This is how desperation looks like.
#Apple really, really wants to hold on that sweet App Store revenue that comes from holding an absolute monopoly and slamming fees wherever it likes.
Even after 5 years of back-and-forth through courts, even after losing both against Epic in the US and against Spotify in Europe for anti-competitive behaviour, even after trying dozens of ways to circumvent court orders, even after spending millions in lobbying, even after going as far as lying in front of a federal judge and ending up with a criminal contempt investigation.
After all of this, Apple still doesn't want to give up. The App Store revenue is more precious to them than the ring of power is to Gollum.
They submitted an emergency appeal that begs the court to pause the implementation of the order. An appeal that, as expected, has been rejected - there are no reasons for "emergency" other than Apple potentially losing an illicit monopoly that it's been trying to defend for way too long.
And Apple has sworn that they'll appeal again - I'm not sure how many more times they are allowed to appeal before just shutting up and respecting the law, like any other citizen would be expected to do.
According to the text of the latest appeal, Apple says that the order would prevent the company from "exercising control over core aspects of its business operations" - a nice way of saying "it prevents money from flowing in while we just sit on our lazy arses".
That's right. The wealthiest company that has ever existed, which mostly uses its multi-trillion wealth to release once a year a new iteration of a nearly 20-year-old phone, and doesn't even bother to appropriately invest in R&D or open source like other companies of its scale do, is knocking the doors of all the federal judges, and it's begging them like a whining toddler to please, please allow them to still siphon up for a bit longer more than a quarter of the revenue made by software that they haven't even developed themselves, without even giving neither developers nor users any alternatives.
If it sounds like the arrogant richest kid in the neighbourhood demanding his right to keep stealing food from the lunch boxes of all the other kids, it's because that's exactly what it is.
And the hypocrisy of Apple is more unforgiving when you look at how it behaved just a few years ago with the Meta "incident".
Just 4 years ago Apple did the right thing on iOS by preventing another monopolistic bully from profiting from users without giving them a choice.
In 2021 iOS users started getting "privacy consent screens" where they were prompted if they wanted to give Facebook permissions to track their activities across any website with a Facebook button or Meta's 3rd-party cookies.
Unsurprisingly, most of the users, when given the choice, didn't like to have a Big Brother spying on everything they do.
Zuckerberg, of course, was livid. He used the exact same excuse that Apple is now using to fight against the court rulings - that the decision will somehow harm small businesses using their platform (?) etc.
He has complained for years that that single popup shown on all iPhones cost his company $10B of lost revenue.
Apple's argument at the time was clear and straightforward - that it believed in giving customers a choice.
It's amusing to see how the roles are now inverted and how karma strikes back.
And it's a bit pathetic to see the wealthiest company in the world, the one that should bear "with great power comes great responsibility" banner in front of their face all the time, defend the freedom of choice of its users when it profits them, and sabotage it in the most desperate ways when it doesn't - and not even be bothered by so much hypocrisy.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/apple-loses-bid-pause-app-store-reform-order-epic-games-case-2025-06-04/
