Judge Orders Apple to Ease Restrictions on App Developers

nytimes.com

20 points·ausbah··5 comments

Active discussion already on front page:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28482895

The ruling stops short of opening up iphone to third party stores so not a complete victory for Epic.

Apple is illegally restricting customer choice while not being monopolistic seems pretty balanced take on the whole issue.

Apple will of course appeal, however this is going to be massive for iOS store revenue.

They will be forced to drop rates or stand to loose a lot of developers from their payment system

> Apple will of course appeal this...

Given the current climate, I don't think they have a strong chance to overturn this ruling.

Or for companies that don't pay via their payment system, couldn't they increase the annual dev fees to compensate, or tell those people they cant use their APIs if they are not going to pay from them or other tactics. If the rate is too high that's one thing, but assume companies don't expect to continue to get any marketing or resources from apple if they aren't paying for them in one way or another.

I don't find myself in either a pro-Epic or anti-Apple stance but I believe this is the best outcome for the industry. I'm less interested in having competing stores on iOS and more interested in building businesses that have a mobile component.

At this point the app store is so crowded there's no way Apple can say it's "providing the customer" but still demands an incredible amount of money for what they provide developers.

Hope this sticks. Couldn't care less if Epic gets allowed back on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com