New book explores the courtroom wars against Apple’s App Store rules

Avid 9to5Mac readers know that it is getting increasingly harder to have a day go by and not come across a post about a new (or old) lawsuit trying to challenge, dismantle, or overturn Apple’s App Store rules. Now, a new book out later this month pieces some of the biggest battles together in one place.

In , Wall Street Journal business columnist Tim Higgins sets out to tell the story of “how Apple became the world’s most valuable company,” using it as a jumping-off point to explore “the lawmakers and entrepreneurs determined to knock it off its pedestal.”

The book traces Apple’s rise from the pre-App Store days, all the way to the recent __ involving Fortnite and Chinese super app WeChat.

In a recent article for the WSJ , titled “ ,” Higgings adapted an excerpt from the book to recount the early tensions between Apple and Spotify, in a process that included a famously contentious meeting between Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Margrethe Vestager, then head of the European Commission’s antitrust office.

The story also covers how Spotify used its Android app in a global A/B campaign to gather evidence and try to prove in court that Apple’s model wasn’t conducive to fostering the creation of opportunities touted by the company, a pivotal argument in the Swedish platform’s overall case against the App Store rules (a premise which Apple promptly rejected):

Using Spotify’s data, the commission conservatively estimated that Apple’s restrictions were resulting in Spotify losing out on 20% of its in-app users upgrading. Put another way, millions of “users got lost in the subscription process and did not end up subscribing,” and millions more had “an inferior user experience.”

iWAR: Fortnite, Musk, Spotify and the Siege of Apple and it will be released on September 16.

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