Apple wins antitrust court battle with Epic Games, appeals court rules

People like me who aren't programmers, or even power users anymore.

> I know it, and I know that you know it.

A long time ago I used to modify the Windows ME registry, and it genuinely created some features doing so. Then they removed this windows-altering ability from the particular feature I was modding and my mods were useless. Maybe the MS programmers saw this as a bug being fixed, but I saw it as a feature being removed. I basically haven't been a Windows power user since ME because of stuff like this.

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Nothing Apple is doing is materially different from what Microsoft was sued for in the 90s by anti-trust enforcers. In fact, it's a bit more, because it just isn't a default browser, it's control of every app. Apple's share of the US market is just slightly less than Microsoft's was at the time.

This is in the works, right. It's not possible at this moment, is it.

How will Apple prevent people in the USA from buying iPhones in Europe and bringing them back to the US.

I'm pretty sure I cannot sideload on iOS, unless you count using a free developer account to load self-compiled applications whose certificates are only valid for a few days.

Every behemoth company you see today did not start out that way. Apple was a couple guys in a garage. At that time, IBM was almost 100 years old, had revenues in the tens of billions and was sending hardware and software into outer space with government contracts. Guess how that company started out?

It’s also revealing that you think $10K is a low barrier to entry to a risky business with razor thin margins. And it’s also quite hard work, in terms of physical labor and ongoing time commitment. Most of my life that kind of lump sum was unthinkable, and I have to imagine it still is for many. Yet even in the face of that, some people do find a way.

They should do so with smartphones as well, if they feel strongly about it. I think the scales match in terms of barrier to entry to expertise if you want to compare delis and smartphone manufacturing.

I think the problems with your comparison are at least twofold:

1) it’s much much easier, in a technical sense, to start a deli vs manufacture a smartphone. Just in Apple, there have been tens to hundreds of millenia of person-time poured into the company.

and 2) most people with the expertise necessary to do so are happy with the options available today and would rather spend their time solving other as-yet unsolved problems.

That we should punish success?

Primarily, the legal system, courts do. However, they always draw in expertise and considering that privacy experts don't agree on what a "privacy phone" should be, good luck defining that market when the market can't define itself. (Does it need secure boot or not? Hardened malloc? Tracker blocking? Sideloading or no sideloading? Allow background processes or not? Hardware Microphone disable switches or not? Some or all of the above? Hardware-based assertions for auditing? Built-in YubiKey? Completely open source firmware? Completely open source modem? Fuzzing required? No C, only Rust?)

But then, even if there was a standard for a "privacy-preserving phone," is that market large enough to legally matter? Currently, judging by how many people are using GrapheneOS... No. Again, Apple has a monopoly on smartphones with Lightning Ports, but I don't think anybody cares about the "Smartphones with Lightning Ports" market. And if you brought a lawsuit complaining about the Lightning Port monopoly, it would be dismissed immediately.

In the 80s, I could literally pick up my phone and hear neighbor’s conversations sometimes.

Also during the analog cell phone era, anyone could buy a receiver from Radio Shack and bypass the frequency block and listen to cell phone conversations.

That’s entirely false. The majority of telephone lines were party lines through the mid 20th century.

The lack of privacy became a topic of pop culture of the time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_Wire

They want to have their app/game store everywhere, not just PC and smartphone.

Also, hasn’t “I know it when I see it” been criticized as a poor test since it was stated based on how arbitrary it is?

It’s been used in a court, but not too much effect; the popular source of that is a discussion of “hardcore pornography” in a concurrence to a Supreme Court decision in an obscenity case which was notable for having a majority on the ruling in the case, but no consensus by any more than two justices on either a rationale for the ruling, or (among the dissenters) on the reasons for rejecting the ruling.

The fact that the Play Store is similar to the App Store doesn't mean it's not competitive

Skimmed an interview Doctorow gave for Time [1]. I get the gripe. But I’m failing to find a unique, actionable definition.

Better concise source?

[1] https://time.com/6219423/chokepoint-capitalism-doctorow-gibl...

I thought the question was not entirely in good faith, since it would be pretty obvious that there's no such thing as "monopoly on X" — otherwise it would make Sony a monopolist on Playstation, Microsoft a monopolist on XBox, etc.

57% is not the kind of market share usually associated with a monopoly or a combination in restraint of trade, so you're wrong either way as others have pointed out.

There's really no interpretation needed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoonerism

Or maybe they just don’t like paying for an Android device that actively spies on literally every moment of their life so other companies can buy the marketing data.

Or maybe we just like the OS, build quality, or available iOS only applications? Maybe we like the battery life or the quality or the apple ecosystem. Maybe we like prompt, regular, and long term supported security updates.

Pretty silly generalization.

You can argue that Apple users are just Apple users because of the logo and the coolness and the hype and whatever, but I can tell you that users like me have a real reason for staying with Apple: quality!

Apple doesn't charge for most of its apps. How would this work?

Are you arguing that Apple could raise the prices of apps sold through their App Store? Isn't that the developers' choice? To me, that doesn't seem to change the market argument (IANAL, obviously).

(I know Apple provides banding and international support so perhaps you're suggesting Apple might shift the bands?)

One thing Apple has done masterfully is exploiting the status circuit in the human brain. Apple users often claim they pay more because the product is superior in some or many ways, or even argue that it is, in fact, cheaper when considering everything. However, in reality, they pay more because they can. They want to display their Apple products and they want others to see them.

In mobile gaming, Apple and Google are the largest participants, but not the only participants. We have the Switch, the Steam Deck, and other smaller companies as well.

>(I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.)

Because using an alternative, of which there are many, is as easy as typing in a different URL. They're all just inferior products and the market knows it.

>The duopolists openly conspiring.

Making a deal is not a conspiracy. It would be of concern if part of the deal was prohibiting switching to other search engines but nothing is stopping you from switching to Bing and having Google waste a few dollars of that deal.

Why is that relevant? That was not the question before the court. However, to prove an illegal duopoly you have to show collusion. IANAL, but I think it is unlikely anyone could show enough collusion between Apple and Google to reach the threshold of an illegal duopoly.

What do you suggest we do over this ? Forbid some people to search on Google ? Or give each user X queries / day then say "please use another search engine; here are some alternatives ...".

The laws are against monopolies abusing their power. As long as it's trivial to change provider we are in the clear; but the trouble come if a company uses their position to gain an unfair advantage. For example if Google says "You have to un-index you site from bing otherwise we will apply a ranking penalty on your search results".

But "being the default choice with a trivial switch possible" is hardly an abuse of power.

There are other free search engines. Also Google makes money as an advertiser, not as a search service. Search itself has always been free, even before Google existed.

A duopoly is not a monopoly. Unfortunately, anti-trust law seems to only be concerned with monopolies, and totally ignores duopolies and oligopolies.

>The duopolists openly conspiring.

Exactly.

>Google indisputably has a monopoly over web search: ~93% market share. (I'll never understand why we've done nothing legally about this.)

This isn't quite a monopoly (Bing does exist, you know), plus it's free (or "free").

It doesn't help when the competition is so awful, though. See yesterday's article and discussion about DDG. Many times, monopolies (or near-monopolies, or duopolies) arise because the competition is so inept and incompetent.

What that does do is create an increased onus on the company holding that position not to abuse it. So that kicks the can down the road to disagreements about what constitutes abuse, but just being popular isn't a crime. You'd need to demonstrate actual harm to consumers.

In the case of search, the web search market and the mobile phone market are two different markets. You can't constrain Google from doing commercial deals with other companies in different markets, just because it's search product is hugely popular. Again you'd have to demonstrate harm to consumers.

I'm not saying there isn't any harm, just this is the situation. Only once we have the issue properly framed can we discuss whether there's harm.

You seem to be under the misconception that it is illegal for Google to possess a monopoly over web search. This is not the case. It is only illegal if such a monopoly was obtained or maintained via anticompetitive means. If the monopoly was obtained via "growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident", then it is entirely legal.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopol...

Moreover, the government has done something about it when Google tried to use their monopoly over web search to obtain a monopoly in other markets via anticompetitive means.

Sounds like we have 12% more to go before we reach precedent.

So it has neither a monopoly market share, (~27% globally and ~50% locally), nor does it discriminate in favor of wholly owned sham companies in the fashion of Standard Oil's practices.

Guys, we can't go into courts of law and make poop up. Judges will toss you out.

My own opinion is that the laws themselves have to change. A company like Apple will very likely never meet the legal definition of a monopoly. The digital age has outstripped these definitions, and laws need to change to reflect that fact.

Would you mind explaining how a company could hold monopoly power while not actually holding a monopoly?

Yes there is, so I remembered fine on that count. Here is the article I read.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopol...

Where I was off a little was in mixing market power and monopoly power. As the article explains and corrects my statement to a degree, courts have found it difficult to assign monopoly power when market share is below 50%. However, it does seem possible that a monopoly power can still exist without historical levels of market share. I believe the historical cases do not necessarily apply to technology companies, because these companies throw their power around and enforce it via software and not materialized objects like railroads or commodities. I think being overly preferential to market share is a mistake, particularly for global companies where the market share will vary drastically. In addition, these technology markets are massive. Abuses and competition stiflingly can be very disruptive. They are also very easy to hide behind the complexities of software.

Except the entire time they required a 30% cut and you weren't allowed to point to other payment methods.

https://us.nuumobile.com/android-oems-vs-odms-5-things-you-s...

I’m referring to the millions and of course cost per unit go down depending on how many units you commit to.

The hardest part is dealing with manufacturers and suppliers. In the US, building phones this way is not as popular as building vertical market hardware for kiosks and special putouse devices.

You choose your screen size. memory, SOC etc. It’s been awhile. But I spent a few years working in field services during the transition from companies using Windows CE to Android for industrial ruggedized devices.

The only two companies that aren’t just integrators are Apple and Samsung yet there are dozens of Android Manufacturers.

Since it is easy to pay for a phone on an installment plan, anyone making $15-$20 a hour can pay for one with two hours a month. Even your typical fast food restaurant has to pay that much these days to attract workers.

It's a weird refusal to understand how markets and platform advantages work.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326928162_One_Billi...

Ingredients can be standardized and commoditized. Apple uses the standard networking protocols (mostly), normal stainless steel formulations, typical interconnects for their display controllers.

But a product, in the sense of something a person decides to buy and someone sits in front of and uses, cannot be standardized while providing a good user experience. That’s literally the truth under the “better mousetrap” saying: people will throw money at you if you make something better, and therefore different, from what’s in the market today.

Yes, differentiating your products is anti-competitive, in the sense that you’re trying to get people to buy your products instead of someone else’s. But it is also fiercely competitive, in the sense that you are competing for business.

The critical insight here is that purchasers value UX over the benefits of standardized, commoditized, undifferentiated products. You can legislate and regulate to prohibit differentiation, but left to their own devices that is not what people want.

In an adversarial court system, it’s worth keeping in mind that while the Court is who you need to convince, the Court is not your adversary.

Huh? We have Waymo and Cruise, both of which operate a taxi service with no driver in the car in a major city, on top of many other smaller players including Tesla. Waymo has a stellar safety record to boot. Bad compared to what exactly? Not human drivers, not anything built anywhere else.

>The cloud it's just rehashed mainframes, every Unix users in the 90's (and Athena) did that.

If everyone was doing it, how come the top 3 players are all in the US? Why is Europe reliant on US cloud instead of having its own? And just like everything else, only "competing" with it by kneecapping it with regulation.

>On space, ok, but China it's getting closer daily.

Not Europe though, is it?

>Consumer? Europe's food it's far better and cheaper.

Consumer technology... which is what this conversation is about.

>On AI, China has goverment funded project far ahead of the USA.

Again, what does this have to do with Europe? Further, what projects exactly? If you can't use them, they don't exist. OpenAI is making entire job functions obsolete today.

Reminder that the population of the US is 350M, EU 450M, Europe 750M, and China 1.5B.

It’s mostly developers who care about the engine, end users are going to care far more about the performance.

Which is the reason the JIT runs in its own sandbox connected through IPC IIRC.

Breaking the JIT isn’t supposed to even get you access to the parent process (Safari), let alone anything more, assuming you don’t have a kernel exploit too.

Apple is perfectly well aware of this and in “lockdown mode”, Apple disabled JIT for Safari.

Are there first-party apps that are allowed the JIT entitlement? If the answer is yes, they're done.

Chapter 3, Article 5, Section 7:

> The gatekeeper shall not require end users to use, or business users to use, to offer, or to interoperate with, an identification service, a web browser engine or a payment service, or technical services that support the provision of payment services, such as payment systems for in-app purchases, of that gatekeeper in the context of services provided by the business users using that gatekeeper’s core platform services.

Section 43 :

> Certain services provided together with, or in support of, relevant core platform services of the gatekeeper, such as identification services, web browser engines, payment services or technical services that support the provision of payment services, such as payment systems for in-app purchases, are crucial for business users to conduct their business and allow them to optimise services. In particular, each browser is built on a web browser engine, which is responsible for key browser functionality such as speed, reliability and web compatibility. When gatekeepers operate and impose web browser engines, they are in a position to determine the functionality and standards that will apply not only to their own web browsers, but also to competing web browsers and, in turn, to web software applications. Gatekeepers should therefore not use their position to require their dependent business users to use any of the services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services by the gatekeeper itself as part of the provision of services or products by those business users. In order to avoid a situation in which gatekeepers indirectly impose on business users their own services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services, gatekeepers should also be prohibited from requiring end users to use such services, when that requirement would be imposed in the context of the service provided to end users by the business user using the core platform service of the gatekeeper. That prohibition aims to protect the freedom of the business user to choose alternative services to the ones of the gatekeeper, but should not be construed as obliging the business user to offer such alternatives to its end users.

Disentangling JIT surely hasn't been an easy task, but they have had years to prepare and I don't think Apple will risk a recurring 20% annual global revenue fine.

All I know is iOS/iPadOS have made it possible for my parents and all the non native English literate, mostly uneducated elders in my family able to use modern computing devices without me ever having to worry about malware.

And there is no alternative.

It's a channel to market cost similar if you were selling a product in Best Buy.

The district court and the appeals court both agree that Apple is well within its rights to charge developers $99 initially and x% of revenues, under the principle of what they are calling IP compensation.

The district court did not completely agree to Apple's argument that 30% is fair (they expressly rejected it) and the appeals court observed that Epic's tactic on this argument was legally flawed and mentioned something to the effect of Epic should have used a different argument (and since they didn't, we are not ruling on this). To me, this looks like a vulnerability for Apple that they could be attacked by a different plaintiff using a different legal theory.

There is no reason to believe side loaded apps won’t get the same treatment, and every reason to believe Apple has been doubling down on securing and tightening up the current sandbox implementation.

Maybe you could make headless apps, but that doesn’t seem very useful.

It is a matter of perception. I can tell myself feel-good statistics while ignoring the reality for millions of people as well.

You also conveniently glossed over the other points I brought up

It's one of the most destructive wars, in the style of WW I warfare. Because Russia are basically barbarians in their way of of waging war.

I’m not saying it’s a certainty. I don’t think it would be fair to do to EU citizens traveling in the US on vacation, eg.

I got the impression the HTML5 with WebGL platform was removed at least partly to minimize the scope of work with some of the large renderer changes Epic has made between 4.26 and 5. So now does seem like the right time for them to try to tackle the problem again.

Apple are even on the WHATWG standards body that defined notification spec: https://notifications.spec.whatwg.org/ . And WHATWG is the actual standard, not a non-standard standard. W3C ceded to them a few years ago, which is news to me.

If we were talking about other features, like Web Bluetooth or Web HID which are just drafts on W3C but Google decided to implement anyways, I wouldn't disagree with you. I use Firefox myself, so none of these are supported on Firefox either.