Epic says Apple will reinstate developer account

This is one of those things where there is only upside for everyone involved.

Apple (and Google) need to be saved from themselves sometimes.

Meanwhile the repeated reversals are making Apple look guilty and nefarious.

From the article

“Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies. As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program.”

According to the article it was because Epic met with Apple and gave better assurances that they'd play ball rather than deliberately break their contract like they did last time.

Regulators don't seem to have had anything to do with it.

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So what changed? Apple tells 9to5Mac that it has held further discussions with Epic. The result is that Apple has received proper commitment that Epic will play by the rules as legally defined.

“Following conversations with Epic, they have committed to follow the rules, including our DMA policies. As a result, Epic Sweden AB has been permitted to re-sign the developer agreement and accepted into the Apple Developer Program.”

It's unlikely that "regulators" had anything to do with it, given the quick resolution. I'd be more inclined to think that Epic went back to Apple hat-in-hand and begged to be let back in, probably promising to muzzle Sweeney.

Apple should offer 2 versions of the phone. One version for the consumers who appreciate the extra level of security and another for the rest.

Imagine if the US had equivalent regulators as well...

I think this was all a distraction to give regulators some way to pretend they are doing something while retaining their ridiculous pricing structure and avoiding discussion on that.

This was an overreach by the EU. Android is open source, let Epic launch their own phone, or their own Android store.

Methinks this crowd loves regulation a bit too much.

How would this benefit consumers?

Apple really didn’t make this easy for themselves. In addition to all the legal stuff, they literally gave “the finger” to every EU developer and customer of theirs.

EU regulators show be noted for once. Because the US regulators are on their second siesta.

At least in the U.S. business owners have the right to refuse service or turn away a customer to protect their patrons and business.

That's the issue with all these providers. Every couple of weeks there's a story from someone whose Google account was suddenly closed with no way to access their emails or pictures again.

As was said, this is normal in the US. Private businesses can refuse service to anyone for any reason. There's that paint color that is allowed to be used by all but one person because the inventor doesn't like them.

On the other hand, I'm definitely not saying this is okay or sane just because it's standard practice in the US. It's also how we got legalized segregation and we had to pass laws carving out exceptions to create protected classes such that you're not allowed to refuse service because a person is black, for instance. Just doing this splintered the country and created the modern GOP with its southern strategy.

So it's nice to see these large web companies having to respect the laws of other jurisdictions and not just the US with its hallowed history of property rights over all else, going all the way back to chattel slavery. If the EU can force saner norms on the web, I'm all for it.

I’m not defending Apple’s stance here, but I think the point they were making is that Epic had already admitted to intentionally breaking their previous agreements with Apple for their own gain. The court then ruled that Apple could ban Epic for any reason. Sweeney essentially called the new terms illegitimate while at the same time entering a new agreement where those terms applied to Epic. It’s somewhat understandable that, when seeing that, Apple would not trust Epic to not intentionally break the rules again.

I personally think it’s silly to believe that Apple cares even a little about Epic’s criticism. They probably thought they had a legitimate case that would let them stomp out a potential big App Store competitor before it could get off the ground.

So according to Apple [edit] one isn't allowed to say bad things about a company publicly or they are allowed to ban your account? Interesting view.

No, according to Apple, they believed Epic was going to violate their developer agreement again, and when they asked Sweeney for a commitment he sent them a two sentence email. His public actions were only a modifier on top of his seeming lack of committal and previous history of being a bad actor on Apple’s platform.

Spotify says bad things about Apple all the time, but they've never been banned because they've never violated Apple's rules.

So according to DF

I don't really think that's according to DF, more so Apple.

The main point made is "Epic is verifiably untrustworthy". You're quoting a secondary factor.

It won't end, Apple is too big now, the alternatives are:

  1. Split Apple into smaller companies
  2. Operate Apple like an utility company

You want to sell in their house, you gotta play by their rules. It’s that simple.

It ends when Apple learns to balance the interests of their shareholders and the interests of their customers better. I would go as far as saying that the way Apple banned even any mention of alternative payment methods for in-app services was clearly abusive and faudulent.

Where does the command over minimum wages, minimum maternity leave and minimum consumer warranty end?

Where democracy decides it ends.

In Europe unlike in America the government makes regulations that benefit the general public. That's it.

If enough shareholders vote in favour of Apple leaving the EU and its overbearing regulations, that's when it would end.

They won't because they know Apple exiting would simply hand the market to those that can bear the harsh yoke of consumer regulation.

The USB-C mandate is nothing to do with Apple. It’s ensure interoperability and reduce waste.

Setting standards is one of the oldest forms of regulation, ever since weights and measures were standardized to ensure people could trade more easily, ensuring that when you bought a pound of flour from one vendor it would be the same pound as the vendor across the street.

Ideally, as a consumer, in a market where commodity computer hardware is not arbitrarily restricted to extract the maximum attainable profit from consumers? It has been shown time and again that both volunteers and competitors can quickly and easily build and ship software, including entire OS's that run on the hardware, the only thing preventing them from doing so is anti-consumer and anti-competitive controls.

It's asinine that I, as a consumer, can pay over $1000 for a device and not be able to choose which software I can run on it because the developer of that device locks out access. It's even worse that the company I bought it from can arbitrarily disable the device, features, and services that I have paid for, and I have little to no recourse.

Where smartphones end effectively being a public utility, is my guess.

Personally, I've like to get the old audio jack socket added back to iPhones and laptops.

Maybe that's just me though. ;)

It probably ends with happy consumers :) At least, I'm very happy that the EU is trying to avert the worst anticompetitive behaviour and restoring my control over the hardware that I purchased.

I'm no lawyer, but it seems like it ends and begins at wanting to sell in the european market. It doesn't seem that different from mandating that cars obey certain emission standards, contain digital radios etc. Or how food packaging contain nutritional information. Mandating 2-year guarantees for sold goods. There's quite a lot of legislation on specific requirements on sold goods.

One can argue whether this specific legislation is wise, but legally i don't think there's any limit to what the EU can mandate for goods sold in their market.

Why should it end? So far it's awesome.

Why would it end? Governance is a continuing process.

Not where, when. And the answer is never, because the EU regulates what companies themselves either can't regulate themselves because no one's willing to adopt the other's standard, or there's a position of dominance that doesn't even require collaborating with anyone else. And they do that for a pretty simple reason: to ensure that businesses do right by the EU citizenship.

And they do that across _all_ sectors of industry, you only noticed the tech one because it's in the news you pay attention to, but everything from farming to textiles to tech to pharmaceuticals are heavily regulated so that the people that live in the EU can enjoy a reasonable standard of living.

When devices aren't sold in the EU. If it's sold in the EU, the EU can regulate that model.

It shouldn't end, we shouldn't let them do whatever they want.

"for one" or "for once"?

If you can't have successful tech giants, you can have principles. If Apple/Meta/Alphabet were European companies the EU regulators would have absolutely no scruples about these things.

Every country talks 'free trade!' out of one side of their mouth, and implements protectionism via various concerns about health/safety/fairness out of the other when it's expedient. The US isn't any different, it's just not tech companies we're worried about (except some clock app that the Gen Z kids are obsessed with).

The US came very close to passing similar legislation recently and it still could. This bill had bipartisan support. Apple was able to kill it using relationships with leadership, but the votes were there. My organization Fight for the Future worked on lobbying for this, and while it's super difficult to pass legislation over big company opposition, it's not impossible. We can have similar rules in the US if we keep pushing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_App_Markets_Act

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39644788.

What was the deal with PWAs?

They want to minimize the amount of control lost. You cant find the limit without testing the limit.

Culture is a very hard thing to change at any company, including in the face of existential threats. Look at what's happening at Google with AI.

"We are a walled garden and will not interoperate or tolerate alternatives" is in Apple's DNA, and no decision maker at any level at the company will risk suggesting otherwise for fear of being branded a traitor, even if it is a very good idea.

they don't seem to realise that they can't win against a sovereign power that is actively legislating against them

Right? They make so much money, what’s the deal. Seems like they let the MBAs take over. I get that not all money they make is liquid, but a rounding error to Apple would be enough money to change someone’s life.

Showing their true colors. "Going mask off" as the kids would say.

There's an observation that computer programs tend to reflect the organizational structures of the company that developed them. I would go further and argue that company cultures are a reflection of the founders that built them.

In the case of Apple, Steve Jobs was an emotionally manipulative psychopath that was very good at conning people, making anyone he talked to buy into his bullshit. When he didn't get his way, he'd cry like a child and throw tantrums. Everyone at Apple absolutely lionized the shit out of Jobs, even during the interregnum period where the company was being torn apart by idiots. All of the upper management was his own hand-picked successors, who have largely continued doing exactly what Jobs was doing, just with higher scale.

The world largely did not notice this because the actual product (at least, when Jobs was actually in the driver's seat) was good. Part of the capitalist social contract is that we don't care about how the sausage was made so long as we aren't assuming the risk[0]. But this is still very much a religious cult that just so happens to be shaped like a for-profit corporation, run by people who were hand-picked by its dogmatic, emotionally unstable founder[1]. It just so happens to also employ actual geniuses.

In the Apple religion, there are commandments, and one of them is "thou shalt not install unauthorized third party software, for it is the malware of the beast". Like other religions, the commandments are based in some kind of plausible system of rules, we can absolutely Chesterton's Fence them, but that rationale has been forgotten by true believers who take them to axiomatic extremes. Apple is not exactly going to die on this hill[2], but they are going to try to make the system as restrictive as possible within the DMA's constraints, because they've RDF'd[3] themselves into thinking their greed is protecting users.

[0] Also, most of the people Jobs really fucked over were the kinds of people society did not care so much about in the 1980s.

[1] This also applies to the FSF, except it's rules are "thou shalt not bind the user to your tech cult". It's an anti-cult cult.

[2] Though I've had the urge to make fake sales pages for an Apple Nuclear weapons program and photoshop the words "POOR IMPULSE CONTROL" on Tim Apple's head.

[3] Reality Distortion Field, not Resource Description Framework

Apple is finding out they do not have more power than government. Apple isn't flailing at all, their competition limiting decisions are forcing government to regulate them.

More likely that the request for more information on this case from the EU commission to Apple triggered the walk back. At least the EU Commissioner for the internal market is happy about the reverse: https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1766167580497117464

I don't really understand the notion that Sweeney's original response was terse or insufficient. He said exactly what needed to be said (good faith effort to follow the rules) succinctly and professionally. Should he have offered a pinky swear or a blood oath? Or an essay pledging his allegiance? I generally like Apple and their products but in this instance they came across as bitter and petty.

I would posit that Apple is the "untrustworthy" and unhinged party here.

I don't think there is a strategy, this is all theater so he has some pushback if investors file complaints or lawsuits during the next quarterly results meeting. They can't say that Tim Cook didn't do everything in his power to make them even *more* money.

Since, ultimately, his duty as a CEO is to prioritize the financial wealth of shareholders. If he just complied with the EU then he'd be voted out by the board by the end of the week.

Is he going overboard? I think so. But I've also never owned a $2T+ company with investors and an entire government breathing down my neck.

That's the confusing part. With the DMA policy at least there's a strategy, even if it's a strategy that will ultimately be rejected as non-compliant.

Picking these petty fights or whining about getting fined is not helpful, certainly not to Apple and their shareholders. It's hard not to conclude that Apple leadership is making stupid emotional decisions rather than rational ones, which is especially dumb when you're running a trillion dollar company.

It works in American courts, where you can file appeal after appeal, during which time you don't have to comply with the court's original verdict.

Trying again and again until you get what you want seems to be how it works. Seems to be the same for when adversarial change causes enough public backlash. Oh no we were called out for <bad thing>, let’s wait a few months and try again, until it gets through unnoticed enough to show up on the radar.

It's a much better experience on windows to not be stuck with a windows store. Third party stores like steam are way better

If Google or Mozilla release real versions of their browsers for iOS/iPadOS and offer long support for them, then I see it as a win. I've seen so many usable iPads turn into e-waste because Safari is out of date and can't be updated.

You must be the only person on Windows who likes the Windows store. I'm personally really glad alternatives like steam exist.

Microsoft isn't forcing anything upon the devs other than signed binaries. This is not the same thing at all.

I don't think you realize your very own example is proving that it's actually bad. If Microsoft did what Apple did, you wouldn't have steam as the one gaming store, you would have the windows store.

Open store competition in the gaming area leading to steam being far in the lead, not the OS gatekeeper, is a proof that it allows for more choices for consumers and the better one taking the lead.

Outcompete them all by creating an amazing store with 3-4% fee and you will be the last one.

The mandated monopoly with 30% fee alternative is unreasonable.

Aside from their spectacular laptops with arm, they seem like they are being left behind.

Vision Pro is probably a gimmick along with the whole VR world right now, which will change soon too but overall I don't see anything exciting about apple.

Their pricing is infuriating and so are their decisions (laptop 8gb ram in 2024???)

To me it looks like they got stuck in the "this is what worked for us, so let's only do this" mentality and take no risks.

They stand on the shoulders of giants and most importantly on their cultural presence...

Because Apple's share price growth now depends on services, not cool hardware.

The App Store monopoly generates billions in ad revenue from app vendors advertising their apps on search results. That will take a huge hit if there's an alternate app store they can potentially pay a lot less to gain exposure.

EU trust watchdog is less trusting than FTC.

While Mr Perry prefers to parry words before a material blow lands, Mr Cook naturally avoids cooking an antitrust case.

A childish move, unexpected from such a company like apple especially with timing.

Which probably boils down to one overzealous middle/higher manager trying too hard to be a good boi for superiors to get extra bonus... I don't think it panned as expected. Otherwise apple corporate culture is quite rotten.

It was mind-blowing to me that in previous threads, Apple fanatics were defending Apple, saying that Epic had broken the developer agreement. It hadn't. Schiller clearly stated that he banned Epic because he didn't believe Sweeney when Sweeney literally said that he would abide by the agreement. I don't see this behavior with any other company.

All sides are marketing and trying to maintain an image. It's up to you to figure out what's actually happening without bias.

Breton posted on X that his team would look into this case with high priority yesterday. Apple noticed they are about to get a beating and decided to handle this case proactively before they get fined and regulated even stronger

I agree. I feel like this was really a muscle flex from Apple in terms of preventing shenanigans. The most critical part of this for Apple is the message to others who are thinking about opening a app marketplace:

- You're still going to be paying us our 27%

- You screw around and we will clip your wings.

Incidentally, if you don't like the rules Apple has set up, start pushing for a law that you do want. If you happen to be in the US, actually write your representatives rather than just whine about it online to a bunch of other people.

Epic already made assurances that they'd follow the terms of the agreement before their account was terminated. It did it very professionally and concisely. Apple basically responded with "we wanted a 10-page essay equivalent to grovelling and begging in dogeza position instead of a professional response" and terminated their account.

There is zero evidence of Epic doing anything on their part after that. There is, however, evidence of the EU Commission warning (if you can't parse "Under the DMA, there is no room for threats by gatekeepers to silence developers" as a warning, you may need to improve your functional reading skills) Apple and inquiring for explanation.

Tim Sweeney isn't chest beating. He is attributing this development to the EU. Chest beating would mean attributing this development to their own actions, which he is not claiming at all.

The EU reacted immediately and asked Apple for clarification. That means, they reminded Apple that the law is the law, which they seemed to have forgotten. You're the one dreaming if you think Apple got their shot together by themselves.

In the best case they are learning that, due to their own behaviour, they are now sharing custody of the EU app store with an adminstrative bureocracy.

But I suspect it'll take them more time until it fully sinks and until they are done testing their new boundaries.

Well done.

No catch, just the threat of "and if you keep trying to violate EU law, we're going to keep levying billion dollar fines on you until you either obey the law, or you cease all operations in Europe. Which will get you sued some more because you're still on the hook for support after you leave"

They'll try harder to find an excuse next time.

You should probably do a few cuts with Hanlon's Razor in this case.

The simplest explanation for what happened with Apple this past few weeks is that there's no master plan. The EU told them the rules, they didn't take them seriously, now they're realizing a bit late that they can't afford not to respect the rules and they're scrambling to figure out what that means.

I never give any Big Tech with nation-state influence the benefit of the doubt. This is a legal/PR stress test. They failed this one, but they won't fail others.

Does it harm trust in Apple's brand? From what I can gather, people who already love and trust Apple want them to do this. They view the status quo as better, and would likely lose trust if Apple didn't fight this as much as possible.

They balance with the arrogance of Cupertino.

The DMA imposes FRAND obligations on gatekeepers and free interoperability requirements ("interoperability" here meaning literally everything from using the installation APIs to install apps from the web to being able to call all OS APIs for free on your app. That's why Apple's "Core Technology Fee" is screwed)

That's a very defensive interpretation of the events. All of the parties involved have complex motivations, as is made evident by whatever-the-fuck just happened over the past 24 hours.

Apple's instigating act was a last-minute reversal on the eve of the DMA, it was never going to go unnoticed. Right or wrong, an inquiry was issued and Epic's complaint was resolved - it's up to Apple to "respond" now. Despite your logic, I don't think it would be wise for Apple to see this as an opportunity to flex. Europe is not going to change their mind, and punishing Epic isn't worth the money they would make Apple anyways. It's less about flexing at this point, and more envisioning what a smart path forward even looks like for Apple in a post-DMA reality.

The DMA doesn’t have provisions that would force parties to enter into an agreement

Are we to believe that they’ve lost their appetite for their favorite meal?

So? Apple is seeing things if they think any of this will (or should) stop a motivated competitor. Turning this into bloodsport does not benefit the butchering pig, Apple's reversal here is easily explained as an act of self-preservation. Their initial stance was hardly defensible unless you could feel the $AAPL weighing down your performance index. Crushing Epic is not a reasonable goal given the extraordinary legal danger it exposes them to.

The Apple shareholders are not having their eyes light up with dollar-signs in light of the recent response. This is a dangerous and petty road to walk, with ostensibly no financial benefit and the possibility of setting a negative precedent.

30% isn't some outlier share though? It also has been that way since the beginning, so it's not like they achieved their market position and then jacked up the prices; it's been this way the whole time - and, in fact, they've added programs where smaller businesses only pay a 15% commission..

I think nobody would be this annoyed if Apple were saying 10% or something around that. 30% is more than most companies pay in tax on profits

Almost every developer pays 15%. You only pay 30% if you earn more than a million dollars a year from the App Store.

If only it was just about the money. The review process itself is beyond ridiculous sometimes, and sometimes has you remove things from your apps that you want and your users want, but Apple doesn't like.

Why does Epic get the privilege to force me to buy things through their store?

You find it amusing that Apple vets their developers by … vetting their developers?

It's entirely possible that Apple's legal team advised the executives of this outcome and more generally the risks involved with the Epic ban move, but were ignored as a strategic decision.

If a VP is "low tier" then isn't calling them a VP at all just title inflation? At what point is a person responsible for the consequences of their actions regardless of intent?

I think it's too early to draw any conclusions. It's going to take some time before you can definitely say if consumers are better off.

Too bad in the US they often just hand the pen for the regulation to the entity being regulated

Regulations CAN be good. But Europe tends to have better regulations than the US lately.

Epic and Apple famously had a close relationship. A few years back, Epic was onstage at every Apple keynote. They were showing off games on iOS on macOS, talking about API development. I understand why Tim Sweeney felt like they were getting ripped off, but it seemed like they had a strong relationship.

I wonder if something happened behind the scenes.

Maybe they've finally realized that the $38 billion fine for failing to comply was in fact not a joke.

The stock dumped 10% almost immediately after the announcement, might also have something to do with it.

It really hurts to watch Apple shoot themselves in the foot like this.

A time will come when Apple will have legitimate reasons to crack down on third-party app stores. Someone like Meta will invariably try some crap like sneaking VPNs into their apps so they can get complete surveillance on their users (ex. https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/).

Apple is going to have less credibility when they say "no, this is wrong" when this eventually happens if they keep screwing with Epic like this.

I'd rather trust a democratic state than a greedy company, directed by a few individuals, who's sole goal is to maximize profit.

Not everyone is a Libertarian.

Some had a nice childhood or brain cells and recognize the difference between a dictatorship and a government working in their favor to protect them from big duopols disrupting competition

from a practical sense this is insignificant, unless collectively organized

I have not played Fortnite in years, but I am buying the new battle pass.

"Yes" because we value our users' safety, and "No" because we value our users' safety. And they just toss one of their billions of coins.

We won't know, because just one side is releasing selective communications as part of their PR.

There was communication before Apple approved Epic's Swedish subsidiary to get an account, and there could very well have been other omitted communication as part of this exchange and after as part of the resolution.