This is why devs are afraid of publicly criticizing Apple, let alone testifying against them in the court. Apple has shown that they will then prevent you from accessing 50%+ of the US market. In short Apple is a bully, has been for more than a decade now, and it has worked out well for them.

This is why the EU is hitting apple and why the US needs to.

Too many devs have their livelihood at the mercy of Apple's(and Google's) Damocles's sword. At least with Google you can easily sideload.

If even megacorpos like Epic have issues with Apple imagine what being an indie dev or small company will be like.

Apple gets around this by saying they are "Promising to Create 30000 american jobs" which the politicians then peddle in their election campaigns. But then it never happens because it is all a promise...

The politicians of course only care about the PR stunt and give them concessions either way.

A youtuber did a dissection of all the big tech jobs Trump "created" with his talks with big tech, and all of the new US jobs announced by the likes of Apple or Nvidia were jobs they were planning to create anyway, before Trump got elected Trump is just taking credit for it as if he did anything.

Job creation, retention or destruction is a powerful political tool that companies use everywhere as leverage to get politicians to do what they want. You can see the auto sector in Germany. So the US defending Apple is understandable. All countries protect their domestic big players.

Imagine if Microsoft banned Steam Or Rockstar on Windows

The outrage would be massive, that would be giant scandal

This is why apple needs to be broken up into a software company and a hardware company. They're so, so clearly abusing their current position.

Just take the app store away.

From all of them - take it away from Google too. Frankly - Microsoft never actually got much buy in for their store, but take it away from them as well.

Hardware that has only a single approved distribution channel for software, that is owned by someone other than the owner of the hardware, shouldn't be legal.

Further - if you own a piece of hardware, you legally should own EVERY fucking key. If there's a lock in that device, hardware or software based, that has a key - you get a damn copy.

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Some physical comparisons that show how outrageously unethical this setup is:

You buy a home, but your realtor gets the only copy of the keys. "Don't worry" they say, "I'll just pop by and open er up whenever you need to get in and out. Oh, and by the way, I don't like Ikea - so I won't open the door if you're trying to move Ikea furniture in. Great working with you guys, enjoy your new home!".

You've just bought a new car, you tried turning into your neighborhood, but suddenly the car stops. You call the dealer: "Oh, I see your neighborhood road was paved by PavingCo, They don't pay our manufacturers' yearly inspection fee, so we can't certify that our car can safely drive on that road. So we disable it when the GPS detects you're about to drive there."

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This is fundamentally about ownership. Hardware manufacturers are playing with utter fire here, because this is the first time in history there exists enough infrastructure that a device can phone home and ask "Is this ok?" to the maker, rather than operating as the owner desires.

As far as I'm concerned - you don't own a device that does that. You're just renting it, and the manufacturer can and will extort you with rent-seeking behavior at EVERY turn.

Phones are only the first stop - this is going to spread to absolutely everything that uses electricity unless this gets extinguished real fast. We're already starting to see the same games in Cars, IoT devices, TVs, etc...

I'm eagerly awaiting the day my drill stops working because I'm not trying to drill the manufacturers' overpriced screws with it...

Apples terms of service were illegal. Illegal agreements are not binding

Yeah this type of behavior will eventually get Apple broken into two. And they’ll deserve it.

Man, just let it go. More you try to block Epic or any other, more you are pushing people away from yourself.

Be Apple, innovate, give us second iPhone moment so you wouldn't worry so much about revenue drop in services. Or make payment via Apple so good, your customers would go for it even with price difference. Just stop stupid, monopolistic tactics.

That is how the world Ought to be, not how the world Is.

As I do with Microsoft, I only use Apple products when its absolutely necessary.

My personal choices are whatever is best, Fedora for my home OS(Don't call Fedora Linux, Fedora is so far and beyond Linux, you don't want to associate them).

My Pixel phone... Idk, looking for something new. But at least I have been using Fdroid and its pretty amazing.

But yeah I bend to their will when I'm doing corporate stuff, never personal.

Apple is just being petty now. They're legally allowed to keep Epic out, but why? As a message to others who might wish to legally contest Apple's monopolistic (or at least duopolistic) practises? You lost, Apple. Be a gracious loser. This action is only going to foment even more animosity from developers, gamers, customers, judges, and importantly, legislators. This absolutely will be used as a datapoint for future rulings, and cases are ongoing or being filed all over the world now.

No shoes, no shirt, no service.

Epic wanted their own store and they got their own store. It cost them and Apple a bunch of money, which indirectly is not good for anyone's customers... my sense of justice is not perplexed as to why they are not allowed back in.

Would you want to do business with someone who just sued you after breaking their previous contract with you?

> Epic wanted their own store and they got their own store.

They don't. Quoting the article:

> "Apple has blocked our Fortnite submission so we cannot release to the US App Store or to the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union," Epic stated via its Fortnite account

If someone prevents me from selling my own product in my own store then it's not my store.

they've started adding warnings to any apps daring to use external payments too

https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_now_showing_warnings_on_eu_ap...

really hope they add to the fine for this, seems like Apple never learns.

So pathetic, especially the red triangle. It's like they thought "well it's a warning, so we use the warning icon but we need to make it scary so it's red!!".

Would you be okay for Google to warn anyone when entering a website on chrome that they are taking a risk because they offer payment options other than Google pay?

Its about freedom and openness of platforms.

‘It’s fine because people will ignore it’ doesn’t make something okay.

I am not sure, but my father who is old, knows his tech has been at the receiving end of some financial fraud (some clowns pretended to be stock trading experts, thankfully nothing happened as he figured it out before any money was sent).

You and I might be technologically literate, or sophisticated enough to know what's what. That being said I feel the likelihood of scammy apps like those on App store for iOS a lot less likely but not zero. That being, on Chrome, one does have many many options for reliable ways to pay money (in my country we have like half a dozen payment gateway apps so if you are not using those, its always going to be a gamble)

> This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system. It uses external purchases

It's poorly worded for maximum FUD.

this showed up in the recent court case too:

> In Slack communications dated November 16, 2021, the Apple employees crafting the warning screen for Project Michigan discussed how best to frame its language. Mr. Onak suggested the warning screen should include the language: “By continuing on the web, you will leave the app and be taken to an external website” because “‘external website’ sounds scary, so execs will love it.” [...] One employee further wrote, “to make your version even worse you could add the developer name rather than the app name.” To that, another responded “ooh - keep going.”

from https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36... (page 36)

these people should be jailed for contempt

Apple proposed reducing the scare factor months ago. The EU told them to hold off.

https://daringfireball.net/2025/05/that_eu_app_store_warning...

At the end of that link, where it describes how the EC gave conflicting instructions, demanded action without saying what needed to be done, and then gave a sudden negative judgment... I know some iOS developers who'd say that sounds eerily familiar. :D

This has been going on for 4 years, they have won multiple times in court. The last time the judge actively insulted apple for ignoring the previous engagements and even suggesting criminal proceedings on some of the executives, and now they ignore the courts again

By “they” you mean Apple, if you’ve read the opinions. And they did fly too close to the sun recently on one point. But that point was not about whether or not they have to let epic on their platform.

epic violated an agreement years ago why let them off the hook?

Doesn’t Apple usually offer a reason why they reject a app or a game? From the article and the linked tweet no reason is given.

It's the same reason it has been since the judgement, Epic violated the TOS so Apple removed Fortnite. The court found for Apple on that count, and has never ordered Fortnite's reinstatement.

Tim Sweeney is using language in a way to make it appear as though the recent ruling ordered Fortnite's reinstatement, and a lot of people are falling for it.

I understood, that Apple did not reject it but just did nothing with the submitted app and didn't give any reply.

Pocket veto

As expected [0], it isn't over yet and Apple doesn't care.

They even went as far as to blocking downloads from third-party app stores:

> The Verge has confirmed that the game is no longer available to download on iOS from the Epic Games Store or the alternative marketplace AltStore PAL in the EU, where it had previously been available. It’s not yet clear if Apple blocked the game’s availability through those stores, or if Epic itself chose to make it unavailable. We’ve reached out to both Apple and Epic for comment.

That tells you the reach into how Apple can block app installs even from third-party app stores.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43896104

Not surprising. Apple suffered an epic defeat (pun intended) and now engages in its usual passive-aggressive behavior to avoid compliance.

According to the article, Apple won the right to ban Epic, so what is the defeat you mentioned?

To be clear I think Apple is in the wrong here and the App Store tax is absurd. But what court decision says that Epic won?

Epic has won multiple times, and the second time the judge is suggesting criminal proceedings against executives for ignoring the first time they won https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/30/epic-games-just-scored-a-m...

Tim Sweeney is good at PR, and the media tends to fall for it.

The judge didn’t say Fortnite had to be let back on the App Store. She said that Apple needed to allow payments through external payment processors. Apple can’t force Epic to use their payment system anymore, but they absolutely still can decide they don’t want to distribute Fortnite on the App Store. It’s their store.

This seems to be true for the Apple App Store, but doesn't explain the lack of notorizing the update for Epic's own EU storefront.

They lost on almost all counts actually; precisely the reason the judge was angry about failure to comply with the relief she did order. (In her opinion; appeals court will see. It looks colorable to me that she may feel Apple outsmarted her and just “technically” complied. But we will see during appeals.)