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> Apple is about to get bitten hard for being a monopoly. A monopoly in what? In making their own products?

• mhh__ 6y ago
  Monopoly is the wrong word but Apple's practices are at least bordering on anti-consumer. The only monopoly apple have is over their own customers i.e. switching away from apple isn't cheap
  • cik 6y ago
    It's actually dirt cheap. As a consumer I've moved from and to apple repeatedly over the years. The cost has always been nonexistent. I never buy Mac only software. Replacing hardware is the expensive part. But again, if you want to change technology vendors, there's always a cost.
  • zackkitzmiller 6y ago
    Sure it is. Android phones are cheap, windows computers can be cheap, a home-build with linux would be cheaper. The only 'expense' is the few hours to relearn a few keystrokes. Yes, that might be an oversimplification, but it's really not that expeisve or difficult to move from one platform to antother.
    • ryanbrunner 6y ago
      Unless your friends are on iMessage, all your documents, contacts and calendar events are on iCloud, your photo library is on Apple Photos, all of which lock you into the Apple ecosystem and aren't available on Android. Sure, you can transition everything off, but I wouldn't call that a pain-free switching cost.
      • filleduchaos 6y ago
        But why should it be pain-free, though? Or rather, why is it suddenly the government's responsibility to make it pain-free?
        • ryanbrunner 6y ago
          Because using your market dominance in one area of business in order to establish and maintain a foothold in a related business is long established as the type of anticompetitive behaviour that antitrust laws were built to regulate.
    • mhh__ 6y ago
      And if you've bought apps? The same is true the other way around of course, i.e. if you've bought apps on android
      • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        To borrow an analogy from another post: If I buy a BMW and later switch to a Honda, do I get to be mad if some of the BMW parts don't fit?
        • kps 6y ago
          You get to be mad if your third-party child seat doesn't fit.
          • deadlocked 6y ago
            I'm confused - what does the third-party child seat map to in the iOS world?
            • kps 6y ago
              Third-party content purchased while using the BMW/iPhone that you want to use with your Honda/Android. Plenty of apps are cross-platform, like child seats.
      • derision 6y ago
        So if I buy a Macbook, we should require Apple to make available all software I had on my Windows PC? That makes no sense.
        • mhh__ 6y ago
          I never said that. My point is that moving devices isn't as simple as just buying a new one - i.e. it's not good enough to say just move to android (up to a point). There's nothing you can really do about it's just how software works.
  • treis 6y ago
    > Monopoly is the wrong word but Apple's practices are at least bordering on anti-consumer. As always, monopoly depends on how you define your market. If the market as iOS apps then Apple is clearly a monopoly.