4 ms·

> Apple should be legally stopped from doing this monopolistic garbage. IANAL but couldn't the MS case be relevant/provide precedent? https://en.wikipedia.org

by chrisan 10y ago

> Apple should be legally stopped from doing this monopolistic garbage. IANAL but couldn't the MS case be relevant/provide precedent? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

jahnu 10y ago
From a legal standpoint Apple don't have a monopoly in the phone market comparable to what Ms had on the desktop.
- shmerl 10y ago
  It causes enough damage to browsers market however, which shows that their influence is sufficient to hinder competition. This should be a subject to Sherman Act or something similar. But I'm NAL either.
- disordinary 10y ago
  On the other hand Microsoft wasn't preventing people from installing an alternative browser, Apple is.
  - gnicholas 10y ago
    Apple lets you install alternatives, you just can't set them as default for opening links from other apps.
    - disordinary 10y ago
      The browsers on iOS are little more than skins over Apples browser stack.
      - gnicholas 10y ago
        True, but in some ways this is Apple doing a favor for competing browsers. Imagine how loudly people would complain if Apple did the opposite — provided no support to other browsers, and left them to compete without Apple's inside knowledge of its OS and hardware. No other browser could come close, and we'd all be on Safari all the time. While it's not ideal to be forced to use Apple's rendering engine, at least we can access the many other features that alternative browsers offer.
- bad_user 10y ago
  Depends on perspective. For MS I'm pretty sure we weren't counting servers, mainframes, etc. And them replying "just buy a Mac if you don't like it" wouldn't have been acceptable. Apple has a complete iOS / iTunes monopoly in the iPhone/iPad market, which is pretty big. And Microsoft wasn't preventing the existence of alternative browser engines or banning apps competing with them, whereas Apple does.
- gnicholas 10y ago
  It's true that Apple does not have — even in the US — the amount of market share necessary to be deemed a monopolist and subject to anti-tying laws for its browser. Android is a strong alternative, and as long as it remains so Apple will be effectively immune from challenge. The reason Microsoft was vulnerable to this is that its market share was much higher. There is one thing that Apple does that Microsoft did not do: it prevents the user from designating a non-Safari default browser. Every link you open will open in Safari, unless you copy it and open paste it into another browser. Microsoft let users install other browsers and designate them as the default (I don't know if this was always the case, but it has been for a very long time.) I'm not sure if Apple has a technical argument for why this is necessary, but it probably won't ever need it because of the market share threshold. FWIW, I am a recovering lawyer, and I spent a summer in antitrust law. So I'm not an expert, but I do know how to calculate a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index for the purpose of determining market concentration...
  - shmerl 10y ago
    > It's true that Apple does not have — even in the US — the amount of market share necessary to be deemed a monopolist and subject to anti-tying laws for its browser. Android is a strong alternative, and as long as it remains so Apple will be effectively immune from challenge. How does a strong alternative help solving the following problem. Let's say you are a video service provider, and want to offer MPEG-DASH[1] based service which relies on browsers supporting Media Source Extensions[2]. Soon enough, you discover, that iOS users can't use your service, not only because iOS default browser doesn't support MSE, but because they can't even install any alternative that does (Apple doesn't let them). You are literally forced to implement something[3] in addition to MPEG-DASH to address a substantial amount of Apple users and in the process potentially pay Apple and Co. for implementing it because they own related patents, or you need to agree to ignore them (which means a loss of money for you). TL;DR: Apple stifled adoption of MPEG-DASH, and forced you to do double work and in theory can force you to pay them money too. This is just one example, there can be many like that, another big one is video codecs and etc., but you get the idea. All that bottlenecks on the same restriction - ban on competing browsers. Shouldn't this be a subject of anti-trust regulation? If they managed to do it, they have enough control over the market. But again, may be anti-trust law simply isn't equipped to address this? I see it as a major problem. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Source_Extensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Source_Extensions 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > From a legal standpoint Apple don't have a monopoly in the phone market comparable to what Ms had on the desktop. Microsoft didn't restrict what software you could install on Windows. That creates a different market. Someone who is buying a phone can reasonably choose between iOS and Android. Someone who already has a phone and is buying an app can't reasonably choose between the iOS App Store and Google Play. And someone selling an app can't reach iOS customers via Google's or Amazon's store. They're different markets.
  - quanticle 10y ago
    Microsoft didn't restrict what software you could install on Windows. That creates a different market. That's not the legal distinction. What got Microsoft in trouble is that they told PC OEMs that they would lose their volume discount for Windows if they shipped another browser alongside Internet Explorer. This was troublesome because, at the time, Windows had a 99% marketshare of PC operating systems, which was judged by the courts to be a monopoly. Apple has nowhere near the same marketshare in phones. Therefore, Apple is free to do whatever it wants with regards to its OS, as consumers are free to switch to Android.
    - shmerl 10y ago
      Why is this reverting to marketshare of phones? It's secondary to the problem. It's about influence on the market of browsers, which also affects tons of other things in result, because so many services today are Web based.
      - realityking 10y ago
        (INAL so take this with the appropriate amount of salt) Because it's illegal to use a dominant position in one market (desktop operating system in Microsft's case) to gain an unfair advantage in another market (browsers). Since Apple does not have a dominant position in any market so they're free to do as they please. Note that the question what constitutes a market is not always easily defined. Apple obviously has a monopoly on iPhones or smartphones running iOS but I doubt you'll find a judge that sees that as a market distinct of the wider smartphone market.
- throwaway91111 10y ago
  What about the tablet market?
djsumdog 10y ago
I was thinking that myself. Personally I think the entire App Store model they have is terrible. Let's take something really good about Linux (package management), now we'll make all the packages monolithic (eh, guess it avoids dependency hell at the expense of space) and also you can only use our one and only tightly controlled package repository (da fuck?!) oh and you don't get admin rights and you can't install 3rd party signing keys (?!?!) You market it to the general public of non-tech people and no one cares. It looks fancy and shiny and you no longer need a stylus .. and doesn't crash twice a day like PalmOS.

by chrisan 10y ago

jahnu 10y ago

From a legal standpoint Apple don't have a monopoly in the phone market comparable to what Ms had on the desktop.

shmerl 10y ago
It causes enough damage to browsers market however, which shows that their influence is sufficient to hinder competition. This should be a subject to Sherman Act or something similar. But I'm NAL either.
disordinary 10y ago
On the other hand Microsoft wasn't preventing people from installing an alternative browser, Apple is.
- gnicholas 10y ago
  Apple lets you install alternatives, you just can't set them as default for opening links from other apps.
  - disordinary 10y ago
    The browsers on iOS are little more than skins over Apples browser stack.
    - gnicholas 10y ago
      True, but in some ways this is Apple doing a favor for competing browsers. Imagine how loudly people would complain if Apple did the opposite — provided no support to other browsers, and left them to compete without Apple's inside knowledge of its OS and hardware. No other browser could come close, and we'd all be on Safari all the time. While it's not ideal to be forced to use Apple's rendering engine, at least we can access the many other features that alternative browsers offer.
bad_user 10y ago
Depends on perspective. For MS I'm pretty sure we weren't counting servers, mainframes, etc. And them replying "just buy a Mac if you don't like it" wouldn't have been acceptable. Apple has a complete iOS / iTunes monopoly in the iPhone/iPad market, which is pretty big. And Microsoft wasn't preventing the existence of alternative browser engines or banning apps competing with them, whereas Apple does.
gnicholas 10y ago
It's true that Apple does not have — even in the US — the amount of market share necessary to be deemed a monopolist and subject to anti-tying laws for its browser. Android is a strong alternative, and as long as it remains so Apple will be effectively immune from challenge. The reason Microsoft was vulnerable to this is that its market share was much higher. There is one thing that Apple does that Microsoft did not do: it prevents the user from designating a non-Safari default browser. Every link you open will open in Safari, unless you copy it and open paste it into another browser. Microsoft let users install other browsers and designate them as the default (I don't know if this was always the case, but it has been for a very long time.) I'm not sure if Apple has a technical argument for why this is necessary, but it probably won't ever need it because of the market share threshold. FWIW, I am a recovering lawyer, and I spent a summer in antitrust law. So I'm not an expert, but I do know how to calculate a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index for the purpose of determining market concentration...
- shmerl 10y ago
  > It's true that Apple does not have — even in the US — the amount of market share necessary to be deemed a monopolist and subject to anti-tying laws for its browser. Android is a strong alternative, and as long as it remains so Apple will be effectively immune from challenge. How does a strong alternative help solving the following problem. Let's say you are a video service provider, and want to offer MPEG-DASH[1] based service which relies on browsers supporting Media Source Extensions[2]. Soon enough, you discover, that iOS users can't use your service, not only because iOS default browser doesn't support MSE, but because they can't even install any alternative that does (Apple doesn't let them). You are literally forced to implement something[3] in addition to MPEG-DASH to address a substantial amount of Apple users and in the process potentially pay Apple and Co. for implementing it because they own related patents, or you need to agree to ignore them (which means a loss of money for you). TL;DR: Apple stifled adoption of MPEG-DASH, and forced you to do double work and in theory can force you to pay them money too. This is just one example, there can be many like that, another big one is video codecs and etc., but you get the idea. All that bottlenecks on the same restriction - ban on competing browsers. Shouldn't this be a subject of anti-trust regulation? If they managed to do it, they have enough control over the market. But again, may be anti-trust law simply isn't equipped to address this? I see it as a major problem. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Source_Extensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Source_Extensions 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> From a legal standpoint Apple don't have a monopoly in the phone market comparable to what Ms had on the desktop. Microsoft didn't restrict what software you could install on Windows. That creates a different market. Someone who is buying a phone can reasonably choose between iOS and Android. Someone who already has a phone and is buying an app can't reasonably choose between the iOS App Store and Google Play. And someone selling an app can't reach iOS customers via Google's or Amazon's store. They're different markets.
- quanticle 10y ago
  Microsoft didn't restrict what software you could install on Windows. That creates a different market. That's not the legal distinction. What got Microsoft in trouble is that they told PC OEMs that they would lose their volume discount for Windows if they shipped another browser alongside Internet Explorer. This was troublesome because, at the time, Windows had a 99% marketshare of PC operating systems, which was judged by the courts to be a monopoly. Apple has nowhere near the same marketshare in phones. Therefore, Apple is free to do whatever it wants with regards to its OS, as consumers are free to switch to Android.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    Why is this reverting to marketshare of phones? It's secondary to the problem. It's about influence on the market of browsers, which also affects tons of other things in result, because so many services today are Web based.
    - realityking 10y ago
      (INAL so take this with the appropriate amount of salt) Because it's illegal to use a dominant position in one market (desktop operating system in Microsft's case) to gain an unfair advantage in another market (browsers). Since Apple does not have a dominant position in any market so they're free to do as they please. Note that the question what constitutes a market is not always easily defined. Apple obviously has a monopoly on iPhones or smartphones running iOS but I doubt you'll find a judge that sees that as a market distinct of the wider smartphone market.
throwaway91111 10y ago
What about the tablet market?

djsumdog 10y ago

I was thinking that myself. Personally I think the entire App Store model they have is terrible. Let's take something really good about Linux (package management), now we'll make all the packages monolithic (eh, guess it avoids dependency hell at the expense of space) and also you can only use our one and only tightly controlled package repository (da fuck?!) oh and you don't get admin rights and you can't install 3rd party signing keys (?!?!) You market it to the general public of non-tech people and no one cares. It looks fancy and shiny and you no longer need a stylus .. and doesn't crash twice a day like PalmOS.