Thread by @thedextriarchy

Day 12 of Epic v. Apple starts in 15 minutes, overlapping with Google I/O. More testimony from Phil Schiller and then (maybe) Apple’s head of game business development Michael Schmid! @mslopatto wrote of Schiller yesterday:

theverge.com/2021/5/17/2244…

https://twitter.com/thedextriarchy/status/1394305648020570112

The press line seems to be broken this morning, but main conference line is up, and judge is welcoming people to the courtroom.

We’re talking about a document that was “found last night” regarding the small business program — there’s an issue around whether it’s privileged.

Epic is arguing it shouldn’t mostly be considered confidential, judge says she hasn’t read the doc, sounds like it’s going to go to another judge for a decision.

Epic lawyers raising a question around Michael Schmid, our planned second witness. Apple wants to admit a declaration Epic calls “classic hearsay” and an attempt to “walk through what can and cannot be done on websites,” something Epic says he isn’t a good witness for.

“[One] doesn’t have to be an expert to figure out how a website works. And frankly, I have lots of questions still,” says judge.

how is website formed

Judge appears to have noted that the press line is down.

In case you’re wondering press line is definitely still down. I just got back to the main line and judge is talking about RICO. Cool.

RICO was only a segue to basketball, sorry.

Phil Schiller is back on the stand, and we’re back where we ended yesterday: with all the tech on the iPhone. Apple’s lawyer is asking Schiller to describe ARKit, Apple’s augmented reality system.

Hahaha okay we’re going to do a Schiller-narrated ARKit demo of "Animal Safari AR"

“Can you tell me which part of that was real and which part was augmented reality?”

Schiller clarifies that everything is real except the safari animals. I can’t see the courtroom but I’m pretty sure folks could figure that one out themselves.

ARKit also has enhancements like RealityKit and Reality Composer, the latter an app for designing AR experiences.

Are these relevant to game designers?

“I think so, particularly younger developers and developers who are getting started,” Schiller says.

Like all the stuff discussed yesterday, Apple is raising ARKit as an example of the benefits game developers get from iOS.

We’ve now got a demo of CoreML machine learning tools — Apple’s showing off this basketball training app: apps.apple.com/us/app/homecou…

Once again, Schiller says none of the costs of developing things like CoreML and ARKit have been charged to the App Store.

Schiller says Apple also has developer outreach programs, accelerators, schools, and other perks for developers worldwide. And much of Apple’s tech is patented and copyrighted, he says.

Schiller says his first patent was for the iPod: “I helped come up with the idea for the wheel."

Lawyer emphasizes that Schiller came up with this despite being nominally the marketing guy. “Marketing works hand in hand with engineering on all of our products,” Schiller says.

Apple is handing Schiller over to Epic for cross-examination now.

Epic’s lawyer starts by drawing a distinction between native and web apps, saying many of these iOS features aren’t available to web apps.

“The reason that web apps and native apps have differences is because the web apps have to be rendered through a browser, correct?”

“That’s one difference. There are others,” Schiller says.

Also, developers have to use Apple’s own Webkit tools to render.

The lawyer notes that of 8 API/software tools Schiller talked about, web developers can’t use 7 of them.

Lawyer asks if Schiller is aware that “Apple relies upon the innovations of many developers, many of whom are not Apple developers” to make its tools, including many open source developers.

“Apple uses a lot of open source software and discloses it,” lawyer says, and that goes into Apple innovations.

Schiller says yes, but he’s not sure exactly how much of them it comprises.

Epic delving real deep into reading out the text of licensing agreements where Apple says some of its software is built on free and open source stuff.

“You spent an awful lot of time talking about the innovations and IP of Apple, and it’s not a surprise to you that there is somewhere [light paraphrase:a disclosure of] Apple licensing terms, is it?” lawyer asks. It's tinged with a bit more suspicion than I feel like it warrants.

Lawyer still literally just reading the text of Apple websites where it references using open source software. Even if you think Apple overhypes its tech this is an extremely weird form of gotcha.

“You’re very familiar with your iPhone, is that correct?” lawyer asks Schiller.

oh my god they’re sniping at each other about the pronunciation of GNU

“You agree with me that there are many pages left in this document, wouldn’t you?” Epic’s lawyer asks, in the tone of a loan shark enforcer noting you’ve still got eight fingers left.

Epic finally and mercifully stops the reading of the licensing agreements, noting the issue is that “Apple is taking total credit for all innovations” in the iPhone, when really it’s built on lots of existing tech.

Now we’re going back to the evidence — a Goldman-Sachs report that Schiller apparently said he didn’t recall sending around Apple in an email but (according to Epic) did.

Schiller, in response to a question about this: “I do everything thinking about it. I’m not sure what that means.”

https://twitter.com/leah_nylen/status/1394685425986543620

We’re going through the difficulty of switching movie libraries from Apple TV — Schiller apparently sent around an email based on this report streetinsider.com/Analyst+Commen…

This report is from 2013, and Schiller notes most people will just stream movies, not buy them, at this point — another moment of witnesses and lawyers working around a lot of evidence having been gathered in the midst of pretty major changes in the industry.

Lawyer wants to talk about iCloud as well. (Schiller confirms you can’t use iCloud on Android devices.) iTunes and iCloud “figure[d] pretty big” in ecosystem switching issues around the Goldman Sachs report; is that still true?

“Not the same as at this time,” Schillre says.

Epic’s lawyer: “Yesterday you had a recollection of a variety of content.”

Yes — Schiller says he looked back at some documents and remembered things he hadn’t in deposition, around emails like this

https://twitter.com/leah_nylen/status/1394688183338688512

Schiller says his memory was jogged when Epic started talking about a ‘plan’ for a walled garden. “When you said that to me, it really stuck in my mind … what ‘whole plan?’” Schiller says.

“You wanted to make sure you knew how to explain it,” lawyer says accusingly.

Epic’s lawyer is so aggressive that it’s almost a little hard to follow Schiller’s questioning here.

We’re bringing up an email to Steve Jobs — Schiller said it was a “really bad idea” to have people see Google contacts instead of Apple ones on the iPhone. Schiller says it was just an attempt to make sure people saw the contacts they expected to see.

A 2008 email with Scott Forstall’s being discussed now — Schiller said “you’re right, Android will be completely open. … I don’t see how we can have anything like their license and business model."

Schiller went on to say it felt “just like the argument earlier this year around app distribution.” Which was an argument for an education-specific issue only, Schiller says now, not overall openness on the store.

“Forstall, remind me, who’s Forstall again?” judge asks, in a solid power move.

(of Apple’s Scott Forstall)

Epic lawyer accuses Apple of “basking in… your power to destroy another company’s business.” She's citing a 2008 email that discusses the hypothetical of starting an ads API on the closed system — "and where would Google be then?” the email asks.

Schiller objects to lawyer repeatedly referencing “the plan” to keep iOS closed or similar.

“Does the word plan make you feel uncomfortable?” lawyer asks.

Schiller says she just keeps suggesting there’s a specific plan to close off iOS and that’s not true.

We’re going over another email where Schiller discusses whether Apple will need to publish App Store guidelines at some point in the future, building on a user asking why they can’t play their favorite games. Epic puts it forward as an example of Apple being willfully opaque.

There’s also a 2010 message to developers who got their apps rejected, saying they could go in front of a review board, but “if you run to the press and trash us, it never helps."

Apple lawyer has just brought up this article by @LaurenGoode — Schiller sent it to other executives for discussion theverge.com/2016/10/10/132…

“Let’s fast-forward to 2019,” says lawyer. But then we’re going back to the early ‘10s to the ebooks price-fixing case against Apple, where executives were allegedly conspiring together. The timeline here is getting a little tangled.

Cue was allegedly involved in the price-fixing case. (Apple’s lawyer raises an objection to something Cue was going to say, but it’s overruled.) So Epic cites a 2014 Guardian article — where Cue said he’d do it again, but “take better notes.” theguardian.com/books/2014/dec…

Epic lawyer says that’s part of a pattern of Apple learning to be more careful by 2019, when Apple execs start talking about (as Tim Cook writes in an email) a “long-term competitive advantage” among enterprise and consumers.

The email is about Apple’s sign-in services — and “one of the issues between switching between devices is being able to remember your password” in apps Epic lawyer notes.

Schiller says he doesn’t agree that’s a big switching driver.

Epic lawyer lays out how passwords work on a platform-specific manager — “unless I remember all of those automatically generated passwords, I am out of luck on every single app.”

Schiller says you just have to reset every password with Android.

Schiller later references the fact that you can use a cross-platform password manager.

Epic’s lawyer is now tearing into Schiller for thinking it’s safe to keep personal information on a Mac despite the Mac being open to sideloaded apps and therefore in Apple’s telling less secure.

“You think people are smart enough to make choices, don’t you?” she asks.

Schiller says people are smart but we might not know all the tradeoffs.

Epic lawyer is recapping the argument that it’s not trying to kill the App Store, just allow alternatives, the same way Apple has a macOS App Store and also allows sideloading.

Lawyer, paraphrased: “You saw my little gas station slide? I made another gas station slide."

Schiller: “Thank you for making another slide."

(The slide is about the gas station as a competition metaphor.)

Apparently there’s a literal giant book of App Store guidelines? I’m not sure from outside the courtroom if I’m interpreting this correctly.

Lawyer brings up a 2010 email. (“Why is everything labeled privileged and confidential?” she asks sarcastically.) We’re looking at areas that need “further investigation” at the App Store, including topics like the Dalai Lama and Tibetan freedom.

“Do not submit to ERB: porn or adult [content]” where the “whole purpose of the app is sex.” That includes escort services locators, sex toy stores, etc. These things didn’t need executive review board checks, in other words, because they were obviously banned.

(Some documents here apparently need to be partially redacted before they’re posted, not sure what we’ll get out of that.)

Epic’s lawyer has now brought up Itch.io *yet again,* this time to attack Apple for attacking it. Keep in mind that Itch.io is not on iOS and nobody AFAIK has proposed putting it there and it is getting insane how often it comes up.

“You’ve never seen it?”

“I don’t recall that.”

“You don’t know if Itch.io’s content is better or worse than that in the App Store?”

No, Schiller says.

Now Epic’s lawyer is just reading out a bunch of alleged BDSM/kink apps that she found by searching through the App Store, including ones with in-app purchases.

This trial is not precisely a high-water mark for sex positivity.

Now we’re getting the results if you search terms like “escort” or “fetish” on the App Store.

we are now hearing about an app called “Sex Position 3D”

also there’s an app called “Fullscreen Incognito Internet” okay seriously people know Tor exists right

more pages of search results, we are dangerously close to gish gallop territory

Okay, Epic’s lawyer is pulling up TikTok. And we’re searching for BDSM on TikTok. “You would agree with me that there’s a variety of search returns for the word BDSM under TikTok?”

“This is your phone and not mine,” Schiller says.

“The Unreal Engine’s publisher goes after Kinktok in federal court” was not on my 2021 bingo card.

Look Epic is making the very fair point that you can find lots of objectionable content within approved apps on the App Store but this is not the most fun way to spend a morning.

Epic lawyer: “Have you ever used Reddit?”

Schiller: “Briefly. I tried it once. Yes."

Phil Schiller tried Reddit once but he didn’t inhale

Epic’s lawyer notes you can access NSFW subreddits on the Reddit app on iOS. Worth noting Apple *does* require some additional content filtering on apps like Discord, which has been controversial! theverge.com/tech/2021/4/19…

“Your honor, this would be a good stopping point” YES PLEASE FINALLY

Back at 1:35 ET.

We’re back on the record with more Schiller.

Schiller said the Small Business price drop was spurred by the pandemic. Lawyer says it was about monopoly concerns.

“I don’t think those points are mutually exclusive.”

But in part?

“It was certainly a consideration of creating it was that we were hearing feedback worldwide."

Schiller essentially said this to Apple’s lawyer yesterday, FWIW.

https://twitter.com/thedextriarchy/status/1394387831058051074

Epic lawyer notes there wasn’t an explicit mention of the pandemic — Schiller says there were other channels of communication, but we don’t have those details here.

“I don’t know that it’s been profitable since 2009,” Schiller says of the App Store — says he doesn’t know about its profits.

“How can that possibly be?”

“Because that’s not how I look at the business and not what I measure the team on.”

It *never* comes up?

“It doesn’t."

A 2017 Apple press release being pulled up now — notes $70 billion earnings to developers apple.com/newsroom/2017/…

Working out the commission numbers, that means Apple took in over $20 billion during that period, Schiller and lawyer agree.

“But you don’t know whether the $20 billion … put the App Store within the realm of profitablility,” lawyer asks.

“I don’t now how to start on that,” Schiller says. Then: “I’m not saying can’t, I’m saying we haven’t.”

“Because it’s convenient not to.”

“We don’t deny that likely it is, we just haven’t managed the business that way. We manage it so there’s one P&L [profit & loss statement] for the company."

Epic lawyer is moving onto the broader regulatory/legal complaints about Apple — a Spotify complaint, a congressional antitrust investigation that covered it and other companies, an EU investigation, and so forth.

There’s an Apple executive email thread acknowledging that Russian antitrust agency FAS also initiated a case against Apple in 2019.

Epic’s lawyer is saying that Epic obviously wasn’t Apple’s introduction to concerns about its market power.

There’s a 2020 email to Schiller and other execs announcing the EU antitrust inquiry.

“This is a person who every single day just sends us press clippings of the news” from the past day,” Schiller objects — not an “announcement."

An email notes there was a lot of press around Apple rejecting the “Hey” app — we covered that saga here theverge.com/2020/6/22/2129…

Confirming Schiller was aware of that controversy. There’s an email titled “Supportive Developers” from June 21 2020. “Apple was out looking for supportive developers for its competition issues before Epic begins its letters to Apple, correct?” lawyer asks.

Lawyer cites a fragment of an email asking "are there some other developers we could turn to quickly if we want something” to support Apple. There’s a list of developers that goes on for several pages, all developers likely to “provide public statements of support for Apple."

“This was Apple’s attempt to try and combat the press you were getting from the developer Basecamp as well as the pressure that was building with the foreign and other investigations, correct?”

“I didn’t connect it to any of those things directly,” Schiller says.

Schiller says one developer reached out to him saying they wanted to talk publicly, so he sent an email to see if there were others who might join them.

“It has to do with everything to do with the App Store, and cerrainly some people were complaining about it, and we wanted to show that there were people who were really happy about it."

Among other things Apple has said Epic is basically the reason things like the Coalition for App Fairness exist and is making developer discontent look worse than it is, and Epic’s lawyer is going through issues that predate Epic’s Project Liberty.

Phil Schiller defines influencer: “Influencers tend to be people who create vlogs on YouTube and other social media channels."

(Apple Arcade was working on a strategy of reaching out to influencers.)

Epic lawyer brings up documents that establish Apple was aware its PR might need to work on competition issues, even before Epic.

Schiller acknowledges he was aware Tim Cook testified at a congressional antitrust hearing but didn’t know the exact date. “I‘m sure I read some press, but I don’t recall it."

Schiller is asked if he’s aware there was a Korean investigation opened in mid-2020. “I believe I may have heard it, I’m not 100% certain."

Was Schiller ever aware that Japan had begun an inquiry into Apple?

“I don’t recall this.”

Does he recall making a Powerpoint slide identifying Japan as a major antitrust threat?

“I don’t even use Powerpoint, so I couldn’t have written a Powerpoint."

Now there’s an email evaluating the possibility of a small business program like the one it implemented in 2020. Apple was looking for a way to take the smallest possible financial hit, right?

“No, I don’t agree with that characterization,” Schiller says.

Epic lawyer says there were “various scenarios” being discussed about ways to reduce the number of developers eligible for the Small Business Program. Schiller disagrees with the characterization.

Schiller said yesterday that an App Store commission reduction was held up by Apple’s financial team worrying about money laundering or other methods of gaming the system.

Judge asks (loosely paraphrasing) if anything’s happened recently in the congressional antitrust investigation — Epic’s lawyer says nothing publicly recently.

There’s a brief argument about whether they’re going to redact some metadata to an email, but they’re moving on now. At least a few more of these docs will remain sealed, unfortunately.

One more antitrust investigation data point: the UK CMA opened an investigation into the App Store in March.

“I don’t recall that,” Schiller says. Somebody may have told him, he says, but he doesn’t remember.

Lawyer and Schiller have distinctly different interpretations of a Russian law requiring phone makers to show Russia-made apps at startup. Lawyer characterizes it as a store-within-a-store, Schiller as having to highlight a handful of specific apps. theverge.com/2021/4/1/22361…

The Small Business Program was pushed over the edge “not by Epic, but by a wide variety of judicial, congressional, and regulatory issues that Apple was facing around the world, is that right?”

Schiller: “It was pushed by me, specifically. If you want to say who pushed it."

“Apple collects a variety of information on Apple apps that there’s a way a user can find out what information is collected, but there’s no way for a user to opt out, correct?”

“There’s a way to opt out of many of the data types,” Schiller says.

Lawyer calls up “the big binder — we don’t need the little binders anymore.”

🚫📒📒📒📒🚫

We’re going to walk through the types of data Apple collects. Starting with personalized ads across different Apple services and a “device trust score” stored anonymously for 10 years.

Now onto Apple collecting information about how people use the store, including info about what kind of stuff they search for there, used for trending topics and suggestions.

“Apple basically can follow you to a location,” lawyer says of one geolocation-focused feature.

Schiller: “This isn’t about following you.”

“It can find you. It knows where you are.”

“It’s not about tracking where you are, it’s about geographically relevant applications."

Schiller says the feature just refers to something like knowing which country you’re in so it can show you localized options.

Lawyer emphasizes that you can opt out of data being used for ad targeting, but not necessarily stop Apple from collecting that data in the first place.

Schiller obviously disagrees with the extent of info being collected, but they’re not talking in hard specifics here.

We’re walking through what the App Store itself collects, then the same for Apple Books, Apple News, Apple TV, etc. — listing things like “financial information,” “contact information,” and “search history."

Lawyer: “It’s a lot of information, wouldn’t you agree?”

Schiller: “No, I wouldn’t agree.”

Lawyer: “Okay."

Lawyer is lumping together a bunch of ways Apple can make money related to the App Store, casting a broad net since Apple doesn’t break out costs and “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander."

“I’m sorry, I never understood that metaphor,” Schiller says, relatably.

There’s a reference to how much money Apple’s search ads make in a one-week period — we aren’t going to hear it out loud, though.

Lawyer brings up the launch of in-app purchases, and we’re playing a clip from a Scott Forstall deposition — saying there were some apps using their own payment mechanisms, and these were required to switch over to IAP.

“I don’t agree with that,” Schiller says, after lawyer asks if it’s true that devs were already offering IAP before Apple launched them.

Schiller says he remembers people offering non-recurring *subscriptions* using in-app purchases, before Apple officially introduced recurring subscriptions in the App Store.

Lawyer says that if devs were offering in-app purchases or subscriptions before Apple made them official, “you increased the cost to developers, because you were implementing a program that then begins to charge them 30%."

I wish we had more detail here about the developers Epic’s referring to — as it stands the lawyer and Schiller seem to be talking past each other a little.

Schiller says they’re just talking about developers who offered services like subscriptions through websites etc., which Apple has always allowed.

Now looking at a 2011 document from Schiller to Eddy Cue. This was before subscriptions were announced. “Anyone offering a subscription service … will need to add our new subscription billing within the app and remove all links to their web signup,” it says.

“Doesn’t that suggest to you that you fully understood that there wer esubscriptino services being offered before Apple’s own subscription program was announced?” lawyer asks.

Schiller says this relates to not being able to link out to a website, i.e. iOS anti-steering rules.

Schiller repeats again that he thinks of the App Store as part of a single product, not a thing he can break down costs of.

“Don’t companies have to look at how much it costs them when they want to cut their price?”

Not when they think of it as one piece of a larger profit and loss statement, Schiller says.

Lawyer says Apple’s never licensed its Mac OS.

“We did once, a long time ago,” Schiller says.

Can’t remember offhand what he’s referring to. Possibly this?
cultofmac.com/458490/clone-m…

Lawyer hitting again on Apple apparently not having seen actual security issues with third-party payment processing systems.

Epic’s lawyer asks how many apps have been rejected as “stores within stores” — Schiller doesn’t know.

Schiller just offhandedly raised the possibility of “stores within stores within stores” and now we’re down the rabbit hole

Lawyer calls up a 2013 email from Schiller referencing a customer who had a store-within-a-store rejected and was then rejected again despite making the “utmost effort” to comply.

Epic raises once again the possibility of a Sesame Street Store that Apple would ban. It is totally hypothetical as far as I know, so now Schiller and the lawyer are arguing about the planned imaginary composition of this store.

The issue is that you can be a “store within a store” in general, you just can’t have an *app* store within a store, says Schiller. Now Epic’s lawyer is describing apparently banned examples of this but I don’t know if they’re real or part of the Sesame Street example.

I’m sure it’s just a convenient recurring shorthand, but this trial makes Epic come off as *incredibly* pumped about the idea of a Sesame Street app store.

Epic’s lawyer mentions Fortnite’s create system, but Schiller says he’s unfamiliar. He only plays Battle Royale.

You never tried the creative mode, lawyer asks?

“I didn’t find it interesting.”

In case you’re wondering, Phil Schiller says he mainly uses two Fortnite skins: a Rogue Agent one from a holiday promotion and a New England Patriots player.

We’re on break now until 4:15ET.

We’re back now. Epic’s lawyer is talking about Apple failing to catch Minecraft copycat apps.

Now, on a related topic, an email about Apple accidentally leaking Fortnite content.

OK, now we’re going back to Tiktok, Instagram, and Reddit (with their NSFW content). “If a user had downloaded the native app of any one of those three … they would have been able to access the content of those apps."

Feels like we’re in recap mode.

Epic’s lawyer and Schiller still don’t agree on whether there were iOS developers offering in-app purchases before Apple officially allowed it.

They’re referencing an email now where it seems like we’re getting an answer: people could potentially buy tokens and then redeem them inside the iOS app. Although Schiller says he’s not sure that actually happened.

There’s a 2008 email noting that “many games have a healthy aftermarket in additional game levels, enhanced graphics,” and even new games using the original base gameplay. Schiller says it “definitely was not on iPhone,” though. I.e., referring to other platforms.

Discussing now “secret” guidelines on the App Store, before they were published online. Schiller says devs could still get notice that they were breaking rules and wouldn’t be completely blindsided.

Epic also claims that Apple preferences its own services in App Store advertising.

“Apple has changed the algorithm, hasn’t it, that relates to the search and preferences its own apps, does it not?”

“No,” says Schiller. He says the algorithm looks at 42 variables, including popularity, closeness of name, etc.

Apple is back up for questioning, so we’re going to work backwards again and talk about why Apple apps come up first in searches.

One issue is that “a surprisingly large number of people use search to launch apps on their phone,” says Schiller — so they search big Apple apps they already have to launch them.

Schiller’s going through the rules of the enterprise program now. “We work with large-scale corporations, we give them a special security key,” and they have to sign an agreement saying they won’t distribute to consumers, he says.

Schiller says the point of the enterprise program is that we "basically trust that a large corporation is not going to violate the security and privacy of their own employees."

The enterprise program has been abused, he concedes, and “we have been tightening the program” and trying to reduce things like sale of keys or deployment of software off company devices.

Schiller is asking if the Coalition for App Fairness (the Epic-cofounded advocacy org) testified before Congress — he names Spotify and Tile.

Schiller is also talking about the Russian app portal law again — denies that it required sideloading apps or adding a “store within a store.”

Does he question that the App Store has contributed to the bottom line for Apple?

No, Schiller says. He does not.

Now Apple’s lawyer is raising the “fetish and BBDM” (or possibly “BDDM”? Definitely not BDSM) apps that Epic’s lawyers complained about. He notes many of these apps present themselves as dating apps, which are not prohibited.

Schiller says “it would be inappropriate for us to give our personal feelings” about not allowing dating apps for people into BDSM, for instance. And there’s an inherent tension between laying out clear rules and people trying to push the boundaries of those rules.

Now we’re pulling up TikTok’s community guidelines, noting that TikTok also does not allow “nudity, pornography, or sexually explicit content."

i think this is the most time anybody has ever spent reading the terms and conditions of an iOS app

Shorter version of today’s legal questioning:

Epic: Sometimes Apple’s App Store review doesn’t work
Apple: Sometimes it does

Lawyer bringing up something I alluded to earlier: Apple requires some social app developers (like Reddit) to lock away NSFW/offensive content on iOS, unless they explicitly flip a switch on the web version of the service.

Schiller says Apple doesn’t track users. “The word ‘tracking’ refers specifically to when a developer … needs information from you to deliver a service, that’s not tracking, that’s just delivering a service.” Tracking is when that data gets moved through a third party.

If you go on vacation in France, Apple might use that country-level location data for recommendations etc., he says, but at a very broad level.

Lawyer: “Does Apple ever sell data?”

Schiller: “No.”

Lawyer: “Does Apple ever share data with data brokers?”

Schiller: “No.”

Schiller brings up the new App Tracking Transparency policy, which we explained previously here theverge.com/2021/4/27/2240…

The “long-term competitive advantage” and “more sticky” comments from earlier, meanwhile, Schiller puts in the context of Apple trying to stop phishing.

Schiller, lightly paraphrased: “If users are better protected from phishing scams on our systems, people are going to want to use our systems.”

(Schiller uses 1Password and Apple’s built-in password features, btw.)

Schiller referring to the Epic allegations of a master plan: “If there was any plan here, it’s simply to come up with new features to help protect users from security and privacy scams.”

Apple’s lawyer is asking about iMessage now — a huge data point in Epic’s argument that Apple is explicitly trying to lock people into iOS by refusing to open it up.

Schiller talking up the benefits of iMessage-to-iMessage communications, like encryption. Then Apple’s lawyer mentions the dreaded SMS green bubble.

“Why did Apple put the work in to create iMessage?” lawyer asks.

“We thought it created an extra experience for our users that was unique and fun and better."

Schiller says Apple saw itself as competing with BlackBerry Messenger at the time of launch — so there was precedent for a single-brand messaging service.

Schiller is asked to explain an email where he speculates about “whether we will ever really open up the iPhone to developers”.

Schiller says he was just saying there would always be tradeoffs.

Did Apple ever consider opening up the iPhone for developers to distribute apps on their own and bypass the App Store?

Schiller: “No."

Schiller says the “run to the press” comment was gone by 2016 at the latest in the developer guidelines.

Schiller also addresses the issue Epic raised way at the beginning: Apple had to consider whether to have two separate contact apps from Apple and Google. Schiller says Apple considered limitations, but it decided to allow many contact apps. “It’s okay, it worked out great."

Schiller also responds to the comment that “where would Google be” if Apple introduced its own ad platform. It was just discussion of a “first realization” that these were issues, and it resulted in no limitations.

We have nearly returned, Tenet-like, to the beginning of Apple’s testimony.

(I haven’t seen Tenet, I have no idea if this is how Tenet works, please don’t tell me anything about Tenet.)

I’m honestly a little surprised Epic didn’t make a bigger deal out of iMessage lock-in, with stuff like this: theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375…

How would having stores within stores impact app review?

“All the apps and services that are delivered through those stores are not reviewed by App Review,” Schiller says — and to that extent, it would eliminate review.

Every store-within-a-store could also have more stores-within-stores within it, says Schiller — any opening of the platform "allows an unbounded number of stores within stores."

Now alllll the way back at Apple’s work on open source software.

“It’s a resource we contribute back to,” Schiller says of open source software — not just Apple taking other people’s work.

Does Apple still build on and improve open source tech, even when it starts with it?

“Certainly,” says Schiller.

Apple lawyer just brought up Movies Anywhere, a thing several people in my mentions have described as being a very good system for cross-platform media!

Schiller says he’s never used it. Apple’s done with its questions.

One of the lawyers accidentally called Phil Schiller “Mr. Sweeney,” thank god I’m not the only person who’s made that slip.

Epic’s attorney raises one case of a company that had to remove in-app purchases of a sort: Amazon. Schiller says Amazon launched a store specifically to sell Kindle ebooks, because “they didn’t expect anyone to read books on an iPhone.” So it was considered an external purchase.

Amazon added support for reading ebooks within iOS, and Apple said Amazon had to either remove it and force people to only read on the Kindle again, or start giving Apple a commission on what had become an in-app purchase.

Judge is asking a little about Apple’s podcast system — basically trying to sort out how all the different pieces of Apple’s sales ecosystem connect.

We’ve got a little time left today, and Apple is calling Michael Schmid, head of the App Store’s game business development.

Schmid describes his role at Apple as being basically a liaison between developers and Apple. He came to Apple in 2017 after working in mobile games.

Last Schiller note — I am really curious about this now. He’s one of the biggest witnesses, and it feels like Epic left a lot on the table today

https://twitter.com/nickstatt/status/1394776384703184907

Schmid says that games (which Epic classifies Fortnite as) are specifically differentiated from general apps and get their own section on the App Store. He’s running down some popular cross-platform games.

Going back to cross-wallet functionality too — iOS lets you buy in-app currency on another platform and use it on iOS. Not all platforms (i.e. PlayStation/Switch) do.

With that, we’re wrapping for the day. We’ll be back tomorrow morning.