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It's always interesting to read the comments on articles about the Epic Games situation. We can have discussions about Apple's cut or how Apple operates their s

It's always interesting to read the comments on articles about the Epic Games situation. We can have discussions about Apple's cut or how Apple operates their store but this is such a clear cut case that I'm honestly surprised so many HN readers are siding with Epic (or maybe it's just the anti-Apple crowd looking for any reason to crap on Apple). Epic tried to get Apple to allow a whole new store on their platform AND allow Epic to do all its own CC processing. Apple said no and Epic flipped a switch to offer CC processing for Fortnite and so Apple removed the app and disabled the account. Part of that account access included the Sign in with Apple and so that is going away as well. Epic isn't fighting for the little guy, they wanted their own store where they would take their own percentage of sales. Lastly I'll just say that while 30% might be too high I think a lot of people are overlooking the value that the App Store and the iOS platform as whole provides. I swear all of the comments about "I could host it myself and use stripe and pay way less" just reeks of "...you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem..."

deleted 6y ago
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bmarquez 6y ago
> Epic isn't fighting for the little guy Nobody is fighting for the little guy, but this is still advantageous for the consumer. Apple is even fighting with Facebook, since you are forbidden to disclose the 30% cut with consumers.
- oefrha 6y ago
  If Epic’s PC store is any indication, consumers will eventually have to face bullshit exclusives that force them to use the Epic store and largely cost the exact same.
  - Rebelgecko 6y ago
    I don't see that as a downside to Epic . Some games on their storefront are exclusives and ones that are available elsewhere often have the same price?* Isn't that an argument to get rid of the App store? EVERY game there is exclusive- there's no other way to buy it for iOS. And it's a bit tautological, but games on the App Store will never be able to undercut prices of competing stores on the platform because there aren't any. *btw I don't totally agree with the implication. Even though many games cost the same as Steam, many of them also don't. Even if only a subset of games is cheaper on Epic, that's a win for consumers.
  - jonny_eh 6y ago
    > bullshit exclusives Who cares if you have to open a different megacorp's launcher?
- scarface74 6y ago
  Name one retailer who would let me sell in their store and advertise either that you can buy it somewhere cheaper or allow me to tell the consumer what the retailer’s markup is - in their store?
  - bmarquez 6y ago
    Arizona Iced Tea...haven't bought it lately but they used to put 99 cents on the packaging. In some places like liquor stores, I've seen it sold for over 99 cents. Also, the comparison between Apple and retail isn't fair. If Walmart doesn't want your product, you can sell to Target. If Apple doesn't want your software product, you have no alternative.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      Now try that in Walmart, GameStop, Best Buy, or any other major retailer. Have you also noticed that the same goods even where it is allowed is sometimes marked at a different price? Do you think that the marked price does not already include the retailers markup? Sure you have an alternative - Android. Just like back in the day, Nintendo refused to allow certain types of games.
      - bmarquez 6y ago
        > Sure you have an alternative - Android. iOS has 52% marketshare in the US. If over half of Americans are locked out of your product, that's not much of an alternative. Continuing your retail analogy, you can drive to Target, Walmart, Best Buy without any hassles, but making your customers switch from iOS to Android has significant friction. And Android lets your sideload even if Google doesn't like your app. https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held-by-smartphone-platforms-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
        scarface74 6y ago
        But that’s not the case here is it? Apple didn’t refuse to allow Epic in their store - not even after the lawsuit. They said they are allowed back in the store if they remove their in app payments. Just like every other console maker and retailer has rules. Epic tried bypassing the Play Store. How did that work out?
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Epic isn't fighting for the little guy, they wanted their own store where they would take their own percentage of sales. Competing stores on a platform means that store vendors have to compete on price and/or service since they can't rely on exclusive access to the platform to force anyone who wants to reach the platform into their store. So, fighting for their own store on the platform (especially since succeeding forces the platform open to other stores, as well) is fighting for the little guy. It may not be the goal, but it's the ultimate effect.
smnrchrds 6y ago
> Epic isn't fighting for the little guy So many people say "oh, Epic is not the underdog. They are a huge corporation themselves. They do not deserve my sympathy." As if they don't support this case, but would have supported it if it was brought by a small independent developer. As if it is morally wrong to support the case because it has been filed by a big company. But guess what, only a multi-billion dollar corporation who is willing to spend north of a billion dollar on legal costs can even toy with the idea of suing Apple and winning. Anything smaller, they will be out of business and everyone will be polishing their resumes and studying leetcode before the first snowfall. There will never ever be a serious legal battle against Apple by a small independent mom-and-pop owned warm fuzzy feelings business. Because they just go bankrupt. Many have perished under App Store rules (you remember the case of the curated app review app from a couple of weeks ago?) and many more will perish. But if some company, any company at all, even if it is Blackwater, wins this suit, then there is a precedant. Then there is a path forward. Then, even if it comes to a lawsuit, with the precedent, it may only takes a couple million dollars for the ISV to fight it in court, instead of a couple billion dollars. Then there may be alternative app stores, so instead of just going out of business if an Apple reviewer decides they don't like you app, you can move your app to the alternatives, even if they are run by devil incarnates. Epic may not care about the little guy, but if they win the fight they are fighting, the little guys will benefit immensely.
- danShumway 6y ago
  I've commented to the same effect at least 2 or 3 times over the duration of this lawsuit, but just to keep repeating: if you get too picky about who is and isn't allowed to advocate for you, eventually everyone will stop advocating for you. A billion dollar company is completely necessary to tackle Apple. This stuff is important, and advocates for user-freedom and device ownership can't afford to put every company that's criticizing Apple through a purity test to make sure that they've never done anything anti-consumer themselves. Think back to Google vs Oracle. You don't need to like a company overall to agree with them in one specific lawsuit.
  - CharlesW 6y ago
    > A billion dollar company is completely necessary to tackle Apple. Absolutely not. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/22/apple-approves-hey-email-app-at-center-of-controversy-ahead-of-wwdc.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/22/apple-approves-hey-email-app...
danShumway 6y ago
> Epic isn't fighting for the little guy, they wanted their own store That's the point. This is also what the little guys want. Epic isn't fighting for the little guy, but they are fighting for terms that are mutually beneficial for both Epic and the little guy. For the devs who support Epic in the lawsuit, it's never directly been about the 30% cut. It's about this article, right here -- that Apple requires you to support a sign-in system that they can just turn off whenever they want, that if you get into a legal battle with Apple they can just revoke your developer certificates, that you're not allowed to mention even inside your app that alternative payment methods exist. It's about a company that purposefully gimps their browser and disallows competing engines, keeping webapps at a perpetual disadvantage to native apps. It's about the fact that if I buy an iPhone, I don't get to decide what code runs on it. People are treating this like a popularity contest, bringing up points like, "Epic is selfishly motivated." Well, of course. Both Apple and Epic are selfishly motivated, neither company cares about you. But it just so happens that in this case, the stuff Epic wants is also the stuff I want. I want the ability to run my own code on my own device I bought without asking anyone else's permission to do so. I really don't care about Epic's motivations. I understand why people disagree with me, I understand why people like Apple's walled garden, and I understand why people think that the average consumer might be too stupid to actually own their own hardware and make their own decisions. I also understand why some people think that antitrust is too heavy of a hammer, and that there are other ways to address the problem of iPhone lock-in for consumers. Heck, I even understand why some people think the monopoly is good, because it forces companies to support iPhone regardless of Apple's terms, which opens some doors to increase user privacy. I disagree with those people, but I understand them. I don't think that they all just completely irrationally hate Epic. So is it really impossible for you to understand why someone would want the ability to control what code runs on their own device they bought? Do you genuinely believe that all boils down to anti-Apple sentiment? You can't understand the other viewpoint at all? > I swear all of the comments about "I could host it myself and use stripe and pay way less" just reeks of "...you can already build such a system yourself [...]" To flip this around, I feel the same way about comments I read that are saying, "Epic should just make their own smartphone or put together a webapp if they don't want to be on the store. The market will solve this." Building a store and figuring out hosting is pretty objectively easier than building a new smartphone competitor. Apple isn't my biggest worry when I think about consumer lock-in and anti-competitive practices (hello Amazon Kindle/Audible), but there is some pretty obvious user lock-in for iPhones, and Apple is pretty obviously pushing to create more of them. There's a reason why the Apple credit card only works with iPhone, and there's a reason why Apple wants everyone to sign into 3rd-party services with Apple accounts. So when someone says, "if it was possible to build a better phone ecosysytem, someone would have done it", I feel like they're drastically oversimplifying the technical, social, and market barriers to actually competing in a smartphone market.
gamblor956 6y ago
It had to be a big guy. A little guy would not have the resources to fight off the most valuable corporation in the world. Apple could spend hundreds of millions in legal fees and it would be a rounding error on their financials. Apple could literally hire every lawyer in the US and the EU, pay them their normal rates, and treat the entire expense as an immaterial item on their annual financials. There are few companies in the world with the resources to fight Apple, and fewer still with the willingness (or reason) to do so.
AlexandrB 6y ago
I agree with you that this case is clear cut based on current legislation, precedent, and ToS (as I understand these, IANAL). I think people are siding with Epic because it feels like Apple is overreaching and abusing their market power. Unfortunately, the normal mechanisms for dealing with this: regulation and legislation, are so dysfunctional at this moment in history that it does not seem likely that a legislative solution is forthcoming. Given all this, Epic's actions represent at least an attempt to reign is some of Apple's power. I think that's why people are siding with Epic - because there is no one else doing anything about the walled gardens increasingly going up in modern computing. What's really scary is what might happen if Apple wins these lawsuits. With legal precedent set, unless there's legislative action to pass new law, it's unlikely anyone will want to challenge Apple or Google's App Store terms in the future.
- sjy 6y ago
  What makes this case clear cut based on current legislation and precedent? In what sense is “regulation” or new legislation an alternative to antitrust litigation? The U.S. has been dealing with alleged monopolies via protracted trials about highly contestable economic facts, based on generic antitrust legislation, for a century now – Standard Oil, IBM, AT&T, Microsoft ...
mikestew 6y ago
I swear all of the comments about "I could host it myself and use stripe and pay way less" just reeks of... Except for the part where hosting my own website/store and using Fastspring for processing Mac app sales was actually less of a PITA than dealing with the Mac App Store with its signing, certificates, shitty first version of cert management, et. al. And it was far less expense and hassle than 30% of sales. Hosting one's own iOS app web store probably wouldn't be a whole lot more trouble. So in this comparison, doing it myself is Dropbox. Going the Apple Store route is wiring together FTP with SVN, getting curlftpfs working,...and paying extra for the privilege.
qppo 6y ago
I guess it's not clear cut if this comes down to whether or not vertical integration is beneficial to consumers in this case. The courts aren't going to decide this case based on who is fighting for "the little guy" but whether the anti-competitive actions taken by Apple constitute a violation of civil or corporate law. > I'm honestly surprised so many HN readers are siding with Epic I'm not. If my only use case for an Apple device was to develop commercial software for Apple devices then I'd rather quit my job, go get a law degree and join Epic's legal team for no salary just to stick it to Apple. But I am a consumer that owns apple devices and I derive value from their model of the universe and don't see how Epic's alternative universe where they charge a lower fee with a different mechanism would improve anything, either as a developer or user. There are much more concrete things they could argue in court are harmful to consumers, like the fact that supporting MacOS and iOS targets costs enormous amounts of money compared to Windows and Linux due to the lack of (TOS compliant) solutions for targeting and testing for Apple's operating systems. But that wouldn't give Epic a win scenario that would allow them to bypass parental controls for microtransactions in a children's game.
- sjy 6y ago
  All other things being equal (and I take it your point is that they might not be), lower fees are generally considered an improvement by the developers and users who pay the fees.
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ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
I'm not anti Apple, actually I own 5 macbook (pros) two iPads two iPhones and one Apple Watch. But come on, that 30% cut is ridiculous and the fact that you can't install apps outside of the appstore easily is a joke.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
It would be foolish to expect a large company to have your best interests at heart. However, it's equally foolish to dismiss their actions even though they are aligned with your best interests. In a market economy, one thing you can generally count on is that nobody is going to do a thing because it is what's best for you. Anything an entity does is generally going to be self-interested. If you're going to dismiss and discount positive actions based on this observation, you're never going to have anything good to say about anything a company does, ever.
asddubs 6y ago
I think most people here aren't specifically siding with epic the entity, they're just siding with a preferred outcome due to its implications
heimatau 6y ago
I disagree with your entire take. Namely because you assume they can do whatever they want. A mall owner can't dictate how it's residents receive money.* Nor would it be wise of them to take a share of their commercial resident's sales.* I'm not arguing on legality. I'm arguing based on social norms (not ethics either). Apple is extreme social behavior of a corporation. There are multiple situations where Apple copied something another app developer made. I doubt Epic will win but...it may open up the conversation and maybe finally encourage other developers to push back on Apple, so that a more socially acceptable structure is within the App Store (and it's ecosystem). If this doesn't cause Apple to reform, the next escalation is clearly inciting a frenzy to push the Govt to execute judgement with the antitrust laws. Even if they're outdated, the case is clear. Apple hasn't just been a bad actor once or twice but numerous instances. If Epic does this with their current case, I'm uncertain that they'll achieve their desired outcome because their limited situation doesn't seem as clear cut. * - If the contract says this...it's still not socially fair. Land is vast...the phone ecosystem is not. Which means a mall owner will meet a lot of competition to push them to either change or they'll go out of business due to undue hardship put on the commercial tenants.
pacifika 6y ago
> I think a lot of people are overlooking the value that the App Store and the iOS platform as whole provides. The value would be obvious if an alternative was available to contrast with.
- abc-xyz 6y ago
  The alternatives are all the other platforms that allow third-party app installations/stores, such as Windows, Android and OSX, all of which have a huge problem with malware.
  - donmcronald 6y ago
    Just because Windows gives the flexibility to do anything you want doesn't mean you have to. You can set up a non-admin account with access to the Windows Store and it works very similar to iOS in terms of getting malware. The only difference is that if you run into something that Microsoft doesn't like or something that's too complex to run within the confines of the store requirements you can enter the admin password and install it anyway. Curation is just letting someone else be your admin and you only get a normal user account. I don't have a problem with that, but I also don't think it's unreasonable for developers to charge those users +43% to recoup the costs of paying Apple to be their admin.

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bmarquez 6y ago

> Epic isn't fighting for the little guy Nobody is fighting for the little guy, but this is still advantageous for the consumer. Apple is even fighting with Facebook, since you are forbidden to disclose the 30% cut with consumers.

oefrha 6y ago
If Epic’s PC store is any indication, consumers will eventually have to face bullshit exclusives that force them to use the Epic store and largely cost the exact same.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  I don't see that as a downside to Epic . Some games on their storefront are exclusives and ones that are available elsewhere often have the same price?* Isn't that an argument to get rid of the App store? EVERY game there is exclusive- there's no other way to buy it for iOS. And it's a bit tautological, but games on the App Store will never be able to undercut prices of competing stores on the platform because there aren't any. *btw I don't totally agree with the implication. Even though many games cost the same as Steam, many of them also don't. Even if only a subset of games is cheaper on Epic, that's a win for consumers.
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  > bullshit exclusives Who cares if you have to open a different megacorp's launcher?
scarface74 6y ago
Name one retailer who would let me sell in their store and advertise either that you can buy it somewhere cheaper or allow me to tell the consumer what the retailer’s markup is - in their store?
- bmarquez 6y ago
  Arizona Iced Tea...haven't bought it lately but they used to put 99 cents on the packaging. In some places like liquor stores, I've seen it sold for over 99 cents. Also, the comparison between Apple and retail isn't fair. If Walmart doesn't want your product, you can sell to Target. If Apple doesn't want your software product, you have no alternative.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Now try that in Walmart, GameStop, Best Buy, or any other major retailer. Have you also noticed that the same goods even where it is allowed is sometimes marked at a different price? Do you think that the marked price does not already include the retailers markup? Sure you have an alternative - Android. Just like back in the day, Nintendo refused to allow certain types of games.
    - bmarquez 6y ago
      > Sure you have an alternative - Android. iOS has 52% marketshare in the US. If over half of Americans are locked out of your product, that's not much of an alternative. Continuing your retail analogy, you can drive to Target, Walmart, Best Buy without any hassles, but making your customers switch from iOS to Android has significant friction. And Android lets your sideload even if Google doesn't like your app. https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held-by-smartphone-platforms-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
      - scarface74 6y ago
        But that’s not the case here is it? Apple didn’t refuse to allow Epic in their store - not even after the lawsuit. They said they are allowed back in the store if they remove their in app payments. Just like every other console maker and retailer has rules. Epic tried bypassing the Play Store. How did that work out?

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Epic isn't fighting for the little guy, they wanted their own store where they would take their own percentage of sales. Competing stores on a platform means that store vendors have to compete on price and/or service since they can't rely on exclusive access to the platform to force anyone who wants to reach the platform into their store. So, fighting for their own store on the platform (especially since succeeding forces the platform open to other stores, as well) is fighting for the little guy. It may not be the goal, but it's the ultimate effect.

smnrchrds 6y ago

> Epic isn't fighting for the little guy So many people say "oh, Epic is not the underdog. They are a huge corporation themselves. They do not deserve my sympathy." As if they don't support this case, but would have supported it if it was brought by a small independent developer. As if it is morally wrong to support the case because it has been filed by a big company. But guess what, only a multi-billion dollar corporation who is willing to spend north of a billion dollar on legal costs can even toy with the idea of suing Apple and winning. Anything smaller, they will be out of business and everyone will be polishing their resumes and studying leetcode before the first snowfall. There will never ever be a serious legal battle against Apple by a small independent mom-and-pop owned warm fuzzy feelings business. Because they just go bankrupt. Many have perished under App Store rules (you remember the case of the curated app review app from a couple of weeks ago?) and many more will perish. But if some company, any company at all, even if it is Blackwater, wins this suit, then there is a precedant. Then there is a path forward. Then, even if it comes to a lawsuit, with the precedent, it may only takes a couple million dollars for the ISV to fight it in court, instead of a couple billion dollars. Then there may be alternative app stores, so instead of just going out of business if an Apple reviewer decides they don't like you app, you can move your app to the alternatives, even if they are run by devil incarnates. Epic may not care about the little guy, but if they win the fight they are fighting, the little guys will benefit immensely.

danShumway 6y ago
I've commented to the same effect at least 2 or 3 times over the duration of this lawsuit, but just to keep repeating: if you get too picky about who is and isn't allowed to advocate for you, eventually everyone will stop advocating for you. A billion dollar company is completely necessary to tackle Apple. This stuff is important, and advocates for user-freedom and device ownership can't afford to put every company that's criticizing Apple through a purity test to make sure that they've never done anything anti-consumer themselves. Think back to Google vs Oracle. You don't need to like a company overall to agree with them in one specific lawsuit.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  > A billion dollar company is completely necessary to tackle Apple. Absolutely not. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/22/apple-approves-hey-email-app-at-center-of-controversy-ahead-of-wwdc.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/22/apple-approves-hey-email-app...

danShumway 6y ago

> Epic isn't fighting for the little guy, they wanted their own store That's the point. This is also what the little guys want. Epic isn't fighting for the little guy, but they are fighting for terms that are mutually beneficial for both Epic and the little guy. For the devs who support Epic in the lawsuit, it's never directly been about the 30% cut. It's about this article, right here -- that Apple requires you to support a sign-in system that they can just turn off whenever they want, that if you get into a legal battle with Apple they can just revoke your developer certificates, that you're not allowed to mention even inside your app that alternative payment methods exist. It's about a company that purposefully gimps their browser and disallows competing engines, keeping webapps at a perpetual disadvantage to native apps. It's about the fact that if I buy an iPhone, I don't get to decide what code runs on it. People are treating this like a popularity contest, bringing up points like, "Epic is selfishly motivated." Well, of course. Both Apple and Epic are selfishly motivated, neither company cares about you. But it just so happens that in this case, the stuff Epic wants is also the stuff I want. I want the ability to run my own code on my own device I bought without asking anyone else's permission to do so. I really don't care about Epic's motivations. I understand why people disagree with me, I understand why people like Apple's walled garden, and I understand why people think that the average consumer might be too stupid to actually own their own hardware and make their own decisions. I also understand why some people think that antitrust is too heavy of a hammer, and that there are other ways to address the problem of iPhone lock-in for consumers. Heck, I even understand why some people think the monopoly is good, because it forces companies to support iPhone regardless of Apple's terms, which opens some doors to increase user privacy. I disagree with those people, but I understand them. I don't think that they all just completely irrationally hate Epic. So is it really impossible for you to understand why someone would want the ability to control what code runs on their own device they bought? Do you genuinely believe that all boils down to anti-Apple sentiment? You can't understand the other viewpoint at all? > I swear all of the comments about "I could host it myself and use stripe and pay way less" just reeks of "...you can already build such a system yourself [...]" To flip this around, I feel the same way about comments I read that are saying, "Epic should just make their own smartphone or put together a webapp if they don't want to be on the store. The market will solve this." Building a store and figuring out hosting is pretty objectively easier than building a new smartphone competitor. Apple isn't my biggest worry when I think about consumer lock-in and anti-competitive practices (hello Amazon Kindle/Audible), but there is some pretty obvious user lock-in for iPhones, and Apple is pretty obviously pushing to create more of them. There's a reason why the Apple credit card only works with iPhone, and there's a reason why Apple wants everyone to sign into 3rd-party services with Apple accounts. So when someone says, "if it was possible to build a better phone ecosysytem, someone would have done it", I feel like they're drastically oversimplifying the technical, social, and market barriers to actually competing in a smartphone market.

gamblor956 6y ago

It had to be a big guy. A little guy would not have the resources to fight off the most valuable corporation in the world. Apple could spend hundreds of millions in legal fees and it would be a rounding error on their financials. Apple could literally hire every lawyer in the US and the EU, pay them their normal rates, and treat the entire expense as an immaterial item on their annual financials. There are few companies in the world with the resources to fight Apple, and fewer still with the willingness (or reason) to do so.

AlexandrB 6y ago

I agree with you that this case is clear cut based on current legislation, precedent, and ToS (as I understand these, IANAL). I think people are siding with Epic because it feels like Apple is overreaching and abusing their market power. Unfortunately, the normal mechanisms for dealing with this: regulation and legislation, are so dysfunctional at this moment in history that it does not seem likely that a legislative solution is forthcoming. Given all this, Epic's actions represent at least an attempt to reign is some of Apple's power. I think that's why people are siding with Epic - because there is no one else doing anything about the walled gardens increasingly going up in modern computing. What's really scary is what might happen if Apple wins these lawsuits. With legal precedent set, unless there's legislative action to pass new law, it's unlikely anyone will want to challenge Apple or Google's App Store terms in the future.

sjy 6y ago
What makes this case clear cut based on current legislation and precedent? In what sense is “regulation” or new legislation an alternative to antitrust litigation? The U.S. has been dealing with alleged monopolies via protracted trials about highly contestable economic facts, based on generic antitrust legislation, for a century now – Standard Oil, IBM, AT&T, Microsoft ...

mikestew 6y ago

I swear all of the comments about "I could host it myself and use stripe and pay way less" just reeks of... Except for the part where hosting my own website/store and using Fastspring for processing Mac app sales was actually less of a PITA than dealing with the Mac App Store with its signing, certificates, shitty first version of cert management, et. al. And it was far less expense and hassle than 30% of sales. Hosting one's own iOS app web store probably wouldn't be a whole lot more trouble. So in this comparison, doing it myself is Dropbox. Going the Apple Store route is wiring together FTP with SVN, getting curlftpfs working,...and paying extra for the privilege.

qppo 6y ago

I guess it's not clear cut if this comes down to whether or not vertical integration is beneficial to consumers in this case. The courts aren't going to decide this case based on who is fighting for "the little guy" but whether the anti-competitive actions taken by Apple constitute a violation of civil or corporate law. > I'm honestly surprised so many HN readers are siding with Epic I'm not. If my only use case for an Apple device was to develop commercial software for Apple devices then I'd rather quit my job, go get a law degree and join Epic's legal team for no salary just to stick it to Apple. But I am a consumer that owns apple devices and I derive value from their model of the universe and don't see how Epic's alternative universe where they charge a lower fee with a different mechanism would improve anything, either as a developer or user. There are much more concrete things they could argue in court are harmful to consumers, like the fact that supporting MacOS and iOS targets costs enormous amounts of money compared to Windows and Linux due to the lack of (TOS compliant) solutions for targeting and testing for Apple's operating systems. But that wouldn't give Epic a win scenario that would allow them to bypass parental controls for microtransactions in a children's game.

sjy 6y ago
All other things being equal (and I take it your point is that they might not be), lower fees are generally considered an improvement by the developers and users who pay the fees.

deleted 6y ago

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ccktlmazeltov 6y ago

I'm not anti Apple, actually I own 5 macbook (pros) two iPads two iPhones and one Apple Watch. But come on, that 30% cut is ridiculous and the fact that you can't install apps outside of the appstore easily is a joke.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

It would be foolish to expect a large company to have your best interests at heart. However, it's equally foolish to dismiss their actions even though they are aligned with your best interests. In a market economy, one thing you can generally count on is that nobody is going to do a thing because it is what's best for you. Anything an entity does is generally going to be self-interested. If you're going to dismiss and discount positive actions based on this observation, you're never going to have anything good to say about anything a company does, ever.

asddubs 6y ago

I think most people here aren't specifically siding with epic the entity, they're just siding with a preferred outcome due to its implications

heimatau 6y ago

I disagree with your entire take. Namely because you assume they can do whatever they want. A mall owner can't dictate how it's residents receive money.* Nor would it be wise of them to take a share of their commercial resident's sales.* I'm not arguing on legality. I'm arguing based on social norms (not ethics either). Apple is extreme social behavior of a corporation. There are multiple situations where Apple copied something another app developer made. I doubt Epic will win but...it may open up the conversation and maybe finally encourage other developers to push back on Apple, so that a more socially acceptable structure is within the App Store (and it's ecosystem). If this doesn't cause Apple to reform, the next escalation is clearly inciting a frenzy to push the Govt to execute judgement with the antitrust laws. Even if they're outdated, the case is clear. Apple hasn't just been a bad actor once or twice but numerous instances. If Epic does this with their current case, I'm uncertain that they'll achieve their desired outcome because their limited situation doesn't seem as clear cut. * - If the contract says this...it's still not socially fair. Land is vast...the phone ecosystem is not. Which means a mall owner will meet a lot of competition to push them to either change or they'll go out of business due to undue hardship put on the commercial tenants.

pacifika 6y ago

> I think a lot of people are overlooking the value that the App Store and the iOS platform as whole provides. The value would be obvious if an alternative was available to contrast with.

abc-xyz 6y ago
The alternatives are all the other platforms that allow third-party app installations/stores, such as Windows, Android and OSX, all of which have a huge problem with malware.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  Just because Windows gives the flexibility to do anything you want doesn't mean you have to. You can set up a non-admin account with access to the Windows Store and it works very similar to iOS in terms of getting malware. The only difference is that if you run into something that Microsoft doesn't like or something that's too complex to run within the confines of the store requirements you can enter the admin password and install it anyway. Curation is just letting someone else be your admin and you only get a normal user account. I don't have a problem with that, but I also don't think it's unreasonable for developers to charge those users +43% to recoup the costs of paying Apple to be their admin.