from Hacker News

A judge just blew up Apple's control of the App Store

by TimCTRL on 4/30/25, 11:03 PM with 18 comments

  • by elpool2 on 4/30/25, 11:49 PM

    "To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath"

    Yikes. I really thought Apple was going to get away with all their crazy restrictions they came up with after the previous ruling (and maybe they still will, who knows) but this looks pretty bad for them.

  • by lordleft on 4/30/25, 11:06 PM

    I am in favor of these changes.

    At the very least, not allowing apps to MENTION the fact that you can purchase items outside an app is ridiculously anti-competitive.

    The truth is that we would never accept this behavior on a traditional desktop OS, but we've tolerated it in the context of iOS. I think that's arbitrary and I hope this ruling sticks.

  • by mil22 on 5/1/25, 12:05 AM

    About time. I'm tired of apologizing to customers who purchase subscriptions in my app only to discover they could have purchased the exact the same thing for 15% less from my website. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  • by amluto on 5/1/25, 3:10 AM

  • by afavour on 4/30/25, 11:26 PM

    > Rogers’ 2021 ruling forced Apple to allow developers to point to alternative payment options. But Apple instituted a policy that demanded developers pay Apple a 27 percent commission on those purchases

    > The judge also referred the case to the US attorney to review it for possible criminal contempt proceedings.

    Of course in the current climate who knows if anything will end up happening but all the same: good. It’s about time we started to see consequences for blatantly deliberate misinterpretation of court rulings.

  • by ChrisArchitect on 5/1/25, 2:59 AM

  • by chipgap98 on 5/1/25, 12:02 AM

    This is a pretty massive ruling if it holds up

  • by nojvek on 5/1/25, 10:04 AM

    I guess let’s see how many millions Tim Cook will give Trump so Supreme Court can make a different ruling.

    This is worth Billions to Apple. Perhaps more when the stock tanks due to the ruling.

  • by curiousWaste on 4/30/25, 11:13 PM

    Why doesnt apple just ban apps that do this. Or start charging for bandwidth