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Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S. developers

gjsman-1000 5y ago
This is the same judge that is doing the Apple vs Epic ruling. I would expect the final ruling on Apple vs Epic to, ultimately, have very similar results to this settlement (or would have). If you've been following Hoeg Law's hours long legal commentary on Apple vs Epic, they believed the most likely resolution would be Apple being forced to remove the "anti-steering rule" which gags developers from talking about alternative payment options. This settlement has that already. It looks like, unless there is a major upset, the Apple vs Epic ruling will be virtually moot (in terms of legal consequences that benefit developers) unless it gets appealed.
- syspec 5y ago
  Link?
- wvenable 5y ago
  > This settlement has that already. It sounds like an extremely limited version of that. Email? How magnanimous of them. I'm surprised it was registered mail or carrier pigeon.
- commoner 5y ago
  > This settlement has that already. This settlement is not good enough for many developers, since developers are still subject to Apple's anti-steering rule in their iOS apps. Having to establish another communication channel with the customer is an unnecessary hurdle to let the customer know that they could avoid the (up to) 42.8% price hike on their subscription and future app-related purchases if they pay outside the app.
post_break 5y ago
I love how in their press release they say: "The terms of the agreement will help make the App Store an even better business opportunity for developers, while maintaining the safe and trusted marketplace users love." This is going to make the App Store even better! You're going to love it! (not because we did this on our own, but because we saw the writing on the wall and were forced to). I can't stand how they are burning so much good faith with developers to keep the rent of the app store.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Well, what else are they going to do, not release a statement? If you release a statement about a legal ruling you lost, it's obviously going to be spun from whoever published it.
  - okamiueru 5y ago
    Not releasing a statement sounds like a good option to me. Even better would be simply not "spinning" it. I don't see what's obvious about it. Companies don't have to behave dishonestly.
    - mbreese 5y ago
      It was a known court case that had the potential to have a major impact on Apple’s bottom line. Not releasing a statement about the settlement was not an option. Neither party is 100% happy with the agreement, but realistically — both parties got what they wanted (and they wanted what they got).
  - jcrites 5y ago
    This is something of a nitpick but: Apple did not lose a legal ruling. Some companies initiated a lawsuit against them, and Apple and those parties mutually agreed to resolve their dispute, presumably with concessions from both sides. The agreement needs to be approved by a judge, but the parties in the case are saying that they are no longer in dispute under the proposed terms. Companies that get sued agree to settlements all the time, even if they believe they are fully in the right, because going to trial has a large potential risk; and the legal expected fees for litigating a trial and possible appeals might exceed the cost of the proposed settlement. If the party suing you is willing to settle for known terms, then it might be preferable to accept the (undesirable to you but fixed and known ahead of time) costs/downsides by settling, than roll the dice by allowing the case to proceed to a judge or jury trial where you might indeed lose the case and suffer a much worse outcome. Companies might settle if they think there is some chance that they plaintiff might prevail, even if that chance is low, when there could be a large (potentially unbounded) downside to losing the case — as could be the case for a class action. This is the same risk management reasoning that allows patent trolls to get away with their bullshit. If you don’t think their patent is valid and would survive scrutiny in court, and even know of prior art, or you don’t think you are infringing it, the legal costs to litigate an fight that battle in court might be higher (and take years of time and energy from senior staff members of the company – a distraction) than settling with the patent troll for what they’re asking for to “license” their patent. It was a travesty that trolls got away with it for so long, but computers and software historically were new whereas most judges & juries consisted of older individuals, and know little to nothing about the internals of computers & software. Meanwhile both sides could bring in so-called expert witnesses to claim whatever they want. This asymmetry resulted in some tech companies agreeing to pool their patents, and formally or informally agree not to sue each other over patents, and form mutual defense coalitions. The Supreme Court also tightened up what inventions are patentable in the software space considerably, as I recall, to eliminate the “pure abstract idea implemented in software and running on a computer“ category of patents. Judges are also starting to become more tech savvy and specialized court circuits are developing to focus on the area. Take a look at how Google versus Oracle was handled: the judge assigned to the case learned introductory programming (!) so as to assess whether Oracle’s claim about their code snippet being copyrightable was true, vs. being obvious and something any practitioner of the art would necessarily write when building compatibility with the Java API (which he did end up concluding as I recall; definitely correct decision IMO, if you recall what that function was – something like checking whether a given index was within the bounds of an array or something similar; any function to do that will look about the same). The case was appealed and I haven’t kept up-to-date on it since then. As the holder of several patents myself, I personally think only substantial research breakthroughs should be patentable (where it comes to software patents that are essentially pure algorithms). The MP3 algorithm was a complete game changer for music & audio distribution, for example, drastically reducing its data size and making it feasible to economically transmit over the Internet. Breakthroughs of this magnitude ought to be the minimum bar in my mind, that I would want the patent office to hold for software patents personally. A novel way to organize your CRM database should not be patentable. A secondary problem is that the patent office has no incentives to be strict (after all, they can just issue the patents and let people litigate in court if they think it’s wrong), and I doubt their competence in their ability to evaluate whether a claimed invention is worthy. they also make income from the patent submission process so their incentives are to allow companies to submit a lot of patents; and if they made those patents too difficult to get, companies would not bother, relying on keeping inventions as trade secrets instead, which companies by and large are doing anyway. A final travesty is how many patents don’t disclose any useful information for someone to replicate the invention when the patent expires. As compared to patents for mechanical devices that must include diagrams of functional machines, software patents have hand wavy abstract architectures that would help you little if at all in your efforts to duplicate the “invention“ after the patent expires. All right, it looks like I’ve gone off on a rant. Suffice it to say that the legal system has lots of complicated incentives and motivations influencing parties involved in it. There may be numerous reasons for a company to take any particular course of action in a legal dispute.
wmf 5y ago
Official announcement thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28322638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28322638
speg 5y ago
So you can now tell users that you can pay/subscribe on your website but you can’t offer alternative payment in-app (or can you if it’s a webview?) But can you do that instead of offering in app payment? Or will you be required to have both. Personably I really don’t want to see alternative payment methods in app unless they follow the same policies and APIs as the existing ones. I hate that Adobe will stop giving my access as soon as I cancel my subscription. I love that I can cancel my Lightroom subscription from Apple’s subscription list with no fuss and have it expire when it’s due.
- judge2020 5y ago
  The wording makes it so you can send email blasts to free-tier users about signing up via an avenue that's not the App. Within the app itself, for digital items, you still cannot use other payment processors or even Apple Pay, and cannot allude to that fact.
saurik 5y ago
I don't understand... did anything even really change? Like, "more price points"... but that seems like a non-sequitur :/. A big change would be letting developers make it clear to users how to use alternative payment options, but Apple's press release only says via e-mail... which I guess they insist wasn't allowed before?
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  I don't think the list of price points was the problem as much as it would be nice to have versioned upgrades. (I.e. FileMaker 2, FileMaker 3, FileMaker 4, and so on under the same listing and with access to old versions). Or, you know, a lower developer cut. Or competitive app stores. I'm just in the same boat... how did you make that your issue worth agreeing over? That's something Apple might have fixed on a Friday afternoon.
  - alanlammiman 5y ago
    I believe one of the arguments used in the suit was along the lines of "Apple, by making the minimum price (other than 'free') for apps and IAPs 99c, prevents us from charging, say, 37c and this harms consumers and is anticompetitive". I believe it was just to provide a clear, verifiable argument that customers were being charged more than they would be in a free market (whereas other things Apple does are infinitely more serious, but also harder to prove and quantify). I'd guess the agreement addresses that to be consistent, even though I don't think anybody truly cares about the granularity of the price tiers.
- mortenjorck 5y ago
  > A big change would be letting developers make it clear to users how to use alternative payment options, but Apple's press release only says via e-mail It really says something that "allowing" businesses to communicate certain information with their own customers via an independent channel was considered a concession in this settlement. I'm still wrapping my head around it.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
stevespang 5y ago
Apple get's to keep it's same commission ? Smells like a "sell out" by plantiffs attorney so he doesn't have to go to trial . . . attorney's get millions - - devs get little, as usual.
routerl 5y ago
Let's be clear about this: this settlement means that Apple is offering developers less than what they believe they would be forced to provide by law. There is never any other business logic behind these settlements. This is just another brick on the "benevolent monopoly" road.
- foota 5y ago
  Not necessarily, it could be they believe a lawsuit would inflict PR damage and depress their stock price, or that they feel the risk of an extremely negative outcome is too high, even if still unlikely.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  The App Store is under investigation by at least a half dozen countries right now. To me, Apple losing the App Store appears completely inevitable; and Apple is willing to throw $100 million at a last-ditch effort to keep the status quo. And if we're lucky and devs are smart, we'll have developers publicly mock those checks from Apple's fund because that was money that Apple took from them with the revenue split and is giving back a fraction of, how generous. It's like when people get excited about tax refunds from the IRS. Super exciting, until you realize it was excess money taken from you to begin with.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    It's not that apple is going to lose the app store, it's that some of apple's more egregious policies (such as banning pointing users to other payment methods to monopolize payments completely unrelated to apple provided services) are being challenged and apple doesn't want to set any precedents or get any judgements against them on this civil suit.
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    > It's like when people get excited about tax refunds from the IRS. Super exciting, until you realize it was excess money taken from you to begin with. Not the best analogy. You can't necessarily know ahead of time exactly what your tax burden is and you define the withholdings to give to the IRS. You could specify no withholdings and have a big tax bill each year or be too aggressive and get a refund, or somewhere in between. Most people over estimate their obligation because it's easier to overpay than to come up with a large sum every year, especially when living paycheck to paycheck.
gjsman-1000 5y ago
I don't understand why the App Store, this small "side business" in the grand scheme of things, is something Apple is worth fighting and dying over. It's literally, a small fraction of their revenue, and yet it grabs 80% of the bad PR and is now under investigation and proposed legislation in the US, UK, EU, Korea, and I think Australia. If I'm Apple, shouldn't it be obvious at this point that losing the App Store monopoly is inevitable, a when instead of an if? And yet...
- bpicolo 5y ago
  Side business? $64 billion in revenue in 2020. That's like a quarter of their overall revenue?
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    Revenue, but that's before devs get their cut. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-apples-app-store-even-a-landmark-antitrust-trial-couldnt-tell-us-11622224506 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-apples-a... In total... more like $22 billion of profit? Not trivial, but compared to Apple's other profitable businesses...
    - jsnell 5y ago
      Apple's entire profit in 2020 was $57 billion. $22 billion is highly non-trivial even when compared to all of their other businesses combined.
- jimhi 5y ago
  Some quick googling told me a lot of things Apple hides how much it makes in the app store by combining it into their iPhone product segment. "Apple doesn’t disclose how much revenue its App Store makes per year. Instead, since 2013, it has released data points in January that include the total that Apple has paid to developers since the beginning of the App Store in 2008." The low estimates for the app store are $64 billion last year and 70%+ margins. It is entirely possible Apple makes most of its money from the app store.
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balozi 5y ago
I guess you can look forward to a check for $2.12 in the mail. Feels like Apple's highfalutin way of mocking devs.
- skybrian 5y ago
  From the article, minimum payment is $250.
  - kar1181 5y ago
    Hopefully that actually hits someone's bank account unlike the Equifax settlement which only really hit the laywers'
- jccalhoun 5y ago
  yep. Class action lawsuits are almost always a scam. I remember when I was a kid my parents bought a Kodak instant film camera. Polaroid sued them. As part of the settlement Kodak gave customers... coupons for a discount on Kodak branded batteries and a specific model of camera my parents could never find in stock.
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pazimzadeh 5y ago
I don't understand the fund. Who would receive the funds, and how? Is this a one time check to all developers who gross less than $ 1 million?
- johnrbent 5y ago
  I was wondering about this too... From the actual press release: "Apple will also establish a fund to assist small US developers, particularly as the world continues to suffer from the effects of COVID-19. Eligible developers must have earned $1 million or less through the US storefront for all of their apps in every calendar year in which the developers had an account between June 4, 2015, and April 26, 2021 — encompassing 99 percent of developers in the US. Details will be available at a later date."
- whatevrrjsa 5y ago
  30% goes to lawyers
liquidise 5y ago
> Developers can communicate directly with customers about alternative payment options. Customers have to consent and be given the right to opt-out. This is a huge step forward (though it falls well short of the ideal case) for iOS development. Having the ability to tell customers about other, often cheaper, payment methods removes a substantial barrier for some apps that have high-priced subscriptions. Positive as this change is, there is still a lot of ground to be won here. I'm fearful concessions like this will work as legal currency in the Epic case, instead of momentum pushing ongoing shifts in app store policy. Can someone with more legal understanding weigh in on that?
- jsnell 5y ago
  What do you think the step forward is here? The developers are still not allowed to communicate about alternate purchase options in the app, they would need to have some other form of communication with the user. Such advertising via side-channels was never forbidden, it's just that it's impractical for most developers to establish that side-channel. I really have to congratulate whoever wrote that press release. They gave away nothing, and even stated that the policy did not change, but still appear to have convinced a ton of people that there was some kind of a concession here.
  - taurath 5y ago
    Developers are also not allowed to link to account management on a webpage if they signed up via a website, which contributes to lots of user confusion when it comes to cancellation of a subscription for instance.
    - noway421 5y ago
      I think this is exactly what is being changed here? Now you can link away to a web portal with your account and alternative payment options. Correct me if I'm wrong.
      - taurath 5y ago
Ajay-p 5y ago
The same federal judge is hearing the Apple-Epic case and a ruling could come at any time. I suppose this is not unusual, but is it ever considered to not have a judge hear more than one case by a party?
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  Well, there's only a limited number of federal district judges in a given jurisdiction, so the odds are that a bunch of tech companies going at each other in California will get in front of the same federal judge. However, I'd argue it's also beneficial: Having two different judges rule radically differently on very similar cases (this one and Epic) would only create more confusion, as to what the ruling is, or should be. If either party doesn't think the judge is going to make the right ruling, there's jury trials, and of course, they can always appeal.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    > If either party doesn't think the judge is going to make the right ruling, there's jury trials, Apple and Epic both opted out of a jury trial, probably would have needlessly extended the process and neither of them think a jury would be able to take in all of the nuances of the case to make an informed decision. Unless, can either party still demand a jury trial a month before/a week before the ruling? https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-09-30-epic-and-apple-decline-trial-by-jury https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-09-30-epic-and-a...
jrockway 5y ago
> Apple will offer more price points for apps. Today there are less than 100, but the company is committing to increase that to more than 500 options. I really hope they implemented this as an enum, so someone has to wade through: enum PricePoint { UNKNOWN = 0; NINTEY_NINE_CENTS = 1; ONE_DOLLAR = 2; TWENTY_DOLLARS = 3; NINETEY_EIGHT_CENTS = 4; DEPRECATED_NINETY_SEVEN_CENTS = 5; TEN_DOLLARS_PER_MONTH = 6; PORTUGAL_NATIONAL_BALLOON_DAY_2019_SPECIAL_NINTEY_NINE_CENTS = 7; // 500 lines follow. }
- mynegation 5y ago
  Lol, few things trigger my OCD more than misspelled words in identifiers. I legit missed important use case while amending legacy system just because someone decided to have “priveleges” in the variable name. I hope all those ways to spell number 90 are part of the joke.
  - alfalfasprout 5y ago
    Oh yeah it's especially wonderful if it's too late to fix the spelling mistake lol.
  - simlevesque 5y ago
    I feel like being proactive about these things is one of the most important parts of my job.
  - hashkb 5y ago
    And everyone saying "backslash" is on the inside of an awesome joke too.
    - JadeNB 5y ago
      Could you elaborate?
      - hashkb 5y ago
        Many TV and radio commercials still say "backslash" in URLs. They're just wrong, it's never been a backslash. I was being mean.
stephc_int13 5y ago
I don’t understand, what is a potential class action lawsuit? In any case, as a game dev, this deal seems bad. This is status quo. I vote no.
- whatevrrjsa 5y ago
  A bunch of people sue together and a lawyer represents them. Instead of taking it to court where apple could lose /riskier they took money from apple and small concessions that arent significant
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m0zg 5y ago
LOL. Apple's revenue is about 140 million per hour. $100M won't deter a damn thing.
kevmo 5y ago
Apple was terrified of what might happen in trial. Edit: downvote away. I'm a former federal law clerk and cofounder of Upsolve. This is how and why settlements happen -- they resolve the uncertainty of trial. This is how power works in the legal system.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
Some more information I got from reading the Preliminary Approval Order Every iOS app developer is automatically included in the class unless she objects to being included, i.e., requests to be excluded.^1 The entire class is represented by two representative members.^2 They in turn are represented by legal counsel selected by a judge. The settlement approval is still preliminary. It will remain preliminary for several months and still needs to be finally approved by the court. Any app developer can object to the agreement in the meantime.^3 Unless an app developer requests to be excluded from the class, then if no developers object to the settlement agreement and it is approved, she will be bound by the terms of the agreement. Unless I am mistaken, it is possible the agreement could, e.g., limit her right to take part in lawsuits against Apple in the future, among other things. Question for the reader: Should an iOS developer/Apple read that agreement. A copy will be published online within the next 45 days.^4 App developers have the next 105 days to request to be excluded from the class and/or object to the agreement as well to the fees to be paid to the lawyers representing the class. 1. "Any person who desires to request exclusion from the Settlement Class must do so by 105 days from the entry of this Preliminary Approval Order, and such request for exclusion shall be in the form of a letter mailed or otherwise delivered to the Settlement Administrator stating that the person wants to be excluded from the Cameron et al. v. Apple Inc., Case No. 4:19-cv-03074-YGR (N.D. Cal.) settlement, and the letter must include the persons name and address,and identify all of the persons Apple Developer Accounts. All persons who submit valid and timely requests for exclusion shall have no rights under the Settlement Agreement, shall not share in the distribution of the settlement funds, and shall not be bound by the final judgments relating to Defendant Apple Inc. entered in the litigation" "All written objections and supporting papers must (a) clearly identify the case name and number (Donald R. Cameron, et al. v. Apple Inc., Case No. 4:19-cv-03074-YGR), (b) be submitted to the Court either by mailing them to the Class Action Clerk, United States District Court for the Northern District of California, 1301 Clay St, Oakland, CA 94612, or by filing it in person at any location of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California; and (c) be filed or postmarked on or before 105 days from the entry of this Preliminary Approval Order" 2. The two app developers who are acting as class representatives for all iOS app developers are: David R Cameron and Pure Sweat Basketball, Inc. 3. See #1 4. It will be published at this address: https://smallappdeveloperassistance.com https://smallappdeveloperassistance.com
ksec 5y ago
>Apple agrees to make sure the search results in the App Store are based on objective criteria. I cant help but laughed when I was reading it. What were they doing before that? I thought the most important part was the next bit, >The settlement, which must be approved by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, comes as Apple is awaiting a ruling in a separate lawsuit, brought by Fortnite developer Epic Games, which seeks to force Apple to allow rival in-app payment and store options. >The same federal judge is hearing the Apple-Epic case and a ruling could come at any time. My guess is that the way things are going in these cases are not in Apple's flavour. And for all the court case I followed over years Apple tends to be the favourite in court. Rightfully or not. ( Some of the Judge are very clearly biased ) But Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers was clearly trying to get to the bottom of things. And asking some very hard questions. Is this enough? I am not sure if Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is easy to please either. And let's not forget this is US only. EU are grinding their teeth. Then there are South Korea and Japan. And China is surpassingly quiet in all of these. Phil Schiller was right, if Apple were to ever change its fee structure, that it should do so “from a position of strength rather than weakness”. It was unfortunate Steve passed away soon after that email.
- markdown 5y ago
  > It was unfortunate Steve passed away soon after that email. I'm sure Steve sent a lot of emails. Which one are you referring to?
  - unclekev 5y ago
    > Which one are you referring to? This one: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/4/22418828/apple-app-store-commission-30-percent-phil-schiller-2011-epic-lawsuit https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/4/22418828/apple-app-store-c...
- x0x0 5y ago
  The value that objectively pays Apple the most per click. Separately... I remain astounded at the risks of quasi-arbitrary government action (lawsuit here, Senators here, regulators in EU) that Apple is running to protect their app store vig. Just amazing.
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finickydesert 5y ago
Not bad
yyyk 5y ago
A more suitable headline for the original article would have been: "US developers' lawyers agree to settle potential class action suit". I wish they didn't. There are important and rather easy wins to be attained (e.g. I don't see how the Apple Payment requirement could survive a trial). Developers could still object to the settlement[0]. That way, Apple will still be bound by its concessions, while the suit goes forward. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28323992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28323992
- BarryMilo 5y ago
  I also wish companies would put justice above profits, but this is so far removed from our current reality it's hard to imagine.
8eye 5y ago
gonna go ahead and collect my 2.77 from a future class action, who else is in? lol
alkonaut 5y ago
Suggestion: push for another lawsuit and demand being able to push the information about any price and payment method right in the app. This seems like a non-concession from Apple.
yarsanich 5y ago
Good to know. Suddenly Apple rejected my last app release because of link to app Patreon page(it was there in all previous releases). Hope now I will be able to back this link to the app.
jonplackett 5y ago
It’s funny, apple’s share price dropped today, presumable based on this. But I think this is net positive for apple. They are being helped out here by the legal system - forced to make the developer experience and customer experience much better. In the long run this will be good for them.
jacquesm 5y ago
Meanwhile, as long as you understand that you are allowed to sell your wares to Apples customers - and not yours - you may proceed. This is the key element, that Apple continues to own the customer relationship, rather than that your customers make use of their eco-system and hardware.
- Razengan 5y ago
  Yes, because iOS users will ask Apple for refunds if your app screws them over.
collaborative 5y ago
>Developers can communicate directly with customers about alternative payment options. Customers have to consent and be given the right to opt-out. >Apple ceded some ground on issues of interest to developers but gets to keep (at least for now) key structures of its App Store, including the overall commission structure of the store as well as its prohibition against using rival app stores or in-app payment mechanisms So are alternative payment methods going to work? Or is it that this is only allowed after you direct a user to an external URL? Would embedded browsers be ok to process the IAPs?
- Daedren 5y ago
  It'll be as it has always been. Apps can't show or hint at alternative payment options. This is in regards to letting users know about such options outside the iPhone's scope (email for instance)
  - TheJoeMan 5y ago
    I was hoping Apple was ceding some ground in this, it’s what puts the dirtiest taste in my mouth. If you go to even Walmart (a company very strict on their suppliers) and pick up some object, on the back of the packaging will be www.exampleproduct dot com. And on that website you could theoretically sell your product directly. What does Apple do? “Oh on that privacy policy we mandated you could click here and then here and then pay online - REJECT” So now people only know that Netflix can be paid online, but few think to sign up for DuoLingo or the like online :/
    - collaborative 5y ago
      Seems like a massive PR trick then. The only difference is that they will set up $100M for US devs. Probably the ones that brought the court case?
    - iNate2000 5y ago
      But Walmart wouldn’t let a vendor set up a kiosk in the middle of the store and accept payments with a Square reader on a phone, would they?
MangoCoffee 5y ago
how come Apple/Google is not consider a monopoly on smart phone?
- digitalsushi 5y ago
  Probably because they are more than one company
bogwog 5y ago
Is this enough to open a competing store? * Put your app for free on the appstore, but with a paywall * In order to activate the app, you must buy it on an external site * A web-based store allows users to browse and purchase apps, and "download" links send them to the appstore * Customers can link their Apple IDs (or another account) so that purchases can be confirmed without having to sign in to every app individually Or is there still something in the developer contract that prevents this?
- 58x14 5y ago
  One of my first thoughts. The purchase of a license would need to occur on the web-based store, where presumably you'd create an account, download the free (with in app purchases, because you don't want to restrict sales even if they're at a lower margin) app from the App store, and sign in with your account to activate. Seems like entities wishing to operate a secondary app marketplace would continually be balancing tradeoffs in UI/UX (v. native Apple experience) and cost of acquisition for a relatively small reduction in fees.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I would rather risk the class action tbh. This is Apple, the company that changes major things on a whim and doesn't care if it's bad. 10-20 years down the road we'll be in the same spot.
xony 5y ago
apple running a monopoly show here .. take them down

This is the same judge that is doing the Apple vs Epic ruling. I would expect the final ruling on Apple vs Epic to, ultimately, have very similar results to this settlement (or would have). If you've been following Hoeg Law's hours long legal commentary on Apple vs Epic, they believed the most likely resolution would be Apple being forced to remove the "anti-steering rule" which gags developers from talking about alternative payment options. This settlement has that already. It looks like, unless there is a major upset, the Apple vs Epic ruling will be virtually moot (in terms of legal consequences that benefit developers) unless it gets appealed.

syspec 5y ago
Link?
wvenable 5y ago
> This settlement has that already. It sounds like an extremely limited version of that. Email? How magnanimous of them. I'm surprised it was registered mail or carrier pigeon.
commoner 5y ago
> This settlement has that already. This settlement is not good enough for many developers, since developers are still subject to Apple's anti-steering rule in their iOS apps. Having to establish another communication channel with the customer is an unnecessary hurdle to let the customer know that they could avoid the (up to) 42.8% price hike on their subscription and future app-related purchases if they pay outside the app.

post_break 5y ago

I love how in their press release they say: "The terms of the agreement will help make the App Store an even better business opportunity for developers, while maintaining the safe and trusted marketplace users love." This is going to make the App Store even better! You're going to love it! (not because we did this on our own, but because we saw the writing on the wall and were forced to). I can't stand how they are burning so much good faith with developers to keep the rent of the app store.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
Well, what else are they going to do, not release a statement? If you release a statement about a legal ruling you lost, it's obviously going to be spun from whoever published it.
- okamiueru 5y ago
  Not releasing a statement sounds like a good option to me. Even better would be simply not "spinning" it. I don't see what's obvious about it. Companies don't have to behave dishonestly.
  - mbreese 5y ago
    It was a known court case that had the potential to have a major impact on Apple’s bottom line. Not releasing a statement about the settlement was not an option. Neither party is 100% happy with the agreement, but realistically — both parties got what they wanted (and they wanted what they got).
- jcrites 5y ago
  This is something of a nitpick but: Apple did not lose a legal ruling. Some companies initiated a lawsuit against them, and Apple and those parties mutually agreed to resolve their dispute, presumably with concessions from both sides. The agreement needs to be approved by a judge, but the parties in the case are saying that they are no longer in dispute under the proposed terms. Companies that get sued agree to settlements all the time, even if they believe they are fully in the right, because going to trial has a large potential risk; and the legal expected fees for litigating a trial and possible appeals might exceed the cost of the proposed settlement. If the party suing you is willing to settle for known terms, then it might be preferable to accept the (undesirable to you but fixed and known ahead of time) costs/downsides by settling, than roll the dice by allowing the case to proceed to a judge or jury trial where you might indeed lose the case and suffer a much worse outcome. Companies might settle if they think there is some chance that they plaintiff might prevail, even if that chance is low, when there could be a large (potentially unbounded) downside to losing the case — as could be the case for a class action. This is the same risk management reasoning that allows patent trolls to get away with their bullshit. If you don’t think their patent is valid and would survive scrutiny in court, and even know of prior art, or you don’t think you are infringing it, the legal costs to litigate an fight that battle in court might be higher (and take years of time and energy from senior staff members of the company – a distraction) than settling with the patent troll for what they’re asking for to “license” their patent. It was a travesty that trolls got away with it for so long, but computers and software historically were new whereas most judges & juries consisted of older individuals, and know little to nothing about the internals of computers & software. Meanwhile both sides could bring in so-called expert witnesses to claim whatever they want. This asymmetry resulted in some tech companies agreeing to pool their patents, and formally or informally agree not to sue each other over patents, and form mutual defense coalitions. The Supreme Court also tightened up what inventions are patentable in the software space considerably, as I recall, to eliminate the “pure abstract idea implemented in software and running on a computer“ category of patents. Judges are also starting to become more tech savvy and specialized court circuits are developing to focus on the area. Take a look at how Google versus Oracle was handled: the judge assigned to the case learned introductory programming (!) so as to assess whether Oracle’s claim about their code snippet being copyrightable was true, vs. being obvious and something any practitioner of the art would necessarily write when building compatibility with the Java API (which he did end up concluding as I recall; definitely correct decision IMO, if you recall what that function was – something like checking whether a given index was within the bounds of an array or something similar; any function to do that will look about the same). The case was appealed and I haven’t kept up-to-date on it since then. As the holder of several patents myself, I personally think only substantial research breakthroughs should be patentable (where it comes to software patents that are essentially pure algorithms). The MP3 algorithm was a complete game changer for music & audio distribution, for example, drastically reducing its data size and making it feasible to economically transmit over the Internet. Breakthroughs of this magnitude ought to be the minimum bar in my mind, that I would want the patent office to hold for software patents personally. A novel way to organize your CRM database should not be patentable. A secondary problem is that the patent office has no incentives to be strict (after all, they can just issue the patents and let people litigate in court if they think it’s wrong), and I doubt their competence in their ability to evaluate whether a claimed invention is worthy. they also make income from the patent submission process so their incentives are to allow companies to submit a lot of patents; and if they made those patents too difficult to get, companies would not bother, relying on keeping inventions as trade secrets instead, which companies by and large are doing anyway. A final travesty is how many patents don’t disclose any useful information for someone to replicate the invention when the patent expires. As compared to patents for mechanical devices that must include diagrams of functional machines, software patents have hand wavy abstract architectures that would help you little if at all in your efforts to duplicate the “invention“ after the patent expires. All right, it looks like I’ve gone off on a rant. Suffice it to say that the legal system has lots of complicated incentives and motivations influencing parties involved in it. There may be numerous reasons for a company to take any particular course of action in a legal dispute.

wmf 5y ago

Official announcement thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28322638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28322638

speg 5y ago

So you can now tell users that you can pay/subscribe on your website but you can’t offer alternative payment in-app (or can you if it’s a webview?) But can you do that instead of offering in app payment? Or will you be required to have both. Personably I really don’t want to see alternative payment methods in app unless they follow the same policies and APIs as the existing ones. I hate that Adobe will stop giving my access as soon as I cancel my subscription. I love that I can cancel my Lightroom subscription from Apple’s subscription list with no fuss and have it expire when it’s due.

judge2020 5y ago
The wording makes it so you can send email blasts to free-tier users about signing up via an avenue that's not the App. Within the app itself, for digital items, you still cannot use other payment processors or even Apple Pay, and cannot allude to that fact.

saurik 5y ago

I don't understand... did anything even really change? Like, "more price points"... but that seems like a non-sequitur :/. A big change would be letting developers make it clear to users how to use alternative payment options, but Apple's press release only says via e-mail... which I guess they insist wasn't allowed before?

gjsman-1000 5y ago
I don't think the list of price points was the problem as much as it would be nice to have versioned upgrades. (I.e. FileMaker 2, FileMaker 3, FileMaker 4, and so on under the same listing and with access to old versions). Or, you know, a lower developer cut. Or competitive app stores. I'm just in the same boat... how did you make that your issue worth agreeing over? That's something Apple might have fixed on a Friday afternoon.
- alanlammiman 5y ago
  I believe one of the arguments used in the suit was along the lines of "Apple, by making the minimum price (other than 'free') for apps and IAPs 99c, prevents us from charging, say, 37c and this harms consumers and is anticompetitive". I believe it was just to provide a clear, verifiable argument that customers were being charged more than they would be in a free market (whereas other things Apple does are infinitely more serious, but also harder to prove and quantify). I'd guess the agreement addresses that to be consistent, even though I don't think anybody truly cares about the granularity of the price tiers.
mortenjorck 5y ago
> A big change would be letting developers make it clear to users how to use alternative payment options, but Apple's press release only says via e-mail It really says something that "allowing" businesses to communicate certain information with their own customers via an independent channel was considered a concession in this settlement. I'm still wrapping my head around it.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago

stevespang 5y ago

Apple get's to keep it's same commission ? Smells like a "sell out" by plantiffs attorney so he doesn't have to go to trial . . . attorney's get millions - - devs get little, as usual.

routerl 5y ago

Let's be clear about this: this settlement means that Apple is offering developers less than what they believe they would be forced to provide by law. There is never any other business logic behind these settlements. This is just another brick on the "benevolent monopoly" road.

foota 5y ago
Not necessarily, it could be they believe a lawsuit would inflict PR damage and depress their stock price, or that they feel the risk of an extremely negative outcome is too high, even if still unlikely.
gjsman-1000 5y ago
The App Store is under investigation by at least a half dozen countries right now. To me, Apple losing the App Store appears completely inevitable; and Apple is willing to throw $100 million at a last-ditch effort to keep the status quo. And if we're lucky and devs are smart, we'll have developers publicly mock those checks from Apple's fund because that was money that Apple took from them with the revenue split and is giving back a fraction of, how generous. It's like when people get excited about tax refunds from the IRS. Super exciting, until you realize it was excess money taken from you to begin with.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  It's not that apple is going to lose the app store, it's that some of apple's more egregious policies (such as banning pointing users to other payment methods to monopolize payments completely unrelated to apple provided services) are being challenged and apple doesn't want to set any precedents or get any judgements against them on this civil suit.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  > It's like when people get excited about tax refunds from the IRS. Super exciting, until you realize it was excess money taken from you to begin with. Not the best analogy. You can't necessarily know ahead of time exactly what your tax burden is and you define the withholdings to give to the IRS. You could specify no withholdings and have a big tax bill each year or be too aggressive and get a refund, or somewhere in between. Most people over estimate their obligation because it's easier to overpay than to come up with a large sum every year, especially when living paycheck to paycheck.

gjsman-1000 5y ago

I don't understand why the App Store, this small "side business" in the grand scheme of things, is something Apple is worth fighting and dying over. It's literally, a small fraction of their revenue, and yet it grabs 80% of the bad PR and is now under investigation and proposed legislation in the US, UK, EU, Korea, and I think Australia. If I'm Apple, shouldn't it be obvious at this point that losing the App Store monopoly is inevitable, a when instead of an if? And yet...

bpicolo 5y ago
Side business? $64 billion in revenue in 2020. That's like a quarter of their overall revenue?
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Revenue, but that's before devs get their cut. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-apples-app-store-even-a-landmark-antitrust-trial-couldnt-tell-us-11622224506 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-apples-a... In total... more like $22 billion of profit? Not trivial, but compared to Apple's other profitable businesses...
  - jsnell 5y ago
    Apple's entire profit in 2020 was $57 billion. $22 billion is highly non-trivial even when compared to all of their other businesses combined.
jimhi 5y ago
Some quick googling told me a lot of things Apple hides how much it makes in the app store by combining it into their iPhone product segment. "Apple doesn’t disclose how much revenue its App Store makes per year. Instead, since 2013, it has released data points in January that include the total that Apple has paid to developers since the beginning of the App Store in 2008." The low estimates for the app store are $64 billion last year and 70%+ margins. It is entirely possible Apple makes most of its money from the app store.

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balozi 5y ago

I guess you can look forward to a check for $2.12 in the mail. Feels like Apple's highfalutin way of mocking devs.

skybrian 5y ago
From the article, minimum payment is $250.
- kar1181 5y ago
  Hopefully that actually hits someone's bank account unlike the Equifax settlement which only really hit the laywers'
jccalhoun 5y ago
yep. Class action lawsuits are almost always a scam. I remember when I was a kid my parents bought a Kodak instant film camera. Polaroid sued them. As part of the settlement Kodak gave customers... coupons for a discount on Kodak branded batteries and a specific model of camera my parents could never find in stock.

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pazimzadeh 5y ago

I don't understand the fund. Who would receive the funds, and how? Is this a one time check to all developers who gross less than $ 1 million?

johnrbent 5y ago
I was wondering about this too... From the actual press release: "Apple will also establish a fund to assist small US developers, particularly as the world continues to suffer from the effects of COVID-19. Eligible developers must have earned $1 million or less through the US storefront for all of their apps in every calendar year in which the developers had an account between June 4, 2015, and April 26, 2021 — encompassing 99 percent of developers in the US. Details will be available at a later date."
whatevrrjsa 5y ago
30% goes to lawyers

liquidise 5y ago

> Developers can communicate directly with customers about alternative payment options. Customers have to consent and be given the right to opt-out. This is a huge step forward (though it falls well short of the ideal case) for iOS development. Having the ability to tell customers about other, often cheaper, payment methods removes a substantial barrier for some apps that have high-priced subscriptions. Positive as this change is, there is still a lot of ground to be won here. I'm fearful concessions like this will work as legal currency in the Epic case, instead of momentum pushing ongoing shifts in app store policy. Can someone with more legal understanding weigh in on that?

jsnell 5y ago
What do you think the step forward is here? The developers are still not allowed to communicate about alternate purchase options in the app, they would need to have some other form of communication with the user. Such advertising via side-channels was never forbidden, it's just that it's impractical for most developers to establish that side-channel. I really have to congratulate whoever wrote that press release. They gave away nothing, and even stated that the policy did not change, but still appear to have convinced a ton of people that there was some kind of a concession here.
- taurath 5y ago
  Developers are also not allowed to link to account management on a webpage if they signed up via a website, which contributes to lots of user confusion when it comes to cancellation of a subscription for instance.
  - noway421 5y ago
    I think this is exactly what is being changed here? Now you can link away to a web portal with your account and alternative payment options. Correct me if I'm wrong.
    - taurath 5y ago

Ajay-p 5y ago

The same federal judge is hearing the Apple-Epic case and a ruling could come at any time. I suppose this is not unusual, but is it ever considered to not have a judge hear more than one case by a party?

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
Well, there's only a limited number of federal district judges in a given jurisdiction, so the odds are that a bunch of tech companies going at each other in California will get in front of the same federal judge. However, I'd argue it's also beneficial: Having two different judges rule radically differently on very similar cases (this one and Epic) would only create more confusion, as to what the ruling is, or should be. If either party doesn't think the judge is going to make the right ruling, there's jury trials, and of course, they can always appeal.
- judge2020 5y ago
  > If either party doesn't think the judge is going to make the right ruling, there's jury trials, Apple and Epic both opted out of a jury trial, probably would have needlessly extended the process and neither of them think a jury would be able to take in all of the nuances of the case to make an informed decision. Unless, can either party still demand a jury trial a month before/a week before the ruling? https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-09-30-epic-and-apple-decline-trial-by-jury https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-09-30-epic-and-a...

jrockway 5y ago

> Apple will offer more price points for apps. Today there are less than 100, but the company is committing to increase that to more than 500 options. I really hope they implemented this as an enum, so someone has to wade through: enum PricePoint { UNKNOWN = 0; NINTEY_NINE_CENTS = 1; ONE_DOLLAR = 2; TWENTY_DOLLARS = 3; NINETEY_EIGHT_CENTS = 4; DEPRECATED_NINETY_SEVEN_CENTS = 5; TEN_DOLLARS_PER_MONTH = 6; PORTUGAL_NATIONAL_BALLOON_DAY_2019_SPECIAL_NINTEY_NINE_CENTS = 7; // 500 lines follow. }

mynegation 5y ago
Lol, few things trigger my OCD more than misspelled words in identifiers. I legit missed important use case while amending legacy system just because someone decided to have “priveleges” in the variable name. I hope all those ways to spell number 90 are part of the joke.
- alfalfasprout 5y ago
  Oh yeah it's especially wonderful if it's too late to fix the spelling mistake lol.
- simlevesque 5y ago
  I feel like being proactive about these things is one of the most important parts of my job.
- hashkb 5y ago
  And everyone saying "backslash" is on the inside of an awesome joke too.
  - JadeNB 5y ago
    Could you elaborate?
    - hashkb 5y ago
      Many TV and radio commercials still say "backslash" in URLs. They're just wrong, it's never been a backslash. I was being mean.

stephc_int13 5y ago

I don’t understand, what is a potential class action lawsuit? In any case, as a game dev, this deal seems bad. This is status quo. I vote no.

whatevrrjsa 5y ago
A bunch of people sue together and a lawyer represents them. Instead of taking it to court where apple could lose /riskier they took money from apple and small concessions that arent significant

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m0zg 5y ago

LOL. Apple's revenue is about 140 million per hour. $100M won't deter a damn thing.

kevmo 5y ago

Apple was terrified of what might happen in trial. Edit: downvote away. I'm a former federal law clerk and cofounder of Upsolve. This is how and why settlements happen -- they resolve the uncertainty of trial. This is how power works in the legal system.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

Some more information I got from reading the Preliminary Approval Order Every iOS app developer is automatically included in the class unless she objects to being included, i.e., requests to be excluded.^1 The entire class is represented by two representative members.^2 They in turn are represented by legal counsel selected by a judge. The settlement approval is still preliminary. It will remain preliminary for several months and still needs to be finally approved by the court. Any app developer can object to the agreement in the meantime.^3 Unless an app developer requests to be excluded from the class, then if no developers object to the settlement agreement and it is approved, she will be bound by the terms of the agreement. Unless I am mistaken, it is possible the agreement could, e.g., limit her right to take part in lawsuits against Apple in the future, among other things. Question for the reader: Should an iOS developer/Apple read that agreement. A copy will be published online within the next 45 days.^4 App developers have the next 105 days to request to be excluded from the class and/or object to the agreement as well to the fees to be paid to the lawyers representing the class. 1. "Any person who desires to request exclusion from the Settlement Class must do so by 105 days from the entry of this Preliminary Approval Order, and such request for exclusion shall be in the form of a letter mailed or otherwise delivered to the Settlement Administrator stating that the person wants to be excluded from the Cameron et al. v. Apple Inc., Case No. 4:19-cv-03074-YGR (N.D. Cal.) settlement, and the letter must include the persons name and address,and identify all of the persons Apple Developer Accounts. All persons who submit valid and timely requests for exclusion shall have no rights under the Settlement Agreement, shall not share in the distribution of the settlement funds, and shall not be bound by the final judgments relating to Defendant Apple Inc. entered in the litigation" "All written objections and supporting papers must (a) clearly identify the case name and number (Donald R. Cameron, et al. v. Apple Inc., Case No. 4:19-cv-03074-YGR), (b) be submitted to the Court either by mailing them to the Class Action Clerk, United States District Court for the Northern District of California, 1301 Clay St, Oakland, CA 94612, or by filing it in person at any location of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California; and (c) be filed or postmarked on or before 105 days from the entry of this Preliminary Approval Order" 2. The two app developers who are acting as class representatives for all iOS app developers are: David R Cameron and Pure Sweat Basketball, Inc. 3. See #1 4. It will be published at this address: https://smallappdeveloperassistance.com https://smallappdeveloperassistance.com

ksec 5y ago

>Apple agrees to make sure the search results in the App Store are based on objective criteria. I cant help but laughed when I was reading it. What were they doing before that? I thought the most important part was the next bit, >The settlement, which must be approved by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, comes as Apple is awaiting a ruling in a separate lawsuit, brought by Fortnite developer Epic Games, which seeks to force Apple to allow rival in-app payment and store options. >The same federal judge is hearing the Apple-Epic case and a ruling could come at any time. My guess is that the way things are going in these cases are not in Apple's flavour. And for all the court case I followed over years Apple tends to be the favourite in court. Rightfully or not. ( Some of the Judge are very clearly biased ) But Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers was clearly trying to get to the bottom of things. And asking some very hard questions. Is this enough? I am not sure if Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is easy to please either. And let's not forget this is US only. EU are grinding their teeth. Then there are South Korea and Japan. And China is surpassingly quiet in all of these. Phil Schiller was right, if Apple were to ever change its fee structure, that it should do so “from a position of strength rather than weakness”. It was unfortunate Steve passed away soon after that email.

markdown 5y ago
> It was unfortunate Steve passed away soon after that email. I'm sure Steve sent a lot of emails. Which one are you referring to?
- unclekev 5y ago
  > Which one are you referring to? This one: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/4/22418828/apple-app-store-commission-30-percent-phil-schiller-2011-epic-lawsuit https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/4/22418828/apple-app-store-c...
x0x0 5y ago
The value that objectively pays Apple the most per click. Separately... I remain astounded at the risks of quasi-arbitrary government action (lawsuit here, Senators here, regulators in EU) that Apple is running to protect their app store vig. Just amazing.

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finickydesert 5y ago

Not bad

yyyk 5y ago

A more suitable headline for the original article would have been: "US developers' lawyers agree to settle potential class action suit". I wish they didn't. There are important and rather easy wins to be attained (e.g. I don't see how the Apple Payment requirement could survive a trial). Developers could still object to the settlement[0]. That way, Apple will still be bound by its concessions, while the suit goes forward. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28323992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28323992

BarryMilo 5y ago
I also wish companies would put justice above profits, but this is so far removed from our current reality it's hard to imagine.

8eye 5y ago

gonna go ahead and collect my 2.77 from a future class action, who else is in? lol

alkonaut 5y ago

Suggestion: push for another lawsuit and demand being able to push the information about any price and payment method right in the app. This seems like a non-concession from Apple.

yarsanich 5y ago

Good to know. Suddenly Apple rejected my last app release because of link to app Patreon page(it was there in all previous releases). Hope now I will be able to back this link to the app.

jonplackett 5y ago

It’s funny, apple’s share price dropped today, presumable based on this. But I think this is net positive for apple. They are being helped out here by the legal system - forced to make the developer experience and customer experience much better. In the long run this will be good for them.

jacquesm 5y ago

Meanwhile, as long as you understand that you are allowed to sell your wares to Apples customers - and not yours - you may proceed. This is the key element, that Apple continues to own the customer relationship, rather than that your customers make use of their eco-system and hardware.

Razengan 5y ago
Yes, because iOS users will ask Apple for refunds if your app screws them over.

collaborative 5y ago

>Developers can communicate directly with customers about alternative payment options. Customers have to consent and be given the right to opt-out. >Apple ceded some ground on issues of interest to developers but gets to keep (at least for now) key structures of its App Store, including the overall commission structure of the store as well as its prohibition against using rival app stores or in-app payment mechanisms So are alternative payment methods going to work? Or is it that this is only allowed after you direct a user to an external URL? Would embedded browsers be ok to process the IAPs?

Daedren 5y ago
It'll be as it has always been. Apps can't show or hint at alternative payment options. This is in regards to letting users know about such options outside the iPhone's scope (email for instance)
- TheJoeMan 5y ago
  I was hoping Apple was ceding some ground in this, it’s what puts the dirtiest taste in my mouth. If you go to even Walmart (a company very strict on their suppliers) and pick up some object, on the back of the packaging will be www.exampleproduct dot com. And on that website you could theoretically sell your product directly. What does Apple do? “Oh on that privacy policy we mandated you could click here and then here and then pay online - REJECT” So now people only know that Netflix can be paid online, but few think to sign up for DuoLingo or the like online :/
  - collaborative 5y ago
    Seems like a massive PR trick then. The only difference is that they will set up $100M for US devs. Probably the ones that brought the court case?
  - iNate2000 5y ago
    But Walmart wouldn’t let a vendor set up a kiosk in the middle of the store and accept payments with a Square reader on a phone, would they?

MangoCoffee 5y ago

how come Apple/Google is not consider a monopoly on smart phone?

digitalsushi 5y ago
Probably because they are more than one company

bogwog 5y ago

Is this enough to open a competing store? * Put your app for free on the appstore, but with a paywall * In order to activate the app, you must buy it on an external site * A web-based store allows users to browse and purchase apps, and "download" links send them to the appstore * Customers can link their Apple IDs (or another account) so that purchases can be confirmed without having to sign in to every app individually Or is there still something in the developer contract that prevents this?

58x14 5y ago
One of my first thoughts. The purchase of a license would need to occur on the web-based store, where presumably you'd create an account, download the free (with in app purchases, because you don't want to restrict sales even if they're at a lower margin) app from the App store, and sign in with your account to activate. Seems like entities wishing to operate a secondary app marketplace would continually be balancing tradeoffs in UI/UX (v. native Apple experience) and cost of acquisition for a relatively small reduction in fees.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

I would rather risk the class action tbh. This is Apple, the company that changes major things on a whim and doesn't care if it's bad. 10-20 years down the road we'll be in the same spot.

xony 5y ago

apple running a monopoly show here .. take them down