Court Takes a Battering Ram to Apple's Walled Garden

I'm not a fan of Apple and their walled garden. They have some decent tech, which is too expensive, and they have some questionable software, but they have a few awful business practices. They got pulled up short on some of those business practices on Wednesday, April 30th.

Apple's anticompetitive behavior included (mostly) their 30% tax on every transaction carried out through any app on the phone. Epic Games (the folks behind Fortnite) defied them and were banned, they took Apple to court. Epic even redid the old Apple 1984 commercial. (For those of you too young to remember the 1984 Apple v IBM commercial, it is linked at the bottom.)

And yes, this is mostly Schadenfreude.

"You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain." Apple went from the plucky underdog in 1984 to the villain in 2020.

Yesterday the judge in the case - which was supposed to have been decided in 2021 - told Apple to stop screwing around, and referred them on a Contempt of Court Charge to the DOJ.

From Tech Crunch we get a summary of the ruling: Read the juiciest bits from the Apple-Epic court ruling

That article hits all the highlights.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is pissed off at Apple. Really, really pissed off.

In Rogers’ newly released 80-page decision, she took Apple and its executives to task for defying the court’s orders in its original case with Fortnite maker Epic Games. Though Apple largely won that round, as it was determined the tech giant was not a monopolist, the court decided that Apple was behaving in an anticompetitive fashion in one specific area: by not allowing app developers to offer their customers other ways to pay outside of Apple’s own payment platform.

The entire 80 page ruling can be found at this link: Case No. 4:20-cv-05640-YGR
ORDER GRANTING EPIC GAMES, INC.’S MOTION TO ENFORCE INJUNCTION;
DENYING APPLE INC.’S MOTION TO SET ASIDE JUDGMENT;
DENYING APPLE INC.’S MOTION UNDER FEDERAL RULE OF EVIDENCE 502(D);
DENYING APPLE INC.’S MOTION FOR ENTRY OF JUDGMENT ON ITS INDEMNIFICATION COUNTERCLAIM WITHOUT PREJUDICE; AND
REFERRAL TO THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY RE CRIMINAL CONTEMPT

I. OVERVIEW
For the reasons set forth herein, the Court FINDS Apple in willful violation of this Court’s 2021 Injunction which issued to restrain and prohibit Apple’s anticompetitive conduct and anticompetitive pricing. Apple’s continued attempts to interfere with competition will not be tolerated.

The hat tip for all of this goes to Mutahar at Some Ordinary Gamers and his video Apple Just Got Completely Destroyed In Court....

For the youngsters, here is the Apple 1984 commercial introducing the Macintosh.

And just because... "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 1)" by Pink Floyd