Apple to argue that users can't sue them over the App Store being a monopoly - Sensationalist Headlines

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/apple-to-tell-supreme-court-it-cant-be-sued-in-app-store-dispute.html A nearly decade-long battle over Apple's App Store is set to finally be argued before the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, setting up a high-stakes showdown over whether the company can be forced to pay damages to iPhone owners who say the App Store is an unlawful monopoly. The iPhone owners who brought the suit allege that Apple's 30 percent commission on app sales amounts to price gouging passed on to consumers. iPhone owners can only buy apps through the App Store, unless they bypass Apple's rules by "jailbreaking" their phone, which modifies the iPhone's software so users can download apps outside the App Store. Jailbreaking an iPhone voids its warranty. The case does not address the underlying monopoly issue, but instead will determine whether the iPhone users can bring the charge at all. Apple has argued that only app developers could bring such a suit. The stakes of the Supreme Court battle are high. Experts say that if the court permits iPhone users to bring their suit, they could force the company to refund a percentage of every app sold over a four year period, possibly saddling the electronics giant with hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties. Whether iPhone users get that payout won't be resolved by the Supreme Court. If the iPhone owners win Monday's fight, they will have to prove in a district court battle that Apple has a monopoly that has led to overcharging, which Apple vigorously denies. The court's decision in the case, which is named Apple Inc. v. Pepper, No. 17-204, could have an impact beyond Apple. It could also open up other tech companies that operate electronic marketplaces, like Facebook, Ebay, Amazon and Alphabet's Google, to similar challenges. Despite affecting the biggest tech companies in the world, Monday's case hinges on how the Supreme Court's justices will apply a decidedly low-tech ruling from the latter half of the 20th century. The precedent the court is revisiting was set in Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, a 1977 dispute in which the court ruled in favor of concrete brick manufacturers. The state of Illinois sued the brickmakers for allegedly inflating their prices, causing an increase in the the cost of public building projects. The court ruled that even though the increased brick costs might hurt Illinois indirectly, only the contractors who actually bought the bricks had standing to sue. That established the so-called "Illinois brick doctrine," which says that only the direct purchaser of a good can collect damages from a monopoly holder. A ruling is expected to come by late June.

Imagine only being able to download software from windows store on windows 10 and microsoft always takes a cut.

Windows 10 in S mode is literally that.

The thing is that's a mode you can disable, its meant for people who don't know anything about computers.

I get where you're coming from, and I (usually) inherently hate monopolies, but Apple puts quite a bit of their "cut" back into the store in the form of oversight. When I had an android, the amount of malicious apps and games I'd come across(in terms of unwanted ads, unwarranted popups, and so on) was absolutely absurd, whereas with my iphone, I have yet to come across any apps that do anything even similar to that. There are still plenty of apps designed to scam your money of course through microtransactions, but they are all optional and obvious in what they are doing, but on the google play store, I was greeted by much more insidious attempts to steal my money or fool me into clicking links that redirect me to scams and so on.

You can have oversight while simultaneously not being a monopoly. Android phones can still load custom APKs without the need for root access or any other heavy modification. In fact, this is how Amazon's app store distributes its software. There is no alternative short of voiding your warranty to install external apps on an iOS device.

Amazon better throw their weight behind this because they do the exact same shit with their Fire tablets.

Ya fair enough. I suppose we should be able to load custom apps, but it is definitely something I'd be opting out of ever doing.

I hope apple gets fucked up in court over this. it would be nice to be able to get apps from other places than the app store and not have to redownload them every like 5 days or something My prediction if apple is told they can't do this: fortnite app will be moved off the app store and onto its own site just like on android