Nefarious Apple has been caught red-handed… doing something it has openly admitted to doing.
Tim Sweeney, a noted App Store fanboy TweetsAbout This Bloomberg report:
Bloomberg investigated @actonline, the fake “app developer interest group” that Apple funds to lobby politicians while its monopoly strangles developers. Shame on Apple for this deceitful astroturfing.
The Macalope’s not sure how “deceitful” it can be considered when Apple’s logo is literally the first one on the organization’s “About” page under “Sponsors.” But it is certainly gross and ham-fisted, almost to the point of Tim Cook coming out swinging with honey-baked hams strapped to his fists.
But Tim’s not the only one whose hands smell ready for the holidays here.
Let’s also recall that Tim Sweeney is more than a little ham-fisted himself.
“Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney likens fight against Apple to fight for civil rights”
This seems to suggest that someone who has said something like this should be ashamed enough not to embarrass themselves. Not saying more things in the future, but when you’re the face of a noisy lawsuit about wanting to tear down Apple’s monopoly power so you can set up your own monopoly power, it’s hard to sit on the sidelines.
Sweeney also links to the Bloomberg piece provides more color on Apple’s involvement.
The group, known as ACT, says it’s not beholden to Apple, but confirmed that it derives more than half its funding from the company. According to former employees, the percentage is actually much higher.
IDG
Much higher than “more than half”? A hundredity twenty percent?
Man, that’s a lot of percent, if true.
Rick VanMeter, a former congressional aide who is the head of rival developer group Coalition for App Fairness, said ACT’s purported representation of app developers is deceptive, given its relationship with Apple.
Oh, really! That was the Coalition for App Fairness’s statement? Okay.
The Coalition is, of course, the group that Tim Sweeney’s Epic Games help create and is on the board of. Epic Games also Provided fundingThe group. Yes, really. This, by way of contrast to what Apple has done, is not in any way “shameful” or “deceitful” because of the things and the stuff and such and, oh, look, over there, the spider that was on the Queen’s coffin is now a playable character in Fortnite for a small fee, isn’t that delightful.
Bloomberg, the outfit that published “The Big Hack” and never retracted any of it even after it was All involved have denied this fact utterly and remains uncorroborated, simply notes that Epic Games is “a member of VanMeter’s Coalition for App Fairness” without going into the fact that, According to The Verge, the Coalition “appears to have actually been created and funded by Epic explicitly to help win its case” against Apple. It seems that this is what it looks like Kind of an important point to leave out when you’re dumping Tim Sweeney’s tweets into your article.
I will reiterate that funding a grassroots lobbying group like this is gross. It should be under Apple’s nose, given that Apple rightly takes pride in its ability to sell great products that people love.
Is Tim Sweeney to be criticized? Nah.
