Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account(9to5mac.com) |
Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account(9to5mac.com) |
> “Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies. As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program.”
Apple backed down, like they did a week ago with PWAs.
Epic could have avoided all this by just responding to Apple and signing the EU Addendum affirming they would stick to the laws. Instead they wanted to get into the news cycle.
This is the policy they have to agree to: https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/download/alterna...
Apple (and Google) need to be saved from themselves sometimes.
Meanwhile the repeated reversals are making Apple look guilty and nefarious.
Except all of us who value privacy and security.
Face it: the major competition between app stores is not going to be on price, but a race to the bottom on who can allow apps to fuck over users the hardest.
I think their strategy is to move the point of reference for future negotiations to an extreme end of the spectrum of what could still be considered to comply with the letter of the law.
Remember all this DMA stuff is coming from the same organization that wants to force Chrome and Firefox to accept TLS certificates issued by governments for any website they want: https://therecord.media/eu-urged-to-drop-law-website-authent...
Regulators don't seem to have had anything to do with it.
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So what changed? Apple tells 9to5Mac that it has held further discussions with Epic. The result is that Apple has received proper commitment that Epic will play by the rules as legally defined.
“Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies. As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program.”
"""Even with screenshots, and assuming no false claims (which IIRC are entirely legal so long as you don't swear under oath), there's plenty of ways to mislead by omission while saying only true things.""" — works just as well in either direction.
Regulators have to look closely, if they take it on trust it's one Tim's word vs. the others'.
Not fully the truth, however -- according to APPLE, who are quoted in this one article. Tim Sweeny tweeted that the change was due to the EU DMA political proponents applying pressure to Apple.
The truth is not known, and it's not limited to Apple's side.
This smells, you know? The timing is just so precise to be a coincidence.
They fear the spotlight on the fact that even on alternate stores only accounts controlled by Apple can publish apps, which might become the focus of new regulations
Methinks this crowd loves regulation a bit too much.
Disagree. EU regulators act quickly. Here's the commissioner for Internal Market of the Eu: "I take note with satisfaction that following our contacts Apple decided to backtrack its decision on Epic exclusion. From Day 2, #DMA is already showing very concrete results!" https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1766167580497117464
The EU told Apple that breaking the law would have dire consequences. That's the only reason Apple backed down.
Stop spreading Apple propaganda.
> The termination of Epic Games Sweden AB’s Apple developer account was communicated in a letter from Mark Perry, a lawyer representing Apple, to Epic’s lawyers:
> Mr. Sweeney’s response to that request was wholly insufficient and not credible. It boiled down to an unsupported “trust us.” History shows, however, that Epic is verifiably untrustworthy, hence the request for meaningful commitments. And the minimal assurances in Mr. Sweeney’s curt response were swiftly undercut by a litany of public attacks on Apple’s policies, compliance plan, and business model. As just one example: https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1762243725533532587?s=20.
Maybe Tim sent more than a two sentence reply to Phil to get it straightened out. It's anyone's guess at this point.
—
[0]: https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/apple_epic_developer_acco...
Apple is a big company and they have more than 100 VPs. This naturally creates "tier" between them, since a single CEO cannot manage all of them.
> At what point is a person responsible for the consequences of their actions regardless of intent?
It depends, but when it's something like fighting back against one of the most powerful supranational government entity like EU, the most senior leadership as well as the board must be involved. Not even Tim Cook cannot decide it alone and they clearly didn't want to escalate this matter to that level so quickly pulled it back.
They’re not low tier by any stretch compared to most employees. They’re still high level leaders.
Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618673 - March 2024 (980 comments)
But banning epic was just pathetic baby behavior.
I hope epic launches the epic game store for iOS and its dogshit but cheaper and the gacha gravy boats all jump ship
It's just so insane how fast lawyers can bring the image, will and industry at large to it's knees. I think Apple's legal team should really take a hint (and a hit) from all of us in this industry. You're hurting Apple and the entire dev community more than you're helping.
They were a threat yesterday, but they're not a threat today?
They weren't a threat yesterday either but, what, an automated process or a rogue intern wrote those pr statements? You leave the keys to those accounts just lying around for any flunky to post from like that?
There is no non-clown-car way to explain it away.
There was communication before Apple approved Epic's Swedish subsidiary to get an account, and there could very well have been other omitted communication as part of this exchange and after as part of the resolution.
It is "Forming, Storming, Norming, ... " (Tuckman's stages of group development)
Forming = setting up the technical and business solution for DMA
Storming = arguing due to the newly experienced dynamics of power/control
Norming = CEO stepping in the get a resolved balance in what to do next
Phil Schiller would have been the point man on the business solution (you can hear his tone of voice in the News communications and now see his private messaging as released by Sweeney).
The regulator involvement would have gone via the CEO route, who would have had to resolve the conflict with his deputised point man (Phil).
Companies are just collections of people. Maybe they share world view or a values system, but they are still just people. So human psychology is a relevant (and I argue the most significant) factor coming into play here.
If there was a market logic, I think it would be that they'd prefer the alternative marketplace provider be someone like Amazon, and then have Fortnite be an app in that store. So the commercial disputes then are deflected away from Apple/Epic animosity.
The original business case for 3G wireless networking was "Girls-Games-Gambling". The business case for alternative app marketplaces is a similar content argument "Games-Gambling&Crypto-Porn". Maybe this is part of what is keeping Meta/Amazon/Google away. Those folks can swallow a Core Tech Fee (although would be a significant friction point for sure).
I think the fundamental root problem here is EC are trying to lower prices to businesses by attempting to foster competition which might lower prices. But the actual solution is to directly mandate lower prices, and keep the gatekeepers with their current control points and systems. In other words, consider App Store commissions as actual Taxes. And we know from history that "taxes without representation" lead to revolution.
You have the choice to buy a Samsung phone instead of an Apple phone; most people don’t have the choice to switch governments.
Some had a nice childhood or brain cells and recognize the difference between a dictatorship and a government working in their favor to protect them from big duopols disrupting competition
So according to Apple [edit] one isn't allowed to say bad things about a company publicly or they are allowed to ban your account? Interesting view.
Apple wants to show that they can’t be brought to their knees.
Epic wants to show that they can get away with shit.
The EU wants to show that they have teeth and are to be feared.
In the meantime, the only organization with the actual final say, the CJEU, is off forgotten in these debates and is currently warming up to accept and adjudicate Apple’s appeal for the ~$2B fine based on art. 102 TFEU.
Apple and Epic are private parties, and the EC is just an executive body. The CJEU in this is analogous to SCOTUS.
The best we can do as bystanders in the meantime is asses on existing principles whose flexing actually has some power behind it.
Epic’s contract with Apple was terminated prior to all this. The US courts have their blessing for this. Epic tried to get unbanned, most notably after changes in Korea, and Apple said they weren’t interested.
Now Epic pulled a stunt and was stupid enough to publish the emails. Based on the time and date of those emails and their public announcement that they “got their dev account back,” we can surmise that Epic just created a new account with the information of their newly erected Swedish entity. This process is 99% automated.
Afterward, they emailed Apple. Not to get permission to return but to state that they are back. That’s when the ball started rolling.
To enter into a valid contract, there needs to be mutual assent. Leaving nuance by the wayside, that means that both parties needed to actually want to enter into a contract with one another.
In the US, this used to be measured against a subjective standard but later shifted to an objective standard that boils down to whether a reasonable person would consider it an acceptance of an offer. In the EU, it’s still a subjective standard where intent to enter a contract is essential.
All of this is to say that if push comes to shove, no court, especially not a European one, is going to consider Epic simply creating a new account when Apple has made it clear time and time again that they don’t want to do business with them, to be sufficient for forming a valid legal agreement.
Without a valid legal agreement, the status quo prior to this event is leading. This being a situation in which Apple and Epic don’t have an agreement.
The DMA doesn’t have provisions that would force parties to enter into an agreement and force them to do business with each other. This is because it wouldn’t be able to withstand adjudication by the CJEU but also because the EU would never want to open Pandora’s box like that. The implications of that would be quite literally beyond comprehension.
So if there’s no valid contract and the EU doesn’t have the power to force one, ask yourself whose flexing is merely a flex and whose flexing is backed by the power of the CJEU? Who’s doing who a favor here?
We know at least of one party that they consistently go out of their way to make a point, even when the underlying issue they use as motivation is already moot. The point being made is that their teeth are truly sharp. So why not use those teeth in this instance and chomp into the flesh. Are we to believe that they’ve lost their appetite for their favorite meal?
Right as their latest pet project has gone into effect no less?
After being embarrassed by their prey who was able to convince the courts to reach into their mouth and reveal that those teeth are not as sharp as they’ve been made out to be almost a decade ago? An embarrassment that they’re still trying to undo in court at this very moment?
If someone who was so shamelessly neutered had the actual power to draw blood by chomping down into the flesh, would it be likely they’d rather growl?
I don’t think so.
Almost every developer pays 15%. You only pay 30% if you earn more than a million dollars a year from the App Store.
Like, there's no strategy at all here? Just keep swinging and hope you land a blow that breaks through the armor? This is how my 15 year old plays VR games.
What's to prevent them from changing their mind and blocking Epic again? What if Tim Sweeney says something else to hurt Apple's feelings in the future? Apple has too much free rein over removing access to this market, and while it may be a market that Apple has made, the EU is clearly requiring Apple to open up the market for others with the only restrictions being those where the app store or the apps themselves are damaging to consumers in the marketplace.
I think there is these 2 things to consider:
Obviously this will change nothing for most people. Baseline, 99.9% people will not be doing anything different today than yesterday. I think the way Apple acts is ridiculous and outrageous, but I already thought that and already don't have an iphone. My wife doesn't even know who Epic is or anything about ios developers or 30% or any of that, and nothing is changing about her iphone. Nothing changes in either case.
But there will be some subset of current Apple customers who see these actions as exposing an attitude they don't want to reward, enough to stop being Apple customers. Maybe it's the latest thing that adds to the constant stream of other criticisms that they've always heard but have been just excusing or dismissing but eventually they see something they decide is "see enough smoke, maybe time to stop doubting there's a fire". It's not a large group but not zero either.
But will there ever be anyone that goes the other way? Is there any such thing as a current Android user who sees Apple do this, and specifically because of the way Apple treats developers, that convinces them to switch TO Apple? Well there's at least one of every imaginable freak out there but there certainly can't be a class of these.
You're almost certainly listening to loud voices online, who do not reflect majority opinion
The government's trust, yes.
That's the issue with all these providers. Every couple of weeks there's a story from someone whose Google account was suddenly closed with no way to access their emails or pictures again.
Once you buy a smartphone today you and everybody who wants to do further business with you are at the mercy of a monopolist. For Apple 100%, for Google only 98% because you could side-load. But not a secure and practical solution today.
But this is not about Apple's right as a company to refuse any business with Epic, they still have that right.
This is about Apple not complying with a law that targets them due to their anti-competitive behavior; a law that requires them to give the means to operate an App Store competitor to anyone who requests it.
Apple is the one who decided to require an Apple developer account in order to operate an App Store competitor, so they effectively gave up their right to refuse any business with Epic by adding this unnecessary requirement.
If all restaurants are Taco Bell, is it reasonable to allow such bans by taco bell?
I personally think it’s silly to believe that Apple cares even a little about Epic’s criticism. They probably thought they had a legitimate case that would let them stomp out a potential big App Store competitor before it could get off the ground.
No, according to Apple, they believed Epic was going to violate their developer agreement again, and when they asked Sweeney for a commitment he sent them a two sentence email. His public actions were only a modifier on top of his seeming lack of committal and previous history of being a bad actor on Apple’s platform.
Spotify says bad things about Apple all the time, but they've never been banned because they've never violated Apple's rules.
I don't really think that's according to DF, more so Apple.
On the other hand, I'm definitely not saying this is okay or sane just because it's standard practice in the US. It's also how we got legalized segregation and we had to pass laws carving out exceptions to create protected classes such that you're not allowed to refuse service because a person is black, for instance. Just doing this splintered the country and created the modern GOP with its southern strategy.
So it's nice to see these large web companies having to respect the laws of other jurisdictions and not just the US with its hallowed history of property rights over all else, going all the way back to chattel slavery. If the EU can force saner norms on the web, I'm all for it.
There are enough really obvious counterexamples to that statement that I wonder why you'd write it.
I think you mean Black 3.0 (or the other versions from the same artist) which cannot be used by Anish Kapoor.
Worth nothing that the artist making that paint is british and not american.
Apple's instigating act was a last-minute reversal on the eve of the DMA, it was never going to go unnoticed. Right or wrong, an inquiry was issued and Epic's complaint was resolved - it's up to Apple to "respond" now. Despite your logic, I don't think it would be wise for Apple to see this as an opportunity to flex. Europe is not going to change their mind, and punishing Epic isn't worth the money they would make Apple anyways. It's less about flexing at this point, and more envisioning what a smart path forward even looks like for Apple in a post-DMA reality.
> The DMA doesn’t have provisions that would force parties to enter into an agreement
> Are we to believe that they’ve lost their appetite for their favorite meal?
So? Apple is seeing things if they think any of this will (or should) stop a motivated competitor. Turning this into bloodsport does not benefit the butchering pig, Apple's reversal here is easily explained as an act of self-preservation. Their initial stance was hardly defensible unless you could feel the $AAPL weighing down your performance index. Crushing Epic is not a reasonable goal given the extraordinary legal danger it exposes them to.
The Apple shareholders are not having their eyes light up with dollar-signs in light of the recent response. This is a dangerous and petty road to walk, with ostensibly no financial benefit and the possibility of setting a negative precedent.
Picking these petty fights or whining about getting fined is not helpful, certainly not to Apple and their shareholders. It's hard not to conclude that Apple leadership is making stupid emotional decisions rather than rational ones, which is especially dumb when you're running a trillion dollar company.
Since, ultimately, his duty as a CEO is to prioritize the financial wealth of shareholders. If he just complied with the EU then he'd be voted out by the board by the end of the week.
Is he going overboard? I think so. But I've also never owned a $2T+ company with investors and an entire government breathing down my neck.
Most companies like Facebook and Microsoft quietly comply with the rules as best they can with as little fanfare as possible. Maybe after paying a fine or two. As far as I know, there hasn't been any oustings because of that.
I feel like the whole fiduciary responsibility bit is always the foundation of terrible arguments. As if every individual choice that earns a dollar is therefore forced.
Earning multiple billion dollar fines is not serving shareholders. Sabotaging the future is not serving shareholders. Destroying goodwill is not serving shareholders.
Apple's various tantrums and desperate clutching onto their market hasn't remotely been beneficial for the company, and I'd argue it is a big reason the company has started plateauing. Like how Valve went from being a game maker to being a purveyor of gambling crates and keys, Apple is desperately pimping for every bit of rent-seeking and service fees.
> “I take note with satisfaction that following our contacts Apple decided to backtrack its decision on Epic exclusion. From Day 2, #DMA is already showing very concrete results!” Breton said on Twitter/X.
We can't be certain it was the EU's pressure that made Apple react, but anything else seems rather unlikely.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/08/fortnite-...
This fallacy plays out a lot in politics. "Epic has lied in the past, so all parties involved must be lying."
I can't take both of them on faith alone, because at least one of them must be wrong. I'm not qualified to decide between them, so I should weight them equally. Public statements from the parties, or fans of the parties, are reasonable to suspect of being tactical with the truth even when no falsehoods are stated, rather than giving a complete picture.
In this case, they suspended the account, put themselves further into the spotlight, and then reactivated the account.
I think Apple may behave more creditably from here on out.
Hold in mind that everything involves trade offs. Authoritarianism is really good at monomaniacal focus on something that the dictator thinks is important, they just tend to fail at all the other stuff. And it is fine - indeed, remarkably effective - as long as people can leave when the focus isn't benefiting them.
Democracy sucks at pretty much everything except being flexible in the face of change and empowering voters. You do not want your food supply being run according to democratic principles, you want it to work.
[0] And most open source projects AFAIK
Epic makes false statements because they have a megalomaniac CEO running the show, Apple on the other hand generally tries to avoid legal and PR troubles and has multiple teams of lawyers who review every public statement on an issue.
I'm sure that some teachers, as well as parents who have seen large credit card bills for Fortnite lootboxes, are grateful that Apple is aggressively targeting one of the banes of their existence. If anything, they'll be disappointed that Apple blinked and let Fortnite continue to exist!
In seriousness, though, I do wonder if some of the sheen of "you need to have blue iMessage bubbles to be one of the cool kids" has been irrevocably damaged by this. Perhaps Apple reversed its decision rapidly enough. I suppose only time will tell, but at minimum it's the type of risky move that seems desperate on Apple's part.
They almost certainly are, which is why the reasoning of EU’s predictable involvement was what triggered Apple’s reinstatement of Epic’s account seems dubious to me.
Blocking Fortnite updates on iOS devices was an inconvenience for users compared to terminating the use of an entire gaming marketplace due to the next round of vigilante contract violation by Epic.
Apple has said as much for the main developer account in the past.
It is highly unlikely Epic would publish anything in the App Store, however, even ignoring the bad blood.
Part of operating an App Marketplace is that you are agreeing to the EU rules which include a core technology fee. So even an app with no in-app purchasing on the Apple App Store would cost them a substantial amount to publish.
Apple overplayed their anti-competitive card, so now they'll be permanently scrutinized.
This is the EU commissioner.
Definitely don't feel obligated to answer, but may I ask what country or region you're from? And if you do any ios or Mac development?
Apple is not a monopoly anywhere on the planet and has no such requirement.
It sounds like the problem isn't Google being able to refuse service, but instead that Google doing that has the power to kill your smaller company. No one company should be allowed to have the power to decide which companies live or die.
If I founded a company that specializes in manufacturing Pokemon toys under contract, and Nintendo (for whatever reason) pulls the contract, it's perfectly normal for the business to no longer be viable and to be liquidated.
We're a society of laws and they apply equally to everyone. If you don't like the laws either vote accordingly, talk to your representative, organise a political action, or leave for a more agreeable jurisdiction.
Also, the US fined Airbus $582 million in 2020.
None of the large tech companies lack of embarrassment.
Google just needs to allow for the selection of a default browser, provide links in Google search to competing sites (which Google will still make money off of with their ad delivery network anyway), opt-out option for sharing data between YT, Search, Maps, etc. As well as allow outside payment processors for apps.
For Microsoft and Google, none of these changes are affecting their cash cow. Cloud computing for MS, and ads for Google.
These DMA changes are affecting Apple's cash cow, the iPhone. and their second largest cash cow, Services and IAP. Apple has a LOT more on the line with these DMA changes than MS or Google do.
You have no idea that this is what happened. You're the one spreading propaganda.
Why propagandize it at all?
EPIC hates Apple and wants to see the App store dead. Apple reasonably didn't trust EPIC not to play games with the DMA. The EU asked EPIC to give an assurance that they would play by the rules and then forced Apple to accept that assurance. Neither of them won anything. Apple is forced to let EPIC in, and EPIC is forced to accept that Apple is complying with the DMA.
That fits the facts. EPIC isn't a good guy. Apple isn't a good guy. The EU isn't a hero. Why try to paint any of them this way?
No they don't. They are absolutely still able to start a lawsuit, as is the EU.
We likely won't have to wait more than a couple weeks to see the lawsuits filed.
Please don't try to start flame wars on HN. You should read the guidelines:
Smart people can make mischief visible or invisible without necessarily getting caught defecting or cooperating.
Oops did I draw that regulator’s attention to the room where we keep the bodies? Silly me.
You don't need to do radical changes, just small actions like do not steal the tips students send to teachers.
Going full-goblin mode and demanding 30% of all the money that moves through a phone is what is destroying Apple.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/21/in-a-reversal-apple-is-now...
So then this would be the process of not accepting Apple's interpretation of the DMA.
Thats my point. That is the exact process for which they would be rejecting Apple's interpretation.
So no, they don't have to accept Apple's interpretation, instead they can go through this process.
An ideology that helps you build and grow a new platform may not be equally suitable for running a dominant platform on which significant parts of the world economy depend.
Includes the tweet as well as confirmation they that the commission did talk to Apple on Thursday
If any official action was taken it would have to be documented with a case: https://digital-markets-act-cases.ec.europa.eu/search
You don’t want an official investigation, they are a complete nightmare that eat up months of work hours. Much better to spend a couple of days making sure you can give the correct answers on the first pass. Unless of course you genuinely believe the regulators are pushing beyond their remit, but know you’re voluntary signing up for an expensive and protracted fight.
The EU has an long tradition of "conversations" and "questions" with an unstated "give the right answer and you can avoid an unpleasant official action".
You're right there is no official casework. That is also entirely irrelevant to the issue of whether or not Apple caved under pressure.
(In some cases this is itself somewhat formalised.)
My guess is that they saw that all happening but Epic provided them a letter saying they double pinky promised, cross their hearts, will obey by the rules this time, which Apple will later try to use in court later on. Otherwise it doesn’t seem worth the risk prompting clearly foreseeable regulator action.
Apple banned Epic the day before DMA came into effect when doing this sort of thing was still legal, they 100% saw this. They did probably bet on the chance EU would overlook it if they did it before the law came into effect, they lost that bet but they thought it was worth a try.
After all, legal advice can usually be summed up as “if you do anything, someone can fuck you”, and do nothing isn’t a good business strategy.
Legal doesn't make decisions like this. That's not what they are paid to do.
Legal advises the executives of the consequences of decisions like this.
And if there's one thing that you should expect from people in positions of incredible power (executives), it's that they often believe that they are immune to the consequences of their decisions.
Most of the time they are right. Sometimes, they are not.
It's entirely possible the regulator asked EPIC to make an assurance that they would comply with Apple's rules, which are legal under the DMA, and then told Apple they'd need to accept the assurance.
If EPIC does now pull a stunt like they did in the US, the EU will now have reason to treat them with suspicion, and Apple will be able to point to the assurance as evidence that they accepted Apple's rules.
The main points of contention are: - the technology fee (the cost of advertising has already cut badly into their margins in the wake of identifier reform); - the clause making the Addendum also binding on any corporate parents and subsidiaries — the game industry is pretty consolidated and this limits the options for independent game studios which are also subsidiaries;
The fee is particularly nasty for hypercasual games, where a very realistic scenario has you paying for millions of installs, only to find your monetization lacking and you paying additional fees to the platform, of all things.
There are very real concerns with the Addendum and making signing only about Epic’s bona fides is reductive and wrong.
Dma is mostly about choice for a couple of developers. Not for users. No way will Epic publish games on their own and Apples store, they did not do it with the Epic Store either. Consumers did not have a choice where to buy when Epic bought exclusive access.
> Earning multiple billion-dollar fines is not serving shareholders.
Correct, and until Apple is threatened with fines, I believe they'll continue doing this until it no longer serves them.
I don't find the tantrums to be the cause of the plateauing, I think they're a response to it. The iPhone is their #1 money-maker (by a massive margin at that), and the smartphone market as a whole has been plateauing. That's why we've seen a shift over the years towards services, which is their #2 money-maker now. When the DMA strongly affects both of these revenue streams, tantrums will ensue.
I'm not agreeing that what they're doing is correct, and I think it's shitty for a company that I consider the reason I got into the dev/design space to begin with to start acting like this. But I do see some business logic behind why they're doing what they're doing, even when it goes against what I know is correct.
Commission fines Apple over €1.8 billion over abusive App store rules for music streaming providers.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
Maybe tripping up the same entity that's already on to you with other fines for similar behavior is not that smart.
The dip started 2 days prior on March 4, the day the EC announced their ~$2B fine based on TFEU, which has nothing to do with the DMA. One the appeal is filed it’ll go back up, as it’s already almost back to before that news. And then a week later when Cook farts, it’ll dip again.
Such is the nature of stocks, at least on the short term. On the long term, 1Y and up, it’s solidly in the green.
Not to mention that stock prices and revenue (which is what they’re talking about) are two separate things.
2 bil € is a fair bit of change but also something that will be in appeals for years.
Nobody would be going after Apple if they had simply stopped their monopoly pricing scheme.
Its too late for that now. Now Apple is going to be forced, under threat of government action, to stop its anti-competitive actions.
If there's one company I don't expect that from, it's Apple. They may have highly dubious ethics but they are damn good at business and marketing, and I would be utterly shocked if they don't position themselves as the safe, privacy-friendly official app store. For people who don't enable side-loading, I wouldn't expect they'll even notice any changes.
And I'm sure Facebook is anticipating not having to ask for permission to hoover up all your personal data. Sure you don't need facebook, but if you want to be using WhatsApp to communicate with your friends and family, you might not have a choice. Shady companies that sell shady spyware to schools "for the children" are looking forward to a much easier time rolling out the most invasive ideas they have. The ad companies are I'm sure salivating over telemetry libraries with extra detailed modes for non-Apple app store installations.
But most of all, I look at Android where alternative app stores are possible with essentially no cost, and even with Amazon's enormous resources behind it, they could not get an alternative app store to catch on. I can't think of any reason why it would be different on iOS, so ultimately I suppose I expect this to go nowhere and a few years from now there will be the epic game store and the main app store and everything for nearly everybody will just be on the app store like it is now. The alternative stores will just have the apps that Apple wouldn't approve, like porn apps or privacy invasive, etc
You are thinking of the mob. Thankfully here in the US official actions are generally done in view of the public.
The “probe” here would be, at least in the first instance, usually mostly letters asking questions. Note that it is “reportedly”; the media didn’t find this out because the DOJ had a banner on its website saying “we are investigating an alleged glass house”. That comes later, if things are not resolved.
Considering this hasn't happened on Android yet, I doubt you are in real trouble. Like it's not that they can really gain extra permissions (other than I guess tracking anything the app already has access to, but that isn't any different than currently) because they are sandboxed by the OS and limited in access through the permission system... I HOPE? RIGHT? @APPLE
And on the side of other app stores: there is F-Droid which is decently popular for OSS apps.
As far as I can tell, Apple doesn't plan to let this happen.
Combined with the "must be very big" requirement it better fits what is going on in the tech world.
Yes, you have a choice once every couple of years while you might want to install an app several times a year. Free markets would also be the wrong word to describe the situation.
Decades ago people were crying out against it, but nobody with power listened because they thought we just wanted to steal music[0]. Well, we did, but that didn't make us wrong. Now the world economy is owned by a handful of oligopolist-elected dictators who have maximally exploited the laws in question to make meaningful competition literally illegal.
No, seriously, try and ship a phone without big tech's blessing. It won't work. Hell, Amazon and Microsoft both tried and failed. Everyone only writes apps for Google Play and iOS, and any attempt to make them work elsewhere is a criminal felony.
[0] To be clear, their real concern was finding ways to legally bind China to pay us for "our IP" on pain of being shut out of world markets. Dictatorship is fractal.
Why can I run code Apple loathes on my Mac ?
A customer is only looking for either iOS or Android apps, and isn't going to choose an Android app if they have an iPhone, or vice versa (IOW, iOS apps don't compete with Android apps).
Imagine only one company sold diesel fuel, and only one sold gasoline. Wouldn't you say they each had a monopoly?
The DMA was always phrased from the wrong perspective (which is just classic EU, they literally cannot ever get regulation right). The correct phrasing is: once a computer operating system achieves a certain level of market adoption (say, 50M+ active installations), it is designated as a systemically critical operating system. Among other regulations, one thing systemically critical operating systems must allow is the independent and unrestricted installation and execution of applications from the internet.
Regulating the market (App Store) itself is just dumb. Apple should not be forced to have Epic Games as a customer. It destroys trust in the App Store's review process, and legitimately does from my perspective infringe on Apple's rights as a business to do business with partners as they please. There's a gulf of difference between "forcing the App Store to distribute some application" and "allowing that application to be freely distributed on the internet". Regulation should be specifically targeted toward the second situation; and leave the App Store alone.
It is Apple who decided that third-party software distributers must comply with certain restrictions, and must sign a contract with them.
And it was Apple which tried to prevent Epic from signing that contract, and who's now backtracking… before it's forced to do so by the EU.
Android allows the installation of alternative app stores but Google still retains large effective control over the app market.
I would argue that the EU recognised that and therefore regulated Operating systems and app stores because the former one isn't enough apparently.
If things continue along this trajectory we may see the utility argument at the store level and at the OS level.
Looking at how the electric power distribution industry is regulated it already works like this (at least here in Germany).
On the one hand grid operators are heavily regulated (as you say) and must allow companies without infrastructure to resell power to end customers.
On the other hand the actual owner of the last mile infrastructure is also forced to do business with all customers and has very little freedom to refuse(e.g. non-payment is a temporary valid reason).
We may very well see something similar in the software distribution market since it's becoming such an integral part of life.
In particular in this case, we have many pass example where even in the US, companies have be found to violate anti trusts law be either refusing or strongly conditioning doing business with a third-party.
The Digital Markets Act is all about profit-motivated businesses. It regulates markets, not charities. It's not anti-profit at all, just pro-competition, and Apple was attempting to stifle competition.
The entire point of DMA is to make sure platforms can’t use lock in to prevent others from joining the market for digital goods and services.
What terrifies Apple isn’t Fortnite, it’s that Epic will make a *better* AppStore.
That being said: it's probably a good thing it was Epic that Apple went after; Apple would probably have gotten away with going after a smaller company.
They then backed down after Open Web Advocacy ran surveys, an open letter and the EU started a investigation.
Eh. Backing down would be Apple allowing non-WebKit browsers to run PWAs.
> The gatekeeper shall allow providers of services and providers of hardware, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same hardware and software features accessed or controlled via the operating system or virtual assistant listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9) as are available to services or hardware provided by the gatekeeper. Furthermore, the gatekeeper shall allow business users and alternative providers of services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same operating system, hardware or software features, regardless of whether those features are part of the operating system, as are available to, or used by, that gatekeeper when providing such services.
Remember that it says "free of charge". 50 cents/install past 1M installs is not free of charge now is it?
Given the compensation level of their legal team I’d expect that they could see it coming and spare the public humiliation and brand damage.
I can’t believe this is real.
The stock dumped 10% almost immediately after the announcement, might also have something to do with it.
I’d love to see the faces of Cook and Schiller at this point.
Sept 10, 2021: Lost a court case, climbed a mountain, read hundreds of pages of legal papers, wrote some code. Just as determined as ever to fight on until there is genuine developer and consumer freedom in software, and fair competition in each mobile platform software component.
https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1436583527290654720?s=20
A time will come when Apple will have legitimate reasons to crack down on third-party app stores. Someone like Meta will invariably try some crap like sneaking VPNs into their apps so they can get complete surveillance on their users (ex. https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/).
Apple is going to have less credibility when they say "no, this is wrong" when this eventually happens if they keep screwing with Epic like this.
Instead of letting Apple make and enforce the rules, we should have laws in place that hold App Stores accountable for what they are selling, just like physical stores.
How did I know that she was the one opposing it? I'm not glad she's dead, but I am glad she isn't on the Senate any more.
Which probably boils down to one overzealous middle/higher manager trying too hard to be a good boi for superiors to get extra bonus... I don't think it panned as expected. Otherwise apple corporate culture is quite rotten.
Especially when you add the failed PWA move before, they're starting to look pretty bad.
But I suspect it'll take them more time until it fully sinks and until they are done testing their new boundaries.
Well done.
The simplest explanation for what happened with Apple this past few weeks is that there's no master plan. The EU told them the rules, they didn't take them seriously, now they're realizing a bit late that they can't afford not to respect the rules and they're scrambling to figure out what that means.
It's more like the EC told both sides to get some adults in the room and work it out. Since they clearly didn't force Apple to change any rules and Epic agreed to follow Apple's rules, I have no idea where all this chest-beating is coming from. Apple is still winning and the EC is still feckless.
I understand everyone feels good about increased competition with Apple—and hopefully it turns out well for users—but iOS is hurtling toward the same situation that exists on Windows, and I think the iOS experience is worse for it. It's definitely worse with the browser nag. So I don't call this a total win. It's a theoretical win, but I foresee it being about as much of a win as cookie banners are, when it comes to the actual, practical, day-to-day experience people have using this technology.
I wonder if something happened behind the scenes.
“Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies. As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program.”
If you think the EU got their shit together in 2 days, you're day dreaming.
Phil Schiller invited Epic to make assurances that they'd follow the terms of the agreement. Epic did. The EU didn't even have their shoes on.
You can safely ignore Tim Sweeney's twitter chest beating - it's marketing.
If you talk to the CEOs of large companies or miltary leaders, you find that they are unable to exert effective control of their organisations. The organisation will do whatever it wants to do. The leader can make their command but at every level through the organisation that command will be slightly subverted. The more layers, the less of that command will get through.
Since it's in the news, take for example Putin and Russia, Putin thought he had tank battalions that his lower downs had sold for parts decades ago. Based on the information in front of him, he should have taken Ukraine in several days regardless of resistance by the locals.
And whilst you might think it's impressive that he cut the budget in US congress to Ukraine, back-handed deals to send old Soviet equipment from 3rd party countries to Ukraine were made and now they are exhausted London is loaning Ukraine, Russia's money.
Putin's authoritarian Russia might be able to cut off the head of democracy but he's up against a five headed hydra. Democracy is a lot more scary than Authoritarism from a military perspective.
"You do not want your food supply being run according to democratic principles, you want it to work."
This is something that people don't really get, what's important is that the people delivering the food get the sack if they failed to do it. As long as that happens it's okay.
That's the reason why socialist and overly authoritarian countries have supply problems, they don't have an effective mechanism to replace failing organisations. Venezuela isn't able to extract Oil because the Oil dereks are run by the local dictator's family members.
It is not an illegal contract. It is a contract that Epic _hopes_ is illegal.
I don't get to ignore my home mortgage payments without consequence even if I believe in my truest of heart that giving money to a bank is wrong. In this metaphor, Apple here is the bank saying that Epic has a habit of not paying back loans, and has publicly stated how they think the loan they are applying for is 'hot garbage'.
The fact that Apple is now regulated is definitely not a symptom of the illegality of their terms. Definitely not.
The European Economic Zone sets regulations around economic policy. Their creation of the DMA was that while the markets did not have monopolistic abuse, that there were areas that still did not have _enough_ competition.
Now I would argue the DMA is misguided, because they are basically trying to regulate in a counter to the network effect. The problem is (for example) that even with barriers lowered, an upstart messaging app cannot compete with WhatsApp because they still cannot grow by the network effects the way WhatsApp did, because WhatsApp already exists and is popular. An upstart will still have to already be on target to become larger than WhatsApp in order to supplant them.
Alternative Marketplaces have been possible on Android for years and really haven't succeeded except in markets where Google Play is unavailable. Why would developers put time and effort into being where nobody is? How does anything in the DMA change their minds - better transaction fees on no sales?
The DMA does give companies an opportunity to innovate, such as how MacPaw is going to have a SetApp Marketplace which is a subscription service for mostly utility apps (similar to Apple Arcade as a first-party marketplace for games). But I would argue there is no way SetApp will be as popular as the App Store - it is a business opportunity, not market competition. I would say this is akin to F-Droid - it is an alternative marketplace on Android, but not one that really competes with Play.
Microsoft was acting like this in the 90s. I think history is just repeating itself with Apple.
So... the difference was Microsoft was winning those fights because their enemy was other products in the market. They'd tell Dell not to ship Netscape, and Dell would yank the product. They'd clone java, and websites would code to that to get IE compliance. They'd push ActiveX and bribe web properties to implement it, and they would. This wasn't fair, but it was at least in some sense "competition". (I mean, eventually MS would go on to lose control of all those levers, but over decades of timescale and generally due to market motion.)
Apple here is just flailing. It's a regulatory action, not a competitor. There's no feasible path to beating or evading EU law. Surely they know that, right?
Apple releases developer notes containing changes included in its betas. Such a change should obviously have appeared right away when iOS 17.4 beta 1 was released. It did not.
After two weeks of backlash, Apple did confirm it was removing the feature in a public statement. They just did not want to announce it publicly before.
After two other weeks of bigger backlash and the start of an EU investigation, they publicly announced they would not remove the feature after all.
They 100% intended to remove the feature, and 100% backed down.
Apple can talk to the Commission all they want and persuade them not to take action. However, they cannot bend the ECJ's ear. If someone forces the issue through the courts (yes, it's a slow procedure and yes the ECJ can choose not to pick up a case, but that's down to the skills of the involved legal heads), what will matter is the directive as written.
Apple will likely continue to drag their feet, but the outcome looks fairly inevitable. It might well come when we've all moved on to "AI, show me data" instead of using browsers, but it will very likely come.
There was a grace period for compliance for companies found in violation, because that determination was made after it came into force, not before.
You can't find a company to violate a regulation that's not in force, and it's reasonable to give a company in violation of complex piece of law (that's never been tested) some period to comply.
But that doesn't mean the law is not already in force.
So technically they "worked it out" but only after a "parent" threatened to send them to bed without dinner.
Every country talks 'free trade!' out of one side of their mouth, and implements protectionism via various concerns about health/safety/fairness out of the other when it's expedient. The US isn't any different, it's just not tech companies we're worried about (except some clock app that the Gen Z kids are obsessed with).
But guess who pays the best bribes?
(that was free, I’ll take the downvotes)
"We are a walled garden and will not interoperate or tolerate alternatives" is in Apple's DNA, and no decision maker at any level at the company will risk suggesting otherwise for fear of being branded a traitor, even if it is a very good idea.
We are a walled garden and will not interoperate or tolerate alternatives"
Naturally there was a lot of backlash, and so Apple reversed their decision and will continue to support PWAs with WebKit in the EU. This suggests that perhaps the European Commission told Apple that it was okay to do this as it does seem to violate the "don't prioritize your own browser" rule, but as of the last I saw on this it was still unclear.
Maybe there were behind the scenes concessions made and I'm completely wrong, in which case I owe Apple management an apology. But my impression as an outsider is that there is no real strategy here; executives at the company seem to be throwing their weight around and picking fights at random, getting slapped down, and immediately retreating.
If you act like a bully, and then recede at the slightest resistance, you just come off looking like a fool.
There's an observation that computer programs tend to reflect the organizational structures of the company that developed them. I would go further and argue that company cultures are a reflection of the founders that built them.
In the case of Apple, Steve Jobs was an emotionally manipulative psychopath that was very good at conning people, making anyone he talked to buy into his bullshit. When he didn't get his way, he'd cry like a child and throw tantrums. Everyone at Apple absolutely lionized the shit out of Jobs, even during the interregnum period where the company was being torn apart by idiots. All of the upper management was his own hand-picked successors, who have largely continued doing exactly what Jobs was doing, just with higher scale.
The world largely did not notice this because the actual product (at least, when Jobs was actually in the driver's seat) was good. Part of the capitalist social contract is that we don't care about how the sausage was made so long as we aren't assuming the risk[0]. But this is still very much a religious cult that just so happens to be shaped like a for-profit corporation, run by people who were hand-picked by its dogmatic, emotionally unstable founder[1]. It just so happens to also employ actual geniuses.
In the Apple religion, there are commandments, and one of them is "thou shalt not install unauthorized third party software, for it is the malware of the beast". Like other religions, the commandments are based in some kind of plausible system of rules, we can absolutely Chesterton's Fence them, but that rationale has been forgotten by true believers who take them to axiomatic extremes. Apple is not exactly going to die on this hill[2], but they are going to try to make the system as restrictive as possible within the DMA's constraints, because they've RDF'd[3] themselves into thinking their greed is protecting users.
[0] Also, most of the people Jobs really fucked over were the kinds of people society did not care so much about in the 1980s.
[1] This also applies to the FSF, except it's rules are "thou shalt not bind the user to your tech cult". It's an anti-cult cult.
[2] Though I've had the urge to make fake sales pages for an Apple Nuclear weapons program and photoshop the words "POOR IMPULSE CONTROL" on Tim Apple's head.
[3] Reality Distortion Field, not Resource Description Framework
The App Store monopoly generates billions in ad revenue from app vendors advertising their apps on search results. That will take a huge hit if there's an alternate app store they can potentially pay a lot less to gain exposure.
Vision Pro is probably a gimmick along with the whole VR world right now, which will change soon too but overall I don't see anything exciting about apple.
Their pricing is infuriating and so are their decisions (laptop 8gb ram in 2024???)
To me it looks like they got stuck in the "this is what worked for us, so let's only do this" mentality and take no risks.
They stand on the shoulders of giants and most importantly on their cultural presence...
And the ARM changeover in the laptops has been so seamless, people seem to ignore the huge risks with switching architectures. And now everyone is chasing them for the same power/battery life.
They've had some missteps, but we need a few more years to really know if they have been left behind. Apple was never one to be first to do something.
Maybe they’ll manage to get LLMs running well locally with the new low-bit developments? Not my area. But for training/learning it seems like Apple is DOA. They have the same problem as AMD, no one is doing research with their hardware or software.
Intentionally shipping low RAM/unified memory quantities seems short sighted too. Maybe with a 16GB baseline they could do something special with local LLMs.
While Mr Perry prefers to parry words before a material blow lands, Mr Cook naturally avoids cooking an antitrust case.
Open store competition in the gaming area leading to steam being far in the lead, not the OS gatekeeper, is a proof that it allows for more choices for consumers and the better one taking the lead.
The mandated monopoly with 30% fee alternative is unreasonable.
The interests of their shareholders are literally the interests of their customers.
Apple makes incredible products, that billions of people pay significant money for, with many competitors that are much cheaper. Their shareholders reap the rewards of this.
If Apple customers hated Apple, they would not be Apple customers, and Apple would not be one of the most valuable businesses in human history.
One can argue whether this specific legislation is wise, but legally i don't think there's any limit to what the EU can mandate for goods sold in their market.
Where democracy decides it ends.
Edit: Misread the comment, sorry.
Setting standards is one of the oldest forms of regulation, ever since weights and measures were standardized to ensure people could trade more easily, ensuring that when you bought a pound of flour from one vendor it would be the same pound as the vendor across the street.
And they do that across _all_ sectors of industry, you only noticed the tech one because it's in the news you pay attention to, but everything from farming to textiles to tech to pharmaceuticals are heavily regulated so that the people that live in the EU can enjoy a reasonable standard of living.
But in this case benefiting the general public is easy because it does not hit a European company ( production in China, development in America) that is working hard to extract money which it sends abroad while avoiding paying taxes here (probably legally).
A good opportunity to reign Apple and friends in and score some "greater good" points in particular since the US government is also sceptical and mostly concerned with internal affairs at the moment.
They won't because they know Apple exiting would simply hand the market to those that can bear the harsh yoke of consumer regulation.
1. Split Apple into smaller companies
2. Operate Apple like an utility company
It's asinine that I, as a consumer, can pay over $1000 for a device and not be able to choose which software I can run on it because the developer of that device locks out access. It's even worse that the company I bought it from can arbitrarily disable the device, features, and services that I have paid for, and I have little to no recourse.
Maybe that's just me though. ;)
There is zero evidence of Epic doing anything on their part after that. There is, however, evidence of the EU Commission warning (if you can't parse "Under the DMA, there is no room for threats by gatekeepers to silence developers" as a warning, you may need to improve your functional reading skills) Apple and inquiring for explanation.
Tim Sweeney isn't chest beating. He is attributing this development to the EU. Chest beating would mean attributing this development to their own actions, which he is not claiming at all.
- You're still going to be paying us our 27%
- You screw around and we will clip your wings.
Incidentally, if you don't like the rules Apple has set up, start pushing for a law that you do want. If you happen to be in the US, actually write your representatives rather than just whine about it online to a bunch of other people.
Then did it again by publishing their correspondence with Apple.
Tell me more.
Yes. But note that armies are a hierarchy with little flexibility once orders start coming down. When democracies want to achieve outcomes they set up (subordinate) dictatorships. The army does not stop to vote in the middle of a war. Indeed, sticking to the Ukraine example, they suspended elections as I assume is usual in war.
Democracy is a better model of governance because the military can focus on winning wars. In a dictatorship, the military has to focus on keeping the dictator in power - otherwise the dictator will get rolled. Since authoritarianism can only do one thing at once, generally they have a weak military at the expense of stability.
I wouldn't say Nazi Germany had a weak military. They had problems with too many tank models (to appease Hitler?) but they only begain losing the war when everyone else that was against them got their act together. And of course, invading Russia. That one was stupid.
I know some here would welcome a single browser target, but I personally think it concentrates too much power with Google.
Privacy is a related concern. I think it’s only going to take one killer app to really launch an alternative App Store. A few years ago when Fortnite was super popular, Fortnite fans would have installed an Epic store in a heart beat if it meant they could play Fortnite.
Once an alternative App Store has significant power, I think they are going to be able to start eroding some of the iOS privacy guarantees. That will be done in the name of consumer interest - things are cheaper here because we can give you better, targeted ads! - but in the long run I don’t think teenagers getting some special Fortnite loot is in their best interests if it means tighter surveillance.
I could also see school districts and/or testing organizations require installations of super invasive anti-cheating apps. There have already been cases of school districts getting caught spying on kids with school issued laptop webcams.
In the end, Apple’s stubbornness and greed brought this on. If they would have been more reasonable, I think both the company and their users would be a lot better off.
I believe that overall the DMA is a good thing, there are some things I would change, but this gives me new perspective on the matter. Cheers.
> So isn't this fee just an extortion attempt?
That's up to the courts to decide, but Apple certainly hasn't painted themselves a favorable picture. When Dutch regulators tried pressing them to include alternative payment services, Apple continued demanding 27% of those transactions. Their disrespectful and obstinate behavior in the Netherlands is what made the DMA such an urgent act in the first place.
So all this will be well-worth keeping an eye on. The iPhone already turns record-breaking profits off hardware sales alone, it will be difficult for Apple to argue they're inherently deserving of taxing aftermarket transactions. At this point, "0%" is starting to seem like the only logical software fee for iOS.
Because Microsoft reneged on a deal. You make Apple sound petulant when they were standing up to a 800lb coercive monopoly.
After a life on windows and some periods on linux, apple managed to refine their os and hardware to the point where I can say, it doesn’t get in the way and it “just works”, which, I think, is what most professionals want.
Said another way, you might be right about US antitrust law, but when that law was written the technology didn't exist to create "vendor lock-in" on millions of products at once.
I am curious about the example though, from a legal perspective. Would the only seller of gasoline have a monopoly, even if other fuels were available, and the only barrier to using them was the switching cost of buying a new vehicle?
Edit: For what it's worth, wikipedia uses the word monopoly when "a single vendor controls the market for the method or technology being locked in to".
If you are flexing your muscles and end up loosing, you are probably loosing your jobs, because shareholders and everyone else will be angry with you
They can still be quite integrated, they just have to a allow a different distribution company compete without using the phone company's monopoly as a leverage against them and not use distribution company as a leverage to compete with other software developers i.e. pay the same 30% fee, bid for promotion in the store and use fair ranking in the search.
It's not the first time a huge corp gets split up once they reach end game and can't innovate in their own field anymore.
- The computing hardware company
- The accessory hardware company
- The operating system company
- The software company
- The cloud services company
- The app store company
- The music & video company
- The messaging company
"I take note with satisfaction that following our contacts Apple decided to backtrack its decision on Epic exclusion."
From Day 2, #DMA is already showing very concrete results!
https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1766167580497117464
The _marketed_ intent behind those regulation is a good one. The actual regulations are just favoring one player over the other: I guess the lobbyists were ahead of the process this time (good for them). As much as everyone would claim ignorance later, I'm not willing to give them the credit of being that stupid.
All he said is that it's the democratically elected officals that decide what laws companies have to obey. Just as they decide everything else about what what laws people have to obey.
You're right! I misread.
>Apparently the media zeitgeist is so strong with this now that even just saying "Democracy" triggers the thought.
Or I just misread the comment.
It doesn't matter where the power officially stems from, the decision making bandwidth and incentive structures govern results - and for companies that is a clear authoritarian model.
There can be, but it's not necessary in a democracy and you can design a democracy in which any action is subordinate to the demos should they choose to operate against it.
The only solace is that you can modify Android to the point where there's almost no Google interference whatsoever. But of course some apps choose to rely on that (e.g. Banking).maybe one day Apple will begrudgingly get to that point.
MS beat Apple to market by a considerable margin. Windows Mobile substantially predates the iPhone, and it was actually usable. (I had one of their flagship devices.)
But MS’s OS concept was incoherent, their UI was laggy, their web browser was unbearably slow despite arguably superior hardware, their form factor was not snazzy. And, unlike Apple, they utterly failed at marketing to consumers.
Also, Apple out their foot down against carrier nonsense, so Apple users didn’t have to deal with $14.99/mo for Verizon Location or whatever they called it. (Although, to be fair, the original iPhone didn’t have GPS. Blackberry had far superior hardware at the time and really ought to have been able to compete, but they didn’t.)
By the time the App Store showed up, it was pretty clear that Apple was beating MS.
This is the main point, not the "also". Apple's revolution was actually getting it in the hands of real life consumers who paid for cell phone plans. The tech was already there with blackberry, but you had to have business to afford it. Yes, the original iPhone itself was a technical marvel, but it would have been a dead fish if it wasn't for the at& t deal that came out as part of it.
windows was well windows 8 and everyone hated it and everything about it. (and pre-windows phone 8 it was to fragmented with to many incompatible versions and little 3rd party support)
Palm/HP WebOS was the real mobile OS with the best chance to win but failed because well HP... need i say more.
Apple didn’t bother, they used an entirely different UI from the start, and it was a UI aimed at everyone from kids to grandparents, not just tech people.
Microsoft execs had their heads buried too deep in their own asses to be able to understand what was needed at the time.
They pushed a platform (Windows phone) that lacked interesting features out of the box, lacked cloud services integration to fill the gap left by the lacking base features, and required Windows as a development platform (and, iirc, C# as well?). It didn't even have any particular windows-ecosystem speciality: no special exchange integration, no special windows pc integration, nothing. Microsoft could have exploited the same reasons they exploited with Azure, Office365 and the general enterprise: microsoft phones should just integrates perfectly with other microsoft stuff. It could have been the no-brainer choice: we use ActiveDirectory and Office365 as a suite, we'll get a Windows Phones as everything just works immediately. No, nobody had thought of that.
The value proposition was just not there.
So basically another walled garden, but dumber. And the hardware didn't have anything special to make it "worth".
Seriously, the original iPhone had little going for it technically. No GPS, poor data bandwidth, no apps, and minimal ability to make phone calls. (It took the combined efforts of Apple and AT&T a couple generations before you could reliably place a call.)
But it had a touch screen that felt nice, and you could watch videos and play music! The web browser actually performed well despite the low bandwidth. It could zoom. And Steve Jobs marketed it well, whereas Steve Ballmer was terrible at marketing.
IMO the iPhone was considerably worse for business use than Windows Mobile, and neither one held a candle to the BlackBerry. But it didn’t matter.
Now, Apple is achieving per-eminance in the cross-device consumer OS market in the latop+tablet+smartphone space and Windows is slowly dying. Microsoft will just set to become yet another boring cloud services company.
I get the sentiment, but it's nice to finally have lawmakers and regulators standing for what's right - for once.
It’s funny how when Apple threatens a European company the EC can act within days, but when a German company is violating the GDPR, it takes 4 years for them to act. What a strange coincidence.
That's not up to you. What you get to decide is which stores you're willing to install apps from. If lots of people refuse to install apps from unrestrictive stores then developers who want to reach those users will have to meet the requirements of more restrictive stores.
You would only not have this choice if the app has a dominant market position, and then can force you to get it from a store you don't want to use. But then your problem isn't an overabundance of trust busting, it's an insufficiency of it.
They need enthusiastic small developers to help build the Vision Pro ecosystem, and so far it doesn't seem to be going that well.
At the end of the day, developers are users first and foremost, and as users they are thrilled with Apple. Things would have to get pretty damn bad before Apple would need to worry about losing developers.
Apple will make the change that they're forced to make. Developers aren't forcing anything at the moment, but what exactly are they being forced to do by the EU? That's what's being learned.
As a long time Apple fan myself I'm certain, Apple fans have never been happy. :)
What is happening seems to benefit mostly massive competitors like Epic or Amazon.
There would be no need hide information from customers if that was true. Their censorship, the fact that Apple desperately wants to hide what they are doing, is very revealing and incriminating.
What's actually missing that's stopping this from working?
Now not paying an equal share of tax, on the other hand, is criticism I can join in on.
It’s totally this time I promise, just like, one more ~~lane~~ model.
I’m sure they do care. I wouldn’t be surprised if they land significant support for on-app processing of models, they’ve already got the chip, dropping in local models is a sensible next step, and if close to zero effort for them.
> LLMs are going to have some general applications that users are going to want, and will become the norm
I have yet to see anyone, in my personal or professional circles, use any LLM:
- for more than a week
- for anything more than cutesy trivial things.
I’m sure there’s people around stapling models into their toaster, but this is so far from the normal.
I get people are use to free, but plenty of companies license software for royalties that does a lot less.
That's what the $99/year fee is for. Apple set that price themselves. It can also be argued that some of the cost of the SDKs is included into the price of the Mac that any iOS developer has to have.
> or OS
That's included into the price of every iPhone because you can't even buy an iPhone without an OS or install your own, like you can do with PCs.
The App store is a highly trusted place to download things on your phone, and that's a value that apple provides and that costs money to maintain. Pretending that it's as isolated as you pretend feels very disingenuous.
If the app store is truly as immensely useful as Apple wants everyone to believe, why not enable full-on Android-style sideloading on iOS and let the app store compete with that on its own merits? Surely everyone would still prefer it if it's so great?
that's because they half assed it.
There's always the risk that mobile phones supersedes the desktop, and thus cannibalize the desktop windows sales. Microsoft also likely not able to force OEM licensing in the same way that they could with windows on PC sellers.
If you could literally run windows apps on a phone back then, i reckon the MS phones would've at least grabbed some marketshare. Of course, the mobile hardware back then isn't as powerful, so there's the excuse that win32 cannot run there.
Only in the US and global high-end market. This is an extremely profitable market to be leading and I'm not trying to minimize Apple's achievement, but globally relatively few people use their phones and tablets, and ever fewer use their traditional computers.
Apple has a sizable lead, but I think the "idea" of what a smartphone is has been locked in essentially in the mind of consumers and their technological lead will only last so long as time passes. They are Microsoft but of smartphones and 20 years younger than windows desktop PCs. They know this, which is why they constantly make new things and try to develop new products (vr headsets, etc).
Such as Tweets: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic
Blogposts: https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/free-fortnite-faq
Press junkets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKsNf5bA1bU
World-wide ad campaigns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPn_PGuYesw
In-game events: https://www.polygon.com/fortnite/2020/8/13/21367955/fortnite...
So how have Epic performed when the facts were before a judge? hmmm. Looks like the marketing worked on some.
Blackberry was doing great with keyboards and refused to sell more of. Windows Mobile had tons of muscles as market share they just trimmed off. Windows Phone had Marketplace trust issue that couldn't be solved. Nokia burned itself down before Google. Palm did most of it right, but couldn't be bothered with exclusivity reneg.
I can't say solving any one of them could have saved each of the brands, but they all had one giant elephant each that were enough to drag them down.
Has trapped so many businesses.
Enterprise customers can afford to pay enough to support good profit margins...
... but there are many more regular consumers, and regular consumer demands tend to produce better solutions than baroque enterprise demands (usually company- or VP-specific).
That was the attitude for a minute until the CEO got a cool iPhone.
Same with Macs. And jeans.
Basically an observation that consumers were interested in digital media players, which Apple had some expertise in building (iPods, for younger folks).
And that a usable browser was a killer feature (most of the web not having reactive mobile sites, and no apps, then).
And if you combined all of the above with a cell phone, customers would rather carry 1 device than the 3 it previously took.
And not coincidentally this is exactly how Jobs pitched the original iPhone unveil.
An iPod, a phone, an internet communicator, an iPod, a phone…
Things that apparently were not that important at launch. Apple did negotiate "unlimited" data plans with Cingular/AT&T.
> But it had a touch screen that felt nice, and you could watch videos and play music! The web browser actually performed well despite the low bandwidth
Better UI, better media playback, web browser that worked. Sounds like a classic example of Apple taking what is out there and simply doing it better.
you could have just shortened that to "Steve Ballmer was terrible" and been more accurate.
IMO the real problem with Windows Phone was the complete failure to produce an actual platform. Windows Phone 7 was incompatible with Windows Mobile, and _Windows Phone 8 was largely incompatible with Windows Phone 7_! The whole thing was comically developer hostile.
(Second mistake; Windows Phone 7’s UI ran at 30fps, presumably in an attempt to save battery. This made it feel a lot worse than iOS and Android.)
They have less than 25% smartphone marketshare. What monopoly do they have?
That's why the regulation targets "gatekeepers" with revenue in the billions and at least 45Million European users.
The EU decided that this is large enough to be limited in what they can do.
Congrats, you won, now let somebody else play the game and become a boring public utility. And by the way, your research lab is now a public university. And the taxes is what government does, not you.
Because the role of the government (in theory) is to use these taxes for public utility services and projects. Companies only care about their owners and shareholders, a very small subset of the population. If you're not contributing to society, but just profiteering, you should retire. Especially if your position lead you to have a say to what succeed or not in the economy.
This was a marketing and perception issue, not a price issue. When the original iPhone came out, I had a very nice blackberry, with a personal plan, effectively unlimited data, and the full blackberry suite (minus corporate integration, obviously). And I think it was less expensive than the iPhone plan. But it was a pain in the neck! I had to pick the correct phone plan, add the correct data supplement, negotiate the correct discount (basically everyone was eligible for a discount, but you had to find your particular reason for being eligible in a ridiculous menu), and then convince the sales person to add the special $3.99/mo supplement for blackberry services. It clearly never occurred to anyone involved that this was not a competent way to sell to consumers!
I did make fun of my friends for paying several dollars more per month for a device with no keyboard, no GPS, slower data, less efficient text input, and dramatically worse performance in marginal network conditions.
When I finally switched to an iPhone 3G, I could do real in the browser, but wow, the ability to make phone calls was seriously downgraded. I feel like my old blackberry may have had the best behaved cellular modem of any smart device I’ve ever owned.
I think that, if RIM had gotten YouTube and a music player working, had improved the web browser, and stuck a capacitive touch sensor on their device, and if they had marketed it competently (make it so that customers could walk into a store, pay $55/mo, and walk away with a working device without a fight!), they might have remained competitive.
Apple didn't invent anything in the original iPhone, except the software. And the first version was really lacking and very buggy.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/steve-jobs-rigged-first-iphon...
Other phones that predated the iPhone release had more capabilities and more software. There was nothing really "marvelous" about the original iPhone, it was many years behind Microsoft.
The HTC Wizard was a "technical marvel" in 2005. Apple was playing catch-up in 2007.
At the time I had an HTC TyTN 2 phone that did everything the iPhone could do and more, and had a removable battery, about the same size as the battery inside the iPhone 1. If you look at photos of the TyTN 2 battery, and the iPhone 1 battery, they are very close to the same size.
There was very little difference between those batteries. The TyTN 2 had a 1350mA hour lithium battery. The iPhone 1 had a 1400mA hour lithium battery. Practically no difference there in size or capacity.
So, no, the iPhone's battery was not a "technical marvel" any more than other phones of that era.
And in fact Apple's was a step back by being non-removable. I absolutely loved having a removable battery, because I could bring 2 or 3 with me on a long trip and never have to charge the phone. Apple was less functional in that way.
Rubbish. The DMA became law in November 1st 2022. A trillion(!)-dollar corporation had approximately a year and a half to work this out.
It's a system level feature and uses the system provided web engine.
Microsoft doesn't let you swap out EdgeHTML or Trident for applications that use the native OS web frame.
But apps shouldn't be forced to use that web frame is the issue the commission had and the DMA attempts to resolve.
I remember quite clearly a gecko (firefox) implementation of the trident COM interface
But the system still needed a WebView for when Play Services were not available, so they made a way to toggle between them.
They've done an okay job of that so far, but their flagship library is diverging pretty far from industry demand. At best, CoreML is a slightly funkier Tensorflow - at worst, it's a single-platform model cemetery. No matter what road they take, they have to keep investing in upstream support if they want Nvidia to feel the heat. Otherwise, it's CUDA vs CoreML which is an unwinnable fight when you're selling to datacenter customers.
I think it's possible for Apple to make everyone happy here by reducing hostilities and dedicating good work where it matters. Generally though, it feels like they're wasting resources trying to compete with Nvidia and retread the Open Source work of 3 different companies.
didn't Apple pretty much throw in the towel in this market simply by choice of form factor for their computers? The sheer desperation of their users wanting a device in this space is shown in the "creative" ways to mount their offerings in a rack.
all of the user friendly things they've done by shrinking the footprint, making them silent, etc are all things a data center does not care about. make it loud with fans to keep things cool so they can run at full load 24/7 without fear of melting down.
so from that lead alone, we can make the next assumption in that Apple doesn't care about vs CUDA. as long as they can show a chart in an over produced hype video for a new hardware announcement that has "arrows go up" as a theme, that is ALL they care about.
Users, developers, and probably Apple too would benefit from just using the prior art. I'd go as far as to argue Apple can't thread the AI needle without embracing community contributions. The field simply moves too fast to ship "AI Siri" and call it a day.
> The sheer desperation of their users wanting a device in this space is shown in the "creative" ways to mount their offerings in a rack.
Well you and I both know that nobody is doing that to beat AWS on hosting costs. It's a novelty, and the utility beyond that is restricted to the few processes that require MacOS in some arbitrary way. If we're being honest with ourselves, any muppet with a power drill and enough 1U rails can rackmount a Mac Mini.
Proper support on all platforms. No point working on PWAs that have janky tooling (reason: see previous sentence) when they're only going to work decently on Android devices anyway.
You also didn’t answer what is missing. What is missing? What’s this insurmountable problem that’s solved everywhere else? Why is janky tooling attributable to Apple?
The EU is infinitely better than living in the states. At least for this third world immigrant.
I think the bread in the US, sans the supermarket stuff, is generally exceptional with bakeries throughout most cities that are top notch. Some of the best creameries in the world are in the US now. Beer is also generally more innovative and better. There is also a much broader food community in that I can eat food from every culture on earth with pretty high quality in every city. Europe tends to be much less diverse and less creative in its foods. However, yes, if you only eat fast food and shop at big box grocery stores (which also exist in Europe) staples are pretty low quality.
The US has a very strong and thriving food movement, and isn’t a strict monoculture by geography. There are layers upon layers of cultures intertwined throughout the country. Generically “American culture” is essentially a marketing regime for large companies selling their stuff. But the reality of America is much more complex than that, and that’s accelerated since the 1950’s, and was completely broken down in the 1990’s.
Most of the polarization stems from that destruction of the American monoculture belief system and a reaction against that. It’s the last gasp of people who see a way of thinking falling apart. But what comes out of that cultural change is excellent bread, cheese, beer, etc.
Who told you that? I mean, it’s certainly the case in some places (particularly in large affluent cities), but, much like in the US, it’s variable. If you take EU countries and the US and rank by home ownership percentage, the US is on the low end (even Ireland, with its long-running nationwide housing crisis, beats the US here). Notably _Germany_ is much lower (65% of US homes are owner occupied, 50% of German homes), but Germany’s an outlier in Europe on this; to a large extent it’s driven by below-cost social housing.
Economic growth isn't great but could be a lot worse if I look at the rest of the world.
Energy transition for sure has some huge challenges but again, we're doing pretty great compared to other places in the world.
Housing is an issue, but where isn't housing an issue?
Which 70 years?
> "The iPhone "couldn’t do what [Apple was] demonstrating without an insanely power hungry processor, it must have terrible battery life," Shacknews poster Kentor heard from his former colleagues of the time. "Imagine their surprise [at RIM] when they disassembled an iPhone for the first time and found that the phone was battery with a tiny logic board strapped to it."
https://www.redmondpie.com/blackberry-maker-rim-thought-appl...
After the gold standard everyone except the US has been paying for it
TSMC's delays have to do with not offering enough pay not a lack of people capable of installing wafer fab tools or building electrical or mechanical systems for fabs.
If it makes their camera "smarter", it's a win. If they can make Siri do something more than "start a timer", then it's a win. If they can have images translate text more accurately, it's a win. There's a lot of things that an on device AI could help users without having to do all of the power hungry creation of a model or the fine tuning. They can do that in the mothership, and just push models on their device.
Not everyone needs to do AI the way you are trying to do it
Any of the aforementioned libraries could make their camera smarter or improve Siri/OCR marginally. The fact that Apple wasted their time reinventing the wheel is what bothers me, they're making a mistake by assuming that their internal library will inherently appeal to developers and compete with the SOTA.
The reason why I criticize them is because I legitimately believe Apple is one of the few companies capable of shipping hardware that competes with Nvidia. Apple is their only competitor at TSMC, it's entirely a battle of engineering wits between the two of them right now. Apple is going nowhere fast with CoreML and Accelerate framework, but they could absolutely cut Nvidia off at the pass by investing in the unified infrastructure that Intel and AMD refuse to. It also wouldn't harm the customer experience, leverages third-party contributions to advance their progress, and frees up resources to work on more important things. Just sayin'.
PWAs are the perfect scapegoat of infinite nebulous whining. The definition of a progressive web app might as well be "whatever Chrome has but Safari doesn't, no matter what year it is or how those features change, and no matter how terrible of an idea they might be even on Chrome".
If you need it spelled out for you:
* WebUSB
* WebBLE
* WebSerial
* WebGL
* Many more standards Apple refuses to implement because it would let developers break free of their walled garden
Without being able to target apple devices why would I, or anyone, bother using these technologies and invest in their tooling? Just make a native android app with quality tooling that's been around for a decade and be done with it.
And.... even if you wanted to build a serial-port enabled "Works only in Chrome" PWA today (lol, we both know you're not) there's no tooling jankiness stopping you from doing so, checking for `if ("serial" in navigator) { ... }` requires no tooling at all it's just plain javascript, you'd just choose to show an error message for browsers like Safari and Firefox that don't support it.
I'm not convinced you're even arguing in good faith here. Well, I never was because PWA whiners never are, but you've proven you're not.
If I go to your average Italian city I simply won’t find good Thai food. I’ll get a lot of great Italian food for sure. But no Malay, no Nepalese, no afghan, no Peruvian, etc. I’m sure you’ll find counter examples, but the US genuinely is a melting pot with well established ethnic subcultures of all cultures on earth and the general society is pretty open. There’s no French nationalism etc. The thing is there’s no established cultural monoculture like you find in most of the world - what people mistake for a lack of culture in America is that it’s a palimpsest of hundreds of cultures, and they all bring their foods to the American table.
This isn’t a knock on the modern multiculturalism in Europe, it’s more a statement that the established historic cultures in Europe squeeze out the diversity more than in the US with its lack of established historic culture that has almost entirely evaporated in the last 80 years.
Also, in your average Italian city, the average meal will still be healthier than the average American meal. The idea of food deserts is what doesn’t exist in Europe, at least not Western Europe. The local mom and pop shops still have veggies and fruits, and I was amazed to find none within biking distance when I was in the US.
I don’t want to have to need to shop at Trader Joes, Whole Foods, or live in a posh city to avoid having to eat over-processed food and be constipated all of the time.
This whole thread is just bizarre.