Even setting aside the dubious morality of Apple's rules on iOS, I feel like I'm going insane watching Apple be maximally aggressive. The EU loves regulating! There's nothing they love more! It seems supremely unwise to give them additional excuses to do something they clearly want to do anyways.
Having worked for many bosses, never ever never undersestimate the power of ego of an executive. It's only second to the ego of a lawyer.
Many of them will tank their company and their client if they get their ego bruised and feel publicly humiliated. Those are hyper competitive people which see live as zero sum game and are trained in life to never, ever, lose a challenge or competition for domination. ESPECIALLY in public.
The myth of a rational businessman is just that - a myth.
Being publicly regulated is exactly that scenario for Apple. There's execs in that very company that are frothing at their mouth in irrational anger ready to throw their weight around and WIN. Stomp on the opponent. SPLAT the unimportant fly that DARED challenge them.
(I'm exaggerating... but not by much. This seems more of an emotional than thoughtful response Apple is doing here.)
What if, and hear me out, execs could go to jail instead of just their company paying fines as if they're parking tickets? Would they still be as cocky?
> execs could go to jail instead of just their company paying fines as if they're parking tickets?
You want to send an executive to jail for cancelling a contract?
I’d be curious for a jurisdiction to try this. In my opinion, I wouldn’t want to do business in a place where commercial disputes can be twisted by a political insider into jail time.
And that's rather the point. Apple earns a lot of money in the EU and much of that seems to be through abusing their position.
So yes, if you're the executive who signs off on something that is so clearly anticompetative, you should own the penalty. Ignorance of the law is not a defense.
No - you seem to be assuming such a law would only be invoked in cases where the company legitimately did something wrong. But that's not what's at stake here. We're talking about what happens when someone with political clout and a vendetta is able to use that law to wrongfully get a a CEO tossed in prison. Because sometimes laws get twisted for personal gain, and you're raising the stakes pretty high.
I wouldn't want to do business under those conditions, not because I might violate the law, but because it could be used wrongfully against me.
Considering how impactful some executive decisions can be why would this be so inconceivable? A CEO can definitely cause more harm to a community than a shoplifter and we have no qualms about sending them to jail. If there was a clear mens rhea to cause harm or awareness of that harm and a disregard for the consequences to others then why shouldn't we treat it similarly?
> If there was a clear mens rhea to cause harm or awareness of that harm and a disregard for the consequences to others then why shouldn't we treat it similarly?
Yes, and we do. That’s well below the threshold of commercial disputes.
Do you want to send executives to jail when their products kill people? The line has to be drawn somewhere, and if there is no (functioning) regulatory oversight then businesses will absolutely not self-regulate.
PG&E caused the death of hundreds and the loss of hundreds of homes, and they've done it multiple times. Is there regulatory oversight because I'm not seeing it. They will happily cut corners in the name of profit even if it means killing people.
Fair enough, no jail time then but how about the personal liability in money. You fuck up, it's your own money you gotta pay with, not the company's bottomless war-chest.
> it's your own money you gotta pay with, not the company's
I agree with this, and it could be constructed out of shareholder rights. Perhaps it could only be applied past a certain threshold of compensation, say, 100x the median wage. ($4.6mm [1].)
I’d argue the threshold should be final, unappealable regulatory penalty or criminal conviction of the corporation.
> why does personal responsibility for harm to others bother you?
Personal responsibility is irrelevant. You’re constructing a lower threshold for criminality. I know the first thing I’d be trying to figure out is how to put my competitors in jail.
Let’s take Epic v Apple. Epic went to court. It lost. This entire saga has cost Epic’s shareholders billions. Should Sweeney go to jail? Would the world be better if an Apple-friendly prosecutor could take up that challenge?
If we have a cultural failing in America, it’s having a reflexive urge to turn outrage into jail time.
> Provide an incentive for companies to regulate each other
Do you think there is a reason every modern democracy resists privatising criminal prosecution? (They had it in Rome. We probably need a history of law section in the basic high-school curriculum.)
The justice system in this hypothetical would not be private, it's just that companies would be trying to sue each other for breaking the rules, accidentally advancing the public interest.
This is a bogus modernist interpretation that dilutes the meaning of violence. Fortunately, it’s being rejected after having a moment that peaked during lockdown.
Interestingly countries that jail people for corruption still have corruption. For example in China you can be jailed and even executed for corruption but there is still a lot of corruption there. Here's an example I read about a few days ago where a city government arrested someone who demanded to be payed for their construction contract. (Obviously the real story may be more complicated.)[0] And there are definitely petty execs there as well. I think it may be because you need more power in enforce corruption laws, and power itself multiplies the effect of corruption. That is why I think the civil law vs. criminal law is an important distinction.
Seems current laws look civilized/weak for your taste.
I think you'd rather prefer Sunday gala of past where convict would be covered with oil soaked rags and then set on fire. So while that person ran crying, howling it provided tons of entertainment to hardworking folks gathered there. And in that process of course justice prevailed.
I think it would be wise to reflect on whether the next logical step from "I think fines are not effective enough and decision markers should face jail setences" is "I think we should set people on fire as punishment and public entertainment". Do you genuinely believe that a person arguing for the first, would agree or would be close to agreeing with the second?
The question you should be asking is: would execs still exist? And we know the answer to this from before the advent of corporations: yes, just as tycoons and barons with barely any checks on their political and financial power instead of as execs.
When this question is asked, it's always with an implicit bias that executives are all morally bankrupt demons that would be beaten to death by the public if not for police.
My response to that is: we should change the laws.
Nobody ever asks this question thinking about multi-generation family businesses where the executive is the head of household and if everything works out, the business will be passed down to their progeny.
Of course, it also begs the question why do we accept this?
Personally - never... but illegal adoptions are a very dark side of human trafficking so you may want to be more careful with your example. The truth is that we live in a far better society than fifty or a hundred or a thousand years prior - we have far more access to justice. But if you think that access to justice is universal then there are some hard truths in your future.
I'm willing to believe Apple may be like that behind the scenes, buuuuuut while reading this:
> Many of them will tank their company and their client if they get their ego bruised and feel publicly humiliated. Those are hyper competitive people which see live as zero sum game and are trained in life to never, ever, lose a challenge or competition for domination. ESPECIALLY in public.
… I thought you were going to name Sweeney as the petulant man-child chafing at rules and being told "no".
From an observation standpoint seeing how Microsoft behaved in the 90's and onward, they (Apple) are behaving very similarly - almost exactly with what MS did for Windows back then. I have a growing distaste for Apple corporate/mgmt each day even though I am surrounded by their devices.
Microsoft already notified EC that they stop their browser shenanigans and will ship windows without their browser pre-installed to save on endless lawyering game they can’t win.
Apple has been dragged kicking and screaming into more consumer friendly positions since the iPhone was released. It took years for them to simply switch to a more open charging port standard.
While I think they should've switched earlier, it's often forgotten how angry people got when Apple switched from the 30 pin connector to Lightning. There were piles and piles of devices that used the 30 pin connector - it had been on every iPod, iPad and iPhone for nearly a decade. Entire hotel chains had iPod Docks in every room. Switching cost isn't limited to just goes in the device. It doesn't surprise me that Apple was hesitant to switch the port again.
Apple wasn't hesitant, they knew it was an inevitable switch so never invested in to Lightening.
They were quite happy knowing once you bought Apple, you kept Apple or you lost all your accessories.
They're still playing the same game now. My Airpods work grate on iPhone, but they only connect to some non-apple devices over bluetooth (not PS5), and when they do connect, if the mic is on the audio is awful.
Before the iPhone and maybe blackberry the majority of phones used random proprietary charger. The iPhone was the first mass market consumer phone to come with a cable that connected to a standard usb charger.
> The iPhone was the first mass market consumer phone to come with a cable that connected to a standard usb charger.
And had a device end connector that didn’t change every other model. Some phones used standard connectors for that but plenty didn’t, and manufacturers would sometimes change the connector without rhyme or reason.
My Sony Xperia phone had a cable that connected to standard usb charger, this was before the first iPhone. From my memory Moto Razr 2 used micro usb b cable to standard usb. There where plenty of phones before iPhone that had charging cable that connected to standard usb charger.
Sweeney allegedly tweeted that he would breach his contract with Apple. Apple reached out and asked if he was being hysterical for public display. He didn’t clarify. At that point, Epic credibly threatened breach of contract.
This is a commercial dispute between multi-billion dollar companies, both of whom charge outrageous platform fees, both of whom seem to enjoy being dramatic, and both of whom are being maximally aggressive. It’s fair to remain emotionally uninvolved.
> threat of a breach of contract is not a breach of contract
I don’t know EU law. But anticipatory breach is enough to trigger damages under American law, and “is an excuse for non-performance by the non-breaching party” [1].
There's nothing about some random contracts I can see in DMA. DMA however does say that the gatekeeper (Apple) isn't allow to block or retaliate against competitors. Or users for that matter.
Epic has a 12% fee, while Apple has a 30% fee - I don't think those are equally outrageous and I would go so far as to say one is extremely reasonable.
Epic’s fee is global. Once you sign with them, you pay that on every install. There is also the 5% royalty, which brings the actual fee to 17% since we’re comparing non-small developer figures.
The 5% royalty is for using the unreal engine - they don't enforce that the engine be used in order to appear in their game store, nor do they enforce that unreal engine games can only be sold on their game store.
Schiller emailed Sweeney asking for assurances and Sweeney responded with:
> Epic and its subsidiaries are acting in good faith and will comply with all terms of current and future agreements with Apple, and we'll be glad to provide Apple with any specific further assurances on the topic that you'd like.
Without reply, Apple summarily terminated their developer account a week later. It seems obvious, in retrospect, that Schiller's email's goal was to establish a fig leaf of Apple having reached out before doing this.
It is indeed true that Sweeney has tweeted many criticisms of Apple's DMA plans but there haven't been any threatening noncompliance.
> there haven't been any threatening noncompliance
Do we have neutral sources for these claims and emails?
Apple said Sweeney threatened to breach contract and didn’t repudiate in private. Epic claims it didn’t threaten and did repudiate. We’re in a he said she said absent independent sourcing.
The source for the tweets (from your original comment: "Sweeney allegedly tweeted that he would breach his contract with Apple") are Sweeney's Twitter feed which you can read as well as I did. Did you find any threatening non-compliance?
Perhaps it's just me, but my gut says that EpicGames dot com might, possibly, just might, not be an entirely neutral source on the topic of "was Epic naughty?"
Even with screenshots, and assuming no false claims (which IIRC are entirely legal so long as you don't swear under oath), there's plenty of ways to mislead by omission while saying only true things.
