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Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#921

Post by freedomben »

kbf wrote: post #895
freedomben wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately for Apple, there definitely is not a movement against iPhones. If anything, the youth associate status with iphones, and if you don't have one you are a loser deserving ridicule. My kids have stopped asking as they know I'm not going to give Apple any of my money, but for a very long time they begged for iphones because kids made fun of them for "having a droid." Today's youth are definitely not the rebel…

>Today's youth are definitely not the rebellious counter-culture youth from my younger days. They absolutely are, you have just become part of the culture they’re countering. Of course there’s conformity within a group or it wouldn’t really exist, but the main reason young people are so turned off by Android phones is that they are mainly associated with older family members who wanted to save a few bucks and substan…

Thank you, this is very interesting indeed and does make a lot of sense given my anecdotal experience. I suspect a good marketer could do wonders for Android's brand image given the misperception, although I doubt such thing ever happens. I get the impression that Google is only half-heartedly behind Android, controlling the reins tightly to ensure their own interest isn't harmed, but by no means truly fans themselves of Android. Every year it seems the great things about Android are slowly tightened away. I hope this changes because as it stands I worry the difference between Android and iOS is becoming an implementation detail.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#922

Post by freedomben »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #746
freedomben wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately for Apple, there definitely is not a movement against iPhones. If anything, the youth associate status with iphones, and if you don't have one you are a loser deserving ridicule. My kids have stopped asking as they know I'm not going to give Apple any of my money, but for a very long time they begged for iphones because kids made fun of them for "having a droid." Today's youth are definitely not the rebel…

Kids are fickle and run with trends though. Apple has a good foothold, for sure, but banking on teenagers to carry your banner is an idea that would have me sweating. Older people tend to care much less about what phone they have, and care much less about upgrading.

Yes fair points all around. It's quite possible that 10 years from now the youth are rebellious again and could cause quite a stir.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#923

Post by ectospheno »

bogdan wrote: post #859
ectospheno wrote: post #849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my iphone more than any other tech device I own. Can you elaborate on "The experience on iPhone is shit"? Seems like hyperbole to me.

Fish don't know they're in water until they're out of it. See Android.

I was on Android for years before I switched to iOS. Did the switch largely due to Apple providing updates for longer than the Android devices I owned. Stayed because I found I preferred iOS.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#924

Post by nozzlegear »

stale2002 wrote: post #917
nozzlegear wrote: post #911

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rest of the world doesn't have to stand still. They can just confiscate Apple's money using threat of government force. But surely the US would not just stand still either while the rest of the world plunders one of its most successful megacorps/source of American influence.

The USA is likely to side with the EU, actually. The US government is literally right now trying to sue Apple for similar anti trust crimes. If anything, what would happen is that the USA would finish its lawsuit and force Apple to end its illegal and anti completive behavior worldwide, instead of just in the EU.

Interesting, I didn't know the US was suing Apple right now for similar things. I don't follow it too closely, just what I see here on HN. Thanks for the info, I'll read up on it.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#926

Post by brikym »

ectospheno wrote: post #849
brikym wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I sold my APPL stock a few weeks back. The experience on iPhone is shit. The web is broken on Safari. They broke PWAs. The vision pro is not a big hit. The notification system on MacOS is a poor experience as it gets in my way all the time. Apple want to extort devs to build apps. The arm macbook chips are amazing but that's old news now. Too much abuse of their customers and not much innovation. It has s…

I love my iphone more than any other tech device I own. Can you elaborate on "The experience on iPhone is shit"? Seems like hyperbole to me.

There are a bunch of little things that would just work on my Android but do not work on iPhone. I already mentioned the web - every browser is just a safari skin. So I can't use my favourite firefox plugins. The YouTube app is not as polished. It won't connect to by cars bluetooth every time and the bluetooth menu takes a lot more taps to access. Siri is really bad it'll often misfire or do the wrong thing. The camera has a shutter sound which is impossible to disable unless I use live photos which take up more space.

The android back button is genius. A stack of views that you pop with a button that is always in the same easy to reach spot. With iPhone sometimes the back link is top left, sometimes top right so I cannot use my muscle memory for navigation.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#927

Post by brikym »

ed_mercer wrote: post #850
brikym wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I sold my APPL stock a few weeks back. The experience on iPhone is shit. The web is broken on Safari. They broke PWAs. The vision pro is not a big hit. The notification system on MacOS is a poor experience as it gets in my way all the time. Apple want to extort devs to build apps. The arm macbook chips are amazing but that's old news now. Too much abuse of their customers and not much innovation. It has s…

Macbooks are years ahead of the competition though. I doubt you can name one laptop that comes even close in terms of build quality, performance and battery life. There’s just no alternative.

I totally agree but I think this is already priced into the stock.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#928

Post by Copernicron »

miga wrote: post #925

Apple is a monopolist on a service that is public. Termination of developer account in this case merits FTC action.

Citation needed.

Apple is not a monopolist. The judge in the Epic Games suit even said so[0]. It also isn't a public service. It's a private service operated by a private company where you have to pay to play. And part of paying means agreeing to certain terms and conditions before you're allowed access. Violating that agreement is grounds for termination of your access.

[0]https://www.npr.org/2021/09/10/1036043886/apple-fortnite-epi...

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#929

Post by Copernicron »

layer8 wrote: post #334
hizanberg wrote: post #18

If I had a Customer that spent years relentlessly complaining about my Company, I know I wouldn't want to have them as a Customer. It does present an interesting question on whether a Company can be forced to have a bad actor as a Customer, I guess this will be decided in the lawsuits to come.

The issue is that Epic doesn’t want to be Apple’s customer in the first place. They want to publish iOS apps. The fact that this requires them to be an Apple customer is the core problem. Imagine if everyone wanting to publish a web app would have to be a customer of the respective browser vendors. Everyone complains about Google and Mozilla and Safari and Edge. Luckily, that doesn’t prevent us from having our web ap…

>The issue is that Epic doesn’t want to be Apple’s customer in the first place. They want to publish iOS apps. The fact that this requires them to be an Apple customer is the core problem.

The issue is that General Mills doesn't want to be Costco's customer in the first place. They want to sell to Costco shoppers. The fact that this requires them to be a Costco customer is the core problem.

Re: Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS

#930

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dpkonofa wrote: post #892
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #885

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems pretty clear what should happen here: Apple should be able to require you to accept their payment system, but not to require you to charge uniform pricing across payment systems, and not be able to charge you anything for sales outside of their payment system. Now you can continue to use Apple's payment system all you like, but if Apple continues to charge 30% when e.g. Stripe charges ~3%, you're going to pa…

How does that seem clear? Apple should provide services and support for people using the payment system without getting any gain from that system? You're being disingenuous to suggest that the only benefit Apple provides is a payment system.

The test of whether they're in compliance should be whether it's feasible to sell an app to an iOS user without paying anything to Apple.

Apple can charge for whatever they want, but they can't put up a troll bridge between other businesses and their customers. Then you can choose whether to use their service or not. If they want to charge for payment processing, you can use Stripe or Paypal. If they want to charge for XCode, you can use VSCode or emacs. If they want to charge for app distribution, you can use the Epic Games Store -- or Google Play -- or host it yourself on AWS or your own servers. Whatever they want to charge for, they have to open up to competition.

If their services are good and well-priced then people will choose them even when they have an alternative. If they're not, they won't.

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