Welcome to Day 10, which is (hopefully!) the last day of expertpalooza in #epicvapple! Today's in-court reporters are @peard33 and @MActon93.
First up, Epic's main expert David Evans takes the stand to offer rebuttal to the Schmalensee/LaFontaine/Hitt testimony.
Then we get Ned Barnes, Epic's accounting expert. Apple had asked to close the courtroom for Barnes' testimony but the judge denied that request. So hopefully some juicy details there.
After that, Epic's two last experts: Peter Rossi, a marketing/stats guy to talk about survey evidence, and James Mickens, computer scientist who will testify about App Store security.
Judge YGR says the expert testimony hasn't been that helpful for her. "Here’s the problem in this case, your experts talk past each other constantly. They have very different views of what the market is."
"Until I have a chance to go back and really assemble and reassemble and look at all this evidence, another single presentation doesn’t really help me," YGR says.
She's now discussing having Epic/Apple outline where they differ and then give her their best arguments. (This is a procedure sometimes called "hot-tubbing")
YGR says this would be in lieu of holding official closings. Would likely come after the trial ends and final briefing is in.
Epic's Katherine Forrest says yes immediately. Apple's Richard Doren says he needs to talk to Apple (then after turning around and getting it, also says yes)
Ok. They have now agreed this will likely take place on Monday, May 24.
Epic's Forrest says they expect to close their case Monday morning (though the last witnesses will testify today). Doren says Apple expects they will finish theirs by next Friday.
David Evans returns to the stand to offer rebuttal testimony. He is being questioned by Epic's Gary Bornstein.
Evans says he doesn't disagree with Hitt that Apple's App Store has increased output.
But Evans says you can't just look at growth. “We’ve know for at least the last 40 years that these high technology industries grow very rapidly and a dominant firm emerges very quickly. So there is tremendous growth in the business.”
Looking just at growth would give a "free pass for high tech companies because they almost all have the same pattern of extraordinary growth."
They are looking at a slide that Hitt offered yesterday (and I don't have, irritatingly since no one has uploaded his stuff yet).
Actually Apple's Dan Swanson says this slide wasn't shown (and thus he objects). He is overruled by the judge.
Reading from the slide, Evans says that it reports 64.1 percent of iOS users only used the iOS Fortnite app. That tells me "there is a large group of individuals only using their iPhone to play Fortnite," he says.
Going to another slide, Hitt reported that 81-84 percent Fortnite spending was retained after the app was removed from the App Store. Evans says that "it not an example of substitution."
Evans gives an example: a user plays on iOS and PS4. In general, she spent $100 a month, with $20 on iOS and $80 on PS4. Hitt's analysis would say there was 80% retention ($80/$100).
Evans said they should be concentrating on what happened to the $20 not the $80 since it stayed the same.
Judge YGR: what if the user spent that $20 on other games. Evans: that would be one form of substitution, but it would be substitution within the iOS ecosystem not Fortnite.
Bornstein moves to Schmalensee testimony where he talked about Android being free.
Schmalensee argued that Android/iOS operating systems couldn't be a market because they aren't sold separately to consumers. Evans says that's wrong. That would mean you can’t define a market if something is free, which would mean you couldn’t define many digital markets
Schmalensee also said that Evans' analysis would condemn game console systems as well. Game consoles are a very different business, Evans says, because there is intense competition in the foremarket for buying the console.
Game consoles are a niche industry. By contrast, the App Store is a foundational platform that underlies the digital economy, Evans says. The OS talking about are "foundational platforms that support the app economy" and a "big portion of the digital economy."
YGR: "are they utilities? given what you said, are the smartphones utilities?"
Evans: "I would not use the word utilities as an economist."
YGR: It sounds like what you are saying to me is they are so foundational they are utilities.
"It’s a matter of gradation," Evans says. He would say electricity is a utility. "I’m not willing to say not being able to access a smartphone is at the same level of not being able to access electricity or water. But they are very, very important technologies."
YGR: “I’m having a hard time understanding the gradation given how essential you claim it is.”
Evans says "at this point in time, I don’t want to suggest that as a foundational platform they are something I would say to Congress that you should think about regulating these companies like you would regulate" an electric company.
YGR: "You don’t think the government should break them up to add competition?"
Evans says he's a "moderate" on breakups. "There are economists and significant debate going on now concerning what to do with the tech companies. I would not advocate breaking them up. I’m strong believer the antitrust laws, properly used, can deal with the problems"
"I believe it would be a mistake. Antitrust law is a flexible method that can be very useful to reining in and dealing with competition problems in the digital economy. I have colleagues who take a more extreme view on that topic."
Returning to testimony now. Bornstein asks about the anti-steering rules.
I missed that question because I was typing up the essential facilities point. But they are now asking about LaFontaine's testimony.
When defining the market, you are looking at whether enough customers would switch, Evans says. "It’s not specific to a customer. It’s looking overall across customers" and whether they would move.
Bornstein says he has no further public questions. Swanson is up next.
Swanson asks if Evans is making a claim that Apple is an "essential facility." Evans says that's a legal classification not an economic one, but he is not.
Swanson is asking about a statement Evans made that successful operating systems often offer access to developers for free.
"Do Apple’s contracts allow all developers to distribute app for free? They do not, they impose obligations on developers so some have to pay commissions as a condition of securing distribution through the App Store," Evans says.
"Apple requires certain developers to pay for app distribution. Google does as well," he says.
Swanson asks how Windows Mobile worked with developers. Evans says they allowed access for a nominal fee, but Windows Phone did have an app store and charge commissions.
Swanson asks if there's any example of mobile operating system allowing developers to distribute for free. Evans says Android was designed that way. In China, the Android ecosystem supports competing app stores, he says.
"So the typical deal you think Apple should have followed exists only in China?" Swanson asks.
Evans says that the prospect offered by Steve Jobs in 2008 would have followed that.
Swanson moves back to "essential facilities" and whether a monopolist has a "duty to deal" with its rivals.
Swanson asks Evans if he believes that "there are important reasons to limit the duty to deal to extreme cases." Evans says he does generally agree.
Apple experts said that developers have been raising in-app prices over time. Evans says he doesn't have an opinion on why that is.
And we're back to American Express anti-steering rules. The Amex rules prevent merchants from refusing to take an Amex card or expressing a preference for non-Amex cards if the merchant has agreed to take Amex, Evans says.
All of those restrictions are procompetitive? Swanson asks. Evans says he agrees.
The rules are intended to prevent a merchant from telling an Amex cardholder who wants to use their Amex that they can't, Evans says. It's no broader than that, he says.
The purpose of the anti-steering provisions for Amex is to prevent merchants from steering business to Amex competitors, Swanson says. They don't prevent merchants from steering to debit cards, checks or cash.
Evans says they don't prevent steering to cash, he's not sure about debit cards.
YGR: Is Apple taking a position that apple is a competitor to the developers?
Swanson says no. "Apple is taking a position it is a competitor to the platform that developers would steer business to."
Evans: Because of the 30% commission, developers who have the ability to operate on another platform have an incentive to persuade the consumer not to use IAP and make that purchase somewhere else.
Evans: That’s what the purpose of the Apple anti-steering restrictions, to prevent the developer from informing the consumer an alternative is available to them.
“Developers can and do routinely communicate to consumers about different ways they can make purchases,” Swanson asks. Evans says he doesn't know how often that happens.
Nothing stops developers from communicating outside the app, Swanson says. Evans agrees that is his understanding of the rules. YGR asks: "I thought they could not collect information that Apple had access to. So if they don’t have information they cannot communicate."
Swanson says that since Fortnite was a multi-platform game, it had the ability to require users to login to keep game play updated. So it knew who its users were
Swanson says Spotify, Amazon app store, Samsung Galaxy store have anti-circumvention rules. Evans says he's not sure. He agrees that AirBnB and eBay both have anti-circumvention rules to prevent people from transacting outside their platforms.
"A road, whether it has a tollbooth or not, requires rules, you agree?" Swanson says, giving us our first random analogy of the day. "I agree," Evans says.
Talking about "rogue app stores," YGR asks if Apple could decide not to allow pornography stores. "Are there any boundaries to what you would clarify as a rogue app store."
Evans: It's not like the iPhone now is designed in a way that owners of iPhones can’t access pornography. There’s the Safari browser and there are apps people can use that don’t specialize in pornography but people can get access it
But Evans says that "as a matter of business policy" Apple could decide it did not want pornographic app stores on iOS
Swanson asks about whether Apple would have to allow app store that are not compliant with its user privacy policies.
Evans: That denial could have competitive implications, but if an app or app store is doing something that is invading user privacy on the iPhone, then that seems to me something Apple could deal with.
Evans says if there were different app stores, then there would be a competitive market for privacy enhancing apps or app stores.
Swanson asks if that isn't decided today by a consumer buying an iPhone or Android. Evans says no, it's decided by Apple's control over its App Store.
In your world, wouldn't Apple lose control over user privacy apps on the iPhone? Swanson asks. Evans: the problem is Apple being able to dictate on how other app stores are able to compete is it can make determinations on app stores and apps in ways that advantage Apple
Evans: "Apple could make decisions with respect to privacy for procompetitive reasons. It’s also possible Apple could make decisions to support its own business model."
Evans: "The road I don’t want to go down is the one where Apple gets to go back to being a monopolist" because it has control over all these decisions.
To the deposition! Swanson reads from Evans talking about app stores in China. "You used app stores in China as the road you would like to see Apple travel," Swanson says.
Evans: The road I would like to see Apple travel is not replicating China. I would like to see Apple having competition.
YGR: Are Android phones predominant in China? Yes, Evans says. Now Swanson is asking about intellectual property theft and the safety of Android phones in China.
And Swanson finishes. Rebuttal by Gary Bornstein now.
Bornstein returns to Amex. Do you know if the Supreme Court found American Express had market power? The court found "the government had not proved that Amex had market power," Evans says.
(This is an important point. Things can be ok for smaller companies to do and found to be illegal if a company is a monopolist and has market power).
We are taking our morning break till 10:35/1:35, however they are going to do Evans' sealed testimony immediately after the break. So might be back a little bit after that.
Listening to this delightful hold music (sarcasm)
Back now. Epic's Gary Bornstein finishing his last questions for David Evans.
Evans says this case is not appropriate to use cluster markets. We have a set of conduct that applies to customers and there is no distinction between how that conduct is applies, he says.
Bornstein says he is done. Swanson is back up for recross. The same conduct at issue in this case is used by console and by Steam, Swanson says. Yes, Evans says. Your position is the market should not include the consoles, Google Play or Steam, correct? Swanson says
Those don't provide substitutes, Evans says. There's nothing that would have prevented them from being in the market, but based on my analysis, I concluded there isn't sufficient substitution on the part of consumers.
And Evans is now done.
Epic counsel Brent Byars calls Ned Barnes, accountant.
Operating margins are revenue less expenses (operating expense and taxes), Barnes says
oMG so many accounting words. Depreciation. amortization.
Apple's App Store had profit margins of 79 percent in 2018 and 2019, Barnes says.
Apple offered some documents and a corporate representative who said that the documents didn't include some operating expenses for the App Store, Barnes says. So Barnes then used other Apple docs to estimate those for inclusion in his calculations.
Apple then produced additional information to Epic that included profit and loss statements that were in CEO Tim Cook's files, Barnes says.
"These documents show that Apple calculated its own operating margin percentage for the App Store to be 77.8% for FY2019 and 74.9% for FY2018," Barnes says, reading from his written report.
Barnes said the P&L statements gave him "comfort and confidence" that his estimates based on the other documents were reasonable.
Joint costs are where there are costs that can be attributed to more than one areas of the business, Barnes. Management or corporate finance sometimes allocate those on the basis of revenue, headcount or assets, he says
Evans asked Barnes to calculate the profit margins for other online stores. He used several publicly traded companies that use the same accounting basis as Apple
(They all use revenue on a net basis, in accountant speak)
Byars is done. Apple's Veronica Moye is up now.
She read from Tim Sweeney's testimony about how Epic does its accounting for joint costs. Barnes says he doesn't know and hasn't studied Epic's accounting. "I was asked to investigate what Apple does," he says.
Moye is reading more testimony from Sweeney that it would be "arbitrary" to create an operating margin for particular Epic products. Barnes just repeats that he doesn't know and didn't look into how Epic does its accounting.
Apparently we're just going to read many things Tim Sweeney said about Epic's accounting and have Barnes just repeat that he doesn't know.
"I don't have an opinion" on that, Barnes says, ad nauseum.
Do you agree its a good way to run a business to focus on innovation rather than business unit P&L? Moye asks. "I don't have an opinion on that issue," Barnes says.
You started with two documents that Apple documents created? Moye asks. I started with Apple documents, I don't remember if there were two.
Barnes thought the Apple documents were "fully burdened" meaning they included all identifiable costs and an allocation of shared costs. Apple witness Mark Rollins however said in a deposition they were not fully burdened.
Barnes then added three expenses that Rollins said were omitted. You tried to follow as best you could Mr. Rollins testimony in performing your allocations? Moye asks.
Barnes agrees.
In Rollins deposition, he gave three expenses and then said "I can’t think of any [other] specific line items sitting here right now," Moye says. Barnes said he made the adjustments based on what Rollins said he recalled.
If he had included other expenses for the App Store, the margin percentage "would go down," Barnes agrees. "That is math."
(We've had a lot of people explain to us how math works this week).
Barnes said he didn't review any testimony about the P&L statements that were found in Tim Cook's papers.
Barnes said he confirmed that the P&L statements were on a "fully burdened" basis.
"I don't have access to the underlying detail that backs up these data," Barnes says of the P&L statements.
Now we are talking about the other marketplaces he calculated the operating margin for. Barnes says he tried to look at the Google Play Store but it was too hard to segregate from Google's overall numbers. He confirms he didn't look at Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo
Moye is making Barnes read aloud from his testimony. "The Google Play Store, Sony Playstation Store, Microsoft Store, Samsung Galaxy Store, and Nintendo eShop do not meet the criteria because they do not report sufficiently separate financial results for their app stores"
Barnes acknowledges eBay, Etsy and Alibaba primarily sell physical goods. He says he'd have to check if Rakuten sells hardware or digital goods.
Moye finishes. Byars is back up.
Byars asks if Barnes knows why there is no testimony about the P&L statements. Barnes said he understood that Apple turned it over on the last day and so Epic wasn't able to ask witnesses about them.
How Epic does its accounting doesn't impact how Apple does its accounting, Barnes says in response to a question by Byars
Thank god that is done now. We're moving on to statistics
Epic's Lauren Moskowitz calls Peter Rossi
Rossi was asked to do a survey of consumers to how they would respond to a 5% increase in prices for certain transactions in the App Store.
They asked respondents in the survey to report their IAP purchases over the past 30 days.
As a control case, they asked them to take a look and report their model number
This survey was done in January, Rossi says, in response to a question from the judge.
After users put that info in, the survey gave this scenario:
It doesn't use the word permanent, Rossi said because that's an inexact term and could mean different things to different people.
Survey respondents were then asked to respond with one of these options.
YGR asks how he dealt with the fact that might have involved some purchases over the holiday, when prices are often lower. Rossi says he doesn't think that applies to this type of good, but he didn't test for that.
If a respondent answered YES, they were labeled a "Stickers." If they answered NO, they were labelled "Decrementers" and asked more questions
Decrementers were then asked how they would have tried to spend less and whether they would have moved to a new device
If they said they would go to a new device, they were asked what kind.
About 2,600 people responded to the survey. Those who said they weren't sure were removed from the sample and there were about 2,300 people who made a choice.
We have now broken for lunch and will be back at 4:15. Are you a Sticker or a Decrementer?
Back. They are fighting over exhibits and because of that fight the Rossi exhibits won't be posted today 🙄
Anyway, here are Rossi's results of the Stickers vs Decrementers
To make sure this sample was representative, they took that data from respondents' information on the make/model of their iPhone and compared it to an RBC Capital Markets report about what types of phones are in use.
Moskowitz finishes. Veronica Moye is up for Apple and cross examination.
Rossi acknowledges he did a first draft and pre-tested it before they did the survey.
In the initial draft, Question 16, Rossi's survey had the hypothetical price increase and told respondents were told about how much it would increase the price and how much it would increase over the court of a year, Moye says. He agrees.
There were aspects that respondents found confusing in the initial draft, Rossi acknowledges, so he made three new versions.
Had you ever used a pretest in a survey before? Rossi said he had not.
On the final version, there were no conversations or interviews of survey respondents, Rossi agrees.
Moye is asking about the word permanent. It is not included in the question that was given to survey respondents.
They are now looking at the various drafts of the questions (sadly I don't have those). One draft said "in the future, you'd be paying"
That didn't make the cut for the final version. Rossi also confirms that the survey didn't look at price increases for initial downloads.
Moye reads part of Epic's Matthew Weissinger testimony that Fortnite's core demographic is men aged 13 to 24. Rossi said he doesn't know whether that is the case and he didn't find it relevant to his survey.
Rossi says his target population for the survey was iPhone users aged 17 and older.
Ages 13-16 are not included in the survey, Rossi says. He also agrees that some of the survey respondents were probably over 25.
The survey took place end of January to February, so would have included purchases from Dec. 21st through the end of January, he says.
They are looking at some of the underlying data for the survey. About 25 percent of the survey respondents said they spent $5 or less. Rossi confirms that a 5% increase would be 25 cents. (Math!)
Overall, 75% of survey respondents had price increases between 25 cents and $1.50, Moye says. Rossi agrees.
81% of people said they wouldn't make a change and 19% said they would make a change, Moye recaps.
She is now asking about Question 17
She asks what the "See more details" said. He reads: "For example, the cost of the new device and accessories, installing and/or repurchasing apps for a different app store, compatibility with other devices and learning how to use new features of the device and the apps."
She asks if he thinks that not ambiguous. He does not that is ambiguous.
Moye is done. Moskowitz is back up.
Why did you do a structured pretest? Moskowitz asks. Rossi says it was difficult to monitor how conscientiousness survey respondents were in actually entering their purchases. To ensure that they were, they added the question about the model of the iPhone.
Rossi said they did not include people under age 17 because kids are often joint purchases with a family. He also would have needed parental consent, which poses a problem in getting unbiased and reliable data, he said.
YGR asks Epic to include the appendices to Rossi's report, which explains all the variations of the survey and why he changed the words.
YGR you didn't ask them in the survey about downloads. Rossi says no. Did you advise them of that in this imaginary scenario? YGR says. Rossi said they only said in-app/subscription would increase.
And Rossi is done. Next up: James Mickens, who will be examined by Epic's Justin Clarke.
Harvard prof, previously a researcher for Microsoft.
Mickens worked at Microsoft from 2008-2015. He had some oversight for research interns. He has been invited to serve as a panelist for a mentoring conference for Microsoft and went to a research faculty summit in 2018.
He has a research collaboration today with someone at Microsoft Research Lab in New York but it doesn't relate to smartphones, he says.
Mickens evaluated the security of Apple iPhones. He said he relied on academic computer security articles, public statements by Apple and a book about reverse engineering the iPhone.
The security properties of the iPhone are primarily enforced by iOS, Mickens says. The App Review adds "minimal additional security benefits"
iOS is capable of installing apps that don't come from the App Store, Mickens says. If iPhones opened up to third-party App Stores, that would not result in users of iPhone having a meaningfully less secure experience.
Do you have an opinion as to why Android has more security issues than iPhone? YGR asks. I don't think there's a meaningful difference, Mickens says. At the margin, specific malware only iOS/Android, but these two platforms are roughly equivalent.
The chef at a restaurant controls the kitchen. He is the executive of the kitchen, Mickens says. A customer can't just go talk to the chef, though. There are intermediators.
The operating system is the chef in the restaurant, Mickens. The middleware is the wait staff. An app sends a request to the middleware.
(Is the app the customer in this analogy? I'm not entirely sure)
The iPhone is the kitchen, I think. It's a little too late after a week of crazy analogies for me to follow this one well.
Oh no. There's another analogy. A person is in an office and when they want to work on a task, they have to move the books from the bookshelf to the desk.
Mickens: The bookshelf is the storage device. When an app wants to work on a specific set of things it has to take things from the bookshelf to the desk. The desk is memory.
This might be easier if I could see his demonstratives.
Good apps and bad apps are behavior distinctions. What sandboxing does is examine the type of behavior an app wants to perform, Mickens says. The only way an app can interact with anything is if it asks the OS to perform something on its behalf. That is called a system call.
YGR: by having the app on an iPhone, isn't that a risk of someone inadvertently having something on their device and all of a sudden the whole system is compromised. That's why you don't open emails if you don't know who they come from.
Mickens says sandboxing helps prevent that. Sandboxing restrict the scope of damage. So if a malicious app gets on there, the sandbox will keep it from doing bad things, Mickens says.
YGR the sandboxing can still take care it? Mickens says yes. Sandboxing are agnostic as to the means by which something gets on a device. If there's a third-party app store, or a malicious app from Apple's app store, sandboxing would restrict the app from causing havok.
A signature is basically a note that is attached to a piece of digital content that provides attribution and integrity. It tells you where something came from and whether something has been tampered with, Mickens says.
Signature validation can help determine whether that signature is correct and should be allowed to be downloaded, Mickens says.
Mickens is now explaining how a developer distributes an app through the App Store.
YGR have you ever created an app? Mickens says yes, but none that have been distributed publicly. He also hasn't personally gone through Apple's App Review.
Our friendly neighborhood developer, Alice, has registered with the Apple Developer Program.
Alice uploads her app to Apple's App Review Process and signs it with her signature.
Apple reviews Alice's app against its App Guidelines. It then signs Alice's app.
Once Apple puts its signature on there it's a "stamp of approval" that iOS is going to check for before it allows an iPhone to download an app from the App Store, Mickens says.
App Review screens for five security features, Mickens says.
Sandbox compliance, exploit resistance, malware exclusion, user consent for private data access, and legal compliance
Exploit resistance checks to ensure there aren't any holes that would allow it to be subverted by an attacker, Mickens says.
Malware exclusion tries to determine if the app is intentionally malicious, Mickens says.
User consent. If an app wants to access something like the camera or GPS, this would lead to a prompt to ensure the user wants it, Mickens says. This would also cover user-data on the phone like a birthday or social security number.
Legal compliance. This is to make sure that the app satisfies any laws that are required by a particular jurisdiction where it might be downloaded, Mickens says.
Those first three categories can be enforced by the operating system without the need for an app review, Mickens says. The second two that both the OS and App Review struggle with, he says.
This is why Mickens says he believes the App Review provides minimal additional security to what the operating system already provides.
On user consent, Mickens says, the operating system can use a prompt if it's not sure whether an app should really be accessing something like contacts or the camera (and you already see this a lot within iOS)
On the user consent to private data, it's hard for a human app reviewer to test all the various parts of an app to see where private data might be requested, Mickens says. The same is true of legal compliance.
"You're not suggesting there's no benefit to human review," judge asks. No, Mickens says, it's just marginal.
Mickens says Kosmynka testified that the average app review is 6-12 minutes. That's not a long period of time. If you are trying to slip something past the app review, you have to get it to look legit for a short period of time, he says.
Apple objects to that testimony. YGR suggests they move on.
Apple's enterprise program allows apps to be distributed to be installed on the phones of a company's employees. Those Enterprise apps are signed by the company not Apple, Mickens says.
These apps are not reviewed by Apple, Mickens says.
Apple also has a distribution channel for its developers so they can test features without going through app review, he says.
"Already iOS supports multiple distribution channels," Mickens says. This is relevant to allowing a third-party app store on the iPhone. It would still be protected by the security measures in the operating system.
Mickens says he also evaluated the security protections in MacOS, the operating system for Mac computers and laptops.
On a Mac, you can get software from Mac Store, third parties who notarize their software, and unsigned, un-notarized third-party apps.
YGR is iOS more secure than MacOS? Mickens: "I would not say it is meaningfully more secure."
Mickens says iOS and MacOS share critical infrastructure. YGR asks if he has seen any proprietary info. Mickens says he has not, but that Darwin kernel that these are based on are open-source, so he's looked at it. There's some middleware that is shared.
Mickens says he bases that on books by former Apple developers and some reverse-engineered information about shared components between iOS and MacOS.
For both iOS and MacOS, there's a lot of shared functionality and overlap that provides on-device security, Mickens says.
The malware scan that MacOS has doesn't exist on iOS. Bu they would have to write it new, YGR says. Mickens says it would only require minimal code. There are common security mechanisms between MacOS and iOS. "You could take these models and move them to iOS"
Malware scanners don't currently exist on iOS. But they could because the plumbing, the infrastructure is already there, Mickens says.
If you wanted to take the notarization model from MacOS and port it to iOS, it would be possible, Mickens says.
If Apple were to allow users to access apps through third-party app stores "I don't think it would have a meaningful difference on the security experience," Mickens says.
Regardless of the distribution channel, all of the on-device security protections are enforced, Mickens says.
The distribution channels on MacOS aren't mutually exclusive, Mickens says. Some users only want to download apps from the MacStore. Others want ones notarized. If iOS were opened up, that would not prevent users from using Apple's App Store.
YGR asks if Mickens knows how many developers there are for Mac. He says he doesn’t. He also says he doesn’t know how many apps are on App Store
YGR says Mickens has “made a good point” about third-party access, but she’s concerned about the numbers involved here
YGR says she read an MIT article about iOS security in compared to other platforms. Mickens says he read that. The biggest companies like Microsoft, Google and others focus heavily on security now
And YGR excuses Mickens. He will resume at 8 am Monday

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12 May
We're now switching to Apple's experts. Apple lawyer Daniel Swanson calls MIT's Richard Schmalensee, their main economic witness
Schmalensee says he has testified in court before, most notably as Microsoft's expert in US v Microsoft. He has consulted for @FTC Bureau of Economics and @JusticeATR. He was member of CEA during George H.W. Bush admin from 1989 to 1991
Read 126 tweets
12 May
Stanford's Susan Athey is back on the stand for #epicvapple this AM being cross examined by Apple's Karen Dunn.
Dunn is asking Athey a bunch of questions about Steam's apps, like Steam Chat, a messenger app. techcrunch.com/2019/05/21/val…
Athey says she's used Steam but not Steam Chat or Steam Link, an app that lets you stream Steam from your PC to your mobile device or TV en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Link
Read 17 tweets

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