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.
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.
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.
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.
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 powerless, you mean. The government has become more tolerant.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He should go to jail!
On the other hand, it may have saved his company billions on tariffs.
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."
> 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.
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?
But most of the Central Valley and the inland Northern California counties are much more Republican than Orange.
(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.)
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It "works for me".
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.
Who cares if it’s pocket change for google or meta, nobody wants another Facebook app.
$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?
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.
Her gaming company you can read about here:
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.
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.
I get the exact same feeling. They're afraid of collapsing despite being way ahead.
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..."
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.
Likely old computers that could do anything the user wanted.
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).
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 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.
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.
I assume most app vendors would gladly get some money from those countries as well, if they want to grow their user base.
That’s included with the App Store.
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.
They didn't say anything about not liking social media, only that they don't want to be secretly 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.
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.
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.
Apple is the one who implements the advertising ID companies use to track you. And preventing that tracking is a is-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.
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.
Security is not mutually exclusive with informed consent. Apple's greatest trick was convincing you -- and, evidently, themselves -- that it is.
I would like to be able to prevent it, like running a firewall or disabling bluetooth for certain processes or more...
blanket statements like this are never accurate
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).
No, we don't. Apple fans from all nations do, but there is literally zero national pride in Apple.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
...
> referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney for a criminal contempt investigation.
It's suddenly become a negotiation again.
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.
Though the contempt referral may have not been part of the deal and might cost extra.
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.
> 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-...
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.
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
perihelions•3h ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43852145 ("Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds (wsj.com)" — 336 comments)