Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-violated-antitrust-ruling-federal-judge-finds-66b85957

by shayneo • 1 year ago

1165 595 1 year ago

wsj.com

flawn• 1 year ago

https://archive.ph/ZQLtD

firloop2• 1 year ago

Apple News+ link: https://apple.news/AlNSjMktVT9afQICM2yRVYw

whateveracct• 1 year ago

nice ty. i always have so much trouble finding these links but i have Apple News+. is there an easy way to do it? i always have to manually go through issues.

jillyboel6• 1 year ago

why do we want an apple link that just redirects to the original article? is this just "look at me i'm a mac user" levels of spam?

thaumasiotes2• 1 year ago

The article is short enough that it makes more sense to quote it in full than to provide an archive link:

A federal judge hammered Apple for violating a ruling in an antitrust case that required the company to loosen certain restrictions it imposes on software-makers in its App Store.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered the iPhone-maker to allow developers to steer users to alternative methods of paying for services or subscriptions offered in the App Store. The company also can no longer impose fees in such scenarios or restrict the ability of software-makers to offer links or otherwise communicate alternate payment options with consumers.
“Apple willfully chose not to comply with this court’s injunction,” she said in the ruling. “It did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers.” She referred the case to federal prosecutors to determine whether a criminal contempt investigation is appropriate.
The order is the latest twist in the long-running legal dispute between Apple and Epic Games, developer of the popular videogame “Fortnite.”

xp846• 1 year ago

There’s more than this, though.

1vuio0pswjnm73• 1 year ago

For me, the archive.ph link now hits a CAPTCHA.

Full article, works where archive.ph is blocked, no Javascript required, no tracking^1:

https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1DXcJN

1. Archive.{is,md,ph,etc.} puts the reader's IP address in a "spy pixel" URL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spy_pixel

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23316085

mil223• 1 year ago

About time. I'm tired of apologizing to customers who purchase subscriptions in my app only to discover they could have purchased the exact the same thing from my website for 15% less. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Excerpt from the filing:

"In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option. To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath. Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. The real evidence, detailed herein more than meets the clear and convincing standard to find a violation. The Court refers the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate."

Muromec• 1 year ago

Criminal contempt would the charge against the company or the people named above? How does it work in this case?

mil223• 1 year ago

"Accordingly ... the Court refers the issue to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California ... for investigation against Apple and Alex Roman, Apple’s Vice President of Finance specifically."

propagandist• 1 year ago

Read Taibbi's book, The Divide. No prison time is the most likely outcome unless the justice system has changed between then and now.

stillatit• 1 year ago

So what is the punishment for outright lying under oath?

90s_dev3• 1 year ago

Generally none, the DA must choose to pursue perjury charges, which basically never happens. In reality, nearly everyone commits perjury. Thomas More would not approve. Both versions (1966 and 1988) of A Man For All Seasons are highly worth watching several times and practically memorizing. "Would you benefit England by populating her with liars?" [edit] in retrospect, there is one inescapable consequence of lying under oath: your word now means nothing to honest people.

andrewmcwatters• 1 year ago

Clearly nothing, since we've decided to be a nation that doesn't enforce laws.

mvdtnz2• 1 year ago

If you're publishing on the app store you are part of the problem. Your customers are right to feel aggrieved.

autobodie2• 1 year ago

About time for what? Another company to get charged with something that they don't get punished for?

The fines are always less than the companies' net gains from the practice. Gains are often indirect, risk-related, and/or part of a larger strategy, so they cannot be calculated.

Everything short of prison is a waste of time, waste of tax dollars, and spits in the face of decent citizens.

echelon• 1 year ago

100%. This doesn't deserve a fine. This deserves Apple to be given an ultimatum about their mob boss behavior with mobile.

Apple and Google quickly built up their duopoly such that everyone doing anything with mobile phones has to pay them a tax. You can't even deploy your own apps at your own cadence, without strict review, using your own technology. You have to jump through unplanned upgrade cycles, you're forced to use their payment rails and signup flows (and don't get to know your customer or get them to use your website). You pay the taxes on everything. And even then, they let your competitors advertise against your name or trademark.

This is rotten to the core.

Neither Google nor Apple should have an app store. Apps should be web installs. The only reason things work the way they do is so that Apple and Google can tax and exert control. A permissions system, signature scans, and heuristics are all that are needed to keep web installs safe - and all of those pieces are already in place. There's no technical or safety limitation, Apple and Google just want to dominate.

These two companies were innovative 20 years ago, but their lead then doesn't entitle them to keep owning the majority of most people's computing surface area for the rest of time. They have to give up the reigns. There are still billions of dollars for them to make on mobile, even if regulators tell them to stop treating developers as serfs and locking them in cages.

No. More. App. Stores.

Regulate big tech's hold over mobile, web, search, and advertising.

Nevermark2• 1 year ago

I like the idea of civil judgements that require responsible individuals to remove themselves from the company. And void any forward looking renumeration in their contracts.

Personal fines too, such as returning past remunerations during the problematic time in question. Salaries. Stock grants.

There is no such thing as an incentive, that doesn't incentivize someone. Relatively small fines relative to revenues and profits don't incentivize anything.

Alternatively, if fines really were big enough to turn large companies around (i.e. not just the enforced, but other companies seeing the enforcement), heads would roll, but would they be the right ones given those in charge are unlikely to fire themselves? And shareholders are the ones really paying the fines, are they really the culprits?

The incentives to act in good faith, should be placed very directly on the individuals whose choices dictate the good/bad faith. Starting and staying largely with the CEO, and the direct line of reports from the CEO down to the relevent decisions.

You don't want anyone who mattered to have cover. You want CEO's policing their own, and their reports pushing back upward against poor directives.

The only cover for relevent actors would be a record of pushing back against those who pushed through poor behavior.

TLDR: Limited liability should protect non-managing shareholders, but not bad actors within a company. Decisions makers should always be held directly responsible for their decisions. Any other system is perverse.

Gareth3215• 1 year ago

The judge referred the case for review of contempt of court, which makes individuals responsible for their criminal actions, and carries possible prison sentences. The judge has clear evidence of lying under oath and withholding evidence, and people have gone to prison for less. Alex Roman appears primarily culpable, but given the evidence reported, Tim Cook may also be complicit, and others. There is a real chance they are arrested at some point.

brailsafe2• 1 year ago

About time.

Oh c'mon, 16 years into a product line ain't too bad, is it?

If you had a kid when the App Store first came out, that kid would now be nearing high school graduation and you still can't do as you describe. The great recession, the pandemic, the iPad, proliferation of AI, legalization of Gay marriage in the states and weed in some places, annexation of crimea and the war in Ukraine, the foxconn suicide issue, 4G, LTE, 5G, fiber to the home, brexit, Golang, Rust, TypeScript, Swift, APFS, Arm and the downfall of Intel, the rise of NVIDIA, Netflix, TikTok, drones, electric cars, scooters, bikes, end-to-end design and construction of their mothership headquarters, and federal acknowledgement that climate change is an issue, have all basically happened in that time; but nope, it's for security reasons. Hell, even their lead industrial designer retired long before they'd let up.

Edit: Not that any of those have anything to do with the App Store, but still.

retetr• 1 year ago

We didn't start the fire, it was always burning since the world's been turning...

to11mtm3• 1 year ago

Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise.

Here's the fun question though. Do Roman, Maestri et al not have any specific damages to this? (I know the answer, but it's a good question to ask....)

musicale• 1 year ago

To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath

Well that sounds rather damning.

stingraycharles2• 1 year ago

Happens more than you’d think. Happened to me in the past as well in some business conflict. It was baffling how people can just lie in court under oath and get away with it.

zik• 1 year ago

Surely he should receive a prison sentence for that alone?

zelphirkalt2• 1 year ago

And what happens now to those who lied under oath? Can we get those people properly punished and send some signals? Or are they above the law somehow?

spencerflem• 1 year ago

The USA is an oligarchy

scarface_748• 1 year ago

Will Walmart let you have a label on your product saying you could get it cheaper from Amazon?

TheDong2• 1 year ago

Will walmart open your packaging, review all text in the manual, and tell you that you need to reprint your manual because it has a link to your homepage "company.com" and on that page you can find a pricing page with lower prices?

Will walmart prevent you from selling, say, a fishing pole that allows you to buy fishing hooks from another store?

Apple's app-store review would reject any app that linked the company pricing page, and would reject any app that let you use an alternative payment method like paypal or a credit card on a non-apple site.

Also, in your analogy the customer has to be unable to buy your app from anywhere else (since the customer has an iPhone and there are no other stores or operating systems for iPhone)..

It really doesn't work as a good comparison imo.

saagarjha6• 1 year ago

Thus the Court found:
In retail brick-and-mortar stores, consumers do not lack knowledge of options. Technology platforms differ.

Yeah, but keep going on about how this is the same as Walmart

danShumway2• 1 year ago

Yes! Why do people keep on asking this? Yes, practically every single tech product that you buy from Walmart will include links to their online stores in the packaging. Including Apple products! And this has been the case for ages.

I remember buying DVDs from Walmart and opening them up and the first thing you would see is a slip of paper telling you in giant letters to use some reward program or streaming service rather than buying the DVDs physically.

If you buy an iPhone from Walmart, there will be a link to the apple store in the packaging. If you buy a Switch, there will be promotions for digital downloads that directly compete with Walmart in your packaging. It's not just digital links either, when I bought a Roomba it came with instructions about how to order future purchases, filters, and parts directly from the manufacturer.

Apple bans developers from including links to alternative stores in bundled manuals and help pages. I can not think of a single physical store that does the same, and I can't think of a single tech company including Apple that doesn't link to competing storefronts in their manuals and packaging inserts.

Apple is worse than Walmart on this issue.

gorbachev• 1 year ago

In the inevitable case where this lands Apple serious monetary penalties affecting the quarterly earnings, how many employees will be laid off? Will Alex Roman be one of them?

I'd bet no.

cyberax7• 1 year ago

Finally. The AppStore rules are ridiculous.

Apple has zero moral justification for them. They are quadruple-dipping:

1. Consumers pay premium prices for Apple devices.

2. Developers have to pay $100 a year to be able to publish an app.

3. Developers need to buy expensive Apple hardware to develop for iOS. XCode doesn't work on Linux or Windows.

4. And on top of it, Apple also wants 30% of all the gross app sales.

All while their tools that developers _have_ to use are buggy and often nigh unsusable (Apple Connect....).

But wait, there's more! To keep the stronghold on developers, Apple is not allowing third-party apps to use JITs, resulting in a huge amount of time wasted to work around that.

m4635• 1 year ago

also, you can't install software on your own device. Even when you can, you have to ask apple permission.

arresin• 1 year ago

The broader consumer base will install anything a bad actor wants them to and then blame the manufacturer for not stopping them with some draconian rule.

sepositus• 1 year ago

All while their tools that developers _have_ to use are buggy and often nigh unsusable (Apple Connect....).

I'm moving to a job where I don't have to be the build/devops engineer for a product with an iOS app. To say I'm relieved wouldn't even be the half of it. What made it particularly worse was that our release cycle was every two months which is just enough time for Apple to completely wreck the build.

Absolutely terrible experience.

mrcwinn• 1 year ago

The heart of Apple's hypocrisy is this: they claim their 30% is necessary to support the developer ecosystem and fund its operations. But of course if that were true, they could easily charge a high enough platform membership fee directly to developers. Instead they opt for a structural tax to cover what are mostly completely opaque and secret operational costs. They're opaque and secret for obvious reasons: those expenses come nowhere close to the ~$30 billion in App Store commission Apple generates every year.

ivanmontillam2• 1 year ago

Were they transparent, what would inhibit developers from bargaining against the costs and benefits shown? Sometimes that also outweighs the benefits of transparency.

You just can't show anything to anyone without kicking a wasp's nest.

I am not defending Apple, if anything, I am pro-Android here, but I understand the pickle they'd be in, were they be transparent with the cost structure.

cyberax7• 1 year ago

Well, yeah. It would have shown that their commissions are nothing but rent-seeking.

mystified5016• 1 year ago

It isn't about transparency.

It is about illegal anticompetitive behavior.

Apple didn't charge tax on all app store purchases to protect themselves, it was done out of greed and malice.

You're assuming that Apple is acting in good faith. An actual, literal judge has decided the evidence shows that Apple was not acting in good faith, and in fact were behaving illegally. This isn't a "both sides" argument, Apple is definitively in the wrong.

mvdtnz2• 1 year ago

what would inhibit developers from bargaining against the costs and benefits shown?

Another word for that is "competing". And yeah, exactly.

elpool2• 1 year ago

As described in the ruling, Apple hired a consulting group to estimate how much value developers get from the iphone platform, which found that

(1) Apple’s platform technology is worth up to 30% of a developer’s revenue. (2) Apple’s developer tools and services are worth approximately 3%–16%. (3) Apple’s distribution services are worth approximately 4%–14%. (4) Apple’s discovery services are worth approximately 5%–14%.

Then Apple claimed this study was how they came up with the 27%, but the Judge basically said nah you guys came up with that number before the study, and you even know it would be a non-starter for almost all developers.

paxys• 1 year ago

Hire a consulting firm to tell you exactly what you want to hear, then say "see the experts said it, not us". Classic.

realusername2• 1 year ago

It made me laugh, if you pretend to be worth 30% of revenue (an insane markup), you better really invest in those developer tools to show it off because the sad state of xcode really isn't showing that.

I don't know where this money is going but certainly not in the developer tooling because it's absolutely terrible

to11mtm3• 1 year ago

This is obscene lmao.

if you take the high end for all of these points, Apple is claiming 74% of the revenue is thanks to them.

Also, there's a certain level of 'hand-waving' here where if you're developing for iOS you're almost forced to have Apple hardware in the first place to run+test (hell, even Android can be dev'd from almost anything...)

marcus_holmes2• 1 year ago

The first thing the consulting group would have asked Apple was "what do you want this number to be?".

That's the point of hiring consulting groups.

bigyabai8• 1 year ago

You don't pay consulting agencies to put you in legal jeopardy. The judge is right.

jamessinghal2• 1 year ago

The funny thing is that the companies that stand to benefit the most from this and that move the most money (Netflix, Spotify, Fortnite) need Apple's platform, marketing, and distribution the least.

manmal2• 1 year ago

Apple’s developer tools and services are worth approximately 3%–16%

That must be a joke. Xcode is so bad, compared to Android Studio, it’s not even funny. As iOS dev I have to constantly apologize to my Android team members, that, no, Xcode can’t do this and that, and, no, we can’t do X in the build pipeline. And I‘m generally 10-20% slower than them because the tooling is just terrible and flaky.

BTW there was a promising IntelliJ option for Apple development, but Apple made life so hard for them that they had to give up. It was called „AppCode“ and some people are still sad that it doesn’t exist anymore.

Spooky23• 1 year ago

They don’t make that claim. That’s the service they are selling and the margin they choose. The royalty is similar to software retailer margins going back a long time. Steam charges a similar rate.

It’s pretty trivial to bypass. Just don’t charge for your software, and use the app to access paid resources purchased outside the platform. My company distributes a few dozen apps to thousands of employees, Apple gets $0, because they utilize an existing subscription or license unconnected to Apple.

gausswho• 1 year ago

Isn't the point of this case that even free apps can't even advertise their direct payment systems?

SchemaLoad• 1 year ago

The problem is less the actual % itself and the fact that it's bundled in with so many things you can't pick or substitute. You can't avoid the app store and you can't avoid the Apple developer tools because they force you to use both of them. So then charging money for something you don't have an alternative to is the issue.

Steam might charge a similar rate but you aren't forced to use them. You can deliver games to PC gamers in a number of ways and many large games opt to not be on Steam.

troupo4• 1 year ago

Just don’t charge for your software, and use the app to access paid resources purchased outside the platform.

That introduces insane friction and you lose a ton of customers

saagarjha6• 1 year ago

Yeah, until Apple asks you "politely" to move your subscription to IAP.

Gareth3215• 1 year ago

There are many caveats on this. For example, Apple's terms clearly state that developers must use Apple’s in-app purchase (IAP) system for digital goods or services. So you're restricted to only subscription based pricing. No upgrade pricing. No microtransactions.

Additionally Apple remains the arbiter of what kind of content and apps may be listed. Until recently they were blocking all emulators and cloud gaming apps. They used to block all crypto apps. They still selectively block gambling apps. They still block torrenting and adult apps.

Additionally, Apple is famous for arbitrary and selectively enforced rules. Many developers have their updates rejected for any and no reason after an automated system rejects them for specious reasons.

Additionally, developers are blocked from linking out. They can't up-sell, which is a critical component of a SaaS business model. Nothing in the app can tell users where to subscribe or how to upgrade or change their credit card details. This one alone kills most SaaS applications unless they use Apple's IAPs.

ensignavenger• 1 year ago

But game developers can sell steam keys directly or cia other resellers and avoid the steam commision entirely. So Valve is goving them a fee service and only chargeing a commision when valve themselves generate the sell.

m3kw9• 1 year ago

The math of a one time fee is different than a percentage. Not sure what you are getting at by presenting a business model that doesn’t make sense as an argument

m4635• 1 year ago

This made sense for an app that was sold on the store.

It didn't make sense to me for media from an external subscription or store account was taxed by apple (like netflix or kindle).

Vt71fcAqt7• 1 year ago

I'm glad this happened, although I would have prefered if the result came from a new law eg. the Open App Markets Act rather than have to rely on what is or is not legally considered a market in terms of the sherman act etc.

medhir4• 1 year ago

once again will ask why iPhones are treated any differently from other computing devices — we need legislative solutions that allow consumers to load software (or even other operating systems) on any computing device they own.

restricting software distribution on any platform under the guise of needing to be kept “secure” always seemed anticompetitive to me - that should apply regardless of Apple’s particular behavior with the courts in this example.

2OEH8eoCRo03• 1 year ago

Get ready to answer why an iPhone is different than an xbox

medhir4• 1 year ago

I’m principled in my stance, I think if you own said Xbox you should be able to load software on that as well.

scq• 1 year ago

Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch should be forced to open up as well.

Closed ecosystems only benefit the corporations that control them.

t_sawyer• 1 year ago

Which… while we’re at it. Gaming would be much better if consoles didn’t exist anymore. Games would be more optimized for PC and manufacturers would just be building prebuilt gaming PCs.

We also would have more Switch competition in the ARM gaming space instead of x64 handhelds and Android windows emulation if these walled gardens didn’t exist.

Laremere• 1 year ago

It isn't. Consoles at this stage are general purpose computers with hardware and software explicitly designed to prevent consumers using it as such. If consumer rights had any real teeth, any hardware device would be required to allow their owners to install any piece of software of their choosing, including replacing the operating system.

MattRix• 1 year ago

One is a general computing device and one is for a specific task (gaming).

cyberax7• 1 year ago

Consoles are sold at-cost to consumers, or sometimes even at a loss: https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-loses-up-to-200-on-ever...

iPhones are sold at a _premium_.

If iPhones were sold at-cost to consumers, then Apple would have been right to ask developers to pay 30% fees.

socalgal24• 1 year ago

One has billions of users, the other has millions. One has 100s of thousands of companies trying to to do business with that platform's users, the other has 100s of companies trying to do business with that platform's users.

scale and usage matters. Apple has > 50% market share in the USA (the place relevant to USA law). So, being a monopoly they get treated differently than a non-monopoly.

Even if they had less than 50%, people bank, invest, shop, talk, communicate, book hotels, flights, and effectively live their lives on smartphones. On XBox they play games and same small percent play music or watch movies there (I suspect most switch over to their Smart TV/Apple TV/.. for that).

ribosometronome4• 1 year ago

Basically every reply gets it wrong. The answer is that the Xbox isn't developed in California. This judgment was applied under California's UCL, not any federal anti-trust law, despite being in federal court. Epic wasn't able to prove Apple a monopoly, because it's not. Applying California's UCL to Microsoft, Sony, etc is going to be a harder sell in courts.

xxs• 1 year ago

Both allow to have software developed for by any 3rd parties - that should include any and the original device seller should not be able to control the distribution.

If you really ask: xbox is pretty much the same as an x86-64 PC, running Windows (and having AMD GPU). It just bit more sealed.

enragedcacti5• 1 year ago

One way that they are different is that the xbox does let you sideload:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/...

abtinf• 1 year ago

once again will ask why iPhones are treated any differently from other computing devices

And then you immediately state a way they should be treated differently (worse).

medhir4• 1 year ago

can you expand on what you find worse about the concept of having full access to any computer you own?

zamadatix3• 1 year ago

Their stated way applies to all computing devices, not just iPhones.

troupo4• 1 year ago

Welcome to EU's fight with Apple (and Google)

medhir4• 1 year ago

I’d really like to bring the fight to the US in a more meaningful way!

lapcat2• 1 year ago

A non-paywalled article, containing the link to the full decision: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43851672

bze12• 1 year ago

Their entire setup was egregious.

They charge 27% for purchases made using external payment processors. Including Stripe fees that's net-zero (not even accounting for any chargeback risks). They severely limit how you can display the external purchase link too, and display an obnoxious warning screen when you tap it.

I would be surprised if a single developer adopted it.

https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...

tech234a• 1 year ago

Only one I'm aware of is Delta Emulator by Riley Testut [1].

[1] https://www.macstories.net/news/an-app-store-first-delta-add...

kubb4• 1 year ago

Wasn’t there a recent EU fine for Apple for preventing developers from promoting alternative distribution channels within their apps, or linking to external subscription websites?

Half of the entire HN was like „EU bad, how dare you regulate them”. What gives?

timschmidt• 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_identity#Brands_and_c...

openplatypus• 1 year ago

HN is mostly US audience.

EU = bad

US = good

YetAnotherNick2• 1 year ago

Quite the opposite. Every single comment that I have done critisizing any aspect of EU regulation has been heavily downvoted. Never even seen a EU bad comment as top comment in any story.

zamadatix3• 1 year ago

This is more about Apple lying under oath about both delaying the court and being aware what they were doing was not actually complying with the previous order. Additional factors are it does not list a fine, relies on longstanding general anti-trust legislation rather than new tech specific laws, and there isn't a wide swath of other regulatory rulings against Apple coinciding with the previous one.

Between all of this, it'll be a lot harder to come to the comments to defend Apple for not getting fined twice in a row for the same issue despite lying under oath and intentionally delaying proceedings, even if you vehemently disagree with the original ruling.

Google tends to be the one with more sympathy in the US lately as they've gotten much more of the regulatory stick in court.

dns_snek3• 1 year ago

From the court document, I don't know how many ended up actually adopting it, but it's about what you'd expect:

As of the May 2024 hearing, only 34 developers out of the approximately 136,000 total developers on the App Store applied for the program, and seventeen of those developers had not offered in-app purchases in the first place. In May 2024, Apple argued that it would take more time for developers to take advantage of the Link Entitlement and that the adoption rates could not be known. Apple attempted here to mislead.
Given the revelations of the February 2025 hearing, Apple modeled the lack of adoption. That Apple adduced no testimony or evidence indicating developer adoption of the program is no surprise. As shown above, Apple knew it was choosing a course which would fail to stimulate any meaningful competition to Apple’s IAP and thereby maintain its revenue stream

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...

jimbokun8• 1 year ago

This seems like a strange argument to me.

Apple is not just responsible for making it possible to purchase apps outside the App Store, but to convince developers to use it over the App Store as well?

I suppose it's damning when combined with the internal emails demonstrating they were trying to avoid compliance with the ruling?

EcommerceFlow• 1 year ago

The timing of this with Tim Sweeney's interview with Lex Friedman is great. Watching a few hours of it, it's no wonder he hasn't slowed down in the slightest in this fight against Apple, he is unrelenting in his focus.

hereme888• 1 year ago

The judge should slap them in the wrist! Just like last time. Served them well...

cuuupid• 1 year ago

Does this mean Apple will have to give up their % fees or that they have to allow third party app stores in the US? And when does that go into effect?

galleywest200• 1 year ago

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ordered the iPhone-maker to allow developers to steer users to alternative methods of paying for services or subscriptions offered in the App Store. The company also can no longer impose fees in such scenarios or restrict the ability of software-makers to offer links or otherwise communicate alternate payment options with consumers.

The ruling means this starts immediately it seems, as I cannot see a date listed anywhere.

rahkiin• 1 year ago

So : make a free app. Ask people to buy the non-free version on a website. Apple gets 0. No revenue at all for providing stable apis and sdks? How’s that sustainable? The app store itself would be a gigantic loss leader that has to be paid for by iphone sales.

If console makers have to do the same, consoles triple in price

pram• 1 year ago

Neither!

thealexliang• 1 year ago

"Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anti-competitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anti-competitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple."

I'd recommend skimming through the whole thing because Judge Rogers just eviscerates Apple over and over.

ocdtrekkie3• 1 year ago

It's so good... but also it has taken so, so long to get here. The US should've done something about the app store tax a long time ago. People thought Apple won their case, but it... really just took time to get here. You get to try malicious compliance with judges exactly once, and then you're over.

BLKNSLVR4• 1 year ago

Shoot me down with examples here, but my impression is that the US (historically, not just in the last three months) will never hurry to curtail the ability of a US company to make profit. With the possible exception of when a US company egregiously flouts laws that already exist.

Effective regulation isn't a strength of the US.

Wobbles4216• 1 year ago

and then you're over What does this mean in practice?

Apple is still doing business, has three years of profits from the malicious compliance, and appears to have attracted not much more than a sternly worded letter from a judge, and possible criminal contempt charges for a couple of individuals.

What real world consequences does Apple face for this behavior?

tyre• 1 year ago

“For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple.”

I love whichever clerk wrote this and then got it through. The real MVP

stevage• 1 year ago

Link?

ukuina• 1 year ago

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25924283/epic-v-apple...

JumpCrisscross3• 1 year ago

John Gruber picks out the juiciest parts [1].

[1] https://daringfireball.net/2025/04/gonzales_rogers_apple_app...

sosull3• 1 year ago

He has such a talent for brevity: "You know a judge is pissed when she busts out the bold italics."

intrasight2• 1 year ago

There will be a fine. Nobody will go to jail. Apple will appeal. They will likely prevail on this "steering" complaint on a freedom of speech basis. It is their platform afterall.

My concern is more about having private companies control platforms upon which we depend. I do often wish that I had a crystal ball to peer a decade or several into the future to see what the future holds for humanity in this regard. Our legal system seems ill-equipped to manage this risk.

HDThoreaun2• 1 year ago

The far bigger question is about the 27% fee on purchases made outside the apple ecosystem. If this ruling is upheld that revenue stream is gone

Zak• 1 year ago

A federal court has ordered Philip Moris USA & R.J. Reynolds Tobacco to state: Smoking cigarettes causes numerous diseases and on average 1,200 American deaths every day.

Freedom of speech does not prevent courts from ordering defendants to say or not say specific things to make up for their past illegal behavior. In this case, the court initially allowed Apple a little flexibility around steering, which Apple misused to make web purchases sound "scary". The penalty for that is the loss of that flexibility.

mijoharas2• 1 year ago

As always, the cover-up made it worse

Can someone explain this to me? As far as I understand apple is being ordered to do the thing it was supposed to do already. Are there extra consequences I've not understood related to them disregarding the court ruling?

dragonwriter• 1 year ago

They are being ordered to pay the court and Epic’s costs and being referred to the Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution for contempt.

brudgers4• 1 year ago

Unless the fine is the better part of a trillion dollars, it won’t make any difference.

Apple has close to 1/2 trillion in revenue a year. A few billion is rounding error.

sureIy5• 1 year ago

Some country recently fined Apple every day until they resolved the issue. I think such solution would both help push Apple to actually resolve the issue and do so in a timely manner.

As much money as they have, no shareholder wants to see a $1m/day expense on the balance sheet.

zamadatix3• 1 year ago

$1m/day since they launched the iPhone App Store in 2008 is roughly 2 months worth of 30% App Store commision revenue. I.e. they'd be making more money by keeping such a small fine on the balance sheet than complying.

The same thing at $1b/day or rapidly increasing with time might be effective though, but I'm not sure what's really assignable by the given court or not.

cwillu• 1 year ago

that's still not even a billion a year though, on a revenue of hundreds of billions.

DecentShoes2• 1 year ago

If they refuse to comply, why don't we just... arrest them?

Like, you know, we do for someone who was poor and starving and stole 10$ of food?

HDThoreaun2• 1 year ago

Apple makes tens of billions of dollars a year off App Store royalties. If this ruling is upheld this fine has a net present value of 100 billion - trillion dollars depending on your discount rate. They will lose billions of dollars a year forever.

bobmcnamara2• 1 year ago

Or toss Tim Apple in the huscow for contempt.

ncallaway• 1 year ago

I don’t think that’s likely with the referral to the US attorney.

I think Cook will probably find that there is a dollar value that will get Trump to instruct a us attorney to drop charges

willhslade• 1 year ago

Hoosegow?

llm_nerd2• 1 year ago

The court is pushing for criminal censure of some of the involved participants. If that happens -- and it absolutely should -- it will have a tremendous impact on the hubris seen in Apple, and in the industry in general. Hopefully bribes don't get them out of this, and some Apple execs really do end up with prison sentences.

yieldcrv• 1 year ago

iPhone users are accustomed to using the App Store to make digital purchases, and changing their behavior could prove difficult

Apple Pay on websites works flawlessly and is great for impulse purchases. Its the same as the inapp experience.

I think this user experience will be fine.

amazingamazing• 1 year ago

all these big companies being hypocrites. congress should just pass a law that you can't be big and end the charades.

marcus_holmes2• 1 year ago

I think that's actually the effect of anti-trust/anti-monopoly laws.

There's a point where companies get "too big to fail"/"too big to jail" and have outsize effect on the country (especially if the country is stupid enough to pass a Citizens United law that explicitly allows them to do this). Anti-trust laws are the main way that the government tries to prevent this, and haven't really been used since Reaganomics decided that big == efficient. Until recently.

Passing a law that companies cannot exceed a certain size (market cap as a percentage of GDP, I guess?) would probably be a simpler way of achieving this. Though, obviously, the accounting profession would roll up its collective sleeves and declare "challenge accepted".

sosull3• 1 year ago

With only a passing knowledge of the field, I'm aware that the standard of monopolistic effect varies between the EU and US (neither specifically uses financial size as the standard). In the EU it's about whether there is sufficient competition in the market, whereas in the US it's about whether the price is sufficiently competitive.

sensanaty• 1 year ago

Is there any hope of a non-joke fine here? Or are we just looking at another kiss of the wrists as them and Google and all the other big tech cos fuck literally everyone over?

semiquaver• 1 year ago

The important penalty isn’t a fine, it’s a forced change of behavior to comply with the injunction. The referral for criminal contempt charges will end up being a slap on the wrist if they are even charged though.

bpodgursky• 1 year ago

No this is actually going get Tim Cook's attention. Contempt can mean actual jail time for execs.

ocdtrekkie3• 1 year ago

A fine isn't even necessary: Apple's App Store business just ended. Between app sales and IAP it has a 30% tax. If an app developer swaps out for a Stripe portal they're paying 3% and probably at least doubling their own profit margin.

Only an idiot would still be selling apps through Apple's payments next week. The only way Apple will make any money at all on apps is if it drops it's fees to 10% or below.

clhodapp5• 1 year ago

A fine is still necessary because (as per the original ruling), they should have never foisted their store on people seventeen years ago when they first launched it and certainly should not have done so when the court ordered them to stop four years ago.

If there isn't a fine, the message will be that it's fine to profit off of ignoring court orders until you face thread of contempt charges.

Gareth3215• 1 year ago

I look forward to Apple suddenly dropping fees and increasing R&D for the App Store when they face real competition.

ZekeSulastin• 1 year ago

Steam still exists on PC.

iamkonstantin• 1 year ago

The precedent is significant too. Remember the EU is currently reviewing Apple’s malicious compliance with the DMA, there are also regulators in other countries moving forward too.

pcvetkovski• 1 year ago

Groundbreaking.

We just released Crosspay, a cross-platform in-app subscriptions SDK for iOS, Android, macOS, Linux, Windows, and Web apps, enabling users to purchase subscriptions once, and use anywhere. As this ruling becomes effective, we will also enable users to choose their payment method on any platform, instead of being tied to Apple App Store.

However, apps that charge $1 or less per transaction will continue to pay over 30% in fees (e.g. Stripe charges 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction)

See more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43714552

satvikpendem2• 1 year ago

I vouched this comment because I found it genuinely helpful, I was looking for cross payment service for my apps that work across all platforms (they're in Flutter, do you support that?).

w_for_wumbo2• 1 year ago

This is huge, because it means that anyone buying an iPhone or apple product going forward is knowingly supporting this behaviour. I fully expect this to be the ruin of Apple.

canogat• 1 year ago

Apple is still a hardware company. A loss of revenue from software and services sales is far from ruinous for Apple.

brailsafe2• 1 year ago

This seems like a bit of a reach tbh. It's no doubt hopefully huge, but by buying a product you're not implicitly agreeing with every or any element of internal company politics that occured during its production. I buy Macbooks because I tend to like most aspects of them, but use mostly Pixel phones, does that mean I support literally anything Tim Cook or leadership does to produce anything else? Not really, I just use the tools that work for me.

77pt77• 1 year ago

I fully expect this to be the ruin of Apple.

Apple products are status products. Especially in the USA.

No one will care.

eviks2• 1 year ago

What is the magic information dissemination service that guarantees that every future customer knows?

w_for_wumbo2• 1 year ago

This is human communication. If you make an ethics-based decision and communicate that with friends or family, they then have to make the conscious choice to continue supporting the business with this practice or seek alternatives. People who care about humans will support businesses that care about humans.

bzzzt• 1 year ago

If that's the bar you're setting nobody would buy Microsoft or Google since they also got convicted of monopolistic practices.

gamblor956• 1 year ago

"She also referred the case to prosecutors for potential criminal investigation into the company and a top finance executive."

That's big. You really have to piss off a judge for them to refer a case for criminal investigation.

fsckboy2• 1 year ago

i think all you need to do is commit a crime

dchest• 1 year ago

"In Slack communications dated November 16, 2021, the Apple employees crafting the warning screen for Project Michigan discussed how best to frame its language. (CX-206.) Mr. Onak suggested the warning screen should include the language: “By continuing on the web, you will leave the app and be taken to an external website” because “‘external website’ sounds scary, so execs will love it.” (Id. at .2.) From Mr. Onak’s perspective, of the “execs” on the project, Mr. Schiller was at the top. (Feb. 2025 Tr. 1340:4–6 (Onak).) One employee further wrote, “to make your version even worse you could add the developer name rather than the app name.” (CX-206.4.) To that, another responded “ooh - keep going.” (Id.)

I could never imagine Apple employees doing it like this. I knew they had to have discussions about the scare screen, but come on! This is pure evil.

EMIRELADERO2• 1 year ago

Want something even more evil? I got you.

When saurik sued Apple for antitrust reasons over Cydia[1] (which sadly ended up going nowhere), at some point a hearing was held where his lawyer accidentally read out something that was supposed to be protected/sealed. Apple's lawyer quickly interjected, but what saurik's attorney got to read before ended up in the official transcript[2], and it's straight up disgusting. From p.18:

"For example, something where -- they are talking about an iOS update that, quote, broke Cydia Impactor. Where they said, it feels too good to destroy someone's spirit. We did something else today that will kill him again with a little smiley emoticon. That, we can specifically talk about with respect to Cydia."

[1] For those not in the know, Cydia was the de-facto App Store for jailbroken iDevices, the prominent third-party marketplace before AltStore.

[2] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18730843/75/saurikit-ll...

saurik• 1 year ago

FWIW, the lawsuit went pretty far--all the way to an appeals court--but failed on what was ostensibly a statute of limitations issue that made very little sense and feels wrong :/. I still intend to write a giant article about it at some point, and probably do a long interview / lamentation about it on t3dotgg's YouTube channel... it just has felt so difficult to approach as the whole thing was so upsetting :(.

robocat• 1 year ago

How much does Apple select employees for loyalty when hiring? One-eyed competitive fanbois?

Companies do want smart machiavellian people that independently act in the interests of the company (archetypical C-suite executives).

Google has had a number of ethical employees damage Google from the inside.

A company can be damaged by smart motivated machiavellian employees using their skills against their own company.

I've noticed competitive gaming training/selecting people to win-at-all-costs. Presumably the C-suite is benefiting from the influx of people that understand manipulation and complexity.

dagmx• 1 year ago

I know several people who work there who are Android and windows users and haven’t switched. Internally it seems they’re not very kool-aid heavy.

eviks2• 1 year ago

I could never imagine Apple employees doing it like this.

Curious why your imagination is so limited here regarding a pretty standard human behavior pattern. Do you personally know Apple employees or is it more of a general respect for their products or ...?

refulgentis2• 1 year ago

I pretty much grew up on this site. 19yo-37yo. economics dropout from nowhere => waiter => startup => sold => 7 year tenure at google => back to a new startup), and I honestly was absolutely horribly over-the-top stunned at how people were just...normal? to put it nicely?...at Google.

You're absolutely right that it's an unwarranted assumption, yet simultaneously, I just always assumed higher class == higher morals. If anything it seemed to select for senior year of HS math class score and sociopathy.

Stuff I used to hear as grousing, from tired, defeated, adults, that couldn't hack it now ring as universal truths.

q3k• 1 year ago

This wasn't just a random employee either, it was “Rafael Onak, User Experience Writing Manager at Apple”.

If you think this is the only time they pull this kind of crap and then hide behind some privacy/design/UX bullshit argument, then I've got news for you...

snowwrestler4• 1 year ago

It’s a shame Phil Schiller has gotten sidelined. He always seemed like a good guy and a big part of the “soul” of Apple as it made its resurgence under Jobs after the NeXT merger.

clhodapp5• 1 year ago

Phil Schiller was one of the strongest voices against cross-platform messaging interoperability. He's just as bad as the rest of them.

AnonHP• 1 year ago

But isn’t that orthogonal to this topic? Being strong on not allowing or losing to competition from a business standpoint vs. advocating that it’s a good idea to follow the judicial directives without playing around?

snowwrestler4• 1 year ago

You can’t guarantee E2E across messaging networks. Apple still doesn’t do it, and neither does Signal, WhatsApp, Messenger, etc.

conorwade• 1 year ago

Agree with this. He originally was taking the opinion that they should make changes to the App Store rules from a position of strength before being forced into it. Schiller has always felt like the best embodiment of the Steve Era. I think they would have lost Tim Cook if he didn't get the CEO position, but Apple has been a little too focused on extracting as much value as possible during his time. They are still doing great stuff, but feel focused on the wrong things.

xuki• 1 year ago

Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise.

The bean counters won. I guess Tim Cook does care about the bloody ROI after all.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim...

JKCalhoun• 1 year ago

I’m liking Phil more than I expected to.

syndeo4• 1 year ago

Ironically, not really the shill as many would think.

pornel2• 1 year ago

This worries me beyond anti-competitive stuff.

If Tim Cook is willing to lie and cheat for extra revenue, I can't trust that Apple is honest about their privacy commitments. Services revenue line must keep going up, and their ad business is a growth opportunity.

20after4• 1 year ago

Similar to how Google merged with DoubleClick and threw out the whole "don't be evil" policy.

My luke-warm take is that the advertising industry is inherently evil.

pi-err• 1 year ago

Pretty sure this is not about revenue but profit margins, since the Services line was under heavy surveillance by markets back then.

Though that's the core issue, margins on services are just too addictive for big tech. Not sure Apple can keep its recipe for success with both services and hardware.

satvikpendem2• 1 year ago

I can't trust that Apple is honest about their privacy commitments

This is a funny comment for me to read. Did anyone honestly think that Apple was touting privacy as anything other than a competitive advantage for revenue maximization? They've had things like iAd, their services revenue has grown massively as hardware sales plateau, and they are nowhere near as "private" in certain countries either.

drooopy• 1 year ago

Apple is a for-profit business, and like most such entities, its primary concern is its bottom line. If promoting privacy aligns with that objective, so be it. However, the company does not have an inherent inclination toward acting ethically beyond what serves its business interests.

someNameIG• 1 year ago

Their privacy commitments align with their business, not their morals. They don't want an open internet primarily funded by advertising, so they make harder for advertising companies to track their users. What they want is an internet silod into apps you get from their app store, that are funded buy subscriptions and IAPs that they get a 30% cut from.

Mindwipe• 1 year ago

I mean, if Apple were ever serious there would be a way to have applications installed on iOS without having to tell Apple.

They were never serious.

whatnow373732• 1 year ago

I can't trust that Apple is honest about their privacy commitments

Oh, no! Who would have thought? What could we possibly do other than keep shoving money into their faces?

buyucu• 1 year ago

Everybody knows that Apple's privacy commitments are a joke. Closed source software can't commit to privacy.

sneak2• 1 year ago

Now Tim Apple has gotta call up Trump and remind him he donated to the inauguration fund and is getting fucked by the tariffs (and furthermore has to spend many billions to hedge against what the USA is going to need to do in Taiwan) and get him to threaten the appellate judge.

naruhodo• 1 year ago

It will be interesting to see if Mr Apple has more spine than Mr Amazon, who acceded to Trump's demand not to show customers how much the tariffs were costing them.

My feeling is that these guys who showed up to the inauguration of a self-professed "dictator on day one" might be a little light on backbone, if not moral fortitude.

xbmcuser• 1 year ago

They already are why do you think Zuckerberg etc were sucking up to Trump and complaining about trade restrictions and barriers in Europe.

zitsarethecure• 1 year ago

I don't know if you are joking and I think it says a lot that I can't tell.

m4635• 1 year ago

Whatever your opinion of Steve Jobs, he was a leader and would never have let things get this far. Now leadership is just mediocre and apple products look nice but are shallow nerfed computing experiences.

caffinatedkitti• 1 year ago

The one who blocked Adobe Flash and Google Voice? Steve jobs was the one to bring app store gatekeping and developer restrictions to IOS.

manoDev• 1 year ago

The "bean counters" always win in the current state of affairs.

The pressure of the financial capitalism on the industrial capitalism is too high. Any company that produces anything is eventually forced into rent-seeking to keep delivering what has come to be expected YoY growth. C-level that won't let that happen will see the way out.

ChadNauseam• 1 year ago

Here is the wording from the judge: https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/3a81ee5d-5103-4306-...

rafaelcosta3• 1 year ago

There's a whole class of sh*t-software that only exists (and is profitable) because users subscribe to them and then forget – primarily because the subscription fee is charged as "Apple" on their Credit Card. I wonder what's gonna happen with this type of scam.

redleather• 1 year ago

Nothing? The ruling is that app developers get to choose how they communicate to users, or how they charge in-app fees. The kind of shady developers you describe would simply continue to use Apple, as it benefits them to do so.

rafaelcosta3• 1 year ago

Right now, yes, but there's a potential to:

- Most legit services move to a web based Apple Pay (note to the unaware reader: this is NOT In-App Purchases and has never had 30% fees) due to the ease of implementing and lower fee (easier to do cross platform + web) - Non-legit developers keep the In-App flow

Over time this would skew In-App Purchases to be scammy-only (and therefore, easier to spot). I'm sure people at Apple consider this possibility too – and therefore, now that there's actual competition, IAP flows will probably have to change to prevent this and compete for actual developer preference (and keep it a viable legit-developer choice)

pasc18782• 1 year ago

If through Apple it is easy to cancel and all subs are listed in one place.

If done through third parties directly the scammers will not make unsubscribing easy and it will not be as easy to find out where you are subscribing.

Thus I expect the scamming to increase.

rafaelcosta3• 1 year ago

Easy from your point of view... This is the argument I mostly hear from Apple folks, but my experience (especially with less tech savvy folks) is that they have no idea where or how to cancel a subscription on IAP and they think that the multiple "Apple" charges are just some iCloud thing or something along those lines. With Credit Card flows the alarm bells go off waaaay earlier: when a website asks for their CC data, they immediately scrutinize more (and thus, conversion rates are lower)

pimterry• 1 year ago

If done through third parties directly the scammers will not make unsubscribing easy and it will not be as easy to find out where you are subscribing.

This is fairly quickly resolved though - if anything close to 1% of customers complain to their banks that they don't want this payment and can't cancel it, triggering a chargeback, the scammers end up entirely blocked from the payment networks entirely in pretty short order. If you end up banned from Visa & Mastercard your whole operation is permanently kaput.

Also, this might be a non-US thing, but over here most modern banks (e.g. Revolut) will let you view & block recurring payment authorizations directly from your banking app anyway.

srcreigh• 1 year ago

It’s not easy on iOS either.

For me to get to it from App Store, I have to click a tiny profile pic (smallest allowed button on iOS?)

The next screen displays Purchase History and other items. However, no way to cancel from this page (insane?)

To get to subscriptions, I have to click my name at the top of that page (which doesn’t even look like a button) which loads for 3 seconds then pops up.

On this hidden account page, it shows Purchase History along with subscriptions list to cancel.

If any other site hid subscription cancelling behind a flat contact header secret account page, it’d be an issue, so yeah it’s an issue for Apple too.

pornel2• 1 year ago

Apple could have offered APIs for managing 3rd party subscriptions from that screen, but it's more convenient for them to have a closed system, private APIs, and use their own non-extensibility as an excuse for their closed payment system.

It's also Apple's specialty to create false dichotomies and shit sandwich bundles: it's either the 30% cut or daylight robbery. No third option (in reality PayPal is more consumer-friendly and allows managing subscriptions in one place from more than iOS).

The whole App Store model is a false dichotomy between the 30% cut and Disney-like moderation vs raging malware that will take down the whole mobile network. No third option (so you can't have Fortnight, or any app showing a nipple).

llm_nerd2• 1 year ago

Apple sends a specific, detailed receipt on the billing of every such item. Apple has some of the most user-friendly subscription management options of anyone. Apple lets you cancel a subscription immediately without cancelling the service immediately, and so on.

There is a lot to criticize Apple for -- the 30% fee is disgusting, and the subject of this order where they bar external payments without fees is criminal -- but the subscription complaint has always been weak.

newbie578• 1 year ago

Finally vindicated! For years we were arguing with the Apple fanboys here on HN about what Apple is doing and how it is wrong, immoral and illegal. Glad to see something starting to happen.

I just wonder what are the next excuses going to be?

bgro• 1 year ago

Besides nothing, I wonder what penalty they’ll face.

smugma• 1 year ago

Full 80 page court transcript:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...

caseyy2• 1 year ago

Many people blame the EU for targeting US companies when it passes anti-monopoly and pro-consumer laws, or penalizes the companies for breaking them.

Now that US courts are doing it more, it seems that corporations abusing their monopoly powers are the problem, not EU laws. But what do I know.

resource_waste• 1 year ago

I don't really know this issue, I don't study it. But from afar:

An EU law stiffles all companies, not just the trillion dollar companies. I've essentially not considered EU audiences because I'm small and focus on the engineering + product directed toward 'everyone except Europe' because it feels like near anarchy.
This is precision work. These companies get too big and anger the wrong person, so they get knocked. However, we obviously see that when its so big, these violations last significantly longer and often can go unpunished.

ginko• 1 year ago

An EU law stiffles all companies, not just the trillion dollar companies. I've essentially not considered EU audiences because I'm small and focus on the engineering + product directed toward 'everyone except Europe' because it feels like near anarchy.

The DMA specifically only applies to platforms with more than 45 million active users.

graemep4• 1 year ago

An EU law stiffles all companies, not just the trillion dollar companies. I

That is true of some EU laws. Many have a disproportionate impact on smaller companies. GDPR for example, and the early versions of VATMOSS in terms of things I have dealt with.

Also, non EU laws such as the UK's Online Safety Act.

Not just in technology. It is also true of UK licensing laws for pubs - an example my attention was drawn to by comments made by the SEO of a big pub company as giving it an advantage.

On the other hand the EU's DMA and a lot of competition regulation gets that right.

Cthulhu_2• 1 year ago

An EU law stiffles all companies it feels like near anarchy

These two... really don't work together, unless my idea of what the word 'anarchy' means is different.

Anyway, an EU based company that wants to trade in the US also has its own slew of legality to consider, including dealing with work visas when visiting, state vs federal laws, import taxes, etc. [0] is the tip of the iceberg. A lot of tech companies will just "move" to the US in order to make things easier (just like a lot of US companies move to e.g. Ireland)

[0] https://www.kvk.nl/en/international/doing-business-with-the-...

kalleboo• 1 year ago

An EU law stiffles all companies, not just the trillion dollar companies

The arguments from Americans against the recent EU regulation is usually the opposite - that it is laser targeted at large US companies "because the EU is jealous that they don't have any large tech companies of their own and just want to cash in on fines"

jimbokun8• 1 year ago

Many people

I doubt it's very many, they just are very loud because there is a lot of money behind their complaints.

caseyy2• 1 year ago

You're right, we can't really know. But on HN, there are always a few comments to that effect whenever there's a larger discussion about EU consumer protections and anti-monopoly laws or penalties.

What % of the public holds these opinions? Who knows? Maybe someone will conduct a study one day, but 99.9% of internet opinions don't get studied, and 99.9% of people don't post mainly responsibly verified information.

There is so much to say about this, when most of our socialization has moved online. So much to be said.

Apols for the tangent.

troad• 1 year ago

The court decision itself is worth reading for a revealing look behind the curtain. [0]

> In Slack communications dated November 16, 2021, the Apple employees crafting the warning screen for Project Michigan discussed how best to frame its language. Mr. Onak suggested the warning screen should include the language: “By continuing on the web, you will leave the app and be taken to an external website” because “‘external website’ sounds scary, so execs will love it.” [...] One employee further wrote, “to make your version even worse you could add the developer name rather than the app name.” To that, another responded “ooh - keep going.”

[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...

bitpush• 1 year ago

Jesus Christ. How worse can they be? Willfully malicious

Jensson• 1 year ago

Now we will have corporate training programs teaching us to say "inform the user" when we mean "scare the user", and then this wont show up in court. Just like how Microsoft taught us to never say "crush the competition". They will do all the same things though.

tokioyoyo2• 1 year ago

Honestly, I’ve seen way, waay, waaaaaaaaaaaaaay worse in internal comms in different companies. Not trying to defend Apple, but this just sounds like an average conversation to me.

caf• 1 year ago

The phrase "incandescent with rage" comes to mind when reading that order. A couple of choice quotes:

To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath.

This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order. Time is of the essence. The Court will not tolerate further delays. As previously ordered, Apple will not impede competition. The Court enjoins Apple from implementing its new anticompetitive acts to avoid compliance with the Injunction.

Gareth3215• 1 year ago

She also referred Alex Roman's actions and everyone else complicit for review of contempt of court, which carries a possible prison sentence. I never thought Apple would outright defy the courts to the degree they'd risk a prison term for the executives.

kmfrk• 1 year ago

It's so jarring to get these kinds of message, especially for compliance with EU directives, because it's so obviously designed to look un-Apple-like which triggers some sort of malware or scam heuristic without the typical nice Apple presentation.

Ironically it ends up getting flagged as some deliberate Apple malicious compliance BS which just sours you on the whole iOS experience.

raincole• 1 year ago

I'm not even sure how "external website" is malicious compliance. Yes, I know the intention is to sound scary. But external website is the correct, neutral term which means... external website.

hajile13• 1 year ago

Unless the judge actually specified the type of language to be used, this seems completely compliant.

Are they supposed to say "Please use our competitor. You'll find your experience with them far superior to what we provide" or something similar?

jkirsteins• 1 year ago

Malicious compliance is a thing. They're supposed to use neutral language.

larsnystrom3• 1 year ago

Why are they using any language at all? Why not just let the app maker open the payment screen directly?

DannyBee10• 1 year ago

Lawyer here - that's not how these things work. This is definitely non-compliant.

Injunctions are, intentionally, required only to "describe in reasonable detail the act or acts restrained or required". The key being "reasonable". They are not required to specify every detail, or every wrong or right thing, especially when the party being enjoined knows more of the details of how things work than the court does.

You seem to believe the court must specify language, etc, and they are absolutely not required to do so. It is your job to figure it out, and if you need more information, shockingly, you can ask the judge for the information, or whether your proposed approach would be compliant.

You are also required to make good faith attempts to comply with a court order. The evidence here is overwhelming bad faith - they were not trying to figure out how to actually ensure the court's goals were carried out, they are instead trying to figure out how to thwart them. That is pretty much the definiton of bad faith.

The injunction has reasonable detail. This is neither good faith, nor did they ask.

You seem to think this is game of try to find legal loopholes. That is a good way to get thrown in a jail by a judge.

It's not. Once you are found guilty and injunction entered, the adversarial process is done. You lost.

Your job is to do what the court requires of you, in good faith, as best you can.

Even if you appeal it, unless it is stayed, you are still required to do it.

Osiris2• 1 year ago

The 180-page injunction outline the reason for it and the goals of the injunction. They knew the court ruled against them for specific reasons but came up with a solution that didn't take into account any of the stated goals into account.

Their solution didn't address any of the goals of the injunction.

IANAL.

avar6• 1 year ago

The most shocking thing to me about that isn't the malicious compliance, but that even after a court injunction, and fully knowing that there could be subsequent discovery, they have people putting something like that in writing.

Seriously, this is one of the top 10 largest companies in the world, and they're playing chicken with the court in order to preserve their ongoing revenue. These weren't random employees, but people part of "Project Michigan", Apple's "activities relating to Injunction compliance".

How doesn't every single person that's a part of that project have an Apple lawyer hovering over them every time they get near any sort of device that can put anything on the record?

mytailorisrich• 1 year ago

People put everything in writing and in videos nowadays and don't even think about it. Often it's "not so smart" criminals but we see again and again that even people are the highest levels do the same...

cwmma• 1 year ago

they did try to hide some of this stuff, by abusing attorney client privilege, which is one of the reasons the judge is SO pissed at them.

graemep4• 1 year ago

Seriously, this is one of the top 10 largest companies in the world, and they're playing chicken with the court in order to preserve their ongoing revenue.

Maybe that is a result of the attitudes that made them one of the largest companies in the world?

DannyBee10• 1 year ago

"The most shocking thing to me about that isn't the malicious compliance, but that even after a court injunction, and fully knowing that there could be subsequent discovery, they have people putting something like that in writing."

Keep in mind that once you lose, the process is no longer adversarial. In ~all cases you will be required to provide evidence and status updates and such on implementation of an injunction, among other things.

So you do practically have to keep records of what you are doing to comply. These are the kinds of records you would normally see as a result. The only shocking thing is that they didn't lie :)

They often do try to hide bad stuff through privilege anyway - I believe they tried here and lost but i will go back and look - but that doesn't often work.

jjav• 1 year ago

The arrogance of power is very difficult (perhaps nearly impossibly difficult) for humans to overcome. Apple is worth more than many countries, so employees are going to feel immune to everything. And for the most part, that is true. Big money buys both laws and courts. Only rarely does this assumption fail.

ChrisRR• 1 year ago

Because otherwise it means getting up from your desk and talking to people. Risk your malicious compliance being discovered or have to go for a walk?

plst• 1 year ago

Responding to a comment by bn-l, but also to the general sentiment about Apple and untrusted code I often see on hacker news.

The broader consumer base will install anything a bad actor wants them to and then blame the manufacturer for not stopping them with some draconian rule.

Has this even happened? Has anyone ever sued and won the case with a laptop manufacturer (or Microsoft or Apple), because they downloaded and executed an executable with malware on their computer? Do average people really blame Microsoft for malware? I would kind of agree that they should, but not because Microsoft allows people to run untrusted code, but because the security model of Windows (and other PC operating systems) is still bad. But not because it allows people to run unsigned code.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think we should return to security model of old operating systems - smartphone OSes definitely got that right, except for the part that forces users to give up control of their devices. It's just that the argument, that allowing people to install software not signed by Apple on their own devices would make iPhones insecure, is totally unsubstantiated to me.

I see some people still arguing that (ex. older) people will do what they are told and will install shady software. If Apple really cares, they could provide a switch that allows users to disable installing "unverified" software. Maybe ask about it during setup. Maybe allow locking it until factory reset, or allow head of icloud family to control it. There are many options to keep some people secure from all unverified apps, while allowing others to run them. Not to mention that the idea that all apps not signed by Apple are somehow malicious is just bad. You could have other entities than Apple verify code. Currently, even running apps you yourself wrote, on your own hardware, is hard and limited. For no good reason.

The only reason Apple is blocking other stores, or preventing people from installing homebrew, is to collect more money. It's good that they are investing into security of their software and hardware, but in this particular case, security is used only as a distraction.

wpm2• 1 year ago

. If Apple really cares, they could provide a switch that allows users to disable installing "unverified" software.

This exists on the Mac. You can configure Gatekeeper to always allow unsigned executables and packages to run, and skip the "You should move this to the Trash it could damage your computer" BS prompts. You can only do this with a Configuration Profile.

amai• 1 year ago

https://mobilegamer.biz/apples-phil-schiller-refuses-to-fix-...

neallindsay2• 1 year ago

Apple should abandon the console model for iPhones (and iPads, etc.). It's corrosive. By my back-of-the napkin math (subtracting an estimate of Google's quarterly search payments from Apple's stated "services" revenue and comparing to iPhone revenue), Apple would make the same amount of money by just charging me an extra 25% when I bought a phone. I would gladly pay that up-front instead of indirectly when I buy apps.

MarioMan2• 1 year ago

A 25% price jump would cause much grumbling. That being said, I’d like to believe that there’s a real market for bootloader unlocked iPhones.

klabb3• 1 year ago

Its not a dollar value. It’s an ongoing percentage based tax on your business relationships and consumption with other providers.

For instance, say Netflix has an iOS app with 10M installs. Apple wants 30% of the subscription revenue even though their costs are static. The only variable cost is payment infrastructure which to some degree is proportional to amounts (fraud etc). But what is the market value of that? A couple percent at most? Are apple even taking any risk?

And honestly, Apple could easily take 5-10% and I’m sure lots of vendors would still use them due to user preference - it’s trustworthy, provided an overview of ongoing subscriptions, and importantly you can cancel without being on a 30min retention call with absolute garbage companies.

But that needs to be played out by the markets. Competition will make Apples option cheaper and most likely competitors will step up to match the UX at lower prices. Free markets, like democracy, have this paradox of tolerance, ie bad faith players can abuse the very system to destroy it in self-interest.

neallindsay2• 1 year ago

I was looking at quarterly revenue numbers—it seems like a dollar value to me.

willchang• 1 year ago

What was Alex Roman's lie? I'm having a hard time figuring that out.

n4r9• 1 year ago

It's not very clear in OP, but is reported better in other places.

Apple employees attempted to mislead the Court by testifying that the decision to impose a commission was grounded in AG’s report. The testimony of Mr. Roman, Vice President of Finance, was replete with misdirection and outright lies. He even went so far as to testify that Apple did not look at comparables to estimate the costs of alternative payment solutions that developers would need to procure to facilitate linked-out purchases.
The Court finds that Apple did consider the external costs developers faced when utilizing alternative payment solutions for linked out transactions, which conveniently exceeded the 3% discount Apple ultimately decided to provide by a safe margin. Apple did not rely on a substantiated bottoms-up analysis during its months-long assessment of whether to impose a commission, seemingly justifying its decision after the fact with the AG’s report.
Mr. Roman did not stop there, however. He also testified that up until January 16, 2024, Apple had no idea what fee it would impose on linked-out purchases […] Another lie under oath: contemporaneous business documents reveal that on the contrary, the main components of Apple’s plan, including the 27% commission, were determined in July 2023.
Neither Apple, nor its counsel, corrected the, now obvious, lies. They did not seek to withdraw the testimony or to have it stricken (although Apple did request that the Court strike other testimony). Thus, Apple will be held to have adopted the lies and misrepresentations to this Court.

https://9to5mac.com/2025/05/01/a-senior-apple-exec-could-be-...

rrgok• 1 year ago

I’ve always been critical of headlines that frame the company as the culprit—especially when the company can’t be sent to prison or face personal consequences. No, it wasn’t "Apple" that violated antitrust laws—Tim Cook approved the actions. Apple doesn't make decisions on its own; it operates under the direction and vision of the people in charge.

It's far too convenient for C-level executives to reap the rewards when their leadership drives profits, only to shift blame to "the company" when things go wrong. Accountability should work both ways.

Wobbles4216• 1 year ago

No one ever suggests that we hold the owners of companies liable for what their companies do.

I know that this is the entire point of limited liability corporations -- to divorce ownership from responsibility -- but maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

jorams• 1 year ago

I agree with the core of your sentiment, but I don't think moving the framing from the company to the person is the answer. It makes it too easy for a company to put the blame on an individual that has conveniently been fired (either for the relevant reason or any other) and then act like the problem is solved. The individuals most responsible should face personal consequences. The company should also face consequences. As they say: One bad apple spoils the bunch. (no pun intended)

1vuio0pswjnm73• 1 year ago

Works where archive.ph is blocked, no Apple surveillance disguised as "convenience", no Javascript:

https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1DXcJN

Read the opinion:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...

jim201• 1 year ago

I am concerned that the App Store has become the norm. For many young people, iPhones and iPads have been their only computer. Many have never seen a world where app developers can distribute independently. The NYT had an article out about ruling, and the number of people supporting the App Store was astounding.

I think Apple has done a great job marketing the App Store as the reason for the security/UX of their platform, when in reality, it's the OS. It's the OS that requires apps to get permission before accessing my location, it's the OS that isolates apps from each other, it's the OS that provides an easy way to install/uninstall packages.

The confusion between benefits of the OS/benefits of the App Store combined with many peoples' unfamiliarity with third party distribution has made it more difficult to convince people of the merit of these antitrust suits.

delusional2• 1 year ago

when in reality, it's the OS

I disagree. Application developers have always been absolutely terrible at packaging. We see this all the time on linux, where publishers just fail to follow the packaging standard of the system, and instead develop an "installer" for their special little snowflake application. The OS cannot save you from that unless you also control distribution and can tell that publisher "you don't get to publish to my very valuable user group if you don't follow my rules".

Publishers have shown time and time again that if given a permission system, they'll just ask for every single permission under the sun, unless somebody stops them from doing that. The user sure isn't. They'll run whatever garbage installer script the publisher gives them because they want the application.

I don't like Apple's monopolistic behavior. I personally believe it would be a great service to the western world to break apart Big Tech, but the incentives that drive application development ARE broken. Apple has good reason to try and fix that with the app store, they just don't get to do it by running a monopoly.

Tijdreiziger• 1 year ago

We don’t see this on Android, where you can install apps from outside the Play Store.

wpm2• 1 year ago

They'll run whatever garbage installer script the publisher gives them because they want the application.

OK, sure. Fine. Whatever.

Fuckin learn or get wrecked.

parhamn2• 1 year ago

I like this decision. But I also like that I can cancel all my IAP subs in the settings quickly. Maybe stripe could set up consumer accounts to do the same.

jobs_throwaway2• 1 year ago

And under this decision, you will be still be free to only subscribe to apps that go through Apple and allow you to cancel that way

PaulHoule• 1 year ago

The government should require credit card companies to introduce a system for recurring billing which would let you see all your subscriptions on your credit card web site and cancel them there. For the 3.5% they charge in fees it is the least they can do.

jnwatson• 1 year ago

it's the OS. It's the OS that requires apps to get permission before accessing my location, it's the OS that isolates apps from each other, it's the OS that provides an easy way to install/uninstall packages.

Sorry, you're just wrong. Only by analyzing the apps can Apple enforce several policies that many folks think contribute to users' security.

The prohibition against dynamic code, lying about the reason that an app needs a certain permission, and all the trust and safety policies are all stuff an OS can't do.

minraws• 1 year ago

If you think there are zero scam/malicious/malwares/etc apps on Play Store or App Store.

I have a mountain I would like to sell ya.

I am not agreeing with the other guy that it's OS.

But App Store is hardly more safe than the usual internet. Stuff...

bigyabai8• 1 year ago

Only by analyzing the apps can Apple enforce several policies

Or they could secure the runtime and quit giving developers dangerous entitlements in the first place. Make no mistake, Apple doesn't need the App Store to develop meaningful security for their users. The Mac is living proof.

malwrar• 1 year ago

The prohibition against dynamic code, lying about the reason that an app needs a certain permission, and all the trust and safety policies are all stuff an OS can't do.

It _is_ something a community of people empowered to control their devices can organize and achieve, but we were stripped of this capability when a small set of private concerns unilaterally locked us out. They just told us that they were the only ones they trusted to manage security, and everyone apparently believed them. The state of personal privacy has gotten unimaginably worse since. Not even the world's largest organizations can manage to fight, much less anticipate, the world's worth of bad actors.

tombert• 1 year ago

My brother in law (25 years old) mostly uses his phone for everything, which is obviously fine, but he needed help with something on his computer recently so he called me.

It was just asking for help getting stuff of a portable hard drive from work, so I tell him to plug it in and open up the file explorer.

He didn't know what the file explorer was, so I say "uh, the thing with the folders and shit in it, the little folder icon on the bottom". He eventually figured it out, and then I tell him to click on the drive on the left, which he figured out, and then I told him to open another file explorer window and drag the files from the first one to the second. The entire ordeal ended up taking him like ten minutes.

My brother in law isn't stupid or anything, he just didn't grow up with the typical desktop computer interface that most people who frequent HN did. He's been able to use a phone or a tablet for pretty much the entire time he's been using "computers", and those abstract away most of the lower level details.

SpaceManNabs• 1 year ago

one of my interns didn't know how to create a folder.

mijoharas2• 1 year ago

So what actually happens here?

Other than the possible contempt for the guy who lied under oath (and some bad press), doesn't this injunction just mean that apple has to do... what it was already previously ordered to do?

Are there no fines or consequences for them doing this? Am I missing something else here?

cyral• 1 year ago

Previously they were ordered to allow outside payments. Apple “complied” by requiring a 27% cut on all outside payments (slight discount to cover the cost of Stripe or whatever), a massive scary popup saying that outside sites can’t be trusted, and the link wasn’t allowed to be in the “payment flow” (where else would it be?), and the right to audit your finances. There were some other things but that’s what I remember as being the most egregious.

Since this basically defies what the court would require, they are now explicitly telling Apple that none of that is allowed, and that there cannot be any restrictions on placement or styling of links to outside payments. As the judge said, no reasonable person would believe that their actions are complying with that they were instructed to do.

Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court's Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the coverup made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple.

ksec• 1 year ago

2025, this marks 11+ years I have been saying that App Store is not sustainable.

They should have made a separate Game Store and continue to collect those 30% from games, which protect 75% to 80% of their current App Store revenue.

Then 5 - 6% for all subscription based services like Netflix and Spotify. If you include the Credit Card Processing and other tax / VAT report this is a fair amount I think most company would be on board.

And 10% for everything else. Including Tipping and other IAP etc.

Apple would have protected most of their App Store revenue, generate lots of good will and continue their walled garden path.

But for whatever reason over the years every time I mentioned it I get downvoted.

Now it may be too late. The damage to developer relationship, to many business and to its brand.

neonate• 1 year ago

https://archive.ph/9BKTB

1970-01-01• 1 year ago

Google, Apple, Facebook all receiving judicial face slaps these past few days! Let's continue with Amazon, Microsoft, and the other supergiant corporations.

matt3210• 1 year ago

Apple will get their money. Expect other costs to make up for any lost costs because of this.

Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

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