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Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

wsj.com

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Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#101

Post by EMIRELADERO »

dchest wrote: post #97

"In Slack communications dated November 16, 2021, the Apple employees crafting the warning screen for Project Michigan discussed how best to frame its language. (CX-206.) Mr. Onak suggested the warning screen should include the language: “By continuing on the web, you will leave the app and be taken to an external website” because “‘external website’ sounds scary, so execs will love it.” (Id. at .2.) From Mr. Onak’s…

Want something even more evil? I got you.

When saurik sued Apple for antitrust reasons over Cydia[1] (which sadly ended up going nowhere), at some point a hearing was held where his lawyer accidentally read out something that was supposed to be protected/sealed. Apple's lawyer quickly interjected, but what saurik's attorney got to read before ended up in the official transcript[2], and it's straight up disgusting. From p.18:

"For example, something where -- they are talking about an iOS update that, quote, broke Cydia Impactor. Where they said, it feels too good to destroy someone's spirit. We did something else today that will kill him again with a little smiley emoticon. That, we can specifically talk about with respect to Cydia."

[1] For those not in the know, Cydia was the de-facto App Store for jailbroken iDevices, the prominent third-party marketplace before AltStore.

[2] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18730843/75/saurikit-ll...

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#103

Post by HDThoreaun »

brudgers wrote: post #48

Unless the fine is the better part of a trillion dollars, it won’t make any difference. Apple has close to 1/2 trillion in revenue a year. A few billion is rounding error.

Apple makes tens of billions of dollars a year off App Store royalties. If this ruling is upheld this fine has a net present value of 100 billion - trillion dollars depending on your discount rate. They will lose billions of dollars a year forever.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#104

Post by DecentShoes »

sureIy wrote: post #61
brudgers wrote: post #48

Unless the fine is the better part of a trillion dollars, it won’t make any difference. Apple has close to 1/2 trillion in revenue a year. A few billion is rounding error.

Some country recently fined Apple every day until they resolved the issue. I think such solution would both help push Apple to actually resolve the issue and do so in a timely manner. As much money as they have, no shareholder wants to see a $1m/day expense on the balance sheet.

If they refuse to comply, why don't we just... arrest them?

Like, you know, we do for someone who was poor and starving and stole 10$ of food?

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#105

Post by brudgers »

DecentShoes wrote: post #104
sureIy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some country recently fined Apple every day until they resolved the issue. I think such solution would both help push Apple to actually resolve the issue and do so in a timely manner. As much money as they have, no shareholder wants to see a $1m/day expense on the balance sheet.

If they refuse to comply, why don't we just... arrest them? Like, you know, we do for someone who was poor and starving and stole 10$ of food?

You can’t arrest a fictitious person.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#106

Post by wmf »

ethbr1 wrote: post #68
realusername wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made me laugh, if you pretend to be worth 30% of revenue (an insane markup), you better really invest in those developer tools to show it off because the sad state of xcode really isn't showing that. I don't know where this money is going but certainly not in the developer tooling because it's absolutely terrible

If Apple were worth 30% of revenue, then they'd have no problem allowing competing app stores on their devices, because they support their rate with their value. The fact that they're deadset against competition should tell the courts all they need to know about how competitively supportable the 30% is.

I thought Apple's argument was that the 30% pays for iOS itself, not that the 30% pays for the App Store. Under that theory there's no reason to allow other app stores.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#107

Post by xuki »

> Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise.

The bean counters won. I guess Tim Cook does care about the bloody ROI after all.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim...

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#108

Post by Jcampuzano2 »

90s_dev wrote: post #8
stillatit wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is the punishment for outright lying under oath?

Generally none, the DA must choose to pursue perjury charges, which basically never happens. In reality, nearly everyone commits perjury. Thomas More would not approve. Both versions (1966 and 1988) of A Man For All Seasons are highly worth watching several times and practically memorizing. "Would you benefit England by populating her with liars ?" [edit] in retrospect, there is one inescapable consequence of lying u…

To be honest companies practically incentivize having no moral compass and lying to succeed. Every major company's executives incorporate lying judiciously to their employees and their users alike and encourage their reports to lie to theirs and so on. Adhering to complete honesty is a one way ticket to HR.

Sit on any all-hands call for a major company and it is practically guaranteed large chunks of the presentation will be executive gaslighting of its own employees with info that is objectively false or a misrepresentation. You will also never get a real answer to actual hard questions (especially if it is on the topic of something that may negatively affect workers) which is essentially lying by omission.

It doesn't help that we have now proven that you can lie all the way to the seat of being president of the united states.

That said - whether we like it or not, we are now a culture built on lying.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#109

Post by ribosometronome »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #21
medhir wrote: post #15

once again will ask why iPhones are treated any differently from other computing devices — we need legislative solutions that allow consumers to load software (or even other operating systems) on any computing device they own. restricting software distribution on any platform under the guise of needing to be kept “secure” always seemed anticompetitive to me - that should apply regardless of Apple’s particular behavio…

Get ready to answer why an iPhone is different than an xbox

Basically every reply gets it wrong. The answer is that the Xbox isn't developed in California. This judgment was applied under California's UCL, not any federal anti-trust law, despite being in federal court. Epic wasn't able to prove Apple a monopoly, because it's not. Applying California's UCL to Microsoft, Sony, etc is going to be a harder sell in courts.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#110

Post by ribosometronome »

MattRix wrote: post #40
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get ready to answer why an iPhone is different than an xbox

One is a general computing device and one is for a specific task (gaming).

That's nothing to do with it. The judgment repeatedly talks about Epic as a competing game store. I'm not sure how else you'd describe the app store of consoles.
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