Tag Archive for: Fortnite

‘Fortnite’ Maker Targets Apple’s ‘Walled Garden’ in Courtroom Fight Over App Store


In its courtroom battle with

Apple Inc.,

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Epic Games Inc. is questioning a core tenet of the iPhone maker’s App Store business: that its success relies upon rigorous policing of the platform.

Apple for years has said its rules and vetting process for apps protect users from malicious software and abuse, work that helps justify the up to 30% cut it takes of digital transactions there. In documents and testimony in a lawsuit being argued this month before a federal judge in Oakland, Calif., Epic has said Apple’s contentions don’t hold up to scrutiny.

The App Store’s business model, which has been called a “walled garden” due to the company’s tight controls, faces rising criticism from a host of developers, from

Spotify Technology SA

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to

Facebook Inc.

Epic and others are seeking to undermine Apple’s rationale for its control of third-party software on its more than one billion iPhones, claiming the operating system is what keeps users safe, not the App Store review process. Epic contends others could safely vet apps if allowed to create their own app stores.

“To justify its walled garden, Apple needed to convince those locked in and those locked out that the wall served some higher purpose, something more than profitability—and so Apple security justification was born,” Katherine Forrest, an Epic lawyer, told a judge this past week during the start of the trial, expected to last most of May.

Apple strongly disputes Epic’s claims that it is a monopoly and defends its app-store rules as a way to provide users with a safe, private and reliable place to download software. Apple says customers would be opened up to harm without its controls.

Epic and other app developers want to change Apple’s control over the third-party software on more than one billion iPhones; ‘Fortnite’ on an iPhone in 2020.



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CJ…

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The 22 biggest tech scandals of 2020, from the unprecedented Twitter hack to the makers of ‘Fortnite’ declaring war on Apple


JANUARY: New details emerge about Jeff Bezos’ iPhone hack

mohammad bin salman jeff bezos
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (left) and Jeff Bezos.



In January, The Guardian and The New York Times reported that a forensic analysis of Bezos’ iPhone by FTI Consulting found evidence that Saudi officials were involved in the leaking of Bezos’ relationship and personal messages in 2019.

The claim was backed up soon after, when the UN called for an “immediate investigation” into the crown prince. 

According to the forensic report, Bezos and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman exchanged numbers at a dinner in April 2018 — on May 1 of that year, Bezos’ iPhone is said to have been infiltrated after he received a video attachment from the crown prince’s personal WhatsApp account.

Within hours of Bezos receiving the video, the report found that a “massive and … unprecedented exfiltration of data” began, an increase of more than 29,000%. 

After details of the forensic report were published, the Saudi government issued a statement calling the reporting “absurd” and said it would be investigating the claims. 

FEBRUARY: A former Microsoft engineer is convicted of stealing $10 million from the company

Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.



Former Microsoft software engineer Volodymyr Kvashuk was convicted in February of stealing $10 million worth of digital currency from his former employer. 

Kvashuk — who worked at Microsoft from August 2016 to June 2018, first as a contractor, then as a full-time employee — was convicted by the US District Court in Seattle after a five-day trial, the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington announced at the time. 

The court found that Kvashuk had stolen “currency stored value,” like online gift cards, during his time testing the retail-sales platform on Microsoft’s website. He then resold the currency in exchange for bitcoin and used the money to buy a lakefront home for $1.6 million and a Tesla that cost $160,000 — likely a Model X, given the price. 

Kvashuk was later sentenced to nine years in prison. 

MARCH: Trolls start invading Zoom calls to share porn or racial slurs

video conference, video chat, zoom call
A Zoom call.


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