This leaves in place the bulk of the ruling favoring Apple, but also the elimination of the anti-steerage rules that Epic successfully challenged (sort of, the trial judge mostly did that on her own).
So, to summarize, the relevant market is this dispute was the mobile game market (not an iPhone-specific market like Epic wanted), Apple does not have a monopoly in that market, and Apple doesn’t need to charge less in the App Store or for in-app purchases. But, due to California law, Apple cannot prevent developers from informing consumers that lower prices are available outside of the app.
Why do we act like there is a "mobile game market" when there are clearly two distinct major private markets, both monopolized by definition of private control over basic aspects like pricing and content, including mandating a private tax rate?
Those two distinct major private markets are inside platforms that compete with each other, so it's not clear what a monopoly means in that case. That's what everyone is trying to figure out.
A judge can't simply mandate a private tax rate and probably wouldn't want to anyway. Antitrust judgments typically try to remedy root causes limiting competition so the market can work out the rest, rather than try to guess some arbitrary "fair" rate that wouldn't be constant anyway.
The root cause here seems to be fairly clear: (Excessive) vertical integration of platforms (or rather their owners) across domains.
The duopoly of mobile app stores would not be nearly as problematic if it wasn’t also tied to a duopoly in phone OS vendors, one of which also tied to a monopoly in phone vendors, which is tied to a monopoly (quasi-monopoly? not sure what to call iMessage in the US) in instant messaging platforms etc.
> The root cause here seems to be fairly clear: (Excessive) vertical integration of platforms (or rather their owners) across domains.
Which is exactly what RMS and like minded individuals have been warning about. Meanwhile Microsoft is working very hard to retro-fit this onto the remains of the PC market.
You're both over and understating RMS's position here. He wasn't opposed to vertical integration, he was opposed to being told no. Vertical integration often means being told no, through not always through copyright means.
That's a pretty broad root cause. The problem is coming up with a remedy that can't be worked around or doesn't distort the market in other ways. It will be interesting to see what happens in Europe if/when they force Apple to allow side-loading apps.
The EU redress strikes at the core of the issue -- if Apple and Google are prohibited from monopolizing app stores and/or payment processing on their respective platforms (including via incentives, tying products to exclusive use, etc.), then their mobile OS/hardware monopolies loose a lot of their power.
The bigger question to me is to what degree will the platform owners be restricted from monetizing apps on the platform. Requiring apps to be installable at no cost to the developer makes a big assumption that platform fees are 100% rent. Some of the fee surely is, but if enough people are able to circumvent fees, it seems likely to impact the dynamics of the platform, e.g. If supporting 3rd party apps become less profitable, why wouldn't Apple and Google shift focus/investments to first-part apps and features and allow public APIs to languish?
I personally think we need a United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.[1] ruling in mobile phone hardware.
Then Apple can produce their OS, Google can produce their OS, and handset makers can be free to choose what OSes and app stores to support on their phone.
> The root cause here seems to be fairly clear: (Excessive) vertical integration of platforms (or rather their owners) across domains.
Which is not illegal per se and, in most cases, such as Apple’s, not even subject to antitrust scrutiny.
Horizontal integration as a result of mergers is immediately subject to legal scrutiny.
Vertical integration by virtue of mergers can be subject to legal scrutiny.
Vertical integrations as a result of organic expansion are not subject to legal scrutiny.
From a US antitrust perspective, Apple is wholly in the clear as long as they don’t actively abuse their market power after they’ve gained their market dominance.
This means that Apple can be as restrictive and aggressive as it wants before it gains market dominance in the relevant market and maintains that stance as long as they don’t restrict after it gains market dominance.
This makes sense; in the US, they don’t want to punish success, and you are allowed to have an “innocent” monopoly.
This also makes sense from the perspective of market-wide ramifications.
If you’d punish vertical integration or single-brand markets in general, then every start-up that automatically has a monopoly over its own products would be subject to punishment.
If I develop a new smartphone tomorrow with its own OS and adopt Apple’s approach to the walled garden, I’d be immediately in trouble.
The fact that Apple became successful doesn’t change anything as long as that success isn’t gained by illegal means, like throwing my newly gained market dominance around.
The EU has a different approach to this, mainly through carving legislation that aims to target specific companies. Still, it remains to be seen if that can withstand adjudication by the courts because the EU courts aren’t very eager to condone targeting at this level and retroactively making things illegal.
In a general sense, it’s baffling to see how many people have trouble wrapping their heads around the simple premise that success isn’t punishable in and of itself and that you actively need to abuse your market dominance after you’ve gained it.
The rule of thumb is that if something is perfectly legal to do when you’re small, it’s also perfectly legal to maintain that behavior once you’re big, with very few exceptions.
This is precisely why Apple is always so restrictive when introducing something (e.g., App Store, no carrier bloatware, Apple Pay, commission rate, etc.) because they can always be more flexible. Still, they can never tighten the reigns once they’re successful.
Google tried this the other way around. Relatively open and permissive ecosystem. Now, they’re trying to close it up and bully other parties into doing what benefits Google; this got them in trouble.
Similarly, people really seem to have trouble wrapping their heads around the fact that “the iPhone” is just not the relevant market definition.
Courts almost never go with a single-brand market definition, because it almost never is a relevant definition and would open the door to ramifications across commerce, if only because pretty much every manufacturer has a single brand market and monopoly over it.
When determining the relevant market you want to include substitute products, both on the demand side and supply side.
Switching costs are a factor in determining the competitive pressure, but switching cost doesn’t mean that you can therefore exclude substitutions from the market definition, if only because there’s almost always a switching cost involved.
Often times even very high switching costs exist, like a cancellation fee and switching cost can also be non-monetary like the time it takes to learn a product.
A lot of companies try to significantly increase switching cost to lock customers in. This doesn’t mean they don’t have competition in their market or that their acts are illegal.
The court has found that Google/Android is a suitable substitution both on the demand side as well as the supply side. People can switch to Android if Apple (indirectly) increases the costs of apps and developers can also switch if the cost of making apps becomes too high.
Keep in mind that the courts don’t care if an average consumer or supplier would do so, only if a marginal consumer/supplier would. In other words, if a small but significant amount of people would do so, typically 5-10%.
These mobile platforms are two sided markets. They only compete on one side for users. They don't compete on the other side for app developers since developers need to use both platforms to reach all users since each user is exclusive to a single platform at a time.
This just means private market. There's nothing special about the term "platform" that changes the feudal nature of this. The tenants compete but the operator has coerced exclusion on collecting its tax. This private market has a single operator offer access on non-negotiable terms against which no other entity is able to make a competing offer. If that's not a monopoly, it's certainly far worse to everyone but the owner of the market.
I chose to buy a device, it's mine. What on earth are you doing meddling with what i do with it, apple? Your taste in apps sucks ass and you charge the poor app developers 10x the value you provide. Being forced to use the appstore actively lowers the value of my phone.
I don't appreciate this attempt by large corps to just rewrite the meaning of ownership and markets without giving us any of the benefits of a world without property or a centralized marketplace. The people here who defend it disgust me.
How is this not straightforwardly a vertically owned market with full price controls to which we can only rent space at exorbitant cost and little return compared to an public market?
We all know the reason: it drives profits and our index funds. Nobody wants to kill the golden goose, even if that represents us all getting collectively sold up river. Which should remind you of about a thousand other problems this country faces.
Because the two giant companies that own those markets like it this way, and they spend millions per year on lawyers and lobbyists to keep that position.
> They paid lawmakers...if we were talking about some other country it would be called bribery
No, they did not and no we would not.
If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker, personally, I'll commit here and now to paying you six figures for it, because it's worth ten times that much in the open.
>If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker, personally, I'll commit here and now to paying you six figures for it, because it's worth ten times that much in the open.
$140,000 to a John Harris Whitmire. Apparently he's "an American attorney and politician who is the 63rd mayor of Houston, Texas" according to Wikipedia.
That's a campaign donation. (Mayors in mayor-council governments aren't technically lawmakers, though Houston has a strong enough mayor that it's semantic at best.) You can't--legally--spend campaign donations on personal expenses. It's the difference between investing in someone's start-up (or more accurately, donating to their non-profit) and giving them money personally.
I'm not arguing it doesn't buy influence. It does, though not in the form popularly conceived. But it's not bribery. Cheapening bribery by conflating it with campaign finance, or worse, lobbying in general isn't intellectually honest.
> You can't--legally--spend campaign donations on personal expenses. It's the difference between investing in someone's start-up (or more accurately, donating to their non-profit) and giving them money personally.
A personal election campaign is presumably something in your personal interest, and money is fungible.
> I'm not arguing it doesn't buy influence. It does, though not in the form popularly conceived. But it's not bribery. Cheapening bribery by conflating it with campaign finance, or worse, lobbying in general isn't intellectually honest.
On the contrary, giving in to the sophistry that says that this particular system of organised and regulated bribery is somehow not bribery is intellectual dishonesty. Yes there are some relevant differences between this and other forms of bribery, but the similarities are stronger.
> If you have evidence of Apple or Google cutting a cheque to any lawmaker
And then
> That's a campaign donation
Use newspeak and call it whatever you want, it is VERY clear MONEY WAS PAID TO A LAWMAKER, which is EXACTLY what you wanted evidence of. This very clearly means you need to cut me a 6 figure cheque.
Again, other countries very clearly call this bribery, the US just invented a new word for it.
> You can't--legally--spend campaign donations on personal expenses.
You absolutely can. You can loan money to your campaign and charge interest on that and then have donors donate to your campaign to repay your debt. Brought to you by the conservative wing of the supreme court in FEC v Cruz.
> Or because those two companies created those platforms. I don't see why they owe it to other companies to lower their prices.
It's up to us to make them give us better tools for us. This isn't a natural thing that just happens. I don't give a damn which company succeeds in the end so long as the consumer is fairly represented.
It's not even clear that breaking up the app stores would be good for consumers or developers. Having to load an app onto 15 different app stores to capture the market sounds like hell.
The only ones who would really benefit are other large corporations like Epic.
> This is completely irrelevant if they are a monopoly and subject to anti trust laws.
No legal precedent supports the idea that the Android or iOS app stores are monopolies under US law. We are in a thread discussing a final verdict against that proposition which is now binding in CA9.
“This is completely irrelevant if [this decidedly false fact]” is not really a useful statement. Wishcasting that courts will misinterpret the law is not the way forward, the way forward is new laws.
My point was that someone saying "well it's their platform, they can do what they want!" Is making a bad argument.
If someone wants to make a good argument, instead of a bad one, then you would have to start talking about what a monopoly is.
But whoever built the platform is simply an argument that is unrelated.
> is not really a useful statement.
It absolutely is useful, because it focuses on the question that matters.
No matter if you think that Apple is a monopoly or not, of which there are reasonable arguments to be made on all sides, the fact that Apple built it just doesn't matter.
Talk about the things that matter, not unrelated points.
> a final verdict against that proposition which is now binding in CA9.
If you meant to imply that this is a final verdict on if Apple is a monopoly or not, then I would recommend that you re-read the original ruling of the California judge.
The California judge was very clear that the verdict only shows that Epic failed in their arguments, not that Apple is decidedly not a monopoly.
Now that SCOTUS has denied cert this constitutes a final judgement. Its rulings on law are binding throughout the 9th circuit. While “possession of monopoly power is a fact question”, this denial is likely to be the final say for quite some time on questions of whether Apple possesses monopoly power in markets related to app stores, which it obviously does not because of the existence of Android.
Epic attempted to argue that Apple has monopoly power in “iOS games” which was rejected since you can’t just arbitrarily narrow your market definition until you find a monopoly.
> Now that SCOTUS has denied cert this constitutes a final judgement
You still don't understand. This is in reference to epic's case. It not about other people's cases. The final judgement is on Epic. It is not on the upcoming US government case, for example.
Do you understand the difference?
Do a control F on the document for "Epic failed". Notice how the words "epic failed" are completely different from "everyone in the world has failed"?
This case is about epic's case, not others. Mostly because Epic did not provide enough evidence and failed on the fact finding portion of the original trial.
But that has nothing to do with if other groups provide evidence that Epic missed.
> Epic attempted to argue
Epic attempted to argue it. And epic's, and only epic's argument has failed.
> which it obviously does not because of the existence of Android.
I don't think you understand what a monopoly is, according to anti trust law.
A monopoly is not a single firm. Instead it is about durable market power.
"Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors."
If you want another source, for future lawsuits, you can simply research the US government's upcoming case against apple.
> No legal precedent supports the idea that the Android or iOS app stores are monopolies under US law.
The right way to look at it is "US law is not written in a way to recognize and break up these monopolies". By any common sense or economic definition, these are monopolies. That the legal definition is out of whack is a problem which will hopefully be corrected.
For the same reason we act like there's such a thing as a "Right to bear arms" or a "common-law right to joint ownership of property with your spouse."
The law is arbitrary and highly path-dependent. But in the absence of the law, there's no "market" period, not as a government-protected legal construct. Without the law, Apple could just tell Epic to pound sand because they have the right-of-might to rotate encryption keys, release future versions of the iPhone that scan for Epic software using hardware-based solutions and brick the phone if they're detected, and drop OS updates that retroactively delete Epic games from user phones if they wanted.
I'm glad for the law that prevents that, even if it's the same framework that makes me act like there's a "mobile game market."
The important disctintion is that monopoly (the formal definition) is subtly different from monopoly (the legal definition). I don't think anyone would deny that Apple has a formal monopoly, but legally speaking they haven't done much to pressure nor push out competitors.
That said, the arguable App Store monopoly (legal) is being challenged in the EU and it sounds like Apple is getting ready to relinquish a bit of that stronghold (apparently by giving the EU a different model of software or something. Still have yet to read the rumors in detail).
>I don't think anyone would deny that Apple has a formal monopoly
If Apple has monopoly here then Best Buy has a monopoly too. Everything you buy in Best Buy is priced according to Best Buy. You can't walk into a Best Buy and say "Oh, I already paid for it on Sony's website, so I'm just here to pick up the TV".
My above comment was talking about IOS and the mobile market overall (of which it has some half of market, give or take a percentage), not the App Store.
Even then, if we focus on stores: Google with multiple stores still does have a play store monopoly (formal, arguably legal given current lawsuits) on Android OS. And on top of that, the EU rulings with Apple mean your metaphor may not be as farfetched as you make it seem.
These aren't based on my opinions so much the fact that both OS are under legal fire. So I wouldn't dismiss this so easily.
the entire iPhone experience is the product. While technically we know that other app stores can and do work on it (Cydia, Trollstore, etc), from a US legal sense there's no separation between the App Store and the iPhone being distinct things.
It seems like the "iPhone experience" is paying a ton more than you should have to, including the 30% price hike for in-app purchases. Since Apple is already a status symbol brand that might not hurt their image much, but at least this case helped to raise awareness about what people are buying into or have already signed up for with the iphone.
I can guarantee you no apps will drop their prices 30%. When Epic pulled their stunt[0], 1000 v-bucks that normally costed $10 were only discounted to $8. They still pocketed $1, maybe ~=$0.68 after CC processing fees.
Of course prices won’t drop because price is based on what people are willing to pay. However the actual creator will have up to 30% more funding instead of a rent seeker, which means the creator will have more margin to increase quality, which benefits the consumer.
It sounds like the anti-steerage rules are still in limbo—they have not yet taken effect while the appeal is ongoing, and the article doesn't indicate they're already officially set to take effect at a certain date.
Does someone more familiar with the process know if it's a guarantee now that Apple will be forced to comply with that part of the original ruling, or is there room for them to get it removed or postponed indefinitely?
The 9th Circuit stayed its mandate until the Supreme Court decided whether to grant cert. That stay expired this morning when the Supreme Court published its orders list.
The 9th Circuit’s mandate will now be sent down to the district court, and judgement entered (on just the anti-steerage provision) for Epic. It’s a done deal at this point.
> "But, due to California law, Apple cannot prevent developers from informing consumers that lower prices are available outside of the app."
Is this CA law enforceable because Apple is HQ in CA, or simply because they do business there?
- if simply due to operating business there, couldn't Apple geofence the entire state and only allow developers the option to steer consumers who are using their app within CA state lines?
- if it's simply because Apple is HQ in CA, couldn't Apple simply move it's HQ (on paper) to another US state (like Texas, where a lot of other tech companies have moved HQs)
Not only Apple, but you also need to take account of those app developers and consumers in scope of the law. If you want to avoid this, you need to fully shut down your entire app store business in CA. This is why a big-tech regulation in a single prominent state sometime can become effectively an US-wide regulation.
> Except to the extent expressly provided in the following paragraph, this Agreement and the relationship between you and Apple shall be governed by the laws of the State of California, excluding its conflicts of law provisions. You and Apple agree to submit to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located within the county of Santa Clara, California, to resolve any dispute or claim arising from this Agreement.
> if it's simply because Apple is HQ in CA, couldn't Apple simply move it's HQ (on paper) to another US state (like Texas, where a lot of other tech companies have moved HQs)
I was going to say there's no way they're registered in CA, most companies are registered in Delaware or whatever.....
But nope! Apple Inc is registered in California. Go figure. For all the Irish tax shenanigans, they're still registered in California!
Apple Inc., located at One Apple Park Way, Cupertino, California, for users in the United States, including Puerto Rico;
Apple Canada Inc., located at 120 Bremner Blvd., Suite 1600, Toronto ON M5J 0A8, Canada for users in Canada;
Apple Services LATAM LLC, located at 1 Alhambra Plaza, Ste 700 Coral Gables, Florida, for users in Mexico, Central or South America, or any Caribbean country or territory (excluding Puerto Rico);
iTunes K.K., located at Roppongi Hills, 6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-6140, Tokyo for users in Japan;
Apple Pty Limited, located at Level 3, 20 Martin Place, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia, for users in Australia or New Zealand, including in any of their territories or affiliated jurisdictions; and
Apple Distribution International Ltd., located at Hollyhill Industrial Estate, Hollyhill, Cork, Republic of Ireland, for all other users.
The location of a business’s structure labeled “HQ” has no relevance to applicability of laws.
If the business is conducting business with people within a given geographic boundary, then the laws of that geographic boundary apply to the business.
> if simply due to operating business there, couldn't Apple geofence the entire state and only allow developers the option to steer consumers who are using their app within CA state lines?
Sorry, but that is not the law. There are lots of factors that go into choice of law, and you can't distill it to a few sentences like this. In any event, almost every business (and even B2C) contract and EULA these days includes a choice of law provision that parties agree to bind themselves to, and Apple's are no exception.
> a choice of law provision that parties agree to bind themselves to, and Apple's are no exception
Choice of law provisions are still subject to the prevailing law. And the first determinant of prevailing law is physical location. Sacramento exerts de facto jurisdiction over every Apple and related asset within California.
Are you familiar with any cases in which a court voided a choice of law provision in an otherwise valid contract? (Yes I’m aware of the requirement now imposed that the language needs to be carefully drafted.)
If that was true, why would any business subject themselves to California’s usually more stringent regulations?
> U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in 2021 rejected Epic's antitrust claims against Apple. But the judge found that Apple violated California's unfair competition law by barring developers from "steering" users to make digital purchases that bypass Apple's in-app system, which Epic contends could save them money with lower commissions.
California law isn’t 100% disadvantageous for all businesses. There are benefits as well. The choices aren’t always easy to make as the picture is rarely black and white.
Maybe I'm totally wrong, but what actually happens if there is a federal court ruling that goes against a state (i.e. CA) law. Which things take precedent if the supreme court wouldn't take it. Maybe this is not the situation here and misunderstood it completely, but let's say then this is a theoretical question.
A Federal judge applied California law (in this case, a law against unfair business conduct). That’s normal, just like state courts can (sometimes) apply Federal law.
Federal courts can “certify” questions of state law to the state courts if they don’t know how they should be applying state law, but in this case neither the district court nor the 9th Circuit felt the need to ask for clarification. The Supreme Court has final say on questions of Federal and Constitutional law. State courts have final say on State law and State Constitutions.
A State law that directly conflicts with a Federal law is preempted. There are also sometimes “zones” of preemption created by broad Federal laws. But, in this case, there is no conflict.
My understanding is “no” (Apple is enjoined against enforcing the rules on anyone), but if we wait a few days we’ll know for sure.
Apple’s cert petition at the Supreme Court was basically the argument that’s it’s unfair that a lawsuit from one developer would prevent its anti-steerage language from adhering to any developer.
> Apple’s cert petition at the Supreme Court was basically the argument that’s it’s unfair that a lawsuit from one developer would prevent its anti-steerage language from adhering to any developer.
Regardless of the legality around this, I just don't get that kind of thinking. So anyone who wants to be able to exercise their legal right would have to, individually (or as a class, I guess) take Apple to court over this?
That would actually be kinda fun, now that I think about it. Apple getting hit with thousands of lawsuits over the same thing, all of them settled case law, having to spend all that money on lawyers and court fees.
This reminds me of a dumb quirk of Italian law. Italy offers citizenship to non-citizen foreigners who can prove an unbroken line of citizenship back to their most recent Italian ancestor who was an Italian citizen. (It's more complicated than that and there are some rules and caveats, but that's the basic idea.) There's a super-misogynistic part of that law that says citizenship cannot be passed through female ancestors prior to 1948. The Italian Supreme Court has ruled that part of the law unconstitutional. But the law is still on the books, and Italy's legislature has not updated it to remove the unconstitutional language, so anyone who wants to use that route to get citizenship has to go to court to do so. It's such a waste of everyone's time and money (well, the lawyers, as usual, make out quite well: a slam-dunk case for them that takes very little effort).
> So anyone who wants to be able to exercise their legal right would have to, individually (or as a class, I guess) take Apple to court over this?
Sort of? Apple's appeal was essentially:
1. The federal court was asked by a single litigant to rule on whether this provision of our agreement with them is unfair.
2. Because the role of courts is to provide relief to the litigants of the case, this court has exceeded its authority by making a ruling against all agreements that Apple has with other parties.
I don't know that they necessarily expected to win on that claim, but it doesn't seem to be entirely without merit. There is risk in a world where courts can use individual cases to effectively act with executive and legislative powers.
It seems easy to kind of shrug at this, but this does seem quite significant because of many mobile apps are 'free to play.' Apple pocketing 30% of all of these transactions, and forcing users/devs to go through Apple, is a major part of its revenue. And all of those apps now have the option to direct users to alternative payment methods, where they can both charge users substantially less and make more profit doing so. Should be interesting to see what happens!
> Yvonne-Gonzalez was skeptical of the 30% fee during the trial, and in the ruling she was suspicious about Apple's justification of the commission, writing that "the 30% is not tied to anything in particular and can be changed," but did not order Apple to do so.
Nothing in the ruling[1] seems to prohibit Apple from still charging a "iOS License Fee" for access to the developer tools, APIs, etc. I can very well see them charging based on # of installs or % of revenue, even if developers direct people to an outside payment processor.
In fact, Apple is already pretty clear in its developer agreement [0] that the 30% commission is for "its services as Your agent and/or commissionaire" (Schedule 2 3.4), not for its services as a payment processor. They are contractually allowed to take the 30% fee out of payments collected, but merely using a different payment processor doesn't remove the obligation to pay them for their other "services as Your agent and/or commissionaire".
I think the main thing is they'd drop it to 26/27% to comply with how they can't perform anti-competitive actions to prevent developers from using another payment processor. If it was still a flat 30%, developers would be losing ~=3% more on every transaction with the overhead that comes with using another processor.
Apple randomly guessing how many users would have bought the app through the store and charging that amount to another company sounds like an easy anti-competitive lawsuit.
They don't have to randomly guess, they'd ask developers who are using external payment processors to provide an accounting of the number of sales, with a clear paper trail showing that the developers certified that their numbers were honest.
It'd end up functioning similar to income tax: Apple has a pretty darn good sense for what the numbers should look like, but they'd rely on you to fill in the gaps, and if you didn't do so accurately they'd sue you for breach of contract.
I'm not sure what would make that an easier anti-competitive lawsuit than the one that Epic lost.
Let's say Spotify adds this in-app message: "Buy with Apple Pay, or visit our website and pay 20% less". No links, just simple text. How would anybody be able to produce a "clear paper trail"? Spotify can only say the total number of web purchases. Apple has no choice, other than to guess how many people would have bought through the app store instead.
If they decide to ban these kinds of messages, and only enforce link tracking, that would be directly in conflict with the ruling.
> If they decide to ban these kinds of messages, and only enforce link tracking, that would be directly in conflict with the ruling.
Which part of the judgments would that conflict with? Both the District Court’s ruling and the 9th Circuit’s decision that affirms it only speaks of anti-steering, without any qualifications on potential limitations on steering users away
They also both affirm that the commission would still be due and that Apple would have the right to audit to enforce payment of said commission.
Apple, since then, has implemented changes to its policy that allow steering, albeit under circumstances that will enable them to track users using the purchase link and claim commission over sales in the seven days that follow.
Any opposition to these requirements would be met with a “legitimate interest” counterargument, the legitimacy of the interest already being established by the courts by them stating that they still owe Apple a commission.
In layperson’s terms:
The courts have said that Apple can’t prohibit developers from steering users to an alternative purchase flow while simultaneously stating that developers will still owe Apple the commission.
Apple, in response, said: Fine, but we want to be able to track it when you do this and make sure you don’t make it look like the native IAP flow to trick users.
What’s the argument of the developers here? They’re allowed to steer users away to their purchase flow of choice; they just have to do it in a way that makes it easy for Apple to audit the owed commissions.
I can’t imagine the courts frowning upon this, especially when both courts have stated on multiple occasions in their judgment how arduous it would be for both Apple and the developers to ensure payment of commissions if alternative payment methods are utilized.
This alleviates some of those concerns.
Spotify is in a category that already is a known exception for Apple [0]—they sell a subscription to media and they have an accompanying app. I expect the anti-steering provision to go away and for Apple to just eat the cost on that category.
Most apps that currently go through the App Store for sales are simple. There are sales for apps (or subscriptions), and they can be individually accounted. You and Apple both know how many users you have on Apple devices, and Apple gets a cut of sales to those users.
I don't like it any more than you do, but it's not hard to do the accounting.
[0] "A Licensed Application may read or play content (magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video) that is offered outside of the Licensed Application (such as, by way of example, through Your website) provided that You do not link to or market external offers for such content within the Licensed Application."
That only works for apps that are exclusive to Apple devices or that have separate licenses for Apple devices.
If I buy Epic in-game currency from Epic and use it on my PC to buy some skin, and then use the skin I bought that way when playing on my iPhone, should Apple get a cut of the money? If yes, how much? The cost of the skin, or the cost of the in-game currency (maybe I bought a 10 USD bundle, but the skin only cost 1 USD, the other 9 USD is just staying in my account unused)?
On the one hand Apple payments are really frictionless. There is no way 3rd parties can match it. Plus easy to track/cancel.
On the other hand a lower price is a lower price. But is it low enough to get enough users to enter a credit card?
Combine this with the alternate App Store thing (looks like EU only) and we’re in for some shaking out of what is and is not a good strategy as an app maker with never before seen on iPhone options in the mix.
> On the other hand a lower price is a lower price. But is it low enough to get enough users to enter a credit card?
An excellent question. I think the thing is that for the prices that often show up in apps, maybe not? Like, for a $3 app I don't think I'm going to go visit some website, go through their flow, and get out my credit card if I'm only going to save $1. (Ok, I'd probably do it on principle at this point to stick it to Apple, but that's not the same thing.)
If I were going to shell out $100, I'd certainly go to the extra trouble to pay $70 instead, though.
The dangerous thing is that with all these mobile games that slowly siphon money from you, you might over time end up spending many tens or even hundreds of dollars (where 30% off might be a significant amount of money). But if each transaction is small, you might not think much of the difference of a dollar or so per transaction.
I would expect from a developer's perspective it makes sense to stick with Apple's mechanism until ARR * 0.30 = whatever it costs to run your own solution. (More power to you if you're the developer who can do that from the start, but that won't be most people.) I wonder, though, if the slow siphon becomes more obvious if it's attributed, in a customer's credit card statement, to [Game Co.] instead of [APPL]. I won't be sad if fewer people spend money on those types of games.
- no need to enter a CC number in another site (and maintain it)
- no need to create another account to make that payment (or unironically use Apple Pay flows)
- trivial cancellation
- trivial cancellation of limited time trials
Maybe I'm fortunate, stupid, or a combination but not being able to pay for Netflix using Apple subscriptions really bugs me and I'd pay more to avoid it. Which reminds me I need to cancel it...
Depending on the developer, there is also quite a lot of trust I need to impart on them too. I am reasonably confident in Apple keeping my data secure. I would likely be confident in it for the bigger apps out there, like your Netflix or Spotifys. But some rando app, would I be comfortable putting my personal and financial info on their server, instead of just using Apple's?
2023 New years day I signed up for an offer 6 bucks a month. I knew it was only for a year, but then I forgot. On new years day 2024, I got charged 50 bucks. Maybe I could have fought it, maybe I could have spent some time challenging it, but it was not worth my time, so I canceled my subscription. But what cost me 12 X 6 = 72 for a year now cost me 50 bucks for a month.
This is the difference Apple's payment system can make. You visit the store regularly (hopefully), so you know when the renewal is up, and at what price. Even if you do not visit regularly, I presume you can set up alerts to notify you of expiry, and IIRC they allow small adjustments to the price without notification, but 6=>50 would be notified. Pretty sure.
Of course this does not work for some companies who thrive on people slacking off on canceling re-priced subscriptions.
At least apps can provide transparent options now. Your payment page could have a "pay us through the App Store" button that costs 30% more than the "pay us through our website" button, and explain why the numbers are different. Safari supports ApplePay, so your app could link you to a website which has a one-click payment option: no entering credit card details required.
Would be hilarious is Apple decided to make ApplePay less convenient in Safari now to hobble the competition.
App Store payments are independent of customer service for the app itself. App developers would have to provide that either way.
App Store refunds are not that different from credit card chargebacks. They mostly happen automatically, with some automatic abuse mitigation as well as a mechanism for the developers to report abuse.
With Stripe, foreign exchange is an extra 1%. The rest of those are taken care of as part of the 3% fee. It doesn't cost that much to process payments.
The one nice thing about the App Store is the centralized recurring subscription management. Seems like a nice juicy low-hanging fruit for Strip to disrupt now that they're allowed to.
The AppStore still charges developers for chargebacks and you still deal with dispute resolution and customer service. Foreign exchange fees are generally 1-2%, so they're not a huge consideration.
It's actually worse with the AppStore, because Apple provides absolutely no assistance to the developer unless you're a billion-dollar plus company.
Funnily enough I think third parties will integrate Apple Pay to maintain the seamlessness. Apple likely would be hit for anticompetitive practices if they forbid developers from using Apple Pay for third-party In-App Purchase payments.
As far as I know, Apple Pay does not cost merchants any extra than any other card payment mechanism. Apple actually collects fees from the card issuing banks to be able to work with Apple Pay:
Sort of a tangent but I feel it's a little troublesome that the Supreme Court can deny appeals without even a paragraph of motivation. Clearly they need to filter based on some criteria or another so denying the appeal is fine. But I feel that shouldn't ever occur without some sort of reason as to why. I enjoy listening to the oral arguments for certain cases in the USSC (https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio/2..., it's interesting) and I can't help but feel that a lot of the cases that are accepted are of somewhat less importance than "can an effective monopoly be forced into less monopolistic business practices" or some variation of that.
As I understood this ruling at the time, one major caveat was that they have to open up payment options but are still allowed to demand 30% of the third-party payments, thus making it mostly irrelevant.
This article mentions nothing about it - was this interpretation overly pessimistic?
How would that work? From my previous comment, let's say you add this message (no links): "Buy with Apple Pay, or visit our website and pay 20% less". Nobody knows how many users decided to visit the website instead.
It would work the same as many other revenue sharing agreements out there (including those for Epic’s own Unreal Engine). Yes, there’s no technical mechanism to keep you from screwing the other party (and small-scale fraud will likely go undetected), but there are contractual/legal mechanisms.
Pretty sure wrong. Apple cannot tax you for buying things on the game’s website. It’s just in app purchases that they have a monopoly on. So it’s annoying but it is possible. Hopefully developers make use of this and other regulation finishes the job
"Apple has also confirmed that it will charge a commission on purchases made through alternative payment platforms. This commission will be 12% for developers who are a member of the App Store Small Business Program and 27% for other apps."
> The commission will apply to “purchases made within seven days after a user taps on an External Purchase Link and continues from the system disclosure sheet to an external website.”
The argument was that Apple can use a business model similar to Epic's business model for Unreal Engine: no matter where / how you sell your game, Epic's licensing terms have you pay them a cut of your revenue.
No, it would only be if you made the purchase via clicking on a specific link from within the iOS app, which Apple allows via a certain API, called an "External Purchase Link".
So Apple's method of complying is:
- yes you can link to an external price, but you need to use our API (External Purchase Link) to do it, per our terms
- any purchases made via an External Purchase Link require Apple be paid the usual cut, per our terms
Seems to fairly clearly violate the spirit of the last ruling, but not the letter of it. I dislike Apple's behavior here, but it's actually kinda genius from a "malicious compliance" perspective. Doing the above is going to be more annoying and you will still owe them a cut, so everyone will just keep doing IAP via Apple if their implementation is allowed to stand.
Pretty sure that Epic will sue again over this, and quite easily win. If Apple has to allow you to advertise that things can be bought from somewhere else, it doesn't seem plausible they can mandate how exactly you advertise this.
> The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld much of Rogers' decision in 2023, finding that Epic had "failed to prove the existence of substantially less restrictive alternatives" to Apple's system.
What does this mean? Does Apple even allow any alternatives?
It means that Epic failed to identify a better way for Apple to collect its 30%/15% fee than mandating developers use its in-app purchase system.
Epic’s cert petition at the Supreme Court focused on the argument that it’s unfair that their identified solution needed to be equally or less burdensome, but the Supreme Court turned them away.
Imagine a world where laws forced Apple to enable feature an Apple-compatible version of the Play Store alongside the App Store and vice versa. How would that not be a net positive for the mobile device ecosystem?
Side-loading apps is not the mecca you think it is. It's going to create even more walled gardens, except this time, companies like meta don't have a fear of being yanked from the app store when they engage in practices that are harmful to user privacy.
Should a mega corp like apple be the gatekeepers for this kind of stuff? In an ideal world no, but at least they are the only ones doing it.
People could, y'know, just not install the Facebook app, if they're unhappy with Meta's privacy practices. Of course, given that Meta's privacy practices are already atrocious, and people still use Facebook, I guess maybe it just doesn't matter?
I agree that side-loading apps is no panacea; I use Android, and while I do have the F-Droid store installed, and even side-load a small utility app or two that I've written myself but can't be bothered to make publicly available, I'm actually not sure I know anyone in person who uses anything but the Play Store.
But having the option there, to me -- even if I didn't use it -- is huge. Hell, having the option to install a third-party OS on the phone (even though I don't do it, because it would involve too many compromises to my daily use) is huge.
That should be the default, not this locked-down nonsense Apple forces on everyone. It's just sad to me that so many people accept it as ok and normal.
> People could, y'know, just not install the Facebook app, if they're unhappy with Meta's privacy practices. Of course, given that Meta's privacy practices are already atrocious, and people still use Facebook, I guess maybe it just doesn't matter?
Just apply this same reasoning to Apple iPhones. Everyone says sideloading is a big deal, but it turns out that when the phones don't have sideloading, people still use them anyway. I guess maybe it just doesn't matter.
Alternatively, hold both companies to higher standards through regulation and start treating technology as a secular field of businesses instead of the World Cup.
Your “higher standard” is only “higher” for your preferences.
Personally I’m happy with both the operation of Facebook and Apple.
I do not wish a 3rd party with no track record of technical innovation, and especially not the US government, come and make some rules about what is a “higher standard”.
I mean the reason Apple took action against Facebook was because they were trying to get traction on their own Ads platform. They didn't stop tracking on iphone they just made it so they were the only ones that can do it.
Aka they used their position to crush competition not to increase privacy. They absolutely could have taken the opportunity to improve privacy overall but that would have limited their own ads platform so they didn't.
Steam feels like a DRM / manufacturer control system more than anything else. It has to be open to launch any of your games, it sorta forces you to install updates to even launch your games (some asterisks there), it disallows downgrading them, a solid number of games are Steam-only, and it shows ads.
Technically there are games on Steam that don't require the Steam client to be running in order for you to play them. If you google 'Steam DRM-free games' on DuckDuckGo you'll easily find a list.
Games that are purchased and downloaded on Steam but can be run without it? I didn't know this was a thing without hacks, but yeah there are some that do this out of the box.
Unfortunately they don't have the market share to have the clout to do a lot of things users really want. I run Linux on my laptop as my daily-driver and sole OS; I've been mostly doing this for more than 20 years now (with some brief dalliances with macOS here and there that never stuck). But my phone runs Google's stock Pixel version of Android.
While there are other examples, a single example I think suffices: Google Pay. I like contactless payments, and I like not having to fish around for a credit card (or just not having to bring a credit card, say if I'm out for a run). What are the chances of a Google/Apple-Pay-workalike app ever appearing on the Librem 5 or Pinephone? Seems pretty slim to me.
I'm not saying these phones have no value; clearly they do. And the world is better off with their existence. But they are not a realistic choice for most people.
> I like contactless payments, and I like not having to fish around for a credit card
Yes, unfortunately, if you want the freedom and control, you have to pay for that with some compromises.
> What are the chances of a Google/Apple-Pay-workalike app ever appearing on the Librem 5 or Pinephone?
Waydroid allows to run Android apps. It works fine on my Librem 5, unless apps require verified Android environment. Unfortunately Librem 5 has no NFC at all. AFAIK Pinephone offered a case which enabled NFC functionality.
Credit cards and contactless payments alike are a far bigger form of control than phone OSes. Bank, government, and advertisers watching your purchases, building a profile, taking their cut, and banning any buyers/sellers they want. In real life, not just digital. If I were worried enough about control to use a FOSS phone, I'd for sure be paying with cash too. But I'm not.
Also, cell carrier will be tracking your location and giving that info out. Not sure if that can be avoided, but maybe a prepaid plan helps anonymize it.
This underestimates the freedom you get with such a phone by a lot. It's not just about tracking but also about being able to run what you want how you want it and having full access to your device like with a desktop: https://forums.puri.sm/t/librem-5-daily-driven-in-profession...
I have a desktop and am familiar with what it offers. Run arbitrary code on it, and modify the hardware if I really want. I used a jailbroken iPhone for years, which is just the software part.
Everything except the modem firmware is updated automatically, without tweaking, and getting better every month. I didn't tweak anything, just waited for updates. If you were in a hurry, you had to tweak everything, yes.
Glad you had a good experience. I didn't. I still don't consider either device a serious contender. "Just wait" is not what people want to hear when their phone doesn't work. I envy the people who can introduce such obstacles into their own lives; I, and many others, cannot.
I'm wondering when that was ever true? Until the advent of the iphone, from my recollection phone devices didn't allow you to install whatever you wanted. In fact they were even more restrictive for developers than they are now
Tons of counterexamples: Windows Mobile, PalmOS, Symbian, even dumbphone operating systems like S30 allowed J2EE apps. Of these, the strictest control was exercised in the J2EE ecosystem, which could be (and often was) configured such that only programs signed by the OEM could run. But that was an extreme case, because all smartphones operated with what kids these days called "sideloading." "Sideloading" used to be called "installing" and you didn't need to do it with a specific piece of software run by the company who issued your operating system.
It will be interesting to see how far the anti-steering ruling actually goes. Will Apple still be able to block links to a alternative payment options? Or what if the link contains a token that logs you in automatically and goes straight to a payment form that’s almost indistinguishable from an in-app form?
"Developers may apply for an entitlement to provide a link in their app to a website the developer owns or maintains responsibility for in order to purchase such items."
Thanks and wow, they’re really doing everything imaginable to make it difficult to include such a link. And their rules say the link cannot contain any additional parameters so it rules out the possibility of just linking directly to a payment form. You would have to log in first, then pay.
Devs just won't add links when informing their users that it's cheaper on their website and Apple can't do anything about it. They are not allowed to ban it according to this ruling.
I will only say there are two important legal issues to keep in mind in cases like this:
1. Every company is, in some respect or another, technically a monopolist with regard to its own products. Indeed if this were not true most would go out of business rather quickly.
2. Different legal standards apply to a company selling a finished product to customers vs a company licensing/selling a partial solution to other manufacturers who then sell a finished product to customers.
If you are interested these two principles are a decent starting point for investigation.
No it doesn’t, because the cases are completely different.
Google engaged in anti competitive practices by discouraging competing stores. Apple doesn’t have competing stores so there’s nothing to compete against.
The law is consistent in that regard because of the scope of the subject matter.
I wonder if this will open the floodgate for more apps to offer free trials through the App Store, with an in-app paywall linking to an external payment processor with lower fees. Basically, Apple gets stuck with the obligation to maintain the App Store, while taking a considerably smaller chunk of the overall pie. Might make them rethink the value proposition of a closed ecosystem if they can't recoup enough of the cost for running the store.
I think apple still gets to collect its 30% in this situation. The ruling was that apps can direct to other payment options but apple can still collect the 30% fee. Only way around the fee I see is to have just a general subscription service and tell users to sign up on the website, giving plausible deniability about where the signup came from.
Not sure why that would lead Apple to opening their devices up. I’d first expect Apple to start charging developers fees for bandwidth usage not tied to a purchase.
"Snubs" doesn't really seem appropriate here as prose. There are plenty of issues with SCOTUS and the US judiciary one could complain about, but a simple one is simply that at the end of the day there is one supreme court of 9 people and they physically can only handle so many cases per year. LOTS or cases of way more fundamental importance then this one get declined every year because only a fraction of those seeking appeal to SCOTUS can possibly get it even if they thought all of them were worthy, which they aren't. At the end of the day this particular case doesn't really seem to rise to that level. There's no big circuit split, no deep constitutional issues, no enormous injustice to individual people, lower courts don't seem to have gotten anything particularly wrong given the current state of the law, and Congress could certainly step in if it wanted in ways much more fine tuned. Each company has plenty of money to be made out of it but that's about it. Neither side got everything they wanted.
I'd personally like to see a federal law trying a scalpel first, where at purchase time people can elect to have the ability to add to the root key store of any hardware they buy, or entrust that to the manufacturer instead. That'd preserve most if not all of the benefits for those who don't want to have to deal with that like right now, and wish to pool their collective purchasing power with Apple or whomever to enforce certain standards on developers. But it'd mean anyone who wanted to could also venture forth from the walled garden and small devs who wanted to focus on that could do so. In terms of power balance I think it'd work out pretty well, the biggest players also want to reach the broadest audience and thus would face more restrictions, whereas small focused devs fine catering to a devoted fanbase, or pure open source, would have the most freedom. It's kinda too bad so much of the conversation is binary of "complete jailed garden" like right now vs "devs getting to do whatever they want to everyone whether they like it or not" like on the PC.
Also, more simply put, SCOTUS declining to review a case is a tacit (and somewhat weak) way for them to state, "the lower court is probably right about this and we don't think we need to get involved".
Even for a hugely important issue, they might decline to hear the case on those grounds, if they think the lower court got it right. For some types of hugely important issues, of course, they might choose to take the case anyway (even if just to affirm the lower courts ruling), in order to establish binding precedent over all federal circuit districts (and below).
> Also, more simply put, SCOTUS declining to review a case is a tacit (and somewhat weak) way for them to state, "the lower court is probably right about this and we don't think we need to get involved".
This is not the correct view. Every year SCOTUS passes on many cases they think are worthy but not worthy enough to justify taking up the court's limited time. It can't just be a "worthy" case. It has to present serious constitutional questions, represent a split between the circuit courts, or similar.
The federal court view is that the courts cannot and should not be the venue to solve all problems. Congress should get off its lazy butt and legislate.
>This is not the correct view. Every year SCOTUS passes on many cases they think are worthy but not worthy enough to justify taking up the court's limited time. It can't just be a "worthy" case. It has to present serious constitutional questions, represent a split between the circuit courts, or similar.
This seems circular. your last sentence IS what constitutes a worthy case (for the SCOTUS)
>> "the lower court is probably right about this and we don't think we need to get involved"
> This seems circular. your last sentence IS what constitutes a worthy case (for the SCOTUS)
No I was correcting the idea that by passing on a case SCOTUS is blessing the lower court opinion.
SCOTUS passes on cases where the justices might completely disagree with the lower court or appellate decision. They pass on cases they think are a huge injustice too.
>Every year SCOTUS passes on many cases they think are worthy but not worthy enough to justify taking up the court's limited time. It can't just be a "worthy" case.
You must be using worthy in a different context than worthy of SCOTUS review.
I agree with you that decision or justice of the lower court is irrelevant, the SCOTUS cares about the reasoning behind it.
A case is worthy of the SCOTUS if it has a conflicted constitutional questions at the heart of it.
> Also, more simply put, SCOTUS declining to review a case is a tacit (and somewhat weak) way for them to state, "the lower court is probably right about this [...]"
I was refuting that notion. It is 100% incorrect.
SCOTUS passes up cases they think are wrongly decided all the time.
They pass on cases with constitutional questions if the case itself is not suitable (according to whatever criteria they use).
They pass on cases that meet all the bars because their calendar is already full with cases they think are more important, often trusting that the issue will present itself again in the future with different case.
SCOTUS passing on a case is not any form of agreement with lower courts. Not strong agreement. Not weak agreement.
I agree that SCOTUS passing is correct and with everything else in your first paragraph as to why.
Addressing the issue would certainly be the job of the legislative branch but I question whether they should try to address this with a law. My feelings on this are a bit conflicted because I truly hate "Jailed Gardens" and wish they didn't exist. However, I also know that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to draft legislation that responds to dynamic, rapidly evolving problems in open-ended domains like high tech. It almost always ends up being ineffective, subverted or causing unintended consequences downstream.
As much as I hate it, in areas of governance often the only viable options are all non-optimal in various ways. In this case, I think the 'least bad' approach is to let Apple have their jailed garden and run it the way they want to (short of demonstrable anti-trust, of course). Personally, I opted out of Apple devices a long time ago for this very reason and use Android devices I can root and modify however I want. After all, some people like living in the iOS jailed garden and appreciate the benevolent dictator keeping them safe and making their decisions for them (or are at least willing to tolerate the costs for the benefits). For my part, this is just another of those things I really don't like but for which reflexively calling "Thar oughtta be a LAW!" would be ineffective or make things worse. The road to dystopias is paved with the good intentions of those trying to legislatively enforce idyllic utopias. It's annoying but maxing broad freedom to choose often requires tolerating the annoying behavior of others maxing their freedom to choose (including those selling time-shares in an idyllic garden-jail).
The POV you express is quite common but it's mistaken in that it assumes the role of the courts is to "fix" things, when it is not. Their role is to apply the law as written consistently.
While the word "fairly" is often used in place of "consistently", that can lead to confusion because some people mistake the word "fairness" in this context as meaning "morally fair" judicial outcomes. While "moral fairness" does sometimes happen as a result of applying the law consistently, it's not the primary goal or purpose of courts. When things in society are happening that are unfair or otherwise wrong, blaming the courts is like blaming the CPU instead of the programmer. In the US, the "programmer" is congress (the legislative branch). They write the code. The courts in this analogy are the CPU. Their job is to run the code as written correctly and consistently. If the outcomes aren't satisfactory, it's either a bug, missing feature or unhandled exception in the code.
The Supreme Court's primary job is to fix system bugs at the micro-code and kernel levels, stuff like scope violations, etc, when the system runs correct code improperly. It's very rare for the issue behind "bad or unexpected outcomes" to be due to the micro-code or kernel but it can happen. Those rare times are when you call the Supremes. When the Supremes pass on accepting a case without comment, it's like rejecting a bug report, often due to it being a bug in the application-level code. In those cases passing is like responding "Not our Bug." Other times they are basically saying the issue is due to a program using system-level APIs in undefined ways. From their perspective, the system responding to ill-defined or undefined instructions with unexpected or inconsistent results is actually correct, so they respond with "Won't Fix (GiGO)". No one wants the CPU making up how to correctly respond to undefined instructions on its own. This is why the phrase "Courts don't make they law, they apply the law" is such a mantra.
In this case, congress hasn't yet written any code designed to directly address this use case. If we want to "fix" things we need to get the feature approved and on the legislative backlog to be addressed in a future sprint.
Indeed Congress could do much much more to make legal proceedings "morally fair".
They could greatly expand the bench (aka have more judges) so cases get heard faster.
They could create entirely new levels of legal proceedings by expanding "small claims" or invent other forms of legal review that are less formal with simpler discovery rules.
They could greatly expand the basis for appeals and insert more levels of review into the existing process, rather than just trial -> appellate -> SCOTUS.
The fact that the current congress is dysfunctional is a political problem the courts can't fix.
That's not the point the poster above was making. They were saying that, if Congress passed a morally unfair law (say, Congress passed a law requiring all transactions in the USA of any kind to pay a 30% commission to Apple Inc.), it's not the job of the courts to fix this moral unfairness. Just like if you write `rm -rf . /`, it's not the job of the CPU to prevent the OS from deleting your entire file system.
The courts, including the Supreme Court, are supposed to apply the law as written. If people are unhappy with the law, they need to take that up with Congress, not the court system.
That is what I was saying. If Congress wanted courts to be more "morally fair" they could decide what that means and remodel the courts to apply that new standard.
And I think we both agree a great many things are issues Congress should resolve by changes to the law.
I find it unfortunate that the vast majority of arguments (for or against) in these kinds of cases are just ad-hoc complaints about what the poster wants because it would be more convenient for them. There is very little reasoning from principles going on. The much larger question is: should companies be able to be rewarded for creating a market? That covers everything from retail stores to game consoles and cell phones.
Millions of businesses pay commissions every single day to someone else for access to the other company's customers. Some people say they aren't doing anything of value, they are just getting in the middle... but if they hadn't done anything at all there would be no market and no customers to sell to. It takes a ton of work to build a business, find customers, keep those customers happy, and get those customers to enter an ongoing payment relationship the customer trusts enough to continue making purchases. And come back to keep buying into the ecosystem every X years. My personal opinion is that has a value greater than $0 that so many people seem to be arguing here.
> could greatly expand the bench (aka have more judges) so cases get heard faster
For what it's worth, we have 62 judicial vacancies with 25 nominees pending [1]. Bugging your Senator about this from time to time isn't a bad idea, since most electeds are convinced their voters don't care about judges.
This idealism ignores decades of the Supreme Court acting as a shadow legislature on topics as broad as environmental protections and sexual freedom. Roe v Wade, and decades later Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization, are not matters of microcode.
That's only because Congress refuses to legislate. Congress could pass a law that says women have the right to an abortion up to X weeks with Y exceptions (or don't or whatever Congress determines is the will of the people), and Roe v Wade or Dobbs would become irrelevant. Even if the SC somehow found that would be unconstitutional, Congress even has the power to enact an amendment to the Constitution.
Sure, but that doesn’t fix the problem with mrandish’s argument. People assume the Court’s role is to fix things because from like 1950–2016, it fixed things: the Court’s political outlook was much closer to the average American’s than Congress’ was, and its macro-decisions served to nudge the law towards popular opinion.
I was trying to communicate how the legal system was generally intended to function. You are quite correct that historically it has not always lived up these aspirations. The tendency in certain eras for SCOTUS to creatively go beyond its charter and "color outside the lines" is part of the reason there's confusion about how the court was intended to function. Although, the popular media also bears a good share of the blame for constantly assessing court actions on moral outcomes instead of judicial process.
I also acknowledge the exact boundary of the court's proper scope has always been a philosophical gray area over which reasonable people can disagree. However, I think most judicial observers today would agree that some courts in prior eras definitely exceeded those proper bounds, even if they don't agree among themselves on exactly how much and when. While there are still those who believe the excessive judicial activism of the past was proper, I think today that viewpoint is a small minority. I suspect that's because even those who agree directionally with certain historical precedents established through such activism understand that the judicial creativity that's wonderful when the court leans your way becomes terrible when the winds inevitably blow the other way.
Hence my analogy about CPUs and how few people think it's a good design approach to "fix" poorly written code or even programs doing things we no longer agree with at the CPU level. The most predictable, reliable and sustainable long-term design approach is for CPUs to consistently run the code as written and for misbehaving code to be fixed at the program level. I think this remains the most proper design intention despite some CPUs of the past being purposefully "creative" to achieve what some may believe were more desirable outcomes than just sticking to the code as written.
How the system was intended to function is only relevant to the mistakenness of the popular conception of its ethical obligations insofar as that conception does (or should) rely on beliefs about that founding intent. Generally, it does not: it's moral intuition—and when that intuition has lined up so well with the realpolitiks for most of our lifetimes, I strain to see the argument it should, either.
> absurd to argue that it isn't interesting enough to be worth the time
This is why “snubs” is misleading. This case has been extensively argued. SCOTUS is saying no novel legal questions are apparent to it; the appeals court is affirmed.
What does "interesting" have to do with it? Millions of people talk about all sorts of stupid shit that happens in current pop culture (including me!).
I am very interested in the outcome of this case. I also absolutely do not care for the idea of the Supreme Court wasting one hour on it.
The Supreme Court does not decide cases: it decides questions. Whether or not the case is interesting, the legal questions the parties asked the Court to resolve were evidently not worth its time.
> Today's denial of petitions for certiorari means that Apple has mostly run out of legal options to prevent changes to its App Store policies now that multiple courts have found its "anti-steering" language anticompetitive.
So the courts agree that Apple uses anticompetitive practices.
As siblings point out, the courts agree to one single anti-competitive practice.
The thing here is that the only thing Epic won on was a fairly clear California law, the anti-steering stuff. While this is good news, this isn't really groundbreaking: it's an unsurprising legal result, given that the CA law exists, and doesn't conflict with any federal law.
The bits where Epic lost were much more significant, and were related to plain-vanilla anti-trust law. Law which I had hoped would apply here and break up Apple's iOS app distribution monopoly.
A court found that Apple used a specific business practice found to be anticompetitive, this was upheld on appeal and SCOTUS declined to address any legal questions. So, to restate what you said more correctly: a court has found Apple used an anticompetitive practice and an Appeals court upheld it or “agreed” if you prefer.
Law is a whole lot more boring when you murder the rhetorical intent in how people interpret it with extreme prejudice.
Yes, that's correct. Hopefully some of their other anti-competitiveness practices get ruled against but for now it's rather limited to some of their most flagrant behavior.
US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39020365 - Jan 2024 (238 comments)