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Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

wsj.com

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Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#491

Post by malwrar »

jnwatson wrote: post #459
jim201 wrote: post #432

I am concerned that the App Store has become the norm. For many young people, iPhones and iPads have been their only computer. Many have never seen a world where app developers can distribute independently. The NYT had an article out about ruling, and the number of people supporting the App Store was astounding. I think Apple has done a great job marketing the App Store as the reason for the security/UX of their plat…

> it's the OS. It's the OS that requires apps to get permission before accessing my location, it's the OS that isolates apps from each other, it's the OS that provides an easy way to install/uninstall packages. Sorry, you're just wrong. Only by analyzing the apps can Apple enforce several policies that many folks think contribute to users' security. The prohibition against dynamic code, lying about the reason that an…

> The prohibition against dynamic code, lying about the reason that an app needs a certain permission, and all the trust and safety policies are all stuff an OS can't do.

It _is_ something a community of people empowered to control their devices can organize and achieve, but we were stripped of this capability when a small set of private concerns unilaterally locked us out. They just told us that they were the only ones they trusted to manage security, and everyone apparently believed them. The state of personal privacy has gotten unimaginably worse since. Not even the world's largest organizations can manage to fight, much less anticipate, the world's worth of bad actors.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#492

Post by kergonath »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #465
rafaelcosta wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy from your point of view... This is the argument I mostly hear from Apple folks, but my experience (especially with less tech savvy folks) is that they have no idea where or how to cancel a subscription on IAP and they think that the multiple "Apple" charges are just some iCloud thing or something along those lines. With Credit Card flows the alarm bells go off waaaay earlier: when a website asks for their CC dat…

I wanted to cancel an Apple subscription recently. I didn't know where to do it. I knew it was coming up because I got an email from Apple to say it was shortly due for renewal. It took me about 5 seconds to google "cancel subscription apple" and find about a zillion articles on how to do it. Basically open up the App Store, go to your account, click on subscriptions, click on the one in the list you want to cancel.…

> I got an email from Apple to say it was shortly due for renewal.

There was a link in that email to a page to manage and cancel that subscription, although it might not be obvious.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#493

Post by firefax »

satvikpendem wrote: post #254
pornel wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This worries me beyond anti-competitive stuff. If Tim Cook is willing to lie and cheat for extra revenue, I can't trust that Apple is honest about their privacy commitments. Services revenue line must keep going up, and their ad business is a growth opportunity.

> I can't trust that Apple is honest about their privacy commitments This is a funny comment for me to read. Did anyone honestly think that Apple was touting privacy as anything other than a competitive advantage for revenue maximization? They've had things like iAd, their services revenue has grown massively as hardware sales plateau, and they are nowhere near as "private" in certain countries either.

>Did anyone honestly think that Apple was touting privacy as anything other than a competitive advantage for revenue maximization?

I think they're more willing to build out privacy enhancing features than other companies that don't rely on surveillance capitalism to make their money. "Small" things like Filevault add up.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#494

Post by kergonath »

enragedcacti wrote: post #434
snowwrestler wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t guarantee E2E across messaging networks. Apple still doesn’t do it, and neither does Signal, WhatsApp, Messenger, etc.

> RCS update adds end-to-end encryption, Google and Apple confirm support https://9to5google.com/2025/03/14/rcs-end-to-end-encryption-...

The parent is technically wrong, but he was right at the time the decision got made.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#495

Post by gumby271 »

parhamn wrote: post #475
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And under this decision, you will be still be free to only subscribe to apps that go through Apple and allow you to cancel that way

Hmm. I'm already considering switching our app to stripe only to ease billing reconciliation. Managing users who made in app purchases who want regular web access as well has been a pain.

Perhaps the added competition will encourage Apple to improve this, they haven't had any reason to make it better so far.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#496

Post by sneak »

naruhodo wrote: post #241
sneak wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now Tim Apple has gotta call up Trump and remind him he donated to the inauguration fund and is getting fucked by the tariffs (and furthermore has to spend many billions to hedge against what the USA is going to need to do in Taiwan) and get him to threaten the appellate judge.

It will be interesting to see if Mr Apple has more spine than Mr Amazon, who acceded to Trump's demand not to show customers how much the tariffs were costing them. My feeling is that these guys who showed up to the inauguration of a self-professed "dictator on day one" might be a little light on backbone, if not moral fortitude.

I don’t think it has anything to do with backbone or fortitude. You can’t fight city hall.

Neither Bezos nor Cook has an army (or a CIA). Trump does. They are not playing the same game.

All private wealth, and businesses, and cash flows exist only at the pleasure of the state.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#497

Post by Tijdreiziger »

delusional wrote: post #456
jim201 wrote: post #432

I am concerned that the App Store has become the norm. For many young people, iPhones and iPads have been their only computer. Many have never seen a world where app developers can distribute independently. The NYT had an article out about ruling, and the number of people supporting the App Store was astounding. I think Apple has done a great job marketing the App Store as the reason for the security/UX of their plat…

> when in reality, it's the OS I disagree. Application developers have always been absolutely terrible at packaging. We see this all the time on linux, where publishers just fail to follow the packaging standard of the system, and instead develop an "installer" for their special little snowflake application. The OS cannot save you from that unless you also control distribution and can tell that publisher "you don't g…

We don’t see this on Android, where you can install apps from outside the Play Store.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#498

Post by clhodapp »

kergonath wrote: post #494
enragedcacti wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RCS update adds end-to-end encryption, Google and Apple confirm support https://9to5google.com/2025/03/14/rcs-end-to-end-encryption-...

The parent is technically wrong, but he was right at the time the decision got made.

The parent is factually correct about the state of the world at time the decision was made but it is irrelevant trivia, given that Apple already supported SMS (an unencrypted protocol) and that they made a deliberate business decision to preserve the status quo of non-interoperability and their ability to falsely blame it on a dedication to encryption.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#499

Post by freejazz »

hajile wrote: post #488
bcrosby95 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law isn't some objective truth. Reckless endangerment, harassment, etc. don't have every form of those outlined. But if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck. If the people involved don't have the brain cells to figure this out, maybe Apple should employ smarter people, because it's about to cost them a lot. And I don't even necessarily mean the UI people - anything would go through legal. I hav…

Something like reckless endangerment is criminal rather than civil. It will involve subject matter experts (SMEs) presenting both sides. It will involve a jury of peers with various perspectives rather than just the Judge's perspective making it less subject to individual bias. It will involve one person (the accused) or multiple people only if it can be clearly proven that they worked in direct concert with each oth…

Do you think experts don't testify in civil cases?

I find these really elaborate rants about the law, which are based on nothing but presumptions, and in this case, presumptions that do not even arise from actual personal experience, to be incredibly exhausting and in service of creating more confusion than anything else.

Like, you just said upthread that courts shouldn't rely on the word reasonable? I cannot think of an easier way to express that you have absolutely no experience with the legal system than that. It's for sure a common misconception of programmers that the law should function the way code does. What's sad about that is that you are somehow so devoid of actual life experience as to not realize how it must be the case that something like the law must not function like source code out of necessity.

Re: Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

#500

Post by PaulHoule »

parhamn wrote: post #457
jim201 wrote: post #432

I am concerned that the App Store has become the norm. For many young people, iPhones and iPads have been their only computer. Many have never seen a world where app developers can distribute independently. The NYT had an article out about ruling, and the number of people supporting the App Store was astounding. I think Apple has done a great job marketing the App Store as the reason for the security/UX of their plat…

I like this decision. But I also like that I can cancel all my IAP subs in the settings quickly. Maybe stripe could set up consumer accounts to do the same.

The government should require credit card companies to introduce a system for recurring billing which would let you see all your subscriptions on your credit card web site and cancel them there. For the 3.5% they charge in fees it is the least they can do.
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