Apple VP Referred for Criminal Contempt After 'Outright Lies' in Epic Games Ruling

[Ghengis LeMond]

This is a laughable take. Tim Cook is one of the most successful CEOs of all time in all of business. Leading the largest most successful company in history.

So was a guy named Jeff Immelt. Or, maybe the names Jeff Skilling/Kenneth Lay ring a bell? How about Bernie Ebbers? There are many examples of leadership failures and extreme hubris causing the downfall of seemingly invincible corporations.

 

[Chungry]

I know what you wrote but imo it was so obtuse it could be interpreted as I did. I totally agree with Apple that they are going down with the ship with respect to fees and commissions.

But epic wants back into the App Store and now they want to play “Monte Hall”*

*for those who get the reference

I don't think epic should be allowed back in, they burned that bridge and should live with their consent of their actions

 

[segfaultdotorg]

The new rumor is that Roman is working on the Apple iLie Pro app...

 

[bluecoast]

I've been saying this for years. So have many devs, Marco and company on the ATP Podcast have said this for a decade.

It's like the lying under oath thing: Apple is so clearly delusional they think they can will what they want into reality and it's all George Costanza after that:
'its not a lie if you believe it"

I fully expect if the criminal bit goes forward this will be Apple's defense. Time for an exec shakeup, because shiller is coming off as the only person with any moral backbone.

Apple is going to do massive reputational harm to their brand here. I've said this for years now. And as a stockholder this is not what I want.

Not an iOS dev don’t know any devs but I can well believe what you say.

The other thing that grates with me, is that Apple kept on saying that they were defending the App Store because of ‘their users’…

…When we all knew it was all about the Benjamins.

Now the judge has spelled out that yes, it really was all about the Benjamins and Apple are revealed to be patently dishonest on that front (and this isn’t even including the contempt of court thing).

 

[User 6502]

Ooof that's a bit naughty from Apple.

Now that ruling is fine, however consider this scenario.

The app is free in the app store - the only way to unlock the features is via a third party payment link which now Apple has to provide for free.

So who is going to charge for an app in the app store when they can take all the profit via their third party payment link.

There needs to be some kind of rule where by it's fine to use third party payment links without Apple taking a fee however you can't host a free app in the store and the ONLY way to active its features is via a third party payment link.

That would be like being able to setup in Target with your own stall for free and take a mobile payment handset with you to charge for anything you sell giving Target nothing.

This is a self inflicted problem. It is Apple who wants to force developers to use the App Store. Developers have been happy to self host their apps for years on Mac and pc and woukd probably do the same on iPhone if Apple allowed it. If Apple wants to force people to use its servers then it has to provide the service for free.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

There needs to be some kind of rule where by it's fine to use third party payment links without Apple taking a fee however you can't host a free app in the store and the ONLY way to active its features is via a third party payment link.

Sure. My app is ~5mb, and has maybe a few hundred downloads a year. Maybe 2000 if you include the rare app update.

That's under $1 in hosting costs.

I pay $99/year for, among other things, Apple to host my app. For the vast majority of developers, the developer fee already covers distribution costs.

 

[nt5672]

...
So who is going to charge for an app in the app store when they can take all the profit via their third party payment link.
...

Which will then force Apple to be more competitive when approving apps (i.e. not rejecting apps for stupid Apple reasons) and focus on better quality of the App store APIs and experience.

As a small developer I don't mind the 30%, I will never do my own App store, but I'm tried of being ignored, push around, having to follow Apple's arrogant nanny rules, being lied to, and having to jump through hoops that are stupid.

So for me, if there was a 3rd party App store, I'd sign up for it in a minute. Why? Because Apple's performance is terrible and will never improve until it has incentive.

 

[Chungry]

Which will then force Apple to be more competitive when approving apps (i.e. not rejecting apps for stupid Apple reasons) and focus on better quality of the App store APIs and experience.

As a small developer I don't mind the 30%, I will never do my own App store, but I'm tried of being ignored, push around, having to follow Apple's arrogant nanny rules, being lied to, and having to jump through hoops that are stupid.

So for me, if there was a 3rd party App store, I'd sign up for it in a minute. Why? Because Apple's performance is terrible and will never improve until it has incentive.

Don't forget their capricious, often contradictory approvals or rejections. They wield that like a cudgel. The notarization in the EU is even worse, as Apple turned it into a political hill to die on for certain types of apps. When they said they wouldn't.

This ruling will only embolden governments and further tarnish Apple's reputation. The damage will be seen for decades to come.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Don't forget their capricious, often contradictory approvals or rejections. They wield that like a cudgel. The notarization in the EU is even worse, as Apple turned it into a political hill to die on for certain types of apps. When they said they wouldn't.

This ruling will only embolden governments and further tarnish Apple's reputation. The damage will be seen for decades to come.

ATP guys were talking about this news as it dropped last night when recording live and even they were joking about the capricious App Store approval behavior...throwing out the "nice App you got there -- be a shame if something happened to it!".


That is a level of dictatorship from Apple that is good for nobody but Apple.

This dynamic needs to change.

 

[Mousse]

The judge stated that Alex Roman, Apple's vice president of finance, gave testimony that was "replete with misdirection and outright lies" regarding when Apple decided on its controversial 27 percent commission fee for purchases made outside the App Store.

"Contemporaneous business documents reveal that on the contrary, the main components of Apple's plan, including the 27 percent commission, were determined in July 2023," wrote Gonzalez Rogers in her ruling. "Neither Apple, nor its counsel, corrected the, now obvious, lies."

This is beyond bad. I'm not a lawyer, but I do know lying in court is one of the worst offense in the eyes of the court. Our court system makes judgement based on the idea that data is good--based on the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It takes some brass balls--cojones the size of grapefruits--to pull this stunt in court. Someone's transitioning from cushy C-level paper pushing to stamping out license plates.😬

 

[Chungry]

ATP guys were talking about this news as it dropped last night when recording live and even they were joking about the capricious App Store approval behavior...throwing out the "nice App you got there -- be a shame if something happened to it!".


That is a level of dictatorship from Apple that is good for nobody but Apple.

This dynamic needs to change.

Yup. All it does is hurt those that advocate for the platform. I missed the Livestream I'll have to go listen they usually have a nuanced take.

The broader takeaway is: this lands on Cook. The buck stops with leadership for any company. And clearly. Leadership built a toxic workplace lacking any compunction to do the ethical thing. Cook's Apple lacks any sort of ethical high ground.

 

[Plerf]

That’s definitely reasonable and the position that apple should’ve been in 5 years or so ago.

If you’re a developer now you are probably developing for iOS not because you want to but because you have to, due to the install base - and hey, because people love their iPhones (all credit to Apple for that).

But in general, this is not a great place for Apple to be in re developer relations.

As soon as Apple needs some help they’ll find they have next to no friends.

The lack of support from devs for the Vision Pro should’ve been a warning sign as to how little anyone is now prepared to help them.

I don’t disagree that Apple could do dev relations a WHOLE LOT better, but I think Vision Pro is its own problem. Short of just paying a lot of money I don’t know who wants to develop for a platform with an installed base of 11 users.

It’s ok that Apple wanted to put out a sort-of reference product for developers to get acquainted with, but not having any public roadmap of any kind to talk about growing the platform means that, if I’m a developer in general and in AR specifically, I don’t have the time and money for Apple Vision right now.

 

[Chungry]

I don’t disagree that Apple could do dev relations a WHOLE LOT better, but I think Vision Pro is its own problem. Short of just paying a lot of money I don’t know who wants to develop for a platform with an installed base of 11 users.

It’s ok that Apple wanted to put out a sort-of reference product for developers to get acquainted with, but not having any public roadmap of any kind to talk about growing the platform means that, if I’m a developer in general and in AR specifically, I don’t have the time and money for Apple Vision right now.

We have over a dozen of them in the lab, and the dev tools are pitiful. Apple just can't do more than one thing at a time with any sort of precision. We want to make great apps for enterprise and commercial interests but the ecosystem and tooling is anemic. It doesn't help things for the platform image that it's basically a giant "remote desktop for your Mac" as it's main use case. This harms the platform greatly. And it basically says, it can't stand on its own, it needs this to create value since there's not a good story for it.

 

[koelsh]

I'm tried of being ignored, push around, having to follow Apple's arrogant nanny rules, being lied to, and having to jump through hoops that are stupid

Not to mention how the interpretation of those rules changes based on what the review staff had for breakfast.

 

[Chungry]

Not to mention how the interpretation of those rules changes based on what the review staff had for breakfast.

Yet they let scam apps sit in the store for years. Untold amounts of scam apps abound even now. But give an honest dev a very hard time. Apple can't claim any sort of virtue surrounding security on their platforms when it's rotten in the app store. Some folks here still trot that out like it's a credible argument.

The only way Apple takes action is bad press. Running to the press is all they understand, when in reality people filing feedbacks -in a system operating as it should- would illicit a two-way conversation. Apple is terrible at squashing bugs because their priorities are shiny new thing. They've even said so.

 

[koelsh]

...coming late to where the puck currently is.
...chasing to where he envisions the puck to be (but hardly anyone else does).
...giving up on where the puck will be.

…building a half court barrier in one of the arenas to confine the puck for home field domination…

 

[gco212]

To play devils advocate for a minute, only a third of Apple customers ever even use Siri and even less have use for a conversational AI that can rewrite instruction manuals or perform complex equations on experimental data.

Apple are the richest company on the planet and there is always, always a strategic business decision behind everything they do (for better or worse). I see a lot of complaints about how comparitively dumb Siri is but very few asking why this might be.

It remains likely that Apple's user data showed them that barely anyone is using Siri for anything other than egg timers and reminders so they diverted R&D funding elsewhere. Why spend money improving a product the market was not asking to be any better?

Someone will mention the oft-rumoured 'Apple Car' but not realise that they were never thinking about releasing an automobile. It was only ever a platform for their machine learning and sensor arrays (thing Vision Pro) to collect real-world data without revealing the product in question.

From all accounts, it's not that Apple hasn't spent tons of money on Siri and improving it, it's that all the money has been wasted as Siri failed to advance in the way Apple hoped. Apple made a strategic business decision behind spending the money to improve Siri because they wanted a better system. They failed at that goal.

 

[I7guy]

Yet they let scam apps sit in the store for years. Untold amounts of scam apps abound even now. But give an honest dev a very hard time. Apple can't claim any sort of virtue surrounding security on their platforms when it's rotten in the app store. Some folks here still trot that out like it's a credible argument.

The only way Apple takes action is bad press. Running to the press is all they understand, when in reality people filing feedbacks -in a system operating as it should- would illicit a two-way conversation. Apple is terrible at squashing bugs because their priorities are shiny new thing. They've even said so.

This is somewhat of a strawman. Security is not an end-game, as you know. The fact there are one or more scamware/phishware/malware apps in the App Store doesn’t mean:
- apple doesn’t care about security
- or loses their virtue of their privacy and security stance
- apple isnt good at squashing bugs

I just saw a YouTube video by ThioJoe about a 10 year old gmail bug. 10 years? Does any tech company take bug remediation seriously?

 

[Chungry]

This is somewhat of a strawman. Security is not an end-game, as you know. The fact there are one or more scamware/phishware/malware apps in the App Store doesn’t mean:
- apple doesn’t care about security
- or loses their virtue of their privacy and security stance
- apple isnt good at squashing bugs

I just saw a YouTube video by ThioJoe about a 10 year old gmail bug. 10 years? Does any tech company take bug remediation seriously?

That's a fair point. It isn't just Apple that can't walk and chew gum when it comes to bugs

 

[iPhoneFan5349]

Apple is free to not offer free purchases / free downloads through their App Store.
They can charge $0.99 or something for every app downloaded.

I'd consider it a much fairer allocation of costs to third-party developers than today's model.

Isn’t it the easiest way for apple to open up the iPhone? Do they think people would choose to install from the web instead of just going to the AppStore? That’s like people choosing Kazaa over iTunes.

 

[dannys1]

This is a self inflicted problem. It is Apple who wants to force developers to use the App Store. Developers have been happy to self host their apps for years on Mac and pc and woukd probably do the same on iPhone if Apple allowed it. If Apple wants to force people to use its servers then it has to provide the service for free.

It's not going to do that until Steam, Microsoft, Playstation, Nintendo, Google, Amazon, Meta Quest etc do that with their digital stores, why should they?

 

[bcortens]

Name one major critical service to society that can’t be accessed if you don’t have an iPhone or other android device.

if a job requirement is an smartphone most employers will provide one. But for the typical person Apple is not a gatekeeper.

Even if the employer provides one that still means that Apple/Google is a gatekeeper for those jobs.

Most critical services don't require a smartphone, however they are easier and more convenient if you do. The ability to use apps to smartphones can make a lot of aspects of life (public transit for instance) more convenient, it is easier to use a banking app to pay bills than the same on a website.

Are there alternatives? Yes, however the ubiquity of smartphones has made their presence the default assumption. No one assumes you don't have one anymore, they just ask which platform. Android or iPhone. That is the question, not, do you have one.

 

[nt5672]

Isn’t it the easiest way for apple to open up the iPhone? Do they think people would choose to install from the web instead of just going to the AppStore? That’s like people choosing Kazaa over iTunes.

Apple knows they are not the best out there (for multiple reasons) and therefore Apple has to rely on strong arm tactics. It is really an indictment of the software quality in Apple's own retail software products. And apparently Apple knows this.

 

[dannys1]

Sure. My app is ~5mb, and has maybe a few hundred downloads a year. Maybe 2000 if you include the rare app update.

That's under $1 in hosting costs.

I pay $99/year for, among other things, Apple to host my app. For the vast majority of developers, the developer fee already covers distribution costs.

It likely does but you also pay for the customer services, the ease and safety of purchase a buyer has, the ready built (and world class) checkout process, the cards people already have added to their Apple account.

You could build your own website with all these things in, but good luck trying to get any traffic to it or anyone to actually buy anything.

And if you sell on any other app store, you're facing the same 30% fee with the exception of Epic who want 12% and Itch.io who want 25% - actually I believe at a low download app you'll only be paying 15% on the app store - that's well worth it. Name another product you could possible make and get distributed around the world and featured on store shelves where you keep 85% of the revenue? It's impossible.

 

[robvalentine]

That could be a solution however it's a horrible one as nearly every app on my phone is free.

I'm not about to spend 0.99 to install Facebook, Whatsapp, banking apps, web browsers, home automation apps, social network apps etc.

The solution I suggested makes the most sense - you can't host a free app on their store where the only way to unlock the content is via a 3rd party payment link.

You can have a free app but in app purchases go through Apple or you can have a paid app but subscriptions, in app purchase, upgrades etc can all be purchased with a third party link cutting Apple out.

Even if there were multiple app stores worldwide they shouldn't allow you to do that. Remove the hardware from the equation. Steam, a hardware agnostic platform wouldn't let you sell a free app in their store and then have people unlock the game for free with a third party payment link - you pay your commission to be part of a store that users enjoy managing their library in, having payments all in one place, having it sync across devices, being able to discover your content, being hosted on their servers and taking advantage of their technology like shader sharing and updated universal libraries etc.

Problem is that Apple don't let you download outside of the app store unless you are in the EU.

I don;t think there is a perfect solution, but if you force people to use the app store then you should be manadated to host all apps for that platoform.