The App Store is under investigation by at least a half dozen countries right now.
To me, Apple losing the App Store appears completely inevitable; and Apple is willing to throw $100 million at a last-ditch effort to keep the status quo.
And if we're lucky and devs are smart, we'll have developers publicly mock those checks from Apple's fund because that was money that Apple took from them with the revenue split and is giving back a fraction of, how generous.
It's like when people get excited about tax refunds from the IRS. Super exciting, until you realize it was excess money taken from you to begin with.
> It's like when people get excited about tax refunds from the IRS. Super exciting, until you realize it was excess money taken from you to begin with.
Not the best analogy. You can't necessarily know ahead of time exactly what your tax burden is and you define the withholdings to give to the IRS.
You could specify no withholdings and have a big tax bill each year or be too aggressive and get a refund, or somewhere in between. Most people over estimate their obligation because it's easier to overpay than to come up with a large sum every year, especially when living paycheck to paycheck.
It's not that apple is going to lose the app store, it's that some of apple's more egregious policies (such as banning pointing users to other payment methods to monopolize payments completely unrelated to apple provided services) are being challenged and apple doesn't want to set any precedents or get any judgements against them on this civil suit.
To me, Apple losing the App Store appears completely inevitable; and Apple is willing to throw $100 million at a last-ditch effort to keep the status quo.
And if we're lucky and devs are smart, we'll have developers publicly mock those checks from Apple's fund because that was money that Apple took from them with the revenue split and is giving back a fraction of, how generous.
It's like when people get excited about tax refunds from the IRS. Super exciting, until you realize it was excess money taken from you to begin with.