I just finished the last episode of The Talk Show podcast, where John Gruber says that Apple doesn’t hold a grudge and is only doing things because they make business sense. He said that because Apple approved Epic’s account and that they would be allowed their own App Store. I already that it was a bad take, but this shows it.
I find that Gruber occasionally has some interesting insight but it’s often hard to take him seriously these days — he’s effectively an unofficial PR outlet for Apple.
(Fun fact: he co-created Markdown with Aaron Swartz)
It's a sad evolution. Gruber's blog is entitled Daring Fireball and in his early blogging days in the '00s he was in fact pretty daring and posted a lot of criticisms of Apple. Over time he had so thoroughly assimilated himself into the Apple way of thinking that he seldom notices whatever Apple is doing wrong.
His criticisms were all about how the NeXT folks were ruining Apple with their mach-o binaries, file paths & extensions, etc. You'd have thought that Avie Tevanian ran over his dog or something.
Really? I've always considered Gruber to be an Apple fanboy. He might write criticisms, but they read to me like a Deadhead penning an essay on why Aoxomoxoa isn't as good as Terrapin Station or something.
Ultimately, Gruber knows his audience is Apple enthusiasts and his material comes from being given access by Apple.
He's pretty critical of them in some areas. Mostly in developer-relations these days -- he doesn't like the anti-steering App Store rules, and Apple's general "we provided the successful platform; your apps contribute nothing to that" attitude.
There is no point having rules and contracts if you aren't going to enforce them.
It is inarguable that Epic broke the terms of the contract. They could've simply done what Spotify and others did and lobby governments whilst honouring the terms of the agreement that they voluntarily chose to sign. Instead Epic chose to be petty in order to prove a point.
Is Spotify banned ? No. And they are 100x a competitor to Apple than Epic is.
