6 ms·

iOS developer who drew attention to App Store scams is now suing Apple

79 points by Gys 6y ago

varispeed 6y ago
I support this. Hopefully the result will be that Apple gets broken up into smaller companies. For example separate company working on operating system, separate company working on hardware, separate company working on the application store. Then the operating system company would have to accept that users will run other app stores on their operating system and so on. This monopoly clearly is using all loopholes possible to squeeze anyone. No normal company gets to amass such wealth. Then their tax affairs need to be carefully looked into and any gains made from accounting tricks should be confiscated. That's just for a start. I'll vote for any party that will promise to do that.
- Angostura 6y ago
  I support this. Hopefully the result will be that Apple changes the way that it curates apps in its store and improves the way it communicates with developers.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- taylodl 6y ago
  > Hopefully the result will be that Apple gets broken up into smaller companies Unlikely to happen. Even Microsoft wasn't broken up in the 90's and they were even more obnoxious in their anti-competitive practices. It's also going to be really hard to go with the monopoly argument seeing as how Apple doesn't have majority market share (not even close) in most market segments - smart watches might be the sole exception.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Colloquial definitions of monopoly do not matter when it comes to antitrust laws[1]: > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. The truth is that Apple and Google have a duopoly in the mobile OS market[2], and they're leveraging that duopoly in an anti-competitive manner to prevent competition in the mobile app distribution market. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a... [2] 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...
    - bilbo0s 6y ago
      From the perspective of the law, their duopoly implies competition. They do not have the durable market power of, say, American Sugar. Google very craftily, allows anyone to manufacture hardware for their Android OS. Not only that, they allow anyone to change their OS in anyway they see fit. The fact that most people don't is immaterial to the courts. Apple has an even more unassailable defense against the durability of their power. ie - their year over year market share graphs. The downward trend in market share would fly in the face of any assertion that they have durable market power. The only real way forward is to forget the old legal facilities of "monopoly" and "trust", and to make new laws. The old laws simply don't fit the time. How is any attorney to be expected to argue durability of a company with declining market share in any legally sensible fashion? If we're serious about going after companies like Apple, we need new tools.
      - heavyset_go 6y ago
        > From the perspective of the law, their duopoly implies competition. From the perspective of the law, a duopoly can imply a cartel[1], especially given the price fixing[2] Apple and Google engage in[3] in the mobile app distribution market. Also, a trust[4] can refer to a duopoly in antitrust[5] law: > A trust or corporate trust is a large grouping of business interests with significant market power, which may be embodied as a corporation or as a group of corporations that cooperate with one another in various ways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Cartels_and_collusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Ca... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26486737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26486737 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(business) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(business) [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - taylodl 6y ago
  - tmottabr 6y ago
    and they only lead in smartwatches because theirs were better because they control the hardware.. they made better cpu and radios for wearables then what was available to competition at the time.. that on my opinion would work more on their favor for not breaking the company then the other way around..
  - bilbo0s 6y ago
    I think this is the correct take. I also think most people on HN misapprehend the legal concept of "monopoly" and even the legal concept of a "trust". Not to mention the fact that Apple isn't even the main problem when you're dealing with FAANGs. Not by a long shot. All that said, I don't know why there has not been a concerted effort to change laws instead of going after FAANGs which, as you rightly point out, are in no danger of being found in violation of any laws that would trigger a breakup. Why are we relying on anti-monopoly or anti-trust laws to go after Apple? It's lunacy. Of course the supremes are going to laugh that out of court. We'd, at the very least have to go after the majority marketholders first. But if you change the laws, you can make what most FAANGs do illegal in a single stroke. Imagine a law that simply said no tracking for any commercial purposes at all under penalty of $50000 fine per violation. That would get Facebook, Google, and to a certain extent even Amazon off our backs instantly. Why not go that route?
    - sebastien_bois 6y ago
      > That would get Facebook, Google, and to a certain extent even Amazon off our backs instantly. Why not go that route? They already have enough clout to be able to buy the votes to avoid that (it'd be pocket change to them).
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    > [Microsoft] were even more obnoxious in their anti-competitive practices. I'd love to hear why you think that. Microsoft never stopped consumers from installing Linux on a PC. Microsoft never stopped anyone from installing software on Windows. You could always buy a PC and do whatever you wanted to with it. Meanwhile, Apple doesn't let you do anything on an iPhone if it isn't bought from their app store. The level of control that Apple has over iOS is ridiculous compared to what Microsoft had. Apple is 10 times worse towards consumers and developers than Microsoft ever was. I can't even install my own apps on my iPhone without paying Apple $100 per year. Without a developer account, having to re-install the app every 7 days (only from a Mac) is nearly useless. How could I ever take a 2 week vacation and still use my apps? > Apple doesn't have majority market share Yes they do. "Today, the iPhone has 66% market share in the United States, 75% of U.S. App Store revenues, and over 80% of time spent on the mobile internet (iOS’s share of physical e-commerce transactions is likely somewhere in the middle of this range). And this dominance is also growing. Eighty percent of U.S. teenagers have iPhones and the device held 90% of smartphone activations in the week after Christmas 2020." [0] [1] [0] https://www.matthewball.vc/all/applemetaverse https://www.matthewball.vc/all/applemetaverse [1] https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/8/18/app-stores https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/8/18/app-stores
    - endisneigh 6y ago
      I’m curious - why don’t you just buy an Android phone and PC - then your issues are resolved no?
      - wayneftw 6y ago
        Simple: almost everybody I know uses an iPhone. Without an iPhone, I can't FaceTime with my family and friends. Without an iPhone, I'm discriminated against among young people because of green text in iMessage. Without an iPhone I can't do account sharing for all the digital things my family uses. And those sorts of reasons are just from me as a consumer. As a developer, more than half my customers (in the USA) have an iPhone. I literally cannot do business or provide apps to them without going through Apple.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    Precisely because of that the capitalism we have is extremely flawed and easy to game for people with money and prevents small guy from making his or hers life better in a substantial way. There are exceptions of course, but generally speaking if you have small or medium company good chunk of your profits will be eaten by all sort of taxes that big corporations don't pay, so it doesn't matter how hard you are going to work you won't go beyond certain point unless you start sharing your company with VC or risk taking bank loans. Probably that's why it has not happened because it would disrupt the cushy life ultra-rich have. At this point we really need a change and this has to stop!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zepto 6y ago
  > I support this. What makes you think it’s true? Apple has been sued for all kinds of spurious claims over the years. How do you know this isn’t another? His claims seem very weak - they hinge on the idea that checking for scams and checking for functionality are directly connected. There is no reason they should be.
stonecraftwolf 6y ago
Of note is the claim that Apple deliberately sabotaged his app as a negotiation tactic for the purposes of acquisition. IANAL, but this seems bad. Even if it’s legally permissible, it’s the sort of outrage that’s both easily understood by non-technical people and hits a kind primal reflexive outrage against unfairness. In addition, I’ve heard of this with other FAANG companies (notably Amazon). They’d likely all be vulnerable to these arguments. Proving such abuses of power might prove more difficult, though.
- amznthrwaway 6y ago
  He didn’t present any evidence of his conspiracy theory though. I would be willing to bet actual money that his imagined conspiracy theory didn’t exist, and that two things happened simultaneously, but without relation: scam apps existed, and Apple tried to buy him. The notion that Apple would engage in widespread conspiracy to save a million bucks strikes me as bizarre.
  - stonecraftwolf 6y ago
    Did you read the article? The claim is that Apple delayed and denied app approval while trying to acquire the app, while approving the scam apps and approving other apps that incorporated his tech. ETA: I find the dismissive reference to “conspiracy theories” to be a little weird. It’s not as though there isn’t a rich history of abuse of monopoly power, including restricting access to market. It’s unclear why FAANG companies would be uniquely immune to such temptations.
    - amznthrwaway 6y ago
      Of course I read the article. It was would be impossible to hold my opinions without reading and thinking critically about the information in the article.
    - zepto 6y ago
      > It’s unclear why FAANG companies would be uniquely immune to such temptations. The risk/reward makes it seem absurdly unlikely that Apple actually did this. 1. Approving scam apps hurts Apple. 2. Approving scam apps in order to screw with a competitor hurts Apple, and would need a widespread conspiracy within the company to do it successfully. 3. There is plenty of money to be made in attacking Apple either directly through a settlement, or indirectly.

79 points by Gys 6y ago

I support this. Hopefully the result will be that Apple gets broken up into smaller companies. For example separate company working on operating system, separate company working on hardware, separate company working on the application store. Then the operating system company would have to accept that users will run other app stores on their operating system and so on. This monopoly clearly is using all loopholes possible to squeeze anyone. No normal company gets to amass such wealth. Then their tax affairs need to be carefully looked into and any gains made from accounting tricks should be confiscated. That's just for a start. I'll vote for any party that will promise to do that.

Angostura 6y ago
I support this. Hopefully the result will be that Apple changes the way that it curates apps in its store and improves the way it communicates with developers.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
taylodl 6y ago
> Hopefully the result will be that Apple gets broken up into smaller companies Unlikely to happen. Even Microsoft wasn't broken up in the 90's and they were even more obnoxious in their anti-competitive practices. It's also going to be really hard to go with the monopoly argument seeing as how Apple doesn't have majority market share (not even close) in most market segments - smart watches might be the sole exception.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Colloquial definitions of monopoly do not matter when it comes to antitrust laws[1]: > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. The truth is that Apple and Google have a duopoly in the mobile OS market[2], and they're leveraging that duopoly in an anti-competitive manner to prevent competition in the mobile app distribution market. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a... [2] 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...
  - bilbo0s 6y ago
    From the perspective of the law, their duopoly implies competition. They do not have the durable market power of, say, American Sugar. Google very craftily, allows anyone to manufacture hardware for their Android OS. Not only that, they allow anyone to change their OS in anyway they see fit. The fact that most people don't is immaterial to the courts. Apple has an even more unassailable defense against the durability of their power. ie - their year over year market share graphs. The downward trend in market share would fly in the face of any assertion that they have durable market power. The only real way forward is to forget the old legal facilities of "monopoly" and "trust", and to make new laws. The old laws simply don't fit the time. How is any attorney to be expected to argue durability of a company with declining market share in any legally sensible fashion? If we're serious about going after companies like Apple, we need new tools.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      > From the perspective of the law, their duopoly implies competition. From the perspective of the law, a duopoly can imply a cartel[1], especially given the price fixing[2] Apple and Google engage in[3] in the mobile app distribution market. Also, a trust[4] can refer to a duopoly in antitrust[5] law: > A trust or corporate trust is a large grouping of business interests with significant market power, which may be embodied as a corporation or as a group of corporations that cooperate with one another in various ways. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Cartels_and_collusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Ca... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26486737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26486737 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(business) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_(business) [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - taylodl 6y ago
- tmottabr 6y ago
  and they only lead in smartwatches because theirs were better because they control the hardware.. they made better cpu and radios for wearables then what was available to competition at the time.. that on my opinion would work more on their favor for not breaking the company then the other way around..
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  I think this is the correct take. I also think most people on HN misapprehend the legal concept of "monopoly" and even the legal concept of a "trust". Not to mention the fact that Apple isn't even the main problem when you're dealing with FAANGs. Not by a long shot. All that said, I don't know why there has not been a concerted effort to change laws instead of going after FAANGs which, as you rightly point out, are in no danger of being found in violation of any laws that would trigger a breakup. Why are we relying on anti-monopoly or anti-trust laws to go after Apple? It's lunacy. Of course the supremes are going to laugh that out of court. We'd, at the very least have to go after the majority marketholders first. But if you change the laws, you can make what most FAANGs do illegal in a single stroke. Imagine a law that simply said no tracking for any commercial purposes at all under penalty of $50000 fine per violation. That would get Facebook, Google, and to a certain extent even Amazon off our backs instantly. Why not go that route?
  - sebastien_bois 6y ago
    > That would get Facebook, Google, and to a certain extent even Amazon off our backs instantly. Why not go that route? They already have enough clout to be able to buy the votes to avoid that (it'd be pocket change to them).
- wayneftw 6y ago
  > [Microsoft] were even more obnoxious in their anti-competitive practices. I'd love to hear why you think that. Microsoft never stopped consumers from installing Linux on a PC. Microsoft never stopped anyone from installing software on Windows. You could always buy a PC and do whatever you wanted to with it. Meanwhile, Apple doesn't let you do anything on an iPhone if it isn't bought from their app store. The level of control that Apple has over iOS is ridiculous compared to what Microsoft had. Apple is 10 times worse towards consumers and developers than Microsoft ever was. I can't even install my own apps on my iPhone without paying Apple $100 per year. Without a developer account, having to re-install the app every 7 days (only from a Mac) is nearly useless. How could I ever take a 2 week vacation and still use my apps? > Apple doesn't have majority market share Yes they do. "Today, the iPhone has 66% market share in the United States, 75% of U.S. App Store revenues, and over 80% of time spent on the mobile internet (iOS’s share of physical e-commerce transactions is likely somewhere in the middle of this range). And this dominance is also growing. Eighty percent of U.S. teenagers have iPhones and the device held 90% of smartphone activations in the week after Christmas 2020." [0] [1] [0] https://www.matthewball.vc/all/applemetaverse https://www.matthewball.vc/all/applemetaverse [1] https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/8/18/app-stores https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/8/18/app-stores
  - endisneigh 6y ago
    I’m curious - why don’t you just buy an Android phone and PC - then your issues are resolved no?
    - wayneftw 6y ago
      Simple: almost everybody I know uses an iPhone. Without an iPhone, I can't FaceTime with my family and friends. Without an iPhone, I'm discriminated against among young people because of green text in iMessage. Without an iPhone I can't do account sharing for all the digital things my family uses. And those sorts of reasons are just from me as a consumer. As a developer, more than half my customers (in the USA) have an iPhone. I literally cannot do business or provide apps to them without going through Apple.
- varispeed 6y ago
  Precisely because of that the capitalism we have is extremely flawed and easy to game for people with money and prevents small guy from making his or hers life better in a substantial way. There are exceptions of course, but generally speaking if you have small or medium company good chunk of your profits will be eaten by all sort of taxes that big corporations don't pay, so it doesn't matter how hard you are going to work you won't go beyond certain point unless you start sharing your company with VC or risk taking bank loans. Probably that's why it has not happened because it would disrupt the cushy life ultra-rich have. At this point we really need a change and this has to stop!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zepto 6y ago
> I support this. What makes you think it’s true? Apple has been sued for all kinds of spurious claims over the years. How do you know this isn’t another? His claims seem very weak - they hinge on the idea that checking for scams and checking for functionality are directly connected. There is no reason they should be.

stonecraftwolf 6y ago

Of note is the claim that Apple deliberately sabotaged his app as a negotiation tactic for the purposes of acquisition. IANAL, but this seems bad. Even if it’s legally permissible, it’s the sort of outrage that’s both easily understood by non-technical people and hits a kind primal reflexive outrage against unfairness. In addition, I’ve heard of this with other FAANG companies (notably Amazon). They’d likely all be vulnerable to these arguments. Proving such abuses of power might prove more difficult, though.

amznthrwaway 6y ago
He didn’t present any evidence of his conspiracy theory though. I would be willing to bet actual money that his imagined conspiracy theory didn’t exist, and that two things happened simultaneously, but without relation: scam apps existed, and Apple tried to buy him. The notion that Apple would engage in widespread conspiracy to save a million bucks strikes me as bizarre.
- stonecraftwolf 6y ago
  Did you read the article? The claim is that Apple delayed and denied app approval while trying to acquire the app, while approving the scam apps and approving other apps that incorporated his tech. ETA: I find the dismissive reference to “conspiracy theories” to be a little weird. It’s not as though there isn’t a rich history of abuse of monopoly power, including restricting access to market. It’s unclear why FAANG companies would be uniquely immune to such temptations.
  - amznthrwaway 6y ago
    Of course I read the article. It was would be impossible to hold my opinions without reading and thinking critically about the information in the article.
  - zepto 6y ago
    > It’s unclear why FAANG companies would be uniquely immune to such temptations. The risk/reward makes it seem absurdly unlikely that Apple actually did this. 1. Approving scam apps hurts Apple. 2. Approving scam apps in order to screw with a competitor hurts Apple, and would need a widespread conspiracy within the company to do it successfully. 3. There is plenty of money to be made in attacking Apple either directly through a settlement, or indirectly.