This is why devs are afraid of publicly criticizing Apple, let alone testifying against them in the court.
Apple has shown that they will then prevent you from accessing 50%+ of the US market.
In short Apple is a bully, has been for more than a decade now, and it has worked out well for them.
But you’ve left out part of the narrative: Developer pushes an App update which purposefully violates the TOS, expecting rejection- having planned in advance to kick off an expensive PR campaign and legal battle.
I don’t deny Apple’s pettiness… Nonetheless, can you provide a different example of why devs are afraid of publicly criticizing Apple?
>I don’t deny Apple’s pettiness… Nonetheless, can you provide a different example of why devs are afraid of publicly criticizing Apple?
Every subscription service should have a banner on their pages saying signing up through iOS takes 30%. Many just disabled signing up.
Of course maybe this isn't the best example since Apple actually made it against their rules to tell users it'd be cheaper to purchase on their site.
Apple's rules undeniably cost end users money. Epic proved it by taking some of that 30% fee and giving it back to the consumer (you got more Fortnite credits buying on Epic store instead of Apple store).
Why people try to defend Apple I'll never understand, my guess is some people who own an iPhone have decided that's 'their team' and who wants to see their team lose? But I'm not sure.
> Every subscription service should have a banner on their pages saying signing up through iOS takes 30%.
Why do I as a user need this information? When I'm a on gas station, I don't see banners how much tax or fees I'm paying. I can find this information if needed, but total price is what I'd like to see in the first place.
> Why people try to defend Apple I'll never understand, my guess is some people who own an iPhone have decided that's 'their team' and who wants to see their team lose? But I'm not sure.
Happy to help! It's because some of us are Apple's customers, not Apple's suppliers, contractors or "vendor partners".
We customers like that Apple plays hardball with the people who would otherwise try to fuck us over. Remember that dev a few weeks ago who was giving examples of the "ways that Apple's IAP sucks"? Most of the things he wanted to do were dark patterns that are bad for customers.
If devs have to raise their prices by 15%, so be it. I would much rather that one company has my PII than fifty, anyway.
> Why people try to defend Apple I'll never understand, my guess is some people who own an iPhone have decided that's 'their team' and who wants to see their team lose
It's this. Apple somehow managed to cultivate cult-like behavior in their users, which I've also never understood.
Because everyone who likes how Apple has made it easy for users to manage their subscriptions and enjoy the overall user friendliness of their products we are thus cultists who just blindly do as we’re told. Maybe some people don’t agree with your views; that doesn’t make them cult followers for having a different opinion.
Edit: fuck I just got trolled. According to jillyboel profile we are all just fascists. And dang is preventing him from spamming his trolls on HN.
There's no law against you overpaying Apple when you could get more value by going off app. If you want to spend $14 for something that's $10 on Epics website, your welcome to do so. Epic will still get their $10, and you can gift Apple $4 for making it easy to cancel your future subscriptions.
Yeah, not arguing the legal specifics. It’s good for Apple to be challenged in court.
But Epic did go out of their way to ‘trash’ Apple in the press. For this and other reasons I can’t generally relate to Epic. (e.g. targeting kids with microtransactions, burning piles of money on Epic Games exclusives.)
Apple is the primary beneficiary by far of games like Fortnite because they allow and tax them in aggregate, even without Fortnite they offer thousands of games for kids to spend a grand or ten in. The legality of the tactics employed by the gaming industry, that can only occur with the platforms complicity, are being challenged in Europe which is hopefully going to end a lot of these practices and derail both Tims grifting off children and cultivated addicts.
So don't put yourself in the position where you have to do business with Epic, like forcing them to use your store to get software on the platform over a billion users use.
Apple could easily just do what various courts have ordered them to do: Open up the ecosystem and allow anyone to distribute apps. This has the added benefit of allowing apple to stop doing business with the entities they don't like, because they are no longer involving themselves in a transaction between the user and the business the user has chosen.
It will also save their executives from a prison sentence if they keep this up.
Yeah, there's no good guys in this fight. Apple may be behaving badly, but Epic broke the terms they agreed to, tried to use the courts to force Apple to change their App Store business model, and even kicked off a public PR campaign trashing Apple... and now they're whining because Apple is not treating them nicely after all that? You went nuclear on Apple, Epic. That's not going to make them interested in having you as a business partner.
Shrug. They can open up the apple ecosystem so you don't need their store and then they can refuse to do business.
Apple put themselves in the position that they have to do business with entities they don't approve of, thankfully the courts are reminding them of this. Soon one or more of the apple execs will wind up in prison.
Yeah, though Epic put themselves in the position of having the gatekeeper of an important part of their business want nothing to do with them, and now they're being whiny babies about it. Both parties suck here.
No, apple is clearly the evil one. They are bullying many, many, many other companies and individiuals in a similar, and often even worse, fashion. Those don't speak up because they're afraid of Apple's wrath. Thankfully Epic did have the balls to stand up, and now various various legal entities are forcing apple to make changes that benefit everyone (except apple).
As a user I love apple products for making payments safe. I can get a refund if the item I bought is not as advertised or I bought it by mistake, I don't need to figure out how to cancel a subscription, it's couple clicks to cancel for any subscription. I don't want apple to allow purchases outside the app as I'm afraid companies will leverage their power to redirect users outside of App Store to bypass those "payment safety" features that do not benefit them and will use fishy tactics to increase their profits.
I trust Sweeney’s intentions far, far more than I do Cook’s. The man is a bona fide hacker from the trenches and does not hide his true feelings behind a corporate firewall.
Not that it's an excuse, but industry darling Gabe Newell has engaged in similar dark patterns since well before Fortnite[1]. Yet, for some reason, there's not a lot of "fuck Newell" people out there.
To be frank, I think this is an issue people only opportunistically care about.
Of course not, but resulting changes to Apple's policy are still a good thing for everyone else. Anything that forces apple to bully other organizations and people less is a good thing.
Epic broke the terms they agreed to, filed the lawsuit, launched an advertising and PR campaign to support it, and continue to make whiny complaints after they got what they asked for, but Apple are the bullies here? I'm not convinced.
Terms that were illegal and thus not binding in many jurisdictions. If I were to write: "By replying to this comment you agree to my Terms of Service which require you to paypal me 10k", you would laugh and disregard it. Same thing.
Anyway, just look at how apple forced their payment service so they can take a 30% cut of every transaction made by any iPhone user. Then they banned price differences between Apple's own payment service and external, cheaper, ones. This forces companies to raise their prices by 30% everywhere. So we're all paying more to fund apple's greed. This is just one example of many, and you have to look beyond the apple vs epic fight since that is just the most public instance. Apple are the bullies.
Apple are involving themselves in business between their customers and companies those users have chosen to use. Apple are the bullies.
> Apple may be behaving badly, but Epic broke the terms they agreed to, tried to use the courts to force Apple to change their App Store business model, and even kicked off a public PR campaign trashing Apple... and now they're whining because Apple is not treating them nicely after all that?
> You went nuclear on Apple, Epic. That's not going to make them interested in having you as a business partner.
this is unfortunately the same language abusers use when their victims try to gain support (pr campaign), seek help (use the courts), or fight back (violate unfair terms)
maybe epic just wants apple to stop abusing them and leave them alone while they interact with their customers on a platform that apple has been ordered several times to open up
not being abused shouldn't require you to "be nice" to your abuser, or to want to be their "business partner"
that is unfortunately also a thing that abusers often say
it is not for you to decide, though
also, I'm not really interested in being the subject of discussion, but if you're going to tell me what I'm doing, at least be right about it: I haven't followed any public statements from either party in the matter; I've only read court documents and rulings; and I have never patronized either company and have no plans or interest to do so. I think that makes me more impartial here.
They couldn't start the legal battle without doing this. They needed to get solid legal standing. So yes, they planned it, but they couldn't easily challenge Apple without getting the rejection.
Your suggestion is that they sit on the sidelines and complain about the situation. That's what plenty of people have done, and it makes no difference.
I'm not a fan of Epic, I don't play their games. They did all this for their own benefit. But it's probably a good thing overall.
What's abusive TOS? Aren't EPIC TOS abusive where the payments to EPIC are non refundable in many cases or that you don't own your account or that your account can be terminated any second without a notice?
Isn't it a free market where if you don't like TOS you just don't use the product?
They didn’t ban them for publicly criticizing, they banned them for intentionally breaking the rules. So yes, this makes devs more afraid of knowingly breaking the rules like how jail makes people more afraid of breaking the law. And yes fornite team has been quite a bully in their incessant tweets but glad to see Apple not stopping to their level.
Devs are more afraid of breaking the rules because the rules change all the time, and they know Apple is petty and cares more about money than being good to customers and developers.
I think a big portion of the problem is that Apple is both the platform (phone) and the store. Similar to Google and Chrome for the web, it creates a conflict.
Bad faith movies like slapping warnings, geo blocking dev tools (remember you have to be in Europe to be able to develop an alternative web browser engine lol), limiting side loading etc … feels like “let’s milk the cashcow until people don’t need iPhones anymore”. The longer they can drag it the better. Disappointing tbh.
Apple gets around this by saying they are "Promising to Create 30000 american jobs" which the politicians then peddle in their election campaigns. But then it never happens because it is all a promise...
The politicians of course only care about the PR stunt and give them concessions either way.
A youtuber did a dissection of all the big tech jobs Trump "created" with his talks with big tech, and all of the new US jobs announced by the likes of Apple or Nvidia were jobs they were planning to create anyway, before Trump got elected Trump is just taking credit for it as if he did anything.
Job creation, retention or destruction is a powerful political tool that companies use everywhere as leverage to get politicians to do what they want. You can see the auto sector in Germany. So the US defending Apple is understandable. All countries protect their domestic big players.
Apple's guidelines pertaining to banning developers from linking to or communicating alternative payment methods were illegal. In the EU, in the US, now in Brazil too.
What's next is the EU fines them harder and faster than ever if they continue breaking the law in about 30 - 40 days, Brazil too in about 90 days, while the criminal contempt referrals hopefully leads to charges and at least one jailed executive, and the developers suing for restitution for unwarranted fees since the injunction prohibited the above behavior prevail, and the consumers suing for restitution in the US and UK prevail, because Apple broke the law to get and maximize those fees yet testified they do nothing for them.
And the DOJ antitrust later this year will feast on this.
> Apple's guidelines pertaining to banning developers from linking to or communicating alternative payment methods were illegal.
If those guidelines were always clearly illegal, why has it taken decades to take Apple to court?
I don't think they should be legal, but there are of a lot of other questionable licensing conditions that seem to be legal too so why all the focus on Apple? You have to be very naive to believe it's all about the law and there's nothing like some political power grab going on.
It’s taken six years since the EU investigated, leading to the DMA which took time to write then had a lengthy lead-in before it came into effect and the 1.8 billion anti-steering fine was incurred. Compliance is still “pending”, with contrived fees and scare walls and hardware restrictions against the EU’s wishes.
And in that time there was the 2020 congressional investigation in the US and failed attempt at similar laws. Later this year the DOJ antitrust stemming from this investigation will finally commence.
In 2021 the steering terms were ruled illegal in the US and it took three years to bounce back from the Supreme Court then another year for Apple’s noncompliance contempt to be measured.
Part of their noncompliance has been dragging things out to the extent the judge recently made sure their ruling applied immediately, and delivered it before Apple even finished debating which amongst 10,000s of pages of evidence documents to provide or suppress.
In that time the EU and DOJ have gone after Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft extensively too.
>you're just leeching of the effort Apple made to build their ecosystem.
Since when is paying 30% of your earnings considered "leeching"? It's not like Apple gives their marketspace for free to the developers. They pay Apple for that, fair and square.
> Porn sites suing because Apple won't allow them to put apps in their store and that's costing them their livelihood
Great example, actually. Why do you think it's okay for apple to unilaterally decide what more than a billion people are allowed to use their device for? Is it because you are projecting your own fears and insecurities on everyone else?
From all of them - take it away from Google too. Frankly - Microsoft never actually got much buy in for their store, but take it away from them as well.
Hardware that has only a single approved distribution channel for software, that is owned by someone other than the owner of the hardware, shouldn't be legal.
Further - if you own a piece of hardware, you legally should own EVERY fucking key. If there's a lock in that device, hardware or software based, that has a key - you get a damn copy.
---
Some physical comparisons that show how outrageously unethical this setup is:
You buy a home, but your realtor gets the only copy of the keys. "Don't worry" they say, "I'll just pop by and open er up whenever you need to get in and out. Oh, and by the way, I don't like Ikea - so I won't open the door if you're trying to move Ikea furniture in. Great working with you guys, enjoy your new home!".
You've just bought a new car, you tried turning into your neighborhood, but suddenly the car stops. You call the dealer: "Oh, I see your neighborhood road was paved by PavingCo, They don't pay our manufacturers' yearly inspection fee, so we can't certify that our car can safely drive on that road. So we disable it when the GPS detects you're about to drive there."
---
This is fundamentally about ownership. Hardware manufacturers are playing with utter fire here, because this is the first time in history there exists enough infrastructure that a device can phone home and ask "Is this ok?" to the maker, rather than operating as the owner desires.
As far as I'm concerned - you don't own a device that does that. You're just renting it, and the manufacturer can and will extort you with rent-seeking behavior at EVERY turn.
Phones are only the first stop - this is going to spread to absolutely everything that uses electricity unless this gets extinguished real fast. We're already starting to see the same games in Cars, IoT devices, TVs, etc...
I'm eagerly awaiting the day my drill stops working because I'm not trying to drill the manufacturers' overpriced screws with it...
Microsoft locking out third-party applications with Windows S, and/or pushing users to Microsoft's own game store, was actually a real threat to Valve. That's one of the major reasons Proton is a thing: Valve realized they were entirely dependant on a party they had no leverage over, so they built and invested in Linux.
Should Microsoft ever make a move now, Valve isn't completely at their mercy.
Valve is still at the Microsoft's mercy to tolerate Proton's existence.
They should have made it attractive for developers already targeting UNIX like systems, with PlayStation and Android NDK, to actually bother shipping GNU/Linux builds of their games.
> Valve is still at the Microsoft's mercy to tolerate Proton's existence.
No, they aren't. Valve is way, way too big a bear for Microsoft to poke. If they banned Steam, the backlash would be severe.
It would also result in even more users switching to Linux to keep access to the games they've already paid for, and which work under Linux due to proton.
Microsoft is at Valve's mercy. Valve doesn't need Microsoft, but Microsoft very badly needs Steam around to keep gamers on windows.
Epic didn't publicly criticize Apple or testify against them in court to get into this situation, they willfully and deliberately broke the legal developer agreement that they signed to get press coverage (they could have filed suit on the anti-steering rules regardless).
Not only did they do this, they then filed suit to say that Apple shouldn't have been allowed to suspend their account—and lost (though arguably won the broader war since anti-steering is currently dead).
There are a ton of things Apple is doing wrong around developer stuff and anti-steering rules and all of it, but I dunno, I feel pretty good about them saying to a specific developer, “actually, you've shown yourself to be willing to ignore the legal agreements you sign, so we're not going to be doing business with you any longer“. Epic's stunt should cost them, if they then want to talk about how they've martyred themselves for developers everywhere. Good work, but a martyr who comes back to life isn't really a martyr, right?
While I don’t claim to know the finer points of the law, I believe the judge was pretty crystal clear that Apple was 100% within their powers to kill the developer account that Epic used to do this.
Apple is just being petty now. They're legally allowed to keep Epic out, but why? As a message to others who might wish to legally contest Apple's monopolistic (or at least duopolistic) practises? You lost, Apple. Be a gracious loser. This action is only going to foment even more animosity from developers, gamers, customers, judges, and importantly, legislators. This absolutely will be used as a datapoint for future rulings, and cases are ongoing or being filed all over the world now.
Epic wanted their own store and they got their own store. It cost them and Apple a bunch of money, which indirectly is not good for anyone's customers... my sense of justice is not perplexed as to why they are not allowed back in.
Would you want to do business with someone who just sued you after breaking their previous contract with you?
> Epic wanted their own store and they got their own store.
They don't. Quoting the article:
> "Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission so we cannot release to the US App Store or to the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union," Epic stated via its Fortnite account
If someone prevents me from selling my own product in my own store then it's not my store.
It's not your fucking store - it's Epic's. It's not Apple's fucking store - It's Epic's.
You know what? It's also not fucking Apple's phone anymore, it's the damn phone of the customer who paid to buy it. They should be the only party who gets to decide whether they can install perfectly functional applications on it.
Apple keeps trying to twist that fact away, over and over again - They are morally in the wrong. Clearly so.
If you think it's a customer's phone and not Apple's, do you agree that customer should own EPIC account (be able to sell, transfer it, that EPIC can not terminate it)? I think it makes sense to apply the same logic either for both cases or for none.
I think visible frustration is appropriate given that even US based judges think Apple is being wildly inappropriate, to the point of recommending criminal contempt.
I think that's an appropriate note for an adult discussion here.
I think I'm very, very tired of Apple apologists flooding HN.
I think this comment is a classic "Woe is me you used potty language!" style distraction from the issue at hand, and isn't an appropriate response.
ah shut up. who made the app store? who made you buy this phone?
epic = another greedy freeloader. since the first iphone people paid apple FOR the store IT made. if current government together with the courts support your opinion that shows how braindead your opinion is
I suspect they just put their eggs in one basket and used the same package identifier for the DMA version of Fortnite and the App Store version, and the app’s state in review limbo messed with the iOS notarization process (which is a minimal review and not an automated CLI like macOS).
That’s something they could’ve avoided by using different IDs for different stores, like everyone else does on e.g. Amazon AppStore. (Maybe even Samsung and Play Store use different IDs)
But that’s assuming they’re not just refusing to release anywhere until Apple relents in the US.
But they didn't get their own store. They're still blocked from distributing to iPhones everywhere except the EU. And that process is incredibly user hostile (for which Apple will likely receive another fine for violating the DMA).
As I say above, Apple is legally permitted to do this, but I think they're inviting additional and heavy-handed legal interdiction. They're burning so much of their brand and goodwill on this war against developers. They went so far as to risk actual prison time for their executives, just so they could screw developers out of as much money as possible.
Man, just let it go. More you try to block Epic or any other, more you are pushing people away from yourself.
Be Apple, innovate, give us second iPhone moment so you wouldn't worry so much about revenue drop in services. Or make payment via Apple so good, your customers would go for it even with price difference. Just stop stupid, monopolistic tactics.
Companies do not innovate for fun. The point of innovation is getting to be able to profit from it.
Apple has built the touchscreen smartphone that the world to date still could not move on from, and it still leads in that category. By working both hardware and software fronts, they have grinded out an ecosystem that was compelling and money-making to small developers (handling legal and tax logistics pretty much worldwide for you) and to the end users.
Apple Pay is yet another example: you’d think somebody would have come up with a way to conveniently and securely pay with, say, a phone, and yet everybody needed for the teacher to do it first and only then jumped on copying the feature with barely enough creativity to call it “%SOME_BRAND_NAME% Pay” and put their logo on it. Now it’s incredibly convenient, it’s everywhere online, and it basically turns every shop out there into Amazon’s patented “one-click purchase” experience.
Saying they should not be able to profit from their innovation because they just did too good of a job intuitively seems like the opposite of American values. This is not some rusty ISP monopoly with a geographically captive market, sitting on decades old software as secure as Swiss cheese, doing mostly nothing. People switch between ecosystems all the time, there are no strong lock-ins; you have to be on top of it to stay competitive, and Apple generally is. This is one of the rare cases where a company keeps generating and implementing (pretty well) idea after idea in multiple areas with a valuation, contrary to trends, built not on empty future promises but on a concrete, sound business model that provides real value to people who are willing to pay for it, despite having a lot of choice.
Eh... get outta here. Profit is fine, rent seeking is not.
I don't care if they're "rusty" or or not. Sell a good hammer, make money selling the hammer: Everything is fine.
Sell a good hammer, double dip with rent seeking and charge for every nail the user drives? Fuck off. Happy to see them get wrecked in the court system.
If you want to live in a world where the pinnacle of innovation is another hammer, be my guest, I’m sure the Amish will welcome you.
If you like this one, with all the futuristic tech it brings, don’t get on a high horse whenever those who dare to innovate also dare to make money from it. Have the brains and the balls to do it yourself and be as flush as they are.
This isn’t “rent”—landlords don’t have to incessantly innovate.
> If you want to live in a world where the pinnacle of innovation is another hammer, be my guest
I'm less interested in a future where hammer manufacturers charge rent for every nail the user drives. I don't consider that "innovation" to be good for humankind.
You are free to abandon iPhones and live under a rock. Just, please:
0) don’t speak for all humankind,
1) when there is no extractive behavior—defined as taking a fee without producing even remotely proportionate value in return—do not misuse the word “rent” (as I said: landlords don’t innovate), and
2) when innovation is actually innovation, don’t put it in quotes.
Unless your hammer comes with a team of security engineers that work round the clock pushing security updates against zero-day vulnerabilities, or a selection of millions of expansions that expand its functionality in various ways, etc., no amount of mental gymnastics would make your hammer anything like a supercomputer that fits in the palm of your hand. The analogy you decided to repeat works against you; the fact that such a supercomputer costs only 20x more than a really good hammer costs today is amazing.
> You are free to abandon iPhones and live under a rock.
This seems like a disingenuous and fallacious response. Would you like to try replying in a more good faith manner? It might convince others to keep reading, rather than stopping at the first sentence.
It certainly did not seem to convince anyone that a hammer manufacturer which charges rent for every nail the user drives (in addition to charging for the hammer) is better than a regular hammer pricing model, and I still don't consider that rent-seeking "innovation" to be good for humankind.
Even though I pointed out that hammer is not a suitable metaphor (I think “disingenuous” and “fallacious” is fitting) and explained in detail why you are incorrect, you keep using that metaphor, do not address any of my points specifically, and then you call my response not “good faith”.
I am the one trying to maintain a constructive argument here. It is not coincidental that people upholding the other side very rarely do.
> I pointed out that hammer is not a suitable metaphor...
Your claim that a hammer manufacturer's "pay us for every nail" model is not a suitable metaphor for the apple's "pay us for every dollar" payment processing model, was respectfully communicated (thank you for that) and heard. The case you made for that claim, was not persuasive enough to convince the people who think it is. I think no more meta-arguing (or meta-insisting) need be done regarding whether a metaphor is perfect or not: I will be the first to admit that none are (because comparing a thing to itself is useless), but some are illustrative.
To wit, this metaphor illustrates that the world would be a better place without apple asking to be paid for every dollar accepted in-app which is distributed in the app store, just like the world would be a better place without a hammer manufacturer asking to be paid for every nail driven by the hammer.
Maybe one might think otherwise if apple showed data that explained how their 27-30% cut of others' sales was necessary to allow payments? We understand that making 2 hammers costs ~2x as much as making 1 hammer, but does allowing an app to accept $2 cost ~2x as much as allowing an app to accept $1? What is the magnitude of that cost? Remember that compensation for distribution (which covers the costs of running the app store, and need not be correlated with in-app payments) can happen separately.
> Your claim that a hammer manufacturer's "pay us for every nail" model is not a suitable metaphor for the apple's "pay us for every dollar" payment
Great job at goalpost moving (and putting words in my mouth).
No amount of mental gymnastics will turn your hammer into a sophisticated device that gains new features after you buy it, so powerful that it can be used by ill-intentioned people to compromise entire livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of customers if it’s not patched in a timely manner after they bought it. All of them expect this ongoing service, and many of them do not pay a cent for it, never using any paid apps or in-app purchases.
However, I’m repeating myself.
TL;DR: The reason your business model works for a hammer is because it is a damn hammer. Come back with a better analogy, reply to my points in the comment upthread, and start finally making sense—or, to quote the comment whom you are so hell-bent on defending, “get outta here”. The overhwelming majority of people worldwide use Android; go join their ranks and be happy.
> No amount of mental gymnastics will turn your hammer into a sophisticated device that gains new features after you buy it
No amount of mental gymnastics will turn apple's "pay us for every dollar you make" payment extortion model into an innovation good for humankind, nor will it make that model any more innovative. It's simply a vig, one of the oldest business models in history. No change, no innovation. Same ol' "give us a cut of everything you make [or else]" that it's always been. The extortion model is not necessary for the app store, it's not necessary for devices, it's not necessary for security, it's not necessary for anything except making more profits. Apple could start demanding 1% of every dollar spent in an app, instead of 27-30%, and still continue providing the same service. Your deafening silence on the topic of their actual incurred costs speaks volumes here: One would be forgiven for concluding that you agree with me, that it has no justification to speak of, other than greed and might-makes-right.
As for your claim that a hammer manufacturer's "pay us for every nail" model is not a suitable metaphor for the apple's "pay us for every dollar" payment processing model: It was respectfully communicated (thank you for that) and heard. Unfortunately, the case you made for that claim was not persuasive enough. You could try to come back and make a better case, but I think no more meta-arguing (or meta-insisting) need be done regarding whether a metaphor is perfect or not: I will be the first to admit that none are (because comparing a thing to itself is useless), but some are illustrative.
To wit, this metaphor illustrates that the world would be a better place without apple asking to be paid for every dollar accepted in-app which is distributed in the app store, just like the world would be a better place without a hammer manufacturer asking to be paid for every nail driven by the hammer.
Maybe one might think otherwise if apple showed data that explained how their 27-30% cut of others' sales was necessary to allow payments? We understand that making 2 hammers costs ~2x as much as making 1 hammer, but does allowing an app to accept $2 cost ~2x as much as allowing an app to accept $1? ---> What is the magnitude of that cost? <--- Remember that compensation for distribution (which covers the costs of running the app store, and need not be correlated with in-app payments) can happen separately.
I observe such statements being repeated, uncreatively and without any factual support, with my arguments against them conspicuously left unaddressed. In fact, my very first comment in this thread listed how Apple keeps innovating and leading change in multiple industries. Present specific evidence that would refute that.
> As for your claim that a hammer manufacturer's "pay us for every nail" model
This was never a claim I made; in fact, this “pay us for very nail” model was never once mentioned by me and in all likelihood is a hallucination of whatever chatbot is spewing this.
>> [apple's "pay us for every dollar you make" payment extortion model] ... No change, no innovation.
> In fact, my very first comment in this thread listed how Apple keeps innovating and leading change in multiple industries.
That may be so, but their "pay us for every dollar" model isn't innovative, and that's what we're talking about here. All the other innovation is unrelated to that. All the other innovation can be done without that. You seem to be confusing one thing Apple does (the "pay us for every dollar" model) with everything else they do. This point was covered in the post you replied to, but you seem to have not only ignored it, but selectively quoted me so as to make it easier for you to ignore it.
>> As for your claim that a hammer manufacturer's "pay us for every nail" model [is not a suitable metaphor for the apple's "pay us for every dollar" payment processing model]
> This was never a claim I made
Sure it was. This entire thread is comparing apple's "pay us for every dollar" model with a hypothetical "pay us for every nail hammered" model. Your contribution was claiming that the metaphor was inapt (a claim unconvincing to multiple people).
It sounds like you're now saying you agree with the metaphor that we've all been discussing, rather than disagree? Either way, I think no more meta-arguing need be done regarding whether a metaphor is perfect or not: I will be the first to admit that none are (because comparing a thing to itself is useless), but some are illustrative.
To wit, this metaphor illustrates that the world would be a better place without apple asking to be paid for every dollar accepted in-app which is distributed in the app store, just like the world would be a better place without a hammer manufacturer asking to be paid for every nail driven by the hammer.
p.s.: please stop omitting critical context from quotes to make your point: Your "no change, no innovation" quote creatively omitted that it was referring to apple's "pay us for every dollar" business model for app store payments; your quote regarding the metaphor omitted the second half of the metaphor whose invalidity was your central claim. For your convenience, in this post I've added back the critical omitted context.
That is how the world Ought to be, not how the world Is.
As I do with Microsoft, I only use Apple products when its absolutely necessary.
My personal choices are whatever is best, Fedora for my home OS(Don't call Fedora Linux, Fedora is so far and beyond Linux, you don't want to associate them).
My Pixel phone... Idk, looking for something new. But at least I have been using Fdroid and its pretty amazing.
But yeah I bend to their will when I'm doing corporate stuff, never personal.
So pathetic, especially the red triangle. It's like they thought "well it's a warning, so we use the warning icon but we need to make it scary so it's red!!".
Though I am very pro Epic in this, I feel this is the least harmful way Apple can warn users who are apprehensive of alternative payment systems while those who want to go ahead can. Like Fortnite's user base would not be deterred by this.
Would you be okay for Google to warn anyone when entering a website on chrome that they are taking a risk because they offer payment options other than Google pay?
Its about freedom and openness of platforms.
‘It’s fine because people will ignore it’ doesn’t make something okay.
>Would you be okay for Google to warn anyone when entering a website on chrome that they are taking a risk because they offer payment options other than Google pay?
Its about freedom and openness of platforms.
>‘It’s fine because people will ignore it’ doesn’t make something okay.
I can give an anecdotal example of my father who is bit old, knows some basic tech, but had been at the receiving end of some financial fraud (some clowns pretended to be stock trading experts, thankfully nothing happened as he figured it out before any money was sent).
You and I might be technologically sophisticated enough to know what's what. That being said I feel the likelihood of scammy apps like those on App store for iOS a lot less likely but not zero. That being said, on Chrome, one does have many many options for reliable payment gateways and not using them can be an easy way to figure out if it is risky or not.
If Google were to force Google Pay on Chrome, that would be clearly wrong. Options should exist.
And I feel Apple should allow Fortnite for that very reason. You cannot ban someone for not wanting to use Apple Pay, the same way Chrome cannot and should not ban a website if they are using a non Google related payment gateway.
> In Slack communications dated November 16, 2021, the Apple employees crafting the warning screen for Project Michigan discussed how best to frame its language. Mr. Onak suggested the warning screen should include the language: “By continuing on the web, you will leave the app and be taken to an external website” because “‘external website’ sounds scary, so execs will love it.” [...] One employee further wrote, “to make your version even worse you could add the developer name rather than the app name.” To that, another responded “ooh - keep going.”
Apple’s malicious compliance then pretending to ask for permission. Apple was trying to get the EU to rubber stamp the scare tactics. Instead the EU said let’s see that works out for you.
And fwiw we have hard evidence of Apple acting in bad faith. Gruber keeps giving Apple PR the benefit of the doubt but they absolutely do not deserve it.
At the end of that link, where it describes how the EC gave conflicting instructions, demanded action without saying what needed to be done, and then gave a sudden negative judgment... I know some iOS developers who'd say that sounds eerily familiar. :D
This has been going on for 4 years, they have won multiple times in court. The last time the judge actively insulted apple for ignoring the previous engagements and even suggesting criminal proceedings on some of the executives, and now they ignore the courts again
By “they” you mean Apple, if you’ve read the opinions. And they did fly too close to the sun recently on one point. But that point was not about whether or not they have to let epic on their platform.
The title is a bit misleading, Apple did not reject the submission, just not approved it (yet). I know ignoring a submission is practically the same as blocking or rejecting it; but I think this case is already messy enough so that these things should be read with more nuance.
Also the situation is much more complicated. In the EU, Fortnite has been available for a while through their own Epic Games AppStore. This submission seems to have been for both, the EU distribution and the US AppStore. I am surprised that such a situation is even possible, I thought if you opt-in your app/account for EU alternative AppStores you are kind of blocked from the standard AppStore submission as the requirements for the alternative distribution path are different from the AppStore. At the same time it seems to give Epic more arguments for pressure on Apple as sabotaging the release in the EU might be against the DMA laws.
Maybe you are right. „blocked“ still is a strange term to use when normally people speak of „rejected“ so maybe they just told them they won‘t approve it. The latest news is that they were told to resubmit for EU only and that will get approved.
As expected [0], it isn't over yet and Apple doesn't care.
They even went as far as to blocking downloads from third-party app stores:
> The Verge has confirmed that the game is no longer available to download on iOS from the Epic Games Store or the alternative marketplace AltStore PAL in the EU, where it had previously been available. It’s not yet clear if Apple blocked the game’s availability through those stores, or if Epic itself chose to make it unavailable. We’ve reached out to both Apple and Epic for comment.
That tells you the reach into how Apple can block app installs even from third-party app stores.
Well, I hope they keep pushing hard so that lawmakers notice how broken anything related to selling software is.
I know, wishful thinking, but I'd love more ownership for the hardware I buy.
A few days ago Nintendo announced that if you do anything outside of what they allow, they will BRICK YOUR NINTENDO SWITCH. Like, how's that even legal
just checking, so you think selling software is broken, do you actually sell software?
if you are an indie dev on app store, do you think apple allowing alt stores and basically unlocking piracy is how selling will become less broken for you?
there are only two categories of people winning this: people who like to pirate things when they can, and shady corps like epic who are invulnerable to piracy even if alt stores are allowed (because they run their own billing servers) and who want to make a penny more on every predatory microtransaction in their games.
The 3 biggest companies in the world are all 3 software companies.
I guess you could consider Apple a hardware company, that leaves us with 2, but the appstore is an enormous source of revenue for Apple, so there is that.
I guess "selling software" in my mind doesn't necessarily means a traditional transaction, so that's probably the source of disagreement.
Yes, to me selling software is very much broken for the consumer.
The fact that selling software for indie devs is hard doesn't justify that, selling to end users is hard in many businesses.
In businesses, software is everywhere though
Selling software is (was) just fine for indie devs with app store. Actually I would say it was just fine and easier than anywhere else for users too. So I have no idea what "broken for consumer" means either.
The same properties we get with physical things (ownership):
- sell
- repair
- pass it to our kids
- no dependency on big corp one day figuring out they don't like me and banning me from all the things I purchased from them
- no possibility for hardware to be broken because "you did something we didn't like"
- emulate or reverse engineer the software, even the damn drm, when the company breaks it
These kind of things that you can do with physical items
Do you think that when you are making something non-physical that can be copied with zero effort (like a programmer who makes a cool little app) then you can only do this for a living and fairly if there is some ability to restrict copying?
if you can pass it to your kids then it also breaks the above. I have some nice non-appstore indie apps I bought as one time purchase, they still call some billing API. they work if I block them with a firewall but they probably will stop working after a reinstall and if billing api dies they are forever in trial mode. do I blame the dev for make a living?
I haven't said you cannot do what you just described, I want to be put in law that you have to account for passing it onto my kids. Right into the DRM.
While I'm alive, lock it to me, unless I land it to somebody else, in which case it must be locked to them
If the solution means hardware DRM vendor must know your legal family tree, I'm out;)
But seriously in ideal world
- subscription offers like adobe will be outcompeted by better one-time sale indie software
This aint happening unless indie devs can reliably make enough money and are protected
- indie dev can open source their stuff in case they quit the business/retire (unless their kids take over and keep billing api working) or for people who can't afford it.
Projects did it because you couldn't just take someone's xcode project and publish it. But now with now alt stores you can
So yeah Epic push for alt stores kills both of the above, all because they want to shave a cent more from each microtransaction they lure your kids into
how do you allow reselling without allowing a buyer to copy the license? unfortunately pinky promise doesn't work in real world and if you are a small indie dev you can't sue everyone who pirates your stuff
That won't happen. It's Apple's platform so they have the right to decide who gets onto it. Just like Walmart gets to decide whose products are sold through Walmart.
It's the same reason it has been since the judgement, Epic violated the TOS so Apple removed Fortnite. The court found for Apple on that count, and has never ordered Fortnite's reinstatement.
Tim Sweeney is using language in a way to make it appear as though the recent ruling ordered Fortnite's reinstatement, and a lot of people are falling for it.
>> Remember when Apple tried to tell the judge that they would be happy to welcome Epic back to the App Store once the court case was over and the issue adjudicated? I do, because I read the transcripts and listened to the hearings.
>> I guess technically it’s not over yet because Apple has appealed. On the other hand, Apple made the offer, without the condition of the court case being over, after the legal battle had already begun. So it seems like it was never a serious offer and only meant to sway public opinion.
Tim Sweeney is good at PR, and the media tends to fall for it.
The judge didn’t say Fortnite had to be let back on the App Store. She said that Apple needed to allow payments through external payment processors. Apple can’t force Epic to use their payment system anymore, but they absolutely still can decide they don’t want to distribute Fortnite on the App Store. It’s their store.
They lost on almost all counts actually; precisely the reason the judge was angry about failure to comply with the relief she did order. (In her opinion; appeals court will see. It looks colorable to me that she may feel Apple outsmarted her and just “technically” complied. But we will see during appeals.)
