Epic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax" after court win in iOS payments case

I don't believe iOS app reviewers actually do any of that, even if on paper they do.

> I would think making sure outside payment links aren’t scams will be more expensive than that because checking that once isn’t sufficient.

According to the ruling on page 42, "(c) Apple should receive no commission for the security and privacy features it offers to external links, and its calculation of its necessary costs for external links should not include the cost associated with the security and privacy features it offers with its IAP"

I think Apple will have a very hard time arguing that the "reasonable" amount is a percentage of revenue with no cap.

Because Epic hitched their real desire, we want to do digital distribution independent of Apple, to wanting alternative App Stores and alternative payment methods. And Apple responded with a scheme that does the latter without the former.

Sure you can use your own payment processor, we're still charging 27% though. Sure you can have your own App Store, you still have to go through the same review process though.

Antitrust laws were written in the early 1900s and updated through the 1950s. Credit cards weren't available until 1966 and didn't become widely used until the 1990s. Digital platforms weren't a thing until the late 90s/early 2000s and the Apple app store didn't exist until 2008.

The courts can only enforce the laws on the books. Congress needs to update the laws, but they won't because they are hopelessly corrupt :(

> - Force prominent disclosure of refund policies. Epic Games doesn't allow them for IAP. Apple does.

Apple has no official App Store refund policy, either for IAP or for upfront paid apps. I've already looked for one. There's of course a form to request a refund, but refunds are entirely at Apple's discretion, for any reason or no reason, and Apple often exercises its discretion to refuse refunds.

Sorry what's strange about the choice of words "Sweeney wrote on social media"?

The ruling says Apple can:

insist on Apple IAP links/buttons to be the same as buttons/links to external payments. But they can't ask for the outgoing links/buttons to be less prominent

charge for links/buttons to external payment, but not as they please. One interpretation is that it has to be based on real cost and can't in any way be tied to IAP costs.

can't use scare screens on external purchases

>Are these the same thing?

Both articles appear to point at the same 9th circuit appeals court ruling:

The Ars piece points at:

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/US-Co...

Which appears to be the same ruling as the Reuters piece links to:

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/lgvdqxweopo/...

As such, I believe that, yes, this is the same ruling reported by both Ars and Reuters.

Well, yeah..

Devil's always in the details. But in this instance, any even partial win is still a win. Something is better than nothing.

At one point, there was a case for preventing scammy and fraudulent apps. For a long time, the ios App store had a much higher quality than android.

But now? There are tons of scammy and fraudulent apps on the app store. If you try to search for any popular app, you'll be presented with a dozen apps that look similar with similar names and logos.

> Outside of a very narrow use case, the iPad product range is useless, despite the endless rantings of the brainwashed fanboys

The use case is rich iPhone users who want an easy experience to watch videos, read, or consume social media on a larger screen than their phones. It’s especially popular for the children or elderly parents of these rich people. You can argue this use case is narrow, but it’s decently profitable.

Just because this use case doesn’t apply to your experience doesn’t mean anyone who disagrees is a brainwashed fanboy.

I will agree that the iPad Pro range seems overly niche to me — but also it could be I just don’t understand the use case. If someone else finds it productive and pleasant to use, what difference does this make to me or you?

> The walled garden has to end. There is no excuse for making people pay a premium price for an iPad Pro that can't run a third party web browser or do software development in any meaningful way.

Why?

There's an alternative: Android. I'm perfectly free to use that instead. I don't.

If I want to "do software development in any meaningful way", I'm not using a tablet. I'm using something with MacOS or GNU/Linux on it.

People willingly pay what Apple's charging for the iPad in the face of competition from a different OS and different classes of device, so I'm not really seeing the problem, especially when I can hand my technologically-handicapped 65-year-old mother an iPad and not have to worry as much about her installing something that will wreck every device on my parents' network or compromise her bank accounts or something.

Besides, the whole "locked-down device" wasn't Tim's idea, it was Steve's. There are plenty of reasons to gripe about Tim Cook, but "the iPad is too locked down" isn't one of them.

Hard disagree. Tim should focus on fixing their software. It has become extremely buggy and it needs to be fixed. No one buying an iPad cares about running some custom browser and supporting it is pointless and is what makes the software emote complex and worse. He should take better care of his paying customers rather than engaging with opinionated activists.

Tim Cook, or any CEO, is accountable to the shareholders, so job well done it seems. It's still the user's choice if they want to live in the walled garden or not, and lots of people do, so why would they change it?