NBC News:

When Welker tried to point out what the Fifth Amendment said, Trump suggested that such a process would slow him down too much.

“I don’t know. It seems — it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials,” he said. “We have thousands of people that are — some murderers and some drug dealers and some of the worst people on Earth.”

“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he added.

“But even given those numbers that you’re talking about, don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?” Welker asked.

“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “I have to respond by saying, again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

The oath of office, which Trump has now taken twice, is “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

I’ll repeat what I wrote a few weeks ago when the Chinese government correctly mocked Trump’s tariffs as “a joke in the history of world economics”: Democrats and all other Trump opponents should repeatedly call into question Trump’s mental fitness for office. Don’t (just) argue that he’s trying to subvert the Constitution as a WWE-style authoritarian, but argue (also) that he clearly doesn’t even remember the oath of office. He’s in early dementia. Trump’s father was suffering from severe dementia when he was Trump’s age. Throw Biden under the bus: remind people that we just saw what happens when a mentally enfeebled 80-year-old^* serves as President, and that under Trump it’s far worse. Biden was sleepy but steady; Trump is agitated and erratic. Only some dementia sufferers act lost and confused — others act out in anger and belligerence. Trump is in the latter group. He doesn’t remember the oath of office.

* Keep calling him “80”; make his sycophants correct you that he’s “only” turning 79 in June.

Apple, in an email to developers yesterday (as reported by MacRumors):

3.1.1: Apps on the United States storefront are not prohibited from including buttons, external links, or other calls to action when allowing users to browse NFT collections owned by others.

3.1.1(a): On the United States storefront, there is no prohibition on an app including buttons, external links, or other calls to action, and no entitlement is required to do so.

3.1.3: The prohibition on encouraging users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase does not apply on the United States storefront.

3.1.3(a): The External Link Account entitlement is not required for apps on the United States storefront to include buttons, external links, or other calls to action.

This does not mean apps can now use alternative payment processing in-app. It doesn’t even mean apps are no longer required to offer Apple’s IAP in-app for purchases and subscriptions. All it means is that apps (in the US for now, but Apple really ought to make this worldwide, but I suspect Tim Cook wants to fight this on appeal in federal court) are free to inform users about offers available on the web, and to link to those offers on the web. Those links must open outside the app, in the user’s default web browser.

• In-app: must use IAP. No alternative payments in-app. No webviews in-app for purchases.

• Link to web, in default web browser, for anything else. But the same offerings — but not at the same prices — must be available in-app too.

In other words, plainly and obviously, in-app purchases must compete with purchase offerings on the web. Which is exactly how the policy should have been for at least the last 10 years. It’s been incredibly frustrating and baffling that Tim Cook has refused to see that this is the obvious and correct path for everyone involved, including Apple itself.

Jason Snell, with some excellent analysis (in addition to his usual visualizations of Apple’s numbers):

Another way Apple can reduce the impact of tariffs is by changing which global factories it uses to build products destined for the U.S. market. “For the June quarter, we do expect the majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. will have India as their country of origin,” Cook said, “and Vietnam to be the country of origin for almost all iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and AirPods products also sold in the U.S.” He said that if you’re outside of the U.S., you’re most likely to be buying products made in China.

Cook also commented briefly on Apple’s philosophy in dealing with the issues of trade wars between various countries: “Obviously, we’re very engaged on the tariff discussions,” he said. “We believe in engagement and will continue to engage.” Elizabeth Warren take note, I guess.

Apple also put a number on how much it will be affected by tariffs during its next fiscal quarter: $900 million. Yes, that’s nearly a billion dollars, but when you consider that Apple just generated $95.4 billion in revenue and that it’s expecting to grow from the $85.8 billion it generated during last year’s third quarter, a $0.9 billion step back doesn’t seem like a massive amount. The company also said it would probably lose a couple of points of gross margin as part of the deal.

And, regarding the analyst call (of which Snell also posted his usual very helpful transcript):

Credit to that brave analyst, Richard Kramer, who didn’t bother asking a ninth question about tariffs, but instead asked Cook head-on about the fact that Apple had failed to live up to its promise of shipping a more personalized Siri as a part of Apple Intelligence.

Cook’s answer was a canned response emphasizing the features Apple did ship, and “We need more time to complete our work on these features so they meet our high-quality bar. We are making progress, and we look forward to getting these features into customers’ hands.” Which is true, but not exactly informative.

Kramer, who is going to get an analyst gold star for this, also asked Cook about the various court cases that might really impact Apple’s business. Regarding yesterday’s court ruling in the Epic case, Cook said, “We strongly disagree with [it].... We’ve complied with the court’s order, and we’re going to appeal.” He declined to discuss Google’s case and the potential loss of search-engine referral revenue altogether.

But, and I think this is important, Cook did not wave off the suggestion that these were serious issues. “We’re monitoring these closely, but as you point out, there’s risk associated with them, and the outcome is unclear.”

It would be kind of ridiculous if Cook did wave off the suggestion that these were significant issues. A federal judge has referred the company to federal prosecutors for criminal contempt and she flatly stated in her ruling that VP of finance Alex Roman perjured himself multiple times.

These analyst calls are largely a waste of time. The questions are obtuse and the answers are obfuscating. But it was frustrating yesterday that the first eight questions were all about Trump’s tariffs. Cook said what he had to say about them early in the call. Only Richard Kramer had the backbone to ask any of the other interesting questions facing Apple — and he was the analyst who asked both those questions. But they stuck his questions at the very end of the call. (I think because Apple vets the questions, Apple orders them?) If you want to listen, Kramer’s first question (re: Siri/AI delays) starts at 48:30 on Apple’s recording of the call, and his second (re: legal cases) starts at 51:00.

It’s like all the analysts but Kramer had their fingers in their ears and eyes closed and were chanting “Everything’s normal for Apple, everything’s normal for Apple, everything’s normal for Apple...” No one even asked about the material impact of Apple being required to immediately change the App Store guidelines (in the US) to allow unfettered link-outs to the default web browser to make purchases and sign up for subscriptions. You’d think that would be a question.

Jay Peters, The Verge, under the headline “Epic Says Fortnite Is Coming Back to iOS in the US”:

Following a court order that blocks Apple from taking a commission on purchases made outside the App Store, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says on X that the company plans to bring Fortnite back to iOS in the US “next week.”

The app hasn’t been available on iOS in the US since August 2020, when Apple kicked it off the App Store for implementing Epic’s own in-app payment system in violation of Apple’s rules. Since then, Apple and Epic have been embroiled in an ongoing legal battle, including a ruling more in Apple’s favor in 2021 and today’s ruling that is a major victory for Epic.

I could be wrong, but my read is that while the ruling was clearly a significant and reputationally damaging loss for Apple, that doesn’t make it a “win” for Epic at all. Just because the case is Epic v. Apple doesn’t mean Epic benefits by Apple’s excoriation. Apple won the original case. It was effectively a sidenote to that original case where Judge Gonzalez Rogers issued an injunction that Apple was required to allow developers to just freely link to alternative payment offerings on the web, outside the app. Basically, that if the App Store is not anticompetitive, apps at least must be able to inform users about competing options for purchases/signups.

Here’s a spitball analogy. Back in the cable TV days, there were many local channels that were available over the air, for free. (That’s still true but almost no one watches TV like this anymore.) Imagine if a monopolist or near-monopolist cable company declared that it would not permit any show on any channel to even mention the fact that the channel was also available free-of-charge over the air. That’s what Apple has been doing with apps in the App Store. If cable was so good, so much better than free over-the-air broadcast TV, it should have been able to thrive even if people were aware of their free over-the-air options. If the App Store is so good, so much better than free over-the-web purchases and signups, it should be able to thrive even if people are aware of their free over-the-web options. Basically, that was Gonzales Rogers’s injunction to Apple. And Apple’s response was basically, “Nah, we’re still not going to allow that, but we’ll pretend to comply by asserting that anyone who starts watching TV channels over-the-air after learning about that via something they saw on cable TV still has to pay us effectively the same rates they’ve been paying to watch those channels via our cable service.” Except instead Apple was asserting that they should collect 27% commissions on over-the-web purchases if the user learned about the option through the native app from the App Store.

None of this, as far as I can see, has anything to do with Epic Games or Fortnite at all, other than that it was Epic who initiated the case. Give them credit for that. But I don’t see how this ruling gets Fortnite back in the App Store. I think Sweeney is just blustering — he wants Fortnite back in the App Store and thinks by just asserting it, he can force Apple’s hand at a moment when they’re wrong-footed by a scathing federal court judgment against them.

Maybe Sweeney knows something I don’t, but I doubt it. I think this is just bluster, PR gamesmanship, and ought to be reported that way, at least for now. If there’s a single sentence in Gonzalez Rogers’s ruling that suggests Apple needs to reinstate Epic Games to the App Store, I missed it.

Are the results of this disastrous for Apple’s App Store business? I don’t think so at all. Gonzales Rogers is demanding that Apple ... do what Phil Schiller recommended they do all along. But are the results of this disastrous for Apple’s reputation and credibility? It sure seems like it.