Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

961–970 of 1001 posts

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#961

Post by dkonofalski »

iknowstuff wrote: post #388
dkonofalski wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have but the rest of the world did so with a lot of hand-wringing and a boatload of viruses, toolbars, malware, and everything else. As someone who has worked in IT and in tech support, I get and agree with what Apple has done.

FYI, the iOS sandboxing model is the innovation behind the security of iOS. It is separate from the notion of having an app store. Apps would be just as restricted from accessing your data and modifying the OS as they are through their own store. So this argument is wrong but will be peddled by Apple for sure. PC operating systems had viruses because of the non-restrictive, unsandboxed access their APIs gave to every…

It is one of the innovations behind the security. A big piece of the security posture is the App Store review process which specifically checks to make sure apps are following the sandbox model. That wouldn't exist outside of that and apps could definitely bypass the sandbox.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#962

Post by dkonofalski »

pombrand wrote: post #634
dkonofalski wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally a major reason why people buy Apple products, though. If you can't sideload things, there's literally no chance of your phone being compromised by those things.

> That's literally a major reason why people buy Apple products, though. If you can't sideload things, there's literally no chance of your phone being compromised by those things. False. People who don't want to take risk simply don't sideload, most people don't know how to anyways even on android - having the /option/ to do so is not a negative. Android allows is and there's nearly no malware https://duo.com/deciphe…

It's not false. We already went through this when people first learned you could jailbreak an iPhone. People don't know the risks involved with sideloading. They just see that some jerk has "video wallpaper" and "custom icons" on their iOS and they want that so they find someone to jailbreak and install those apps without ever recognizing that they have compromised their device. That's literally the entire point here.

Also, that's a very naive position if you're just going to go by that article. That only covers "known" malware and only Android phones that they have been able to actually register has having these apps installed. Malware is not going to phone home to Google. It's going to do it's damndest to hide itself.

Side note: wtf kind of word is damndest? I always thought it was damnest.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#964

Post by dkonofalski »

ubersync wrote: post #591
dkonofalski wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have but the rest of the world did so with a lot of hand-wringing and a boatload of viruses, toolbars, malware, and everything else. As someone who has worked in IT and in tech support, I get and agree with what Apple has done.

I went into your history and ALL of your comments are for defending Apple on Apple related stories or defending Apple on non-apple related stories. You are clearly an Apple shill. How much are you getting paid?

$0. I'm not an Apple employee and all my comments are not defending Apple. Most of them might be because I only go on HN to discuss programming and Apple.

Interesting, though, that instead of actually arguing any of my points, you want to claim, without any proof, that I'm a shill based on what I like to talk about. Instead of attacking me based on my history, how about actually addressing the points I'm making? Clearly you're unable or unwilling to do so.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#965

Post by hacknat »

suifbwish wrote: post #865
hacknat wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could continue to not install those 3rd party apps if Apple was forced to open their platform.

I’m just not sure why they should be forced to open a platform they made and own so other people who don’t own it can get what they want. If I sell property I don’t have to give mineral rights and the purchaser accepts that up front. Why should phones be any different. Should we force all software companies to give us the source code of their proprietary software that we buy? They sell us compiled versions of it whic…

The problem is it's not completely closed. It's open, but they control the only gate into the system. That's a monopolistic practice, very akin to owning all the railroads. Actually it's probably worse than that, because the railroads were only about the transport of goods and people. Most people do more on their phones than anything else. People literally have sex on their phones now, and control their important peripherals (sometimes medical devices) with them.

I'd be a lot more amenable to allowing Apple to make as much money as they want on controlling the only gate into my phone if their only incentives were monetary, but the moment they started making political decisions (banning all vaporizer apps, removing the Hong Kong flag emoji, banning Parler, etc) I was no longer on their side. You can agree or disagree with their decisions on each individual case, but as a liberal I'm not comfortable with a private organization having that much power over public policy. On some level I want to give Apple a way out. My best hope for the company is that they'd prefer not to be making political decisions, but have to bow to external political pressure. I'd like us to help them out and take the decision out of their hands.

As to being able to leave Apple. The amount of work it would take for me, a professional Software Engineer, to decouple all of my contacts, data, personal photos, text history, etc from their ecosystem effectively locks me in. They created a marketplace, and when you create a market in a free market society we'll take you up on it and enforce anti-trust laws. The idea that they don't have monopolistic power is demonstrably false. In fact, I think Apple's monopoly is the most clear cut in the tech community.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#966

Post by colinmhayes »

yladiz wrote: post #559
colinmhayes wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter what Epic's intentions are. Allowing creation of 3rd party stores is great and consumers and developers. I'll continue to support the organization whose incentives are aligned with mine.

I get why it's great for developers, but why for consumers? You'll almost have a situation exactly like the one that exists on Windows for gaming, where you have to install any number of stores to get the games that _only_ exist in those stores. You may think that it will give you or other consumers more choice, but it's a choice only for developers and it's at the expense of consumers.

Choice is a good thing. Games are far cheaper on windows than any other platform because choice has forced stores to compete on fee and provide sales to entice customers.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#967

Post by Egoist »

dubcanada wrote: post #184

I can hardly wait to use Amazon App Store to install Amazon and then open up the Epic Game Store to install random game and then open up EA Game Store to install random game and then open up Facebook App Store to install Facebook and then open up the Apple App Store to install the Blizzard App Store to install Hearthstone and then go back to the Apple App Store and update the Blizzard App Store so I can get the lates…

People really make it as if it’s a better solution. there are multiple reasons why apple still doesn’t like allowing third party to take control. One reason means that trusting the third party applications means trusting privacy on the sub applications and apple have been trying to be more transparent on every app in their store. Another is how the payment system works. Yes, apple takes a big chunk of money and it may be absurd, but I wouldn’t want applications to end up being like google play apps, where i have to trust the company for not stealing my payments info or using their own payment method to track costumers without apple knowledge. not to mention if the company got cyber attacked and they store my payment information. Opening things up for third party may make things better if you read privacy policies and trust companies that you know are trustworthy, but it takes the privacy and security out of apple hands. Add to that how certain companies will definitely exploit that system, Facebook would probably hide their app inside an appstore to avoid privacy policy being transparent. Apple acting as a middleman for every app in the store isn’t that bad if you consider all that, and i am sure we would see many articles blaming apple if things go bad in a third party app.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#968

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Chris2048 wrote: post #650
insert_coin wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right to one's own work, to one's own mind outcome is arguably the only real right we can even pretend to have. What there is none is the "right" for governments to claim ownership to other's work and dictate you must do what your own free will tells you is not on your best interest, that is why they use force.

What nonsense. Apple is a business, it has no right to participate in the economy - it has to follow the rules.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people on HN rush to defent the 'rights' of a fictional entity at the cost of their own.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#969

Post by techpression »

kuschku wrote: post #926
techpression wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this idea, much like Windows N (that the EU fought years for boasting how good it was for consumers and yet nobody bought it) Apple could release a iPhone - insecure edition, offering no security features, just like how Microsoft removed media playback features. Let the actual consumers decide instead of heavy handed government. But I guess most commentators want to eat the cake, sell it and keep it at the sam…

Actually, Windows 10 only sells N editions. If you want to play back media, you'll have to buy media codecs separately in the Windows Store. And it turns out that was actually a benefit for consumers.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/get-windows-medi...

“Included in clean installs of Windows 10 as well as upgrades to Windows 10 from Windows 8.1 or Windows 7.”

My Windows 10 also plays H.264 from a clean install (defaults to Movies and TV viewer) and the list of installed codecs (supplied from Microsoft) contains mp4, xvid and even divx, so no idea where you get the idea that Windows 10 only sells as a N edition. I bought my licenses in Sweden.

Re: Epic Games steps up Apple fight with EU antitrust complaint

#970

Post by simion314 »

valparaiso wrote: post #951
simion314 wrote: post #913

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not matter what a judge said in the past when we want to create some new laws, the new laws will invalidate the old stuff.

You can't invalidate walled gardens because every company uses it. From Tesla to NASA.

Sure we can, if people want it they can. Example with ATM machines in EU, before I had to find an ATM machine from my bank because using other bank one would cost a lot, guess what laws fix that and the people benefited and the big banks suffered a bit, some rich bastards has one less expensive car now... so in a society it is possible to make illegal shitty behavior. (in case you are wondering the banks did not left and no righ dude lost his home because of this)

So if the people would convince the politicians that loot boxes, game exclusives, wall gardens, tracking etc is bad they can force the big giants to stop it and no fanboy or judge in Texas could affect what EU m Australia or other countries would decide.

Post reply on HN