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As an app developer, I'm moving to straight web apps. All the hoops, the review system,and ranking prejudice makes it an easy decision even outside of the 30% rake.
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I'm surprised this kind of topic inspires such discourse. I wonder what makes it different than other topics.
- The rights of the individual/company compared to the good of the public.
- The right of an individual to control that which they bought. Also, whether and what you buy compared to license the use of.
- Anti-competitive behavior and monopolies (as distinct concepts, whether one applies doesn't preclude a different answer for the other).
- Very large companies and the amount of control they have over individuals and their rights.
These are all vibrant topics of discussion on HN, and this includes, and in some cases epitomizes, aspects of all of those and more.
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> Tinder, Microsoft, Facebook, Spotify have all openly backed Epic Oh, it's going to be so much fun when Epic wins and Taylor Swift decides to apply the same legal reasoning to the cut she pays Spotify for her music…
The difference would be that the same iPhone has access to Taylor Swift through Spotify, Apple Music, Play Music (does that even exist anymore?) and so on. Put the app store on the same level of competition and level the playing field of Spotify vs Apple Music in regards to the 30% subscription fee.
All: these Epic vs. Apple threads, and $BigCo vs. $BigCo threads in general, have unfortunately been seeing more name-calling, accusations of manipulation, flamebait/unsubstantive posts, and other things that break the HN guidelines. If you comment, can you please avoid that? Reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html would help. The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoug…
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HN is, hopefully, better than most places on the internet as there are lots of people willing to decide each issue on its merits, and also recalibrate their positions continually in the light of events,
Not sure why people are surprised or consider it giant news. > The court recommended that Epic follow the App Store’s guidelines and policies while the case is in progress – the rules they followed over the past ten years until they created the current situation themselves. Epic refused. Well duh, this is a show match court fight of Epic Games not liking the rules and not getting the special treatment they want. No m…
Epic could have taken the matter directly to the courts and taken action (whatever it was) after a verdict. Heck, they could even have tried to make a case to the European Union, which seems to have a knack for pursuing this kind of thing. A ruling over there wouldn't directly impact the rest of the world, but it could get the ball rolling.
Instead, they decided to make a spectacle of this whole issue to try to rally customers to their cause. For that, I have no sympathy. Customers are being used as cannon fodder here. And it's not by Apple.
I agree that the App store cut is too high. But this is not the way to go about things.
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This is a stub comment to collect the replies so we can collapse them, to prevent offtopicness. Sorry, no-JS users.
I'm surprised this kind of topic inspires such discourse. I wonder what makes it different than other topics.
If this discussion was on Reddit or similar is would probably more one-sided both due to the number of people who play games and the proportionally lower amount of people who have spent a lot of money on Apple products than on HN (accidental humblebraggging regarding your credit card bill seems relatively prevalent here)
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Tim Sweeney may be a wonderful man who loves open platforms, apple pie, and kittens, but: - Android is clearly more open than iOS, but Epic is also suing Google. So is this really about sideloading? From that suit, it sure doesn't sound like it. - When you do sideload Fortnite on your Android device, from what I understand, you can't actually sideload Fortnite directly. Instead you have sideload... the Epic Games Sto…
The reality of the legal system is that all small companies would just get worn out and forced to settle against Apple, regardless of the justice of their complaint. No company smaller than Epic could afford to file such a case. I wonder whether any company could become large enough without having some way for people to argue that "it is not the general this particular battle needs".
Apple is a monopoly. When Microsoft was investigated and fined for anti-trust behaviors, it hasn't engaged in this level of abuse.
it hasn't engaged in this level of abuse. Well, I couldn't buy a computer from a major company with an alternate operating system without paying Microsoft in the 90's, so I'll say that's pretty damn abusive.
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You can't uninstall Safari from iOS. In fact you can't even browse the web without it as Apple prohibits any other browsing engine (Chrome, FF, etc, are using WKWebView). I don't know the numbers but I imagine there are more iOS devices now than there were Windows PCs back in the 90s.
Apple does NOT prevent other browsing engines. It prevents you from dynamically compiling code at runtime which is a needed rule because otherwise apps would just run around the curation process.
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Currently, Epic’s existing users on iOS are able to make in-app purchases without paying Apple’s 30% fee, which is literally saving them an expense. They are better off than before. Epic being blocked from issuing updates may eventually make them worse off (and it makes prospective new users worse off).
No, not the users. It's Epic not paying Apple's 30% cut. You have that backwards.