> “Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies. As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program.”
I think Apple may behave more creditably from here on out.
An ideology that helps you build and grow a new platform may not be equally suitable for running a dominant platform on which significant parts of the world economy depend.
In this case, they suspended the account, put themselves further into the spotlight, and then reactivated the account.
Hold in mind that everything involves trade offs. Authoritarianism is really good at monomaniacal focus on something that the dictator thinks is important, they just tend to fail at all the other stuff. And it is fine - indeed, remarkably effective - as long as people can leave when the focus isn't benefiting them.
Democracy sucks at pretty much everything except being flexible in the face of change and empowering voters. You do not want your food supply being run according to democratic principles, you want it to work.
[0] And most open source projects AFAIK
If you talk to the CEOs of large companies or miltary leaders, you find that they are unable to exert effective control of their organisations. The organisation will do whatever it wants to do. The leader can make their command but at every level through the organisation that command will be slightly subverted. The more layers, the less of that command will get through.
Since it's in the news, take for example Putin and Russia, Putin thought he had tank battalions that his lower downs had sold for parts decades ago. Based on the information in front of him, he should have taken Ukraine in several days regardless of resistance by the locals.
And whilst you might think it's impressive that he cut the budget in US congress to Ukraine, back-handed deals to send old Soviet equipment from 3rd party countries to Ukraine were made and now they are exhausted London is loaning Ukraine, Russia's money.
Putin's authoritarian Russia might be able to cut off the head of democracy but he's up against a five headed hydra. Democracy is a lot more scary than Authoritarism from a military perspective.
"You do not want your food supply being run according to democratic principles, you want it to work."
This is something that people don't really get, what's important is that the people delivering the food get the sack if they failed to do it. As long as that happens it's okay.
That's the reason why socialist and overly authoritarian countries have supply problems, they don't have an effective mechanism to replace failing organisations. Venezuela isn't able to extract Oil because the Oil dereks are run by the local dictator's family members.
Yes. But note that armies are a hierarchy with little flexibility once orders start coming down. When democracies want to achieve outcomes they set up (subordinate) dictatorships. The army does not stop to vote in the middle of a war. Indeed, sticking to the Ukraine example, they suspended elections as I assume is usual in war.
Democracy is a better model of governance because the military can focus on winning wars. In a dictatorship, the military has to focus on keeping the dictator in power - otherwise the dictator will get rolled. Since authoritarianism can only do one thing at once, generally they have a weak military at the expense of stability.
It doesn't matter where the power officially stems from, the decision making bandwidth and incentive structures govern results - and for companies that is a clear authoritarian model.
There can be, but it's not necessary in a democracy and you can design a democracy in which any action is subordinate to the demos should they choose to operate against it.
I wouldn't say Nazi Germany had a weak military. They had problems with too many tank models (to appease Hitler?) but they only begain losing the war when everyone else that was against them got their act together. And of course, invading Russia. That one was stupid.
Apple backed down, like they did a week ago with PWAs.
Eh. Backing down would be Apple allowing non-WebKit browsers to run PWAs.
Apple can talk to the Commission all they want and persuade them not to take action. However, they cannot bend the ECJ's ear. If someone forces the issue through the courts (yes, it's a slow procedure and yes the ECJ can choose not to pick up a case, but that's down to the skills of the involved legal heads), what will matter is the directive as written.
Apple will likely continue to drag their feet, but the outcome looks fairly inevitable. It might well come when we've all moved on to "AI, show me data" instead of using browsers, but it will very likely come.
They then backed down after Open Web Advocacy ran surveys, an open letter and the EU started a investigation.
Apple releases developer notes containing changes included in its betas. Such a change should obviously have appeared right away when iOS 17.4 beta 1 was released. It did not.
After two weeks of backlash, Apple did confirm it was removing the feature in a public statement. They just did not want to announce it publicly before.
After two other weeks of bigger backlash and the start of an EU investigation, they publicly announced they would not remove the feature after all.
They 100% intended to remove the feature, and 100% backed down.
Epic could have avoided all this by just responding to Apple and signing the EU Addendum affirming they would stick to the laws. Instead they wanted to get into the news cycle.
This is the policy they have to agree to: https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/download/alterna...
Includes the tweet as well as confirmation they that the commission did talk to Apple on Thursday
If any official action was taken it would have to be documented with a case: https://digital-markets-act-cases.ec.europa.eu/search
The EU has an long tradition of "conversations" and "questions" with an unstated "give the right answer and you can avoid an unpleasant official action".
You're right there is no official casework. That is also entirely irrelevant to the issue of whether or not Apple caved under pressure.
You are thinking of the mob. Thankfully here in the US official actions are generally done in view of the public.
The “probe” here would be, at least in the first instance, usually mostly letters asking questions. Note that it is “reportedly”; the media didn’t find this out because the DOJ had a banner on its website saying “we are investigating an alleged glass house”. That comes later, if things are not resolved.
You don’t want an official investigation, they are a complete nightmare that eat up months of work hours. Much better to spend a couple of days making sure you can give the correct answers on the first pass. Unless of course you genuinely believe the regulators are pushing beyond their remit, but know you’re voluntary signing up for an expensive and protracted fight.
(In some cases this is itself somewhat formalised.)
It's entirely possible the regulator asked EPIC to make an assurance that they would comply with Apple's rules, which are legal under the DMA, and then told Apple they'd need to accept the assurance.
If EPIC does now pull a stunt like they did in the US, the EU will now have reason to treat them with suspicion, and Apple will be able to point to the assurance as evidence that they accepted Apple's rules.
My guess is that they saw that all happening but Epic provided them a letter saying they double pinky promised, cross their hearts, will obey by the rules this time, which Apple will later try to use in court later on. Otherwise it doesn’t seem worth the risk prompting clearly foreseeable regulator action.
Apple banned Epic the day before DMA came into effect when doing this sort of thing was still legal, they 100% saw this. They did probably bet on the chance EU would overlook it if they did it before the law came into effect, they lost that bet but they thought it was worth a try.
There was a grace period for compliance for companies found in violation, because that determination was made after it came into force, not before.
You can't find a company to violate a regulation that's not in force, and it's reasonable to give a company in violation of complex piece of law (that's never been tested) some period to comply.
But that doesn't mean the law is not already in force.
After all, legal advice can usually be summed up as “if you do anything, someone can fuck you”, and do nothing isn’t a good business strategy.
Legal doesn't make decisions like this. That's not what they are paid to do.
Legal advises the executives of the consequences of decisions like this.
And if there's one thing that you should expect from people in positions of incredible power (executives), it's that they often believe that they are immune to the consequences of their decisions.
Most of the time they are right. Sometimes, they are not.
The main points of contention are: - the technology fee (the cost of advertising has already cut badly into their margins in the wake of identifier reform); - the clause making the Addendum also binding on any corporate parents and subsidiaries — the game industry is pretty consolidated and this limits the options for independent game studios which are also subsidiaries;
The fee is particularly nasty for hypercasual games, where a very realistic scenario has you paying for millions of installs, only to find your monetization lacking and you paying additional fees to the platform, of all things.
There are very real concerns with the Addendum and making signing only about Epic’s bona fides is reductive and wrong.