Cook'd: Judge says Apple lied to court in Epic case, asks Feds to mull criminal charges A federal judge has said Apple execs deliberately ignored an injunction and told lies in court – and so has asked US prosecutors to consider criminal charges against the iPhone titan. Patent shock: Apple must cough $500B plus interest In more bad news for Apple, Cupertino was told [PDF] in a UK court on Thursday that it must …
I heard here and not hear, but I could hear you munching popcorn here as well. But who I am here, hearing his keyboard spitting out spelling mistakes, and me here having more typos than David 132 in generally.
I heard you know the zeroth rule of the internet applies here as well, and be proud to stand here by your mistakes instead of removing or "Anonymous Cowarding" your way out of here.
Let's wait and see if the orders actually gets enforced, before we champion the legal system.
The cynic in me suggests that Cook will host a few lavish million dollar dinners at Florida Man's resort. Florida Man will have a word in the ear of the Attorney General, no charges will be forthcoming.
Apple will then take a few members of the supreme court on all expenses paid holidays (because their long standing friends of Cook, of course), and then will appeal the case all the way to said court, where it will be thrown out, and Apple will declare "Justice is served!".
It's sad that 10 years ago I would never have believed in my most cynical moments that such a thought really could happen. Now this seems like the most likely scenario for what will happen... The world sucks, right now...
Isn't there a big drive going on in the UK at the moment, for people who bought cars on finance but where the commission the broker got from the loan company wasn't revealed to the buyer?
I don't have any dealings with Apple or it's app store but I bet there was no indication of "oh, and 30% of anything you pay isn't for the stuff you buy in the app, it's all going to Apple as commission" - or something.
Someone alert the ambulance chasing cohort of lawyers.
In the case of Apple, an alternative purchasing mechanism may have reduced the final cost to the consumer as the merchant would have had the opportunity to reduce the cost of sales.
In the car finance case, consumers did have the option to compare prices and use another (probably less convenient) source of finance if a cheaper one was available. Personally, I have no problem with the car companies not disclosing that they were getting a cut from the finance, as consumers could look elsewhere.
Apple forced this without choice and then tried it another way - again probably without telling the mass piblic
Car loans do/did not. Car loans are always more expensive than loan from a bank, and it is detailed on the small print
However, if someone did not shop around it is their fault
If you could not get a loan from a bank for whatever reason, but a car shop will - need to question why and who is picking up the risk
Next they'll go after the interest free loans stating it was not clear if it is not paid by X date you'll pay some interest
"If you could not get a loan from a bank for whatever reason, but a car shop will - need to question why and who is picking up the risk"
The mechanism depends where you are, but in the US, a car dealership is often extending the loan to the buyer and then selling it to another lender sharpish to move it off their books. If it turns out they didn't dig deep enough, they could get stuck with the loan or have to sell it at a discount to make up for the interest rate they agreed with the buyer. I don't think the subsequent lender can raise the rate unless there's a material change in the buyer's credit. The dealer will also be getting paid for originating the loan if they've done things right which can be the difference between what they've nailed the buyer for and what a lender is asking. Car dealers make their money in the finance department. That's also where they will put on the pressure to add undercoating, paint sealant and etching the VIN into all of the glass panes.
"With how automated everything is, why can't this be done at the assembly plant?"
It could be done, but it would mean making sure the system is matching the glass with each vehicle coming down the line and having to redo a pane by hand if a piece gets damaged or a defect is spotted. I don't know if the laws regarding defacing a VIN would apply to one added after manufacture of the car. The dealer's addition could be sandblasted out with no legal ramifications so how worthwhile is it to have done? Any cop that sees the VIN tag behind the windscreen that's been scratched off or removed is going to instantly do a much thorough investigation. A bit of sandblasting on a window isn't going to trigger a deeper check since it's not what manufacturers are doing.
The TL:DR is that anything they try to get you to add to the car while you are sat in the finance person's office is pure profit for the dealer. I was looking at cars in the auto mall while my car was having recalled airbags replaced and one dealer was adding the etching to all of their inventory and adding it to the sticker price. For me, that's an instant downcheck of the dealer. They can either do it for free if they think it's very worthwhile or make it an option. I don't remember what they were charging, but it was spendy.
Not always - when I bought my vehicle I checked with the bank and they wanted to charge ~10-12%. The dealer offered 3-5%.
Admittedly that was in 2005.... not looking forward to the financial dance when I replace it in the next few years.
Credit union. think it was 5% last time i borrowed to buy a car. took the payments out of my bi-monthly deposits. Closed and merged with the boston credit union, but a lot less convenient as they are no longer on campus, and have to go through payroll to make deposits. You'd almost think the place was anti-credit union. easy to deposit, almost always paid more interest than any local banks. could get a loan without leaving campus or emergency funds if needed.
@PCscreenOnly
You're missing a few details.
1. It's not a loan, it's a lease. So pretty much the only place you could get it from was the car dealership. My APR was lower than the banks and also meant I got 3 years servicing, including parts.
2. It's a requirement of anyone selling financial products in the UK to CLEARLY state any fees or commission. Many did not do this.
"Having their 30% commission on the app store declared anticompetitive, creating a 27% tax on transactions executed outside of the app store definitely feels like taking the piss."
For a $300 purchase, yes. For an in-game $1 purchase? Not really once you factor in the cost to do the payment processing, provide/maintain the backend to be able to do it and the hosting for the software.
Apple might want to offer to allow companies to use outside payment processing, but only if customers pay a hosting cost or a higher one. There are plenty of small publishers that aren't put out by what Apple charges. For them to do it would be too much work and likely more expensive given the size of their operation. eBay fees are complete rape as well. I just sold a computer on eBay and they charged me 13.9% final value fee plus a $0.40 listing fee. That 13.9% was also applied to the sales tax they collect on my behalf and submit which I will assume is completely automated. The percentage also applies to the price of shipping when I don't include shipping in the sale. Grocery stores don't make that much margin and they have to handle tangible product that can expire or go splat all over an aisle.
I get that Epic wants to keep more money, but they also signed a contract and renewed it instead of negotiating with Apple when it was coming due the next time. If Epic is generating a fair bit of coin for Apple, they could threaten to build their product only for Android going forward if they can't work out a better deal. Some of the big box stores in the US will only accept a single brand of credit card and play the companies off each other from time to time to get a lower processing price, the greedy bastards. I'm just happy I can take cards at a fairly common 2.9%. It's convenient for my customers and a cost of doing business that I factor into my pricing. Want a lower price from me? Pay cash and don't insist on an invoice/receipt.
What you are missing is that Apple are wanting this fee from everyone - even people who do not want to use any of Apple's services. They put hard roadblocks in place to actively prevent vendors who want to do something else from not using Apple's services. That's what the legal action was about - the "you WILL use our services even if you don't want to and we'll charge you 30% for using something you don't want to use" aspect of the closed Apple ecosystem.
When the court declared this illegal, they employed malicious compliance - i.e. they appeared at first sight to comply with the order, but made it so difficult & expensive that in practice it's a pyrrhic victory. So the judge has looked at the evidence, and decided that Apple really were taking the urine - hence the strong language.
"What you are missing is that Apple are wanting this fee from everyone - even people who do not want to use any of Apple's services. They put hard roadblocks in place to actively prevent vendors who want to do something else from not using Apple's services. "
Yes, I got that. My suggested remedy is an option for companies to opt-out, but then have to pay more for hosting, directory services, etc to be included in Apple's store. If companies don't want to do that, they can simply not make software for Apple's iOS devices. The fiction surrounding the app stores is to protect the ignorant masses from infecting themselves with malware and also so governments can ban software they don't like, have backdoors installed, etc. The price of accessing Apple's iOS devices is paying the ferryman. I'm not seeing that fining Apple huge amounts of money for something they have been very up-front about from the onset is a legitimate use of the court's time. If you eat McD's everyday and are having health issues, you can stop eating at McD's! Suing them for not supplying "food" that isn't a health risk is silly, They aren't advertising that they are selling healthy food. They advertise that the McRib is back or you can get Fillet-o-fish 2 for 1 this month and any size fizzy drink is the same price. Apple's contract isn't being kept secret like Obamacare where you don't know what's in the legislation until it's passed into law.
..."it's a fair cop, guv".
Has any business in last few decades (at least!) ever just looked at the charges and gone, "yeah, pay the fine and get over it, let's not spend years and $millions fighting a losing battle". Nope, it seems every business in every field starts off with "we did nothing wrong", denies everything vehemently and will "disagree" with every judge all the way to the top. ANd as we saw recently in the US, will even go against confidential legal advice telling them they are going to lose. I'd have more respect for a business that owned up and promised not to do it again from the outset (assuming they do actually improve, of course)
"xeeted"? :) First time I saw this. Not bad. (Maybe I should get out more.) I did try "xert", once or twice, as in "an xertion", referring to "the work of composing and posting a message on X, and as a noun, the result". Didn't catch on. Oh well. Probably a good idea. One syllable is better.
"I use a MacBook for work, and haven't rioted yet, but I'm so glad I'm not the one paying for the accessories"
There's a difference between the MacOS and iOS environments. I've been mostly Mac since ... a long time ago, but mobile devices are firmly de-googled Android. I'm not playing Apple's game with iOS/app store, etc. I also find no need to. There's nothing that Apple brings that would give me any sort of advantage. My older MBP works fine, my desktop iMac is my daily driver, my MacPro 4,1 is my media machine and SOHO server, my MacPro 5,1 (maxed out) is my production machine. The ancient Mini bolted up under the desk is tasked with running the accounting program and runs headless. There's Windows, Linux and Chrome stuff here too, but I won't enumerate them here.
Yes, I could forge one ring to bind them and make some coin selling off plug strips, but if any one of them goes wrong, it's so much faster to recover. The media and accounting machines are overkill for what they do, but they won't sell for enough to make the effort worthwhile and the accounting software I own outright and is the last version in a box and won't run on anything more modern unless I can do a VM with an older version of MacOS. I think I can, but for lunch money, I could buy another of the same core2duo Mini and swap drives/RAM. Another benefit is much of the time, only the iMac is running and it's pretty energy efficient. The MP production machine can keep the office warm in winter when I'm banging away on it. The newest cheese graters draw so much they need a dedicated circuit.
Looks like Apple is taking this seriously. They have already updated the App Review Guidelines, 3.1.1 thru 3.1.3, removing pretty much all prohibition of links to external payment systems etc. for "apps on the United States storefront".
Whatever that means for apps which are available worldwide...
Sad that companies who create products now have to design to some idiot judge's standard instead of what's best for themselves. They did create the whole damned product and app store system. We need serious judicial reform here in the US. These idiots have far too much power at the moment.
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