Thread by @thedextriarchy

Week 2 of Epic v. Apple begins in 10 minutes. We’ll start with Epic marketing VP Matthew Weissinger, then two of Epic’s expert witnesses. Check out last week’s writeup from my colleague @mslopatto, plus my last tweet thread:

theverge.com/2021/5/7/22425…

https://twitter.com/thedextriarchy/status/1390688458658652165

We’re on with Weissinger, talking about Epic’s work running promotions now, including big Microsoft/Sony crossovers with characters like Master Chief and Kratos, which Weissinger describes as “the Mickey Mouse of PlayStation and Xbox."

“How was Fortnite doing overall when it launched on iOS?” lawyer asks.

“Fortnite was doing incredible. It was basically a cultural phenomenon at the time,” Weissinger says.

How was Epic from a marketing perspective?

"I felt like it was transactional, impersonal, it always felt like in some sense it was fly-by-night.” There were strings attached or caveats attached. “These requests would come in late in the process.”

Weissinger says it was a “different experience from the console partners,” and Apple’s support was “opportunistic.” Epic’s team would scramble to work with late requests.

“It was around opportunities when they had something else in their ecosystem to promote,” Weissinger says of Apple’s cross-promotion. I.e., Apple Music collaborations around the Fortnite Marshmello and Travis Scott concerts.

Judge jumps in and asks: weren’t the Sony and PlayStation relationships also transactional? “They were promoting their products, weren’t they? Whenever you did collaborations with them? How is it different that Apple is trying to benefit both?”

“It just seemed opportunistic, the times they wanted to support us. It was around content in the other parts of the business, rather than helping to support the Fortnite business,” says Weissinger.

The gist of Weissinger’s argument is that Apple was focused on promoting services that weren’t mutually beneficial with Epic — i.e., attracting “consumers who may not be looking for gaming apps."

(We’re leaving aside for now that Epic has previously made a big deal of Fortnite not being just a game.)

Bindersssssss

We’re looking at binders

This is an email between Apple and Epic. Apple sender's requesting assets promoting Chapter 2 launch, says “I know we’ve had issues in the past with a significant art leak,” but he promises it won’t happen again. Spoiler: Apple apparently did leak the Chapter 2 assets.

“Is there a platform on which Fortnite has the biggest growth potential?”

“Mobile.”

“Why?”

“We’ve reached pretty much full penetration on console,” and everybody has a mobile device, while “not everybody has a console, and not everybody has a gaming PC."

Weissinger says Fortnite saw 2.5 million daily active users on iOS when it was on the platform, something like 2.86 billion hours of playtime on iOS.

“There’s a portion of our population that only plays on iOS, and they disappeared, because they only had iOS.” There’s also specific timeframes when people only have access to a phone. “It also severed friend connections, social connections."

Judge: “Are you tracking people’s connections?”

“Correct.”

“You track that? You have that data?”

It’s basically your friends list, says Weissinger.

“And people know you were tracking them?”

Weissinger reiterates it’s drawn from chat records/friend lists.

It’s fascinating hearing the judge apparently come fresh to the sheer volume of quantification of social connections online and decide it’s actually super weird.

Weissinger on consoles, which are sold at a loss: “They make their money back when Fortnite and other apps have sold on those platforms. They’re only making money when we’re making money, and they are aligned and invested in securing the success of the titles on their platforms."

"You contrast this with Apple, they actually generate profit on their hardware sales."

We’re getting cross-examination now from Apple’s lawyer. Talking about the business model of Xbox, PlayStation, Switch. “Have you ever seen any internal documents … that prove to you that consoles are sold at a loss?”

“I have not."

Apple’s lawyer hammering on Weissinger’s lack of “first-person knowledge” that consoles are sold at a loss. Xbox’s Lori Wright has testified that this is true of the Xbox, but Apple has moved to strike her testimony, saying it’s not credible. theverge.com/2021/5/7/22424…

Apple is pulling up Fortnite and asking Weissinger to describe different parts of the interface, specifically the game modes. Again, would really prefer this was printed in a binder.

Apple’s describing the Save the World mode, which it characterizes as players teaming up to shoot zombies.

“That’s a good summary,” says Weissinger.

Now Apple’s lawyer citing the Battle Royale mode, which it calls the “game that made Epic Games both rich and famous.” In fairness, Epic did have a *few* other things going on already.

Apple lawyer: “We have a large yellow banana here, in a tuxedo?”

Weissinger: “Yes, that’s Peeley."

Apple: [light paraphrase: “And in the tuxedo he’s known as Agent Peeley."

“We thought it was better to go with the suit instead of the naked banana, because we are in federal court right now.”

pretty sure Apple read all our tweets about Itch’s unspeakable games and is just messing with us now, because what

We’re showing another Fortnite video.

“I take it there are going to be words?” judge asks.

“There are not going to be words, your honor."

Judge: “The record should reflect there was some song playing in the background, with words, and the court reporter was relieved of her duty to transcribe these words.”

Apple’s lawyer is defining a third-person shooter, which he does by essentially saying it’s a shooter where the camera is over your shoulder. This is depressingly logical and not ridiculous.

“The avatar is running toward a skydiving activity, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“You know this game, sir? The skydive time trial?”

“Yes.”

“Your avatar is going through hoops, correct?”

Now in about minute 10 of lawyers describing Fortnite

I am deliberately not putting anything in quotes that’s not direct or at least paraphrased, becuase otherwise this would be like half the trial

https://twitter.com/ChrisBarnewall/status/1391785010806632450

Lawyer: “A death run is where the player has to make it across the island without getting killed, correct?”

this testimony is way more fun if you imagine it’s a mad scientist getting put on trial for war crimes

Normally I would try to give some context for why this line of questioning is relevant to the larger argument, but tbh I’m just drifting here.

Describing another mode:

Lawyer: "Escape prison and cause mayhem in the city, correct?”

Weissinger: "Correct."

“Or you can be a guard [and keep order].”

“Correct.”

“Now, is this an experience or a game, sir?”

“This looks like a game to me."

Okay, here we are. Lawyer is introducing various creative modes and asking Weissinger whether they’re games or not. Weissinger says they are indeed games.

We’re playing a video. Lots of people are screaming.

The screaming is in the video, not the courtroom, to be clear.

This is apparently the trailer promoting Creative Mayhem

Lawyer: “If anyone was to state that creative mode had no competitive gameplay, that would be inaccurate, correct?"

Weissinger concedes that’s true.

Oh no Apple’s lawyer learned the term “game mechanics.” (I don’t have his exact definition transcribed sadly.)

“There are plenty of game mechanics in Creative Mode, aren't there?”

“If someone were to have said that there is nothing resembling a game mechanic at all in Fortnite Creative, that would be incorrect, true?”

“It depends on the experience."

Apple lawyer: If someone were to say Fortnite Creative is "Barbie Fashion Designer for the Fortnite Universe, that person would be incorrect, true?”

Weissinger: “I’m not sure what goes on in Barbie Fashion Designer.”

“Fair enough.” Turns out lawyer doesn’t know either.

We’ve moved on to how V-Bucks work. Apple’s lawyer asks if there’s a limit to how many V-Bucks there are. There might be, but it’s extremely high, says Weissinger.

Okay we’ve been hearing testimony for an hour and most of it has been devoted to a Fortnite tutorial.

Lawyer notes that Weissinger complained not enough people in App Store wanted stuff like Fortnite.

Lawyer: “You’re looking for people that want to play games, right?”

Weissinger: “I’m looking for people who want awesome entertainment experiences."

Lawyer’s asking for demographic data Weissinger says he can’t provide. Fortnite is “more male than female,” he concludes. Apple says “core demographic” is boys/men from 13-25, Weissinger agrees.

We’re doing more questioning intended to establish Fortnite as a “youth brand."

Now pulling up a doc called “Fortnite 2018 by the numbers.”

In November, Epic did an NFL promotion where you could get player skins. Notes 3.3 million units sold in November/December of that year.

To oversimplify, Apple wants to establish Fortnite is for young people specifically interested in games, because the companies are arguing over whether the scope of the discussion over antitrust should be limited to gaming.

https://twitter.com/cpnYarhar/status/1391792558271909894

Apple’s lawyer asking if Weissinger ever heard people at Epic say they were failing to attract/retain more iOS users because of Apple’s 30% cut. Weissinger says he wasn’t party to a conversation like that, as far as he remembers.

Lawyer: “As the VP of marketing at Epic, you have never discussed whether your marketing efforts would be more effective or successful if Epic could distribute iOS apps outside of the App Store, correct?”

Weissinger: “Correct."

Now citing an email about promo efforts for Fortnite: “Epic will be the first to take over the latest iteration of the App Store [after a 2017 redesign], we will also be given creative control over what we want to display and how."

Minus the extended tutorial, today is a lot of back-and-forth over whether Apple sufficiently marketed Fortnite.

Lawyer: “During the Marshmello concert, people couldn’t shoot each other, right?"

“But they weren’t disabled until the concert began, were they?”

Weissinger says “probably they were disabled at some point in the leadup to the concert.”

But until then, they were shooting each other “or clubbing each other, or putting arrows in each other."

“You’re familiar with the publication The Verge?”

“It’s some kind of entertainment type [“website", I think]?”

yesss

Citing this:

theverge.com/2020/4/23/2123…

Weissinger specifies that the Travis Scott preshow was not technically a “bloodbath” because there is no blood in Fortnite.

I had a non-game-playing roommate shortly after college, and at one point after I got off the phone he asked me why I’d been talking about running out of hand grenades or something similarly bloodthirsty. This entire exchange is basically that phone call under legal oath.

Lawyer: “It’s a fact, isn’t it, that every partner of Epic has leaked a Fortnite season at some point?”

Weissinger: “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Lawyer is taking on Epic’s earlier complaints about Apple leaking Fortnite assets. He notes Weissinger wrote that relatively speaking, he had “great confidence about Apple’s ability to keep Epic’s secrets."

“I know Apple can keep [Epic’s] secrets, I’m not as sure about Google,” Weissinger wrote in July 2020, even after various Apple leaks.

Apple poking holes in Epic’s claims about its weak security.

Citing another email: “Do you know how long it would take to make a build of Fortnite that would function on Google Play that would only support our own payment methods?” Referring to Epic’s payment method, which it added to iOS and got summarily banned for.

We’re going over a Project Liberty strategy to “draw Google into a legal battle over antitrust” in addition to Apple. If Google makes a big deal out of Epic using its own payment method, “the battle begins, it’s going to be fun."

Google kicked Fortnite off its store around the same time as Apple, for context, but you can sideload apps so Fortnite remains available on Android. Epic did still sue, though: theverge.com/2020/8/13/2136…

We’re going over Project Liberty’s goal of making Epic seem sympathetic by, among other things, helping establish the Coalition for App Fairness theverge.com/2020/9/24/2145…

Lawyer’s noting that Weissinger took notes involving a “nuclear option” that can “dimensionalize the battle [?] for us.” The nuclear option was implementing the hotfix with in-app payments with Google.

There’s a consulting firm document for the Coalition for App Fairness, noting that “consultants will help to establish a reason for it to exist, either organic or manufactured.”

Apple/Epic disagree over which side Fortnite’s ban falls on.

If Apple had given in to Epic, the coalition would have evaporated, lawyer says.

Weissinger disagrees: “Google’s still around too. There’s other stories that have the same issues in principle."

But the document doesn’t reference any company other than Apple, lawyer notes.

“That looks to be the case,” says Weissinger.

We’ve got a 20-minute recess now. Back around 1:35.

Couple people have asked about this — not sure what it means that we’re not seeing testimony folders.

https://twitter.com/AlfredLameche/status/1391807901837180928

This is plausible — last week was a (delightful for journalists!) total mess

https://twitter.com/Reilly0523/status/1391809285273837568

We’re back.

It has come to my attention that I misspelled Peely. We apologize for the error.

We’re continuing to talk about Project Liberty — Apple lawyer hitting on the fact that it was a coordinated effort with a “virtual war room” designed to provoke Apple.

Establishing whether there were communications to console partners about Project Liberty. That includes communications about the impending price drop on V-Bucks, per a strategy document.

For context, Epic discounted V-Bucks on console despite the fact that console makers hadn’t dropped their 30% cut. Compared to mobile, where it specifically offered the higher/lower prices side by side to highlight the savings of using Epic’s payments theverge.com/2020/8/13/2136…

Apple’s going after the fact that Epic referred to the price drop as a “lock-in tactic.” Epic says it just means trying to make Fortnite more attractive, not make it difficult to leave.

“You would not use the term ‘lock-in’ if you saw anything wrong with it, would you?” lawyer asks. Notes Weissinger went to MIT (he originally says Harvard incorrectly, possibly because you would carefully refer to either at a cocktail party as “going to school around Boston”).

And we’re finally through cross-examination, back to Epic’s lawyers. She’s noting that Apple didn’t show lots of non-game-related experiences in Party Royale and so forth.

Epic’s lawyer brings up the aforementioned “game mechanics” from Apple’s questioning. “When a user is using those tools to create in creative mode, is there any gameplay happening?”

oh boy

(Epic says no, ofc.)

Judge asks how much of Party Royale is games.

“Is there a percentage? 50-50?”

Weissinger says it can depend on events like concerts; judge notes the concerts are only around 15 minutes.

“So you don’t have any way to quantify games vs. experience?”

Not offhand.

Weissinger suggests that Epic does have documents indicating the proportion of games vs. experiences in Party Royale. It doesn’t seem like we’re going to get to see them, sadly.

Epic Lawyer: “A little bit of a digression: we talked about Peely, our banana?"

Epic lawyer: "There might have been an implication that showing Peely without a suit might have been inappropriate. [Lawyer shows a picture of naked Peely in court.] "Is there anything inappropriate about Peely without clothes?”

Weissinger: “It’s just a banana, ma’am."

Apple lawyer: “You talked about creating an item. Is that fun, creating an item?”

Epic lawyer: “Yeah. It’s awesome.”

(This is referencing Fortnite Create.)

Minus the digression about the implied obscenity of an unclothed banana, questioning is still along two main lines: whether Fortnite is mostly gaming-related, and whether Apple screwed up its side of the promotional deal.

We just finished Weissinger, and now Epic is calling the first of its expert witnesses: David Evans, chairman of Global Economics Group. Here’s Evans’ testimony (redacted) from earlier: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

We’re beginning questioning. Evans is an economist focused on platform economics and antitrust economics.

Lawyer is verifying that Evans doesn’t want to change anything in his earlier testimony based on details that have come out since.

Evans is here to establish the “relevant market” in this case, which (to oversimplify as a non-lawyer) is Epic trying to establish that iOS can be a discrete market that Apple can have a monopoly in, rather than just a device it makes.

The market here is iOS apps — Evans is talking about restrictions in the market, like Apple preventing people from installing apps outside its App Store.

The App Store is a supplier of distribution services, and those customers rely on the App Store for distribution services, Evans says. These apps don’t necessarily compete with each other, but they’re part of the same market.

We’re getting some weird voice bleedover in the conference line — think somebody on the line is unmuted and is talking over the witness.

Evans is trying to establish that you can have a single market where the customers aren’t all competing with each other — talking about a bunch of different companies that all buy steel, or a credit card network that services lots of businesses.

Evans giving his own “phones v. consoles” distinction: “The smartphones can be used anywhere, anytime. And that means a consumer … as long as they have a cellular connection can use that smartphone."

“A game console on the other hand is typically a fixed device that is not something that people carry around,” except the Switch, which still doesn’t have a cellular connection.

“A consumer who is interested in using apps at various times and various places during the course of their lives, there are many many situations in which the game console even if it had the relevant app on it, is simply not a relevant device for them to use in their daily lives.”

Again, this matters because (to Evans) it means that console ecosystems can’t be considered direct competitors to iOS.

Add to the Epic v. Apple drinking game: witness makes tortured attempt to work the Nintendo Switch into a “mobile v. console” definition.

all of us got unmuted for one second and nobody took advantage of it, is this the mitigating effect of civilization

We’re going through the shift in time spent on personal computing: by 2019, 77% of that time is being spent using a smartphone connected to the internet. And 89% of the time people spend online using smartphones is through an app, not a browser.

US adult spends roughly average of 3 hours a day on a smartphone, Evans says. (And, again, 89% of that is apps.) And one hour on a personal computer.

Did you take into account time people spend working on PC, judge asks?

No, this is “consumer use,” says Evans.

Not 100% sure what that means or how they parse it, given the blurry line between work and leisure for many heavy computer/phone users.

In personal computers, you’ve always been able to get apps from a “variety” of channels. But with the App Store and Google Play, there are “only two channels” where consumers/developers go through for apps, says Evans. “There are really two gatekeepers, in effect."

The distinction between “general-purpose” and “special-purpose” operating system has come up again — Evans says there’s a “fundamental difference” between them. You may recall this from Day 3: theverge.com/2021/5/5/22421…

Evans is talking about different new business models for computing — cites that Google is primarily motivated by selling advertising against its phones/apps.

Evans notes console developers selling at a loss, and judge jumps in — asks if he has actual evidence of this.

Looks like Apple has successfully sown doubt about Epic's “consoles sell at a loss” point.

Judge says you’ve “seen no evidence from Sony, no evidence from Nintendo” that they sell at a loss. Evans hedges.

Judge: “I don’t know if this is based on a generic understanding of what’s out there … or if I’m going to be able to verify this theory I’ve heard multiple times."

Evans is trying to explain his overall market research indicating that consoles sell at a loss. He calls it a “non-controversial point."

Incidentally, Sony appears to have recently confirmed the claim for at least some of its consoles: fool.com/investing/2021…

Shoot, should clarify — Epic *witness*, not lawyer.

Dumb typo on my part.

“You want me to consult my binder?”

“Yes please do.”

BINDERS

Evans is going to explain the difference between a “foremarket” and “aftermarket” distinction. A “foremarket” would be buying a printer, for instance, while an “aftermarket” is a purchase made after that initial buy — like toner for that printer.

This is not as sexy as the naked banana but it’s actually an incredibly important legal distinction.

The smartphone is a foremarket here, and the apps are an aftermarket, Evans says. Basically, allegation is that Apple is using the foremarket to monopolize the aftermarket.

I’m sure your friendly neighborhood lawyer or @reckless etc. can explain this much better than I can, but the upshot is, Apple created a big and unique ecosystem that it’s controlling access to, and Epic argues this is an antitrust violation.

Evans made this argument in his written testimony, so the important thing here is whether the judge seems to buy it — so far her only commentary has been doubting the “consoles sell at a loss” point.

If you want a refresher of the key legal arguments going on, @russellbrandom laid it all out a few weeks (or possibly decades) ago (i mean, who can remember) theverge.com/2021/4/8/22373…

(Tweets are a little slower because we’re going over some arguments involving iPhone market power that we’ve already discussed pretty heavily in previous witness testimony.)

“Switching between ecosystems isn’t much of a competitive constraint on the iOS app market,” Evans says — that’s sort of the crux of it, the claim that Apple has this market where it doesn’t have to respond to normal market forces.

Judge asks about duopoly market: “It looks like, according to your chart, there are a number of players in 2009. When did you say that Android and iOS had antitrust market share, in your view?”

Evans: “It really shifted significantly by 2010.”

Evans says after iOS and Android showed up, developers overwhelmingly switched to it away from Symbian, BlackBerry, and Palm.

No Windows Phone mention, :’(

“From about 2008 to about 2010-2011, there were still some people that weren’t ready to switch over. There were consumers who still weren’t ready to switch over to iPhone and Android … because BlackBerry users liked to be able to use the keyboard,” for instance.

“But by 2010, there was a dramatic movement of people over to these new devices,” in part because developers were flocking to them and this was driving a cycle of adoption, says Evans.

With that, we’re taking a 40-minute break. Be back around 4:15ET.

We’re getting back into it.

Evans is back, and lawyer is asking how he defines the market and alternatives here. Evans notes the costs of switching ecosystems to Android are high, PCs/consoles aren’t a substitute, and Apple’s policies prevent the existence of iOS App Store alternatives.

Evans says it’s also hard to assess the cost of what you’ll spend over the lifetime of a smartphone, which makes consumer choice harder. He concludes the iOS/Android duopoly places only “very limited constraint” on Apple’s app policies.

“What did you define to be the aftermarket that is relevant to analyzing Apple’s conduct?”

“The iOS app distribution market includes all the channels consumers and developers would use, and that includes app stores, [online marketplaces], and direct distribution."

Evans concludes that this case is about a single-brand market. The only two possible choices for apps here are iOS and Android, and Android isn’t a sufficient substitute because you can’t use Android apps on iOS and there’s a high tough-to-evaluate cost in adoption, he says.

(Apple’s claim is the opposite, obviously — it says single-brand markets are extremely rare, and Apple can’t have a monopoly on iOS the same way that, like, Twitter doesn’t have a “monopoly" on tweets.)

Evans is citing research he did that 65-90% of Fortnite players play on one device.

“That’s a very big discrepency,” Judge notes of the gap between those numbers.

Evans goes back to this graf in testimony, which has more specific numbers he meant to cite:

Judge is momentarily confused by the numbers he’s citing — he’s trying to say there’s a high percent of iPhone users who only use one platform, but there’s a separate number where iOS-only users accounted for 60% of minutes, as described here:

The “punchline” to Evans is that only a very small portion of minutes played on iOS moved over to other platforms after Apple banned Fortnite, so people effectively pick a platform and stick to it.

Ah sorry — “punchline” here is referring to the separate conclusion he reached when analyzing the post-ban behavior, with the gist of what I described above

https://twitter.com/thattridentdude/status/1391857766915092483

I’m not gonna get too much into this, but this is the result Evans came to about whether people actually switched over after the ban.

Judge just asked this exact question — if people switched to PUBG for battle royale or some iOS game of a different genre. “Some other gaming company could have benefited,” she notes. Evans says he’s “not addressing that particular issue here."

https://twitter.com/ihasaredcouch/status/1391860357405282314

Evans thinks it’s unlikely iOS users specifically snubbed Fortnite for PUBG, which he implies requires a switch to a console/PC. Which I think is not *technically* accurate: apps.apple.com/us/app/pubg-mo…

Lawyer asks what the odds of switching to another platform would be if an app like Uber got taken off iOS. “Even less likely than the example I gave you,” says Evans.

seen lots of jokes about reading “Epic lawyers” as “epic lawyers" and it’s delightful knowing that they are possible because in the ‘90s Tim Sweeney was like “i’d better make my studio sound like more than one guy, let’s call it EPIC MEGAGAMES"

We’re now turning to Apple’s app store profit margins — we saw one (very high!) estimate come out in expert testimony last month theverge.com/2021/5/1/22414…

“Apple’s profit margin was vastly higher than the benchmark group of companies, including even the most successful” ones — comparing to markets like eBay, Rakuten, and Alibaba, which are also digital marketplaces that don’t directly make stuff (I think is the justification?)

To bring it back to consumer harm, Evans is arguing that Apple’s lack of competition causes higher prices and a slower pace of innovation.

In his analysis there’s only one difference: “the App Store faces competition.” Which as far as I take it is competing app stores or other distribution methods within iOS.

Judge asks what kind of alternatives Apple has suppressed — Evans cites things like Epic Games Store and Nvidia and Microsoft’s attempts to do cloud gaming stores. “Has anybody ever attempted any other kind of store beyond gaming?” she asks.

Evans says he doesn’t know.

Little odd Evans doesn’t mention Cydia, a longtime jailbroken-iOS app store that in fact has also sued Apple: theverge.com/2020/12/10/221…

Not sure if Amazon ever actually tried to get on iOS? But there are definitely multiple possible stores that could show up if Apple allowed alternatives.

https://twitter.com/sgrif/status/1391871359823728640

Evans pulls up a 2017 Apple developer survey about performance of App Store. Slide refers to satisfaction with discoverability of apps.

36% indicated “somewhat” or “very” satisfied. “Which means the others… weren’t.”

Bad discoverability also makes it harder for consumers to meet their needs, Evans says.

Evans says Apple hardware is very innovative but that its work on the App Store hasn’t kept pace, basically.

Evans is talking about the differences between companies that sell digital goods and ones that don’t — i.e. Starbucks doesn’t have to use Apple’s payment processing, Tinder does.

What explains the difference? “Ultimately, because Apple has made the decision to do that.” Why? Reiterates the distinction between digital and physical content. (Apple says it's is because it can be sure digital goods are delivered, while it can’t be sure physical goods are.)

Judge is stepping in to clarify whether there’s really no alternative to using Apple for in-app purchases, when you can go to the web and make IAP that way. Evans says he’s specifically referring to stuff happening inside iOS apps.

This is in the context of Evans using digital/non-digital in-app purchases for a comparison test, btw.

Judge still seems dubious that you’re really locked into Apple processing for IAPs if you can go to the web and buy them.

Everyone in the courtroom is extremely eager to clarify that they totally have no idea what Tinder is and have never used it.

Evans notes the “anti-steering” systems like this one — still not clear to me how compelling the judge finds it

https://twitter.com/reckless/status/1391879552897531908

As funny as this sounded, in fairness she was comparing the in-app purchase systems — i.e., could you go buy a Tinder equivalent of V-Bucks on another platform and then use them on iOS?

https://twitter.com/27hectormanuel/status/1391880135649992705

I don’t know the answer to this because I have not used Tinder.

We’re done with testimony for the day. We’re running through some logistics for releasing documents (none have been yet today, in theory they’re coming later today).

Alright, Day 6 is a wrap. Tomorrow we can look forward to MORE! EXPERT! WITNESSES! and probably less banana appropriateness debate. And my cat is stealing edamame husks again.

little gremlin just *ate* it

https://twitter.com/AlmakkiDeputy/status/1391884502562217988

trico finds the banana’s suggestiveness concerning

https://twitter.com/AlmakkiDeputy/status/1391884502562217988

banana news, get your naked banana news, hot all nude banana news revue right here theverge.com/2021/5/10/2242…

the naked banana is a metaphor

but also apple and epic literally bickered about whether a banana should have to wear a suit