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Skimming through, I found this: > Copying technology has gotten tech giants in trouble before. Two decades ago, the Justice Department and 20 states sued Micro

Skimming through, I found this: > Copying technology has gotten tech giants in trouble before. Two decades ago, the Justice Department and 20 states sued Microsoft, whose operating system Windows was dominant at the time, after Microsoft copied the Netscape Web browser and made its own version, Internet Explorer, the default option in Windows. Microsoft settled the case. That’s not exactly why they were sued. It was because they made it hard to uninstall IE and hard to install other browsers.

chrisan 7y ago
It is impossible to uninstall the iOS apps, right?
- rgovostes 7y ago
  As of iOS 10, it became possible to hide many first-party apps. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204221 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204221 In iOS 12 this evolved to actually removing them from internal storage. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208094 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208094
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    I believe you could “actually” delete apps a bit earlier than iOS 12.
- Gaelan 7y ago
  A few reasons ago, you became able to “delete” default apps. IIRC that was initially cosmetic, but I think maybe they are actually deleted now?
  - yellow_postit 7y ago
    Sure but you can’t redirect. For example Apple let’s you uninstall Mail but most other apps, especially those made by Apple, will just fail on an email link if Apple mail isn’t installed instead of letting the user open with Gmail, Outlook, etc. Personally this is one of the appeals of the Apple ecosystem, there’s aspects to the walled garden I think as a end user are useful but I can see why plenty of users and app developers chafe against this.
henryfjordan 7y ago
There are a lot of parallels between what Microsoft did with IE and what Apple is doing with basically the whole App Store. Apple will either eliminate competition with their apps or use their position as the iOS creator to make their own apps better integrated (namely Apple Music). Apple also makes it impossible to install any software except what they've signed in the App Store. Seems to me to basically be the same case.
- pvg 7y ago
  What are the parallels? It's not like Microsoft ever made it impossible to install Netscape or a competing office suite. They got regulatory scrutiny because they were the hugely dominant OS in ways iOS isn't.
  - nxc18 7y ago
    They did make it costly for OEMs to install competing browsers: https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/704881/download https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/704881/download Abusing their market position (only viable desktop OS) to promote IE and attempt to get a stranglehold on the web is a significant part of what got them in trouble. Excellent book covers the situation in more detail: https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Windows-Fumbled-Future-Microsoft/dp/1416573259 https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Windows-Fumbled-Future-Micro...
    - pvg 7y ago
      You could straight up download Netscape on your Windows box. The question isn't 'in what ways was Microsoft bad'. I think it's reasonably established Microsoft was bad. The question is, how is this parallel to what Apple does today. To me, naively at least, it seems like 'not parallel at all'. Where am I getting this wrong?
      - Redoubts 7y ago
        > You could straight up download Netscape on your Windows box. I couldn't imagine tying up the phone line that long. Think of the expenses.
thought_alarm 7y ago
At the time Netscape's revenue came almost largely from corporate customers who paid for Netscape's client and server software products. Microsoft offered to give these companies a discount on their Windows licenses if they agreed to cut ties with Netscape, thereby severely limiting Netscape's revenue. Shortly thereafter the Netscape client software was the spun off to mozilla.org, and the rest of the company was sold to AOL.
Nokinside 7y ago
Why Microsoft was sued was just the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft did a lot of anticompetitive and illegal stuff but it's very hard to prosecute. They used predatory and dirty tactics as much as it could. Apple is novice in comparison. VC companies had to specially prepare startups for Microsoft. If MS requested a demo, they might just watch the demo and launch their copy of software little later. They might hire top developers without requirement to work to just slow you down. They told OEM's what to do with competing software. If that didn't work they started “embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy. They destroyed DR-DOS, killed Word Perfect etc. They even attacked big boys. MS used price discrimination against IBM and blackmailed Intel to drop Native Signal Processing instruction set that threatened them. > I have decided that we should not publish these [Windows 95 user interface] extensions. We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for likes of Notes, WordPerfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage.... We can't compete with Lotus and WordPerfect/Novell without this.” —Bill Gates, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/documents/gates0902p4.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/micro...
- oblio 7y ago
  > They used predatory and dirty tactics as much as it could. Apple is novice in comparison. Apple is a novice? Not really. Microsoft plays dirty, Apple doesn't even play. They're basically a tyrant on their domain. For how much people bitch about Microsoft, I'm happy Apple didn't win in the end, on either desktop or mobile.

chrisan 7y ago

It is impossible to uninstall the iOS apps, right?

rgovostes 7y ago
As of iOS 10, it became possible to hide many first-party apps. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204221 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204221 In iOS 12 this evolved to actually removing them from internal storage. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208094 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208094
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I believe you could “actually” delete apps a bit earlier than iOS 12.
Gaelan 7y ago
A few reasons ago, you became able to “delete” default apps. IIRC that was initially cosmetic, but I think maybe they are actually deleted now?
- yellow_postit 7y ago
  Sure but you can’t redirect. For example Apple let’s you uninstall Mail but most other apps, especially those made by Apple, will just fail on an email link if Apple mail isn’t installed instead of letting the user open with Gmail, Outlook, etc. Personally this is one of the appeals of the Apple ecosystem, there’s aspects to the walled garden I think as a end user are useful but I can see why plenty of users and app developers chafe against this.

henryfjordan 7y ago

There are a lot of parallels between what Microsoft did with IE and what Apple is doing with basically the whole App Store. Apple will either eliminate competition with their apps or use their position as the iOS creator to make their own apps better integrated (namely Apple Music). Apple also makes it impossible to install any software except what they've signed in the App Store. Seems to me to basically be the same case.

pvg 7y ago
What are the parallels? It's not like Microsoft ever made it impossible to install Netscape or a competing office suite. They got regulatory scrutiny because they were the hugely dominant OS in ways iOS isn't.
- nxc18 7y ago
  They did make it costly for OEMs to install competing browsers: https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/704881/download https://www.justice.gov/atr/file/704881/download Abusing their market position (only viable desktop OS) to promote IE and attempt to get a stranglehold on the web is a significant part of what got them in trouble. Excellent book covers the situation in more detail: https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Windows-Fumbled-Future-Microsoft/dp/1416573259 https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Windows-Fumbled-Future-Micro...
  - pvg 7y ago
    You could straight up download Netscape on your Windows box. The question isn't 'in what ways was Microsoft bad'. I think it's reasonably established Microsoft was bad. The question is, how is this parallel to what Apple does today. To me, naively at least, it seems like 'not parallel at all'. Where am I getting this wrong?
    - Redoubts 7y ago
      > You could straight up download Netscape on your Windows box. I couldn't imagine tying up the phone line that long. Think of the expenses.

thought_alarm 7y ago

At the time Netscape's revenue came almost largely from corporate customers who paid for Netscape's client and server software products. Microsoft offered to give these companies a discount on their Windows licenses if they agreed to cut ties with Netscape, thereby severely limiting Netscape's revenue. Shortly thereafter the Netscape client software was the spun off to mozilla.org, and the rest of the company was sold to AOL.

Nokinside 7y ago

Why Microsoft was sued was just the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft did a lot of anticompetitive and illegal stuff but it's very hard to prosecute. They used predatory and dirty tactics as much as it could. Apple is novice in comparison. VC companies had to specially prepare startups for Microsoft. If MS requested a demo, they might just watch the demo and launch their copy of software little later. They might hire top developers without requirement to work to just slow you down. They told OEM's what to do with competing software. If that didn't work they started “embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy. They destroyed DR-DOS, killed Word Perfect etc. They even attacked big boys. MS used price discrimination against IBM and blackmailed Intel to drop Native Signal Processing instruction set that threatened them. > I have decided that we should not publish these [Windows 95 user interface] extensions. We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for likes of Notes, WordPerfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage.... We can't compete with Lotus and WordPerfect/Novell without this.” —Bill Gates, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/documents/gates0902p4.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/micro...

oblio 7y ago
> They used predatory and dirty tactics as much as it could. Apple is novice in comparison. Apple is a novice? Not really. Microsoft plays dirty, Apple doesn't even play. They're basically a tyrant on their domain. For how much people bitch about Microsoft, I'm happy Apple didn't win in the end, on either desktop or mobile.