits.
We've seen this many times, it's not exclusive to the case against Epic.
---
Please note that I have not weighed in on whether I think Apple or Epic is in the right (legally or otherwise). I'm just informing you of their justification, and why they claim this isn't a danger for other developers who may accidentally (or, perhaps, much more minorly) break the terms of service.
I have no understanding for anyone that buys Apple and then complains.
One could, you know, make a case that it should be illegal, go to court to get that official, and then the way to implement your own payment processing is open.
But beginning at the last step, is totally the wrong order to do these kind of things.
Besides that, Epic and Apple had an agreement the moment Epic published fortnite in the app store. If they dont like the contract, they can leave. Again, if they think the terms are illegal, go fight that out BEFORE you implement something that breaks the contract.
Or what goes into each game console, my cable provider installs on their set top box, and so on.
I for one am happy to see Apple fire back with both barrels. Epic deserves it. A message has to be sent.
Tolls like the above were how the mainframe started and are nothing new.
We had a historical anomaly with the PC being a hobby platform at its roots where everything felt so free. Legally it never was, that was a marketing fiction created by Apple, Microsoft, IBM and others.
Any attempt to do a sealed experience for average users was subpar in execution... except perhaps gaming consoles.
Honestly, tech was depressing in those days when NHS was running on Windows XP. Oh wait; yes, you're right. "These" days are still around today :(
https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/healthcare/nhs-co...
Previous consumer OSes had major usability and security drawbacks for the average consumer. Through no fault of their own, their computers would gradually get slower and corrupted by 3rd parties.
This is similar to the shift to cloud computing. It’s more valuable to have a service take care of me than to have the freedom of licensed software .
I’m not saying this stance is without problems - but it does seem to be what the market is saying.
It’s also worth noting that software always has been considered a service in some sectors - enterprise software dating back to the 1970s for example required 21-25% of your purchase price in annual service & support fees with penalties if you terminate.
We would never even be at the level we're at if there weren't those malware-plagued PCs and their open marketplace of software and operating systems competing with each other.
> Previous consumer OSes had major usability and security drawbacks for the average consumer.
You mean Windows did, because A) it was the OS of the vast majority of desktop systems and B) they had a culture and practice of not taking security very seriously, or at least prioritizing so many things over it that the outcome was the same.
Apple's operating systems traditionally faced less scrutiny (but now there are more security problems since they are more popular). Windows has gotten much better and Microsoft appears to be much more serious about security (since it because a large enough problem to actually threaten their OS market dominance).
> Through no fault of their own, their computers would gradually get slower and corrupted by 3rd parties.
Not really my experience over the last 6-7 years. Prior to that, depending on OS, sure.
> This is similar to the shift to cloud computing. It’s more valuable to have a service take care of me than to have the freedom of licensed software .
To you, sure, but for the average person or company, it's variable and based on many things (capability, scale, etc).
> It’s also worth noting that software always has been considered a service in some sectors - enterprise software dating back to the 1970s for example required 21-25% of your purchase price in annual service & support fees with penalties if you terminate.
The enterprise doesn't really scale to the individual level we're talking about at all. An enterprise buying a specific computer with certain hardware with a custom OS delivered as a service is like a person buying some Tamagotchi toy and looking at it for 5 minutes a day for a week. Enterprises run anywhere from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of desktops and/or servers and any software as a service they pay for in that ecosystem is minuscule compared to the whole. Apple controls a non-negligible portion of most iPhone users compute time in one way or another (or multiple ways).
Yeah totally.
I've been using Windows since 3.1 and macOS since Panther.
These days I spend most of my time on macOS but I have a Windows 10 desktop machine and it works beautifully. Performance is way better than on macOS.
If Windows had a better text rendering engine I would probably switch. I just have an irrational disgust for how fonts are rendered on Windows. I know it's subjective but as someone that spends most of its time reading and writing text it's imperative I enjoy that.
The mobile industry would also never even be at the level it's at if it wasn't for the iPhone.
One of the biggest selling points of iOS was precisely that it was free of random third-party crap that everyone was sick of by that time.
Ever since Apple refused to let AT&T shovel their bloatware on the first iPhone, the very identity of iOS has been that it's a curated platform, and you only have to be concerned with one company for almost everything.
It was a breath of fresh air, bringing the philosophy of consoles to a mass consumer device.
Millions of people love that. For everybody else, there's Android.
That's ridiculous. That has nothing to do with the reason people selected it when it came out. It was pretty, it had features no other phone really had, such as a browser that rendered the same as the desktop and good touch controls, but security and safety had nothing to do with it.
Companies allowed the switch to iPhone when they realized that it was in theory as secure as Blackberry, and didn’t require a BES server.
So of course a major appeal was that it was a curated and totally secure platform was from day one. I know this because I was a many year Blackberry customer and was in the record lines in June 2007.
Blackberry was far and away considered the much more secure and safe option, for those that needed it. Your company could run your own messaging service (through Blackberry Enterprise Server), so it was far more secure in that respect.
I also had a Blackberry at the time the iPhone was announced. You were in the lines for an iPhone at the time because you wanted the safety and security it offered? Or because it looked really nice, had a browser that rendered correctly, and had a nice new way to interface? Because I don't know anyone else who switched for security at the time.
People bought iPhones because they trusted it was secure, and chose it over Blackberry because of features and UX. And they kept buying it because it was secure, had the release of the App Store opened the platform to a horde of malware, we would be saying remember when Apple sold iPhones?
People mostly choose their plane flights based on cost, comfort, and time. Not because safety isn’t important, but because it’s assumed it’s by default excellent. Now how high a priority will safety be for travelers when the 737 Max is cleared to fly again?
>>>>> Since day one security and safety have been the most important feature for iPhone, and the biggest reason consumers select it.
Is incorrect, because safety and security were not the major selling points. The person who said that is incorrect.
Nowhere am I saying that the iPhone was unsafe or insecure, but that it definitely wasn't seem as a "more secure" option and it definitely wasn't the "most important feature" and "biggest reason consumers selected it" from "day one".
This comment of your and the prior ones make it pretty obvious you understand this, so I'm not sure what you're trying to argue anymore. Are iPhones often chosen now for for safety and security? Yes, although I still wouldn't say it's the most important feature or the biggest reason people choose it. It definitely wasn't that when it first launched though.
And anyone who administered BES really wanted to see a market switch to ActiveSync on Exchange, because BES was a massive resource hog on Exchange for no major security benefit over ActiveSync: the messages got routed over auto generated TLS Certs to BlackBerry’s data centers in Canada... so the main benefit was properly configured end to end TLS. Which admittedly wasn’t nothing in the late 90s, so few understood SSL/TLS, and Exchange was a beast, and early ActiveSync was buggy and insecure! But by the mid-late 2000s Microsoft started getting its act together.
But this isn't what you actually said. You made a very specific claim, and that specific claim is what I said was ridiculous. You can admit the original claim was a bit hyperbolic, and then we don't really have anything left to argue, or you can defend that safety and security where the "most important feature" and "biggest reason consumers selected it" from "day one", in which case I don't think there's much left for us to cover.
Ugh, my mistake. Those weren't your words. I got you and the other commenter mixed up here and elsewhere (as in I specifically tried to address you each as your respective roles, but got it backwards). Sorry for that.
Why does Apple spend so much on safety and security if it doesn’t sell iPhones?
I'm not saying make it super easy. I would be perfectly happy with a situation where it's hard to install a separate store (on Android to install any app not from the shipped with stores you specifically have to go to settings and enable untrusted apps. But there's a huge difference between "hard" and "legally impossible".
> Why does Apple spend so much on safety and security if it doesn’t sell iPhones?
Because it lets them completely control the platform, so they don't have to worry nearly as much about competition? The fact that Epic can't just install another store and get around Apple's 30% cut is a huge incentive to spend money on "safety and security", because the way they've chosen to achieve those goals is "we control it all, you control nothing, and we'll keep you safe". That's very convenient for them.
Yes they are worried about competition, Android. Epic isn’t competition. Without the walled garden, the iPhone loses a huge differentiator between it and Android, a and one of their developers and customers most valued features.
It has direct parallels to that age-old argument beloved of software lawyers that consumers do not own their copy of installed software, but are merely borrowing it by the grace of the vendor.
In contrast, here's a study that says even consumers in one of the most technologically aware regional markets do not perceive a difference between iOS and Android safety:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316573401_A_Study_o...
which is much more in keeping with just about everybody's experience of people outside the tech echo chamber.
Even better if you allow yourself to make giant leaps of assumption about the underlying motives. Then it can justify almost any apology for bad behaviour.
Apple competes with a horde of phone makers who sell cheaper phones at vastly lower profit margins. And who don’t have to spend a dime on OS development.
To compete Apple spends enormous effort in keeping iPhone secure and safe. And it makes safety and security a top iPhone marketing message. And it’s upper management repeats this mantra in interviews.
Apple knows how they came to dominate the high end of the smartphone market, they have pursued the same consistent strategy all the way back before the App Store existed. The first iPhones were locked down not allowing any third part apps. When they opened the App Store the security was already baked in, App Review, ode signing, sandboxing, the works.
It’s easy to be that dude on the internet who doesn’t believe Apple, but they aren’t running a $200B business by the seat of their pants. They have thousands of marketing people talking to customers, and if they could sell more phones by allowing sideloading and alternate app stores they would.
Marketing materials are not evidence of consumer preference. If anything, they're potentially the opposite; if people cared so much, why is constant repetition of the message necessary?
Investment levels are not evidence of consumer preference. There are countless strategic reasons why companies spend money in a certain direction.
If you're going to claim that consumers are suddenly factoring device security and relative levels of curation-dependent application safety into their platform selections, in the face of decades of history being incapable of doing so, you'd better be prepared with more statistical power than "they spend a lot of time & money convincing me how insanely great they are".
The final nail in this sorry coffin of corporate malfeasance is that even if consumers did value safety to the extent of choosing one platform over another on that basis, this can never justify actively misleading the consumer and requiring that other parties participate in the same deception.
Ok, you win. Apple doesn’t know it’s users, they put so much time, effort and marketing behind safety and security, while not understanding that customers don’t care about them.
It’s just random luck that despite being outsold 6-1 that they make more profits off smartphones than all other smartphone companies combined, and pay developers 50% more than any other company in earth. It can’t come from any deep understanding of what their customers want, since you don’t have a statistically viable sample confirming it.
The corporate malfeasance is using your market power to force third parties to mislead consumers. That's straight-up illegal in my country. I hope it is illegal in yours too.
Attributing Apple's 66% share of the global app store market to "consumers actually want a walled garden that lies to them" is wildly unfounded.
I don't have to prove anything, since I'm just calling out a unfounded claim being used to justify bad behaviour. If you want a forum where those will go unchallenged, and more apologists for the same, try an Apple website. Maybe there you can even get away with name-calling, and belittling major overseas markets as "small" (fun fact: wherever you are in the world, Korea has better broadband than you).
Same goes for any other platform like Google Play, Xbox, Nintendo, etc. Or selling concert tickets through Ticketmaster.
Also, it's not only about the App Store. You can't simply tell the iOS users of your mobile web app to use an Android device.
Half true. EPIC doesn't really get any value from the App Store except data delivery, which they're more than willing to do themselves. Fortnite is popular enough that the app discovery part of the store is meaningless.
For example, 10 years ago, when Epic made the Citadel demo for Apple to show their smartphones could run games. Ground breaking R&D work, gratis for Apple, & legitimizing their devices.
https://www.theverge.com/21405805/epic-citadel-2010-annivers...
We'll see how much more bad blood Apple can make with developers before people start noticing & caring about the software they can't get on their i-devices.
Apple's SDK doesn't contain a game engine.
2D => https://developer.apple.com/spritekit/
3D => https://developer.apple.com/scenekit/
Alongside lots of other game related goodies, https://developer.apple.com/games/
Second, who would adopt a platform specific "game engine" like scenekit? Are you going to rebuild your whole game to port it, is that the plan here? Apple is categorically unable to compete with actual game engines exactly because they dig their own hole, invent their own proprietary closed technologies (metal, scenekit) up & down the stack. They aren't playing keep up with the real tools, a game of "me too": they can't begin to compete with the real deal even if they tried.
Surely you must be joking?
Apple engines are so bad that Cocos2D-x is basically a copy of their features, using C++ instead of Objective-C/Swift, one of the engines that Google and Microsoft give first class on their platform SDKs.
Not every game engine needs to be a bullet point list copy of Unreal capabilities.
And no I am not joking, contrary to many here, I had a past life in demoscene, been a former IGDA member, previous GDCE attendee (London and Cologne), have been inside a couple of known AAA publishers and have kept my contacts from them.
10 years ago, Epic made the Citadel demo for themselves to show that smartphones could run Unreal Engine 3.
Unity was eating their lunch in mobile. They simply saw how dominant mobile gaming was becoming and did what they had to do to survive.
Absolutely no one was waiting for UE to legitimize Apple's devices. Game developers will use the tools that are present on the platform. All that matters is shipping the game.
The only people who were impressed with Epic's demos were the tech "press".
Apple didn't need Epic support, the only other phone that actually had hardware support for GL ES 1.0 was Nokia N95.
And mobile games have been a thing since J2ME, Brew, Symbian, Windows CE/Pocket PC, with stores getting commissions all the way up to 80%.
Maybe Epic would rather develop games against the early 2000's store model from mobile operators.
I think people underestimate the lengths bored teenagers will go through to play video games, especially free ones.
And Google's play store has value to Epic too - they started by only allowing Fortnight to be side loaded, and moved to the play store.
I suspect that the reason lots of people prefer these devices are precisely because of the app stores. They have confidence that they won't get viruses, confidence in the payment process, ability to lock down devices for kids etc. The ecosystem clearly has a lot of value.
This whole thing is about money. In the first year Epic made $500m from fortnight on ios. Of course they want a larger piece of the pie - Apple got $214m.
I'm not comparing iOS to Android - i'm comparing iOS to every platform EPIC makes money on. 20% is a big chunk yes, but 2 billion instead of 2.5 billion is still a ton of money, and they're obviously willing to sacrifice in order to get to their real goal - bringing the EPIC game store to iOS
If the iOS version was just an appetizer, then you wouldn't be pushing the volume of DLC that make the Apple tax so apparently onerous for them. If you switch to desktop then your purchases are pure profit for them. If not they still make a few bucks.
And since some people (of the younger variety) can't get a PC to game on, but do have a mobile device, cutting themselves off to that profit defeats some of the financial incentive to be on that platform.
Ah, I forgot that bit. So Epic wants to list their products on the App Store and pay Apple $299 a year while they're earning millions off of one game.
As an Apple shareholder, I have to ask: what are they putting in the water over at Epic?
The only charitable explanation I have is that they don't want to put it on the App Store at all, but they aren't allowed to do that.
That's exactly right - they want to be able to install their own EPIC Games store that they can manage and extract 10-15% ish of the sales.
Bear in mind Apple didn’t have to do a store at all. Steve Jobs was against the idea and wanted all iPhone apps to be in house from Apple only in order to maintain quality. Alternatively Apple could have implemented APIs and services for side loading apps like on Android. They chose a middle path, and why shouldn’t they? Are the two extremes really the only options that should be tolerated?
I think it's a very hard push to claim Apple is a monopoly. It's just a damn good platform that's able to claim a disporportionate share of the revenue because it's so damn good. The whole moralistic histrionics from Hey, Epic, and Apple are total rubbish though.
The legal controversy is that Apple prohibit apps from advertising, linking to, or even mentioning that external account management/payment/service sign-up options are available.
This forces vendors to become complicit in misleading the consumer about their options, an anti-competitive position that distorts a market.
Some journalists may choose to focus on the 30% out of sheer crassness. Don’t be misled by sub-par reporting.
I bought an item through Amazon recently and it did come with a bunch of materials inviting me to visit the manufacturer’s website.
I bought an app through the App Store and it is prohibited from inviting me to visit the vendor’s website.
In contrast, I bought a MMORPG through the PlayStation store and the first thing it did was direct me to the maker's account sign-up.
Do you think Apple own the apps that are installed on your phone? Do you think they own your phone? Your ongoing relationship with a software developer? Do you think you are the product here?
The answer for me: no, no, no, and no, respectively.
I'm pretty sure Walmart doesn't sell items in its stores that have text on the packaging about how to buy the item cheaper at Target, and it isn't particularly controversial that they do things that way.
As far as I'm aware app's web pages or other communication medium aren't prohibited from advertising whatever they want. Basically Apple is saying, "don't use our platform against us" which is what every for profit platform, ever, has done.
In some platonically ideal way it would be nice that it were otherwise, but it is in no way unusual or illegal to do what it is doing. Remembering the time of Verizon flip phones with locked down video services and tiny java apps, the freedom of an iPhone (once the app store was out) was actually unprecedented from day one from a mass consumer point of view- niche Nokia/Windows CE/Pocket phones to the side.
Let's say it's a water filter. Now it's a Walmart-specific water filter. When the filter module needs replacing, the vendor is now prohibited from selling me a replacement through any channel but Walmart, or even providing any contact details in the box to obtain a spare from them directly. You'd file that under "WTAF?" and complain to the nearest competition regulator.
So yes, this is unusual, and in my country at least, misusing your market power to force another party to mislead the consumer and distort a market is illegal.
Don't conflate the product with the platform. Otherwise you implicitly allow that you basically don't own the product even after you've bought it, which is unconscionable.
The question of course is an iPhone a specialized device or a general one. I would say Apple has worked as hard as it has to keep things locked down so it can say, with a straight face, that its platform is no different than a Kindle or a Leapfrog.
Its just a very successful specialized device that 3rd parties have decided to come and join the party (hosted by Apple.) So much like Xerox successfully fought off becoming a generic term, Apple is fighting off becoming a legally generic platform.
Apple's rules would prohibit it.
Apple's restrictions on any content that suggests the consumer may access services by any means other than making an in-app purchase are not "par for the course", they are an unusual abuse of market power that directly misleads the consumer.
I've also just re-read the App Store rules and noticed that for multi-platform services, it even contains a covenant outside of the walled garden: "your general communications about other purchasing methods must not discourage use of in-app purchase."
You can indeed find terms for physical products that they can't do this.
If someone did this with Wal-Mart, I imagine the best the manufacturer could hope for is that Wal-Mart returns all 'defective' products on the manufacturer's dime.
Of course it's controversial. Why should 30% be acceptable? Why not 50% or 70%? Or only 5%?
If you look at the app store revenue done by Apple and if you would be able look at the true cost of running it, one can agree that the huge markup is a racket.
In one case, the US fought a whole war over something that was previously legal for decades!
The lack of entrepreneurial imagination is astounding. VR and AR are coming, Facebook and Valve are poised to be the next kings of tech. The current era of Apple and Google has an obvious time limit.
They just have a tendency to keep things under wraps until the big reveal.
You aren't obligated to sue everyone breaking the law just because you sued one person that did, which seems to be the sum of the "but Xbox and playstation" argument. In that sense, literally not at all.
Intellectual consistency does matter in the sense that courts will... heavily frown upon... you arguing X in one case and not X in another. But that hasn't happened here.
"Is there any difference between Apple and Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo?" is a logical sequitur to "what's your market?" and "who holds the power?".
Epic might say yes, they might say no. Either way, I'm interested to hear the reasoning.
In this case, I fully expect the judges to ask some hard questions about why Epic seems so content with the consoles, while taking a bold stand for freedom on mobile, and only mobile.
I'll be up in the virtual peanut gallery munching popcorn the whole time. It's gonna be a ride.
Scientific journals
Vehicle firmware and apps
The list goes on.
Apple’s policies aren’t monopoly by any historic definition: it’s complaining about commission rates, not about blocking market access, since you always can just pick a different platform.
Unless iOS and Android needs to be declared a public utility.
My disagreement is with the belief that existing anticompetitive laws apply to this situation.
You can't have a successful app business without putting your offering in Apple's app store.
Our existing anti-trust laws absolutely apply here.
Who knows... we'll see I guess. I don't think Epic will win, but I hope something changes because I just really want to put my own app on my own phone and help my customers do the same.
I look forward to hearing an argument about how iPhones == all smart phones, or why the millions of users (including developer) who love the single-curator nature of iOS should be forcibly deprived of that.
(Sorry for the snark, just continuing the mimicry chain)
If it was Spotify or some other productivity apps like MS office it would have been better. But Gaming.....
I haven’t bought any IAPs for a console, so I’m not sure.
[1] https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/08/playstation_makes_mo...
UWP games on XBOX are for indies, or to sell game idea concepts to Microsoft, as means to get an invitation to the big boys club.
Isn't that the current situation on Android, and Epic still sued them?
I feel lost. Wanting to have a simple OS that lets me develop with unix tools but also "just works". The expense i pay for Apple products no longer follows this, for me.
All the Linux OSs i've tried is a mixed bag. A gamble. And i have a terrible experience with windows currently, so even ignoring Unix, Windows doesn't seem like an option.
I'll probably give Linux another try, i'm just concerned of driver issues primarily. Finding the right hardware, having trackpads and graphics cards not suck, etc.
The only think Epic Games can hope for at this point is for the court to find Apple is a monopoly and engaging in unfair business practices but I think that type of finding isn't even in the court's purview -- I think that anti-trust needs to be a suit from the US government? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
Probably, but I'm not a legal professional. But it is has actually happened before so maybe if the case for anti-trust is clear for Apple, it 'may' escalate to the US Government.
Meanwhile, Apple is enjoying hereto-unseen levels of financial and critical success.
The only things the majority of regular people are paying attention to is when the next iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods etcetera are going to drop.
It sounds like you're saying that companies should better not mess with Apple and that financial success puts you above criticism.
> Not sure what your point is.
Epic Games Asks Court to Allow Fortnite Back on the App Store: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/09/05/epic-injuction-fortnite...
At this point I’m convinced there needs to be a law against closed devices and closed software.
“Although Apple portrays itself as a modern corporate United Nations, in reality it is a multi-billion dollar enterprise that simply wants to get a cut for the tremendous value it partners derive to their platform.”
That being said, this is scary and also shows how comfortable Apple feels in their position. I am hoping that someone as strong as Apple will come with a lawsuit and shake them up a bit so to speak.
:)
Obviously they're losing revenue from Fortnite but that would have happened if Epic just decided they don't like the rules and took the app down themselves instead of breaking them. I can't imagine Apple would be entitled to damages then and I can't see how they've lost more money than that.
The other obvious thing is legal expenses, but you don't throw them in as damages during the case right? That'd be settled based on the result and depending on the jurisdiction.
I guess I can see them getting a few hours of someone's wage for re-reviewing Fortnite after the changes and taking it down?
I feel like I'm probably missing something, does anybody know the actual position Apple would argue for damages from here?
I think Apple would have had much more of an argument for lost revenue if they had kept the game on the store. It would be directly quantifiable, they could say "look, the game made x million and we received $0, we should have received $y".
But Apple has everyone chained up in the basement.
Epic may want you to think that, but it's just not true.
My reasoning? They already tried it on Android, and it failed miserably. They moved out the house entirely, taking their listing off the Play Store and allowing side-loading via their website. I'm assuming they also handled payments themselves, too.
A year or so, they came crawling back to Google, presumably due to a massive drop in users.
It's pretty clear that side-loading is not a commercially effective means of distribution, and publishers need the App/Play Stores to get to users.
They prepared a release that contained the ability to bypass the payment mechanism. Then they did that, and told Apple that was what they were doing. And then launched a big marketing campaign to rally support for it.
At least in facts, this wasn't a sudden action by Apple to crush an unsuspecting little player.
I can't imagine how big a backlash there would have to be for Apple to give up on it's 30% cut voluntarily, and I don't imagine that Epic thought there was any chance of this happening.
Say I am a mobile bank or some other kind of service that needs to reach all my customers on mobile.
There are significant populations across the world on iPhone, so to stay competitive as something like a challenger bank, ignoring iOS is simply not an option.
If the argument is that Apple provides payment processing, this is not a benefit as it's the only option, i.e. does not win on the merits.
As for game consoles, they're not essential. Smartphones are.
Here's one that's not paywalled for me, if someone else has an issue with it I will try to find another decent source that's not paywalled.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/08/epic-ap...
Alternatively,
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/08/apple-seeks-damages-from-epi...
Here's Epic demoing Fortnite at WWDC15: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChIuImrOsaY
Ever since the Citadel and Zen Garden demos, I remember Epic getting a prime spot or mention at almost every WWDC, where they used their tech to showcase Apple's and vice versa, like the power of modern iPads and Metal.
What do you think must have gone down behind closed doors for their relations to have soured to this point?
Unless of course it's all a calculated stunt that ultimately benefits both companies.
I mean, Epic will be able to argue that it was illegal, they were able to argue that anyways. The exact value for the cut isn't really a legal issue though, if the cut is legal in the first place then the existing contract will almost certainly hold and it will be 30%.
1. Can Epic establish that iOS app distribution is in fact a valid antitrust market that Apple has monopoly control over?
Epic argues that Apple is abusing its "monopoly" over the iOS app distribution market. However, in an antitrust case you cannot simply declare an arbitrarily narrow market where the defendant is the only participant and expect the court to accept it. iOS app distribution is an "aftermarket" of the smartphone market, and as a general rule, US courts do not permit antitrust markets to be based on a single brand's product unless specific exceptions are met.
> "In general, a manufacturer's own products do not themselves comprise a relevant product market..... [A] company does not violate the Sherman Act by virtue of the natural monopoly it holds over its own product." Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corp.
The circumstances in which the courts have allowed a single brand's product to be treated as a valid antitrust market have usually involved situations where the customer purchased a product not knowing they would be locked into some aftermarket restriction, for example due to a change in contract or company policy. If, on the other hand, customers knew about the restriction ahead of time, could have purchased an alternative product without restrictions, and went ahead and purchased anyway, the market power deriving from that restriction is generally not considered a valid basis for an antitrust claim.
Of particular note is that courts routinely reject market definitions based on restrictions stipulated in EULAs that customers voluntarily agreed to when purchasing the original product. For example, in Blizzard Entertainment Inc. v. Ceiling Fan Software LLC, the court rejected the defendant's claim that Blizzard held monopoly power in the "WoW add-on software" aftermarket, because WoW customers explicitly agreed to WoW's EULA stipulating they would only used Blizzard authorized WoW add-ons when they purchased the game. Similarly, in Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corp., the court rejected Psystar's claim that Apple held monopoly power in the "hardware that runs Mac OS" aftermarket because customers "knowingly agreed to the challenged restraint" when they purchaed Mac OS.
Interestingly enough, I double checked and surprisingly the iPhone EULA does not appear to have language restricting app installation to the "App Store and other authorized sources only". If it did, I believe Epic would have trouble getting past here. However, even in absence of an explicit contractual restriction, the court permits an analysis of "whether a consumer's selection of a particular brand in the competitive market is the functional equivalent of a contractual commitment". This analysis is explained in Newcal Industries, Inc. v. IKON Office Solution which describes four relevant aspects to consider:
a) The existence of two separate but related markets. Epic alleges these are "smartphone OSes" and "app distribution". It's not clear to me whether these two markets need to be economically distinct (more on the meaning of this below), but it could be problematic for Epic if they do.
b) The allegations of illegal monopolization relate only to the aftermarket. (This is a given.)
c) Whether the source of the company's market power is based on contractual provisions obtained in the initial market or based on the company's relationship with its customers. Epic argues that in the absence of a EULA there is no contractual relationship, while Apple will presumably argue that there is a quasi-contractual agreement in place because they made the app installation policy very clear at the launch of the App Store and it has never changed.
d) Whether market imperfections prevent customers from realizing their choice in the initial market will impact their freedom to shop in the aftermarket. In other words, did customers "make a knowing choice to restrict their aftermarket options" when they decided to buy an iPhone instead of a different phone that allowed side-loading?
I think Epic is going to have a particularly tough time establishing (c) and (d). If the court concludes that customers purchased iPhones knowing that they would be restricted to installing apps from the App Store, then Apple's "monopoly" over iOS app distribution is based on the customer's knowing consent, and therefore will not be a valid basis for an antitrust claim.
We'll see what the court decides. But in any event, even if Epic succeeds in proving that Apple has a monopoly over iOS app distribution, the job is not done. They then need to prove that Apple used that monopoly to illegally restrain competition in another market, which brings us to question 2.
2. Can Epic establish that iOS app payment processing is a separate and distinct product from iOS app distribution?
In order to prove Apple illegally tied app distribution and payment processing together, Epic will need to show that the two are actually economically distinct products.
> "[T]here must be a coherent economic basis for treating the tying and tied products as distinct. All but the simplest products can be broken down into two or more components that are "tied together" in the final sale. Unless it is to be illegal to sell cars with engines or cameras with lenses, this analysis must be guided by some limiting principle. For products to be treated as distinct, the tied product must, at a minimum, be one that some consumers might wish to purchase separately without also purchasing the tying product. When the tied product has no use other than in conjunction with the tying product, a seller of the tying product can acquire no additional market power by selling the two products together." Jefferson Parish Hospital Dist. No. 2 v. Hyde
In Jefferson Parish, the Supreme Court ruled anesthesiological services were not economically distinct from hospital services because anesthesiological services were always sold in conjunction with other hospital services, and therefore tying the two together was not illegal. In Rick-Mik Enterprises, Inc. v. Equilon Enterprises, LLC, credit card processing was considered an essential component of a gas station franchise and therefore was not economically distinct from the sale of the franchise itself. The legal test for whether two tied products are economically distinct has historically depended on whether consumer demand exists for the tied product separate from the tying product, but it's not clear whether that test is appropriate here.
For the case of paid apps, there clearly aren't economically distinct products. If Apple distributes a paid app on behalf of a developer and collects a fee in exchange, the fee is the cost of using Apple's distribution service. Distribution and payment happen simultaneously, they are not separate services, therefore there is no tie between them.
Now, what happens if Apple initially distributes the app without a fee and (later) takes a fee when an in-app purchase is made? Does the act of deferring the payment from the download create two economically distinct products when before there was only one? Apple argues that it does not, and similar to Rick-Mik, in-app payment processing is simply a component of its app distribution service.
I don't know if this argument will hold up in court but it's certainly very interesting and probably venturing into uncharted territory as far as existing precedent is concerned. But if the court does decide that in-app payment processing services are not economically distinct from app distribution services, then Epic is going to have difficulties with their tying claim.
Overall these are very tough questions and as the judge said, it's not a slam dunk for either side. I tend to think Epic is fighting the uphill battle here, as existing US antitrust law seems like it favors the defendant in cases like this. If Epic does win, it's certainly going to open up a lot of similar questions for other companies that sell tightly controlled hardware and software. (Particularly on the console side, but also stuff like smart TVs and even cars.)
If Apple loses and is forced to allow Tim Sweeney Store on its platform, then Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo must allow the same on their consoles.
Remember that on Android they first tried to workaround Google Play's limitations by distributing Fortnite outside the store. They caved later. So this isn't about having no ability to distribute Fortnite, rather it's about them wanting easy distribution without paying the tax that everyone else is paying.
I dislike Apple's walled garden approach very much, but on the other hand it's their app store and this is still capitalism. If you don't like it, as a consumer, buy another brand, and as a developer, avoid developing for Apple. Develop for Android, develop for the open web. Voting with your wallet still works, the problem being, of course, that Apple fans are happy with the current arrangement.
And seriously, I can't side with a company willing to sell people's data for marketing purposes. Sorry.
I'm the first to criticize Apple for its attitude towards users and developers, but I'm struggling to see how it falls afoul of the law. It's their walled garden - don't like it? Don't play in it.
But the little people in my life are missing the corporate synergy of Marvel and Fortnite for the new season. This makes just having iOS devices in your world less palatable and teaches a valuable lesson on walled gardens.
Saddly Fortnite is one of the rare games that is cross platform online playable. It took their weight to make that happen.
Wish Epic would work to make linux a more viable native gaming platform now (steam does a lot of work with Proton, but I think native might be better...).