[HN Gopher] Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple ... ___________________________________________________________________ Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case Author : freddier Score : 1044 points Date : 2021-09-10 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com) | noxvilleza wrote: | If someone has read the full ruling and is familiar enough with | the case, what are the odds Apple appeals this - and if they do, | is it likely they will win the appeal? | gigatexal wrote: | This has to be an insta-appeal though so much dirty laundry has | come out in discovery maybe they won't. Then again App Store | profit margins are so high ... maybe they will take the hit on | the 30% and double down on App Store advertising instead since | first party advertising is blessed now? | colinmhayes wrote: | 100% chance apple appeals. App store revenue is like 15 billion | a year and margins have got to be huge. | gpm wrote: | (Not a lawyer, or really an expert on anti-trust law) | | I fully expect both sides to appeal. To much money is on the | line to not try. | | Even if Apple _knew_ they would lose the appeal, I expect they | still would, to try and get a stay on this ruling pending the | outcome of the case. | | I've always been very sympathetic to Epic's side of this case, | still am, personally I don't expect Apple to win appeal [1], | but I also wouldn't rank the odds of that happening as | significantly lower that I thought the odds were of them | winning the initial case. | | Epic might be willing to settle without an appeal in exchange | for the ability to continue developing unreal engine for iOS... | but given that Apple is not likely to be willing to settle (see | above) I doubt that will happen. Apple _might_ choose to unban | epic anyways, since the game engine only being available for | android hurts them, but I doubt it. | | [1] Though if a detail here or there changed in Apples favor | that would not be surprising. | microtherion wrote: | > Epic might be willing to settle without an appeal in | exchange for the ability to continue developing unreal engine | for iOS | | I wonder which parts of the lawsuit are even amenable to a | settlement at this point. Sure, the breach of contract claim | is between Apple and Epic, and Epic could negotiate away | their right to appeal. | | But presumably the injunction just issued is NOT negotiable, | as this is based on behavior that Apple is alleged to have | engaged in against _all_ developers? | | Would any actual lawyers care to weigh in? | jcranmer wrote: | Reading only a snippet of the opinion, 100% chance of appeal. | At the very least, the court effectively says it has no | authority as to why it can issue a nationwide (instead of | statewide) injunction; you'd be a fool to not at least appeal | that. The fact that the court also came to a different decision | from both Apple and Epic as to what constitutes the appropriate | market for determining monopoly also seems like it would be | fruitful grounds for appeal. | | Will Apple win? I don't know 9th Circuit or the applicable law | anywhere near enough to answer that question. | paulpan wrote: | Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this ruling only applies for | in-app purchases correct? E.g. Apple cannot force apps to default | to and only use to its payment infrastructure for post-sale and | within app transactions (which comes with 30% fees). | | In other words if my app costs $10 and in-app transactions are $1 | apiece, Apple still gets $3 from initial purchase but instead of | $.30 from each subsequent in-app transaction, I could potentially | keep $.97 (assuming 3% credit card fees). | | If so I think the long-term impact will be most interesting in | that will Apple raise its developer fee significantly and/or | discourage "free" apps to cover its hosting, review, other | overhead costs. It would also incentive app developers to become | more like game developers: every feature becomes its own add- | on/DLC. | manquer wrote: | Alternatively in a parallel universe, Apple will transparently | price their other "services" basis the actual cost incurred | such as number of reviews they do, number of downloads, OTAs, | number of IAPs/ recurring subscriptions etc, and developers can | figure out the best mechanism for their user case. | nodamage wrote: | It's worth noting that this ruling was not particularly great for | Epic as their ultimate goal was to run their own app store under | the theory that Apple was unfairly monopolizing app distribution | on iOS devices. | | The court fully rejected Epic's argument that Apple held a | monopoly over the iOS app distribution market, concluding that | the relevant antitrust market did not consist only of iOS | devices: | | > _" As demonstrated with respect to the relevant market, Apple | does not have substantial market power equating to monopoly | power. While considerable, Epic Games has failed to show that | Apple's market power is durable and sustaining given the current | state of the relevant market. For that reason, the Court finds | that Epic Games failed to prove the first element of a Section 2 | claim: the possession of monopoly power in the relevant market."_ | (Page 152) | | Consequently all of Epic's Sherman Act claims and California | Cartwright Act claims were rejected by the court because Epic | failed to prove Apple held monopoly power in the relevant market. | | With specific regards to Epic's specific claim that blocking | alternative app stores was an unreasonable restraint of trade, | the way the court analyzes these types of claims is as follows: | | 1. The plaintiff first has to show that the restraints have an | anti-competitive effect. | | 2. The defendant is then given the opportunity to show a pro- | competitive justification for the restraint. | | 3. The plaintiff then has to show that those pro-competitive | justifications could have been achieved via less restrictive | alternatives. | | In this case, the court agreed with Epic that the constraint was | anti-competitive. However, they then accepted Apple's pro- | competitive justification with regards to security of the | platform: | | > _" Here, the Court finds Apple's security justification to be a | valid and nonpretextual business reason for restricting app | distribution. As previously discussed, see supra Facts SS V.A.2., | centralized app distribution enables Apple to conduct app review, | which includes both technical and human components. Human review | in particular helps protect security by preventing social | engineering attacks, the main vector of malware distribution. | Human review also helps protect against fraud, privacy intrusion, | and objectionable content beyond levels achievable by purely | technical measures. By providing these protections, Apple | provides a safe and trusted user experience on iOS, which | encourages both users and developers to transact freely and is | mutually beneficial. As a result, Apple's conduct "enhance[s] | consumer appeal." See Qualcomm, 969 F.3d at 991."_ (Page 145) | | They also accepted that the difference in approaches between iOS | and Android promoted competition between the two platforms: | | > _" As a corollary of the security justification, the app | distribution restrictions promote interbrand competition. The | Supreme Court has recognized that limiting intrabrand competition | can promote interbrand competition. Leegin, 551 U.S. at 890. For | example, restricting price competition among retailers who sell a | particular product can help the manufacturer of that product | compete against other manufacturers. Id. at 890-91. It is this | interbrand competition that "the antitrust laws are designed | primarily to protect." Id. at 895. Here, centralized app | distribution and the "walled garden" approach differentiates | Apple from Google. That distinction ultimately increases consumer | choice by allowing users who value open distribution to purchase | Android devices, while those who value security and the | protection of a "walled garden" to purchase iOS devices. This, | too, is a legitimate procompetitive justification."_ (Page 146) | | Epic tried to argue that a less restrictive alternative was | possible via enterprise certification or notarization, but this | argument was rejected by the court: | | > _" However, missing from both the enterprise and notarization | models is human app review which provides most of the protection | against privacy violations, human fraud, and social engineering. | These proposed alternatives would require Apple to either add | human review to the notarization model or leave app review to | third-party app stores. Apple executives suggested that the first | option would not scale well. Under the second option, Apple could | in theory set minimum guidelines for app stores to provide a | "floor" for privacy, security, and quality. However, security | could increase or decrease depending on the quality and diligence | of the store. Evidence shows that at least on Android, the | experiment shows less security. | | ... | | > In short, Epic Games has not met its burden to show that its | proposed alternatives are "virtually as effective" as the current | distribution model and can be implemented "without significantly | increased cost." | | ... | | > Here, Apple's business choice of ensuring security and | protecting its intellectual property rights through centralized | app distribution is reasonable, and the Court declines to second- | guess that judgment on an underdeveloped record. | | ... | | > Accordingly, the Court finds that Apple's app distribution | restrictions do not violate Section 1 of the Sherman Act."_ | (Pages 148-149) | | While this decision will no doubt be appealed by both sides, it's | not looking good for Epic's goal of forcing open alternative app | stores on the iOS platform. | danShumway wrote: | This is somewhat surprising to me. I thought Epic had a | reasonable chance of getting an eventual win on some points, or | in getting enough attention that regulators stepped in. I also | thought Apple had a pretty decent chance of winning. | | But I did not think that Epic had a particularly strong chance of | getting an injunction like this. | | I hope that the takeaway people take from this is "it's tricky to | guess what a judge will do during a contentious case", and not, | "the judge was always obviously going to issue this injunction." | I still personally think knowing what I know now, if I went back | to the start of this case I still wouldn't be able to confidently | predict this injunction. | | But maybe other people are better at reading court signals than I | am. | stale2002 wrote: | Something that I like to do, when discussing these issues with | people, is get the other person to commit to a position, ahead | of time, and go back to those comments later to see who was | right. | | I had multiple discussions, with many commenters on hacker | news, where people were way too certain about the court case, | when clearly it could have gone many different ways (Thus, I | agree with you that "it's tricky to guess what a judge will do | during a contentious case" ). | dannyw wrote: | The judge literally hinted at this exact outcome during the | hearings, back in May: | | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-12/epic- | appl.... | | It's not a surprising outcome whatsoever if you followed the | trial. | | Apple's recent concession on this was reading the room and | realising this is the likely outcome. | danShumway wrote: | I did follow the trial, and actually probably commented on | that exact compromise hint at the time (although I'd need to | look over my comment history to know for sure). | | I didn't read a "compromise" as indicating that an injunction | was particularly likely, and most of the commentary I read on | HN at that time didn't read it that way either. | | I think people are looking back with the benefit of hindsight | at something that was not by any means a generally assumed | outcome, even from people who were covering and talking about | the trial on HN itself or on other social media sites I | followed. | | A _hint_ that the judge is curious about finding middle | grounds in a lawsuit is definitely not a promise of a | permanent injunction. | OneEyedRobot wrote: | Is Apple surprised? | | It seems to me that the current model for tech companies is.. | | . Do something clearly sketchy to build your market. It might be | copyright violations, it might be lock-in. | | . Grow/profit until someone cares. | | . Hold off the court cases for as long possible | | . When they finally go against you, it's probably too late since | the new thing has come along. | | . Wash rinse repeat. | lacker wrote: | Great news for mobile developers (and for Stripe). Everyone doing | in-app purchases has a huge incentive to quickly find some drop- | in replacement that charges 3% instead of 30%. | | I would be surprised if Apple ends up keeping the fee at 30%. If | this injunction holds up, I think they will drop it within the | year. | skizm wrote: | I wonder if Apple is allowed to put warnings on apps that contain | directions to non-app store payments. Something like "This app | may direct you to a payment method not reviewed by or governed by | the App Store's strict security guidelines. Use at your own | discretion. Apple is not responsible for any issues related to | this non-Apple payment method." | cblconfederate wrote: | who says they won't review the payment processors? they | obviously won't allow apps that they consider scams | Razengan wrote: | That seems to be the best way to reduce the number of users | pestering Apple for refunds for shitty apps. | frumper wrote: | I wouldn't be surprised to see a pop up warning when leaving | the app to the browser that gives a warning like this on all | external links. | anilr wrote: | If an app has been blocked from the app store because it doesn't | have In-App purchases (it has its own credit card form), do we | know how this judgement affects things? | | It sounds like the app would be allowed to link to an external | payment system, but it's not clear if a non-Apple in app payment | system would be allowed. | | It's also not clear to me if In-App purchases (through Apple) | could be required for approval into the store? I assume Apple | would still have the power to require use of their payment | system. | thesuperbigfrog wrote: | It still costs Apple money to run the App Store. | | Since many developers will now be able to opt out of payments | through Apple and Apple will lose that revenue, I foresee Apple | changing the terms of service for developers so they can get | revenue by some other means not affected by this ruling. | | Would Apple charge developers based on the number of downloads / | installs of the developers' apps? | | What other ways might Apple make up for the lost revenue? | Invictus0 wrote: | Will Epic's developer account be reinstated? | cletus wrote: | I've been saying this for years now: this is why Apple should've | ushered in lower commissions on larger publishers themselves | because otherwise a court, a regulatory authority or a | legislature was ultimately going to do it for them. | | And you're almost always better off making that change yourself. | | Big publishers have their own payment processing pipelines. | Apple's is just extra overhead. Smaller publishers still (IMHO) | can see a lot of benefit from Apple's 30% cut. It's those large | publishers who are most likely to challenge your rules in court | or lobby against you. | | If the very largest publishers were paying 10% as a Preferred | Partner instead of 30%, they would be a lot less willing to | challenge the status quo when they might lose that privilege. | | We've already have ridiculous workarounds for Apple's policies | here like how you can bypass it to buy directly from Amazon | through the app for physical goods. The carve out for digital | goods is and was always a tortured post facto justification. | | Where once the 30% cut funded the App Store (when it was small). | It's clearly transitioned to being a massive profit center and | Apple executives couldn't see past the short term revenue to see | the writing on the wall. Woops. | tyingq wrote: | They sort of tried, under duress, but too little, too late: | | https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/08/apple-us-developers-a... | majani wrote: | When you consider the Pareto nature of app store earnings, | Apple's best move was to wait and be forced to make the change. | dev_tty01 wrote: | I agree. It also allows the judge to slap them without | agreeing with the other side. Epic didn't get anything they | really wanted. This change will not make much difference. No | change to single app store model. As far as I can tell, Apple | will have to allow communication in the app about payment | through other means. That's it. I think it is likely that | Apple will require apps to offer Apple payment as an option | alongside the new communication about an external payment | system. That is just a guess on my part, but it wouldn't be | surprising. | | If I guessed right, Apple's income probably won't go down | much. I would rather use Apple payment system. Lots of other | people will also. It is simple and allows me one-stop | management of subscriptions and purchases. Some folks won't | of course, but it is the easiest choice. | woko wrote: | > I would rather use Apple payment system. | | The price would be higher if you used Apple payment system. | That is how companies would get consumers to be enticed to | use other payment systems. | | That is what Epic did with their V-bucks: either use Apple | system at the usual cost, or use Epic payment system at a | permanently decreased cost (20% cheaper in August 2020). | dwaite wrote: | But once the regulatory option is looming overhead, don't you | risk having your changes conflict with what the ultimate | regulatory judgement would be? | lostcolony wrote: | Sure; you also "risk" the regulating authority deciding it's | no longer an issue. Best case, you get to frame the solution; | worst case you get the same outcome, the regulator deciding, | BUT with you having demonstrated willingness to address the | issue. | | The only reason to defend yourself is if you legitimately | think what you're doing is defensible. | [deleted] | threatofrain wrote: | That Apple collects high fees ought to be considered separately | from whether Apple mandates at least the use of Apple Pay. As a | user, I love Sign in with Apple + Apple Pay. It allows my family | members to give over very little information over to app | companies. | | This is a level of consumer privacy that's not found anywhere | else. | gigel82 wrote: | This would be very good news if it sticks! | | But since Apple is known to refuse store submissions for opaque | reasons, what would stop them from retaliating against apps that | provide links to external payment processors with vague unrelated | reasons? I would not put that past them. | | Also, I hope the anti-monopoly part gets picked up at the federal | level; no one can deny Apple & Google are de-facto duopoly. | belltaco wrote: | It's possible but it will be hard to get away. If there's an | official policy to do it, there might be whistleblowers or | people might notice patterns. If that happens, courts tend to | take a very dim view of what they see as intentional | retaliation or creative workarounds to not follow the court | orders. The court might first tell Tim Cook to appear in court | to answer what exactly happened and who decided to do it. | Pulcinella wrote: | Apple Pay is a separate system than the normal IAP system, but I | expect there are going to be tons of apps with tiny web views | hosting nothing but the web Apple Pay button. This would cut down | on some of the friction of having the user re-enter their credit | card info for every app while still cutting out Apple's 30% cut. | smnrchrds wrote: | > "The court cannot ultimately conclude that apple is a | monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws," she | writes in the ruling. "Nonetheless, the trial did show that apple | is engaging in anti-competitive conduct under California's | competition laws." | | It's nice to see that you don't have to be a monopolist to be | legally barred from anti-competitive behaviour. I hope this puts | a permanent stop to all the thread on HN arguing one way or | another whether Apple is a monopoly. | echelon wrote: | It's a new game, and we need new definitions. | | Famgopolies [1] behave different than monopolies. But they're | every bit, if not more, dangerous. | | They use their incredible market power and cash piles to enter | new markets with ease and put price pressure on the incumbents. | It's hard to compete with free. Then all the other famgopolies | enter the space too, and it's just a famgopoly watering hole. | | Their objective: capturing attention and keeping their users on | their platforms longer. They use their platform bubbles to | capture a large group of users that will never leave their | services. Like Apple users. They're all in a bubble, and if you | want access, you have to pay a steep tax and jump to the beat | of the their whims. | | And this isn't a new kind of monopoly? It's a monopolization in | a new sense: they wrap their shroud over individuals and | companies and keep them attached at the hip. Switching costs | become incredible. | | Apple, Google, and Amazon are turning us into serfs. They have | a quasi republic going on that they tax and control. You can't | start new businesses. You can't escape. If they target your | small market, you're screwed. | | The DOJ needs to break these companies up into twenty or so | smaller ones that don't form a cobweb of entrapment. | | Apple/Google/etc fans and shareholders will disagree, but these | companies are hurting our industry and soaking up all the | innovation. | | [1] FAAMG companies with supremely anticompetitive behavior | shadowgovt wrote: | I don't think we need a new word for this. What you've | described is a cartel [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel]. | To the extent that they restrain trade, prohibit competition, | or artificially increase costs on consumers, cartels are | already illegal in the US. | echelon wrote: | Is "cartel" fitting? These companies aren't always | associated. (Though recent leaks do seem to indicate | behind-doors conversations are taking place.) | | Some of the prevailing themes: | | - These companies are after _attention_ across any vertical | a person may touch | | - These companies build platforms that scope creep into | other platforms and verticals. They connect and entrench | them. | | - They make it impossible to access consumers without them, | and then they tax the entry points | | - They make switching costs high | shadowgovt wrote: | What you're describing looks more like the supermarket | shelves. Some 80% of products in the cereal aisle are | owned by three companies. Nobody really cares, but the | switching costs to get a cereal outside that controlled | space turn out to be pretty high (just try it with a | family with kids). | | If you want to make your own cereal, good luck; the | supermarkets trust the Big Three and are pretty | uninterested in flighting something new; shelf space is | finite and people don't trust off-brand cereals. | | The cereals care more about attention than price- | competition. They know it's all the same crap; they want | you to care more about whether there's a bear or a frog | on the box. | | And the same companies that make the cereals make several | other verticals too, all carved similarly. | | This configuration has not, generally, been considered | illegal in terms of market regulation in the US. The | standard is harm to consumers, not harm to non-incumbent | manufacturers. Your battle to show _why_ either of these | spaces should be regulated more stringently is uphill | against the default in the US to take a hands-off | approach to market activity unless necessary to cure an | obvious ill (and the ills here are non-obvious; how do we | show the cereal market, or the software-services market, | don 't look the way they do because the incumbent players | have hit on a locally-optimal approach to give value to | customers, while customers are satisfied? Amazon, for | example, are bastards, but they're bastards that have | managed to unlock such efficient distribution and value- | satisfaction for their customers that they rendered an | entire ecosystem of competitors as obsolete as the buggy- | whip manufacturer). | echelon wrote: | I think you have that analogy backwards. Google, Apple, | and Amazon are the supermarkets. But they're also filling | the shelves with their own products. It might not be too | different from Walmart, save for a few points: | | - They make it hard for consumers to shop at other | stores. Or repair their devices (bad analogy). | | - They're doing all kinds of things a supermarket would | never do. Like turning into music and movie studios. | | - The really sad thing is that before the giants sprang | into existence, you could distribute your software and | services without the need for a supermarket. Famgopolies | created an artificial warehousing system and forced us | all into it. | shadowgovt wrote: | - They make it hard for consumers to shop at other | stores. | | As a user of Apple, Google, and Amazon tech for decades, | I simply disagree on the other two. You'll have to | clarify in what way Google and Amazon make it hard to | shop at other stores. Google, in particular, enables | side-loading on every Android device. Of the three you've | named, Apple is the biggest offender, and it appears they | _have_ touched the hot stove, unless this Court 's ruling | becomes reversed. But they touched it in a way that | Google and Amazon do not, unless I'm missing something. | | I don't think a world where F-droid continues to exist is | one where we can claim Google, in particular, is a | supermarket that makes it hard to shop at other stores. | | - They're doing all kinds of things a supermarket would | never do | | That's not by itself illegal, or discouraged. | Traditionally, companies have considered such expansion a | bad idea because they expose themselves to outsized risk | in a market downturn. But there are examples of other | companies doing that. Sony is a hardware manufacturer and | a movie producer. Disney owns theme parks and movie | production. Proctor & Gamble make some 90% of what goes | in, on, or around the American body and home that you can | buy off a store shelf (including many apparently- | competing products). ViacomCBS owns theme parks, | television studios, book publishing, heavy-industry | machinery, and nuclear technology. | | - The really sad thing is that before the giants sprang | into existence, you could distribute your software and | services without the need for a supermarket | | I remember, and what I remember is, I think, one of the | reasons American law tends to take a relatively hands-off | approach in this space. | | The user experience from the era you're describing, to be | blunt, sucked. Mobile devices, when apps could be loaded | on them at all, where hard-to-manage, the apps were | buggy, and they were hard to find. Lack of standards, | lack of oversight, no trust that any given app wasn't a | security mess (or just a Trojan) without something like | brand recognition to rely upon. It wasn't just Apple and | Google who changed that; we saw Steam come along and | regularize the games-on-PCs space, we saw package | management get more robust in the Linux ecosystem... | People weren't _forced_ into software catalog ecosystems, | they _ran_ to them and brain-drained alternatives because | most of the alternatives were actively painful. | | The government wants to avoid stepping on the neck of a | better customer experience inadvertently via over- | regulation. | | And perhaps most importantly: you can still do that. You | can still write an Android app and put it on F-droid, or | self-sign it and give users instructions for enabling | side-loading. But you won't see the adoption you will in | using the big app stores, because the big app stores are | a _way_ better experience for most users. Outside of | those app stores, discovery, reputation-tracking, | consumer communication, anti-Trojan safeguards, etc. are | '90s era. | Nevermark wrote: | > >The really sad thing is that before the giants sprang | into existence, you could distribute your software and | services without the need for a supermarket | | > I remember, and what I remember is, I think, one of the | reasons American law tends to take a relatively hands-off | approach in this space. | | It is a false dilemma that you either have vetted apps | with Apple, or unvetted apps. | | You could still have other app stores reviewing apps. | That would increase competition but still let users | choose safety over a Wild West. | | And brands who have gone to great efforts to obtain user | trust can sell directly. | jacobr1 wrote: | How does this differ from traditional brick and mortar | retail? The retailers posed a barrier to selling to consumers | at scale and wholesale prices, I think, were closer to 50% of | retail markup. | | Sure, manufactures could find small retailers and build a | following from there, or find ways to market direct to | consumers. But it seems like that is still true, if not even | easier in the modern age. So what is different. I ask this | not rhetorically, clearly there are differences. Is the scale | the difference? Was it always wrong and we just didn't see it | a clearly? Is the smaller number retailer the major factor? | jdgoesmarching wrote: | No brick and mortar store has anywhere close to Apple's | dominance on mobile apps and the retail industry is not a | defacto duopoly. Apple and Google control 95% of the global | app market. Apple alone was 65% last year. | | For reference, Walmart and Amazon have about 14% and 10% | market share respectively. Numbers differ from report to | report, but the scale of difference is pretty clear. | fabianhjr wrote: | > It's a new game, and we need new definitions. [..] | Famgopolies (FAAMG companies with supremely anticompetitive | behavior) behave different than monopolies. | | There are many authors that have been exploring the economic | aspect of platforms. As such nowadays that phenomenon is know | as "platform capitalism" in literature due to Nick Srnicek's | 2016 Polity book of the same name. [1] | | [1]: https://theceme.org/richard-godden-platform-capitalism- | nick-... | hospadar wrote: | I'm sure it won't put a stop to it, I love to read discussions | about "Does company X engage in anti-competitive behavior and | are they a big enough player that it's a problem". That seems | to be a much more useful discussion (i.e. it gets at "do they | need to be reigned in by We The People") than "are they a | monopoly" which is just bickering over what words mean (with | some shades of "if they _were_ a monopoly, then We The People | should do something about it). | | At the end of the day, who cares if they are a monopoly or not | - you don't have to be a monopoly to be in a position to do Bad | Stuff to The Market. | TheCoelacanth wrote: | We should care if they are a monopoly, because if they're a | monopoly, then they simply shouldn't be allowed to exist. | | Even if they aren't a monopoly, they shouldn't be allowed to | engage in anti-competitive behavior. | blackoil wrote: | > if they're a monopoly, then they simply shouldn't be | allowed to exist. | | Market driven de-facto monopoly are allowed. If you own | >90% search engine marketshare it is fine as you have | earned it. If you abuse the marketshare to enter shopping, | travel market it is monopoly-*abuse* and it should be | blocked/fined. | smolder wrote: | Abuse would include if you were charging ridiculous | amounts of money for your monopoly service, like Ma Bell | did, right? What about deterring competition with | portfolios full of braindead patents? Buying legislation | that puts high barriers around the market? I think the | separation between government and big business is a | farce, today, and in combination they're way more | oppressive than high priced telephone service was way | back when. | tshaddox wrote: | > "Does company X engage in anti-competitive behavior and are | they a big enough player that it's a problem" | | Seems like that just makes "it's a problem" do all the work. | smarx007 wrote: | Well, if we are taking quotes out of a serious 185-page | document, we are bound to lose some context. How about this | counter-quote: | | "The Court does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic | Games failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal | monopolist." | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | > I hope this puts a permanent stop to all the thread on HN | arguing one way or another whether Apple is a monopoly. | | Unlikely. While there may now be a legal decision in place it | will still be argued whether or not it was the correct one. | ChrisLomont wrote: | It then leaves a bigger argument for reversal on appeal. | Supermancho wrote: | > It then leaves a bigger argument for reversal on appeal. | | The argument is not "bigger". It is exactly the same. If | we're not a monopoly (Apple), how can we be anti-competitive? | dannyw wrote: | There are laws against anticompetitive behaviour in | California. Those apply to all companies, irrespective of | monopoly status. | ChrisLomont wrote: | Yes, those laws in California are not uniform among | states. If Apple is not a monopoly and violating Federal | Law, then on appeal, to higher than state laws, the case | is more likely to reversed. | | Since other states do not have the same laws of | California, the Supreme Court will likely apply Federal | Law, not California law, on appeal. | | Epic is headquartered in NC, after all. Thus this will | fall under interstate commerce clauses, and California | law only applies to transactions in California. | Supermancho wrote: | Ok? That doesnt explain what the phrase : | | > (the judgement) then leaves a bigger argument for | reversal on appeal. | | is supposed to mean by "bigger argument". | newaccount2021 wrote: | no, only HN seems stuck on arguments like this | kodah wrote: | From my perspective folks are arguing two things: | | The current definition of a monopoly. | | Whether the current definition of a monopoly needs to change. | | If you are mixing the two arguments discourse can go nowhere | because you're substantively discussing cause and effect. The | current definition of a monopoly _needs to change_ , imo, then | we can talk about whether Apple is a monopoly. | | I'm also interested in discussing conglomerates and whether | they are _good_ or _bad_ , and how to control them similar to | monopolies, but that discourse can't be had until we can agree | on something like the definition of a monopoly. | philip1209 wrote: | The issue is more that they are conglomerates - they control | the device, the discovery mechanism, the payment mechanism, | and the identity mechanism. In each of those areas, they may | or may not be a monopoly - but together their broad control | creates an anti-competitive environment. | | I wrote more about that here: https://www.tinker.fyi/6-break- | up-tech-conglomerates/ | tshaddox wrote: | The problem is that the proposed new definition of "monopoly" | generally goes something like "any company who has a product | that I like and does anything at all with that product that I | don't like." Like, regardless of what the iPhone's market | share is, if I like to use my iPhone, but I don't like one | aspect of the iPhone, that means that Apple is acting like a | monopoly because they're not completely honoring my personal | preferences and the only option I have is to switch to | another smartphone which I don't want to do. | oblio wrote: | In my opinion we don't need to change the definition of | monopoly, we need to integrate "conflict of interest" more | into anti-competitive practice discourse. | | Apple, Google, etc. are having their cake and eating it, too. | They have platform which they charge others to use (ok), and | then they study usage data (somewhat shady) and then launch | direct competitors (<<super>> shady). | | That's the root of the problem in many cases. | | Of course, this needs to be coupled with stronger anti-cartel | enforcement. Because tech is rarely a pure monopoly, but | extremely often is ends up under the control of a cartel. | sulam wrote: | Honestly the shadiest practitioner here is Amazon. Google | and Facebook are possibly second and third. I think Apple | is a pretty distant one, maybe behind folks like Netflix. | jdavis703 wrote: | Most of the apps that Apple sells are already in highly | competitive markets like music, video streaming, cloud | storage, etc. | | I really don't feel bad if some developer selling a leveler | app for 99C/ goes out of business because Apple pre- | installs a free leveling app on the iPhone. | moron4hire wrote: | Yeah man, fuck that guy and the kids he's trying to feed. | Tim Apple needs another boat, baby! | lostmsu wrote: | If Apple only pre-installed a free leveling app on | iPhones. What happened to time tracking is they also | banned existing tools and APIs they used. | rofrol wrote: | You mean this https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/05/apple- | puts-third-party-scr... ? | ethbr0 wrote: | Exactly. Plus a relatively small percentage of HN (or | anywhere) knows the current legal tests of a monopoly. | | But everyone always becomes substantially less interested in | topics once it becomes hashing out legal language. Which is | why we pay lawyers well. | np_tedious wrote: | Some good faith changes to the definition of monopoly could | certainly be valuable. | | However, I fear most efforts would start with "Companies X, | Y, and Z need to be categorized as monopolies. Let's write | rules to fit" | kodah wrote: | Agreed. Lina Khan is one of my favorite voices on this | matter for that reason. | | Edit: | | Stating my opinion without why isn't very HN-ly of me, eh? | | She's been on Planet Money and discussed her ideas, where | they come from, etc before. I don't think I'd quite do them | justice explaining them myself. Apparently she's now a | chair of the FTC as well (which I was unaware of). | | If you want a raw view of her views on anti-trust: https:// | www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.p... | | In one of the podcasts she dives into the history of anti- | trust. She talks about how after Standard Oil we convinced | ourselves everything was a monopoly and stifled a lot of | innovation, which led to some reforms later and the anti- | trust we have today which are demonstrably too permissive. | She has picked on Amazon (as a wider corporation) quite a | bit, but a lot of it has to do with the practices of their | ecommerce division and the extent to which Amazon can | compete with it's vendors. Basically, she believes there's | a middleground to be found between the two anti-trust time | periods and that it's important to be concise in how we do | that. You can see some of her specific criticisms in the | article above. | | A more full bibliography can be found here: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Khan | | I highly suggest "The Separation of Platforms and Commerce" | as that's the one that resonated with me, having worked in | the startup world. | torstenvl wrote: | I initially downvoted but thought it would be better to | ask for the information I think would make your comment | more helpful. | | Would you mind linking to something pertinent, in order | to add to the discussion? What does she say? Where does | she say it? Why does that appeal to you? | kodah wrote: | She's been on Planet Money and discussed her ideas, where | they come from, etc before. I don't think I'd quite do | them justice explaining them myself. Apparently she's now | a chair of the FTC as well (which I was unaware of). | | If you want a raw view of her views on anti-trust: https: | //www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.p... | | In one of the podcasts she dives into the history of | anti-trust. She talks about how after Standard Oil we | convinced ourselves everything was a monopoly and stifled | a lot of innovation, which led to some reforms later and | the anti-trust we have today which are demonstrably too | permissive. She has picked on Amazon (as a wider | corporation) quite a bit, but a lot of it has to do with | the practices of their ecommerce division and the extent | to which Amazon can compete with it's vendors. Basically, | she believes there's a middleground to be found between | the two anti-trust time periods and that it's important | to be concise in how we do that. You can see some of her | specific criticisms in the article above. | | A more full bibliography can be found here: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Khan | | I highly suggest "The Separation of Platforms and | Commerce" as that's the one that resonated with me, | having worked in the startup world. | jdgoesmarching wrote: | I highly recommend people read the law review article, | it's extremely non-lawyer friendly. | StevePerkins wrote: | To be fair, when Hacker News publishes "____ Has Died" | posts and makes the title bar black, 99% of the time I | have absolutely zero idea who "____" was. So I don't | think it's _terribly_ over-burdensome to expect the | curious to highlight a name, right-click, and select | "Search". | | In this case, the opening of the person's Wikipedia page | probably sums it up right away: | | > _In the article, Khan argued that the current American | antitrust law framework, which focuses on keeping | consumer prices down, cannot account for the | anticompetitive effects of platform-based business models | such as that of Amazon. She proposed alternative | approaches for doing so, including "restoring traditional | antitrust and competition policy principles or applying | common carrier obligations and duties."_ | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Khan | simonh wrote: | How would you like the definition of a monopoly to change? Or | to avoid sniping over details if you're not sure of a | definition text, how would you like it to change and to what | objective? | ethbr0 wrote: | Personally? I think we should get away from "monopoly" and | move towards "excessively large market entity." | | The problems now have more to do with market capitalization | / revenue than they do with physical control. | | Apple or Google aren't trying to buy all the railroad | tracks between Cincinnati and Kansas City (app stores | aside). They're trying to assemble a company that owns all | the disparate but critical pieces in an ecosystem, then | leverage those into extracting higher than free market | rents. | | Consequently, remedies shouldn't be the same as for | monopolies (read: breaking up companies). They should | instead of targeted on (1) classifying corporations by | their size & (2) placing limits on their actions, in places | where that size provides its own monopolistic-esque | advantage. | | Afaict, these should take the form of prohibiting | acquisitions of competitors (Facebook shouldn't be able to | buy Instagram or WhatsApp, but Instagram and WhatsApp | should have been allowed to buy each other / merge) and | stricter limits on market entry (FAANGM or SoftBank | deciding they want to throw stupid money into a hole to | poison the well and capture market share). | adam_arthur wrote: | I'd rather stay away from focusing on the size of the org | itself, and moreso on the "markets" that they create. | | When a platform or market is created by an entity, and | that platform reaches a certain scale, they must allow | free competition within that market. | | Here's an extreme example. Say somewhere down the line | Facebook invents some metaverse or VR world. This becomes | the primary form of interaction between people... 99% of | interactions take place in this virtual world. It's clear | the scale and extent to which this platform impacts | people's lives is substantial. So Facebook logically | would have to allow other sellers to enter this virtual | world and compete to drive prices towards a free market | equilibrium. | | Past monopoly legislation has focused on competition | outside the walls, product vs product. But nowadays the | walled gardens are getting big enough to the point that | these companies have large control over our lives. | | Maybe that example just muddies things, but the important | thing in my mind is to identify "private markets" and | enforce that competition be allowed. | ethbr0 wrote: | It's a good point. To quantify it, I guess you'd look at | total user count and percent of all users on the | platform? | | Most of the ills we're trying to avoid don't seem to | easily slip around, if there's a law that says "If you | control more than 25% of a market of more than 1M | users..." | | I don't think anyone is arguing that Apple shouldn't be | allowed to create an iEcosystem. | | But what we all want is a future where Apple's ownership | of the iEcosystem can't be used in such a way, and | generate enough profit, that no one can ever overturn | Apple's position. | Retric wrote: | > 99% | | Your describing a monopoly. IMO the real question is what | actually harms consumers. | | Requiring companies to open their platforms is one option | for regulation, but perhaps not ideal. Great for tech | companies sure, but possibly a huge opportunity for | scammers. Consumers and companies are often at odds, | banning app coins for example is great for gamers and the | opposite of an open platform. | | A flat regulation that all software platforms are limited | to X% fees might be a better option. | adam_arthur wrote: | You're right that the analogy was not quite right. | | Here's a better one. Facebook creates a virtual world | where 50% of the population choose. Apple creates a | different virtual world which the other 50% choose. | | If you simply look at the boundary/entrance you can say | there's freedom of choice. But whether you choose apple | or Facebook, there's 0 competition once you're inside | that world. | | Further, once you've established a home and connections | within one world, switching to the other becomes quite | expensive. | | Competition at the gates, monopoly within. | | I might add that this is very similar to the concept of | company scrip whereby the local coal mine had a monopoly | over local jobs and gouged workers for basic necessities. | Absolutely you could have moved a town over, but the cost | to do so was deemed too high in many cases. | | When cost of switching is high, monopolistic power can be | enforced upon customers. It's a similar situation with a | lot of SaaS who have pricing power to strong arm their | customers into high margins due to the cost of switching | to alternative technologies. In a truly competitive | market, SaaS margins should be close to 0. Obviously | that's not the case today. | | Regulation will catch up to all of these tricks, just a | question of the timeline. Capitalism only works well when | there's an environment of competition, and leveraging | high costs of switching or large gated systems to enable | profit margins well beyond what a competitive market | would bear is antithetical to this concept. | | That's why antitrust law is so important, and needs to | evolve to handle modern business structures. | asdff wrote: | What probably harms consumers the most is that companies | with large purses have an outsized influence on policy | and typically write their own regulations that serve to | generate additional profit and make it difficult for new | entrants to the market to emerge. You don't need to have | a monopoly for that, just a good old fasioned colluding | industry and a politician who cares more about their | individual wealth than the collective good of their | electorate that they represent. | natpalmer1776 wrote: | I just want take the time to compliment this question. I | find it difficult to articulate exactly what you've done | here, but I wish I saw it more often. | DannyBee wrote: | You are _very_ confused. Courts don 't make calls as to whether | companies are monopolist in general. The judge doesn't even try | to do that (though someone is trying to make it seem like they | have). | | They make a call about whether a company has monopoly power in | a specific market defined in a specific case. | | In this case, the court does not believe Apple is a monopolist | in a specifically defined digital gaming market. | | That has no bearing or relevance on whether they are a | monopolist in some other defined market (or even on a different | day in the same market!) | ecf wrote: | > It's nice to see that you don't have to be a monopolist to be | legally barred from anti-competitive behaviour | | Can someone ELI5 why Apple is considered to be anti-competitive | for not dedicating resources to assisting another business in | creating a competitor to a market for a platform they and they | alone created? | | If Epic wants to have their game on a phone, it makes sense | they abide by the rules enforced by the company that allows the | whole ecosystem to exist. If they don't like it, they can go | and create their own phone hardware and app ecosystem. | | Maybe I'm just naive. | shadowgovt wrote: | Apple goes beyond not facilitating other businesses; they | actively ban other app stores (because the only legit way to | get an app store on an iPhone is to install it from their app | store). | Sohcahtoa82 wrote: | > Can someone ELI5 why Apple is considered to be anti- | competitive for not dedicating resources to _assisting_ | another business | | (emphasis mine) | | Nobody said anything about Apple assisting other businesses. | They could easily just let everything be, but instead, Apple | is _going out of their way_ to prevent competition. | | Imagine if your favorite Linux distro only allowed you to | install software from their package repos, and you had to | jump through tons of hoops to install software from outside | their repos, and adding other repos was impossible. | | I know you'd say "I'd just switch distros!", but in the | mobile world, you effectively only have two choices. | ThatPlayer wrote: | Because it's vertical integration and refusal to deal. To me, | it's very similar to the Hollywood anti-trust case, when | movie studios used to own movie theaters. By your reasoning, | those theaters should have just made their own movies? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Anti- | trust_Case_of_1... | colechristensen wrote: | Apple is in several markets in the same time and using its | position in one to control the competition in another. | | There are limits to what you can do in a vertically | integrated business stack, especially when you invite third | parties to participate in pieces of that stack. | | As a consumer, I can't have a phone for every software vendor | I want to purchase from, that's obviously ridiculous. If | Apple wants to create a marketplace, it has to allow certain | things to happen in that marketplace. If the App Store was an | entirely separate business not tied to hardware, the | restrictions would be significantly less. | HideousKojima wrote: | Because end-users own their phones, and Apple restricting the | ways software can be loaded onto the phone is robbing those | users of their rights. The same applies to game consoles and | other similarly locked-down devices. | | If I buy a table, I can choose to stain it a different color, | or put a tablecloth over it, or cut the legs off, or burn it | for firewood. I have the right to use it however I want for | whatever purpose I want, because I own it. For some insane | reason bootlickers are willing to throw such rights out the | window the moment you try to apply them to computer hardware | and software. | qwytw wrote: | Well the table manufacturer is not obliged to make it | possible or easy for you to use the table as a chair, a bed | or an airplane. I'm not really a fan of Apple but it's not | that they are hiding the fact that you can only install | software on the iPhone via the app store. It's the way they | choose to design their product and it's an inherent feature | of it (and part of their business model). Should all | companies which build devices which include general purpose | computers internally be legally obliged to make it possible | (and easy) for users to install arbitrary software on them? | boolemancer wrote: | Because those rules are anti-competitive. | | I don't think anyone is saying that they need to provide | support for third-party payment processors themselves, but | their rules can't restrict someone else from supporting them. | | I don't know why that would be controversial. | | Imagine a world where Google required a 30% cut of everything | bought through Chrome. How is what Apple's doing any | different from that? | stale2002 wrote: | > . If they don't like it, they can go and create their own | phone hardware and app ecosystem. | | What do you even think a monopoly or anti-competetive | behavior is? | | During the standard oil trials, would you support the | argument of "If people don't like it, they can go build their | own railroad!"? | | Do you simply not believe in any forms of monopoly law? | Because your argument could be used in literally any monopoly | trial, if you actually believe it. | simion314 wrote: | >If Epic wants to have their game on a phone, it makes sense | they abide by the rules enforced by the company that allows | the whole ecosystem | | What about the sucker that bought the phone? why the company | that created the device should decide what the owner can do? | | Isn't ironic Apple prevents someone showing you a link to the | product webpage and the explanation is that you are too | stupid to be let opening a webpage from the app = will they | remove the web-browser ? | oblio wrote: | Well, it is kind of a naive perspective. You can't expect | every competitor to reinvent the universe in order to be able | to compete. | ProAm wrote: | Who's phone is it? | Andrex wrote: | All it says to me is federal antitrust guidelines are outdated | and California's are not. | | We need strong federal antitrust enforcement. This only worked | because Apple is based in California, which has stricter rules. | bialpio wrote: | > I hope this puts a permanent stop to all the thread on HN | arguing one way or another whether Apple is a monopoly. | | Why would it? The court basically dodged the question, so we | still don't have an answer provided by the court system. Until | that happens, we can discuss it to death if we want! | | Edit: excerpt from the ruling is: "Given the trial record, the | Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist | under either federal or state antitrust laws. (...) The Court | does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games | failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal | monopolist." | madeofpalk wrote: | What does an answer actually look like? | bialpio wrote: | I'd expect one of the 2 phrasings to be present: | | "the Court concludes that Apple is a monopolist under | federal / state antitrust laws" | | "the Court concludes that Apple is not a monopolist under | neither federal nor state antitrust laws" | | Instead, the court went with the third, which to me means | "we have not ruled on whether Apple is a monopolist or not, | lawsuits welcome". Is that not the right way to look at it? | dannyw wrote: | The court said Epic failed to prove it in the relevant | market to this case (digital mobile gaming). | | Leaves the door open for Spotify to sue. | radley wrote: | The injunction clearly states Apple is anti-competitive, but | not a monopoly. | bialpio wrote: | Hmm. I'm reading "the Court cannot ultimately conclude that | Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state | antitrust laws" as "we cannot decide on this matter". Is | this not the right interpretation? | borski wrote: | That is not the right interpretation. They didn't say | they cannot conclude one way or the other - they said | they cannot conclude that Apple is a monopolist, period - | meaning that they have concluded Apple is not a | monopolist (under current state and federal laws). | | They did not say "we cannot ultimately conclude _whether_ | Apple is a monopolist" which would be your | interpretation. | | [edit] Given the downvotes (really?) I suppose I should | add the nuance that all of this is based on this specific | case and evidence presented; the case did not conclude | that Apple can never be a monopoly (in another case, with | other evidence) but that in this case, it isn't. | makeitdouble wrote: | Why twist the words straight from the ruling ? If they | "concluded Apple is not a monopolist" they would have | said so. They deliberately choose a different turn of | phrase for these words, let's respect the nuance they | cared to put there. | gpm wrote: | They literally did, at the bottom of page 1 of the ruling | | > Given the trial record, the Court cannot ultimately | conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal | or state antitrust laws. [snip explanation] The Court | does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games | failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal | monopolist. | bialpio wrote: | Thanks, I haven't skimmed that far! | nescioquid wrote: | The judge found that Apple is not a monopoly _in the | market for payment processors for mobile games_, not that | Apple is categorically not a monopoly. | | > "The relevant market here is digital mobile gaming | transactions, not gaming generally and not Apple's own | internal operating systems related to the App Store," | Gonzalez-Rogers wrote. | | > Under that market definition, "the court cannot | ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under | either federal or state antitrust laws," she continued. | | My main point of surprise is that anti-trust was even | relevant in a lawsuit between two private parties. I | thought this would only be relevant if the state were | trying an anti-trust case. | canjobear wrote: | "We cannot conclude that X" does not imply "We conclude | that not-X". | shadowgovt wrote: | Bialpio has a reasonable interpretation for court-speak. | The fuller relevant quote is this: | | "Having defined the relevant market as digital global | gaming transactions, the Court next evaluated Apple's | conduct in that market. Given the trial record, the Court | cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist | under either federal or state antitrust laws. While the | Court finds that Apple enjoys considerable market share | of over 55% and extraordinarily high profit margins, | these factors alone do not show antitrust conduct. | Success is not illegal. The final trial record did not | include evidence of other critical factors, such as | barriers to entry and conduct decreasing output or | decreasing innovation in the relevant market. The Court | does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games | failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal | monopolist." | | Borski's interpretation is right under the "innocent | until proven guilty" burden-of-proof in criminal cases. | Bialpo's interpretation is correct in that this Court has | not made, as a finding of fact, that Apple is _not_ a | monopoly, only that the evidence brought by Epic to | _this_ trial does not prove Apple is a monopoly (i.e. | another case on this topic may be brought if more | compelling evidence is available). | cush wrote: | Dodging the question would be a non-ruling. The judge issued | an injunction. It's in the title of the post. | gpm wrote: | The judge issued a injunction based on another law that | didn't require Apple be a monopoly, found that the record | did not prove that Apple was a monopoly (and thus against | Epic on that theory), but took the time to clarify that | Apple might be a monopoly, it just wasn't proved. | bialpio wrote: | I seem to recall reporting around some Supreme Court ruling | that was phrased as "there is a ruling but the question is | still undecided". It may have been Google v. Oracle, where | it didn't say APIs are copyrightable or not, but Google's | use fell under fair use irrespective of that. So just the | existence of a ruling doesn't mean there is an answer to | the question that was asked. | mbell wrote: | That quote is a bit of a cherry pick resulting a wide | interpretation that isn't supported. | | The actual ruling is something more like "Epic failed to prove | that Apple is a monopoly in the market the judge decided is the | relevant market: digital mobile gaming transactions". | | Here are the relevant sections of the ruling: | | > The Court disagrees with both parties' definition of the | relevant market. | | > Ultimately, after evaluating the trial evidence, the Court | finds that the relevant market here is digital mobile gaming | transactions, not gaming generally and not Apple's own internal | operating systems related to the App Store. The mobile gaming | market itself is a $100 billion industry. The size of this | market explains Epic Games' motive in bringing this action. | Having penetrated all other video game markets, the mobile | gaming market was Epic Games' next target and it views Apple as | an impediment. | | > Further, the evidence demonstrates that most App Store | revenue is generated by mobile gaming apps, not all apps. Thus, | defining the market to focus on gaming apps is appropriate. | Generally speaking, on a revenue basis, gaming apps account for | approximately 70% of all App Store revenues. This 70% of | revenue is generated by less than 10% of all App Store | consumers. These gaming-app consumers are primarily making in- | app purchases which is the focus of Epic Games' claims. By | contrast, over 80% of all consumer accounts generate virtually | no revenue, as 80% of all apps on the App Store are free. | | > Having defined the relevant market as digital mobile gaming | transactions, the Court next evaluated Apple's conduct in that | market. Given the trial record, the Court cannot ultimately | conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or | state antitrust laws. the trial record, the Court cannot | ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either | federal or state antitrust laws. While the Court finds that | Apple enjoys considerable market share of over 55% and | extraordinarily high profit margins, these factors alone do not | show antitrustconduct. Success is not illegal. The final trial | record did not include evidence of other critical factors, such | as barriers to entry and conduct decreasing output or | decreasing innovation in the relevant market. The Court does | not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games failed in | its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal monopolist. Case | Court does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games | failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal | monopolist. | | > Nonetheless, the trial did show that Apple is engaging in | anticompetitive conduct under California's competition laws. | The Court concludes that Apple's anti-steering provisions hide | critical information from consumers and illegally stifle | consumer choice. When coupled with Apple's incipient antitrust | violations, these anti-steering provisions are anticompetitive | and a nationwide remedy to eliminate those provisions is | warranted. | dannyw wrote: | Sounds like if Spotify sued, they'd have a better chance. | SkyBelow wrote: | >I hope this puts a permanent stop to all the thread on HN | arguing one way or another whether Apple is a monopoly. | | Are those threads arguing about a legal definition, because if | not then this would have little impact on them. Even if they | are arguing form a legal perspective, it would have to be | within the same legal system as this court and thus could be | argued for other legal systems. And even then one can argue the | judge is wrong, look at how many judges end up being wrong | based on appeal results. Technically you can't be sure which | judge is actually wrong, you know which one is in the court | that overrules the other, but you can still point out that the | disagreement means one of them is wrong even if you can't say | definitely which one is. | dataflow wrote: | Wow, how did this ruling come so quickly when court cases are so | slow to play out normally? | | Is this something that can get appealed? | jcranmer wrote: | It took over a year for this ruling to come out. Also, this was | a bench trial as opposed to a jury trial, which also makes it | faster. | | Of course, what really makes court cases take very long is when | they get appealed to hell and back -- see Google v Oracle for | an example of such a case. | | (And this is a final order, so it can get appealed). | BizarroLand wrote: | Online court systems are here to stay. They're much more | efficient than traditional in-person court, both in terms of | overall time spent and in manpower. | | There are still a lot of kinks to work out, such as how to | handle court decorum & technological disparities such as low | availability of high speed internet and good quality camera | systems/lighting/privacy. | | Personally I think the federal government should contract for | an app other than Zoom because if I had to go to trial I | wouldn't feel very comfortable knowing it was all being hosted | by a private company, but that's a minor gripe. | jffry wrote: | The lawsuit was filed in August of last year, and arguments in | court spanned most of May (and were conducted in-person, not | virtually), and then the judge issued her decision today. | That's not exactly lightning quick. | | The rate at which court cases proceed really depends a lot on | the complexity of the case, the length of the discovery phase, | etc. Both Apple and Epic didn't want to have a jury trial, so | there also wasn't the matter of empaneling a jury. | gok wrote: | Seems like this essentially kills the game console business. If | 3rd party Xbox and Playstation games are allowed to sell content | with their own payment system, why would anyone buy games through | Microsoft/Sony? | junipertea wrote: | Convenience, existing game libraries, the pain of setting up | another payment system using 12 buttons, price.. | diebeforei485 wrote: | Great article in The Verge about what the meaning of a "button" | is: | | https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/10/22667161/app-store-epic-r... | jay_kyburz wrote: | I'm going to put this comment on every Apple vs Epic thread from | now on, regardless of how many internet points I lose. | | Instead of trying to ruin Apples ecosystem, Epic should try and | develop their own. | | If Valve can make the Steam Deck, Epic can make a Fortnite Phone. | | Epic could then choose to make the phone as open or locked down | as they like. They could have their own app store policies, and | they could allow any payment platforms they like. | | It could be an Android fork, or they could have a look at what is | going on in the Linux phone community. | | Would it be a success in the market place? I just think that | depends on Epics choices it makes along the way. But I do know | that millions of kids would rather have a cool gaming phone | rather than an old fashioned iPhone. | kaishiro wrote: | Surely they could do both? | cblconfederate wrote: | > Instead of trying to ruin Apples ecosystem, Epic should try | and develop their own. | | So instead of 2 silos, you now have 3. How does that improve | anything? | | The whole point is to move away from this idea that developers | are apple's "ecosystem", like cows in a cow farm. They are not | cattle, but independent people with the right to compete in a | fair market, much like how apple is competing in a fair market, | which is provided by general market state regulations. | jay_kyburz wrote: | We might find that Epic chooses an open platform like Valve | chose with the Steam Deck. | | But developer are free to just not develop apps for Apple. Or | just run their app as a web page like I do. | mbreese wrote: | IANAL, but I'm not sure that this order actually forces Apple to | allow alternative in-app purchasing. | | _> ... hereby permanently restrained and enjoined from | prohibiting developers from (i) including in their apps and their | metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to action that | direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to In-App | Purchasing ..._ | | To me this reads as Apple must allow people to be able to link | out to an external purchasing mechanism. So, for example a link | to the Epic Store web page must be allowed, but a different in- | app purchasing mechanism could still be limited. Which, I think | that was the main complaint for many other developers -- you | couldn't accept payments outside of the App Store (like on your | website). | | So users can be directed to alternative payment mechanisms, but | that doesn't mean they must be allowed in the Apps themselves. | This seems to be a pretty common-sense written injunction, | meaning that developers are allowed to communicate with users and | accept payment outside of the Apple garden. This seems pretty | straightforward and would cover many (most?) of the developer | complaints for dealing with their customers. | | https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21060628/epic-apple-i... | cptskippy wrote: | This is how I read it: permanently restrained | and enjoined from 1) prohibiting developers from | a) including in their apps and their metadata: | i) buttons, ii) external links, or | iii) other calls to action that direct | customers to purchasing mechanisms, b) in | addition to In-App Purchasing and c) | communicating with customers through points of contact obtained | voluntarily from customers through account registration within | the app. | mbreese wrote: | But that's not how the clauses are written grammatically, | which is why I'm unsure. There are two clauses: one about | purchases and the second about communication. | | The second clause is easiest to deal with. It is: | | _communicating with customers through points of contact | obtained voluntarily from customers through account | registration within the app_ | | This means that the developer can communicate with the user | -- using information the user gave them, not information that | Apple has to give them. I think we can agree on that one. | | The first clause is tougher, and I think there are multiple | ways to read it (at least for a non-lawyer... lawyers might | read this only one way). | | _prohibiting developers from (i) including in their apps and | their metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to | action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in | addition to In-App Purchasing_ | | The way that I read it is: developers can include links, | buttons, etc that point a user to external purchasing | mechanisms, in addition to the existing Apple In-App | purchasing. | | The other way to read that is (which is how I assume you read | it): developers can include links, buttons, etc that point a | user to external purchasing mechanisms, as well as allowing | non-Apple mechanisms for purchasing inside the app. | | Without knowing how the judge has defined In-App purchasing, | I'm not sure you can tell which is the right interpretation. | The capitalization of it is curious to me, but maybe that's | just how they referred to all purchases that happen inside an | App, or maybe that's how the Apple App Store managed | purchases were referred to. | | I'm sure there will be some kind of better legal analysis | appearing soon enough (I hope). | sangnoir wrote: | > So users can be directed to alternative payment mechanisms, | but that doesn't mean they must be allowed in the Apps | themselves | | How do you foresee Apple disallowing that in the apps without | violating the injunction? The injunction gives apps free-reign | on UI elements that direct customers to non-Apple payment | systems. | mbreese wrote: | The way I read it (which might be wrong) was that the | developers could put links to external websites in the app, | but not necessarily require that the transaction be allowed | to occur in the app itself. | | In the case of Fortnite, Epic could include a link to their | online store where you could buy V-Bucks that would be linked | to your Fortnite account. This link would open in Safari, but | could also be done on any other computer. | | Under the old rules, Epic couldn't do this. Nor could Netflix | send you a link to their webpage, or Kindle a link to the | Amazon web site to buy a book. | | Maybe it's the legalese, but the phase "direct customers to | purchasing mechanisms" makes me think that the judge is | referring to these external methods. | | But as I mentioned on a sibling comment, I'm really unsure as | to what is meant by "In-App purchasing". Is this Apple's | mechanism, or any mechanism? It isn't clear to me, without | more context. There may be a couple of interpretations. | mensetmanusman wrote: | This is a big deal. | | I wonder how Apple will respond to dealing with the bandwidth | costs of free apps with large bandwidth requirements. | | Hopefully they just get rid of free apps, and require customers | to pay upfront so that they don't have to deal with as many | advertisements. | mhermher wrote: | They're just gonna increase developer license fees. | mensetmanusman wrote: | Epic licensing fee $100,000,000? | granzymes wrote: | Epic's statement (via Tim Sweeney): Today's ruling isn't a win | for developers or for consumers. Epic is fighting for fair | competition among in-app payment methods and app stores for a | billion consumers. Fortnite will return to the iOS App Store when | and where Epic can offer in-app payment in fair competition with | Apple in-app payment, passing along the savings to consumers. | | Apple's statement: Today the Court has affirmed what we've known | all along: the App Store is not in violation of antitrust law. As | the Court recognized 'success is not illegal.' Apple faces | rigorous competition in every segment in which we do business, | and we believe customers and developers choose us because or | products and services are the best in the world. We remain | committed to ensuring the App Store is a safe and trusted | marketplace that supports a thriving developer community and more | than 2.1 million U.S. jobs, and where the rules apply equally to | everyone. | sombremesa wrote: | What's the penalty for Apple just ignoring this ruling, if any? | dragonwriter wrote: | > What's the penalty for Apple just ignoring this ruling, if | any? | | In addition to whatever penalties are available in law for the | act outside of the ruling, they would also face additional | consequences for contempt of court. And its generally easier to | prove a violation of the order than a violation of the law | justifying the order. | AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: | Afaik they cannot ignore a ruling. And they don't need 30% fees | for maintaining IOS ecosystem - when you buy an apple phone for | $1000, you pay Apple enough for it to maintain its AppStore. | | Also they earn money from AppStore advertising (which apps out | of the millions should the small screen show); so maintaining | AppStore should not be a problem. | | I don't know about the bad-actors part though. | sombremesa wrote: | > they cannot ignore a ruling | | Why not? | throw_m239339 wrote: | > Why not? | | That's a bizarre question. | | They'd be in contempt of the court. | | https://www.upcounsel.com/legal-def-contempt-of-court | | The judge could sent Tim Cook or any number of Apple execs | to prison. | indymike wrote: | Fines now. Jail later. | sombremesa wrote: | Thanks. This actually comes closes to answering the | question I was asking in the first place. | colinmhayes wrote: | Why can't you ignore your tax bill? | babelfish wrote: | Because that's not how the law works. Sure, they can | technically ignore the ruling, but they're opening | themselves up to a whole host of lawsuits, and any judge in | those lawsuits would not look favorably on Apple. | quickthrowman wrote: | Uh, the state has a monopoly on violence? Apple doesn't | have a private army to protect their executives from going | to prison, so...... | dragonwriter wrote: | > Afaik they cannot ignore a ruling. | | They can, but it has a high probability of additional adverse | consequences. | AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: | By your argument, we CAN commit murder, but it has a very | high probability of additional adverse consequences (such | as life in prison) | dragonwriter wrote: | > By your argument, we CAN commit murder, but it has a | very high probability of additional adverse consequences | | Which...is obviously true. I mean, it would be nice if | people could not commit murder, but they can _and do_. | AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: | This doesn't apply in this case because Apple is not | stupid. They are not gonna ignore a court ruling because | it will land their execs in jail. | | Rather than that, they will use legal means such as | appealing the ruling. They are a 2T$ company, and they | will try their best to use their money to change this | decision in their favor. | Macha wrote: | The law is not software. | | "Apple must allow the use of third party payment processors" | does not mean "Apple cannot enforce any other rules against | apps using third party payment processors". If they decide to | go on a harassment campaign of petty violations against third | party payment using apps or put undue requirements on them, | those parties can complain to the courts and likely succeed. If | the third party payment provider is stealing credit cards or | obviously malicious behavior in some other area, Apple would | likely prevail when pointing to that as the reason they banned | them. | nokcha wrote: | From https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21060628/epic- | apple-i... : | | >If any part of this Order is violated by any party named | herein or any other person, plaintiff may, by motion with | notice to the attorneys for defendant, apply for sanctions or | other relief that may be appropriate. | | The penalty for contempt of court is often incarceration. Note | that the order enjoins not just Apple the corporation but also | Apple's officers. It would be highly unusual for the CEO of a | major corporation to openly and defiantly flout a court order, | but if it happens, he can expect to be arrested for contempt. | jjordan wrote: | Hopefully this will eventually lead to a day where users once | again have full control over their devices. Android is a bit | better, even if alternate app stores don't have the same system | privileges as Google Play, but Apple devices are wholly | authoritarian in what you can run on a device you supposedly own. | gchokov wrote: | Google Devices are anything but owned by customers. You don't | have anything yours there, not even your data, location.. | anything. Wake up. | ssaturn wrote: | Freedom is not a boolean, it is a scale and google offers | more than apple at the moment. Ironically the pixel devices | are one of the few where bootloaders are unlocked in the US | and you can flash a customer google free rom. Assuming there | is no hardware based surveillance this is as close to free as | we can get at the moment. | marricks wrote: | It's a case of choosing how you lose. Android certainly is more | open and free in terms of what you can do with it, but you | become Google's product and they will mine all meaningful data | from your interactions. | | What would be swell is an open device you fully control which | doesn't spy on you. Turns out that cuts off most of the ways to | make big bucks. | arsome wrote: | You can basically have this today - you might have to give up | a few niceties, but if you don't rely on anything too fancy, | Lineage + F-Droid, with optional MicroG will generally do the | trick for most apps. | | Gotta be a bit of tinkerer to set that one up though, not | something for grandma. | zuhayeer wrote: | https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/93990 | | Wonder no more lad, you can use Stripe as IAP soon | Rels wrote: | I don't understand the logic behind this ruling. | | So, Apple was in the wrong about forcing app devs to use their | payment processor (and taking a 30% cut at the time - 15% or 30% | now), and they have to change that. | | But Epic was also in the wrong when they tried to go around this | rule, and they have to pay 30% on every transaction they made | after their update in which they used direct payment? | | But if Epic didn't try to go around the rule and loudly complain, | there would be no judicial case, and no ruling forcing Apple to | change? | | This is weird to me. | kkcorps wrote: | Taking one for the team. | [deleted] | jimbob45 wrote: | Epic only has to pay out ~$4 million for their "damages" so | it's largely moot and ceremonial for them. Nevertheless, I | agree with you that it seems contradictory. | modeless wrote: | I guess the judge's logic is that Epic could have sued without | breaching the contract first, even if the contract was actually | illegal. I don't agree that it should work that way, but the | damages are immaterial. The bigger issue is: can/will Apple | permanently terminate Epic's developer account for breach of | contract and prevent them from releasing Fortnite despite this | ruling, and possibly even cause problems for Unreal on Mac? It | seems to me that they can. | Macha wrote: | > possibly even cause problems for Unreal on Mac? | | I think this is unlikely. Mac gamers need Unreal more than | games developed using Unreal need Mac users. Mac is an | incredibly niche market for games - they're not going to | rewrite their game using a different engine to run on Mac, | and Apple knows that. | | Of course, Apple could decide they don't give a shit about | native Mac games, why don't you play our iOS games, but that | just seems petty. | zarzavat wrote: | Apple is an incredibly spiteful company. They will happily | cut off Unreal Engine to spite Epic even if it fucks over | their users and developers. They did exactly the same to | Nvidia and to Khronos group, and they will do it to Epic | too. | hwbehrens wrote: | > Apple could decide they don't give a shit about native | Mac games | | I think it's possible to make persuasive argument that this | already took place around the time that they killed OpenGL | support and/or refused to allow Vulkan support. Requiring a | proprietary API that only works on a _tiny_ subset of | gaming devices* seems like they 've already made their | position on this topic very clear. | | * I'm excluding mobile devices here since mobile games were | called out as a different market in the parent comment. | modeless wrote: | Apple already terminated Epic's Mac developer account for | Unreal, and refused to reinstate it until the judge forced | them to with a restraining order earlier in the trial. So | they've demonstrated willingness to retaliate in this way. | And now that the trial is over I think they are not bound | by the restraining order anymore. | kemayo wrote: | The ruling explains the logic near the last page of the | decision -- it's basically "Epic didn't _have_ to break their | contract in order to sue ". I think it's the judge slapping | Epic on the wrist for grandstanding, even though they | basically-won. | NohatCoder wrote: | It is certainly a victory for junk legalese that you can | write an illegal contract, have it ruled illegal, and still | enforce it. | | The logical ruling would be to force Apple to pay reparations | to all the app developers that they have illegally forced to | pay for the app store. | legohead wrote: | I wonder if there is a "secret reason" of not ruling in favor | of Epic closes the door on a ton of other lawsuits popping up. | dundarious wrote: | They seem to have ruled only that you can't prohibit links to | alternative payment methods (which would not be IAPs). You can | still prohibit alternative actually IAPs, so Epic's alternative | IAPs must pay the fee. | | Edit: Note that this a descriptive statement regarding the | ruling, not a normative statement of my opinion. | modeless wrote: | I am unclear about this actually. I think the actual | injunction will be a separate document released soon. But | here's the judge's description in the ruling: | | > a nationwide injunction shall issue enjoining Apple from | prohibiting developers to include in their Apps and their | metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to action | that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition | to IAP | | Obviously this would seem to _imply_ that developers are | allowed to _accept_ payment from alternative systems to | unlock digital content in apps. But it doesn 't _explicitly_ | say that. All it explicitly says is that developers can | _link_ to alternative payment systems. I hope the actual | injunction is more explicit. | dundarious wrote: | I doubt they're saying you can link to methods of payment | but can't provide goods or services in return for that | payment, even in app. | judge2020 wrote: | I think the question is "can I have an in-app flow for | purchases outside of IAP, or do i need to redirect people | to my safari site to purchase?" | baggy_trough wrote: | Note that Epic also has to pay 30% damages. | | > n the counterclaim, in favor of Apple on the counterclaim for | breach of contract. Epic Games shall pay (1) damages in an amount | equal to (i) 30% of the $12,167,719 in revenue Epic Games | collected from users in the Fortnite app on iOS through Epic | Direct Payment between August and October 2020, plus (ii) 30% of | any such revenue Epic Games collected from November 1, 2020 | through the date of judgment, and interest according to law. | [deleted] | schappim wrote: | This news is a huge opportunity for Stripe, who can quite easily | deploy a nice cross platform payments solution. | plandis wrote: | As a consumer I trust how Apple payments work and like the fact | that everyone was using it on iOS. Now I will need to cut back on | apps and do more due diligence to avoid scams and other issues. | | Hard to see how this is a win for consumers in addition to | developers. | cblconfederate wrote: | Apple will stop finding ways to squeeze indie developers and | spend more time making iphone great again | spywaregorilla wrote: | You can still use Apple payments. | plandis wrote: | What do you mean? If purchases are directed to a developers | own payment system I don't have a choice, I cannot force that | developer to use Apples payment system can I? | fabianhjr wrote: | You have the same choice developers had: their way or the | highway. | | Though, developers would be likely to: | | - choose established and trusted payment processors (like | PayPal or Stripe) rather than rolling their own solution or | a small unknown payment processor, and | | - offer many processors and let the user choose | cynix wrote: | The ruling is that Apple cannot forbid linking to other | payment methods _in addition to_ IAP, not _instead of_. | Apple can still require that IAP must be one of the | options. | spywaregorilla wrote: | I don't see anything to suggest apple cannot force apps to | offer apple pay as an option. Only that they cannot force | apps to make apple pay the only option. | [deleted] | jsmith45 wrote: | Nothing in this injunction prevents Apple from requiring that | if apps offer purchase options they must also offer IAP as an | option. | | I'm certain that even if the injunction were to go into force, | Apple would continue to require that. | | Apple could probably even mandate that the other purchase | options not be cheaper than IAP pricing by more than apple's | 30%, preventing developers from putting absurd prices on the | IAP option, and only put real prices on their alternative | methods. from the wording of the injunction itself is not even | actually clear that apple cannot mandate the IAP and non IAP | prices must be the same (the dicta might provide more clarity | on if that would be permissible). | | Then it becomes up to you if whatever discount is offered for | non IAP purchases is worth the extra risks, or if you would | rather use IAP. | cblconfederate wrote: | That sounds like it would be going too far and almost show | contempt. But perhaps they can reject apps that use scammy | payments | hrbf wrote: | On the one hand this great for consumer choice, on the other, it | will undoubtedly lead to a loss in purchasing confidence of | regular users and a flood of scams or scam-like apps. Especially | with regard to subscriptions, we've seen this play out via SMS- | based ringtone subscriptions of days past. | | Personally, I will never subscribe to anything on my iOS devices | if I cannot view and cancel it via the built-in subscription | management. Here's to hoping that Apple is going to make | integration with it mandatory. | echelon wrote: | We don't need a corporate nanny state. Society has thrived | without Apple putting its mittens on everything and everybody. | cblconfederate wrote: | Apple is probably going to make a list of "allowed" payment | partners. This decision doesn't seem to disallow them to have a | say in that. | latexr wrote: | > it will undoubtedly lead to (...) a flood of scams or scam- | like apps. | | Scams are alive and well on the App Store, they don't need this | ruling to thrive: | https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-... | hrbf wrote: | Way to cherry-pick and dismiss. I would argue the possible | long-term loss in purchasing confidence by the customers who | were burned by a bad experience weighs a lot heavier overall. | | Regarding scams, keep in mind that the ones I mentioned will | come in addition to the existing ones, not displacing them, | making an already non-ideal situation potentially way worse. | To stem this, the app approval process could get even slower | than it currently is. | | A better solution would have been to somehow force Apple to | lower its fee structure. This however is incompatible with | certain economic liberties we take for granted and would set | a worrying precedent, so the current outcome is probably the | only pragmatic one. | fotta wrote: | > permanently restrained and enjoined from prohibiting developers | from including in their apps and their metadata buttons, external | links, or other calls to action that direct customers to | purchasing mechanisms, in addition to In-App Purchasing and (ii) | communicating with customers through points of contact obtained | voluntarily from customers through account registration within | the app. | | This sounds like the same agreement Apple came to a few weeks ago | [0]. They can't bar developers from linking to external payment | methods, but doesn't require them to allow other forms of in app | payment. | | [0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/08/apple-us- | developers-a... | baldajan wrote: | "purchasing mechanisms" is what's interesting... it's not just | information. | fotta wrote: | But it doesn't force them to allow other purchasing | mechanisms, just that they cannot bar "calls to action that | direct customers to purchasing mechanisms". My read on that | is that Apple is still allowed to force Apple-only IAP, but | they cannot bar CTAs to external purchasing mechanisms. | knubie wrote: | From the text of the injunction: | | > [Apple] are hereby permanently restrained [..] from | prohibiting developers from including in their apps [..] | buttons [,..] that direct customers to purchasing | mechanisms [..] | | I'm not sure how exactly to interpret that but it seems | reasonable to interpret that has being able to put a button | in your app that takes someone to a checkout page. | shkkmo wrote: | It explicitly prohibits Apple from prohibiting any form of In- | App purchasing, not merely links to external payments methods. | fotta wrote: | I disagree here. My read on it is that Apple is prohibited | from prohibiting "calls to action that direct customers to | purchasing mechanisms", not "purchasing mechanisms" | themselves. So Apple can still say App Store IAP is the only | allowed form of IAP, but they have to allow CTAs to other | mechanisms. | dannyw wrote: | Apple's concession didn't apply to games; only "reader apps". | | Apple's concession also limited to one link, whereas this | refers to links in the plural, and also metadata (eg app store | descriptions). | fotta wrote: | Ah I didn't know of those stipulations in the original | concession. | knubie wrote: | You're thinking of a different concession they made a few | years ago. This one is specifically about developers reaching | out to their customers _outside_ of the app, for example via | email (which they may have obtained from the app). | testfrequency wrote: | I believe people are over conflating the "friction" involved with | using an outside payment system (such as Stripe or PayPal). Apple | ID's already allow you to attach your PayPal account as primary | funding...this is just giving developers that direct choice now. | | PayPal, you confirm checkout total, login to paypal, confirm | subscription or price. Done. | | Stripe, you can use their standard checkout page, autofill your | card info, or just use Apple Pay to confirm the | subscription/item, pay. Done. | | What's changed is just giving developers that flexibility. | Ultimately saving them money, they can hire more devs, and make | their products hopefully cheaper (and better). | | Most consumers will still have no idea that their checkout is not | happening with Apple, and it's happening elsewhere (aside from | PayPal Checkout being obvious with their checkout/login flow). | | Apple could absolutely adapt their native subscriptions SDK to | support the status of a third-party app, though I doubt they ever | would. They tried to do this with streaming services (HBO, | Netflix, etc.), but they shut this down recently | jackson1442 wrote: | Apps based around "physical goods" (read: food ordering) have | been able to do this for ages, and if the trend I see there | expands into "normal" apps, about 50% will support Apple Pay, | 25% will support PayPal without AP, 10% will support card | scanning, and the rest will make you manually enter your card | number, billing address, name, email, firstborn child, etc. | | So no, I don't think the flow will remain nearly as seamless as | it is today, and that's disappointing to me. I don't pay for | much IAP-wise (though I do order plenty of DoorDash), but I | guess this will give me even less motivation to buy crap I | don't need. | dustinmoris wrote: | As an Apple user I feel like I have lost the most here. Sad day | for users, great day for dodgy cunts like Epic. | gordon_freeman wrote: | From Epic CEO Tim Sweeney from NYT article[1]: | | Tim Sweeney, Epic's chief executive, said on Twitter that he was | not satisfied with the ruling because it did not go far enough in | allowing companies to complete in-app transactions with their own | payment systems, versus having to direct customers to outside | websites. He said Fortnite would not return to the App Store | until such rules were in place. | | "Today's ruling isn't a win for developers or for consumers," he | said. "We will fight on." | | [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/technology/epic-apple- | app... | shrimpx wrote: | Apple's reaction to Sweeney's statement: "See ya!!!" | pier25 wrote: | Wait... what? | | So apps will be able to redirect you to a website but users | won't be able to make the payment in the app itself? | archon810 wrote: | That's right and it's exactly what he's unhappy with. | slinkyblack wrote: | Epic has decided to appeal https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/10/epic- | games-to-appeal-decision... | yurishimo wrote: | I'm really happy to see this moving forward, but I loathe the | potential future landscape. Every fortune 500 is going to | immediately pivot to their own IAP options which will make my | life harder compared to Apple Pay. | | I'm hoping with this movement, tools like Stripe/Paddle will | develop some better IAP flows to make it as easy as possible. | Adding my card information to 50 different in-app wallets does | not sound appealing to me, despite the win for consumers and | developers. | | I guess what I'm trying to say, is that it's unfortunate we have | to make a tradeoff at all. | | Hopefully, this move will put downward pressure on Apple's | payment infrastructure that incentivizes devs to keep using Apple | payments because it's the same fee structure as whatever 3rd | party they might move towards. | superkuh wrote: | When Apple announced it was introducing intentional security | vulnerabilities to their Apple Pay platforms last month that | was the signal that they were done trying to be a bank. I | wonder if that decision was made knowing the likely outcome and | downstream results of this case. | aeontech wrote: | Wait, what intentional security vulnerabilities? | superkuh wrote: | The backdoor. | mrtksn wrote: | As a Developer, I also don't look forward for integrating 50 | frameworks for payment, deal with the limitations of each and | every one and go through the bureaucracy of 180 countries for | export compliance and taxes. | | When you sell something through Apple, depending on the | location of your user, Apple will act as Agent or as a | Commissionaire. This makes everything easy, even for a solo | developer. Sold an in-game coins in France? Apple collected the | money, paid the VAT to the French government. If you do this | through your own means, you will need to establish a | relationship with the French government so that you can pay | them the VAT that you have to collect from your users. | | This will ultimately benefit large companies who can jump | through the hops of managing all this, putting the independent | developers in a disadvantaged position due to the high barrier | of entry into improved margin(compared to Apple Store where | everyone gets the same cut) payments. In some places you can be | required to send a printed receipt to the user. | | It would not be fun to watch, let's say Zynga, collecting their | low cost payments across all their portfolio by making users | sign up once and having indie games instantly losing a payment | or falling back to high commission options because users are | tired of entering payment info for each game. | | Sad day for the little guy. Do you see independent Devs | cheering for the %2-%3 commission or is it Epic, Netflix, | Spotify who will benefit from this? Unless you do low margin | commission work (like platform where you take a cut, i.e. | online tutoring) the %30 commission is a non issue. | | Game crystals don't really have a cost, so %5 cut or %30 cut | doesn't really matter that much. However, one company having | access to the %5 and other not having access to it will change | the landscape because the large company will be able to | advertise more thanks to its better margins, wiping out the | rest. | donmcronald wrote: | I'd be stunned if everyone starts using niche payment | providers. I think it's more likely the larger providers will | step up. It'll be more along the lines of: | Pay With --- Apple IAP ($1.43) - Stripe IAP ($1.06) - Paypal | IAP ($1.06) | | That's also why Epic is disappointed. If Apple were forced to | allow competing app stores, Epic is in a perfect position. | They have app store tech with payments, commissions, etc. | built in. If Apple's only forced to allow competing payment | providers to become more prevalent, everyone thinks of | Stripe, Paypal, etc. first. Epic probably has their own | payment processing fees to cover, so they'll never be able to | compete on price and that's where things are heading IMO. | bink wrote: | Is there anything in the ruling that prevents Apple from | requiring all prices be the same or preventing companies | from providing extra "value" if their payment processor is | utilized? | mrtksn wrote: | I think it would be more like Apple IAP($1.43), Your Local | payment($1.43), Paypal($1.43). | | They will add something like a bonus if you choose the | alternative ones. I'm baffled why people expect that the | margin will go to the user. Do you think that Epic sued | Apple because altruism? To help users save money? They are | are after the margins. | | Because of the "Your Local payment" option, binary sizes | will grow(Uber has this problem, they need to ship the | framework of numerous payment providers on every market) or | you will start maintaining different binaries for each | country. | | Also, each payment provider will come with its own rules. | One will say "this is too close to gambling, no unless put | this text next to the price to clarify" the other will be | like "is this related to crypto, you can't do that", the | next one will be "I think you must provide 3 months refund | guarantee. Also, coins allowed boxes not allowed". | | Then you will have to do the legal work for each country | separately or work with publishers who do that for you for | a hefty cut. | | The business side of things is a full time job. That's why | when you publish a book or release a song you tend to get | tiny amount of the price payed. | | I am afraid, this fragmentation has the potential to turn | the App&Game business into Books&Music business where you | don't make money unless you are superstar. | woko wrote: | For the record, when Epic did their stunt on August 13, | 2020, the margin went to the user. | | > Today, we're also introducing a new way to pay on iOS | and Android: Epic direct payment. | | > When you choose to use Epic direct payments, you save | up to 20% as Epic passes along payment processing savings | to you. | | https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/news/the-fortnite- | mega-dr... | mrtksn wrote: | They must be non-profit and doing it as charity. Totally | not as a PR stunt for the upcoming Apple vs Epic thingy. | Dylan16807 wrote: | Their costs are lower, so they offer it at a lower price | to encourage more people to buy it. While still having a | higher profit per unit! | | That's normal business behavior. Why would it have to be | "charity" or some kind of fake "PR stunt"? | mrtksn wrote: | Right, companies have fixed profit rate and they lower | the price when the costs go down. Got it, thanks. Great | business tip! | Why_O_My wrote: | You make It sound like apple's service will disappear over | night. If you're fine with them taking 30% then that's your | choice. And if your app does become big enough to reap the | benefits of implementing mutiple payment providers then thats | even better. | mrtksn wrote: | It doesn't work like that. Friction destroys revenues, | large companies can remove friction by having their | portfolio of users with credit cards collected. Small devs | cannot do that because the user will need to enter payment | details each time. The best chance would be to use | something like Paypal, which is again a huge friction since | the user will need to switch apps or enter login | information. | | As a result, unless you are a huge publisher you don't | actually have a realistic chance to sell over alternate | low-cost methods. This is not because you can't put the | code there but because it will make the user experience so | bad that a fraction of your users will proceed. | | It's not about being technically possible but it's about | being feasible. It doesn't matter that you can technically | do it if not enough people want to play along and deal with | it. | stale2002 wrote: | > It doesn't work like that. Friction destroys revenues | | Then don't add the friction! Just continue to use Apple's | payment system. | | Nobody is forcing app developers to use different payment | processors. | | > but because it will make the user experience so bad | that a fraction of your users will proceed. | | Then don't use it! Just use Apple. | mrtksn wrote: | Maybe I wasn't clear. The problem is that smaller | developers will not have access to the same frictionless | services anymore. 180 million people have an account with | Epic, who knows how many of them have already provided | the CC. | | If you are an indie, you don't have access to the 180 | million people, which creates uneven competition. | | When the only payment in town is Apple IAP, you and Epic | have the same margin. Suddenly, Epic has %28 more margin | with at about the same level of friction. If you need to | match Epic's margin, you need to introduce friction. | | Are there App devs on this site anymore? It feels like | arguing with people who have no idea. | stale2002 wrote: | > will not have access to the same frictionless services | anymore. | | Yes they will... They will have access to same exact | Apple In App Purchases feature that they had before. | | > Suddenly, Epic has %28 more margin | | Ok, so then it is _not_ about you having access to the | exact same thing that you had before. | | Instead, it is that other developers, have more money, | and don't have to pay an Apple fee. | | Thats pretty different. | | You are not complaining about losing something. Instead, | you are complaining that other developers, have to pay a | lower fee than they had before. But you still have | exactly the same thing as you had before. | | Generally speaking, lowering costs are not something to | complain about. | | Lower costs are good. | mrtksn wrote: | Duh. You are going to find me complaining about large | corporations not paying taxes as much as me due to their | access to creative accounting too. | | It's simply not good for the smaller developers. How more | clear I can be? Tough luck, go be a large corp then you | say? | tveita wrote: | > As a Developer, I also don't look forward for integrating | 50 frameworks for payment, deal with the limitations of each | and every one and go through the bureaucracy of 180 countries | for export compliance and taxes. | | It sounds like you should be using some kind of service that | does that for you, maybe even provided by Apple? | | > Do you see independent Devs cheering for the %2-%3 | commission | | Independent devs seemed pretty happy overall with the 15% | concession they already got as a result of the legal scrutiny | on Apple. No doubt they'll enjoy further improvements to the | terms once there is an actual threat of switching. | mrtksn wrote: | The point is not that smaller devs like to pay more, the | point is that smaller devs would like to compete on even | playing field. | | The lower the commission, the better. That should be | obvious, but it is not better if it comes at cost that is | potentially much higher than the reduction of commission. | cma wrote: | If there is competition allowed, maybe Apple lowers price and | then you don't have much change in convenience. | lifty wrote: | I think the judge didn't specify how equal access needs to be | given to alternatives means of payments. It's very | straightforward to design a payments SDK where card data gets | stored on the phone and payment providers are forced to use | that SDK so that all of them would absolutely the same | experience as Apple pay. You can even force them to provide | subscription cancellation like Apple does. But Apple wants you | to believe that's not possible, so probably they won't do it. | kkcorps wrote: | I think it will ultimately boil down to 2-3 major payment | gateways such as Stripe after initial chaotic 'every app trying | to be force their own payment processor' phase | hyperpallium2 wrote: | Another possibility is Apple drops its take to reflect the | value its payment service provides (including the benefit to | users you mention). | coldcode wrote: | As a user, I have zero desire to use some random payment | gateway, using Apple makes my life easier, I can reasonably | trust Apple not to let someone steal my money, how am I | supposed to trust 50 different gateways? | | Also if people move away from giving Apple any money for the | App Store, I expect the annual fee to increase to make up for | it, and might Apple make you pay more if you don't use Apple's | gateway? I don't see the ruling as forcing Apple to lose money. | | If I were Apple, I would have gone nuclear early on, and | eliminated all % fees but made the annual fee per app of $X to | each developer (whatever $ makes sense) and then you can | collect money however you want. This would likely kill a lot of | small app developers, but the big ones would not care. The | ruling makes Epic a big winner, but everyone else loses in the | long run, because Apple (and Google) will find a way to recover | lost revenue. | | Some people also want to have 1000 app stores allowed. Good | luck with that one... imagine having to build an app store just | for your app, or supporting 25 different app stores. | BackBlast wrote: | Are you willing to spend 27% more for everything to use Apple | payment gateway? Do you love it that much? | | At the end of the day, services have to provide value. If | your customers don't want to pay for your services, they do | not value them. That's a dangerous position for any company | to try to maintain. The mobile software industry generally | has been chaffing at the fees for quite some time now, these | are the warning signs that all is not well. | falcolas wrote: | > Are you willing to spend 27% more for everything | | This makes what is, IMO, an unjustified assumption: that | competition in the payment scene will drive prices down | _for the same item based on payment method_. | | Instead, I think we'll see the same thing we see with the | cash/credit card split: The same price regardless of your | payment method, with price differences lining the | publisher's pockets. | webmobdev wrote: | True that cheaper payment methods may not drive down the | price of an app or in-app transactions. But as a user, | you would be more satisfied knowing that that the $10 you | are paying for an app (or for some transaction within it) | is going to the creator of the app, rather than some | arbitrary percentage (decided by Apple) of your money. As | a user, you would even feel worse knowing that Apple | simply pockets the remaining amount. | coldpie wrote: | > Are you willing to spend 27% more for everything to use | Apple payment gateway? Do you love it that much? | | Honestly, yeah. I'm way more likely to click "subscribe at | $5/mo using your normal payment flow" than go through a | whole new account creation flow and wonder how cancellation | will work somehow down the line or how trustworthy this | vendor is with my data. | ghosty141 wrote: | >Are you willing to spend 27% more for everything to use | Apple payment gateway? Do you love it that much? | | Most in-App purchases are in the range of 1-5$. If I pay a | couple of cents more to have a unified experience, yeah | sure. | | It'd be interesting to see how much users spend on in-App | purchases. For me it's almost nothing, maybe 1 purchase a | year? The big money is probably in the free2play market | where players spend a lot to buy booster packs or "gold". | dubcanada wrote: | Yes, if it saves me from having to call to cancel my | subscription or going through a bunch of weird "are you | sure", "how about 2% off", "how about 5% off", "how about | we bill you $5 less", "why do you not like us? Fill out | this 75 question survey to cancel". Yes it does. | selykg wrote: | I would. I'm very careful about what I pay for anyway. If | you want me to pay for your product it needs to be | something that brings me real value. Even then I limit | myself, as I only have a certain amount to spend anyway, so | you're competing with other products for my limited amount | of budget. | | Apple's IAP makes it incredibly simple to cancel service. | It's consistent as well, which means I don't have to keep | hunting through your site to find it because you hid the | location of canceling behind "Please contact us to cancel" | type crap. | | Do I think Apple is charging too much for their cut? Yea, I | do. But as a consumer, the benefits outweigh it. As a | potential business owner, yea... I would be upset too. | jerrycruncher wrote: | The ability to simply cancel any subscription without | clicking through increasingly desperate "Don't go!!!" nag | screens is easily worth an extra 30% for me, too. | selykg wrote: | Yup. As a consumer, Apple's IAP and Apple Pay driven | experience is pretty darn good. I wish their business | didn't revolve around subscriptions as much, but at the | very least it does make purchasing really easy as a | consumer. | yyyk wrote: | >Apple's IAP makes it incredibly simple to cancel | service. | | This doesn't require Apple's payment monopoly. IAP would | just need to make an API call to some 3rd party API. | Besides did everyone forget they can call their credit | card issuer and suspend payment? | dodobirdlord wrote: | > Besides did everyone forget they can call their credit | card issuer and suspend payment? | | This does not get you out of your contractual obligation | to pay, if you have one. You could end up getting an | annoying surprise from a debt collection agency a few | years down the road. An important thing that Apple was | able to provide that a credit card processor suspending | payment can't is to force the vendor to let you _actually | cancel the subscription_ , not just the payment. | zachlatta wrote: | Honestly in some cases, yes. Subscription in-app purchases | are the only subscriptions I have ever signed up for that | are easy to cancel. | | I prefer to subscribe to services through in-app purchases | over the service's website itself because it's always easy | to cancel subscriptions made through Apple, and I never | forget I'm getting charged because I get payment receipts. | chipotle_coyote wrote: | > Are you willing to spend 27% more for everything to use | Apple payment gateway? | | This is the argument Epic's tried to make, and it isn't | particularly convincing. The iOS App Store is filled with | cheap apps, to the point where many people react to a one- | time price of $9.99 as disturbingly expensive. Apps and | games that are literally identical on iOS to other | platforms are frequently cheaper in their iOS releases | because that's what the market expects. So in practice, the | 30% cost is usually being eaten by developers, _not_ passed | on to consumers. There 's a lot of good arguments to be | made for cutting that 30% share down to 15% for everyone | across the board, but "now you'll only be charged $4.99 | instead of $5.99 for this game you would have paid $14.99 | for on the Switch version" just isn't one of them. | BackBlast wrote: | > This is the argument Epic's tried to make, and it isn't | particularly convincing. | | It's not an argument, it's a question. Some people have | clearly answered it as yes, yes they would. This shows | some distinct value provided to them by Apple. Value | that's worth something, though perhaps not 30%. | | Apple's next step is to provide a compelling enough | offering that developers and consumers alike pick it over | the soon-to-be competing offerings. Wouldn't that be | awesome if they pull it off? | bayindirh wrote: | Some of the services I pay via Apple's subscription | workflow is _cheaper_. Unbelievable, but true. Pocket is | one, Evernote is other. However, they later synchronized | their pricing to be cheaper everywhere, but it doesn 't | matter. It makes my life easier. | | If I'm paying for a cross-platform service, I can happily | use their own methods, but if I'm paying for an app-store | only application which either runs only on iOS or macOS, | good luck to them. I won't subscribe via their methods, | because it makes my life more complicated. | r00fus wrote: | 27% more? Are you kidding - it will be 12% more, if Apple | doesn't reduce their rates at all for most developers (most | don't make $1m revenue). | sebzim4500 wrote: | What portion of payments go to people not making $1m | revenue? Hard to believe it is a large portion. | NationalPark wrote: | There's tons of value in a unified payment system, which is | why it's app developers who were unhappy, not users. For | instance, ease of cancellation of recurring fees is | enormous. You can bet that's going to get harder as | developers get more control. And anyway, The app developers | have no motivation to charge you less, the market already | bears the fees, they just want to capture that profit for | themselves. | | Personally I probably just won't buy things that require me | to sign up for a new payment system, but I don't play | mobile games so I'm probably not representative of who this | impacts the most. | thebean11 wrote: | > why it's app developers who were unhappy, not users | | IIRC, Epic was offering their in game currency more | cheaply outside of the App Store, which Apple didn't | like. | | I bet plenty of people would use an alternate payment | method to save money..right now they don't have that | choice. | ApolloFortyNine wrote: | It was pretty genius from Epic, they knew they'd get | banned, but it instantly showed how the consumer is | harmed by this behavior (pay more, get less). | | Every mobile game with a cash store would instantly give | you a discount to go through a different provider. | madeofpalk wrote: | > which is why it's app developers who were unhappy, not | users | | The judge commented on that | | >> "Apple created an innovative platform but it did not | disclose its rules to the average consumer. Apple has | used this lack of knowledge to exploit its position. | | --- | | > Personally I probably just won't buy things that | require me to sign up for a new payment system | | You, as a consumer, will now have a choice, which you'll | get to exercise! You will be able to send a market signal | for products (either the service you might subscribe to, | and Apple) to get better and attract more | developers/users. This sounds like a win! | [deleted] | coldpie wrote: | > This sounds like a win! | | Not if I wasn't interested in having the choice to begin | with. Now some apps will not be purchasable by me unless | I go through their account flow, which I don't want to. | It's strictly worse (for me). | madeofpalk wrote: | There is now a market force for Apple to make its IAP | services better, which makes it more likely for | developers to make apps with it (theoretically). | ascagnel_ wrote: | There will be larger players who won't bother with any | cut -- they want to own the relationship with the | customer, and view any intermediary with hostility. | luckylion wrote: | And before, they might not have bothered developing an | app, or one for iOS. Now you have choice. Choice is good. | mrtranscendence wrote: | What big names haven't developed iOS apps but may do so | now? I'm hard pressed to think of any. They may not | always allow in-app purchases, of course, but they | generally exist. | madeofpalk wrote: | Sure. | | They're either already not on Apple's IAP (Netflix or | Spotify) or they are very sensitive to optimising | conversions, and would pay a premium to give users an | easier option (which Apple is now incentivised to lower) | cormacrelf wrote: | It's not guaranteed, but one realistic outcome is that | its IAP services get worse, because e.g. automatically | saying yes to all refund requests is less feasible when | margins are thinner. Retailers like large supermarket | chains are only able to have no-questions-asked refund | policies because nobody is actually taking a bad box of | cereal back to a store, but in digital, it might too easy | right now for a 3% cut + absorbing chargebacks to be | sustainable. Similarly, having cancellation be one-click | and done is great for the consumer but if you're in the | razor thin margins game unfortunately making | unsubscribing difficult is a competitive edge. | | IAPs are only indirectly a product that app customers get | a choice in; the primary customer is app developers who | have vastly different interests. There may have to be a | shift on some of these axes for Apple to compete on | price. | majani wrote: | I trust Apple will force developers to provide a drop | down menu of options for payments. I don't think they'll | allow dodgy redirects and webviews. That's not in line | with Apple's design principles. | mystcb wrote: | > As a user, I have zero desire to use some random payment | gateway, using Apple makes my life easier, I can reasonably | trust Apple not to let someone steal my money, how am I | supposed to trust 50 different gateways? | | I think this is a fair argument, and I believe also shows | that if options are available, that is where us as a consumer | have our freedom. I also personally like the ability to | quickly pay when needed for things using Apple, but in return | - if I was able to pay for it because another offer, or | option, or something was presented to me that was easier, I | would totally take that that too. However, I can see how that | would be a loss for the people writing and maintaining the | app and the associated services. | | The problem I see is that this swinging at the moment between | a single payment gateway and every payment gateway out there | is a huge pendulum that is swinging to the extremes of both, | neither side actually gets anything good out of it. | | It would be lovely in a world where the option was to use | Apple + an external, and letting users decide what they feel | safe with. Some will be happy going direct with Apple, some | would be happier with <insert payment style here>. | | I think it is mentioned below, I can see larger companies | immediately dropping the Apple method because it loses them | the extra profit, and just making the ecosystem harder. | People lose faith in paying for services, and then another | service comes along, charging 30%, and we are back where we | started. | | So yeah, IMHO, it is good it is being recognised, but at the | same time, its going to be a bumpy ride. | madeofpalk wrote: | > how am I supposed to trust 50 different gateways? | | Do you not buy things online currently? Do you not use | Amazon, or Lyft, or Netflix, or Spotify? | barkerja wrote: | My concern is less about random one-off purchases but more | the management of on-going subscriptions. Having Apple | handle that, is a blessing, from a user perspective. I have | a single place to manage all the random $1 - $10 | subscriptions that I have, making it easy to change/cancel | at any moment's notice, and from any device. | encryptluks2 wrote: | What is to stop you from searching for services that | still let you use Apple Pay? No one is stopping you from | living in your tight-knit Apple world, but you seem | discontent with the idea that people will no longer have | to live there and would rather find ways to force them to | stay there with you. | pertymcpert wrote: | I don't think Apple Pay can do that? It's a one off | payment thing. | chipotle_coyote wrote: | I don't think there's anything in this injunction that | stops Apple from building a mandatory subscription- | cancelling API, which I wouldn't be surprised if they're | actually already working on due to earlier rulings this | month. In other words, you might be able to subscribe to | FooCalendar using their Stripe API system, but FooCo has | to make sure that your FooCalendar subscription shows up | in your list of subscriptions, maybe under a "Non-Apple | Subscriptions" list, that still lets you cancel with one | tap -- or at least one tap to take you to that app's | subscription management page. | | (I'm sure there will be some people upset at that kind of | interfering overreach, but it's the kind of interfering | overreach most of us would actually like.) | gigatexal wrote: | I'd trust them a lot more if they used Apple Pay. Just | saying. | webmobdev wrote: | > how am I supposed to trust 50 different gateways? | | It's your government's job to make sure that you have faith | in financial institutions and trust the infrastructure | through which financial transactions happen. | | If not, corporates like Apple will continue to exploit your | misplaced trust by charging you 30% - 50% on every | transaction. The solution isn't Apple or Google or some other | corporate, but your government and better regulations. | atishay811 wrote: | I think what it will eventually turn out to be is - Apple | will require IAP/Storekit but will be forced to allow others. | And you will see something like this - $10 - Pay by Apple, $8 | Pay via Amazon/Google/Whoever big name enters this business, | $7 pay by credit card directly. And you can chose if you need | Apple's unsubscribe, want to trust Amazon for $2 discount, or | want to get a further $1 discount by entering your credit | card number and risking doing a chargeback in the future if | the developer is really crappy. | | Eventually Apple will get down to make the Amazon not turn | profit out of iOS IAP and then you will be left with two | choices. | cush wrote: | I highly doubt there will be any win for consumers. App | developers probably aren't going to reduce their prices by 20% | solarmist wrote: | No, and it wasn't meant to. It was meant to let companies | keep more and give Apple less. That's all. | | In all likely hood things will get worse for consumers. I | will definite not buy apps requiring custom payment | platforms. Hopefully it'll settle on stripe companies will | offer multiple payment methods rather than trying to force | their own. | | I look forward to it making Apple lower its IAP fees for | everyone. I'd still like to use their infrastructure, but | without the enormous fees (15% for small devs is still huge). | cush wrote: | Right. I bet this will be huge for companies like Stripe, | Square, and Shopify. | kllrnohj wrote: | The win would be that you're actually able to sign up for | more things in the iOS ecosystem that you previously weren't | able to, like Netflix or Spotify. | anonfornoreason wrote: | Not financially (we wouldn't lower prices), but I would | immediately start to hire 4 more developers if they went from | 30% down to 5%. | | Lowering prices increases the number of jobs available, and | the only cost is that Apple loses some amount of it's | astronomical profits. | mcphage wrote: | How many developers do you have already, that 35% more | money would let you hire 4 more? Back-of-the-envelope | calculation says you've got 7, does that match up? | anonfornoreason wrote: | It's more about what our annual app fees to Apple are, | 1.2mm. We have diverse revenue streams so the correlation | between Apple revenue and salaries isn't apparent. | Osiris wrote: | That's a big assumption. | cush wrote: | Assuming a company will maximize profits is a big | assumption to you? | christopherwxyz wrote: | Apple Pay has no bearing on IAP. You can use Apple Pay with | Epic's IAP implementation. | dannyw wrote: | apple pay expressly forbids being used for digital content | delivered within apps. | diebeforei485 wrote: | If they want to keep this rule, they can- but they're just | losing out. | JamesSwift wrote: | Right, but the only reason for that is it prevents | circumvention. I would assume after this injunction they | will allow using apple pay in order to re-capture some of | that revenue. | maccard wrote: | Will I be able to use it with King's implementation, or my | local pizza place's outsourced app? | | edit: I was instantly downvoted without any discussion, which | doesn't add to the conversation. The reason I ask is because | that's what the key value add is of Apple's IAP - I know that | my payment method is accepted on the app store. | dannyw wrote: | There are payment aggregators that charge about 30c and 3%: | PayPal, Shop Pay, Google Pay, etc. And Apple Pay. | | There are also standards like Web Payments. | MAGZine wrote: | On Android, I use Google Pay all of the time for in-app | purchases, and it doesn't require Google to take 30%. | | It's just another payment processor. It often shows up beside | "add a credit card" in apps. I use it to order food, pay for | rideshare, buy tickets, etc. | simonh wrote: | According to google, that is not correct. They levy a 30% fee | on all Play Store transactions for apps and IAP. I've seen | articles that say they are cutting the fee to 15% for | businesses with under $1m revenue, but that's not what the | support page says. | | https://support.google.com/paymentscenter/answer/7159343?hl=. | .. | | Buying physical goods and services may not count, in the same | way that they don't count on the Apple App Store. | kllrnohj wrote: | It's a 30% fee if you use Play Store's IAP system. It's not | a 30% fee to use Google Pay as a payment provider ( https:/ | /support.google.com/pay/merchants/answer/6288971?hl=e... ) | | Same distinction exists on Apple's side with IAP vs. Apple | Pay. For example Apple Pay on the Web ( https://developer.a | pple.com/documentation/apple_pay_on_the_w... ) doesn't take | anywhere close to a 30% cut. In fact it, like Google Pay, | is also free for merchants, who just have to pay the normal | payment processor fees. | https://squareup.com/us/en/townsquare/apple-pay-for-small- | bu... | madeofpalk wrote: | Just to be clear here (and this fact doesn't really detract | from your point) - Apple Pay is very different to Apple's In | App Purchases. Apple Pay can be used anyhere, and it could | still be used if a company rolls their own purchase system on | their website that they link to from the app. Apple only gets a | very minor % cut of Apple Pay transactions, from the bank, | compared to Apple IAP where Apple gets 30% from the developer. | | Besides, isn't the competition here what we want? Apple IAP are | still easier, and probably will convert at a higher rate than | pushing a user outside the app to do the payment on a website, | so there's still incentives for developers to use them. If Apps | switch away from IAP, then Apple is incentivised to actually | compete (imagine that!!) and make something better that | developers actively want to use. | | It says something about the state of competition where Netflix | can just say "no, we no longer want people to sign up on an | iPhone and give us money". That says they don't think IAP is | good, and Apple should actually work on building something that | companies want to use. | ApolloFortyNine wrote: | Apple would also likely drop their cut from 30% overnight. | Maybe not to 3% like Paypal, but low enough where companies | would have to think. | madeofpalk wrote: | For context, Netflix was getting 15% in some markets and | that was not enough to keep them on IAP. | ghosty141 wrote: | >isn't the competition here what we want? | | In my opinion not in this specific case. As an iOS user I | WANT a system where everything conforms to certain | guidelines. I do NOT want to fiddle with some weird custom | in-App payment dialog which does it's own thing again. | | It'll be interesting to see how this court order will be | "implemented", my guess is that not much will change for now. | widowlark wrote: | you will still be able to do this, at a 30% premium through | IAP | dodobirdlord wrote: | Yea, but obviously no company will offer that option | unless forced. This decision undeniably benefits app | developers, but the benefit to customers is murkier. | | Apple couldn't previously _require_ payment flow through | Apple's payment systems, as evidenced by apps like | Audible where you have no purchasing in the app and just | have access to the content that you purchased through | their website. Since Apple couldn't outright _force_ app | vendors to monetize through Apple payment channels, their | cudgel has been to ensure that app vendors have no way to | link to external purchase options in the app, and hope | that this was inconvenient enough for app vendors that | they would choose to integrate with Apple's payment | channels. And it worked for most, but not all of them. | Some apps, like Audible, just chose to live with having | no way to sell anything from the app. | | If Apple can't even do that, they lose the ability to | provide for their customers a consistent payment | experience across apps. | iknowstuff wrote: | They did try to force companies to monetize through them. | | https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/8/21506995/apple-forced- | in-... | majani wrote: | My guess is Apple will force developers to provide a drop | down of payment options with Apple Pay as the default | draw_down wrote: | Who is we? I imagine app makers want this, but as a user I do | not care to enter my credit card details just so they can | save on their cut to Apple. It's understandable from their | POV, but not my problem. | maccard wrote: | > and it could still be used | | But it's not guaranteed to be, which is a huge loss for the | app store IMO. | jackson1442 wrote: | Agreed. I think a fair plan would be | | * lower IAP to 15% with an option to pay a higher dev | license fee to lower it to maybe 7-10%. | | * require that any IAP has an _option_ to use Apple's IAP | system within day 20% of the offsite price | | * physical goods stay on the same system, but potentially | offer some kind of carrot to implement Apple Pay | tshaddox wrote: | > Besides, isn't the competition here what we want? | | Depends what you mean. The subtlety that is always lost in | these conversation on HN is _how deep does the competition | have to go?_ I don 't think anyone seriously argues that | iPhones do not have viable competition in the smartphone | market. And yet, if I as a consumer want to use a smartphone | which places strong restrictions on third-party developers | (which is one of the most significant reason I use iPhones | and recommend them to friends and family), somehow those | restrictions are considered "anti-competitive." If these | restrictions are lifted or prohibited, that clearly removes | one of the key _differences_ between iPhones and their | competitors (mostly Android phones), and it baffles me that | this could be construed as a _more_ competitive smartphone | market for consumers. | radley wrote: | > Adding my card information to 50 different in-app wallets | does not sound appealing to me, despite the win for consumers | and developers. | | Apple will probably pivot quickly to allowing you to use Apple | Pay for this. A small commission and metadata is better than | nothing at all. | sabellito wrote: | Apple Pay charges the banks a _percentage_ per transaction on | the credit card, despite not taking absolutely any of the risk | in that operation. Plus a quarterly fee per card. | | Do you think the banks are going to foot that bill? Of course | not: it's us, the consumers. | | Are you willing to have everything be a bit more expensive, for | everyone, so that you, apple users, can have something a tiny | bit more convenient? | diebeforei485 wrote: | Correct- it is 0.15% on credit card transactions, or a flat | $0.005 per debit card transaction. | | Stripe (which charges 2.9% + $0.30) is willing to eat this | fee, presumably because of the benefits of vastly lower | fraudulent transactions and chargebacks. | falcolas wrote: | Isn't that how any convenience works? Credit cards already | increased the price of everything for the convenience of | using credit cards, as an example. I'm old enough to remember | there was once one price for cash, and another for credit | cards. | josefresco wrote: | > I'm old enough to remember there was once one price for | cash, and another for credit cards. | | Some businesses in my town still do this. When I see it, | the only thing I think is "they must be committing light | tax fraud". Maybe it's wrong, but I know what merchants pay | for CC transactions and it doesn't justify the whining from | business owners who have been accepting cards for decades | and suddenly decided CC transactions were unprofitable | because business is slumping /rant. | manquer wrote: | It is not tax fraud [1]. Merchants are violating the | terms of CC provider. The merchant agreement explicitly | forbids merchants to have different cash price from what | is charge with the card. | | It is fairly common in geographies where CC providers | can't litigate/enforce easily . It is not a penal crime, | only a contract violation between two private parties and | settled in arbitration/civil courts . | | [1] Such Merchants also may commit tax fraud if they | don't declare the cash income for tax purposes, that | however is not directly related to Credit Cards or | payment medium and usually even if they do commit tax | fraud, they don't pass on their tax benefits for GST/VAT | or Income Tax (10+% in most countries) to the customer. | commoner wrote: | Not sure about other countries, but in the US, the Dodd- | Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act | (2011) ensures that merchants are allowed to offer cash | discounts. | | > A PCN cannot stop you from offering your customers a | discount or another incentive for using a certain method | of payment, as long as you offer it to all your customers | and disclose the offer clearly and conspicuously. For | example, you can offer your customers a discount or a | coupon if they pay with cash or a debit card rather than | a credit card. | | https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- | center/guidance/new... | majani wrote: | The most likely move here is that Apple forces developers to | put a drop down of payment options, with Apple Pay being the | default. Same way Google did when Android was forced to offer a | choice of default search engines | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: | It would be hilarious if the end result was iOS users no longer | being as valuable to app developers, if the ecosystem just | starts to feel sketchy and people stop spending as freely on | it. I don't think it's _likely,_ but it feels plausible enough | to lol at the idea. | gumby wrote: | This doesn't stop Apple from controlling which apps can be | installed. It stops them from using a link to external | payment as a criterion. | | I do think this will have _some_ effect that you describe | (e.g. perhaps Epic suffers a breach in their payment system) | on the end user side but it's not as bad as the android store | situation. if anything it will make iOS users more attractive | to devs as they can now keep a larger percentage of IAP | sales. | | But when IAP costs less than 30% I expect all paid apps to go | the IAP route. | perfectstorm wrote: | > Adding my card information to 50 different in-app wallets | does not sound appealing to me, despite the win for consumers | and developers. | | this is not an unresolvable issue though. Apple could force | developers to make their payment option as the default payment | option similar to how they forced devs to use Sign in with | Apple (when they have third party login). Big companies like | PayPal could provide an SDK which can be used by devs to | complete trasaction similar to web. I could think of many more | ways to solve this issue. | WA wrote: | Apple could start to compete on price for IAPs, so that devs | favor Apple's solution out of free choice, not because they | have to. | 41209 wrote: | Vote with your dollars. | | If App A requires you to use their payment gateway and App B | uses apple pay, use App B. | | I imagine this will cause a sort of race to the bottom where | apple will lower its own fees to match. | makeitdouble wrote: | It feels ironic to ask customers to bear the burden to make | big companies behave, in a thread about a court ruling | regulating anti-competitive behavior. | summerlight wrote: | https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blu... | | Should Apple appeal? I don't think so; they now have much bigger | thing to worry about. If they decide to appeal, it'll generate | even more publicity and congress and public are going to be more | engaged. Apple desperately wants to get it over with as silent as | possible. | xvector wrote: | Apple WILL appeal. This is 25% of their yearly revenue at risk. | I think many people don't realize just how critical this case | is to Apple. | sangnoir wrote: | If they appeal, they'll be on the line to lose even more (and | Epic is itching for this fight to continue, so _Epic_ might | appeal). Apple can cut its losses and be happy with the | current, quantified ruling, or roll the dice and possibly run | into a terrible precedent for other jurisdictions that have | been rattling their sabers at Apple. | dannyw wrote: | I expect both Apple and Epic to appeal. | manquer wrote: | Epic will _need_ to appeal, they are still not allowed in | the App store for breaching contract, this ruling did not | change that. | | They need get favorable ruling on appeal taking the view | the contract was not valid and had illegal terms therefore | Epic was not in breach. | | Without that Fortnite is still not returning to the App | Store. | baggy_trough wrote: | Note Epic also has to pay 30% damages. | | > On the counterclaim, in favor of Apple on the counterclaim for | breach of contract. Epic Games shall pay (1) damages in an amount | equal to (i) 30% of the $12,167,719 in revenue Epic Games | collected from users in the Fortnite app on iOS through Epic | Direct Payment between August and October 2020, plus (ii) 30% of | any such revenue Epic Games collected from November 1, 2020 | through the date of judgment, and interest according to law. | jimbob45 wrote: | In what upside-down world is that justified? It seems like the | judge is talking out of both sides of her mouth. | wincy wrote: | I think they'll be happy to pay $4,000,000 for this though. | colinmhayes wrote: | I'm sure Epic included this in the legal costs of the case. If | they get to create their own store they can potentially make | billions. | stavros wrote: | I don't understand why Epic is dissatisfied with this. Doesn't | the injunction mean that Apple now has to allow other payment | processors? Is it that Epic wanted third-party app stores on iOS? | another_kel wrote: | No. This injunction is allowing info\link to website where you | can use other payment processor. And Epic wanted to integrate a | different payment system directly into the app. | stavros wrote: | Oh hmm, that's too bad. I'd be dissatisfied too, I hope they | win the appeal. | Drew_ wrote: | I believe they're disatisified that the App Store wasn't deemed | a monopoly | AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: | Does this also apply (as precedent) to Epic vs Google? | occamrazor wrote: | Partly. Google allows sideloading, but makes it inconvenient. | Whether it's more similar to Apple or Steam is a non-obvious | question. | [deleted] | justahuman1 wrote: | I love the cancellation experience with apple subscriptions, most | other things are garbage / dark patterns. | yyyk wrote: | Judge seemed to have reached into the narrowest possible ruling, | a reasonable decision in a case which is likely to be appealed by | both sides. | | Apple learnt that the monopoly definition argument doesn't | prevent rulings against anti-competitive practices, and Epic | learnt that if it wants to attack App Store fees it needs to | bring an objective criteria to the table and have it accepted. | | The judge skirted the App Store issue, but I never felt that was | important: IMHO, 99.999% of iPhone users would have used Apple's | store even if alternate stores were available; The only | alternative store with any chance of success would have been an | OSS store - hardly what Epic wanted. | fxtentacle wrote: | Reading this, I cannot help but imagine someone at Apple thinking | to themselves "I wish we had granted Epic an exemption like we | did with Netflix". | | The court proceedings and the documents that they were required | to disclose were surely bad for PR and now it looks like they | won't even keep the monetary benefits. | dannyw wrote: | It would only delay things. The class action lawsuit for | example. | colinmhayes wrote: | Epic is interested in creating their own store and increasing | revenue developers get because of their unreal engine fee. | judge2020 wrote: | Netflix did not get an exemption. They still don't link to | Netflix.com from the app since Apple dictates that they can't | direct people to paying for subscriptions outside the app | store. When Netflix did do some IAP subscriptions, they costed | more to the user and were only available for a limited time. | fomine3 wrote: | If Fortnite did same things like Netflix, they'll be banned. | Why Netflix or Kindle isn't banned is because Apple arbitrary | allowed such app for some category, but not for games. See | Hey case. | judge2020 wrote: | What things? What did apple arbitrarily allow? Netflix has | never used its own payment system within iOS. | Factorium wrote: | Fortnite will come and go but Unreal Engine will be generating | revenues forever. | | Epic are more motivated by transferring the excess profits of | Apple into modest profits for developers, who then redistribute | 5% of their revenues (as part of the Unreal Engine license) | back to Epic. | | I wonder if Epic will sue Steam and console developers next... | | Epic sells Unreal to Sony and Microsoft, so suing them is | probably unlikely. But Valve could definitely be the next | target. | [deleted] | dleslie wrote: | > But Valve could definitely be the next target. | | Valve would simply refer the judge to their rather-successful | competitors, including: | | - Epic Game Store | | - Origin | | - Blizzard Store | | - Microsoft Store | | - GoG | | - Itch.io | | - Ubisoft Store | | - Bethesda Store | | And to further their point, Valve would show how many games | on Steam are found on other stores, and Valve doesn't prevent | other companies from listing games on other stores. | | Valve does not have a monopoly; not by a long shot. | progbits wrote: | Not even a monopoly question (the ruling says it can't call | Apple a monopoly). | | However Steam is not a walled garden. Feel like they charge | too much? Go to itch.io or make your own website with | Paypal button. It is your machine, your OS. | madeofpalk wrote: | > I wonder if Epic will sue Steam | | Why would Epic sue Steam? | | Fornite isnt on Steam, because it doesn't need to be. It's | the platform (Windows) working in a competitive way! | Macha wrote: | Console developers on the other hand, are almost certainly | next. | madeofpalk wrote: | I think Epic has a good relationship with console | developers, generally, because they help each other out. | Epic seems happy that it actually gets something back for | giving up that 30%. | marricks wrote: | Uh, didn't it always seem like Epic was itching for a fight no | matter what happened? That's the impression I got from the case | but I also didn't follow it super closely. | gpm wrote: | It did, but Apple might have been able to prevent Epic from | having standing to sue by giving them an exception. | marricks wrote: | I imagine that could have hurt their case if Epic was | always going to sue anyways. | gpm wrote: | I imagine it would have hurt their case if someone else, | say Unity Technologies, sued. I really do think that Epic | would have failed on the standing argument and not have | even gotten to the fact finding stage of the trial where | it could hurt their case. | | On the claim that Epic won, the courts finding on | standing is already "just barely" | | > Thus, although the question is close, the Court finds | that Epic Games has standing to bring a UCL claim as a | quasi-consumer, not merely as a competitor. | [deleted] | rocqua wrote: | This still allows apple to mandate same price on and outside the | platform, and still allows apple to mandate apple pay be an | option. | | This is great for customer experience, because users still have | the option to use apple their polished system. But if a (big) | player offers a better experience, users get to pick that. | throwaway98797 wrote: | I hope this doesn't hurt customer experience. | parhamn wrote: | > communicating with customers through points of contact obtained | voluntarily from customers through account registration within | the app. | | Another interesting part of this ruling. | quickthrowman wrote: | Is this going to affect subscriptions? If so, I'm cancelling all | of my current subscriptions through apple, they're the ONLY | company that makes cancelling easy and that _will_ go away if | this includes subscriptions. | rubyn00bie wrote: | _yawn_ Apple is getting a mild slap on the wrist and the outcome | of the case is probably the best for everyone. It did away with | the most entirely absurd and egregious restriction but still lets | a company like... choose how to run their business. If anything | this is likely to drastically improve the quality of some big- | name applications on Apple 's platforms, further increasing their | bottom line. I would bet money technologically illiterate people | have sworn off of Apple's platforms because they bought a device | for a single purpose (like watching Netflix) and then couldn't | signup for the fucking service on the device. Is that going to be | a huge boon for Apple's bottom line? Nope. But it will likely | make their ecosystem stickier because there's less friction for | groups of consumers. Chances are Apple-HQ is poppin' open some | champagne today having a laugh that they ever were allowed to | prevent links or calls to action. | | The real winners here, no one seems to be talking about, are the | console manufacturers who I'm sure had their buttholes puckering | at nearly the speed of light waiting for the verdict. While Apple | could surely continue on without an exclusive AppStore on its | platform, Nintendo and Sony would begin to feel some absolutely | critical burning. Both manufacturers have de-facto monopolies on | their platforms, and those monopolies are at least as restrictive | as Apple's if not more so because they act as barriers to entry | into their markets (i.e. If Sony doesn't _like_ your game idea, | you can just fuck off with no recourse). | | The one thing about this case that pisses me off is Sweeny | running his mouth like he and Epic are really victims here. His | refusal to put Fortnite (which I've never played) back on the app | store is pathetic, childish, and anti-consumer. It is honestly as | disgusting to me as Facebook trying to peddle their unwavering | commitment to tracking their users every waking-action as "pro | consumer." If Sweeny and Epic brought this same case against | Nintendo and Sony, I'd maybe be more sympathetic to his bullshit | because at least then it would be consistent. My thought is Epic | is likely big enough to bully Sony or Nintendo into better deals | on their platforms; while, Apple doesn't have to take it's shit | for a single solitary second because Epic poses no threat to | Apple's revenue. Then this inability to bully the platform owner | threw Sweeny into an _epic_ tantrum and here we be. | | _shrug_ I 'll stop ranting here. | spywaregorilla wrote: | Epic tried to put Fortnite back on the app store in Korea. | Apple refused. | threeseed wrote: | And now Apple is going to refuse to put them on any store | given that courts found them to have breached their contract. | | Epic have screwed themselves pretty badly here. | stale2002 wrote: | > back on the app store is pathetic, childish, and anti- | consumer. | | This makes no sense. If the price of something is too high, | then a company is not going to purchase it. | | I am sure that Epic would be happy to put fortnite back on the | app store, if Apple charged 0%. | | But you can't go around saying that it is "petty" for a company | to think that the price of something is too high, and then | refuse to pay that price. | | Apple doesn't own fortnite. They aren't owed anything, unless | you are going to make some reverso uno argument, and claim that | actually fortnite is a monopoly, but that would be silly. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | >The decision concludes the first part of the battle between the | two companies over Apple's App Store policies and whether they | stifle competition. Apple won on 9 of 10 counts but will be | forced to change its App Store policies and loosen its grip over | in-app purchases. | | >Rogers said that Apple was not a monopolist and "success is not | illegal." | | >"Given the trial record, the Court cannot ultimately conclude | that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state | antitrust laws," Rogers wrote. | | Glad to see nobody knows what a monopoly is anymore. It's like | the Grant administration all over again... | OisinMoran wrote: | To be clear, I'm on the side of Epic here, but in rulings like | this where it has been judged that someone did some wrong (just | focusing on Epic breaking their contract) and the punishment is | getting them to pay exactly as much as had they done the "right" | thing, the expected value is always going to favour doing the | "wrong" thing, as sometimes you won't get caught. Any fines or | decisions like this should include the likelihood of getting | caught and make the expected value negative. A fine for not | having a train ticket is not just the price of a ticket. | AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: | Very good point. I believe that the judge just gave a slap on | the wrist to Epic Games with that fine (that's why it was equal | to just the "back-pay") for breaking a contract (which is | wrong, legally speaking.) | | I believe the judge did this (just a slap) because Epic was | right and Apple was anti-competitive. | | I could be wrong though. I have very little knowledge of anti- | competitive laws. | judge2020 wrote: | I'd have to agree with you, as this lawsuit was a PR play | more than anything, especially if it means they don't get | their App back on the app store (yet?). | kllrnohj wrote: | I think it's worth stressing that _both_ sides did something | wrong. Apple 's contract was also just ruled invalid, and they | also aren't being forced to pay any penalties for that. They | aren't being forced to compensate Netflix, Spotify, etc... for | all the years those companies have been unable to link out to | subscription signups on iOS, for example. | | So consider instead that Epic _and_ Apple were both penalized | an identical amount rather than neither side being penalized at | all. | poniko wrote: | Why, the curt said follow the terms of contract (Since the | contract is valid). Why should you get a penalty because you | legally have a chance to dispute a contract? You might need to | pay the legal fees etc but the default must be to have the fair | chance to challenge what you might seem unfair in said | contract. | AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: | His argument was that if you don't pay all the time and get | caught some of the times, then you only have to pay some of | the time. | | If fees is $100 each time and you don't pay 100 times and get | caught only 50 times, then you only pay 50 times 100=5000 | rather than 100 times 100=10000. | | And we are talking in tens of millions, so legal fees are | negligible. | endisneigh wrote: | Is this also true for Epic Games? | | Why would _anyone_ not circumvent all fees for _any_ platform? | dannyw wrote: | Name me another platform where you are forced into a duopoly | with identical policies. | endisneigh wrote: | Gaming consoles. | therealdrag0 wrote: | We can still buy games outside the platform at this point. | But we're probably nearing an age of consoles without disk | drives, then yeah. | | I guess there is still the in-app purchase angle. | kmeisthax wrote: | Strictly speaking, retail games are also part of the same | platform. Game consoles have the same lockout policies | Apple does - in fact, they were literally invented | decades prior to the iPhone by console manufacturers. You | still have to pay a platform royalty on physical copies; | except now you also have to throw margin to distributors | and retailers, too; and the games can be resold without | you making a penny. | cblconfederate wrote: | In many platforms it's not worth the effort, or the native | payment method is actually cheaper than any potential | competitor | endisneigh wrote: | Curious to know which platforms have lower fees than doing it | yourself. | cblconfederate wrote: | It depends on the effort needed to "do it yourself" which | is a lot if you're accounting many many tiny transactions. | There's definitely a market there, or at least there was | during the FB games era. | TillE wrote: | Taking direct payments is absolutely insane if you're a | small developer. I mean, have fun accounting for zillions | of tax laws in every country in the world. | | 30% is a lot, but considering all the other services you | get, it's not particularly unreasonable. | | For big companies, sure, you have accountants and lawyers | and your own infrastructure, so you don't need any of that | stuff. | COGlory wrote: | This is not a good enough outcome. It's never been about IAP | methods. The problem here is that Apple is stopping you from | using software on a physical device you own. | | Very disappointing ruling. | subdane wrote: | It'd be pretty novel and refreshing if Apple competed for | developer buy-in for payments on features and functionality. | [deleted] | Factorium wrote: | Can this legal precedent also be applied to Steam? | madeofpalk wrote: | It's hard to draw parallels to Steam, because this case was | about iPhone + App Store, not just the App Store itself. | | If you don't want to pay Steam's cut, or follow their | restrictions you have plenty of other options. You are not | restricted in the sense you are with iPhone + App Store. | gnorst wrote: | Or, more interestingly, game consoles... | freewizard wrote: | > Notably, the judge rejected both parties' definition of the | marketplace at issue in the case. "The relevant market here is | digital mobile gaming transactions, not gaming generally and | not Apple's own internal operating systems related to the App | Store," Gonzalez-Rogers wrote. | | I guess the question is does Mobile gaming cover handheld game | device like Switch? If so, it may impact Steam Deck as well. | themaninthedark wrote: | Looks like the Steam Deck will let you install windows on it | as well as access other game stores. | | https://www.polygon.com/22579033/valve-steam-deck- | handheld-e... | | This has more interesting implications for Nintendo, Sony and | Microsoft consoles. | wormslayer666 wrote: | Steam doesn't prevent games from linking to alternative payment | processors in-app. | Factorium wrote: | It most certainly does! All payments must be within the Steam | ecosystem when you are distributing a Steam app. | | Valve even prevents developers from linking to their own | website, if said website includes ways to buy content | independent of Steam payment. | themaninthedark wrote: | No it doesn't. | | See Rimworld. | https://store.steampowered.com/app/294100/RimWorld/ | | Sidebar has link to visit the website. | https://rimworldgame.com/ You can buy directly with Credit | Card or Paypal. | | Fantasy Ground is the same way: https://store.steampowered. | com/app/1196310/Fantasy_Grounds_U... | SXX wrote: | Steam does have rules about it, but they are not strictly | enforced. If your game have it's own backend / website then | you can freely bill people there after you onboarded them | via Steam. | | IAPs are different: here Valve actually require you to | process payments through steam when game is running via | Steam. But even in this case a lot of games can be launched | independently after installation through Steam. | | Also on top of this Valve already decreased it's comission | from 30% for large publishers. | 8K832d7tNmiQ wrote: | Warframe, one of the most active userbase game on Steam, | literally has a dedicated page just to purchase a platinum | coin in their own website [1] | | [1]:https://www.warframe.com/buyplatinum | gigatexal wrote: | That's it. The App Store is broken. Major win to Epic. | | I'll keep using apps and services that take funds via Apple Pay | though. I trust Apple in this sense. | scardycat wrote: | More choice is always a win for the customers. Customer can get | to decide who is providing a better quality of service and go | with them instead of the current situation of having one choice | forced down their throats because the vendor decides that is | whats best for the customer. | handrous wrote: | > More choice is always a win for the customers. | | It's _sometimes_ a win for customers. | | [EDIT] trivial and clear illustrative case that should be | easy to apply to murkier situations: a regulation that bans | known poisons in food reduces choice. | | [EDIT EDIT] more relevantly, and a bit tangentially to the | example above: thanks to coordination problems it's possible | for more-desirable states to be _unmaintainable_ without | reduction of choice--it 's possible for someone's--even | _everyone 's_--favorite outcome to require a reduction of | choice, and for that option to cease to be when more degrees | of freedom are introduced. | maccard wrote: | > More choice is always a win for the customers. | | Not if it solely results in fragmentation. Having the choice | between Ubisoft Connect, EA Origin, Steam and Battle.net | isn't a "choice", it's just 4 different storefronts for me to | manage credentials for. | AlexandrB wrote: | Likewise with video streaming services: Netflix, Disney+, | etc. It would be nice if content could be unbundled from | distributor in this case - like what you see with music. | ZekeSulastin wrote: | If and when Apple is forced to allow other app stores (and | Google is forced to give them the same abilities and | privileges as their own), the wailing and gnashing of teeth | when "competition" ends up like the much derided state of | PC gaming will be _hilarious_. At least there's the login | with google /Apple ID thing and OS level restrictions on | program privileges? | scardycat wrote: | You cannot have choice without fragmentation, you cannot | complain about lock-in without wanting choice. Choice and | fragmentation go hand in hand, and customers get to decide | who wins and who loses. | wvenable wrote: | When you get hacked and your account is destroyed, at least | all your eggs won't be in one basket. | | There are always pros and cons. | mensetmanusman wrote: | In App Payments does not equal Apple Pay | | tl;dr IAP DNE Pay | ApolloFortyNine wrote: | >In a separate judgment, the court affirmed that Epic Games was | in breach of its contract with Apple when it implemented the | alternative payment system in the Fortnite app. As a result, Epic | must pay Apple 30 percent of all revenue collected through the | system since it was implemented -- a sum of more than $3.5 | million. | | Well, that seems rather BS. To even try for the antitrust case | they were required to show how it would hurt consumers. So they | did. Which went against Apple's rules obviously. | | So it's decided that Apple isn't allowed to do what they were | doing, but, Epic has to pay out a fine anyways? Would the case | have even made it this far if Epic hadn't done this? | | I'm sure Epic is happy to pay the $3.5 million in return for | this, and other companies are surely just as pleased. But to have | to pay it at all seems like a bit of a legal flaw here. | threeseed wrote: | Epic was in breach of contract. | | Which means not only do they have to pay the fine but Apple is | likely to permanently ban them from the store. | gjkngr wrote: | here's the meat: | | "Accordingly, a nationwide injunction shall issue enjoining Apple | from prohibiting developers to include in their: | | Apps and their metadata buttons, external links, or other calls | to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in | addition to IAP. | | Nor may Apple prohibit developers from: | | Communicating with customers through points of contact obtained | voluntarily from customers through account registration within | the app." | | And it applies to all apps, not just games | a-dub wrote: | this seems ridiculous. | | does this mean that if disney resorts open up to third party | vendors (assuming they haven't already), they can't require them | to accept the disney payment wristband? | | apple is not a monopoly, nor is it anticompetitive. it is, | however, opinionated and differentiates itself in the marketplace | with that opinionation. there are less opinionated, yet very | competitive alternatives and both users and developers are free | to switch to them. | ThatCaio wrote: | >does this mean that if disney resorts open up to third party | vendors (assuming they haven't already), they can't require | them to accept the disney payment wristband? | | No, this is equivalent to the vendors having the ability to | accept other forms of payment, such as cash or other credit | cards, if they choose alongside the wristband. | a-dub wrote: | but then because the wristband is more expensive, they'll | hide or break the wristband machine and the next thing you | know, downtown disney is now the bowery with sketchy ad men | in pinstripe suits chasing everyone around. the whole reason | why people pay to go to downtown disney is because they don't | want to deal with that shit. | | the simple fact no one wants to admit is that the msrp for an | iphone or an android does not even come close to the r&d | costs for the software, hardware and backend platforms. | android is open, but in exchange for that, users pay by | broadcasting all their activity to creepy marketers. ios is | closed, but rather than take money from creepazoids who are | stalking and trying to sell to and complicate the lives of | users, they charge a tax on all commercial activity on the | platform... to pay for the platform. | | now third parties are saying "we don't want to pay the | platform tax" but this is couched in all this bullshit about | app store freedom or choice in payment processor or whatever. | | if you don't want to pay the platform tax, don't do business | on the platform. don't try to wreck the platform's business | model and value proposition for the users who choose it over | the digital advertising dystopia that is the "open" internet | in 2021. | pupppet wrote: | I don't see developers dropping their price now they can use | their own payment processor. All I see is me, the user, having to | struggle through using their janky home-made payment processors | as I pay and/or try to end my subscriptions. | alickz wrote: | >All I see is me, the user, having to struggle through using | their janky home-made payment processors as I pay and/or try to | end my subscriptions.` | | You could just not use the app if you don't like their payment | processor. | donmcronald wrote: | It's possible they could use the difference for promotion too. | In the PC world there's things like nexus.gg that I've been | seeing more of lately. It allows creators and streamers to set | up a game store so you can buy from them and the creator gets | the (rough) equivalent of Steam's cut. | | That's a much better model IMO. The creators and streamers are | actually promoting your product to a core audience that's | likely to buy, so they're more deserving of that big cut. For | example, the YouTube channel where I learned about that is from | a creator that plays the style of games I like, so their | nexus.gg store is actually pretty good as a discovery mechanism | (for me). | | So smaller developers can keep uniform pricing, but leverage | other forms of promotion where the people that are actually | driving sales benefit instead of some rent seeking middle man | like Apple or Google. | | That's not some "janky home-made payment processor" either. I | set up an account with the primary platform (nexus.gg) and I | can buy from / support any creator curated game store I want | within that platform. | dannyw wrote: | Developers will probably just use apple pay plus PayPal. | unanswered wrote: | > Dr. Hanssen's survey is also severely flawed and ultimately | unreliable. First, he reports that 30- 43% of respondents | "regularly" use a Microsoft Windows phone even though Microsoft | had 0% market share in smartphones in 2018 and no longer sells | phones. | | Apple with their completely truthful experts here. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I think it will be fine, but the one big worry that I have, is | that I expect a significant percentage of these "alternatives" to | point to scams. | | That will put Apple in another hot spot. If someone reports that | an approved app has scam links in the app, will Apple be on the | hook to block the app? If they do, will that, then open them up | to charges? What about if they don't? | | I have been quite impressed with the ingenuity of scammers. The | Apple customer base is a lucrative target. I am _constantly_ | getting hijack attempts and phishing scams, aimed at my AppleID. | ksec wrote: | I just want to say I follow a lot of court case within the Tech | Industry mostly Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, Intel. And Judge Yvonne | Gonzalez Rogers is the only Judge that seems to have clear, well | reasoned verdict in all of her cases. Compared to many others | cases where the Judge were clearly biases from the very | beginning. | | The other thing that really irritate the heck of me from Apple's | PR, are their insistence of mentioning how App Store has provided | jobs in each country. Creating X amount of Jobs. Below is the | statement from Apple on this verdict | | >Today the Court has affirmed what we've known all along: the App | Store is not in violation of antitrust law. As the Court | recognized 'success is not illegal.' Apple faces rigorous | competition in every segment in which we do business, and we | believe customers and developers choose us because our products | and services are the best in the world. We remain committed to | ensuring the App Store is a safe and trusted marketplace that | supports a thriving developer community and more than 2.1 million | U.S. jobs, and where rules apply equally to everyone. | gpm wrote: | Note that if you scroll to the bottom of the order, the judge was | nice enough to include an outline of the order to aid in | navigation | | Direct link to order: | https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21060631/apple-epic-j... | [deleted] | cblconfederate wrote: | Should apple appeal this? Is it really worth further damage? | | It turns out the little guys were right all along. It's | surprising that it took legal action for apple to realize that, | when you invite millions of third parties in your marketplace, | you should treat them with some respect. And when this leads to | prices of purchases going down, how are people going to keep | justifying apple's position. | | I think the biggest win is that micropayment services will grow | which is good for all developers (not just in iOS) | Osiris wrote: | The ruling could cost them billions of dollars in revenue. It's | absolutely worth appealing. Even if they lose in the long run, | they'll make a few billion more in the mean time. | cblconfederate wrote: | how many billions? It seems their max app gaming revenue lost | would be 64 * 70% * 30% = 13.4B for 2021 , but it's probably | a lot smaller due to special deals, and also this would | assume they would lose ALL the revenue. In reality they'd | lose about,maybe ~$3B ? | | The alternative would alienate some of their best developers | -- who knows, maybe they'd leave? | bhelkey wrote: | >> In short, iOS apps must be allowed to direct users to | payment options beyond those offered by Apple. | | > It seems their max app gaming revenue lost would be 64 * | 70% * 30% = 13.4B for 2021 | | It is my understanding that the injunction is not limited | to games. It applies to all apps. | AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: | where will they leave? 50% of market is Apple's and | majority of people play games on their mobile phones and | not on dedicated setups. | cblconfederate wrote: | how much did fortnite lose? | spzb wrote: | My reading of this is that it's nowhere near the big deal people | are making out in the comments here. According to CNBC's report | "Apple will no longer be allowed to prohibit developers from | providing links or other communications that direct users away | from Apple in-app purchasing" [0]. That's a long way from forcing | Apple to allow alternative IAP providers or installing alternate | app stores. It suggests you'll have to step out of the app to | make a payment (which adds friction) and it'll be up to the app | developer to validate back in the app that the right person has | made the right payment. This sounds similar to what Apple had | already conceded they'd do [1] | | [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/10/epic-games-v-apple-judge- | rea... | | [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/27/apple- | agr... | dannyw wrote: | Apple's concession was for reader apps only. This expands it to | all apps. | spzb wrote: | I meant "sounds similar to". I've edited my comment for | clarity now. | akmarinov wrote: | Also a "reader app" is whatever Apple felt a reader app is, | it's not something specific that an app should be. | socialist_coder wrote: | This will certainly get appealed and bogged down even more in the | legal system, right? What are the chances this actually happens? | And when? | | Secondly, this is such an easy way to increase your take by 20+% | that I would imagine almost every publisher is going to be | offering their own payments platform, not just the biggest ones | like Epic. | nullspace wrote: | Yeah, agree. I think this would kill the App Store model. It's | surprising that the stock only dipped by 2%. What am I missing? | jeroenhd wrote: | Why would the app store model stop working? Paying through | the app store has a direct benefit to usability. Before in | app purchases the app store model worked fine. | | Even if the Epic lawsuit goes completely off the rails and | Apple is forced to allow external app stores on iOS, they can | still maintain a profitable app store if they provide the | best experience to end users. Building an app store is very | hard, and convincing people to install an alternative store | is even harder, so I doubt they'll lose much there. | | The app store is so ludicrously profitable that the | exclusivity they enjoy can't possibly be the only reason it's | making them money. This cut into Apple's (and Google's) | profits, but it certainly won't mean the end of app stores as | we know them. | gokhan wrote: | > if they provide the best experience to end users | | I don't think they can. Their DNA on this evolved as a | monopoly. They won't be able to compete, they will be slow | and boring while clever people will overpower them. | jeroenhd wrote: | I think they will find a way. The Mac App Store is far | from a monopoly yet it still remains profitable as far as | I know. | | My grandma isn't going to use any alternative store, she | probably doesn't even understand the concept of different | app stores. I think Apple will be fine, at least until | competitors somehow gain a MASSIVE usability advantage. | akmarinov wrote: | This ruling enables devs to use third party payment | providers, it doesn't force Apple to let alternative App | Stores on iOS. | | Apple can and will still reject any apps they feel like. | shuger wrote: | It's not going to end this quickly. Whichever side loses will | keep going at it until they exhaust all legal paths. | dathinab wrote: | > I think this would kill the App Store model. | | It doesn't kill it much more then it killed the android store | in the past when it wasn't (roughly, in practice) enforcing | the same thing. | | It's a revenue cut, but at least for the beginning it won't | be a problem at all for apple, this might change at some | point, but stocks have no reason to majorly drop _now_ they | still can do so in the future if it makes sense. | f6v wrote: | > What am I missing? | | Google drive and Dropbox didn't kill iCloud. | dathinab wrote: | > What are the chances this actually happens? And when? | | If new laws/regulations are made which are clear about this, | then potentially very soon. | | For such thinks sadly "making more clear laws" is sometimes | faster then "enforcing not fully clear laws". | bberenberg wrote: | It will be interesting to see how many small companies figure | out that tax and general compliance is worth every penny that | Apple charges them. Smart ones will opt for a seller of record | approach, but many will get burnt. | manquer wrote: | Stripe provides a lot of tooling ( more than apple) for | compliance. Apple is hardly the only payment provider which | simplifies payment processing for small developers. | TillE wrote: | "Tooling for compliance" sounds a hell of a lot more | complicated than "you sell my app and send me a check", | which is the deal on the App Store, Steam, etc. | manquer wrote: | Finance and compliance is lot more complicated than send | me a Cheque for most businesses. | | Stripe ( and others) have products right from | incorporation (Atlas?), identity verification, custom | reporting, fraud/risk, Charge backs, Tax reporting/ | filing and even PoS terminals etc. | | Most businesses have to deal with multiple channels | (Android, web, iOS and others), custom reporting, and | different risk/compliance will need solutions well beyond | what Apple is offering | cblconfederate wrote: | Definitely not every penny. E.g Xsolla, a payments | provider/merchant-of-record charges 5% | colinmhayes wrote: | NYT article said this goes into effect in 90 days, although I | assume an appellate judge could change that. | [deleted] | leptoniscool wrote: | This is a big money maker for AAPL, they'll probably need to | raise the profit margins on their hardware to make up for the | lost revenue. | asdff wrote: | "New" SE phone with 4 year old hardware incoming | OrvalWintermute wrote: | Personally, I am surprised at all the anti-competitive actions | Apple has been able to get away with over the years: | | Bundling the OS with hardware | | Enforcing an App store | | Dictating/Castrating Browser on mobile | | And the list goes on. | | I'm not saying this as a ding on Apple products, because I | genuinely appreciate them, but I think at the same time Apple has | resorted to creating roadblocks rather than innovating. | tw600040 wrote: | //Bundling the OS with hardware... | | What about bundling camera, speaker, screen, processors etc? | They are selling a product. You don't complain about car | companies bundling 4 wheels and a motor. | belltaco wrote: | >Dictating/Castrating Browser on mobile | | Not just mobile, but iPad Pro and iPads too. | pwinnski wrote: | Wait, are you suggesting that iPads and iPads Pro are not | mobile? In what sense are they tethered? | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: | The same sense as laptops. At a wild guess, I'm betting | most people are buying ipads with wifi only, not cellular. | belltaco wrote: | Are ultraportable laptops tethered? Would you call them | mobile? | | Anyway, "mobile" has long been used as a short form for | "mobile phone" rather than a "mobile device". E.g. the iPod | was not called a mobile, and AFAIK barely anyone uses that | term for tablets. | wvenable wrote: | If iPads are mobile, why aren't laptops? | toast0 wrote: | Laptops use mobile cpus, but desktop oses and software. | | PC based tablets are kind of weird, but iOS/Android | mobile OS based tablets are more or less phones with big | screens and no/limited calling features. | wvenable wrote: | "Desktop OS's and software" is an arbitrary definition. | Smartphones are just computers that make calls. Steve | Jobs even famously said that the iPhone ran "OS X" when | it was first launched. | toast0 wrote: | It is somewhat arbitrary; yeah, smart phones _can_ run | whatever, but practically, they don 't. | | For many reasons, the vast majority of people stick with | the OS a device ships with, and mobile OSes are directed | towards app stores and limited filesystems, and desktop | OSes are directed towards applications (with a side of | app stores) and visible filesystems and what not. | | You can run Android on a desktop PC, and you can (if you | try really hard) run desktop Windows on a phone or a game | console, but that's not how the devices are generally | sold, and that's not how the devices are generally used. | Apple sometimes claims their tablets are as useful as a | computer running a desktop OS, but they don't provide | Xcode for the iPad, do they? | BizarroLand wrote: | I think they mean systems with a SIM card or internet | access without being tethered to WIFI. | MBCook wrote: | You can buy iPads with cellular. You've been able to | since the iPad 1. | BizarroLand wrote: | Yes, you can buy them, but not everyone does. Phones are | by default portable with their own network connection, | whereas iPads have to be specifically chosen to have | cellular data service. It's alright to overlook them. | yurishimo wrote: | > Bundling the OS with hardware | | Is this really an issue? I agree Apple has been pretty shady | but this is a facet of any hardware you buy today from any | manufacturer. Now, preventing/obfuscating the install of | _other_ OS software, I agree, total bullshit. | skohan wrote: | Yes exactly. It's not the bundling that's the problem, it's | preventing free use of the hardware. | endisneigh wrote: | Is that actually an issue though, given that Apple has | never advertised their hardware as being "free-use"? | smoldesu wrote: | It's an issue given that I'd be more interested in using | a Mac if I could choose which graphics card I get to use | instead of perusing a pre-approved list of B-rate | processing units. | judge2020 wrote: | Technically, if you've got the know-how, you could code | your own graphics acceleration drivers for nVidia cards | on MacOS, it'd just be extremely hard and expensive to do | so. | skohan wrote: | I can't speak to where it stands in the current legal | framework, but personally I don't think the vendor of any | product should have any rights to determine how it's used | once the customer has paid for it. | endisneigh wrote: | Why not just stop buying products that can't do what you | want? | skohan wrote: | Why not just have common sense property rights enforced | by law? | endisneigh wrote: | What's common sense property right? | | Isn't it common sense to not buy a toaster expecting it | to be a server even though they both have circuit boards | and technically can both _compute_? | | Still don't get why don't you just buy things that | advertise the functionality you want. | EMIRELADERO wrote: | > Isn't it common sense to not buy a toaster expecting it | to be a server even though they both have circuit boards | and technically can both compute? | | The key here is _control_ , not computational power. An | ideal law, in my opinion, would be one which prohibits | building and selling _any_ device that can run code in a | way which allows the manufacturer to have _more_ control | over it than the legal owner after the sale has been | completed. I think this idea is actually great because it | never limits how limited a device can be, it just | prohibits it from being made in a way in which the OEM | /maker can control it more than the end user/new owner | could. | | As an example, say you make a "smart toaster" with Wi-Fi | and all that "good stuff" in it. If you just burn the | firmware into the sillicon and that program has no way of | updating itself, then you're good to go because both the | company and the end user are stuck with the same level of | control (In this context, "control" means "ability to | make the computer parts run the code that you wish them | to run") | | If you include the firmware in a writable EEPROM, and no | further checks for the update firmware besides checksums, | you're also golden, because then both the new owner and | you (OEM) can exercise the same level of control over it. | | If, however, you decided to include signature checking | using a public key burned in the sillicon, _then and only | then_ you would be violating this hypothetical law, | because that creates a situation in which you, the OEM, | can exercise _more_ control than the device 's legitimate | owner after purchase. | | So, to summarize, from the OEM's point of view under this | law, less control is good, equal control is good, more | control is bad. | | I think _this_ is what should be proposed as a new bill | in U.S congress, although I have to admit the Open App | Markets Act serves a great purpose as of right now for | some specific devices. | skohan wrote: | A toaster is clearly not a general purpose computer. | Should a car manufacturer be able to dictate which | destinations you're allowed to reach with it? | endisneigh wrote: | Why isn't a toaster a general purpose computer? There are | toasters with wifi, touchscreens and other functionality. | | As for your car question - why not? No one would buy such | a crippled device. The problem would resolve itself. | | If a car manufacturer sold a car without a steering wheel | that self drove, perhaps people would buy the car in | spite of the limitations. What they shouldn't do, is buy | a car advertised without a steering wheel and then | complain that it doesn't have one. | | https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Cooking-R180-High- | Speed-St... | gpm wrote: | In my opinion it _should_ be, it should be an abuse of | Apple 's monopoly on the hardware (including patents | preventing someone else from building an equivalent | device) to create a monopoly on the software. | | Legally I don't think it is today though, and my | understanding of the law is that it's precisely because | they haven't advertised their hardware as open as you | say. | tomjen3 wrote: | It is not an issue. MS is the outlier here in that they sell | their software to anybody (Linux is given for free), like you | said everybody else (TV manufactures, cars, etc) bundle | theirs. | | You could, maybe, make the argument that what Apple does is | anticompetitive, but in the laptop space they are the ones | being hurt by a monopoly, not the ones who benefit. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | One fact that has emerged is that Apple is pushing lock-in as a | strategy. So to everyone who has ever felt like they are too | "invested" in the ecosystem to leave- that is by design. You | are victims. | simonh wrote: | How dare they make their systems work so well together and | easy to use. | xvector wrote: | The Google Pixel works well and is easy to use but still | lets you install custom ROMs. | btmiller wrote: | Sounds to me like the invisible hand of the free market | economy. Use that phone, then. A given company is not | obligated to serve all of your specific needs and | desires. | widowlark wrote: | but their practices might still be considered anti- | competitive if harmful enough to end users | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | Not mutually exclusive. You can build systems that work | well together and are easy to use without lock-in. Users | should want to use the product because it is the best, not | because they feel trapped. | howinteresting wrote: | What does not allowing alternative browsers (only skins) on | their best-selling platform have to do with that? | danShumway wrote: | That's not really what lock-in means. | | An example of lock-in is making a conscious decision not to | port iMessage to Android, specifically because it would | make it easier for iPhone users to move to Android[0]. | | Making Apple products work well with other Apple products | isn't lock-in. Purposefully making Apple products work | worse with other systems, phrased within the company as a | way to punish users who switch, is the kind of thing we're | talking about when we describe lock-in. | | [0]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/apple-never- | made-i... | ricardobeat wrote: | How easy is it to migrate from Google's Messages app to | iMessage? | danShumway wrote: | Is your argument that Google doesn't try to engage in | lock-in? Or is your argument that lock-in is good for | users? | | Either way, when there are literal emails in the company | saying that the reason iMessage isn't on Android is | because otherwise it would be too easy for Apple users to | switch to Android -- then that's what lock-in is. | | I don't get the whataboutism here. It's lock-in. Google | is also a crappy company, but that doesn't change | anything about what Apple is doing, and it doesn't change | anything about the fact that the court case has revealed | enough documents to show that lock-in is a deliberate | market strategy that Apple undertakes. | | Google also acting crappy in a few cases does not mean | that the very concept of lock-in is suddenly invalid. | People forget that Apple is not the only company being | sued for antitrust in regards to their app stores. | ricardobeat wrote: | I don't have time right now to expand, but the greater | argument is that data portability is a much larger | problem. There is nothing nefarious about Microsoft | deciding to not support Office on Mac, just like iMessage | on Android. It's a business decision. There are plenty of | cross-platform alternatives. If Apple actively blocked | messaging apps from exporting their data then we'd have a | story. | simonh wrote: | >Making Apple products work well with other Apple | products isn't lock-in. | | Cool. iMessage works perfectly well with SMS, which is | the only true open messaging standard, and therefore will | work with anything else that interoperates with SMS. Job | done. | danShumway wrote: | Job done well enough that internal emails at Apple said, | "the #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple | universe app is iMessage"? | | Come on. Apple's VP of software engineering would not be | debating Android support in internal emails if SMS worked | "perfectly well". | gwoplock wrote: | I agree that Apple not bringing iMessage to Android is | lock in and very purposeful. But I don't think (at least | not initially) it's because it works better than plain | old SMS. I think there is quite a bit of social pressure | to have "the blue bubble" especially in middle/high | school. | | Most of the iMessage features, text, video, pictures and | "reactions/tap backs" work over SMS. The only real | feature missing is delivery and read receipts but most | people in my experience have read receipts turned off. | Apps also don't work but I've yet to see someone actually | use that feature. | [deleted] | asdff wrote: | Until these systems start aging and are no longer | interoperable with more recent versions. It's not like | Apple is giving us a bash like experience where things just | work for decades. | dynjo wrote: | Yet you are ok with your Microwave/Washing Machine/Car etc | being supplied as a software/hardware combination... | endisneigh wrote: | If Apple were a minor player, would the things you describe | still be anti-competitive? | mmastrac wrote: | Yes, but if you're tiny it just doesn't matter, and the laws | are explicitly written with this in mind. | endisneigh wrote: | Do you have examples of these laws (in the USA | specifically)? | JohnWhigham wrote: | I'm not. Amazon does the same thing: produce a great end | product, and users won't give a shit about what you did behind | closed doors to get it that way. | asdff wrote: | It blows my mind how Apple can do all of this but windows got | dinged for IE | agilob wrote: | >Bundling the OS with hardware | | Is this anticompetitive if it's a fundament of old business | model back from 80s? | throw_m239339 wrote: | Wow this is unexpected, until now Apple had a solid case, or so I | thought. This is welcome of course, since it means other | developers can use that judgement AGAINST Apple. Was it worth it | for Apple to go to court all things considered? I guess they were | really confident the court would rule in their favor. | dannyw wrote: | huh? The judge pretty much told everyone the outcome in May: | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-12/epic- | appl.... | xvector wrote: | There goes all of Apple's App Store revenue, a cool 25% of | Apple's total revenue. Should have sold my stock! | astlouis44 wrote: | Bravo to Epic and team, but I have to say that the web will win | out long term. It's cross platform, "just works" everywhere, and | developers are free to choose from any payment system. They also | don't have to live in fear from retribution by the platform | owner. | | Our startup Wonder is building a decentralized 3D platform in the | browser for Unreal Engine 4 developers who want to ship their | immersive applications on the web, be it games, product | visualizations, even VR apps. We plan on extending support to | Unity and other engines in the near future as well. | | The biggest innovation is that we offer the tooling to optimize, | package, and distribute rich software online that previously | could only run on desktop. Thanks to WebAssembly, WebGPU, | WebTransport, and WebXR, even the most demanding applications can | run client side in the browser. | | Developers are free to host their creations on their own terms, | without a middleman saying what they can and can't do. | | Here's a link to our Discord if you're interested in hearing | more: | | https://discord.gg/cFJV6Yu | carlosdp wrote: | Wow, this is huge! We'll see how this holds up, but definitely | seems like a turning point. | | The effect of this order seems to be Apple can't prevent apps | from telling customers about alternative in-app purchasing | methods, which is a central issue of the case at hand in Epic vs | Apple. | post_break wrote: | I can only assume this means epic developer account reinstated | and fortnight is back in the app store. | dannyw wrote: | The injuction does not require Apple to reinstate Fortnite. | zamadatix wrote: | > 43 With respect to the appropriateness of Peely's "dress," the | Court understood Apple merely to be "dressing" Peely in a tuxedo | for federal court, as jest to reflect the general solemnity of a | federal court proceeding. As Mr. Weissinger later remarket, and | with which the court agrees, Peely is "just a banana man," | additional attire was not necessary but informative. Trial Tr. | (Weissinger) 1443:17. | [deleted] | gunapologist99 wrote: | If you were confused by this as well, here's a reference: | | https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/10/22666922/apple-epic-peely... | jollybean wrote: | I think the other, possibly more meaningful issue, is Apple's | control over who can and cannot make an app for their devices. | | If you put a product in BestBuy, it's understandable that BestBuy | would not want you to offer a very cheap upfront price, and then | to have all sorts of 'add ons' sold directly to consumer where | BestBuy doesn't make any money. | | It's fair that BestBuy sets terms that they can participate in | the follow ons. | | The limiting factor here, however, is competition. | | If anyone could make an AppStore for iOS, then the issue of | Apple's or BestBuy's 'terms' could be side-stepped. | | The power imbalance is caused by a lack of competition. | | If there was competition, app makers would find a place where | they were not constrained by in-app purchases, or something along | those lines. | thehappypm wrote: | I've read the doc like 10 times. I think there are two key | takeaways. | | First, Apple can't stop companies like Epic from including links | to other payment tools. Practically speaking, that means things | like Kindle can now have a "Purchase on Amazon.com" button (which | it currently does not have in order to avoid the 30% cut). | | Second, the App Store itself is a-okay. Apple does not need to | allow side loading or a second App Store. | | Analysis from me: it's a win for Apple. They get to keep their | App Store, which would be tremendously bad for them if they were | forced to allow alternatives. There will be revenue loss from in- | app purchases that are done via external links now, but Apple's | own mechanisms are likely to continue being the easiest and most | seamless, so that revenue stream will hardly go to $0. | ggoo wrote: | Does this apply to all apps or just games? | jhatax wrote: | All apps; the language in the ruling against Apple is: | | >> | | permanently restrained and enjoined from prohibiting developers | from including in their apps and their metadata buttons, | external links, or other calls to action that direct customers | to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to In-App Purchasing and | communicating with customers through points of contact obtained | voluntarily from customers through account registration within | the app. | | >> | sudhirj wrote: | Think Apple has already seen the writing on the wall - both S. | Korea & the US are now probably going to push back against the | IAP restrictions, and they can / should do a couple of things, | which might actually increase revenue. | | 1. Cut down the IAP commission to 15% for everyone. 2. Cut down | the commission to 5% for those who pay for a Business Account, | say at $5,000 a year. | | The thing is no customer wants to use any company's half-assed | bug-riddled purchase or subscription system. Every iOS and macOS | user will prefer to use the Apple system. All Apple has to do is | to make the rates competitive enough, that after considering | building their own purchases system, factoring in sales tax and | VAT, most developers will happily just opt for Apple's system if | the rates make sense. Many people are putting up with 30% already | -- bringing the rates down to something reasonable with an | upgrade path to put them on par with payment processors like | Stripe (with VAT and Billing and Radar) or Paddle will just | increase revenues for them. | | The moment they drop rates and ease restrictions apps that are | not being built because of these rules will get built, and these | apps will gladly pay the market rate of 5% to 10% for a full | service payments system. | MillenialMan wrote: | Given the option, I think most customers would absolutely | rather use the company's system, if the company offered lower | prices for buying through them. Of course, that assumes both | systems would be on offer - but if there's market pressure for | companies to offer Apple as an option, that may be enough. | xkr wrote: | As iOS and macOS user, I always subscribe directly through the | app developer if they allow this. I stopped trusting Apple | subscriptions when I called them asking to reimburse the | subscription I forgot to cancel (just a few days later) and | they said "no". I never encountered any internet service | declining this kind of requests. | Razengan wrote: | Apple has always given me a refund for shitty apps without | question, whereas shitty apps who have their own payment | system, like CouchSurfing, never even respond to requests for | refunds _at all._ | | The silent majority - the users - will always prefer to go | through Apple. But HN seems to be full of user-hostile devs (as | you can tell by looking at all the downvoted comments here who | speak from a user's PoV) who only hear the companies that want | to break down the garden's walls to prey upon users. | yyyk wrote: | The Apple fee model favours cheap shitty apps because that's | the best way to not get gouged by Apple's fees. | | Relaxing that model will lead to better apps overall because | finally you can invest and charge appropriately, you just | need to trust yourself to not pay in apps you don't trust. | collaborative wrote: | We are not user-hostile | | We just don't want to be vilified and forced to bow to the | giants because of a few bad apples | ltbarcly3 wrote: | People will prefer to use Apple's system if the cost is close | enough to the same. The larger/more trusted the brand making | the app is, or the higher the cost difference, the more likely | the user will be to go to the trouble of going off platform to | make the purchase. | | Most of the revenue Apple makes is from top apps and top | brands, which is why they had no problem cutting the rates to | 15% for the little guys already, the little guys are a tiny | slice of the overall pie. | | There is no way this will overall increase Apple's revenue, | especially as companies concentrate on building solid 'Apple | fee avoidance' funnels. Not to mention that many pay-for apps | will very likely convert to free to download and then push the | user to pay for the app externally to the app store as a 'one | time lifetime subscription'. | | This is going to cause a massive revenue loss for Apple if it | stands. | BackBlast wrote: | Trying to hang onto systems where your customers resent paying | you is not where you want to be. You bring up an interesting | proposal, fundamentally Apple needs to create a system where | developers WANT to pay the fees because of the value they get | in using the system and services. And all those connected | credit cards and customer identities definitely have value. | laurent92 wrote: | > All Apple has to do is to make the rates competitive enough | | No. All Apple has to do is amplify a few horror stories, for | example people using [any competitor]'s renewable subscriptions | and not being able to unsubscribe. Or amplify a story of a | virus/malware on, hopefully, Epic or Steam. | | This is certainly what makes you choose a MORE expensive | product, that's certainly why I buy my fire extinguishers $200 | instead of $50 for the same model (but a trusted source). Apple | should be able to keep a more expensive margin based on | reputation alone. | [deleted] | acdha wrote: | > The thing is no customer wants to use any company's half- | assed bug-riddled purchase or subscription system. Every iOS | and macOS user will prefer to use the Apple system. | | The first sentence is true but incomplete, making the second | wrong. For example, the Amazon app is highly likely to have | people using their existing Amazon payment method. Companies | like Stripe are going to offer their own SDKs just like they do | for web payments. Apple's offerings are quite polished so I | don't think they'll fall out of favor but it's going to reduce | their profit margin and I'm sure the number of people who will | use alternatives is much greater than zero. | naravara wrote: | Also scammers will want to redirect people to alternate | methods, as well as those who engage in not-quite-scam-but- | still-unsavory-business practices. Games aimed at kids are | the biggest offenders, possibly using this as a way to | circumvent parental controls on purchases or just to | introduce some additional friction to customer service | requests or requests to terminate subscriptions. | | This is all stuff Apple can design around or codify into | their approval standards, obviously. Which is why it's | imperative they act on their own so they can dictate how it | shakes out rather than having a poorly considered | implementation forced on them by regulators. | wlesieutre wrote: | _> Apple's offerings are quite polished so I don't think | they'll fall out of favor_ | | Any iOS devs care to weigh in? Apple's system could just as | easily be a godawful mess. No personal experience but I've | seen people online complaining about how StoreKit sucks. | | They've had in-app purchases since 2009 and no competitive | pressure from other SDKs, because they can block them with | app store policy instead of needing to offer a better | product. That sounds like an easy environment for it to | become an afterthought; the people using it have no choice in | the matter if they want to be on the App Store. | jclardy wrote: | As a dev, StoreKit sucks. StoreKit 2 basically fixes all | the development pain points, but is iOS 15+ only so | basically unusable for everyone until late next year. | Payment models are limited to basically paid, free + IAP, | free + subscription. No real trials, no paid upgrades, no | configurable subscriptions (IE pay for 1-X seats.) That | leads to things like Twitter's setup where every plus | account has an individual subscription SKU. | | On the code side you have to run your own backend purchase | server because there is a ton of subscription information | that is only relayed to the server (Cancellations, | upgrades, downgrades, cross grades, billing problems, | etc.), as the app has no way to know directly (Until SK2.) | Services like RevenueCat help small devs deal with this, | but then you have another cut out of your paycheck. | | Things like price testing require more backend setup | because Apple offers no way for an app to grab product | information from themselves (You have to know every | identifier, there is no way to just request "all available | IAPs" via StoreKit.) | | So basically, there is a ton of room for improvement on the | dev side, and a lot of easy wins for someone like Stripe to | capitalize on. | | As a user, I don't have many complaints, other than not | having an easy way to request a refund, other than finding | the App Store email address and pleading your case. It | should be something you can do via your purchases screen | directly. As a dev, not being able to issue customer | refunds sucks, as many users will think you are dismissing | them by saying, "You've got to ask apple for a refund." | prepend wrote: | As a user, Apples is the best and easiest payment system. | | I'll frequently not buy from sites that want registration | and card info because of the hassle. | | I'll probably end up using things I already have accounts | with (amazon, Google, steam) but will never buy from apps | that require me to sign up with them to buy stuff. I | already hate registering with companies to play games. | acdha wrote: | I'm just speaking from the user experience: I know that | there are issues with the App Store's model for upgrades, | trials, etc. so those are valid considerations but if | you're just using an app it is really convenient to that | you can buy something securely with a tap and a double- | click and have zero problems getting a refund or canceling | a subscription. | | Basically I'd expect successful competitors with Apple to | be companies which do the same. Abusive companies aren't | going to be popular but I suspect Stripe, Shopify, Amazon, | etc. could convince a fair number of people that they're no | worse on that regard and better in some other way. | wlesieutre wrote: | Yeah, I would be perfectly willing to set up | subscriptions through Stripe if they gave me a way to | manage all those subscriptions in one place. | | My worry with the "anti-steering" requirement being | removed is that every company will redirect me back to | their own website with their own payment system, and I'll | have to manage all of them individually, or phone up | their call center to try and get anything cancelled. | | Easy to avoid by not subscribing to anything, but every | app seems to be trending that way. | tshaddox wrote: | You can already buy stuff from the Amazon app using your | existing Amazon payment method. All of this controversy is | about in-app purchases of digital content. | GiorgioG wrote: | Except you can't purchase Kindle/Audible content. | acdha wrote: | That's what I was referring to. Try buying a Kindle book -- | you have to wishlist it (you can't even add it to your | cart) and switch to a browser to actually buy it. | | This is also why I mention Amazon a lot: while I favor | ApplePay for purchases, there's a 0% chance that I want to | use it for my Kindle purchases because simply owning a | Kindle means I've already committed to use Amazon to buy | content for it. | pornel wrote: | Apple likes to imply it's only about frivolous things like | powerups in games or iTunes songs, but software is eating | the world, so the whole economy is moving to being | "digital". | danudey wrote: | Given how polished everything that Stripe makes is, I | wouldn't be surprised if this becomes the de-facto non-Apple | alternative. Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if they'd already | built an SDK to cover this very eventuality. | RIMR wrote: | >the Amazon app is highly likely to have people using their | existing Amazon payment method. | | Let's say you want to sell your original product on Amazon, | but you also have your own fulfillment center and a | storefront on your website. What if Amazon removed you from | their store, because your instruction manual included a URL | to your website, and it was against the rules to tell your | customers that you accepted payment outside of Amazon's | ecosystem in any way. | | That's what Apple did with software, though suspiciously they | left the largest, most litigious companies like Amazon alone, | because they've been free to use their own payment systems | for in-app purchases of physical products for years now. | shados wrote: | I agree with this. On top of that, the experience in games is | often downright weird. I'm no Apple user, but on Android, | you're in the game, you try to buy something, it pops the | Android payment UX, you pay, then you wait a sec or two, get | your thing in the game. | | If its a Gacha or something, you then are getting some in- | game currency, that you then have to redeem for the item you | wanted. The extra steps are really annoying, and if its a | company I trust, it would be easier to give them my info to | smoothen things up (big if, mind you) | isk517 wrote: | I many would argue that making gacha game purchases harder | is a feature. | toseupthrow wrote: | On the other hand, I love how apple lets me use a visa gift | card purchased in cash at the local convenience store. When | trying to pay for a VPN service anywhere but the app, they | reject the card, but Apple let me use it to purchase the | subscription. | sneak wrote: | How did you get the phone number you used to create the | Apple ID? Mint? | easton wrote: | Unless something has changed in the past year since the | last time I've made an Apple ID, they don't verify the | phone number. For 2FA, you can also give it an email | address. And I'm almost certain I've used a Google Voice | number with an Apple ID before with no qualms. | sneak wrote: | For at least a year creating a new Apple ID requires | verifying the phone number by providing Apple with an | integer code sent to the number. | | Getting a Google Voice number requires a Google account. | Creating a Google account requires a phone number (which | you must maintain access to, because they will | periodically reverify it). | eropple wrote: | Companies will want it, but I'm not sure users will. Apple | does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and | centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and that's huge. | Like, if I have to go to your app--or worse, your website--to | cancel a subscription? I'm gonna just not use your stuff, | because I'm going to forget about it until you whack me for | another year or whatever. | tracker1 wrote: | Worse still, is having to re-install a removed application | when the renewal hit in order to then kill your account | that was created during first run of said app. | skrtskrt wrote: | Shopify's "Shop Pay" has already introduced a seamless | payment interaction across many sites without a need for a | separate account or to trust so many people with payment | info - the idea that something similar wouldn't be created | and get adoption for subscriptions on mobile seems highly | unlikely. | | I have subscriptions and accounts all over the web, and I | have never have had an issue canceling anything via a | website - the only exception being the NYTimes and all its | dark patterns. | | Out of probably 10+ subscriptions we use (Netflix, Spotify, | HBO, Hulu, etc), I have only ever had one through the Apple | system, and it's not even active anymore. | | Just using a password manager and having a separate email | for junk/mail from various accounts keeps me in the loop on | what accounts I still have laying around. The Apple | subscription section is the absolute last place I look when | I don't know where a charge came from. | layer8 wrote: | One drawback of the current situation is that for example | you can't purchase ebooks through the iOS Kindle app | (because Amazon can't/won't let Apple take their 30% cut | there), and the app can't even link to the corresponding | product page on Amazon. If the new ruling enables such | purchases and linking, then as a consumer I'm very much in | favor of it. | mcphage wrote: | I used to love buying comic books in Comixology--it was | so quick and easy to try new titles. And then Amazon | bought Comixology, and almost immediately removed in-app | purchases. I haven't purchased many comics since. | dylan604 wrote: | But yet you can by directly from Amazon in their app | without using Apple. How can Apple say that they cannot | sell eBooks directly on Kindle app, but allow direct | sells from the retail store? | layer8 wrote: | You can't buy Kindle books with the iOS Amazon app. It | only allows to download a free sample. | | Amusingly, when you tap on an Amazon link to a Kindle | book in iOS Safari, it redirects to the app (because of | the Amazon URL), but then the app notices that it's a | Kindle book page and redirects back to Safari. | jclardy wrote: | It's because then Apple Books would have to compete with | the Kindle app on fair terms. IE Apple is being anti- | competitive and giving their own app an advantage. This | is basically a part of what the original lawsuit was | about. | djrogers wrote: | You can buy physical goods in the Amazon app, but not | digital books. | bogwog wrote: | Im sure every random app wont be rolling their own payment | system. Paypal's transaction fees for example are | significantly lower than Apple (less than 4% vs Apple's | 30%), and millions of users already have a Paypal account, | so they could buy your product without having to create an | account or enter payment info. | | Idk if Paypal lets you cancel subscriptions directly | through them, but they could certainly implement that if | there's demand. The same goes for any other payment company | that wants a piece of this new and enormous opportunity. | shagie wrote: | If you're making less than $1M/y, its 15% ( | https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces- | app-s... ) | | If you're going through PayPal ( | https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees ), a | $0.99 micro transaction is $5% + 0.09. That's $0.14 which | is about 15%. It also means you get things like PayPal | deciding to not release the money it holds for some | reason. | | At that point, for the small developer, it appears to be | a wash for how much you're making. Yea, this goes down if | you've got bigger IAPs. It also goes up if its an | international transaction. | | Furthermore, it means that you (the developer) needs to | manage your own IAP system. Website with 100% uptime? | User accounts and passwords (more friction to creating | the account to purchase the IAP)? Network connectivity | issues (can a solo game be played off network)? | cto_of_antifa wrote: | paypal actually does, i used it the other day. they've | given their web app a lot of polish recently. | rhizome wrote: | People/apps that use alternate payment SDKs aren't going to | care how difficult it is to unsubscribe, and very few | people (citation needed) care enough to look into an app's | cancellation flow before buying in. | webmobdev wrote: | > _Companies will want it, but I 'm not sure users will_. | | Explain to the user that a $10 / month in-app transaction | is $13 or $15 because Apple wants 30-50% of every | transaction, and I am pretty sure most Apple users will | recognize this as plain _extortion_ and not appreciate it. | AnthonyMouse wrote: | > Apple does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and | centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and that's | huge. Like, if I have to go to your app--or worse, your | website--to cancel a subscription? I'm gonna just not use | your stuff, because I'm going to forget about it until you | whack me for another year or whatever. | | So then we have two possibilities. | | One, you're an outlier and nobody else cares. | | Two, many users care about this enough to refuse payment | systems that don't have it. In that case there will be a | market for another payment system that has easy | cancellations but charges ~5% instead of 30%. | | Either way nobody pays 30% anymore. | adamlett wrote: | * Two, many users care about this enough to refuse | payment systems that don't have it. In that case there | will be a market for another payment system that has easy | cancellations but charges ~5% instead of 30%.* | | That line of reasoning holds when all else is equal, | which it almost never is when it comes to apps. No matter | how passionate anyone is about payment systems, it's | still extremely unlikely to rise to become the | determining factor when deciding to install an app. If a | person wants to play Fortnite with their friends, but | doesn't like the payment system, they don't magically get | to choose a Fortnite clone with a payment system that's | more to their liking. | yyyk wrote: | Apple doesn't need to monopolize payment to centralize | subscription cancellation. More importantly, Apple's fee | structure prefers cheaper trashy apps over expansive to | produce quality apps. I hope users will feel the difference | with an overall better app selection. | | Example: Apple takes a flat 30% fee while Stripe takes | (IIRC) 0.3 + Y% (when Y much lower than 30). So a cheap app | will pay the same or less with Apple, but an expensive one | will lose a lot with Apple. I know not all expensive apps | are quality ones, but at least this model will be | economical now. | acdha wrote: | You'll get no argument from me that Apple's system is | pretty good from a consumer standpoint -- that's the | primary reason why I predicted that it'd remain popular. | It's really nice knowing that you can nuke a subscription | without getting some dark patterns trying to talk you out | of it. | | On the other hand, it's really easy to imagine that you'd | see something like "$9.99 IAP; $7.99 direct from | Epic/Amazon/Google/Netflix/et al.", especially when it's a | company they already deal with and don't have a negative | impression of. | | The big question I'd have is whether that's possible or the | other terms require price parity -- and whether they'd be | able to do something like offer bonus content, rewards | clubs, etc. to nudge people toward their own store. I'd be | somewhat surprised if, for example, Epic couldn't entice a | fair number of people with some kind of in-game skin or | other loot which they could argue has a resale value of $0. | yyyk wrote: | > It's really nice knowing that you can nuke a | subscription without getting some dark patterns trying to | talk you out of it. | | Tim Cook said at the trial they could integrate a | separate payment API into Apple's subscriptions. | Alternatively, Apple could check the cancel method during | app review - so that's not a reason to allow Apple's | payment monopoly. | NikolaNovak wrote: | The other part is, what do the Apple subscription cover | in terms of platforms? | | e.g.: If I can pay for say Guardian subscription either: | | 1. via their website/app and use it on iPhone, android, | PC, etc; or | | 2. Pay for same subscription via Apple subscription and | ONLY have it on my iPhone | | - that's a HUGE diff, and one that I have been extremely | peeved off to discover in the past :-/. It only took one | such experience to permanently sour me on Apply | subscriptions. | biztos wrote: | I ended up canceling a magazine subscription I'd done | with Apple, because there was no way to use my Apple | credentials on the web site. It was app-only, and the app | was crap compared to the web version. I might resubscribe | but... friction... | TYPE_FASTER wrote: | I subscribe to HBO through Apple. The platform I watch it | on doesn't matter. We use Roku. | bin_bash wrote: | I would consider going through HBO directly. I used to | subscribe through Apple but once HBO offered a promo that | I didn't qualify for because I was billed through Apple. | robocat wrote: | The Guardian allows you to sign in from a browser with | your AppleID - does that not give you access to your | subscription? https://profile.theguardian.com/signin | djrogers wrote: | That's not a shortcoming of Apple's system - every | subscription I have using IAP has a way to tie to to an | existing or new account for use on other devices. If the | Guardian decided not to do that, that's kinda crappy and | 100% on them. | baxtr wrote: | I had a WSJ subscription which I couldn't cancel online. | You have to call them, wait in line and then let them | talk you into another free month and stuff. A bad | experience. | | It was so annoying I just gave up until my CC was locked. | | This experience was definitely more expensive than using | Apple's services. | hellbannedguy wrote: | They have a class action lawsuit against them. | | I believe it just covers automatic renewals, which are | illegial. | | The WSJ needs to clean up their act. Offer better info to | subscribers? The rest of us arn't going to pay. And I | know it's difficult business. Figure out something | newsboys besides trickery? | | Fire that MBA in charge of subscriptions. | pstrateman wrote: | I cancelled mine by sending them an email stating that I | would be disputing every charge. | | The reply email I got was at 9:07am EST, 'dispute' | probably automatically puts your email head of queue for | them. | tyingq wrote: | "chargeback" is probably a good keyword too. | sdenton4 wrote: | We just got an email notice that $locl_newspaper was | doubling its monthly subscription rate effective | immediately. When we called to cancel they permanently us | in at the old subscription rate. | | Pretty clearly a cash grab against those subscribers who | aren't watching the notices + auto-billing closely... | fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: | If a smooth cancelation is so important to users that it | justifies a 30% upcharge, other payment processors will | compete. They can even advertise the easy cancelation | during checkout next to the payment method ("install the | stripe subscriptions app or go to stripe.com for one- | click, prorated cancellations!"). I think once one of | them does it, they all will. If the injunction goes into | effect in 90 days, it will be a gold rush for everyone | who gets to finally compete with Apple Pay. This will | induce a bunch of rapid innovation in the iOS payment | space. | cjfd wrote: | If not being robbed is so important that it justifies | buying locks we might actually decide that robbing should | be illegal and punishable by jailtime.... | svachalek wrote: | Not when the robbers are writing the rules. | eropple wrote: | The thing that I think you're perhaps missing is that | Stripe etc. will be competing with Apple _for | developers_. Letting developers make it harder for | consumers to cancel something is a feature, not a bug. | | Stripe etc. do not care about competing for consumer | favor. Apple does. As far as any large company is on the | consumer's side, Apple is, because they need me to buy | another iPhone more than they need me to buy a | subscription to somebody else's app, even at a 30% vig. | fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: | This is a deeply threaded discussion, but if you look up | there, you'll find that people are arguing that users | will choose Apple Pay over other payment processors or | refuse to use apps that don't offer Apple Pay. That's the | context in which my comment is written. If it's true, | then app developers and payment processors will need to | respond to that market demand. If users don't care, then | of course developers and payment processors don't need to | care either (absent regulation). | woko wrote: | I don't understand how this works in favour of Apple. | Imagine you had paid with any other third-party payment | provider, e.g. Paypal. Wouldn't you have been able to | cancel the recurring payment just as easily? Even with a | CC payment, wouldn't you be able to cancel the recurring | payment by going through the account options on your bank | website? | baxtr wrote: | At least with my European CC I need to fill out a PDF, | put a signature on it and upload. Not the level of | convenience I am used to. Maybe it's different elsewhere. | msbarnett wrote: | > Even with a CC payment, wouldn't you be able to cancel | the recurring payment by going through the account | options on your bank website? | | No? I don't know where you're located, but I'm not aware | of any North American banks that offer anything of the | sort. Typically the only thing you could do through your | bank is dispute a charge after the fact and request a | chargeback. The end of that process may or may not see | the company in question left unable to charge you again, | but it's not a "cancellation of recurring payment" | process in any normal sense, and it's going to require | some phone calls and form-filling. | | Companies will famously decline to offer subscription | cancellation options on their website, leaving consumers | with the only option of calling them on the phone and | facing a hard sell when attempting to cancel. Apple's | subscription cancellation options are night-and-day | better than the status quo. | gambiting wrote: | Here in UK if a company wants to charge you regularly for | anything they have to start something called a "direct | debit" on your bank account - then they can withdraw | money from your account whenever they see fit. The thing | about direct debits though is that you can cancel them | for any reason within few clicks on your account website, | and all charges are reversible without having to provide | a reason - I just call my bank and say I want to reverse | a direct debit charge X, done. | | I know the American system is bad, but it's not like the | only system in the world. There are other ways of doing | this, without going through Apple's closed ecosystem. | darkhelmet wrote: | Precisely this. And I realize it's not the same around | the world, but recurring payments get really bad in large | parts of the world. | | If you, the customer, want to cancel a recurring payment | and you're using ApplePay, it's one button and done. | | If you're using 3rd party billing from $randomcompany, it | usually works by you, the customer, trying to find who to | call and spending a substantial portion of your time | being badgered by customer retention people. They're set | up to make it as difficult as possible because they know | that they can make people give in if the effort is too | high. | | This is a huge part of the reason why companies want the | second option - they want to own the customer, and for | you to have to get permission from them to stop belonging | to them. | FDSGSG wrote: | >Even with a CC payment, wouldn't you be able to cancel | the recurring payment by going through the account | options on your bank website? | | High quality bait right here. | rfrey wrote: | I suppose that would only happen if Apple were very | uncompetitive in price. In the example above, the options | would be equivalent to the company if Apple only dropped | their cut to 25% and the competition was free. | | Assume Apple dropped to 15% and the competition was 10% - | then it would be 9.99 IAP, 9.63 on | Amaozon/Stripe/Netflix, which probably wouldn't be worth | the consumer confusion. | ethbr0 wrote: | ~USD$70 B AppStore revenue (yearly, 2020), so simplistic | estimates: | | 5% price cut: -$3.5 B | | 15% price cut: -$10.5 B | | ... I think all bets are on the table as to how Apple | will respond, given the magnitude of what we're talking | about. | shagie wrote: | Doing some back of the envelope "what would it take to do | micropayments with PayPal" | | https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees | | A micropayment is 5% + $0.09. For a $0.99 purchase, this | is about 15%. | | I would expect other payment processors to be similar. | | This _also_ leads to the question of "how do you | maintain the in app purchases?" Is it an account on a | website that has 100% uptime? Does it work for solo games | when there's no network connectivity? | | This works for Epic (big company, lots of payment | processing already). It doesn't work for SmallGamerInc | that would find that they'd need to do a bunch of _other_ | stuff to get it working that incurs more costs than what | Apple offers. | travoc wrote: | You would really pay a 30% premium on all your digital | purchases just to be warned about a subscription expiring | next year? You might be an edge case. | eropple wrote: | Third-party payment providers who _I don 't select_, not | being answerable to me as a platform holder, are | incentivized to make it hard for me to cancel. Apple | doesn't do that. I have better things to worry about than | to track this stuff down and I desperately want to think | about fewer stupid things in my life. Subscription | management is solved and stupid. | | Perhaps look at it this way: I'm pretty OK with paying | 30% to not pay 200% and, kinda more importantly, not to | feel upset and angry later for forgetting a dark- | patterned subscription dinging me again. If that's an | edge case, _y 'all are wrong_. | | Maybe Apple can straitjacket them properly. "You must use | XYZ API in iOS/MacOS and you must support one-click | cancellation via a standard process." But I think the | dark-pattern farmers who are angry about this would be | angry about that, too. | Vespasian wrote: | Apple can still enforce in their rules the ability to | cancel from one place | | If that's all they'd done from the beginning this ruling | would not have happened. | | Apple wants to control the access to a very significant | portion of the user base? | | Fine, but then they'll act like a lawmaker-light and in | many (western) societies that means you get some burdens | and responsibilities piled upon you by the original | lawmakers. | gwoplock wrote: | > Maybe Apple can straitjacket them properly. "You must | use XYZ API in iOS/MacOS and you must support one-click | cancellation via a standard process." But I think the | dark-pattern farmers who are angry about this would be | angry about that, too. | | Im not sure Apple want's to do that. By not restricting | the 3rd party payments there is more of a case for using | Apple's payment processor so you can cancel easier. | ApolloFortyNine wrote: | >If that's an edge case, y'all are wrong. | | I don't want to pay an extra 30%, and have that 30% taken | away from the devs who actually deserve the money, | because _some_ might make it hard to cancel. | | Most would likely just have a Paypal button same as 90% | of websites if that makes you feel better. | eropple wrote: | Devs "deserving the money" is a curious statement. I | don't deserve dark patterns and stress in exchange for a | subscription, do I? | | And it doesn't make me feel better, because that's | exactly the hellworld we have outside of iOS, but thanks! | roamerz wrote: | Do you really think that the digital purchase cost would | be 30% lower if you bought it directly through the | vendor? The edge case would be that buying directly | though the vendor would actually be 30% less. | [deleted] | danudey wrote: | You think the people who move to their own payment | systems are going to drop their prices by 30%, when | instead they could keep them the same and make 30% more | revenue? | ahurmazda wrote: | Another edge case here. For now I trust apple with my | credit cards (a lot) more than a bunch of smarmy payment | processors (somehow I magically get subscribed to a bunch | of things when I use the latter) | diebeforei485 wrote: | Developers can use payment methods that don't require | credit card data to touch their servers (eg. Stripe, | PayPal, Shopify). | Dayshine wrote: | Why on earth wouldn't you be able to use Apple to pay | (with the normal 2-3% transaction fee)? | | Does Apple not support paying in arbitrary websites like | Google Pay? | hraedon wrote: | Two separate things at play here. Parent is saying they | trust Apple to manage their payment options, and since | third parties have to go through Apple they don't have to | trust a bunch of individual companies to do things right. | | Apple Pay is one of those payment options, but if you | have to trust a bunch of third parties to properly manage | your information the specific form of payment doesn't | matter much. | djrogers wrote: | Yes they do support that. | 0xf8 wrote: | I am also more than ok to pay that premium for the | benefit of centralized subscription management. an | additional instance of the "edge case". | bobthepanda wrote: | A fair amount of companies makes their subscription | cancellation actively hostile in an effort to not get | people to do it. To give an example, though you can | subscribe online, the NYT requires you to call during | only certain hours to a customer service line where you | get badgered and questioned like you're trying to cancel | a cable subscription. | | If the US mandated that you need to provide equivalent | means of subscription and unsubscription with equal ease | of use that would be one thing, but we do not live in | that world. | supergeek133 wrote: | This 100%. As an Android user if I have the option to pay | for a subscription with Google Pay (even for extra) I | will do it to avoid the dreaded "You can only call to | cancel" interaction where someone will spend the next 10 | minutes trying to talk me out of it. | amalcon wrote: | It seems theoretically possible for Apple to reject an | app with a hostile cancellation policy _without_ | requiring that they use Apple as a payment processor. | [deleted] | ilikehurdles wrote: | This is exactly the example that's been on my mind. Had I | known how horrible NYT's unsubscription process is, I | would have never subscribed in the first place. I'm sure | they extracted an extra month or two out of me because of | the friction they introduce, so in management's eyes | that's probably a win. I will never use NYT again in the | future, but I think a big label letting users know an app | isn't using iCloud payments could go a long way to | cautioning users about a user-hostile experience. | | Even if a developer makes subscriptions easy to manage | today, without tie-in to Apple's infrastructure, they | could change that process on a whim. | tracker1 wrote: | Similar opinion for XM... Would never sign up again | without a generated card number that is only good for a | single charge. I only wanted to cancel one radio of 3 I | had at the time. By the third 40+m wait after | mysteriously "disconnected" after they couldn't talk me | out of it, I cancelled the whole thing. | vngzs wrote: | Just tried this. I had to talk to a support staff on the | website, and they made one attempt to offer me a lower | rate for a year (which I declined). | | In my opinion, it should be as easy to unsubscribe as it | is to subscribe. I interpret anything else as consumer- | hostile. It's very strange coming from NY Times ... I | know they find it hard to finance journalism nowadays, | but dark patterns are never the answer. | asdff wrote: | It's a law in california at least. If you log onto NYT in | california you can cancel online I believe. Outside of | california if you have no issue burning a bridge, you can | issue a chargeback and most services will ban your | account. | musesum wrote: | This used to be the case with NYTimes, several years ago. | But, I think it has improved. Same horrible experience, a | few years ago. Then, I resubbed after a couple years. A | few months ago, NYTimes ran an article on "dark | patterns." So, I attempted to unsub -- it was much | easier. | | But, that is only the NYTimes. My guess is that the | original hypothesis holds true for others; I doubt JFax | has improved. | hnra wrote: | I just checked my NYT account I can cancel from the | website? I only have a digital subscription however. | js2 wrote: | Huh, I was just able to cancel my digital introductory | subscription ($4/month) w/o talking to anyone. This must | be a recent change. I've canceled several times in the | past and had to talk with someone, either voice or via | online chat. | selimthegrim wrote: | The exception to their statements above is if you use | Apple Pay however | datavirtue wrote: | I had to cancel a debit card to get rid of WSJ. | bink wrote: | This might depend on the state in which you live: | | https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and- | software/companies-mu... | | This makes the practice even more egregious as you know | the website has the ability to allow cancellations they | just choose not to enable it for people living in other | states. | YeBanKo wrote: | I think it is a recent change if you are in California. I | used to have subscriptions to Economist and NYTimes. Both | we very hard to manage and cancel. | [deleted] | Spivak wrote: | I mean everyone's assuming that non-IAP subscriptions are | going to be 30% cheaper but I don't really buy it. If the | market has proven that someone will pay $10 for a thing, | suddenly offering it for $7 seems like a bad business | move. | jclardy wrote: | Most likely Apple subs will increase in price. This was | the case for Netflix/Spotify for a while until Apple | banned the practice (7.99 direct, 9.99 via IAP.) | heavyset_go wrote: | > _If the market has proven that someone will pay $10 for | a thing, suddenly offering it for $7 seems like a bad | business move._ | | The mobile app payment market hasn't been competitive for | a decade, so Apple has never had to compete with | companies that are more efficient than they are, and can | offer the same or better service for less than a 30% cut. | NineStarPoint wrote: | It's a good move if you want to get more business than | the people still charging $10. It's very much an | equilibrium between profit and competition. | wvenable wrote: | Many apps already have non-Apple-taxed pricing. So they | can just keep price consistency without losing 30%. | whoisburbansky wrote: | Which apps do this? | hoveringhen wrote: | YouTube Music / Premium does this if I'm not wrong | uberduper wrote: | What makes you so sure it would be 30%? Somewhere a | middleman gets their cut. Why wouldn't bigCorp just make | you use their payment system at the same price without | allowing purchases via Apple at all? | dntrkv wrote: | That 30% covers a lot more than just processing payments. | weixiyen wrote: | I assume by that you mean the developer tools to create | apps in the first place. | | Apple is free to not make developer tools anymore, that's | their choice. Nobody is forcing them to. They do it b/c | apps make the iPhone better. In fact an iPhone without | apps is pretty useless. | dylan604 wrote: | You're assuming that the Epics of the world will actually | lower their rates the 30%. Epic could just as easily keep | the same prices, but now make that extra. That's the | issue I have with Epic's arguments. They might lower the | rates by a percent to entice people over to their system, | but over time pull the cable company routine and just up | the rates each time it renews or new version. | elondaits wrote: | It's almost impossible to analyze Epic's rates | "objectively". Fortnite is free, but you can pay for in- | game currency (V-Bucks) with which you buy cosmetics. You | can buy V-Bucks directly (discounted in large amounts), | get them through a monthly subscription slightly cheaper, | or get a limited amount by playing (more if you buy a | season pass which also includes cosmetics). BTW: | Cosmetics are EXTREMELY overpriced, because you pay for | "exclusivity" (think like USD 20+ for a fully | accessorized skin with no effects beyond cosmetic). Even | though Epic can claim it lowered the cost of V-Bucks in | its store, you can only used them to pay for a small | daily selection of arbitrarily overpriced cosmetics that | Epic puts in its in-game store... so how much is a V-Buck | worth? Nobody knows, and Epic can tweak it by making | skins more or less detailed, or by giving away more or | less V-Bucks to players and subscribers. | kbenson wrote: | > Companies will want it, but I'm not sure users will. | | Is Amazon was allowed to run a store on iOS, Android, and | Fire devices, and if you bought an app you were guaranteed | the equivalent version on other devices if it existed, I | think there would be a lot of incentive for people to use | it. I wouldn't necessarily prefer Amazon be the entity | running it in the end, but they're probably best poised to | do so with customer trust. | | > Apple does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and | centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and that's | huge. | | If there was actual competition between stores, this could | be an item of competition, and a minimum acceptable level | of support for this might emerge in the front runners. | Amazon is already pretty good at making customers happy, | this might be something they'd happily take on (and don't | they already do subscriptions for magazines?). | | The whole problem is that people keep looking at this as | "Apple may be bad at X, but they do Y really well and I | don't want to lose that" when they should be looking at it | as "Apple is bad at X, maybe if they get some competition | they'll do better at X, and Y will _still_ be done well by | them ". | | I can't understand why anyone would assume Apple having | competition on their platform would make them _worse_. They | would actually have to address problems for once otherwise | worry about losing people to other stores, not entire phone | ecosystems which require multiple hundreds of dollars and | losing access to all your purchases. | | If some company is really trying to get out of the Apple | controlled system not because of costs but because they | really want access to your personal info or to make it hard | to stop paying them, maybe they should be allowed to leave | and they can get less customers and hopefully change or | die. Chances are they're trying to figure out the info | using other methods right now anyways. | spsful wrote: | The issue of subscriptions gets worse --not better-- if | there are more companies competing for subscription | revenue. Having to use more than one service to manage | all your subscriptions would make things even more of a | headache, so I don't see how consumers would benefit. | | Ex. if a 3rd party makes their own subscription | management that somehow allows you to cancel | subscriptions faster than Apple does, maybe that is more | convenient, but now you have to figure out which of your | services work with that provider and likely would have to | use both as neither could offer you everything you | wanted. I understand how the idea of competition for | revenue could incentivize better management from the | likes of Apple and others but I just don't think the | market for this will be competitive at all. | eropple wrote: | _> I can 't understand why anyone would assume Apple | having competition on their platform would make them | worse._ | | Apple having competition isn't a problem. That | competition selling _me_ to that competition 's actual | customers--enabling difficulties and dark patterns that | Apple does not--is a problem. | | I like Stripe as an app developer because I pick them _as | a seller_ ; they're _not_ there to serve my customer and | are there to serve me. I am reasonably confident that | Apple 's there to serve me at least as much as an app | developer because I _as a buyer_ picked Apple. For B2C | interactions where I 'm the C, I want the platform on | _my_ side. | | Why would your selection of Stripe ever put the platform | on my side? Why should I want this as a consumer? The | money's already a rounding error, the time and stress | aren't. If the end result here is "you must use Apple's | subscription system, must honor one-click cancellations | through a centralized clearinghouse, and sure you can use | your payment provider on the other hand", then that's | great. Anything else is worse than the status quo ante. | burlesona wrote: | It doesn't really matter what customers want. If companies | have an option to offer a lesser user experience but keep | more revenue, they'll nearly always take it. The only | exception would be if "underdog apps" start seeing "we | still use Apple IAP" as a selling point. | tomjen3 wrote: | With apple I know that I can cancel easily. I am not going to | sign up for a subscription with anybody but Apple. | | I am also an irrational cheap skate so if I see Apple around | but more, I won't subscribe at all. | | My guess is that a lot of people see it that way. | ashtonkem wrote: | The ability to use Apple Pay on the web more seamlessly than | I can use Stripe on the web will probably be Apple's killer | feature in this area. I've already noticed a change in my | purchasing behavior because of it. | yalogin wrote: | This is true, and the solution for Apple is to go cross | platform themselves with their functionality. Make IAP a | service usable on other platforms/apps. I am not sure how | successful they will be though if they go that route. | 8ytecoder wrote: | Oh I agree with you. I think 30% is highway robbery and that | opinion hasn't changed since day one. | | But also just take a look at the number of subscriptions we | all have these days - Entertainment stuff (Spotify/Music, | Netflix/streaming, HBO, Xbox Live), Donations (Charity, | Github Sponsors), Software (Password managers, backup | solutions, Jetbrains, Adobe), Membership (Prime/equivalent, | internet, mobile), ... yada yada yada. It's a huge unwieldy | list. | | I have tried my best to keep at least all the app ones in | iTunes/Apple (in my case - weather app, dating apps, | productivity apps). My alternative is I just won't subscribe. | I'm sick of the subscription economy as it is. This would be | the last straw. If Bumble tells me I have to give them my cc | info and have to call them to cancel (like NYT does), I just | won't subscribe. | | Essentially I'm subscribed to some of these apps because I'm | not being forced against my will to stay subscribed using | terms and conditions that are outrageous (looking at Adobe | with its annual contract). | makeitdouble wrote: | You are totally right, and I also feel we won't get out of | this situation for a while. | | Let's be honest, my Amazon payments will never fit into | Apple's bubble. The things is, I prefer to deal with Amazon | than Apple. Same for things like Patreon, I don't think | they do, but I can't imagine Apple getting a cut of each | donation. | | So to me the status quo was just the worst outcome. | pornel wrote: | I would choose PayPal over Apple payments every time. | | It's a good way to centralize and easily cancel | subscriptions, and it handles more than just Apple's | overpriced ecosystem. PayPal's site is not perfect, but | it's still much more usable than Apple's subscription | management running on iTunes' corpse. | smichel17 wrote: | This wouldn't be an issue if credit card providers offered | a standardized system for making subscription charges. When | you sign up, you'd pre-authorize them to charge your card a | certain amount per time period. You could revoke the | authorization through your credit card company's website, | along with your other subscriptions. If the service wanted | to change the price, they'd need a you to re-authorize it. | ziml77 wrote: | If they were doing that, they should also overhaul the | whole system so you're never giving your credit card | number directly to the sites. Similar to how if I use | OAuth to log into a site, that site never has a chance to | see my password. | jwlake wrote: | Apple's system does not allow a developer to refund a purchase. | Seems like the height of half-assed. | shagie wrote: | With iOS 15: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storek | it/transacti... | | > Call this function from account settings or a help menu to | enable customers to request a refund for an in-app purchase | within your app. When you call this function, the system | displays a refund sheet with the customer's purchase details | and list of reason codes for the customer to choose from. | baldajan wrote: | I'm not sure if you ever used StoreKit or their subscription | API... its so full of holes and poor documentation and poor | implementation that it's a nightmare to work with (particularly | subscriptions). Don't believe me? There's a YC startup raising | millions of dollars dedicated to solving the subscription | implementation problems Apple has created... | moneywoes wrote: | Which startup? | kumarm wrote: | I think OP was talking about Revenue Cat: | https://www.revenuecat.com | [deleted] | criddell wrote: | I love the Apple subscription system for things like streaming | services simply because it makes unsubscribing a one-click | process. | | I'm much more likely to subscribe to something via the Apple | store than I am through any in-app service. | dontblink wrote: | Would you be willing to pay 30% more? Why not let people | choose how they wish to pay. If you like that UX and are | willing to pay for it, app developers should be able to offer | it along with cheaper alternatives. | criddell wrote: | One of the things the App Store protects against is abusive | practices like making it difficult to cancel a | subscription. I wish there was some way they could protect | their customers _and_ allow outside payment services. | | FWIW, the streaming services I want easy unsubscribe | options are typicall $5-$8 / month and yes, I would pay 30% | more for a better experience. | the_gipsy wrote: | Tragedy of the commons. | nutanc wrote: | It's not just that. As a developer I wouldn't want Apple to | know who my paying customers are. Right now, there is no | option. With this hopefully there will be more options. | webmobdev wrote: | Exactly. And as a user too, I don't want Apple to have access | to any of my financial transactions! | cletus wrote: | There's two sides to this actually. | | I, as a customer, don't want to pay many companies directly. | The prime example is any news publication. There are many I'd | happily pay for except (like gym memberships it seems) it can | be incredibly difficult to cancel. I won't reward that model | so they get none of my money. | 8note wrote: | I think more specifically, as a customer, I don't want to | be locked into bad subscriptions, whether it's gym | memberships or news publications. | | I'm fine paying companies directly, but I don't want them | to manage my subscriptions | woko wrote: | That is why I use Paypal. As a customer, why should I be | constrained to use Apple's payment system as my only choice | of middle-man? | webmobdev wrote: | > Every iOS and macOS user will prefer to use the Apple system. | | Speak for yourself. I am from India, and we already have much | better payment systems then Apple's: | | 1. All our debit / credit card are chip-based. | | 2. No card transaction can happen without the PIN. Some online | transactions require both a PIN and a password. | | 3. For any online transactions, the payment processors often | support the following options to pay - using debit / credit | card, directly from our bank account (Net Banking with 2FA), | Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ( | https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/product-overview ) which | is another online digital payment mode that even allows for | easy peer to peer payment between parties and umpteen online / | mobile digital wallets. | | 4. Best of all, using any of these payment modes won't allow | Apple any access to my financial data. | | (And naturally Apple supports _none_ of these popular modes in | India because otherwise Apple would come under closer scrutiny | from indian regulators.) | | As far as App Store commissions are considered, from a | developer's perspective Apple can go screw themselves if they | want anything more than what competing payment processors | charge. (Like Epic, I am disappointed that consumer rights | weren't considered at all - ultimately it is us owners / users | of Apple devices that pay these 30%-50% or whatever | commission!) | heavyset_go wrote: | > _1. Cut down the IAP commission to 15% for everyone. 2. Cut | down the commission to 5% for those who pay for a Business | Account, say at $5,000 a year._ | | Payment processors and their networks are infinitely more | complex and resource intensive than a mobile app distribution | store, and their commissions tend to only be between 1% and 3% | per transaction. | djrogers wrote: | > Payment processors and their networks are infinitely more | complex and resource intensive than a mobile app distribution | store | | First of all - citation? Have you run a mutli-billion$$ App | Store with hundreds of millions of individual customers, and | the associated support channels etc? | | Secondly, Apple is _also_ providing those 'infinitely more | complex' payment processing services on top of the App Store, | so even if true, your argument is kinda moot. | shagie wrote: | The merchant fees for PayPal can be found at | https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees - which | includes micro transactions. | | For a US company and a US customer, that's 4.99% + $0.09 for | each transaction. For a $0.99 transaction, that's 15% of the | total. | bjohnson225 wrote: | Stripe is 2.9% + $0.30 in the US, 1.4% in Europe. Large | merchants will also get a much more favourable deal than | those prices. | ElFitz wrote: | > The thing is no customer wants to use any company's half- | assed bug-riddled purchase or subscription system. | | And to have to just through countless hoops to unsubscribe. | | Looking at you, annoyingly hard to unsubscribe from, New-York | Times. | clairity wrote: | > "they can / should do a couple of things, which might | actually increase revenue." | | cutting prices that drastically will most certainly not | increase revenue. in a competitive market, pricing is near/at | the price elasticity equilibrium. in a monopoly situation, | pricing is much beyond that point, in the company's favor. | you're suggesting they move prices _in the opposite direction_ | , which would most certainly impact revenue negatively. note | that these are not nascent, high growth markets where the | growth rate can overwhelm the price elasticity dynamics. | | the court should be mandating broad, open, and honest | competition, not dictating prices, which is will practically | always get wrong in some way. price is a signal for how | competitive a market is, not a lever to drive competition. | mertd wrote: | Why do you think people would implement their own IAP? It would | most likely be a few competing platforms like Shopify for web | purchases. | WA wrote: | Exactly. Stripe and PayPal could be integrated easily. | ethbr0 wrote: | But Stripe and PayPal and Square have far lower fees... oh. | Now I see what this was about. | dpkonofa wrote: | I don't think you do. Stripe and PayPal are _only_ | payment processors. If Apple now has to allow other | payment processors then they 're either going to charge | fees for hosting the files or they're going to charge | fees for the other services that people are using (OTA | updates, reviews, localization, etc.). All that stuff | will still have to be in place so it'll just be an issue | of whether or not these companies will have to stand up | their own versions of this (or if they even can) and | whether or not it'll be as seamless for the end user. | manquer wrote: | Sure they can and should charge for all the other | "services" they provide transparently. Many of those | services not dependent on my DAU, or the kind of usage | users have via IAP. | | This is none of Apple's business they don't need to | provide me any services(if i don't use their payment) if | my user uses 5 IAP transactions a day or one. | | As a developer I get to choose which model makes more | sense for me and in turn pass on benefits of that to my | user, right now there is no choice and this ruling allows | only for that. | hardolaf wrote: | Since Apple doesn't provide you any services, I guess | you'll no longer be distributing your app updates through | the App Store? | summerlight wrote: | > If Apple now has to allow other payment processors then | they're either going to charge fees for hosting the files | or they're going to charge fees for the other services | that people are using (OTA updates, reviews, | localization, etc.) | | Why? Apple has been arguing that iPhone, iOS, Safari and | App stores are so tightly integrated in that they are in | fact an essentially indivisible single business. With | this logic, all the revenue comes from iPhone/iPad | hardware can subsidize operation costs for App store | right? | tshaddox wrote: | Why should revenue from iPhone hardware subsidize third- | party iPhone app developers? | stale2002 wrote: | Subsidizing 3rd party developers, would be if Apple paid | app developers to be on their platform, on top of a 0% | commission. | | Instead, what people want, is for users who already own | their own phone, to be able to do what they want with it, | without an uninvolved 3rd party (Apple) getting in the | way of transactions made between the user and the | developer. | easton wrote: | Because Apple doesn't break out the money from the App | Store from the rest of their software/services business, | and iOS isn't free, it's licensed with the purchase of a | iOS device. If money from every iPhone sold goes into the | software/services budget, one could conclude there's | enough money coming into that budget from device sales to | pay for their CDN/developers/etc. | tshaddox wrote: | You answered why there might be enough money to subsidize | developers. Apple has a lot of money, there's no question | about that, but I was asking why they _should_ subsidize | developers (or why we should expect them to). | summerlight wrote: | I think you don't understand the answer. When customers | buy iPhone, they already paid a plenty amount of money | for accessing third party apps via App Store since it's | so essential and inherently indivisible value from iOS | and iPhone, in favor of Apple's argument. Apple may not | be obligated to subsidize developers with direct cash, | but to pay operational expenses for App Store since there | is no alternatives. Otherwise, it would be a textbook | example of abusing monopolistic power. | tshaddox wrote: | I don't really see why there would be any expectation of | that from the legal system or for ordinary people, other | than that Apple obviously shouldn't drastically reduce | functionality of iPhones which they have already sold. | But again, I don't think anyone is suggesting that Apple | might stop having an App Store altogether, or that the | outcome of any of these legal battles would be that | iPhone users would have significantly reduced access to | third-party software. You're just talking about who ought | to pay for the costs of distributing third-party software | to iPhones. | summerlight wrote: | Because Apple doesn't allow other form of app | distribution? It'd be fine if they allow third party | stores like Android. | ethbr0 wrote: | Yes. And good. The more Apple and Google are forced to | line item their charges for users, showing what each | charge is for, the closer we get to a free market. | | The central evil of all of this has been the bundling of | everything together, so that nothing can be independently | valued. | | "30% is fair, in exchange for all the things we provide | you", etc. | | _Edit_ : As an example, in the US this is mandated for | home mortgages. "These are services you can shop for" + | "These are charges for each service". Any platform having | to offer the equivalent of a Closing Disclosure / HUD-1 | doesn't seem like such a bad world. | Spivak wrote: | I mean you also assume that it will be line-item'd | instead of "give us 30% of your revenue made through iOS" | in the ToS to publish an app which has any paid features | or content. | ethbr0 wrote: | At least then, we'd be honest that it's extortion. | ChrisLomont wrote: | >The more Apple and Google are forced to line item their | charges for users, showing what each charge is for, the | closer we get to a free market. | | Historically line itemization makes it harder, not | easier, for users to understand what they're being | charged for. Compare Verizon versus Google fi statements, | for example. The complexity hidden in all those fees | confuses people, and let's Verizon (and others) claim | monthly fees are X in ads, then listing that fee as X, | then tacking on a lot of line items that make the actual | payment much more. | | Be careful what you wish for. | colinmhayes wrote: | I'm not sure apple is interested in destroying user | experience to spite developers. IPhone will still make | incredible amounts of money with lower app store margins | because it's still the best product on the market. | Pissing off users isn't how they built the best product. | spywaregorilla wrote: | For the money | foolfoolz wrote: | all you need is a number smaller than 30%. build your own | or use someone else for 10%? easy choice | spywaregorilla wrote: | 10% sounds very aggressive to me still | trollied wrote: | Then high street margins for physical games would really | surprise you... | spywaregorilla wrote: | The physical game store isn't charging X% for payment | processing. They're charging X% to get your product in | front of customers. | trollied wrote: | > They're charging X% to get your product in front of | customers. | | Oh, right. The app store doesn't also do that? | chongli wrote: | Retail stores have a finite and very small amount of | shelf space. Publishers pay a lot for a significant | percentage of that shelf space devoted to their product. | | The App Store has effectively infinite space. There are | so many products and search is so broken that it's | extremely difficult for users to discover your product. | | Rather than comparing the experience to brick and mortar | stores a more apt comparison would be to throw your | products in a landfill, junkyard, or extremely large flea | market and expect your users to find them. Would you pay | high commissions to a junkyard for tossing your product | in a pile "somewhere in the back"? | spywaregorilla wrote: | No not really. Can you imagine gamestop demanding a cut | of dlc purchases because a physical game was originally | purchased in their store? | | These are separate concepts. | duskwuff wrote: | Even if you implemented the whole checkout process | yourself, you'd still be paying at least ~3% to your | credit card processor -- more if you're handling small | payments, as most processors charge a fixed fee as well. | | 10% to handle the entire subscription/checkout process | isn't bad at all, especially if it means that many of | your customers can check out without entering any billing | details. | lmkg wrote: | To sell the purchase data to data brokers so they can | aggregate purchase data across merchants by card number? | mdoms wrote: | > The thing is no customer wants to use any company's half- | assed bug-riddled purchase or subscription system. | | I have been paying for things online for decades now and never | once have I used Apple's payment system. I assure you, plenty | of us will use payments not provided by the fruit company. | EamonnMR wrote: | That may be true for Apple, but most Windows users prefer Steam | to the MS Store, for example. | volkk wrote: | > The thing is no customer wants to use any company's half- | assed bug-riddled purchase or subscription system. Every iOS | and macOS user will prefer to use the Apple system. | | the apple developer ecosystem (with regards to subscriptions | and app purchases) in my experience has been quite awful for a | multi trillion dollar company. really bad API docs, really poor | experience around understanding what is even happening in their | black box. i'm honestly astonished at how "unfinished" the | whole experience feels. something like Stripe is on another | level | [deleted] | [deleted] | Zenst wrote: | Another option is for Apple to offer their digital store as a | service to larger players for a lower % fee. Akin to MVNO | (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) and equally on some levels | comparable in a way that building that type of network in the | first place is costly and in Apples case, it is battle proven | software back-end as well as front. | flohofwoe wrote: | For the hypothetical case that there will ever be Steam on iOS | I'd rather pay through the Steam account I had already setup on | the PC rather than through the Apple payment system. Same for | 'cross-platform' subscriptions like Spotify. | [deleted] | falafel_muncher wrote: | > most developers will happily just opt for Apple's system if | the rates make sense | | The _buyer_ experience with Apple's IAP is mostly good, but I | would argue that the developer experience is downright | horrible. Working with subscriptions and IAP receipts is | clunky. You can only use one of about 100 SKUs, which makes it | difficult to offer discounts and customized pricing at the | higher price tiers, where the gaps between amounts are quite | large. Until recently, it wasn't even possible for developers | to issue refunds! | | Even if Stripe charged 30%, I would choose them every time over | Apple's IAP. | forty wrote: | Thanks for the explanation. They must be talking about UX | indeed. | | I have implemented subscription using many APIs (stripe, | PayPal, processout, Apple, Amazon, Android...) And Apple is | by far the shittiest. | | And you cannot even refund your own customers... | shagie wrote: | > And you cannot even refund your own customers... | | I was looking at StoreKit earlier today and saw https://dev | eloper.apple.com/documentation/storekit/transacti... as | part of it. I realize that this is new with iOS 15... but | there's something there now. | shagie wrote: | > Even if Stripe charged 30%, I would choose them every time | over Apple's IAP. | | Note that Apple is charging 15% for small developers ( | https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces- | app-s... ) - not 30%. | | Stripe's rates are $0.30 + 3% ( https://stripe.com/pricing ). | Paypal is a quite a bit better at $0.09 + 5% for | micropayments. | | For a $0.99 IAP through Apple (with all of the associated | infrastructure to handle IAP) that would cost $0.15 to the | developer. | | That same purchase through Stripe would cost $0.33... and the | developer would need to provide some way to handle IAP. | Paypal would be the same as through Apple. | | That "set up some way to handle IAP" is going to be | interesting too. | sharkjacobs wrote: | As a user my dream is that Apple actually puts in the effort | and makes the changes to convince these companies to use IAP. | My nightmare is that they don't and everyone drops IAP for a | wilderness of credit card web forms. | ibdf wrote: | I believe this will cause managing subscriptions to be a lot | harder and untrustworthy. I will probably have to sign up for | different payment systems I never heard of... the store won't be | able to track when subscriptions expire, and this will open up so | much room for fraudulent behavior. | cyberlurker wrote: | Why would that be the case? Can't apps still use Apple as one | of the payment options? If subscriptions are important to you, | keep doing it through Apple. | | Unless the discounts are significant I don't see myself going | through the 3rd party payments. I already try to avoid | subscriptions anyway. But for one off purchases, it's nice to | have options. I think this is a modest win for consumers. | btown wrote: | This makes me very curious if we'll see things like the Amazon | Kindle store coming to iOS, as well as an increased amount of | paid Amazon Prime content. It's absurd that you can read books on | the Kindle app but there's no CTA to buy them. Whatever ends up | happening, this upends whatever status quo existed between the | companies. | arbirk wrote: | Kids are the customers, parents have the credit card. Epic will | have to onboard the parents to really make a dent. | | What Epic wanted was their own separate store, and that wish is | clearly shut down. | spywaregorilla wrote: | Majority of parents will choose epic if epic is cheaper for the | same thing. | etchalon wrote: | Everyone seems to reading this ruling as "Apple has to allow | other payment processors." | | But the text of the order seems to be about anti-steering, i.e. | Apple can't tell developers they can't link out to other payment | options on the web. | cblconfederate wrote: | It says they can't prohibit developers (so they must allow) | adding links to non-IAP. | | OTOH it doesnt force apple to allow any link, they can still | filter which payment providers are allowed | dannyw wrote: | Violating an injuction via a technicality will land you in | court again. | cblconfederate wrote: | Would it be a violation? | etchalon wrote: | Probably. "Letter of the law" vs. "the spirit". Judges | are not fans of people trying to be "technically in | compliance". | cblconfederate wrote: | i dont think the spirit is to allow developers to engage | in scammy behavior. Apple can still refuse the app based | on its other rules. | dannyw wrote: | Does the permanent injuction apply only to Epic, or does it apply | to everyone? | sparker72678 wrote: | It reads like it applies to all developers. | theginger wrote: | This seems pretty big, like it should have an immediate | impact with everyone who ever wanted to use alternative | payments on any app store should be submitted an updated app | today kind of big. | | Are there strings like appeal rights that means we won't see | a change for years? | dannyw wrote: | the injuction only applies after 90 days. Likely both Apple | and Epic will appeal. | rvz wrote: | So it is not over yet. Anything can happen until then. | shkkmo wrote: | This injuction only applies to Apple, as it says pretty | clearly in the decision. That prohibition does benefit all | developers using the App Store, not just Epic. | | There is a good chance that this precedent will encourage | other lawsuits that will lead to more injuctions, such as one | that applies to Steam. | system2 wrote: | In the last few years Apple really showed their real face. I am | also surprised to see these changes even after their extreme | lobbying work. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-09-10 23:00 UTC)