Epic Lost Trial Due to Flawed Argument, Not Legal Error, Apple Says in Appeals Filing

It takes the brain of a ten year old (or less) to see very clearly that Apple only fought Epic because of all the revenue they would lose from in-app purchases outside of the app store. The reason people these days say "the law is an ass" is because it's no longer about right vs wrong it's about who's got the better lawyers.
 
Lessee,
You have a store, I have a product. I can sell my product in your store, have you present, collect and adjudicate disputes for me, for which you take a product. I can sell in your store, which protects consumers or I can hawk my product on a street corner or sell my product in an (Android) store that is full of bugs and scammers.
Seems simple to me.
 
diamond.g said:
Is charging developers more for the yearly fee, and disallowing free applications in the store not a viable solution?

I find it interesting they won’t implement the same safe/innovative solution on MacOS.
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They could charge more for a yearly fee instead, but so what? Is the argument that about the amount apple gets? BecUse i was responding to an argument that apple shouldn’t get anything.

The reason they won’t implement the solution on macOS is choice. Users can pick whether they want ultimate flexibility or are willing to forgo flexibility for security and simplicity. Apple clearly thinks the future is the latter, but the fact that they provide choice is a good thing.

The fact that Chevy sells trucks is not proof that sedans are bad.
 
cmaier said:
They could charge more for a yearly fee instead, but so what? Is the argument that about the amount apple gets? BecUse i was responding to an argument that apple shouldn’t get anything.

The reason they won’t implement the solution on macOS is choice. Users can pick whether they want ultimate flexibility or are willing to forgo flexibility for security and simplicity. Apple clearly thinks the future is the latter, but the fact that they provide choice is a good thing.

The fact that Chevy sells trucks is not proof that sedans are bad.
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I do think that if you are using Apples services they should get paid, but they also should host the things they are getting paid for.

Eh consistency would be nice the mobile computer in my pocket is being treated differently than the mobile computer in my lap. ??‍♂️
 
Wildkraut said:
Looking forward to sideloading enforced by EU’s Digital Markets Act, and the outcome of this lawsuit will be irrelevant anyway.
Click to expand...

Sadly it wont happen. Apple will pull out of EU to retaliate. And Apple user in EU will be without Siri and Maps and Apple Services. As well as closing of all the Apple Stores. EU citizen will demand the EU to withdraw DMA.

- According to Macrumors Comments.
 
ksec said:
Sadly it wont happen. Apple will pull out of EU to retaliate. And Apple user in EU will be without Siri and Maps and Apple Services. As well as closing of all the Apple Stores. EU citizen will demand the EU to withdraw DMA.

- According to Macrumors Comments.
Click to expand...
Unlikely as sales in Europe represents around a quarter of it’s profits.

www.statista.com

Apple: net sales in Europe 2011-2024| Statista

Apple recorded sales of over *** billion U.S.
www.statista.com www.statista.com

www.investopedia.com

Apple's 5 Most Profitable Business Regions (AAPL)

Learn about how Apple generates its profits, breaking down its results by geographic region, with all showing year-over-year improvement.
www.investopedia.com www.investopedia.com
 
ksec said:
Sadly it wont happen. Apple will pull out of EU to retaliate. And Apple user in EU will be without Siri and Maps and Apple Services. As well as closing of all the Apple Stores. EU citizen will demand the EU to withdraw DMA.

- According to Macrumors Comments.
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Yes, it's a good possibility that the EU iphone experience will be subpar compared to the rest of the world. That is what the EU is asking for...a lowest common denominator mass produced consumer electronic that provides no outstanding functionality, but is totally open to all comers and under strict regulation.
 
Epic have a history of anticompetitive behaviour regarding their own PC game App Store, its ironic they complain from the benefits they receive from having Fortnite on the Apple App Store.

To my mind, there is an argument to say Fortnite's success in the youth market was due to, in no small part, access to a well built, well used and trusted, central software distribution platform.

I just don't understand what they expected here, standards are good and should be defended and Apple should be able to make money from it. Otherwise the alternative is a lack of standards if you can't reasonably monetize your efforts and we are left with a Wild West of Android app stores on steroids with copycat games cropping up at a staggering pace.

The centralised model of software distribution for mobile platforms has been VERY successful for both Apple and developers...attaching micro transactions to said software and expecting it not to also be subject to a % seems insane.
 
Apple won the battle but lost the war, see the EU restrictions etc. They kept too tight a rein for too long and now it's getting worse for them from the government(s). Epic might get what it wants the long way around anyways. The marketing worked better than the lawsuit. :(
 
falkon-engine said:
What's curious to me is that the M1 iPad Pro and Air have the same M1 chip as the M1 Macs, yet the M1 iPads are restricted to only those apps from the App Store, while the M1 Macs can run apps from anywhere. If the concern was solely about security and privacy as Apple claims, then why can the M1 Macs run apps from anywhere but the M1 iPads are locked down? Another thing that I don't understand is why apps that offer physical goods (such as Uber and Lyft) don't have to pay the in-App purchase fees, but apps that offer digital goods (such as games) have to pay the fees. Why the discrimination?
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Because Macs and iPads are different products selling to a different (if overlapping) set of customers. If you do even a modicum of research then “security” vs “ability to run any code you choose” is one of many distinguishing features between the two, and has been since the launch of the iPhone - you pays your money and takes your choice. The iOS market has been a walled garden since day one - and has succeeded on that basis. Macs have never been totally locked down (although they’ve got tighter, and effectively added opt-in full lockdown over the years).

The M1 has nothing to do with it - Apple could have locked-down the Mac at any time since 1984 (albeit less securely, until they started making Intel Macs with the T2 chip which made iOS-level lockdown possible). Why haven’t they done it and raked in App Store profit? Ans: they’re not a monopoly and too many customers would vote with their feet.

As for the “physical goods” thing - well, because Uber etc. are not selling Apps and Apple are not a taxi firm. The Uber app has no value in itself, other than to book rides. Apple might like the idea of getting a 30% cut of every cabbage you buy from an online grocery store, but it would make the groceries too expensive, and using their share of the iPhone market to muscle in on the groceries market might be an antitrust no-no. These lawsuits would make more sense if they were coming from (e.g.) Amazon who are competing directly with Apple for movie and music distribution but then they really can’t afford to be throwing too many rocks in the antitrust greenhouse…

You see, here’s what Epic et. al. really want to do: give away games “for free” in the Apple App Store - taking advantage of it’s established popularity and trust - then make loadsa money via the in-app purchases you need to make the game playable, without sharing any revenue with Apple…. and there’s no reason why every app in the App Store couldn’t take the same route - free demo version in the App Store, click here to send $10 via PayPal to unlock the full version. It‘s not about selling services via Apps - it’s a back-door way of selling the App itself without paying the retailer. It would pretty much kill all revenue from the store.

Allowing competing app stores is a slightly different thing - apart from the security issue, the new stores would have to establish a reputation, build up a big catalog and find their own solution to making “freemium” software and demo ware pay its way.

Basically:

King Camp Gillette: Hi Mr Walmart, I’d like you to give away my razors in your stores for free, I’m going to make a fortune selling the blades.
Walmart: Great idea KCG! So what discount do we get on the blades?
KCG: Oh no, I’m going to sell the blades myself by mail order and keep all the money, I just want you to give away the razors because you’ve got such awesome footfall here!
Walmart: Please do let the door hit you on the way out…
 
falkon-engine said:
Another thing that I don't understand is why apps that offer physical goods (such as Uber and Lyft) don't have to pay the in-App purchase fees, but apps that offer digital goods (such as games) have to pay the fees. Why the discrimination?
Click to expand...

It's because Apple wants it that way, and no government, other businesses or consumers should have any say.
Apple should be able to determine their business model without any interference unless it is a direct physical threat to someone.
 
lk400 said:
Big upgrade over paper punch cards.
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Ah, but the IBM 029 card punches were so much fun to use. Every keypress, it was like there was a mighty blacksmith in there swinging a hammer to make those holes in the card. I did my Fortran on punch cards, by choice (we had a small Cromemco timesharing system, but it had a tendency to crash, taking people's half-edited files with it - cards don't crash).
 
sinoka56 said:
They already pay the $99 or $299 app store fees though.
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That $99 yearly rate is promulgated based on the whole payment structure. Would you prefer it if Apple changed the payment structure to "no commissions on app sales or in-app purchases, and in turn, now the yearly developer membership costs $100k up-front". I'm guessing a lot of smaller developers wouldn't like that very much. The $99 price isn't some sort of "actual cost of materials for making your Apple Developer membership card and framed certificate", it's part of the whole pricing structure - assuming that you can reduce the other parts of the cost to developers to $0 and have the yearly membership fee stay the same, is just foolish.
 
cmaier said:
Apple didn’t design all of the hardware that runs the game? Apple didn’t develop the SDKs? Apple didn’t provide a customer base that actually trusts the ecosystem enough to be willing to spend money on apps (unlike Android users)?
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It's like the people who go on and on about, "I made every cent of my money myself, nobody else should get any of it, especially the government". Oh yeah? What did you drive to your office on, was that a public road built by government funds? Who comes to your house if it catches on fire? Is that a government-funded fire department, or do you have a private one of your own? They don't see how they were only able to make all that money in the first place because they were in a functioning society with a functioning government, supported by taxes - they want to enjoy all the benefits of a system someone else built without paying their fair share to keep it going.

Apple built and popularized an entire ecosystem - before them, you were stuck buying crappy apps and midi ringtones for your flip phone from the phone carriers, who were orders of magnitude more controlling over what they allowed on "their" phones. There very likely wouldn't be a thriving mobile development ecosystem of any sort, if it weren't for what Apple did, through a lot of hard work - the wireless carriers could very well still be in complete charge, gatekeeping hard, and the entire computing landscape could look very different, in a bad way - especially given how many people rely on their smartphones as more or less a primary computer.

Currently, we have two varieties of mobile ecosystem available. One quasi-open free-for-all, and one walled garden. And a whole bunch of people really want to eliminate the latter choice, despite there being a whole bunch of us who chose the walled garden quite intentionally. They're trying to eliminate choice while calling it "making more choice" - it's kind of Orwellian.
 
Wildkraut said:
You mean “…and a company that does phones, ****ing locked down anticompetitive phones…”
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No, I’m bowled over by the utter absurdity of the situation that we’re all witnessing as the fabric of society slowly falls apart, not your personal dislike of a particular set of devices
 
TinyMito said:
Everyone wants a piece of Apple's wallet. You make enemies when you are successful and popular, people get jealous and try to blackmail you.
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That is not how the world works. You make enemies when you behave badly. Have a think about some of the highly successful Hollywood stars or other famous people, or even highly successful people you know personally, who always behave wonderfully. Those types don't have many issues in life. People aren't jealous and mean to them, instead they are clamouring to be a part of their life. The ones who behave poorly, however, have a hard time in life.

Or here's an example in the tech world. Back when Google started, they took off because they always did the right thing. They focused on making great products for the users, and from that, money flowed. They even had an internal slogan "Do No Evil", and every time any of them had an idea, they asked each other "Is this evil?", and if it was, they'd drop the idea. The company back then was adored the world over. They built a search engine that focused entirely on being fast, and giving fair results. Every other search engine was inserting slow image based banner ads (back when the internet was so slow that a single image took a decent time to download), and secretly taking payments to boost search results. Their search engine thus completely dominated, and Google became a verb. Then something changed. The owners became highly successful, and quite rich, but they decided they wanted more money. They dropped the "do no evil" slogan, and concentrated on how to make money, rather than how to make great products. They turned into the advertising, tracking company they are now. They made a ton more money, but lost all the goodwill. Now loads of people hate them. Zero of that hatred has to do with how much money they make, it has 100% to do with how they make it. They do evil.

Apple is a mixed bag. It does some great things, so has a massive fan base. And does some really low, greedy things, and people resent them for that. There are a heap of regulars on MacRumors that are in both camps. People like me love the good things Apple does and makes, so much so that we buy their products, but strongly resent the greedy, nasty behaviour. If there was none of this bad behaviour from Apple, then I would love Tim Cook, but there is, so I think he is a worm. I still use Macs and iPhones, but only because they are better than the rest. But I don't like Little Timmy Crook. My signature sums it up.
 
sideshowuniqueuser said:
That is not how the world works. You make enemies when you behave badly. Have a think about some of the highly successful Hollywood stars or other famous people, or even highly successful people you know personally, who always behave wonderfully. Those types don't have many issues in life. People aren't jealous and mean to them, instead they are clamouring to be a part of their life. The ones who behave poorly, however, have a hard time in life.

Or here's an example in the tech world. Back when Google started, they took off because they always did the right thing. They focused on making great products for the users, and from that, money flowed. They even had an internal slogan "Do No Evil", and every time any of them had an idea, they asked each other "Is this evil?", and if it was, they'd drop the idea. The company back then was adored the world over. They built a search engine that focused entirely on being fast, and giving fair results. Every other search engine was inserting slow image based banner ads (back when the internet was so slow that a single image took a decent time to download), and secretly taking payments to boost search results. Their search engine thus completely dominated, and Google became a verb. Then something changed. The owners became highly successful, and quite rich, but they decided they wanted more money. They dropped the "do no evil" slogan, and concentrated on how to make money, rather than how to make great products. They turned into the advertising, tracking company they are now. They made a ton more money, but lost all the goodwill. Now loads of people hate them. Zero of that hatred has to do with how much money they make, it has 100% to do with how they make it. They do evil.

Apple is a mixed bag. It does some great things, so has a massive fan base. And does some really low, greedy things, and people resent them for that. There are a heap of regulars on MacRumors that are in both camps. People like me love the good things Apple does and makes, so much so that we buy their products, but strongly resent the greedy, nasty behaviour. If there was none of this bad behaviour from Apple, then I would love Tim Cook, but there is, so I think he is a worm. I still use Macs and iPhones, but only because they are better than the rest. But I don't like Little Timmy Crook. My signature sums it up.
Click to expand...

Or maybe the people angry at Apple are pissed because Apple is doing the right thing, just not for them.

It’s like how Facebook is mad at Apple over ATT, and maybe that’s because their entire advertising model was essentially built on a foundation of rot. What does it say when nobody is agreeing to the sort of invasive tracking that their ad delivery network demands?

Apple’s no saint, and maybe that’s the way it ought to be. For Apple to be that jerk that keeps all the other jerks at bay. Because it sure doesn’t seem like the government is going to do anything about this.
 
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