[furi]

The problem isn't that they make decisions about what the device can and can't do before the moment of purchase. As you correctly pointed out in another comment they made the implicit choice to not ship it with the ability to make pizzas and everybody thinks that's fine.

The problem is that they (have the ability to) continue to make those decisions afterwards. You could have "known" an iPhone could run Fortnite at the moment you bought it and then after you received it in the mail discovered that they had decided you were no longer allowed to do that.

You could then say "well I bought it knowing they had the ability to change anything at any time" but I'm not sure I agree that you can give informed consent to a blank check.

[zepto]

It’s pretty easy to conclude that Apple will remove software the deliberately breaches their terms of service.

Epic knew it, and the chose to breach the terms of service on purpose to cause this effect. Epic intentionally triggered a contract term that they knew would result in their software being removed from their customer’s devices.

They were given an opportunity by both Apple and the court to restore their software to compliance and still get to continue the lawsuit.

This is 100% Epic’s responsibility.

They could have sued Apple without deliberately breaching the contract, but they chose to make their customers into pawns in their legal strategy.

[furi]

I don't support what Epic did but whether or not it was justified is irrelevant here. A modification was made to the functionality of your device after the moment of purchase, that remains true regardless. And you could not have foreseen that specific modification to your device unless you worked at Epic and had internal knowledge of their plans.

You effectively need to know what every company in the world is doing to have any real idea what your device is going to be able to do tomorrow. Under those conditions I don't think you can say you were informed when you purchased it.

[zepto]

Your standard can never be met. Even if no changes were made after the sale, no human can fully predict the behavior of even an open source modern operating system, let alone a closed source one.

But I disagree that people weren’t informed. It is common knowledge and widely advertised that Apple issues software updates, and it is widely known that Apple enforces its store rules.

The information about what changes could be made and by whom was readily available to purchasers.