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Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

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Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#461

Post by pvg »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #418
pvg wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BSD use in there wasn't because of love of standards but permissive licensing. Apple didn't develop CUPS. Apple's relationship with 'standards' has always been pretty complicated although it's mostly worked out for them.

They used BSD because then it could run Unix/POSIX applications instead of the ~0 third party applications that would have existed for a new operating system. Apple hired the maintainer of CUPS and provided the resources necessary to make it good enough for the publishing market, while continuing to publish the source code. They had enough involvement in RFCs 5227, 5387, 6761, 6762 and 6886, among others, for their c…

The Unix 'applications' they got for free. The OS itself shipped with a bunch of apps plus the various bits and pieces that now form the Voltron of Xcode and those were all Nextstep apps. Did the Unix part help to market the thing as a workstation? Sure. But, again, this wasn't for love of standards. The actual machine didn't ship with X11. Next didn't, I dunno, join Motif or whatever. The thing was one of the more non-standard workstations around.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#462

Post by harrisi »

davely wrote: post #394
casperb wrote: post #372

I just finished the last episode of The Talk Show podcast, where John Gruber says that Apple doesn’t hold a grudge and is only doing things because they make business sense. He said that because Apple approved Epic’s account and that they would be allowed their own App Store. I already that it was a bad take, but this shows it.

I find that Gruber occasionally has some interesting insight but it’s often hard to take him seriously these days — he’s effectively an unofficial PR outlet for Apple. (Fun fact: he co-created Markdown with Aaron Swartz) Edit: Swartz not Schwartz

Swartz. Aaron Schwartz was in Mighty Ducks and Heavyweights.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#463

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

SllX wrote: post #419
jsnell wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 12. The gatekeeper shall apply fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory general conditions of access for business users to its software application stores, online search engines and online social networking services listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9). Apple don't get to deny access to their main competitor in this space just as a show of force. That is not fair, reasonable or non-discrimina…

Epic also intentionally broke agreements with Apple before. Non-discriminatory doesn’t mean they have no grounds to terminate Epic’s developer accounts, and Epic is continuing to make themselves look untrustworthy by trying to publicly and explicitly shank Apple. Spotify is also trying to shank Apple in all the same places Epic is, but they also didn’t go behind Apple’s back to deceive the prior review process in con…

>Epic also intentionally broke agreements with Apple before.

This is funny to point out since they did it specifically to sue over it (you pretty much can't other wise).

So Apple has their draconian 30% cut or there's literally no other way to have an application run on iOS policy, you can't challenge it without breaking it so you can sue, and because you broke it to sue you are now permanently barred from every making another iOS app.

Yea that seems fine, no monopolistic behavior here, it's only 49% of the phone market so it's fine.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#464

Post by adrr »

zyang wrote: post #384
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #35

Whether or not Tim Sweeney has a legal leg to stand on, I'm so happy he keeps fighting this. Likewise with Spotify. I love that the EU is pushing legislation to give at least some people back control of their devices. I'm curious why Tim Cook thinks Apple can continue to treat developers they way they do for years on end and it won't slowly but surely come to bite them hard one day.

Tim Sweeney could lead by example and remove Unreal royalty fees and make his app store free for all. There's no freedom fighter here. Just another greedy troll.

Why is it bad for people to profit off their work? You can use unreal engine for non-commercial use for free. The source is open.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#466

Post by hn_version_0023 »

layer8 wrote: post #442
chongli wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue for Apple is that their hardware business is slowing down due to market saturation. Their recent attempt at growth into a new hardware market (Vision Pro) seems like a huge dud. Their last successful new product was the Watch which at about 100 million sales in total is only half of a single year’s iPhone sales (and likely less profitable). So where do they go from here?

They may have to realize that unlimited growth is simply not possible.

It works for cancer, at least until the patient dies.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#468

Post by threeseed »

Jensson wrote: post #224
Despegar wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the major difference being that Epic is not an employee of Apple and thus cannot benefit from employment law. The terms of their relationship is governed by contract law, and now the DMA.

DMA, Apple can't just retaliate for Epic complaining about them, this doesn't mean that Apple is forced to deal with everyone they are just banned from retaliating for certain things: > 6. The gatekeeper shall not directly or indirectly prevent or restrict business users or end users from raising any issue of non-compliance with the relevant Union or national law by the gatekeeper with any relevant public authority,…

You should read the US ruling [1]. This is not about Epic criticising Apple.

This is because Epic did things like pushing a hidden IAP system inside Fortnite to evade review and then at a later point switching it on. This sort of thing has been forbidden since the early days of the App Store. It is a fundamental part of the Apple-Developer contract that you allow reviewers access to all functionality.

[1] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/21...

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#469

Post by serf »

fancyham wrote: post #278
Brian_K_White wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve hated industry standards. The only time he ever said anything else was when every web site in the world ran on flash and iphone couldn't do flash. Every iphone user was reminded daily about how kneecapped it is when they can't pull up the web site for the restaursnt to check hours or call up for a reservation. That kind of life experience was his entire focus and his showpiece product failed utterly at it. And…

Flash WAS crappy - it had so many vulnerabilities (and probably would have run terribly on the early iPhones) Just as importantly, Apple and Steve learned not to rely on someone else’s technology. PowerPC and all that (when Motorola stopped keeping up with Intel and Apple suffered) Look at things through this lens and their behavior over the past decade makes a lot of sense.

flash was crappy, had poor compatibility and tons of vulnerabilities

but it was replaced with.. nothing. and there is still a gap in that market for novice creators that all the webgl/html5/toolkit-of-the-week has yet to cater towards.

Jobs interest in bad-mouthing it in the early days had more to do with cutting development costs on his side, if flash and adobe is the devil there is no need to spend time and effort developing compatibility layers for it, and it's a chance to wedge the populous towards a solution he can control more closely.

'vulnerabilities' was just the talking point he used to do so.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#470

Post by AnthonyMouse »

actionfromafar wrote: post #348
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Steve hated industry standards. > The only time he ever said anything else was when every web site in the world ran on flash and iphone couldn't do flash. NeXTSTEP, the Steve Jobs thing that got renamed as Mac OS X when Apple bought it, was based on BSD Unix. In the early 2000s, Apple produced and used a lot of open standards. "Darwin" was open source. Bonjour is mDNS. Apple developed CUPS and open sourced it. Then…

Could just as well say they stopped being desperate. They cobbled together what they needed from where they could.

There are a lot of big companies that continue to produce and use open standards. In general it benefits them, because it's "commoditize your complement." Google sells advertising so they want web standards so that more things use the web and therefore Google ads. Intel sells server CPUs so they contribute to Linux to keep customers from being locked into proprietary Unix on proprietary RISC architectures.

Doing the opposite is generally short-sighted. In the short term you lock customers in and make more money, but then you get everyone else in the industry lined up trying to find a way to cut you out, and eventually one of them succeeds.

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