When Starting A Game of Chicken With Apple, Expect To Lose

2017.04.09   prev     next

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ACCLIMATING to computing in the fifteen year period from about 1985 to 1999 has, I think, permanently affected many technologists’ perception of Apple. In their minds, Apple is forever the desperate also-ran that sells to an audience of benighted purists who can’t see that they’ve already lost. In this distorted vision, the 1990s never really ended.

When stuck-in-the-’90s tech­no­philes see Apple doing well, they naturally assume that such success can be easily taken away. And they feel that if faced with a game of chicken, Apple is sure to swerve. Those “kids” at Apple must be so delighted to have success at all, that when confronted with any kind of threat, they’ll surely choose the easiest, least risky, most immediate way out.

Many people who think this way have developed into disgruntled pundits who do their best to pepper their readers, ad nauseam, with year after year of Apple-failure mispredictions. But once in while, you get someone who’s actually in a position to try to deal with Apple in some way, and — acting on the false assumption that Apple is a company of weak losers who stumbled into fantastic fiscal fortune by accident — tries to win a staring contest with the company. And typically, such individuals make utter fools out of themselves, when Apple doesn’t blink.

Cupertino Clown

A couple years ago, Barry Chang, mayor of Apple’s hometown, decided he could cover his administration’s financial incompetence — the place is becoming “overcrowded and decrepit” — by getting Apple to pay gobs more money than it owes under existing tax laws. How would he accomplish that? By publicly shaming the company until it handed over the desired mountain of cash.

So he granted an interview to The Guardian — a publication that has no qualms about running blatantly anti-Apple smear pieces — in which he “assailed Apple for evading taxes and hiding profits in offshore accounts,” and said, “‘Apple is not willing to pay a dime. ... They’re making profit, and they should share the responsibility for our city, but they won’t ... They abuse us.’”

He tried to get the city council to approve a motion to arbitrarily increase Apple’s city taxes from tens of millions of dollars to $100 million. His motion was rejected. Then he showed up unannounced at Apple’s headquarters, apparently to start a conversation about his $100 million plan, but only managed to have a very brief talk with building security, who made him leave. He insisted that he’s “not going to back down” on this — but neither, apparently, is Apple, which has had virtually nothing to say about the episode, and just continues to pay the amount of taxes required by law. Meanwhile, Chang’s antics seem to have ab­rupt­ly ceased.

Why would the mayor of an affluent suburb of a major U.S. city make such a buffoon out of himself? The mostly likely answer is that he simply believed it would work. If Apple had panicked at the specter of any negative publicity, and said, “Oh, here! Here’s $100 million! Please, please take it,” then Chang would’ve come out smelling like a rose, looking like a genius. Believing that this outcome was highly likely, and mentally discounting the possibility that Apple would stand firm, Chang trashed his own reputation for rationality and professionalism.

Haunted Journalist

Yukari Iwatani Kane had a Wall Street Journal gig in the 2000s writing negatively about Apple. Then she came out with her own book about the company. A lot of people who for one reason or other can’t quite swallow Apple’s post-’90s success determined with unshakeable certainty that the untimely passing of Steve Jobs could mean only one thing: the swift decline, if not outright death, of his main creation. However, it’s fair to say that only Kane turned that thesis into an entire book. Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs, though also a grab-bag of random, time-dishonored (and not always compatible) Apple’s-in-trouble-now arguments, did manage to marshal the most persuasive no-Apple-without-Jobs postulates into a single, tiresome tome.

Apple’s only reaction to Kane’s screed was a brief, mildly heated, public statement by CEO Tim Cook in which he called the book “nonsense.” Cook’s emotion should surprise no one when he comments on the work of an author who refers to Apple as “a cult built around a dead man,” who claims the company “teeters at the edge of a reckoning,” and who calls Cook himself “delusional and painfully out of touch” for not somberly affirming her book’s concerns at his D11 interview, instead expressing excited optimism about his enterprise’s future.

No, if you really believe in your heart-of-hearts that Apple’s runaway success train just has to derail any day now, you can heap personal and substanceless abuse on the company and its leadership, and still expect, with a completely straight face, that they take you seriously:

For Tim Cook to have such strong feelings about the book, it must have touched a nerve. ... Even I was surprised by my conclusions, so I understand the sentiment. I’m happy to speak with him or anyone at Apple in public or private. My hope in writing this book was to be thought-provoking and to start a conversation which I’m glad it has.

Cook and company did not take up Kane on this generous offer. Her “conversation” began and ended with her own, “thought-provoking” tract.

If even some of Kane’s Haunted assessments were valid, Apple indeed would have been in serious trouble, but the three years since her fifteen minutes in the sun have clearly revealed that there must have been something seriously amiss with every single one of them. Kane still hawks the now-transparently-misguided volume from her self-named website, when she’s not teaching classes at Berkeley or finding some other way to pay the bills.

Flash Over

Besides Apple’s then-beleaguered condition, another feature of the ’90s was the prominence of Macromedia Flash, the web browser plugin that enabled interactive animations in a web pane. Even in its prime, Flash had a lot of deficiencies, including low frame rates, browser compatibility issues, general bugginess, and opaqueness to web search. But Adobe apparently thought it had a big future ahead of it when they bought it outright for $3.4 billion. A couple years later, iPhone debuted, and it didn’t run Flash at all. As Apple’s mobile revolution quickly took off, Adobe suddenly realized that they really wanted to get Flash running on iPhone. But Apple’s tightly controlled mobile platform offered no way to accomplish that.

So what did Adobe do? They created Flash for iOS anyway (running only on their own, developer-controlled iPhones), and put on de­mos, to create the impression in the tech industry that Flash would soon be available on iPhone. John Gruber best summed-up the sit­u­a­tion:

The Internet pipes are chock full of reaction to the news that Adobe is “working on” a Flash player for the iPhone, much of it based on the weird assumption that if Adobe can get it working well, Apple will publish it. Guess what? Apple isn’t going to publish it. ... Apple will not publish a Flash player for the i­Phone unless and until there exists some other mobile phone that (a) does run Flash, and (b) starts taking sales away from the iPhone. Which, my guess is, means never. ... An excellent implementation of Flash for Android would give A­do­be some amount of actual leverage. Until then, Adobe’s just embarrassing themselves every time they mention it.

Sure enough, Apple didn’t publish it. And it never ran well (or even ubiquitously) on Android, or any other mobile platform. But Adobe kept pushing it for the next several years. iPad came out, and it didn’t run Flash either, but still, Adobe wouldn’t quit hyping the idea that Flash would soon be available for Apple’s devices, apparently believing that Apple would just have to give in and let it happen.

So Steve Jobs put out his now-famous “Thoughts On Flash,” an open letter in which he plainly detailed six specific reasons Apple doesn’t want Flash running on its mobile devices. Despite being excoriated as “just smoke” by high-profile tech writers like Joe Wil­cox, and as “really a smokescreen” and “an extraordinary attack” by Adobe’s own CEO Shantanu Na­ra­yen, Jobs’s letter proved to be the first and last thing Apple had to say about it, and the idea that iOS users would ever see websites running Flash faded away over the next several years — followed by Flash itself, from which even most desktop/laptop web browsers are trying hard to escape for good.

FRANDship Is Magic

Your patent becomes “FRAND” (Fair, Reasonable, And Non-Discriminatory) when you allow it to be used in an impending, industry-wide standard — say, the 3G mobile phone protocol developed in the mid-’90s — in exchange for which you will receive a stipulated, uniform, per-phone payment from every phone maker (other than yourself) who manufactures phones that work on the 3G network. Your reason for agreeing to such a contract is obvious: once 3G goes into effect, no phone maker will be able to avoid paying you this royalty. Just as obvious is the reason the architects of 3G want you to sign such a contract before they finalize the standard: so you can’t wait for 3G ubiquity, then demand any amount you please in exchange for allowing the whole system to continue operating!

Many tech companies struck the FRAND agreement for various of their patents, and one of those companies was Motorola. Once a prominent brand of mobile phone, Motorola’s mobile division got its ass spanked out of that market by Apple within a few years of i­Phone’s arrival. In deep financial doldrums, the Motorola people ap­par­ent­ly figured, what have we got to lose? Let’s try demanding many, many times higher royalties from Apple for our 3G FRAND patents, and sue them if they don’t pay. Worst case, our suit gets dismissed — but maybe it won’t be?

Motorola guessed right: the courts (in Germany for this particular action) seemed to think that the case should be allowed to proceed, at least for a while. A lot of courts worldwide have become accustomed to the idea that when tech companies sue each other, it’s all a prelude to an out-of-court settlement, and that’s how the case ends. In this mindset, the job of the judge is to impartially allow the companies to spar until they reach such settlement.

But Apple refused to settle, insisting that FRAND fees are all it should have to pay. So Motorola asked the court for an injunction against the sale of certain 3G i­Phones and iPads. Again, the court apparently thought this was a legitimate pressure point for purposes of bringing the case to settlement, and granted the in­junc­tion.

Apple still didn’t settle, nor did it stall for time. Instead, it promptly complied with the injunction, yanking the offending products from the German market, and saying in-effect, OK, now what? Perhaps realizing that Apple wasn’t going to cave, and that the German people were going to be seriously inconvenienced by a case that ultimately would be thrown out on FRAND considerations, a higher court ab­rupt­ly intervened, lifting the injunction and effectively voiding the patent.

In the meantime, Motorola’s mobile division had been bought up (as “Motorola Mobility”) by Goo­gle for $12.5 billion, and soon thereafter was estimated to be bleeding about $1 billion per year from Google. A few years (and a few ill-fated products) later, it was sold off to Lenovo for $2.9 billion. Lenovo lately has seen most of its PC profits erased by continuing, ongoing losses at Motorola Mo­bil­i­ty.

• • •

Many telecom patents are encapsulated in one, very specific, electronic part: the baseband radio chip found in every mobile phone. For maybe a decade or more, Qualcomm has been the near-exclusive maker of that chip. Per FRAND rules, all FRAND patent royalties must be paid at the earliest point of manufacture, so Qualcomm pays per-chip royalties to several different companies; then those patents require no further payment, and Qualcomm is free to sell the chips to whomever will buy. The buyer (e.g. Apple) is not required to pay anything for FRAND patents used by that chip; the manufacturer (Qualcomm) has already taken care of it.

Qualcomm itself owns some of those patents, and as the maker of the chip, may choose to pay itself the royalties if it so desires (perhaps for accounting purposes). But then no further payment is required, and the buyer of the chips (e.g. Apple) just uses those chips in its products, and pays no royalties on that chip.

Some years ago, apparently, Qualcomm decided that its near-monopoly on this key component meant that it could stray outside of its FRAND agreements, and so started to charge Apple, and Apple’s contractors, for the use of Qualcomm’s own FRAND patents in Qualcomm’s own chips, to charge much higher rates than the FRAND agreements indicate these patents are worth, and to charge different amounts depending on the market value of the end-user product where the chip is finally used. Further, Qualcomm demanded (and received) secrecy from the companies that were overpaying for FRAND patents, in order to keep other involved parties (including government regulators) in the dark about how these patents were being misused. All of these practices were predicated on the implied threat that if Qualcomm cut off chip supply to any particular company (e.g. Apple), that company would be unable to sell its products, and would be ruined overnight.

Apple seems to have silently tolerated this exploitation, even as it got slowly worse with time, while making quiet plans to become far less dependent on Qualcomm. Once Apple got Intel supplying a substantial percentage of Apple’s baseband chip demand — and, of course, Intel can just pay the FRAND-stipulated royalties to Qualcomm, whether Qualcomm likes it or not — then Apple came forward with a huge lawsuit a­gainst Qualcomm. The suit coincides with Qualcomm getting hit with an $865 million fine by Korea’s FTC for FRAND patent a­buse. Besides lots of damages associated with patent overpayment, Apple also seeks $1 billion that Qualcomm confiscated in retaliation for Apple talking to the KFTC at the KFTC’s request. From the suit:

If that [confiscation] were not enough, Qualcomm then attempted to extort Apple into changing its responses and providing false information to the KFTC in exchange for Qualcomm’s release of those payments to Apple. Apple refused.

It all looks very bad for Qualcomm — but however the case shakes out, it seems a pretty solid bet that Apple will be using its warm relations with chip-producing powerhouses such as Intel, TSMC, and perhaps even Samsung, as well as its own in-house and very successful chip-design abilities, to ensure that it will forevermore be able to produce working iPhones that don’t rely on Qualcomm’s cooperation or consent.

• • •

Nokia, like Motorola and Qualcomm, apparently thought that after losing out to iPhone, it could exploit its FRAND patents and make Apple cough up much greater sums than FRAND allows. Apple refused to pay, and fought Nokia’s suits. At some point, Nokia started to get into trouble over the fact that the patents are FRAND and it shouldn’t be doing this. So it invented a scheme whereby it could quietly sell some of these patents to “patent trolls” (companies with no products, that simply sue over patents) — since those trolls never signed a FRAND agreement, maybe they can win?

Filing suit against Apple for five of these bought-from-Nokia patents, the trolls managed to actually get a court victory on one of them. Then Apple filed an antitrust conspiracy suit against Nokia and the trolls, which is ongoing at the time of this writing. Clearly, Apple has no intention of settling for anything less than full compliance with FRAND agreements.

Privacy Schmivacy

When iPhone debuted, Apple and Google were friendly partners, and Google Maps was the data back-end used by iPhone’s Maps app. But then Google, assuming it could do a Windows-clobbers-Mac scenario in mobile, decided to repurpose its nascent Android platform into an iPhone killer, resulting in strong animosity between the two companies. The Google-Maps-on-iPhone relationship, however, continued for some years — Apple didn’t have an available Plan B, and Google had contractual obligations to Apple in this regard.

So instead of cutting Apple off, Google simply neglected to make its newest, best, mapping features available to iPhone. While Android phones got turn-by-turn directions, vector (as opposed to image-tile) maps, and 3D flyovers, i­Phone stagnated without those improvements. When Apple asked, when will we get access to those features, Google responded with a demand: provide us with detailed information about your iPhone users every time they do a Maps search. Apple said no, we don’t share our users’ private information. So Google refused to give Apple access to the advanced feature-set. What was Apple going to do?

What Apple did was to spend the next couple years developing its own maps back-end, so it could dump Google (and stop paying them a lot of money). Despite a rocky launch in 2012, Apple’s maps system today seems to be working just fine, and, of course, now has all the advanced features Google was withholding. Google scrambled to create its own, front-end, Google Maps app for iOS, which — though not disallowed by Apple — is largely ignored by the iPhone user base, which seems perfectly happy to use Apple’s default Maps app without knowing or caring from where the back-end data is served. The minority of iPhone users who do use Google Maps are now receiving its full feature-set. And Apple no longer pays Google a dime for anything to do with mapping; all the money Ap­ple pours into maps, from now on, is solely to the benefit of its own customers.

• • •

The FBI found a perfect test case in the San Bernardino suicidal shooting spree. The shooters had physically destroyed their own personal phones, but left their work phone (owned by the local city government) undamaged. That phone was an iPhone 5C, made before Apple’s Secure Enclave chip, and so was hypothetically vulnerable to an attack that could get into the phone without knowing the user’s unlock code. However, this theoretical hack would require considerable work by a team of developers, and would set an uncomfortable precedent about how far a private company can be required to go in the assistance of law en­force­ment.

So Apple — which had already provided the FBI everything about these accounts that it could readily access, including all of the attackers’ iCloud data — drew the line at this complex hack. The FBI pulled out all the stops in trying to shame Apple publicly as being on the wrong side of the fight against terrorism and crime, but Apple said no, short of a court order that survives the full appellate chain, we’re not doing that.

After the story used up its life in the press, the FBI suddenly found a third party hacker who could do it. They didn’t say exactly how it was broken, nor did they reveal what, if anything, they found on that iPhone. And no precedent was set that Apple, or any other company, need go to such a level of technical effort to break its own products’ security, in the service of legal investigation.

In the meantime, all iPhones made for the last few years feature the Secure Enclave chip, a security system against which there is not even a theoretical way for Apple itself to break. Apple appears to be throwing down the gauntlet: either pass (and court-test) a law requiring us to build-in a backdoor, or we’re going to keep making phones that no one — not even we — can get into without the end-user’s consent.

Cash Grab

Corporate raiders, such as Kirk Kerkorian, T. Boone Pickens, and Carl Icahn, traditionally go after formerly great companies that are now floundering around in such a state of failure/mismanagement that the total value of their stock (at current prices) dips below the resale value of their tangible assets. At that point, the raider steps in and makes the shareholders an offer to buy their shares at significantly more than the current trading price, which he will then pay out of the liquidation of the (ex) company’s assets.

Raiders do not normally target healthy corporations — not to mention the healthiest ever — but Icahn, perhaps emboldened by pundits’ never-ending chorus of “Apple’s run is up,” got the bright idea to go after Apple. Since Apple had a huge cash hoard of $150 billion, Icahn figured he might be able to get the shareholders to pass a referendum to expend the entire sum as one, huge share-buyback. Even losing more than a third of that money to the whopping, U.S. “repatriation tax,” it would still be a heck of a lot, and a giant windfall for holders of the stock — like Icahn.

Apple responded by starting dividend and share-buyback programs (actually its buybacks were already underway) — but nothing like what Icahn was hoping to get: Even with the biggest dividends in corporate history, and substantial stock buybacks over the past four years, Apple’s cash hoard, after subtracting outstanding debt, still today hovers around $150 billion. However, the new programs did serve the purpose of undermining Icahn’s plan, by helping the stock price (always bad for any raider’s ideas), and by removing shares from the least faithful shareholders — the ones most likely to vote for a raider’s proposal.

As soon as it became apparent that his scheme wasn’t going to work, Icahn made a face-saving statement about being satisfied with Apple’s buybacks, and withdrew his referendum attempt.

• • •

When a U.S. company earns money overseas, and pays corporate income tax in the country where the product was sold (which could be higher or lower than U.S. corporate income tax), the after-tax money is still subject to a tremendous 35% “repatriation” tax, if that money is ever brought back to the USA. But if it isn’t brought back, then it isn’t subject to repatriation tax. So if the company finds some way to spend that money on overseas projects, or just stores it in an overseas bank, then the repatriation tax doesn’t apply.

Eyeing Apple’s immense, overseas, cash hoard hungrily, a U.S. Senate subcommittee decided to “investigate” the issue of whether companies like Apple are paying the taxes they should. The apparent strategy was to stink up public discourse with the suggestion that Apple might be cheating the U.S. taxpayer out of billions of dollars by avoiding this 35% tax — a notion happily lapped up and regurgitated by Apple’s numerous detractors — and see if Apple capitulates under pressure, coughing up over $50 billion in extra money (plus much more ongoing) for the U.S. legislature to then go to town with.

As part of this pressure campaign, the committee invited Tim Cook himself to testify before it. He did. But he did not capitulate to anything; instead he gave a very confident, reasoned, straightforward speech about how much Apple pays in U.S. income taxes, how many U.S. jobs it creates, how it doesn’t hide its U.S. earnings behind foreign shell corporations like many U.S. tech companies have been doing for decades, and how its decision to keep overseas its non-U.S., after-tax earnings is perfectly legal.

The hearing became a bit comical when many committee members — once they realized Cook wasn’t caving — started using their speaking time to shower Cook and Apple with effusive praise. Savvy politicians know when it’s time to support the winning side.

• • •

Not wanting to let the U.S. Senate have all the fun, the European Union came up with a great idea to hit up Apple for many billions of dollars of surprise payments: Simply claim that for the past several years Ireland’s tax laws haven’t been compatible with overarching EU rules, and presto: Apple, you now owe $14.5 billion more than you’ve already paid! What? You wouldn’t have put your money in Irish banks if you had been told it would be hit for fourteen B’s? Too bad — you put it there! That’s all that matters. Pay up.

This particular drama has yet to reach a conclusion, but Tim Cook responded with a direct, level-headed, open letter about the whole thing. Ireland’s finance committee, effectively ignoring Cook’s letter, publicly invited him to come discuss the matter in-person. He declined. So they smeared him as “disrespectful to the Irish people,” then a month later invited him again. He again declined.

Developers, Developers,
Developers

Sometime in the 2000s, Richard Ziade started a service called Readability. For a monthly fee, you could read news articles curated from major news sources’ web sites, but reformatted and stripped of all advertising, links, and other distractions. To head off copyright suits, he promised 70% of all revenue to be divided among the owners of the original content, with the other 30% to be kept by Readability.

While Ziade was developing his product — as a Windows app — a quiet revolution was going on in mobile, with Apple’s iOS devices strongly dominant among people who are actually willing to pay for apps/services such as Readability. When Ziade and his team abruptly realized that they really needed an iOS app, they discovered to their dismay that Apple keeps 30% of all App Store revenue, including from subscription fees. If 30% goes to Apple, and 70% goes to the article-originating news sites, how much does that leave for Ziade? Zero.

So he attempted to contact Apple, explain the problem, and ask them to take a lower percentage. Then he found out that Apple doesn’t negotiate this percentage with individual developers. Stupefied that they wouldn’t jump at the chance to get a Windows developer writing native apps for an Apple platform, Ziade penned an angry open letter (now removed, but you can read about it here).

Apple let him simmer for a year, then came up with a new policy for software-as-a-service apps that made it theoretically possible for Ziade to make some iOS money under his scheme. He created his iOS app, but in the end, his whole Readability business model didn’t turn out to be sustainable, and it shut down permanently last fall.

• • •

About five years ago, Microsoft decided that if they wanted their Microsoft Office gravy train to continue ad infinitum, they better get it up-and-running on iOS. But, like Ziade, they apparently thought that they had sufficient clout to negotiate away all or part of Ap­ple’s 30%. It turned out they did­n’t. They waited a year and a half for Apple to change its mind, then gave up and released Office for iOS — and yes, Apple keeps 30%.

A couple years after that, Apple came out with a new policy for all subscription-based apps (which includes Microsoft Office): when an individual subscriber has been paying for at least a year, Apple’s share drops to just 15% of that subscriber’s payments.

• • •

Apple has a pretty long list of reasons why iOS apps may be rejected by its App Store, but most developers don’t have any problem with it, and just develop great apps that Apple promptly publishes for its users to buy and enjoy. Some developers, however, read Apple’s app rules and decide that those rules can be bluffed or gamed until Apple gives in and lets the rules fall apart. For example, Jim Dovey of Kobo took maybe seven tries to discover that Apple’s app policies really are real, and Apple really is going to enforce them. Then he wrote a bitter blog article about it, which made no difference at all. Other disgruntled developers have sworn off of ever developing for Apple’s platforms again, and numerous pundits have insisted that Apple needs to open up iOS to any and all apps, with no restrictions. Apple has largely ignored these outcries, and continues to manually curate its App Store, which continues to break and re-break rec­ords of how much money third-party developers have been paid from an application platform.

• • •

The same year iPhone debuted, NBC decided to pull all its TV shows from Apple’s iTunes Store, due to Apple’s refusal to modify its TV show pricing scheme and its bundling policies, just for NBC. Forrester Research called Apple the “loser” of the fight, but Apple ignored such statements, stuck to its guns, and just continued selling non-NBC content. Nine months later, after various failed attempts to sell its content via other online venues, NBC changed its mind and returned all its content to the iTunes Store.

Monopoly Money

NFC (Near Field Communication), the wireless technology used by various contactless payment systems, arrived in many different smartphones years before any i­Phone had it, giving Apple’s critics yet another reason to pooh-pooh Apple’s product. Then Apple deployed NFC to all new models of iPhone, but not as a wide-open, API-supported, third-party feature, instead only in support of Apple Pay, its Secure-Element-protected, fingerprint enabled, contactless payment system.

Apple Pay has been widely adopted by banks and retailers throughout the U.S. and in many other countries. But the three big Australian banks balked. They had their own ideas of how a contactless payment system should work, and asked Apple to create an API to allow the banks to use iPhone’s NFC chip in whatever way they preferred. Apple said no, our product doesn’t do that.

So the banks took Apple to court, arguing that Apple’s control of NFC was some sort of anticompetitive, monopolistic thing. The courts didn’t buy it. Then the banks went to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and asked for its blessing for them to negotiate with Apple as a united, collective front — i.e. the banks would agree with each other to refuse to adopt Apple Pay. Just this past month, the ACCC ruled: No, Australian banks may not collude against a company such as Apple. Each bank must decide what to do on its own.

• • •

Much has been written about the U.S. DOJ’s iBookstore price-fixing case against Apple. To keep it short: Apple was charged with committing no crime other than offering a better deal to the publishers than Amazon Kindle had been. All five big publishers jumped at that deal in unison (because they all found out about it at the same time, duh), and if that resulted in average e-book prices going up on Kindle, then that was all the prosecutor technically needed to charge Apple and the five publishers with conspiratorial price-fixing.

In 20/20 hindsight, it’s obvious the court was grossly biased in favor of the prosecution. The publishers all caved for relatively lenient sentences; only Apple insisted it did nothing wrong, and wanted its day in court. In the end, Apple was made to pay out a bunch of money (of course), and was harassed for two years by an obnoxious, court-appointed overseer, but nothing was actually done to change the way e-books are now sold. Everything that happened to that market as a result of Apple entering it is still in-effect.

Conclusion

After Apple’s arch-rival Microsoft ruled computing in the 1980s and ’90s, Apple is now pulling off the biggest upset in corporate/tech history. It’s only natural that some people with heavy-vested can-do in Microsoft’s systems are going to feel both threatened and incredulous at Apple’s spectacular resurgence. And since virtually everyone uses a computer now, these anti-Apple people are scattered throughout every profession, and they sense that they are not alone in disliking Apple’s rise, and doubting its durability. In such an environment, we shouldn’t be at all surprised to see many more individuals, companies, and governments make colossal fools of themselves when they act on the expectation that Apple will hastily jump out of their way.

Free advice for all such people: Before starting a game of chicken with Apple, ask yourself if any major corporation would be likely to give in to the pressure you’re about to apply. Would you expect this to work against GM? Exxon? Walmart? Boeing? Chase? Nike? Southwest Airlines? Starbucks? Microsoft, or Google, or Amazon? If not, then shitcan your plan to make Apple blink, and go find something else to do.

Ongoing updates:

2017.04.12, 05.12, 05.18, 05.24, 05.31, 06.15, 06.28 ⋅ small edits for clarity, including mention of Apple’s debt

2017.05.23 ⋅ Apple and Nokia settle for undisclosed terms.

2017.06.05 ⋅ At its WWDC, Apple announces Core NFC, a way for third-party apps to use the NFC radio built into all recent iPhones.

2017.06.28 ⋅ Federal judge rules that an anti-competition suit a­gainst Qualcomm by the U.S. FTC can proceed.

2017.07.06 ⋅ Qualcomm now asking ITC to ban the sale of iPhones and iPads that use non-Qualcomm (e.g. Intel) baseband chips.

2017.07.14 ⋅ Australia working on law that would require government access to encrypted messages.

2017.07.23 ⋅ Apple announced a $1 billion data center to be built in Ireland, then the project was held up for two-and-a-half years by the country’s approval process. In the same time period, a similar data center has been fully completed in Denmark, and now Apple is announcing plans for a second one there.

2017.07.23 ⋅ Italian government proposing law that would require Apple (among others) to support unrestricted app sideloading.

2017.07.25 ⋅ Adobe announces Flash’s end-of-life.

2017.08.08 ⋅ The Indian government’s year-old “Do Not Disturb” Android app has full access to the user’s text messaging and call logs. But in iOS, such access is not available to any third-party app. So India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority chairman Ram Sewak Sharma granted an interview to the Times of India, in which he called Apple “anti-consumer,” and said:

Apple has just been discussing, discussing, and discussing. They have not done anything ... [they] are violating the right of the user to willingly share his/her own data ... why should it not be allowed? This is what we call data colonization.

an apparent reference to British colonial rule of India.

2017.08.22 ⋅ Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney, speaks about “app stores”:

“[They are] pocketing a huge a­mount of profit ...”

“The system is pretty unfair at the moment. These app stores take 30% of your revenue ... That’s strange because Mastercard, Visa and other companies that handle transactions take 2% or 3% of the revenue. ... these app stores ... aren’t really doing much to help us any more.”

“[The first step is] not accepting this as the status quo ... We should be angry about this, and we should constantly be on the lookout for other solutions, and new ways to reach gamers.”

“[App store share is a] parasitic loss.”

2017.08.30 ⋅ Chinese law firm, representing about fifty app developers, files complaint with the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, arguing that Ap­ple shouldn’t be allowed to decide when it is appropriate to disallow individual apps, and also shouldn’t be allowed to keep 30% of app revenue.

2017.09.04 ⋅ Korean court order that Qualcomm negotiate in good faith with Apple upheld by higher court.

2017.09.06 ⋅ Sharma now says that Apple’s position:

is a ridiculous situation, no company can be allowed to be the guard­i­an of a us­er’s data.

2017.09.08 ⋅ U.S. federal judge says Apple’s foreign suits against Qualcomm can proceed.

2017.09.14 ⋅ Apple’s Safari web browser implements “intelligent tracking prevention”; advertising groups send open letter to Apple, objecting to it. The letter says, a­mong other things, that they are “deeply concerned” about the feature, and that the “infrastructure of the modern Internet depends on consistent and generally applicable standards for cookies, so digital companies can innovate to build content, services, and advertising that are personalized for users and remember their visits.”

2017.09.15 ⋅ Apple responds to ad groups’ open letter, asserting that Safari’s new, anti-tracking feature “does not block ads or interfere with legitimate tracking on the sites that people actually click on and visit.” I.e. it prevents only cross-site tracking by advertisers who plant their own cookies on your computer even though you may have never intentionally visited their sites.

2017.09.28 ⋅ Referencing the plight of recent hurricane victims, FCC chairman Ajit Pai calls on Apple to activate FM radio chips in iPhone, and the South Florida Sun Sentinel says:

In other countries, including Cuba, manufacturers are required to flip the switch on. But in this country, Apple rules. And it prefers to sell the iPhone with the FM radio button switched off.

and:

Do the right thing, Mr. Cook. Flip the switch. Lives depend on it.

Apple responds with a statement patiently explaining that all recent-model iPhones lack any component with FM circuitry; nor do they have antennas capable of FM reception. John Gruber adds that in older-model iPhones that incidentally do have FM circuitry — as part of a commodity component included for its other, non-FM functions — that FM circuitry is not physically hooked up to anything in the iPhone that could use it, nor do those iPhones have an FM-capable antenna. So there’s no way for Apple, or anyone else, to just “switch it on.” If the U.S. passed a Cuba-style law requiring it, Apple would have to design new models of iPhone to be capable of it. No iPhones that exist today will ever support it, law or no law.

2017.10.11 ⋅ Qualcomm hit by Taiwan’s FTC with $773 million fine for seven years of antitrust violations, and ordered to change its illegal licensing terms, which included:

requiring licensees to provide customer names, model names, shipment quantities, and pricing back to the chip supplier [Qualcomm].

2017.10.12 ⋅ Apple’s Ireland data center finally given the go-ahead to start construction.

2017.10.13 ⋅ Qualcomm asks Chinese court for injunction against the sale or manufacture of i­Phones.

2017.10.18 ⋅ A month after it was made clear that FM radio is completely impossible in all iPhones that have ever been made, Sam Matheny of the National Association of Broadcasters calls on Apple to enable it. Despite loading his article with lots of accurate, factual detail, he somehow manages to omit the fact that iPhone 7 & 8 do not have any FM circuitry, and to be ambiguous about whether he’s asking Apple to include FM reception in future iPhones, or (magically) turn it on in existing i­Phones. One gets the feeling that the obscurity is intentional: without directly saying so, he hopes to give his readers the impression that Apple can just turn on FM right now.

2017.10.31 ⋅ Apple reportedly to discontinue all use of Qualcomm components.

2017.11.15 ⋅ Apple decides to help the Indian government create an iOS version of its Do Not Disturb app — “but only with limited capabilities” to read users’ private data, compared to the existing, Android version.

2017.11.27 ⋅ EU considering enforcing Qualcomm’s system of charging different amounts for patents based on the value of the final product in which the patent is used.

2017.11.29 ⋅ Apple countersues Qualcomm for violating at least eight of Apple’s private (not FRAND) battery-life patents in the Snapdragon processors used by most high-end Android phones.

2017.11.30 ⋅ Qualcomm asking ITC for import ban on multiple i­Phones including the new iPhone X.

2017.12.04 ⋅ Apple reportedly will start paying the EU’s $15 billion, retroactive, Ireland tax “early next year.” (Apple has not dropped its appeal.)

2017.12.05 ⋅ Germany working on law to require backdoors in all modern tech devices.

2017.12.18 ⋅ India hikes its mobile phone import tax from 10% to 15%; Apple promptly increases Indian iPhone prices to compensate.

2017.12.22 ⋅ U.S. repatriation tax reduced from 35% to 15.5% — but is now immediately mandatory, whether or not you actually repatriate the cash.

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2018.01.24 ⋅ EU fines Qualcomm $1.2 billion for antitrust abuses against Apple, Intel, and Samsung.

2018.03.15 ⋅ French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire publicly announces impending legal action against Apple (and Google) to correct “abusive commercial practices” against app de­vel­op­ers/us­ers, but neglects to spell out precisely what Apple is doing wrong, nor how it might be corrected by the courts. Apple responds with a statement that it is proud of the success of its App Store developers in France, and is “fully prepared” to defend itself in court.

2018.03.27 ⋅ Sharma, dissatisfied with Apple’s offer of a user-data-limited version of India’s DND app, now says:

We will take appropriate legal action. This is unjust, it shows the approach and attitude of this company.

2018.04.26 ⋅ EU mulling as-yet-ambiguous, new rules that might require Apple (and other app platform operators) to take a dramatically smaller share than 30%.

2018.04.26 ⋅ Qualcomm CEO says of Apple’s suit:

There will be a decision one way or the other, either through the courts, or in the way that I think everybody would prefer, in a settlement, here and before the end of the year if we’re lucky. ... I think in all cases, people don’t like to have legal risks hanging over their heads, and as you get closer to the legal milestones, the perspective of both companies — including Qualcomm — is such that I think the environment gets better to get a settlement. ... [Apple’s responses to our arguments are] very consistent with our view and optimism that we’ll be able to get this done and delivered in fiscal year ’19. There’s just too much, too many reasons to get this settled.

2018.05.10 ⋅ After yet more regulatory delays materialize, Apple cancels Ireland data center project.

2018.05.12 ⋅ 1960s consumer advocate and perpetual failed presidential candidate Ralph Nader writes open letter to Tim Cook, criticizing Apple for allocating $100 billion to stock buybacks. He calls the plan “short-term nonsense,” then spouts a long lament of ways that Apple is a big, bad corporation that ought to be a­shamed of itself. He concludes, “I look forward to your thoughtful response.”

2018.06.20 ⋅ Cupertino shelves, for at least the rest of this year, the idea of an Apple-targeted, head tax (per-employee tax). The decision to shelve would have been unanimous but for one dissenting vote: ex-mayor Barry Chang, who says:

big corporations ... need to take up their fair share to help solve the problems we are facing now ... that’s why this issue needs to be done and needs to be done now instead of waiting.

2018.07.20 ⋅ R. S. Sharma, India’s telecom regulator, now ordering India’s mobile service providers to stop service to all iPhones within the next six months, if Apple doesn’t approve/enable his preferred version of the contentious DND app.

2018.08.12 ⋅ After waiting exactly three months for a “thoughtful response” to his withering open letter to Tim Cook, Ralph Nader goes on NPR to publicly reiterate his letter’s assertion that Apple’s stock buybacks are bad because they should be spending that money on something else.

2018.09.18 ⋅ Qualcomm suffers major setbacks in its attempts to get the ITC to block sales of Apple’s products; Qualcomm CEO tells Bloomberg that he thinks Ap­ple is likely to settle out of court.

2018.10.11 ⋅ German court tosses Qualcomm’s patent case against Apple.

2018.11.07 ⋅ Apple reportedly “not in settlement talks ‘at any level’ with Qualcomm,” and is “‘gearing up for trial.’” Qualcomm CEO comments:

We continue to talk. We also have a number of ... legal strategies that are in flight. And we hope that through the combination of either those paths, we could get to a resolution, and we’re confident that we will.

2018.11.16 ⋅ Swiss government finds that five large Swiss banks may have illegally colluded against Apple Pay.

2018.11.30 ⋅ Utilizing a new, iOS 12, call-reporting framework, Ap­ple implements India’s TRAI DND app four-and-a-half months into Ram Sewak Sharma’s six-month ultimatum — after which Apple would not have been legally prosecuted or had any opportunity to defend itself in court, but simply would have had its entire Indian iPhone business summarily and instantly destroyed by Sharma, via forced carrier termination of all iPhones in India. (Also, about ten million totally innocent Indian citizens would have instantly lost phone and wireless data service, and been stuck with a dead i­Phone, then forced to switch to Android or a dumb flip-phone, e­ven if they didn’t want to do either, just to prove that Sharma is in command.) Reportedly:

It is unclear if TRAI’s app was approved because it uses the framework and follows App Store policies, or if Apple ultimately gave in to demands [for free-rein access to users’ call/message data].

2018.12.01 ⋅ Apple’s lawyer tells judge:

The parties [Apple v Qualcomm] are going to need a trial. There have been unfortunate articles lately that the parties are close to a settlement, and that is not true. There haven’t been talks in months.

2018.12.13 ⋅ Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CommBank) becomes the first of the big-three Australian banks to adopt Apple Pay.

2018.12.18 ⋅ Still hoping to force a favorable settlement in the massive lawsuit over its FRAND pat­ent abuse, Qualcomm gets an injunction against the sale of certain iPhones in China, based on an unrelated patent that may be already invalidated. Rather than removing those iPhones from the Chinese market, Apple instead issues an i­OS update that stops those models from using that particular patent. Qualcomm’s lawyer Don Rosenberg is not pleased, asserting that the injunction “needs to be taken very seriously,” and that it “should be taking a bite out of Apple’s sales right now.”

2018.12.27 ⋅ Qualcomm’s lawyers now asking the Chinese court to fine and/or jail Apple’s lawyers.

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2019.02.01 ⋅ After discovering that Facebook has been abusing its enterprise certificates — meant only for company-internal iOS apps but quietly used by Facebook also to track teenage users via a Trojan “research” app — Apple promptly revokes those certificates, disabling many of Facebook’s company-internal iOS apps in the proc­ess, including apps used to facilitate employee transportation. Ap­ple also finds that Google is abusing enterprise certificates in the same way, and revokes those ones too. Both companies get Apple to reactivate their certificates — after ending the misuses of those certificates.

2019.03.14 ⋅ Spotify CEO Daniel Ek calls Apple’s control of its own App Store “completely unsustainable.”

2019.04.16 ⋅ On the first day of their main trial, Apple and Qualcomm settle, ending all suits between Apple, Qualcomm, and their contractors.

2019.05.20 ⋅ National Australia Bank adopts Apple Pay, leaving Westpac as the only big-three Australian bank yet to do so.

2019.05.22 ⋅ WebKit (Apple) debuts new system to allow advertisers to know how many ad clicks result in actual shopping, while simultaneously neutering everyone’s ability to track what individual users do.

2019.05.22 ⋅ Federal court rules for FTC in its case against Qualcomm.

2019.05.30 ⋅ Ars Technica details how Qualcomm illegally “shook down” the whole wireless industry for at least the past twenty years.

2019.07.10 ⋅ Just to sidestep macOS’s security question, “do you want to allow this webpage to launch such-and-such app,” Zoom quietly installs a localhost web server on its users’ Macs, which not only launches the app on command, with no security question, but also quietly re-installs the Zoom app if the user uninstalls it. Security researcher Jonathan Leit­schuh discovers all this, and notifies Zoom that their system allows any malicious website to join the user immediately into a live video call without prior notification or permission, and incidentally can also be used to effectively disable the user’s Mac via a denial-of-service attack. Given 90 days to fix the problem or face public disclosure, Zoom stalls Leitschuh for 72 days before even discussing the problem with him, then on the 89th day deploys a fix that Leit­schuh knows can be easily bypassed. Leitschuh discloses to the public — a couple days later, Apple pushes a mandatory update to all Macs everywhere that permanently disables Zoom’s localhost web server.

2019.08.15 ⋅ Mobile device virtualization firm Corellium decides to include Apple’s iOS, lifted in its entirety, in their hardware virtualizer, without permission or payment to Apple, and just see if they can get away with it. Apple responds with a copyright infringement suit.

2019.08.16 ⋅ Apple will finally be getting its day in court over the $15 billion, retroactive, Ireland tax case, about a month from now.

2019.11.19 ⋅ India’s government says it is “empowered” to intercept any citizens’ private “information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer resource”.

2019.12.02 ⋅ Russia enacts new law requiring all computing devices (e.g. iPhones) to be pre-installed with government-specified Russian software by July 1.

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2020.01.13 ⋅ New legal battle brewing between the U.S. DOJ and Apple over the deceased Pensacola shooter’s iPhones. Unlike the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone 5C, these iPhones do have the Secure Enclave. Once again, Apple is providing the DOJ with everything it can (from iCloud and elsewhere), but declining to unlock the i­Phones themselves — either as a matter of policy, or (more likely) because it actually has no way to do that.

2020.03.31 ⋅ Facing Apple’s withdrawal from the Russian market, the Russian government moves its ultimatum (that Apple must install government software on i­Phones) from July 1 to January 1.

2020.04.28 ⋅ Westpac, for nearly a year the last holdout among the big-three Australian banks, adopts Apple Pay.

2020.06.16 ⋅ Kobo joins Spotify in complaining to the EU about the unfairness of Apple’s 30% share of sales on iOS; the EU’s antitrust authorities are investigating Ap­ple’s App Store and Apple Pay services. Apple responds:

It is disappointing the European Commission is advancing baseless complaints from a handful of companies who simply want a free ride, and don’t want to play by the same rules as everyone else.

2020.06.16 ⋅ Basecamp co-founder David Hansson complains:

Apple just doubled down on their rejection of HEY’s ability to provide bug fixes and new features, unless we submit to their outrageous demand of 15-30% of our revenue. Even worse: We’re told that unless we comply, they’ll remove the app. On the day the EU announced their investigation into Apple’s abusive App Store practices, HEY is subject to those very same capricious, exploitive, and inconsistent policies of shakedown. It’s clear they feel embolden [sic] to tighten the screws with no fear of regulatory consequences. ... it’s hard to see what they have to fear. Who cares if Apple shakes down individual software developers for 30% of their revenue, by threatening to destroy their business? There has been zero consequences so far! Most such companies quietly cave or fail. We won’t. There is no chance in bloody hell that we’re going to pay Apple’s ransom. I will burn this house down myself, before I let gangsters like that spin it for spoils. This is profoundly, perversely abusive and unfair.

HEY is a full-fledged e-mail application which does not qualify as a strict “reader” app — and so is not eligible to bypass Apple’s 15-30% cut (as do Amazon Kindle, Netflix, and Spotify, for example).

2020.06.18 ⋅ Apple’s Phil Schiller publicly states that Apple’s App Store rules will not be changed for Basecamp’s HEY e-mail app. The 30% markup will apply just as it does with all other iOS e-mail apps.

2020.06.22 ⋅ Andy Yen, CEO of ProtonMail:

Apple uses anti-competitive practices to extort developers and support authoritarian regimes ... like many others, we have long hesitated to speak out for fear that these tech giants may abuse their market dominance to destroy all who dare to stand up against them. ... Ap­ple’s iOS controls 25% of the global smartphone market (the other 75%, is largely controlled by Goo­gle’s Android). This means that for over a billion people (particularly in the US where their market share approaches 50%), the only way to install apps is through the App Store.

Or.. by switching to Android, like 50-75% of people already do?

2020.07.11 ⋅ After iOS 14’s new “this app just pasted from the clipboard” alert exposes LinkedIn’s (and several other popular apps’) constant, quiet, background clipboard snooping, LinkedIn sued in federal court (class-action requested) for infringing user privacy.

2020.07.15 ⋅ Apple wins its appeal of the EU’s $15 billion retroactive Ireland tax. (The EU can still appeal this decision to an even higher court.)

2020.07.24 ⋅ Interviewed on C­N­B­C, Sweeney calls Apple’s App Store an “absolute monopoly” — while also criticizing the Google Play (Android) Store for its nearly identical 30% markup:

Apple has locked down and crippled the ecosystem by inventing an absolute monopoly on the distribution of software, on the monetization of software ... If every developer could accept their own payments and avoid the 30% tax by Apple and Google we could pass the savings along to all our consumers and players would get a better deal on items. And you’d have economic competition.

Meanwhile, Apple commissions a study revealing that Apple’s mark­up is very similar to that used throughout the digital goods business, including stores run by Goo­gle, Amazon, Samsung, and Microsoft. (Sweeney, whose personal net worth is $4.5 billion, did not announce plans to start his own platform with 0% markup on third-party apps.)

2020.07.30 ⋅ Telegram files EU antitrust complaint against Apple, saying that:

Apple must “allow users to have the opportunity of downloading software outside of the App Store.”

The complaint neglects to mention that mass, casual piracy will be the certain result of forcing Apple to do that.

Telegram said that in 2016 Apple restricted the messaging app from launching a gaming platform on the grounds that it went against App Store rules.

Yes, from its very beginning in 2008, Apple’s App Store has never allowed third-party sub-platforms or sub-stores. The App Store has always been intended as a platform strictly for end-user apps. The only pseudo-exception has been content services, like Netflix, Spotify, and Kindle, which provide access to libraries of video, audio, and e-books.

In effect, Telegram is asking the EU to rule that all platform pro­vid­ers should be legally required to allow third-party sub-platforms on their platform, third-party sub-stores within their store, and sideloading of unspecified software of unknown source, safety, and copyright. Can we assume this will apply also to Google Play, Xbox, Playstation, and any other platforms, now or in the future?

2020.07.31 ⋅ From AppleInsider:

“Developers rail against Apple App Store policy in wake of House antitrust hearing

Major developers continue to deride Apple’s App Store policies and call into question CEO Tim Cook’s testimony at a U.S. House hearing this week, where he said the company treats all developers on the platform equally.”

“‘We are hopeful that Apple will recognize they are not the only developers capable of creating products with the user’s best interest in mind as it related to data privacy and security,’ [cross-platform mobile parental control app maker Eturi’s Dustin] Dailey said. ‘And we hope Apple will put action behind their words and create a level playing field for everyone — themselves included.’”

Heads-up, Dustin: Cook was talking about a level playing field for third-party app developers to compete with each other. He wasn’t saying that a developer who wants to control the whole device at a low level will be on equal footing with Apple itself. I’m pretty sure Apple doesn’t allow third-party apps to do that at all. Just ask the makers of third-party anti-virus software for iOS — oh yeah, there aren’t any.

2020.08.13 ⋅ In direct violation of Apple’s (and Google’s) store rules, Sweeney activates (not via app update) a new feature in Fortnite that sells app credits at a 20% discount if you buy them outside of the store (with Apple and Google getting 0% of that purchase). Hours later, Apple removes Fortnite from the App Store. Sweeney responds with a prepared lawsuit alleging that it is “illegal” for Ap­ple to disallow third-party app stores on iOS — and a prepared parody of Apple’s “1984” ad, with Apple cast as the totalitarian villain. Hours later still, Google also pulls Fortnite from its Google Play store, and Sweeney files another prepared lawsuit.

2020.08.14 ⋅ Curiously, Sweeney’s legal assault on software stores with 30% markup does not include Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox, or Nintendo Switch.

2020.08.17 ⋅ Epic reveals that a few days ago, Apple told Epic that it will terminate Epic’s entire access to iOS development if Epic does not fix all breaches of its iOS development contracts in two weeks.

2020.08.24 ⋅ Verdict that Qualcomm abused unavoidable (standard-embedded) patents, in violation of its FRAND agreements, tossed by appeals court — Tesla, Honda, Daimler, and Ford urge the FTC to request a re-hearing of that decision, on the grounds that it “could destabilize the standards ecosystem by encouraging the a­buse of market power acquired through collaborative standard-setting.”

2020.08.25 ⋅ Federal judge issues temporary order preventing Apple from shutting down the developer account with which Epic develops Unreal Engine, but declines to compel Apple to reinstate Fortnite.

2020.08.28 ⋅ Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, displeased by Apple’s impending no-tracking option (selectable at each individual user’s discretion), starts slamming Apple as having a “unique stranglehold as a gatekeeper on what gets on phones,” as being a company that “blocks innovation, blocks competition,” “charge[s] monopoly rents,” and in reference to Epic’s desire to dodge Apple’s markup said, “That’s innovation that could really improve people’s lives. And Apple’s just balking at it.”

2020.08.28 ⋅ As it warned it would, Apple terminates Epic’s developer account, killing a few other games besides the already-removed Fortnite. (Epic’s Unreal Engine account remains active per temporary injunction.)

2020.09.01 ⋅ Russia working on new law that would limit Apple’s (and Google’s) store markup to no more than 20%. It also would require them to pay 1/3 of that markup to a government tech training fund. And it would “‘o­blige’ device makers to allow the installation of third-party app stores on mobile devices.” Fedor Tumosov, the bill’s promoter:

waved away concerns that the move would compel Apple to leave the Russian market, claiming that the “trend is worldwide, and Russia should not lag behind.”

2020.09.14 ⋅ Ad group releases “O­pen Letter to Apple,” in which they:

request an urgent meeting to ensure we use that additional time [until iOS 14’s anti-tracking feature releases] to launch a collaborative process to address widespread questions and concerns a­round those upcoming changes. ... we hope to better understand the specific rationale for such changes ... Without immediate engagement in a cross-industry dialogue, we believe the proposed changes could have a negative impact on both consumers and businesses ... we believe it is vital to avoid the emerging structural risk from a patchwork of conflicting policies around addressability being implemented by the handful of companies that control browsers and operating systems.

Translation: When users are asked, point-blank, whether to allow tracking or not, we think we know which option they’re going to be choosing.

2020.09.24 ⋅ Epic, Spotify, Basecamp, and a handful of other organizations form “The Coalition for App Fairness,” which plans to “fight back against the monopolist control of the app ecosystem by Apple.”

2020.09.25 ⋅ EU commissioner appealing Apple’s victory on the $15 billion retroactive Ireland tax case.

2020.10.11 ⋅ Microsoft releases 10 principles for the Microsoft Store on Windows, in which they hope that Apple will be compelled by the government to abandon its 30% iOS app markup, but that the same will not happen to Microsoft Xbox.

2020.10.12 ⋅ The judge who refuses to force Apple to reinstate the store-rule-violating version of Fortnite offered to hold Apple’s 30% markup in escrow, pending the outcome of Epic’s suit, if Epic would comply with Apple’s rules for now — Epic said no.

2020.11.18 ⋅ Apple announces a reduced markup (15% vs 30%) for developers making less than $1 million in annual iOS revenue. Hanssen says on Twitter:

Machiavelli would be so proud of Apple. Trying to split the App Store opposition with conditional charity concessions [reduced markup for developers making less than $1M/year], they — a $2T conglomerate — get to paint any developer making more than $1m as greedy, always wanting more. As clever as its [sic] sick.

2020.11.18 ⋅ Sweeney now comparing his legal battle against Ap­ple’s 30% markup to the civil rights movement.

2020.12.10 ⋅ Jay Freeman, who in early 2008 created a very-short-lived, unofficial, iPhone app store based entirely on then-unpatched security holes in iOS, is now suing Apple for having an “illegal monopoly” on iOS app distribution.

2020.12.16 ⋅ Facebook runs full-page newspaper ads saying:

We’re standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere ... Many in the small business community have shared concerns a­bout Apple’s forced software update, which will limit businesses’ ability to run personalized ads and reach their customers effectively.

by which it means that Apple shouldn’t even be giving users the choice to allow/disallow each of their iOS apps to track user activity. (One-day update: Facebook runs second ad, titled “Apple vs. the Free Internet.”)

2020.12.18 ⋅ Facebook actively contributing to Epic Games’s anti-Apple suit.

2020.12.29 ⋅ Chris Wade’s Corellium wins the first round against Apple’s copyright suit. (Presumably, Apple will appeal, and, of course, is under no obligation to assist or cooperate with Corellium, which depends entirely on undocumented iOS vulnerabilities to achieve its unapproved emulations.) On the same day, Wade — on parole for “various cyber-crimes” — is pardoned by lame-duck President Donald Trump.

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2021.02.17 ⋅ Proposed North Da­ko­ta law against Apple’s control of its own App Store, which was recently discovered to be authored by an Epic Games lobbyist, rejected 36-to-11 by ND’s Senate.

2021.03.31 ⋅ Arizona bill that would force Apple (and Google) to allow third-party apps to use alternate payment systems on smartphones defeated in the AZ senate.

2021.04.12 ⋅ Apple upgrades its Secure Enclave subsystem to be impervious to GrayKey, Cellebrite, and any other hardware-device, brute-force attacks.

2021.04.12 ⋅ Epic reportedly losing “massive” money in its attempts to unseat Steam as the dominant PC gaming platform.

2021.04.15 ⋅ $506 million patent verdict against Apple tossed by appeals court because the trial judge didn’t allow the jury to know about the FRAND agreements to which the patent(s) are attached.

2021.04.27 ⋅ Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service fines Apple $12 million for disallowing Kaspersky Labs (the Russian security company whose main product is Windows anti-virus software) from selling cross-app activity monitoring software for iPhone and iPad, and orders Apple to stop disallowing it — Apple, which doesn’t allow any third-party, cross-app, activity monitoring in iOS, is appealing the decision.

2021.05.27 ⋅ Facebook pays for a USC/Harvard study which determines Apple’s let-the-user-choose-whether-to-be-tracked option in i­OS 14 is “Harming Competition and Consumers under the Guise of Protecting Privacy”.

2021.06.01 ⋅ Spotify head lawyer Horacio Gutierrez, after calling Apple a “ruthless bully” two weeks ago:

delved further into his claims, explaining why he called Apple a bully for its control of the App Store. ... “It is clear to me that when it comes to their policies on app stores and the way in which they’re treating [not just] competing apps, but a whole variety of apps on their App Store, is just unfair,” ... Since the percentage of the App Store [markup] is “arbitrary,” he offers that Apple should be able to set it even higher to 50% ...

For years, BlackBerry charged third-party apps 50%, until Apple drove it out of the smartphone market.

2021.06.03 ⋅ Marco Arment, author of the Overcast podcast player for iOS, says:

Apple uses their position of power to double-dip. ... [T]o bully and gaslight developers into thinking that we need to be kissing Apple’s feet for permitting us to add billions of dollars of value to their platform is not only greedy, stingy, and morally reprehensible, but deeply insulting. ... [in the common case, Apple] “deserves” nothing more from the transaction than what a CDN and commodity credit-card processor would charge. ... For Apple to continue to claim otherwise is beyond insulting, and borders on delusion.

Not sure what Arment’s thinking here, but if I was even half this angry with Apple, I would be totally busy porting my app to Android, not writing vitriolic anti-Apple blog articles. (Two-year update: Still no Android version.)

2021.06.09 ⋅ Fanhouse founder Jasmine Rice, after finding out that her iOS app won’t be allowed to dodge Apple’s 30% markup, says:

People who are relying on their creative income as a means to support themselves will now find themselves being taxed by Apple more than they would by their own government. ... For some people, that difference can be life or death.

2021.07.11 ⋅ After the UK Su­preme Court rules that Apple owes $7 billion (plus presumably more ongoing) for 3G and 4G FRAND patents — which per FRAND rules are supposed to be paid only at the first point of manufacture, i.e. by Qualcomm, the maker of the baseband radio chip — Apple lawyers mention that Ap­ple may have to leave the UK market, if that is the only way to avoid these “commercially unacceptable” terms.

2021.08.10 ⋅ Apple and Corellium settle for undisclosed terms.

2021.09.01 ⋅ Apple now allows iOS media-player-only apps (Netflix, Kindle, etc., that don’t sell anything in Apple’s app store) to include one link to their external store.

2021.09.09 ⋅ Following passage of a new Korean law that requires Apple to allow alternate payment portals on iOS, Epic publicly requests that Apple reinstate iOS Fortnite so that it can be released in Korea under those legal terms. But Korea’s new law does not require Apple to reinstate the apps of a developer who egregiously breached existing contracts prior to the passage of that law. Apple declines to reinstate.

2021.09.14 ⋅ With the court admonishing that “success is not illegal,” Epic loses its suit against Apple on nine out of ten counts — all except for its request that Apple be forced to allow alternate payment methods, which Judge Rogers ruled to be required by California law. However, she did not rule that Apple can’t still charge its commission, even when such payment methods are used. She also ruled that Epic must pay the commission on the $12 million of revenue it ran around Apple’s payment system before Apple yanked it from the App Store. (Epic pays, but is appealing, as is Apple.)

2021.09.22 ⋅ Apple says that Epic’s Fortnite will not be allowed back on iOS until all appeals of the judge’s decision have been exhausted, a process which could take years.

2021.11.24 ⋅ Sweeney has the solution to the problem of the Ap­ple/ Goo­gle duopoly: a single app store for all platforms — iOS, Android, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, Windows, and Mac — run by Tim Sweeney.

2021.11.25 ⋅ Israeli firm NSO Group used an iOS zero-day vulnerability to create Pegasus spyware which can infect iPhones remotely, then brazenly sold this attack to various governments for millions of dollars. Apple responds with a lawsuit, seeking unspecified damages as well as “a permanent injunction that would ban NSO Group from using Apple software, services, or devices.” (Ten-day update: “The iPhones of at least nine employees of the U.S. Department of State were hacked using the spyware developed by Israeli-based surveillance technology company NSO Group.” Apple says that it will notify some iPhone users that they were exposed to NSO Group’s spyware.)

2021.12.02 ⋅ Judge dismisses $200 billion suit against Apple by two developers, which claimed that Apple’s control of its App Store represents “tyrannical greed”:

There can be little doubt that Tim Cook sought to compensate for the tragic loss of Steve Jobs — and his gift for innovation — by seeking reckless profits on the heels of the success that Apple enjoyed with the iPhone.

It also sought the formation of an “independent, and impartial App Court,” to make all future decisions of which apps Apple must carry.

2021.12.08 ⋅ Appeals court rules that while Apple is in the process of appealing the one Epic-v-Apple count that it lost, it does not have to comply with that count.

2021.12.14 ⋅ Epic-v-Apple appeals court rejects amicus (“friend of the court”) brief from the Coalition For App Fairness (Epic Games et al.).

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2022.01.03 ⋅ When users of Ap­ple’s iOS Safari web browser type a search term into the address field without specifying which search engine to use, the default is used. That default search engine can easily be chosen by the users — but those users who haven’t yet chosen one will get the default default: Google. Apple apparently sells this spot to the highest bidder, and Google is currently paying something close to $10 billion/year for that privilege. Now, a California class action suit claims that this payment constitutes Google illegally paying Apple to stay out of the search business. The suit seeks Apple and Google each to be for­ci­bly broken up into many, separate, independent companies.

2022.01.06 ⋅ Jay Freeman’s suit a­gainst Apple, for preventing his hacked, a.k.a. “jailbreak,” Cydia i­OS app store of early 2008 from continuing to function (by fixing the security holes via which he was hacking iOS) dismissed — but the judge will allow it to be re-filed with certain changes.

2022.01.10 ⋅ After failing for five years to push its own proprietary messaging system (Allo), Google now endorsing RCS, the would-be modern replacement for SMS — but is bothered by Apple’s as-yet refusal to support it: Apple supports regular SMS and its own, Apple-to-Apple iMessage. Now Google is complaining publicly that “iMessage should not benefit from bullying,” and that Apple is “[u]sing peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products.”

2022.01.11 ⋅ Apple preparing to comply with South Korean law requiring the allowance of alternate payment methods on the iOS App Store — but Apple will still charge a (reduced) fee on those purchases.

2022.01.19 ⋅ Basecamp CEO David Hansson promoting bills in multiple states that would force Apple to allow alternate payment methods in its iOS App Store.

2022.01.20 ⋅ Former cellphone great Ericsson recently sued Apple for refusing to agree to Ericsson’s terms over how its 5G FRAND patents will be licensed; Apple now countersues, asking the court for an injunction against Ericsson base stations that violate Apple’s private (non-FRAND) patents.

2022.02.01 ⋅ Microsoft sends amicus (“friend of the court”) brief to the Epic-v-Apple appeals court, stating that Apple has “extraordinary gatekeeper power” o­ver its own platforms, and that if the lower court’s decision is upheld, “innovation will suffer,” and it would “insulate Apple from meritorious antitrust scrutiny and embolden further harmful conduct.” Microsoft describes its brief as a “unique — and balanced — perspective to the legal, economic, and technological issues this case implicates.”

2022.02.03 ⋅ Apple’s privacy option, which allows individual users to opt out of tracking, estimated by Facebook (now Meta) to cost Meta $10 billion/year — on the news, Meta’s stock price takes an instant, vertical plunge of over 25%, and over the next few days shows no signs of recovering any of that loss, even sinking a bit lower yet. (Ten-month update: Meta has steadily declined to less than half of its post-plunge value.)

2022.02.04 ⋅ Apple announces that Dutch dating app developers who elect to use alternate payment methods (as Apple is required by new Dutch law to permit) will owe a commission of 27% instead of the usual 30%:

a reduced rate that excludes value related to payment processing and related activities. ... Failure to pay Apple’s commission could result in the offset of proceeds owed to you in other markets ... [or] removal of your app from the App Store or removal from the Apple Developer program.

2022.02.16 ⋅ Google’s latest blog post comments on iOS 14:

We realize that other platforms have taken a different approach to ads privacy, bluntly restricting existing technologies used by developers and advertisers. We believe that — without first providing a privacy-preserving alternative path — such approaches can be ineffective and lead to worse outcomes for user privacy and developer businesses.

2022.02.28 ⋅ Dutch regulator fining Apple $5.6 million per week for the past six weeks, because Apple won’t apply the Netherlands’s dating app law in a way that would cause it to take effect everywhere in the world, not just in the Netherlands.

2022.03.01 ⋅ In reaction to Russia’s assault on Ukraine, Apple ends all product sales in Russia, rendering moot all of Apple’s pending Russian legal issues.

2022.03.30 ⋅ Apple class-action sued in the Netherlands for $5.5 billion, for controlling and charging for its own iOS platform:

By using anti-competitive practices, Apple has been able to charge excessively high prices and impose restrictive conditions. Ap­ple excluded all competition and withheld choice for consumers on their App-store and in-app purchases.

The suit was filed by the Consumer Competition Claims Foundation, a self-described:

independent non-profit foundation that is committed to protecting consumers against unfair commercial practices and violations of consumer law.

2022.04.14 ⋅ After publicly protesting Apple’s 15-30% commission as “monopoly rent” and a “stranglehold as a gatekeeper” that “blocks innovation, blocks competition,” Facebook now announcing a 47.5% commission on third-party sales in its upcoming Metaverse platform.

2022.05.03 ⋅ Elon Musk, the wealthiest person in the world, says on Twitter:

Apple’s store is like having a 30% tax on the Internet. Definitely not ok. Literally 10 times higher than it should be

2022.05.03 ⋅ For months, the UK’s CMA (Competition & Markets Authority) has been publicly planning massive, mandatory changes to Apple’s products and services — but now, the UK government has decided not to enforce any of it. (Three-day update: UK’s media regulator insists that its rules will be enforced.)

2022.05.05 ⋅ Last October, India’s Reserve Bank ruled that every credit/debit card transaction must be independently approved by the card holder, including recurring transactions and transactions made by a holder of the card number, such as Apple’s App Store or iTunes. This approval “must be obtained through transaction notifications, e-mandates, and Additional Factors of Authentication (AFA).” Today, Apple stopped taking credit/debit cards altogether in India, and announced that Indian customers will need to prepay their Apple ID balance, and buy apps, videos, and subscriptions from that balance.

2022.05.20 ⋅ EU lawmakers now planning to require Apple (and a handful of other companies):

to create an independent “compliance function.” The new group must include compliance officers to monitor their company’s compliance with EU legislation using sufficient authority, resources, and access to management, and be headed by an “independent senior manager with distinct responsibility for the compliance function.” The rule would effectively require companies like Apple to set up a department internal dedicated to meeting pro-competition regulations. In addition, new rules spe­cif­i­cal­ly targeted to address companies like Apple that have “a dual role” with control over both hardware and software look to allow any developer to gain access to any existing hardware feature, such as “near-field communication technology, secure elements and processors, authentication mechanisms, and the software used to control those technologies.”

2022.05.26 ⋅ Sweeney now publicly complaining that Apple:

completely obstructs all competition and market forces that would shape better app stores and better deals for consumers. ... [Apple reporting App Store earnings as part of its services revenue is] a shady accounting practice that should not be allowed. Apple is engaged in this heist of grabbing an opportunity from developers ... The app store is not a service. The app store is a disservice to developers. The app store forces developers to treat their software in a sub-par way to give customers a sub-par experience to charge uncompetitive handling and processing fees to inflate the price of digital goods. It’s a bizarre scheme that should never have been created ... Apple, under its terms and its stated interpretation of its terms and its rights, can just pull any app down for any reason — or no reason ...

2022.06.27 ⋅ Epic Games’s “Support-A-Creator” program pays on­ly 5% of revenues to the content creators, keeping 95% for itself.

2022.07.11 ⋅ iPhone sales suspended in Columbia because Apple allowed its FRAND-agreement-violating Ericsson licenses to lapse, and refuses to renew them on anything other than FRAND-compliant terms.

2022.07.18 ⋅ Affinity Credit Union of Des Moines IA class-action sues Apple for not supporting competing NFC payment systems such as Samsung Pay and Google Pay.

2022.07.27 ⋅ Portuguese professor Fabrizio Esposito class-action sues Apple because the App Store’s 30% markup is “anticompetitive and excessive” and is “raising prices for consumers.”

2022.08.09 ⋅ Google creates a big website declaring, “It’s time for Apple to fix texting,” in which it attempts to shame Apple into supporting Google’s proprietary spin on the failed 2008 RCS standard, and blame Apple for the deficiencies of the fragmented mess Goo­gle has created as an alternative to the clean and thoroughly modern functionality of Apple’s iPhone-to-iPhone iMessage system.

2022.09.08 ⋅ Tim Cook makes it very clear that Apple isn’t responsible for Google’s Android messaging mess, and recommends that people “buy iPhones.”

2022.09.20 ⋅ The U.S. DOJ, which has long been preparing its own antitrust suit against Apple — and whose likelihood of winning such a suit is massively diminished by Apple’s near-complete victory over Epic Games’s suit — gets permission to argue against Apple in Ep­ic’s appeal of Apple’s victory.

2022.09.22 ⋅ Facebook’s scheme of injecting tracking macros into webpages on-the-fly is now the subject of two class action suits against Facebook (Meta) for using this technique — in violation of Apple’s contractual requirements — to infringe the privacy of users who chose “do not track” in Ap­ple’s ATT (App Tracking Transparency) setting.

2022.10.13 ⋅ Zuckerberg brags that his AR/VR headsets will be sold at no profit, which:

will be disruptive, in that it’s typically people build hardware and they try to make a profit off of it, where if you’re Apple, you build hardware and you charge as much as you can for it.

2022.10.20 ⋅ Musk predicts that Tesla will one day be bigger than Apple:

I see a path for Tesla to be worth more than Apple and Saudi Aramco combined.

2022.10.25 ⋅ Like Kobo did eleven years ago, Spotify now repeatedly resubmitting its iOS app with different variations on ways to violate Apple’s rules, and Apple is repeatedly rejecting it.

2022.10.28 ⋅ After Telegram CEO Pavel Durov finds out that he won’t be allowed to dodge Apple’s 30% markup on in-app purchases in his iOS app, he says:

This is just another example of how a trillion-dollar monopoly a­bus­es its market dominance at the expense of millions of users who are trying to monetize their own content. I hope that the regulators in the EU, India and elsewhere start taking action before Apple destroys more dreams and crushes more entrepreneurs with a tax that is higher than any government-lev­ied VAT.

2022.11.17 ⋅ Pending the Ericsson v. Apple trial scheduled for June, Columbian appeals court lifts the injunction against 5G iPhones.

2022.11.22 ⋅ Assassin’s Creed maker Ubisoft, which in 2019 called Steam’s 30% markup “unrealistic,” and has been trying to use Epic Games instead, now “comes crawling back to Steam”.

2022.11.24 ⋅ While Apple continues its court challenge of Brazil’s regulator’s rule that all iPhones must be sold with a charger in the box, the regulator physically seizes iPhones from Brazilian retailers, and orders the suspension of all i­Phone sales in Brazil.

2022.11.26 ⋅ Elon Musk says that if his just-bought (and newly unregulated) Twitter is ejected from the iOS App Store (or from the Google Play store), he will make “his own ‘alternative phone’ to the iPhone and Android devices.”

2022.11.26 ⋅ Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents (and longtime Apple critic) rants:

More and more tech luminaries call out Apple on its shameless abuse of market power and the damage it does to innovation and the economy at large. As Epic Games’[s] CEO Tim Sweeney has repeatedly said on Twitter, “Apple must be stopped.” Nothing is even half as urgent in the tech regulation context (Google is a clear but distant second). Instead of addressing the issues, Apple brazenly keeps causing additional problems. Apple is the tech industry equivalent of the Lernaean Hydra. Not everyone dares to speak out a­gainst the tyrant. That’s always been a problem in any dictatorship in history. But Apple has gone so far, and suffering is so widespread, that slowly but surely its critics grow in numbers and in profile.

2022.11.28 ⋅ Musk posts (on his own just-purchased and newly unregulated Twitter):

Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America? What’s going on here @tim_cook?

and:

Did you know Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store?

2022.11.30 ⋅ Zuckerberg complains about Apple’s control of its own products, saying it’s:

problematic that one company controls what happens on the device ... I think the problem is that you get into it with the platform control, is that Apple obviously has their own interests ... the fact that companies have to deliver their apps exclusively through platforms that are controlled by competitors — there is a conflict of interest there ... [which makes Apple] not just a kind of governor that is looking out for the best of people’s interests. ... I do think Apple has sort of singled themselves out as the only company that is trying to control, unilaterally, what apps get on the device, and I don’t think that’s a sustainable or a good place to be.

Translation: It’s an unsustainable conflict of interest that Apple lets each of its users choose whether or not to be tracked by any particular app. It would be very sustainable, and not at all a conflict of interest, if Facebook got to force all of Apple’s users to allow Facebook to track them, whether they like it or not.

2022.11.30 ⋅ Spotify CEO Daniel Ek now saying Apple:

gives itself every advantage while at the same time stifling innovation and hurting consumers.

2022.12.08 ⋅ Apple announces Advanced Data Protection on iPhone and iPad: an opt-in, end-to-end en­cryp­tion of iCloud, which, when chosen by the user, will render Ap­ple itself unable to access that us­er’s photos, messages, device backups, and other information. The FBI describes it as “deeply concerning.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation praises this development, but adds that it shouldn’t be opt-in — and that Apple adopting Google’s RCS system is a “non-negotiable next step.”

2022.12.09 ⋅ Three weeks after a Columbian appeals court lifted the injunction against 5G iPhones, Ericsson and Apple settle all of their patent disputes for undisclosed terms.

2022.12.19 ⋅ Epic Games settles for $520 million in FTC suits over Fortnite’s multiple violations of COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), and for charging millions of players’ credit cards for in-game items without their informed consent.

2022.12.21 ⋅ EU now planning to mandate that:

portable batteries in appliances must be designed so that consumers can easily remove and replace them themselves.

2022.12.23 ⋅ ITC declines to enforce an AliveCor-requested ban on Apple Watch, until the courts have made a final decision on A­live­Cor’s/Apple’s mutual suits.

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2023.01.05 ⋅ Recently fined $414 million by the EU for violating us­er privacy with its ad personalization techniques, Meta may have no choice but to directly ask each user (Apple-style) whether to allow it or not.

2023.01.08 ⋅ Joaquin Serrano of Philadelphia PA class-action sues Apple for “systematic violations of state wiretapping, privacy, and consumer fraud laws.”

2023.01.11 ⋅ Musk, until recently the richest person alive, has experienced a 57% decline ($182 billion) in net worth since 2021, more than tripling the world rec­ord for “largest loss of personal fortune in history.”

2023.01.18 ⋅ Russia fines Apple $17 million for controlling payments in its own App Store — but:

Considering that Apple announced its withdrawal from Russia early in the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it’s not immediately clear how the fine will be enforced.

2023.01.20 ⋅ CEOs of Spotify, Basecamp, and a few other less well-known companies write letter to the EU, asking for “urgent action” to remedy Apple’s “abusive behaviors” and “unfair restrictions” over its own products/platforms:

Apple benefits from a monopoly position over its mobile ecosystem and extracts exorbitant rents from app developers who have no choice but to remain on the App Store to reach European consumers [of Apple products].

2023.02.02 ⋅ South Korean lawsuit against Apple for throttling the speed of older iPhones with aging batteries (to prevent them from abruptly shutting off in mid-use) dismissed, and Apple also is not held responsible for legal expenses.

2023.02.09 ⋅ Japanese regulator announces that Apple and Google are “abus[ing] a superior bargaining position,” and that third-party developers must be given:

access to the mobile OS functions at the same timing, scope and level as Google’s/Apple’s apps, products and services[.]

2023.02.23 ⋅ Signal, faced with an impending U.K. law that promises to outlaw end-to-end encryption with no backdoor, says it will “absolutely, 100% walk” away from the U.K. market.

2023.02.24 ⋅ Ericsson canning 8% of its workforce: 8,500 persons.

2023.03.02 ⋅ EU regulators now preparing rule that would require all highly successful proprietary messaging systems — iMessage, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger — to change into open-to-all, third-party-usable messaging protocols.

2023.03.06 ⋅ Twitter reports (privately, to investors) a year-over-year 40% drop in revenue, “amid an advertiser exodus following E­lon Musk’s takeover.”

2023.03.09 ⋅ WhatsApp publicly announces that it, too (like Signal), will exit the U.K. if end-to-end encryption becomes illegal there.

2023.03.13 ⋅ Meta publicly states that if Canada passes a law that requires Meta to pay news sites for Facebook users’ links to news stories, then Meta will simply disable/disallow those links.

Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said it was disappointing to see Facebook resorting to threats instead of working with the Canadian government in good faith ... “All we’re asking Facebook to do is negotiate fair deals with news outlets when they profit from their work,” Rodriguez said. “This is part of a disappointing trend this week that tech giants would rather pull news than pay their fair share.”

(Three-month update: Law passes; Me­ta’s Facebook and Instagram make good on their promise to disconnect from Ca­na­di­an news sources.)

(Five-month update: Facebook usage in Canada has “stayed roughly unchanged” since the disconnection from Canadian news sources.)

(Nine-month update: “Meta’s news ban in Canada triggered a 90% drop in engagement on Canadian news outlet pages, report finds.”)

2023.03.21 ⋅ After six years of regulatory delays, Apple Pay finally coming to Samsung’s home country, South Korea. (One-month update: taking off like a rocket.)

2023.03.27 ⋅ Shortly after Musk’s big Twitter layoffs, Twitter source code leaks to the internet.

2023.04.02 ⋅ While 97% of new cars sold in the U.S. offer Apple’s CarPlay, and 79% of new car buyers want it, GM decides to stop offering CarPlay in its electric vehicles, instead going with an all-new system to be created by Goo­gle. (One-month update: Ford CEO says, we’re sticking with CarPlay.)

2023.04.05 ⋅ Germany’s antitrust authority declares Apple subject to “special abuse control” for at least the next five years, because market competition is “not sufficiently controll[ing]” its behavior. The au­thor­i­ty’s “investigation began in 2022 with the aim of determining whether Apple’s anti-tracking technology is anti-competitive” — the ATT feature that gives each user the option to allow/disallow tracking in each iOS app.

2023.04.05 ⋅ Cisco exits Russia and Belarus, destroying $23 million of equipment and components on its way out.

2023.04.12 ⋅ After Musk “brand[s] NPR with the ‘state-affiliated media’ tag, which is typically applied to propaganda outlets controlled by governments”, NPR quits Twitter. (Three-week update: Musk now threatening to give the Twitter handle “NPR” to another company or person — who would then be able to post messages on Twitter pretending to be NPR — if NPR does not start posting again soon. Meanwhile, PBS and CBC have also quit Twitter for identical reasons.)

2023.04.17 ⋅ After having his $533 million victory tossed on appeal, and the relevant patents voided because they “were too ‘abstract’ and did not sufficiently describe an actual invention,” patent troll (non-product-producing litigator) Patrick Racz now accusing Apple of “racketeering,” and says “he intends ‘to hold Apple accountable.’” “[H]e estimates that he is owed up to $18 billion from Ap­ple.”

2023.04.18 ⋅ After years of regulatory delays, India’s first Apple retail store opens to huge crowds, including people who “travelled a­cross India” to attend. (Two-day update: Huge crowds also at store #2.)

2023.04.24 ⋅ Appeals court upholds Apple’s 9-of-10-counts victory over Tim Sweeney’s suit; higher appeals are still possible.

2023.04.27 ⋅ Wikipedia publicly states that it will not perform age checks required by the pending UK Online Safety Bill.

2023.05.01 ⋅ After Utah’s governor Spencer Cox signs into law a new requirement that Pornhub (among others) must verify the age of its users, Pornhub instead blocks eve­ry­one in Utah from accessing Pornhub at all.

(Three-month update: Pornhub cuts off Virginia, Mississippi, and Arkansas for the same reason.)

(Eight-month update: Now also Montana and North Carolina.)

(Ten-month update: And Texas.)

2023.05.12 ⋅ Google Bard (AI chatbot) releases in 180 countries, but all of the EU and Canada are excluded, probably to avoid compliance with recent regulations.

2023.05.25 ⋅ Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, says he may have to exit the EU if the EU AI Act’s current draft passes into law.

2023.05.31 ⋅ With California on the verge of passing a pay-to-link-to-news-sites law (like Canada’s), Meta publicly announces that it will disable/disallow those links in California (as well as Canada), in response to such law.

2023.06.03 ⋅ Twitter lands at #4 in the Axios/Harris poll of worst-reputation brands in the USA, behind only Trump, FTX, and Fox.

2023.06.08 ⋅ Zuckerberg calls a companywide meeting to pooh-pooh Apple’s just-revealed Vision Pro, saying it’s “not the [future] that I want,” and contains “no kind of magical solutions ... that our teams haven’t already explored and thought of.”

(Eight-month update: Zuckerberg o­pines, “I finally tried Apple Vision Pro. I don’t think [my Meta] Quest is the better value, I think Quest is the better product, period.”)

(Nine-month update: Zuckerberg reportedly meets with LG to discuss “joint development of an advanced mixed reality headset.”)

2023.06.14 ⋅ Federal agency tells car manufacturers to ignore Massachusetts “right to repair” law, which requires them to use a “standardized open data” telematics system. (Two-month update: NHTSA says automakers now “can comply,” “with some caveats.”)

2023.06.15 ⋅ Twitter evicted from its Boulder, Colorado HQ “over unpaid rent and cleaning bills.” Ongoing lawsuits continue for unpaid rent at another Boulder location, as well as HQs in San Francisco and London.

2023.07.10 ⋅ After ruling in 2020 that companies like Apple may not store EU users’ data outside of the EU, now the EU changes its mind, decides to allow it.

2023.07.15 ⋅ Twitter has lost “half its ad revenue,” and is “still weighed down by debt.”

2023.07.20 ⋅ Apple promises to end iMessage and FaceTime in the U.K. if the current Online Safety Bill is enacted there. (Seven-week update: U.K. backs down.)

2023.07.24 ⋅ University of East Anglia competition policy professor Sean Ennis class action sues Apple for $1 billion, saying:

Apple’s charges to app developers are excessive, and only possible due to its monopoly on the distribution of apps onto iPhones and i­Pads. The charges are unfair in their own right, and constitute a­bu­sive pricing. They harm app developers and also app buyers.

2023.07.25 ⋅ France launches antitrust probe into Apple’s ATT — the feature that lets each user choose whether or not to be tracked by each app — by which Apple:

abused its dominant position by implementing discriminatory, non-objective and non-transparent conditions for the use of user data for advertising purposes.

2023.08.01 ⋅ Longtime Apple disparager Cory Doctorow releases his new book on how to fight the “enshittification” of the internet (including Apple’s app DRM, which effectively blocks mass casual piracy of iOS apps). His article announcing the book fades to white half-way through, with a prompt to enter information about yourself before you can read the entire article.

2023.08.18 ⋅ Purportedly for the urgent purpose of saving people from wildfires, Canada “demands” that Meta lift its Canadian ban on news links, calling Meta’s policy “reckless and irresponsible.” No word on whether the wildfires might necessitate a lifting of the pay-to-link law which prompted Meta’s ban. (Four-day update: Prime Minister Trudeau says Meta is “putting corporate profits ahead of people’s safety.”)

2023.08.19 ⋅ For years, Cellebrite trained police to skirt the court processes of legal discovery and truthful testimony, in order to keep its then-iPhone-hacking device’s existence and functionality secret from Apple for as long as possible — which may now cause cases to be reopened by defendants whose lawyers were denied truthful/complete information a­bout how evidence was obtained.

2023.08.22 ⋅ Alex Morales’s class action suit against Apple for racial bias — because blood oxygen sensors like the one included in Apple Watch may work better through pale skin — dismissed, and cannot be re-filed.

2023.09.06 ⋅ Under the EU’s pending rules, “[i]t will be illegal for certain platforms to favor their own services over those of rivals,” and “[t]hey’ll be barred from combining personal data across their different services” — which presumably means that if you use i­Phone, iPad, Mac, iCloud, iTunes, the App Store, and Apple Books, then you will need to create separate accounts for each, to make sure it is not unfairly convenient for you to continue to avoid Ap­ple’s competitors’ offerings.

“We are finally reining in the economic power of six gatekeepers, giving more choice to consumers and creating new opportunities for smaller innovative tech companies,” said Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner.

2023.09.13 ⋅ France’s ANFR (radiation watchdog agency) tells Apple to reduce the radiation produced by the iPhone 12 (a three-year-old model still on sale), or stop selling it and recall it from all its current French users. “Apple said today that its iPhone 12 model was certified by multiple international bodies as compliant with global radiation standards ...” (Two-day update: Apple updates iPhone 12, in France only, to somehow be in compliance with this regulator’s demand.)

2023.09.21 ⋅ Google releases “i­Pag­er” video, mocking Apple as similar to a primitive 1990s pager because it doesn’t support Goo­gle’s RCS messaging system.

2023.09.23 ⋅ Doctorow now says that Apple’s:

most innovative work is dreaming up new ways to sneakily sabotage electronics repair while claiming to be a caring environmental steward, a lie that covers up the mountains of e-waste that Apple dooms our descendants to wade through.

2023.09.26 ⋅ EU commissioner Thierry Breton now says:

The next job for Apple and other Big Tech, under the DMA (Digital Markets Act) is to open up its gates to competitors. Be it the e­lec­tron­ic wallet, browsers or app stores, consumers using an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services by a range of providers. ... EU regulation fosters innovation, without compromising on security and privacy.

2023.09.28 ⋅ Epic Games lays off 1/6 of its workforce.

As for the fight against Apple, Sweeney claims that Epic Games is taking steps to cut down on legal expenses, but will continue on with its legal battles so the “metaverse can thrive and bring opportunity to Epic and all other developers.”

2023.10.02 ⋅ Microsoft CEO Na­del­la testifies “that the Apple-Goo­gle default search deal has unfairly hurt Bing badly” — that being the use-Google-Search-by-default deal that applies only to Apple users of Apple’s Safari browser who choose to search the internet without specifying which search engine to use, and who have never chosen their default search engine in their entire history of using Apple products.

2023.10.09 ⋅ Samsung posts awkward, confusing ad trying to pressure Apple into adopting the Goo­gle-controlled RCS messaging system — something Tim Cook has already very publicly stated he has no interest in doing.

2023.10.23 ⋅ Tesla under DOJ investigation for “grossly ex­ag­ger­at­[ing] its vehicles’ driving range,” which caused “many customers [to assume] their cars were defective. Three customers launched a class-action suit, alleging fraud and false advertising.”

2023.10.31 ⋅ On the first anniversary of Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now “X”), its market value has dropped from $44 billion to $19 billion. (Two-month update: Now valued at $12.5 billion, which is a 34% drop from $19 billion, or a 72% drop from $44 billion.)

2023.11.08 ⋅ Google and four large European telcos send letter to the EU, recommending that it force Apple’s iMessage to interoperate with competing messaging services, on the grounds that “iMessage serves as ‘an important gateway between business users and their customers.’” (Apple’s Messages app already interoperates with all competitors’ devices via SMS, a long-neutral standard used by everyone in the industry.)

2023.11.16 ⋅ Apple surprises eve­ry­one by announcing near-future support for RCS messaging — but apparently only the GSM Association definition of RCS, not Goo­gle’s proprietary, Google-controlled version of it. Nor will RCS replace Apple-to-Apple iMessage, but will be used as the preferred fallback when communicating with non-Apple devices (as SMS is currently).

2023.11.17 ⋅ In reaction to Musk’s positive comment(s) about anti-Jewish posts on Twitter (“X”), and the recent frequency of extreme-right (literally pro-Hitler) ads there, major advertisers — Apple, Google, Amazon, IBM, the EU, Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, NBCUniversal, Comcast, Lionsgate, and Discovery — pull out of the platform.

(Two-week update: Musk says that advertisers who are trying to “blackmail” him can “go fuck yourself.” Walmart and Sony Pictures also pull out.)

(Three-week update: Musk says Disney CEO Bob Iger “should be fired immediately.”)

2023.11.20 ⋅ “Nothing” (wannabe iPhone) promised an unauthorized bridge between iMessage (Apple’s proprietary Apple-to-Apple service) and non-Apple devices — but takes it down after just one day when it is found to be storing supposedly encrypted messages in a publicly available, unencrypted form, among other “shockingly bad security practices.”

2023.11.21 ⋅ In direct response to Uruguay passing a law “requiring ‘fair and equitable remuneration’ for authors, composers, performers, directors and screenwriters,” Spotify exits Uruguay.

2023.11.29 ⋅ Arm parent Softbank’s CEO Masayoshi Son, who routinely whines at company meetings about how little licensing money Arm gets from Apple:

phoned Tim Cook to say that Arm would be raising its prices. Reportedly, Cook’s staff just referred Son to the contract Apple had with Arm. With that door shut, Son tried getting Arm to raise prices with every other company it works with, and those firms pushed back enough that the plan was scrapped.

2023.12.08 ⋅ Less than a week after the launch of Beeper Mini, an Android app that fakes out Apple’s proprietary, Apple-to-Apple iMessage system so as to make it accept iMessages from an Android device (and display them in blue-bubble conversations as if they’re from an Apple device), Apple apparently now has blocked it from continuing to function. Beeper “was planning to charge $1.99 per month,” and also “had planned to build additional secure messaging into Beeper Mini, including Signal and WhatsApp messaging, and make it the primary focus of its efforts.”

2023.12.09 ⋅ Apple confirms it stopped Beeper’s hack, while Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky “says he’d be happy to share Beeper’s code with Apple for a security review, so that it could be sure of Beeper’s security practices,” and “that Apple can’t or won’t keep [Beeper] out forever.” Plus, “he hopes the court of public opinion will eventually convince Apple to play nice”.

2023.12.11 ⋅ Elizabeth “Break Ap­ple Into Pieces” Warren, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, posts to Twitter (“X”) regarding Beeper:

Green bubble texts are less secure. So why would Apple block a new app allowing Android users to chat with iPhone users on iMessage? Big Tech executives are protecting profits by squashing competitors.

2023.12.15 ⋅ Mirage Wine & Spirits of Palm Springs CA files federal suit (class-action requested) alleging that the very small fee (1/7 of 1%) that Apple Pay charges to Mastercard and Visa (actually to the banks that issue those cards) constitutes an antitrust-violating conspiracy between Apple, Mastercard, and Visa.

2023.12.20 ⋅ Beeper CEO now says he might sue Apple:

They’ve degraded the performance of iMessage for iPhone users, all in search of crushing a competitor.

2023.12.31 ⋅ While Apple fights to invalidate Masimo’s patent claims against Apple Watch, Masimo C­E­O Joe Kiani says that he is open to settling with Apple, and “would certainly ‘work with them to improve their product’ as well,” but “Apple hasn’t taken steps to even discuss a settlement. ‘They haven’t called,’ said the CEO. ‘It takes two to tango.’” Meanwhile Kiani has blown at least $100 million trying to squeeze Apple for a settlement, and Apple has briefly removed Ap­ple Watch from the U.S. market rather than settle with Masimo.

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2024.01.05 ⋅ In reaction to his subscription-payment HEY Calendar being disallowed to dodge the App Store’s 15-30% markup, Hansson now says that Apple is engaging in:

bullying tactics ... Push delicate rejections to a call with a first-name-only person who’ll softly inform you it’s your wallet or your knee­caps. ... we’re never going to pay them the extortionate 30% ransom ...

2024.01.16 ⋅ U.S. Supreme Court declines all parties’ appeals, allowing Apple’s 9-of-10-counts victory over Epic Games’s antitrust suit to stand as originally ruled. (How Apple will comply with the one count that it lost remains to be seen.) Sweeney calls the decision “A sad outcome for all developers.” (One-day update: Apple bills Epic Games $73 million for legal costs, as per the trial judge’s decision in that regard.)

2024.01.16 ⋅ With the EU’s Digital Markets Act set to go into effect a­bout seven weeks from now, 24 EU tech companies sign a letter complaining that Apple and other DMA targets are not engaging with them in preparation for compliance.

2024.01.18 ⋅ After it becomes clear that Apple is going to disable the blood oxygen feature in current models of Apple Watch to get a­round the ITC import ban, rather than pay Masimo any money to end its patent case against Apple, Masimo CEO Joe Kiani now says that Apple Watch’s blood oxygen feature is “unreliable,” and that “consumers are better off without it.” (Two-week update: Apple publicly confirms it has no intention of licensing Masimo patents.)

2024.01.19 ⋅ In a concession to EU regulators, Apple will allow app developers direct, do-what-you-will access to iPhone’s NFC hardware — in the EU only.

2024.01.20 ⋅ Apple complies with the one-of-ten count in nearly the most minimal, technically correct way possible; Spotify (Ek) vents with a public statement:

Apple has demonstrated that they will stop at nothing to protect the profits they exact on the backs of developers and consumers under their app store monopoly. Their latest move in the U.S. — imposing a 27% fee for transactions made outside of an app on a developer’s website — is outrageous ... the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) will finally put an end to this false posturing ... We strongly urge the European Commission to act swiftly and decisively ...

2024.01.25 ⋅ Apple rolls out big, EU-only, iOS changes which comply with the letter of the impending DMA, but don’t come close to turning EU iPhones/iPads into the anything-goes, ’90s-PC-style free-for-all envisioned by Sweeney, Ek, et al. Sweeney pitches an immediate fit, calling Apple’s new policy “hot garbage,” a “horror show,” a “plan to thwart” EU law, and “a devious new instance of Malicious Compliance.”

2024.01.26 ⋅ Ek throws his own fit into the ring:

Apple has just shown the world, they don’t think the rules apply to them. Apple is nothing if not consistent. While they have behaved badly for years, this takes the level of arrogance to an entirely new place. Under the false pretense of compliance and concessions, they put forward a new plan that is a complete and total farce. ... This is extortion, plain and simple.

2024.01.30 ⋅ Microsoft’s Xbox chief disparages Apple’s new EU policies:

We believe constructive conversations drive change and progress towards open platforms and greater competition. Apple’s new policy is a step in the wrong direction. We hope they listen to feedback on their proposed plan and work towards a more inclusive future for all.

2024.02.05 ⋅ Mozilla (and Google) are “extremely disappointed” with Apple’s plan to comply with the EU’s alternate-browser-engine regulation only in the EU, not worldwide.

2024.02.05 ⋅ WSJ’s Greg Ip reports:

Europe regulates its way to last place ... European mobile customers ... pay only about a third of what Americans do. ... [telecom consultant John] Strand said: “Getting a 5G signal in Germany is like finding a Biden supporter at a Trump rally.” Putting European networks on a par with the U.S. would cost about $300 billion ...

2024.02.07 ⋅ Apple wins summary judgment against AliveCor’s antitrust suit over changes to the Ap­ple Watch heart rate algorithm.

2024.02.07 ⋅ Class-action collusion suit over the Apple-Google Safari default search engine deal dismissed.

2024.02.08 ⋅ Investor lawsuit over the alleged “overpaying [of] CEO Tim Cook and other top [Apple] executives” dismissed.

2024.02.12 ⋅ The FCC’s Brendan Carr recommends that the FCC in­ves­ti­gate Apple for its disabling of Beeper’s hack, which he thinks might violate FCC rules.

2024.02.12 ⋅ India wants to limit the dominance of Google Pay and PhonePe in its mobile payments market (current combined share: 83%) to no more than 30% each, but is:

stumped on how ... The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a special unit of the Indian central bank ... faces an acute challenge in bringing down the commanding share of the leading duopoly: It doesn’t know how to.

2024.02.13 ⋅ EU regulator backs down on the threat to require Ap­ple-to-Apple iMessage to be transformed into a third-party-usable, open protocol.

2024.02.15 ⋅ Microsoft Xbox CEO Phil Spencer wants iOS to become as open to alternate storefronts as Microsoft Windows has always been — but not his own Xbox, which is no less closed than iOS.

2024.02.20 ⋅ U.S. Supreme Court declines VirnetX’s last-ditch effort to argue for reinstatement of its $503 million anti-FaceTime verdict, which Apple defeated on appeal last March.

2024.02.21 ⋅ X (Twitter) stays in compliance with its FTC privacy settlement only because its employees refused to obey Musk’s orders to intentionally violate it.

2024.02.29 ⋅ NSO Group, maker of anti-iPhone spyware that was used against numerous U.S. govt. officials, and which is being sued by multiple companies for violating their users’ privacy, now court-ordered to hand over its source code to the plaintiffs.

2024.03.04 ⋅ EU regulator fines Apple $2 billion on behalf of Spotify; Apple releases a public statement arguing against the decision, and announcing its intention to appeal.

2024.03.06 ⋅ Soon after Epic creates a new iOS developer account for purposes of developing an EU DMA alternate app store for iOS, Apple deletes it, on the grounds that Epic is “verifiably untrustworthy” due to its history of “egregious breach of its contractual ob­li­ga­tions to Apple”. (Two-day update: After Epic reportedly promises to follow Apple’s rules, Apple reinstates Epic’s new account.)

2024.03.21 ⋅ US DOJ sues Apple for antitrust, because Apple’s products generally work better with each other than they do with its competitors’ products, and because color-coding SMS messages green (as Apple’s messaging app has done since iPhone launched in 2007 and didn’t do any other kind of instant message besides SMS) sends a psychological signal to i­Phone users that other companies’ smartphones are inferior. The DOJ also blames iPhone for killing Am­a­zon’s Fire phone, Microsoft’s Windows Phone, and smartphones from HTC and LG, which might actually be true, though perhaps not in an illegal way.

2024.04.01 ⋅ Apple apparently explains to India’s Enforcement Directorate that an iPhone cannot be unlocked without supplying the user’s password, after the ED asks Apple to unlock the iPhone of the Prime Minister’s main political ri­val, who is currently jailed on corruption charges.

2024.04.05 ⋅ Likely in reaction to “new regulations introduced by the Monetary Authority of Singapore,” on July 1 Apple will stop everyone in Singapore from spending any money on their Apple ID balances, and will refund that money to the users in cash. All use of Apple gift cards also is ended in Singapore. (One-week update: Details on why this happened are hard to come by, but my best speculation is that Singapore passed rules that require Apple to refund scam victims who buy and give away Apple gift cards or their Apple ID balance — so Apple just terminated all use of gift cards and Apple ID balance in Singapore: problem solved.)

2024.04.12 ⋅ Google comments on Sweeney’s latest demands:

Epic’s filing to the US Federal Court shows again that it simply wants the benefits of Google Play without having to pay for it.

See also:
iOS Jailbreaking — A Perhaps-Biased Assessment
&
A Secure Backdoor Is Feasible
&
Method of Implementing A Secure Backdoor In Mobile Devices
&
When Starting A Game of Chicken With Apple, Expect To Lose
&
Make Your Own FBI iPhone Backdoor, Right Now
&
Tim Sweeney Plays Dumb
&
Apple Wants User/Developer Choice; Its Enemies Want Apple Ruin

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