Wally Epic games (makers of Fortnite) took Apple to court over the 30% take and ‘closed garden’ monopoly nature of iPhones recently and…<drumroll>….. got their ass handed to them.
That’s not entirely true - they won on one point which was:
"In the original ruling, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers said that Apple would be prohibited from restricting developers from including “in their apps and their metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms,” paving the way for alternate payment options that do not require Apple to use the in-app purchase system."
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/08/apple-wins-epic-appeal-no-app-store-changes-yet/
This should enable app developers to circumvent Apple’s 30% cut by offering the app for free in the app store but making the key features available to purchase in-app via alternative payment methods.
It’s not yet been implemented as Apple have filed an appeal, but it seems unlikely to be overturned.
This isn’t to say that the entire legal battle may have been worth it for Epic Games mind, but that developers in general seem likely to benefit from this change once it’s introduced.
Given this, it actually seems a bit odd timing by Musk to publicly rage about this given in the near future Apple could be forced to enable developers to get around it. It could just be that he’s just publicly calling out Apple’s monopolistic practices now as a PR move in retaliation for Apple threatening to pull advertising off twitter, as opposed to him actually being prepared to stage a legal battle.
It does not seem immediately obvious what a legal battle undertaken by Musk or twitter would add or change which hasn’t already been gone through by Epic Games?! So unless he’s somehow found some entirely new insight in to the case it doesn’t seem an obvious move.
Wally If Apple really are warning them to stop the hate speech, I’d listen. Apple could knock up a version of twitter faster and better than Musk could knock up a Tesla phone.
But how many people would use a version of twitter only populated by people with iPhones?!
Also, who the fuck are Apple to define what is “hate speech”?
