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Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

Interesting to see the judge bring up the same points that so many have here on HN, myself included. I've read a few articles about this topic, not just this one, but some good points I saw from another article [1]:

> Judge Rogers questioned Epic on when, exactly Apple became a monopoly given that its App Store rules have remained unchanged since the App Store launched, which Epic had no solid answer for, responding only that it was a monopoly when Fortnite came to iOS in 2018. She also said that walled gardens have existed for four decades and that what Apple's doing isn't too different. "They created a platform," she said

> She also reiterated that Epic Games made a "calculated decision" to defy Apple's App Store rules, and the court doesn't provide injunctions for contractual disputes. Epic was "not forthright," she said. "There are people in the public who consider you guys heroes for what you did, but it's not honest.

> Epic Games continued to argue that Apple has an App Store monopoly and charges excessive fees, but the judge pointed out that the 30 percent rate that Apple collects is the "industry rate" collected by PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Google, and more. "It's all 30 percent and you just want to gloss over it," the judge said to Epic's lawyers.

I don't remember where I read this but someone mentioned that the judge asked Apple why they charge 30%, which I found to be a bit of a strange thing to ask (and probably a bit of a softball). Why not 30%? Why not 40%? Why do companies have margins that they set that the market will bear at all? Etc.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2020/09/28/epic-games-apple-disput...

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It's not illegal to be a monopoly.

What's illegal is taking advantage of your monopoly position. Microsoft was a monopoly? That was fine. Microsoft forced people towards Internet Explorer? Trouble.

Yes but the 30% cut (which is supposedly taking advantage of their monopoly) existed from the very beginning. They didn't eventually become a monopoly and then up prices to extort money from developers. From the very start they charged 30%, and despite of that fee, they still gained a huge market share. I would argue that because they were able to gain a monopoly without changing their fees, that the fees are not taking advantage of monopoly whatsoever.

It is not a monopoly. You are spinned. The answer is key. Can’t be monopoly like this legally. Otherwise you may be charged of monopoly of selling coffee in your backyard as only you can do it.

Not just that, to be honest Apple App do not spill over even. You do not need to run in Apple store unlike in 1990 you basically have to run windows.

The people who choose iPhones don't know that they pay almost 50% extra per purchase since Apple doesn't allow apps to show it.

How did you get the 50% figure?

And an extra compared to what exactly? The fee is identical on the Play Store.

username90 probably just used math:

Example: $2 in other app store, $3 in Apple app store.

Subtract 30% from $3 ≈ $2.

$3 is 50% more than $2.

Microsoft at the time owned 90 percent of the entire computer market.

The only thing Apple has a monopoly on is things Apple sells. If it is deemed that you can have a monopoly of a subset of a market, ask yourself how this will be applied to other businesses in the future. Does a mall have a legal (not colloquial) monopoly on stores in the mall?

Edit: If you make a game that has a store in it, do you have to let others sell thing in your game’s store. You have a monopoly on things sold in your game. Your game is a platform.

As someone who develops on these platforms, the problem is how difficult it is to get true figures for market share.

If you just search "Apple vs Android market share" you get an incredibly false picture of reality.

Android isn't just Android. It's everything from a flagship like a Galaxy S20 to a "Galaxy A2 Core" destined for low-income markets that was never meant to compete with an iPhone, and for which most app's target markets might as well not exist.

I remember a conversation with Jake Wharton where he insisted it was fine for apps to adopt the iOS strategy of dropping older OS versions extremely quickly. His reasoning the devices that have owners who spend the vast majority of money on the platform have newer devices that get updates.

To some degree he was right (not enough to excuse the absymal Android update ecosystem but I digress)

We've reached the point where even things that are comparatively used as "semi-dumb phones" show up under Android figures because of how ubiquitous of an OS it is. There are a ton of Android devices out there that are 3 or 4 major versions behind, leading a lot of developers to support them.

But if you actually look at top app revenues' (of which I've seen a few now), they consistently might as well not exist.

For that reason, if we actually shave that down to people who are paying into the app ecosytem (ie. look at the customers of the app developers, not the customers of the phone manufacturers) , suddenly you realize why so many apps and games go iOS-first for development:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/03/apples-app-store-...

It's no contest, Apple dominates the market for actually making money off apps. Because it's not just that Apple is making more gross revenue, it's the fact they're doing it with a third of the installs(!!!)

It's a one-two punch against Android devs since, as installs scale, support and review problems scale, while revenue is not scaling at all with it vs iOS.

It's a reflection of what I mentioned above, just how many Android devices are really not iPhone competitors, and not catering to a demographic that spends money on apps.

The average developer is making many times what their Android equivalent is making per app. You can make money on Android, but if you're blocked off from iOS, you're hurting in a huge way.

> > Epic Games continued to argue that Apple has an App Store monopoly and charges excessive fees, but the judge pointed out that the 30 percent rate that Apple collects is the "industry rate" collected by PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Google, and more. "It's all 30 percent and you just want to gloss over it," the judge said to Epic's lawyers.

She also glossed over the fact that software can be distributed free with its own payment systems in laptop/desktop OSs like Windows, OS X, Ubuntu etc. When I paid for Sublime I didn't go into an App Store to pay for it.

Smartphone/tablet OSs are logical successors to the laptop/desktop OSs we have not game consoles. They are general purpose computing platforms.

Based on existing law, why is the laptop/desktop model inherently superior to the game console model?

> Based on existing law, why is the laptop/desktop model inherently superior to the game console model?

Superior for developers because their margins improve. For low margin ones like Spotify that is make or break, especially when you take into account that they are fighting with preinstalled and OS promoted incumbents in both the platforms like Apple Music which are not subjected to the same.

Your example seems particularly weird to me since Spotify's business is having extremely broad hardware support. They set up shop on everyone's platform. I'm sure desktop/laptop listening is a sizable chunk of their use but it's probably dwarfed by all the cars, phones, smart speakers, TVs.

>Superior for developers because their margins improve.

First, this is debatable itself, walled gardens bring their own advantages for developers too. But second, why exactly should developers be the primary concern? There are three parties involved after all: the platform creator/maintainer, the developers, and the users. Why should users not have the choice to essentially collaborate with the platform creator to promote their interests, even at the expense of the developers?

I mean, I know this is HN, and a lot of us wear developer hats. But we tend to wear user hats too, and even in many cases family (or business) support hats. Switching to one of those, developers on open platforms are often jackasses and can develop their own power imbalance vs users. Sometimes (often even!) a single particular piece software can become so vital and represent so much investment that it's much harder to substitute than even the platform itself. At that point any single user faces big hurdles vs the developer. The likes of Adobe and others have repeatedly been able to force very user hostile choices on their customer base because their customers couldn't really coordinate collective action.

One thing Apple offers is a way to buy into a collective action system against developers. For many people that's not a bug, that's a feature, so complaining about how developers are "hurt" or "make less money" isn't going to sway them one bit, quite the contrary. They're generally glad when Apple tells devs their way or the highway[Android/Linux/Mac/Windows]. Of course, this concentration of power also has negative implications too in terms of censorship, inability to do some very useful creative development and utilities, potential for major harm if/when Apple goes bad, etc.

But too many on HN have refused to recognize the strengths and the reasons why it's been popular and to try to find ways to incorporate some or all of those while still allowing power users/misfits/hackers to push the envelope. I think our collective disdain for many regular non-tech users is part of why we've ended up in this mess in the first place.

This comment is 100% true.

But for a user, especially a non technical one, a walled garden is a superior ux. Updates automatically, single stop to find anything and easy discovery, no worry of viruses/malware except in extreme circumstances, cheap apps (never seen a .99 app in the wild) etc.

Automatic updates, single stop and little worry for malware are all perfectly achievable without a walled garden. It's been a thing on Linux for ages. It even gives you the choice of how high you want your walls, whether you only trust the debian developers or a user-made aur package or anything in-between.

And yet the only way it was successful on the mainstream was via ChromeOS and Android, which hide from userspace that they are even using the Linux kernel.

You are confusing "because of" with "in spite of"

Where is the evidence that any of that was required?

Apparently yes, given the amount of "Linux" developers that rather pay Apple for a UNIX desktop experience instead of making "Year of Desktop Linux" actually turn into a reality beyond the usual 2% from Steam surveys.

Perfectly achievable, at the expense of being an end user nightmare.

The reason I'm buying an iPhone is I don't have the time to care about how high the walls should be and to ensure every app I use isn't abusing the SDK to suck up data. The reason I'm paying a premium for Apple is I'm choosing to trust them rather than trust every developer.

The day apple, microsoft or google would manage updates of a whole system as well as some linux distribution would actually be the end of many user nightmares.

Unless you don't install any app, you still trust all the developers of the apps you install. Walled garden is just a nice way to name Authoritarianism applied to a platform.

It might make you feel safe to have apple deciding every bits of what you can do with your phone but it does mean that: - it's secure - the apps you are using are - you still have very low control over your data.

You just pay to close your eyes and feel safe.

That’s true of all closed source software, not just walled gardens. Any time you don’t have the source, you’re trusting that the developer isn’t screwing you over.

I’d rather trust Apple than the cumulative two dozen developers that have their software running on my phone.

Or to put it another way, Apple provides systems administrator services with every phone. Most medium and large businesses pay a LOT of money for systems administration to ensure that their desktops and laptops work reliably.

In the Spotify analogy, maybe the music artists would play the role of developers here—-get squeezed for the benefit of end users and the platform owner.

Going beyond that, even if it is superior, why should the game console model be illegal?

It's not even just the game console model.

It's ANY company that offers a closed platform e.g. Shopify addons.

So basically what the judge is saying is that people should be able to install stuff from outside the App Store?

I mean, it isn't a big deal there because you can just go purchase these stuff on other stores.

> Smartphone/tablet OSs are logical successors to the laptop/desktop OSs we have not game consoles. They are general purpose computing platforms.

Game consoles are general computing platforms as much as anything. Like Apple's devices they are artificially restricted with a walled garden model.

"I own this device, therefore I should be able to run anything I want" is an argument I can understand. "Company X invented this platform and therefore can choose what to allow to run on it" is also an argument I can understand (though I disagree). What I can't understand is this argument that Apple specifically shouldn't be allowed to restrict software but game consoles should.

> What I can't understand is this argument that Apple specifically shouldn't be allowed to restrict software but game consoles should.

If it was upto me, I would even argue for fairer rules there. Right now, it is Apple and they are sitting on a much more important computing platform for developers in terms of value, so I am fine if companies concentrate their efforts on iOS. If a precedent comes from this that can be applied in other places, I am all for it.

The main selling point of game consoles are uniform hardware specs and knowing that the console can run all games released on it. That isn't true for phones.

Maybe not in the Android case, but in the iPhone case, it is pretty much true and there are clear ways to deal with the variances in capabilities between iPhone models. It's a much more predictable platform than for PCs or even Macs.

It isn't true in the iphone case either, they don't create a new appstore when they release new hardware generations so they don't check if apps works fine on older hardware nor do they guarantee that the software you buy in their appstore continues to work after updates. Instead it is up to the software provider to update things when Apple breaks their product and to inform the user of which phone can run the app.

PS4 plays the same games as ps4 pro, but has different specs

s/games/software and this could be a quote from 5 years ago about how nice it is to develop for iOS because of its uniform hardware and how long Apple supports their devices.

We can go back and forth naming differences between phones and consoles: phones are smaller and have cellular chips, consoles are usually connected to TVs -- but if you can't say why a difference is so fundamental that they should be treated as entirely different classes of things then it doesn't matter.

What are you talking about? The iphone appstore haven't had uniform hardware since 2008 when the second generation iphone was released.

>We can go back and forth naming differences between phones and consoles: phones are smaller and have cellular chips, consoles are usually connected to TVs -- but if you can't say why a difference is so fundamental that they should be treated as entirely different classes of things then it doesn't matter.

Here's the fundamental bit:

For the vast majority, it's the primary (often only) way to connect with friends, family, colleagues, employers, news, government services, education, wayfinding, banking, emergency services, the entirety of the worlds information, and the world economy.

It also contains peoples most personal thoughts, search history, intimate conversations/photos, location history, political affiliations, and social graph.

For most of the disabled and/or isolated, it affords them a degree of dignity and inclusion that is life changing.

The above is doubly true in a post Covid world.

So, you can't artificially limit the discussion to technical similarities. The societal implications (the real fundamentals) should matter more than anything. Do you really want a world where we make our decisions based on what's best for society, or solely on what is technically true (smartphones and consoles are both just computers!)

We already treat things differently solely because of their importance to society, safety, health, and the economy. Yes, that does mean smartphones are, in a way, victims of their own success because they will be treated differently.

But that's not any different from other fundamental inventions in history (the printing press, banking, emergency services, automobiles, communications, etc).

NOTE: I'm not advocating for, or against, any specific policy. I'm only pointing out why equating consoles and smartphones is denying some very basic realties about how much the economy and society relies on smart phones (compared to consoles).

The vast majority of the world does not use smart phones.

And all of what you listed above applies to computers.

Your first point is not correct, there are about 3.5 billion smart phone users out there. https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-w...

The vast majority of the world doesn't have toilets or running water. Yet we still consider those essential.

> Game consoles are general computing platforms as much as anything.

By their technical base, yes, but not by their usecase. Consoles have games and apps for media-consumption, but no apps for working, managing your life or other stuff. They are limited in the category of apps they allow, while smartphones and tablets are free for everything (even though they have some restrictions on the type of content they allow in their own app stores).

Your argument is circular. Game consoles don't have "apps for working, managing your life or other stuff" because they are controlled by a walled garden that prevents that kind of software from being developed. You're essentially saying "they're a walled garden, so they should be a walled garden".

Maybe your attention is circular, when you can't even think outside of a single comments.

The discussion is about smartphones, not consoles. And I explained that the technical base is irrelevant for whether it's a walled garden or not, because the purpose and usecase are different. Smartphones and Consoles are both universal computing platforms, but only consoles are also used as a universal device, while consoles are walled by design/purpose. So consoles being walled gardens has no relation to whether smartphones should or should not be walled gardens.

The judge in the case - an actual lawyer - disagrees with you.

>Smartphones and Consoles are both universal computing platforms, but only consoles are also used as a universal device, while consoles are walled by design/purpose

This is a very loose concept that you are arguing should be law. Fine, smartphones are "universal computing" platforms. Tablets are mostly used for media consumption - is the iPad exempt? If a manufacturer releases a Windows PC and calls it a "Home Theater PC", are they now exempt from the "universal platform" rule? If Sony allows users to install other OSs on their PlayStation, the PlayStation now a "universal device"? If a developer releases a calendar application or Slack on the PS4, will the PS4 be converted to a "universal" device?

Or now that we have this carve out for "universal platforms" should Epic continue to pay the Apple 30% because it's a "gaming app"?

Your console carveout is completely arbitrary.

The app stores for PSP, Vita and Switch happen to disagree.

> What I can't understand is this argument that Apple specifically shouldn't be allowed to restrict software but game consoles should.

Well, I didn't see anyone here saying that game consoles should restrict software they run. They are in the monopoly wagon as much as Apple.

Users should be allowed to run any software on their machine.

You can, if you wipe the content-specific platform.

Then there is still monopoly on that content-specific platform.

Think of it as if philips screwdriver producer forbid using those screwdrivers with posidriv heads (it is less efficient but works).

And there would be those that would say: "this is their product, they can dictate how it can be used".

Is there? I bought a closed-platform device by choice.

I don't buy a Phillips screwdriver expecting it to work on a Robertson head because I think it should fit every case.

But you buy it to use it they way you see fit (I assume), not they way the producer did.

I still amazes me that people don't have problem with computer hardware+software being closed, enforced, EULA driven.

And at the same time they expect to be able to e.g. use knife to open a box and not only cut bread (enforced by EULA).

This is similar to what is happening right now with the right to repair of tractors.

I can use that screwdriver to try and hammer in a nail, sure. It probably won't work well and I'll likely break the screwdriver or the nail or the other purpose they're both serving.

That's not the fault of the company that designed, manufactured, and sold the screwdriver, though.

But they won't stop me from doing that either. But they did design the Phillips screwdriver to work optimally with Phillips head screws, so that's what I actually bought it for and use it for.

The EULA doesn't prevent you from wiping your iPhone and doing anything with it. It's your hardware. You won't see any warranty help after that, but that's not their problem at that stage. You can even try to use your iPhone as a hammer, but I wouldn't recommend that either. It wasn't designed that way, but you're totally free to do so.

Personally, I bought my phone to use it the way it was designed, because I liked the design—not in spite of it.

Where is the Robertson head that I can fit in my pocket and also runs iOS, though?

I think you're lumping contractual EULAs with technical limitations and they're not the same thing.

If I bought a system that I am technically able to install anything I want onto, I don't think courts should enforce a EULA that forbids me from doing so.

But that doesn't mean I think the courts should forbid the manufacturer from implementing technical controls to stop unapproved software from being installed.

Those are two very different things, and the courts should treat them differently.

For one, there are consumers who buy iOS devices explicitly because they are hardened against unapproved software. Comparing the amount of malware on Android with what is on iOS proves that this is not an irrational decision.

I don't choose to buy a device like that, but I don't want courts saying that companies are not legally allowed to make such devices.

> Game consoles are general computing platforms as much as anything. Like Apple's devices they are artificially restricted with a walled garden model.

This is true that game consoles are walled gardens. But the question is, what is the market like for game consoles, when you compare common substitutes, as compared to what the market is like for smartphones.

I would argue that the game console market is much less concentrated than the smart phone market.

Anti-competitive practices are only illegal if a company has significant market power. And, IMO, Apple has much more market power than playstation, given that Apple controls about 50% of the smartphone market, in the USA.

> What I can't understand is this argument that Apple specifically shouldn't be allowed to restrict software but game consoles should.

The reason is because Apple controls half the smartphone market, in the USA, whereas game consoles don't have that much market power, especially, if one were to claim that the PC market competes with game consoles. (Which I say that it would. And I would also not say that smartphones compete with game consoles)

Apple's actions only become illegal, because of the combination of both their actions, and the fact that they have significant market power.

Furthermore the Xbox at least does let you install arbitrary unsigned software.

Citation? Last I checked this was only relevant for devices in Developer mode, and required a bunch of hackery. That is little different from installing apps on your iPhone from Xcode, which Apple also allows...

Logical successors or not, the walled garden economic model remains actively in-use and viable on gaming platforms, and has not been found to be legally unacceptable to date. What basis exists for the walled garden economic model to be decreed unlawful, whether for video games or applications or any other digital content? How would that basis be legally distinctive from the walled gardens of physical retail stores?

The judge’s point is that this - “walled gardens” - is an economically sound and widely-used practice that has not previously been found to be unlawful, and therefore (likely) no basis exists to find in favor of Epic’s claims at this stage of the proceedings.

(Usual disclaimer applies: I am not your lawyer, I will not prepare additional citations, please seek legal counsel before taking action based on anything written above.)

> is an economically sound and widely-used practice that has not previously been found to be unlawful

Not unlawful maybe, but unfair? I think the answer is yes.

It's already happened.

Being politically influential, vertically integrated, well organized, and able to negotiate cohesively as a cartel, the Seven Sisters were initially able to exert considerable power

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_(oil_companies)

Apple is more powerful, more influential, more vertically integrated and more capitalized than any of those companies.

I'm not sure I understand your argument or your views, as there is only the assertion about Apple ("Apple is more powerful...") provided without any of your own views explaining how that assertion has any bearing on this matter. If you can offer any further explanation of how to connect your comment with the case under discussion, I'd love to consider it in more detail. Anyways, proceeding with the best I can offer —

Do you believe that a US judge can issue a summary judgment against a defendant based solely on fairness, when based solely on case law they are not guilty of any crime? (Apple is the defendant, and US law is biased in favor of defendants in various respects.) I believe that such a finding, whether by a judge or a jury, usually results in the judgment being overturned by the appellate court.

In the context of the Seven Sisters example, then, the simple-test question for finding a judicial bridge for the connection between the Seven Sisters and Apple is below. I use "without basis in law" as a superset of "unfair but not unlawful". I would hazard a guess that the answer to this question is "No." but I haven't researched it further.

"In cases where the US member(s) of the Seven Sisters were defendants, did a judge or jury ever find against them without basis in law, and in such cases, were any of those judgments allowed to stand by the appellate court?"

> Do you believe that a US judge can issue a summary judgment against a defendant based solely on fairness,

As Italian, I don' t believe USA can deliver justice at all (I can make tons of examples).

Se also Assange.

To make it clear: this is a discussion board, someone said it's not unlawful, I replied unlawful it's not the only thing that matters.

For example: in US it is not unlawful to not pay maternity leave, it's unlawful in Europe.

It's unfair in general, so, in my opinion, unfair laws should be changed to make society more fair (as fair as possible)

That's the point.

The power Apple detains make opposing to some of their rules unfair (and impossible) hence the laws are somewhat lacking somewhere.

You probably don' t know him, but Enrico Mattei was killed because he broke the seven sister's oligopoly.

When companies are too powerful, they are dangerous.

When they have global power, they are globally dangerous.

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

The job of the judge is to determine legality based on existing legislation and precedence.

If you want a judge to make a decision based on nonexistent law, you will need Congress to pass a law that they can use first.

> Smartphone/tablet OSs are logical successors to the laptop/desktop OSs we have not game consoles.

I think that's a case a person could make in a court of law, but there are also compelling cases for "It's more like a console than not" and for "It's its own thing, a separate category of computing device, which should be beholden to a separate set of rules."

The App Store was one of the value-adds Apple brought to the smartphone ecosystem. In a system of heterogeneous methods to put apps on phones (if the app suite was configurable at all and not pre-loaded onto the device), Apple provided a system where they would do quality curation of the apps that were loaded on the device they made and a clean, obvious method to track the apps a person wanted on their device and install them. No complex configuration, no different-installers-for-different-apps, none of that PC-ecosystem nonsense. Along with the iPhone API (that erred on the side of performance over flexibility), it brought a strong product to market.

It's possible what is offered now isn't the same thing, but I think a case could be made by a competent lawyer that the store is part of the entire product offering and makes for a better consumer product, which is what US antitrust law often hinges on (consumer harm).

That argument is self-defeating.

The argument that there is some other platform where software is distributed for free relies on that platform being comparable iOS.

If it is comparable to iOS, then consumers can just choose it instead.

> Smartphone/tablet OSs are logical successors to the laptop/desktop OSs we have not game consoles. They are general purpose computing platforms.

Yes, let's ignore the actual predecessors of smartPHONES, you know, cellPHONES. It makes our argument much easier, much.

Surely you remember the original iPhone announcement: being able to call people was only a very minor point in that presentation even then. I would bet money that the iPhone 12 announcement will not have anybody demonstrating the phone capabilities at all.

You should go back and rewatch that original iPhone announcement. Phone calls were a major highlight. They did a live, on-stage conference call between Jobs, Ive, and Schiller. Jobs phoned in the infamous thousand latte order to Starbucks. Features like Visual Voicemail were heavily promoted.

And the second-most important feature was that it played music stored locally on device.

I brought it up precisely for that phone call. You must remember what prompted it, right? Jobs didn’t go into his phone book and dial the number–he looked it up from maps. And that is precisely how people use iPhone today: they do a bunch of other things and also call sometimes. To be honest, I take more phone calls from my Mac than my iPhone.

Well, yeah. The presentation showed emergent new ways to place calls. Not sure how this contradicts the original point that iPhone was an evolution of the cell phone.

It’s a phone. An iPod. A revolutionary internet communicator.

A phone. An iPod. A revolutionary internet communicator.

Are you getting it?

I am. You can see that the phone part must be at least less than a third of the device ;)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but did not Apple create the first app store and then set it, perhaps somewhat arbitrarily, to 30%? After that, all others simply followed suit and set their cut to 30% too?

If so, I would argue that it's high time to revisit the 30% charge. Whatever happened, competition among platforms did not reduce the 30% fee. I'm not sure why, but even if we cannot prove that there was price fixing, the Apple app store and other platforms have become so powerful that individuals and small companies cannot negotiate with any of the stores for a fair price.

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but did not Apple create the first app store...

Steam, at least, has it beat, in 2005: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag_Doll_Kung_Fu

I'm fairly certain there were apps available for purchase on Nokia and other phones well before that, as well.

App Store didn't come until 2008.

The revenue model was very different for Nokia software, carriers were involved and revenue distribution was somewhat byzantine, if i remember correctly. One of the reasons developers jumped on the AppStore was that it simplified things pretty dramatically from the previous status-quo: they only had to deal with Apple. One of the reasons Nokia struggled to relaunch was that they couldn’t wiggle themselves out of these relationships with carriers, this albatross around their neck. In that sense, the AppStore was undoubtedly a step forward. That doesn’t mean it’s an eternally-perfect solution.

Like in many other issues involving Apple, what looked like a positive change in immediately-pragmatic terms ended up being a faustian bargain in the long run. Maybe we should just discuss this in terms of “10+ years have passed, things have changed, what was good before might be bad today”. Stuff like the single non-negotiable browser engine was a curiosity and a small impediment 13 years ago, but now it’s a real threat to the health of the web ecosystem. Same for the single-appstore model, which effectively enables a rent-seeking cartel (Apple and Google) which any serious antitrust scholar should find abhorrent.

There were (a few, not just one) app stores on Palm OS devices too. I forget the year and I don't know what the cut was.

I vaguely remember that when Steam launched and started charging 30%, it was way less than what retail charges.

The list of companies: PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Google, and more

Include many (hint - the first 3) that were taking huge chunks of game publishers' money long before the iOS App Store ever existed. There were also many app stores for palmOS, WinCE, etc. some of which collected far more than 30%.

The Wii Shop Channel predates it by a few years.

There was ClubNokia where you could pay by SMS for ringtones and on certain phones - games. Many 3rd s60 app stores were just credit card collection places and malware distribution centers. None of the stores were preloaded on the phone.

Steam probably had first "app store", but it has to be installed separately and usually you don't have to use it for the most part - you often could buy it online directly from the publisher or on CD/DVD.

PS Store launched in 2006. That's closest to what Apple did. Actually, exactly the same for most part until Apple added in-app, subscriptions etc. Difference was that to get listed on App Store you just had to pay $100 and make application that follows guidelines.

Here is where there are lot differences:

- Legally you can't sell any software for PlayStation without Sony getting a cut. - That includes physical media - Steam can only get it cut from sales on its store - Publishers/developers can either sell directly to you without anyone getting a cut - Or they can sell you a steam code and then steam doesn't get a cut

This is why I'm saying that Apple is closer to Sony than Steam.

I don't know where 30% cut came from, but I know steam has the same cut.

There were app stores for feature phones where you could download J2ME apps way before the iPhone came out. Sprint ran one.

> I don't remember where I read this but someone mentioned that the judge asked Apple why they charge 30%, which I found to be a bit of a strange thing to ask (and probably a bit of a softball). Why not 30%? Why not 40%? Why do companies have margins that they set that the market will bear at all? Etc.

Presumably, if they’d said “because that’s what Google is/was charging”, it could be pursued as price fixing.

> Presumably, if they’d said “because that’s what Google is/was charging”, it could be pursued as price fixing.

That's not price fixing if they make the decision to match Google on their own, rather than in concert with Google.

If Apple chose to match the existing industry standard percentage but has not fixed any prices, is that price-fixing?

Not without coordination with other vendors, no.

The number probably came from looking at what brick and mortar stores do. Typically stores "mark up" products by 40% from their distributors. And if you think about it, that's effectively what Apple does, but in this case, the distributor (aka app developer) has to "mark-up" the price to cover the cost incurred by selling in the app store. In general this practice is pretty common in retail.

The fact that there even is an "industry rate" is evidence of price fixing, if not by the legal definition (which may require explicit collusion) then by the layperson's definition.

Rogers that, the makers of Fortnite were not Forthright. That's an Epic wordplay of the judge.

IIRC, the 30% was chosen so Apple would roughly break even on credit card processing for $1 apps.

So Apple effectively only gets revenue from apps $2+, which then subsidizes the costs of reviewing and distributing the plethora of apps that are free.

In a way, it's a similar principle to progressive taxation. If your paid app is a hit on the App Store, then it's helping support the existence of all the free ones too.

That’s some BS argument people came up with in the beginning g because they saw thst 30% was similar to the credit card processing fees you’d find.

Apple isn’t paying 30c + 2.9% i.e. 33c that someone with no experience ever can get on opening a Shopify store.

They do more than payment processing on the App Store. So it’s possible they approximately break even on 99c apps. And every free app is a loss.

> the judge pointed out that the 30 percent rate that Apple collects is the "industry rate" collected by PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Google, and more. "It's all 30 percent and you just want to gloss over it," the judge said to Epic's lawyers.

Justifying lax antitrust with the fact that other, similar market-power abuses, have also been permitted in the current lax antitrust atmosphere... as close to circular logic as it gets.

So you think Apple is abusing its extraordinary monopoly power by... charging what everyone else is charging?

I think legally it makes a pretty big difference: abusing a monopoly is considered a social bad because and to the extent that it results in higher prices for consumers.

> So you think Apple is abusing its extraordinary monopoly power by... charging what everyone else is charging?

By not allowing anyone to charge differently on iDevices.

If they had a monopoly, they should do better than 30% though? Chums like Google who don’t have the monopoly charge 30%. Hell, Twitch takes 50%, right?

If Apple is the only game in town they should charge like 99%. Developers have no choice, right?

> charging what everyone else is charging?

"Everyone else" being other middle-men with enormous market power?

> higher prices for consumers.

Monopoly and market power can also kill companies that "should have" prospered, depriving consumers of choice. Like the supermarket that gives preferential treatment to products owned by the same conglomerate, or the search giant that prioritizes its own services [1]. I would consider that a social bad as well.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24633387

No walled gardens should be beyond reproach IMO. I think Epic has it's work laid out for it, and they would definitely have a shot with a jury trial, and likely at the Supreme Court given Apple vs Pepper.

It's sometimes interesting to look at the history of walled gardens and how they came to be. Nintendo's console model, for example, was a direct reaction to previous failed no-walled-gardens models where consumer confidence that they weren't burning money buying a lemon console that only supported crappy games cracked.

On phones, Symbian and Blackberry were about as open as Android is currently (though signing apps was partially required IIRC). iOS/iPhones has always been closed except for the web browser.

I think there are completely valid cases for having a locked down phone, but it should be up to the user, not the device/OS maker. In this case, I don't think a phone developer can negotiate fair terms until the users have choice.

Single purpose locked-down devices are all around us from ereaders to TV streaming boxes to game consoles, and here I think it's important to distinguish by purpose from the more general purpose of a phone.

In the sense that nobody is obligated to buy an iPhone (and can jailbreak one after buying it, for that matter), it is up to the user. For the consumer, they have more choice if Android-style "app store but also side-loading," phones that lack an app store altogether, and iPhone-style walled garden coexist.

If you have a company phone you have a different type of walled garden than even what the iPhone provides through some MDM layer. Apple could offer such a separate MDM-based consumer product and also allow side loading.

Microsoft was forced to open up browsing/programming/AV APIs, on which future innovation was built. What Epic is asking for is no different IMO. I just don't think the benefits of multiple open platforms can be understated similar to Windows vs. Linux over the last twenty years.

Both Linux and Windows represent terrible user experiences for many users. Windows, until recent improvements, had a very rocky relationship with being online (primary attack target for viruses, rootkits, and botnets). The Linux ecosystem's user-hostility to the average computer user is the stuff of legend, although things have obviously improved greatly (this is still not the year that Linux on the desktop gains mainstream acceptance).

I think you've ignored my main point, which is Windows, Linux and MacOS kept innovating by being open and iOS and Android can do the same for phones.

They could, but what's the benefit? Apple is currently innovating by being closed.

(Android is a more complicated story; if you mean "The Android ecosystem tied to Google Play Services and controlled by Google," I can agree. There's a whole chunk of Android not meeting that criteria, and by many people's estimates, it's behind the 'closed' one for features and reliability).

Let's define innovation here, for iOS it would be the A13 and widgets, while for Android it would be folding screens and a modular Android that's easier to update. But you know, this thread is about Fortnite not being on iOS, and Apple weaponizing technologies like Metal and Safari. Apple innovation is lock-in, while Android is not.

If jailbreaking could be done the same way I can unlock the bootloader for my Android device, you would have a point. Unfortunately it requires using security exploits, which Apple is doing its best to plug.

Symbian apps were sold by mobile operators with margins up to 80%.

You could only install apps outside the store via the SDK.

Later on, during the Ovi Store days it was possible to buy applications and install them via the phone management software, which only technical inclined users did.

Carrier appstores aside, you could download apps directly from Google or any other website on any Symbian phone.

And people didn't want to do that so they bought an iPhone.

People also didn't think Apple would just stop updates to a game they paid Apple money for.

They paid money to Epic, which is the responsible for them not having the game in first place.

You should learn about Apple vs Pepper.

Why do you think that case is relevant to this discussion? The only issue that has been resolved in that case so far is a question about standing. The actual anti-trust questions are still unresolved.

It is completely irrelevant for this court case.

I don't need to be a lawyer to see that a case which determined that users can sue Apple because Apple is the direct seller, and in the dissent said developers would have an even better standing to sue Apple leads us to where we are. It's precedent.

Except Epic has specifically stated they don't want a jury trial.

Also, I'm not sure why you think Apple v. Pepper is relevant here?

"Why not 30%? Why not 40%? "

How ridiculous.

A) It's not the margins, it's the lock-in.

B) Why didn't the Judge ask what kind of 'margin' Apple or MS gets for desktop versions of their apps? Because it's not 30%.

C) Asking 'when did Apple become a monopoly because they were not 15 years ago' is irrelevant: when did Standard Oil become a monopoly? AT&T? Certainly not the day they started out. These issues are shades of grey.

I'm tired of judges ruling on issues they don't understand, we need more expertise, just as they have in medicine.

Perhaps the most fundamental issue here with respect to 'Nintendo' comparisons - is that Gaming Consoles are purchased for Playing Games. That's it. All market participants know the stakes.

A mobile phone is an entry point to every line of business imaginable - it's a very broad platform and Apple has tried to take cuts of incidental businesses for all sorts of things.

The analogue would be AT&T charging you for 'every kind of business you did over your phone'.

Or Verizon charing you 30% for 'any kind of business you do over the internet'.

Or the electricity company for 'anything you use electricity for'.

Apple is leveraging the broader terms of mobile access: voice, browser, basic apps, which gives them a duopoly over mobile devices with Apple - into a crazy monopoly over their own platform.

Many markets are not rational in the way we would like them to be and have to be regulated, this is very common with single points of access: phone, water, electricity, energy, drugs, hospitals.

This looks like a prime opportunity for some creative and thoughtful regulatory response.

> A) It's not the margins, it's the lock-in.

What lock in? Nobody is forcing Epic to develop for iOS and Fortnight is available on pretty much every other platform. It's literally the antithesis of lock in, no matter how much you dislike Apple or its perceived unjust influence.

Standard Oil came into a market and controlled an increasing proportion of it.

On Epic's own terms, that's not what Apple did. There never was a market for iOS apps that Apple took over.

That means the best argument actually is that they became a monopoly on day one, but you dismiss that for some reason.

Which makes the way Epic defines the situation ridiculous.

You shouldn't be considered to be an infringing monopoly on day one with a single customer.

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