iOS developer who drew attention to App Store scams is now suing Apple
theverge.com
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IANAL, but this seems bad. Even if it’s legally permissible, it’s the sort of outrage that’s both easily understood by non-technical people and hits a kind primal reflexive outrage against unfairness.
In addition, I’ve heard of this with other FAANG companies (notably Amazon). They’d likely all be vulnerable to these arguments. Proving such abuses of power might prove more difficult, though.
I would be willing to bet actual money that his imagined conspiracy theory didn’t exist, and that two things happened simultaneously, but without relation: scam apps existed, and Apple tried to buy him.
The notion that Apple would engage in widespread conspiracy to save a million bucks strikes me as bizarre.
ETA: I find the dismissive reference to “conspiracy theories” to be a little weird. It’s not as though there isn’t a rich history of abuse of monopoly power, including restricting access to market. It’s unclear why FAANG companies would be uniquely immune to such temptations.
The risk/reward makes it seem absurdly unlikely that Apple actually did this.
1. Approving scam apps hurts Apple.
2. Approving scam apps in order to screw with a competitor hurts Apple, and would need a widespread conspiracy within the company to do it successfully.
3. There is plenty of money to be made in attacking Apple either directly through a settlement, or indirectly.
The point isn't that they wanted scam apps, it's that they were so readily approving apps in the space that they even approved scams.
This suggests that they did so little review as to miss a scam, and therefore that any argument of "his app wasn't ready" isn't right.
That doesn’t make sense since it would apply to any review.
It also assumes that checking for scams is equivalent to checking for functionality, which is obviously not true.
Individual reviewers may simply be provided with a set of apps to check and a set of criteria to determine whether they work or not.
Checking for scams may be a completely different process done by completely different people.
There is no logic to the claim that they must be related.
Apple has been really dumb about antitrust law before. It’s not unrealistic to think they’d be dumb again. It’s not even dumb if you’ve been doing it routinely for years and only suffered consequences once or twice. Which I don’t think is unique to Apple — I think all the FAANG companies have gotten very accustomed to being able to do essentially whatever they want as long as they pay a minor fine every few years.
This logic might have held 5 years ago but doesn’t hold now. All the large tech companies are under heavy scrutiny and there are multiple anti-trust cases in play. The US administration appears to be anti-trust friendly, and there are hostile companies deliberately backing as many anti-trust actions as they can against Apple.
It makes no sense to imagine they would play into this for a minor discount on purchasing a trivial app.
It’s just as likely likely that a lawyer and an angry developer think it’s worth seeking a settlement in the current climate.
I agree there are hypotheses by which they could have done this but it’s bullshit to assume they must have done this.
And while I don’t know if this was deliberate or a mistake, I think the more interesting point is that even if it was a mistake it demonstrates the danger of monopoly. The problem is structural. When a company has the market dominance of the FAANG companies, abuse is inevitable.
Yes, they fell foul of anti-trust law in Ebook pricing.
> Even if this is, as RileyJames posits, just the head of one team asking another for a favor in pursuit of an acquisition,
That’s just a made up explanation. It’s not ‘evidence’.
> it speaks to the corporate culture at Apple.
There is no evidence for this at all.
Remember, it’s just something a commenter made up. It’s not information about Apple, so it can’t ‘speak to Apple’s culture’.
> Regardless, given the balance of actual evidence, it seems more absurd to extend the benefit of the doubt to the corporation that has abused market power in the past.
At least you are clear about what you are actually saying:
You are going to assume Apple is guilty of this because they violated antitrust law over ebook pricing*, and that is your only evidence.
We have no evidence that they are guilty of this.
Maybe something will show up in court.
Loyalty, trading favours, gaining intel, earning a promotion, because I like them. Pick a reason. It doesn’t have to have much, or anything, to do with Apples strategy, or legal position. And it certainly has nothing to do with the cost of an acquisition, and the billions they have in the bank. Those details are irrelevant to the individuals involved.
It doesn’t have to be a grand conspiracy, it can be much simpler than that.
This sounds more like, “what can the xxx team do to help”, or “Jimmy from the review team said he’d throw one our way, say no more ;)”
Hallway talk and face to face meetings. Put it in an email, and it’s dangerous, only a fool would do so, and they all know that..
I have no evidence either way. Not claiming I’m right.
Unlikely to happen. Even Microsoft wasn't broken up in the 90's and they were even more obnoxious in their anti-competitive practices. It's also going to be really hard to go with the monopoly argument seeing as how Apple doesn't have majority market share (not even close) in most market segments - smart watches might be the sole exception.
> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.
The truth is that Apple and Google have a duopoly in the mobile OS market[2], and they're leveraging that duopoly in an anti-competitive manner to prevent competition in the mobile app distribution market.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
Google very craftily, allows anyone to manufacture hardware for their Android OS. Not only that, they allow anyone to change their OS in anyway they see fit. The fact that most people don't is immaterial to the courts.
Apple has an even more unassailable defense against the durability of their power. ie - their year over year market share graphs. The downward trend in market share would fly in the face of any assertion that they have durable market power.
The only real way forward is to forget the old legal facilities of "monopoly" and "trust", and to make new laws. The old laws simply don't fit the time. How is any attorney to be expected to argue durability of a company with declining market share in any legally sensible fashion? If we're serious about going after companies like Apple, we need new tools.
From the perspective of the law, a duopoly can imply a cartel[1], especially given the price fixing[2] Apple and Google engage in[3] in the mobile app distribution market.
Also, a trust[4] can refer to a duopoly in antitrust[5] law:
> A trust or corporate trust is a large grouping of business interests with significant market power, which may be embodied as a corporation or as a group of corporations that cooperate with one another in various ways.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Ca...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26486737
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(business)
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
If their market share is declining year-over-year then why do we need to go after them? It seems like the market is telling them they need to change their ways. Or maybe they're happy being a niche player catering to a niche user who's fine with the status quo. After all, those customers who are happy with the status quo in and of themselves comprise a market segment. Besides which Microsoft has the wherewithal to re-enter the market anytime they wish.
The iPhone's market share has been trending up in the US, not down. It was around 60% in Q4 2020. Does that change your opinion?
The problem is that making something new in the mobile OS market at this points is borderline impossible for anyone that is not already huge with virtually unlimited money supply..
to start you will need to make an OS on par on UX, usability and resources with iOS and Android that had more then a decade of interactions to reach where they are..
After that if you do not want to face same the problem that everyone else that tried faced, no apps because no users and no users because no apps, you will also need make apps for the main third-parties that everyone want as well or convince them to do it for your new system..
All of that just to get started.. it is basically impossible at this point in time..
surely it could happen but it is more likely that someone that has the resources to go for an android-based device then to start something new..
Apple is certainly excluding all mobile app distribution competitors on their OS by leveraging their dominance in the mobile OS market to prevent competition.
Google prevents mobile app distribution competitors from competing with the Play Store on feature parity because because user installable 3rd party mobile app stores cannot implement automatic upgrades, background installation of apps, or batch installs of apps like the Play Store can.
sure they do not allow third-party stores, but they also do not exclude you to use their store to sell your apps..
for the people complaining about not being able to use their own apps without dev account.. not allowing people to hurt themselves is a design choice for apple, if you want flexibility go android..
also third-party stores is a two edge sword, it allow user more control but also allow you to harm yourself more..
this is why android is a shit show of malware while in ios this is much less of a problem, although to be far it does happen from time to time..
apple will just use the card that third party stores harm their users.. and that you can just use their app store.. that is why they do not allow third party stores and likely never will..
they made better cpu and radios for wearables then what was available to competition at the time..
that on my opinion would work more on their favor for not breaking the company then the other way around..
All that said, I don't know why there has not been a concerted effort to change laws instead of going after FAANGs which, as you rightly point out, are in no danger of being found in violation of any laws that would trigger a breakup. Why are we relying on anti-monopoly or anti-trust laws to go after Apple? It's lunacy. Of course the supremes are going to laugh that out of court. We'd, at the very least have to go after the majority marketholders first.
But if you change the laws, you can make what most FAANGs do illegal in a single stroke. Imagine a law that simply said no tracking for any commercial purposes at all under penalty of $50000 fine per violation. That would get Facebook, Google, and to a certain extent even Amazon off our backs instantly. Why not go that route?
They already have enough clout to be able to buy the votes to avoid that (it'd be pocket change to them).
I'd love to hear why you think that. Microsoft never stopped consumers from installing Linux on a PC. Microsoft never stopped anyone from installing software on Windows. You could always buy a PC and do whatever you wanted to with it.
Meanwhile, Apple doesn't let you do anything on an iPhone if it isn't bought from their app store. The level of control that Apple has over iOS is ridiculous compared to what Microsoft had. Apple is 10 times worse towards consumers and developers than Microsoft ever was.
I can't even install my own apps on my iPhone without paying Apple $100 per year. Without a developer account, having to re-install the app every 7 days (only from a Mac) is nearly useless. How could I ever take a 2 week vacation and still use my apps?
> Apple doesn't have majority market share
Yes they do.
"Today, the iPhone has 66% market share in the United States, 75% of U.S. App Store revenues, and over 80% of time spent on the mobile internet (iOS’s share of physical e-commerce transactions is likely somewhere in the middle of this range). And this dominance is also growing. Eighty percent of U.S. teenagers have iPhones and the device held 90% of smartphone activations in the week after Christmas 2020." [0] [1]
[0] https://www.matthewball.vc/all/applemetaverse
[1] https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/8/18/app-stores
Without an iPhone, I can't FaceTime with my family and friends. Without an iPhone, I'm discriminated against among young people because of green text in iMessage. Without an iPhone I can't do account sharing for all the digital things my family uses.
And those sorts of reasons are just from me as a consumer. As a developer, more than half my customers (in the USA) have an iPhone. I literally cannot do business or provide apps to them without going through Apple.
I'm curious what your proposed solution to this problem is.
A completely socially clueless person might try that, sure.
> Presumably they're using an iPhone because they find the experience to be superior. [Because they're more expensive...]
They're not more expensive. I actually can't find a $299 Android which has the same specs as an iPhone 8 that I got for that price. Also, where's the $2000 iPhone that competes with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2??
So they're cheaper in many cases but even more importantly, Apple has done some excellent marketing to position themselves as a premium brand and most people in my upward/upper-ish middle class circles are extremely susceptible to that kind of signaling.
Personally, I can take or leave either one of them. I have to use both for testing and I do support for people in my life all the time and they both definitely have their drawbacks.
Not only that, Google prevents competition in the mobile app distribution market, too, because user installable 3rd party app stores cannot implement automatic upgrades, background installation of apps, or batch installs of apps like the Play Store can.
So his question is more like "Do you just look away when you see a valid business transaction" but couched in rage terms.
The reputational difference, I think, is in their self-representation. Microsoft played price-fixing games, let malware be included in the install, manipulated the market, etc, while presenting themselves as honest competitors.
Whereas Apple is pretty straight-forward about the lockdown.
And that's sort of why we buy them for our non-tech people - because they can't be screwed up in all the user-based ways. We don't particularly want to force Apple to open up until the security/privacy problems of Android and Microsoft have some plausible solution.
I hope that once strong U2F tokens are normal and in-use by the average person that we'll have the infrastructure to really allow people to unlock their device without just enabling evil-maid attacks.
For starters, Microsoft relied heavily on undocumented APIs in both DOS and Windows for their own applications, e.g. Office. When others such as Borland, Lotus, or Word Perfect attempted to reverse-engineer and utilize those APIs in their own applications they'd be broken in the next release. Microsoft would change the undocumented APIs so their competitors would no longer work and release a new release of Office concurrent with the next release of DOS/Windows. Guess what happened as a result? You don't hear of Borland, Lotus or Word Perfect anymore, do you?
There were still more dastardly deeds up Microsoft's sleeve. Ever wonder why OS/2 didn't leave Microsoft's Windows in the dust? Or why Linux never became a viable option? Read on. When Windows 3.0 was released in 1990 it took the world by storm. Everybody, and I mean everybody, wanted it. PC makers (HP, Dell, Gateway, Compaq, et. al.) wanted to provide PC's with Windows preinstalled. Microsoft used that to their advantage. They would provide Windows licensing to the PC makers at substantially reduced cost on ONE condition: they could not preinstall any other competitor's OS. Oh and one more thing - EVERY SINGLE machine shipped would have to include a license for Windows. What does that mean? If you wanted to run OS/2 on your Compaq then you will have paid Microsoft for the Windows license you're not going to use AND you're still going to have to pay IBM for OS/2 AND you're going to have to install it yourself - Compaq wasn't allowed to preinstall it for you and still be able to distribute Windows.
Pretty bad, no?
Get this - in federal court Microsoft argued these practices were legal because they were not a monopoly. They pointed to Apple as their viable competitor. At the time Apple had 2% of the PC market and was on the verge of bankruptcy. The judge noted that Apple wasn't really a healthy, viable competitor and ordered Microsoft to pay Apple several hundred million dollars (this seems to be confused in the press, apparently at the time the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit was proceeding there was another case where Microsoft and Intel were caught red-handed stealing video codec IP from Apple and were ordered to pay a large infringement settlement). Either way, Microsoft was forced to pay Apple hundreds of millions of dollars.
So yes, Microsoft was more obnoxious in their anti-competitive practices and the courts allowed them to carry on with those practices for the price of a few hundred million dollars paid out to Apple. By comparison Apple looks like darling little Angels compared to the Microsoft of the Gates and Ballmer eras.
> ...Microsoft relied heavily on undocumented APIs in both DOS and Windows for their own applications...
And Apple doesn't? Oh good! Where's the API that I can use to replace their app store app? How about Safari? And where's the alternative browser that can implement PWAs for iOS like Safari does? Where's my API to stop the phone from charging at a certain percentage like Apple does with their smart case software?
> Ever wonder why OS/2 didn't leave Microsoft's Windows in the dust?
Nope. OS/2 was utter garbage from a company that was already a dinosaur at that time.
> Or why Linux never became a viable option?
You mean those RedHat servers I was maintaining back in 1999 didn't really exist? I'd been experimenting with Linux desktops since the early 2000's and they've always been viable. Heck, a quarter of all the devs that respond to Stack Overflow's survey year after year use it - the same percentage that use a Mac. Personally, I've been doing all my work from a Manjaro desktop for years now.
> PC makers (HP, Dell, Gateway, Compaq, et. al.) wanted to provide PC's with Windows preinstalled.
Not my problem. As a consumer, I was never restricted. I'd absolutely love it if Apple would only mess with other OEMs and let me do whatever I wanted to with my iPhone like Microsoft used to let me do with my PC.
> ...you will have paid Microsoft for the Windows license...
Apple is much more insidious. They don't even give you the option at all to run an alternative because they built their entire house on locked down, undocumented hardware.
> in federal court Microsoft...Apple...Intel...stealing from each other...
Again, I missed the part where I was restricted from doing what I wanted to with my own hardware. What does it matter to me if 2 titans want to duke it out? In the end, nothing that Microsoft was doing ever caused me any grief. Apple on the other hand...
> By comparison Apple looks like darling little Angels...
Quite the opposite. Apple has not only stolen from competitors just like Microsoft, they've stolen directly from enthusiasts who built apps for Mac and iOS multiple times and then kicked them off the platform. They very name of the iPhone was already trademarked by Cisco and Apple just went ahead and used it. They couldn't even build their own kernel or base platform like Microsoft did, they had to Tivoize BSD. Apple is well known for stealing from enthusiasts. [0] There's an overwhelming amount of evidence for this. [1]
Apple is the worst thing that's ever happened to computing. I'd take the Microsoft of the 90s any day over the Apple of today. They're taking away your control over your own computing devices and people on HN have the audacity to defend them for it. People that like Big Brother so much should honestly just move to China because that's the future that Apple wants for you. They want to own and control everything.
Sorry, but you're on the wrong side here.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/05/how-app...
What makes you think it’s true?
Apple has been sued for all kinds of spurious claims over the years. How do you know this isn’t another?
His claims seem very weak - they hinge on the idea that checking for scams and checking for functionality are directly connected.
There is no reason they should be.