Comment by rpdillon
7 hours ago
Just to ground the discussion in Apple's criminal behavior a bit, here's some excerpts from a 2025 ruling about Apple's behavior in this regard:
> Apple’s response to the Injunction strains credulity. After two sets of evidentiary hearings, the truth emerged. Apple, despite knowing its obligations thereunder, thwarted the Injunction’s goals, and continued its anticompetitive conduct solely to maintain its revenue stream. Remarkably, Apple believed that this Court would not see through its obvious cover-up (the 2024 evidentiary hearing). To unveil Apple’s actual decision-making process, not the one tailor-made for litigation, the Court ordered production of real-time documents and ultimately held a second set of hearings in 2025.
> To summarize: One, after trial, the Court found that Apple’s 30 percent commission “allowed it to reap supracompetitive operating margins” and was not tied to the value of its intellectual property, and thus, was anticompetitive. Apple’s response: charge a 27 percent commission (again tied to nothing) on off-app purchases, where it had previously charged nothing,and extend the commission for a period of seven days after the consumer linked-out of the app. Apple’s goal: maintain its anticompetitive revenue stream. Two, the Court had prohibited Apple from denying developers the ability to communicate with, and direct consumers to, other purchasing mechanisms. Apple’s response: impose new barriers and new requirements to increase friction and increase breakage rates with full page “scare” screens, static URLs, and generic statements. Apple’s goal: to dissuade customer usage of alternative purchase opportunities and maintain its anticompetitive revenue stream. In the end, Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this Court’s Injunction.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...
So, I wanted to avoid referring to this case because it undermines any discussion, but if you want to include it, the judge ruled in favor of Apple for nine out of ten claims made by Epic, including 1) Apple's 30% commission is not anticompetitive behavior, and 2) Apple has the right to not allow third-party apps on their platform. Apple, being Apple, attempted to subvert the part about allowing links to other storefronts by adding a 27% commission aas well as a scare page, which is what they are currently in hot water for. However, the overall decision was solidly in Apple's favor regarding the App Store's 30% commission and practices.
> One, after trial, the Court found that Apple’s 30 percent commission “allowed it to reap supracompetitive operating margins” and was not tied to the value of its intellectual property, and thus, was anticompetitive.
Epic is twisting other people's words here. Notice how they quote “allowed it to reap supracompetitive operating margins” but not the point about it being anticompetitive. It's because the decision never said that.