[MBCook]

I think Apple should’ve won the lawsuit. Epic broke TOS they agreed to, got punished, and whined a bunch to the court. They deserved to lose as they largely did. They’re also not innocent. They don’t want to get rid of all of this, they want the middleman cashing in to be THEMSELVES, not Apple. They’re no underdog hero.

Apple is doing something incredibly stupid and absolutely killing their relationship with developers. Right when they need it most. They should fix that, but won’t. Wall Street would crucify them for daring to lose revenue. And regulators should probably limit how much they can charge.

But this lawsuit was not the way for that to happen. Don’t root for a bad lawsuit just ‘cause you hate the plaintiff. Fix it the right way.

[HDThoreaun]

Who cares what Epic wants? Their incentives align with mine so I supported them. Apples practices here clearly harm consumers by reducing competition on iOS. It is obvious to me that if Epic won iOS would be a better product, at least for me.

[nickthegreek]

Some would argue that Apples practices clearly protect the consumer from malware, privacy issues and scams. It is obvious to me that if Epic won iOS could be a worse product, at least for me.

[amiga386]

Exhibit A: https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/30/21348130/apple-documents-...

> Jobs said, “[i]t’s time for Amazon to decide to use our payment mechanism or bow out [of the App Store],”

> Jobs said: “I think this is all pretty simple — iBooks is going to be the only bookstore on iOS devices. We need to hold our heads high. One can read books bought elsewhere, just not buy/rent/subscribe from iOS without paying us, which we acknowledge is prohibitive for many things.”

Tell me how this clearly protects the consumer from malware, privacy issues and scams.

[nickthegreek]

Apple pay subscription cancellation ease and refunds protect the consumer. I’m not here to defend all of their practices. I am saying there are very obvious consumer friendly parts of the ecosystem starting with the fact that I don’t need to run tech support on my families tablets and phones.

I barely ever see consumers complain about the ecosystem, mostly companies and developers. And I just don’t feel like they are going to use a more an open system to the benefit of the consumer. I trust them _a lot_ less than Apple.

[lapcat]

> I barely ever see consumers complain about the ecosystem, mostly companies and developers.

Where have you looked? I see them complain all the time on Reddit, for example. And Apple actually denies a lot of refunds.

[nickthegreek]

I have never heard a person complain about this in real life. I hear other issues with Apple but never has anyone espoused the desire for another AppStore. Everyone loves the ability to mange subs in one location. They enjoy the ease of transactions from the AppStore as opposed to entering cc info or logging into other apps. My less tech savvy friends and family feel safe in the iOS ecosystem. They do think there are issues with low quality predatory subscription apps though. I certainly agree with that.

[malshe]

Reddit is one of the most astroturfed websites out there. I wouldn't trust anything I read there.

[samtho]

The ToS isn’t law and we desperately need to stop pretending it is.

A ToS a “shrinkwraped” contract. In Apple’s case, it’s enforceability was yet to be tested. We can agree to a lot of things in a contract, but in general, we cannot consent to letting a party break the law at your expense. A judge determined that Apples practices were unlawful and therefore the problematic stipulation of the ToS was struck.

This is an important tool to combat runaway shrinkwrap contracts that can say literally anything and attempt to enforce it.

[MBCook]

It’s not law, it’s a binding legal agreement.

This wasn’t some clickwrap thing you have to click through to play Angry Birds, it was the agreement for signing up for the developer program.

[samtho]

> This wasn’t some clickwrap thing you have to click through to play Angry Birds, it was the agreement for signing up for the developer program.

Both of these operate under precisely the same principle. The same principle is applied when you sign up for a gym membership, a credit card, or install software on your computer. The validity of the shrinkwrap contract is not something I’m challenging here even if I happen to believe they go against the spirit of contracts.

My point is that there are limits as to what you are able to consent to, legally speaking. You can’t typically sue a company for including something in the ToS that you haven’t yet signed which you believe is unenforceable because you suffered no damage and have no standing in the matter. The way to go about this is to agree to the ToS and challenge its enforceability when, specifically, the target stipulations(s) were enforced by the company you made the agreement with. If this stipulation was not legal for them enforce, then it’s perfectly within the rights of the signer to challenge it.

The other dynamic is that the signer is taking on risk by challenging the validity of the contract either as a whole or in part, therefore it’s not necessary asymmetrical.

There are other situations where a “legal contract” can be thrown out, such as being forced to sign one under duress/threat, or even if someone who cannot consent legally signs it.

[mschuster91]

> They don’t want to get rid of all of this, they want the middleman cashing in to be THEMSELVES, not Apple. They’re no underdog hero.

There's value to be had in more competition the "middleman" market, too!

At the moment, on PC there's a healthy competition between the Microsoft Store, Steam, GOG, Epic Games, EA Origin and probably at least a dozen other smaller platforms, some of which are also available on macOS and Linux.

On Android, there's the Play Store, some of the device manufacturers have their own additional stores (Samsung), even carriers have app stores (Vodafone Germany), and enabling a completely independent store like F-Droid is three taps away. The only thing that's unhealthy is how much AOSP functionality got shifted over to the Play Store Services which means that competitors on the OS level (e.g. Amazon's Fire series) have to do a lot of work on reimplementing that to even get basic apps running.

The only platforms where app/game vendors are completely dependent on the mercy of the device vendor is Apple's iDevices and game consoles (Xbox, PS5, Nintendo Switch) - and it's high time for that to end. Users should be free to run whatever they want to run on their devices, and they should be free to decide upon another curator for trustworthyness if they so desire. If the price of that is marginally more expensive hardware, so be it - it should not be allowed to sell stuff as permanent loss leaders anyway, it's unfair business practice.

[MBCook]

I agree there’s a benefit.

I’m just saying that Epic is not the underdog little guy some seem to act like they are. This wasn’t a small indie developer sticking up for their rights.