It's always interesting to read the comments on articles about the Epic Games situation. We can have discussions about Apple's cut or how Apple operates their store but this is such a clear cut case that I'm honestly surprised so many HN readers are siding with Epic (or maybe it's just the anti-Apple crowd looking for any reason to crap on Apple). Epic tried to get Apple to allow a whole new store on their platform A…
That's the point. This is also what the little guys want. Epic isn't fighting for the little guy, but they are fighting for terms that are mutually beneficial for both Epic and the little guy.
For the devs who support Epic in the lawsuit, it's never directly been about the 30% cut. It's about this article, right here -- that Apple requires you to support a sign-in system that they can just turn off whenever they want, that if you get into a legal battle with Apple they can just revoke your developer certificates, that you're not allowed to mention even inside your app that alternative payment methods exist. It's about a company that purposefully gimps their browser and disallows competing engines, keeping webapps at a perpetual disadvantage to native apps. It's about the fact that if I buy an iPhone, I don't get to decide what code runs on it.
People are treating this like a popularity contest, bringing up points like, "Epic is selfishly motivated." Well, of course. Both Apple and Epic are selfishly motivated, neither company cares about you. But it just so happens that in this case, the stuff Epic wants is also the stuff I want. I want the ability to run my own code on my own device I bought without asking anyone else's permission to do so. I really don't care about Epic's motivations.
I understand why people disagree with me, I understand why people like Apple's walled garden, and I understand why people think that the average consumer might be too stupid to actually own their own hardware and make their own decisions. I also understand why some people think that antitrust is too heavy of a hammer, and that there are other ways to address the problem of iPhone lock-in for consumers. Heck, I even understand why some people think the monopoly is good, because it forces companies to support iPhone regardless of Apple's terms, which opens some doors to increase user privacy.
I disagree with those people, but I understand them. I don't think that they all just completely irrationally hate Epic.
So is it really impossible for you to understand why someone would want the ability to control what code runs on their own device they bought? Do you genuinely believe that all boils down to anti-Apple sentiment? You can't understand the other viewpoint at all?
> I swear all of the comments about "I could host it myself and use stripe and pay way less" just reeks of "...you can already build such a system yourself [...]"
To flip this around, I feel the same way about comments I read that are saying, "Epic should just make their own smartphone or put together a webapp if they don't want to be on the store. The market will solve this." Building a store and figuring out hosting is pretty objectively easier than building a new smartphone competitor.
Apple isn't my biggest worry when I think about consumer lock-in and anti-competitive practices (hello Amazon Kindle/Audible), but there is some pretty obvious user lock-in for iPhones, and Apple is pretty obviously pushing to create more of them. There's a reason why the Apple credit card only works with iPhone, and there's a reason why Apple wants everyone to sign into 3rd-party services with Apple accounts.
So when someone says, "if it was possible to build a better phone ecosysytem, someone would have done it", I feel like they're drastically oversimplifying the technical, social, and market barriers to actually competing in a smartphone market.