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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

#401

Post by yholio »

pwinnski wrote: post #75
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.”

Some might see a difference between "a developer who went public about their frustrations with the App Store" and a developer who deliberately violated the policies and then filed a lawsuit and started an extensive PR campaign.

Your sentence for today to write 100 times, Bart Simpson style, is: "I shall never use my monopoly power to restrict access to justice for my clients".

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

#402

Post by muststopmyths »

>That said, I do find one aspect of this second suit to be troubling for Epic: Apple is threatening to terminate Epic’s developer account only if Epic doesn’t revert Fortnite to the version that didn’t include its own in-app payment system.[0]

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. But Epic's PR game is strong.

[0] https://www.thurrott.com/apple/239199/apple-retaliates-again...

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

#403

Post by ernst_klim »

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.

> Then don't install unsigned apps.

The problem is that most people know nothing about software distribution, signatures etc etc, and would become an easy target for fishers, as they do on Windows or Android. People oft underestimate how little avg user knows about computers and basic hygiene.

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

#404

Post by greycol »

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…

There's a reason contracts of adhesion are very often not binding. I'm not saying that's the case here (as B2B it will be more likely that the oppressive terms in the terms of use could be upheld) but it's worth considering when saying Epic agreed to the contract.

Like it or not IOS has 2/3rds of revenue in the mobile apps market and how many businesses can afford to leave 46%(0.7*0.66), of their revenue on the table?

It's pretty obvious that epic has goaded apple into punching them. But there's plenty of people who feel it's the equivalent of apple saying you have to give me your lunch money every 3 days or I'll beat you and epic making sure the teacher is watching when they maliciously don't hand over their lunch money (I'll add I'm not arguing that the schools football team wouldn't have much fewer wins without apple, to stretch the metaphor to breaking).

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

#405

Post by gruez »

kingnothing wrote: post #311
tapoxi wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xbox isn't central to modern life like a smartphone is. Also, the game consoles use a razor/blades model, they're sold at a loss and make money through the sale of games. Smartphones are not sold at a loss.

Fortnite isn't central to modern life.

A cheap source of entertainment for kids that are locked down because of a pandemic isn't central to modern life?

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

#406

Post by zucker42 »

gpm wrote: post #381
Despegar wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Instead Epic decided to sue Apple in court. This gives the impression that suing them is what led to Apple terminating their relationship, but that isn't the case. Epic could have sued Apple without the theatrics and they'd have been fine. They didn't even need to violate the terms of the developer agreement to bring their antitrust lawsuit, which is largely about the developer agreement.

> Epic could have sued Apple without the theatrics and they'd have been fine. Without the "theatrics" epic would not have had standing to sue and the case would have been dismissed.

Is this true? Can't you claim standing based on something you would do except for an illegal contract or illegal law?

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

#407

Post by beering »

bsaul wrote: post #369
rabidrat wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And many of the things that we thought he was pointlessly complaining about, instead grew into big issues a few years later affecting all of us.

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

#408

Post by grishka »

gruez wrote: post #367
CamperBob2 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

So let them install that malware and have their data stolen despite all warnings because they deserve it? We can't have safety nets everywhere, and we, in fact, don't. We allow everyone to drive, use knives and handle all kinds of potentially dangerous stuff every day, but for some reason can't trust them with their own phones.

Some mistakes are costly, but people learn from them. Such is life.

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

#409

Post by Despegar »

gpm wrote: post #381
Despegar wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Instead Epic decided to sue Apple in court. This gives the impression that suing them is what led to Apple terminating their relationship, but that isn't the case. Epic could have sued Apple without the theatrics and they'd have been fine. They didn't even need to violate the terms of the developer agreement to bring their antitrust lawsuit, which is largely about the developer agreement.

> Epic could have sued Apple without the theatrics and they'd have been fine. Without the "theatrics" epic would not have had standing to sue and the case would have been dismissed.

As a party to the developer agreement with Apple they clearly have standing to sue. And since one of the counts in their complaint is that they're being denied use of an "essential facility", they wouldn't even need to have a contractual relationship to have standing to sue.

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

#410

Post by _qulr »

floatingatoll wrote: post #373
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…

Epic expressly snuck code through the door to activate a user-visible feature in direct prohibition to App Store rules. Apple could have revoked their developer certificate in response, which would have essentially killed all installations of Fortnite iOS/Mac worldwide within 24 hours. That they are merely revoking their ability to sign new code and giving them 2 weeks to perform an orderly shutdown is far less draco…

> Notarization is about protecting users who are not capable of making an informed decision about code safety from developers who refuse to comply with Apple's terms of service.

No, notarization is about preventing malware. That's all. This has been promised to us by Apple many many times. Malware prevention only. Fortnite is not malware.

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