(That was the posted URL, but it's usually best to find the highest-quality popular article on a story and then include a link to the "paper" in the thread.
If anyone finds a better URL we can change it again—I just Googled until I found something that wasn't too annoying.)
The best part is how the headshot of the Justice is highlighted when he or she is speaking. It's great. Since there are no cameras allowed in the Supreme Court (thank God), this is I think the best approximation there is. June is right around the corner too, so there will be plenty more to go through soon.
SCOTUS holds that Apple can be sued for alleged monopoly of the Apple App Store. It does not decide whether or not this alleged monopoly exist.
Interestingly, it's a 5-4 decision, with Kavanaugh writing the decision, joined by the 4 liberal justices. Probably the most unexpected alignment of the current term!
> Interestingly, it's a 5-4 decision, with Kavanaugh writing the decision, joined by the 4 liberal justices. Probably the most unexpected alignment of the current term!
It isn't really. It's just the standard partisan split, albeit with one guy "crossing the floor". Such crossing is common but since most of the media is incapable of understanding anything but partisan point scoring, they portray the Justices as partisan hacks, which they are not.
Heck, they aren't even that good at tracking point-scores, since the most common score at SC United (states) is 9-0.
Basically in order from left to right numbered 1-9 the majority on this case were 1-4 and 6. So it's only one step away from being a fully partisan split.
>"they portray the Justices as partisan hacks"
I leave it up to others to decide whether scoring each justice on a left-to-right continuum is any more nuanced than this.
Additionally, while Gorsuch ruled in favor of Apple, it is clear from oral arguments that Alito/Gorsuch have little respect for the Illinois Brick argument.
While I agree that much of the time they do try to rule based on law, it is clear that precedent is being looked at as mere suggestions by this new court. I wonder what the score will be when the challenges to Roe hit their bench.
That's not something unique about "this new court". The Court has never been all that respectful of precedent. From the Lochner era (reading a right to expansive freedom of contract into the constitution), to the "switch in time that saved nine" (vastly expanding the definition of 'interstate commerce' such that Congress could regulate anything), to the Warren court (which invented whole-cloth a slew of social and criminal justice rights), the Court has often gone in radical new directions and overruled previous decisions.
"The point in question is which of these two customers has standing to sue on the basis of the specific harm in question. Under US law the answer cannot be both."
This in fact not what SCOTUS wrote, SCOTUS clearly said that Apple may be sued by developers and consumers alike, the mere fact that apple has a monopolistic (They hold all the consumer supply in this market) and a monopsonistic(They satisfy all the demand from app devs on this market) position does not mean that the damages injured to both parties are in fact the same damages.
Under current US law multiple parties may not sue for the same damage. But at this point of time it is not decided whether the damages sustained by consumers in this lawsuit would be the same damages that app developers could sue for. It is entirely possible that Apple has swindled BOTH.
I don't understand this argument though. Surely if both app customers and app developers sued Apple they'd be suing over the exact same damages?
Either customers have their prices artificially increased, at which point app developers don't have damages as they're getting the money from customers, or else app developers are keeping prices low and taking the damage themselves, at which point customers aren't harmed.
It's still the same damages. Apple is taking money from a transaction between users and developers. It effectively comes equally from both sides of the transaction.
It's just like a sales tax, who does it come from, the consumer or the retailer? It really doesn't matter, the effect is the same.
The only problem is if it is accounted for twice. If it adds $10 to a transaction, you can't say both the consumer and developer are each harmed by $10. Better to say each are harmed by $5.
Apple is (allegedly) monopolising a market, which is not the same as skimming a percentage off transactions, and damages do not have to be estimated as a straightforward percentage of all transactions.
A monopoly has structural implications which could disadvantage both customers and developers in ways that go beyond paying x% Apple Tax on each sale.
For example - opportunity costs for both developers and customers, lock-in costs, costs to competitors who might have been able to operate a related market, specific losses for specific developers based on arbitrary, capricious, or self-serving app store exclusions, and so on.
None of this has been proven yet, all of it is debatable, and it could all be included in potential arguments.
This is bad news for Apple - not just because any judgement could be worth tens of billions, but because of potential bad PR and brand damage, which may happen however the final judgement goes. And also because of the distraction from more constructive goals.
The problem with the "monopolizing a market" idea is the fact that "Apple devices" is not a meaningful market, and within the actual "smartphone" market Apple very clearly does not have a monopoly.
Although the US antitrust laws do use the language of monopoly, they are broadly drafted and have been subject to a lot of judicial interpretation. Rather than monopoly, when considering antitrust questions it is sometimes better to think about "market power and … whether business conduct has or likely will have anticompetitive effects." [1]
"Market definition is least useful when market shares would not be strongly probative of market power or anticompetitive effect, while direct evidence as to market power or anticompetitive effect is available and convincing." Apple's control of the App Store has a direct anticompetitive effect in the secondary market for iOS apps. This is pretty clear from the fact that Apple explicitly prohibits some apps that compete with its own. The interesting question is whether the plaintiffs will succeed in proving that Apple's conduct is illegal, under the prevailing interpretation of the US antitrust laws.
Many apps are available exactly the same on Android as well, and nearly all apps have at least some equivalent on Android. The fact that an iOS app isn't literally compatible with Android, you can't take the exact same binary and use it on an Android phone, doesn't mean that iOS is a separate market category. You may as well say that UPPAbaby strollers are their own market category because UPPAbaby stroller accessories don't work on other strollers.
> You may as well say that UPPAbaby strollers are their own market category because UPPAbaby stroller accessories don't work on other strollers.
I wouldn't say UPPAbaby strollers are their own market, but I would say UPPAbaby stroller accessories are their own market, at least if they have and act on a legal way to prevent all others from making and selling accessories that interact with their strollers.
And notably Apple locks out some companies from the same kind of integrations that 1P apps get. The only use I have for Safari is that it’s the browser most apps open. And Apple won’t release Siri actions for music, putting Spotify at a big disadvantage.
Devs need to increase their prices to make a living to account for the 30% Apple tax. Higher prices hurt the consumers who do not want to pay that and shouldn't as the app developers do not even want their customers to pay that. Apple made it so, so it's hurting the customers.
Then again higher prices usually leads to less demand, hurting the devs even more (who will have to either eat the losses, or increase prices even more; goto 1). Apple made it so, so it's hurting the developers.
So Apple is hurting both, customers and developers.
But are app customers also Apple customers? Well, customers give a ton of money to Apple directly. It is comparable to a brick and mortar store where the customer does not actually pay the store, but the landlord of real estate in which the store is housed, who then keeps 30% and kicks over the rest to the actual store owner. And then the landlord claims it has no relationship whatsoever with those customers. Sounds ridiculous to me. Imagine credit card companies said they will no longer do any fraud prevention let alone fraud compensation because because all the money exchanged it between the customer and the vendor (or fraudster).
But it even goes further than this: said hypothetical brick and mortar store is in a company town, so all estate in the town is owned by the same landlord (the company in "company town"). Neither the store owner nor the customers have alternatives to do business in that town without the landlord's involvement. "But you can always move" says the landlord (i.e buy a non-iPhone as a customers and switch to another platform such as Android as a developer)...
Now the question is whether the court will find Apple is abusing their monopoly on "iOS App Stores" or if they are well within their right, because they do not actually have a monopoly as there is more than just iPhones and their App Store in the market.
Apple's argument was that 3rd parties set the prices on their platform not them (app developers), so they shouldn't be held liable for the monopolistic effects this creates.
How can this be irrelevant to this part of the case if this is precisely why, as per Apple, end users don't have standing? The court rejects this argument and points out that who sets the prices is actually a technicality, which is less important than who buys from whom.
Despite what the Apple lawyers claimed, wouldn't the actual interpretation be: Apple could sue app developers? The developers are the ones "producing the concrete bricks" and Apple is the one "directly purchasing the concrete bricks." By arguing this way for this case, and setting precedent, Apple would have been able to manufacture a loop hole by subsequently using the more accurate interpretation.
It's a very healthy precedent for app stores, regardless.
I don't think this true. Look at your bank statements after a purchase from the App Store. You're not billed by the developer of the app, youre billed directly by Apple, so under Illinois Brick, and users do already have standing (obligatory not a lawyer).
This is what is great about it being a lifetime appointment.
There is literally nothing else for these folks to strive for except being well regarded in the history books, so they can finally do what they regard as the best thing to do.
This is what's terrible about being a lifetime appointment. Once a politicial driven justice gets appointed there's literally nothing that will change them.
Perhaps in the "old" days when Justices had the feelings you're attributing it might be true but now in the current political situation ideologues are who are sought out to appoint and they care only they're well regarded by their own political persuasion.
> they care only they're well regarded by their own political persuasion
Why would they care about that? They already have the job for life. They don’t need to please their audience any more. They’re free to act on principle.
Because people aren't actually like that in real life. Just because they've gotten a to a particular lifetime job in life, it doesn't mean they don't still crave the approval of their peers. They don't live in a vacuum. They want to still be invited to speak at the places they usually speak, attend the same parties they usually attend, etc.
And beyond that, there's a more fundamental issue: people like this are chosen for these roles because of their fervent, polarized political beliefs. Their principles, if they have any, are either aligned with or overcome by the politics. Their willingness to listen to reason and step outside their bubble is limited, unless doing so lines up with their politics.
> Are Supreme Court justices swayed by the political environment that surrounds them? Most people think "yes," and they point to the influence of the general public and the other branches of government on the Court. It is not that simple, however.
> As the eminent law and politics scholars Neal Devins and Lawrence Baum show in The Company They Keep, justices today are reacting far more to subtle social forces in their own elite legal world than to pressure from the other branches of government or mass public opinion. In particular, the authors draw from social psychology research to show why Justices are apt to follow the lead of the elite social networks that they are a part of.
Exactly. And the Heritage Society goes out of its way to cultivate a bunch of peers, current Supreme Court Justices being the first and foremost of those peers.
Their willingness to listen to reason and step outside their bubble is limited, unless doing so lines up with their politics.
I certainly hope current SCOTUS justices have a solid grasp of history and what happened to the last SCOTUS justice who acted in a manner you're suggesting. And this is an institution that (also, as history would have it) does a pretty good job giving a wide berth to precedent.
A sub-lifetime appointment is also really bad for the Court system, too- the Court gets the final say in the law- and needs independence- and if we were to hold elections every few years for the Supreme Court, we would have an even more partisan government, as people would go campaigning for that office, with all its mud-slinging and hyper-partisanship that seems to be necessary to get elected in the United States' current political climate.
Sometimes, having an old guy say "whoa, slow down! That's a bad idea" is a good idea.
Having an elected judiciary is in itself a terrible idea, and not the only option against lifetime appointment. There's also term limits for appointments.
I agree with you, but also think SCOTUS and similar picks need to require a supermajority vote. That is, I don't have a problem with lifetime appointments to SCOTUS, but I do think if that's the case we need to base those appointments on some kind of trans-partisan consensus.
That's why you don't let a single political side appoint all of the judges, regardless of what side you reside on. You don't have a balance of opinions if everyone has the same opinion.
There are valid arguments against term limits for judges, too.
I think that the terms don't actually matter much. The real problem with SCOTUS is that it represents extreme concentration of political power in our system that doesn't have any direct checks on it. Then you have stare decisis, which makes it so much harder to overturn decisions - so even indirect checks are limited. That's why its lack of accountability (e.g. term limits) is such a big problem. It's also why it was inevitable for it to become more partisan over time - having a partisan majority on the court is basically the equivalent of having nukes, and once one side starts moving in that direction, the other will inevitably follow. And now we're at the point where many people vote for president solely on the basis of what kind of judges they will appoint - and it's not even an irrational approach.
So I think that it's better to make the court less powerful, such that those appointments are not quite so important. One particular idea that I had is to abandon simple majorities as the way to decide matters on the court, and run it more like a jury - basically, the only way to declare something to be definitely unconstitutional, or definitely constitutional, should be by unanimous decision, or perhaps a strong supermajority (say 7 out of 9?). If a panel of people who are specifically chosen as legal experts cannot agree what the Constitution means with respect to something, I think the most sensible interpretation is that it's ambiguous - but then going with a simple majority would be very wrong.
Instead, if the judges cannot agree, this should automatically trigger a constitutional amendment process. Basically, have them all write opinions explaining why they cannot agree with their opponents on the court, and what changes to the Constitution would be necessary before they can agree. Submit all those changes as proposals for ratification, using the normal process, except that only one can be ratified, and that automatically rejects the other changes. If one of the amendments is ratified, that resolves the issue unambiguously and with an explicit rule for future cases like that. If none get ratified, then the lower court decision stands, but it does not set a precedent - the constitutional question remains open, and can be challenged again.
I would expect this to result in more unanimous or supermajority decisions with less extreme and more narrow effects, because the judges would be more likely to try to hammer out a compromise to cross the threshold.
A ten year term ought to do the trick, though. And would allow the passage of time to undo any stacking of the court that a particular president wants to engage in.
...until you get presidential candidates campaigning on the promise that they'll fill SCOTUS seats with the candidates of their alignment. It's practically an election by proxy.
But we have that now. The idea of setting a term limit for Supreme Court justices is that it would minimize the effect of politicized appointments. Assuming the party that gets to make the appointments shifts over time, the makeup of the court is likely to be more balanced overall.
6 year staggered appointments. So 3 justices terms are up every 2 years. Means one president doesn't get to completely stack the court, but each has a fair impact on it, and we aren't stuck with judges with outdated ideologies forever (unless people vote for it).
The big difficult, however, is how to make sure that a hostile senate wouldn't just block all nominations (which is the new norm). Some people like Calabresi have suggested that the president and everyone in the senate would be denied all compensation (IIRC even from private parties) until the seat is filled. I don't think that's a workable idea though.
The simple way to stop the Senate from just blocking everything (which it does by not scheduling a vote, to avoid accountability of individual senators to voting down qualified candidates) is to reshape their confirmation power to a power to actively reject.
6 years is awfully short for this sort of thing. What we absolutely need to avoid is having justices have to care about reelection, which means we need to say justices can only ever serve one term, which means we need longer terms.
Ok "reelection" is the wrong term, but if anything this is worse, because if judges can have multiple terms then it means they're beholden to the current president when their term ends and therefore will be heavily swayed by party politics. This is why judgeships are normally lifetime roles, though the important part of "lifetime role" is "only one term" and not "never ends".
> 6 year staggered appointments. So 3 justices terms are up every 2 years. Means one president doesn't get to completely stack the court
Most presidents are reelected to two terms, and so if judicial terms were offset from Presidential terms by a year, they'd have:
At 0 years, 0 justices they appointed.
At 1 year, 3 justices.
At 3 years, 6 justices.
At 5-8 years (and up until 1 year into the next term), all 9 justices.
So most President get to completely stack the court, the effects just don't last as long—the judiciary becomes another weathervane political branch of government, because the two of those was too few.
(And I don't even want to consider the consequences of all those short time justices looking to their post-Court career while sitting on the bench.)
Citizen's United was decided on Jan 21, 2010. At this point the court would have still been dominated by Bush II appointees not Obama ones. Always hard to say for sure, but it probably goes the same way under this proposal.
> 6 year staggered appointments. So 3 justices terms are up every 2 years. Means one president doesn't get to completely stack the court, but each has a fair impact on it, and we aren't stuck with judges with outdated ideologies forever (unless people vote for it).
That's how the Senate used to work, with state legislatures "electing" the senators.
That was replaced a hundred years ago with direct election of senators.
"Being well regarded in the history books" is something that a president or a king should strive for. A judge really shouldn't ever look out for his popularity when making decisions.
Lol judges interpret the law written in English as is. It's not whether it makes you feel good or not.
I'm sure plenty of people who voted Hitler thought they were in the right side of history until they suddenly weren't. That's the unfortunate part of politics, you have to build a system around not trusting people.
"The right side of history" is for politicians to pursue, not for judges. They aren't supposed to make policies or create laws, their job is to apply the laws. If they do their job correctly, and you disagree with the constitution and therefore also with their decisions, that should never be an issue for them.
This is sort of a stylized high-level description of how the U.S. government works, but it isn't really true. Law is often made by the courts (we call it precedent). Law is also made by the executive branch (by writing detailed regulations).
It does have to be justified based on existing law and this is important. But often, existing law only talks about broad principles or is contradictory, and judges are expected to fill in the details. In the case of the U.S. Constitution, these "details" can be really huge gaps.
Sure, that's unavoidable, but it's not the job definition. My point is that judges should never be guided by "how will some group/the majority/the elite/my children consider my decision now/in 5 years/in a century" but only by what they believe to be right at the moment of ruling. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for arbitrary rulings to appease some future historian and create judges that try to rule to win popular support. "Polls say the majority wants the death penalty for petty theft? I better give them what they want"
I'm not sure there is much of a distinction in practice between asking "how will history see this" and trying to do what's right? You don't get a magic ball to find out what will actually be popular. It's just a way of putting yourself in a state of mind to take a more long-term view of things.
> I'm not sure there is much of a distinction in practice between asking "how will history see this" and trying to do what's right?
I didn't mean "what's right" as in "what I feel is right", but in's what the law says. The policies are for the politicians, trying to merge the judiciary and the legislative doesn't sound like such a great plan to me.
Well, maybe read the part about filling in the details again. "What the law says" is often not clear. That's why it made it to an appeals court. In such situations, judges can't simply follow existing law. It just doesn't provide that guidance.
And I totally agree with you on that, but that's not what "judge by thinking how good you'll look 50 years from now" is. Filling in the details is more "applying the spirit of the law to a particular case not explicitly covered", it's not about creating new de facto laws based on your personal (political) opinions.
Where do you think the "spirit of the law" comes from and how does a judge apply it? It's by thinking about what others would expect. Whether it's about the past (original intent) or the future, this is an act of imagination (supported by research) where they are thinking about what others would want. There isn't any "view from nowhere".
If you don't care about what other people want and how the law affects people, then there is no morality or justice and it might as well be a coin flip.
The supreme Court primarily hears important cases where there are strong and reasonable legal arguments on each side. The idea that they can just apply the law in these cases is a bit unrealistic. It's just not that clear cut in the majority of SC cases.
Sure. But it's still their job, even if it's hard. "What will the media think of me, if I decide X" would certainly make it easier, but fortunately doesn't seem to have become the guiding principle yet.
It's strange that the idea that judges shouldn't decide by (future) popularity gets downvoted. At times I don't understand this community at all. Is that a "I believe that my opinion will rule supreme in 20 years, so judges should submit to it now and just ignore the constitution"-thing?
Usually, the court decides important case on extremely subtly technical details unrelated to the main merits of the case, and the results are blown way out of proportion by the wider sociery.
They should strive to create equal protection under the law, which over time they have done, by striking down laws that aren't this like Jim Crow laws etc.
This is what an appeals court justice does and their check and balance role on the other two branches of govt.
Why would they follow the party line? They literally don't answer to anyone except their own conscience. In addition, they can remain in power for decades, during which time a party's policies can change drastically...
No, it rules exactly that it exists or not. That's a tertiary logic, although not a legit figure of speech. I mean, if they didn't rule that the monopoly doesn't exists, which would have stopped the motion, and neither decided that monopoly was a fact, then they decided for or.
> Probably the most unexpected alignment of the current term!
Not so! There are many decisions by Kavanaugh that "liberals" (it's weird to me that they're called than in the U.S.) will have trouble predicting the opinions of conservatives [0].
“Who was best able to pretend to be the other?
The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as "very liberal." The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the care and fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with statements such as "one of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" or "justice is the most important requirement for a society," liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree.”
And they're probably even worse at this now than they were in 2012, if the inanity of the mainstream moral caricatures is anything to go by.
One of the things that Haidt leaves out of his article is that the % of difference between liberals and conservatives was within the margin of error.
His findings have also never been validated, even by other conservative scholars, and he refuses to provide the data from this study. (Also, the study was a survey given to people attending the Reagan Library during the work week, so a highly self-selective bunch...)
(Jonathan Haidt was a hero of one of my professors...until the scholarly issues with Haidt's research came to light.)
I think the fact that he sided with the liberal justices in favor of Planned Parenthood was less expected [1]. Especially considering his hearings were plagued with disruptions and protests from pro-choice activists.
Except Kavanaugh did argue against immigrant women being able to have an abortion while in detention. [1]
What you say may be a true statement, but it also selectively ignores the sexual assault accusations made by three women he has known. Whether or not you believe the accusations are true or false doesn't change the fact that they factor into his expectations as a judge.
It suggests the Federalist Society failed to do their job in vetting the candidate for ideological purity, especially since Trump was holding up the Kavanaugh nomination as a big win for his anti-abortion base voters.
The idea that “Federalist Society wouldn’t recommend anyone but a hardline anti-abortionist” somehow has become common knowledge, but it is a complete fabrication. If you go to their website’s list of their events and conferences, you’ll find more about the Clean Water Act than abortion. (Indeed, after filtering for events and talks tagged “religious liberties”—I couldn’t find anything about abortion in the first ten pages of results.) Likewise for their Twitter. It’s not really one of their issues.
The idea of Federalist Society “ideological purity” is also pretty amusing, considering that there is a large Never Trump contingency within the organization: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-conway-starts-anti-tru.... I’d wager there are a lot more pro-choice Federalist Society members than pro-life members of the American Constitution Society.
Brett Kavanaugh was barely confirmed in the senate 50-48. If the small handful of individuals in the GOP who supported the legalization of abortion felt that Brett Kavanaugh would be bad for women's rights, they could've successfully rejected the nomination.
If I had to guess, he knows that when things turn back around, he wants any and all reasons for people to be on his side. Keep a close eye on his decisions post 2020.
There is definitely a reason. Supreme Court Justices have policy preferences like anyone else, and if a particular decision would hurt the electoral chances of their preferred politicians then that's a reason to go the other way.
Whether or not they actually do this is another question, but the incentive is still there even with a lifetime appointment.
I think this proves that Supreme court justices are not aligned with any political parties. They take their roles very seriously. Kavanaugh looks to be very much a worthy Supreme Court Justice, same as Roberts who was elected by Bush (whom I hate more than Trump). I'm glad he was able to survive the ridiculous antics he went through and I think he will be a good justice regardless of what people think his allegiance was.
It really does prove it. If they were completely aligned with politics, they would have ALWAYS voted in a predictable way.
They may have more conservative or liberal tendencies, but to think that that all Justices will vote the way that people want to pigeonhole them into is ridiculous.
Edit: friends, apologies for upsetting... first, I find the accusations horrendous. I am more just amused that K chose to write the opinion. Politics is a funny game.
It’s hard to swallow, but we need a third constitutional convention because this stuff is wrecked in the us.
Prior to the confirmation insanity, Kavanaugh was viewed as one of the best supreme court justice nominations for all sides. All the confirmation hearings did was potentially radicalize him to the right. One of the best things about being a supreme court judge is that he no longer has to care about being reappointed or elected. He's not doing damage control, he's just being a supreme court judge.
> Kavanaugh was viewed as one of the best supreme court justice nominations for all sides
What is this based on? Everything I've read up to today, even ignoring the confirmation events, has indicated that Kavanaugh is not a desirable choice for those on the left side of the political spectrum.
My understanding is that when compared to alternative, qualified, right-leaning candidates, he was the most moderate. This is just based on people I know who have worked with him and tried cases in front of him.
> He's not doing damage control, he's just being a supreme court judge.
As of last week, Rasmussen (a conservative polling firm) was sampling support for impeachment of Kavanaugh.
It's possible that Kavanaugh is completely ignoring the topic, and has dedicated himself to the high-minded topic of jurisprudence. It's also possible that he is aware of such polling and is building support should the winds change.
But I've seen some speculation that after all the awfulness of the confirmation hearings accusing him of being a hard-right leaning justice that he would actually try (consciously or not) to show he's not locked into that mindset.
That certainly could be true. I like to believe supreme court justices remember that with that role comes with the truest ability to be impartial and unbeholden.
> Apple filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court in August 2017, posing the question "whether consumers may sue anyone who delivers goods to them for antitrust damages, even when they seek damages based on prices set by third parties who would be the immediate victims of the alleged offense". The Court agreed to hear the case in June 2018.[8] Oral arguments were held on November 26.[9] [10] Court observers stated that the four liberal Justices were joined by three of the conservative ones, Justices Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, as to side with consumers on the question of standing.[11] Justice Sonia Sotomayor stated that Apple's practice creates a closed loop that impacts the price paid by consumers.[12] Justice Neil Gorsuch considered that the prior decision from Illinois Brick may need to be overturned at the federal level, as at least 30 states have rejected the Illinois Brick doctrine.[12]
> The Court issued its 5-4 decision on May 13, 2019, affirming the Ninth Circuit's decision that consumers did have standing under Illinois Brick to sue Apple for antitrust practices. Justice Bret Kavanaugh, writing for the majority, stated that under the test of Illinois Brick, consumers were directly affected by Apple's fee and were not secondary purchasers, that consumers could sue Apple directly since it was Apple's fee that affected the prices of the apps, and that while the structure for any damages that consumers may win in the continuing suit may be complicated, this is not a factor to determine the standing of the suit. Kavanaugh was joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. The decision remanded the class-action case to continue in lower courts, though did not rule on any of the antitrust factors otherwise at the center of the case.
Am I reading correctly that this argument has now been going on for 8 years, or at minimum nearly 6? [1] An argument about who I am buying from when I type my credit card into Apple's system, click a purchase button on an Apple device, and then use the results of that purchase solely on Apple devices?
I see what you’re implying, but tweak one little thing and the answer seems vastly different:
Instead of an Apple device, say you’re using a Google-manufactured Android device (something-or-other), and have installed a third-party App Store on it. But that third-party App Store turns around and uses Google Pay as its payment processor.
All the same qualifications still apply: you essentially used a “Google POS device” (your phone), were routed through Google payment processing, and the results were deployed to a Google device (your phone again.)
But from the perspective of the seller, you were just using an arbitrary Android device to run their App Store on; and Google, to them, is just the payment-processor they chose to use (probably because it’s conveniently integrated on Android devices) but they could have just-as-well used PayPal or Stripe.
Is this third-party App Store—in this particular case—legally “Google?” Even though, in other cases, where people are using other non-Google Android devices to access the store, or maybe selecting a different payment-processor option at checkout, they definitely aren’t legally Google? I would say “obviously no.” Those apps were legally sold by the third-party App Store. Google was just a payment processor there. (Payment processors still also have legal responsibilities regarding the transaction, but they’re different than those of the seller.)
And if that’s true, then what’s the difference between a third-party App Store that you installed as its own app, and a “third-party App Store” that is a section of the Apple App Store app, e.g. a Microsoft section or Adobe section? Isn’t that the same as, say, buying from a physical Microsoft store in an Apple-owned shopping mall?
And if that’s true, then where’s the line between that and “each app you purchase is purchased from its own little stall in this digital mall, which is owned and operated by the software author”? Is there one?
I feel like this is something that’s unclear enough that you could spent eight years arguing the various precedents behind deciding either way.
> [you] have installed a third-party App Store on it.
I believe that is more than "one little thing". Here is why: Plantiffs say that Apple's decision to be the sole source of apps for the iPhone is monopolisitc. In your scenario, the purchaser is buying apps from a third party, not affiliated with Google. So, no, a third party cannot be possibly "legally Google". Critically in your scenario, "you were just using an arbitrary Android device" and "Google, to them, is just the payment-processor they chose to use" and most critically "they could have just-as-well used PayPal or Stripe." So, I believe the facts of your case are very very far from the facts of the Apple case.
Hypothetical Google Case:
- Third Party App Store
- Multiple competing payment solution
Actual Apple Case:
- Only one app store by order of manufacturer/OEM/OS Vendor
- Only one payment processor (who is the app store)
In the scenario with Google, google is no more involved in the purchase than mastercard is in your purchase at Walmart.
In the scenario with Apple, the app developer is no more involved with your purchase than the book author is on Amazon (when you buy directly from Amazon). You purchase FROM APPLE.
The difference is that the hypothetical third party Android App Store could use any payment service it wanted, or even the user could use any App Store it preferred.
With iOS not only you can't buy from a third party, you can't even install an app that hasn't been signed by Apple.
I would argue the point of consumer choice is at device selection. If they choose the ecosystem with the heavy markup, when they had alternatives, then they are responsible for incurring their own additional costs. The information is public regarding app costs between devices and marketplaces. This seems to me a bad ruling based on that.
Blaming the consumer in this case doesn't fly because the consumer owns the device once they purchase it, and it is anticompetitive for Apple to lock out competing services on the consumer's device. The "Just don't buy it" argument also doesn't work for The Right to Repair movement.
Either way, end users have the right to sue Apple here, not just the developers.
That requires making the case that the consumer believes they are buying a general computing device that they can use for any purpose and customize freely, which is simply not the case.
Furthermore, repair applies to the hardware of the device, not the software ecosystem. You have to make a separate, very different argument for software as it is more malleable and less restricted than hardware components are.
> That requires making the case that the consumer believes they are buying a general computing device
Considering Apple has been pushing the "iPad is a PC replacement," it's a fairly easy case to make with regard to iOS and the App store. There is a lot Apple has done to push the idea that the "users" are in control of their information and that "there is an app for that." Couple that with the history of people being able to customize their phones in certain ways, it's not a case that is that hard to make, especially when compared to contemporary phones.
I do think you have a better argument: if Apple has falsely advertised the capabilites of its platform as being capable of general computing, it may be liable on that count. I do not think you can argue a history of customizing phones, given Apple was the first provider with this scale of adoption.
I am arguing it is constrained by its manufacturer and that consumers are well aware of those constraints on purchase. That is sufficient for the consumer to take on liability if the choice does not meet their needs.
Again, a consumer using something doesn't justify anti-competitive behavior with companies. If the bar for antitrust was whether or not a person bought it, then there wouldn't be a need for antitrust law.
I would recommend looking up what antitrust does and does not cover. This is not suitable grounds for antitrust arguments as the law is currently given; if you were arguing 'Apple has a monopoly on Apple-exclusive apps', you might have a case, but even then there are many apps that are cross platform, and those that choose to develop exclusively for Apple are making a market decision that they may be liable for if the cost of production increases because of it.
I don't think you can argue platform monopoly here any more than you could argue, say, that Amazon has a monopoly on AWS-specific services. Since an app developer can choose which platform to use with approximate levels of parity between those platforms and a few distinctive services per platform, it is my opinion that the 'platform monopoly' argument is rendered void. This argument is only weakened in recent years as feature parity increases between Android and Apple ecosystems.
Vertically integrating and excluding competition is exactly what antitrust covers! The monopoly that Apple has on the app store for the devices it sells allows it to exploit consumers with pricing. That's the case that the Supreme Court has allowed to move forward.
AWS is also a platform but they don't lock customers into only using AWS or AWS-licensed services. This is almost as preposterous as saying, "Someone bought it, so it's not anti-competitive".
All the vertical integration Apple has been able to muster hasn't prevented more open competition from growing in the smartphone market, so your point continues to remain moot.
Again, to make your case, you must argue that Apple products are categorically different from any other device available on market and that they are preventing new entrants from competing with it, which is so blatantly not the case here.
Addendum after edit time passed: the final and primary criticism I'm making about this argument is this: if you selectively narrow your view to the Apple ecosystem and ignore all external entities, you would easily come to the conclusions you are coming to. I believe that is an artificial and distorting narrowing of the scope that must be considered in this argument.
This is incoherent, non sequitur. Again, we're talking about two different categories of devices: general computing vs. non-general. At the moment, smartphones are non-general, insofar as they are not made for user programmability from the device itself.
Secondly, that MS case is a different matter than the one cited here, and does not map well onto this case.
Thirdly, the major precedent of the original ruling appears to have been overturned shortly after. This damages the argument somewhat. The ruling seems scurrilous in the first place, in my opinion.
1. Apple advertised the iPad (which is also an iOS device) as a laptop replacement.
2. My point is not to compare the two cases, legally speaking, but you argued that "consumers are well aware of those constraints on purchase". Well, consumers were well aware of the limitations of Windows and that didn't change the fact that Microsoft was charged with unlawful monopolization.
3. Sorry, I'm not sure what you are referring to here.
A key finding was that Microsoft had a monopoly on the PC OS market, with marketshare > 90%. If 90's Microsoft had Apple's marketshare today, <50% in US, the judgement would have been absurd.
Everyone has a different opinion on this, but I have a hard time believing desktop users (Linux, Mac, Windows) would accept getting their software only from the computer manufacturer's officially approved store.
I certainly don't like it, no, but that doesn't make it antitrust in this case. My feelings and desires aren't what determines law, and thank goodness for that.
In a democracy, they kind of are. Indirectly, obviously.
My feelings and desires affect how I vote, and voting affects legislation as well as such things as who gets appointed to the Supreme Court. (and given our legal system, courts determine law as much as legislators do)
I think it is awful that manufacturers of devices have that level of control of who can sell apps to run on them, and I certainly hope enough other people do to affect law. I'm old enough to remember when you could only buy a (landline) phone through Ma Bell, and luckily the law -- via courts of course -- stopped that eventually.
This is very similar, but in my opinion the current issue is a good bit worse that AT&Ts monopoly.
Is there a general principle at work here? I have a Wii, a PlayStation, an LG smart TV, a Chromecast. All of these runs apps and are substantially more locked down than my iPhone.
If I make a device, you should not be able to force me to support your software running on it. That seems fundamental.
Consumers have a choice, though, and that trumps most other considerations. With Android, they receive an alternative set of constraints. Do I think Apple is wise to be as restrictive as they are? No. Is it within their bounds to do so? Absolutely.
As a consumer, I can be disgruntled that my chosen platform is not as flexible as I wish. I can either throw a fit and lobby congress to force Apple to open its gates, or wait a year or two for my phone to slow down and pick up an Android device. In fact, this kind of migration occurs in both directions on a regular basis. Only religious loyalists stick with a single ecosystem without examining the tradeoffs they're making, as a general rule.
They have a choice between two monopolistic platforms, frankly.
Your purchasing decisions are not mutually exclusive with action from courts and legislators and voters and such. And, especially if you take into account that market theory as well as game theory tends to view individuals as rational agents pursuing self interest (1), a pure free market approach simply does not effectively curtail monopolistic and otherwise anti-competitive behavior of corporations.
And a court would likely take that into account. They might even consider that you have the right to fabricate your own phone, and write the operating system from scratch.
Luckily courts take into accounts the barriers inherent in such things. If few enough people do such things because the difficulty of doing so makes them impractical for most people, they give appropriately low weight to such arguments.
>And if that’s true, then where’s the line between that and “each app you purchase is purchased from its own little stall in this digital mall, which is owned and operated by the software author”? Is there one?
To use your analogy, the line is if someone can set up their own shop outside the mall. As a consumer, if I have no way to avoid purchasing from a store inside a single mall then I'm effectively purchasing from the mall itself.
How do you resolve this with the fact that exclusives exist and are tolerated in just about every industry.
You can only buy the new Jordan's from X stores, only available on PS4, exclusively at Target, etc.
And places that sell things are well within their right to choose their vendors unless you want to demand that the BMV dealership be leglly required to sell Ford trucks if Ford desired.
Put exclusivity and vendor selection together and you have a digital app store. Apple doesn't even pretend to be open -- they're a product with licensed 3rd party integrations.
On what grounds should they be compelled to be anything else?
Exclusivity deals are pretty complicated under the Sherman/Clayton acts. It's hotly contested - hardly "tolerated in just about every industry." Here are some links:
That's why this is going to the Supreme Court - we all recognize that the App Store uses exclusive dealing, but it's non-obvious whether or not it's lawful.
>And places that sell things are well within their right to choose their vendors unless you want to demand that the BMV dealership be leglly required to sell Ford trucks if Ford desired.
Not sure what that has to do with anything. Apple's point was that they aren't selling anything - therefore appstore customers wouldn't have standing to bring an antitrust against them.
> You can only buy the new Jordan's from X stores, only available on PS4, exclusively at Target, etc.
When this matters is when you have a dominant market position. Target doesn't have to sell Nike because you can reasonably buy them at Walmart. Nike doesn't have to sell to Target because Target can reasonably buy from Reebok, which is a reasonable substitute.
The issue here is that there is no reasonable substitute for Apple's App Store, because they have made it that way on purpose. You can't sell your iOS app through Walmart or Google Play or Amazon. You can't download it from the developer's website. And you can't run Android apps on iOS devices. So Apple has a dominant position in iOS app distribution, and with that comes the antitrust restrictions that don't apply to competitive markets.
> So Apple has a dominant position in iOS app distribution
Is iOS app distribution a thing that can be dominated though, legally? In your example I get how stores and shoes are both things that can be dominated but what category of thing does iOS app distribution fall into? Is it still in the same category if one deletes iOS and just calls it in "app store"? Would Apple still dominate apps?
It's all confusing to me. I'm asking sincerely because I honestly don't know.
This is getting into market definition, which is kind of complicated and subjective, but one of the key factors is substitution.
So for example, is "Clorox bleach" its own market, separate from just "bleach"? Well, no. Clorox bleach is chemically identical to any other bleach. You could switch one for the other and not even be able to tell the difference.
On the other hand, is "broadband internet service in Pittsburgh" a different market than just "broadband internet service"? It kind of is. There may be a dozen different ISPs in varying cities across the country, but the prerequisite to using one that doesn't offer service in your city is to sell your house and move somewhere else. That doesn't make it a particularly viable substitute.
So then is "iOS app store" a different market than just "app store"? Well, what do you have to do to substitute one for the other? Is it reasonable to have to exchange your $600 phone, or buy a second $600 phone, in order to buy a $1 app from a different store?
You would still have to buy a new $600 phone to use that $1 app irrespective of whether Apple had multiple stores or not. iOS is a platform and apps can only work on that platform.
> You would still have to buy a new $600 phone to use that $1 app irrespective of whether Apple had multiple stores or not.
You need a phone to use an app in the same way that you need a piece of real estate to get internet service. That doesn't mean Cox in Omaha is a competitor to Comcast in Pittsburgh, because people aren't reasonably going to make a choice with hundreds of times greater implications just in order to do that.
> iOS is a platform and apps can only work on that platform.
You're only providing reasons that it is a separate market from apps on other platforms.
The argument discussed was literally Apple trying to argue that you aren't their customer for the purpose of legal liability while you pay them money to install apps from their store on a device they configured to only be able to buy from their store.
This decision makes clear that legal weasels lost.
Understanding next steps requires constructing the argument correctly. One could ask why should Apple be forced to open "their" phone for example. This too would be weasel words because nobody on earth is asking Apple to open the phones in their pockets.
A more reasonable person might ask that Apple allow owners to control THEIR OWN PHONES.
You ask erroneously if BMW should have to stock ford Trucks. This isn't remotely analogous. This is asking if BMW owners ought to have to go to a BMW gas station, seek repairs only at BMW owned service stations. Listen to BWM approved music on BMW approved stereos.
Fundamentally using control of a users device after sale to maximize future revenue is inappropriate and the only remedy is to give users full control.
Apple allows you just as much control as every other product. If you were to break all of the security controls you could do whatever you want including adding a new App Store just like Cydia did.
The question is whether Apple should make it easy for you to do this. And there is no legal basis for that.
Sure there is. Section 2 of the Sherman Act makes it illegal to "monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations." You may think that Apple's conduct does not fall under that provision, and it remains to be seen whether the federal courts will agree, but if the legal argument were totally baseless then Apple wouldn't have gone to the Supreme Court to shut it down at a preliminary stage.
So? What makes it okay to lock down a telephone but not a computer? What would prevent a computer OEM from locking down devices to a single store like Windows 10S?
Look I want to have full control of my devices but I don't think owning the physical hardware entitles you to any rights other than you may do with the device as-is as you please.
If we decide that designing a toaster to only accept $vendor's bread is illegal that's all well and good but the justification for such a law will be that it's monopolistic behavior, not that the end user owns the toaster.
It's really hard to prove that a person who paid money for an object in their hand, without an explicit leasing agreement, is not the "owner" of that object.
Without a compelling, court-tested, legal precedent for Apple to claim "you don't own that iPhone in your hand", the assumption is that you do, regardless of what the EULA might say. EULAs that are contrary to standing law are not valid.
The fact that one can buy iPhones on the secondary market lends credence to notion that consumers own their devices.
And given that Atari and Nintendo both tried, and failed, to make similar arguments against 3rd party software manufacturers, I think it's pretty clear which way the courts would go, if it were to ever be tested.
We don't live in a society where corporations get to make up whatever rules they want, as long as they can convince someone to sign on the dotted line.
The thing is that fundamentally you can in software undermine any degree of real ownership.
Say I sell you a car outright. I decide to push an update that bricks the car and pops up a window on the in dash entertainment with an offer to re enable it for a monthly fee or an offer to buy it back for pennies on the dollar.
I think we can agree that I basically just stole your car and offered to rent it to you.
My ability to control the heart of your device means we can either
- spend the next century litigating in what fashion and circumstances I am and am not allowed to fuck you and to what degree while hoping that the side with the deepest pockets doesn't win most rounds
- pretend that the dysfunctional hand of the free market is capable of solving a complex societal problem this time
- admit that the privileges and rights that we already acknowledge and value implicitly must include the right to access and modify the software included or they can literally be taken away wholly or in part for the increasing percentage of things that include a chip.
I think this is true implicitly but am entirely open on the idea of spelling this out explicitly in terms of additional laws and lawsuits.
I'm in no way saying that companies should be allowed to do evil things like that, only that the justification for preventing them would be consumer protection, not device ownership. Which I guess in your world is option 1.
I actually think the option 1 world would actually be better than deriving rights from device ownership because then it would be super easy to get around by renting devices or by using SaaS services; consumer protection litigation protects you against various types of fucking in all cases.
I don't really want to live in a world where companies are allowed to be maximally evil with their software but it's okay because you are technically allowed to replace it with your own. All this would do is allow a tiny tiny fraction of the population to enjoy their devices while everyone else would be fucked.
I'm on the side of "I would personally love if companies were required to allow/support device modification but the justification for such a thing is weak and wouldn't actually protect or solve problems for consumers."
Not surprising. The supreme court typically takes a long time to get involved with anything.
They are the final word, so they must get it right. Thus they want lots of other lawyers and judges to spend time coming up with all arguments and working out all angles. The worst possible thing would be for them to issue a final ruling, only to realize they are wrong because of some line of reasoning nobody had thought of.
In short, by taking 8 years, many smart people have spent 8 years thinking about the issue. There is a good chance that nobody will think of a different argument that is compelling.
Unfortunately law is not math. There are no fundamental truths to start from. It is a matter of conflicting opinions. We will never be sure that they are right or wrong, but at least they carefully considered their decision trying to get it right.
No, it's not at all about who you are buying from, that is simply not an issue in the case. It's about what is allegedly being monopolised and who is directly harmed.
That's not fair. Your lawyer should make any arguments they need to defend you, even if they're not what you believe. As long as they're not false or misleading, it's good practice.
Nobody's claimed that Apple believes that people buying their phones aren't their customers. Apple claimed (IIUC) that in this scenario, it's the app store vendors that are the customer of the app store. Which is a reasonably valid way to look at it.
Your lawyer should advise you of all of those arguments but that doesn't mean you have to instruct the lawyer to make them. Litigants who make legally tenable but unethical arguments can still be criticised on ethical grounds. Apple could have conceded the plaintiffs' standing in this case but chose not to. The fact that this case has been tied up in expensive preliminary litigation so long surely acts as a deterrent to anyone else who would like to bring an antitrust suit against Apple, and if Apple ran this argument for that reason alone, that would be unethical and worthy of criticism.
I think it is important that the anticompetitive effects of Apple's control of the iOS app store be examined by US antitrust courts. Regulators and app store developers had not taken action at the time this lawsuit was filed, and I think it is important that app store users can force the issue in these circumstances. I think there is at least an ethical issue with Apple choosing to argue that the plaintiffs do not have standing, rather than explaining why its actual behaviour is consistent with current US antitrust laws.
Apple won on the standing point in the trial court, then lost on appeal to the circuit court, and chose to protract the preliminary litigation by running this failed appeal to the Supreme Court, at significant cost to its opponents. Perhaps in doing so, Apple achieved a public benefit by securing a Supreme Court decision that explains this contested part of the law on standing. But if the minority opinion had prevailed, Apple would have won a victory that deprived the courts of the opportunity to review the legality of its behaviour for a few more years.
I don't know enough about the decision-making process to say whether Apple's behaviour in running this litigation was ethical. My point is that Apple executives are morally responsible for it, even if it is perfectly legal.
So either Apple is misleading us when they say we are their customers or they are flat out lying to get out of a lawsuit. Can't have your cake and eat it too, mate.
If you own a shopping centre, and rent out the spaces to shops, do shoppers at those stores count as customers of the store, or of the shopping centre owner?
If you don't maintain the mall, shoppers won't come to your mall and this in turn will drive the stores away. So you stores are your primary customers and shoppers are your secondary customers.
Potentially both? At least if I want my customers to imagine so because thinking I value them inspires them to spend more money I wouldn't say out loud that they weren't
For those downvoting bitwize, get a life. This is an accurate and impartial explanation of the arguments actually at stake in the legal case, clarifying an ambiguity in the post it's replying to.
Apple has two possible customers in this issue - the developers it provides distribution services to and the consumers that buy the apps. The point in question is which of these two customers has standing to sue on the basis of the specific harm in question. Under US law the answer cannot be both.
Please don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvoting in comments. That rule has been in there for many years—would you mind reviewing them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Also, please omit distracting dross like "get a life".
It looks like there is a tremendous amount of downvoting of simple factual info in this thread, unfortunately (the subjective opinions, sure, whatever)
I've noticed with my own posts that some people here tend to downvote purely factual information simply because they find it unpleasant. Although that usually happens on some of the more controversial topics (and much more frequently on weekends, IMO). This post isn't really controversial...
I don't think it's wrong to downvote unpleasant-but-true posts if it appears that the author's intention was strictly to be provocational. Clearly that's not the case here though
How can Apple’s App Store prices be monopolistic if the App Store has driven software prices so low that a lot of developers are having a hard time making money?
Before the App Store, software licenses for Mac software could be priced in the $40-$70 range for software that might have had feature parity with what you get in a $3-$10 app on iOS these days. That’s not even taking into account the fact that paying for a new version of a piece of software used to be the norm, but on iOS, you buy the app once and expect updates for free forever.
Nobody has ruled on whether the practices are actually monopolistic or not - this ruling just allows a suit against Apple to proceed, which will then make that determination about their business practices.
The debate in this case was all about whether the end user was Apple's customer (thus able to sue Apple directly) or the developer's customer.
I think this debate is interesting, but I don't expect Apple to be happy about the final outcome. A developer publishing solely on Apple's App Store (and relying solely on Apple features to provide functionality) has no direct access to the customer* - Apple prevents that fairly well. In this case, I feel like, as a consumer, I'm Apple's customer. I think courts, and especially juries, would agree.
That said, I don't see how the App Store is a monopoly. How would "monopoly" be defined to even formulate a case against Apple?
* - notwithstanding that many apps want you to create an account on their systems - Apple does indeed allow this.
> That said, I don't see how the App Store is a monopoly. How would "monopoly" be defined to even formulate a case against Apple?
I think the argument would be fairly straightforward: the App Store is the exclusive avenue to distribute paid applications to iPhone users. In so doing, it acts as a single seller of applications to consumers and a single buyer of applications from developers, and its arbitrarily-set fees are incorporated into prices.
The fine parsing comes in whether "iPhone users" are a sufficiently distinct market to effectively make the App Store a monopoly, and I think reasonable people could have different opinions here.
So, they're certainly a monopoly in that market today and possibly in the general market in the near future. I have also read that you don't even need to have a higher than 50% market share to be considered a monopoly. You simply need to affect the entire market, which Apple certainly does with their 45% general market share in the US.
The app store is a monopoly because its the only app store you can use on an apple phone. There is no other way to find, pay for, or download apps as an apple phone user.
This argument fails because consumers have ample choice in what phones they want to use. You can just as easily purchase an Android phone and not have to play by Apple's rules.
Yes, Apple has a monopoly over iPhones. They do have a monopoly over phones.
It's standard for a "channel to market" to hide the customer.
If my product is being sold in any retail store e.g. Best Buy then I typically don't have access to the customer's contact details that may be collected at the checkout. It's up to me to capture that information when a user uses my product.
Notably Walmart has been examined for as a monopoly but because in every case that was examined they decreased prices to consumers, no action was taken.
I hate that they use federal money to subsidize their workforce' paychecks (non-living wages, supplemented by food stamps), but...they're great for the consumer.
They are only great at the point of purchase. They make it harder to run a competing business, they create a tax burden by paying low wages, they distort local markets and cause local economies to suffer, they benefit foreign suppliers of products produced at wages and in conditions below American legal minimums (at the expense of American companies that compete with them, which affects American workers at those companies).
How could it be any other way? To the extent that government benefits increase I would expect hourly wages to go down for those beneficiaries. This would be the nature result of a competitive market place.
I doubt you comprehend how absurd this situation is.
Benefits are inversely proportional to income meaning that a below survivable wage requires people on the verge of not being able to eat to actually step down in pay in order to take the natural progression of an increase in wages.
In order to avoid this you just don't let people pay less than a minimum survivable hourly wage so they can't force the government to subsidize them.
I understand what you are saying regarding the relationship between income and benefits. I think it is actually somewhat worse than you suggest due to the various step functions in the benefit calculations -- an increase in wage income can actually result in a larger decrease in benefits.
In the absence of a minimum wage constraint, and all other things being equal, a change in government assistance is going to result in an opposite change in the market wage rate. This is just a statement of market mechanisms. When the labor pool has access to higher benefits, it is easier for an employer to find someone willing to work for a little less than before (and vice versa).
The two situations are somewhat different though. In the first case you are talking about an individual moving themselves into a different market (unskilled/untrained labor to improved skills/experience, for example). Ensuring that this progression isn't penalized via overly aggressive reduction in benefits is a good thing irrespective of any minimum wage constraints. In the second case you are talking about a global change to the market constraints for all participants.
So I was just responding to the parent to say that when the government changes its "formula" for benefits, it is entirely reasonable and expected for the market to find a new equilibrium. This isn't an example of Walmart or any other employer "using federal money to subsidize their workforce". This is just the market doing what it does.
As for your minimum wage concerns, a minimum wage prices some people out of the labor market entirely. Someone with minimal skills or experience won't be able to bring enough value to an employer to cover the minimum wage. I think it would be much better to get rid of minimum wage rules and adjust benefits accordingly. It makes more sense for someone with minimal skills to have a job (and thus a path towards more skills) and some additional public assistance than to have no job at all and be 100% dependent on public assistance.
You yourself said that offering generous benefits inspires low end workers to tend to work for less because they can live on it and ultimately drives down wages.
In a fictional world without minimum wage or assistance a low wage employee can't afford to work for less than would be required to live for very long so one would expect the wage to float to somewhere in that neighborhood. Lets completely arbitrarily set that value at $10 an hour without worrying what the actual value would be. Imagine that the company expects to create $15 of value on average for each $10 paid out.
Note that in this universe even without a minimum wage the wage still can't float arbitrarily low because people can't live and certain people who truly don't create the needed value are STILL pushed out of the labor market by more employable people. Without any benefits they just die.
Now lets add welfare! People with enough to eat, free medical, cheap rent can indeed afford to work for less even if the company is still generating the same $15 net on each labor hour. Say the person effectively gets $7 an hour in benefits and companies average out to pay $5.
This means that in the original arrangement customers paid out $15 and the employee collected $10 the employer $5.
In the new situation the customer paid out $15, society kicked in $7, and the employee collected $12, the employer collected $10.
One could have achieved the same societal benefit by giving the employees $2.
Nations that provide sizable benefits to poor are obliged to set a minimum wage to avoid the situation where the social safety net represents a net transfer of wealth to low end employers by allowing employees to offer below living wages.
I see what you are saying but I don't think that addresses my point that the higher minimum wage, which by your example causes some of the welfare benefits to stay with the recipient and not the employer, also results in unemployment for people who can't bring enough value to the table.
I'm not claiming I have a good solution, just pointing out the side effects of the high minimum wage (higher that the otherwise natural market clearing price).
There’s nothing illegal about having a monopoly, but by the same token, you don’t have to have a monopoly to run afoul of antitrust regulation. This is an oversimplification, but the Sherman Act was about monopolies, while its later companion the Clayton Act was about anticompetitive practices.
> How can Apple’s App Store prices be monopolistic if the App Store has driven software prices so low that a lot of developers are having a hard time making money?
Because the issue is the price of app distribution, i.e. the part of the price Apple gets, not the part of the price the developer gets. The fact that the developers are getting squeezed is what you expect to happen when some other part of the supply chain is monopolized, because more of the revenue goes to the monopoly and less to the developer.
> Before the App Store, software licenses for Mac software could be priced in the $40-$70 range for software that might have had feature parity with what you get in a $3-$10 app on iOS these days.
The desktop and mobile markets are very different. For one thing, the people paying for desktop apps are primarily businesses whereas iOS apps are sold primarily to individuals. The mobile market is also bigger, which means more customers to amortize costs over which should result in lower prices.
Compare the price of iOS apps to Android apps. They're not lower and if anything are higher.
>How can Apple’s App Store prices be monopolistic if the App Store has driven software prices so low that a lot of developers are having a hard time making money?
But Apple is the one that's skimming all the revenue and making huge profits on their forced 30% cut. Apparently they made $12 billion just from the app store in Q3 2018. How is it surprising that a lot of developers are having a hard time making money?
My understanding is that argument would have standing in the EU (competitive harm monopolistic practices), not the US (consumer harm monopolistic practices).
So hundreds of thousands of app developers are conspiring to keep app prices low? That would involve coordination which is essentially impossible for the numbers of app developers. The developer of Tiny Wings isn’t calling Rockstar Games to agree on prices. Without such coordination, there isn’t any “dumping.” Standard Oil was a sole supplier, while the App Store has thousands of suppliers who all set their prices based on what the market supports. A dumping argument in this case makes no sense since Apple does not set app prices.
It’s perfectly normal to dump product if it drives sales of your main product. In this case it’s the iPhone that benefits from cheap apps. The App Store has been instrumental in keeping prices down - a major way they do this is by not allowing demos. Who’s going to risk $50 without seeing it first?
Can anyone now blast Apple on anti-trust grounds, for banning competing browsers in their store?
When Apple want to sabotage universal adoption of certain technology (such as DASH for video streaming), they can avoid implementing needed components on the client side in their engine, forcing everyone who wants to target iOS (a sizable chunk of the Web market) to support their own technology instead of only something else.
So control over the browser engines in the store gives them anti-competitive control which extends way beyond it. It's surprising no one challenged that garbage until now.
It doesn't matter if it can't be even released there. That's the whole point. Apple don't compete on merit, they use monopolistic tactics to ban competition.
This is indeed the elephant in the room. All app developers, except spotify, are too terrified to directly confront with Apple. That's the chilling effect of a true monopoly.
Kinda like Google and their widevine DRM only being available on Chrome and first party apps. If you want to watch Google Play purchases you MUST use their clients. Is this monopolistic or are we still gonna ignore all the crap Google does?
Yeah Apple can do that. Thank goodness. Safari lags on web standards. It's ahead on anti-tracking, Reader Mode, etc. Which focus benefits the user more?
They do that. However it shouldn't be legal in any sane legal climate, where competition law is not a fake facade. And who would defend the monopoly except for shills?
It would be nice if people in this thread could stop expressing surprise that Justice Kavanaugh sided the way he did when these people presumably have no idea which way Kavanaugh has decided for similar cases in the past.
This is flippant and non-helpful. If you disagree with how his record is characterized, then please post counter examples. But let me post the following:
+ Rejected challenges to NSA authority
+ Rejected workers rights to picket
+ Opinionated diverting public funds to religion schools
None of your examples are about how he looks at the particular issues in this case though. You've arbitrarily grouped this case with the several others above by putting them all on an axis of whether he's anti-consumer or pro-consumer. You may choose to perceive justices on these ideological axes, but these ideological axes are probably not what determines how they vote, even if there are sometimes strong correlations.
It doesn't matter the theory driving his votes, it matters the outcome. If you vote against say, civil rights, because you have some super-nuanced view about how the court can or can not be involved in respect to state politics, you're still propping up Jim Crow laws.
Read up on Baker v Carr which touched on the issue of redistricting. Specifically on whether the court could intervene in a state perogative case. On one side were a set of justices who believed that the court couldn't since they would be interfering in state matters. On the other side were justices who believed the court was the only possible body who could restore the voting power of minorities.
Strong first principles are great when we're arguing philosophy but it's pretty bad when we're preventing millions from exercising a fundamental right. The soldier who carries out atrocities because he believes in the duty of following orders is no less guilty of the atrocity.
This doesn't mean that the end justifies the means but it means that we must judge our course of action and the actions of others with their full weight, not only intention or goal but the direct cost too.
> Kavanaugh is highly anti-consumer. That he's sided with consumers in this case is very surprising to me.
I think it's a bit disingenuous to assume partisanship on the basis of a <1 year voting record. That's a serious charge to levy against a judge, as it implies he/she is violating his/her judicial oath by failing to "administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich".
It's rather unfortunate that courts have become the foci of partisan politics. It reflect the reality that Congress has been effectively abdicating their duty as the ones who must write the law.
My comment was not flippant at all, and it appeared it was very helpful, because it caused you to actually dig in to why you might be surprised that Kavanaugh sided the way he did, and you are the first (and only) person in the thread to do so.
Those issues are not relevant to the current one, which is the whole point. Extrapolating what he would do in this monopolistic/monopsonistic case based on EPA and labor law rulings is... a stretch.
> In this case, unlike in Illinois Brick, the iPhone owners
are not consumers at the bottom of a vertical distribution
chain who are attempting to sue manufacturers at the top
of the chain. There is no intermediary in the distribution
chain between Apple and the consumer. The iPhone
owners purchase apps directly from the retailer Apple,
who is the alleged antitrust violator. The iPhone owners
pay the alleged overcharge directly to Apple. The absence
of an intermediary is dispositive.
Essentially, the Supreme Court is letting an antitrust lawsuit against Apple proceed — and it has rejected Apple’s argument that iOS App Store users aren’t really its customers.
Not really, no. Apple has two customers in this respect - the developers it provides distribution services to and the consumers that buy the apps. The point in question is which of these two customers has standing to sue on the basis of the specific harm in question. Under US law the answer cannot be both.
Do you have a source for this? Reading the decision here it seems like both the developers and the consumers have standing to sue, although for slightly different reasons [0].
[0] from the decision: "Here, some downstream iPhone consumers have sued Apple on a monopoly theory. And it could be that some upstream app developers will also sue Apple on a monopsony theory. In this instance, the two suits would rely on fundamentally different theories of harm and would not assert dueling claims to a “common fund,” as that term was used in Illinois Brick. The consumers seek damages based on the difference between the price they paid and the competitive price. The app developers would seek lost profits that they could have earned in a competitive retail market. Illinois Brick does not bar either category of suit."
Question: How can Apple have a monopoly if a customer can decide to buy a competitor's phone to use as they please (Android, etc). That's where I get lost. The Windows/Netscape made sense since the claim was that Windows dominated the market almost completely (around 90% on those times?). Can I sue any other hardware device company (smart fridges, smart tvs, rokus) for monopoly since I can't load my own apps on them? Anyways, having an alternate app store on iOS sounds good to me.
To my understanding, anti-trust laws are generally designed to discourage the ability of companies to use success in one area to capture customers and thus have monopolistic pricing ability in another area.
In this case I think it is going to be a hard sell to demonstrate an anti-trust issue, but "A vertical arrangement may violate the antitrust laws, however, if it reduces competition among firms at the same level (say among retailers or among wholesalers) or prevents new firms from entering the market."[1]
I think claiming that Apple has some kind of monopoly on the smartphone market is a nonstarter, since they are well below 50% of the smartphone market in every country, including the US.
It's not clear that Apple's policies reduce competition among firms at the application creator level. However, Apples policies clearly do prevent new firms from entering the market. For example, Apple has explicit rules forbidding entire classes of apps that it believes compete with it's own services.
I think you might be able to make the following case, although the lack of an actual monopoly makes it more difficult (but not impossible) to frame it as an anti-trust issue: The levels of this vertical integration are 1. selling phone hardware 2. providing phone operating systems 3. reselling of applications (app stores) 4. production and sale of applications (app developers). Apple doesn't allow competing app stores at all on the hardware it sells, so it's clearly using it's control of a large segment of the smartphone hardware selling market in a way that discourages competition in the application store market.
That's why the suit will probably fail in the end. In terms of app selection, Android is not inferior to iOS. People aren't choosing Apple's products because they have no other choice. They're buying them BECAUSE Apple has tighter control over the platform. If the company conducts a survey asking iPhone users if they want Play Store on their phone, I suspect the vast majority would vote no. The choice to install malware isn't one that people want.
Sorry since when is a closed platform a good choice? No one is saying you have to use an other App store. Apple is saying you can't even someone wants to.
The only option is to Jailbreak your own device. Yes your own device not Apples.
Nobody is asking specifically if the majority of users want to specifically install the play store on their phones so answering a question nobody asked in the first place isn't terribly relevant.
The question is if the way Apple controlled the market fell afoul of legal standards in a way that effected makers and users. If this is deemed so it would be true regardless of what percentage of users would install apps from a third party store.
You're begging the question. Whether Apple in fact controls the market is the key point of contention here. If the company is simply responding to market demand then there is no credible theory of harm. I don't have any hard data but anecdotal evidences indicate people want more curation of apps, not less.
If Apple were to be required to allow third party App Stores or side loading apps, could it legally deny interoperability with Apple services as a “security measure,” like a sandbox? For example, you can download a game, but it won’t hook into their gaming social network. No ability to share in iMessage, or sync data to iCloud. Basically cripple the apps so that for the end user it isn’t worth saving the money on the apps that don’t have the 30% markup.
In my experience, if there's an option to ask same price everywhere, sellers will do that. So on app store it will cost (for example) 4.99$, and on third party app store without 30% cut, the developers will still set the price of 4.99$.
The only kind of place I've seen prices less than MSRP is discount stores like cdkeys. For example, try to find microsoft windows that costs less than MSRP -- on all stores, first party and third party, the price will be the same.
So, lack of 30% markup is very unlikely to reduce the final asking price by 30%.
If this is the case, I see no particular reason to go through the hassle of a 3rd party App Store or side loading on iPhone. But, my time vs $ saved equation is different from lots of people, so I suppose it would appeal to some users at even a 10% discount or less.
I'm sure both the developers and the consumers will still choose to use the sideloaded app depending on the app. Look at how Fortnite on Android skipped the entire Google Play Store because they can provide the entire infrastructure themselves anyways.
Or apps that get denied from the Apple App Store. Emulators come to mind, but also the recent Steam Link app is still not allowed on the App Store.
Is this not similar to when you buy an item from a department store? When you buy a jacket from say, Tommy Hilfiger, in Macy's.. . who are you buying from?
It is similar, but not identical. A department store buys physical goods from a vendor, and then sells them to consumers. An App Store provides distribution and payment services to vendors and consumers.
For a department store, it is very clear that you are buying from the department store. They own the physical goods at the time of sale.
For an App Store, most people would agree that the Store does not own the digital goods they are selling to consumers.
So, while a superficially similar transaction occurs, both the nature of digital goods and the difference between goods and services makes for pretty vast differences under the surface.
> For a department store, it is very clear that you are buying from the department store. They own the physical goods at the time of sale.
Just to bit pick and it doesn't really change your point, but I thought a lot of places basically do consignment now for their vendors and don't own much of their stock?
This is true. A lot of inventory in big box retail isn't owned by the retailer, but the distributer/manufacturer. More and more big box retailers are moving into the business of leasing out floor space, and ditching buying and selling inventory.
The difference is that big box retailers won't force you to only make purchases with their credit cards or other vertical integration limitations.
But this isnt as easy as Steam vs Epic, Apple is the only "department store" on their platform, it's like if McDonalds took over every restaurant in the country- you can order whatever you want from the menu, but you're in their power.
Hmm, might be more apt to say you purchased an Apple self driving car whose GPS only takes you to places apple approved and listed. It doesn’t let you drive and it doesn’t let you input your own destination but it’s pretty damn cute looking and it’s pretty safe. You can choose to use another method to reach similar destinations so long as it’s not Apple. You lose your choice by accepting the perceived benefits of the platform. The end users are the ones who can sue Apple if this ends up being ruled a monopoly.
That's still anticompetitive if the 'approved' Apple list excludes competition. It's like the right to repair - just because you bought the car from a certain manufacturer doesn't mean you can only repair it at the 'licensed' dealer.
Would it be a bad thing for society if the antitrust laws were interpreted in this way? Why should these hardware vendors be allowed to exercise control over the software their customers run? Personally I think that open platforms are socially important, and I'm concerned that voting with my wallet isn't enough to protect and nurture them. Most people don't have the time, knowledge or interest to think about open vs closed platforms when they make purchasing decisions, and I think law is an appropriate solution to this market failure.
> So I could now sue Microsoft because I can only buy XBox games from their store?
Yes, though I have no idea if you would win. This decision doesn't decide that Apple has a monopoly or that Apple is abusing a monopoly. It decides that the end-user purchasers of apps on the app store are Apple's customers, not customers of the app developer only. It follows that they are entitled to raise a suit that Apple is abusing monopoly powers in a way that harms them. Whether Apple has a monopoly, and if so, whether Apple is abusing that monopoly both remain to be decided. (My guess is neither.)
It's all relative, but I don't think a game console can be compared to a general purpose pocket computer. Even Apple has been marketing the iPad as a laptop replacement.
I am having hardtime understanding if this can even be called a monopoly? Assume there is a Amart if it lets other vendors sell their products in its store on the condition that there is a small price they have to pay in order to put their products on its shelves in return they dont need to pay rent and they get the benefit of customers who love to shop at Amart could this be considered a monopoly? Also who is responsible if there is a defect in the product? the vendor of the said product or Amart?
I can go somewhere else to buy potatoes if I don't like how one store handles them. An iPhone owner can't go off to the Microsoft, Google, or Amazon stores if they don't like the version in the Apple store. They have a monopoly on apps for iOS devices.
That's not a very good analogy, Apple makes it impossible to run your own app store in their ecosystem. Ford isn't doing anything to stop others from servicing your vehicle, they still provide parts, training, etc to competing third parties.
If you can convince Honda to do the work, then yes[0]. You could also go a local mechanic[0]. It is literally not possible for Microsoft et al or a independent programmer to sell you iPhone apps[1].
0: I'm assuming Ford hasn't added some sort of DRM to their vehicles; if they have, then they have a monopoly on maintenance for those vehicles and should be penalized accordingly.
1: They can sell you jailbroken-iPhone apps, but you could also get maintenance on a DRMed truck once you ripped out and replaced all the computer systems, so that's not very relevant.
Well you can install alternative app stores on iOS Devices without jailbreaking. Essentially all you need is a profile for that app store, the entire ecosystem of enterprise Device management in built on this mechanism which provides custom app stores to enterprises.
It's not an easy question, which is why the Supreme Court wasn't asked to decide it in this case. The answer depends on the past 100 years of previous cases interpreting US antitrust law. Those interpretations have been influenced by research and trends in economics. Lina Khan recently became a minor celebrity for her article in the Yale Law Journal critically reviewing this history in the context of today's tech giants, specifically Amazon: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/technology/monopoly-antit...
> iPhone users can sue Apple over “monopolistic” prices in the iOS App Store, prices that a group of consumers allege are driven higher by the commissions Apple charges independent appmakers.
Now I'm not in the apple ecosystem personally so I don't know, but are there other "store fronts" that serve the apple ecosystem, or is Apple store the only one?
Since nobody answered and downvoted, all apps needs to be submitted to the App Store and be downloaded from there exclusively, and all payments, even subscriptions that are made through the app, needs to go through Apple.
Some providers like Netflix and Spotify are deliberately not offering the option to subscribe through the iOS app to avoid paying the Apple tax currently at 30%, and for subscriptions I believe the cut is reduced if the user is subscribed for a certain period of time.
I wrote comments on this case here in the past, and not gonna rewrite them, so here is the TL;DR:
This was not unexpected but precedent was on Apple's side.
Apple was basically playing the "whoa, we don't sell apps, we just make an app store. They buy apps from the developers" card.
This is technically true.
In that situation, Illinois Brick/etc would normally say consumers cannot sue you, only app developers can.
Most of the reasoning in those decisions is around how hard it is to calculate damages, etc.
However, the court refused to buy it.
The abstract they give is pretty easy to understand:
"Second, Apple’s theory is not persuasive economically or legally. It would draw an arbitrary and unprincipled line among retailers based on their financial arrangements
with their manufacturers or suppliers. And it would permit a consumer to sue a monopolistic retailer when the retailer set the retail price by marking up the price it had paid the manufacturer or supplier for the good or service but not when the manufacturer or supplier set the retail price and the retailer took a commission on each sale.
Third, Apple’s theory would provide a roadmap for monopolistic retailers to structure transactions with manufacturers or suppliers so as to evade antitrust claims by consumers and thereby thwart effective antitrust enforcement. "
> Apple was basically playing the "whoa, we don't sell apps, we just make an app store. They buy apps from the developers" card.
> This is technically true.
Technically? It doesn't look like it. Apple decides what is sold, how it is sold, IF it is sold, and what the thing sold may do. It will decide how to take payment, Apple takes payment and pays something else to the app developer after 30% and more. Apple decides when the developer gets money. Apple may retroactively cancel the sale within 90 days. Since the developer is paid within 60 days, it will do so.
Apple is what is bills the customer and Apple(or one of Apple's many subsidiaries) is who pays the developer.
Does the developer know who buys the things? No. They just give an infinite supply of widgets to Apple who sells them and gives the developer a cut.
> Apple was basically playing the "whoa, we don't sell apps, we just make an app store. They buy apps from the developers" card. This is technically true.
How is it technically true? Apple collects the payment and takes a cut. Yes, the developer gets to set their prices, but I don't see this as any different to manufacturers of products setting their cost price for retailers, who then go and apply their markup to it.
It's technically true because there is no real intermediary in apple's case (the "retailer" in your example). It's illusory.
(this is also what the court found)
Also keep in mind that various kinds of price fixing by manufacturers (IE forcing retailers to sell at a certain price) are also subject to antitrust arguments.
It's simply no longer "per-se" illegal.
For a long time, the precedent was that various forms of price fixing and price maintenance were illegal on their face.
YOu didn't have to prove it hurt anyone, only that it existed.
They are now subject to rule of reason analysis (basically, balancing of harms).
The reason such lawsuits are uncommon is not because the price fixing is okay, but because it is incredibly expensive and time consuming to litigate for a very uncertain outcome :)
To purchase a product I go to an Apple owned-and-operated store, give Apple my credit card, and receive an item that's been packaged and signed by Apple tools from an Apple server.
I mean (as the court did) intermediary between apple and the consumer.
Which you yourself have shown is illusory :)
Apple's claim is in large part that the transaction is not between them and the consumer, but they are basically just off to the side somewhere. Again, in historical precedent like Illinois Brick, that is most certainly correct, and you can bet money the app store was structured in precisely the way it was to try to fall under that precedent.
However, that illusion of being off to the side is clearly false from a practical perspective, as you have shown, and in the end, that is what lost them the case.
Apple took the precedent to the logical extreme, and when you do that, you run the risk of the supreme court saying "yeah, actually, that goes against what we were trying to accomplish in the first place be". Which they did here: in the abstract, they actually say "yeah, we get it, but that that makes no sense in practice".
(Hopefully lyft/uber/etc are paying attention, because they seem to expect the courts to let them take their "we're just app makers" argument to the logical extreme in a different legal context)
Yes, at the very least it's consignment. Apple plays a huge roll. It's not like Craigslist or the pennysaver where people place ads and everything else happens off platform.
> Apple was basically playing the "whoa, we don't sell apps, we just make an app store. They buy apps from the developers" card.
Well, one thing is certain, and that is that Spotify will be happy with this as it may end up making their competition against Apple Music a bit easier.
What is a reasonable time frame for an antitrust lawsuit to conclude in? Now that the consumers have the legal ability to sue, how long could this take, considering that it took 8 years to get to this point?
Whether it's an antitrust suit depends on whether the plaintiff is suing under the antitrust laws, not whether the plaintiff is the government. "Any person who shall be injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws may sue therefor in any district court of the United States in the district in which the defendant resides": https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/15
The dissent's opinion is very weird. All of the justices agree that developers are suppliers, Apple is the seller, and the consumers are the buyers.
They all implicitly agree that buyers have standing to sue sellers who illegally use a monopoly to overcharge the buyer.
But - somehow - that is no longer true if the seller also overcharges their supplier. Then the dissent says that any harm is "passed-through" the supplier.
Huh? The buyer isn't buying from the supplier, they're buying from the seller. If any harm passes from the seller to a supplier, then the only way for it to get back to the buyer is for it to then flow back through the seller to the buyer. AKA the overcharge is still coming from the seller.
Those two stores are not the exclusive avenue for customers to play games. Developers may choose to bypass those stores altogether and release their games on disc if they choose.
Sony blesses them, but the ways in which a consumer can obtain those blessed discs is much more varied than the App Store, and Sony doesn’t oversee the sale of discs. You can’t rent or borrow apps, can’t resell them, can’t trade them...
I think if 30 states hadn't rejected it, the case probably would have had 2 of the 4 switching sides. It does point to the need for some changes to the federal anti-trust laws in the technology era.
> I am surprised Kavanaugh joined the Liberal block on the vote.
I'm not. There is a pretty big cloud of illegitimacy over his head. He needs allies in case the next administration encourages some of the proposed inquiries to proceed.
Try to understand: Kavanugh and the people he is aligned with are like that incompetent manager in your office who took your successful project using their influence. Now they want to shake down Apple. After that google just watch.
As an app developer, I'm not a fan of apple taking a 30% or 15% cut. It's is possible to get around by offering the app for free and then using a third party payment processor to allow users to purchase or subscribe to a service your app provides. The way I see it, developers have that choice to charge the "expensive, easy way" using Apple's platform, or the "more profitable but harder way" using a third party.
You cannot do this. I run a website and mobile app ecosystem, which started as a website with standard credit card billing. If you want to mention that you have a website, or link to the website, you must provide every option the website has for purchasing, in your app, using apple's payment system. There is one exception, which is for physical goods/services, see Lyft and the like.
Sorry, but you have to take the 30% hit, or you can't mention your website, and you certainly can't put in a third party payment system. You'll get booted fast, or, won't even make it in the door when they review your app.
Yes. If you buy in the app and consume in the app, Apple wants their 30%.
That's why you can watch videos in the amazon prime video app, but you can't rent or buy movies there. You need to rent or buy the video on Amazon.com, then you can watch on the amazon video app.
I'm pretty sure the distinguishing factor is that Apple takes a cut of all revenue that passes through the app. That was the beef Spotify had at least.
Hmmm ... see the other comment to my post. It sounds like this isn't entirely true. Certain apps like Amazon.com don't have to pay Apple 30% -- I buy plenty of physical goods with the Amazon app, but 30% of those sales don't go to Apple.
(That was the posted URL, but it's usually best to find the highest-quality popular article on a story and then include a link to the "paper" in the thread.
If anyone finds a better URL we can change it again—I just Googled until I found something that wasn't too annoying.)