Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds

https://archive.ph/9BKTB

The court decision itself is worth reading for a revealing look behind the curtain. [0]

>> In Slack communications dated November 16, 2021, the Apple employees crafting the warning screen for Project Michigan discussed how best to frame its language. Mr. Onak suggested the warning screen should include the language: “By continuing on the web, you will leave the app and be taken to an external website” because “‘external website’ sounds scary, so execs will love it.” [...] One employee further wrote, “to make your version even worse you could add the developer name rather than the app name.” To that, another responded “ooh - keep going.”

[0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...

"Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anti-competitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anti-competitive. That it thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation. As always, the cover-up made it worse. For this Court, there is no second bite at the apple."

I'd recommend skimming through the whole thing because Judge Rogers just eviscerates Apple over and over.

> Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise.

The bean counters won. I guess Tim Cook does care about the bloody ROI after all.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim...

Their entire setup was egregious.

They charge 27% for purchases made using external payment processors. Including Stripe fees that's net-zero (not even accounting for any chargeback risks). They severely limit how you can display the external purchase link too, and display an obnoxious warning screen when you tap it.

I would be surprised if a single developer adopted it.

https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...

I am concerned that the App Store has become the norm. For many young people, iPhones and iPads have been their only computer. Many have never seen a world where app developers can distribute independently. The NYT had an article out about ruling, and the number of people supporting the App Store was astounding.

I think Apple has done a great job marketing the App Store as the reason for the security/UX of their platform, when in reality, it's the OS. It's the OS that requires apps to get permission before accessing my location, it's the OS that isolates apps from each other, it's the OS that provides an easy way to install/uninstall packages.

The confusion between benefits of the OS/benefits of the App Store combined with many peoples' unfamiliarity with third party distribution has made it more difficult to convince people of the merit of these antitrust suits.

Many people blame the EU for targeting US companies when it passes anti-monopoly and pro-consumer laws, or penalizes the companies for breaking them.

Now that US courts are doing it more, it seems that corporations abusing their monopoly powers are the problem, not EU laws. But what do I know.

Finally. The AppStore rules are ridiculous.

Apple has zero moral justification for them. They are quadruple-dipping:

1. Consumers pay premium prices for Apple devices.

2. Developers have to pay $100 a year to be able to publish an app.

3. Developers need to buy expensive Apple hardware to develop for iOS. XCode doesn't work on Linux or Windows.

4. And on top of it, Apple also wants 30% of all the gross app sales.

All while their tools that developers _have_ to use are buggy and often nigh unsusable (Apple Connect....).

But wait, there's more! To keep the stronghold on developers, Apple is not allowing third-party apps to use JITs, resulting in a huge amount of time wasted to work around that.

It’s a shame Phil Schiller has gotten sidelined. He always seemed like a good guy and a big part of the “soul” of Apple as it made its resurgence under Jobs after the NeXT merger.

There's a whole class of sh*t-software that only exists (and is profitable) because users subscribe to them and then forget – primarily because the subscription fee is charged as "Apple" on their Credit Card. I wonder what's gonna happen with this type of scam.

About time. I'm tired of apologizing to customers who purchase subscriptions in my app only to discover they could have purchased the exact the same thing from my website for 15% less. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Excerpt from the filing:

"In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option. To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath. Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. The real evidence, detailed herein more than meets the clear and convincing standard to find a violation. The Court refers the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate."

The heart of Apple's hypocrisy is this: they claim their 30% is necessary to support the developer ecosystem and fund its operations. But of course if that were true, they could easily charge a high enough platform membership fee directly to developers. Instead they opt for a structural tax to cover what are mostly completely opaque and secret operational costs. They're opaque and secret for obvious reasons: those expenses come nowhere close to the ~$30 billion in App Store commission Apple generates every year.

Is there any hope of a non-joke fine here? Or are we just looking at another kiss of the wrists as them and Google and all the other big tech cos fuck literally everyone over?

Responding to a comment by bn-l, but also to the general sentiment about Apple and untrusted code I often see on hacker news.

> The broader consumer base will install anything a bad actor wants them to and then blame the manufacturer for not stopping them with some draconian rule.

Has this even happened? Has anyone ever sued and won the case with a laptop manufacturer (or Microsoft or Apple), because they downloaded and executed an executable with malware on their computer? Do average people really blame Microsoft for malware? I would kind of agree that they should, but not because Microsoft allows people to run untrusted code, but because the security model of Windows (and other PC operating systems) is still bad. But not because it allows people to run unsigned code.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think we should return to security model of old operating systems - smartphone OSes definitely got that right, except for the part that forces users to give up control of their devices. It's just that the argument, that allowing people to install software not signed by Apple on their own devices would make iPhones insecure, is totally unsubstantiated to me.

I see some people still arguing that (ex. older) people will do what they are told and will install shady software. If Apple really cares, they could provide a switch that allows users to disable installing "unverified" software. Maybe ask about it during setup. Maybe allow locking it until factory reset, or allow head of icloud family to control it. There are many options to keep some people secure from all unverified apps, while allowing others to run them. Not to mention that the idea that all apps not signed by Apple are somehow malicious is just bad. You could have other entities than Apple verify code. Currently, even running apps you yourself wrote, on your own hardware, is hard and limited. For no good reason.

The only reason Apple is blocking other stores, or preventing people from installing homebrew, is to collect more money. It's good that they are investing into security of their software and hardware, but in this particular case, security is used only as a distraction.

"She also referred the case to prosecutors for potential criminal investigation into the company and a top finance executive."

That's big. You really have to piss off a judge for them to refer a case for criminal investigation.

Unless the fine is the better part of a trillion dollars, it won’t make any difference.

Apple has close to 1/2 trillion in revenue a year. A few billion is rounding error.

The timing of this with Tim Sweeney's interview with Lex Friedman is great. Watching a few hours of it, it's no wonder he hasn't slowed down in the slightest in this fight against Apple, he is unrelenting in his focus.

> iPhone users are accustomed to using the App Store to make digital purchases, and changing their behavior could prove difficult

Apple Pay on websites works flawlessly and is great for impulse purchases. Its the same as the inapp experience.

I think this user experience will be fine.

Apple should abandon the console model for iPhones (and iPads, etc.). It's corrosive. By my back-of-the napkin math (subtracting an estimate of Google's quarterly search payments from Apple's stated "services" revenue and comparing to iPhone revenue), Apple would make the same amount of money by just charging me an extra 25% when I bought a phone. I would gladly pay that up-front instead of indirectly when I buy apps.

I'm glad this happened, although I would have prefered if the result came from a new law eg. the Open App Markets Act rather than have to rely on what is or is not legally considered a market in terms of the sherman act etc.

Does this mean Apple will have to give up their % fees or that they have to allow third party app stores in the US? And when does that go into effect?

"In Slack communications dated November 16, 2021, the Apple employees crafting the warning screen for Project Michigan discussed how best to frame its language. (CX-206.) Mr. Onak suggested the warning screen should include the language: “By continuing on the web, you will leave the app and be taken to an external website” because “‘external website’ sounds scary, so execs will love it.” (Id. at .2.) From Mr. Onak’s perspective, of the “execs” on the project, Mr. Schiller was at the top. (Feb. 2025 Tr. 1340:4–6 (Onak).) One employee further wrote, “to make your version even worse you could add the developer name rather than the app name.” (CX-206.4.) To that, another responded “ooh - keep going.” (Id.)

I could never imagine Apple employees doing it like this. I knew they had to have discussions about the scare screen, but come on! This is pure evil.

Works where archive.ph is blocked, no Apple surveillance disguised as "convenience", no Javascript:

https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1DXcJN

Read the opinion:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...

once again will ask why iPhones are treated any differently from other computing devices — we need legislative solutions that allow consumers to load software (or even other operating systems) on any computing device they own.

restricting software distribution on any platform under the guise of needing to be kept “secure” always seemed anticompetitive to me - that should apply regardless of Apple’s particular behavior with the courts in this example.

Here is the wording from the judge: https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/3a81ee5d-5103-4306-...

I’ve always been critical of headlines that frame the company as the culprit—especially when the company can’t be sent to prison or face personal consequences. No, it wasn’t "Apple" that violated antitrust laws—Tim Cook approved the actions. Apple doesn't make decisions on its own; it operates under the direction and vision of the people in charge.

It's far too convenient for C-level executives to reap the rewards when their leadership drives profits, only to shift blame to "the company" when things go wrong. Accountability should work both ways.

A non-paywalled article, containing the link to the full decision: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43851672

So what actually happens here?

Other than the possible contempt for the guy who lied under oath (and some bad press), doesn't this injunction just mean that apple has to do... what it was already previously ordered to do?

Are there no fines or consequences for them doing this? Am I missing something else here?

Full 80 page court transcript:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...

Related:

https://mobilegamer.biz/apples-phil-schiller-refuses-to-fix-...

Google, Apple, Facebook all receiving judicial face slaps these past few days! Let's continue with Amazon, Microsoft, and the other supergiant corporations.

Besides nothing, I wonder what penalty they’ll face.

Apple will get their money. Expect other costs to make up for any lost costs because of this.

What was Alex Roman's lie? I'm having a hard time figuring that out.

2025, this marks 11+ years I have been saying that App Store is not sustainable.

They should have made a separate Game Store and continue to collect those 30% from games, which protect 75% to 80% of their current App Store revenue.

Then 5 - 6% for all subscription based services like Netflix and Spotify. If you include the Credit Card Processing and other tax / VAT report this is a fair amount I think most company would be on board.

And 10% for everything else. Including Tipping and other IAP etc.

Apple would have protected most of their App Store revenue, generate lots of good will and continue their walled garden path.

But for whatever reason over the years every time I mentioned it I get downvoted.

Now it may be too late. The damage to developer relationship, to many business and to its brand.

all these big companies being hypocrites. congress should just pass a law that you can't be big and end the charades.

https://archive.ph/ZQLtD

Finally vindicated! For years we were arguing with the Apple fanboys here on HN about what Apple is doing and how it is wrong, immoral and illegal. Glad to see something starting to happen.

I just wonder what are the next excuses going to be?

The judge should slap them in the wrist! Just like last time. Served them well...

Groundbreaking.

We just released Crosspay, a cross-platform in-app subscriptions SDK for iOS, Android, macOS, Linux, Windows, and Web apps, enabling users to purchase subscriptions once, and use anywhere. As this ruling becomes effective, we will also enable users to choose their payment method on any platform, instead of being tied to Apple App Store.

However, apps that charge $1 or less per transaction will continue to pay over 30% in fees (e.g. Stripe charges 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction)

See more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43714552

This is huge, because it means that anyone buying an iPhone or apple product going forward is knowingly supporting this behaviour. I fully expect this to be the ruin of Apple.