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Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

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Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#361

Post by AnthonyMouse »

baddox wrote: post #307
woofie11 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A one-sided agreement containing a retaliation clause, followed by exercising that clause, is retaliation. Say you're desperate and need water in a crisis, and I offer you some, but only if you sign an agreement which gives you water, but says I can punch you in the face whenever you say something I don't like. Say you say something I don't like, and I punch you in the face. Did I just retaliate? Or did the contract…

This argument seems to hinge on the assumption that two parties are experiencing similar "levels of desperation": a person dying of thirst, and the developers of a video game which is available on half a dozen platforms and is probably the most financially successful video game of all time.

Could it have been "probably the most financially successful video game of all time" if it hadn't agreed to the terms of the various consoles and phone stores?

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#362

Post by [deleted] »

ArchOversight wrote: post #103
0x402DF854 wrote: post #23

From a preliminary statement of Epic's motion: > Just over two weeks ago, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook was asked during a Congressional hearing whether Apple has “ever retaliated against or disadvantaged a developer who went public about their frustrations with the App Store”. Mr. Cook testified, “We do not retaliate or bully people. It’s strongly against our company culture.”

This isn't retaliation though for Epic going on Twitter and being angry about the App Store practices, or the situation like Hey where the was a lot of press and negativity. Epic breached the terms of the agreement for their app, so their app was removed from the App Store. Other than needing to fix their app to no longer be in violation of the guidelines, they could have cured that breach of the contract. Instead Ep…

[deleted]

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#363

Post by arcticbull »

mvn9 wrote: post #323
danudey wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can still build and test on-device, they just won't be able to publish anything to the app store. Specifically, in XCode, they can add an Apple ID (any Apple ID) and use that to build on a device.[1] This creates a "personal team"[2] which you can use to test on your devices. [1] https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/devaf282080a [2] https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/dev17411c009

Why then all those monopoly-discussions? Cannot any program be 'side-loaded' by creating a personal team? Or the other way round: What good would be a personal team for epic if they cannot test their games on actual phones? If personal teams allow side-loading of apps, why isn't this a way to distribute apps? Why is there no app store for personal team apps?

> Why is there no app store for personal team apps?

Honestly, for most people the App Store is good enough. For a long, long time, it wasn't good enough, and Apple was much stricter. As it got better, Apple started loosening the restrictions around deploying whatever you want to your device. People didn't really notice, and that's because the App Store was good enough. I suspect this was the game plan all along.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#364

Post by misnome »

mvn9 wrote: post #323
danudey wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can still build and test on-device, they just won't be able to publish anything to the app store. Specifically, in XCode, they can add an Apple ID (any Apple ID) and use that to build on a device.[1] This creates a "personal team"[2] which you can use to test on your devices. [1] https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/devaf282080a [2] https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/dev17411c009

Why then all those monopoly-discussions? Cannot any program be 'side-loaded' by creating a personal team? Or the other way round: What good would be a personal team for epic if they cannot test their games on actual phones? If personal teams allow side-loading of apps, why isn't this a way to distribute apps? Why is there no app store for personal team apps?

You need to re-sign it frequently because the certificate is only short-lived, and I think there are difficulties in signing existing binaries that make it mostly only useful for things you can distribute the source for.

It's not really an alternative to an app store. There are also enterprise signing certificates for distributing custom apps within large companies without these restrictions, along with cases in the past where people have abused this to distribute; these are usually shut down pretty quickly as a blatant violation of the licencing agreement.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#365

Post by gamblor956 »

theshrike79 wrote: post #303
nightski wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually shipping on Xbox one is quite simple and mostly free with the ID@Xbox program or the Creators program.

And if you slip stuff that’s against the rules on Xbox and sue Microsoft, they’ll just let you keep your accounts open and keep selling your applications?

Depends on what rules you break, but yes generally they will.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#366

Post by Joeri »

amaccuish wrote: post #97

What took me aback was the withdrawing permission to notarise their apps for Mac. That was only meant to be a check for known vulnerabilities/malicious software. Apple was more within their rights to kick Fortnite until the dust has settled from the iOS store, that was the retaliation, but now a mechanism supposedly for security has been repurposed as punishment. That's a pretty nasty move and I feel the mask has sli…

Isn’t it a bit naive that we ever believed the notarization feature would not be used to blacklist developers for business reasons? I feel like a chump now.

It is definitely clear that apple does not have the best interest of me, their customer, at heart. Epic were being very sneaky towards Apple, but not malicious towards users in any way. Apple is being malicious. If I want to run Epic’s software without disabling security features of the OS I feel I’ve definitely spent enough money on my iMac to get a say in that. This is the sort of thing 90’s microsoft would have done. “It’s just business, they knew what they were getting into.” would have been Gates’ excuse for throwing them from the windows platform.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#367

Post by gruez »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #351
enos_feedler wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I trust the device maker more than myself to keep my data safe and secure.

Then don't install unsigned apps. The notion that the platform owner is somehow doing you a favor by denying you that choice is nothing but a manifestation of Stockholm Syndrome in action.

That advice might be feasible for the average HN reader, but what about the average person? How resistant do you think they will be against a social engineering attack telling them to disable code signing?

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#368

Post by arcticbull »

danudey wrote: post #212
woofie11 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A one-sided agreement containing a retaliation clause, followed by exercising that clause, is retaliation. Say you're desperate and need water in a crisis, and I offer you some, but only if you sign an agreement which gives you water, but says I can punch you in the face whenever you say something I don't like. Say you say something I don't like, and I punch you in the face. Did I just retaliate? Or did the contract…

Apple said "Here are the terms, you can use our services if you agree to them, and if you break them we'll close your account." Epic said "Okay, we agree.", then broke the terms they agreed to, so Apple is closing their account. This seems like pretty straightforward break of the terms of use to me. The reasonable way Epic could have proceeded is to have submitted an update with the "third party store" stuff added, g…

> It doesn't feel any more mature than goading someone into throwing a punch at you so you can claim to be "defending yourself" when really you were just being a douche and you got what you asked for.

Still, illegal, and that's the question being litigated here.

You can stick anything you want in an EULA but it's not automatically enforceable. If Apple started adding a stipulation that your first-born would be a slave to Tim making iPhones for life, that wouldn't be enforceable. In general you can't sue until there's damages -- so you couldn't sue just for that term existing in the EULA. You wait for your first-born to enter slavery, then sue.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#369

Post by bsaul »

rabidrat wrote: post #337
grishka wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so that's why I never liked nor trusted this whole idea of code signing with non-self-signed certificates, especially on desktop OSes. This notarization mechanism introduced a single point of failure: Apple. And now there is concrete evidence of how exactly this is bad. On a device I own, there should be no parties that are trusted more than myself. It's ridiculous I even have to write this.

Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for this very reason. You might think it's ridiculous but the fight for the right to modify the software running on devices you own has been raging for 35 years and is bigger than ever.

It hasn’t been a quarter in which i haven’t told myself how richard stallman was right, and a visionary, and how much we were fools to consider him an extremist.

Re: Apple to kill Epic’s accounts on Friday the 28th

#370

Post by smilekzs »

quotha wrote: post #315
woofie11 wrote: post #2

This clearly and unambiguously crosses the line into abuse of market power. Apple's actions before? Maybe? Sort of? Apple needed that 30 percent cut to monitor for fraud and quality or something, going above-and-beyond other payment processors. This? This has absolutely no basis in anything. It's simple retaliation designed to kneecap Epic from Apple's dominant control of a market. Apple can refuse to let Epic releas…

So, Epic should get special treatment? They don't have to pay the fees? Just everyone else? How is apple supposed to run the app store? They kinda know what they are doing or why else would so many people buy their iphones?

No one should have to pay 30% as long as Apple also competes in the same "marketplace".
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