> “Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies. As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program.”
Apple backed down, like they did a week ago with PWAs.
Epic could have avoided all this by just responding to Apple and signing the EU Addendum affirming they would stick to the laws. Instead they wanted to get into the news cycle.
This is the policy they have to agree to: https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/download/alterna...
Apple (and Google) need to be saved from themselves sometimes.
Meanwhile the repeated reversals are making Apple look guilty and nefarious.
Except all of us who value privacy and security.
Face it: the major competition between app stores is not going to be on price, but a race to the bottom on who can allow apps to fuck over users the hardest.
I think their strategy is to move the point of reference for future negotiations to an extreme end of the spectrum of what could still be considered to comply with the letter of the law.
Remember all this DMA stuff is coming from the same organization that wants to force Chrome and Firefox to accept TLS certificates issued by governments for any website they want: https://therecord.media/eu-urged-to-drop-law-website-authent...
Regulators don't seem to have had anything to do with it.
---
So what changed? Apple tells 9to5Mac that it has held further discussions with Epic. The result is that Apple has received proper commitment that Epic will play by the rules as legally defined.
“Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies. As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program.”
"""Even with screenshots, and assuming no false claims (which IIRC are entirely legal so long as you don't swear under oath), there's plenty of ways to mislead by omission while saying only true things.""" — works just as well in either direction.
Regulators have to look closely, if they take it on trust it's one Tim's word vs. the others'.
Not fully the truth, however -- according to APPLE, who are quoted in this one article. Tim Sweeny tweeted that the change was due to the EU DMA political proponents applying pressure to Apple.
The truth is not known, and it's not limited to Apple's side.
This smells, you know? The timing is just so precise to be a coincidence.
They fear the spotlight on the fact that even on alternate stores only accounts controlled by Apple can publish apps, which might become the focus of new regulations
Methinks this crowd loves regulation a bit too much.
Disagree. EU regulators act quickly. Here's the commissioner for Internal Market of the Eu: "I take note with satisfaction that following our contacts Apple decided to backtrack its decision on Epic exclusion. From Day 2, #DMA is already showing very concrete results!" https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1766167580497117464
The EU told Apple that breaking the law would have dire consequences. That's the only reason Apple backed down.
Stop spreading Apple propaganda.
> The termination of Epic Games Sweden AB’s Apple developer account was communicated in a letter from Mark Perry, a lawyer representing Apple, to Epic’s lawyers:
> Mr. Sweeney’s response to that request was wholly insufficient and not credible. It boiled down to an unsupported “trust us.” History shows, however, that Epic is verifiably untrustworthy, hence the request for meaningful commitments. And the minimal assurances in Mr. Sweeney’s curt response were swiftly undercut by a litany of public attacks on Apple’s policies, compliance plan, and business model. As just one example: https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1762243725533532587?s=20.
Maybe Tim sent more than a two sentence reply to Phil to get it straightened out. It's anyone's guess at this point.
—
[0]: https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/apple_epic_developer_acco...
What's to prevent them from changing their mind and blocking Epic again? What if Tim Sweeney says something else to hurt Apple's feelings in the future? Apple has too much free rein over removing access to this market, and while it may be a market that Apple has made, the EU is clearly requiring Apple to open up the market for others with the only restrictions being those where the app store or the apps themselves are damaging to consumers in the marketplace.
I think there is these 2 things to consider:
Obviously this will change nothing for most people. Baseline, 99.9% people will not be doing anything different today than yesterday. I think the way Apple acts is ridiculous and outrageous, but I already thought that and already don't have an iphone. My wife doesn't even know who Epic is or anything about ios developers or 30% or any of that, and nothing is changing about her iphone. Nothing changes in either case.
But there will be some subset of current Apple customers who see these actions as exposing an attitude they don't want to reward, enough to stop being Apple customers. Maybe it's the latest thing that adds to the constant stream of other criticisms that they've always heard but have been just excusing or dismissing but eventually they see something they decide is "see enough smoke, maybe time to stop doubting there's a fire". It's not a large group but not zero either.
But will there ever be anyone that goes the other way? Is there any such thing as a current Android user who sees Apple do this, and specifically because of the way Apple treats developers, that convinces them to switch TO Apple? Well there's at least one of every imaginable freak out there but there certainly can't be a class of these.
You're almost certainly listening to loud voices online, who do not reflect majority opinion
The government's trust, yes.
Apple is a big company and they have more than 100 VPs. This naturally creates "tier" between them, since a single CEO cannot manage all of them.
> At what point is a person responsible for the consequences of their actions regardless of intent?
It depends, but when it's something like fighting back against one of the most powerful supranational government entity like EU, the most senior leadership as well as the board must be involved. Not even Tim Cook cannot decide it alone and they clearly didn't want to escalate this matter to that level so quickly pulled it back.
They’re not low tier by any stretch compared to most employees. They’re still high level leaders.
Apple terminates Epic Games developer account, calling it a 'threat' to iOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39618673 - March 2024 (980 comments)
But banning epic was just pathetic baby behavior.
I hope epic launches the epic game store for iOS and its dogshit but cheaper and the gacha gravy boats all jump ship
It's just so insane how fast lawyers can bring the image, will and industry at large to it's knees. I think Apple's legal team should really take a hint (and a hit) from all of us in this industry. You're hurting Apple and the entire dev community more than you're helping.
They were a threat yesterday, but they're not a threat today?
They weren't a threat yesterday either but, what, an automated process or a rogue intern wrote those pr statements? You leave the keys to those accounts just lying around for any flunky to post from like that?
There is no non-clown-car way to explain it away.
There was communication before Apple approved Epic's Swedish subsidiary to get an account, and there could very well have been other omitted communication as part of this exchange and after as part of the resolution.
It is "Forming, Storming, Norming, ... " (Tuckman's stages of group development)
Forming = setting up the technical and business solution for DMA
Storming = arguing due to the newly experienced dynamics of power/control
Norming = CEO stepping in the get a resolved balance in what to do next
Phil Schiller would have been the point man on the business solution (you can hear his tone of voice in the News communications and now see his private messaging as released by Sweeney).
The regulator involvement would have gone via the CEO route, who would have had to resolve the conflict with his deputised point man (Phil).
Companies are just collections of people. Maybe they share world view or a values system, but they are still just people. So human psychology is a relevant (and I argue the most significant) factor coming into play here.
If there was a market logic, I think it would be that they'd prefer the alternative marketplace provider be someone like Amazon, and then have Fortnite be an app in that store. So the commercial disputes then are deflected away from Apple/Epic animosity.
The original business case for 3G wireless networking was "Girls-Games-Gambling". The business case for alternative app marketplaces is a similar content argument "Games-Gambling&Crypto-Porn". Maybe this is part of what is keeping Meta/Amazon/Google away. Those folks can swallow a Core Tech Fee (although would be a significant friction point for sure).
I think the fundamental root problem here is EC are trying to lower prices to businesses by attempting to foster competition which might lower prices. But the actual solution is to directly mandate lower prices, and keep the gatekeepers with their current control points and systems. In other words, consider App Store commissions as actual Taxes. And we know from history that "taxes without representation" lead to revolution.
You have the choice to buy a Samsung phone instead of an Apple phone; most people don’t have the choice to switch governments.
Some had a nice childhood or brain cells and recognize the difference between a dictatorship and a government working in their favor to protect them from big duopols disrupting competition
So according to Apple [edit] one isn't allowed to say bad things about a company publicly or they are allowed to ban your account? Interesting view.
That's the issue with all these providers. Every couple of weeks there's a story from someone whose Google account was suddenly closed with no way to access their emails or pictures again.
Once you buy a smartphone today you and everybody who wants to do further business with you are at the mercy of a monopolist. For Apple 100%, for Google only 98% because you could side-load. But not a secure and practical solution today.
But this is not about Apple's right as a company to refuse any business with Epic, they still have that right.
This is about Apple not complying with a law that targets them due to their anti-competitive behavior; a law that requires them to give the means to operate an App Store competitor to anyone who requests it.
Apple is the one who decided to require an Apple developer account in order to operate an App Store competitor, so they effectively gave up their right to refuse any business with Epic by adding this unnecessary requirement.
If all restaurants are Taco Bell, is it reasonable to allow such bans by taco bell?
I personally think it’s silly to believe that Apple cares even a little about Epic’s criticism. They probably thought they had a legitimate case that would let them stomp out a potential big App Store competitor before it could get off the ground.
No, according to Apple, they believed Epic was going to violate their developer agreement again, and when they asked Sweeney for a commitment he sent them a two sentence email. His public actions were only a modifier on top of his seeming lack of committal and previous history of being a bad actor on Apple’s platform.
Spotify says bad things about Apple all the time, but they've never been banned because they've never violated Apple's rules.
I don't really think that's according to DF, more so Apple.
On the other hand, I'm definitely not saying this is okay or sane just because it's standard practice in the US. It's also how we got legalized segregation and we had to pass laws carving out exceptions to create protected classes such that you're not allowed to refuse service because a person is black, for instance. Just doing this splintered the country and created the modern GOP with its southern strategy.
So it's nice to see these large web companies having to respect the laws of other jurisdictions and not just the US with its hallowed history of property rights over all else, going all the way back to chattel slavery. If the EU can force saner norms on the web, I'm all for it.
There are enough really obvious counterexamples to that statement that I wonder why you'd write it.
I think you mean Black 3.0 (or the other versions from the same artist) which cannot be used by Anish Kapoor.
Worth nothing that the artist making that paint is british and not american.
Apple wants to show that they can’t be brought to their knees.
Epic wants to show that they can get away with shit.
The EU wants to show that they have teeth and are to be feared.
In the meantime, the only organization with the actual final say, the CJEU, is off forgotten in these debates and is currently warming up to accept and adjudicate Apple’s appeal for the ~$2B fine based on art. 102 TFEU.
Apple and Epic are private parties, and the EC is just an executive body. The CJEU in this is analogous to SCOTUS.
The best we can do as bystanders in the meantime is asses on existing principles whose flexing actually has some power behind it.
Epic’s contract with Apple was terminated prior to all this. The US courts have their blessing for this. Epic tried to get unbanned, most notably after changes in Korea, and Apple said they weren’t interested.
Now Epic pulled a stunt and was stupid enough to publish the emails. Based on the time and date of those emails and their public announcement that they “got their dev account back,” we can surmise that Epic just created a new account with the information of their newly erected Swedish entity. This process is 99% automated.
Afterward, they emailed Apple. Not to get permission to return but to state that they are back. That’s when the ball started rolling.
To enter into a valid contract, there needs to be mutual assent. Leaving nuance by the wayside, that means that both parties needed to actually want to enter into a contract with one another.
In the US, this used to be measured against a subjective standard but later shifted to an objective standard that boils down to whether a reasonable person would consider it an acceptance of an offer. In the EU, it’s still a subjective standard where intent to enter a contract is essential.
All of this is to say that if push comes to shove, no court, especially not a European one, is going to consider Epic simply creating a new account when Apple has made it clear time and time again that they don’t want to do business with them, to be sufficient for forming a valid legal agreement.
Without a valid legal agreement, the status quo prior to this event is leading. This being a situation in which Apple and Epic don’t have an agreement.
The DMA doesn’t have provisions that would force parties to enter into an agreement and force them to do business with each other. This is because it wouldn’t be able to withstand adjudication by the CJEU but also because the EU would never want to open Pandora’s box like that. The implications of that would be quite literally beyond comprehension.
So if there’s no valid contract and the EU doesn’t have the power to force one, ask yourself whose flexing is merely a flex and whose flexing is backed by the power of the CJEU? Who’s doing who a favor here?
We know at least of one party that they consistently go out of their way to make a point, even when the underlying issue they use as motivation is already moot. The point being made is that their teeth are truly sharp. So why not use those teeth in this instance and chomp into the flesh. Are we to believe that they’ve lost their appetite for their favorite meal?
Right as their latest pet project has gone into effect no less?
After being embarrassed by their prey who was able to convince the courts to reach into their mouth and reveal that those teeth are not as sharp as they’ve been made out to be almost a decade ago? An embarrassment that they’re still trying to undo in court at this very moment?
If someone who was so shamelessly neutered had the actual power to draw blood by chomping down into the flesh, would it be likely they’d rather growl?
I don’t think so.
Apple's instigating act was a last-minute reversal on the eve of the DMA, it was never going to go unnoticed. Right or wrong, an inquiry was issued and Epic's complaint was resolved - it's up to Apple to "respond" now. Despite your logic, I don't think it would be wise for Apple to see this as an opportunity to flex. Europe is not going to change their mind, and punishing Epic isn't worth the money they would make Apple anyways. It's less about flexing at this point, and more envisioning what a smart path forward even looks like for Apple in a post-DMA reality.
> The DMA doesn’t have provisions that would force parties to enter into an agreement
> Are we to believe that they’ve lost their appetite for their favorite meal?
So? Apple is seeing things if they think any of this will (or should) stop a motivated competitor. Turning this into bloodsport does not benefit the butchering pig, Apple's reversal here is easily explained as an act of self-preservation. Their initial stance was hardly defensible unless you could feel the $AAPL weighing down your performance index. Crushing Epic is not a reasonable goal given the extraordinary legal danger it exposes them to.
The Apple shareholders are not having their eyes light up with dollar-signs in light of the recent response. This is a dangerous and petty road to walk, with ostensibly no financial benefit and the possibility of setting a negative precedent.
Almost every developer pays 15%. You only pay 30% if you earn more than a million dollars a year from the App Store.
Like, there's no strategy at all here? Just keep swinging and hope you land a blow that breaks through the armor? This is how my 15 year old plays VR games.
Picking these petty fights or whining about getting fined is not helpful, certainly not to Apple and their shareholders. It's hard not to conclude that Apple leadership is making stupid emotional decisions rather than rational ones, which is especially dumb when you're running a trillion dollar company.
Since, ultimately, his duty as a CEO is to prioritize the financial wealth of shareholders. If he just complied with the EU then he'd be voted out by the board by the end of the week.
Is he going overboard? I think so. But I've also never owned a $2T+ company with investors and an entire government breathing down my neck.
Most companies like Facebook and Microsoft quietly comply with the rules as best they can with as little fanfare as possible. Maybe after paying a fine or two. As far as I know, there hasn't been any oustings because of that.
I feel like the whole fiduciary responsibility bit is always the foundation of terrible arguments. As if every individual choice that earns a dollar is therefore forced.
Earning multiple billion dollar fines is not serving shareholders. Sabotaging the future is not serving shareholders. Destroying goodwill is not serving shareholders.
Apple's various tantrums and desperate clutching onto their market hasn't remotely been beneficial for the company, and I'd argue it is a big reason the company has started plateauing. Like how Valve went from being a game maker to being a purveyor of gambling crates and keys, Apple is desperately pimping for every bit of rent-seeking and service fees.
Given the compensation level of their legal team I’d expect that they could see it coming and spare the public humiliation and brand damage.
I can’t believe this is real.
The stock dumped 10% almost immediately after the announcement, might also have something to do with it.
I’d love to see the faces of Cook and Schiller at this point.
Sept 10, 2021: Lost a court case, climbed a mountain, read hundreds of pages of legal papers, wrote some code. Just as determined as ever to fight on until there is genuine developer and consumer freedom in software, and fair competition in each mobile platform software component.
https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1436583527290654720?s=20
A time will come when Apple will have legitimate reasons to crack down on third-party app stores. Someone like Meta will invariably try some crap like sneaking VPNs into their apps so they can get complete surveillance on their users (ex. https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/).
Apple is going to have less credibility when they say "no, this is wrong" when this eventually happens if they keep screwing with Epic like this.
Instead of letting Apple make and enforce the rules, we should have laws in place that hold App Stores accountable for what they are selling, just like physical stores.
How did I know that she was the one opposing it? I'm not glad she's dead, but I am glad she isn't on the Senate any more.
Every country talks 'free trade!' out of one side of their mouth, and implements protectionism via various concerns about health/safety/fairness out of the other when it's expedient. The US isn't any different, it's just not tech companies we're worried about (except some clock app that the Gen Z kids are obsessed with).
But guess who pays the best bribes?
(that was free, I’ll take the downvotes)
"We are a walled garden and will not interoperate or tolerate alternatives" is in Apple's DNA, and no decision maker at any level at the company will risk suggesting otherwise for fear of being branded a traitor, even if it is a very good idea.
We are a walled garden and will not interoperate or tolerate alternatives"
Naturally there was a lot of backlash, and so Apple reversed their decision and will continue to support PWAs with WebKit in the EU. This suggests that perhaps the European Commission told Apple that it was okay to do this as it does seem to violate the "don't prioritize your own browser" rule, but as of the last I saw on this it was still unclear.
Maybe there were behind the scenes concessions made and I'm completely wrong, in which case I owe Apple management an apology. But my impression as an outsider is that there is no real strategy here; executives at the company seem to be throwing their weight around and picking fights at random, getting slapped down, and immediately retreating.
If you act like a bully, and then recede at the slightest resistance, you just come off looking like a fool.
There's an observation that computer programs tend to reflect the organizational structures of the company that developed them. I would go further and argue that company cultures are a reflection of the founders that built them.
In the case of Apple, Steve Jobs was an emotionally manipulative psychopath that was very good at conning people, making anyone he talked to buy into his bullshit. When he didn't get his way, he'd cry like a child and throw tantrums. Everyone at Apple absolutely lionized the shit out of Jobs, even during the interregnum period where the company was being torn apart by idiots. All of the upper management was his own hand-picked successors, who have largely continued doing exactly what Jobs was doing, just with higher scale.
The world largely did not notice this because the actual product (at least, when Jobs was actually in the driver's seat) was good. Part of the capitalist social contract is that we don't care about how the sausage was made so long as we aren't assuming the risk[0]. But this is still very much a religious cult that just so happens to be shaped like a for-profit corporation, run by people who were hand-picked by its dogmatic, emotionally unstable founder[1]. It just so happens to also employ actual geniuses.
In the Apple religion, there are commandments, and one of them is "thou shalt not install unauthorized third party software, for it is the malware of the beast". Like other religions, the commandments are based in some kind of plausible system of rules, we can absolutely Chesterton's Fence them, but that rationale has been forgotten by true believers who take them to axiomatic extremes. Apple is not exactly going to die on this hill[2], but they are going to try to make the system as restrictive as possible within the DMA's constraints, because they've RDF'd[3] themselves into thinking their greed is protecting users.
[0] Also, most of the people Jobs really fucked over were the kinds of people society did not care so much about in the 1980s.
[1] This also applies to the FSF, except it's rules are "thou shalt not bind the user to your tech cult". It's an anti-cult cult.
[2] Though I've had the urge to make fake sales pages for an Apple Nuclear weapons program and photoshop the words "POOR IMPULSE CONTROL" on Tim Apple's head.
[3] Reality Distortion Field, not Resource Description Framework
The App Store monopoly generates billions in ad revenue from app vendors advertising their apps on search results. That will take a huge hit if there's an alternate app store they can potentially pay a lot less to gain exposure.
Vision Pro is probably a gimmick along with the whole VR world right now, which will change soon too but overall I don't see anything exciting about apple.
Their pricing is infuriating and so are their decisions (laptop 8gb ram in 2024???)
To me it looks like they got stuck in the "this is what worked for us, so let's only do this" mentality and take no risks.
They stand on the shoulders of giants and most importantly on their cultural presence...
And the ARM changeover in the laptops has been so seamless, people seem to ignore the huge risks with switching architectures. And now everyone is chasing them for the same power/battery life.
They've had some missteps, but we need a few more years to really know if they have been left behind. Apple was never one to be first to do something.
Maybe they’ll manage to get LLMs running well locally with the new low-bit developments? Not my area. But for training/learning it seems like Apple is DOA. They have the same problem as AMD, no one is doing research with their hardware or software.
Intentionally shipping low RAM/unified memory quantities seems short sighted too. Maybe with a 16GB baseline they could do something special with local LLMs.
While Mr Perry prefers to parry words before a material blow lands, Mr Cook naturally avoids cooking an antitrust case.
Which probably boils down to one overzealous middle/higher manager trying too hard to be a good boi for superiors to get extra bonus... I don't think it panned as expected. Otherwise apple corporate culture is quite rotten.
Especially when you add the failed PWA move before, they're starting to look pretty bad.
But I suspect it'll take them more time until it fully sinks and until they are done testing their new boundaries.
Well done.
The simplest explanation for what happened with Apple this past few weeks is that there's no master plan. The EU told them the rules, they didn't take them seriously, now they're realizing a bit late that they can't afford not to respect the rules and they're scrambling to figure out what that means.
It's more like the EC told both sides to get some adults in the room and work it out. Since they clearly didn't force Apple to change any rules and Epic agreed to follow Apple's rules, I have no idea where all this chest-beating is coming from. Apple is still winning and the EC is still feckless.
I understand everyone feels good about increased competition with Apple—and hopefully it turns out well for users—but iOS is hurtling toward the same situation that exists on Windows, and I think the iOS experience is worse for it. It's definitely worse with the browser nag. So I don't call this a total win. It's a theoretical win, but I foresee it being about as much of a win as cookie banners are, when it comes to the actual, practical, day-to-day experience people have using this technology.
Open store competition in the gaming area leading to steam being far in the lead, not the OS gatekeeper, is a proof that it allows for more choices for consumers and the better one taking the lead.
The mandated monopoly with 30% fee alternative is unreasonable.
I wonder if something happened behind the scenes.
One can argue whether this specific legislation is wise, but legally i don't think there's any limit to what the EU can mandate for goods sold in their market.
Where democracy decides it ends.
Setting standards is one of the oldest forms of regulation, ever since weights and measures were standardized to ensure people could trade more easily, ensuring that when you bought a pound of flour from one vendor it would be the same pound as the vendor across the street.
And they do that across _all_ sectors of industry, you only noticed the tech one because it's in the news you pay attention to, but everything from farming to textiles to tech to pharmaceuticals are heavily regulated so that the people that live in the EU can enjoy a reasonable standard of living.
They won't because they know Apple exiting would simply hand the market to those that can bear the harsh yoke of consumer regulation.
1. Split Apple into smaller companies
2. Operate Apple like an utility company
It's asinine that I, as a consumer, can pay over $1000 for a device and not be able to choose which software I can run on it because the developer of that device locks out access. It's even worse that the company I bought it from can arbitrarily disable the device, features, and services that I have paid for, and I have little to no recourse.
Maybe that's just me though. ;)
“Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies. As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program.”
If you think the EU got their shit together in 2 days, you're day dreaming.
Phil Schiller invited Epic to make assurances that they'd follow the terms of the agreement. Epic did. The EU didn't even have their shoes on.
You can safely ignore Tim Sweeney's twitter chest beating - it's marketing.
There is zero evidence of Epic doing anything on their part after that. There is, however, evidence of the EU Commission warning (if you can't parse "Under the DMA, there is no room for threats by gatekeepers to silence developers" as a warning, you may need to improve your functional reading skills) Apple and inquiring for explanation.
Tim Sweeney isn't chest beating. He is attributing this development to the EU. Chest beating would mean attributing this development to their own actions, which he is not claiming at all.
- You're still going to be paying us our 27%
- You screw around and we will clip your wings.
Incidentally, if you don't like the rules Apple has set up, start pushing for a law that you do want. If you happen to be in the US, actually write your representatives rather than just whine about it online to a bunch of other people.