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Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

wsj.com

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Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#271

Post by thaumasiotes »

snowwrestler wrote: post #96
echelon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. This doesn't deserve a fine. This deserves Apple to be given an ultimatum about their mob boss behavior with mobile. Apple and Google quickly built up their duopoly such that everyone doing anything with mobile phones has to pay them a tax. You can't even deploy your own apps at your own cadence, without strict review, using your own technology. You have to jump through unplanned upgrade cycles, you're forced t…

I understand people like this ruling and want Apple and Google to open up. But this is just silly rewriting of history: > Apple and Google quickly built up their duopoly such that everyone doing anything with mobile phones has to pay them a tax. Long before Apple and Google made phones, a huge mobile device ecosystem already existed, including app stores, and it was way more locked down and expensive than what we hav…

It's worth noting that other fields take a radically different perspective on this. You can see Brandon Sanderson talking about how software developers get such great deals from publishers, with Apple, Google, and Steam taking puny 30% commissions, and he wishes authors could get something similar.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#272

Post by caseyy »

Many people blame the EU for targeting US companies when it passes anti-monopoly and pro-consumer laws, or penalizes the companies for breaking them.

Now that US courts are doing it more, it seems that corporations abusing their monopoly powers are the problem, not EU laws. But what do I know.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#273

Post by PaulRobinson »

kubb wrote: post #240
openplatypus wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is mostly US audience. EU = bad US = good

But weren't people here supposed to be intellectually curious, and have the cognitive tools to overcome things like instinctive tribalism?

I think you'll find at least 1/4 of HN comments are indicative of stating things from a place of strong instinctive tribalism, but this crowd are just very slightly better at using words to defend our position in a more noble way.

That's OK, it shows we're human, it's not all AI slop here (yet?).

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#274

Post by ukuina »

stevage wrote: post #211
thealexliang wrote: post #44

"Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anti-competitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anti-competitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this Court, the…

Link?

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25924283/epic-v-apple...

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#275

Post by microtonal »

CalRobert wrote: post #239
openplatypus wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is mostly US audience. EU = bad US = good

Seems to depend on time of day

This is certainly the case. I have noticed this in voting patterns as well. I often comment strongly in favor of EU regulations (I believe capitalism is fairer and benefits consumers more with stronger regulations). During times the US is asleep such comments often get a lot of upvotes. During times where EU and the US are up, there seems to be much more contention in the voting, with votes swinging up and down a lot.

By the way, I don't think this is a good way of voting. IMO comments should be upvoted if they provide good insights (even if you disagree with them) and downvoted when they are low-content/trolling/full of fallacies.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#276

Post by PaulRobinson »

satvikpendem wrote: post #254
pornel wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This worries me beyond anti-competitive stuff. If Tim Cook is willing to lie and cheat for extra revenue, I can't trust that Apple is honest about their privacy commitments. Services revenue line must keep going up, and their ad business is a growth opportunity.

> I can't trust that Apple is honest about their privacy commitments This is a funny comment for me to read. Did anyone honestly think that Apple was touting privacy as anything other than a competitive advantage for revenue maximization? They've had things like iAd, their services revenue has grown massively as hardware sales plateau, and they are nowhere near as "private" in certain countries either.

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 first and foremost.

Apple want services revenue, they like services revenue, but historically they're a vertically integrated tech platform manufacturer whose revenue model is building better platforms consumers want.

It's true that the services model may start to compromise that - and they've definitely started to make some poor choices they might need to pull back on to protect the core platform model - but I do think we're not comparing like with like when we say that Apple is no different to any other company in this space.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#277

Post by someNameIG »

pornel wrote: post #232
xuki wrote: post #107

> 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...

This worries me beyond anti-competitive stuff. If Tim Cook is willing to lie and cheat for extra revenue, I can't trust that Apple is honest about their privacy commitments. Services revenue line must keep going up, and their ad business is a growth opportunity.

Their privacy commitments align with their business, not their morals. They don't want an open internet primarily funded by advertising, so they make harder for advertising companies to track their users. What they want is an internet silod into apps you get from their app store, that are funded buy subscriptions and IAPs that they get a 30% cut from.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#278

Post by troad »

The court decision itself is worth reading for a revealing look behind the curtain. [0]

>> In Slack communications dated November 16, 2021, the Apple employees crafting the warning screen for Project Michigan discussed how best to frame its language. 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.” [...] One employee further wrote, “to make your version even worse you could add the developer name rather than the app name.” To that, another responded “ooh - keep going.”

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

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#279

Post by ENGNR »

rafaelcosta wrote: post #265
redleather wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing? The ruling is that app developers get to choose how they communicate to users, or how they charge in-app fees. The kind of shady developers you describe would simply continue to use Apple, as it benefits them to do so.

Right now, yes, but there's a potential to: - Most legit services move to a web based Apple Pay (note to the unaware reader: this is NOT In-App Purchases and has never had 30% fees) due to the ease of implementing and lower fee (easier to do cross platform + web) - Non-legit developers keep the In-App flow Over time this would skew In-App Purchases to be scammy-only (and therefore, easier to spot). I'm sure people at…

So they should probably just scrap the 30% fee. At the very least scrap it if the user was linked directly to the app. And just make the also huge commission on the payments.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#280

Post by Wowfunhappy »

xp84 wrote: post #221
thaumasiotes wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is short enough that it makes more sense to quote it in full than to provide an archive link: > A federal judge hammered Apple for violating a ruling in an antitrust case that required the company to loosen certain restrictions it imposes on software-makers in its App Store. > Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered the iPhone-maker to allow developers to steer users to alternative methods of paying for serv…

There’s more than this, though.

...wait, there is? It's not in the archive.is link!
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