Apple Will Not Reinstate Epic’s Fortnite Developer Account

With a tap of a button I fill my house with lossless quality of music that is playing on astonishingly capable speakers. Those speakers also answer my questions and run automations on my phone which I can create in a very nice and user-friendly interface.

I'm currently watching an episode of a TV Series that is playing from my NAS on my mac through the only player on my Mac (I tried mpv, IINA and VLC) that is capable of playing 8k MKVs without hiccups - Infuse. That player is a port from an iPad app btw.

When I finished with my work I say "Hey, Siri, I'm done" and leave the room. Monitor's lightbar, other lights turns off. When it is getting dark my chosen lights turn on automatically, provided somebody's home. My printer doesn't consume electricity in the night because HomeKit automatically turns it off in the evening and turns it on in the morning. I don't need to worry about my daughter putting her fingers into shredder because it is always turned off. When I need it, I say "Hey Siri, turn on shredder". The shredder turns on and it then automatically turns off after 90 seconds.

When I get in my car I have a very nice screen on the dashboard that most of the time is capable of guessing where I'm about to go and suggests one-tap navigation. And the music starts playing from where I left off.

My photos are downloaded on several devices and backed up in the cloud. The albums are shared with my Mom who is very happy every time when I upload new photos of here granddaughter.

My private drm-free music collection is also uploaded to the cloud and synchronised to every device I've got.

I can say "Hey Siri, facetime Mom" and I'll see my mother's face over the distance of 17000km in a magnificent quality.

My books are synchronised and downloaded across all my devices as well and whenever I feel like reading one, it's right here. None of those books were bought from Apple btw, they are DRM-free.

The other day I was wondering if I should buy an iMac for my wife - would it fit in the kitchen or not? Well, there's AR technology on my phone that had no troubles presenting me how it would sit on the counter. Now there's also an AR app that helps me manage my arachnophobia.

I am an immigrant. In the past 5 years I had to do so many paperwork that it could fill a little closet. Luckily, compared to my peers I didn't have to print all of those PDFs out. I was able to sign them from my MacBook in Preview and using markup feature on my iPad.

I am also a software developer. I value and appreciate Unix core utils. Turns out my Mac is a certified Unix and I am able to automate a lot of things in my day-to-day job using small Unix tools that are imprinted into my fingers. All that while looking at _magnificent_ 4k monitor that delivers 100% of Adobe's gamut and doesn't make my eyes with weird font issues.

I love travelling into Australian Outback with my wife and we take some magnificent photos there with our iPhones without having to carry a lot of heavy equipment. We then are able to send this photos to each other whilst being completely off-the-grid, some hundreds of KM from nearest cell tower using AirDrop. It takes milliseconds. On the long drives my daughter can pick up here iPad and just watch some cartoons. iPad connects to the internet using my iPhone automatically when there's reception and Infuse has stuff that it downloaded form my Emby installation when there's none.

My podcasts are downloaded automatically without my intervention and put onto my watch. When I go for my walks I don't have to carry my phone. My watch and headphones suffice.

When I browse the web using my phone or my mac I don't see any advertisements and popups and auto-playing videos. Safari on my phone and mac is capable of having extensions and has APIs for adblocking applications. 1Blocker takes a good care of me when it comes to ads.

My phone provides me with tools to take care of my digital well-being. It lets me know which applications I used the most and when and lets me to block those applications for certain periods of time if I find an unhealthy habit.

I write my notes on my iPad. I don't need to cut trees anymore and it is more comfortable. With Notability I can zoom and cut my handwritten nodes and move them around and do all sorts of stuff I can't with regular pen and paper.

I recently bought an iPad for my Mom and added her into my Apple One subscription. Now she's in Russia and I'm in Australia and she is able to listen to her beloved old soviet decedent music virtually for free without needing to download it anywhere. I am calm and confident that she's safe using this device and probably of her getting scammed is quite a bit lower compare to any other device.

I'm looking forward to what other quality of life improvements Tim Cook's vision will bring to my life. I feel privileged that I have access to this magnificent technology and thankful for that.

I think your post inadvertently makes things more confusing.

In short, the situation changed and got a little more complicated after Tim Cook previously said they'd reinstate Epic's account.

What are the new changes and complications created by the recent judge's ruling? Epic's "promise" has to be dissected into 2 component parts:

(#1) _direct_ in-app-purchases. This was the mechanism that originally got Epic kicked off the App Store last year. (The court ruling still doesn't force Apple to allow this and indeed, they reaffirmed this by ordering Epic to pay back $6 million (the "lost" 30% commissions) to Apple for bypassing Apple's in-app-purchases.)

(#2) _informing_ the user of alternative app payments via web links, etc. (the "anti-steering" in the court's ruling)

Apple's current guidelines don't allow for either (1) & (2). However, Epic wants to be back in the App Store and immediately use option #2 because they feel the judge's ruling to stop Apple anti-steering policy should be followed now. Apple disagrees because they think they have a right to impose anti-steering. Hence, everybody is still in appeals process.

Put another way, Sweeney's idea of "promise" does not match Cook's expectation of a promise which makes it invalid from Apple's perspective.

Contrary to public perception, "anti-steering" is not always illegal and Apple's legal team is probably aware of previous cases such as American Express winning their anti-steering case with The Supreme Court: https://www.pymnts.com/legal/2018/supreme-court-amex-case-an...

Just like Apple has not killed most of their desktop offering just because they are not a very significant part of their income.

Also a big chunk of it is probably just Tim Sweeneys personal opinions (he owns over 50% epic by himself so what he says happens pretty much). Basically he is rather strongly (and very openly) against any walled garden platforms.

Opening the payment mechanisms for other developers is a separate issue to whether or not Epic could still sell iOS apps on the AppStore.