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It's a real stretch to look at what happened with Hey and think that they took on Apple and won. They re-engineered their app to fit in with Apple's terms offer

It's a real stretch to look at what happened with Hey and think that they took on Apple and won. They re-engineered their app to fit in with Apple's terms offering a completely new service on the platform. And there were no changes to Apple's terms as a result of that, and no net benefit to any other developer. The only benefit that came out of the controversy over Hey was that Epic got another example incident they could trot out in an actual legal case over antitrust that has the potential to impact multiple developers. Hey cannot be the champion in the fight against Apple, they don't have the popularity or resources to win that fight. There was never any chance during Hey's fight with Apple that it was going to result in ordinary consumers being able to decide what code they want to run on their own devices.

CharlesW 6y ago
> It's a real stretch to look at what happened with Hey and think that they took on Apple and won. Hey got what they wanted, as did Apple. This is the way. It's amusing that people think Epic is doing this for the good of anyone other than themselves.
- danShumway 6y ago
  > Hey got what they wanted, as did Apple. That's correct, they were not big enough to take on Apple and win. They bent to Apple's demands and figured out a solution that Apple wanted. In the process they saved their own company but had zero impact on the overall ecosystem. I think my original point stands. If user-freedom advocates want a "champion" that can actually change the ecosystem, it's going to need to be someone bigger and more powerful than Hey. It's going to need to be a company that has a lot of lawyers and a lot of money. > It's amusing that people think Epic is doing this for the good of anyone other than themselves. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24423865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24423865 Nobody supporting Epic in this lawsuit cares about Epic's motivations. It's not important whether or not Epic is doing this for their own good or not. Again, think back to Google vs Oracle. Do we believe that Google wasn't selfishly motivated during that case? Of course not, of course Google is looking to protect its own interests. But the case still mattered for ordinary developers, and we still wanted Google to win. I didn't need to stop criticizing the Chromium team or stop accusing Google of being anti-privacy to support them in that one lawsuit. "Bad company accidentally does good thing" is a perfectly fine perspective to have when dealing with corporate lawsuits.
  - CharlesW 6y ago
    > That's correct, they were not big enough to take on Apple and win. I think reasonable people can disagree on the meaning of "win" in this case. From my POV, Hey won because (1) they were handsomely rewarded with free national news coverage for Raging Against the Fruit at the cost of having to make very minor and unsurprising changes to their app, and (2) they forced Apple to make changes to their app review process. > Apple: "Additionally, two changes are coming to the app review process and will be implemented this summer. First, developers will not only be able to appeal decisions about whether an app violates a given guideline of the App Store Review Guidelines, but will also have a mechanism to challenge the guideline itself. Second, for apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no longer be delayed over guideline violations except for those related to legal issues. Developers will instead be able to address the issue in their next submission." WordPress is another example of a small company who "won", receiving an very public apology from Apple.
    - danShumway 6y ago
      > they forced Apple to make changes to their app review process. It's worth keeping Hey's response to those changes in mind[0]: > "What they've given out is actually so far very little. Apple has said that you can appeal to Apple if you want Apple to investigate Apple. OK, maybe there's something there, but it hinges on what those verdicts are going to be" > "We did not want a fight with Apple whatsoever," Hanssen said. "We just need to get on the iPhone, it's the dominant platform for these kinds of services." I guess I agree; different people have different definitions of "win", and I'm not going to fight with you if that fits your definition. I am going to say that even if this is a win, Hey isn't pushing the envelope or moving Apple in any significant direction. This is not an efficient or reasonable way for us to change how Apple approaches device ownership, and it's not clear to me how a company like Hey can force Apple to make the jump from "we'll be slightly nicer about approving apps" to "consumers will own the devices they buy and have the option to control the code that runs on them." Call this a victory if you want, but we need bigger victories than this. > WordPress is another example of a small company who "won" Sure, they got an apology from Apple while Apple was being sued by a billion dollar company over their app store policies and worried about looking bad for that lawsuit. But it's kind of the same situation as above. I guess you can call it a win, but forgive me for not being too excited about an outcome where Apple says 'sorry that you misunderstood us' to one company. I don't think that's going to have a significant impact on user's ability to own and control their own devices. [0]:https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/23/apple-app-store-policy-changes-very-little-developer-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/23/apple-app-store-policy-chang...
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > It's amusing that people think Epic is doing this for the good of anyone other than themselves. It's amusing that people defending Apple have trouble understanding the difference between effects and motivations. The issue of why people who aren't Epic want Epic to succeed has never been about why Epic is pursuing the endeavour.

CharlesW 6y ago

> It's a real stretch to look at what happened with Hey and think that they took on Apple and won. Hey got what they wanted, as did Apple. This is the way. It's amusing that people think Epic is doing this for the good of anyone other than themselves.

danShumway 6y ago
> Hey got what they wanted, as did Apple. That's correct, they were not big enough to take on Apple and win. They bent to Apple's demands and figured out a solution that Apple wanted. In the process they saved their own company but had zero impact on the overall ecosystem. I think my original point stands. If user-freedom advocates want a "champion" that can actually change the ecosystem, it's going to need to be someone bigger and more powerful than Hey. It's going to need to be a company that has a lot of lawyers and a lot of money. > It's amusing that people think Epic is doing this for the good of anyone other than themselves. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24423865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24423865 Nobody supporting Epic in this lawsuit cares about Epic's motivations. It's not important whether or not Epic is doing this for their own good or not. Again, think back to Google vs Oracle. Do we believe that Google wasn't selfishly motivated during that case? Of course not, of course Google is looking to protect its own interests. But the case still mattered for ordinary developers, and we still wanted Google to win. I didn't need to stop criticizing the Chromium team or stop accusing Google of being anti-privacy to support them in that one lawsuit. "Bad company accidentally does good thing" is a perfectly fine perspective to have when dealing with corporate lawsuits.
- CharlesW 6y ago
  > That's correct, they were not big enough to take on Apple and win. I think reasonable people can disagree on the meaning of "win" in this case. From my POV, Hey won because (1) they were handsomely rewarded with free national news coverage for Raging Against the Fruit at the cost of having to make very minor and unsurprising changes to their app, and (2) they forced Apple to make changes to their app review process. > Apple: "Additionally, two changes are coming to the app review process and will be implemented this summer. First, developers will not only be able to appeal decisions about whether an app violates a given guideline of the App Store Review Guidelines, but will also have a mechanism to challenge the guideline itself. Second, for apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no longer be delayed over guideline violations except for those related to legal issues. Developers will instead be able to address the issue in their next submission." WordPress is another example of a small company who "won", receiving an very public apology from Apple.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    > they forced Apple to make changes to their app review process. It's worth keeping Hey's response to those changes in mind[0]: > "What they've given out is actually so far very little. Apple has said that you can appeal to Apple if you want Apple to investigate Apple. OK, maybe there's something there, but it hinges on what those verdicts are going to be" > "We did not want a fight with Apple whatsoever," Hanssen said. "We just need to get on the iPhone, it's the dominant platform for these kinds of services." I guess I agree; different people have different definitions of "win", and I'm not going to fight with you if that fits your definition. I am going to say that even if this is a win, Hey isn't pushing the envelope or moving Apple in any significant direction. This is not an efficient or reasonable way for us to change how Apple approaches device ownership, and it's not clear to me how a company like Hey can force Apple to make the jump from "we'll be slightly nicer about approving apps" to "consumers will own the devices they buy and have the option to control the code that runs on them." Call this a victory if you want, but we need bigger victories than this. > WordPress is another example of a small company who "won" Sure, they got an apology from Apple while Apple was being sued by a billion dollar company over their app store policies and worried about looking bad for that lawsuit. But it's kind of the same situation as above. I guess you can call it a win, but forgive me for not being too excited about an outcome where Apple says 'sorry that you misunderstood us' to one company. I don't think that's going to have a significant impact on user's ability to own and control their own devices. [0]:https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/23/apple-app-store-policy-changes-very-little-developer-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/23/apple-app-store-policy-chang...
dragonwriter 6y ago
> It's amusing that people think Epic is doing this for the good of anyone other than themselves. It's amusing that people defending Apple have trouble understanding the difference between effects and motivations. The issue of why people who aren't Epic want Epic to succeed has never been about why Epic is pursuing the endeavour.