Apple threatens to kill Unreal Engine on iOS, Fornite may never return

[betatestedurm0m]

On 8/17/2020 at 9:05 PM, Pickles - Lord of the Jar said:

then ALL unreal engine stuff would have to be removed

No I don’t think this is true. Removing ALL apps that run on the Unreal Engine cannot earn Apple any good press. There’s absolutely no reason they would do that. If they did they would instantly receive more lawsuits.

 

From what I gather the clause Apple put out states that they’ll stop optimising for and supporting the Unreal Engine. Of course there are probably ways Epic’s investors can circumvent this.

[Kisai]

11 minutes ago, betatestedurm0m said:

No I don’t think this is true. Removing ALL apps that run on the Unreal Engine cannot earn Apple any good press. There’s absolutely no reason they would do that. If they did they would instantly receive more lawsuits.

 

From what I gather the clause Apple put out states that they’ll stop optimising for and supporting the Unreal Engine. Of course there are probably ways Epic’s investors can circumvent this.

 

I think the point being missed is that Epic can't update Unreal engine for iOS. Developers using Unreal Engine will just be unable to update the engine, and most developers don't update the engine anyway because too much crap breaks between even minor version numbers in pretty much all middleware. If you decide to build a game using X engine 1.0 and Apple decides to depreciate a feature for iOS 20 that X engine relies on, the game dev isn't going to release engine 1.0 that uses iOS 20 API, not a 2.0 with backwards compatible with 1.0, they're going to just release 2.0 with the depreciated feature removed and all the new API changes made.

 

At any rate, Unreal Engine is not the only thing out there (Source2, Unity (yuck) and Godot) are all options for new developers, and in most cases Unity is more than enough for Mobile phones and Nintendo consoles.

[Mark Kaine]

On 8/19/2020 at 2:54 PM, mr moose said:

 

Absolutely it is how it works, but nice of you to cut out all the explanation and fail to explain why you don't think it works that way.  Perhaps you could link me to authority on the subject (government trade commission or law library) that details how it fails to be a monopoly.  I mean we have linked to several now that clearly show it is, there are several cases now taking apple to court (including one that was green lit by a judge to go to trial) because the accusations and evidence satisfy the criteria that anti trust is occurring,   

 

I know some people really don't want it to be the case, god only knows why, all consumers should be fighting for more options not less. 

I do not have any doubt that there are forces who want to change what a monopoly actually is.  Measly 50% or whatever is *not* a monopoly by any means of the word and legal interpretation currently.  And selling only goods *you* want to sell in *your* store is also not a monopoly,  quite the opposite, it's what a free market is all about.  Currently. 

 

Again I do not doubt that there are forces who want this all changed,  I just hope that the people deciding over it will see the negatively far reaching consequences of such a tremendous change of rules. 

 

That would mean pretty much every single platform would now suddenly be a monopoly (at least the digital ones,  because apparently for physical goods completely different rules apply)

 

 

PS: I'm also not opposed to change how digital distribution of digital goods currently works,  but saying it's for "monopoly" reasons is the wrong way to go about it,  with possibly catastrophic consequences, economically   which is why I think this whole epic episode is destined to fail.

 

It's possible some changes come out of it tho and I hope it's the right ones,  ie more consumer rights,  reselling of digital goods ,  no more region locking,  universal software licenses etc etc. and not as currently proposed a free reign for a trash company like epic to sell their trash products with even more profit and extended anti consumer practices... 

[mr moose]

19 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

I do not have any doubt that there are forces who want to change what a monopoly actually is.  Measly 50% or whatever is *not* a monopoly by any means of the word and legal interpretation currently.  And selling only goods *you* want to sell in *your* store is also not a monopoly,  quite the opposite, it's what a free market is all about.  Currently. 

 

Again I do not doubt that there are forces who want this all changed,  I just hope that the people deciding over it will see the negatively far reaching consequences of such a tremendous change of rules. 

 

That would mean pretty much every single platform would now suddenly be a monopoly (at least the digital ones,  because apparently for physical goods completely different rules apply)

Again you are assuming the percentage dictates if it is a monopoly or not, that 50% does not make it a monopoly and it doesn't make it not a monopoly.  Market power dictates if it is a monopoly for the purpose of anti trust.   And yes similar platforms (google search and their android apps whilst controlling the app store) have already been deemed a monopoly.  Windows is a monopoly only when it does something that prevents others from carrying out legal business.   The issue with digital goods in many countries is that consumer law hasn't caught up yet, it is still founded on the market of physical goods.  

 

 

19 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

PS: I'm also not opposed to change how digital distribution of digital goods currently works,  but saying it's for "monopoly" reasons is the wrong way to go about it,  with possibly catastrophic consequences, economically   which is why I think this whole epic episode is destined to fail.

It never hurt windows or mac to allow consumers to buy software from wherever they want.  It certainly didn't deter developers from making apps for those operating systems.  In fact the ability to make an app for window and sell it on your own website is why we have so many options, (including many free ones).

19 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

It's possible some changes come out of it tho and I hope it's the right ones,  ie more consumer rights,  reselling of digital goods ,  no more region locking,  universal software licenses etc etc. and not as currently proposed a free reign for a trash company like epic to sell their trash products with even more profit and extended anti consumer practices... 

 

A large part of consumer rights is not having to buy a new phone in order to have a choice then discover you are just locked into a different store. 

 

I hope Epic win and the right to repair case wins and forces all digital platforms to drop all forms of walled gardens and limitations.  They are all artificial and serve only to extract more money from consumers by controlling what they can buy and where they can buy it.

 

 

[Kisai]

10 minutes ago, mr moose said:

It never hurt windows or mac to allow consumers to buy software from wherever they want.  It certainly didn't deter developers from making apps for those operating systems.  In fact the ability to make an app for window and sell it on your own website is why we have so many options, (including many free ones).

 

That is wrong by a very large measure. The PC and Mac let you sideload because that's how they always operated and to disable that would disable practically everything. Adobe and Autodesk would have an absolute fit and so would their customers. Adobe has their own cloud nonsense. Good luck getting those companies to play ball by forcing them into the Microsoft or Mac app store.

 

Those companies have a lot more leverage over Microsoft than they do Apple.

https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/photoshop-elements/kb/purchases-mac-app-store-faq.html

Quote

What Adobe products are available for purchase through the Mac App Store?

• July 19, 2011: Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Editor (discontinued)
• October 26, 2011: Adobe Revel
• November 6, 2011: Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 Editor (discontinued)
• November 6, 2011: Adobe Premiere Elements 10 Editor (discontinued)
• May 10, 2012: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 (discontinued)
• March 13, 2013: Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 Editor (discontinued)
• April 11, 2014: Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 Editor (discontinued)
• May 6, 2015: Adobe Photoshop Elements 13 & Adobe Premiere Elements 13 (discontinued)
• March 15, 2016: Adobe Photoshop Elements 14 (discontinued)
• November 17, 2016: Adobe Photoshop Elements 15 (discontinued)
• November 13, 2017: Adobe Photoshop Elements 2018 (discontinued)
• November 18, 2018: Adobe Photoshop Elements 2019

Notice the only product that is in the app store is the Photoshop elements, and they discontinue it every year. Everything else, use their cloud service. Even enterprise versions are a bit of a cluster**** to push.

 

Anyway. Microsoft had no opportunity to force everyone to use their app store. They were not the first mover on it (Valve was, in 2003, and digital sales in 2006.)  Before 2006 is was not any different from any other MMO patcher. Where we are now is Epic wants that pie to itself, and people aren't really compelled to buy into Epic any more than they were compelled to buy into EA Origin or UPlay. Only GoG has any leverage here, and that's because they don't force a dang launcher on their customers. Their downloads are still utterly crappy bloated. Download a 1MB game with a 24MB installer, good grief.

 

Apple has more opportunity to force the App store to be used on the Mac because they've jettisoned 32-bit support. So everything that is built for the Mac -NOW-, was built after the App store was created. However I don't see any removal of the sideloading feature, just it becoming more complicated to use (eg having everything you sideload be sampled and sent to apple to block known malicious software.)

 

Pirates hate it of course. Hackers (as in cheaters) also hate this kind of thing. They don't want the app stores to exist so they can pirate everything and wreck online games for lulz.

[mr moose]

7 minutes ago, Kisai said:

That is wrong by a very large measure.

How is it wrong. 

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

20 minutes ago, Kisai said:

 

Pirates hate it of course. Hackers (as in cheaters) also hate this kind of thing. They don't want the app stores to exist so they can pirate everything and wreck online games for lulz

Oh... Cute. You think app stores stop pirates.

[Kisai]

32 minutes ago, TheTechWizardThatNeedsHelp said:

Oh... Cute. You think app stores stop pirates.

Go google "cydia ban pubg". Pirates don't care. Hackers(cheaters) ruin the experience for paying customers by which the game dev has incentive to detect hacked/pirate versions of games. That's easier to do when the process to get hacked crap on the device is already difficult and risks destroying the device.

 

46 minutes ago, mr moose said:

How is it wrong. 

 

Because both Windows and MacOS warn you more than once that you've potentially downloaded something dangerous, are you sure you want to run/install this?

Go give Leonard French a watch:

 

He doesn't see a something that Epic could win on. Oh and actually watch the video. Pretty much everything said in this thread already.

 

 

 

[mr moose]

9 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Go google "cydia ban pubg". Pirates don't care. Hackers(cheaters) ruin the experience for paying customers by which the game dev has incentive to detect hacked/pirate versions of games. That's easier to do when the process to get hacked crap on the device is already difficult and risks destroying the device.

 

Because both Windows and MacOS warn you more than once that you've potentially downloaded something dangerous, are you sure you want to run/install this?

Go give Leonard French a watch:

 

He doesn't see a something that Epic could win on. Oh and actually watch the video. Pretty much everything said in this thread already.

 

 

 

So when I say that developers being able to sell software off of their own websites has been great for the industry rather than cost it, you say that's wrong and your reason is windows gives you several warnings?  

 

I'm sorry but I really don't think you  read my post.  The issue presented was that we need a walled garden because allowing people to sell apps outside of such stores would be financially detrimental.  I pointed out that that is the way the whole industry has evolved, it is built on people having the freedom to write and sell whatever software they want.   The concept of side loading never existed until apple and google came along because technically everything was side loaded until then. Even pocketpc/windows CE and palm devices allowed you to load on any software you wanted. 

[Kisai]

10 minutes ago, mr moose said:

So when I say that developers being able to sell software of their own websites has been great for the industry rather than cost it, you say that's wrong and you reason is windows gives you several warnings?  

 

I'm sorry but I really don't think you  read my post.  The issue presented was that we need a walled garden because allowing people to sell apps outside of such stores would be financially detrimental.  I pointed out that that is the way the whole industry has evolved, it is built on people having the freedom to write and sell whatever software they want.   The concept of side loading never existed until apple and google came along because technically everything was side loaded until then. Even pocketpc/windows CE and palm devices allowed you to load on any software you wanted. 

Nope. The concept of sideloading has existed since the Atari 2600. Remember Nintendo's lockout chip?  Remember what EA did to Sega for the Sega Genesis?

https://bluetoad.com/display_article.php?id=773681

Quote

By exerting near total control over any publisher who wanted to work on its platforms, Nintendo essentially operated like a legal extortionist under the guise of the license agreement. Even if you created a game that would fly off store shelves if given the opportunity, Nintendo could freeze you out of the market if didn’t like the game, decided it was too similar to one of its own games and thus cut into their profits, or felt the content didn’t fit with its vision of the console.

EA wasn’t interested in willingly participating in this punishing one-sided relationship, so it started looking for other options. Sega had just released a new 16-bit console called the Genesis and it would soon debut in North America. EA just happened to have several successful 16-bit titles from the Commodore, Amiga, and IBM PC that would be a natural fit.

A Modest Proposal

When EA inquired about publishing its games on the Genesis, the executives felt their proposal would be met with open arms. After all, Sega’s Master System floundered due to a shallow game catalog, garnering a mere three-percent market share. With EA’s developmental chops and library of proven games on board, the Genesis would have a fighting chance.

“We said, ‘You’re coming out with this system and you’re nowhere, but we have games,’” Gordon recalls. “’We’ll make a bunch of games, but you have to give us a different license than Nintendo because you’re nowhere. We’re your lone partner.’”

Instead of embracing the logic in EA’s proposal, Sega of America president Mike Katz had other ideas. Sega wanted to emulate the Nintendo licensing agreement system, leaving little to no negotiation room for third-party publishers.

“Sega said, ‘No. We’re going to be as important as Nintendo and we’re not going to back down,’” Gordon remembers.

Sega’s stingy response amazed EA. “You’re so stupid,” Gordon recalls thinking. “You can get to the majority of the market with third-party support. Change the rules or we can’t commit.”

The discussion went back and forth for nearly a year, until a Sega executive boldly told Gordon, “If you want a different deal you’re going to have to reverse engineer the system, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t say anything, but I went home and took notes in case of deposition – because it turned out that we had a few engineers,” Gordon says.

Sega had thrown down the gauntlet, and EA gladly picked it up. Under the guidance of its legal counsel, the company gave two of its most talented engineers the green light to attempt a clean room reverse engineering job on the Genesis.
 

...

The Gambit

In preparation of the big reveal, EA booked a booth at the 1990 Consumer Electronics Show, with plans to showcase seven titles. In those pre-E3 years, CES was the go-to convention for gaming companies. Riding the success of its recent Game Boy launch and the NES’ dominant market share, Nintendo planned to show off the legendary title Super Mario Bros. 3. At the same time, Sega was planning a proper introduction to the Genesis, which had just launched in August, and NEC was touting its new TurboGrafx-16 console as a must-have device thanks to a new title called Bonk’s Adventure.

The night before the show began, Trip Hawkins met with Sega CEO Hayao Nakayama and informed him of his company’s bold feat. “We basically said, ‘We’re going to run our own licensing program unless you agree to our terms,’” Gordon says.

Sega was caught in an uncomfortable position. If EA went ahead with its licensing program, the console manufacturer would be losing a significant portion of the profit that traditionally comes with the territory. EA could essentially reach out to other publishers and offer better returns and cheaper manufacturing costs than Sega was willing to do. The meeting lasted through the night, and in the morning Sega acquiesced.

In exchange for agreeing to join Sega’s licensing program, EA would be allowed to manufacture its own Genesis cartridges, could make as many games as it wanted, and received a more favorable royalty rate. The next day at CES there was a wall of 16-bit Electronic Arts titles running on the Sega Genesis.

This is literately a page out of EA's underhanded playbook. Sega somehow decided not to sue EA into oblivion.

 

Then there is the actual lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade with a different company, which is why Emulators are technically legal, and merely RE'ing the BIOS is fair use.

 

As a side note, Sega appears to have quite a terrible record at defending their IP.

 

[mr moose]

10 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Nope. The concept of sideloading has existed since the Atari 2600. Remember Nintendo's lockout chip?  Remember what EA did to Sega for the Sega Genesis?

https://bluetoad.com/display_article.php?id=773681

This is literately a page out of EA's underhanded playbook. Sega somehow decided not to sue EA into oblivion.

 

Then there is the actual lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade with a different company, which is why Emulators are technically legal, and merely RE'ing the BIOS is fair use.

 

As a side note, Sega appears to have quite a terrible record at defending their IP.

 

What games were sideloaded on an atari 2600?    Those things were cartridge and a cartridge was the only way to do it. 

[Belgarathian]

So according to the contents of Apple's clapback, Tim sent the following e-mail before updating the Google Playstore and App Store apps to include direct payment methods. 

 

Also can we appreciate for a second that Tim Sweeney has 0 skills in contract management and that he signed off an e-mail to Apple C-Suite with ""... Apple is not willing to make changes necessary to allow us to provide android customers..." 

 

 

Souce: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1296918541627793411/photo/1

[Kisai]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

What games were sideloaded on an atari 2600?    Those things were cartridge and a cartridge was the only way to do it. 

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/rarest-and-most-valuable-atari-2600-games

 

Quote

Air Raid was long considered to be a pirate cartridge from South America because of its unusual case and scanline count. Some were later convinced it was indeed a US release from a small LA-based operation. Others argue that the suspicious re-use of code from Space Jockey, absence of advertising, and lacking grammar and punctuation point to it being a Taiwanese hack sold in the States.

Quote

One example of this is Personal Games’ attempt at bringing a customized video game experience for the “perfect” birthday present for a early 80’s video game fan. Birthday Mania cartridges were specially ordered cartridges with personalized title screens and a handy space on the label to write the recipient’s name.  The game played “Happy Birthday” tones before launching into a simple Kaboom / shooter-type game where you “blow out” birthday candles. The game wasn’t especially great and the customizing aspect was minimal.

And so on. As there was no protection mechanism, anyone who know how to make a cartridge, could.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/rarest-and-most-valuable-atari-2600-games

 

And so on. As there was no protection mechanism, anyone who know how to make a cartridge, could.

Pirate cartridges != side loading. 

[Kisai]

Just now, mr moose said:

Pirate cartridges != side loading. 

Pirate software is still unauthorized software that the developer of the console was not paid for.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Pirate software is still unauthorized software that the developer of the console was not paid for.

But that has nothing to do with side loading.

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 minute ago, Kisai said:

Pirate software is still unauthorized software that the developer of the console was not paid for.

Pirate cart =\= pirate software. If you ripp the cart, and put the game on a fake cart, it's a pirate cart, without pirate software, at least if you only use it for personal use and don't sell it.

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

But that has nothing to do with side loading.

 

Still relevant. Why do you think the entire console-licencing scheme exists at all?

 

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Still relevant. Why do you think the entire console-licencing scheme exists at all?

 

If you say so.  

 

The thing that has annoyed me most about all this is that Linux phone didn't take off and that windows phone wasn't x86 compatible (and/or hardware suitable for it).  Once people have the option to install software from anywhere like they can with desktops then we'd see apple and google making a much more concerted effort not to fuck over customers.

 

 

 

 

[HenrySalayne]

25 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Still relevant. Why do you think the entire console-licencing scheme exists at all?

It's not relevant. It was mentioned several times before, that sideloading has nothing to do with jailbreaking. It doesn't allow you to get low level access to the phone to copy apps or install pirated apps. Apple is still in control of their OS.

If someone told you, this is the only thing they could do to prevent piracy, they were lying to you and you fell for it.

[Kisai]

8 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

It's not relevant. It was mentioned several times before, that sideloading has nothing to do with jailbreaking. It doesn't allow you to get low level access to the phone to copy apps or install pirated apps. Apple is still in control of their OS.

If someone told you, this is the only thing they could do to prevent piracy, they were lying to you and you fell for it.

The entire reason lockout chips exist in the NES, is because of game software crash in 1983. Did you know that the lockout chip was only on the US/EU model not the JP model? The point of the lockout chip was two fold

a) Prevent unlicensed (eg shovelware) titles from being on the platform so the Nintendo was seen as a quality device with high quality games

b) Prevent pirated software (a problem with floppy disk, and cassette-tape systems) from being on the system. You could only buy the cartridges from Nintendo.

 

You can not honestly tell me with a straight face that people were making homebrew software for the NES. For the Famicom, maybe.  Hell Atari was one of them under "Tengen" making unlicensed cartridges. This is not unlike the current Epic fight where Epic is trying screw Apple.

[mr moose]

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

This is not unlike the current Epic fight where Epic and Apple are trying screw everyone.

There, I fixed it for you.

[Kisai]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

There, I fixed it for you.

Just because you don't like a business model, doesn't mean it's wrong.

 

I'd much rather be able to install MacOS X on a whitebox PC or iOS on a device with a much bigger battery, but neither of those things are ever happening, and the market trend it always to protect your revenue sources. It would be a different thing if Apple only sold hardware like Dell or HP. But you're still paying the Microsoft tax, regardless if you use that Microsoft licence or not. A Mac is the only PC that you don't pay the Microsoft tax on.

 

The only reason Microsoft didn't get broken up is because the judge said things that they shouldn't have.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070929210548/http://www.courttv.com/archive/news/2001/0906/microsoft_ap.html

Quote

Microsoft, which has long resisted a breakup, reacted cautiously to the announcement. "We remain committed to resolving the remaining issues in the case," spokesman Vivek Varma said.

 

The Bush Justice Department said it was dropping two key elements of the Clinton-era case against Microsoft for fear they would lengthen court proceedings and hurt consumers. The department said it "is taking these steps in an effort to obtain prompt, effective and certain relief for consumers."

 

Justice said it would no longer seek to break Microsoft into two companies — one for its Windows operating system and the other for its other business and home software — as U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson once ordered in the case. That order was eventually reversed by an appeals court, and a new judge was appointed to consider a new penalty.

 

The department also said it would not pursue allegations the company had illegally combined a previously separate product — a strategy known as tying or bundling — in an effort to hurt competitors.

Both decisions were victories for Microsoft, which has waged a costly four-year battle to dispute those allegations and has continued to build more features into its products.

 

But the Justice Department said it would seek to stop Microsoft from making certain exclusive deals with partners, forcing computer manufacturers to keep specific icons and programs on the Windows desktop, and other requirements. Those restrictions were also imposed by Jackson, but immediately rescinded when Microsoft appealed the case.

Notice how that last paragraph is similar to the situation with Google and the Android OS.

 

Had Microsoft been split up, at best there would a "Windows (TM)" company and a "Microsoft" and the situation would be much the same as today except the "Windows (TM)" company would be unable to sell Windows with any other software from Microsoft, it would be even more bare bones than MacOS X. So Office and Visual Studio wouldn't ever be part of Windows (TM), making the development of such technology like the Xbox impossible, and devices like the Surface Pro would never happen. What likely would have happened is that an OEM would have acquired the "Windows (TM)" company (eg Dell) to eliminate their Windows Tax, and then we'd be back to the problem that existed before the IBM PC, where all OS's were tied to hardware. And before you say anything, Dell already wanted to do this with Apple/OSX.

 

https://www.cultofmac.com/448147/today-apple-history-michael-dell-says-hed-shut-apple-refund-shareholders/

Quote

October 6, 1997: Michael Dell makes an infamously bleak appraisal of Apple’s fortunes. Asked what he would do with the struggling company, the founder of Dell Inc. says he would “shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

Michael Dell then changed his tune in 2005:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2808951/mac-os-on-a-dell--dell-in-favor--apple-opposed.html

https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/michael_dell_we_would_be_happy_to_offer_the_mac_os

Quote

"If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers," Dell wrote in an email. 

So when stories about companies wanting to buy ARM, you have to consider that this is the business mindset of large OEM's. Buy it, put it on our product, and then cut the competition from using it.

 

Apple's position right now is that they do not have to licence their OS to others, nor their app store. You can certainly put Windows or Linux on a Mac computer. But there is no standard mobile (phone) hardware platform, and there likely will never be, because hardware venders are too interested in keeping their products proprietary, lest they become open and their margins be reduced to almost nothing as in the case of how HP pretty much bought out all the competition they had.

 

Would customers benefit from lower prices? yes. But that requires a complete change in the mobile phone ecosystem where Apple becomes the one not playing ball, and as it stands right now, the Android vendors don't even standardize on cpu parts on their own branded hardware.

 

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

Just because you don't like a business model, doesn't mean it's wrong.

 

I'd much rather be able to install MacOS X on a whitebox PC or iOS on a device with a much bigger battery, but neither of those things are ever happening, and the market trend it always to protect your revenue sources. It would be a different thing if Apple only sold hardware like Dell or HP. But you're still paying the Microsoft tax, regardless if you use that Microsoft licence or not. A Mac is the only PC that you don't pay the Microsoft tax on.

 

The only reason Microsoft didn't get broken up is because the judge said things that they shouldn't have.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070929210548/http://www.courttv.com/archive/news/2001/0906/microsoft_ap.html

Notice how that last paragraph is similar to the situation with Google and the Android OS.

 

Had Microsoft been split up, at best there would a "Windows (TM)" company and a "Microsoft" and the situation would be much the same as today except the "Windows (TM)" company would be unable to sell Windows with any other software from Microsoft, it would be even more bare bones than MacOS X. So Office and Visual Studio wouldn't ever be part of Windows (TM), making the development of such technology like the Xbox impossible, and devices like the Surface Pro would never happen. What likely would have happened is that an OEM would have acquired the "Windows (TM)" company (eg Dell) to eliminate their Windows Tax, and then we'd be back to the problem that existed before the IBM PC, where all OS's were tied to hardware. And before you say anything, Dell already wanted to do this with Apple/OSX.

 

https://www.cultofmac.com/448147/today-apple-history-michael-dell-says-hed-shut-apple-refund-shareholders/

Michael Dell then changed his tune in 2005:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2808951/mac-os-on-a-dell--dell-in-favor--apple-opposed.html

https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/michael_dell_we_would_be_happy_to_offer_the_mac_os

So when stories about companies wanting to buy ARM, you have to consider that this is the business mindset of large OEM's. Buy it, put it on our product, and then cut the competition from using it.

 

Apple's position right now is that they do not have to licence their OS to others, nor their app store. You can certainly put Windows or Linux on a Mac computer. But there is no standard mobile (phone) hardware platform, and there likely will never be, because hardware venders are too interested in keeping their products proprietary, lest they become open and their margins be reduced to almost nothing as in the case of how HP pretty much bought out all the competition they had.

 

Would customers benefit from lower prices? yes. But that requires a complete change in the mobile phone ecosystem where Apple becomes the one not playing ball, and as it stands right now, the Android vendors don't even standardize on cpu parts on their own branded hardware.

 

You are now arguing that a monopoly would lower prices?  That there is no standard mobile platform?  B. No it doesn't and proof is in the evidence of every successful lawsuit (even some unsuccessful ones).  And B. there is a standard platform for mobile, it's called ARM, but even if there wasn't that is not an excuse for monopolistic behavior screwing developers and consumers.

 

You people are trying desperately to divorce the mobile phone from every other personal computational device that plays an intrinsic role in living.   No matter how many times you try to play this argument, all the rational people will just show it for what it is.  Trying to argue that is like insisting you be on the servicing side of the corporate glory hole.   They shove their product through he hole and you argue we have to consume it because they own it.

[Kisai]

Here's why you don't want "sideloading" as a standard feature:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/cheap-chinese-smartphones-malware

The fourth largest handset maker, preloaded malware.

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It was another sale for Transsion, the Chinese company that makes Tecno and other low-priced smartphones, as well as basic handsets, for the developing world. Since releasing its first smartphone in 2014, the upstart has grown to become Africa’s top handset seller, beating out longtime market leaders Samsung and Nokia.

 

I've never heard of this brand.

 

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He thought it might be his fault, but according to an investigation by Secure-D, a mobile security service, and BuzzFeed News, software embedded in his phone right out of the box was draining his data while trying to steal his money. Mxolosi’s Tecno W2 was infected with xHelper and Triada, malware that secretly downloaded apps and attempted to subscribe him to paid services without his knowledge.

This is the kind of crap that is pulled when something allows sideloading, software being installed without your knowledge.

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A Transsion spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that some of the company's Tecno W2 phones contained the hidden Triada and xHelper programs, blaming an unidentified “vendor in the supply chain process.”

So, someone is loading this malware onto the devices before they ever get to the customer. If the ability to sideload didn't exist, or could only be enabled by say.... having the device activated with a sim-card installed, this wouldn't happen. 

 

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Though it’s largely unknown outside of Africa and in developing countries, Transsion is the fourth-biggest handset maker in the world, behind Apple, Samsung, and Huawei, but it’s the only manufacturer in that group to exclusively focus on low-income markets.

 

And less you think this is only a problem for poorer countries:

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People in the United States are also being exploited. Earlier this year, Malwarebytes, a security service, found preinstalled malware of Chinese origin in two phones offered to citizens with low incomes as part of the US government’s Lifeline program, which provides subsidized phones and mobile data. Both phones were made by Chinese companies.

 

Sideloading should not be an option by default, only wiping the firmware+storage by the user. Hence the suggestion a few times in one of these threads that arbitrary side-loading not be permitted. It leaves the person who ultimately uses the device open to malware. 

 

To take this into context with the App store. Let's say Epic's underhanded tactics allows it to get an "Epic store" on the iphone, and then one of the games Epic sells downloads further binaries from the developer to generate cryptocoins on the device. The user never sees this happening.