The trial between Apple and Epic Games begins on Monday. But the pre-meeting investigation revealed details that will be critical to the defense of both sides. Thus, the interrogation of one of the key witnesses of the developer of Epic Games, Scott Forstall offered interesting data concerning Steve Jobs’ vision of the App Store.
Forstall, who served as Apple’s chief software engineer until 2012 and then played a major role in the development of the first iPhones and iPhoneOSs, shared details about Apple is early not to offer a third-party app store on the iPhone, in which Steve Jobs was one of the biggest opponents of an App Store.
The App Store was not always a good idea
In pre-trial examination between Apple and Epic Games which will begin on May 3, Forstall claimed that several Apple executives believed that the ability of third parties to create natively compiled applications should never be released.
“Some executives thought we should have a hybrid model of some web technologies and some native skills. And then there were some executives who thought we should provide a platform to allow third parties to build fully native apps on the platform.
Steve Jobs was the most important of them. I don’t remember specifically who else made this point. Steve thought that we shouldn’t allow third-party app development at all, because it was necessary. “
Forstall said the risks user safety was one of the main reasons for refusing to allow third-party applications
“If you’re a game developer and you have an extra level that you would like to sell, but the customer has to enter a credit card, it could be a big hurdle for the customer to buy that extra level… And Apple has already his credit registered by credit card, so that really simplifies things. And it’s a big advantage for the developer to have a simple built-in mechanism for selling products in the app. So that was the main reason we did it: to make it easier for developers to have another source of income. “
This Monday, May 3 officially begins the trial between Epic Games and Apple, in which the policies of the App Store are judged, in particular charge a 30% commission to third-party developers for the sale of its applications.
