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Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

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Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#511

Post by smarx007 »

smnrchrds wrote: post #10

> “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…

Well, if we are taking quotes out of a serious 185-page document, we are bound to lose some context. How about this counter-quote:

"The Court does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal monopolist."

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#512

Post by danShumway »

simonh wrote: post #501
danShumway wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really what lock-in means. An example of lock-in is making a conscious decision not to port iMessage to Android, specifically because it would make it easier for iPhone users to move to Android[0]. Making Apple products work well with other Apple products isn't lock-in. Purposefully making Apple products work worse with other systems, phrased within the company as a way to punish users who switch, is the k…

>Making Apple products work well with other Apple products isn't lock-in. Cool. iMessage works perfectly well with SMS, which is the only true open messaging standard, and therefore will work with anything else that interoperates with SMS. Job done.

Job done well enough that internal emails at Apple said, "the #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage"?

Come on. Apple's VP of software engineering would not be debating Android support in internal emails if SMS worked "perfectly well".

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#513

Post by dontblink »

criddell wrote: post #340
sudhirj wrote: post #223

Think Apple has already seen the writing on the wall - both S. Korea & the US are now probably going to push back against the IAP restrictions, and they can / should do a couple of things, which might actually increase revenue. 1. Cut down the IAP commission to 15% for everyone. 2. Cut down the commission to 5% for those who pay for a Business Account, say at $5,000 a year. The thing is no customer wants to use any c…

I love the Apple subscription system for things like streaming services simply because it makes unsubscribing a one-click process. I’m much more likely to subscribe to something via the Apple store than I am through any in-app service.

Would you be willing to pay 30% more? Why not let people choose how they wish to pay. If you like that UX and are willing to pay for it, app developers should be able to offer it along with cheaper alternatives.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#514

Post by majani »

cletus wrote: post #510

I've been saying this for years now: this is why Apple should've ushered in lower commissions on larger publishers themselves because otherwise a court, a regulatory authority or a legislature was ultimately going to do it for them. And you're almost always better off making that change yourself. Big publishers have their own payment processing pipelines. Apple's is just extra overhead. Smaller publishers still (IMHO…

When you consider the Pareto nature of app store earnings, Apple's best move was to wait and be forced to make the change.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#515

Post by skohan »

endisneigh wrote: post #202
skohan wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes exactly. It's not the bundling that's the problem, it's preventing free use of the hardware.

Is that actually an issue though, given that Apple has never advertised their hardware as being "free-use"?

I can't speak to where it stands in the current legal framework, but personally I don't think the vendor of any product should have any rights to determine how it's used once the customer has paid for it.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#516

Post by amalcon »

bobthepanda wrote: post #337
travoc wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would really pay a 30% premium on all your digital purchases just to be warned about a subscription expiring next year? You might be an edge case.

A fair amount of companies makes their subscription cancellation actively hostile in an effort to not get people to do it. To give an example, though you can subscribe online, the NYT requires you to call during only certain hours to a customer service line where you get badgered and questioned like you’re trying to cancel a cable subscription. If the US mandated that you need to provide equivalent means of subscript…

It seems theoretically possible for Apple to reject an app with a hostile cancellation policy without requiring that they use Apple as a payment processor.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#517

Post by tshaddox »

acdha wrote: post #275
sudhirj wrote: post #223

Think Apple has already seen the writing on the wall - both S. Korea & the US are now probably going to push back against the IAP restrictions, and they can / should do a couple of things, which might actually increase revenue. 1. Cut down the IAP commission to 15% for everyone. 2. Cut down the commission to 5% for those who pay for a Business Account, say at $5,000 a year. The thing is no customer wants to use any c…

> The thing is no customer wants to use any company's half-assed bug-riddled purchase or subscription system. Every iOS and macOS user will prefer to use the Apple system. The first sentence is true but incomplete, making the second wrong. For example, the Amazon app is highly likely to have people using their existing Amazon payment method. Companies like Stripe are going to offer their own SDKs just like they do fo…

You can already buy stuff from the Amazon app using your existing Amazon payment method. All of this controversy is about in-app purchases of digital content.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#518

Post by gordon_freeman »

From Epic CEO Tim Sweeney from NYT article[1]:

Tim Sweeney, Epic’s chief executive, said on Twitter that he was not satisfied with the ruling because it did not go far enough in allowing companies to complete in-app transactions with their own payment systems, versus having to direct customers to outside websites. He said Fortnite would not return to the App Store until such rules were in place.

“Today’s ruling isn’t a win for developers or for consumers,” he said. “We will fight on.”

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/technology/epic-apple-app...

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#519

Post by dwaite »

cletus wrote: post #510

I've been saying this for years now: this is why Apple should've ushered in lower commissions on larger publishers themselves because otherwise a court, a regulatory authority or a legislature was ultimately going to do it for them. And you're almost always better off making that change yourself. Big publishers have their own payment processing pipelines. Apple's is just extra overhead. Smaller publishers still (IMHO…

But once the regulatory option is looming overhead, don't you risk having your changes conflict with what the ultimate regulatory judgement would be?

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#520

Post by ssaturn »

gchokov wrote: post #63
jjordan wrote: post #51

Hopefully this will eventually lead to a day where users once again have full control over their devices. Android is a bit better, even if alternate app stores don't have the same system privileges as Google Play, but Apple devices are wholly authoritarian in what you can run on a device you supposedly own.

Google Devices are anything but owned by customers. You don’t have anything yours there, not even your data, location.. anything. Wake up.

Freedom is not a boolean, it is a scale and google offers more than apple at the moment. Ironically the pixel devices are one of the few where bootloaders are unlocked in the US and you can flash a customer google free rom. Assuming there is no hardware based surveillance this is as close to free as we can get at the moment.
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