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by oauea 2085 days ago
They also indicated they'd never ever use Mac's notarization requirement to block legitimate software.

Then they got in a legal fracas with Epic and immediately retaliated against Epic by banning all their software from all Apple hardware!

Apple has shown they are very eager to use their position of power to strong-arm the competition, and these kinds of chips only add to their power.

2 comments

That's a very disingenuous assessment of the situation at hand. Epic knowingly violated their developer agreement. There was no retaliation. There was the consequences that were written into the developer agreement that Epic agreed to.
Apple revoked the developer accounts that Epic uses, so Epic could no longer notarize their (unrelated, MacOS desktop) software. No matter what you think about the lawsuit, you have to admit that Apple used their position of power to strong-arm the competition, and went against their promises to end-users regarding notarization.
They revoked the developer accounts because Epic intentionally violated the rules of those accounts. What you're doing by blaming Apple amounts to blaming the police for arresting a criminal that broke the law. Epic knew ahead of the time what the consequences were for violating the agreement and they knowingly did that. There was no strong-arming involved. The judge even stated in her initial briefing that Epic overstepped their bounds and didn't even need to do what they did to file their lawsuit. The only reason they did it was to try and stir up a PR storm but that backfired on them.
Sure, whatever.

Apple promised to the users (not Epic) they would only use notarization to block harmful software. Epic's software is not harmful to the user, and the lawsuit didn't change anything about that.

> Epic knowingly violated their developer agreement. There was no retaliation

I think you don't understand how this works. The agreement itself is the subject of the lawsuit and thus MUST be violated in order to show harm. Epic did it on purpose in order to sue Apple and whether you agree with that or not, it is the only mechanism the law allows to make the agreement itself the subject of the suit. And Epic does have a right to sue Apple for whatever reason they choose.

This is quite incorrect. Epic can already demonstrate financial harm due to the 30% fee that Apple has been collecting. They did not also need to break the agreement in order to bring the lawsuit. The judge literally recommended they cure the breach and put Fortnite back on the App Store while the lawsuit was pending.
>Epic can already demonstrate financial harm due to the 30% fee that Apple has been collecting

Not to the consumer.

No they did not do that at all.