Apple CEO Tim Cook Picked Anticompetitive Strategy; VP Alex Roman Lied Under Oath

A one-day administrative stay issued by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan is set to expire at 5:00 PM ET today, August 13, 2026 — and when it does, the full Supreme Court must decide whether to freeze the Apple App Store rate-determination proceedings or let them move forward before the same judge who found that Apple CEO Tim Cook personally chose the anticompetitive strategy, that Cook's chief of finance overruled a senior executive who urged compliance, and that Apple's Vice President of Finance then lied under oath to cover it up.

The contempt proceeding uncovered an internal Apple decision-making record that no prior reporting had placed at the center of this story. When Apple was required to comply with Judge Gonzalez Rogers's 2021 anti-steering injunction — which barred the company from blocking developers from linking to external payment options — the question of how to comply was litigated internally. Schiller urged Apple to comply with the injunction as written. Tim Cook refused. Instead, Cook deferred to Maestri's finance team to design the compliance strategy.

That strategy was a 27 percent commission on purchases made through external links within seven days of a user clicking one — a rate the court ultimately found Apple knew would make the injunction commercially unworkable. Not a single large developer implemented external links during the compliance period. The court found that outcome was by design.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers summarized Apple's internal decision-making record in terms that have since become the defining phrase of the entire case: "Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly."

At a May 2024 hearing, Apple's VP of Finance, Alex Roman, testified about when the company had decided on the 27 percent commission — and said the decision was made in January 2024. Documents established that the commission structure had been determined in July 2023, months before Roman's stated date. The discrepancy, in the judge's words, was testimony found by the judge's contempt finding to be "replete with misdirection and outright lies." Neither Apple nor its counsel corrected the testimony after it was given.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers referred both Roman and Apple to the US Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate. The referral remains pending — no public outcome has been reported as of today.

Apple's three-court delay record shows it has already been denied stays at the Ninth Circuit in June 2025 and at the Supreme Court in May 2026 — today marks the third time at the highest available level that Apple has sought a pause.

Under the Ninth Circuit's cost-recovery standard from December 2025, Apple may charge a commission only for costs that are "genuinely and reasonably necessary" for its coordination of external-link purchases.

Apple told the Supreme Court directly: "Regulators around the world are watching this case to determine what commission rate Apple may charge on covered purchases in huge markets outside the United States."

Judge Gonzalez Rogers has made her view of the delay record explicit. At the August 11 hearing, before Apple raced to the Supreme Court with its emergency application: "We are coming up on five years, and Apple has acted in many ways to delay, delay, delay."

By Zachary Chambers. Published: Aug 13 2026, 2:46 PM EDT.