Get in losers, we’re reading Judge Gonzalez’s ruling

(Note: you can get the zingers elsewhere, I am going to assume you read those already. If you haven’t, you should, they are *really* funny.)

> Thus the Court found:
> In retail brick-and-mortar stores, consumers do not lack knowledge of options. Technology platforms differ.

brb going to annihilate all the Hacker News posters talking about how this is actually the same as Walmart

Loving the use of “supracompetitive” going to use it all the time now

Nobody is really talking about the Epic side today but the court does confirm that they breached the DPLA and need to pay attorney’s fees (which I don’t think they really care about at this point)

> Apple hired the Analysis Group (“AG”), …, which (1) “[e]stimate[d] the value of services provided by the Apple ecosystem to developers,”
> Nonetheless, AG “estimated”
> AG “concluded”

The quotes, of course, indicate how much the court trusts this third party analysis group

> In its notice of compliance and at the May 2024 hearing, Apple claimed that restrictions on
link placement protect against “security risks.” […] Again, Apple attempted to mislead.

Ooh it’s getting spicy

> Confusion is not a security risk. Given the lack of any document identifying this alleged concern, the Court finds these justifications pretextual

Gonzalez is not having it lmao

In a hilarious twist Gonzalez literally takes a screenshot of Apple’s own Human Interface guidelines to call them out

> One employee further wrote, “to make your version even worse you could add the developer name rather than the app”. To that, another responded “ooh - keep going.”

"At Apple, design is core to everything we do. Our team works hard to make things worse.”

> Mr. Onak commented that “if we want to ‘scare’ users a bit, i like the addition of ‘out’ because it raises questions and hesitancy haha. out? out where? omg what do i do?”

Well then Mr. Onak, what *will* you do?

> Mr. Onak testified that “in term of UX writing, the word ‘scary’ doesn’t . . . mean the same thing as instilling fear. […] Rather, ‘scary’ is a term of art”
> Mr. Onak’s testimony was not credible and falls flat given reason, common sense

I guess the answer is perjury

> Apple claimed the static URL requirement protects users’ security and privacy.
> Yet, despite these concerns, developers can program dynamic links for any other purpose—Apple in general only prohibits the use of dynamic links for external links for link-out purchases.

> As of the May 2024 hearing, only 34 developers out of the approximately 136,000 total developers on the App Store applied for the program, and seventeen of those developers had not offered in-app purchases in the first place.

In case you were wondering

> Adding a lawyer’s name to a document does not create a privilege.
> The record is rife with such examples of over-designation of privilege.

I guess it’s now Apple’s turn to do the “you can’t mark everything PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL” trick

> Apple filed a “response,” but that response ultimately harms its position. […] In its defense, Apple blames everyone but itself

> As these are restrictions on the specific actions Apple took to violate this Court’s Injunction and as they require no affirmative action on Apple’s part, the INJUNCTION IS EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

So, yeah, ALL CAPS “you gotta do this stat”. Want to bet App Review will listen?

@saagar I would not be surprised if this ruling somehow never makes it to app review. They can’t seem to follow their own policies, why should they follow those from the court? 🫠

@calicoding Oh good point