Apple slams door on Fortnite's stateside iOS comeback Apple has blocked Epic Games' submission of Fortnite, just as it was set to return to iOS in the US. Now it cannot be found in the US App Store nor via the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union. Epic has been locked in a legal battle with Apple since 2020, accusing the iGiant of illegally monopolizing iOS app …
They shouldn't have to worry about a toddler president who throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way.
Fortunately for them the courts move so slowly that even if he pressed his DOJ to initiate antitrust proceedings today Trump will be long gone (and hopefully dead and buried) by the time any case was finally decided.
Not say to say Apple isn't in the wrong here. I don't know the details, but if they're violating the law it is the law they should be worried about not the orange wannabe dictator.
Actually, the various versions of the Christian Bible and the Hebrew texts upon which they are based do not specify the type of fruit that grows from the tree of the knowledge of good & evil.
So since God is omnipotent, it could have been a genus of the phallic banana or even the smelly durian.
Raspberry Pi, especially now it's gone public, might even be an instrument of the evil one since it's an aggregate fruit. ☺
(But I'm also an athiest & I agree that Apple is a nasty corporation, although there are very few that aren't.)
Sorry, it ain't gonna be Android.
Apple may be evil incarnate, but users of its products are presently better protected as they still put some effort in (one of the reasons Zuck isn't happy either as it makes it possible to stop crap like WhatsApp grabbing an entire address book) and keep sending security updates years after a model has been released. It's thankfully not impossible to keep Android safe but it's not as much a given as the Apple environment.
Google can actually fix that, their current effeorts are not enough. I hope they improve.
You aren't any better protected - it's all theatre.
Your phone is a surveillance device and data honeypot. All the phones are accessible by LE. All of them have implants available that will give you full access.
Don't put confidential information on your phone. It's a complete impossibility to secure it.
The thing that protects most people is that the majority of times the person taking your phone wants to resell it, so nuke and pave is desirable.
You are utterly a soft target for someone who wants your data and has moderate resources at their disposal. The State Actors are purchasing from people, the vendors are paying bounties to people, the criminal are employing people, the state is employing people.
There is an entire industry and you think your choice of handset make any difference. Your endpoint is hosed before you've even switched it on, That's why secure segregated information channels exist.
You have to treat your handset as compromised because it is. There is a baseband processor which you don't control, enclaves you can't access and millions of lines of unaudited code.
The only way to fully secure information is not to have it, and that's unrealistic.
Thus, I am left with an approach to risk management, and using Apple gear with its containerised approacht to information protection is the best commercially available.
The benefit of profiles is that you can set up a container with confidential stuff and nuke it in seconds if you have to cross the border of a totalitarian regime like Russia,m Chine or the US - it leaves you with aphone that contains 'normal' information. If you cross with a freshly formatted phone you'll look suspicious, but if you only delete a profile there's no evidence it ever existed. Also, a full reset takes minutes. and leaves you with nothing.
Add to that the usual security measures of knowing and retaining as little as you can get away with (you can't lose or accidentally leak what you don't have) and the Apple eco system is about the only viable solution. And, to be honest, I've had enough 'secure' ultra expensive gear in my hands to know that 90% of that is a lot of hot air. Just because it's expensive doesn't mean it's good - stay with the facts.
On the plus side, that's how SkyECC was sold, and I'm happy that so many criminals were caught with their pants down..
The bottom line is SCIF is a thing and magic handset doesn't fix lack of SCIF. Your apple phone is no safer than some second hand cheap piece of shit from china with a name you can't pronounce.
Don't put data on handsets - period - if it's on the handset, that information is compromised.
Any device you have is compromised, you simply lack the ability to tell, and you aren't a valuable enough target to disabuse of your complacency until you are hosed.
If the information would result in disclosure as a result of the device leaving your control, you cannot safely store any information on that device. You have no visibility into what is available but it's sweet that you think you can purchase safety while giving up essential liberties.
There are security bugs, granted, and better effort should be made to stop them.
However, the main "problem" with android is people granting permissions without thought (and in your example, WhatsApp can't grab an entire address book unless the user allows it)
Unfortunately, Google are slowly going the apple route and blocking things period, but the fact they haven't gone as far as apple is a good thing.
As a techie, you should be as happy about a stupidly restricted phone as a mechanic would be if his car arrived with the bonnet (hood) welded shut.
If this policy of "protecting the idiots" was applied elsewhere, windows wouldn't allow the opening of any attachments, and banks wouldn't allow the withdrawal/transfer of money.
Just stop using Apple. Arrogant control freak arsehole of a company.
A user can make that choice.
But if you are providing something, lets say ... a game. And if you want people to be able to buy it and play it, then you have to make it available to play on the devices the user actually have. So as a game vendor, you have a choice - either provide it for Apple devices, or cut out all Apple users from your potential customer base.
And of course, if you are brave enough to walk away from a substantial part of your market, you are then competing not just on "how good is your game" - but also on "how good is your game, and can you persuade people to play it instead of another one where their friends are also using it on Apple devices". There's a network effect - if a sizeable section of your friends are Apple users, as a group you are more likely to play games available on Apple as well as other platforms than you are to be playing different games on different platforms (and that's especially true if it's a networked game).
Apple have already been ruled against by courts in multiple jurisdictions, so it's time for Epic to get personal and to start digging up dirt on individuals at Apple, that it can submit to the relevant courts worldwide, and get real physical people thrown in jail and/or fined into bankruptcy. The moment upper management start to see inside of cells or lose their homes, is the moment other management members turn and walk away, leaving Tim Cook on the hook for all the activities these courts are finding illegal. Even Bill Gates is on record as having said (and I paraphrase) "If there's one word of advice I can give to anyone, it's don't end up being sued by governments".
No, no, sorry, really sorry but I have read the above post four times, and I still can't find any logic in it. 'Dig up dirt on individuals at Apple'; maybe such as; well 'this person once visited a gay bar so obviously....'? Seriously?
It's an interesting situation, there seems to be a group of people who have a knee-jerk, anti-Apple response. And all I can say is why; what have they done to you? "Can you show me on this doll where Tim Cook touched you"? Don't like their products, fine, don't purchase them? Don't like their business practice, fine don't purchase from them? Nobody, but nobody is putting a gun to anyone's head and making them buy iPhones etc.
I find it unbelievable that anyone purchases an iPhone and doesn't understand what they are buying into. A locked down infrastructure, yes they are fine with that, can't install 'random, maybe, malware-ridden application* for anywhere', no sorry you can't. This also means you can't install some perfectly legit application from anywhere, but that's the way it works. Tough, don't like it, there are other platforms.
Are Apple being punished for being successful and (arguably) getting it right?
* oh and just to be sure, should someone download a malware ridden piece of software from a third party app store onto their phone and it promptly empties their bank account; now tell me who will they be advised by their ambulance chasing lawyers to sue? Will it be 'scammysoftware.org' or Apple?
And you have taken the completely opposite tack. They don't like Apple and suggested weird, ineffective, and possibly unethical approaches to try to harm it. You have instead decided to completely swap the positions and ignore the fact that Apple has violated laws in a lot of countries, and that is a bit of a problem for which they do need to face consequences. Not individual employees, although the one recently cited for lying to a court might be an exception, but the company must not be allowed to continue to ignore courts. Anticompetition legislation exists for a reason. Apple is covered under it based on its massive market share and single realistic competitor. If you don't like it, campaign for the law to be changed. Otherwise, it can and should be enforced.
"a knee-jerk, anti-Apple response"
It isn't knee-jerk or anti-Apple when they have consistently engaged in anti-competitive practices and lodged countless (sometimes completely baseless) legal threats over the years because they can afford to railroad just about anyone they want to with almost no consequences. The phrase "vexatious litigant" has also been used by judges more than once to describe Apple's legal practices and attitude, so it really is about time they were brought to book, and hopefully, punished in a way which makes them alter their behaviour to something less offensive and more responsible.
And as for the "nobody is putting a gun to anyone's head and making them buy iPhones" part, if you've invested yourself into the Apple ecosystem with iTunes et al then you have no choice when you come to change your handset and have to pay the Apple Tax. And if you're happy to do that, then you do you.
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"well 'this person once visited a gay bar so obviously."
Yes, because that kind of thing really does sway the courts I made reference to......
Ok let me spell it out for you. The closets I want exposing are the ones with skeletons in them, the smoking gun as it were. Apple have been found guilty of illegal conduct in multiple jurisdictions by multiple courts. Apple individuals have been named by the courts as lying in court and engaging in illegal conduct. Proof if this will exist somewhere. Named individuals will not have been acting alone, they will have got approval from seniors, the courts need to know who. Actions will have been ran by lawyers and approved. Proof of this will exist in the form of emails, MacWord documents, MacPowerPoint presentations, databases and meeting minutes. All this dirt needs to be unearthed so the courts can hold people accountable.
Apple are not being punished for being successful as you argue, they are being punished for illegal activity.....
I'd mostly side with Epic here, but from Tim Sweeney
'Our release planning relies on platforms supporting app developers like us releasing apps. There is no way a rapidly evolving multi-platform game like Fortnite can operate if platforms use their power or processes to obstruct.'
oh bugger off! If your app *needs* to be updated that regularly your architecture is shit. Content updates should be applied through data, not executable code.
Just another example of awful modern development processes where medium to long term planning is shelved based on the knowledge any issues can be fixed with a mandatory regular release.
Still, that's about standard for Epic. Fortnite may be very successful, and Unreal Engine is doing very well, but despite all the free games being given away epic games store front is still a very poor alternative to GOG, never mind Steam, six years on.
I didn't give you the thumbs down but I can see the difference between the need to update a multiplayer game like Fortnite which, I understand, regularly changes up the gameplay and updates used as a way to cover for releasing a terribly coded single player game.
Sure, perhaps the gameplay does change, but every week? The need to wait for app approvals is a known quantity. Ship in the new code ahead of time, activate it on a given date.
The 'need' to ship an update every week seems to me to be for their convenience, not an absolute necessity.
If your app *needs* to be updated that regularly your architecture is shit. Content updates should be applied through data, not executable code.
Just be aware that there are some things that are prohibited in Apple's ecosystem - one of them being "code that runs other code not part of the app" - such as emulators and the like. So it's quite likely that some parts of the game would be considered by Apple to fall under this and so cause it to be banned.
The answer to that is to roll up the code into a new version of the app and release that - which Apple has also blocked.
Epic will argue Apple is in contempt of the whole hearing, but they aren’t. The judge never once said that Apple had to reinstate Fortnite onto the Apple Store. In other words, Apple is completely in the right to deny Epic.
Call it petty but when someone willingly breaks ToS, which they had originally agreed to, you ain’t making it back. Simply because you can’t be trusted anymore.
And for those saying Sweeney did all of this for consumers and developers, he didn’t. He did it for himself, so all the money goes into Epic’s pocket, not being partially blocked by Apple’s walls.
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