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bze12 | 10 months ago

Their entire setup was egregious.

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

I would be surprised if a single developer adopted it.

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

discuss

order

dns_snek|10 months ago

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

> As of the May 2024 hearing, only 34 developers out of the approximately 136,000 total developers on the App Store applied for the program, and seventeen of those developers had not offered in-app purchases in the first place. In May 2024, Apple argued that it would take more time for developers to take advantage of the Link Entitlement and that the adoption rates could not be known. Apple attempted here to mislead.

> Given the revelations of the February 2025 hearing, Apple modeled the lack of adoption. That Apple adduced no testimony or evidence indicating developer adoption of the program is no surprise. As shown above, Apple knew it was choosing a course which would fail to stimulate any meaningful competition to Apple’s IAP and thereby maintain its revenue stream

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

jimbokun|10 months ago

This seems like a strange argument to me.

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

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

kubb|10 months ago

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

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

zamadatix|10 months ago

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

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

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

openplatypus|10 months ago

HN is mostly US audience.

EU = bad

US = good

YetAnotherNick|10 months ago

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