Note that if you scroll to the bottom of the order, the judge was nice enough to include an outline of the order to aid in navigation
Direct link to order: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21060631/apple-epic-j...
Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case
211–220 of 958 posts
Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case
#212> “The court cannot ultimately conclude that apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws,” she writes in the ruling. “Nonetheless, the trial did show that apple is engaging in anti-competitive conduct under California’s competition laws.” It's nice to see that you don't have to be a monopolist to be legally barred from anti-competitive behaviour. I hope this puts a permanent stop to all the thr…
> It's nice to see that you don't have to be a monopolist to be legally barred from anti-competitive behaviour Can someone ELI5 why Apple is considered to be anti-competitive for not dedicating resources to assisting another business in creating a competitor to a market for a platform they and they alone created? If Epic wants to have their game on a phone, it makes sense they abide by the rules enforced by the compa…
Who's phone is it?
Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case
#213[deleted]
Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does an answer actually look like?
I'd expect one of the 2 phrasings to be present: "the Court concludes that Apple is a monopolist under federal / state antitrust laws" "the Court concludes that Apple is not a monopolist under neither federal nor state antitrust laws" Instead, the court went with the third, which to me means "we have not ruled on whether Apple is a monopolist or not, lawsuits welcome". Is that not the right way to look at it?
The court said Epic failed to prove it in the relevant market to this case (digital mobile gaming).
Leaves the door open for Spotify to sue.
Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
They seem to have ruled only that you can’t prohibit links to alternative payment methods (which would not be IAPs). You can still prohibit alternative actually IAPs, so Epic’s alternative IAPs must pay the fee. Edit: Note that this a descriptive statement regarding the ruling, not a normative statement of my opinion.
I am unclear about this actually. I think the actual injunction will be a separate document released soon. But here's the judge's description in the ruling: > a nationwide injunction shall issue enjoining Apple from prohibiting developers to include in their Apps and their metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to IAP Obviously this would…
I doubt they’re saying you can link to methods of payment but can’t provide goods or services in return for that payment, even in app.
Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a user, I have zero desire to use some random payment gateway, using Apple makes my life easier, I can reasonably trust Apple not to let someone steal my money, how am I supposed to trust 50 different gateways? Also if people move away from giving Apple any money for the App Store, I expect the annual fee to increase to make up for it, and might Apple make you pay more if you don't use Apple's gateway? I don't see…
Are you willing to spend 27% more for everything to use Apple payment gateway? Do you love it that much? At the end of the day, services have to provide value. If your customers don't want to pay for your services, they do not value them. That's a dangerous position for any company to try to maintain. The mobile software industry generally has been chaffing at the fees for quite some time now, these are the warning s…
Some of the services I pay via Apple's subscription workflow is cheaper. Unbelievable, but true. Pocket is one, Evernote is other. However, they later synchronized their pricing to be cheaper everywhere, but it doesn't matter. It makes my life easier.
If I'm paying for a cross-platform service, I can happily use their own methods, but if I'm paying for an app-store only application which either runs only on iOS or macOS, good luck to them. I won't subscribe via their methods, because it makes my life more complicated.
Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case
#217I don't understand the logic behind this ruling. So, Apple was in the wrong about forcing app devs to use their payment processor (and taking a 30% cut at the time - 15% or 30% now), and they have to change that. But Epic was also in the wrong when they tried to go around this rule, and they have to pay 30% on every transaction they made after their update in which they used direct payment? But if Epic didn't try to…
I guess the judge's logic is that Epic could have sued without breaching the contract first, even if the contract was actually illegal. I don't agree that it should work that way, but the damages are immaterial. The bigger issue is: can/will Apple permanently terminate Epic's developer account for breach of contract and prevent them from releasing Fortnite despite this ruling, and possibly even cause problems for Unr…
> possibly even cause problems for Unreal on Mac?
I think this is unlikely. Mac gamers need Unreal more than games developed using Unreal need Mac users. Mac is an incredibly niche market for games - they're not going to rewrite their game using a different engine to run on Mac, and Apple knows that.
Of course, Apple could decide they don't give a shit about native Mac games, why don't you play our iOS games, but that just seems petty.
Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm. I'm reading "the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws" as "we cannot decide on this matter". Is this not the right interpretation?
That is not the right interpretation. They didn’t say they cannot conclude one way or the other - they said they cannot conclude that Apple is a monopolist, period - meaning that they have concluded Apple is not a monopolist (under current state and federal laws). They did not say “we cannot ultimately conclude whether Apple is a monopolist” which would be your interpretation. [edit] Given the downvotes (really?) I s…
"We cannot conclude that X" does not imply "We conclude that not-X".
Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fortnite will come and go but Unreal Engine will be generating revenues forever. Epic are more motivated by transferring the excess profits of Apple into modest profits for developers, who then redistribute 5% of their revenues (as part of the Unreal Engine license) back to Epic. I wonder if Epic will sue Steam and console developers next... Epic sells Unreal to Sony and Microsoft, so suing them is probably unlikely.…
> I wonder if Epic will sue Steam Why would Epic sue Steam? Fornite isnt on Steam, because it doesn't need to be. It's the platform (Windows) working in a competitive way!
Console developers on the other hand, are almost certainly next.
Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case
#220There goes all of Apple's App Store revenue, a cool 25% of Apple's total revenue. Should have sold my stock!