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Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

wsj.com

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Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#511

Post by [deleted] »

owkman wrote: post #310
PaulRobinson wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iAd is stated as being built differently to how other adtech networks work. I personally believe that Apple is able to make different (better), choices in the name of a consumer privacy, than Google will. Android is built from the ground up to provide surveillance data to Google-controlled adtech - that's their revenue model. I don't begrudge them that, people should have choice, etc. but the revenue model is adtech…

> Android is built from the ground up to provide surveillance data to Google-controlled adtech I've always read this and it seems well accepted. But I'm curious what exactly does it mean? What's Android sending to Google? Surely it's not logging what I click on apps? It's not logging what I click on my browser since the websites themselves send this info for ad purposes. So what's Android doing that let's say my Linu…

[deleted]

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#512

Post by dns_snek »

bze12 wrote: post #26

Their entire setup was egregious. They charge 27% for purchases made using external payment processors. Including Stripe fees that's net-zero (not even accounting for any chargeback risks). They severely limit how you can display the external purchase link too, and display an obnoxious warning screen when you tap it. I would be surprised if a single developer adopted it. https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-e…

From the court document, I don't know how many ended up actually adopting it, but it's about what you'd expect:

> As of the May 2024 hearing, only 34 developers out of the approximately 136,000 total developers on the App Store applied for the program, and seventeen of those developers had not offered in-app purchases in the first place. In May 2024, Apple argued that it would take more time for developers to take advantage of the Link Entitlement and that the adoption rates could not be known. Apple attempted here to mislead.

> Given the revelations of the February 2025 hearing, Apple modeled the lack of adoption. That Apple adduced no testimony or evidence indicating developer adoption of the program is no surprise. As shown above, Apple knew it was choosing a course which would fail to stimulate any meaningful competition to Apple’s IAP and thereby maintain its revenue stream

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#513

Post by ksec »

2025, this marks 11+ years I have been saying that App Store is not sustainable.

They should have made a separate Game Store and continue to collect those 30% from games, which protect 75% to 80% of their current App Store revenue.

Then 5 - 6% for all subscription based services like Netflix and Spotify. If you include the Credit Card Processing and other tax / VAT report this is a fair amount I think most company would be on board.

And 10% for everything else. Including Tipping and other IAP etc.

Apple would have protected most of their App Store revenue, generate lots of good will and continue their walled garden path.

But for whatever reason over the years every time I mentioned it I get downvoted.

Now it may be too late. The damage to developer relationship, to many business and to its brand.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#514

Post by freejazz »

hajile wrote: post #508
freejazz wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think experts don't testify in civil cases? I find these really elaborate rants about the law, which are based on nothing but presumptions, and in this case, presumptions that do not even arise from actual personal experience, to be incredibly exhausting and in service of creating more confusion than anything else. Like, you just said upthread that courts shouldn't rely on the word reasonable? I cannot think o…

I'm familiar with what exists -- I simply think it is flawed. I never said SMEs don't testify in civil cases. My contention was that the judge should have consulted SMEs when defining parts of the ruling outside her expertise. You aren't making a case for reasonableness as a concept. You are simply asserting that it exists, so it must continue to exist with the implication that it is good. You seem to be further impl…

I didn't say you said that. I asked if you thought that. Once again, that's a faciallly unreasonable response. Just to demonstrate that reasonable is a workable term that need not be this vague unlawful mystery that you decided is the case, entirely on your own.

>My contention was that the judge should have consulted SMEs when defining parts of the ruling outside her expertise.

The case consists almost entirely of the testimony of experts and the professionals working on both sides, so I think the judge is actually very familiar with the issues at play here and I'm not sure why you came to the conclusion that this kind of expertise was not considered when its the very nature of the entirety of the case.

>You aren't making a case for reasonableness as a concept.

I don't need to. It is not my obligation to defend the legal system because you have your own ridiculous and unfounded assumptions.

>You seem to be further implying that an assertion of reasonableness by a judge should carry the same weight as an assertion of reasonableness by SMEs or a jury of peers.

Judges make orders. SMEs don't and can't. And lol at the idea you are suggesting that a layman jury should define these things. It is clear to me that you do not understand the role of a jury in a trial. Jury's determine disputed facts. Nothing more, nothing less.

>Can you defend these assertions?

The issue isn't defending them. The issue is convincing you, an incredibly unreasonable person. That's probably not going to happen judging by the conversations I see you engaged with here.

But hey, I'm glad you came up with your own idea as to how the legal system should work, seemingly without any actual experience outside of reading the news. Very smart kid energy.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#515

Post by DannyBee »

egonschiele wrote: post #427
DannyBee wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The most shocking thing to me about that isn't the malicious compliance, but that even after a court injunction, and fully knowing that there could be subsequent discovery, they have people putting something like that in writing." Keep in mind that once you lose, the process is no longer adversarial. In ~all cases you will be required to provide evidence and status updates and such on implementation of an injunction…

> you do practically have to keep records of what you are doing to comply I would argue that the text the parent comment has pulled out is not part of the record keeping you need to do to comply. Lawyers will tell you to have certain conversations in person, and it is surprising that some of these conversations happened in text instead of in person.

i'm aware of what lawyers tell you sometimes, since i am in fact, a lawyer in addition to being an engineer, but you have to think about the context as well. You aren't talking about trying to avoid another side finding it in mountains of discovery, you are talking about trying to avoid a judge who easily has the power to force your engineers to testify under oath about what they are doing, finding out about what you are doing.

This is a very bad plan :)

On top of that I'll also offer to you that the days of trying to avoid generating evidence as a mechanism for avoiding bad things happening are fast dying after google got sanctioned for having off the record conversations for exactly this reason.

It's bad advice - the better advice i used to give my clients is - if you are not doing anything wrong, don't act like you are doing anything wrong. If you are doing something wrong, stop.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#516

Post by kridsdale3 »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #510
tombert wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother in law (25 years old) mostly uses his phone for everything, which is obviously fine, but he needed help with something on his computer recently so he called me. It was just asking for help getting stuff of a portable hard drive from work, so I tell him to plug it in and open up the file explorer. He didn't know what the file explorer was, so I say "uh, the thing with the folders and shit in it, the little…

one of my interns didn't know how to create a folder.

I'm glad my dad taught me mkdir at 9 years old.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#517

Post by DannyBee »

freejazz wrote: post #504
hajile wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the current interpretation, but I also know that it's not logically sustainable. The key here is "reasonableness", but you can't read a judge's mind, so reasonable only means what a reasonable person would infer. That is completely subjective based on an individual's implicit biases and knowledge of all surrounding circumstances. For example, the dev team tasked with implementing this may not be familiar with…

Here's a great application of reasonable: your post is incredibly unreasonable. It's a long rant that is not based in the law, the application of "reasonability" in the law, or other examples of "good faith" standards being used. It's made without any expertise or direct relevant knowledge, yet it is offered with the authority and conviction as if you understood more about the law than the judge in question. Reasonab…

+1 to this.

In addition, one of the ironic things is that I ran engineering teams that did the equivalent of project michigan, at Google.

More than once.

The upsides (downsides?) of being an engineer/manager/lawyer.

So i even have plenty of firsthand experience dealing with exactly this situation, both on the legal side, and the engineering side.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#518

Post by ocdtrekkie »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #364
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoot me down with examples here, but my impression is that the US (historically, not just in the last three months) will never hurry to curtail the ability of a US company to make profit. With the possible exception of when a US company egregiously flouts laws that already exist. Effective regulation isn't a strength of the US.

The US has no problem with regulating its industries. It just doesn't do it pre-emptively out of fear the way the EU does. It actually lets business develop before assessing any damages.

The problem is the damage was obvious in 2014, and it took until 2025 for us to do anything about it. In the tech cycle, that reaction time is way, way too slow. Honestly, the biggest part of the problem is not when they started investigating, it's how long they allowed these companies to abuse the process.

This case started in 2020. What companies like Apple and Google have done in most of these cases has been to abuse the court's willingness to provide extensions to create an incredible amount of delay. One of the tactics they use both here and in the EU is to say they need more time, and more time, and more time, and then on the very last day of the last extension just say "nah, we don't think we're doing anything wrong". They didn't need the extensions, they were just wasting time. Because the amount of money they make on the status quo is worth drawing out as long as possible.

If anything, I think the biggest reform would be to say that large companies do not get to ask for extensions on court deadlines. They have literally billions of dollars, hundreds of lawyers, there is no reason they cannot manage to get what they need to do done on schedule. Asking for more time should be viewed as bad faith.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#519

Post by stale2002 »

hajile wrote: post #508
freejazz wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think experts don't testify in civil cases? I find these really elaborate rants about the law, which are based on nothing but presumptions, and in this case, presumptions that do not even arise from actual personal experience, to be incredibly exhausting and in service of creating more confusion than anything else. Like, you just said upthread that courts shouldn't rely on the word reasonable? I cannot think o…

I'm familiar with what exists -- I simply think it is flawed. I never said SMEs don't testify in civil cases. My contention was that the judge should have consulted SMEs when defining parts of the ruling outside her expertise. You aren't making a case for reasonableness as a concept. You are simply asserting that it exists, so it must continue to exist with the implication that it is good. You seem to be further impl…

> so it must continue to exist with the implication that it is good

The purpose and reason why these concepts are absolutely good would be specifically because people like you, with your attitude exist.

The purpose of the law isn't to play this game of bad faith find the loophole. Instead, the purpose is to make people follow both the letter and the intent of it.

And The reason why vague concepts like this are good, is because people who try to get around the law should be punished as harshly as possible, through whatever teh most effective means necessary are, specifically so as to discourage this behavior of trying to get around the law.

It is much better for society if people and companies are trying to act in good faith to follow the law, instead of going around trying to find clever ways to break it. Thats why the bad actors should be punished as much as possible, if they are trying clever tricks.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#520

Post by avar »

DannyBee wrote: post #515
egonschiele wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you do practically have to keep records of what you are doing to comply I would argue that the text the parent comment has pulled out is not part of the record keeping you need to do to comply. Lawyers will tell you to have certain conversations in person, and it is surprising that some of these conversations happened in text instead of in person.

i'm aware of what lawyers tell you sometimes, since i am in fact, a lawyer in addition to being an engineer, but you have to think about the context as well. You aren't talking about trying to avoid another side finding it in mountains of discovery, you are talking about trying to avoid a judge who easily has the power to force your engineers to testify under oath about what they are doing, finding out about what you…

    > If you are doing
    > something wrong, stop.
You may be a lawyer, but this is clearly bad advice if your client was Apple.

It's not like they couldn't afford competent legal advice, and surely they either knew they were flaunting the injunction, or could have predicted that the judge would take this view of their activity.

So, they're set on doing the "wrong" thing, but could still use legal advice.

What I'm amazed at up-thread is how seemingly incompetent they were at changing their workflow so they wouldn't hand the court evidence on a silver platter.

In this case, surely they could have pulled all the stakeholders into a room with a whiteboard, and made sure nobody kept any records of the meeting.

They'd have ended up with the same wording, but the court couldn't have merely done a text search of relevant Slack conversations.

Yes, the court could have eventually forced everyone who was in that room to testify, but the end result would have been a bunch of "I think so-and-so wanted it more such-and-such".

Surely that's better than the sort of quotes the court could copy/paste into its decision.

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