A court ordered Apple to let apps link you to pay on the web. Apple put a 27% fee on those purchases and a full-screen warning in front of every link, and a federal judge found Apple in willful violation of the court's order. The full case file, from the court record: what the court ordered, what Apple built instead, what its own documents show, and what is still undecided.
fee on purchases made through an app's link, where Apple had charged nothing.
ORDER OF 30 APR 2025, PP. 2 AND 14of about 136,000 developers applied to use the links, as of May 2024.
ORDER OF 30 APR 2025, P. 45Apple held in willful violation of the court's 2021 order.
ORDER OF 30 APR 2025, PP. 1 AND 63What the record is. Everything here comes from the court's order of 30 April 2025 holding Apple in civil contempt of its 2021 injunction, and from the 2021 ruling after trial. The 27% applied to purchases on a developer's website within 7 days of tapping an app's link. Apple's internal presentation and its estimates are as the court describes them; the employees are not named. A referral to the U.S. Attorney is not a charge.
| Number | What it is | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 27% | Commission on linked-out purchases, for 7 days after a tap | Order p. 14 |
| 0% | What Apple charged on those purchases before | Order p. 2 |
| 34 of 136,000 | Developers who applied, as of the May 2024 hearing | Order p. 45 |
| 1 in 4,000 | From the line above. Our arithmetic | Our arithmetic |
| Full screen | The warning Apple chose, from three designs it drafted | Order pp. 35 to 36 |
Open the documents above. Every number in the video points to its page.
Subscribe for the next file
