He has to fight to the bitter end and when he finally looses the board will probably replace him for this idiotic stunt that cost them million in money and way more in reputation.
FYI to Sweeney: the court system isn't supposed to issue decrees about a mobile OS needing to be the same as a desktop OS. They're supposed to be ruling on bills passed by elected representatives and signed into law by elected executives. There are no existing laws that say iOS has to work just like macOS or Windows.
Sweeney also doesn’t have to sell in App Store. He can go sell door to door himself for 0 percent commission or hire some kids to do it for him for a negotiated wage. Or he can just sell it in his website and pay just web hosting, I am sure Apple would be ok with that as well
Every store marks up the goods it sells on its shelves: Apple is no different. And “monopoly”? There’s plenty of competing smartphones out there including in Epic’s owners country, China.
II don't agree with the way Epic Games started this, but I do feel their sentiment. Taking 30% of someone's business in order to sell on their platform is like doing the same in order to make a MacOS or Windows 11 app. It does seem unfair.
This has been beaten to a dead horse. Imagine you're the owner of a shopping mall. Are you going to allow your tenants to operate stores in your mall for free and not pay any rent?
The answer is yes. A communist Chinese owned company like Epic would think that of course …
How am I supposed to be able to get 90% of the profits if Apple insists on getting 30%?
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm, but you can always get your own storefront and use android as your sole customer base. Then you’d get all the profits your heart desires.
Here's final exam for everyone: EPIC is owned by __________ (100pt).
Lol
i mean the fact CCP owned Epic is messing with America greatest company ? Doesn’t this deserve an investigation by our FBI or DOJ?
I mean doesn’t this deserve more investigation then boxes of paper consisting of dinner menus or letters at former president’s house?(Democrats) Or Investigating what Fauci did wrong with Covid?(Republicans) our government is so messed up
Love how his own example blows holes in his argument.
"Yes, Apple built the iPhone hardware and they designed iOS, and they deserve to earn a fantastic return by selling their devices with their operating system, as did the railroads deserve to earn a fantastic return by profiting from selling railroad tickets and transportation services," he tells The Verge.
"But what they cannot do under the law, and under any principle of fair competition, is Apple cannot use its control over the hardware and operating system to impose trade restraints on related markets," he continues. "Apple prevents other companies from establishing competing stores on iOS. That's similar to the railroads blocking the oil refineries from shipping their products on the railroad in order to take over those related industries." Apple isn't blocking him from selling his products (if he follows the rules everyone has to follow). They are saying, if you want to use OUR tracks, that WE built, you have to pay a fee, just like everyone else. That's literally the equivalent of selling "transportation services" for a railroad.
He's basically arguing that it doesn't matter that the railroad spent the money to build the tracks, he should be able to put his own train on them and use the tracks at no cost since they're already there...
davidw said: You don't think Walmart is making at least 30% of the retail sale price of an Xbox game?
Difference between Walmart and App Store:
A. Seller has to negotiate the deal individually with Walmart. Bigger companies have more leverage and get better deals.
B. Walmart buys the product outright and then puts whatever retail price it wants on the product in stores.
C. Most companies are going to be selling to Walmart below wholesale prices.
D. If the product doesn't sell well enough, you're SOL and Walmart isn't going to continue to buy it.
I do understand your points but the actual situation is not always as clear cut as it may appear at a high level. There are other types of relationships that exist between
what most consumers think are purely "buyers" and purely "sellers' in
the retail sector, especially in the realm of data warehousing and
analytics. Also, Walmart for one has a ton of leverage a lot of influence over sellers that it allows to sell in its stores, like making the seller stock the shelves and manage product replenishment. Forcing sellers to provide services like stocking the shelf space they are granted within the Walmart stores is not exactly what I'd call an outright purchase.
In other cases, retailers like Home Depot (and Walmart (and subsidiaries),Costco, ALDI, large food chains, etc.) have a lot of leverage over what product makers actually make, up to and including establishing retail price targets that the manufacturer must be able to hit in order to get their products on the shelves of the store owner. This very often results in the version of a product that you buy in the big retail store being materially different than the same version of the product that you would buy in other sales channels the manufacturer uses.
Like any analogy it's seldom a perfect fit, but it still can serve as a reference point. Some things that Apple does are similar to a retailer like Walmart, but some are very different and may never be similar, like Apple telling an ISV how to price their product to be allowed into the store. The advent of app stores, and especially Apple's App Store, have taken many things in directions we could never have anticipated at their inception. The compounding networking effects around the products that Apple sells take a lot of what they do to such massive and universal levels that people easily forget that Apple is not a public utility even though its influence is so massive and far reaching. Anyone trying to replicate Apple's success from square one today would have a monumental hill to climb largely because of Apple's success, none of which happened overnight. People like Sweeney want to erase the facts, costs, and efforts that it took for Apple to get to where they are today and pretend that because everything that Apple has already done is so well entrenched it's all now simply part of the landscape.
Just one final and specific point regarding your list items: If Apple took a position that bigger companies have more leverage and under performing vendors got the boot, the App Store would be a fraction of its current size. Many smaller ISVs would dry up and die because they'd have find a way to get their stuff recognized and distributed. The fact that the App Store works the way it does reflects a vastly different mindset from its creators. I suspect one goal was to attract more developers and expand the entire Apple ecosystem. It's kind of worked out very well in that regard, maybe too well for developers like Epic who want to be given preferential treatment and snuff out up & coming competitors in their line of business. If Apple culled Epic's competitors from the App Store due to lack of sales performance while Epic was given preferential treatment, I'm sure Sweeney would be quite pleased.
dewme said: I do understand your points but the actual situation is not always as clear cut as it may appear at a high level.
I think the main point to be made in comparing the App Store to retail like Walmart is that Apple's approach was primarily about a level playing field. No individual negotiations. Everybody gets the same contract/rules regardless of size. Part of the motivation for this by Apple was likely to do with their knowledge of how entrenched legacy developers were on desktop operating systems. It was a way of refreshing/resetting things for software development. That obviously doesn't mean that every part of Apple's approach with the App Store has been ideal, but I think you can generally make the statement that their approach is more egalitarian in nature than something like Walmart.
"Apple prevents other companies from establishing competing stores on iOS. That's similar to the railroads blocking the oil refineries from shipping their products on the railroad in order to take over those related industries."
Utter BS. What would be similar is if Apple were to try and take over Epics game developing business - which they won’t.
Railroads did not as far as I know stop oil refineries developing their own transportation system to compete.
What a muppet.
Epic should get together with Musk and develop their own mobile platform.
My thoughts on what should be regulated and what should be voluntary good behavior by Apple:
Apple should stop rent-seeking and any government regulation should narrowly target this and nothing else. There are a couple significant sources of rent seeking on the App Store: (1) Apple shouldn't require more than transaction fees from direct competitors to its first party services. (2) Non-platform content like eBooks or audio books shouldn't require more than a transaction fee.
Apple should introduce a creator-content level of App Store IAP fees when there are three parties involved. These creators are similar to small developers that Apple only takes 15% from anyway. Apple could ultimately take 15% from these transactions and allow the app developer to take another 15% for a 30% total fee.
The 30% fee is perfectly reasonable for games. Epic Games has nothing of merit to complain about when it comes to Fortnite.
Any place the agency model is traditionally used should be exempt from incompatible fees, but generally that is just non-platform content that is covered by the first bullet point.
The iPhone should not allow side-loading for security reasons, but Apple should voluntarily allow iPad (or at least iPad Pro) to side-load since it is marketed as a general purpose computer. It should allow open source software and complex workflows. With the direction that iPad is trending each release this feels inevitable. I don't think side-load should be required through any regulation since it is too blunt an instrument.
Apple should allow game streaming because it essentially transforms the iPhone in to an input peripheral for another device (even if that device is a cloud server). This shouldn't be limited much like Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony doesn't restrict Apple from adding game controller support to iOS. There should be no expectation of content moderating for this class of app if it is listed for adult maturity levels. I think it is fair not to allow such an app in the game category of the App Store since it's not a game and it might dominate rankings essentially providing free advertising. It could be placed in a utility or entertainment category. Despite Apple previously saying the opposite, I don't think Apple should allow games in the games category that are just a thin wrapper around single-game streaming. Fortunately Microsoft opted not to do this. The games category should be for native games only.
Apple should do whatever it takes to avoid streaming video services from sending you to a web page even if it means not taking more than a transaction fee. This burns good will from consumers that are increasingly aware that Apple is requiring this. It may be considered rent-seeking since Apple offers a first-party service that doesn't require fees although this is fuzzy since the actual content content is typically different. It is not commonplace to charge these fees on non-phone platforms and the medium is non-platform content.
Apple isn’t rent-seeking. They built and maintain the platform. They created a low-risk App Store that encourages customers to purchase apps, because they’ve been vetted for stability, security and compliance with UI standards. Purchases and subscriptions are low risk because it’s easy to delete apps and cancel subscriptions, no questions asked. Apple literally invented this paradigm for purchasing software.
These attributes deliver customers who would not otherwise exist. That is the exact opposite of rent-seeking.
Comments
A. Seller has to negotiate the deal individually with Walmart. Bigger companies have more leverage and get better deals.
B. Walmart buys the product outright and then puts whatever retail price it wants on the product in stores.
C. Most companies are going to be selling to Walmart below wholesale prices.
D. If the product doesn't sell well enough, you're SOL and Walmart isn't going to continue to buy it.
This is no different than Putin going after Apple
let that sink in
https://www.engadget.com/2013-03-21-tencent-sunk-330-million-into-epic-games-owns-nearly-half-of-s.html
i mean the fact CCP owned Epic is messing with America greatest company ? Doesn’t this deserve an investigation by our FBI or DOJ?
our government is so messed up
"Yes, Apple built the iPhone hardware and they designed iOS, and they deserve to earn a fantastic return by selling their devices with their operating system, as did the railroads deserve to earn a fantastic return by profiting from selling railroad tickets and transportation services," he tells The Verge.
"But what they cannot do under the law, and under any principle of fair competition, is Apple cannot use its control over the hardware and operating system to impose trade restraints on related markets," he continues. "Apple prevents other companies from establishing competing stores on iOS. That's similar to the railroads blocking the oil refineries from shipping their products on the railroad in order to take over those related industries."
Apple isn't blocking him from selling his products (if he follows the rules everyone has to follow). They are saying, if you want to use OUR tracks, that WE built, you have to pay a fee, just like everyone else. That's literally the equivalent of selling "transportation services" for a railroad.
He's basically arguing that it doesn't matter that the railroad spent the money to build the tracks, he should be able to put his own train on them and use the tracks at no cost since they're already there...
Utter BS. What would be similar is if Apple were to try and take over Epics game developing business - which they won’t.
Railroads did not as far as I know stop oil refineries developing their own transportation system to compete.
What a muppet.
Epic should get together with Musk and develop their own mobile platform.