Judge dismisses Apple’s “theft” claims in Epic Games lawsuit
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Take away the apps/services not created by Apple and the value of the platform drops considerably. Whole market is in a big catch 22 position. It is nearly impossible to compete and create a new smartphone platform, because even if a new player creates superior products compared to Apple, they don't have all the apps. They can't create the whole ecosystem by themselves, as the costs would be insane. Software developers also don't have much choice. There are two platforms that control all the market share. They have to accept the rules given to them or leave the industry (one they helped create).
Saying things like that every developer agrees to the App Store rules before releasing their applications is a major oversimplification of a complex situation. Apple can change the rules and they might not be the same at the time when developer makes an major investment to develop an app and when they release it. And rules might change again after they release it.
Apple did not create this whole virtual ecosystem, just the platform on which it is build upon. And this ecosystem has outgrown Apple. It's got so big, that Apple's contribution is only a part of it. Apple has been generously repaid for their efforts, and will continue to be so in the future. But maybe they shouldn't have a complete control over a virtual ecosystem this big, where their investments no longer represent the majority of it's value.
To make it simpler to understand, apply this system to your computer. What if you couldn't install what you wanted and everything would have to go through a protected store? If the platform dislikes your app, they could just remove it from the store and no one could get it.
It adds a huge gate in front of the hardware that YOU paid for. You're essentially getting milked from both sides which is terrific for Apple, awful for the consumer.
Walled gardens are safer, and usually have some implicit or explicit quality guarantee (like the Nintendo seal of quality).
Open platforms allow for more flexibility and innovation by new entrants.
On top of this disagreement, we have the meta-issue of whether business model innovation should be allowed; the USA generally permits new business models, whereas European governments are more restrictive.
And consumers who want to limit themselves to the safety of Apple's app store are free to do so. But Apple goes a step beyond this, and prevents consumers who don't want to be locked-in this way, from using "unauthorized" stores or apps.
It's false to claim that the only way to offer safety is to take away user freedom.
Well, I didn't claim it was the only way, but it does seem like the simplest and possibly the safest way.
The only way to offer safety on a platform is to secure that platform. If Apple disables the API’s which lets apps access users contacts then they can be sure 3rd party iOS stores don’t compromise user’s privacy. If they allow API access and don’t vet stores then guess what that directly means breaches will occur.
PS: If you disagree try and come up with some supporting argument.
I downvoted you rather than giving you an argument. Here's why:
You've edited your post at least four times. Three of those times was when I was trying to offer a counter-argument. The problem was, you kept changing yours. I'm honestly not sure what you believe, both because you changed it so many times, but also because you haven't defined your terms (e.g. whose freedom?). Finally, you make some bold claims, but you don't really support those claims with anything I find credible.
In any case, the 'security' argument (and the associated 'reputation' argument you made in one your iterations) rings particularly hollow with me since Apple itself has already had—for decades—great success with a platform that is reasonably secure and relatively free compared to iOS: the Mac.
As to freedom, that was specifically used by the post I was responding to. But, if you’re unsure, consider it in terms of raw assembler vs python. Raw assembler allows more freedom, but that freedom comes at a clear cost.
PS: And yes I edited to specific wording a few times for clarity. That’s a holdover from the days when hacker news would eat comments that where being edited for to long. Reputation is a major concern for Apple as a business, but outside of the scope of this discussion.
Only if you interpret "freedom" as "freedom for apps" instead of "freedom for the user". None of what you said precludes the user (I won't say "owner") being able to override Apple, or take Apple's place in deciding what their device may do.
In your mind, is a platform only "secure" when ultimate control is with the manufacturer, and not the user?
How much more "secure" were Apple's users in Hong Kong, after Apple decided to disable the app they were using to track the police?
There are a host of ways of describing computer security, but in my mind the most fundamental idea is minimizing the amount of surprises a user faces. A brick might not be a useful stake knife, but it’s secure. Anyone can want more features, but features aren’t security.
If someone goes to a knitting blog they don’t expect it to have access to their exact location via GPS, phone contacts, social security number, bank routing number etc. As such for users to have meaningful control it’s generally 3rd parties not manufactures or users that security needs to deal with. If you want to use online banking you need to trust the device to not be sharing login information with random other apps you happen to have installed, that’s incompatible with allowing such random apps to connect with your bank account.
PS: Hong Kong users benefited from having devices not compromised by the CCP, that’s what I am referring to. Clearly more app stores would let various other apps in, but how may of them would have actually been compromised?
I wouldn't call being given the master key to my own computer "surprising".
App stores on the other hand can actually differentiate between an app that only accesses contacts locally, and one that uploads that information etc. That’s not to say Apple actually does this diligently, but it’s at least possible.
Really it’s a question of deceptive apps. Suppose someone makes a AI based photo manipulation app which reasonably asks for permissions to your photos. And then quietly does a facial recognition search or just tried to find and uploaded nude photos without notifying users. You can catch that crap with human reviewers not so much permissions and automated systems.
I'd say the GP isn't really playing devil's advocate, because he hasn't shown the comparison is apt nor that if it is apt, the gaming platforms aren't also a problem for consumers.
I have no idea how their pricing models differ regarding in app purchases, subscription, etc, and feel disinclined to investigate for a one-off comment...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-19/epic-game...
So my question would be whether there are tax implications.
Consoles are fundamentally locked down, as the platform-holder (Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony) sell the console at a loss to drop the market price (impossible for commodity hardware that can be used for other purposes), then recoup their money by taking a fee from every copy of every game sold for their console.
This used to make sense because consoles used to be unique specially-designed hardware that kind of necessitated purpose-designed codebases, but nowadays consoles don't really have a difference compared to commodity PCs. In fact, the latest generation moved to x86 specifically so that they would be more similar to PCs! That was for the sake of letting devs use PC dev tools and it, but IMO there wouldn't be much loss if the consoles were actually 100% compatible OOTB with normal PC applications.
The main reason consoles exist with broken compatibility is:
1. Simpler, potentially more reliable purchasing experience (there's only 1-3 hardware devices that can run your console game, thereby sidestepping the paradox of choice)
2. Social-network lock-in (bad for consumers IMO)
3. Slightly lower upfront costs. Except that's basically not true, it only applies for a specific arbitrary standard of minimum graphical fidelity. A Raspberry Pi will always be cheaper, and a cheap x86 PC should be able to run 2010 games just fine. Batman: Arkham Asylum was from 2009, and is no slouch in terms of graphics. Arguably, consoles are better upfront value for money.
4. Potentially simpler dev target - only one configuration, means QA is easier.
5. Exclusives. In theory it gives devs the chance to make something they wouldn't have made otherwise, or gives them the chance to develop the game specifically around the one hardware architecture, but I'm not convinced either of these are real problems.
6. This isn't related to compatibility but debatably consoles have a better UI than HTPCs. Also, being gamepad-only means you don't get rekt when joining a lobby with KB+M players in FPSes.
Personally, I don't think so. There's more analysis to be done but I'm ending this comment here.
However, there isn't just an option to completely eliminate walled gardens. There are many possibilities, like limiting what rules are legal, or requiring that equal rules/fees apply to all developers, or limiting max fees, or allowing small fee to be charged even if official store is not used, or requirement that all apps that are available via 3rd party stores are also available on the official store and that base price is the same (markup being the only variable)... I think platform creator should still be acknowledged in some way, just not by having a complete and total control over the platform.
Doing higher and higher resolutions makes the art work hard and harder, and the tool updates arent making a big difference
Because of that, I find I still purchase iPhones, but never Apple computers anymore.
You mean like on my Nintendo Switch, which I knew worked like that when I bought it and was part of my calculation when buying it?
I will never get why people will so happily pay to get locked into an ecosystem they are guaranteed to be extorted by.
It's ridiculous. We grew up with the (relative, before someone starts a gnu/linux rant) freedom to install on our PCs what we wanted, why do kids today not deserve the same thing?
In the pre-90s, you bashed things out of the same primatives everyone else had access to.
Now, even getting a simple app up and running on Android or iOS requires abstraction-on-abstraction-on-boilerplate. And you still don't know what the lower layers are doing. And making it runnable requires a developer account, etc.
Are we surprised these days that kids (and everyone else) don't see "writing an app" as something they can just try?
And that the end consequence of that is that they don't value the ability to do so?
We've engineered our platforms to look like the companies that produced them: highly optimized, but simultaneously bloated and overly complex.
And there's plenty of people ready to write theses abstraction in the open source world.
> Are we surprised these days that kids (and everyone else) don't see "writing an app" as something they can just try?
It's just as easy and I see just as many kids trying than before. There's millions apps on the
> And making it runnable requires a developer account, etc.
Sure that's definitely not an artificial barrier added to control what gets made... You don't need one to develop on Android by the way ;), nor do you need one on Windows... Linux... Mac... well actually only iOS come to minds, any other?
> And that the end consequence of that is that they don't value the ability to do so?
The consumer aren't aware of that, most of them doesn't want to makes apps, most of them doesn't know the barrier added actually affect their ability to access content.
To put this in perspective consider these stats.
In the US, iOS has 52.4% of the mobile OS market[1], and Android has 47%.
In the US, Apple's App Store is responsible for the majority of mobile app sales[2], and has 3 times the revenue of Google's Play Store.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
[2] https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2020/01/in-2019...
In a monopoly there wouldn't be significant competitors to compare against.
This sounds like a point that would come up often in critiques of capitalism.
> Software developers also don't have much choice. There are two platforms that control all the market share. They have to accept the rules given to them or leave the industry (one they helped create).
This is very true. Microsoft tried to turn the Apple/Google smartphone duopoly into a... triopoly? (Is that even a word?)
I feel like apart from 2-3 clients for other web services (eg: Twitter, Slack, etc.) I rarely purchase or download any apps. The last time I can remember installing one was the contact tracing app for where I live.
I think I use the iPhone more as an appliance than a general-purpose computer. If I wanted the latter, I’d buy something else.
In this lawsuit Apple argued it's theft, which is nonsense, and so the judge told them to go stuff it.
Even if Apple ultimately is found to not be a monopoly, this particular action would be a simple contract breach. Not theft.
Is this supposed to be an ironic comment? Because if it is not, I'm concerned for your knowledge about the situation.
So basically if you want to sell on Apple, you must give Apple a 30% of all sales on the platform AND you're not allowed to tell users they can purchase your wares via alternatives.
I don't think anyone is arguing that Apple shouldn't have the right to charge companies that take advantage of the products and services that they've built in their store
I think that problem is that Apple is arbitrarily denying the ability for any other company to provide a competing product. How can you honestly evaluate the value proposition of Apple's "great" store, if they've killed all the competition?
You can't. Which is the whole damn point, because Epic HAS a store that I'm sure they'd love to release on iOS but Apple prohibits it.
Basically - Apple is the bully who's now crying foul when the competition is actually trying to enter the game.
From a monetary standpoint, I understand why Apple is doing this. As a developer and distributor of software (my day job), I cannot express clearly enough how much I'd like to see Apple lose this case. As far as I'm concerned, they can fuck right off.
I'm firmly in the "Handle it like MS and IE" camp - I want a court ruling that not only prohibits Apple from stopping competition in their store space, I want a MANDATORY popup on first use that asks the user which store they'd like to use.
Where you come down on this issue should really be based on whether you think a marketplace cut of revenue with extremely onerous conditions that prevent even minor bypasses should be legal or not when distribution on said marketplace constitutes 50% of the consumer market in the sector (mobile gaming in this case). Whether or not someone previously agreed to the terms is not the issue.
This is a court case. Not a legislative session.
Where you come down on it should be based on the law. I believe the law should be changed. But based on existing law, it is difficult to find for Epic. Epic's strategy is, in effect, a high-risk lobbying endeavor.
The comment that you responded to included facts that would support the idea that Apple's behavior is against the current law.
When they said that " said marketplace constitutes 50% of the consumer market"
This is a reason as for why Apple is breaking the law. It is an argument that Apple has significant market power, and is engaging in anti-competitive actions, which is illegal.
The arguments against Apple all seem to hinge on the market being "people who own iOS devices," while the argument in favor of Apple all seem to hinge on the market being "people who own a smartphone."
In one of those, Apple is a monopolist. In the other, Apple isn't even the biggest company.
Actually Apple would be the biggest company, in the market of people who have smartphones in the US. They just recently have a bit over 50% of that market.
Also, Apple does not need to be a literal, singular company for its actions to be illegal. Instead, it only needs to have significant market power. It doesn't even need to have a majority of the market.
> the argument in favor of Apple
Actually, no. Apple is making a much more silly argument that the market should be defined as "Things that can run video games", which can include things such as the XBox.
If the market is instead defined as the % of people who own an apple smartphone, in the US, then Apple is ~50% of that market.
Is Epic requiring Apple to only open their stores in the US?
People are blithely making cases here like all of these things are simple, but they're the key to this and all other similar cases, and it's not as clear as people seem to assume. Different judges might decide different things on different days, and none are necessarily wrong... or right!
IE I am not sure how anyone could look at Apple's control over its market, and its policies, and disagree with the idea that Apple has significant control, and that its policies are anti-competitive.
Regardless over the exact definition of a market that you use, it is quite clear that Apple has pretty significant market power over something and that its actions cause app prices to be significantly higher than they would be otherwise, if they allowed competing app stores.
Personally, I think Apple's too big, and I don't trust them (though my M1 Mac mini should arrive Tuesday nonetheless), and I think the government should act.
That said, antitrust has generally been focused on acquisitions and mergers, which don't seem to be the issue in Apple's case. Apple has genuinely made a product, mostly on their own, that has attracted enough users that it's become a problem. This seems like a radically different issue from other large tech companies, most of which have very large acquisitions that could be--and should be--undone.
And Epic is being disingenuous and inconsistent, and I don't think they're in the right here, either.
No it is not.
> that has attracted enough users that it's become a problem.
That doesn't matter. People could make the same claims about microsoft, that it "created" it's own OS market.
But we all know how that went. Microsoft lost its anti trust case.
> antitrust has generally been focused on acquisitions and mergers
Or we could just look at the Microsoft case. The Microsoft case is directly applicable to Apples case.
It doesn't matter if microsoft or apple "created" the market for OSes. They can still have significant market power.
Imagine if Microsoft took the same exact actions that Apple did regarding app stores, on internet explorer.
Imagine that Microsoft prevented all 3rd party web browsers, and then charged a 30% fee to websites accessed through IE.
This would be clearly and obviously anti competitive. Why can't we use the same argument against Apple?
However, I think you are misremembering the MS case. As I recall from the time, a lot of that case hinged on the fact that MS was a software maker, not a hardware maker. So "the market" was defined as "all PCs," and a lot of what got MS in trouble was leveraging their dominant market position with Windows to force PC manufacturer to pay them license fees even for computers that didn't have Windows pre-installed.
Since Apple makes their own hardware, the situation is not really analogous to the big MS case. As far as I can tell, Apple doesn't seem to be leveraging their market position (in any market) to force suppliers to pay Apple even when Apple isn't involved. That is, they aren't demanding any percentage of payment to Epic on non-iOS devices, right? So that's the center of the MS antitrust case with no obvious parallel.
As far as imagining, I think it's really easy to imagine more direct parallels with Epic's case. Sony makes their own gaming hardware and exerts tight control over the PlayStation sales channel, including demanding a large cut of both initial sales and IAP. Microsoft makes their own gaming hardware and exerts tight control over the Xbox sales channel, including demanding a large cut of both initial sales and IAP. One question that has come up in court already is why Epic is fighting against Apple on this, but not Sony or Microsoft. I think it's a good question.
Look, I've said repeatedly: I think Apple is too big. I believe something needs to be done, and maybe the iOS App Store is a good place to start. But I don't think Epic's case is any good at all, and I'm not sure there is a strong case against the iOS App Store other than: "we need to do something, and this annoys me." Which... I guess we just need to make that sound better.
This doesn't matter. If microsoft built all of the computer hardware in the world, as well, then there is absolutely no way that society would let them engage in anti-competitive practices. Instead, that would be even worse, as it would show microsoft having even more market power.
Take a look at the railroads as a similar example. The railroad companies built their own railroads.
But obviously, even though railroad companies built their own railroads, they still got hit with anti-trust. The railroad companies lost. Building the hardware, or railroads, is not a defense.
> Apple doesn't seem to be leveraging their market position (in any market) to force suppliers to pay Apple even when Apple isn't involved.
Sure they are. Once someone owns a phone, it now belongs to them. It no longer belongs to Apple. Apple is no longer involved in any way, with the hardware that the consumer now owns. That is now Apple getting involved in a different market.
> Sony makes their own gaming hardware
From a high level I would not say that Sony has nearly the same amount of market power as Apple does. Thats why the same arguments don't apply. It has nothing to do with them making hardware.
But, on the other hand, if there were only 1 major game platform, then anti-trust law would absolutely apply. If only xBoxes existed, then they would have significant market power.
> but not Sony or Microsoft. I think it's a good question.
The reason is because Apple has way more market power than the playstation and the xbox. Thats it.
> a strong case against the iOS App Store
The very strong case is that it is very clear that Apple has significant market power. That is the only thing that matters. The only thing that matters, at all, is that Apple clearly has significant market power, and that means that it cannot engage in certain actions.
There is nothing at all in the sherman anti-trust act that says "If you build the hardware entirely, then you can engage in anti-competitive actions".
Please show be the paragraph in that law, that says that. It does not exist. The only thing that matters is market power.
> I think Apple is too big
I don't care about them being big. Instead what I want is for them to not engage in anti competitive practices.
> we need to do something, and this annoys me
What we need to do is end the anti competitive practices, and force apple to allow all major 3rd party app stores to be installed on the iphone.
That is not a vague proscription. It is very specific.
The government needs to force Apple to allow 3rd party app stores in the same way that they forced microsoft to allow people to easily choose a different web browser.
If you want to talk about European antitrust actions against MS, okay, go ahead, but those are not a precedent for the US DOJ.
If you want to talk about a hypothetical reality in which the case against MS went differently, okay, go ahead, but that isn't what happened in the US in real-life history.
You're acting as if your perception of moral right and wrong are somehow winning arguments in court, and that's just not how it works. It's not how any of this works. The letter of the Sherman Antitrust Act would have resulted in so so so many companies broken up, and yet very few have been broken up at all, and rarely along the strict lines of the Act itself. The DOJ will need to make a legal case against Apple, and they'll need to answer Apple's legal arguments in defense, and precedent matters.
Reading the history of the DOJ's case against MS, and how badly that went for the DOJ, would be helpful.
Again, for the third and final time, I think that Apple has too much power. But saying that Sony isn't an antitrust case because MS exists, but Apple is an antitrust case despite Samsung and Google existing, that's not the sort of thing that seems very convincing. Once you get into the weeds on how to measure the market power of various companies, well, in those weeds is where Apple wants the conversation to go, which is literally what I said on my very first comment on this thread. It's still true.
Apple sells a minority of smartphones worldwide and hovers around 50% in the US. That's what makes this a tough case to win. I think they have too much power, and you think they have too much power, but they have a reasonable defense argument that will need to be overcome. It's not clear that a judge, and the majority of an appeals court, will agree.
P.S. Assuming you get past the hurdles and manage to make a case that Apple requires remedies, "allow third-party app stores" has a ton of legal issues as well. This is very different from what MS was required to do in the EU, which itself was seen as beyond what US law could require them to do.
These are not moral argument, lol. These are legal arguments.
The arguments are, that according to the sherman anti-trust law, what matters is market power. Thats it. That is a legal argument. It has nothing to do with morals.
> The DOJ will need to make a legal case against Apple
Yes, they have to make a legal argument. And the legal things that matter, in an anti-trust case, is market power.
> But saying that Sony isn't an antitrust case
I already told you why this is the case. it is because Apple has way more market power than Sony does. That is a legal argument, not a moral arugment.
But even if we want to say that the same precedent should apply to the playstation or the XBox, well I'm actually ok with that.
A world where anyone could make games for these consoles, doesn't sound to bad too me.
> Apple sells a minority of smartphones worldwide and hovers around 50% in the US
I think that it is pretty clear, that Apple has quite a lot of market power. This is a legal argument, not a moral one. Market power is relevant to anti-trust.
> on the fact that MS was a software maker, forcing hardware makers into illegal contracts.
So then you unironically believe that if Microsoft created every computer in the world, at a hardware level, and owned this multi trillion dollar hardware business entirely, that they would have been allowed to engage in anti-competitive practices? Really?
I understands that microsoft got in trouble for anti-competitive practices in the hardware market. But that does not change that fact that if they owned the entire multi-trillion dollar hardware market, that they absolutely would have been also hit by anti-trust law.
In fact, they would have been hit even harder if they also owned all computer hardware in the world, and were engaging in anti-competitive actions.
I'm not so sure this is true. Historically it's far from true, but this is 2020, not 2010, so there are definitely a few examples now of companies charging more to balance out Apple's fees. That said, Apple essentially created what was decried at the time as a rush-to-zero that made mobile apps free or close to it, in turn driving down the price of many non-mobile games.
Your statement seems to take only one side into consideration, while Apple will be highlighting both sides. If Fortnite in-game currency becomes less expensive, but the average game becomes more expensive, do we win or lose?
From elsewhere in the thread, Apple's app store revenue is 3x Google's and they both charge about the same in fees.
The number of phones or iOS users seems irrelevant to the sales that go through the app store, and that apple is using its position as the app store owner to force app developers to use other apple products like Apple pay
As does Epic, the other party to this case.
Apple’s case is arguing (at least in part) that no, epic could not have made all of that money if Apple didn’t first put a hundred billion dollars and 10 years worth of investment into iPhone and iOS.
Given the runaway success on every other available platform, I'm going to have to say that's not true at all. IANAL.
Epic is trying to bring the product to the customers that want it, and if the App Store and iOS hadn't existed but everything else was mostly the same, then those iOS users would simply be using Android or another similar product.
Apple's investment in the platform benefited many (including Google and Android) but in this case Apple doesn't bring anything to Fortnite that other platforms don't. It's just the users Epic is after.
Epic themselves have a distribution method that they've developed quite successfully on every platform except mobile, where they're not even allowed to compete because of the arbitrary restrictions Apple and Google have put in place on software distribution.
I think Apple's argument is incredibly disingenuous.
So maybe Apple should really be going after the savings all of those customers have.... /s
They could charge 80% as far as I am concerned as long as there was the possibilities to get apps another way (and ideally run alternate stores).
Of course this is my opinion and a major reason that I am not an Apple customer.
the dictionary definition of the word analogy does not include those stipulations that you stated.
Any explanation that compares two things meets the definition of analogy. I think you're being pedantic. You can disagree with the comparison, but that doesn't mean it can't be called an analogy.
If I was to make an analogy, I might say Walmart is a better analogy. Walmart is the biggest store in town, but you do have alternatives and nobody is forcing you to shop there, even if it's kind of hard not to. Walmart does all the legwork of getting customers into the shop, then puts other companies' products on its shelves and sells them for a markup. Their markup? Pretty similar to Apple's fee, roughly 25%.
In what way is this different than a country or a state? Nobody is forcing you to live in California, you could sell your house and get a different job and a different social cohort and move to Florida. Nobody is forcing you to use an iPhone, you could sell your phone and replace all your apps and convince everyone you know to switch away from iMessage.
> where you are forced to abide by its laws and pay its taxes.
How are you distinguishing the app store rules and fees from laws and taxes?
> Walmart is the biggest store in town, but you do have alternatives and nobody is forcing you to shop there, even if it's kind of hard not to.
Walmart doesn't own all the real estate for a hundred miles and then prohibit anyone else from building a store that people who shop at Walmart could reasonably patronize. They don't condition your use of their store on buying their car, which in turn refuses to let you drive to any other store, so that if you want/need any product from Walmart you have to get every product from there.
> Their markup? Pretty similar to Apple's fee, roughly 25%.
For a brick and mortar store which is paying for local real estate, physical inventory and human cashiers, none of which Apple does and yet they're still charging higher fees.
But you can't sell apps when you switch platforms, so not really sure how this country/state analogy helps
Next, we'll see people complaining how google.com should be displaying alternative search engine links on their frontpage because it's too hard for people to type bing.com.
You don't even need to live indoors either. You don't need a telephone, you don't need oil, you don't need to make things out of steel. You can live without any of it.
Antitrust isn't about how much you need something, it's about competition. It's illegal to abuse a monopoly on cotton candy, regardless of the fact that nobody actually needs cotton candy.
Moreover, the point of the analogy is to demonstrate switching costs. Phone platform transitions are costly. You not only have to replace your device but all your apps, your operating system (which incurs training costs), any services that are only supported or well-supported on one platform including those with network effects that are used by other people, etc. It's not at all trivial and can involve tens of hours of labor. So if that's what you have to do in order to have a choice in where you can buy a $1 app, that isn't really a choice. It's not anywhere close to cost effective to do it even if the competitor is charging $0.70 for the app instead of $1.
And you would have to do it every time. Even if you switched to Android, now you're stuck in a different market -- Google Play doesn't have to worry about you buying the next app from Apple, because to do that you would have to pay to switch back.
> Next, we'll see people complaining how google.com should be displaying alternative search engine links on their frontpage because it's too hard for people to type bing.com.
Does Android only work with Google and if I want to use Bing I have to buy an iPhone? How many hours does it take to type bing.com?
(If you think Comcast is bad, read up on the history of railroad monopolies.)
The market in question is the $150 billion mobile applications market, of which Apple controls 60% worldwide, well above the threshold for regulatory attention in many jurisdictions.
As for taking sides, I recommend taking the consumer's side, since the consumer is thoroughly shat upon by Apple's rules. The agreement demands that merchants on the Apple platform actively mislead the consumer about their purchasing options.
At that point, whatever one may think of Epic's preferences, motives, or ethics, becomes moot. It is not unlawful to hold market power, or to use it for profit, but it is unlawful (at least where I live) to wield market power to mislead the consumer, and that's where Apple slides off the rails. However by taking direct action, Epic have the burden of proof, unless a governmental regulator decides to shoulder it first.
Of course none of this actually relates to the judgement in the article, which is about Apple's embarrassingly nonsensical counterclaims, amounting to "competing with Apple shouldn't be allowed at all because then we make less money". I struggle to comprehend the magnitude of over-entitled, self-absorbed groupthink that could lead to making such a claim with a straight face.
Also by comparison consider the statement: "The New York Central Railroad's 'monopoly' of railway access between 14% of the worlds cities doesn't stop anyone traveling by road or doing business between any of the other cities in the world so clearly it' not a monopoly".
Having said that of course Apple is no where near as egregious a monopoly. However you'd have to agree any profit focused mobile app simply must (if it can) be available on iPhone and that does give Apple a monopoly position. It's only a question of if Apple is abusing that position.
In the US, Apple's App Store is responsible for the majority of mobile app sales[2], and has 3 times the revenue of Google's Play Store.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
[2] https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2020/01/in-2019...
It would be as silly as asking website owners to pay Apple, just because of the fact, that visitors came in with Safari browser.
Apple made the platform, but they can't piss off the developers. Otherwise they're just going to alienate people and possibly major players to challenge them more or invest in other areas that don't take so much off of them. Apples Appstore becomes worthless the moment nobody supplies any worthwhile software...WHICH Apple needs.
Wait until you hear about intentional congestion, paid peering, and Netflix. https://qz.com/256586/the-inside-story-of-how-netflix-came-t...
They're just playing pretend as a victim. They want people to believe what they're doing is right. In actuality their hedging to become the next version of Cable TV. With how bad Disney's revenue has been going this year, I wouldn't be surprised that if they keep taking hits like this, we could potentially see an acquisition or merger between the two.
That aside - You're missing the forest for the trees.
No one is saying Apple is not providing a service, no one is arguing that they shouldn't be able to charge what they want for that service.
Everyone is saying that it's bullshit that Apple is the only service you can pick if your users are on iOS.
Basically - Why is it fair for apple to arbitrarily prevent the installation of any competing distribution methods?
Because from my perspective - It doesn't matter how great you think Apple's services are, you can't have an honest and informed opinion when they only ever let you see that one walled garden.
Epic is literally in the same market - They have a store, they developed a distribution channel, they paid developers, designers, QA, support, etc. But Apple has said "Nice store you've spent all that money building, such a shame we've decided we won't allow you to use it on an iPhone."
App not on the Apple store? Don't use the app. So simple.
---
I bet your first response to that statement isn't positive - Now reflect that this is exactly what Apple is saying to developers. "Don't want to use our store? Don't release on iOS."
Because right now, if you use an application on iOS, you are not a customer of that application. You are an Apple customer who happens to use a product resold by Apple.
Now - I have no problem with you preferring that arrangement, and I'm certainly not suggesting removing the Apple app store. I'm just saying it feels a tad like bullshit. Maybe entirely like bullshit. Actually - Nope, it's just bullshit.
Disjointed app stores are annoying at worst, but I don't really see why there's any legal problem with that.
Ethically... I find it fairly immoral to intentionally prohibit users who have bought your product from using it in ways you don't like. Courts also tend to look poorly on this, but there's a narrow path to walk between enforcing interoperability and allowing innovation.
I guess I'd say the concepts "sale" and "ownership" are at stake here. If I buy something, I expect to be able to extend/modify/repair/dismantle that device in any way I choose. I OWN it.
In the physical world, it's nearly impossible to put some sort of non-electronic lock on a device that would prevent the user from doing just that. There's no reasonable way to make a cup that could only hold Sprite.
So that status quo up until the last 70 years or so has been "buy means buy" and you own the thing.
Now we have products with incredibly complicated digital locks, though.
It turns out you can prevent users from putting something other than sprite in their cups with a complicated enough digital enforcement mechanism. The question is "should you be allowed to?".
And that's actually a hard question - The answer depends a lot on how many people need to interoperate with you and your products (your marketshare and possible monopoly status), as well as whether you have a genuine benefit you're providing your consumer by limiting that cup to just Sprite.
So legally speaking, Keurig just settled a case about this exact issue (they're out 31 million, btw). This is not nearly as "problem free" as you so clearly want it to be.
The answer seems to become, I own the fridge, I can change it how I want, it I can figure out how, I can put whatever software I want on it.
Same with an iPhone—it’s my device, I can use it as a paperweight if I want, if I want, I can run Doom directly on it if I can figure out how.
Not sure why LG or Apple have an obligation to make sure their devices can run arbitrary programs.
Like it sucks that it takes a trillion dollar company and total control of the platform to get developers to sorta kinda not mistreat their users but the “the individual right to not use bad apps” has done exactly nothing.
For example, I trust Steam, GOG, Epic's store (though I don't use Epic's because I don't want to fragment my library), and a whole assortment of developers specifically.
Also, it's not 2007 anymore, if you trust a developer you can almost always guarantee the app came from the trusted source through code signing. Almost everything is code-signed nowadays. If it isn't, Windows lets you know about it. If it's also not a popular app, the platform actively alerts you about it. VirusTotal and other reputation services also help you make an informed decision on whether an app is trustworthy or not.
There is no problem with multiple stores existing as a model. In fact, on android you can have that. If you like multiple stores, and you want the hassle of using reputation services to manage which things you trust, that's fine. Nobody is saying that you can't.
But by going against Apple's store as part of the platform model, you want to stop people from having a simpler option.
They are deciding that simpler option when they buy into the platform. My mum HATES PCs but loves her iPad because she doesn't have to deal with antivirus updates or downloading dodgy software. She doesn't have to understand multiple stores.
With a multi store model, there is an incentive for competition on store pricing. How do you compete on pricing alone with other stores? You reduce the quality of your review process. It's the only way to compete on cost. And that's what forcing multiple stores does.
This lawsuit is like saying that Google should be forced to allow for other browser than Chrome to be used on Chromebook devices. The whole device is a tightly integrated top to bottom solution and when you buy the device you buy the entire solution, not pieces of it. It's not an open system where you buy separate hardware/software components and some of those components aren't playing fair with the others or something.
Well, yes - obviously, no? If a tech company wants to build a completely closed ecosystem they can fuck off - that includes Epic games. Epic is doing this for their pockets, but the freedom of the end user is only going to continue to be eroded as more and more software moves into the cloud. This isn't like GDPR, the marginal cost to Apple to add a sane way to load what you want on hardware you bought is almost nil.
It would be unreasonable to make Apple sell phones without an operating system, it would not, however, be unreasonable to force them to allow users to have the privilege of even running their own apps at their own risk.
Same reason it is fair for Nintendo to not allow Sony to sell Switch games, and Sony not to allow Nintendo to sell PlayStation games.
Their circus, their monkeys.
> Apple has said "Nice store you've spent all that money building, such a shame we've decided we won't allow you to use it on an iPhone."
Epic also can't put the Epic Store on Switch or PlayStation. Strange how there's no hand-wringing about that.
If you ignore all context, then yes, an iPhone is exactly the same as a games console.
> it is fair
Is it fair? To the companies or the consumers? These are all huge multinational companies, regulation should err on the side of the end users - not Epic either.
> Their circus, their monkeys.
Your choice of words is perhaps an argument for freedom given how the life a circus monkey is.