Link to the court doc:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...
> The testimony of Mr. Roman, Vice President of Finance, was replete with misdirection and outright lies. He even went so far as to testify that Apple did not look at comparables to estimate the costs of alternative payment solutions that developers would need to procure to facilitate linked-out purchases. (May 2024 Tr. 266:22–267:11 (Roman).)
> Mr. Roman did not stop there, however. He also testified that up until January 16, 2024, Apple had no idea what fee it would impose on linked-out purchases:
> Q. And I take it that Apple decided to impose a 27 percent fee on linked purchases prior to January 16, 2024, correct? A. The decision was made that day.
> Q. It’s your testimony that up until January 16, 2024, Apple had no idea what -- what fee it’s going to impose on linked purchases? A. That is correct
> (May 2024 Tr. 202:12–18 (Roman).) Another lie under oath: contemporaneous business
So was Roman incompetent or just kissing ass hoping to become the President of Finance
> So was Roman incompetent or just kissing ass hoping to become the President of Finance
Why do you think Apple sent the Vice President to such a high visibility trial and not the President, who is the person with the ultimate authority and accountability in Finance?
In any large enough organization (and I haven't stumbled on one where this wasn't the case), private or public, the people at the top are shielded by a "second in command" whose job is to take the hit if needed, with the promise that they're next in line for the big position. It's a requirement of the job, they do it and maybe get rewarded, or don't and absolutely get ejected. Sometimes it pays off and they get the coveted president, CEO, etc. position. Sometimes it doesn't and they go to prison or their career is completely derailed.
Survivorship bias says we only see the ones who managed to pull it off. If you look at any large company's CEO now, they're there because they took these hits or provided plausible deniability for the big boss in the past.
> So was Roman incompetent or just kissing ass hoping to become the President of Finance
Why not both?
Execs will continue to default to obfuscating and misleading in testimony as well as minimally complying with court orders until a high-profile exec spends time in jail for criminal contempt. I fear this particular guy isn't senior enough to be the example we really need. While I'm sure he lied and obfuscated, I doubt a VP Finance was really the top decision-maker on "Despite the clear court order, we're going to keep fucking with Fortnite through aggressive non-compliance". I suspect that's an EVP on Tim Cook's staff.
Having spent several years at the top levels of an F500 valley tech company, I'm certain a consistent, broad and aggressive posture like that doesn't happen by accident or any lower than EVP. There was a meeting at some point where the Chief Legal Officer basically laid out the options: A) Give in and do what the court ordered, B) Do most of what the court ordered but drag our feet on all of it and 'accidentally' miss some of it where plausibly deniable, C) Make only token concessions to the order while ensuring the actual intent of the order is blocked, delayed or minimized wherever possible.
Someone with an EVP title picked "C" and until that person spends a couple months in jail on criminal contempt, senior execs will never pick "A". The VP Finance going down isn't enough. Until Tim Cook's staff meeting has an empty EVP chair for several months, none of this is serious. They'll just accelerate this VP Finance's options, bonus the shit out of him and consider his "sacrifice" to be collateral damage.
> Someone with an EVP title picked "C" and until that person spends a couple months in jail on criminal contempt, senior execs will never pick "A". The VP Finance going down isn't enough. Until Tim Cook's staff meeting has an empty EVP chair for several months, none of this is serious. They'll just accelerate this VP Finance's options, bonus the shit out of him and consider his "sacrifice" to be collateral damage.
Agree. They'd have to feel some personal threat of going to prison or at least losing their fortune. As long as they feel protected behind the corporate veil, it's not a big deal to them.
> I fear this particular guy isn't senior enough to be the example we really need.
>> Tim Cook ignored Schiller
>> Cook chose poorly.
>> Cook, Schiller, and Maestri were the ultimate decision makers “about what they felt was [an] acceptable” level of risk to cabin the Injunction’s effect in terms of link placement and design.
> Chief Legal Officer basically laid out the options
Unless they omitted (C) and the EVP suggested it, it seems like they should share the blame by proposing something that's not an actual option.
It's always an option, just not a risk-free one.
Something something AT&T might work as well.
Well good point. I guess I was just trying to present it as he just lied because he thought it's not a big deal, as in he is incompetent enough to not understand in the kind of trouble he can be in. Or, he fully understood what deep shit he would be in, but it was a worthy risk to become Mr. Cook's personal favorite.
Related ongoing threads:
Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43852145 - May 2025 (504 comments)
A senior Apple exec could be jailed in Epic case - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43859814 - May 2025 (58 comments)
I really, really, really hope this guy gets treated like very else under similar circumstances. Top execs are totally used to be able to buy their way out of problems with company money without any personal repercussions other than maybe a big severance package.
The argument for the high wages was always the "big responsibilty" the manegerial class has to bear. IMO to hold them personally liable is the absolite bare minimum, they already for the money for it. In reality CEO processes are often among the line: "You earned 10 Millions in boni for illegal behavior? Here is a 100K fine!"
A simple tradesperson is also personally responsible when they fuck up their job despite better knowledge. So if those can go to jail for the consequences of their dealings why shouldn't a CEO where the consequences are potentially of a scale several magnitudes higher? Wasn't personal responsibility in everybodies mouths, or is that only important when we talk about poor people?
Aren't the wages high because the people who decide the wages are the execs themselves? (Alternatively a genius scheme involving a "remuneration consultant".)
The market amd the law allow it, and so it is the case. Moral justifications are just post-hoc fluff.
Singapore got this right with everything up to capital punishment for white collar crimes.
I agree with disincentivizing white collar crime with more severe punitive measures, but if you throw capital punishment into the mix you’re just trading one ethical dilemma for another.
Capital punishment is capital punishment, but let's be real here: if there is a group of people who should fear it, it's the people making decisions that affect people in the thousands, millions or billions.
Hypothetical: how many people should get cancer or other serious illnesses and defects from chemicals a company produces, until the company management who knew about it were in the "war criminal" crime bracket?
And fines as a percentage of income or with a point system, e.g. when they catch you speeding. The goal is to make it equally painful to break the law to a poor and a rich person as is only just.
Otherwise what is painful punishment for a poor person is just a laughable fee for rich people.
>Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. The real evidence, detailed herein, more than meets the clear and convincing standard to find a violation.
Judging by tech, apple is right now in deep water due to the failure of delivering apple intelligence and a major drop in software quality.
Judging by political positioning, cook’s donation to trump’s inauguration didn’t sit well with the fanbase.
Now, it seems Cook is going for shady behavior against judges.
Maybe it’s time for a major change of leadership. Financially they might be ok, but one can’t avoid the feeling they’re burning the furniture to heat the house.
I generally like Apple but this is not ok. It wouldn’t bother me at all if they put Tim Cook in prison for this.
If corporations are not bound by laws they don’t like, then why should they be protected by laws they do like? Should the US turn a blind eye to IP infringement against Apple?
> Judging by political positioning, cook’s donation to trump’s inauguration didn’t sit well with the fanbase.
On the other hand, it may have saved his company billions on tariffs.
Only 100 days on and we celebrate open crony capitalism as a smart business decision.
Oh you mean that guy "Tim Apple"? Trump doesn't even know his name, and I doubt Apple will get much for their tithing.
Tim Apple. Sounds like a compliment to a CEO.
Lately he's been rather sour... Like a Granny Smith.
Given that the CFO encouraged Cook to violate the court order tells me that they calculated that
1. Any fines for not complying would be less than what they would lose by complying
2. That no individual would suffer any consequences for blatantly disobeying a court order.
In my opinion, the whole concept that a company can break the law but no human can be held responsible is insane.
I really hope that criminal charges are brought against those involved in making a conscious choice to both lie to the court and ignore the court order. Hopefully that will make other executives think twice when put in the same situation.
> I really hope that criminal charges are brought against those involved in making a conscious choice to both lie to the court and ignore the court order.
I do as well, but I have little hope that it will.
Prosecutors don't like prosecuting perjury. It's tricky to prosecute (particularly because of how close it is to the first amendment), takes a lot of time, and often it just ends up with a minor slap on the wrist. I've seen other cases with outrageous perjury that resulted in no criminal prosecution.
This is a broken part of the justice system. Particularly because these apple execs have the money and lawyers to drag out any prosecution until everyone involved is dead. But also because it relies on government prosecutors caring in the first place.
> particularly because of how close it is to the first amendment
It is tricky to prosecute and prosecutors don't like it but perjury rarely has anything to do with the first amendment.
The judge should really fine apple in the form of a 100% refund of everyones fees for the duration of this behavior. That's the only way the pain is great enough to force forward compliance.
We have a lot of messed up rulings in the past that allow corporations to act like people but skate by when they do things as if they weren't people. I say if a corporation can have free speech like a person then they can get thrown in jail like a person too. When illegal stuff happens it should have real, meaningful, consequences like the board being fired and massive fines or outright closing the company. I am not a fan of the industry right now. Apple is a symptom of a broader problem and we need bigger changes to start correcting the direction corporate america has been heading for the last 50 years.
> In my opinion, the whole concept that a company can break the law but no human can be held responsible is insane.
Wait, isn't the board personally liable for their decisions? I'm not a lawyer, obviously.
Not even when their product kills thousands or more and they knowingly took action that resulted in those deaths.
Perdue pharma is a high profile recent example of this , but there dozens of such events from big tobacco to baby formula
Corps are separate legal entities so individuals are generally protected from personal liability. There can be exceptions in criminal and civil liability instances but even then there things like D&O. Until we stop giving corporations so much legal cover we’re hosed.
>Corps are separate legal entities so individuals are generally protected from personal liability.
not really.
corps have the defining feature that their passive shareholders are protected from personal liability, but not their officers, directors, nor employees.
they are "entities" so they can sign contracts and you can sue them and bring them to court. they are entities so the entire body of preexisting laws about suing and bringing to court would not need to be rewritten from scratch for corporations, it slots them into the rights and responsibilities that individuals have.
That would suggest the fine should be in the hundreds of billions?
We all hope a lot of things. Come on.
Apple might still appeal to a higher court and lean heavily on that donation to Trump for legal support. They as much as said they would appeal the decision.
Apple will certainly appeal this ruling to the Ninth Circuit and probably to SCOTUS but Apple already appealed the original order which the Ninth denied and SCOTUS denied by declining. That makes an appeal on getting busted for non-compliance of the already appealed ruling unlikely. If the Ninth doesn't issue an emergency stay of the order tomorrow, it'll go into effect while the appeals grind on. This is very likely a done deal except for Apple wasting a little more lawyer money theatrically "exhausting every appeal."
I think Apple has needed a change of leadership since day one of the Cook era. He may have been brilliant at logistics and putting products on shelves, but I think Apple innovation has flatlined under Cooke and if anything, the holier than thou arrogance of Apple in general has grown exponentially. Maybe it's time to breakup Apple - separate the computer and phone divisions.
A more user friendly option would be to separate them into a hardware and a software company.
The hardware company would have to publish specs allowing anyone to offer operating systems running on Apple hardware.
That would just open an entire new can of worms to litigate for decades to come. For the near future the best we can hope for is that the courts continue to hit Apple on topics that have already been litigated to death.
The return of Claris!
>Maybe it's time to breakup Apple - separate the computer and phone divisions.
The Beatles? With iTunes going to Apple Records.
easily no question, ios would get apple naming convention. 85 percent of their revenue is from ios and connected services.
Which also means, "it's time to breakup apple" means nothing, not sure why OP suggested that as a method to punish a legally problematic CEO/board. they don't have a multisegment monopoly allowing them complete control over supply chains, or multi region monopoly on smartphones that would be effected by a breakup.
The heirs of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McIntosh_(farmer)
Tim Cook is an operation guy. With Trump's trade war, operations is going to be even more important.
A change of leadership? This is clear, obvious, undenied evidence of Tim Cook committing a criminal act. This is a crime. A coordinated, intentional, well-informed crime made in malice!
He should go to jail!
100%. For any regular citizen this would obviously lead to jail time. Being Tim Cook shouldn't change that.
Cook just didn't aim high enough. Commit one felony, go to jail. Commit thirty felonies, become president!
The funny thing is they have 2x consumer class actions (US + UK) alleging these 30% fees were always a ripoff, they just became a slam dunk so that’ll be tens of billions they have to pay back!
Genuine question as I'm seeing this sentiment a lot in these threads, and I must be missing something.
What you've just described would be the single greatest punishment to an entity in the (admittently recently established) history of case-law, would upend the tech sector (maybe justly), lay off 10s of thousands and effectively stop work at downstream supply chains.
I get that this is the point of the punishment. However, do you think politicians, investors, lawyers with controlling stake, The DOD with security integrations, would allow that to happen?
Put another way, do you think the rule of law exists for the hyper rich when the current admin put.....Linda McMahon on the presidents cabinet?
Well, theoretically, Apple would have to reimburse the people it stole from, if the fees were found to be illegal. Presumably this would mean every app developer getting reimbursed some of that 30% Apple Tax, or every Apple customer getting refunded some of their Apple purchases, depending on which way the court goes. This could be a very, very large number.
Not so much about punishment, as repayment. However, it's not unusual for courts to also add a punishment element, especially if the offending party knew it was offending (as in this case).
And yes, I think the politicians would let this go through, because "every Apple customer" is a lot of voters.
What does any of this have to do with consumers being ripped off then reimbursed for software?
It would only be “the greatest punishment” because it is a subset of what Apple was able to obtain with their illegal methods. They billed hundreds of billions in fees.
> Judging by political positioning, cook’s donation to trump’s inauguration didn’t sit well with the fanbase.
Objectively and ethically, it's reprehensible, but subjectively, we're now living in a blatantly pay-to-play world and everyone else is doing it, and there are clear, easily quantifiable gains of billions to be made from that bribe.
(The best part of all this was learning that inauguration bribes have been happening for decades, generally to little fanfare.)
>The best part of all this was learning that inauguration bribes have been happening for decades, generally to little fanfare.
Where can I read more about this?
I'm not surprised, but the thing here (as usual) is how unashamedly blatant it was this rime around. Mask off.
Cook is getting cooked
Also
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43852145 ("Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds (wsj.com)" — 336 comments)
App Store has been a cesspool of liars and thieves, criminals and sadists for years, from Phil Schiller to Bill Havlicek and many, many more.
Is there any reason to believe anyone will even get charged, let alone face trial, let alone convicted? And if so is there any reason to believe they won't be pardoned upon a conviction?
"is there any reason to believe they won't be pardoned"
Shortly after the next unexplained bull market in $TRUMP a pardon will appear along with direct links to their upcoming subscription service conveniently preloaded and un-delete-able from the iPhone Home Screen.
> And if so is there any reason to believe they won't be pardoned upon a conviction?
Given Apple's direct pushback against Trump's anti-"DEI" campaign, it's less likely than I might have thought - or maybe that's leverage? e.g. what if Trump promises to pardon Apple's executives if they remove the giant rainbow thingie from Apple Park and stop selling pride-related Apple watch straps?
You are being distracted by the culture war sideshow. No war but the class war, and Apple's execs are definitely powerful enough players in that war to protect themselves from consequences.
>No war but the class war,
You're normally right. But Trump is also a very petty narcissist. His "culture war" is pretty much "anyone who makes him feel bad".
>Apple's execs are definitely powerful enough players in that war to protect themselves from consequences.
That's why I hope courts do start throwing contempt around. Execs need to remember they aren't above the law to the point where they can blatantly lie to a judge.
It's not really a culture war sideshow it's a "buying favor with the administration" sideshow. And it does matter, Trump is not exactly a man with a strong loyalty streak. Demonstrating fealty to him on a regular basis could absolutely result in preferable outcomes for Apple.
This is a state case. Referral for criminal charges goes to a district attorney in Northern California. Trump's DOJ could try to lean on California but no one in California has any taste for Trump and his people.
No, it is a federal case in the US District Court for the District of Northern California, and the referrals go to Pam Bondi’s DOJ.
You seem to have made the mistake of thinking that a news article saying “a judge in northern California" means “a State of California judge in the northern part of that state" rather than “a federal judge in the Northern California District Court”.
Have you been to the county of orange? San Francisco does not California make.
Have you been to the county of Modoc? The urban coastal enclaves do not California make.
(I mean, sure, by population they mostly do, and are overwhelmingly Democratic, but if you are going to look for a county that goes against the partisan trend of the state, staying in the urban coastal enclaves and picking Orange is actually a fairly weak example.)
I live in California. I know how red parts of the state are.
Bakersfield, amirite?
orange county is still pretty liberal just not quite as liberal as the other parts. huntington beach and newport beach is not all of orange.
Orange often gets cited as the example of a Republican county in California because it is the highest population county that is pretty reliably Republican (it has a slight Republican registration edge, but more solidly votes Republican because it also has a Republican-favoring balance of independent-by-registratiom voters.)
But most of the Central Valley and the inland Northern California counties are much more Republican than Orange.
An Apple attorney is now head of the NLRB. The day they were appointed, they stopped three ongoing lawsuits against Apple (including the #appleToo anti-harassment class action suit):
https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/04/02/trump-admin-poach...
Tim Cook is better at PR than Musk, but he's also a member of Trump's inner circle (why else would there be tariff carveouts that directly benefit Apple?):
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/apple-ceo-tim-...
Unlike Musk, the two were also close during Trump 1.0.
The rainbow thingy isn't a gay pride thing. The rainbow colors are out of order, just like in the original Apple logo.
I am not sure but it does seem that apple's stock price has taken a hit.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/
Maybe somebody could enlighten me but the off hours part shows -2.3%, is that a correction because people are losing faith in apple or what exactly? and would these off hours loses get converted to on hour losses or what exactly? (Sorry I could ask AI but I might as well ask here as well)
So I had done some calculations and please correct me if you think I am wrong but at 4:00 pm USA time (EDT?) the stock was selling at 213.5 open (I am not sure what the differences b/w open,close etc. are , I am not a finance guy) but it went from 213.5 open to 207.8 right now
Taking the % lose from its peak just at 4 PM EDT & multiplying it by its market cap? 3.19Trillion(1- 207.5/213.5 ) is 89_648_711_944 , ie. 89 Billion $.
So from my understanding Apple lost 89B $ in like a span of 2 hours (4PM EDT to 5:10-ish PM EDT which is the approx current time while writing this post)
That sounds REALLY BIG. Like I used to think damn Trillion $ are a lot but if such a case can cause apple to lose 89B$ in span of 2 hours then either I am doing some calculation wrong or this case has a truly big gravity that its worth not to just skim over it I guess and truly read it at detail I suppose.
Just my two cents..
Apple didn’t lose money because their stock price dropped. All their shares out in the world lost that much value. The stock price has little, if any, affect on the company and its bank accounts.
If anything, it makes it cheaper for Apple to buy back shares!
It means that Apple and their shareholders can do less things with those shares. Buying companies with their shares or selling shares to buy a car.
Bloomberg reported that the shares fell because their sales in China under-performed estimates.
By bloomberg, you mean bloomberg terminal or what exactly?
Thanks for this information. I was genuinely confused after I had written this comment because well this information of epic games was already available 8 hours earlier so that had already been factored in the market 2 hours ago so I was confused as to why this change in 2 hours.
Also, I would genuinely appreciate it if we could have a seperate HN thread just for this news itself. Sounds really interesting and I have quite an opinion on it
Apple's earnings call is going on right now: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-tops-q2-earnings-estima...
The headline sounds positive, but apparently its not positive enough to keep the stock from dropping.
wow, this has dropped even further it was around 2.5 last time , now its 3.7 , these are in some serious Billion dollar loses.
I don't know but seeing so much money move so fast with such high velocity and such corrections in minutes and thus losing or making billions. I really want stability and it does seem to me that in some sense I wish for every economy to be more comprised of small businesses which aren't changing their stock price in such drastic measures though I think such an opinion might be unpopular around here.
Did Bloomberg report that share prices fell because their sales in China under-performed estimates, or while/as their sales in China under-performed estimates?
The difference between an explicit and implicit narrative.
are you referring to this? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-01/apple-chi...
Since no one puts a reason down when they sell, it's all tea leaf reading.
There's always a story that can be thrown together for every price movement, although it looks like apple did miss sales estimates in China by several percent. Looks like they also withheld guidance on services growth.
> That sounds REALLY BIG. Like I used to think damn Trillion $ are a lot but if such a case can cause apple to lose 89B$ in span of 2 hours then either I am doing some calculation wrong or this case has a truly big gravity
The thing about a company worth several trillion dollars is that even minor movements involve (what are to us laymen) huge sums of money. Conversely, huge sums of money really are just minor movements to that company.
Some people talk about how the middle class has a hard time understanding the vast difference between a millionaire and a billionaire. The same thing applies (but probably compounded due to being at a larger scale) for thinking about billions vs. trillions of dollars.
(Just speaking to the question of scale; as someone else brought up, there've been other happenings that affect stock prices besides just this case.)
After hours market prices aren't indicative. I'd wait until tomorrow mroning to see what happens.
Ah, but will there be any actual financial penalties against Apple to address the revenue they received as a result of this? Or would developers have to start their own cases to attempt to recover anything?
The end of the order says that they are referring the issue to the DoJ for criminal charges, which is where a fine would be issued if found guilty.
Will the executive actually face an criminal charges? No they will not.
The upside is that executives are cowards (also there's no way in hell I'm going to prison for my employer and most people I know feel the same) so even one high profile successful prosecution will have enormous deterrance effect.
There is this despondent feeling among most people that the law no longer applies to the powerful and we watch the behave with ever more brazenness. The saving grace is the amount of pushback needed to put them back in line is very small. Once they see any consequences for their actions they will fall in line.
Generally I agree but I think the pushback needs to be a bit larger than you suggest.
Over the last 25 years, we’ve become more tolerant to larger leeway for those of certain societal status. A relatively large whiplash must happen to course correct the general behavior, in my opinion.
> "A relatively large whiplash must happen to course correct the general behavior, in my opinion."
Indeed. Someone (or a couple few well-known someones) in positions of real "power" need to do some real prison time in a real prison for their massive lawbreaking and abuses of power before they'll take the situation somewhat seriously.
A LOT imo.
If you make it clear that even a little slip up of fraud will be at least 1 year in prison and huge fines, I think it would work wonders.
Tough on crime policies don't really work for petty crime, because people are desperate. But rich people have so much to lose that they wouldn't risk it.
> But rich people have so much to lose that they wouldn't risk it.
Ponzi schemes are still a regular thing despite Madoff being sentenced to 150 years behind bars. They're just relabeled as "cryptocurrencies" these days.
> we’ve become more tolerant
We've become more powerless, you mean. The government has become more tolerant.
> There is this despondent feeling among most people that the law no longer applies to the powerful
It's less of a feeling and more of a repeatedly demonstrated reality. It shouldn't be that way, but most of the time it is. I'd love for that to change, but I can't fault people for not expecting it to happen any time soon.
> Once they see any consequences for their actions they will fall in line.
I would wager that idea crossed the mind of Luigi Mangione.
It will take more than a slap on the hand from the court to change anything.
I think cowards is the wrong word - more like opportunists. Like you said, almost no one wants to go to jail for "shareholder value" or a 10% bonus.
> almost no one wants to go to jail for "shareholder value" or a 10% bonus.
Almost no-one gets that choice.
The choose a risk of going to jail for a more likely bonus.
But they don’t, because there is no risk. If there was, many wouldn’t take it
Many =/= all.
The coward part was to stress his later point that they'll all fall in line like a herd of animals.
> most people that the law no longer applies to the powerful
gee, I wonder why! you now have POTUS openly defying the direct orders from the highest court. That's so much further past some corp executive committing a crime that hasn't even gone to trial yet.
> Once they see any consequences for their actions they will fall in line.
We're seeing this with just how fast and ruthless many executives were after Trump won the election, actually. The behavior of some of these people is best described as "swearing fealty": donations to Trump's circle, dismantling of anything remotely smelling as "DEI" instead of standing up for what was sold as "core values" over the last years, compliance instead of resistance (just recently Bezos in the Amazon tariff pricing issue, or the "resignation" of 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens so that the Trump admin doesn't impede a corporate merger).
We've been asking ourselves "wtf are the Russian oligarchs doing" after Putin invaded Ukraine, and now we're seeing just the same compliance from our own oligarchs.
> Will the executive actually face an criminal charges? No they will not.
How so?
Rich people in America rarely face consequences for anything, even flagrantly lying under oath. I would bet good money no one faces any jail time, but I would be happy to be wrong.
Rarely =/= never.
All they have to do is pony up $2 million and they can buy a pardon from a criminal president. Seems like a pretty easy problem to solve if you're rich like Apple execs.
and the 9th Circuit is almost certain to overturn this. Apple is a major employer, donor, etc. that I can't see this going all the way. I hope, but I am so jaded on the courts doing anything to actually hold companies and their executives responsible that I can't help but be pessimistic.
John Gruber has a good summary of the ruling: https://daringfireball.net/2025/04/gonzales_rogers_apple_app....
My favourite part: "Unlike Mr. Maestri and Mr. Roman, Mr. Schiller sat through the entire underlying trial and actually read the entire 180-page decision. That Messrs. Maestri and Roman did neither, does not shield Apple of its knowledge (actual and constructive) of the Court’s findings."
Great summary. I will add to this:
> 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.
Not only have they been asking for this, but the link to your external checkout could only be in once place in your app, and could not be part of the payment flow (where else would you put it??)
They also want rights to audit your financials to determine compliance
And this scary popup before going to the external payment page: https://d7ych6cwyfyiba.archive.is/AZrEz/0c8d40ed4a6886240370...
Not sure if such a large font is used anywhere else in iOS
The whole thing was so obviously designed to prevent any developer from seriously considering it, maintaining their anti-competitive advantage. Glad the judge finally had enough.
> And this scary popup before going to the external payment page: https://d7ych6cwyfyiba.archive.is/AZrEz/0c8d40ed4a6886240370...
My. They forgot "Apple cannot guarantee making payment elsewhere won't give you cancer."
Thanks for posting that. I came away from tfa wondering what the actual lie was. Gruber made that clear and was a good read otherwise.
Wow that is pretty damning. I understand that they want to protect their revenue, but looks like they screwed up here.
The top brass at Apple just think they are above everyone else. Remember when Tim Cook lied about Apple not giving anyone special terms in the app store and that everyone gets the same deal. And then it came out Netflix was one that got special terms?
The sheer arrogance of Apple leaders is astounding. They think they are outright owed rent on anything that runs on an iPhone, iPad, etc. Apple thinks developers are nothing without Apple. Look at how snubbing developers has worked out for the Apple Vision Pro. It was already a niche device, but it's a ghost town.
Apple always has been like that, see The Cult of Mac book.
However, it appears being at the edge of bankruptcy, and having turned the ship around has made them paranoid of losing a single cent.
When Apple Store came out it was great.
I was a Nokia employee at the time, and 30% was a dream compared with what you would have to pay to phone operators, app listenings in magazines with SMS download codes, for Blackberry, Symbian, Windows CE, Pocket PC, Brew, J2ME,...
However we are now in different times, and acting as if the developers didn't have anything to do with it, it was all thanks to Apple's vision of the future, it is pure arrogance, and yes the Vision Pro was the first victim.
Here is another one, if they do really announce an UI revamp at WWDC 2025, I bet most will ignore it.
"In 2013 i met a very close friend of Steve Jobs and i remember saying "there's one thing i absolutely have to know, it's really important to me" he responds "okay what is it?"
I ask "what was all the money for?!" puzzled "what do you mean?" "Steve Jobs saved up like 200 billion dollars in cash at Apple, but what was it all for? what was the plan? was he going to buy AT&T? was he going to build his own telecom or make a giant spaceship? what was it for?"
And he looked at me with just the deepest and saddest eyes and spoke softly "there was no plan" "what??" "you see, Steve's previous company, NeXT, it ran out of money, so at with Apple he always wanted a pile of money on the side, just in case. and over years, the pile grew and grew and grew... and there was no plan..."
Totally believable. My grandmother lived though the great depression, wherein she was lucky to get an Orange at christmas. The last few decades of her life she basically was a food hoarder, pantries overflowing with canned goods, and a freezer where you never saw the back.
When I was a kid I did odd jobs, and one of the odd jobs was cleaning out a semi-hoarder’s house after he’d passed away (iirc he’d lived through the Great Depression). Not like you see on TV, with the heaps and heaps of garbage. Maybe like your grandmother, tons of… basically well organized supplies and stuff.
I dunno. Toilet paper, some canned goods, lighters, I guess that stuff all lasts decades if stored properly. Takes up a lot is space, though, and your descendants might have to pay some kid to throw it all away if you don’t use it up in time…
But, some folks wished they were toilet paper hoarders during the pandemic I guess. Wonder what the kids of 2060 will be throwing away as a result of our life-experiences.
> Wonder what the kids of 2060 will be throwing away as a result of our life-experiences.
Likely old computers that could do anything the user wanted.
> Wonder what the kids of 2060 will be throwing away as a result of our life-experiences.
EOL devices(tablets, phones, macbooks, thinkpads, hobby electronics boards, home lab equipments, hdd and ssd full of archive data, swag from conferences, outdated books on product and programming, smart watches etc).
Rats nests of USB cables and power cords, etc., probably.
Same thing with my grandpa, he hoarded everything. Cleaning out his house after he passed was a huge undertaking.
Also, Apple was down to 90 days of operating cash and almost went bankrupt in 1997.
And Microsoft had to invest in Apple, as a bankrupt Apple would have left them with effectively no defense against the antitrust investigation they were undergoing.
The irony in that is pretty funny tbh
It's also proof that antitrust laws are beneficial, if only they were enforced (a lot) more seriously and frequently and uniformly.
The jury's still out on this case. When historians look back a hundred years from now, will they consider it beneficial that Apple survived? Or will they see it as an unfortunate reprieve for a company that wrought unfathomable destruction upon our society via the creation of the smartphone and the attention economy that soon followed?
It's really hard to argue counterfactuals on this one. Perhaps the smartphone would have been built by Google anyway. I can't really imagine how, given the state of the mobile phone market at the time of the iPhone's release.
I would keep enjoying my Maemo or Symbian Belle probably, who knows.
Alternative/complementary view: traditional software applications business is extremely high-risk high-return. It’s no accident that NeXT (and Microsoft in early days!) almost ran out of money. To balance the risk, you would want to compensate with extremely conservative balance sheet.
Michael Milken published a paper analyzing exactly this issue a while back.
This and the Cult of Mac book completely describe it. Leaders are people who can have emotional damage that they compensate for in their business decisions.
It is "easy" to understand why parents would lie to home invasion robbers about whether or not they had a safe in the house. Leaders of companies will readily lie if they believe that the survival of their company is at stake. The rational is "well someone might get mad that we lied but at least the company will still be here."
The only way that differs "any corp" is that in most publicly corporations, you want to return that money to your shareholders - and they sit on it for the same reason. IE, this just says Jobs ran Apple as his personal fife. But since he made lots of money, no one cared.
I’m a shareholder, and I would rather that money be used to grow stock price (since it is already at a business known for creating new products and markets).
If I get a dividend, I have to pay tax today. And then I just turn around and buy more stock with post tax income?
If I can sell the share at a higher price when I want the cash, then I can pay the tax whenever I want, possibly under more preferable terms.
> However, it appears being at the edge of bankruptcy, and having turned the ship around has made them paranoid of losing a single cent.
That was more than 20 years ago, under a totally different market condition and Apple leadership. Back then, they needed developers to turn the ship around, now they think devs need them. They's a cash cow and act like assholes.
There are enough people at Apple from those days, including at management levels.
Especially execs and management level
Might as well scrap Memorial Day, thanksgiving, and all other (holy) celebrations. It’s been ages ago
> Back then, they needed developers to turn the ship around, now they think devs need them.
No, that's the opposite of what actually happened with the iPhone. Back in 2007, Apple actually saw evidence from the customer buying frenzy that Apple didn't need 3rd-party devs to make iPhone a wild success. After the very desirable iPhones got into millions of customers hands, it was the 3rd-party devs that needed Apple more than Apple needed the 3rd-party ecosystem as I've mentioned before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39291668
Maybe an alternate history would have had all the 3rd-party devs deliberately boycott Apple iOS and thus only create apps for Android in 2008. We now know that didn't happen so we'll never know if devs realistically had enough leverage back in 2008 to alter Apple's App Store commission structure and policies.
The iPhone was so desirable as a platform that new popular apps like Instagram and WhatsApp were released for Apple iPhones months before Android.
The OP isn't talking about iPhone devs, they're talking about a decade before that when Apple was called 'Apple Computer' and had mad a series of bad business choices (confusing product line up, allowing other companies to make Mac clones, etc).
Developers had started to abandon the Mac OS platform - or at least start making Windows versions of previously Mac-only software - and getting developer confidence back was one of the key things that kept the company alive to grow into the consumer electronics manufacturer that it is today.
>The OP isn't talking about iPhone devs,
OP's wording was somewhat confusing because they were talking about the later iPhone devs with, >", now they think devs need them" by comparing them to the 1997 Mac OS devs.
As though possibly implying that Apple incorrectly misjudged the later iPhone-era devs' leverage as if it's the opposition situation of "Apple is the one that needs the devs" and somehow Apple misunderstands that.
I was clarifying that Apple didn't misjudge the devs and they correctly predicted that devs would want access to millions of new iPhone customers. It isn't just "Apple thinks devs need them", it's more definitive in "Apple _knows_ that devs need them." The timeline of events reinforced in Apple's mind that it was "Apple's customers" more than the "dev's customers".
Seeing customers camp out overnight in front of Apple's stores for iPhones that didn't have any 3rd-party apps -- and still sell millions of them -- is why they're so arrogant. Apple concluded it was Apple's efforts alone that recruited those customers to their new platform and not the 3rd-party devs. (Apple itself created the first Youtube app instead of 3rd-party Google devs doing it.) The 2008 devs may have had a chance to flip that narrative by rejecting iOS and only create apps for Android and Windows Phones but they didn't do that and instead, went along with Apple's gatekeeping and 30% fees.
>Developers had started to abandon the Mac OS platform [...] and getting developer confidence back was one of the key things that kept the company alive to grow
Well, the 1997 dev confidence behavior for a Mac platform with only ~5% market share at that time wouldn't be relevant to Apple's attitude about iPhones because devs never abandoned the iPhone. iPhones were an instant hit with 100% market share of touchscreen smartphones until Android came out a year later.
In US maybe, we had plenty touch screen smartphones in Europe, between Nokia, Siemens-Ericson and PocketPC/Windows CE.
>, we had plenty touch screen smartphones in Europe, between Nokia, Siemens-Ericson and PocketPC/Windows CE.
Those were older TFT resistive touchscreens and not the newer capacitive touchscreens that could detect multi-finger gestures like swipes and pinch-to-zoom. TFT touchscreens requiring finger pressure instead of finger swipes is not as intuitive a UI.
That's why the audience at Macworld 2007 gasped in astonishment when Steve Jobs demonstrated gentle finger scrolling on a capacitive screen. Deep link to that demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=16m05s
Keep in mind that MacWorld tradeshow attendees are technical geeks who are aware of the latest gadgets and phones. Many of those in the audience would already have the latest 2006 Palm Treo 680 in their pocket that had a TFT touchscreen. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treo_680)
The iPhone's touchscreen capabilities made that Palm phone's TFT touchscreen technology obsolete.
You can check the Europe news archives back in 2007 to see both the telecoms and customers there were also eagerly awaiting the iPhone. If Europe already had equivalent touchscreen smartphones with Nokia, Siemens-Ericsson etc, the iPhone would have been a non-event and flopped in sales.
Nokia/Blackberry/WindowsCE/Android/etc switched to capacitive touchscreens to compete with the iPhone.
Why didn't European devs collectively just ignore the Apple iPhone and instead, focus on Nokia Symbian OS?
OP was talking about 1997, not 2007.
I recall Apple's commercial slogan "There's an app for that"
Apple did not write those apps themselves.
> has made them paranoid of losing a single cent.
I get the exact same feeling. They're afraid of collapsing despite being way ahead.
They aren't that much ahead anymore.
> Apple always has been like that
They were better in the pre-Mac days. I was a big Apple fan until the Mac came out.
So basically Apple II days?
So, you liked the Lisa?
Honestly, I think they're less jealous of money than rep. A man like Jobs would rather die under torture than be laughed at, and even almost 15 years gone, we still see his mark.
> Look at how snubbing developers has worked out for the Apple Vision Pro.
I think it's mostly the lack of users. Apple snubs mobile developers all the time, but since they gate access to a large chunk of well-paying customers, developers are ready to jump through any hoops.
If there were millions of Apple Vision Pro users I'm sure the developers would have followed, but it's of course a chicken and egg situation considering Vision Pro lack of content.
It's not really a chicken and egg situation, it's more of a cost problem. It still costs $3500. Even if the next version is a third of the price it will still cost three times more than the competition.
And if I'm buying it as a devkit I'm sure my accountant and I will find a way to write that off, anyway. $3500 isn't quite pocket change, but it is close enough to petty cash. But why do that if there's no users? And even the day-one diehards among my colleagues stopped wanting to be seen in them before long.
I think it isn't really chicken-egg, is what I'm saying. Devs were so hot to target iPhone from day one that the first or second major OS update added an entire infrastructure to make that possible. There was so much interest it made Apple back down! For the Vision Pro they had that on day one and it wasn't nearly enough to sell the thing to devs, because again, nothing did nearly enough to sell the thing to users.
What made the early apps great and viral on iPhone were the indie developers. The ones making flashlight and farting sound boards. They paved the way, and for them $3500 is a lot of money.
Who cares if it’s pocket change for google or meta, nobody wants another Facebook app.
$3500 doesn't matter at all for developers. It matters for users. If there are a billion users, devs will pay $3500 for access no problem. But you can't get a billion users for a $3500 product unless it's at least as useful as a car.
This is the best way to sum it up. The diehard Apple fans still defend it, with handwaved promises that the future will bring a cheaper one, but in this economy I don't think Apple can do it. The price people will bear is proportional to the current usefulness, and the usefulness is proportional to third-party dev interest. The irony is that of all companies, Apple would be the most capable financially of loss-leadering it into existence with their cash hoard, but they're so stingy that the idea of a loss leader offends them to the core.
But imagine for a moment an alternate reality where they at least moderately tried to keep the cost down, and then further subsidized it, selling the headsets for $599 and made developer terms wildly attractive (like, your first 20 million in revenue having a 5% fee instead of 30%). It would cost Apple billions, but they pissed away more on the car idea with nothing to show for it. This could have launched a category, instead I predict a future more like Apple TV hardware where it's niche due to being 4x the price of what most people want to pay for the category.
Sure. And those early indie devs paid, inflation adjusted, iirc around $500-1000 for the hardware they developed against to put those indie flashlight fart noise apps on the then nascent App Store, because that's what an iPhone cost.
$3500 is, as I said, pretty close to petty cash even for a sole-owner LLC that needs taking at all seriously, and I would front that sum without a second thought out of my own personal pocket if I thought VR had legs, the same way I've put about $9k toward inference-capable hardware in the last two years because AI obviously does have legs. It's an investment in my career, or at least toward the optionality of continuing a career in software in a post-AI world, assuming I don't decide to go be an attorney or something instead.
I appreciate not everyone can drop a sum like that, like that. I can and I'm not ashamed of it. Why should I be, when it's exactly what I've worked the last 21 years straight to earn?
I think the issue is less the cost to developers and more the cost to users. Were there more users, no doubt a larger number of indie developers would be able to justify the expense. Without those users--or at least a reliable promise of those users in the near future--it's tough to justify even dipping your toes into it. It's a chicken and egg problem that's fundamentally tied to cost as well as hardware limitations. Discomfort from the bulk and weight was my biggest sticking point even before the price, for example.
Plus, the hardware is just the initial starting point. Your initial outlay will quickly be eclipsed by the dev hours spent working on Vision versions of your app(s), and that's when the opportunity costs become particularly noticeable. Time spent on a Vision app that may have no real market for years is time you could be spending adding features, testing changes, fixing bugs, marketing, etc. Skipping on Vision Pro is really a no-brainer for most indie developers, at least for the foreseeable future.
Yes. That was my original point, just above the head of the branch where you responded. Could I have been more concise or more clear? Serious question, I am mildly retooling my prose style of late.
The price isn't as much of a problem for developer adoption, it's a problem for user adoption. Users aren't buying the Apple Vision Pro because it's $3500. Developers aren't writing apps for the Apple Vision Pro because it has no users.
I said precisely as much in the comment to which you replied. Can you offer advice on my prose style therein?
You didn't really talk about users at all. The only part of your comment about users is "But why do that if there's no users?". There can be many reasons why there are no users, price being just one of them.
That's fair. The implication was all in the comparison with week-1 campsites for iPhones versus day-1 yawns for Vision Pro, but it's smeared across two paragraphs and should have been hoisted and made explicit. Thanks for the review!
I know a lady who owns an ISV. Per her, you make a lot more money on the app store compared to other platforms.
Why the downvotes about an anecdote about the owner of (actually a couple of) software companies? She gives talks, in those talks she says she makes more money off iOS apps than other platforms. You can probably find a few of those talks on Youtube.
Her gaming company you can read about here:
What killed the Vision Pro is the complete lack of support for the two main things people use VR for. Productivity is a distant third behind the likes of VR Chat and pornography. If Apple managed to capture only 1% of VR Chat's monthly userbase, they would've tripled their pathetic sales numbers.
Apple tried to focus on productivity and some light entertainment and didn't even throw the other two a bone by supporting a PC link feature. Particularly they didn't make a physical link possible - Wifi is not reliable/high bandwidth enough for most people, so those third party solutions aren't cutting it.
Apple users are mostly locked out of the existing PC VR ecosystem - Apple didn't have to rely on developers writing dedicated apps.
I bought the AVP for one thing only - long haul flights. It makes the experience completely and utterly different, and it's less than the cost of a business seat.
It "works for me".
what kind of flights are you buying that cost 3500 for a business seat? do you get them very last minute?
Pretty standard for a ~10-12 hour flight.
It's not like there's much reason to care about comforts on short flights. Anyone can tolerate economy for an hour and you'd probably not get out your VR headset for a short hop either.
Trust me, porn on the Vision Pro is plentiful and industry-leading.
VRChat, I agree, should absolutely be there and unrestricted. It wont be though. It isn't uncensored on Oculus either.
> Trust me, porn on the Vision Pro is plentiful and industry-leading.
VR pornography is quite massive in Japan for instance. Huge in fact. The Vision Pro doesn't even have a DMM.com/Fanza app for that.
I don't think most users would even consider getting a device that doesn't allow them to view their existing catalog of purchases, pornography and not.
Again, this could've been solved by simply supporting PCVR.
> VRChat, I agree, should absolutely be there and unrestricted. It wont be though. It isn't uncensored on Oculus either.
I don't think the VR Chat app on Oculus is very popular. Most users are just going to run it via PCVR for better performance, feature support, etc.
I wouldn't blame them, Americans on the whole fall over themselves to defend Apple. Apple is the magic entity that figured out how to send full videos and pictures in text messages. Something a google android could never figure out. Apple phones didn't come bloated with garbage. You go to the apple store for help rather than the verizon store. You are above others when you have an iPhone.
Apple's external veneer is stellar, and the overwhelming majority of people don't know and don't care what it is holding up that veneer.
I want Apple to protect me from app developers. For me, it’s a feature not a bug.
I want them to prevent social media companies from tracking my device across my other apps.
I want them to integrate billing so I can easily cancel subscriptions or get refunds.
I want them to require Oauth that allows me to keep my email private from app developers.
These features make my customer experience better not worse. I’m sorry it sucks for app developers to make less money but for customers it’s mostly a good thing.
We're on Hacker News, not Granny News.
Being a hacker means having curiosity about the things around you, having the desire to be able to change and understand things.
On android, I wrote small toy apps for myself, I could build and self-sign an APK, I could poke at how the system worked and read all the source code I wanted.
Tragically, due to blue bubbles and group chats within my family, I was forced to switch to iOS, and I thought sure, it wouldn't be so bad...
No, it sucks for hackers, you can't build and sign apps from linux reliably, you need an apple account and to pay $100 even if you do have a macbook, the APIs are limited, you can't see the source code for the most of the kernel or platform, apple has a ton of APIs you're not allowed to use.
My firefox addons I developed for myself installed fine on android, but I can't even use those on iOS.
I want apple to let me use the device I paid for.
You weren't forced to do anything. You submitted to peer pressure, and that was a decision that, along with millions of others making that same decision, led to the current state. The very state that you're now complaining about.
Don't like it? Don't use it. (I don't.)
Government intervention, or legal system intervention is one way in which millions are collectively deciding to move away from the current state. In theory at least.
> Don't like it? Don't use it.
Life is slightly more complicated than this.
It's true, I like my Granny phone. And you can choose a hacker phone if you want!
I personally do my hacking on Mac, Linux, and on my RasberryPis, in my secure home and behind a firewall. But I don't want a hacker-friendly phone holding my passwords, credit cards, social media, email, photos, GPS location, cameras, microphones, etc., with a persistent cellular connection to the internet and at constant risk of being left in a taxi or cafe. I would never put the effort into locking everything down, and I'd probably fuck it up if I tried anyway.
> I want them to prevent social media companies from tracking my device across my other apps.
Apple is the one who implements the advertising ID companies use to track you. And preventing that tracking is a os-level feature, not a thing they review out of app.
> I want them to require Oauth that allows me to keep my email private from app developers.
You are describing a private email address.
Those features have fat apple tax overhead and are not unique to iPhones.
That's why I talk about the veneer that users don't care to look beyond. Customers get bent by Apple and aren't even aware of it.
I would like to know what is running on my phone, what it is doing and who it is communicating with.
I would like to be able to prevent it, like running a firewall or disabling bluetooth for certain processes or more...
No phone can really give you that. Even if the OS were better, the wireless chipsets themselves are black boxes that do their own thing giving you zero insight or control into what how or why. There's plenty of room for improvement, but ultimately they'll always be insecure and untrustworthy by design.
I think apps have to request permission to use Bluetooth on iOS with the exception of audio playback
All those are awesome features, and I use them all the time.
But that's no reason to prevent them from being opt-out. It should be possible to not use OAuth, integrated billing, social media tracking etc.
If privacy or security protections are opt-out, Facebook, et al. will try to use any leverage they can to push their users to opt out. There's real value in a platform that doesn't give Facebook, et al. that opportunity. There are also obvious downsides; it's a tradeoff that might not be right for you but definitely isn't one-sided.
> that's no reason to prevent them from being opt-out
I’m genuinely surprised Meta and e.g. Citrix haven’t launched their own app stores in the EU. Maybe GDPR disincentivises the worst shenanigans.
Have you ever used a PC or laptop? I bet you have at least a computer and the fact that you can download and install software without an intermediary doesn't make you lose any of the things mentioned above.
None of that requires a 30% cut.
Requires, no but in all regards it’s a great deal for app developers. You write code they do everything else. You want options? They exist (Windows/Android) but are all shitified minefields of commercial ads and poor design choices that I only use when required. Is Apple perfect? No far from it. When I buy and use their products though I feel more like the customer than the product. It’s a tool built for me not their advertisers.
This is correct.
App devs hate "paying" the 30% cut, but often aren't smart enough to realize that they make more on iOS than Android specifically because it's a high-trust environment and people trust that Apple has their back.
There's a reason most of us app devs make most of our money on Apple devices.
Except there are markets where Apple is hardly present, so this doesn't hold, as those money making apps on iDevices are mostly from tier 1 countries.
I assume most app vendors would gladly get some money from those countries as well, if they want to grow their user base.
They also happily pay 3+% for charging a card with stripe. And more than happy to fork a few percent for some accounting / VAT handling.
That’s included with the App Store.
Kinda dishonest to cite that 30% number when most developers don't pay it. The fee has been 15% for years now if your revenues are under $1M.
And it is the same cut that console companies take from developers. And then when we point this out, people respond with some bullshit that consoles are not "general purpose computers"...
Consoles are trivially avoidable. Family group chats that require a blue-bubble-capable phone, grandmothers that only know how to use facetime, those are actually important.
I can't get into my coworking space without a door unlock app on my phone.
On the other hand, exactly 0 times in my life have I ever been told "yeah, you need to own an xbox to go to the dentist's office".
Phones are indeed in a different class from game consoles and should be held to a higher standard.
But yes, also, game consoles should allow you to develop your own programs and side-load them.
> I can't get into my coworking space without a door unlock app on my phone.
And that app is probably free, covered by the costs of the paid apps, the majority of which are brainrot games and social media[1].
Honestly this system isn't half bad, it's essentially a tax on idleness that funds a bunch of virtuous activity.
[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/29389/global-app-revenue-by-s...
The app is free for users, but the coworking space pays the app's company a considerable fee to manage access to the doors and audit logs and such, so it's not that it's subsidized by brainrot games.
Free apps on iOS should be subsidized by, I don't know, the purchase price of the phone and the $100 yearly developer fee I'd think.
> Honestly this system isn't half bad, it's essentially a tax on idleness that funds a bunch of virtuous activity.
The system isn't funding "virtuous activity", the system is a for-profit system for the benefit of the richest company on the planet.
> the coworking space pays the app's company a considerable fee to manage access to the doors and audit logs and such, so it's not that it's subsidized by brainrot games.
I think you're well aware that these fees don't go toward the iOS SDK licensing/infra/staffing/security/distribution costs of the app and the App Store. That's what is being subsidized by the brainrot games.
Furthermore, there's nothing stopping that app maker from bypassing the app store and simply making a webapp, so this argument that you need an iphone to open the door is really moot. It's not the smartphone makers' fault that the door company's customers demand this product.
> Furthermore, there's nothing stopping that app maker from bypassing the app store and simply making a webapp, so this argument that you need an iphone to open the door is really moot
The door opener uses NFC, and iOS does not allow webapps to use NFC, only app-store apps: https://caniuse.com/webnfc
Apple has consistently made the experience of using webapps worse, including making installing them so convoluted that most users continue to not even know they exist.
> Family group chats that require a blue-bubble-capable phone
This is a social walled garden they've built over years and has been solidified by users choosing it over and over again. Are they exploiting our brain's capacities regarding social pressure to extract profit? Sure, but so does every fast food company, social media company, marketing company, etc.
I think it's interesting that you phrase it as "require" regarding a group chat made by your family members. Apple doesn't require this, your family members chose Apple when they purchased their phones.
Practically every other chat ecosystem I've used has worked fine from android or ios, or for the most part my desktop computer. Signal, XMPP, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Twitter DMs, Google Chat, all of these work _fine_ from every general computing device I own (iPhone, android, linux).
Somehow it's only iMessage which doesn't have an android or desktop or web app, despite Apple having more money than every other messenger app I mentioned.
> your family members chose Apple when they purchased their phones.
Apple chooses the default and integrates it into the OS more deeply than any third-party app can be integrated. It's not a free choice... and then Apple also refuses to provide open access to this ecosystem to other devices.
I know other people have sometimes said that it's an anti-spam measure to tie the iMessage account to an apple ID which is associated with a purchase. I'd be fine making an apple ID and paying up to $300 to get iMessage access for it if that would allow me to not use iOS and still communicate with my family (via an officially supported / recognized android + linux iMessage app).
When my iPhone finally breaks (and may it be soon), I am planning to get a mac mini server and install https://bluebubbles.app/ to solve this.
I am mildly worried that apple will eventually ban me for that, as they did with beeper (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39156308), and also not thrilled about the increased electric bill that'd entail.
> Apple chooses the default and integrates it into the OS more deeply than any third-party app can be integrated
And this is well known by everyone, and your family still chose Apple (in fact, I'm fairly certain this is why most people choose Apple - they want everything to "just work"). Apple has no obligation to provide any "ecosystem".
At the end of the day there isn't some mass hypnosis at work here. People choose Apple en masse because it works for them. Nothing stops Apple users from making an SMS (now RCS) group chat, either, nor from you and your family hosting a group chat on any other app on the App Store.
Free the consoles, too.
And they also tie you into systems you don't control. That power can be wielded against you when you least expect it. When you trade security for freedom, you deserve neither.
I want Apple to protect me from app developers. For me, it’s a feature not a bug.
Security is not mutually exclusive with informed consent. Apple's greatest trick was convincing you -- and, evidently, themselves -- that it is.
Every attempt at providing the general public with an "informed consent" escape hatch to security or privacy features ends degrading to either consent fatigue or "misinformed consent" dark patterns.
What do you suggest, then? As users, does rent-seeking paternalism really serve us better in the long run?
The rent-seeking is fundamentally a separate issue from the paternalism. Lots of the anti-Apple lobbying and PR is drawing attention to the 30% fees, but for many of those companies, they care much more about winning the freedom to spy on their users or engage in other predatory or abusive business practices.
But aside from that, you cannot simply point people at the approach that led to Windows UAC and GDPR cookie consent banners and consider the problem adequately solved.
So you'd prefer that instead of the (rare) UAC prompt, Windows should simply refuse to do what the user asks, unless they pony up for a developer license?
No, but I think it's incredibly naive and shortsighted to suggest that we should impose a legal requirement that any platform adopt such an obviously imperfect approach. Your memories of Windows Vista may have faded, but UAC prompts were certainly not rare when UAC first showed up, and they're still common enough to cause consent fatigue and undermine their effectiveness as a security measure.
So it's okay to leave your macbook wide open to all of the things you described? Because Apple doesn't force any of that on their macbooks. So are you really that safe?
If you don't like social media, don't use it. Isn't that what all apple fans tell when someone dislikes apple practices?
The problem is that other apps advertise on Facebook, and in order to attribute new installations to the ads (to find out how effective they are), they had to add the Facebook SDK in those other apps. Then when the social media-avoiding users ran those other apps, they ran Facebook code on their device without knowing and still got tracked.
This is what Apple’s ATT was designed to prevent. If app developers want to do that now, they need to ask the user for permission. The more Apple’s control over the platform is rolled back, the more stuff like this happens.
As a user, I don’t want to be using, say, a recipe app and be secretly tracked by Facebook in the background.
> I want them to prevent social media companies from tracking my device across my other apps.
They didn't say anything about not liking social media, only that they don't want to be secretly tracked.
This is good advice. I do that. HN and occasional reddit browsing (on the "old" design, the "new" one sucks ass) is where I draw the line.
> Americans on the whole fall over themselves to defend Apple
No, we don't. Apple fans from all nations do, but there is literally zero national pride in Apple.
"americans on the whole"
blanket statements like this are never accurate
Your comment also makes a blanket statement.
That's the joke. All generalizations are false.
That's a generalization.
THAT'S THE JOKE.
Not magic although it seems like it. Pixel perfect graphics and smooth video go a long way even if you’re not a graphic designer. Silicon Graphics had this figured out.
> Americans on the whole fall over themselves to defend Apple.
What does it have to do with nationality? I've seen Apple fanboys from all countries. Sure, Apple's market share in the US relative to other phone manufacturers is high, but that's mostly due to the "trust" Americans have in US-based companies (you can argue this trust is misplaced).
The Playdate, made by Panic, has a more active store than Vision Pro.
The Playdate store has ~300 games.
Apple Vision Pro has ~3,000 native apps, plus millions more compatible iPhone/iPad apps.
That's because they are above everyone else. Tell me — do you think this executive or any other higher-up at Apple will face any real consequences because of this?
In the absolute worst case the company will pay a fine in the order of tens of millions and the whole thing will go away. And the executive in question will get a fat bonus and promotion for his loyalty.
Well they've been getting away with it for years seemingly without any real consequences. Why should we assume corporations behave morally when there are no sanctions?
> Look at how snubbing developers has worked out for the Apple Vision Pro
I really don't think Apple's dev policies has had anything to do with this. The issue is the price - it's simply inaccessible to the vast majority of consumers, even many moderately high income consumers due to its value being somewhat unproven.
> The sheer arrogance of American leaders is astounding.
there, fixed it... the top brass at USG also behave this way, they're following the leader (or more likely the other way around, USG behaving like a private interest corporation)
To be fair, the top brass at Google, Facebook, etc also think they are above everyone else. Even Trump is above the law these days.
It's been under a month since Apple's lawyer took over the NLRB and immediately made a bunch of lawsuits over union suppression, employee rights and widespread employee harassment go away.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/04/02/trump-admin-poach...
I'm hoping this judge's ruling will actually be enforced by the executive branch, but I'm not holding my breath. I wonder if there are any mechanisms that allow state law enforcement to enforce federal judicial orders.
if it’s anything like wells fargo 8 million fine for opening up bank accounts in peoples names without their knowledge... after a 1 million donation to trump’s inauguration the fine will go down to 150,000 dollars.
Unfortunately their arrogance isn't false bravado. iPhones brand is extremely strong. Funny aside I know many women who won't date men who's text come up in green bubbles... thats branding.
I believe you -- though it's not surprising in the USA. Apple absolutely dominates the US market. I'd estimate of the top 75% of incomes Apple has at least an 80% market share. I live in a high-income area and the only Androids I ever see are carried by my house cleaners. And among young people it's only more intense because teens are so obsessed with brand cachet (as they always have been).
Now, on HN we know some people, though plenty wealthy enough to afford Apple, are choosing Android for function. But I doubt most of the public even thinks about that choice through that lens. Green bubble is the same as arriving to pick up your date in a 2002 Civic. It projects "I'm probably broke." Statistically. In the US only.
>Look at how snubbing developers has worked out for the Apple Vision Pro. It was already a niche device, but it's a ghost town.
This isn’t really about that. The reality is that the AVP costs $3500,- and realistically, how many users are there? It’s much more likely that developers will begin building for VisionOS once Apple releases a more affordable device.
This is the reality of development when you don't have support from developers - they will follow the money.
Contrast this with early iPhone app development where people were turning out in droves EXCITED to build something.
Apple has lost the trust and enthusiasm of the developer community by making their lives harder and harder over time. Of course they aren't going to lift a finger now unless it will make them money. The same wouldn't be true if Apple provided them the support to get excited about a new platform.
> The reality is that the AVP costs $3500,- and realistically, how many users are there?
This is exactly what everyone said about the original Macintosh, which cost $7,695 in 2025 dollars. The prediction value of the price of this AVP model is close to zero.
Does Apple have the willingness to sell a hypothetical future device for cheap enough to appeal to the mass market without the third-party developers who have thus far completely ignored it? Just on what comes with it alone. Nothing but a web browser and a bunch of iPad apps. It's expensive hardware, and admittedly much of the appeal is said to come from the amazing high resolution and perfect motion input. That puts a floor on the BOM. And Apple hasn't sold a loss leader in checks watch ever? Certainly not in the past 25 years.
And remember, you need more than us on HN to spark enthusiasm amongst developers of the calibre they need. Think AAA game studios, major sports leagues to produce premium courtside experiences, etc. The only way forward I see for Apple Vision (Pro) is if they put their money to work.
They can pick:
1. Subsidize it down to upper-middle-class impulse buy/middle class splurge, so about $600-800. This is still a stretch because even at that price it's hard to justify as-is today, but iPhone Pro Max and AirPods Pro sell and they don't do that much more than what you can get for half the price.
2. Back up a truck full of cash to NBA and/or NFL for courtside/sidelines experiences at every game.
3. Back up a truck of cash to the biggest names in gaming to nab full exclusives, and make sure those games are so good even diehard Apple haters can't resist it.
Anything besides those 3, in my view, will not launch this platform.
Developers, developers, developers, developers!
Where’s the coercive remedy?
Judges always mess this up. They act like their words have power. They issue one injunction, the party violates it in a flagrant manner, then the judge issues a new injunction.
You have to impose a coercive doubling fine, or something like that. Say $10 Million on day 1, $20 Million on day two, until compliance is secured.
Or jail time for those responsible.
My biggest takeaway out of this is Jim Jordan in the Senate trying to sneak through antitrust weakening.
From the "free market" party from a senator with at least some shame on the red aisle.
It really is open season for buying politicians.
Correct, but as the article states, it was the MAGA side that laid into him and made him pull it.
Steve Bannon has said many times he would've kept Lina Khan.
The populists are socially conservative but economically liberal in many respects (not all, obviously)
Jim Jordan is in the House of Reps fyi
He should be in jail for covering up a sexual abuse scandal, but alas
In the first few paragraphs the court states that it is anti-competitive for a company to set its profit margin to a factor that isn't linked to the value of its intellectual property.
Isn't this business 101? Charge what the market will bear? Unclear to me why the court thinks profit margin needs to be a factor of the value of goods/services/ip, or that the court is even capable of determining what that value is?
I wish the government took more steps to fix the monopolizing forces in the system instead of focusing on antitrust.
The way the monetary system is set up guarantees that market monopolies will occur. The monetary playing field is centralized and asymmetric. It's a basically a system of privilege and handicaps on a broad spectrum. Then people are surprised that those with more privileges keep winning predictably and form monopolies.
I hope he gets criminal charges. The amount of people who lie under oath and get away with it is unacceptable. Lets get all the politicians who lied under oath next as well.
It's not gonna happen. And for the reason that you just gave.
The only reason I have the smallest bit of hope is that this is a state case in California and not a federal one.
No, it's a federal court case. The original claim that Epic won against Apple was based on California state law, but it was decided in a federal US District Court (N.D. Cal) because there were also claims under federal law (the Sherman Antitrust Act) and because Epic and Apple are headquartered in different states.
California is not going to punish Apple Execs lmao.
They didn't give a reason.
It's baffling putting together a C-suite of anti-competitive executives doesn't get anyone criminal charges.
Its only baffling if you think consumers control the courts, which they self evidently do not.
And other execs, like Zuckerberg
Al Gore is still on the board.
Is it a coincidence that this ruling comes near earnings (which is today)?
It's probably a coincidence. Having worked for federal judges I can tell you that, by and large, they make a point of paying no attention to that kind of stuff.
Tim Cook has overstayed his welcome. He should have left years ago at this point. That plus the fact that all his successors are built on the same nondescript mold he came out of, does not bode well for the strategic vision of Apple.
I know Tim does a better job, but he is the mirror image of his counterpart at Google. Made from the same mold. Great peace time substitutes, lousy leaders.
The CEO of Google seems to be navigating the AI war pretty competently.
A few months back everyone was writing the eulogies for Google and how they fumbled AI. Now Gemini is one of the top models (if not the best) and it is extremely capable and price competitive
Meanwhile Apple is still trying to wrap the head around AI. (Didn't stop them from making a splashy marketing campaign though)
So no, both companies are not the same.
> Tim Cook has overstayed his welcome.
This isn't the first time an influential leader (like Jobs) chooses the next leader only for everyone to realize the next person isn't a "leader" type, but rather someone who was put in charge to maintain the status quo, not tarnish the previous leader's legacy, and not come up with crazy new ideas.
Let me push back on that: Cook was an extraordinarily good choice as successor to Steve, but he also should have left a while ago.
It doesn't look to have achieved those goals this time around.
Innovators like Jobs are incredibly rare. We're lucky he chose someone who would not only preserve the company, but stave off the worst of the enshittification that has eaten Microsoft and HP. Cook is also surprisingly protective of privacy and civil rights. I'll take him over 99% of executives these days.
In what sense is Cook protective of privacy and civil rights? Apple collaborates with the government to the full extent that is required to have access to their market, irrespective of privacy and civil rights implications. China, for example.
In the sense that they don't go much much further than just the bare minimum required by government regulations from the various jusrisdictions they operate in, and they don't treat this overreach as their primary profit center, thereby incentivising themselves to push it as far as they think they can get away with, the way all the other major tech companies do?
I'm hoping for John Ternus to take the reins soon. At least from the casual outside observer, he seems like someone that's actually excited about tech and customer experience.
Maybe Apple is too big to have a product person as CEO? They are so big that they essentially need a diplomat at the top spot? If so, at least let someone like Ternus call the internal shots and lead the products.
Ternus generally comes across well - technically knowledgeable and a good speaker - but also he is literally the only notable Apple executive who is significantly younger than Cook.
Apple is extremely not the type of company to recruit a CEO from outside, so if Cook is doing any kind of succession planning I have to imagine it's Ternus.
Multiple failed large projects under his watch, Apple Intelligence, Apple Vision, Apple Car. For comparison, Huawei and Xiaomi both have launched cars. Samsung AI offering is much better than Apple's.
In the words of a trial lawyer friend of mine, “Nobody in the history of the world has said, ‘You know what? The judge was right; I was an asshole.’
Definitely some of those vibes there. I’ve generally been on team apple for this case, and as Gruber notes, they largely won the case. Dunking on their power to set other contractual fees seems to have come back to bite them. That said, as a user, I strongly prefer to use Apple’s in-app payments — I was just buying a hearthstone purchase from Blizzard; on my laptop it popped up options like “Credit Card or PayPal?” I was like “nah” and loaded it up on my iPad to pay with Apple Pay.
Do I hate PayPal? No. Do I appreciate a payment service that shows all my recurring payments in one place, lets me cancel them, and feels generally very safe? Yes. I’m happy to have Apple compete on fair playing field for payments.
Summary: Oops.
> That said, as a user, I strongly prefer to use Apple’s in-app payments
I'm sure both the app developer and Apple are happy to let you pay 30% extra for the convenience of Apple Pay vs PayPal.
Well in blizzards case, I pay the same - they pay the fee.
Apple Pay is 0.15% fee and have no bearing on this case. In-App Purchases are 30%.
Note that the 0.15% fee for Apple Pay is paid by the banks issuing the card, and I assume it sufficiently reduces chargebacks since the banks are happy to offer Apple Pay.
All fees get factored into the retail price, generally speaking. Bankrupt companies excluded.
That is not a proper accounting of this situation.
Suppose the chargebacks due to fraud/whatever without Apple Pay cost the issuing banks 0.20%.
Then the banks reduce their expenses by paying Apple 0.15%.
Maybe it helps reduce customer service calls and the associated expenses. Maybe Apple results in higher total spend. I’m sure the leaders at JPM, BoA, Wells Fargo, etc have done the calculations to figure out that it is better for them to pay Apple than to not.
And since it is not required for any bank to allow Apple Pay to work with their cards, it stands to reason that in a competitive market like credit cards, it doesn’t result in an increase in end user prices.
> a payment service that shows all my recurring payments in one place, lets me cancel them
PayPal does.
> and feels generally very safe
PayPal doesn't??
I've heard so many horror stories about people's PayPal accounts, it feels like the last thing from safe.
On the other hand, if you're using it exclusively for payments rather than receiving money maybe it's fine?
But there are so many stories where PayPal closed someone's account and didn't give them back their money, am I really supposed to trust them in the case of a dispute where I'm owed a refund?
I've never had to dispute anything yet through Apple Pay. Does anyone have any experience? Are their reps decent and have a fair process?
Apple Pay on Stripe?
I'm unable to find where Gruber says that Apple "largely won" (not that I would be surprised to see Gruber making such a claim). His latest headline literally begins with "Apple lost." Where are you seeing that?
From https://daringfireball.net/2025/04/gonzales_rogers_apple_app...
> Keep in mind this whole thing stems from an injunction from a lawsuit filed by Epic Games that Apple largely won. The result of that lawsuit was basically, “OK, Apple wins, Epic loses, but this whole thing where apps in the App Store aren’t allowed to inform users of offers available outside the App Store, or send them to such offers on the web (outside the app) via easily tappable links, is bullshit and needs to stop. If the App Store is not anticompetitive it should be able to compete with links to the web and offers from outside the App Store.”
And there's a subsequent post elaborating on this point: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/05/01/apple-lost-but-...
I don't buy into the analogy. Cable providers can't prevent you from watching free OTA channels on your television, but Apple prevents Epic from publishing iOS apps outside of the App Store. Considering Fortnite was removed from the App Store specifically due to offering outside payment options, denying its return will likely lead straight back to court.
IANAL, but that's not true. Fortnite was removed due to breach of contract.
The breach being that they offered a payment method outside of Apple Pay. That's exactly what he said.
It's not exactly what he said. The fact the they agreed to a contract prohibiting them from using an outside payment method and then willfully violated that contract is a detail that courts may not be so willing to overlook.
Even though the court found that particular provision to be illegal?
Contract law allows you to sign away many rights you would otherwise retain. I'm not sure that a contract provision being found illegal under antitrust law has the effect of it being retroactively considered unconscionable or excuses agreeing to the contract in bad faith.
It's in the text of his blog entry. Right there. In black and white. Word for word.
Keep in mind this whole thing stems from an injunction from a lawsuit filed by Epic Games that Apple largely won. - emphasis his.
And he's right, Epic "largely lost" that case, Apple only needed to concede the minimal things they didn't win and it would have been an epic win (as opposed to an Epic win) for them. Sweeney didn't get much of what he wanted, Apple mostly got everything they wanted.
He has several blog entries, the latest of which says explicitly that Apple lost ("the ruling was clearly a significant and reputationally-damaging loss for Apple"), hence asking for guidance toward the entry that contained that text. I don't understand the reaction toward that.
They won on almost all counts; you can tell this by trying to download a Tim Sweeney backed App Store on your iPhone in the US.
> This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order.
...
> referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney for a criminal contempt investigation.
It's suddenly become a negotiation again.
You need two sides for a negotiation.
Based on the tariff carve-outs and the political appointments Trump's made, Apple leadership is definitely inside Trump's inner circle.
They've been smart enough not to parade Tim Cook around in a MAGA hat, but just barely:
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/apple-ceo-tim-...
I expect there to be some performative lawyering by the Trump administration until the case blows over.
Haha okay fair point, the negotiation already took place.
Though the contempt referral may have not been part of the deal and might cost extra.
This is nothing that a donation to a Trump PAC or shitcoin won't be able to fix.
Can we go after Apple for the green bubble discrimination? It's responsible for the rise of incels...
https://www.joe.co.uk/life/sex/owning-an-android-is-official...
No Server Name Indication (SNI):
https://web.archive.org/web/20250501083454if_/https://www.th...
https://github.com/kontaxis/snidump
Try running snidump for a day while reading HN, including
(With SNI)
firefox https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-apple-executive-lied
(Without SNI, i.e., "No SNI")
{
printf 'GET /web/20250501083454if_/https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-apple-executive-lied HTTP/1.0\r\n'
printf 'Host: web.archive.org\r\n\r\n'
} |openssl s_client -connect archive.org:443 -ign_eof -noservername > 1.htm
firefox ./1.htmOut of curiosity, what does SNI stand for?