[hortense]

This is why devs are afraid of publicly criticizing Apple, let alone testifying against them in the court. Apple has shown that they will then prevent you from accessing 50%+ of the US market. In short Apple is a bully, has been for more than a decade now, and it has worked out well for them.

[napkin]

But you’ve left out part of the narrative: Developer pushes an App update which purposefully violates the TOS, expecting rejection- having planned in advance to kick off an expensive PR campaign and legal battle.

I don’t deny Apple’s pettiness… Nonetheless, can you provide a different example of why devs are afraid of publicly criticizing Apple?

[ApolloFortyNine]

>I don’t deny Apple’s pettiness… Nonetheless, can you provide a different example of why devs are afraid of publicly criticizing Apple?

Every subscription service should have a banner on their pages saying signing up through iOS takes 30%. Many just disabled signing up.

Of course maybe this isn't the best example since Apple actually made it against their rules to tell users it'd be cheaper to purchase on their site.

Apple's rules undeniably cost end users money. Epic proved it by taking some of that 30% fee and giving it back to the consumer (you got more Fortnite credits buying on Epic store instead of Apple store).

Why people try to defend Apple I'll never understand, my guess is some people who own an iPhone have decided that's 'their team' and who wants to see their team lose? But I'm not sure.

[benoau]

And you've left out part of the narrative: the terms that Epic broke were illegal in the state of California. Hooli's contract is thus invalid.

As for different reason, how about this official policy from ~2015:

> If your App is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150411105225/https://developer...

[coldpie]

Yeah, there's no good guys in this fight. Apple may be behaving badly, but Epic broke the terms they agreed to, tried to use the courts to force Apple to change their App Store business model, and even kicked off a public PR campaign trashing Apple... and now they're whining because Apple is not treating them nicely after all that? You went nuclear on Apple, Epic. That's not going to make them interested in having you as a business partner.

[jemmyw]

They couldn't start the legal battle without doing this. They needed to get solid legal standing. So yes, they planned it, but they couldn't easily challenge Apple without getting the rejection.

Your suggestion is that they sit on the sidelines and complain about the situation. That's what plenty of people have done, and it makes no difference.

I'm not a fan of Epic, I don't play their games. They did all this for their own benefit. But it's probably a good thing overall.

[arccy]

a successful PR campaign given now we have court rulings that show apple is an abusive company.

abiding by apple's abusive TOS won't improve developers' situations, you have to stand up to them.

[TechRemarker]

They didn’t ban them for publicly criticizing, they banned them for intentionally breaking the rules. So yes, this makes devs more afraid of knowingly breaking the rules like how jail makes people more afraid of breaking the law. And yes fornite team has been quite a bully in their incessant tweets but glad to see Apple not stopping to their level.

[apple4ever]

Yes they broke bad rules and were right to do so.

Devs are more afraid of breaking the rules because the rules change all the time, and they know Apple is petty and cares more about money than being good to customers and developers.

[isodev]

I think a big portion of the problem is that Apple is both the platform (phone) and the store. Similar to Google and Chrome for the web, it creates a conflict. Bad faith movies like slapping warnings, geo blocking dev tools (remember you have to be in Europe to be able to develop an alternative web browser engine lol), limiting side loading etc … feels like “let’s milk the cashcow until people don’t need iPhones anymore”. The longer they can drag it the better. Disappointing tbh.

[FirmwareBurner]

This is why the EU is hitting apple and why the US needs to.

Too many devs have their livelihood at the mercy of Apple's(and Google's) Damocles's sword. At least with Google you can easily sideload.

If even megacorpos like Epic have issues with Apple imagine what being an indie dev or small company will be like.

[DanielHB]

Apple gets around this by saying they are "Promising to Create 30000 american jobs" which the politicians then peddle in their election campaigns. But then it never happens because it is all a promise...

The politicians of course only care about the PR stunt and give them concessions either way.

[jillyboel]

This is why apple needs to be broken up into a software company and a hardware company. They're so, so clearly abusing their current position.

[horsawlarway]

Just take the app store away.

From all of them - take it away from Google too. Frankly - Microsoft never actually got much buy in for their store, but take it away from them as well.

Hardware that has only a single approved distribution channel for software, that is owned by someone other than the owner of the hardware, shouldn't be legal.

Further - if you own a piece of hardware, you legally should own EVERY fucking key. If there's a lock in that device, hardware or software based, that has a key - you get a damn copy.

---

Some physical comparisons that show how outrageously unethical this setup is:

You buy a home, but your realtor gets the only copy of the keys. "Don't worry" they say, "I'll just pop by and open er up whenever you need to get in and out. Oh, and by the way, I don't like Ikea - so I won't open the door if you're trying to move Ikea furniture in. Great working with you guys, enjoy your new home!".

You've just bought a new car, you tried turning into your neighborhood, but suddenly the car stops. You call the dealer: "Oh, I see your neighborhood road was paved by PavingCo, They don't pay our manufacturers' yearly inspection fee, so we can't certify that our car can safely drive on that road. So we disable it when the GPS detects you're about to drive there."

---

This is fundamentally about ownership. Hardware manufacturers are playing with utter fire here, because this is the first time in history there exists enough infrastructure that a device can phone home and ask "Is this ok?" to the maker, rather than operating as the owner desires.

As far as I'm concerned - you don't own a device that does that. You're just renting it, and the manufacturer can and will extort you with rent-seeking behavior at EVERY turn.

Phones are only the first stop - this is going to spread to absolutely everything that uses electricity unless this gets extinguished real fast. We're already starting to see the same games in Cars, IoT devices, TVs, etc...

I'm eagerly awaiting the day my drill stops working because I'm not trying to drill the manufacturers' overpriced screws with it...

[gmerc]

They did this even to Facebook back in the day, primarily holding app updates hostage to kill Instant Games

[high_na_euv]

Imagine if Microsoft banned Steam Or Rockstar on Windows

The outrage would be massive, that would be giant scandal

[xethos]

Microsoft locking out third-party applications with Windows S, and/or pushing users to Microsoft's own game store, was actually a real threat to Valve. That's one of the major reasons Proton is a thing: Valve realized they were entirely dependant on a party they had no leverage over, so they built and invested in Linux.

Should Microsoft ever make a move now, Valve isn't completely at their mercy.

[shadowfiend]

Epic didn't publicly criticize Apple or testify against them in court to get into this situation, they willfully and deliberately broke the legal developer agreement that they signed to get press coverage (they could have filed suit on the anti-steering rules regardless).

Not only did they do this, they then filed suit to say that Apple shouldn't have been allowed to suspend their account—and lost (though arguably won the broader war since anti-steering is currently dead).

There are a ton of things Apple is doing wrong around developer stuff and anti-steering rules and all of it, but I dunno, I feel pretty good about them saying to a specific developer, “actually, you've shown yourself to be willing to ignore the legal agreements you sign, so we're not going to be doing business with you any longer“. Epic's stunt should cost them, if they then want to talk about how they've martyred themselves for developers everywhere. Good work, but a martyr who comes back to life isn't really a martyr, right?

[aaomidi]

Yeah this type of behavior will eventually get Apple broken into two. And they’ll deserve it.

[HDThoreaun]

Apples terms of service were illegal. Illegal agreements are not binding