Epic vs. Apple judge thinks Apple's being shady about buttons and links | Hacker News Reader

Epic vs. Apple judge thinks Apple's being shady about buttons and links

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43 pointsbusymom017 comments

The real lesson here is don’t piss of Tim Sweeney. Dude just can’t let it go.

> lesson here is don’t piss of Tim Sweeney. Dude just can’t let it go

Not sure if this qualifies as strategic deterrence. If anything, he has thus far just helped Apple set useful precedents. A more-sympathetic plaintiff might have caused the law to veer otherwise.

> If anything, he has thus far just helped Apple set useful precedents.

Yes, the forcing Apple to allow external billing platforms has been a very useful precedent.

> forcing Apple to allow external billing platforms

The courts order is far less than what was being mooted in legislation, and killed those bills better than a lobbyist ever could have.

Is this not clearly answered by a desire to maintain a cohesive user experience and even potentially security, like to not have people accidentally think they are using Apple Pay when they aren’t? Reminds me of network QoS controls being confused for favoritism.

The implicit assumption that Apple Pay is more secure is the problem here. If it is really about security or cohesive experience, then Apple should have a transparent process for approving "secure" payment methods for any vendors and allow the user to set any arbitrary default payment method in the cohesive style while putting other methods (especially Apply Pay for example in the non-cohesive style).

A cohesive experience is more than just the UI skin. It’s also about the expectation that the payments work. If every app starts pushing users to install their payment method, that’s no longer a cohesive experience and the success of the payment going through is dependent on 3p services.

Not saying Apple is wrong or right, but your response isn’t considering the actual end-to-end user experience that will result from it, which is the part that Apple does care about.

One solution here is: then we solve the next problem, that is: we enable a payment standard like India does with say UPI and enforce all apps to use that standard, and so all apps should be able to accept any payment method which enforces that standard.

But also, users who really care about end-to-end user experience will automatically prefer standard payment apps. So, then bad apps should automatically get weeded out.

Finally, it is possible I admit, that here, we have "What's good for an Apple user?" vs "What's good for long term goals of the system?". Because it is quite possible that the long-term cost that happens because of the monopolistic practices of Apple only impact poor users negatively, and not rich users. And therefore, the only argument that actually works is, "This is bad for the whole population in general in long term, because of the potential for abuse in future by a company."

In such a case of potential abuse, it is possible that the users would then look the government to help them out, possibly at huge cost to the government. So, it might make financial sense on the part of the government to prevent such a situation from arising in the first place. And then, the real solution to this problem would be to break up Apple the phone hardware company from Apple the iOS company from Apple the payments company.

Well, isn't that the point? If you desire uniformity above all then a local monopoly is the best possible situation for you.

Competition requires diversity, there has to be different offerings which work in slightly different ways.

An app on your phone is "third party" from the perspective of Apple but from your perspective it is a first party. You are doing business with them, presumably because you wanted to.

It’s a tragedy of the commons situation though. Apple can try to enforce policies at some level but at the point where every 3p app is pushing their own payments solution, it’s a lost cause.

Right now, Apple can enforce payment guidelines uniformly across everything and they can provide the subscription and payment management experience that they want. If they open it up, then apps will force users to use their payment mechanisms. I suspect you’re overly discounting that people can treat their Apple relationship as the sole party responsible for what happens on their phone and overly privileging the how people interpret “doing business” with arbitrary 3p apps, especially if they’re not subscriptions (and for subscriptions I trust Apple to not follow dark patterns trying to get me to stay).

I agree you should be able to pick at least to give your payment details directly, but I think it makes sense to allow that apps be required to also ask preferentially for Apple Pay if there’s no such payment information provided.

The previous state was that apps can force users to use their own payment mechanism, but only if Apple made the apps. As a result of the ruling, Apple's competitors now also can, and the playing field between Apple and Apple's competitors is closer to level.

The key takeaway is that Apple's payment processing business shouldn't be treated preferentially over a competing payment processor by Apple's mobile OS business, so any solution has to start there, and only then consider what Apple wants.

I don’t think it means Apple Pay is more secure compared to another payment method just that it could be easier to trick someone if you could emulate more aspects of the authentic experience.

Yeah, this is sad to see. It's difficult for people who don't design software to imagine just how confusing and manipulative payment interfaces can be made.

My professionally-uninformed take is that preferencing themselves for 'security' concerns would run afoul of the legislative intent. Preferencing themselves as 'the secure option' among their competitors also seems unfair. Maybe a competing payment system is more secure than them.

If Apple (let's also call them "Payment-System-A", to illustrate how the dual role causes issues here) has a special way to communicate to the user that they have this Payment-System-A-Verified-Secure-Link, then Payment-System-B should have an equal, special way to communicate to the user that they have this Payment-System-B-Verified-Secure-Link. Maybe Payment-System-B even Verifies better than Payment-System-A!

Since the legislative intent seems to be that Apple shouldn't be preferencing Payment-System-A on their platform, doing _literally that_ seems to go against the legislative intent. Let Payment-System-A and Payment-System-B compete as equals on the platform, and users can decide for themselves which Payment-System is more Secure or Verified.

Apps already have their own user experience distinct from Apple's. If that's so precious to users they can choose other apps. All of this is just to make it harder for companies to make the button to bypass Apple's artificial toll more attractive than the button that passes through Apple's toll booth.

Most people don't think Apple's goal is user safety, most people understand the goal is making it as hard as possible for people to NOT pay the Apple tax.

Is Apple having a bad year?

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