In court on Monday, Epic Games argued that Apple purposely locks in its customers in the first day of a landmark trial with Apple over the rules of the App Store. Apple is arguing that it built the App Store and gets to set the rules — which are designed to ensure that apps are high-quality and secure.
“Epic wants us to be Android, but we don’t want to be. And our consumers don’t want that either. They want the choice,” Apple lawyer Karen Dunn said.
In Apple’s opening statement, it emphasized that its rules have helped created a vibrant ecosystem that benefits iPhone developers, with over 1.8 million apps in the App Store.
Apple said that Epic made $750 million from the App Store, implying that the trial is merely about money. Apple also said that Epic was looking at the wrong market and cannot show anticompetitive conduct in the gaming market.
Apple also defended its “walled garden” without using those terms… “Take away from the security particular to the iPhones and the bad actors have a field day. This is why Android security statistics are so much worse,” Dunn said.
MacDailyNews Take: Nobody sane wants the iPhone and iPad platforms to devolve into an Android toxic hellstew. Apple’s walled garden is a major reason why we chose iPhones and iPads over Android-based knockoffs.
When boiled down, Epic’s inane argument is akin to this:
We want to sell MacDailyNews T-shirts and mousepads in Target, using their physical stores, roof, heat, cooling, electricity, floor space, staff, parking lot, their online store, server capacity, storage, more electricity, staff, etc., but we want to keep 100% of our sales.
That’s fair, right?