4 ms·
Consumers have a choice, though, and that trumps most other considerations. With Android, they receive an alternative set of constraints. Do I think Apple is wi
by Fellshard 7y ago
Consumers have a choice, though, and that trumps most other considerations. With Android, they receive an alternative set of constraints. Do I think Apple is wise to be as restrictive as they are? No. Is it within their bounds to do so? Absolutely.
As a consumer, I can be disgruntled that my chosen platform is not as flexible as I wish. I can either throw a fit and lobby congress to force Apple to open its gates, or wait a year or two for my phone to slow down and pick up an Android device. In fact, this kind of migration occurs in both directions on a regular basis. Only religious loyalists stick with a single ecosystem without examining the tradeoffs they're making, as a general rule.
- robbrown451 7y agoThey have a choice between two monopolistic platforms, frankly. Your purchasing decisions are not mutually exclusive with action from courts and legislators and voters and such. And, especially if you take into account that market theory as well as game theory tends to view individuals as rational agents pursuing self interest (1), a pure free market approach simply does not effectively curtail monopolistic and otherwise anti-competitive behavior of corporations. [1] as a baseline, anyway.
- Fellshard 7y agoAs a user, I can freely sideload onto Android devices, or even use custom Google-free distributions. This argument is incomplete.
- robbrown451 7y agoAnd a court would likely take that into account. They might even consider that you have the right to fabricate your own phone, and write the operating system from scratch. Luckily courts take into accounts the barriers inherent in such things. If few enough people do such things because the difficulty of doing so makes them impractical for most people, they give appropriately low weight to such arguments.