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

Post by onion2k » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

fooey wrote: post #415

rgovostes wrote: post #391

From Epic's filing, here is an excerpt from Apple's notice listing the Developer Program features that Epic will lose access to when its membership is terminated: - All Apple software, SDKs, APIs, and developer tools - Pre-release versions of iOS, iPad OS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS - Pre-release versions of beta tools such as Reality Composer, Create ML, Apple Configurator, etc. - Notarization service for macOS apps - App…

Besides the Unreal the game engine, Epic has been making huge inroads leveraging Unreal as a virtual movie set, as seen on Mandalorian. I would assume most of the hardware used in movie production is Mac hardware, so that entire initiative just went up in smoke.

Post by hu3 » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

spoopyskelly wrote: post #424

fishywang wrote: post #352

My prediction is that this will backfire so badly for Apple. Apple clearly underestimated how popular Unreal Engine is to game developers. Apple probably expect developers to just switch to other engines when they took UE away from them, but in reality most of the developers currently using UE will just stop publishing on Apple's platforms because that's no longer a profitable platform (consider the investment for de…

They didn't take Unreal Engine away from anyone and every other platform also charges 30%.

Post by fermienrico » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #451

fermienrico wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am fine with this for most things except my phone. I trust Apple more than any party in the world. Even the government. Fortnight devs, Epic, whatever are not even on the same radar. They'll sell your privacy in milliseconds if they can get 2.5 cents for it. I would never ever own an open source phone. Not because the operating system is open source (probably good that it has eyes on it) but there is no way to cont…

More than... yourself?

Post by oscargrouch » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

brundolf wrote: post #396

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.

It's important to note that you can still run unsigned Mac apps. Apple isn't preventing users from running a tool they want to run, it's just showing them a big scary warning and making them jump through some extra hoops. It's incredibly scummy and inappropriate, but I would put it more along the lines of an attack-ad than an outright ban. Edit: Now, one thing that isn't totally clear is whether or not devs who have…

Post by jonny_eh » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #449

_qulr wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

An application that suddenly changes behavior due to no action taken by the user, triggered remotely by the developer, is getting very close to the "malware" line in my book.