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Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

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Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#371

Post by wkat4242 »

array_key_first wrote: post #355
wkat4242 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't jail a company. And breaking one up is pretty much impossible considering the geopolitical pressures on huge companies like this.

It's also not really desirable to punish a company or dissolve it. It's mostly made up of laborers - you can bet your ass C-Suite is gonna be A-Okay. Also, we don't really want to just burn the IP. That stuff is useful.

> you can bet your ass C-Suite is gonna be A-Okay.

No but that's why it should be possible to hold them personally accountable IMO. I think them getting away with everything is what's wrong with the world these days.

Also, a company is a culture. Labourers will find another job. But probably in a company with a better culture. Which is good for them too.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#372

Post by theshrike79 »

freedomben wrote: post #351
thisislife2 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Google isn't less bad (and I avoid them using Sailfish OS and non-Google ROMs (Lineage OS / Graphene OS). I don't believe either Google or Apple (or any other BigTech) should have any role in deciding what apps I install on my phone or how I choose to purchase (not rent) an app. (I mean, they just act as an unnecessary middle-man and gatekeeper to extort money). The smartphone is just another computer. I don't pa…

Apple (and subsequently many other copy-cats in the tech industry) have done a phenomenal job convincing people to think of their fully capable mobile computers as "appliances", and this really shows.

A modern smart phone is more like a gaming console and less like a personal computer

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#373

Post by captn3m0 »

johnfn wrote: post #206
somenameforme wrote: post #197

I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near 2 days of revenue!" For somebody that makes the median income, of about $50k, this is a fine of $273 for years of largescale systematic abusive behavior, done for profit.

That's not really a meaningful comparison, either. If you assume every engineer makes ~300K at Apple, perhaps a more meaningful comparison is "Apple loses ~7K engineers for 1 year", which seems a bit more than a slap on the wrist as you are suggesting.

Or 26 CEOs for 1 year. (Tim Cook earned ~$75M for 2024).

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#374

Post by Dylan16807 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #317
Dylan16807 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you did claim that, but thank you for correcting. So that warning is bad for a developer because of confused and annoyed users, but in terms of actual user restriction it's not super bad. If defender is set to be too aggressive, that's a one time change, so about on par with Android. And for the normal (I think? Did the default change?) setting you just use run anyway. That's far away from how iOS makes it impos…

No, this is what I claimed: > I'd be okay giving Microsoft whatever they wanted on the Windows app store as long as they loosened their grip on being able to run what you want, from where you want, without their explicit blessing. I am talking about their grip on what you're allowed to run with or without their blessing, not that you "can't run unsigned binaries at all". They have a tightened grip, in that without th…

Okay, that new default is a significant worsening.

> what I claimed

Your first comment was fine. Your response to nandomrumber was the problem. They asked about "can't run" and you gave a big list of situations that are interference but not "can't run".

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#375

Post by laughing_man »

kataklasm wrote: post #255
laughing_man wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a big enough number that the likely result is Apple would pull out of the UK altogether.

Does it matter? Apple paid around 300 million pounds of corporation tax in 2024. If the UK poses a landmark penalty of say 50 or 100 billion pounds, thats 167x or 333x the annual corporation tax paid by Apple in the UK.

I'm assuming if they pulled out they wouldn't pay.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#376

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kvemkon wrote: post #328
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can imagine things a country could do in this respect. Require the devices they sell in your country to be completely unlocked with respect to third party app stores and operating systems, but also with respect to regions so that people can buy the unlocked ones there and use them anywhere. Invalidate their copyrights in your country so that third parties can ship phones with iOS. It's punishment, they're not sup…

> and operating systems This must be an essential requirement for all PC-like devices. > regions People in different regions have very different average income. As long as manufacturer scales prices accordingly, I think locking to this region might be appropriate. > buy the unlocked ones there and use them anywhere In the case if the price is already the worldwide highest one, you're right, no locking to the region i…

> This must be an essential requirement for all PC-like devices.

Why are you excluding phone-like devices? That's where it's currently the bigger problem. You can't do it at all on iPhones and Android devices malign you with locked boot loaders, attestation failures and undocumented blob drivers tied to an ancient kernel version.

> People in different regions have very different average income. As long as manufacturer scales prices accordingly, I think locking to this region might be appropriate.

It's discriminating against the poor people of any country that also happens to have rich people in it. Both the poor and rich people of that country should want it banned there for their own benefit and they're the ones who get to decide that.

> In the case if the price is already the worldwide highest one, you're right, no locking to the region is needed.

The point of prohibiting the region locking in this case is that it also allows the unlocked versions of that vendor's devices to spread across the world, making them feel the remedy. But also, it would be fine for everyone to just prohibit region locking everywhere. Price discrimination is an arbitrage opportunity and it ought to stay that way.

> I think, EU could only achieve that a non-EU-based company leaves EU.

International companies aren't "based" anywhere in particular except for on paper, but Apple has significant operations in the EU. Moreover, they sell a significant number of devices there.

The way a breakup works anywhere is that the government says "separate these business units into a separate entity or you can't operate here" and then if they don't do it, they both lose >$100B in annual revenue and cause there to be a large economic region where they don't exist which becomes a breeding ground for new competitors that can then spread into other regions. Given that choice, investors might be pretty unhappy if the executives choose that over just separating the company out into ones that collectively get to keep all of that revenue.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#377

Post by IshKebab »

shuckles wrote: post #174
bmandale wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

""" 919. The comparators available to us (the Epic Games Store, the Microsoft Store and Steam’s lower headline rate) suggest that the competitive rate of commission would be in the range of 12 to 20%. We do think it is reasonable to make some adjustment to that range to accommodate the points made by Apple about its premium brand, the quality of its offering and its established market position. However, we do not thi…

TLDR: they made it up.

What else would they do?

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#378

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bigyabai wrote: post #368
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting, do you have a link for that? https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/19/22632806/google-epic-prem... They adopt the Google framing that they were "being paid" to exclude third party stores, but that's a subjective description. If you get paid X for search revenue and you get Y less if you include third party app stores, that's a penalty. > The network effect never existed on desktop and Steam is doing just fin…

> No it isn't. It's good, but it has ~0% market share Oh, I'll go tell my dad and brother who have been happily using it to update NewPipe for years. They'll be heartbroken but otherwise unbothered.

This isn't about the tiny percentage of people who are stubborn or technically inclined enough to make it work despite the barriers. It's about the other 99% of people who should have access to NewPipe too.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#379

Post by AnthonyMouse »

wkat4242 wrote: post #348
kvemkon wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and operating systems This must be an essential requirement for all PC-like devices. > regions People in different regions have very different average income. As long as manufacturer scales prices accordingly, I think locking to this region might be appropriate. > buy the unlocked ones there and use them anywhere In the case if the price is already the worldwide highest one, you're right, no locking to the region i…

> I think, EU could only achieve that a non-EU-based company leaves EU. Exactly, also, the US would prevent that geopolitically.

> also, the US would prevent that geopolitically.

Everybody keeps saying that Trump is eroding US power etc. etc. Are they all lying or is the EU just too chicken to actually do it when it comes up? According to the TACO principle it goes the other way, right?

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#380

Post by AnthonyMouse »

immibis wrote: post #324
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You believe that breaking them up is geopolitically infeasible but a fine larger than the GDP of Finland would fly? On top of that, giant bureaucracies are great at "compliance". That isn't the same as doing the thing you actually wanted though.

The UK could give Apple a choice: Either pay a fine exceeding the GDP of Finland, or stop being a monopoly, or every Apple senior executive will have an arrest warrant and the products will be seized on import. To achieve the thing you wanted, word the law vaguely and have a judge interpret it. You know, the same way the law is applied to poors like you and me. Nobody gets off a murder by saying "Your Honour, when I…

> Either pay a fine exceeding the GDP of Finland, or stop being a monopoly, or every Apple senior executive will have an arrest warrant and the products will be seized on import.

That's what breaking them up is. "Stop being a monopoly" is breaking them up.

Leaving them in one piece and trying to pass a separate rule against every monopolistic practice they can come up with while they remain in one piece is an exercise in futility.

> Nobody gets off a murder by saying "Your Honour, when I stabbed that man to death, technically I didn't meet the criteria in point 3 subsection 12 and therefore I am innocent." Why should corporations get that privilege?

Some people do, in fact, e.g. because the evidence was seized unlawfully and the government's penalty for that is not getting to use it, or because the charges were filed in the wrong jurisdiction etc. This is why rich people often get away with things -- they have money to pay lawyers to trawl through thousands of pages of regulations to find the mistake the government made or bamboozle the jury or the court. See e.g. O.J. Simpson.

But the problem in cases like this is much harder than that, because there is no murder without a body. It isn't a normal thing to be having to decide if the person who killed someone is guilty of murder because it isn't a normal thing to be the person who killed someone.

Whereas it is a normal thing for companies to sell things for money and enter into contracts etc. Which means you're not trying to decide if they did something wrong in an outrageous event that happens zero times in the median person's life, you're trying to decide if they did something wrong in any of the millions of transactions they take part in every day.

Is requiring a fee or the use of an identification service in order to publish an app just recovering their costs, or is it a ploy to inhibit people from doing it? Is preventing third party software from performing certain system functions a security measure, or a means to prevent competitors making an app store that actually functions properly?

You can't be getting into the weeds like that or their lawyers will eventually come up with something the government accepts as the former while it still has the effect of the latter. You have to remove the structural incentive they have to do it to begin with, which comes from these separate products all being tied together within the same company.

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