This is just another brick on the "benevolent monopoly" road.
Not necessarily. You haven't taken account of costs, or the possibility that the parties both felt this was the best outcome regardless of what (unpredictable) quantum a court may have awarded.
Litigation is a poor use of time for both parties and is best avoided for the good of both parties.
Whether the settlement is "fair", "reasonable", "agreeable", or "forced" is another matter. The point is, you can't assess or deduce it without more information.
Never? That assumes hostility or bad faith by at least one of the parties.
On the contrary, when both parties negotiate in good faith, there is often other business logic to be discovered.
By talking through points of difference, the parties have the opportunity to learn about each others strengths and weaknesses, which are the necessary ingredients for better design.
You never know with this. Apple might learn something from smaller devs that their executives didn't know before. The art is in translating that knowledge into a business advantage for both parties that doesn't cost Apple something in its business relationship with bigger shops, such as Epic.
How? The devil is in the details.
Apple executives naturally have more exposure to big shops than small devs. This exercise at least gets small devs on their radar, and vice versa.
In reality, for both sides there is a benefit in reducing the risk of an uncertain outcome and avoiding protracted litigation.
This situation is not symmetrical.
> Let's be clear about this: this settlement means that the developers got more than they believe Apple would be forced to provide by law. There is never any other business logic behind these settlements.
Im inclined to agree without other commenters that this line of thinking doesn’t help.
No. The cost factor has higher weight on one side of that equation. Apple is one of the largest companies on earth, with an expert and carefully curated legal team. The other side is a loose association of individual interests.
Unless you believe that the legal process is absolutely fair, and that its outcomes are in no way related to the opposing parties' "legal burn rate". In that case, your reasoning is correct.
But that is not the case.
To me, Apple losing the App Store appears completely inevitable; and Apple is willing to throw $100 million at a last-ditch effort to keep the status quo.
And if we're lucky and devs are smart, we'll have developers publicly mock those checks from Apple's fund because that was money that Apple took from them with the revenue split and is giving back a fraction of, how generous.
It's like when people get excited about tax refunds from the IRS. Super exciting, until you realize it was excess money taken from you to begin with.
Not the best analogy. You can't necessarily know ahead of time exactly what your tax burden is and you define the withholdings to give to the IRS.
You could specify no withholdings and have a big tax bill each year or be too aggressive and get a refund, or somewhere in between. Most people over estimate their obligation because it's easier to overpay than to come up with a large sum every year, especially when living paycheck to paycheck.