Apple is just acting increasingly stupid. There's no word for it.
Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS
411–420 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS
#412Seems like the message is, sure we lost our case against the EU so we have be more open on the platform/store, but we're just going to ban any developers who even try to take advantage of that. I suppose they're leveraging their duopoly/luxury positions to give everyone the finger. And once again I'm glad I have nothing to do with the Apple ecosystem.
Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies in quite a few industries have a duty to do business with you, with very few limitations. For example, in some countries/cities, taxis generally can't refuse transportation to you, assuming you're able to pay and not endangering the driver. Having publicly and repeatedly expressed a dislike for taxis, or even wearing a t-shirt saying "taxis in $city are an overpriced monopoly" would not be a valid reason to…
"taxis generally can't refuse transportation to you" The fact that it happens says nothing about whether it's right or not. In my opinion it's wrong and immoral that taxis can't refuse to service you. But taxis are very regulated in many places. In fact, for example, Uber is illegal in Colombia. And still, despite their legal status, Uber is not only very used in Colombia, but it's also safer than getting a normal ta…
When there's a big power imbalance, putting the onus on the service provider to give a valid reason for denying customers can be more impactful than laying the burden on a user to prove there was discrimination.
Depending on your race/ethnicity/disability/socioeconomic status, taxi drivers might refuse service even though it is against the law. It is easier to win against a taxi driver if they're obligated to explain why they didn't help someone in a wheelchair.
Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS
#414The only explanation Apple can give is "Money!!!"
Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, the major difference being that Epic is not an employee of Apple and thus cannot benefit from employment law. The terms of their relationship is governed by contract law, and now the DMA.
DMA, Apple can't just retaliate for Epic complaining about them, this doesn't mean that Apple is forced to deal with everyone they are just banned from retaliating for certain things: > 6. The gatekeeper shall not directly or indirectly prevent or restrict business users or end users from raising any issue of non-compliance with the relevant Union or national law by the gatekeeper with any relevant public authority,…
Even if the "hole" is plugged you'd have to prove in court you were being retaliated against. Vibes are not going to be enough. You'd need a decision maker's e-Mail saying "you know what, fuck Epic cancel their account". Without that smoking gun all Apple needs to do is show all the instances of Epic violating their contract. Same if they canceled your account because of violations.
Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 12. The gatekeeper shall apply fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory general conditions of access for business users to its software application stores, online search engines and online social networking services listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9). Apple don't get to deny access to their main competitor in this space just as a show of force. That is not fair, reasonable or non-discrimina…
a) It is fair and non-discriminatory. Epic was found by the courts to have violated the terms of the agreement that they signed and Apple had the right to terminate it. They have done this with other developers as well. b) Epic is not their main competitor in anything.
Have any other companies announced credible plans for a competing app store? I'm at least not aware of any, which would absolutely make Epic their main competitor.
It is pretty hilarious how people think some US court judgement would have any relevance on EU anti-trust regulation.
Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS
#417This is egregious and deeply disturbing behavior from Apple. At this point it feels wrong to own an iPhone. I'm at a loss for words describing what Tim and their leadership team has done to this company that I used to admire so much.
They're addicted to bad revenue here. Once they started with the App Store revenue and especially taking a cut on all transactions, they were locked in. It's a public company so number must always go up. If number doesn't go up, executives are gone and replaced with people who will make number go up. That means it's impossible for them to back out of the App Store revenue channel. They'll have to be forced out by gov…
They already have an ads business, fwiw.
Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Steve hated industry standards. > The only time he ever said anything else was when every web site in the world ran on flash and iphone couldn't do flash. NeXTSTEP, the Steve Jobs thing that got renamed as Mac OS X when Apple bought it, was based on BSD Unix. In the early 2000s, Apple produced and used a lot of open standards. "Darwin" was open source. Bonjour is mDNS. Apple developed CUPS and open sourced it. Then…
The BSD use in there wasn't because of love of standards but permissive licensing. Apple didn't develop CUPS. Apple's relationship with 'standards' has always been pretty complicated although it's mostly worked out for them.
They used BSD because then it could run Unix/POSIX applications instead of the ~0 third party applications that would have existed for a new operating system.
Apple hired the maintainer of CUPS and provided the resources necessary to make it good enough for the publishing market, while continuing to publish the source code. They had enough involvement in RFCs 5227, 5387, 6761, 6762 and 6886, among others, for their company name to be listed in the RFC.
Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not aware of any duty to deal in the DMA.
> 12. The gatekeeper shall apply fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory general conditions of access for business users to its software application stores, online search engines and online social networking services listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9). Apple don't get to deny access to their main competitor in this space just as a show of force. That is not fair, reasonable or non-discrimina…
Epic also intentionally broke agreements with Apple before. Non-discriminatory doesn’t mean they have no grounds to terminate Epic’s developer accounts, and Epic is continuing to make themselves look untrustworthy by trying to publicly and explicitly shank Apple. Spotify is also trying to shank Apple in all the same places Epic is, but they also didn’t go behind Apple’s back to deceive the prior review process in contravention to a signed agreement, file suit and spin-out a pre-prepared publicity stunt-filled PR campaign and then go on to court to testify that all of that was done on purpose. Tim Sweeney and Epic did.
It sucks because I was hoping this fight was basically in the rear-view mirror now, but it’s hard to argue Apple has no grounds for calling Epic untrustworthy and not even maintaining an arms-length business relationship in one jurisdiction with them. Who’s to say Epic wouldn’t try something similar again? Apple can still set terms under the DMA, and Tim has been publicly campaigning that these terms violate the DMA which isn’t actually his call to make.
Also one other point:
> Apple don't get to deny access to their main competitor in this space
As of today, and yesterday, and going back to the dawn of the iPhone: Epic isn’t anything in “this space” let alone Apple’s main competitor. They have stated that they intend to compete, and want to compete with Apple in this space, but Epic’s iPhone app marketplace is vaporware. It hasn’t shipped, it doesn’t look like they’re going to be able to ship now, and in its entire history of being discussed, has earned Epic €0.00 to date.
Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS
#420This is egregious and deeply disturbing behavior from Apple. At this point it feels wrong to own an iPhone. I'm at a loss for words describing what Tim and their leadership team has done to this company that I used to admire so much.
They're addicted to bad revenue here. Once they started with the App Store revenue and especially taking a cut on all transactions, they were locked in. It's a public company so number must always go up. If number doesn't go up, executives are gone and replaced with people who will make number go up. That means it's impossible for them to back out of the App Store revenue channel. They'll have to be forced out by gov…
The issue for Apple is that their hardware business is slowing down due to market saturation. Their recent attempt at growth into a new hardware market (Vision Pro) seems like a huge dud. Their last successful new product was the Watch which at about 100 million sales in total is only half of a single year’s iPhone sales (and likely less profitable).
So where do they go from here?