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This is somewhat surprising to me. I thought Epic had a reasonable chance of getting an eventual win on some points, or in getting enough attention that regulat

This is somewhat surprising to me. I thought Epic had a reasonable chance of getting an eventual win on some points, or in getting enough attention that regulators stepped in. I also thought Apple had a pretty decent chance of winning. But I did not think that Epic had a particularly strong chance of getting an injunction like this. I hope that the takeaway people take from this is "it's tricky to guess what a judge will do during a contentious case", and not, "the judge was always obviously going to issue this injunction." I still personally think knowing what I know now, if I went back to the start of this case I still wouldn't be able to confidently predict this injunction. But maybe other people are better at reading court signals than I am.

dannyw 5y ago
The judge literally hinted at this exact outcome during the hearings, back in May: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-12/epic-apple-judge-hints-at-compromise-in-feud-over-app-store#:~:text=The%20judge%20overseeing%20the%20high,t%20their%20only%20shopping%20option https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-12/epic-appl.... It's not a surprising outcome whatsoever if you followed the trial. Apple's recent concession on this was reading the room and realising this is the likely outcome.
- danShumway 5y ago
  I did follow the trial, and actually probably commented on that exact compromise hint at the time (although I'd need to look over my comment history to know for sure). I didn't read a "compromise" as indicating that an injunction was particularly likely, and most of the commentary I read on HN at that time didn't read it that way either. I think people are looking back with the benefit of hindsight at something that was not by any means a generally assumed outcome, even from people who were covering and talking about the trial on HN itself or on other social media sites I followed. A hint that the judge is curious about finding middle grounds in a lawsuit is definitely not a promise of a permanent injunction.
stale2002 5y ago
Something that I like to do, when discussing these issues with people, is get the other person to commit to a position, ahead of time, and go back to those comments later to see who was right. I had multiple discussions, with many commenters on hacker news, where people were way too certain about the court case, when clearly it could have gone many different ways (Thus, I agree with you that "it's tricky to guess what a judge will do during a contentious case" ).

dannyw 5y ago

The judge literally hinted at this exact outcome during the hearings, back in May: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-12/epic-apple-judge-hints-at-compromise-in-feud-over-app-store#:~:text=The%20judge%20overseeing%20the%20high,t%20their%20only%20shopping%20option https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-12/epic-appl.... It's not a surprising outcome whatsoever if you followed the trial. Apple's recent concession on this was reading the room and realising this is the likely outcome.

danShumway 5y ago
I did follow the trial, and actually probably commented on that exact compromise hint at the time (although I'd need to look over my comment history to know for sure). I didn't read a "compromise" as indicating that an injunction was particularly likely, and most of the commentary I read on HN at that time didn't read it that way either. I think people are looking back with the benefit of hindsight at something that was not by any means a generally assumed outcome, even from people who were covering and talking about the trial on HN itself or on other social media sites I followed. A hint that the judge is curious about finding middle grounds in a lawsuit is definitely not a promise of a permanent injunction.

stale2002 5y ago

Something that I like to do, when discussing these issues with people, is get the other person to commit to a position, ahead of time, and go back to those comments later to see who was right. I had multiple discussions, with many commenters on hacker news, where people were way too certain about the court case, when clearly it could have gone many different ways (Thus, I agree with you that "it's tricky to guess what a judge will do during a contentious case" ).