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Apple ordered to not block Epic’s Unreal Engine, Fortnite to stay off App Store

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Re: Apple ordered to not block Epic’s Unreal Engine, Fortnite to stay off App Store

#251
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter, the behaviour is still monopolistic, but even if we cede that point it's absolutely a duopoly. Fortnite is also banned on Google play, they've lost access to over 90% of the mobile market. The Sherman Act isn't about being a monopoly, it's about exploiting an unfair degree of leverage. But either way that's not my point. Epic establishing a precedent that restricts the degree to which companies can do…

Your point is meaningless in face of the law, and that is what all anti-Apple champions will get with this lawsuit.

They aren't suing Apple for being a monopoly, they're suing Apple for violating the Sherman Act.

https://twitter.com/EskilSteenberg/status/129752027579013939...

Re: Apple ordered to not block Epic’s Unreal Engine, Fortnite to stay off App Store

#252
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- I don't think it's fair to compare Apple's position to a "collective bargaining". What they are doing is defending their moat from competing offering, they are defending one of their source of control and revenue. If there would be a bargain, who would be facing them? Developers? If Apple is in position to dictate what they want with no discussions, it's not a bargain. - Even if other app stores are available (or s…

The bargaining is between users and developers. Developers have increasingly taken adversarial positions with their users, who have accepted increasingly onerous terms and privacy policies because individual users are not in a good bargaining position. Apple, in contrast, is in a bargaining position to negotiate terms of use on behalf of its users with developers. For example, if I purchase a subscription to a langua…

I think that you’re reversing the power dynamics. I agree with your first sentence but in a different way: bargaining should be between users and developers.

Here Apple isn’t a benevolent user collective, they have complete control over the entire pipeline, use it to force their rules on both users and developers. Epic, Spotify and others DO WANT to negotiate with their users instead of being forced by Apple. If someone is trying to negotiate, it is Epic & Co. Apple refuses any negotiation, told them repeatedly to follow their own rules. Epic thinks that there is a case to make that Apple has too much power and control and the balance should tip a bit more to developers. And that’s where we are now.

I don’t think that the collective bargaining is a good analogy, but if you want to go with this, Epic and others ARE the bargaining collective, while Apple is the mighty entity that tries to shutdown anything remotely threatening to their current business model.

Re: Apple ordered to not block Epic’s Unreal Engine, Fortnite to stay off App Store

#254
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say Epic get what they want, that would open iOS to competing app stores and/or would make rules more flexible regarding available payment systems and/or would allow applications to be side loaded. That's more dynamism, market forces can then play their role. I understand that you may want an even more open market, but that's a quite different topic. > Having two competing kings fighting over the throne isn't "…

I think what you’d see is not much in the way of price decreases or increased availability of apps, but more dark patterns, malware, and anti-privacy measures. Apple basically collectively bargains for iPhone users via the App Store. Privacy features, sign-in with Apple, limiting tracking abuse, privacy “Nutrition Facts” and other items will go out the window. Apple will have those in their App Store, but users will…

Apple can still enforce privacy measures at the OS level.

Re: Apple ordered to not block Epic’s Unreal Engine, Fortnite to stay off App Store

#255
It would be nice if everyone could start by agreeing that that there's actually a nuanced discussion to be had about how "anti-competitive" a company can be, and also how that answer might change based on the size and profitability of the company under discussion. If your position is that your opinion is absolutely correct and there's no room for discussion, why post at all? It's just ideological battle.

With that said, I am naturally inclined to believe that businesses should have a lot of control over the products they create. My baseline is that I want to be as unencumbered as possible in my product vision and the experience I offer my users, and I'd like minimal government restrictions on my desired UX unless consumers' physical health or safety is on the line.

I see the choice of how third parties should be able to create and sell code that runs on a platform I have created as sacrosanct, from the drawing board, up to the day the first unit is shipped, the developer gets to decide. As my code is my own written word, it is akin to my First Amendment right to free speech. However, I'm willing to accept that somewhere along the journey from that very first prototype, to the 1,000,000,000th unit shipped, the equation shifts.

Most products, that is to say non-open source software, by their very nature, are non-trivially anti-competitive in some way. It is the same thing to say that the product is differentiated. I have a BA in Economics, but I'm a long time out of school, so I may be clobbering this definition, but "a product is differentiated in the marketplace to the extend that a product has a feature or benefit or functionality that is not equivalently provided by every other substitute in that market." In order for a product to remain differentiated, it therefore must be non-trivially "anti-competitive". Maybe it makes sense to dive into the definition of that word more deeply, but I don't want to waste your time. My point is simply that "anti-competitive" is synonymous with any market that is not perfectly commoditized. Hopefully it's uncontroversial to claim that "anti-competitive" is not fundamentally bad per se.

It's well recognized that anti-competitive behavior which at one scale is fundamental to a diverse marketplace of products and services which drives innovation, value, and consumer choice, at another scale is used to lock-out potential new market entrants, and enable excessive profitability or rent-seeking behavior. The words "monopoly" and "duopoly" usefully describes the ultimate/penultimate theoretical states of such a market, but they don't adequately describe that various ways we can approach such a limit in the real world. Apple is not a monopoly, but that does not mean that there should not perhaps be elevated limits on acceptable anti-competitive behavior on their part based on the specific facts of their market position.

I think it is also self-evident that it is an extraordinary remedy to judicially limit anti-competitive behavior targeted at a specific company in a competitive market. Indeed when we enjoin a company from making their products function in ways that are quite central to that product's highly differentiated user experience, yes it may grant choice to some customers of that product to operate it in new ways, it is also taking choice away from customers who may have chosen the product for exactly the functionality being target. This to me is an extremely heavy handed remedy, and should only be deployed against a company if it is absolutely warranted based on unlawful conduct by that company.

While the case before the judge today was simply a preliminary hearing on a injunction, and therefore not by any means a ruling on the fundamental issue, we can see this balancing act being employed in the current case. The contract that Epic willingly entered into with Apple and willingly violated is placed in one corner (blocking Fortnite) while the separate contract(s) of developers using Epic's Unreal Engine is placed in another corner. All we know today is that this judge was not willing to allow Apple to retaliate against the violating of one contract by withdrawing from the others, and that the judge was not willing to stop Apple from terminating the first contract after it was willfully violated by Epic. The larger discussion will likely take years to play out.

Re: Apple ordered to not block Epic’s Unreal Engine, Fortnite to stay off App Store

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And in the process get a law book. You're the one who thinks that you need a world-wide monopoly for it to matter to courts in the US. > Don't like Apple, buy Android, Jolla, Purism, KaiOS, whatever. That's advice for a user, not a developer. As a developer, I'm forced to go where my customers are and in the US 50% of the users have an iPhone. If only 10% of the users in the US used an iPhone, we wouldn't be having…

If your customers made a choice to choose a platform with a highly-controlled walled garden as the only means of installing software then you should respect that and either adhere to the terms of said garden or not enter that market. You're thinking like a company that cold calls people on the do-not-call registry or something.

This assumes people buying Apple devices did it because they want a walled garden. I don't think that's true, I think it's the opposite. Most users dislike it.

Obtuse example: I think the vast majority of Fortnite players would have (much) preferred to pay Epic's cheaper rate.

Re: Apple ordered to not block Epic’s Unreal Engine, Fortnite to stay off App Store

#257
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that's the case, a legal and economics competition between those block owners sounds like a positive thing! A more dynamic market is what I want as a developer and consumer.

Heh, I don't see anything dynamic here. You basically choose between two prison cells instead of having an open market where the platform isn't more than a side note. You can just have no block owners at all. Having two competing kings fighting over the throne isn't "dynamic" democracy.

You'd probably see cross buy from Google and the Amazon store on iOS so probably at least 4 stores on iOS would pop up.

Re: Apple ordered to not block Epic’s Unreal Engine, Fortnite to stay off App Store

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people choose to live in the country, off the grid, and wonder why people would want the live in a city (under closer scrutiny of others and the government). For this “freedom” to work they run all their own infrastructure, need to manage their own defense (against fire and wild animals), and have little or no support if things go really wrong but they prefer it this way, it suits them. Meanwhile the city dwelle…

As i wrote in another comment, those comparisons 99.9% of the time lose a ton of details so they are not helpful at all. The choice for others to have no choice is not really much of a choice - not only i want to have a choice in what i install on iOS devices but i also want the ability to have a choice available in all of the devices i paid for, especially in an environment where other companies see Apple's success…

You’re framing your preference for openness as a choice and another’s preference for regulation as “having no choice” which is exactly the problem I was trying to highlight. You see your option as the only option so all others are a mistake, and so are dictating what options are available (is only yours). Do you not see this is removing people’s choice? Especially if already today there are other ecosystems that cater to your desire?

Re: Apple ordered to not block Epic’s Unreal Engine, Fortnite to stay off App Store

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I definitely think it's in my interest and the interest of the vast majority of iPhone users to have Apple make these decisions. I'd rather every developer leave the App Store than switch away from the current model. I'd just use Apple's built-in apps.

Your own situation wouldn't be different if you had alternatives to Apple's store. Apple can even market their own store as the one with higher quality apps and promote their safety guarantees. Applications from another store wouldn't have to be less "safe" (depending on your definition) as other iOS applications, they would still use the same sandbox system and all the other standard APIs. You can always decide to s…

> Your own situation wouldn't be different if you had alternatives to Apple's store.

I respectfully disagree with this statement. I think an analogous situation would be the launch of Disney+: it used to be possible to watch Disney series on Netflix, but after Disney decided to launch Disney+, these series were pulled from Netflix to push the adoption of Disney+. For a Netflix user, their situation would very much be affected by Disney+ existing.

Re: Apple ordered to not block Epic’s Unreal Engine, Fortnite to stay off App Store

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your customers made a choice to choose a platform with a highly-controlled walled garden as the only means of installing software then you should respect that and either adhere to the terms of said garden or not enter that market. You're thinking like a company that cold calls people on the do-not-call registry or something.

This assumes people buying Apple devices did it because they want a walled garden. I don't think that's true, I think it's the opposite. Most users dislike it. Obtuse example: I think the vast majority of Fortnite players would have (much) preferred to pay Epic's cheaper rate.

At least according to many iPhone owners in this thread, that is precisely why they bought an iPhone.

It's also one of the many reasons that I did not.

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