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Epic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax" after court win in iOS payments case

(arstechnica.com)
432 points nobody9999 | 5 comments | 12 Dec 25 16:04 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bogwog ◴[12 Dec 25 16:54 UTC] No.46245949[source]▶
> ... the appeals court now suggests that Apple should still be able to charge a “reasonable fee” based on its “actual costs to ensure user security and privacy.”

> Speaking to reporters Thursday night, though, Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said he believes those should be “super super minor fees,” on the order of “tens or hundreds of dollars” every time an iOS app update goes through Apple for review.

Wow, one step forward, and one step back. Good job, Epic.

The outcome is obviously going to be that Apple's store will have the most apps, with the most up to date versions, and with the most free apps/games. I'm sure Fortnite will do just fine though.

Unless I'm misunderstanding this, why would the court allow Apple to act as a gatekeeper for their competitors?

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Ajedi32 ◴[12 Dec 25 18:07 UTC] No.46246793[source]▶
> why would the court allow Apple to act as a gatekeeper for their competitors

Yeah, this is the fundamental problem, and not something this court ruling does anything to fix. Apple has full control over what software its competitors are allowed to sell. The court's solution? Tell Apple to be more fair when dictating rules to its competitors. Yeah... I'm sure that'll work great.

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ericmay ◴[12 Dec 25 18:56 UTC] No.46247389[source]▶
Yep, on their platform. Just like Wal-Mart and Kroger have full control over what products their competitors are allowed to sell too (in-store versus name brands). Microsoft only makes and sells their games for example for the Windows platform and doesn't allow portability.

As a pattern there's nothing wrong with it.

The crux of the issue is that creation of a mobile operating system that people actually want, like in some other industries, as resulted in two dominant platforms that don't compete all that much with each other. That's a much more interesting and important "problem" to solve than Apple/Google create competing apps on their software distribution platforms.

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Ajedi32 ◴[12 Dec 25 20:08 UTC] No.46248246[source]▶
My phone that I purchased is not "their" platform. Better analogy would be if Wal-Mart sold me a fridge and then somehow managed to make it so I can only store groceries purchased from Wal-Mart in that fridge. Now if anyone wants to sell me groceries they need to sell them to me through Walmart, otherwise I can't refrigerate them.
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samdoesnothing ◴[12 Dec 25 20:21 UTC] No.46248386[source]▶
As long as you understood the limitations of the fridge you purchased, i.e. you weren't defrauded, what's the problem? Do you really need a nanny state to prevent you from making bad purchases??
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array_key_first ◴[13 Dec 25 02:07 UTC] No.46251308[source]▶
The problem is that it obviously sucks. If you say "no it doesn't" - you're lying, you know it sucks. Obviously me only being able to refrigerate Walmart goods sucks.

> Do you really need a nanny state

This is a false dichotomy. The reason you're doing this is because you know the current situation sucks major donkey dick and nobody, including you, likes it. So to defend it you have to appeal to something even more sucky. It's the death rattle of a poorly constructed argument.

You don't need a nanny state, quite the opposite! You need a freer market.

When Walmart sells the evil fridge, which I can only assume has been hexed by a swamp witch, what they are actually doing is subverting the free market. They're cheating.

Instead of competing by selling the best groceries or the best fridge, they're competing by artificially limiting their competition. They see the market, say "fuck that market, your market is only our stuff", and force your hand. They've created a soft monopoly.

The misconception about free markets is that, if you just let them be, then they're good. Ha. Every free market player is actively devising every single plan imaginable to make the market less free.

If Walmart could run behind you and lock the doors so that you have to buy their groceries, lest you starve to death, they would. Luckily, the "nanny state" stepped in, and we have a freer market because of it.

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1. samdoesnothing ◴[13 Dec 25 06:34 UTC] No.46252548[source]▶
So the problem with your fridge example is that if the product was as bad as you say, nobody would buy it and thus there is no risk of a monopoly. If the product is so good that everyone wants it, there goes the rest of your pro-consumer argument.

This whole argument is a neat trick, as you smuggle bad outcomes into a situation where there aren't any by pretending that everyone wants to buy the horrible product.

If you want to make a case that monopolies that arise from consumers overwhelmingly choosing a preferential product are bad, go ahead, but don't construct an impossible scenario where everyone loses their minds and buys a product that provides purely negative value to them just cuz.

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2. array_key_first ◴[13 Dec 25 17:28 UTC] No.46256222[source]▶
The key is you don't tell consumers.

A pre-requisite for a free market is consumer choice, which deception naturally undermines. And don't even say "well the EULA..." no, doesn't count.

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3. samdoesnothing ◴[13 Dec 25 20:45 UTC] No.46257856[source]▶
Consumers leave bad reviews and people stop buying the product.
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4. array_key_first ◴[14 Dec 25 16:10 UTC] No.46264071{3}[source]▶
I think everyone knows most reviews are bullshit.

Look, you're describing how it should work, and I agree. But how it actually works is far, far different.

No, first the product is introduced with no ads. You sign a EULA that might contain language around ads, but guess what - the EULA is 100 pages long and nobody is reading that shit because we have jobs and families.

The product gets glowing reviews, probably because it's cheap and subsidized by the mega-corp (aka sell product at a loss for market capture). Then, the product enshittifies from under your feet.

There's nothing you can do at that point, because you already bought it. Your "market", so to speak, is 1. You were deceived. You thought you were buying a fridge, but really you were just licensing access to a fridge.

But say you didn't buy it. Even then, you're fucked. There's no trustworthy online reviews, well, anywhere basically. And it's just not reasonable to expect consumers to do hours of research prior to buying anything. No, I should be able to go to the store and ascertain the quality and nature of the product. But I can't, so I get tricked and hoodwinked.

This is all very purposeful. Companies know if they're honest about their products that consumers might look at the competition. So everyone just scams and lies. Even multi-billion dollar multi-nationals are basically running scams at this point. And guess what? All their competition is doing it, too. Because if your competitor is scamming, you have no choice but to be a con artist yourself, lest you become irrelevant.

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5. Ajedi32 ◴[16 Dec 25 15:25 UTC] No.46289677{4}[source]▶
I think it's not quite as bad as you're making it out to be. If Apple's abuse of their position became truly intolerable GP is correct: people would stop buying their products. Apple knows this, and that limits how aggressive they can be with their anti-consumer nonsense and forces them to keep innovating.

So market forces do still work on Apple, just not as efficiently as they otherwise would in the absence of these artificial barriers to competition.

Software is somewhat unique in its ability to act against the interests of the person who owns it. Trying to design a fridge to not refrigerate your competitor's food would be impractical and probably easy for consumers to bypass. But designing an operating system which won't run your competitor's software? Trivial, and very hard to bypass. Because of this, companies that write software include anti-consumer features like that all the time to the point where it's almost expected now.