Apple threatened to revoke Epic’s “Apple Developer” account due to repeated violations of the developer policy and agreement. I am sure Apple did it to try and bully Epic into settling.
Both Apple and Google will pull people’s developer accounts for this kind of misbehavior. Epic isn’t special in this regard.
Except the developer Apple wanted to ban was Epic and their Unreal engine. That is an entirely different legal entity and developer than Fortnite the game developers on the app store. It also says so in the ruling. So what Apply did was punish X for what Y did. They might as well have banned Microsoft for siding with Epic.
Could someone explain what was Apple trying to do? I really don't get their position in this story. It seemed obvious that trying to completely block Epic's Unreal Engine would be causing more legal issues. What is their strategy here? It feels that they actually wanted things to escalate, though I cannot see why they would do this.
I think Apple was outplayed here, at least for now. Apple uses a single developer account system for both iOS and MacOS. Revoking violating dev accounts is somewhat understandable but because Epic is a large tool vendor on MacOS as well, disabling that account has massive downstream consequences. Due to the particular implementation I don't think its possible for Apple to revoke only the iOS assets. By being forced t…
Epic actually does have separate accounts; in fact, they not only had separate accounts, but they have entirely separate corporate entities! Apple decided to cancel every account they could find that was even remotely associated with Epic, which the judge thought might be retaliatory and might be "piercing the corporate veil". Apple argues that Epic is essentially trying to use the moral equivalent of sock puppets to let them avoid consequences.
Could someone explain what was Apple trying to do? I really don't get their position in this story. It seemed obvious that trying to completely block Epic's Unreal Engine would be causing more legal issues. What is their strategy here? It feels that they actually wanted things to escalate, though I cannot see why they would do this.
Apple seems to have the position that if a company is going to start publishing apps with non allowed systems once that they will probably do it again with other apps. Epic has had the choice to conform to terms (they were not even losing money on in-app unlike the content streaming folks), even if that means removing all mention of in-app and have yet to do so. More or less Apple did the same thing to Facebook in th…
>Epic has had the choice to conform
The developer you are talking about didn't break the rules of the app store. Epic -the one with the development of Unreal Engine- is an entirely different legal entity than the one that broke Apple's rules - the forthnite developer. X broke a rule, Apple got pissy and punished both X and Y because both have the same owners. As the judge also acknowledged in the ruling.
So, will you be happy if the government asks Apple to remove every messenger that allows encryption? That's what users in China get. Also, it's nice that you mention Macs. On Macs, you can install any app bypassing the AppStore. As it should be on a proper computer, and iPhone IS a computer.
Have you seen what the average Mac user’s computer often looks like? It’s often a mess of five years old Adobe flash update messages, and adware like MacKeeper. I know because I’ve had to spend hours cleaning this trash up from machines belonging to friends and family. Meanwhile this has never been an issue on the iPhone. The lack of UX-degrading software on the iPad is also the primary reason why I’ve been pushing m…
Well, some people just love their chains. It is ok, I guess, their right to agree to bondage. But why do they insist that everyone else should be as enslaved as they are themselves?
And yes,I've seen Macs of average users. Never saw anything really wrong there. You are exaggerating the issue.
No sane app development business would do this when half of their potential customers are on an iPhone. I'd rather vote in legislators that will maintain the existing laws of the land, which state that you can't use your Apple-sized market power to keep competitors from doing business.
80% of world's customers are on Android. There are countries with 0% market share for iOS.
This lawsuit is taking place in the United States just like most of my business. It doesn’t matter what’s happening in the rest of the world.
Some of my highlights: - "Irreparable Harm: The issue of irreparable harm focuses on the harm caused by not maintaining the status quo, as opposed to the separate and distinct element of a remedy under the likelihood of success factor. Here the court's evaluation is guided by the general notion that “self-inflicted wounds are not irreparable injury.” - "While the Court anticipates experts will opine that Apple’s 30 p…
>"Irreparable Harm: The issue of irreparable harm focuses on the harm caused by not maintaining the status quo, as opposed to the separate and distinct element of a remedy under the likelihood of success factor. Here the court's evaluation is guided by the general notion that “self-inflicted wounds are not irreparable injury.” To add more color to this, the court refused an injunction to force Apple to enable Fortnit…
> If Apple refuses at that point Epic would likely win an injunction to force them.
Also, Apple has been repeatedly inviting epic to do this, so there is no reason to believe Apple would refuse anyway.
If I write an app that includes the Facebook SDK, that doesn't mean that Facebook is involved with submitting my app. As long as my developer account is valid, Facebook's account doesn't enter the equation when I am submitting an app that includes their SDK in any way I can see. Can someone shed more light on this?
I'm likely looking at this from a narrow case but how does the Facebook SDK scenario related to the question you asked? Did I misinterpret your original statement to mean how would the closure of Epic's Apple Developer account impact others (with their own valid Apple Developer accounts) from using their engine within an app they published to the App store? I understood your question to be "why do I (an app developer…
>how would the closure of Epic's Apple Developer account impact others (with their own valid Apple Developer accounts) from using their engine within an app they published to the App store
Correct. My understanding of the situation is that developers who include third party code in their app do not involve the author of that third party code when submitting their own app.
I used the Facebook SDK as a frequently seen example of third party code that is included within iOS apps as they are submitted to the App Store.