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

Judge in Fortnite case holds Tim Cook's feet to the fire

protocol.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 375 posts

Re: Judge in Fortnite case holds Tim Cook's feet to the fire

#361

Post by ksec »

nucleardog wrote: post #140
benrbray wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is opening it up so users have a choice. Third party stores will emerge, and it is up to the consumer, not Apple, to decide whether the extra features are worth the new apps being a little rough around the edges like they are on Android. If it's as bad as you say, the new stores will not be successful anyway.

> The point is opening it up so users have a choice. Users have a choice: Don't use iOS. Their actions have pretty overwhelmingly spoken and they don't care. The only people that care are techies. And most obviously not that much because most meetings I show up to are still full of iPhones.

Just to add to all the replies.

EU is watching the case very carefully. While Americans might think Apple can do whatever they want with their devices. The same could not be said with the EU. And I am willing to bet the court battle wont flavour Apple because it seems the old world has a much different view to Anti Trust and Anti Competition than US.

And Apple will have a choice, comply or paid a heavy price.

Re: Judge in Fortnite case holds Tim Cook's feet to the fire

#362

Post by stale2002 »

slver wrote: post #342
stale2002 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can do whatever you want with your phone already. But, with the court decision, it will become much easier to install other app stores on the phone, if Apple's actions are ruled illegal anti-competitive. Thats the point. The illegal anti-competitive behavior, that makes it more difficult for people to install other software, could be blocked by the courts. At which people, people will be able to install other a…

I don’t get what I want. I want Apple to control their ecosystem. It significantly altered the iPhone experience for the better imho and this is why I buy the products. A store in a store is like a country in a country. I declare myself a country now laws no longer apply to me. How would that work for society. And you already had what you want. It’s full of phones where you can install whatever. Why should you force…

> I want Apple to control their ecosystem

Users are free to choose the Apple app store, if the decide to do so.

The problem is Apple's illegal, anti-competitive behavior, that needs to be stopped.

> I don’t get what I want.

If the courts rules that Apple's behavior is illegally anti-competitive, then what will likely happens is that Apple will be ordered to make it easier for people to install other app stores, if the users choose to do so.

> It significantly altered the iPhone experience

You can continue to have that experience. Just don't install other app stores. But, if the courts rule that apple's behavior is illegal, then other users will be able to choose differently.

> declare myself a country now laws no longer apply to me.

What are you talking about? I am talking about the law. You know, the court case that is happening right now? The legal system?

The judge, in this case, in America, could rule Apple' behavior illegal, and force them to make it easier to install other app stores.

> And you already had what you want.

No, actually. What other users and developers want, is for Apple's behavior to be ruled illegally anti-competitive, and for them to be required to stop intentionally making it more difficult for people to install other app stores, using their illegal anti-competitive behavior.

> Why should you force Apple to offer a product they don’t want to?

It is not about forcing them to offer a product. Instead, it is about stopping them from spending so much effort, illegally, to stop competitor app stores. With their illegal behavior.

Re: Judge in Fortnite case holds Tim Cook's feet to the fire

#363

Post by ksec »

rococode wrote: post #9

Sounds like the judge had some very sharp questions, big props to her. It seemed to me like Tim Cook and Apple were not as prepared as they should've been. They didn't have any particularly unexpected/novel arguments, it was basically just constantly repeating the same bland things they've been saying all along about IP and fraud and convenience.

>Sounds like the judge had some very sharp questions, big props to her.

In following some court cases in Tech ( mostly Apple ) this is the first time I have seen a US judge actually doing their job properly. May be this is also because it is the first case Apple is a defendant. All the other case Apple brought forward, the judge was unapologetically Pro Apple. It was uncanny.

Re: Judge in Fortnite case holds Tim Cook's feet to the fire

#364

Post by mbg721 »

nradov wrote: post #48
rococode wrote: post #9

Sounds like the judge had some very sharp questions, big props to her. It seemed to me like Tim Cook and Apple were not as prepared as they should've been. They didn't have any particularly unexpected/novel arguments, it was basically just constantly repeating the same bland things they've been saying all along about IP and fraud and convenience.

Novel arguments aren't needed. If the precedents are on your side then it makes sense to repeat bland arguments instead of confusing the issue. I don't necessarily support Apple's business policy here, but strictly from a legal standpoint Fortnite's case has always been a long shot.

"A good lawyer knows the law; a great lawyer knows the judge." It sounds like this was a rare blindsiding.

Re: Judge in Fortnite case holds Tim Cook's feet to the fire

#365

Post by voxic11 »

techrat wrote: post #291
justaguy88 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested to see Steam on the iphone rather than anything Epic might do

> I'm interested to see Steam on the iphone rather than anything Epic might do Steam isn't even an app store on Android.

I use steam on my phone all the time via gforce now.

Re: Judge in Fortnite case holds Tim Cook's feet to the fire

#366

Post by m463 »

kiririn wrote: post #339
m463 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in a few seconds I can think of many many ways an ipad is crippled. - look at your data directly and back it up - backup and restore the entire device including apps - use ethernet through the lightning port instead of wifi - use general usb devices through the lightning port - wifi scanner (apple disallowed it in ios early-on) - tcpdump network traffic - change the wifi-off shortcut to actually turn it off (matching…

>look at your data directly and back it up >backup and restore the entire device including apps Ironically these areas are where iOS shines. Despite being a heavily walled garden, it grants you full backups and full user filesystem access (including things like keychain) via extracting those backups. A comparable and unrooted Android tablet cannot be fully backed up, and you cannot inspect app/user settings areas of…

> Ironically these areas are where iOS shines.

You as a device owner do not have access to the full ios filesystem. full stop.

Re: Judge in Fortnite case holds Tim Cook's feet to the fire

#367

Post by igornadj »

m463 wrote: post #52

The best result for customers is that there are alternate ways of putting apps on their own phones that do not require apple's permission. Then the customers that trust apple to protect them will just stay with the app store. The customers that try the alternate ways may find problems, but they will also find enormous positive changes in their ability to do new things on their phone. Personally, I would like the abil…

The argument against an iPhone being a general purpose computer is that it first and foremost needs to be a phone, and do various other critical things. Imagine being stuck out in the middle of nowhere and your phone not working because of an app you installed from a non verified source messing things up.

Re: Judge in Fortnite case holds Tim Cook's feet to the fire

#368

Post by anoncake »

tompazourek wrote: post #358
anoncake wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If customers don't buy consoles unless sold at a loss, they value them less than making them costs. Which means they shouldn't be made.

You forget that there's a competitive market that affects the pricing of consoles. If a customer values a console for $1000 and therer are two consoles on the market that are almost identical, one costs $600, and the other one $900, the customer is still going to get the $600 one. The cost is related to the value it brings, but it's also heavily affected by competition.

No, I didn't. I meant that if opening consoles means they stop existing because customers aren't willing to buy them at full price, that's actually a good thing.

Re: Judge in Fortnite case holds Tim Cook's feet to the fire

#369

Post by trboyden »

slver wrote: post #347
trboyden wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, as we have seen with Epic, and why we are talking about this case, is they can, by dropping your app from the App Store in retribution for offering an alternative. They can do that because there is no other app store on Apple and effectively prevents you from competing.

Epic wasn't dropped for offering sales on a site. Inform yourself.

Except, they did. Apple started the threats against Epic when Epic started lowering their prices for add-ons on other platforms, which made Apple look greedy. To bolster their anti-competitive case against Apple, Epic turned on the in-app store to which Apple then pulled Fortnite. Epic has to be able to show damages and anti-competitive actions in order to have a case. If they didn't force Apple to pull Fortnite, they wouldn't be able to show damages.

Re: Judge in Fortnite case holds Tim Cook's feet to the fire

#370

Post by Copernicron »

skohan wrote: post #274
mattkevan wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By create you mean develop, right? The iPad is already one of the best creation tools out there for artists, musicians, photographers etc. I’d suggest the iPad is hampered more by the limits of iPadOS’ multitasking UI and it’s roots as a scaled-up phone OS - and the scarcity of truly pro-level software - rather than the App Store and not being able to sideload. In fact the only real reasons to sideload or jailbreak a…

iPad has some good tools for content creation. Procreate for example is probably one of the best drawing tools available at the moment. But these apps are still largely islands. Powerful pro workflows require multiple applications to be used together in interesting ways. With iPad that's impossible. You have an anemic file system, and strict limitations on what an app can do. What I want is a proper *Nix layer, like…

Even a lot of amateur workflows are difficult to impossible on the iPad. I'm an amateur photographer and after using the iPad Pro as my primary editing computer for months I gave up and went back to Windows. I wanted to make it work. I really did. The file system makes the workflow incredibly painful, my preferred RAW converter isn't available, and the Adobe apps that are available are sorely lacking compared to the desktop versions. I have a couple hundred dollars worth of Photoshop plug-ins and none of them work on the iPad. There isn't even a way to load plug-ins on iPad. I can't print at all (yes, some of us still like to print). Backups can't be automated. Internal storage is very limited and external drives are painful to use. There's simply no way to tell when the iPad is accessing the external drive or not. I have had to perform multiple filesystem repairs because of that.

The iPad has some definite advantages. Battery life is great, performance is great, the screen is amazing, but it's all severely crippled by the software. Until Apple makes the OS as powerful as MacOS there is no point at all in having so much power that you simply can't use.

Post reply on HN