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Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

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Re: Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

#371

Post by snotrockets »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #360
snotrockets wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS Safari is the only thing that prevents a Chromium/Blink hegemony. A popular Chrome on iOS would be a return to the IE6 days (Firefox has such a minuscule market share, no one even notices it)

I don't want to give one company a monopoly just to prevent a potential monopoly. I want better anti-trust to handle both and all monopolies. And handling the existing and real monopoly is how that starts.

It's not a potential: we know this is going to happen, because we've seen it happening before.

The _marketed_ intent behind those regulation is a good one. The actual regulations are just favoring one player over the other: I guess the lobbyists were ahead of the process this time (good for them). As much as everyone would claim ignorance later, I'm not willing to give them the credit of being that stupid.

Re: Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

#372

Post by mulmen »

Apple believes this is an existential threat and they are fighting against it as hard as they can. But is this a self-fulfilling prophecy? These actions come with a cost. This gives Epic visibility and it harms trust in Apple’s brand. How do they balance these costs against the perceived threat?

Re: Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

#373

Post by mike_d »

lxgr wrote: post #332
mike_d wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This needs to be higher up. Apple didn't budge, or cave, and regulators did not get involved. Epic could have avoided all this by just responding to Apple and signing the EU Addendum affirming they would stick to the laws. Instead they wanted to get into the news cycle. This is the policy they have to agree to: https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/download/alterna...

Regulators did get involved: https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1765793776692326891

He tweeted something. There was some reporting he might have sent a letter asking questions too, the same as you or I could do.

If any official action was taken it would have to be documented with a case: https://digital-markets-act-cases.ec.europa.eu/search

Re: Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

#374

Post by nozzlegear »

Vespasian wrote: post #196
qeternity wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most countries have laws against monopolies They have less than 25% smartphone marketshare. What monopoly do they have?

They don't. That's why the regulation targets "gatekeepers" with revenue in the billions and at least 45Million European users. The EU decided that this is large enough to be limited in what they can do.

It is curious that there are no European gatekeepers either.

Re: Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

#375

Post by kj100 »

agust wrote: post #338
mike_d wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This needs to be higher up. Apple didn't budge, or cave, and regulators did not get involved. Epic could have avoided all this by just responding to Apple and signing the EU Addendum affirming they would stick to the laws. Instead they wanted to get into the news cycle. This is the policy they have to agree to: https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/download/alterna...

Yes, the EU immediately stepped in and explained them what the consequences of breaking the law would be, and Apple budged, caved, backed down. Not getting out of this one.

You have no idea that this is what happened. You are literally just making this up.

It's entirely possible the regulator asked EPIC to make an assurance that they would comply with Apple's rules, which are legal under the DMA, and then told Apple they'd need to accept the assurance.

If EPIC does now pull a stunt like they did in the US, the EU will now have reason to treat them with suspicion, and Apple will be able to point to the assurance as evidence that they accepted Apple's rules.

Re: Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

#376

Post by overgard »

iamthirsty wrote: post #4

From DF a few days ago[0] : > The termination of Epic Games Sweden AB’s Apple developer account was communicated in a letter from Mark Perry, a lawyer representing Apple, to Epic’s lawyers: > Mr. Sweeney’s response to that request was wholly insufficient and not credible. It boiled down to an unsupported “trust us.” History shows, however, that Epic is verifiably untrustworthy, hence the request for meaningful commit…

I don't really understand the notion that Sweeney's original response was terse or insufficient. He said exactly what needed to be said (good faith effort to follow the rules) succinctly and professionally. Should he have offered a pinky swear or a blood oath? Or an essay pledging his allegiance? I generally like Apple and their products but in this instance they came across as bitter and petty.

Re: Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

#377

Post by jncfhnb »

ineedaj0b wrote: post #261
jncfhnb wrote: post #130

Apple’s behavior largely makes sense given what a huge share of their profits their racketeering of customer access earns them. If you ever wanted to see regulation pains as the cost of doing business, this is it. But banning epic was just pathetic baby behavior. I hope epic launches the epic game store for iOS and its dogshit but cheaper and the gacha gravy boats all jump ship

[flagged]

Those are prison walls, mate.

Re: Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

#378

Post by mike_d »

znpy wrote: post #368
astlouis44 wrote: post #41

Amazing how fast this decision was reversed. It's truly awesome to see regulators standing up to walled gardens. This will greatly benefit both developers and consumers.

Imagine if the US had equivalent regulators as well...

We would all be carrying around government approved Windows Mobile phones.

Remember all this DMA stuff is coming from the same organization that wants to force Chrome and Firefox to accept TLS certificates issued by governments for any website they want: https://therecord.media/eu-urged-to-drop-law-website-authent...

Re: Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

#379

Post by albert180 »

g051051 wrote: post #255
astlouis44 wrote: post #41

Amazing how fast this decision was reversed. It's truly awesome to see regulators standing up to walled gardens. This will greatly benefit both developers and consumers.

It's unlikely that "regulators" had anything to do with it, given the quick resolution. I'd be more inclined to think that Epic went back to Apple hat-in-hand and begged to be let back in, probably promising to muzzle Sweeney.

Yes very unlikely, that Apple didn't want to try out the new 10% penalty of global turnover, after the commission said she is looking into it and days after Apple was bonked with a 1.8bn fine for violating antitrust regulations

Re: Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

#380

Post by znpy »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #349
tjoff wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah we get to choose between google and apple. Lucky us...

Other titans tried, they all failed to capture. Blackberry lagged for too long and Microsoft simply lacked the network effects since early advertisement was based on how large the app stores were. The only solace is that you can modify Android to the point where there's almost no Google interference whatsoever. But of course some apps choose to rely on that (e.g. Banking).maybe one day Apple will begrudgingly get to…

> Microsoft simply lacked the network effects

Microsoft execs had their heads buried too deep in their own asses to be able to understand what was needed at the time.

They pushed a platform (Windows phone) that lacked interesting features out of the box, lacked cloud services integration to fill the gap left by the lacking base features, and required Windows as a development platform (and, iirc, C# as well?). It didn't even have any particular windows-ecosystem speciality: no special exchange integration, no special windows pc integration, nothing. Microsoft could have exploited the same reasons they exploited with Azure, Office365 and the general enterprise: microsoft phones should just integrates perfectly with other microsoft stuff. It could have been the no-brainer choice: we use ActiveDirectory and Office365 as a suite, we'll get a Windows Phones as everything just works immediately. No, nobody had thought of that.

The value proposition was just not there.

So basically another walled garden, but dumber. And the hardware didn't have anything special to make it "worth".

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