651–660 of 1001 posts
This is egregious and deeply disturbing behavior from Apple. At this point it feels wrong to own an iPhone. I'm at a loss for words describing what Tim and their leadership team has done to this company that I used to admire so much.
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What will happen if they exit the EU? They will loose more revenue and tank their stock and Tim Apple will get the boot ad EU users will move to Samsungs, Pixels and Nokias and life will go on. You're acting like the EU is some poor country in the outback and not their second biggest market after the US. Or better yet, we fork Android and have a non-Google EU-only appstore similar to Huawei's Andorid fork OS and apps…
> Or better yet, we fork Android and have a non-Google EU-only appstore similar to Huawei's Andorid fork OS and appstore but with EU's privacy rules. No one would use it and no developers would publish to them. All brands have their own appstore already, but no one uses them so they also all ship with the Google app store.
You're wrong. A lot of Apps are on Huawei's store in EU.
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> We own this platform, (we built this platform), we make the rules I own my phone, I make the rules. If Apple doesn't want Epic on the App Store, fine. But their current level of control over what people can do with the devices they purchased and own is absurd and has nothing to do with market size.
No no, you see the restrictions are there for YOUR protection. "Won't someone please think of the children?"
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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, but so what?
The fact that flash was crappy didn't matter to him. If he wasn't artificially prevented by copyright, he could have and would have just wrote his own implementation that wasn't crappy.
The only problem with flash was that Adobe did to him exactly the same thing he did to everyone else. Flash was a proprietary thing that didn't happen to work the way he'd like, and he wasn't allowed to just make his own better version, and so, "This needs to be an open standard!"
That statement doesn't mean he endorsed or preferred or recognized the value and virtue of open standards. All it means is that he was a huge hypocrite who would say anything at any time, and actually do the opposite the instant he can devise a way to.
He only ever recognized a standard when he is the beneficiary of it and there was no physically possible way to get around it, and only until he manages to devise a way to get around it.
One day he says "bicycle for the mind" and that much is absolutely true.
But the next day tries to sell a bicycle that the user can't repair or add a luggage rack, and conveniently declines to acknowledge that a large part of what makes a human with a bicycle so efficient is that the bicycle is simple and user-serviceable in the field and adaptable. The human is more efficient and powerful because they are literally empowered.
The advantage of the wheels turn completely the other way into the disadvantage of a piece of broken machine you have to carry, after you also paid money to aquire it in the first place, when you can't fix it's bent wheel, or add a headlight or a luggage bag or a lower set of gears or fatter tires etc etc to adapt it to your individual slightly different needs.
He said "bicycle for the mind", but never sold a bicycle for the mind once.
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>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 maki…
They had the alternative of pulling their software on principle and suing, but they wanted the fight they would have by having Apple suspend and then terminate their developer accounts to bring more public opinion to their side, and they sure got the fight. As a developer enrolled in the program, it would have been hard to argue they didn’t have standing as long as what they were arguing had plausible legal merit (it…
I think that gave them much stronger standing and claimed damages.
It's a weaker argument if they voluntarily removed themselves from the AppStore.
Apple could have trotted out some 'We typically work well with developers in Epic's situation, but they never approached us so there was nothing we could do' excuse.
By forcing Apple to take an action, it concretely showed that Apple does in fact remove access if companies tried to forward users to alternate payment methods.
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I agree the mobile ecosystem is cancerous, I have never given a dime to Apple for anything but their MacBooks for work reasons. The thing that gets most on my nerves is the ridiculous "protecting users security and privacy". Because if I go along this line of thinking then the conclusion is that they don't give a damn about it on the Mac line because there I can install what I want. It's not up to Apple to decide how…
> The thing that gets most on my nerves is the ridiculous "protecting users security and privacy". There's a distinction between "secure for users by default" and "secure from users" Apple (and Apple fans) really like to muddy the two. You can build a perfectly secure ecosystem by default... that still has an escape hatch (covered with warnings) that the user retains the right to use. Apple chose in its mobile ecosys…
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The arbitrary limitations on computers that are obviously general purpose is more clear than the arbitrary limitations on general purpose computers that are marketed as special purpose computers (gaming machines). In reality they're all equally bad.
Gaming consoles are not really special purpose anymore.
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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 maki…
This notion that 30% is 'draconian' is curious since Steam -- on supposedly open PC -- costs devs more, and even 30% is wrong since it's not 30% below a certain revenue level or in the second year onwards, again in line or less than stores on other platforms.
Epic is learning the lesson that Nvidia had to learn. Apple holds grudges. Honestly, it was idiotic of them to expect anything else. Maybe they thought that they were more Samsung-like and after being a huge pain to apple, life will resume normalcy. Apple needed Samsung. They do not need Epic.
I'm sure upon first hearing this news Epic's management collectively lay down and curled up into the fetal position, awestruck and weeping in surprise at the sheer, unprecedented nature of this blow.
Ummm lol. So now sideloading is allowed (with lots of costs associated mind you) and if someone wants to use it Apple will just kick them off the platform? :') So first malicious compliance with all the inflated costs and then they don't even allow people to use it. I really hope the EU will crack down on this BS and force Apple to allow real sideloading. But anyway I've written Apple out of my life a long time ago.
Call me when Xbox allows side loading.
It's not convenient and you need to reboot your console to go back to running commercial apps, but it is present. At least it's a one-time payment to get the developer account.