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This is a blunder. Epic will do just fine without Apple, but Apple is alienating people like me who use their products and are predisposed to support them. Our eyes are opening to their true nature. Full disclosure: I worked for Apple for almost 20 years.
Do you want to see side deals with your privacy too?
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It’s a flawed argument, developers don’t come saying “we’ll give you 30% of our revenue if you let us build on your platform”. If they don’t like the terms they can simply choose to not develop there.
This is like saying if you don't like how your government is run, just move somewhere else. So basically never push for improvements.
As a consumer, you can push for improvements by voting with your wallet and flat out not buying Apple products. As a developer, you can push for improvements by not supporting that platform. Given that you have alternatives to Apple both as a developer and as a consumer, I don't think there's any justification for the government to force Apple to accept Epic blatantly breaking the terms they agreed to comply with.
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I think its really important the narrative stays clear concerning this: Its never been about users having choice (because users do have choice): Its about Developers not having a choice. Refusing to release an iOS app for your web application/game/etc is generally a death sentence, so much so that oftentimes you see new services release as "Get it on the iOS app store, Android coming soon."
I don't think this line of argument would fly, because developers have actually a choice in developing for Android. If they don't make as much money that is not Google or Apple's fault. What I think is an argument against Apple is that users want to have access to apps that Apple doesn't want to release on its store. In that case, they may be forced to relax their rules on the Appstore.
I'm not talking about writing an application for iOS and Android, then selling it in the store. I do think that's a separate case.
I'm talking about, as the best examples, xCloud and Hey. Web services which need to offer a mobile experience. Microsoft will be fine without Apple, but Hey faced legitimate business issues when Apple kicked them out. These companies are uninterested in the App Store Economy: They just want distribution.
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I am not following. Are you saying apps development is free? That the only cost is delivering the bytes?
I’m saying that selling costumes and Carlton dances at zero marginal cost and loot boxes is not the hill to die on. If every game that had micro transactions for consumables disappeared tomorrow, nothing of value would be lost.
All: these Epic vs. Apple threads, and $BigCo vs. $BigCo threads in general, have unfortunately been seeing more name-calling, accusations of manipulation, flamebait/unsubstantive posts, and other things that break the HN guidelines. If you comment, can you please avoid that? Reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html would help. The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoug…
This is a stub comment to collect the replies so we can collapse them, to prevent offtopicness. Sorry, no-JS users.
Apple is a monopoly. When Microsoft was investigated and fined for anti-trust behaviors, it hasn't engaged in this level of abuse.
Well, I couldn't buy a computer from a major company with an alternate operating system without paying Microsoft in the 90's, so I'll say that's pretty damn abusive.
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Might be an unpopular opinion but I don’t think they are acting to the level of MSFT in the 90s. What MSFT did would be equivalent to Apple forcing everyone to use its apps and not allow any competing apps. Also recall that Jobs was pretty adamant about allowing third-party apps in the beginning. Now, do I think 30% is ridiculous in 2020? Yes. But it made sense a decade ago when having a half decent working app almos…
You can't uninstall Safari from iOS. In fact you can't even browse the web without it as Apple prohibits any other browsing engine (Chrome, FF, etc, are using WKWebView). I don't know the numbers but I imagine there are more iOS devices now than there were Windows PCs back in the 90s.
It prevents you from dynamically compiling code at runtime which is a needed rule because otherwise apps would just run around the curation process.
Not sure why people are surprised or consider it giant news. > The court recommended that Epic follow the App Store’s guidelines and policies while the case is in progress – the rules they followed over the past ten years until they created the current situation themselves. Epic refused. Well duh, this is a show match court fight of Epic Games not liking the rules and not getting the special treatment they want. No m…
A valid opinion is that those rules are illegal under current federal statue. Another one is that although they currently aren't, they should be.
> Separate the issues and angles and see it for what it is: just a bunch of legal departments having a fight.
Yes, but the only reason they get to adjudicate it in tax payer funded courts is precisely _because_ the decision will have a major impact on consumers and developers as as whole.
It's a surprise because typically these departments have a much larger incentive to settle, and not to create new case law. It's giant news because of the potential impact to many individuals and to the industry as a whole.
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It's not even legal departments having a fight, it's Tim Sweeney tilting at windmills I 100% believe that 3rd party app stores is a hill Apple is willing to die on. I would guess they're more likely to get rid of "apps" entirely than open up their ecosystem.
> would guess they're more likely to get rid of "apps" entirely than open up their ecosystem. You believe they'd rather give up the iPhone than compromise on a more consumer-friendly ecosystem policy?
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interesting, then, that he is solely responsible for introducing marketplace exclusivity deals to PC gaming.
We've had decades of exclusivity deals for one console or another. Those actually prevented people from playing the games without shelling out for an extra console. Total War: Troy is exclusive to Epic Games Store for one year before it comes to Steam. If you got the game on its release date, Epic gave it to you for free. To play it, you need one more launcher to go along with Steam, Battle.net, GOG, and various cust…