Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 996 posts

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

#491

Post by dreamcompiler »

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.

Stallman is a difficult person to like and he is wrong about many things, but not about this, the central issue of his career.

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

#492

Post by dimator »

brundolf wrote: post #425
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pop-up box you get when you try to run unsigned applications gives the user absolutely no hint as to how they can jump through those hoops to run the thing. You need to know what to google for to find the right magic incantation to enter into the macOS terminal. On Windows, at least, the “Run anyway” button is merely behind the “More information...” link.

Right. I'm just saying, user-freedom is technically preserved. This is a huge inconvenience, and bad for Epic's business, but it's not a ban . As an owner of Mac hardware, I still have control over what I can do with my machine.

Do you honestly think Apple is going to keep this true for Macs in 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? I think there is slim to none chance that they give a shit about the "openness"of Mac.

As far as I'm concerned, Mac openness is just a cat that got out of the bag, before anyone knew they could produce a _mint_ from rent seeking walled garden platforms. I find it highly unlikely Apple is not looking to correct this mistake on Mac, even if it's done so gradually that by the time the pull the trigger, no one even bats an eye.

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

#493

Post by fishywang »

empthought wrote: post #430
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…

Because if there's one thing Apple customers choose Macs for, it's to play games...

That's exactly my point. When a game developer made a game using UE, their investment to also making a Mac port is negligible, so even if the market on Macs are small it's still worth doing for most cases. When UE on Mac is no longer an option, if they want a Mac port they need to pour some real resources into the Mac port. Consider the small market they are more likely to just skip that.

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

#494

Post by floatingatoll »

damnyou wrote: post #474
floatingatoll wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, it sounds like we're saying the same thing. Notarization is not a stick-less carrot. Anyone can sign up and agree to the rules and pay the fee begin notarizing apps. If you break the rules you agree to when you sign up, you lose access to notarization. It seems like we disagree about this basic understanding, so I'll take a couple guesses at it. Are you, perhaps, arguing that Apple should not be allowed to…

Yes, Apple should very obviously not have a completely unchecked right to disable arbitrary software from running on millions of computers for whatever reason they want. This is so obviously an abuse of power that I can't believe I have to spell it out so clearly. At the very least such decisions should be subject to appeal to an independent board, and failing that the legal system.

The only time in the past decade that I can think of where they used that power to remove anything other than malware on any platform, was to remove the Zoom daemon that Zoom was using to bypass Installer.app permission checks, which made sense to Apple — and to HN, at the time — because it was considered malicious/exploitable.

Should they have not exercised that right, and left us all at risk — even though the daemon itself wasn't malware, nor had it been abused for such purposes by anyone?

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

#495

Post by threeseed »

mantap wrote: post #453
threeseed wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Apple: "Upon further review of the activity associated with your Apple Developer Program membership, we have identified several violations of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement" So it doesn't sound like it was just for this Fortnite issue.

That's what they want you to think. Which is why they say it. Sounds better than "Tim made the order to retaliate, sayonara"

Given that there are lawsuits in place pretty sure they aren't going to lie about it.

Question is how serious the multiple infractions are.

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

#496

Post by heavyset_go »

brundolf wrote: post #425
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pop-up box you get when you try to run unsigned applications gives the user absolutely no hint as to how they can jump through those hoops to run the thing. You need to know what to google for to find the right magic incantation to enter into the macOS terminal. On Windows, at least, the “Run anyway” button is merely behind the “More information...” link.

Right. I'm just saying, user-freedom is technically preserved. This is a huge inconvenience, and bad for Epic's business, but it's not a ban . As an owner of Mac hardware, I still have control over what I can do with my machine.

That's not freedom. Most users are going to think the unsigned app just doesn't work, and almost none of them are going to know that there is a magic ritual they need to perform in the Settings app to launch the program they wanted to run in the first place.

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

#497

Post by gokhan »

ArchOversight wrote: post #103
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.”

This isn't retaliation though for Epic going on Twitter and being angry about the App Store practices, or the situation like Hey where the was a lot of press and negativity. Epic breached the terms of the agreement for their app, so their app was removed from the App Store. Other than needing to fix their app to no longer be in violation of the guidelines, they could have cured that breach of the contract. Instead Ep…

Not all agreements are enforceable. For example, non-compete agreements are not enforceable in California. There's nothing honorable about Apple, it's just like every other company [1].

Apple uses being a secure device manufacturer for marketing to geeks in US, with a completely different stance in Chine [2]. Do people in China have access to VPN apps in Apple's app store? "Today, Epic Games ... violating the App Store guidelines that are applied equally to every developer and designed to keep the store safe for our users." Safety first, unless you're a citizen of authoritarian regime where Apple's profits justify to look elsewhere.

[1] https://venturebeat.com/2014/05/23/4-tech-companies-are-payi...

[2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/china-has-apple-by-the-iphones...

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

#498

Post by munificent »

Joeri wrote: post #343
jerf wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal term you are looking for is "contract of adhesion": https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adhesion_contract_%28contrac... However, a lot of the text around those contracts you'll find centers around a powerful entity like Apple adhering the contract to a nearly-powerless entity, like an individual consumer. I'm not up enough on the details of what case law has been created to know what happen to a contract of adh…

I hope Epic doesn’t have a strategy that hinges on a PR win forcing apple to back down, because (A) as this thread is showing there are still a lot of people on apple’s side and (B) apple is usually quite vengeful in these things and will not back down here until compelled by court or law. Just look at what happened to nvidia, for far minor offenses. They were blacklisted from apple’s platforms very thoroughly, and p…

> (A) as this thread is showing there are still a lot of people on apple’s side

HN is unlikely to be an unbiased sample of the general population, along many axes.

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

#499

Post by Waterfall »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #491
bsaul wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Stallman is a difficult person to like and he is wrong about many things, but not about this, the central issue of his career.

What do you find him wrong about?

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

#500

Post by Aperocky »

themacguffinman wrote: post #444
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…

Are you sure? iOS is something like half the US market and its userbase is likely more wealthy on average, I don't think any normal game developer could sacrifice that to keep using what is essentially an implementation detail at the end of the day, no matter how good it is.

half the US market but how much of gaming market? Personally I have always used macs but I have a windows desktop specific for gaming. I don't think anybody somewhat into gaming would have bought an apple machine for that purpose.
Post reply on HN