You’ve probably heard that Fortnite publishers Epic are suing Apple over the right to sell software to Iphone owners without cutting Apple in for a 30% vig on every sale. Epic wants a court to order Apple to allow software vendors to offer direct sales.
Apple apologists insist that Apple should have the right to both lock its devices so that Apple customers can only get their software through the App Store, AND that Apple should be able to cream off 30% of every sale in the store.
There’s been some smart commentary on this. In particular, I recommend Jay Freeman’s long thread on whether the App Store is monopolistic (it most certainly is) and whether that’s good for users or software developers (it most certainly is not).
I’ve made my own contribution to the debate. In a new article for Slate’s Future Tense, I talk about the role that interoperability could and should play in safeguarding user rights and blocking monopolistic conduct.
True believers in Apple’s business model argue that Apple customers don’t even WANT to buy software elsewhere (similar to how they argue against the Right to Repair by insisting that Apple customers are happy to be limited to getting repairs from Apple).
This is a frankly bizarre argument. Apple isn’t spending millions are hiring entire buildings full of lawyers to block right to repair or independent app stores on general principle - the only reason to block these things is because you think your customers would use them.
As my EFF colleague Mitch Stoltz says, the argument that Apple users don’t want flexibility is like the argument that the Berlin Wall isn’t there to keep East Germans IN, it’s there to keep the bourgeoisie out of the Worker’s Paradise.
If the DDR really believed that people were happy to be behind the wall, they could easily test the proposition: just install a gate that anyone could pass through and see whether anyone stayed.
Likewise, if Apple’s convinced that no one wants independent repair or third-party app stores with more dev-friendly policies, it can just put a gate in ITS walled garden and see what its customers do.
The Apple version of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy (“You’re not a true Iphone owner if you object to the company you gave $1000 to for a phone charging software vendors a 30% commission”) was always absurd.
But it would be fascinating to find out how many “true” Iphone users there are by those lights. If we were to allow owners of Iphones to treat them as their property, to use without regard to the shareholders of a $1T corporation, what would they do?
Apple probably won’t unilaterally disarm its DRM arsenal. That’s why EFF is suing the US government to overturn the law that makes it a crime to bypass DRM.
