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Epic vs. Apple: Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for TRO [pdf]

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Re: Epic vs. Apple: Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for TRO [pdf]

#61

Post by philliphaydon »

fxtentacle wrote: post #53
threeseed wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to act like this is the first App Store dispute. There have been many over the last decade and Apple's behaviour has been consistent i.e. they will simply allow Epic to come back onto the store and pretend like nothing ever happened. Exactly like we saw recently with the Hey app. Apple doesn't want to punish developers but they will play hard ball if they don't abide by the rules.

This appears to be the first dispute where Apple aggressively retaliated in unrelated areas of business.

> This appears to be the first dispute where Apple aggressively retaliated in unrelated areas of business.

But it's also the first publish dispute where someone purposely put in code to activate alternative payment options and broke the rules. Apple is setting an example of epic. Don't break the rules.

Re: Epic vs. Apple: Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for TRO [pdf]

#62

Post by sumedh »

mythz wrote: post #58
modeless wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple profits handsomely from the iOS ecosystem every time someone buys an iPhone to access it, or buys a Mac because Apple won't allow building iOS apps without one, or pays the annual developer program fee. They don't need to triple or quadruple dip to be the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.

iOS is a major cost to develop that's given away for free, continually invested in, advanced, developed & updated. Apple is allowed to have more than one business model on the platform they built, which was their primary focus that reshaped the company at a great opportunity cost to their other businesses. Ultimately the Company bet paid off & became successful against a number of incumbents who lost fortunes trying…

> iOS is a major cost to develop that's given away for free

How is it given for free, you pay for it when you buy the phone.

Re: Epic vs. Apple: Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for TRO [pdf]

#63

Post by mdoms »

ben_w wrote: post #19
trumpeta wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...Epic Games moves this Court to allow it to access Apple’s platform for free while it makes money on each purchase made on the same platform. While the Court anticipates experts will opine that Apple’s 30 percent take is anti-competitive, the Court doubts that an expert would suggest a zero percent alternative. Not even Epic Games gives away its products for free..." Apple is arguing as if accessing their platform…

It being a walled garden is the only way I’m willing to trust it for accessing all my account recovery emails, my 2FA SMSes, my bank details, and the sensor package that can listen to everything I do while GPS tracking me and monitoring my heart rate and gaze if I happen to be holding it where I can see the screen. Of course, that doesn’t mean I like being stuck with an American cultural hegemony that says sexual con…

> It being a walled garden is the only way I’m willing to trust it for accessing all my account recovery emails, my 2FA SMSes, my bank details, and the sensor package that can listen to everything I do while GPS tracking me and monitoring my heart rate and gaze if I happen to be holding it where I can see the screen.

Sorry I'm not following. What does any of this have to do with the app store?

Re: Epic vs. Apple: Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for TRO [pdf]

#64

Post by threeseed »

brmgb wrote: post #60
threeseed wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to the way iOS works (dynamic dispatch) private APIs can only be prevented through an App Store review process. And many of those APIs can be used to extract enough information to fingerprint the device, determine your location or steal your data e.g. accessing the list of WiFi networks or browser history. So no. The two concerns are very much related.

> Due to the way iOS works (dynamic dispatch) private APIs can only be prevented through an App Store review process. That's complete nonsense. Dynamic dispatch has nothing to do with the ability or not of a program to access API. Dynamic dispatch is the selection at runtime of the correct version of a polymorphic function. Obviously, you can sandbox programs written in languages using dynamic dispatch.

Be curious how you plan to prevent access to Apple's private APIs in Objective-C, which uses dynamic dispatching, without breaking existing code.

I am sure Apple would love to know how you've managed to solve this.

Re: Epic vs. Apple: Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for TRO [pdf]

#65

Post by bwilli123 »

modeless wrote: post #47
mythz wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course a competing App Store can offer lower prices, they don't bear any of the costs for developing and managing the iOS ecosystem Apple spent billions over a decade building (that many other companies lost fortunes failing to compete against). They can just popup a virtual store in someone else's successful established platform and access a market of 1B+ credit cards they had no hand in creating where they can d…

Apple profits handsomely from the iOS ecosystem every time someone buys an iPhone to access it, or buys a Mac because Apple won't allow building iOS apps without one, or pays the annual developer program fee. They don't need to triple or quadruple dip to be the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.

Apple here is no different than the Telcos wanting to avoid only being paid for just being dumb pipes. If everybody else is making money building on that basic service they want a piece of that pie too.

Re: Epic vs. Apple: Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for TRO [pdf]

#66

Post by gridlockd »

threeseed wrote: post #40
roblabla wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The walled garden is not what protects your email, 2FA SMSes or bank details. The OS sandboxing and permissions system do that. The two are often conflated, but the two concerns are orthogonal really. Heck, you could easily imagine a system where software distributed outside the app store can only access a subset of perms if security is such a concern, and that'd still be less anti-competitive

Due to the way iOS works (dynamic dispatch) private APIs can only be prevented through an App Store review process. And many of those APIs can be used to extract enough information to fingerprint the device, determine your location or steal your data e.g. accessing the list of WiFi networks or browser history. So no. The two concerns are very much related.

They can't be prevented reliably even through the App Store process - that's simply impossible.

The point of a private API not security, it's to distinguish between the public interface that is meant to be stable and implementation details that might change.

They might do some rudimentary checks to catch obvious usage of private APIs, but it's not part of the security model and still apps show up on the App Store that use private APIs, all the time.

Re: Epic vs. Apple: Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for TRO [pdf]

#67

Post by nucleardog »

richrichardsson wrote: post #49
rimliu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every payment and subscription going through Apple is one of the best features for me. Especially the subscriptions.

So why can't Epic (or any other company) provide you that option with a 42% premium (to cover Apple's 30% cut) and allow users to buy direct from them? Then if you wish to trust Apple more with your card details, you can pay more for the privelege. Or you can save some money, but potentially increase your risk by going direct. I've always hated that Apple seem to think they know better than anyone else; you can't do…

I mean, that’s exactly why I have an Apple device.

No, wait, not that I’m stupid. Though I’m sure some people would call me that.

It’s that they make the decisions for me. I’m specifically paying a premium to delegate the responsibility for making those decisions to them.

I spent years running Nexus devices (since before they were Nexus... still have my ADP1 in a drawer) on Cyanogenmod and LineageOS. At some point I got busy and didn’t have time for my phone to be a hobby or even a thing I had to think about and chose to delegate those decisions to Apple rather than Google because they generally seem to lean more toward privacy-conscious decisions and making money on hardware and apps rather than decisions to support violating my privacy and making money on advertising.

I already paid more for what I agree is a privilege by buying an expensive Apple phone. If you don’t like the rules, then don’t sell here. I’m cool with that. Leave my walled garden alone. I’m comfortable in here.

Re: Epic vs. Apple: Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for TRO [pdf]

#68

Post by gpderetta »

threeseed wrote: post #64
brmgb wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Due to the way iOS works (dynamic dispatch) private APIs can only be prevented through an App Store review process. That's complete nonsense. Dynamic dispatch has nothing to do with the ability or not of a program to access API. Dynamic dispatch is the selection at runtime of the correct version of a polymorphic function. Obviously, you can sandbox programs written in languages using dynamic dispatch.

Be curious how you plan to prevent access to Apple's private APIs in Objective-C, which uses dynamic dispatching, without breaking existing code. I am sure Apple would love to know how you've managed to solve this.

sign existing code.

Re: Epic vs. Apple: Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for TRO [pdf]

#69

Post by tehbeard »

reissbaker wrote: post #18

This seems like the predictable outcome. Epic knew Fortnite would get banned when they started this; Apple is innocent until proven guilty, so no court will force Apple to reinstate Fortnite unless Epic wins its antitrust suit. But similarly, Apple's subsequent, second threat to ban Epic from doing other lines of business via macOS tools (e.g. Unreal Engine development) seemed excessive compared to other app bans, an…

Banning the unreal dev account makes sense when you take it as setting/following precedent of removing access to the legal entity responsible for the breach of contract?

It also follows that Apple could claim that Epic used this unreal dev tooling to break the contract and thus the tooling is "illegal" and subsequently must bear the consequences as well.

I don't think there's anything overtly malicious to the unreal part save for usual corporate lawyering of go big and then back off rather than not reaching far enough and losing.

Re: Epic vs. Apple: Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion for TRO [pdf]

#70

Post by mythz »

sumedh wrote: post #62
mythz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS is a major cost to develop that's given away for free, continually invested in, advanced, developed & updated. Apple is allowed to have more than one business model on the platform they built, which was their primary focus that reshaped the company at a great opportunity cost to their other businesses. Ultimately the Company bet paid off & became successful against a number of incumbents who lost fortunes trying…

> iOS is a major cost to develop that's given away for free How is it given for free, you pay for it when you buy the phone.

You're paying for the phone, there is no cost nor can you pay for iOS. The current and all future versions is & always has been free.
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