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.
Almost no-one gets that choice.
The choose a risk of going to jail for a more likely bonus.
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.
It's less of a feeling and more of a repeatedly demonstrated reality. It shouldn't be that way, but most of the time it is. I'd love for that to change, but I can't fault people for not expecting it to happen any time soon.
How so?
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.
He should go to jail!
What you've just described would be the single greatest punishment to an entity in the (admittently recently established) history of case-law, would upend the tech sector (maybe justly), lay off 10s of thousands and effectively stop work at downstream supply chains.
I get that this is the point of the punishment. However, do you think politicians, investors, lawyers with controlling stake, The DOD with security integrations, would allow that to happen?
Put another way, do you think the rule of law exists for the hyper rich when the current admin put.....Linda McMahon on the presidents cabinet?
It would only be “the greatest punishment” because it is a subset of what Apple was able to obtain with their illegal methods. They billed hundreds of billions in fees.
Not so much about punishment, as repayment. However, it's not unusual for courts to also add a punishment element, especially if the offending party knew it was offending (as in this case).
And yes, I think the politicians would let this go through, because "every Apple customer" is a lot of voters.
>Maybe it's time to breakup Apple - separate the computer and phone divisions.
Which also means, "it's time to breakup apple" means nothing, not sure why OP suggested that as a method to punish a legally problematic CEO/board. they don't have a multisegment monopoly allowing them complete control over supply chains, or multi region monopoly on smartphones that would be effected by a breakup.
The hardware company would have to publish specs allowing anyone to offer operating systems running on Apple hardware.
The Apple value pack comes mostly from brand value, deep ecosystem interactions, and being pretty much the only big corp ONLY focused on high end personal computing devices. Almost all their revenue is from B2C, their incentives are more aligned than most other big corps.
Any split to not actually harm the customers would be more focused on services such as apple card, icloud, the apple plus services (music,tv,…) etc.
Tbh, even EU mesures i think would be better if apple was instead forced to open the hardware (provide docs and bootloader, and no penalty for an user that takes advantage), rather than opening the OS or store. Not needing such openness on store and OS/core libs, actually allows apple to be more nimble and providing de better service (or bigger margins :( ), buto opnning hardware could actually give other OSs a chance, for once there could be a linux phone, as iphone has few hardware configs, and the device is very wide spread, 2 factors making it very attractive to devs (as example, check asahi linux, how quickly it became usable on a platform without docs)
This would play much more into “i bought this device i run wtv software I want” without restricting software vendors, Apple could keep the benefit of tight integration (that consumers like me like), but would have to provide the docs (and boot) for alternative OS to rise.
On the other hand, it may have saved his company billions on tariffs.
1. Any fines for not complying would be less than what they would lose by complying
2. That no individual would suffer any consequences for blatantly disobeying a court order.
In my opinion, the whole concept that a company can break the law but no human can be held responsible is insane.
I really hope that criminal charges are brought against those involved in making a conscious choice to both lie to the court and ignore the court order. Hopefully that will make other executives think twice when put in the same situation.
I do as well, but I have little hope that it will.
Prosecutors don't like prosecuting perjury. It's tricky to prosecute (particularly because of how close it is to the first amendment), takes a lot of time, and often it just ends up with a minor slap on the wrist. I've seen other cases with outrageous perjury that resulted in no criminal prosecution.
This is a broken part of the justice system. Particularly because these apple execs have the money and lawyers to drag out any prosecution until everyone involved is dead. But also because it relies on government prosecutors caring in the first place.
It is tricky to prosecute and prosecutors don't like it but perjury rarely has anything to do with the first amendment.
Wait, isn't the board personally liable for their decisions? I'm not a lawyer, obviously.
not really.
corps have the defining feature that their passive shareholders are protected from personal liability, but not their officers, directors, nor employees.
they are "entities" so they can sign contracts and you can sue them and bring them to court. they are entities so the entire body of preexisting laws about suing and bringing to court would not need to be rewritten from scratch for corporations, it slots them into the rights and responsibilities that individuals have.
Perdue pharma is a high profile recent example of this , but there dozens of such events from big tobacco to baby formula
Objectively and ethically, it's reprehensible, but subjectively, we're now living in a blatantly pay-to-play world and everyone else is doing it, and there are clear, easily quantifiable gains of billions to be made from that bribe.
(The best part of all this was learning that inauguration bribes have been happening for decades, generally to little fanfare.)
Where can I read more about this?
If corporations are not bound by laws they don’t like, then why should they be protected by laws they do like? Should the US turn a blind eye to IP infringement against Apple?
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.
My. They forgot "Apple cannot guarantee making payment elsewhere won't give you cancer."
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”.
You're normally right. But Trump is also a very petty narcissist. His "culture war" is pretty much "anyone who makes him feel bad".
>Apple's execs are definitely powerful enough players in that war to protect themselves from consequences.
That's why I hope courts do start throwing contempt around. Execs need to remember they aren't above the law to the point where they can blatantly lie to a judge.
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.
Now, on HN we know some people, though plenty wealthy enough to afford Apple, are choosing Android for function. But I doubt most of the public even thinks about that choice through that lens. Green bubble is the same as arriving to pick up your date in a 2002 Civic. It projects "I'm probably broke." Statistically. In the US only.
Apple Vision Pro has ~3,000 native apps, plus millions more compatible iPhone/iPad apps.
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".
It's not like there's much reason to care about comforts on short flights. Anyone can tolerate economy for an hour and you'd probably not get out your VR headset for a short hop either.
VRChat, I agree, should absolutely be there and unrestricted. It wont be though. It isn't uncensored on Oculus either.
VR pornography is quite massive in Japan for instance. Huge in fact. The Vision Pro doesn't even have a DMM.com/Fanza app for that.
I don't think most users would even consider getting a device that doesn't allow them to view their existing catalog of purchases, pornography and not.
Again, this could've been solved by simply supporting PCVR.
> VRChat, I agree, should absolutely be there and unrestricted. It wont be though. It isn't uncensored on Oculus either.
I don't think the VR Chat app on Oculus is very popular. Most users are just going to run it via PCVR for better performance, feature support, etc.
Can you elaborate?
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.
But imagine for a moment an alternate reality where they at least moderately tried to keep the cost down, and then further subsidized it, selling the headsets for $599 and made developer terms wildly attractive (like, your first 20 million in revenue having a 5% fee instead of 30%). It would cost Apple billions, but they pissed away more on the car idea with nothing to show for it. This could have launched a category, instead I predict a future more like Apple TV hardware where it's niche due to being 4x the price of what most people want to pay for the category.
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.
No, that's the opposite of what actually happened with the iPhone. Back in 2007, Apple actually saw evidence from the customer buying frenzy that Apple didn't need 3rd-party devs to make iPhone a wild success. After the very desirable iPhones got into millions of customers hands, it was the 3rd-party devs that needed Apple more than Apple needed the 3rd-party ecosystem as I've mentioned before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39291668
Maybe an alternate history would have had all the 3rd-party devs deliberately boycott Apple iOS and thus only create apps for Android in 2008. We now know that didn't happen so we'll never know if devs realistically had enough leverage back in 2008 to alter Apple's App Store commission structure and policies.
The iPhone was so desirable as a platform that new popular apps like Instagram and WhatsApp were released for Apple iPhones months before Android.
Developers had started to abandon the Mac OS platform - or at least start making Windows versions of previously Mac-only software - and getting developer confidence back was one of the key things that kept the company alive to grow into the consumer electronics manufacturer that it is today.
OP's wording was somewhat confusing because they were talking about the later iPhone devs with, >", now they think devs need them" by comparing them to the 1997 Mac OS devs.
As though possibly implying that Apple incorrectly misjudged the later iPhone-era devs' leverage as if it's the opposition situation of "Apple is the one that needs the devs" and somehow Apple misunderstands that.
I was clarifying that Apple didn't misjudge the devs and they correctly predicted that devs would want access to millions of new iPhone customers. It isn't just "Apple thinks devs need them", it's more definitive in "Apple _knows_ that devs need them." The timeline of events reinforced in Apple's mind that it was "Apple's customers" more than the "dev's customers".
Seeing customers camp out overnight in front of Apple's stores for iPhones that didn't have any 3rd-party apps -- and still sell millions of them -- is why they're so arrogant. Apple concluded it was Apple's efforts alone that recruited those customers to their new platform and not the 3rd-party devs. (Apple itself created the first Youtube app instead of 3rd-party Google devs doing it.) The 2008 devs may have had a chance to flip that narrative by rejecting iOS and only create apps for Android and Windows Phones but they didn't do that and instead, went along with Apple's gatekeeping and 30% fees.
>Developers had started to abandon the Mac OS platform [...] and getting developer confidence back was one of the key things that kept the company alive to grow
Well, the 1997 dev confidence behavior for a Mac platform with only ~5% market share at that time wouldn't be relevant to Apple's attitude about iPhones because devs never abandoned the iPhone. iPhones were an instant hit with 100% market share of touchscreen smartphones until Android came out a year later.
Those were older TFT resistive touchscreens and not the newer capacitive touchscreens that could detect multi-finger gestures like swipes and pinch-to-zoom. TFT touchscreens requiring finger pressure instead of finger swipes is not as intuitive a UI.
That's why the audience at Macworld 2007 gasped in astonishment when Steve Jobs demonstrated gentle finger scrolling on a capacitive screen. Deep link to that demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=16m05s
Keep in mind that MacWorld tradeshow attendees are technology geeks who are aware of the latest gadgets and phones. Many of those in the audience would already have the latest 2006 Palm Treo 680 in their pocket that had a TFT touchscreen. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treo_680)
The iPhone's touchscreen capabilities made that Palm phone's TFT touchscreen technology obsolete.
You can check the Europe news archives back in 2007 to see both the telecoms and customers there were also eagerly awaiting the iPhone. If Europe already had equivalent touchscreen smartphones with Nokia, Siemens-Ericsson etc, the iPhone would have been a non-event and flopped in sales.
Nokia/Blackberry/WindowsCE/Android/etc switched to capacitive touchscreens to compete with the iPhone.
Why didn't European devs collectively just ignore the Apple iPhone and instead, focus on Nokia Symbian OS? Devs did ignore platforms if they wanted to. E.g. the devs mostly ignored the Blackberry OS and Microsoft Windows CE Mobile.
I even happened to be in Espoo, the tragic week of the burning platforms memo.
I could write a lengthy comment, however it appears it would be a waste of my time.
It won't be a waste of time if you correct something I wrote something that was factually incorrect. I won't debate it.
>I even happened to be in Espoo, the tragic week of the burning platforms memo.
Was Stephen Elop's assessment of Nokia's fading market share by both consumers and developers in 2011 incorrect? What Nokia phone in 2007/2008 was compelling compared to Apple iPhone that people were not buying and the developers not adopting? What do you believe happened?
excerpt of Elop's memo from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2011/feb/09/noki... :
>In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.
And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core.
[...] While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.
The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.
[...] At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.*
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).
It's really hard to argue counterfactuals on this one. Perhaps the smartphone would have been built by Google anyway. I can't really imagine how, given the state of the mobile phone market at the time of the iPhone's release.
If I get a dividend, I have to pay tax today. And then I just turn around and buy more stock with post tax income?
If I can sell the share at a higher price when I want the cash, then I can pay the tax whenever I want, possibly under more preferable terms.
It is "easy" to understand why parents would lie to home invasion robbers about whether or not they had a safe in the house. Leaders of companies will readily lie if they believe that the survival of their company is at stake. The rational is "well someone might get mad that we lied but at least the company will still be here."
Michael Milken published a paper analyzing exactly this issue a while back.
They were better in the pre-Mac days. I was a big Apple fan until the Mac came out.
Apple did not write those apps themselves.
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.
I can't get into my coworking space without a door unlock app on my phone.
On the other hand, exactly 0 times in my life have I ever been told "yeah, you need to own an xbox to go to the dentist's office".
Phones are indeed in a different class from game consoles and should be held to a higher standard.
But yes, also, game consoles should allow you to develop your own programs and side-load them.
And that app is probably free, covered by the costs of the paid apps, the majority of which are brainrot games and social media[1].
Honestly this system isn't half bad, it's essentially a tax on idleness that funds a bunch of virtuous activity.
[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/29389/global-app-revenue-by-s...
Free apps on iOS should be subsidized by, I don't know, the purchase price of the phone and the $100 yearly developer fee I'd think.
> Honestly this system isn't half bad, it's essentially a tax on idleness that funds a bunch of virtuous activity.
The system isn't funding "virtuous activity", the system is a for-profit system for the benefit of the richest company on the planet.
I think you're well aware that these fees don't go toward the iOS SDK licensing/infra/staffing/security/distribution costs of the app and the App Store. That's what is being subsidized by the brainrot games.
Furthermore, there's nothing stopping that app maker from bypassing the app store and simply making a webapp, so this argument that you need an iphone to open the door is really moot. It's not the smartphone makers' fault that the door company's customers demand this product.
The door opener uses NFC, and iOS does not allow webapps to use NFC, only app-store apps: https://caniuse.com/webnfc
Apple has consistently made the experience of using webapps worse, including making installing them so convoluted that most users continue to not even know they exist.
This is a social walled garden they've built over years and has been solidified by users choosing it over and over again. Are they exploiting our brain's capacities regarding social pressure to extract profit? Sure, but so does every fast food company, social media company, marketing company, etc.
I think it's interesting that you phrase it as "require" regarding a group chat made by your family members. Apple doesn't require this, your family members chose Apple when they purchased their phones.
Somehow it's only iMessage which doesn't have an android or desktop or web app, despite Apple having more money than every other messenger app I mentioned.
> your family members chose Apple when they purchased their phones.
Apple chooses the default and integrates it into the OS more deeply than any third-party app can be integrated. It's not a free choice... and then Apple also refuses to provide open access to this ecosystem to other devices.
I know other people have sometimes said that it's an anti-spam measure to tie the iMessage account to an apple ID which is associated with a purchase. I'd be fine making an apple ID and paying up to $300 to get iMessage access for it if that would allow me to not use iOS and still communicate with my family (via an officially supported / recognized android + linux iMessage app).
When my iPhone finally breaks (and may it be soon), I am planning to get a mac mini server and install https://bluebubbles.app/ to solve this.
I am mildly worried that apple will eventually ban me for that, as they did with beeper (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39156308), and also not thrilled about the increased electric bill that'd entail.
And this is well known by everyone, and your family still chose Apple (in fact, I'm fairly certain this is why most people choose Apple - they want everything to "just work"). Apple has no obligation to provide any "ecosystem".
At the end of the day there isn't some mass hypnosis at work here. People choose Apple en masse because it works for them. Nothing stops Apple users from making an SMS (now RCS) group chat, either, nor from you and your family hosting a group chat on any other app on 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 os-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.
Don't like it? Don't use it. (I don't.)
> Don't like it? Don't use it.
Life is slightly more complicated than this.
I personally do my hacking on Mac, Linux, and on my RasberryPis, in my secure home and behind a firewall. But I don't want a hacker-friendly phone holding my passwords, credit cards, social media, email, photos, GPS location, cameras, microphones, etc., with a persistent cellular connection to the internet and at constant risk of being left in a taxi or cafe. I would never put the effort into locking everything down, and I'd probably fuck it up if I tried anyway.
Security is not mutually exclusive with informed consent. Apple's greatest trick was convincing you -- and, evidently, themselves -- that it is.
But aside from that, you cannot simply point people at the approach that led to Windows UAC and GDPR cookie consent banners and consider the problem adequately solved.
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.
This is exactly what everyone said about the original Macintosh, which cost $7,695 in 2025 dollars. The prediction value of the price of this AVP model is close to zero.
And remember, you need more than us on HN to spark enthusiasm amongst developers of the calibre they need. Think AAA game studios, major sports leagues to produce premium courtside experiences, etc. The only way forward I see for Apple Vision (Pro) is if they put their money to work.
They can pick:
1. Subsidize it down to upper-middle-class impulse buy/middle class splurge, so about $600-800. This is still a stretch because even at that price it's hard to justify as-is today, but iPhone Pro Max and AirPods Pro sell and they don't do that much more than what you can get for half the price.
2. Back up a truck full of cash to NBA and/or NFL for courtside/sidelines experiences at every game.
3. Back up a truck of cash to the biggest names in gaming to nab full exclusives, and make sure those games are so good even diehard Apple haters can't resist it.
Anything besides those 3, in my view, will not launch this 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.
In the absolute worst case the company will pay a fine in the order of tens of millions and the whole thing will go away. And the executive in question will get a fat bonus and promotion for his loyalty.
I really don't think Apple's dev policies has had anything to do with this. The issue is the price - it's simply inaccessible to the vast majority of consumers, even many moderately high income consumers due to its value being somewhat unproven.
there, fixed it... the top brass at USG also behave this way, they're following the leader (or more likely the other way around, USG behaving like a private interest corporation)
A few months back everyone was writing the eulogies for Google and how they fumbled AI. Now Gemini is one of the top models (if not the best) and it is extremely capable and price competitive
Meanwhile Apple is still trying to wrap the head around AI. (Didn't stop them from making a splashy marketing campaign though)
So no, both companies are not the same.
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.
So please spare us the PR, arguing that Apple "cares" about privacy or civil rights is dishonest. If they cared about those values they wouldn't be operating in China.
Maybe Apple is too big to have a product person as CEO? They are so big that they essentially need a diplomat at the top spot? If so, at least let someone like Ternus call the internal shots and lead the products.
Apple is extremely not the type of company to recruit a CEO from outside, so if Cook is doing any kind of succession planning I have to imagine it's Ternus.
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)
He should be in jail for covering up a sexual abuse scandal, but alas
...
> 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.
PayPal does.
> and feels generally very safe
PayPal doesn't??
On the other hand, if you're using it exclusively for payments rather than receiving money maybe it's fine?
But there are so many stories where PayPal closed someone's account and didn't give them back their money, am I really supposed to trust them in the case of a dispute where I'm owed a refund?
I'm sure both the app developer and Apple are happy to let you pay 30% extra for the convenience of Apple Pay vs PayPal.
Suppose the chargebacks due to fraud/whatever without Apple Pay cost the issuing banks 0.20%.
Then the banks reduce their expenses by paying Apple 0.15%.
Maybe it helps reduce customer service calls and the associated expenses. Maybe Apple results in higher total spend. I’m sure the leaders at JPM, BoA, Wells Fargo, etc have done the calculations to figure out that it is better for them to pay Apple than to not.
And since it is not required for any bank to allow Apple Pay to work with their cards, it stands to reason that in a competitive market like credit cards, it doesn’t result in an increase in end user prices.
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
Why not both?
Having spent several years at the top levels of an F500 valley tech company, I'm certain a consistent, broad and aggressive posture like that doesn't happen by accident or any lower than EVP. There was a meeting at some point where the Chief Legal Officer basically laid out the options: A) Give in and do what the court ordered, B) Do most of what the court ordered but drag our feet on all of it and 'accidentally' miss some of it where plausibly deniable, C) Make only token concessions to the order while ensuring the actual intent of the order is blocked, delayed or minimized wherever possible.
Someone with an EVP title picked "C" and until that person spends a couple months in jail on criminal contempt, senior execs will never pick "A". The VP Finance going down isn't enough. Until Tim Cook's staff meeting has an empty EVP chair for several months, none of this is serious. They'll just accelerate this VP Finance's options, bonus the shit out of him and consider his "sacrifice" to be collateral damage.
Agree. They'd have to feel some personal threat of going to prison or at least losing their fortune. As long as they feel protected behind the corporate veil, it's not a big deal to them.
Unless they omitted (C) and the EVP suggested it, it seems like they should share the blame by proposing something that's not an actual option.
> I fear this particular guy isn't senior enough to be the example we really need.
>> Tim Cook ignored Schiller
>> Cook chose poorly.
>> Cook, Schiller, and Maestri were the ultimate decision makers “about what they felt was [an] acceptable” level of risk to cabin the Injunction’s effect in terms of link placement and design.
Why do you think Apple sent the Vice President to such a high visibility trial and not the President, who is the person with the ultimate authority and accountability in Finance?
In any large enough organization (and I haven't stumbled on one where this wasn't the case), private or public, the people at the top are shielded by a "second in command" whose job is to take the hit if needed, with the promise that they're next in line for the big position. It's a requirement of the job, they do it and maybe get rewarded, or don't and absolutely get ejected. Sometimes it pays off and they get the coveted president, CEO, etc. position. Sometimes it doesn't and they go to prison or their career is completely derailed.
Survivorship bias says we only see the ones who managed to pull it off. If you look at any large company's CEO now, they're there because they took these hits or provided plausible deniability for the big boss in the past.
He was actually complimented by the judge. Schiller was overrruled by the CFO.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250501083454if_/https://www.th...
Try running snidump for a day while reading HN, including
(With SNI)
firefox https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-apple-executive-lied
(Without SNI, i.e., "No SNI")
{
printf 'GET /web/20250501083454if_/https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-apple-executive-lied HTTP/1.0\r\n'
printf 'Host: web.archive.org\r\n\r\n'
} |openssl s_client -connect archive.org:443 -ign_eof -noservername > 1.htm
firefox ./1.htmhttps://www.joe.co.uk/life/sex/owning-an-android-is-official...
Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43852145 - May 2025 (504 comments)
A senior Apple exec could be jailed in Epic case - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43859814 - May 2025 (58 comments)
A simple tradesperson is also personally responsible when they fuck up their job despite better knowledge. So if those can go to jail for the consequences of their dealings why shouldn't a CEO where the consequences are potentially of a scale several magnitudes higher? Wasn't personal responsibility in everybodies mouths, or is that only important when we talk about poor people?
Otherwise what is painful punishment for a poor person is just a laughable fee for rich people.
Hypothetical: how many people should get cancer or other serious illnesses and defects from chemicals a company produces, until the company management who knew about it were in the "war criminal" crime bracket?
The market amd the law allow it, and so it is the case. Moral justifications are just post-hoc fluff.
These liers should eat their words.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/
Maybe somebody could enlighten me but the off hours part shows -2.3%, is that a correction because people are losing faith in apple or what exactly? and would these off hours loses get converted to on hour losses or what exactly? (Sorry I could ask AI but I might as well ask here as well)
So I had done some calculations and please correct me if you think I am wrong but at 4:00 pm USA time (EDT?) the stock was selling at 213.5 open (I am not sure what the differences b/w open,close etc. are , I am not a finance guy) but it went from 213.5 open to 207.8 right now
Taking the % lose from its peak just at 4 PM EDT & multiplying it by its market cap? 3.19Trillion(1- 207.5/213.5 ) is 89_648_711_944 , ie. 89 Billion $.
So from my understanding Apple lost 89B $ in like a span of 2 hours (4PM EDT to 5:10-ish PM EDT which is the approx current time while writing this post)
That sounds REALLY BIG. Like I used to think damn Trillion $ are a lot but if such a case can cause apple to lose 89B$ in span of 2 hours then either I am doing some calculation wrong or this case has a truly big gravity that its worth not to just skim over it I guess and truly read it at detail I suppose.
Just my two cents..
Thanks for this information. I was genuinely confused after I had written this comment because well this information of epic games was already available 8 hours earlier so that had already been factored in the market 2 hours ago so I was confused as to why this change in 2 hours.
Also, I would genuinely appreciate it if we could have a seperate HN thread just for this news itself. Sounds really interesting and I have quite an opinion on it
The headline sounds positive, but apparently its not positive enough to keep the stock from dropping.
I don't know but seeing so much money move so fast with such high velocity and such corrections in minutes and thus losing or making billions. I really want stability and it does seem to me that in some sense I wish for every economy to be more comprised of small businesses which aren't changing their stock price in such drastic measures though I think such an opinion might be unpopular around here.
The thing about a company worth several trillion dollars is that even minor movements involve (what are to us laymen) huge sums of money. Conversely, huge sums of money really are just minor movements to that company.
Some people talk about how the middle class has a hard time understanding the vast difference between a millionaire and a billionaire. The same thing applies (but probably compounded due to being at a larger scale) for thinking about billions vs. trillions of dollars.
(Just speaking to the question of scale; as someone else brought up, there've been other happenings that affect stock prices besides just this case.)
The way the monetary system is set up guarantees that market monopolies will occur. The monetary playing field is centralized and asymmetric. It's a basically a system of privilege and handicaps on a broad spectrum. Then people are surprised that those with more privileges keep winning predictably and form monopolies.
Judges always mess this up. They act like their words have power. They issue one injunction, the party violates it in a flagrant manner, then the judge issues a new injunction.
You have to impose a coercive doubling fine, or something like that. Say $10 Million on day 1, $20 Million on day two, until compliance is secured.
Isn't this business 101? Charge what the market will bear? Unclear to me why the court thinks profit margin needs to be a factor of the value of goods/services/ip, or that the court is even capable of determining what that value is?
perihelions•22h ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43852145 ("Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds (wsj.com)" — 336 comments)