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Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

wsj.com

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Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#441

Post by enragedcacti »

Scaevolus wrote: post #160
realusername wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made me laugh, if you pretend to be worth 30% of revenue (an insane markup), you better really invest in those developer tools to show it off because the sad state of xcode really isn't showing that. I don't know where this money is going but certainly not in the developer tooling because it's absolutely terrible

Steam takes a 30% cut, but it's actually apparently worth it for discovery and low-friction sales alone, since developers still sell on Steam when the PC is an open platform with competing storefronts with lower cuts.

Steam also reduces their cut down to 25/20% at $10m/$50m in sales, whereas Apple reduces it to 15% only for devs under $1m/yr. A small number of games/apps make the vast majority of revenue so Steam's average cut is likely considerably lower in practice.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#442

Post by Jcampuzano2 »

90s_dev wrote: post #376
Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest companies practically incentivize having no moral compass and lying to succeed. Every major company's executives incorporate lying judiciously to their employees and their users alike and encourage their reports to lie to theirs and so on. Adhering to complete honesty is a one way ticket to HR. Sit on any all-hands call for a major company and it is practically guaranteed large chunks of the presentation…

> we are now a culture built on lying. Are now ? I mentioned Thomas More to show that this exact same thing happened 500 years ago. The whole point of the movie A Man For All Seasons is to show that this is always how it has been throughout human history, and that only a few people stand out as putting the truth higher than their own interests, such as Thomas More and Joan of Arc, which deeply impress even non-religi…

Maybe 'are now' was the wrong choice of words because this is correct. It has always been this way.

Truth for thee but not for me are the rich and powerful's greatest desire.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#443

Post by mijoharas »

So what actually happens here?

Other than the possible contempt for the guy who lied under oath (and some bad press), doesn't this injunction just mean that apple has to do... what it was already previously ordered to do?

Are there no fines or consequences for them doing this? Am I missing something else here?

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#444

Post by enragedcacti »

rahkiin wrote: post #403
galleywest200 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered the iPhone-maker to allow developers to steer users to alternative methods of paying for services or subscriptions offered in the App Store. The company also can no longer impose fees in such scenarios or restrict the ability of software-makers to offer links or otherwise communicate alternate payment options with consumers. The ruling means this starts immediately it seems, as…

So : make a free app. Ask people to buy the non-free version on a website. Apple gets 0. No revenue at all for providing stable apis and sdks? How’s that sustainable? The app store itself would be a gigantic loss leader that has to be paid for by iphone sales. If console makers have to do the same, consoles triple in price

> No revenue at all for providing stable apis and sdks? How’s that sustainable?

They should go down the hall and ask the MacOS developers how they do it.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#445

Post by Wobbles42 »

rrgok wrote: post #412

I’ve always been critical of headlines that frame the company as the culprit—especially when the company can’t be sent to prison or face personal consequences. No, it wasn’t "Apple" that violated antitrust laws—Tim Cook approved the actions. Apple doesn't make decisions on its own; it operates under the direction and vision of the people in charge. It's far too convenient for C-level executives to reap the rewards wh…

No one ever suggests that we hold the owners of companies liable for what their companies do.

I know that this is the entire point of limited liability corporations -- to divorce ownership from responsibility -- but maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#446

Post by mijoharas »

thealexliang wrote: post #44

"Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anti-competitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anti-competitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this Court, the…

> As always, the cover-up made it worse

Can someone explain this to me? As far as I understand apple is being ordered to do the thing it was supposed to do already. Are there extra consequences I've not understood related to them disregarding the court ruling?

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#447

Post by colpabar »

jillyboel wrote: post #428
AntonyGarand wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is a way to use their own apple news subscription to access the article instead of using the archive version: It only redirects if you're not logged in to apple news.

So it's spam in the eyes of everyone who doesn't happen to subscribe to their service of choice? If they want to read an article through their news app they are of course free to do so, but why spam that link?

Is it really spam if it was posted a single time? Just downvote it and collapse the thread if you don't want to see it.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#448

Post by cyral »

mijoharas wrote: post #443

So what actually happens here? Other than the possible contempt for the guy who lied under oath (and some bad press), doesn't this injunction just mean that apple has to do... what it was already previously ordered to do? Are there no fines or consequences for them doing this? Am I missing something else here?

Previously they were ordered to allow outside payments. Apple “complied” by requiring a 27% cut on all outside payments (slight discount to cover the cost of Stripe or whatever), a massive scary popup saying that outside sites can’t be trusted, and the link wasn’t allowed to be in the “payment flow” (where else would it be?), and the right to audit your finances. There were some other things but that’s what I remember as being the most egregious.

Since this basically defies what the court would require, they are now explicitly telling Apple that none of that is allowed, and that there cannot be any restrictions on placement or styling of links to outside payments. As the judge said, no reasonable person would believe that their actions are complying with that they were instructed to do.

> Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court's Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the coverup made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#449

Post by dragonwriter »

mijoharas wrote: post #446
thealexliang wrote: post #44

"Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anti-competitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anti-competitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this Court, the…

> As always, the cover-up made it worse Can someone explain this to me? As far as I understand apple is being ordered to do the thing it was supposed to do already. Are there extra consequences I've not understood related to them disregarding the court ruling?

They are being ordered to pay the court and Epic’s costs and being referred to the Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution for contempt.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#450

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

poincaredisk wrote: post #439
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has no problem with regulating its industries. It just doesn't do it pre-emptively out of fear the way the EU does. It actually lets business develop before assessing any damages.

So you're arguing that it's s still to early to assess Google, Meta, Amazon and other big tech? Somehow I don't think that's right and EU realized the need of regulation much earlier.

Not arguing that it's still too soon. The anti-trust litagations are obviously underway. But the EU themselves only started cracking down within the last decade, which is still relatively recent.
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