Welcome to the Tech Mean Right Home for Thursday, May Day 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. Apple basically got held in contempt of court in the epic case.

Rumors about Elon staying at Tesla, meta and Microsoft earnings, Xbox price increases, and would you wear a smart ring that

proves you're not cheating on your significant other? Here's what you missed today in the world of

tech.

Whoa, a U.S. judge has ruled that Apple violated a 2021 court order to open the App Store to third-party payment options and has referred the case for a criminal investigation. You heard that right. Quoting Bloomberg, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers cited Wednesday with Fortnite developer Epic Games over its allegation that the iPhone maker failed to comply

with an order she issued in 2021 after finding the company engaged in anti-competitive conduct

in violation of California law. Gonzalez-Rogers also referred the case to federal prosecutors

to investigate whether Apple committed criminal contempt of court for flouting her 2021 ruling.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco declined to comment.

The changes the company must now make could put a sizable dent in the double-digit billions

of dollars in revenue the App Store generates each year.

Apple is potentially facing another multi-billion dollar hit from losing payments Google

makes to be the default search engine for its Safari browser, which is the subject of an ongoing

Justice Department antitrust case against the alphabet unit. After several weeks of hearings

last year and this, Gonzalez-Rogers concluded Wednesday that Apple, quote, willfully violated her

injunction, quote,

it did so with the express intent to create new anti-competitive barriers, which would, by design,

and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream. A revenue stream previously found to be

anti-competitive, she wrote in her 80-page ruling, that it thought this court would tolerate such

insubordination was a gross miscalculation,

end quote. Epic Games chief executive officer Tim Sweeney called the ruling a huge victory for developers

saying in a phone call with journalists, it forces Apple to compete with other payment services

...