The top brass at Apple just think they are above everyone else. Remember when Tim Cook lied about Apple not giving anyone special terms in the app store and that everyone gets the same deal. And then it came out Netflix was one that got special terms?
The sheer arrogance of Apple leaders is astounding. They think they are outright owed rent on anything that runs on an iPhone, iPad, etc. Apple thinks developers are nothing without Apple. Look at how snubbing developers has worked out for the Apple Vision Pro. It was already a niche device, but it's a ghost town.
Apple always has been like that, see The Cult of Mac book.
However, it appears being at the edge of bankruptcy, and having turned the ship around has made them paranoid of losing a single cent.
When Apple Store came out it was great.
I was a Nokia employee at the time, and 30% was a dream compared with what you would have to pay to phone operators, app listenings in magazines with SMS download codes, for Blackberry, Symbian, Windows CE, Pocket PC, Brew, J2ME,...
However we are now in different times, and acting as if the developers didn't have anything to do with it, it was all thanks to Apple's vision of the future, it is pure arrogance, and yes the Vision Pro was the first victim.
Here is another one, if they do really announce an UI revamp at WWDC 2025, I bet most will ignore it.
"In 2013 i met a very close friend of Steve Jobs and i remember saying "there's one thing i absolutely have to know, it's really important to me" he responds "okay what is it?"
I ask "what was all the money for?!" puzzled "what do you mean?" "Steve Jobs saved up like 200 billion dollars in cash at Apple, but what was it all for? what was the plan? was he going to buy AT&T? was he going to build his own telecom or make a giant spaceship? what was it for?"
And he looked at me with just the deepest and saddest eyes and spoke softly "there was no plan" "what??" "you see, Steve's previous company, NeXT, it ran out of money, so at with Apple he always wanted a pile of money on the side, just in case. and over years, the pile grew and grew and grew... and there was no plan..."
Totally believable. My grandmother lived though the great depression, wherein she was lucky to get an Orange at christmas. The last few decades of her life she basically was a food hoarder, pantries overflowing with canned goods, and a freezer where you never saw the back.
When I was a kid I did odd jobs, and one of the odd jobs was cleaning out a semi-hoarder’s house after he’d passed away (iirc he’d lived through the Great Depression). Not like you see on TV, with the heaps and heaps of garbage. Maybe like your grandmother, tons of… basically well organized supplies and stuff.
I dunno. Toilet paper, some canned goods, lighters, I guess that stuff all lasts decades if stored properly. Takes up a lot is space, though, and your descendants might have to pay some kid to throw it all away if you don’t use it up in time…
But, some folks wished they were toilet paper hoarders during the pandemic I guess. Wonder what the kids of 2060 will be throwing away as a result of our life-experiences.
> Wonder what the kids of 2060 will be throwing away as a result of our life-experiences.
EOL devices(tablets, phones, macbooks, thinkpads, hobby electronics boards, home lab equipments, hdd and ssd full of archive data, swag from conferences, outdated books on product and programming, smart watches etc).
The only way that differs "any corp" is that in most publicly corporations, you want to return that money to your shareholders - and they sit on it for the same reason. IE, this just says Jobs ran Apple as his personal fife. But since he made lots of money, no one cared.
I’m a shareholder, and I would rather that money be used to grow stock price (since it is already at a business known for creating new products and markets).
If I get a dividend, I have to pay tax today. And then I just turn around and buy more stock with post tax income?
If I can sell the share at a higher price when I want the cash, then I can pay the tax whenever I want, possibly under more preferable terms.
> However, it appears being at the edge of bankruptcy, and having turned the ship around has made them paranoid of losing a single cent.
That was more than 20 years ago, under a totally different market condition and Apple leadership. Back then, they needed developers to turn the ship around, now they think devs need them. They's a cash cow and act like assholes.
> Back then, they needed developers to turn the ship around, now they think devs need them.
No, that's the opposite of what actually happened with the iPhone. Back in 2007, Apple actually saw evidence from the customer buying frenzy that Apple didn't need 3rd-party devs to make iPhone a wild success. After the very desirable iPhones got into millions of customers hands, it was the 3rd-party devs that needed Apple more than Apple needed the 3rd-party ecosystem as I've mentioned before:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39291668
Maybe an alternate history would have had all the 3rd-party devs deliberately boycott Apple iOS and thus only create apps for Android in 2008. We now know that didn't happen so we'll never know if devs realistically had enough leverage back in 2008 to alter Apple's App Store commission structure and policies.
The iPhone was so desirable as a platform that new popular apps like Instagram and WhatsApp were released for Apple iPhones months before Android.
The OP isn't talking about iPhone devs, they're talking about a decade before that when Apple was called 'Apple Computer' and had mad a series of bad business choices (confusing product line up, allowing other companies to make Mac clones, etc).
Developers had started to abandon the Mac OS platform - or at least start making Windows versions of previously Mac-only software - and getting developer confidence back was one of the key things that kept the company alive to grow into the consumer electronics manufacturer that it is today.
There were multiple narrative streams happening in this subthread. I was working off the beginning context of iPhone:
>arrogance of Apple leaders is astounding. They think they are outright owed rent on anything that runs on an iPhone, iPad
Yes, poster pjmlp was talking about 1997. The "Apple needed devs" for that time bankruptcy period was more about Steve Jobs asking Bill Gates to continue supporting Macs with Microsoft Office. (The famous Bill Gates giant face at MacWorld presentation.) That didn't seem to the 3rd-party devs that was started by the subthread of "iPhones".
The next reply of ", now they think devs need them." is what happened with iPhones which makes it different from 1997.
Honestly, I think they're less jealous of money than rep. A man like Jobs would rather die under torture than be laughed at, and even almost 15 years gone, we still see his mark.
> Look at how snubbing developers has worked out for the Apple Vision Pro.
I think it's mostly the lack of users. Apple snubs mobile developers all the time, but since they gate access to a large chunk of well-paying customers, developers are ready to jump through any hoops.
If there were millions of Apple Vision Pro users I'm sure the developers would have followed, but it's of course a chicken and egg situation considering Vision Pro lack of content.
It's not really a chicken and egg situation, it's more of a cost problem. It still costs $3500. Even if the next version is a third of the price it will still cost three times more than the competition.
And if I'm buying it as a devkit I'm sure my accountant and I will find a way to write that off, anyway. $3500 isn't quite pocket change, but it is close enough to petty cash. But why do that if there's no users? And even the day-one diehards among my colleagues stopped wanting to be seen in them before long.
I think it isn't really chicken-egg, is what I'm saying. Devs were so hot to target iPhone from day one that the first or second major OS update added an entire infrastructure to make that possible. There was so much interest it made Apple back down! For the Vision Pro they had that on day one and it wasn't nearly enough to sell the thing to devs, because again, nothing did nearly enough to sell the thing to users.
What made the early apps great and viral on iPhone were the indie developers. The ones making flashlight and farting sound boards. They paved the way, and for them $3500 is a lot of money.
Who cares if it’s pocket change for google or meta, nobody wants another Facebook app.
$3500 doesn't matter at all for developers. It matters for users. If there are a billion users, devs will pay $3500 for access no problem. But you can't get a billion users for a $3500 product unless it's at least as useful as a car.
Sure. And those early indie devs paid, inflation adjusted, iirc around $500-1000 for the hardware they developed against to put those indie flashlight fart noise apps on the then nascent App Store, because that's what an iPhone cost.
$3500 is, as I said, pretty close to petty cash even for a sole-owner LLC that needs taking at all seriously, and I would front that sum without a second thought out of my own personal pocket if I thought VR had legs, the same way I've put about $9k toward inference-capable hardware in the last two years because AI obviously does have legs. It's an investment in my career, or at least toward the optionality of continuing a career in software in a post-AI world, assuming I don't decide to go be an attorney or something instead.
I appreciate not everyone can drop a sum like that, like that. I can and I'm not ashamed of it. Why should I be, when it's exactly what I've worked the last 21 years straight to earn?
I think the issue is less the cost to developers and more the cost to users. Were there more users, no doubt a larger number of indie developers would be able to justify the expense. Without those users--or at least a reliable promise of those users in the near future--it's tough to justify even dipping your toes into it. It's a chicken and egg problem that's fundamentally tied to cost as well as hardware limitations. Discomfort from the bulk and weight was my biggest sticking point even before the price, for example.
Plus, the hardware is just the initial starting point. Your initial outlay will quickly be eclipsed by the dev hours spent working on Vision versions of your app(s), and that's when the opportunity costs become particularly noticeable. Time spent on a Vision app that may have no real market for years is time you could be spending adding features, testing changes, fixing bugs, marketing, etc. Skipping on Vision Pro is really a no-brainer for most indie developers, at least for the foreseeable future.
The price isn't as much of a problem for developer adoption, it's a problem for user adoption. Users aren't buying the Apple Vision Pro because it's $3500. Developers aren't writing apps for the Apple Vision Pro because it has no users.
Why the downvotes about an anecdote about the owner of (actually a couple of) software companies? She gives talks, in those talks she says she makes more money off iOS apps than other platforms. You can probably find a few of those talks on Youtube.
What killed the Vision Pro is the complete lack of support for the two main things people use VR for. Productivity is a distant third behind the likes of VR Chat and pornography. If Apple managed to capture only 1% of VR Chat's monthly userbase, they would've tripled their pathetic sales numbers.
Apple tried to focus on productivity and some light entertainment and didn't even throw the other two a bone by supporting a PC link feature. Particularly they didn't make a physical link possible - Wifi is not reliable/high bandwidth enough for most people, so those third party solutions aren't cutting it.
Apple users are mostly locked out of the existing PC VR ecosystem - Apple didn't have to rely on developers writing dedicated apps.
I bought the AVP for one thing only - long haul flights. It makes the experience completely and utterly different, and it's less than the cost of a business seat.
I wouldn't blame them, Americans on the whole fall over themselves to defend Apple. Apple is the magic entity that figured out how to send full videos and pictures in text messages. Something a google android could never figure out. Apple phones didn't come bloated with garbage. You go to the apple store for help rather than the verizon store. You are above others when you have an iPhone.
Apple's external veneer is stellar, and the overwhelming majority of people don't know and don't care what it is holding up that veneer.
I want Apple to protect me from app developers. For me, it’s a feature not a bug.
I want them to prevent social media companies from tracking my device across my other apps.
I want them to integrate billing so I can easily cancel subscriptions or get refunds.
I want them to require Oauth that allows me to keep my email private from app developers.
These features make my customer experience better not worse. I’m sorry it sucks for app developers to make less money but for customers it’s mostly a good thing.
Being a hacker means having curiosity about the things around you, having the desire to be able to change and understand things.
On android, I wrote small toy apps for myself, I could build and self-sign an APK, I could poke at how the system worked and read all the source code I wanted.
Tragically, due to blue bubbles and group chats within my family, I was forced to switch to iOS, and I thought sure, it wouldn't be so bad...
No, it sucks for hackers, you can't build and sign apps from linux reliably, you need an apple account and to pay $100 even if you do have a macbook, the APIs are limited, you can't see the source code for the most of the kernel or platform, apple has a ton of APIs you're not allowed to use.
My firefox addons I developed for myself installed fine on android, but I can't even use those on iOS.
You weren't forced to do anything. You submitted to peer pressure, and that was a decision that, along with millions of others making that same decision, led to the current state. The very state that you're now complaining about.
> I want them to prevent social media companies from tracking my device across my other apps.
Apple is the one who implements the advertising ID companies use to track you. And preventing that tracking is a is-level feature, not a thing they review out of app.
> I want them to require Oauth that allows me to keep my email private from app developers.
Have you ever used a PC or laptop? I bet you have at least a computer and the fact that you can download and install software without an intermediary doesn't make you lose any of the things mentioned above.
Requires, no but in all regards it’s a great deal for app developers. You write code they do everything else. You want options? They exist (Windows/Android) but are all shitified minefields of commercial ads and poor design choices that I only use when required. Is Apple perfect? No far from it. When I buy and use their products though I feel more like the customer than the product. It’s a tool built for me not their advertisers.
App devs hate "paying" the 30% cut, but often aren't smart enough to realize that they make more on iOS than Android specifically because it's a high-trust environment and people trust that Apple has their back.
There's a reason most of us app devs make most of our money on Apple devices.
And it is the same cut that console companies take from developers. And then when we point this out, people respond with some bullshit that consoles are not "general purpose computers"...
Consoles are trivially avoidable. Family group chats that require a blue-bubble-capable phone, grandmothers that only know how to use facetime, those are actually important.
I can't get into my coworking space without a door unlock app on my phone.
On the other hand, exactly 0 times in my life have I ever been told "yeah, you need to own an xbox to go to the dentist's office".
Phones are indeed in a different class from game consoles and should be held to a higher standard.
But yes, also, game consoles should allow you to develop your own programs and side-load them.
> Family group chats that require a blue-bubble-capable phone
This is a social walled garden they've built over years and has been solidified by users choosing it over and over again. Are they exploiting our brain's capacities regarding social pressure to extract profit? Sure, but so does every fast food company, social media company, marketing company, etc.
I think it's interesting that you phrase it as "require" regarding a group chat made by your family members. Apple doesn't require this, your family members chose Apple when they purchased their phones.
And they also tie you into systems you don't control. That power can be wielded against you when you least expect it. When you trade security for freedom, you deserve neither.
If privacy or security protections are opt-out, Facebook, et al. will try to use any leverage they can to push their users to opt out. There's real value in a platform that doesn't give Facebook, et al. that opportunity. There are also obvious downsides; it's a tradeoff that might not be right for you but definitely isn't one-sided.
Every attempt at providing the general public with an "informed consent" escape hatch to security or privacy features ends degrading to either consent fatigue or "misinformed consent" dark patterns.
The rent-seeking is fundamentally a separate issue from the paternalism. Lots of the anti-Apple lobbying and PR is drawing attention to the 30% fees, but for many of those companies, they care much more about winning the freedom to spy on their users or engage in other predatory or abusive business practices.
But aside from that, you cannot simply point people at the approach that led to Windows UAC and GDPR cookie consent banners and consider the problem adequately solved.
The problem is that other apps advertise on Facebook, and in order to attribute new installations to the ads (to find out how effective they are), they had to add the Facebook SDK in those other apps. Then when the social media-avoiding users ran those other apps, they ran Facebook code on their device without knowing and still got tracked.
This is what Apple’s ATT was designed to prevent. If app developers want to do that now, they need to ask the user for permission. The more Apple’s control over the platform is rolled back, the more stuff like this happens.
As a user, I don’t want to be using, say, a recipe app and be secretly tracked by Facebook in the background.
Not magic although it seems like it. Pixel perfect graphics and smooth video go a long way even if you’re not a graphic designer. Silicon Graphics had this figured out.
> Americans on the whole fall over themselves to defend Apple.
What does it have to do with nationality? I've seen Apple fanboys from all countries. Sure, Apple's market share in the US relative to other phone manufacturers is high, but that's mostly due to the "trust" Americans have in US-based companies (you can argue this trust is misplaced).
Well they've been getting away with it for years seemingly without any real consequences. Why should we assume corporations behave morally when there are no sanctions?
It's been under a month since Apple's lawyer took over the NLRB and immediately made a bunch of lawsuits over union suppression, employee rights and widespread employee harassment go away.
I'm hoping this judge's ruling will actually be enforced by the executive branch, but I'm not holding my breath. I wonder if there are any mechanisms that allow state law enforcement to enforce federal judicial orders.
if it’s anything like wells fargo 8 million fine for opening up bank accounts in peoples names without their knowledge... after a 1 million donation to trump’s inauguration the fine will go down to 150,000 dollars.
>Look at how snubbing developers has worked out for the Apple Vision Pro. It was already a niche device, but it's a ghost town.
This isn’t really about that. The reality is that the AVP costs $3500,- and realistically, how many users are there? It’s much more likely that developers will begin building for VisionOS once Apple releases a more affordable device.
> The reality is that the AVP costs $3500,- and realistically, how many users are there?
This is exactly what everyone said about the original Macintosh, which cost $7,695 in 2025 dollars. The prediction value of the price of this AVP model is close to zero.
This is the reality of development when you don't have support from developers - they will follow the money.
Contrast this with early iPhone app development where people were turning out in droves EXCITED to build something.
Apple has lost the trust and enthusiasm of the developer community by making their lives harder and harder over time. Of course they aren't going to lift a finger now unless it will make them money. The same wouldn't be true if Apple provided them the support to get excited about a new platform.
Unfortunately their arrogance isn't false bravado. iPhones brand is extremely strong. Funny aside I know many women who won't date men who's text come up in green bubbles... thats branding.
>Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. The real evidence, detailed herein, more than meets the clear and convincing standard to find a violation.
Judging by tech, apple is right now in deep water due to the failure of delivering apple intelligence and a major drop in software quality.
Judging by political positioning, cook’s donation to trump’s inauguration didn’t sit well with the fanbase.
Now, it seems Cook is going for shady behavior against judges.
Maybe it’s time for a major change of leadership. Financially they might be ok, but one can’t avoid the feeling they’re burning the furniture to heat the house.
Tim Cook has overstayed his welcome. He should have left years ago at this point. That plus the fact that all his successors are built on the same nondescript mold he came out of, does not bode well for the strategic vision of Apple.
I'm hoping for John Ternus to take the reins soon. At least from the casual outside observer, he seems like someone that's actually excited about tech and customer experience.
Maybe Apple is too big to have a product person as CEO? They are so big that they essentially need a diplomat at the top spot? If so, at least let someone like Ternus call the internal shots and lead the products.
I know Tim does a better job, but he is the mirror image of his counterpart at Google. Made from the same mold. Great peace time substitutes, lousy leaders.
This isn't the first time an influential leader (like Jobs) chooses the next leader only for everyone to realize the next person isn't a "leader" type, but rather someone who was put in charge to maintain the status quo, not tarnish the previous leader's legacy, and not come up with crazy new ideas.
Multiple failed large projects under his watch, Apple Intelligence, Apple Vision, Apple Car. For comparison, Huawei and Xiaomi both have launched cars. Samsung AI offering is much better than Apple's.
Given that the CFO encouraged Cook to violate the court order tells me that they calculated that
1. Any fines for not complying would be less than what they would lose by complying
2. That no individual would suffer any consequences for blatantly disobeying a court order.
In my opinion, the whole concept that a company can break the law but no human can be held responsible is insane.
I really hope that criminal charges are brought against those involved in making a conscious choice to both lie to the court and ignore the court order. Hopefully that will make other executives think twice when put in the same situation.
> I really hope that criminal charges are brought against those involved in making a conscious choice to both lie to the court and ignore the court order.
I do as well, but I have little hope that it will.
Prosecutors don't like prosecuting perjury. It's tricky to prosecute (particularly because of how close it is to the first amendment), takes a lot of time, and often it just ends up with a minor slap on the wrist. I've seen other cases with outrageous perjury that resulted in no criminal prosecution.
This is a broken part of the justice system. Particularly because these apple execs have the money and lawyers to drag out any prosecution until everyone involved is dead. But also because it relies on government prosecutors caring in the first place.
Apple might still appeal to a higher court and lean heavily on that donation to Trump for legal support. They as much as said they would appeal the decision.
A change of leadership? This is clear, obvious, undenied evidence of Tim Cook committing a criminal act. This is a crime. A coordinated, intentional, well-informed crime made in malice!
The funny thing is they have 2x consumer class actions (US + UK) alleging these 30% fees were always a ripoff, they just became a slam dunk so that’ll be tens of billions they have to pay back!
I think Apple has needed a change of leadership since day one of the Cook era. He may have been brilliant at logistics and putting products on shelves, but I think Apple innovation has flatlined under Cooke and if anything, the holier than thou arrogance of Apple in general has grown exponentially. Maybe it's time to breakup Apple - separate the computer and phone divisions.
In the words of a trial lawyer friend of mine, “Nobody in the history of the world has said, ‘You know what? The judge was right; I was an asshole.’
Definitely some of those vibes there. I’ve generally been on team apple for this case, and as Gruber notes, they largely won the case. Dunking on their power to set other contractual fees seems to have come back to bite them. That said, as a user, I strongly prefer to use Apple’s in-app payments — I was just buying a hearthstone purchase from Blizzard; on my laptop it popped up options like “Credit Card or PayPal?” I was like “nah” and loaded it up on my iPad to pay with Apple Pay.
Do I hate PayPal? No. Do I appreciate a payment service that shows all my recurring payments in one place, lets me cancel them, and feels generally very safe? Yes. I’m happy to have Apple compete on fair playing field for payments.
I've heard so many horror stories about people's PayPal accounts, it feels like the last thing from safe.
On the other hand, if you're using it exclusively for payments rather than receiving money maybe it's fine?
But there are so many stories where PayPal closed someone's account and didn't give them back their money, am I really supposed to trust them in the case of a dispute where I'm owed a refund?
I'm unable to find where Gruber says that Apple "largely won" (not that I would be surprised to see Gruber making such a claim). His latest headline literally begins with "Apple lost." Where are you seeing that?
> Keep in mind this whole thing stems from an injunction from a lawsuit filed by Epic Games that Apple largely won. The result of that lawsuit was basically, “OK, Apple wins, Epic loses, but this whole thing where apps in the App Store aren’t allowed to inform users of offers available outside the App Store, or send them to such offers on the web (outside the app) via easily tappable links, is bullshit and needs to stop. If the App Store is not anticompetitive it should be able to compete with links to the web and offers from outside the App Store.”
I don't buy into the analogy. Cable providers can't prevent you from watching free OTA channels on your television, but Apple prevents Epic from publishing iOS apps outside of the App Store. Considering Fortnite was removed from the App Store specifically due to offering outside payment options, denying its return will likely lead straight back to court.
It's in the text of his blog entry. Right there. In black and white. Word for word.
Keep in mind this whole thing stems from an injunction from a lawsuit filed by Epic Games that Apple largely won. - emphasis his.
And he's right, Epic "largely lost" that case, Apple only needed to concede the minimal things they didn't win and it would have been an epic win (as opposed to an Epic win) for them. Sweeney didn't get much of what he wanted, Apple mostly got everything they wanted.
I hope he gets criminal charges. The amount of people who lie under oath and get away with it is unacceptable. Lets get all the politicians who lied under oath next as well.
No, it's a federal court case. The original claim that Epic won against Apple was based on California state law, but it was decided in a federal US District Court (N.D. Cal) because there were also claims under federal law (the Sherman Antitrust Act) and because Epic and Apple are headquartered in different states.
Start with Fauci. Yes, an autopenned unprecedented preemptive blanket pardon, but charge him anyway, make him invoke the pardon. Discovery would be fascinating. Certainly there would be more details about unpardoned co-conspirators in the lying and cover-up.
> The testimony of Mr. Roman, Vice President of Finance, was replete with misdirection and outright lies. He even went so far as to testify that Apple did not look at comparables to estimate the costs of alternative payment solutions that developers would need to procure to facilitate linked-out purchases. (May 2024 Tr. 266:22–267:11 (Roman).)
> Mr. Roman did not stop there, however. He also testified that up until January 16, 2024,
Apple had no idea what fee it would impose on linked-out purchases:
> Q. And I take it that Apple decided to impose a 27 percent fee on linked purchases prior to January 16, 2024, correct? A. The decision was made that day.
> Q. It’s your testimony that up until January 16, 2024, Apple had no idea what -- what fee it’s going to impose on linked purchases? A. That is correct
> (May 2024 Tr. 202:12–18 (Roman).) Another lie under oath: contemporaneous business
So was Roman incompetent or just kissing ass hoping to become the President of Finance
Well good point. I guess I was just trying to present it as he just lied because he thought it's not a big deal, as in he is incompetent enough to not understand in the kind of trouble he can be in. Or, he fully understood what deep shit he would be in, but it was a worthy risk to become Mr. Cook's personal favorite.
Ah, but will there be any actual financial penalties against Apple to address the revenue they received as a result of this? Or would developers have to start their own cases to attempt to recover anything?
The upside is that executives are cowards (also there's no way in hell I'm going to prison for my employer and most people I know feel the same) so even one high profile successful prosecution will have enormous deterrance effect.
There is this despondent feeling among most people that the law no longer applies to the powerful and we watch the behave with ever more brazenness. The saving grace is the amount of pushback needed to put them back in line is very small. Once they see any consequences for their actions they will fall in line.
Generally I agree but I think the pushback needs to be a bit larger than you suggest.
Over the last 25 years, we’ve become more tolerant to larger leeway for those of certain societal status. A relatively large whiplash must happen to course correct the general behavior, in my opinion.
> "A relatively large whiplash must happen to course correct the general behavior, in my opinion."
Indeed. Someone (or a couple few well-known someones) in positions of real "power" need to do some real prison time in a real prison for their massive lawbreaking and abuses of power before they'll take the situation somewhat seriously.
If you make it clear that even a little slip up of fraud will be at least 1 year in prison and huge fines, I think it would work wonders.
Tough on crime policies don't really work for petty crime, because people are desperate. But rich people have so much to lose that they wouldn't risk it.
> But rich people have so much to lose that they wouldn't risk it.
Ponzi schemes are still a regular thing despite Madoff being sentenced to 150 years behind bars. They're just relabeled as "cryptocurrencies" these days.
> most people that the law no longer applies to the powerful
gee, I wonder why! you now have POTUS openly defying the direct orders from the highest court. That's so much further past some corp executive committing a crime that hasn't even gone to trial yet.
> Once they see any consequences for their actions they will fall in line.
We're seeing this with just how fast and ruthless many executives were after Trump won the election, actually. The behavior of some of these people is best described as "swearing fealty": donations to Trump's circle, dismantling of anything remotely smelling as "DEI" instead of standing up for what was sold as "core values" over the last years, compliance instead of resistance (just recently Bezos in the Amazon tariff pricing issue, or the "resignation" of 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens so that the Trump admin doesn't impede a corporate merger).
We've been asking ourselves "wtf are the Russian oligarchs doing" after Putin invaded Ukraine, and now we're seeing just the same compliance from our own oligarchs.
and the 9th Circuit is almost certain to overturn this. Apple is a major employer, donor, etc. that I can't see this going all the way. I hope, but I am so jaded on the courts doing anything to actually hold companies and their executives responsible that I can't help but be pessimistic.
Is there any reason to believe anyone will even get charged, let alone face trial, let alone convicted? And if so is there any reason to believe they won't be pardoned upon a conviction?
"is there any reason to believe they won't be pardoned"
Shortly after the next unexplained bull market in $TRUMP a pardon will appear along with direct links to their upcoming subscription service conveniently preloaded and un-delete-able from the iPhone Home Screen.
> And if so is there any reason to believe they won't be pardoned upon a conviction?
Given Apple's direct pushback against Trump's anti-"DEI" campaign, it's less likely than I might have thought - or maybe that's leverage? e.g. what if Trump promises to pardon Apple's executives if they remove the giant rainbow thingie from Apple Park and stop selling pride-related Apple watch straps?
You are being distracted by the culture war sideshow. No war but the class war, and Apple's execs are definitely powerful enough players in that war to protect themselves from consequences.
It's not really a culture war sideshow it's a "buying favor with the administration" sideshow. And it does matter, Trump is not exactly a man with a strong loyalty streak. Demonstrating fealty to him on a regular basis could absolutely result in preferable outcomes for Apple.
This is a state case. Referral for criminal charges goes to a district attorney in Northern California. Trump's DOJ could try to lean on California but no one in California has any taste for Trump and his people.
No, it is a federal case in the US District Court for the District of Northern California, and the referrals go to Pam Bondi’s DOJ.
You seem to have made the mistake of thinking that a news article saying “a judge in northern California" means “a State of California judge in the northern part of that state" rather than “a federal judge in the Northern California District Court”.
Have you been to the county of Modoc? The urban coastal enclaves do not California make.
(I mean, sure, by population they mostly do, and are overwhelmingly Democratic, but if you are going to look for a county that goes against the partisan trend of the state, staying in the urban coastal enclaves and picking Orange is actually a fairly weak example.)
Orange often gets cited as the example of a Republican county in California because it is the highest population county that is pretty reliably Republican (it has a slight Republican registration edge, but more solidly votes Republican because it also has a Republican-favoring balance of independent-by-registratiom voters.)
But most of the Central Valley and the inland Northern California counties are much more Republican than Orange.
An Apple attorney is now head of the NLRB. The day they were appointed, they stopped three ongoing lawsuits against Apple (including the #appleToo anti-harassment class action suit):
Tim Cook is better at PR than Musk, but he's also a member of Trump's inner circle (why else would there be tariff carveouts that directly benefit Apple?):
My favourite part: "Unlike Mr. Maestri and Mr. Roman, Mr. Schiller sat through the entire underlying trial and actually read the entire 180-page decision. That Messrs. Maestri and Roman did neither, does not shield Apple of its knowledge (actual and constructive) of the Court’s findings."
> Apple’s response: charge a 27 percent commission (again tied to nothing) on off-app purchases, where it had previously charged nothing, and extend the commission for a period of seven days after the consumer linked-out of the app.
Not only have they been asking for this, but the link to your external checkout could only be in once place in your app, and could not be part of the payment flow (where else would you put it??)
They also want rights to audit your financials to determine compliance
Not sure if such a large font is used anywhere else in iOS
The whole thing was so obviously designed to prevent any developer from seriously considering it, maintaining their anti-competitive advantage. Glad the judge finally had enough.
The sheer arrogance of Apple leaders is astounding. They think they are outright owed rent on anything that runs on an iPhone, iPad, etc. Apple thinks developers are nothing without Apple. Look at how snubbing developers has worked out for the Apple Vision Pro. It was already a niche device, but it's a ghost town.
However, it appears being at the edge of bankruptcy, and having turned the ship around has made them paranoid of losing a single cent.
When Apple Store came out it was great.
I was a Nokia employee at the time, and 30% was a dream compared with what you would have to pay to phone operators, app listenings in magazines with SMS download codes, for Blackberry, Symbian, Windows CE, Pocket PC, Brew, J2ME,...
However we are now in different times, and acting as if the developers didn't have anything to do with it, it was all thanks to Apple's vision of the future, it is pure arrogance, and yes the Vision Pro was the first victim.
Here is another one, if they do really announce an UI revamp at WWDC 2025, I bet most will ignore it.
I ask "what was all the money for?!" puzzled "what do you mean?" "Steve Jobs saved up like 200 billion dollars in cash at Apple, but what was it all for? what was the plan? was he going to buy AT&T? was he going to build his own telecom or make a giant spaceship? what was it for?"
And he looked at me with just the deepest and saddest eyes and spoke softly "there was no plan" "what??" "you see, Steve's previous company, NeXT, it ran out of money, so at with Apple he always wanted a pile of money on the side, just in case. and over years, the pile grew and grew and grew... and there was no plan..."
https://x.com/DavidSHolz/status/1900334446928421081
I dunno. Toilet paper, some canned goods, lighters, I guess that stuff all lasts decades if stored properly. Takes up a lot is space, though, and your descendants might have to pay some kid to throw it all away if you don’t use it up in time…
But, some folks wished they were toilet paper hoarders during the pandemic I guess. Wonder what the kids of 2060 will be throwing away as a result of our life-experiences.
Likely old computers that could do anything the user wanted.
EOL devices(tablets, phones, macbooks, thinkpads, hobby electronics boards, home lab equipments, hdd and ssd full of archive data, swag from conferences, outdated books on product and programming, smart watches etc).
If I get a dividend, I have to pay tax today. And then I just turn around and buy more stock with post tax income?
If I can sell the share at a higher price when I want the cash, then I can pay the tax whenever I want, possibly under more preferable terms.
That was more than 20 years ago, under a totally different market condition and Apple leadership. Back then, they needed developers to turn the ship around, now they think devs need them. They's a cash cow and act like assholes.
No, that's the opposite of what actually happened with the iPhone. Back in 2007, Apple actually saw evidence from the customer buying frenzy that Apple didn't need 3rd-party devs to make iPhone a wild success. After the very desirable iPhones got into millions of customers hands, it was the 3rd-party devs that needed Apple more than Apple needed the 3rd-party ecosystem as I've mentioned before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39291668
Maybe an alternate history would have had all the 3rd-party devs deliberately boycott Apple iOS and thus only create apps for Android in 2008. We now know that didn't happen so we'll never know if devs realistically had enough leverage back in 2008 to alter Apple's App Store commission structure and policies.
The iPhone was so desirable as a platform that new popular apps like Instagram and WhatsApp were released for Apple iPhones months before Android.
Developers had started to abandon the Mac OS platform - or at least start making Windows versions of previously Mac-only software - and getting developer confidence back was one of the key things that kept the company alive to grow into the consumer electronics manufacturer that it is today.
There were multiple narrative streams happening in this subthread. I was working off the beginning context of iPhone:
>arrogance of Apple leaders is astounding. They think they are outright owed rent on anything that runs on an iPhone, iPad
Yes, poster pjmlp was talking about 1997. The "Apple needed devs" for that time bankruptcy period was more about Steve Jobs asking Bill Gates to continue supporting Macs with Microsoft Office. (The famous Bill Gates giant face at MacWorld presentation.) That didn't seem to the 3rd-party devs that was started by the subthread of "iPhones".
The next reply of ", now they think devs need them." is what happened with iPhones which makes it different from 1997.
I get the exact same feeling. They're afraid of collapsing despite being way ahead.
I think it's mostly the lack of users. Apple snubs mobile developers all the time, but since they gate access to a large chunk of well-paying customers, developers are ready to jump through any hoops.
If there were millions of Apple Vision Pro users I'm sure the developers would have followed, but it's of course a chicken and egg situation considering Vision Pro lack of content.
I think it isn't really chicken-egg, is what I'm saying. Devs were so hot to target iPhone from day one that the first or second major OS update added an entire infrastructure to make that possible. There was so much interest it made Apple back down! For the Vision Pro they had that on day one and it wasn't nearly enough to sell the thing to devs, because again, nothing did nearly enough to sell the thing to users.
Who cares if it’s pocket change for google or meta, nobody wants another Facebook app.
$3500 is, as I said, pretty close to petty cash even for a sole-owner LLC that needs taking at all seriously, and I would front that sum without a second thought out of my own personal pocket if I thought VR had legs, the same way I've put about $9k toward inference-capable hardware in the last two years because AI obviously does have legs. It's an investment in my career, or at least toward the optionality of continuing a career in software in a post-AI world, assuming I don't decide to go be an attorney or something instead.
I appreciate not everyone can drop a sum like that, like that. I can and I'm not ashamed of it. Why should I be, when it's exactly what I've worked the last 21 years straight to earn?
Plus, the hardware is just the initial starting point. Your initial outlay will quickly be eclipsed by the dev hours spent working on Vision versions of your app(s), and that's when the opportunity costs become particularly noticeable. Time spent on a Vision app that may have no real market for years is time you could be spending adding features, testing changes, fixing bugs, marketing, etc. Skipping on Vision Pro is really a no-brainer for most indie developers, at least for the foreseeable future.
Her gaming company you can read about here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webfoot_Technologies
Apple tried to focus on productivity and some light entertainment and didn't even throw the other two a bone by supporting a PC link feature. Particularly they didn't make a physical link possible - Wifi is not reliable/high bandwidth enough for most people, so those third party solutions aren't cutting it.
Apple users are mostly locked out of the existing PC VR ecosystem - Apple didn't have to rely on developers writing dedicated apps.
It "works for me".
VRChat, I agree, should absolutely be there and unrestricted. It wont be though. It isn't uncensored on Oculus either.
Apple's external veneer is stellar, and the overwhelming majority of people don't know and don't care what it is holding up that veneer.
I want them to prevent social media companies from tracking my device across my other apps.
I want them to integrate billing so I can easily cancel subscriptions or get refunds.
I want them to require Oauth that allows me to keep my email private from app developers.
These features make my customer experience better not worse. I’m sorry it sucks for app developers to make less money but for customers it’s mostly a good thing.
Being a hacker means having curiosity about the things around you, having the desire to be able to change and understand things.
On android, I wrote small toy apps for myself, I could build and self-sign an APK, I could poke at how the system worked and read all the source code I wanted.
Tragically, due to blue bubbles and group chats within my family, I was forced to switch to iOS, and I thought sure, it wouldn't be so bad...
No, it sucks for hackers, you can't build and sign apps from linux reliably, you need an apple account and to pay $100 even if you do have a macbook, the APIs are limited, you can't see the source code for the most of the kernel or platform, apple has a ton of APIs you're not allowed to use.
My firefox addons I developed for myself installed fine on android, but I can't even use those on iOS.
I want apple to let me use the device I paid for.
Don't like it? Don't use it. (I don't.)
Apple is the one who implements the advertising ID companies use to track you. And preventing that tracking is a is-level feature, not a thing they review out of app.
> I want them to require Oauth that allows me to keep my email private from app developers.
You are describing a private email address.
That's why I talk about the veneer that users don't care to look beyond. Customers get bent by Apple and aren't even aware of it.
I would like to be able to prevent it, like running a firewall or disabling bluetooth for certain processes or more...
App devs hate "paying" the 30% cut, but often aren't smart enough to realize that they make more on iOS than Android specifically because it's a high-trust environment and people trust that Apple has their back.
There's a reason most of us app devs make most of our money on Apple devices.
I assume most app vendors would gladly get some money from those countries as well, if they want to grow their user base.
That’s included with the App Store.
I can't get into my coworking space without a door unlock app on my phone.
On the other hand, exactly 0 times in my life have I ever been told "yeah, you need to own an xbox to go to the dentist's office".
Phones are indeed in a different class from game consoles and should be held to a higher standard.
But yes, also, game consoles should allow you to develop your own programs and side-load them.
This is a social walled garden they've built over years and has been solidified by users choosing it over and over again. Are they exploiting our brain's capacities regarding social pressure to extract profit? Sure, but so does every fast food company, social media company, marketing company, etc.
I think it's interesting that you phrase it as "require" regarding a group chat made by your family members. Apple doesn't require this, your family members chose Apple when they purchased their phones.
And that app is probably free, covered by the costs of the paid apps, the majority of which are brainrot games and social media[1].
Honestly this system isn't half bad, it's essentially a tax on idleness that funds a bunch of virtuous activity.
[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/29389/global-app-revenue-by-s...
But that's no reason to prevent them from being opt-out. It should be possible to not use OAuth, integrated billing, social media tracking etc.
I’m genuinely surprised Meta and e.g. Citrix haven’t launched their own app stores in the EU. Maybe GDPR disincentivises the worst shenanigans.
Security is not mutually exclusive with informed consent. Apple's greatest trick was convincing you -- and, evidently, themselves -- that it is.
But aside from that, you cannot simply point people at the approach that led to Windows UAC and GDPR cookie consent banners and consider the problem adequately solved.
This is what Apple’s ATT was designed to prevent. If app developers want to do that now, they need to ask the user for permission. The more Apple’s control over the platform is rolled back, the more stuff like this happens.
As a user, I don’t want to be using, say, a recipe app and be secretly tracked by Facebook in the background.
They didn't say anything about not liking social media, only that they don't want to be secretly tracked.
blanket statements like this are never accurate
No, we don't. Apple fans from all nations do, but there is literally zero national pride in Apple.
What does it have to do with nationality? I've seen Apple fanboys from all countries. Sure, Apple's market share in the US relative to other phone manufacturers is high, but that's mostly due to the "trust" Americans have in US-based companies (you can argue this trust is misplaced).
Apple Vision Pro has ~3,000 native apps, plus millions more compatible iPhone/iPad apps.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/04/02/trump-admin-poach...
I'm hoping this judge's ruling will actually be enforced by the executive branch, but I'm not holding my breath. I wonder if there are any mechanisms that allow state law enforcement to enforce federal judicial orders.
This isn’t really about that. The reality is that the AVP costs $3500,- and realistically, how many users are there? It’s much more likely that developers will begin building for VisionOS once Apple releases a more affordable device.
This is exactly what everyone said about the original Macintosh, which cost $7,695 in 2025 dollars. The prediction value of the price of this AVP model is close to zero.
Contrast this with early iPhone app development where people were turning out in droves EXCITED to build something.
Apple has lost the trust and enthusiasm of the developer community by making their lives harder and harder over time. Of course they aren't going to lift a finger now unless it will make them money. The same wouldn't be true if Apple provided them the support to get excited about a new platform.
Judging by tech, apple is right now in deep water due to the failure of delivering apple intelligence and a major drop in software quality.
Judging by political positioning, cook’s donation to trump’s inauguration didn’t sit well with the fanbase.
Now, it seems Cook is going for shady behavior against judges.
Maybe it’s time for a major change of leadership. Financially they might be ok, but one can’t avoid the feeling they’re burning the furniture to heat the house.
Maybe Apple is too big to have a product person as CEO? They are so big that they essentially need a diplomat at the top spot? If so, at least let someone like Ternus call the internal shots and lead the products.
This isn't the first time an influential leader (like Jobs) chooses the next leader only for everyone to realize the next person isn't a "leader" type, but rather someone who was put in charge to maintain the status quo, not tarnish the previous leader's legacy, and not come up with crazy new ideas.
On the other hand, it may have saved his company billions on tariffs.
1. Any fines for not complying would be less than what they would lose by complying
2. That no individual would suffer any consequences for blatantly disobeying a court order.
In my opinion, the whole concept that a company can break the law but no human can be held responsible is insane.
I really hope that criminal charges are brought against those involved in making a conscious choice to both lie to the court and ignore the court order. Hopefully that will make other executives think twice when put in the same situation.
I do as well, but I have little hope that it will.
Prosecutors don't like prosecuting perjury. It's tricky to prosecute (particularly because of how close it is to the first amendment), takes a lot of time, and often it just ends up with a minor slap on the wrist. I've seen other cases with outrageous perjury that resulted in no criminal prosecution.
This is a broken part of the justice system. Particularly because these apple execs have the money and lawyers to drag out any prosecution until everyone involved is dead. But also because it relies on government prosecutors caring in the first place.
He should go to jail!
Definitely some of those vibes there. I’ve generally been on team apple for this case, and as Gruber notes, they largely won the case. Dunking on their power to set other contractual fees seems to have come back to bite them. That said, as a user, I strongly prefer to use Apple’s in-app payments — I was just buying a hearthstone purchase from Blizzard; on my laptop it popped up options like “Credit Card or PayPal?” I was like “nah” and loaded it up on my iPad to pay with Apple Pay.
Do I hate PayPal? No. Do I appreciate a payment service that shows all my recurring payments in one place, lets me cancel them, and feels generally very safe? Yes. I’m happy to have Apple compete on fair playing field for payments.
Summary: Oops.
I'm sure both the app developer and Apple are happy to let you pay 30% extra for the convenience of Apple Pay vs PayPal.
PayPal does.
> and feels generally very safe
PayPal doesn't??
On the other hand, if you're using it exclusively for payments rather than receiving money maybe it's fine?
But there are so many stories where PayPal closed someone's account and didn't give them back their money, am I really supposed to trust them in the case of a dispute where I'm owed a refund?
> Keep in mind this whole thing stems from an injunction from a lawsuit filed by Epic Games that Apple largely won. The result of that lawsuit was basically, “OK, Apple wins, Epic loses, but this whole thing where apps in the App Store aren’t allowed to inform users of offers available outside the App Store, or send them to such offers on the web (outside the app) via easily tappable links, is bullshit and needs to stop. If the App Store is not anticompetitive it should be able to compete with links to the web and offers from outside the App Store.”
And there's a subsequent post elaborating on this point: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/05/01/apple-lost-but-...
Keep in mind this whole thing stems from an injunction from a lawsuit filed by Epic Games that Apple largely won. - emphasis his.
And he's right, Epic "largely lost" that case, Apple only needed to concede the minimal things they didn't win and it would have been an epic win (as opposed to an Epic win) for them. Sweeney didn't get much of what he wanted, Apple mostly got everything they wanted.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...
> The testimony of Mr. Roman, Vice President of Finance, was replete with misdirection and outright lies. He even went so far as to testify that Apple did not look at comparables to estimate the costs of alternative payment solutions that developers would need to procure to facilitate linked-out purchases. (May 2024 Tr. 266:22–267:11 (Roman).)
> Mr. Roman did not stop there, however. He also testified that up until January 16, 2024, Apple had no idea what fee it would impose on linked-out purchases:
> Q. And I take it that Apple decided to impose a 27 percent fee on linked purchases prior to January 16, 2024, correct? A. The decision was made that day.
> Q. It’s your testimony that up until January 16, 2024, Apple had no idea what -- what fee it’s going to impose on linked purchases? A. That is correct
> (May 2024 Tr. 202:12–18 (Roman).) Another lie under oath: contemporaneous business
So was Roman incompetent or just kissing ass hoping to become the President of Finance
Why not both?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43852145 ("Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds (wsj.com)" — 336 comments)
There is this despondent feeling among most people that the law no longer applies to the powerful and we watch the behave with ever more brazenness. The saving grace is the amount of pushback needed to put them back in line is very small. Once they see any consequences for their actions they will fall in line.
Over the last 25 years, we’ve become more tolerant to larger leeway for those of certain societal status. A relatively large whiplash must happen to course correct the general behavior, in my opinion.
Indeed. Someone (or a couple few well-known someones) in positions of real "power" need to do some real prison time in a real prison for their massive lawbreaking and abuses of power before they'll take the situation somewhat seriously.
If you make it clear that even a little slip up of fraud will be at least 1 year in prison and huge fines, I think it would work wonders.
Tough on crime policies don't really work for petty crime, because people are desperate. But rich people have so much to lose that they wouldn't risk it.
Ponzi schemes are still a regular thing despite Madoff being sentenced to 150 years behind bars. They're just relabeled as "cryptocurrencies" these days.
We've become more powerless, you mean. The government has become more tolerant.
Almost no-one gets that choice.
The choose a risk of going to jail for a more likely bonus.
I would wager that idea crossed the mind of Luigi Mangione.
It will take more than a slap on the hand from the court to change anything.
gee, I wonder why! you now have POTUS openly defying the direct orders from the highest court. That's so much further past some corp executive committing a crime that hasn't even gone to trial yet.
We're seeing this with just how fast and ruthless many executives were after Trump won the election, actually. The behavior of some of these people is best described as "swearing fealty": donations to Trump's circle, dismantling of anything remotely smelling as "DEI" instead of standing up for what was sold as "core values" over the last years, compliance instead of resistance (just recently Bezos in the Amazon tariff pricing issue, or the "resignation" of 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens so that the Trump admin doesn't impede a corporate merger).
We've been asking ourselves "wtf are the Russian oligarchs doing" after Putin invaded Ukraine, and now we're seeing just the same compliance from our own oligarchs.
How so?
Shortly after the next unexplained bull market in $TRUMP a pardon will appear along with direct links to their upcoming subscription service conveniently preloaded and un-delete-able from the iPhone Home Screen.
Given Apple's direct pushback against Trump's anti-"DEI" campaign, it's less likely than I might have thought - or maybe that's leverage? e.g. what if Trump promises to pardon Apple's executives if they remove the giant rainbow thingie from Apple Park and stop selling pride-related Apple watch straps?
You seem to have made the mistake of thinking that a news article saying “a judge in northern California" means “a State of California judge in the northern part of that state" rather than “a federal judge in the Northern California District Court”.
(I mean, sure, by population they mostly do, and are overwhelmingly Democratic, but if you are going to look for a county that goes against the partisan trend of the state, staying in the urban coastal enclaves and picking Orange is actually a fairly weak example.)
But most of the Central Valley and the inland Northern California counties are much more Republican than Orange.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/04/02/trump-admin-poach...
Tim Cook is better at PR than Musk, but he's also a member of Trump's inner circle (why else would there be tariff carveouts that directly benefit Apple?):
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/apple-ceo-tim-...
Unlike Musk, the two were also close during Trump 1.0.
The rainbow thingy isn't a gay pride thing. The rainbow colors are out of order, just like in the original Apple logo.
My favourite part: "Unlike Mr. Maestri and Mr. Roman, Mr. Schiller sat through the entire underlying trial and actually read the entire 180-page decision. That Messrs. Maestri and Roman did neither, does not shield Apple of its knowledge (actual and constructive) of the Court’s findings."
> Apple’s response: charge a 27 percent commission (again tied to nothing) on off-app purchases, where it had previously charged nothing, and extend the commission for a period of seven days after the consumer linked-out of the app.
Not only have they been asking for this, but the link to your external checkout could only be in once place in your app, and could not be part of the payment flow (where else would you put it??)
They also want rights to audit your financials to determine compliance
And this scary popup before going to the external payment page: https://d7ych6cwyfyiba.archive.is/AZrEz/0c8d40ed4a6886240370...
Not sure if such a large font is used anywhere else in iOS
The whole thing was so obviously designed to prevent any developer from seriously considering it, maintaining their anti-competitive advantage. Glad the judge finally had enough.
My. They forgot "Apple cannot guarantee making payment elsewhere won't give you cancer."
From the "free market" party from a senator with at least some shame on the red aisle.
It really is open season for buying politicians.
Steve Bannon has said many times he would've kept Lina Khan.
The populists are socially conservative but economically liberal in many respects (not all, obviously)
...
> referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney for a criminal contempt investigation.
It's suddenly become a negotiation again.
Based on the tariff carve-outs and the political appointments Trump's made, Apple leadership is definitely inside Trump's inner circle.
They've been smart enough not to parade Tim Cook around in a MAGA hat, but just barely:
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/apple-ceo-tim-...
I expect there to be some performative lawyering by the Trump administration until the case blows over.
Though the contempt referral may have not been part of the deal and might cost extra.