Epic accuses Apple of exercising complete control over iOS

That actually happened.

 

Well yeah of course, what you both said is obvious. But again, Apple's ToS in this context isn't doing anything egregious, it's just very strict, selfish, and elitist. I haven't heard any compelling argument about how Apple is doing something illegal. Again, they're not really a monopoly.
The part where Apple starts to look a bit more guilty is when they start taking cuts for in-app purchases, but even then, I don't think that's illegal.

I understand that, but my point is Epic has no ground to stand on here. They're basically suing because they're butthurt that Apple is taking all the control and a large chunk of revenue. Someone "hurting your butt" isn't a punishable offense. To paraphrase this situation, Epic is saying "I want to have more control in a market that I didn't build, own, or operate" and "Apple's terms are unfair". I 100% understand why Epic cares, but going against a contract "because I don't like it" is a terrible reason to file a lawsuit and bound to fail.

It was within Apple's right to remove them, because Epic knowingly went against the ToS. It sucks, but this isn't something Epic has grounds to sue on.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I don't think this is anti-competitive either. Epic isn't a competitor. Sure, they are a marketplace, but they sell totally different products. It would only be seen as anti-competitive if they sold the same products but Epic was put at a significant disadvantage.

That's the thing though - the consumer does have a choice and always has. Like I said before, nobody depends on iOS. Epic could just suck it up and comply with the ToS, like they did for a while.
Again, it's really hard to hate on Apple when people consciously choose to support them. They've been getting away with their crap for so long because the customers permit it.

That goes back to my other examples though: if contracts could so easily be broken simply because "I don't like it", then they would be practically useless. There has to be some compelling reason why a contract should be officially voided, and greedy policies just isn't a compelling reason.
And yeah, you pose a good example, but Epic did the exact opposite of that: they willfully agreed to the ToS and deliberately broke the rules to prove a point. Think of it in a different perspective:
Let's say you signed a contract to have someone repair the roof of your home. You knew before you signed it how much they would charge. You signed it anyway, even though you didn't agree to the price. So, you just simply stop paying them what you signed to, and as a result, they stop repairing the roof. Is it fair to sue them because they didn't finish the job? No, of course not.

If the bank that holds your mortgage is the same bank involved in the nextdoor plot and they deliberately didn't tell you what that plot was going to be used for, then sure, you would have grounds to sue, because critical information was withheld against your best interest. But if the bank has nothing to do with that plot and didn't know about what it would be then tough luck - your misfortune is not their problem. At that point, you take it up with the city.
If the daycare worker has health concerns, the appropriate step is to deny the unvaxed children from entering [EDIT] and refund the parents. Simply walking away from the job after otherwise agreeing to the conditions would put her in the wrong.

We also, fortunately, don't live in a world where contracts can be voided simply because we don't like them.

And it is .2 inches smaller than the largest android. You said you don't want android because of small screens, but they have ones larger than what Apple offers.

 

They have common ground to stand on, for which they are standing with Apple whilst the courts hear the case.

Apple have been anti-competitive, this is indisputable.

 

This is disputable - I already explained how: Many (most?) games you find sold by Epic aren't sold in the App store. They're different markets. Up until Epic deliberately broke the rules, they were permitted to sell their games on iOS. Apple was taking a cut, but they weren't doing anything to prevent Epic from making sales. Apple wasn't driving Epic's customers away from them. Apple wasn't deceiving Epic's customers. They weren't sabotaging Epic's sales. They weren't doing anything other than taking too much money. Taking a cut isn't anti-competitive, it's just greedy. So what exactly did they do that's anti-competitive?

 

That's part of the reason. Another is Epic adding backdoors to it's app software in the form of it's own payment system, thus bypassing system protections.

 

Monopoly itself, in most developed countries, is only illegal because it typically hurts the customers. However, it's not like there would be anything morally wrong about a monopoly. Governments simply have decided it's no good. There still can be monopolies or near monopolies if there simply aren't competitors. In PC gaming, Windows is nearly a monopoly. In PC home use it's a bit further away but still sufficiently close that countries and the EU have paid a whole lot of attention to it over the decades. Microsoft has been pestered about net browsers and other things for ages.

It seems to me like in the USA there isn't much of a choice: You either have an Apple or you can't afford an Apple but dream of having one. However, the consumers aren't in the same position as app developers. The app developers can't charge an arm and a leg (because they aren't Apple), but they are bleeding because Apple takes too big of a cut and doesn't even allow them to do their own selling without Apple again taking the same huge cut. There's a limit to how much you can charge without being Apple and still make sales. However, when a consumer pays 10 bucks, they lose 10 bucks. Objectively speaking it doesn't matter to them that 3 dollars of it goes to Apple and 7 to the actual app developer. For the developer it makes all the difference, though.

It is. If a company is too greedy and reaches too dominating a position, it may have to face the consequences.

I don't know if such a thing even exists in the USA and what it might be called in English, but over here there's a juridical concept of moderating (making reasonable) something in a contract. Typically it's a single condition, which can be also the price. Let's say you haven't got a clue what a fair price for a new roof should be but a roof repair company representative tells you their company has really good prices, and it's only 25,000 euros for your house, but you have to make the deal now because next week the prices are going to rise. Since you haven't got a clue, you might think think it's a lot of money, but it's also a lot of work and material (from your amateur's point of view), so you agree to it posthaste. Later you find out the typical average market price would be 10,000-15,000 euros. You might try to negotiate the price anew, even with the help of lawyers/officials. Maybe even the court if nothing else helps. Like always, you might succeed or you might fail. Just like Epic here might succeed or fail.

Why would your mortgage payment contract have anything like that mentioned? You would have just asked about it from the banker, who would say that naturally they are planning to develop the area into a fine neighbourhood, where the property prices will rise. If you afterwards refer to such a statement, the banker would say that unfortunately the plans changed. And it's not in the contract anyway, you know, it was just smalltalk. Business is business.

No, the worker would likely just get fired with no golden handshakes. The owner of the kindergarten must please the influential antivaxxer families.

Nah, it is highly anti-competitive that folks can't buy stuff in other applications outside of Apple's app store. It means Apple has the monopoly to everything where money (or something else valuable) changes hands for profit, which is the one and only thing in business that must happen for it to be business in the first place. The fact that others can do it if they give Apple almost a third of the price is just an excuse to not make it look like a monopoly on paper. I don't think even mafia has the guts to demand that much. If all of your products must include 30% of articial costs, it might make the business fail.

 

Really? Then why are they even bothering to dignify the accusation?

What is it you said once about email security? That if you have nothing to hide....

 

I agree with all that, though, it extends beyond customers. Monopolies are also a major threat to other businesses, and therefore the economy. But the thing is, it's not clear whether Apple is a monopoly, because they aren't anywhere close to the same situation MS has been in (and in a way, is still in). MS was belligerently anti-competitive. They controlled the overwhelming majority of the entire PC industry. They didn't just simply take a large cut of sales from other platforms, they directed traffic away from other platforms. The whole thing about net browsers was that MS made it so users were unlikely to know about alternatives.
To my knowledge, Apple isn't doing such things.

I disagree. I don't know of a single industry that depends on iOS, and most people I know either don't care or have actually switched to Android without much of a fuss. To clarify, I know plenty of industries that use iOS, but they didn't have to.
If devs were struggling as much as you suggest, they wouldn't bother releasing for iOS. They still see profits.
Bear in mind, I think it's pathetic Apple demands such a large cut and I hope they lower it.

In that particular combination, yes. But Apple isn't too dominating. Compared to various other marketplaces, Apple isn't doing anything all that drastic. So relatively speaking, Epic doesn't have a compelling argument here.

I'm not sure how it works in the US either, though, I do know that for this particular example, you have 3 days to cancel the contract after signing it (might be more in some states) and get a full refund. Although I would like to see that extended to maybe 5 or 7 days, I think this is a fair enough approach, because after that amount of time, it's not the contractor's fault you didn't do your research.
Anyway going back to Epic, yes, it is possible they could win. As stated before, court cases are often more a matter of subjective interpretation, so even though Apple isn't doing anything illegal (to my knowledge), the court could still rule against them.

Well yeah the contract wouldn't say anything about that, but such information could be disclosed before you sign it. Think of it like taking your car to get a repair: if the mechanic sees a safety problem unrelated to what you want to get repaired and doesn't tell you, I'm pretty sure that's grounds for a lawsuit. When you sell someone something (whether that be a product or a service) knowing there will be a problem in the future and you neglect to say anything, that's grounds for a lawsuit.

Well we're making a lot of assumptions here but in either case, how does that change my point? You can't just simply stop doing your job and continue to get paid. Filing a lawsuit over it is highly unlikely to fix that, because (in the situation you've laid out) as an employee, you have a contractual obligation to follow, hence being fired.
If your argument is then "I [the worker] didn't agree to work in an environment that puts my health at risk" then yes, that would be grounds for a lawsuit, because that would not have been part of the contract and the employee would have been wrongly terminated.

But they can buy stuff outside Apple's app store, so long as they don't buy an Apple product. Since nobody depends on Apple products, and, since people are [generally] aware of what products aren't sold in the app store, consumers know what they're getting themselves into and they accept it anyway. You can't fault Apple for their crappy business tactics if people through their own will keep supporting them.
Last I checked, 30% is common in most big stores. The only difference is Apple has a digital store, so they don't have to pay for things like shipping, shelf stockers, cashiers, a building, property, and so on. So, their 30% cut is unreasonable considering how little it costs for them to operate their store. But... unreasonable isn't the same thing as illegal.

Good question, because why are they bothering with something where they don't have a legal ground to stand on?
Not sure what the email security thing has to do with this.

 

I'm going to interject again. Tim Sweeney said he doesn't use email, yet the court has emails which Tim verified that were basically trolling other CEO's.

 

I'm still not understanding how this is relevant.

 

I can't remember off-hand what the emails entailed. Asking Apple to be open-source or something along those lines. Another to Xbox Phil saying get ready to see the fireworks in regards to Fortnite being on the Apple store with their own embedded code.

 

that’s not what I said at all. I don’t care how closed off iOS is because I don’t like playing games on my 10 inch screen android tablet let alone my tiny iPhone screen. Needless to say if I was terribly worried about open platform I’d have an android phone too.

 

and then she ran off with bill gates

 

Seems I misinterpreted you then, because when you said this:

I thought you meant Android phones had small screens (though really, neither Android or iPhone have small phone screens).
My bad.

 

Maybe when Apple will launch its game streaming service after banning all the others from its store, or making it financially unsustainable given their small margin, it'll be more obvious.
I'll also be too late.

I do agree with @Loobyluggs regarding Apple anti competitive behaviour being undisputable.

They're pulling the same crap with Spotify.

"The European Commission has issued a formal ‘statement of objections’ against Apple, saying today that its preliminary view is Apple’s app store rules distort competition in the market for music streaming services by raising the costs of competing music streaming app developers."
https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/30/e...Y-CJTr3TS2z3G3-AgmItEpFkD-zbdpdUjxmkTPTfqSpm6

 

Should that happen then perhaps Epic would have a real case on their hands, especially if Apple's service contains many of the same games found on EGS.

And yet, neither of you have explained how, in a way that relates to Epic...

Sure, that is a great example of Apple being anticompetitive. Apple has been anticompetitive in the music industry for a long while. But that's not the case being brought forth by Epic.

 

I did. They removed Epic from the store.

 

So does every company that has software that runs on Windows pay Microsoft a share of their profits. Does Valve pay Microsoft a percentage everytime someone buys a game on steam? Not a joke, I seriously wanna know? What makes Apple so special?

 

Nope

A touch of narcissism and a sprinkle of dictatorship.

 

The ToS that someone brought up is basically a worthless piece of paper if it contradicts laws. You can sign an agreement to sell yourself into slavery, but it's not legal and your "owner" will be arrested and will go to jail for a long time.

Now Apple here has a clear monopoly, in fact that is how they have always made money, by creating closed systems where no one could compete. If you buy their device, it requires their OS and the only way to install anything there is through their app store. That is clearly a dominant (or outright monopoly) position. But even that would be fine if Apple didn't abuse it, yet they take 30% cut, which is not in any way reasonable. I don't think that Apple can really defend their position, although I'm not at all hopeful that the court would do anything real about it.

Oh and BTW, there was somewhat similar case regarding MS and internet explorer. Where MS got a fat fine for shipping their OS with preinstalled internet explorer without any choice in competition. They didn't charge anything or restrict other browsers in any way. If that is considered abuse of monopoly, what kind of defense do you guys think that Apple has?