Well, this Epic lawsuit seems to turn into a nightmare on multiple fronts for the PR guys at Apple...
Let's not pretend that one greedy billionaire is the good one here.
Plus Epic does not really proposes the same kind of walls as Apple do. The worst they can do are exclusive titles on some typically somehow open platforms (and yep I guess they would take a deal to have an authorized store on a closed one, but for now I'm not sure such beasts exist anyway -- and again, why would it be worse than a monopoly?), they don't even sell only that, and the people they get exclusivity from had the choice to do something else anyway (without renouncing to whole platforms)
Who's doing that?
If Apple's AppStore isn't protecting users, why not let there be competing AppStores and let users decide which serves them best?
Out of curiosity, are you responding to me or digesting my point? I’m not pretending anything.
I don't care about which billionaire benefits the most, I care about options. IOS has zero options (that don't void your phone) if your app isn't approved by Apple.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-...
https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/8/22272849/apple-app-store-s...
This is a lot to unpack. Let me narrow it down here:
- Developers submit app to AppStore
- Apple scans it, manually reviews it, certifies it meets security, privacy, and quality guidelines
- Apple allows users to download the app from the AppStore
- Users assume apps on the AppStore are secure because Apple loudly proclaims this
- Users are infected with malware
And this isn't Apple's fault? Of course this isn’t a tenable position for Apple. There’s no way to catch everything. But they market this, and use it as justification for their walled garden.
This is a valid point, and also the reason this particular attack is so interesting. Apple's system relies on holding people/companies accountable for submitting malware. Apple has the power to knock a company out of the App Store, so the company is incentivized to not push the limits. This hack is an attack directly on this relationship-based system. It's an attack on Apple's ability to punish. This doesn't make Apple's system worthless, just worth less.
Also, it was less malware and more just a low-profile privacy invasive SDK.
>Well, this Epic lawsuit...
And this is the issue that no one seems to be getting. Epic will lose. As a gaming company they never really have a case, I do admire them to have the courage to go against the largest cooperation in modern history. But it provide enough materials for their end goal for other parties, whether that is EU or US regulators.
First, it's not just Apple. The App Store/ecosystem concept is a newish concept, and probably needs completely new types of regulation outside of anti-trust. Apple, Google, MS, Sony, Nintendo, etc... are for the most part monopolies in their respective worlds, but fail at the traditional monopoly definition. Waiting for a company to achieve an AT&T or Standard Oil level level of power is an outdated way of thinking. Apple also doesn't have anywhere near that level of power.
Can I use in game currency bought from somewhere else in FortNite?
how can we do that?
Calling exclusives “anti-consumer” is basically nonsense. Exclusives have been a mainstay of the gaming world for ages. The actual harm they cause to the consumer is minimal, no different than first party titles do (like Valve’s own Half-Life, etc).
If he was, he would be against exclusives, but he pays handsomely for those.
- Epic marketplace has a few exclusive video game titles for their marketplace.
- Their games can be installed on multiple platforms.
- Also, there are dozens of competing video game marketplaces, each with their own exclusives. You can't play Zelda on PC.
Vs.
- There are only two brands of smartphones. Everyone is forced into this duopoly.
- iPhone is a device that doesn't let users repair it
- iPhone is a device that doesn't let users install their own software
- iOS forces all commerce through Apple's tax rails
- iOS prevents forming a relationship with customers as it gives businesses a disposable fake contact. These are "Apple's customers", not yours.
Businesses have two choices: fuck off and die of irrelevancy, or put on the Apple gimp suit and get fucked. There's no way this was ever legal. We've all just been gaslighted by Apple's mind-bending PR. They've constructed the biggest monopoly of all time.
As far as relationships, I don’t want every business to have relationship with me. For those companies that need one, they can have users register.
How is the App Store any more illegal than the consoles? Yes every physical game you buy for a console still has to be approved by the console makers.
Apple is the only game in town, and they bully everyone. Their rise to this position and stranglehold over all commerce was an illegal move that will be corrected by the DOJ.
Imagine if AOL controlled the Internet and all websites had to pay 30% to AOL. That's the world we live in with Apple.
Not to mention that there is also the web.
No website has to pay Apple 30%. In fact, no dating app has to pay Apple 30%. They can all force you to pay on the web and Apple won’t get any cut.
Do you think Tinder would have caught on as a website? Apple trained people to use apps.
Furthermore, what about real time video transcoding? Apple kept their web browser purposely hobbled to force people into their dungeon. You can't use a multitude of modern, advanced capabilities with safari. How can I do advanced workloads in parallel, at high performance, in the background? I can't because Apple.
You can’t do advanced workloads in the background with native apps on iOS. Apple strictly limits what an app can do in the background to conserve battery life. Safari doesn’t stop running in the background.
I don’t know about performance, but if someone could write a performant JS/web assembly transcoder that could run on the web, since iOS devices routinely trounce all Android devices with respect to browser performance, I’m sure it could be done.
it's not about what "could work", a 15fps game "could work".
it's "what is successful". And for a mobile audience, UI/UX engineers have spend decades determining that after a certain amount of lag, that experience is lost.be it for technical or political reasons, Safari and by extension, much of HTML 5 cannot meet this UX criteria. So an application has an massive advantage.
>but if someone could write a performant JS/web assembly transcoder that could run on the web
Sounds like a Progressive Web App: https://web.dev/what-are-pwas/
They've come far but are far from perfect. It's also moot in this case, since certain optimizations would need to rely on understanding Safari's infrastructure. Which is closed source. They can optimize it for webkit, but any web dev can tell you that interplatform quirks are the 2nd 90% of the battle.
- GoG will give you DRM free downloads
- Steam allows you to give out keys for free then use their infrastructure to download/manage the game (humble bundle steam keys)
- None of them force exclusives as far as I know
> Businesses have two choices: fuck off and die of irrelevancy, or put on the Apple gimp suit and get fucked.
No they don't. There's plenty of businesses that are alive and well and not getting fucked by anyone.
But you don't know if this is their only end goal.
Internally this is probably a high-risk high-reward kind of plan, but this is a wild guess.
If they could sell digital goods using their own payment system within the app like Amazon can with Amazon Video, what would they gain from this?
The PR doesn’t tell the story like what came out during court procedures.
the ability to potential lauch EGS on IOS. Success or not, they want that opportunity to try.
I suspect they would still want to. My personal suspicion about the motivation behind this case is that it's not really about Epic Game's profit, but Tencent's. Tencent owns 40% of Epic Games, and owns a lot of companies who stand to make a lot more money if Apple's forced to open up the app store.
given that individuals have brought up cases that ultimately landmarked as Surpreme court rulings, I have to say this is the oddest take on the lawsuit I've seen yet.