4 ms·

About time for what? Another company to get charged with something that they don't get punished for? The fines are always less than the companies' net gains fr

• echelon 1y ago
  100%. This doesn't deserve a fine. This deserves Apple to be given an ultimatum about their mob boss behavior with mobile. Apple and Google quickly built up their duopoly such that everyone doing anything with mobile phones has to pay them a tax. You can't even deploy your own apps at your own cadence, without strict review, using your own technology. You have to jump through unplanned upgrade cycles, you're forced to use their payment rails and signup flows (and don't get to know your customer or get them to use your website). You pay the taxes on everything. And even then, they let your competitors advertise against your name or trademark. This is rotten to the core. Neither Google nor Apple should have an app store. Apps should be web installs. The only reason things work the way they do is so that Apple and Google can tax and exert control. A permissions system, signature scans, and heuristics are all that are needed to keep web installs safe - and all of those pieces are already in place. There's no technical or safety limitation, Apple and Google just want to dominate. These two companies were innovative 20 years ago, but their lead then doesn't entitle them to keep owning the majority of most people's computing surface area for the rest of time. They have to give up the reigns. There are still billions of dollars for them to make on mobile, even if regulators tell them to stop treating developers as serfs and locking them in cages. No. More. App. Stores. Regulate big tech's hold over mobile, web, search, and advertising.
  • lwo32k 1y ago
    Its not possible for them to make "billions of dollars" any other way - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_economy
    • malfist 1y ago
      Then maybe they shouldn't be making billions of dollars
      • zelphirkalt 1y ago
        And really we don't need them making billions of dollars. It is not conducive to healthy human society or progress. Such money could be spent way better than lining the pockets of management levels, people, who enable this by not having a conscience, and corrupt politicians.
    • tsimionescu 1y ago
      If it's possible to prove that they could only make their billions thanks to this illegal practice, that would be awesome - the government could claw back the billions.
  • snowwrestler 1y ago
    I understand people like this ruling and want Apple and Google to open up. But this is just silly rewriting of history: > Apple and Google quickly built up their duopoly such that everyone doing anything with mobile phones has to pay them a tax. Long before Apple and Google made phones, a huge mobile device ecosystem already existed, including app stores, and it was way more locked down and expensive than what we have now. The iPhone did not even launch with an app store, its launch concept was 100% web apps. They only added the native SDK and app store after developers and customers demanded it. Again: I know the world is different now. But the idea that this was all some swift inexorable coup by Apple and Google is totally inaccurate. Plenty of other companies had a chance to do things differently, many with huge head starts.
    • wolpoli 1y ago
      Sure, but parallel to the mobile device (featurephone) ecosystem, there was also the old smartphone ecosystem which grew out of the PDA market where you could install your own program without paying the middleman. I would argue that modern day smartphone is more similar to the old smartphones than the featurephones.
      • pbh101 1y ago
        And somehow despite that ecosystem existing before, new entrants Apple and Google emerged victorious. Maybe it had something to do with their different approach.
        • xp84 1y ago
          I doubt it was because people wanted The App Store. If the PocketPC/Windows Mobile had an App Store it would not have won. Featurephones had App Stores like Verizon’s “Get It Now” and it was obvious that they were money grabs like Apple’s. Apple and Google won the game because the phones were powerful enough to make web browsing feasible, and had great text input. If nobody had thought of app stores, it would have been trivial to distribute .ipa’s and .apk’s on the Web just like Windows and Mac software still predominantly is.
    • 1y ago
  • leptons 1y ago
    I'm fine with Google and Apple having App stores, so long as I'm not forced to use them. They should compete like everyone else. The walls of the walled garden have to be torn down. They still get to have a garden, they just can't lock unwitting people inside of it.
    • jonny_eh 1y ago
      If it's good enough for Mac, it's good enough for iPhone.
    • gpm 1y ago
      Walls to keep apps out should be fine, but they should have to have gates to let the consumers out - i.e. a method to install other apps (not through the app store) that have every bit the same level of access as the device manufacturer's apps. There should be two levers used to achieve this. One is anti-trust style legislation. The other is patent misuse legislation. If you try and prevent consumers from running software on hardware they bought from you to make a profit, you shouldn't be allowed to prevent consumers from buying the same hardware from someone else - that's what patents do - they create government enforced monopolies on the hardware. You should be required to invalidate (donate to the public domain) every patent on the hardware if you want to sell hardware where you get to profit off your monopoly on letting developers write software for the hardware. These Epic rulings are better than nothing, but I can't help but feel that their solution of "make Apple distribute software they don't like in their app store" is the wrong one.
      • scripturial 1y ago
        A company can lock the hardware but not the software, or lock the software but not the hardware? I’ve not heard this idea before, it sounds like an extremely logical idea. It would easily be achieved by splitting apple in two. I wonder if there are any downsides to that? The “walled garden” of hardware and software does have some benefits, but the cost to society is too high.
      • xp84 1y ago
        Is anyone proposing making Apple distribute software? If so, though, pretty sure just allowing sideloading instead would satisfy all of Apple’s critics including the government. It’s Apple who insists that all roads onto the iPhone must go through them (and give them 30% of your gross revenue)
  • ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
    It's also insane how what was considered dystopia for desktop computing silently happened for mobile devices: a corporation controlling the software stack and using cryptography against the users to control precisely what software they are allowed to run on their "own" devices. Yes, in principle Android phones can be rooted, but in practice this breaks Play Integrity and you are now locked out from a huge range of apps. Google and Apple have silently achieved Microsoft's wet dream from the "trusted platform" era of effectively making it impossible for free and open source operating systems to compete with their own.
    • plokiju 1y ago
      You don't need to root an android to install apps from outside the play store
      • ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
        What I meant is if I want to run an open source OS like LineageOS. In principle this is possible, but Play Integrity will refuse to work when you have a custom ROM.
        • anticensor 1y ago
          Some apps go far beyond that and actively check your installed apps against a whitelist and refuse to work if anything unknown is found.
  • tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
    It does deserve a fine and/or criminal forfeiture of the revenue they made from the app store monopoly. If Apple had to repay let's say the difference between what they charged and what a reasonable fee would be (let's say 10%), for the entire time they've been doing it, that would put "a bit" of a dent into their pocketbook and serve as an effective deterrent.
  • anticensor 1y ago
    > Apps should be web installs. That would not work with iPhone security model, as iPhone assumes the user is inexperienced.
• Nevermark 1y ago
  I like the idea of civil judgements that require responsible individuals to remove themselves from the company. And void any forward looking renumeration in their contracts. Personal fines too, such as returning past remunerations during the problematic time in question. Salaries. Stock grants. There is no such thing as an incentive, that doesn't incentivize someone. Relatively small fines relative to revenues and profits don't incentivize anything. Alternatively, if fines really were big enough to turn large companies around (i.e. not just the enforced, but other companies seeing the enforcement), heads would roll, but would they be the right ones given those in charge are unlikely to fire themselves? And shareholders are the ones really paying the fines, are they really the culprits? The incentives to act in good faith, should be placed very directly on the individuals whose choices dictate the good/bad faith. Starting and staying largely with the CEO, and the direct line of reports from the CEO down to the relevent decisions. You don't want anyone who mattered to have cover. You want CEO's policing their own, and their reports pushing back upward against poor directives. The only cover for relevent actors would be a record of pushing back against those who pushed through poor behavior. TLDR: Limited liability should protect non-managing shareholders, but not bad actors within a company. Decisions makers should always be held directly responsible for their decisions. Any other system is perverse.
  • Terr_ 1y ago
    > I like the idea of civil judgements that require responsible individuals to remove themselves from the company. As long as their job isn't to P.L.E.A.S.E. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfWVV533RHE&t=85s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfWVV533RHE&t=85s
  • schmidtleonard 1y ago
    > There is no such thing as an incentive, that doesn't incentivize someone. It's wild how the public discourse on incentives is so split. On one hand, the poor are guilty until proven innocent of six dimensional chess to eek "unearned" pennies from social programs, yet the very idea that mega billionaires might pull easy, obvious levers for unethical mega million payouts is one that must beg and scrape for consideration.
  • tsimionescu 1y ago
• Gareth321 1y ago
  The judge referred the case for review of contempt of court, which makes individuals responsible for their criminal actions, and carries possible prison sentences. The judge has clear evidence of lying under oath and withholding evidence, and people have gone to prison for less. Alex Roman appears primarily culpable, but given the evidence reported, Tim Cook may also be complicit, and others. There is a real chance they are arrested at some point.
  • sosull 1y ago
    For me (IANAL), reading the judgment was initially shocking primarily for its facts and tone, rather than having any understanding of the legal consequences. I initially skipped over the phrase 'contempt of court' because the phrase seems so familiar from TV. But on reflection, it's the most consequential part of the document because, as you say, it has actual consequences for the people involved.
  • Clubber 1y ago
    Lying under oath would catch a perjury charge as well. In the United States, the general perjury statute under federal law classifies perjury as a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to five years.
  • autobodie 1y ago
    >There is a real chance they are arrested at some point. Let's put money on it. I'll put $10k on it.