Imagine you're a government lawyer working on the US case and you show up to a deposition and pull your iPhone out set it on the table.
What are the chances that your Apple ID and iCloud are mysteriously banned for violations of the terms of service for which Apple can't share the specific reason because of "policy related security reasons" before the week is out?
That’s called “ retaliation” and Apple would have to be pretty fucking stupid to do that to the prosecutors at any point, let alone in the middle of a dep.
NAL, but it would likely be enough for a felony obstruction of justice charge. Add to that, depending on specifics of Apple's legal response (and whether they throw the employee under the bus,) a CPAA charge for exceeding authorized access in a computer system.
So this wasn't exactly retaliation. The first approval epic got this year was from an automated system. Once they got the approval they assumed (very understandably) that apple was okay with them establishing their store within the new guidelines, so they announced their plans publicly. They also continued to diss apple on Twitter of course. Hearing the announcement, Apple execs decided to ban them again because they didn't adhere to the rules last time.
This however completely looked like retaliation from apple's side, so the DMA lawyers started an investigation and Apple had to re-allow epic again.
Wether it's apple's fault for having the shitty automated system or not, doesn't really matter though. I just hope we get proper sideloading by the end of the process.
No, this was exactly retaliation. Phil Schiller explicitly said in emails that they were removing Epic's Switzerland's account because they couldn't trust them because of how critical their recent comments about the DMA plan were.
So? That doesn't change how stupid it was to publicly retaliate against them, and explicitly write out that you were punishing them for their criticism. The point is that Apple execs are as dumb as your average person, just greedier.