Apple will terminate Epic’s inclusion in the Apple Developer Program, a membership that’s necessary to distribute apps on iOS devices or use Apple developer tools, if the company does not “cure your breaches” to the agreement within two weeks, according to a letter from Apple that was shared by Epic. Epic won’t be able to notarize Mac apps either, a process that could make installing Epic’s software more difficult or block it altogether. Apple requires that all apps are notarized before they can be run on newer versions of macOS, even if they’re distributed outside the App Store.
Epic has filed for a preliminary injunction against Apple, asking the court to stop the company from cutting it off. Epic says it will be “irreparably harmed long before final judgment comes” if it does not obtain the injunction. “Apple’s actions will irreparably damage Epic’s reputation among Fortnite users and be catastrophic for the future of the separate Unreal Engine business,” Epic writes. Epic also asks for Fortnite — with its lowered prices and alternate payment option — to be returned to the App Store.
A bully is bad. A self-righteous bully surrounded by an internal and external army of yes-men is a million times worse. I sadly don’t expect much from the United States Congress, but I hope the European Commission is keeping very close tabs on Apple’s abusive anti-consumer behaviour here.
And the general reminder: you might’ve paid a grand for your iPhone, but it really isn’t your iPhone. It’s Apple’s, and they, and only they, get to decide how you use it.
Serves them (iOS users) right. I specifically avoided iOS because of its nonsensical restrictions: lack of sideloading, lack of MicroSD support, and the requirement to use a non-standard tool (iTunes) to transfer files. Sure, I had to tolerate Android 2.x, but the benefit of avoiding iOS was worth it in my opinion. All iOS users could have done what I did since these restrictions were present since day 1. And it’s not the first time iOS users can’t get to an application because Apple doesn’t want it in their app store (Kodi comes to mind), so nothing new here. Apart from the fact this time it’s an app that appeals to the average Apple user a bit more.
What is infuriating is that MacOS, an operating system once marketed as a Unix workstation operating system, is getting its sideloading options restricted. I mean, look at what you have to do in order to run an unsigned application:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202491
Is all that necessary? Something like the SmartScreen popup as found in Windows would have been more than enough.
I honestly Do not know who to root for here both companies suck on one side you have apple building a moat around the walls of there garden.
And Epic who has bought out games for example Rocket league that were nice cross platform games and dropped support for both mac and Linux
BOth are guilty of being anti consumer and we can only hope that apple Kills Epic than the U.S. Government Breaks apple up
Blocking sideloading should be illegal. Even the IBM mainframe allowed the customer to install his own developed software on the computer they bought. A developer did not need an agreement with the manufacturer, and not even an exclusive development tool from the manufacturer.
In the end this are first world problems. Said that, Apple is now too big of an company, to get away with such level of control it tries to have. Too many interests and parties are involved. I am sure that people, developers, companies … will have more choices and Apple will have to adapt and provide them. If Epic wouldn’t succeed, there will be others that will. It’s a bit strange Apple managed to avoid this for so long.
What does being NATO member or aligned have to do with the problem? (first world)
Troll?
Not really. What do you mean by “third world”? Unless you are a chinese Maoist it is rather simple. 3rd world has the richest countries like Switzerland, Qatar, Bahrain, and Liechtenstein but are non-aligned to the 1st or 2nd world. (Like Sweden and Finland). 2nd world is Russia+China and their allies and puppets. 1st world is NATO and their allies and puppets. 1st world include poor crapholes like albania and portugal (no offence, but the economic system does not seem to inspire growth)
It’s not strange at all. Android and iOS have app parity, and the platforms are split 50/50 in the US. In the rest of the world, Android leads the market. The time people were locked to a platform is gone, and most people already have access to side loading and alternative apps stores.
“most people already have access to side loading and alternative apps stores”
Most people can barely manage to install an app from the official app stores. To them terms like “side loading” are probably something you do with your DVD drive.
Sideloading is when you sneak your cloths into someone else’s laundry. 🙂
Having access to something without the ability to do something is a personal problem.
In this case, people who want to sideload and use alternative app stores have access to Android phones. Knowing how to sideload and use alternative apps stores is entirely their problem.
The point is that the vast majority of users do not sideload or use “alternative” app stores.
javiercero1,
There is nothing wrong with that. However it is wrong to block the owners who do want to.
And not for nothing, but did you ever think that maybe alternative app stores would become more viable and popular with iphone owners if they weren’t blocked?
I feel that the Apple/Google situation, technically being a duopoly, will be treated as monopoly. Similar regulation likely affecting both companies, Apple and Google. The main problem was, until now, nobody really challenged Apple/Google. And that changed now!
That’s a fair assessment.
However, Republicans have stacked the court with pro-business judges, and it’s possible they will see two companies which evenly split the market who are protecting their investments. The existence of Android, Android ROMS, and Android cellphone OEMs will be used as evidence to support the position consumers have choices. (Disregarding how locked down cellphone hardware is, and how user hostile cellphone manufacturers are. Now, that is a lawsuit I would like to see.)
The argument obviously doesn’t hold water, to us, since we know Android is fairly useless without Google Services and the OEMs are awful, but other people may have different opinions about it.
Until someone makes an app that helps protesters in some way but pisses off the Chinese government (or other dictatorship). And you know Apple will comply with the requests of the Chinese government as usual. As a result, Android users will be able to get the app, iOS users won’t. And then it becomes a non-first-world problem.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49919459
Multi billion companies going to court. That is what i imply being a first world problems.
Thom Holwerda,
Of course we’ve been complaining about this for a very long time, but apple could always afford to ignore it because users were oblivious to it. However epic has a lot of popularity and I think that for the first time apple’s actions could start upsetting normal consumers who are impacted. Epic set the stage pretty well by aligning itself explicitly with users and offering them the choice of a cheaper payment processor. Apple has gotten itself into terrible optics by taking a position that clearly harms users (as opposed to just developers). I wonder if any other developers will join epic in protesting walled gardens by getting themselves banned – it would send a strong message.
As far as banning epic on macos to enforce restrictions there, well that just seems foolish to me. Apple needs to be attracting more developers to macos, not pushing them away.
Epic has probably calculated the costs of trying to keep iOS and Mac OS support and found it wasn’t worth it. Dropping Open GL requiring a rewrite of the Unreal engine? Moving to ARM and likely getting terrible gaming performance? Epic probably doesn’t see much money left in Apple platforms right now. Might as well pile on the antitrust train and risk everything.
Ha, the OpenGL fan club.
Unreal was one of the first engines to support Metal, with demos at WWDC.
It also supports DirectX, GNM, GNMX, NVN.
By that logic I suppose every creative 3D app that hasn’t ported their Mac versions to Metal are also fanboys. Trying to ignore the fact that it costs a ton of money and not everyone can afford the Apple tax, or pass it on to their customers. Way to miss the main point that it probably wasn’t as profitable as they had imagined, and even less so with the switch to ARM and suspicious benchmarks.
Dude. OpenGL is aaaaaancient. You’d be surprised how much the world has moved on. Specially gaming engines.
For starters, most of these APIs are literally designed with the main engines as integral part of the process. And wether you like it or not, Apple ARM cores are now on par with Intel, on a IPC basis, have surpassed x86 in perf/watt, and their GPUs have surpassed intel’s IGP.
I do agree that apple trying to charge a 30% commission for their app store is ridiculous though.
A pigeon has better “speed per joule of energy” than a state of the art jet fighter. I don’t know why the airforce doesn’t just “overclock” some pigeons (using adrenaline and caffeine) instead of wasting money on jet engines. Surely it’d only take 100 juiced up pigeons and some glue to break the sound barrier?
The fact is that (for a specific chip design) “perf/watt” is a curve, where doubling performance might result in 4 times higher power consumption (halving the “perf/watt”).
The fact is that different CPU designs have different “perf/watt” curves – a chip designed for high performance (without caring as much about low power consumption) will be radically different to a chip designed for low power consumption. For an example consider speculative execution; where power is consumed doing work that the CPU doesn’t know will actually be useful (until later, when it’s too late to avoid the power consumption if the speculatively done work isn’t used). If high performance is the goal then you’d use speculative execution aggressively (without caring much about power wasted on work that isn’t used in the end); and if low power consumption (and high “perf/watt”) is the only goal then you really want to avoid speculative execution completely.
Now…
Let’s define “performance” as a combination of clock speed, IPC and “instructions per work done”. For example, if it takes you twice as many instructions to do the same work but you have the same IPC, then “same IPC” would imply “half as fast at same clock frequency”. In a similar way, “half the IPC at double the clock frequency for the same instruction set” would imply “same performance even though IPC is half”. Essentially; IPC alone (especially when comparing different instruction sets, for different CPU designs, with different design goals and different “perf/watt” curves) is meaningless.
However it gets worse. There’s 2 very different types of “IPC”. There’s “IPC that was measured in practice (for a specific piece of software or benchmark)” and there’s “theoretical IPC that nobody ever achieves in practice that’s almost entirely irrelevant”. Sadly; almost all quoted “IPC” values are the latter (useless marketing snot). The fact is that CPUs spend a huge amount of time stalled doing nothing; waiting for a cache miss, or waiting to find out if a branch is taken/not taken, or waiting for one instruction to complete before a dependent instruction can start, or …. This means that the difference between “IPC in practice” and “IPC in theory” is often huge. Closing this gap means avoiding stalls, and avoiding stalls means a significant amount of effort put into things like cache management (prefetching, etc), branch prediction, speculative execution, SMT/hyper-threading, etc; and all of that consumes more power. In other words; if 2 CPUs have identical “instructions per work done”, identical “theoretical IPC” and identical clock frequencies; there can still be huge performance differences between the CPUs in practice.
Mostly; in theory, in the long run,, ARM should beat 80×86 (due to weaker memory model, less legacy stuff to make sure software you bought yesterday still works tomorrow and less “niche” features).
However, in the short term what will happen is that clueless people will cherry pick marketing nonsense in an attempt to claim “victory” before the battle has begun; until Apple release their ARM based Macs at half the price of Intel based Macs and finds that nobody wants them (at first) due to severe performance problems caused by 80×86 emulation; then (about 2 years later, after all the applications people care about are ported to “native ARM” and new games are written for it) people will see that the performance is still not as good. This will give ARM a reputation as cheap crap that will persist long after ARM actually does equal (or exceed) Intel chips in actual practical “not cherry picked theory” performance. Eventually Apple will do what they should’ve done to start with – abandon the desktop/laptop market and focus their effort on phones alone, leaving behind the “ARM is cheap crap” reputation that (in theory) ARM doesn’t really deserve.
Brendan
Pigeon red herrings aside, Apple’s ARM cores have matched Intel’s on a per clock cycle. And they are fabbed in a more advanced process, which can match intel’s clock frequency (and do so at lower power cost).
This is not the first transition in Apple’s history, so I am sure they will have most important apps ported by the time ARMacs come along.
Apple’s large out-of-order cores really are that good, in some cases are even more aggressive than Intel’s (way larger L1, huge register file and re-order buffers, 8 FUs), apple SoC also offer on die IPs that intel either doesn’t, or requires a second HUB die. Their GPU has already surpassed Intel’s IGP.
I think a lot of people have trouble going from one paradigm to another. Just like how back in the 80s the mini guys could not grasp that the lowly micros were matching their performance. Same is happening now with the transition from desktop CPUs to mobile CPUs performance driver.
Intel only has a slight microarchitectural edge and it’s behind node tech. Whereas Apple is slightly behind in microarchitecture but is way ahead in node tech.
I think it’s great, there’s going to be another explosion in performance among the ARM vendors.
And? Given the choice between a CPU that actually has decent performance and another CPU that spends most of its time stalled doing nothing (and therefore has extremely poor performance); why am I supposed to care if both CPUs have comparable “theoretical max. IPC you never achieve” and comparable clock frequency (maybe)?
They’ve switched from slow CPUs to significantly more powerful CPUs twice; and in those cases “significantly more powerful” means “able to emulate a slower CPU and make the performance look about the same as it was”. This isn’t what they’re planning now. Nobody is claiming that their ARM CPUs will be significantly more powerful than Intel CPUs (even the Apple fanboys and their overemphasis of meaningless marketing statistics like “IPC” are only hoping for “comparable”).
Based on what? The idea that doubling the clock frequency will double performance (even though it never does) and will only double the power consumption (and won’t quadruple the power consumption); and that “perf/watt” will stay the same (and won’t be 5 times worse)?
Intel has a microarchitectural edge, a proven track record of backward compatibility that some would consider excessive, the ability to work with industry standards that ensure interoperability between (hardware and software) pieces from a huge number of different vendors (and encourages competition that drives prices down), plus a very established market share and ecosystem that has been largely uncontended for multiple decades, and is temporarily behind in node tech (but likely to gain fast as they start rolling out “10 nm process improvements”).
Apple has…. indecision, marketing/branding, loyal suckers that don’t laugh at $999 monitor stands, the use of someone else’s fabs, and a strong desire to lock competitors of any kind out of their walled gardens to drive prices/profits up?
IPC is one of the main metrics to compare, quantitatively, cross architectural performance.
If anything the Apple cores are slightly better balanced: they have way larger L1 caches, very aggressive out-of-order structures (large speculative prefetch and predictors and a huge distributed register file + ROB).
You honestly think, that one of the best architecture teams in the industry “missed” the whole memo on keeping their cores fed? Or that they don’t understand how power and performance scale?
When apple transitioned to x86, the initial core parts they used were barely more performant than the top of the line G5s. They had a much better power/performance rations, though. And lo’ and behold, that’s the same situation right now.
Besides binary translation has advanced as well in the past 15 years. And the whole point of OSX (NextStep) is that is a highly portable, architecture-agnostic, system. The porting process of most applications will be a simple recompile.
In any case. By the time intel’s 10nm rolls in significant volume. TSMC and Samsung will already be on 5nm. So now they’re 2 nodes behind, progress!
The foundry model has already won the day. Sorry.
With their chips now on par with intel’s, there’s no point on Apple continue using x86. Intel has no value proposition in that space. Specially since it has worse power/performance, and the number of people in the mac ecosystem, that may need to use some obscure 8086 MS-DOS binary from 1982, can probably be counted with the fingers of one hand.
@javiercero1
” OpenGL is aaaaaancient.”
And still the best option for content creation programs because that’s what it was designed for. Vulkan doesn’t have a lot more to offer in that department. Great for lowering resource use in game engines, but I doubt anyone using Blender’s shader editor would get any improvements from precompiled shaders while they’re literally making a new shader. This is an apples to oranges comparison you’re making.
dark2
In windows and MacOS OpenGL has been relegated to legacy renderer status. AMD’s OpenGL performance on Windows, for example, is atrocious.
Most content creation are moving towards APIs with compute.
At this rate Linux will be the last “bastion” for anything OpenGL. It had a good run, how old is that thing? 30 years?
The Basecamp founders set this up when they launched Hey. Epic just xeroxed their playbook. This even an original play.
Epic did have the good luck of a pandemic coming along when there were a bunch of idiots in power which allowed Epic to launch a much more successful attack then Hey since more people are looking for entertainment right now. I’m not sure how people feel about exploiting a national emergency for personal gain, but I don’t approve of it.
The App Store works for regular users, and as such, they don’t really care. Plus, people can pickup and move to Android. The two platforms are fairly symmetric in their app selection. There are a few exclusives, but they’re pretty niche products. All of the big players support both platforms.
Businesses are always looking to cut expenses, so the fees are rough for them, if they are trying to use mobile to make money.
I doubt any company will take a stand on an app. For most, iOS apps are just a portal to their web applications. It’s a value add for the user. It’s been known for a while, mobile apps don’t make money. It’s the services they connect to which make money, and losing or annoying those customers would be worse for them.
Flatland_Spider,
I don’t think we should assume that epic is exploiting national emergency for personal gain. I really do think this was a long time coming, Maybe epic didn’t feel it was in a strong enough position to take on apple’s anti-competitive restrictions before now.
It any case, you can’t just blame epic, it cuts both ways and you also have to blame apple:
“Facebook Says Apple In-App Fees Hurt Businesses During Covid”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-says-apple-app-fees-190000886.html
Again I don’t think either company is deliberately profiting from the pandemic, but if we criticize one then we should criticize both.
That’s what makes Epic’s move interesting. By moving the choice into the user’s court, now users do care because they are directly exposed to apple’s policies. It isn’t just apple versus epic anymore, it’s apple verses end users. Maybe you are right that some still won’t care, but I’d wager that many actually do and if nothing else I think it’s good that they’re getting more informed.
Of course this will always be true. I don’t want this to be a debate between one company’s fans versus another since I think that misses the real antitrust issues, which are systemic issues in the tech industry.
Yes, that’s a common refrain. and there’s some truth it. But keep in mind that one of the principals of antitrust is to stop one corporation from using it’s dominance in one market (ie smartphones) from impeding competition in another (apps and app stores).
I’m cynical enough to assume as much. Media and entertainment stocks are up due to people staying at home more due to the pandemic, and this gives Epic even more leverage since this is going to hurt people. People are only going to care about themselves not being able to play whatever the game is, and they are going to blame Apple.
It’s masterful really. Epic backed Apple into a corner with the help of a communicable disease.
Facebook can be added to the list of companies piling on.
The 30% cut has always been there. It’s not like Google or Apple raised the rate to capitalize on the pandemic. Epic and Facebook are using the pandemic to their advantage to paint Apple as evil since people are spending large amounts of time with their electronics now.
That is exactly what Epic wants. They want to prosecute the case in the court of public opinion without any fallout for them, and they want people to ignore the real issues. They don’t want to change anything; they just want to be in charge.
They’re exploiting people, and people’s current situation. They’re manipulating people to side with them.
I agree there are problems in the tech industry, but I don’t agree this is going to change anything, especially not with these two companies. I think attacking hardware is a better way to go.
This whole thing is going to revolve around how a market is defined.
Apple has a monopoly over their platform. They design their systems, and their OSs won’t run on other hardware (for the most part).
Microsoft has a monopoly over their platform. Windows and Office are not open source.
Google generally has a monopoly over their platform. People don’t have access to Google stuff.
AWS has a monopoly over their platform. People can’t download AWS and run it on their own systems.
Red Hat does not have a monopoly over their platform. People can download CentOS which is bug for bug compatible with RHEL.
Companies are generally allowed to monoplise their platforms, and the whole market is considered. In this case, Android needs to be considered, and it hold more marketshare then iOS does. The market may be a duopoly, but that is usually enough for the courts and regulators.
The odd thing about this is that there are two very viable competitors, and one isn’t being kept around as a token.
Flatland_Spider,
Epic didn’t do anything that wouldn’t have made sense at any other time. Yes, companies like zoom, epic, netflix, logitech, apple, microsoft, facebook, amazon, etc have profited handsomely, however I think it’s highly unfair to blame them for pandemic profits. They all happened to be in lines of business that became profitable. I don’t personally blame any of them for it.
How is facebook piling on?
https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/14/facebook-vs-apple/
I despise facebook quite a bit and won’t hesitate to criticize them. However regarding these fees on online classes during the pandemic, it’s hard to see why you’d blame anyone other than apple. Look at the screen shot. Google allowed facebook to process transactions themselves without paying the fee. Apple is the only one forcefully imposing the 30% fees during the pandemic. Of course for apple it’s business as usual, if they make a profit during the pandemic, then so be it. Remind me which one is to be commended?
Well yes, apple was better off when it’s users remained ignorant, but epic’s strategy is to change that. Epic feels that the optics look bad for apple in the court of public opinion. Nothing that’s going on is new, the only thing that’s changed is now the public are becoming more informed about apple’s contracts.
Sure they want to be in charge and I understand your rational in accuse them of seeking more power. But I am totally perplexed as to why you are only criticizing epic rather than also criticizing apple for already having so much control, which they are already using to stifle competition? Like I said earlier, this shouldn’t be about apple fans versus epic fans, it should be about eliminating digital restrictions that kill the free market and enable companies to gain control over what apps owners are able to run. Does that not bother you even a little bit? Not blaming apple at all seems like an enormous double standard.
Can we agree that a duopoly is a far cry from a healthy market?
Apple might argue the “locking” of the smart phones and tablets is for the sake of the customers to protect them from evil people in the internet.
But the truth is, since the use of Armv7-A CPUs, Apple had the possibility to add a sand box (TrustZone) to run side loaded application is a controlled way.
If they would have wanted it.
DeepThought,
Exactly. Sometimes we are told that locking owners into walled gardens is necessary for security, yet the truth is walled garden applications have the exact same access as those that are sideloaded. On android sideloaded apps still run in the sandbox. This isn’t like computer software that has all or nothing access. I think some people confuse sideloading for root access.
Sideloading is for people who would like to install software without being subjected to corporate and government censoring & banning. By taking away owners right to sideload, apple is treating it’s customers as children.
When Microsoft had its hegemony in the 90s I looked up to the companies (Sun, Be, and yes even Oracle at the time) that stood up to it. I thought those times were dead. I know ultimately Epic is protecting its bottom line but it is very nice to see them calling out Apple like this.
Tom Magee,
Yeah, Epic isn’t being selfless, but it still might be the best opportunity we’ve had in a long time for something positive come out of the fight for owner & developer rights.
Android OEMs will actually support their phones for more then 1 year?
Epic will throw lots of resources behind a 3rd platform which really is an open platform?
Real progress will have to come through legislation that is anti-capitalist and pro-consumer. We’re not going to gain anything by letting a corporation write the rules, which is essentially what this would be.
We’re also not going to gain anything by making Apple allow side loading. That would be a large security hole.
Flatland_Spider,
Hey, I’m already on the record criticizing android support and acknowledging apple’s long term support 🙂 Short of that time apple was caught reducing performance with updates, apple’s long term support is certainly much better than most of the industry.
My wish isn’t really to promote one company over another, it’s really for owner rights to be respected across the board. IOW once you buy a device, you should have an explicit legal right to the keys if you so choose without fear of being punished for it.
I agree, legislation is desperately needed to keep corporations from amassing control over our devices.
I find this comment perplexing because it speaks to a hypothetical that already aptly describes whats going on today already.. We’ve got a duopoly where two corporations write the rules and nobody else is on fair ground.
Except that sandboxing still applies to sideloaded apps. If epic opened an app store on IOS, the apps would still have the same permissions they have on IOS. Now maybe you don’t trust epic, which is fine, but it would be kind of a bizzare argument to say epic apps are trustworthy when apple collects it’s 30% cut, but are not trustworthy otherwise.
Congress has punted by doing nothing, and in the meantime, companies have created de facto standards.
This leaves the courts to establish legal precedence. This is two large corps who want something, and it’s has nothing todo with consumer interest. If this was Everyday Dude vs Apple, I would feel different, but it’s Epic vs Apple with the winner getting to set the rules.
I’m assuming Apple will retaliate with some sort of restrictions if they lose, and Epic will get full access to everything defeating any security measures after they complain about the retaliation.
Apple has their reputation and platform at stake. Epic has nothing. If Epic lets malware and other crap in, it doesn’t matter. They couldn’t care less if they destroy the platform because their app store only cost them legal fees. They’ll destroy the platform, pick over the bones, and move on to the next one. It’s not so much about Epic apps as it is the guard at the gate, and how little respect for the platform the potentially could have.
Meanwhile, that’s a lot lost revenue for Apple. Regardless of how people feel about Apple, they are the only viable alternative to Windows. Linux can do a lot, but it doesn’t have application parity and it’s a distant third.
Flatland_Spider,
End users have become directly involved because now their right to install fortnight and their right to use a cheaper transaction processor is in the cross hairs.
If a new donut shop opens up next to starbucks and starts serving food that makes everybody sick, that will drive customers away and back to starbucks.
@Alfman
Sort of.
A coffee shop opens across the street from Starbucks, and they source treats and sandwiches from a 3rd party restaurant owned by the landlord. The restaurant has lax standards, and everyone gets sick from their food. The coffee shop doesn’t have the option of switching because their landlord says they can only source food items from the restaurant making people sick. The coffee shop shuts down, and customers go back to Starbucks since Starbucks has it’s own source of food. The restaurant which was making people sick doesn’t care, and they continue business as usual. In fact, the landlord sues Starbucks because they don’t sell the restaurant’s food, and the landlord pays off local politicians to pass an ordinance forcing Starbucks to buy food from the restaurant. Starbucks shuts down, and the town is now a barren, coffee shop wasteland thanks to the landlord being a greedy a**hole. The citizens revolt because they’re caffeine addicts who are forced to get their fix via bad gas station coffee or a fast food chains which serve brown water. They drive the landlord, politicians, and corporations out of town and establish an anarcho-syndicate where they have good coffee and luxurious freedom.
Flatland_Spider,
Sounds like you live in a very corrupt town with a**hole landlords 🙂
All is well that ends well.
But Apple does not have the same hegemony in the mobile space as Microsoft did (still does) in the desktop space.
At least Microsoft only had “monopoly” when it came to OS license sales, and anyone was allowed to install any application they wanted without paying any 30% application tax to Microsoft.
This is the clearest account of the whole thing that I have come across
https://youtu.be/sM4QmEw6QDM
Thanks for posting. I quite objective take on the topic, instead of the usual bashing towards Apple that Thom likes so much.
Rene Ritchie, the co-host of MacBreak Weekly, is on the same track of all Fan Boys. Why Apple and not Sony, Nintendo Microsoft? The real focus is that charging 30% quota for in-game purchase is too abusive and monopolistic. Apple iOS does not allow any sideloading, there is no other way to install software on an iPhone. —THAT IS A MONOPOLY— . The real subject is that Apple and Google App Stores are abusive and takes 30% of all in-game purchase, that means Apple and Google get money for nothing, while Fan boys are trying to make you look the other side… Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft.
Ok, I think the smartest move EPIC could make next is to purchase TikTok
That would force Apple to have to remove TikTok from their app store to maintain their stance.
Muhahaha
I’ve read numerous posts like this but none also talking about the fact that Google also removed Fornite. I don’t believe its correct to say Apple is bad and not mention Google. Let’s not forget we’re talking about absurdly immense companies that have no problem ripping off the end user.
That being said, i believe we would be worse off without App Stores. Let’s consider that regulators force Apple and Google to move their AppStores to different companies or relax their grip on it. What incentive would those companies have ( they only see € or £ ,$ ) to maintain the quality of the apps there?
This can also be an opportunity for some gaming companies, to become closer with Apple/Google.
The crucial difference is that Android users can still run Fortnite (and any other software from Epic) on their phones, whereas Apple users cannot, and this is solely down to differences in policy between Apple and Google.
Google, like Apple, enforces its own rules for the apps it offers through its store, but unlike Apple it doesn’t prevent users installing other stores on their phones.
EPIC signed a contract with Apple. And then it breached it.
This is exactly what happens in these cases.
But hey! Bad bad Apple, bad Apple!
The point is, when a monopoly company is a gatekeeper to an entire market, they can force any anti-competitive contract terms they want or deny access to the market, which is obviously bad for everyone except for the monopolist.
What about other markets where competition exists?
I’m sure EPIC needs to:
Pay Sony 30% to list on PlayStation
Pay Microsoft 30% to list on Xbox
Pay Nintendo 30% to list on Switch
At least the game-consoles are sold as loss so I guess earning from games / taking a tax on the games revenue is fair. When it comes to Apple I think they earn from harware sales of the iOS devices also without 30% tax from app sales.
“One reason why companies sell the consoles at a loss initially is to lure customers into buying them and then try to make up for the losses through each game sold”:
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080515/economics-gaming-consoles.asp
Apple does not have a monopoly on the mobile device market, people have options. People have options. Some of use choose and use Apple devices for the very fact that the App store is a walled garden with some attempt to limit privacy intrusions and malware. We bought our ticket knowing what the ride was. I think the real question is “Who is the bully here?” If Epic played by the rules that they agreed to when they signed their contracts with Apple, there is not issue here, but they chose not to do that. They instead are trying to use their Army of users and public opinion for force Apple to make a change that that is in their best interest. If you believe Epic is doing this to benefit anyone other than Epic, you are sadly mistaken. They would have been perfectly happy if Apple had cut them a secret deal to reduce commissions on their products on the App store and we would not be hearing about any of this.
Yep, you get it.
Clutch the pearls, trot out the photogenic kids, and tell the world how evil Apple is. Wrap up in the flag and tell people this is for the greater good, but leave out the part about how “The Greater Good” is going to be the name of a megayacht.
dmdair,
The antitrust issue here is a company uses it’s dominance in one market (ie hardware) to control and influence another market (apps). Saying “people have options” doesn’t solve the antitrust issue. Apple has 46% smartphone market share in the US, more than any other manufacturer.
It would be like Ford forcing owners to only use Ford mechanics & parts. The fact is these restrictions on owner rights are extremely harmful to free markets and lead to less freedom and more monopolization.
Frankly this has been a BS argument from day 1. In the same way that your freedom to choose Ford parts & mechanics was never taken away by giving owners a choice, You’re freedom to use the apple store over others will remain your choice.
The thing about antitrust is that it’s necessary to balance the tables. Otherwise the market is forced to comply with unfair contracts because of drastically imbalanced negotiating power. Let me apply your contract logic to a scenario that will probably ruffle your feathers: microsoft went to PC vendors contractually requiring them to pay for windows OEM licenses on all PCs sold, including those with other operating systems. This was clearly done with the intent of killing competitors, and like apple’s contracts it was very effective. I think the real question is “Who is the bully here?” If PC vendors played by the rules that they agreed to when they signed their contracts with Microsoft, there is not issue here, but they chose not to do that.
What does antitrust laws have to do with any of this?
Are Apple, Google, and Microsoft colluding to control the market?
Or did you mean “anti monopoly?” Which is something completely different, and which does not apply in this case either given how 46% of the market is still less than half, and as such nowhere near a monopoly?
The law may be different in your jurisdiction, but in the EU antitrust law “prohibits abusive conduct by companies that have a dominant position on a particular market”. Whether Apple has a dominant position isn’t clear-cut by any means, but based on the definition here, a market share as low as 46% doesn’t rule it out:
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/procedures_102_en.html
javiercero1,
As flypig said, antitrust applies to companies using their dominance to hurt competition. And since you ask, a monopoly is not required to be guilty of price fixing schemes.
I see. I stand corrected then.
So in the EU antitrust applies to both; trusts themselves as well as monopolistic behavior.
I still don’t see how Apple fits in either category though.
I have the impression that the situation is way more complicated and could have way more repercussions than what it might appear at first glance. The whole antitrust issue is shaky to say the least, as it should be based on categories of products, not the actual product per se. When this happened to Microsoft long time ago, it was debated that they had the monopoly on the PC business, which included all the vendors, with different OS and different products. This time around, Apple has no monopoly in the phone market, and saying that it has monopoly on it’s own product is like saying everyone who has not a completely open product, has a monopoly on it. Which can become dangerous, because, in the name of offering the consumer free choice, this can be exploited in a lot of ways. Forcing FORD to get a RENAULT app in their cars, which would remind the consumer how he should have known better and bought a different car. 😀 Also, I don’t think we have friends up there, Epic is after big fishes like Valve, Apple, Google… but they’re also trying to kill smaller fishes llike Crytek, Unity and any other engine by literally giving away assets for free (megascans anyone?) to whoever embraces their product. They’re starting to do the same in the film industry, trying to kill any CPU based rendering solution (renderman vray, Arnold), as well as in the photogrammetry field (Photoscan reality capture)… because they’re good? I seriously doubt it. From a certain point of view, this could be a problem for them in the long run, as at some point people will argue that they have become a monopoly in the entertainment industry, but I guess they’re smelling blood right now, and they’re not worried about the consequences. I don’t know guys, I have very mixed feelings about all of this.
The car analogy isn’t the greatest, but back in the 80’s and 90’s the US essentially forced Japan to include car parts made in the US. Its not that uncommon for cars from different manufacturers to share basic components, or even have jointly run car manufacturing plants.
I think reducing the app store tax on devs is a great step that would really unleash more mobile development. As for the app store being too locked down, I personally don’t think its locked down enough. Their standards suck now. The app store is full of garbage apps. Not sure how to both encourage good apps, while not locking out hobbiests and small devs. Maybe if your app isn’t downloaded at a sufficient rate it gets removed automatically and needs to manually be put back up or you have to pay Apple for it to stay?
No one can force people to produce quality applications. This is the eternal problem of allowing third-party software on a platform; not everyone has the same standards of quality. That pile of trash in the corner is someone’s pride and joy. (I’ve made more then my fair share of trash piles, and I’ve been pretty proud of some of them too. XD.)
Apple could extend their enterprise deployments to hobbyists, or they could create a new category in the Test Flight program with a limited, invite only deployment style. Something like 25 invitations would probably work.
Small devs just need to pay the $99 dev account fee. As a small dev, the experience isn’t bad.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
(my emphasis)
I want to say first that I agree with you on the parts in bold, however your suggestions that its not locked down enough really rubs me the wrong way. Apple is within it’s rights to sell out and put whatever garbage apps it wants within it’s stores, and users are within their rights to use & buy whatever garbage apps they want too. Your underlying complaint is still valid, but the real problem is the lack of high quality app store alternatives because it’s too locked down. Apple restrictions explicitly ban higher quality app stores too.
As a brick and mortar example, there are harbor freight hardware stores here that sell absolutely the cheapest stuff you can find, it competes with internet prices, which is amazing. Is it high quality stuff? No, it’s the same quality as knockoff stuff you order on the internet, but sometimes that’s all you need. Maybe you want better quality, nothing wrong with that. But the solution is not shutting down the stores that sell products you don’t like or forcing all stores to only sell products that suit your needs, it’s far better to let the free market do it’s thing and allow both sellers and buyers to decide for themselves what they want to sell and buy. You, as a buyer, should support the stores that best serve your needs. The obvious problem with apple restrictions is that they systematically block 100% of the app store competition. What they’re doing should be illegal!
Don’t feel bad about not taking sides in a pissing contest between two multi-million dollar companies. Epic isn’t the small company we may remember, and they‘re mad it’s not their app store people are using. They want to funnel people into their own app store, so they get all of the profits. They want to take a 30% cut of the profits. It’s not so much as an anti-app store stance as it’s a stance against app stores that they don’t own.
It’s like Disney pulling it’s content from Netflix and locking it to their own streaming service. Netflix isn’t doing a bad job; Disney isn’t getting as much money as they would like.
Anyway, just remember that’s not rain that coming down. 🙂
Pretty much. The Basecamp founders started this when they whined about the App Store with their Hey app. It got Hey free publicity, and now the sharks are jumping on the band wagon.
If this were some small , struggling dev shops getting squeezed by Apple, I would feel bad, but I don’t since it’s successful companies who are being greedy.
This is more interesting then Apple and Epic slap fighting about a game. Do you have more details?
Flatland_Spider,
You are right (although I would nitpick the “multi-million dollar” class for apple, haha https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/investing/amazon-apple-microsoft-market-value/index.html ). Epic is just doing what’s good for Epic. I don’t particularly care for Epic, however they aren’t wrong that apple is abusing its market position to deliberately block competitors. So if Epic is able to put the tech industry’s anti-competitive restrictions on the radar then I’ll take it, it’s long overdue.
Yeah. XD
Yeah, we can’t fault Epic for looking out for Epic. They have people to pay, shareholders to placate, the C-suite has boats to buy, and a congress to payoff.
A walled-garden with gatekeepers is part of the value proposition of iOS. Everything in the App Store is filtered and reviewed. This does infringe on some freedom, but that’s the trade off.
I’m not going to argue Apple’s review policies and process couldn’t be better. They could. I will argue we have a pretty good diversity between iOS and Android.
Anyway, there are other areas I would like to attack more then the semantics of whether an App Store on a vertically integrated platform is anticompetive or not. The idea of a vertically integrated platform is some things are going to be excluded to provide a better experience to begin with. The scope is going to be limited from the start.
Fair enough. 🙂
Flatland_Spider,
Why though? The apple store will still filtered and reviewed regardless of whether other app stores are allowed to exist. I would even argue that apple’s store might improve because of the new competition. As an incumbent, apple has relied far to heavily on anti-competitive restrictions rather than improving their service. What happens when companies have too much power in their respective markets is that they stop improving and competing and start relying on blocking competitors or just price fixing. And while there’s a long list of companies that have done this before apple, it doesn’t make sense to look the other way and allow it to continue. It needs to be addressed especially for trillion dollar companies with an immense amount of control over our technology.
Epic has been quite aggressive for the last three years within the film industry. They’ve been having contacts with several VFX companies, organising tech demos, offering support and open discussions in order to meet expectations. Their main goal is to attack the market in three positions: pre-production, production and post-production. Namely previz, virtual sets, and final pixel rendering. The main trojan horse, so to speak, is proving to be the aquisition of Quixel, and their Megascans library. They’re literally offering assets for free, if you adopt the unreal engine within your workflow. One of the main hurdles in film production has always been the assets themselves, and in particular the fact that the previz process would use low rez assets, which will have to be completely redone in post production. This usually involves lots of photoshoots, photogrammetry, and custom modeling. By adopting the megascan library which has a 1 to 1 assets equivalence between lowrez and production quality, you have the benefit of being able to reuse the previz later on. You would have to export the created set into usd or a format you can read in the pipeline you’re using, exchange the assets for the high quality ones, and sometimes with minimal additional changes (if the previz is done well) get a renderable scene. It’s still quite some work, but you’re already cutting the majority of modeling of reusable assets, leaving out the custom specific assets work. This fact alone undermine any use of alternative realtime engines for previz (no included library of high quality assets) as well as the usefulness of any photogrammetry tool, given that any generic prop, let’s say a rock, would come from the library itself (for free with the unreal engine adoption) rather than custom work. All it’s left would be “just” to render your scene in Renderman, Arnold or Vray. Now enters U5: “production quality assets” directly in engine. They literally say it themselves. So now you have a scene with assets which are already production ready, which can go in a renderer which produces decent global illumination and ray tracing, without any translation. Now the VFX studio has immediately cut the costs of photogrammetry, expensive photoshoots, generic library modeling and maintainment, additional software licenses and, last but not least, an expensive renderfarm which currently sits in racks and can only be used for long, time consuming renders and nothing else (due to the specs required). Epic wins, the vfx company wins (for now, until the studio decides to further cut the costs, now that they’re getting “images from a Playstation”), pretty much everyone else looses. Froma certain point of view it’s the cost of evolution and progress, which I’m not against it at all, but it’s also the first few steps of a new monopoly. If you need more infos, search “ILM Mandalorian LED screens”, “Unreal virtual sets” and more, with more detailed information.
Anacardo,
That’s very interesting. I would think that open source/creative commons licenses would be ideal for high quality world assets. If everyone contributed a little bit, and in return modelers could build on everyone else’s work rather than starting from scratch… Is there a reason this could not work?
Also I realize that in practice you’ve got players in every industry who have too much power and intentionally try to monopolize things, which sounds like epic in your case. Greed at the top does that. 🙁
Idealistically though from your perspective could an open source asset database work? Some people just wouldn’t want to contribute anything at all, maybe you could require commercial users of the asserts to contribute a little so at least the asset database keeps growing. I’m not familiar with your industry, does anything like this exist?
errrr…. this would require an article on its own… 😀 There are some things in place, but nothing really structured. There’s a lot of people who would like to go open spurce, but current limitations in the business models are to be blamed why these things are somewhat uncommon. (as an example, given that a client pays for you to go crate an asset, even generic, they own it, not you.)… In the end… it’s complicated. But I agree with you, an open source library of quality generic assets would be amazing.
Anacardo,
Not crossing my fingers or anything, but hypothetically if you could find a sustainable model to make it happen, then I might be interested in working with you on it 🙂
Your focusing on the wrong thing. It’s developers that have no choice. It’s 30% either way, with what appears to be an illegal trust of both companies keeping that price up. If there were really competition between Google and Apple, they’d most certainly drop that down to a reasonable percent.
Most apps are free, and the companies make their money someplace else. The economics of mobile is that it’s a dry well, and mobile apps are a convenience feature for consumers to allow easy access to the real product.
I don’t feel sorry for Epic. Apple has had this model since their App Store came out and with Google has spent billions building it out and running it long before Epic came along.
Now you want to say you should get a free ride on this ecosystem that you didn’t create that you don’t maintain and that you don’t bring a whole lot to??
Maybe they should bring developers together and create their own platform like Apple and Google did. Oh yeah that’s tough even big bad Microsoft couldn’t pull it off with all their billions!
They should not get a free ride because they don’t want to pay the cost of admission and a company should not be punished for being big or enforcing their rules. (Rules you accepted going in)
And people with this “you don’t own your iPhone” stuff. You don’t own your Samsung ether. It’s the same thing. Most people just want to use something that works. Most people won’t “side load” and all that other stuff. Most will go to the play story just like the App Store and if they don’t see you there they will go on to something else.
Windows Sucks,
Nothing could be further from the truth though. it takes tons of resources to open up your own store. Developers may not want to do it in-house, it’s easier just to let apple handle it. If both parties agree without coercion, then fantastic. However if a developer builds their own infrastructure from the ground up, apple is the one robbing the developer from the fruits of their labor by taking 30% off the top of the developer’s gross income when the developer did all the damn work.
I’ll agree with you one one thing: competing stores that don’t pay apple’s 30% fee don’t deserve any services from apple. No entry in apple’s store, no advertising, no transaction processing, no tech support, nothing. But…competitors do deserve to exist no matter whether it pleases apple or not! Apple should not be allowed to forcefully block owners from app providers that compete with apple. Having developers forced into paying for apple services that aren’t wanted or needed is insane. Seriously it’s comparable to what the mob does: “nice business you got there, give us a cut or else we’ll make sure you get shut down”.
If you’re saying that we need more competition on the android side too, I won’t argue with that. However there’s still a huge difference in that on android sideloading isn’t usually blocked and the owners are free to use other stores.
“Nothing could be further from the truth though. it takes tons of resources to open up your own store. Developers may not want to do it in-house, it’s easier just to let apple handle it. If both parties agree without coercion, then fantastic. However if a developer builds their own infrastructure from the ground up, apple is the one robbing the developer from the fruits of their labor by taking 30% off the top of the developer’s gross income when the developer did all the damn work.”
No one is forcing Epic to be on iOS. If you choose to be on IOS then you know going in you have to pay the %30 they didn’t pop it up on them or pull a fast one on them. To say that you HAVE to let me on your platform for free is crazy.
Epic does not help Apple sell phones. If people bought more phones because of Epic games I could see the argument. But they are in the same position as all game developers.
“If you’re saying that we need more competition on the android side too, I won’t argue with that. However there’s still a huge difference in that on android sideloading isn’t usually blocked and the owners are free to use other stores.”
Interesting because Epic is suing Google also so it sounds like sideloading isnt profitable ether and allowed Epic to sideload a major security hole on a bunch of Android phones when it launched outside of the Play Store: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/276158-epic-calls-google-irresponsible-for-disclosing-serious-security-flaw-in-fortnite
In the end I could understand if this was a bump up from what Epic agreed to almost 10 years ago now when they put previous games and apps on iOS and Google play, or they were picking on Epic because they are big and want more money.
But every game developer in the Play Store and App Store pays the %30 evenly.
Windows Sucks,
It violates antitrust principals to use dominance in one market to exert influence over another.
For example: MS was found guilty of antitrust violations for forcing manufacturers to bundle IE and not netscape. End users could install netscape themselves, but in blocking manufacturers from bundling netscape, the damage was done.
Should a company that creates a computing platform have the exclusive, perpetual right to completely control that platform? It seems you think so, I would respectfully disagree. This was never the case before the iPhone App Store, which pioneered the digital fiefdom model, enforced using technical means rather than legal (code becomes law). Even in Microsoft Windows’ worst monopoly days, Microsoft did not have the audacity (or ability) to prevent third-parties from creating Windows applications and selling them without their permission and after giving them a 30% cut. Of course this is changing now with Windows 10 as digital fiefdoms become commonplace.
I would point the finger at things like FreeBSD ports, NetBSD pkgsrc, Linux repos, and specifically the Cydia iOS App Store as originators of this model.
All of those were and are digital fiefdoms. They don’t charge people money, well RH charges people money, but there is a guard which keep the gates. They aren’t as strict as Apple, but same concept.
MS didn’t have the luxury of constant Internet access at their peak, and they have to fight against ~40 years of ingrained bad security practices. In sense, MS’s bad security worked out for them.
It’s definitely interesting to consider open source as a precursor, but I’d argue it goes back even further. The game console business model is based on the same closed-platform approach, and this goes back at least to Nintendo in the late eighties. It led to various lawsuits against Nintendo at the time (e.g. Tengen and Codemasters/Camerica/Galoob). A whole variety of technical means have been employed by Nintendo (and the other console manufacturers subsequently) as well as legal.
No doubt someone else will come along and point out an even earlier example. Railway gauges perhaps?
Good points. 🙂
App Stores definitely borrow ideas, liberally, from the content industry. Napster and digital rights management definitely helped flesh out the idea of controlling end user rights.
Yes, and interestingly, Epic isn’t going after the consoles which are just as closed down as iOS. Hmm…
I thought Nintendo’s got in trouble for price fixing with the NES, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with games. I also don’t follow the console or video game industry.
Flatland_Spider,
You are right that apple didn’t invent the centralized app distribution model, however unlike every one of those you mentioned, none of them withhold local access rights from owners. That’s what makes the apple app store a walled garden while something like linux or bsd is not.
I had to lookup what a “fiefdoms” is, haha.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fiefdom
By this definition, IOS is a digital fiefdom because apple exerts control over users. I can think some linux products that are restricted and would fit this definition, like tivo or roku, but generally speaking linux distros, bsds, and even cydia do not fit the definition.
I know how tired you and others are tired of this debate. I get that. Some people don’t care about owner sideloading rights for themselves, but its frustrating when those people speak out against the sideloading rights of others. “I don’t care about XYZ, therefor your opinion about XYZ doesn’t matter”. For me, corporations applying increasingly sophisticated control is a growing problem in tech and we must talk about it.
Am I right to assume that you would not be complaining against apple even if they did in fact let owners have local access to their own hardware?
It’s not a perfect analogy.
They do gatekeep though, which I think is the important idea, and most people don’t understand how to compile their own programs. It’s not hard after the first couple of times, but it is daunting in the beginning.
Honestly, I object to Epic being catagorized as a hero when they’re being opportunistic predators. I object to Epic being in this equation.
If this was a private citizen who truly believed in tech freedom, right to repair, etc., I would be on board with it. As it is now, I’m wondering how consumers are going to get f***ed harder then they are. Epic’s demands are very narrow, and the two most likely won’t end up in court. There will be a backroom deal where Apple doesn’t admit anything and nothing changes.
Anyway… I used to run Android as my mobile OS, and I realized I just want a phone. It’s not a desktop. It’s a communication device, and I needed that communication device to work. (Plus, being attached to Google, no support from the OEM, and Android security was bad. Security is also a reason I banned Android devices from a corporate network and services at one point.)
Vertical integration, walled garden, security, and good OEM support are the reasons I switched to iOS.
Android is an okay alternative. It has it’s problems, but it is a more open platform.
I would love a consistent boot process and open hardware to be able to install Linux or a BSD easily on cellphones. 😀 I have several old cellphones I could hook up to a solar panel and use as some lowtech webservers. 🙂 LowTech Magazine has version which runs on a solar panel powered ARM server which has me fascinated. (https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/)
It also has me wondering about the wisdom of buying solar panels from Harbor Freight, and where I could find a wrecked Prius to salvage a battery pack. That’s an other discussion.
With access to hardware, a 3rd mobile OS could be built. I’m not expecting it to compete with iOS or Android, but I would like to be able to opt out from those two when I can.
The Fairphone on open hardware is probably the ideal scenario, but I’ll take what I can get.
We’re on the same side. I happen to think forcing the OS open is the wrong thing to focus on, and we should route around the damage which is Apple and Google entirely.
If you mean sideloading and what not, I might complain about that. It would only be a matter of time before someone brings in a rooted iPhone filled with sideloaded apps downloaded from a warez site, and I have to find the device sending data to servers in China.
Google is even playing on this scenario with Android Enterprise Devices. https://www.android.com/enterprise/devices/
Bottom line: explicit stated rules should not be broken. Epic did.
Apple fudges and makes rules mysterious like Google. THAT is a horrible, different issue.
Devs and end users should both talk with their money – not intentionally break contract and cause drama.
slobu,
I understand your argument and I don’t have much particular sympathy for epic either. However you need to understanding the fundamental reason epic did it. Playing by the rules keeps us in the status quo, a status quo which has been unfair since the beginning. We all know that ideally this would be fixed through legislation, but it’s been well over a decade and they still have done nothing. The reality is that nothing will happen unless someone can get more and more of the public talking about it, only then will it become a political priority. For better or worse, drama is what it takes to bring about change.
I think that Apple and Google guidelines are not over the local law. Possible those guidelines are against the US “Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890” and will need to go to court for a Judge to define it and create a precedent on how App Stores in the US should work.
martini,
Yeah, that might have to happen. It kind of sucks though that we don’t have a proper legislative solution in place. Not only is antitrust such a blunt instrument, it kicks in after the fact many years too late once the damage is already done. Consumers need laws that make ownership rights explicit, but politicians are so intertwined with business interests that I’m skeptical of change.
But knowing how all this companies works, maybe Epic and Apple will reach a monetary agreement and settle up, leaving the market screwed, and letting the monopoly to suck everybody 30% of their revenue, except for Epic. We need something like anew “The United States vs Apple” to break the monopoly of the app store, like it happen with IBM and Microsoft on the past with their products.
A man was going to the house of some rich person. As he went along the road, he saw a box of good apples at the side of the road. He said, “I do not want to eat those apples; for the rich man will give me much food; he will give me very nice food to eat.” Then he took the apples and threw them away into the dust.
He went on and came to a river. The river had become very big; so he could not go over it. He waited for some time; then he said, “I cannot go to the rich man’s house today, for I cannot get over the river.”
He began to go home. He had eaten no food that day. He began to want food. He came to the apples, and he was glad to take them out of the dust and eat them.
Do not throw good things away; you may be glad to have them at some other time.
https://www.newblogvip.com
I’m taking EPIC side. There had been abuses on the App Store way of making business for so many years, and I think that is time to have a change, and the only way it can be done in US is with a lawsuit and going to court.
Even that EPIC may not be the most nice company of all, at least they have enough financial muscle to put a battle against Google and Apple. I just hope this goes to court and set a precedent, and not that the settle with some money exchange.
Apple fanboys defense on the web is getting very annoying too:
– EPIC is a dirty bastard that wants more money.
– Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft also charge 30%, why they only sue Apple?
– Epic is “young people crack” with his dirty Fortnite.
– See all the viruses and malware that Windows 10 has. IOS walled garden avoided that.
– See how the OEM bundled software in Windows 95 failed miserable (with the respective link to an article)
– Check all this articles from this smart (unknown) people defending Apple.
– You are an ignorant for not knowing this smart people and not sharing his opinion about Apple. (The personal attack card at the end)
Fanboys think they can use the reality distortion field as good as Steve Jobs, but they just can’t
Regards
Tech hobbyists who like to tinker with their kit and think that the Apple App Store model is some sort of infringement of liberty remind me of gun supporters in the USA. Inside their world the logic that letting any law abiding citizen own almost any number of powerful guns sounds so logical. Meanwhile everybody outside the US looking in can see immediately that allowing so many guns in private hands makes the world much more dangerous for everyone, causes huge suffering, requires policing with a finger on the trigger, in fact all those guns destroy freedom.
It’s the same with all the talk like “And the general reminder: you might’ve paid a grand for your iPhone, but it really isn’t your iPhone. It’s Apple’s, and they, and only they, get to decide how you use it.”
Seemingly so logical, yet so bonkers.
The App Store model liberated a billion of people from worrying about how to install software, or whether something really bad was going to happen because they installed software, or how to pay for it, or find it. The App Store model was software liberation for a billion people. A few million tech hobbyists chafe against the App Stores (mostly imaginary) restraints, but the freedom for the few would erode the freedom of the many. Imagine a world where all sorts of software for devices was aggressively promoted and pushed by anybody to anybody, with no gate keeper, and endless promises of what it could do. Imagine what the bad people would do with that model, especially give that mobile computing devices are so much more intimately integrated in to people’s lives than any old style PC.
This article very concisely explains why the App Store is liberation for the many.
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/8/18/app-stores
Disagree with the comparison with the gun supporters, too exaggerate. Another technique to make you look the other way.
Citing the benefits of an App Store does not take apart the abusive monopoly that tax you 30% for your software. Your “gate keeper” is indeed a “Monopoly”
Strossen,
The main problem with your argument is that it completely ignores the fact that the app store model isn’t mutually exclusive to owner freedoms. I can go to home depot or walmart or freedy’s stuff emporium at will. There’s no reason I can’t use all of them as I please. However if one store gains a way to digitally block the others, that’s a serious problem for market abuse. We should have interjected many years ago, but instead we’re allowing it to become normalized. Such abuses continue to harm rights and competition for years to come if we don’t put an end to manufacturers locking owners out of their own devices.
Many platforms do in fact use the same app store model without taking away owner rights. Linux distros have been using that since before apple and heck apple didn’t even have the first app store on the iphone. So, if you want to promote the concept of app stores, go right ahead, but don’t mistake it as a rebuttal to those calling for owner freedoms.
So, it is like buying a car that only takes you to Walmart and not to Target LOL
That feature will soon be announced on Tesla Motors :_)
This video from The Verge is more equilateral explaining the situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r70ZdDQt4K8