Peza

tenthousandthings said:

Peza said:

tenthousandthings said:

Peza said:

Fischer is obviously lying here, under oath no less. You can't have one employee state a group is a whitelist of trusted large scale developers with access to other API's, and then have another employee claim they are only beta testers. If they were beta testers you'd have a much wider scope of devs from big to small. Not hold any exclusive list of those you stand to make the most profit from... and who are substantial in size. 

EDIT looking further into this, it seems Hulu according to Apple internal emails shown in the trial had access to this special subscription cancellation API AT LEAST since 2015, yet Apple today on the stand are proclaiming this year that it's a beta test? Even though no other dev can access the same API today that Hulu uses? Pull the other one it's  got the bell from the Titanic attached to it...
And from what I can gather Hulu still uses this 'special' API.

Does not look very good for Apple.

Based on what it says here in this article, it seems clear that it *was* a live beta, one that ended once Apple “had subscription upgrade/downgrade capabilities built in.” I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that the live beta never ended and Apple never finished the job, since they are saying pretty much the exact opposite of that. There’s no discrepancy that I can see.

The “white list” seed program continues, obviously, but that particular live beta ended, equally obviously.

Devs do not have access to the same API, that’s the difference, Hulu still is using a special version no one else can access, and they have been using it since 2015, that’s what people are saying, it’s effectively according to Apple been in beta for several years, so only a select whitelist of devs can use it. You seem to have missed that point?

“people are saying” — what are you referring to? I don’t see it in this article. Who are these people? I mean, you’re accusing an Apple employee of lying under oath. That’s a pretty serious allegation. 

tenthousandthings said:

Peza said:

Fischer is obviously lying here, under oath no less. You can't have one employee state a group is a whitelist of trusted large scale developers with access to other API's, and then have another employee claim they are only beta testers. If they were beta testers you'd have a much wider scope of devs from big to small. Not hold any exclusive list of those you stand to make the most profit from... and who are substantial in size. 

EDIT looking further into this, it seems Hulu according to Apple internal emails shown in the trial had access to this special subscription cancellation API AT LEAST since 2015, yet Apple today on the stand are proclaiming this year that it's a beta test? Even though no other dev can access the same API today that Hulu uses? Pull the other one it's  got the bell from the Titanic attached to it...
And from what I can gather Hulu still uses this 'special' API.

Does not look very good for Apple.

Based on what it says here in this article, it seems clear that it *was* a live beta, one that ended once Apple “had subscription upgrade/downgrade capabilities built in.” I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that the live beta never ended and Apple never finished the job, since they are saying pretty much the exact opposite of that. There’s no discrepancy that I can see.

The “white list” seed program continues, obviously, but that particular live beta ended, equally obviously.

davidw said:

Peza said:

davidw said:

Peza said:

Haha not surprised in the slightest, it was obvious they would find Apple guilty because Apple has breached their regulations and laws, it is the job of any company to know and understand the laws and regulations of your select market no matter the size. 

What will be interesting is the penalty that will be imposed, the EU will hit hard if required in any company with penalties, I suspect they will force Apple to change its store policy in Europe. Spotify did have a point too over this though and the heat was obviously building up against Apple, need to share the wealth fairly.

The EU Commission is not the courts. They did not find Apple guilty of anything. They only did the investigation and concluded that Apple is violating EU competition laws. It's going to be up to the EU courts to determine if Apple is guilty of the charges. This will takes years and then you have to add even more years for the appeal process.  

Remember, the EU commission did a 2 year investigation and in 2016 and concluded that Apple was avoiding taxes for years, by setting up their HQ in Ireland, (who they claimed was giving Apple favorable treatment) and the commission ordered Apple to pay nearly $15B in back taxes. But Apple (and Ireland) appealed the ruling in an EU court and won. So now the EU commission is appealing that decision. This been going on for 5 years now and counting. Apple has already set aside the $15B. It seems that with this case, it was the EU Commission that did not know and understand their own laws. 

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/15/21325325/apple-eu-ireland-back-taxes-13-billion-overturned-appealed


So don't go out and celebrate yet. Hopefully anything you bought for your big celebration party will keep for another 5 or more years. 

Firstly, get it right, the EU didn’t accuse Apple of anything surrounding taxes, it accused Ireland of breaching state aide regulations and law over its favoured tax levels they agreed for Apple to pay, their grievance was with Ireland and it is Ireland that must pay 12 billion in back taxes. But what do you expect when it’s all true and Apple was paying 0.005% in tax through offices existing in paper only.
Secondly, if you know one thing it’s that the EU won’t give up, also it does not take years to bring cases to conclusion, and it does not let cases be buried in appeals processes. This is anti competitive behaviour not tax evasion by one of its member states.

Perhaps you should look at the way they have treated other electronic corporation electronic giants to get an understanding of how it treats them when they breach competition laws, not like how they are treated in US law that’s for certain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_vs._Google

When it comes to anti competitive behaviour, the EU has incredibly strong laws and regulations over it, and it vehemently defends them and enforces them. You can expect a big fine to be levied on Apple or it will be forced to change its App Store policies to continue operating within the EU market, or maybe both, if found guilty. We shall see.

So you admit that you were wrong, when you claimed that the EU found Apple "guilty". If by "We shall see.", you also include yourself, then you admit that you don't know if Apple will be found guilty of anything, yet.

The EU accused Apple of avoiding taxes and wanted Apple to pay $15B in back taxes, not Ireland. What the EU Commission got wrong was that there is no laws set by the EU regarding tax rates in any of its members country. Each member country can set their own tax rates. But the taxes must be applied to all equally. The EU Commission claimed that Apple received a special tax deal from Ireland. But Ireland low tax rates were applied equally and did not favor any one company.

This is what the EU court ruled and thus Apple did not receive any special tax treatment and don't owe the back taxes. The EU Commission was accusing Apple of receiving special tax treatment and was demanding that Apple pay the $15B in back taxes. Ireland was not demanding that Apple pay the back tax and yet Apple aside $15B, in case the lost. Why? If no one was demanding that Apple pay $15B in back taxes. And how in the name of Hell can Ireland owe and must pay "back taxes" to themselves? What's the point in that? That would be like if the US Federal government were to claim that because TX do not collect a State income tax, they owe themselves back taxes that they didn't collect.

Ireland was never accused of tax "evasion". Neither was Apple. Tax "avoidance", by paying as little taxes as legally possible, is not illegal. Not even in the EU. But In the EU, it is illegal if one got special tax treatment in order to pay less taxes. This was what the EU Commission did not prove, that Ireland gave Apple any special tax treatment.   

It took a decade, to finally win anti-completive charges against Google. I don't know what you consider "years", but a decade is by definition ......10 years. Even if the EU Commission were to cut that time in half, it would still be  ....... years. And this was a case of anti-competitive behavior against a company (Google), that controls 90% of the search engine market. A monopoly, by any definition. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/10/eu-antitrust-probe-google/

davidw said:

Peza said:

Haha not surprised in the slightest, it was obvious they would find Apple guilty because Apple has breached their regulations and laws, it is the job of any company to know and understand the laws and regulations of your select market no matter the size. 

What will be interesting is the penalty that will be imposed, the EU will hit hard if required in any company with penalties, I suspect they will force Apple to change its store policy in Europe. Spotify did have a point too over this though and the heat was obviously building up against Apple, need to share the wealth fairly.

The EU Commission is not the courts. They did not find Apple guilty of anything. They only did the investigation and concluded that Apple is violating EU competition laws. It's going to be up to the EU courts to determine if Apple is guilty of the charges. This will takes years and then you have to add even more years for the appeal process.  

Remember, the EU commission did a 2 year investigation and in 2016 and concluded that Apple was avoiding taxes for years, by setting up their HQ in Ireland, (who they claimed was giving Apple favorable treatment) and the commission ordered Apple to pay nearly $15B in back taxes. But Apple (and Ireland) appealed the ruling in an EU court and won. So now the EU commission is appealing that decision. This been going on for 5 years now and counting. Apple has already set aside the $15B. It seems that with this case, it was the EU Commission that did not know and understand their own laws. 

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/15/21325325/apple-eu-ireland-back-taxes-13-billion-overturned-appealed


So don't go out and celebrate yet. Hopefully anything you bought for your big celebration party will keep for another 5 or more years.