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> Microsoft already does exactly this on console. I never thought about it like this. It could be viewed differently because the Xbox is a game console and the

> Microsoft already does exactly this on console. I never thought about it like this. It could be viewed differently because the Xbox is a game console and the iphone is a general handheld computer, but perhaps it should be illegal to restrict users installing software on your device by any means they choose, though there's no reason for you to support those means.

bravoetch 6y ago
Microsoft was dragged through court for it's aggressive browser install on windows back in the day. Now everybody is getting rich off apple stock and there's not much incentive to hold them to the same standard. They even started with a monopolistic policy - if it's duplicating functionality they'll remove it from the app store. People keep buying iPhones because they don't care.
- mehrdada 6y ago
  The difference is market share. There was no effective alternative to Windows ecosystem at the time (arguably there still isn’t). The issue was also broader than just bundling the browsers: there were contracts with OEMs that effectively entrenched Windows as the only OS they were practically shipping (not dissimilar to Android contracts with the OEMs). Last time I checked most people don’t even have iPhones.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Except that nobody is alleging they have a monopoly on phones. The market of concern is the app store. Which they obviously have a monopoly on because a customer with an iPhone can't use any other store, and a developer with customers who have iPhones can't distribute to them using any other store. It's like claiming that nobody can have a monopoly on electric car charging stations because the customer could just buy a gasoline powered car and electric cars don't even have majority market share. It's still a monopoly. It's a monopoly on charging stations, not a monopoly on cars.
    - simonh 6y ago
      The App Store is an Apple product, of course they get a monopoly on designing and implementing it. Any mechanism for side loading apps would also be an Apple product, designed and written by them. They would be responsible for supporting it, and ensuring it was secure. Maybe they don’t want to do that, so who gets to force them to, and who gets to decide if they complied with that directive? Who gets to specify it and take responsibility if it causes problems and incurs costs on Apple or issues for their customers? You’re not talking about stopping Apple from doing something, you’re taking about coercing them by legal requirement to do new different things, and you’d better be very specific and careful about what you are forcing them to do.
    - nodamage 6y ago
      If one company (let's say, Tesla) owned half the electric car charging stations in town, and another company (let's say, Nissan) owned the other half, and Tesla's charging stations could only be used on Tesla vehicles and Nissan's charging stations could only be used on Nissan vehicles, would you conclude that both companies have monopolies?
      - username90 6y ago
        It doesn't matter if Apple has a monopoly or not, they can bully other companies all day long anyway since they got the most lucrative users and you can only reach them via Apple phones. If there is no law to handle this case then we need to create one since the current situation is obviously bad. It is kinda like how workers can get bullied by companies since the worker is so much smaller, Apple is way less dependent on app creators than the app creators are on Apple creating an unhealthy power imbalance. Such power imbalances needs to be regulated.
        nodamage 6y ago
        It does matter if your goal is to sue Apple on anti-trust grounds, as Epic has done.
      - realusername 6y ago
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Apple certainly has the majority of the market when it comes to app store purchases. And the government doesn't classify trusts[1] by the dictionary definition of monopoly: > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
- scarface74 6y ago
  Microsoft was taken to court for three reasons - forcing OEMs to pay a license fee for each PC sold whether or not the OEM shipped the PC with Windows, Office Productivity monopoly and the browser. It wasn’t until 2010 that IEs market share started eroding. It didn’t have anything to do with the government. Almost 20 years later, MS still has the same market share in both operating systems and office productivity and no one cares about browser dominance except for Google. When MS was under investigation they were the most valuable company in the US. Now they are number 3. So how effective was the government last time?
- krrrh 6y ago
  If the state hadn’t intervened on behalf of defending Netscape’s commercial interests we may have gotten decent open source browsers a few years earlier than we did. The market solved the problem in ways that the DoJ couldn’t have anticipated. It turned out that licenses fees for closed source web browsers were just not something that businesses and consumers were interested in putting up with. Few remember how much of an equal offender Netscape was when it came to proprietary extensions to the web.
thatguy0900 6y ago
Consoles specifically are sold at a loss to make money on games, though. I wonder how competitive they would be with buying a gaming pc if they were forced to make all their profit on the console itself with no money coming in from games
- waisbrot 6y ago
  This is untrue. The XBox started out at a loss as a specific strategy by Microsoft to break into a market that was controlled by multiple established rivals. Other than that, consoles are sold at a profit. That is, the revenue Nintendo gets from sale of a Switch is greater than the marginal cost of its manufacture. What you may be thinking of is that the consoles are not the main source of profit. And that the profits from consoles may take some time to make up for the expenses of developing and manufacturing those consoles.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mthoms 6y ago
    Companies generally take huge losses at the beginning of the cycle and a very modest profit towards the end. Overall, it's probably a wash. I think the statement that consoles are sold at a loss is generally/mostly true. [0] >And that the profits from consoles may take some time to make up for the expenses of developing and manufacturing those consoles. Yup, and during which time, they sell at a huge loss.[1] You're right that Nintendo tries to buck this trend, but they also realize it's a delicate balancing act.[2] [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/xbox-one-x-price-explanation-phil-spencer-e3-2017-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/xbox-one-x-price-explanation... [1] https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/06/18/sony-microsoft-game-console-big-loss-leader.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/06/18/sony-microsoft-gam... [2] https://venturebeat.com/2016/10/26/nintendo-wont-sell-switch-at-a-loss-plans-to-ship-2-million-units-in-march/ https://venturebeat.com/2016/10/26/nintendo-wont-sell-switch...
    - thedufer 6y ago
ballenf 6y ago
Has apple ever blocked or threatened anyone for developing a rival OS? For an OS that could run on iPhones to be developed, it seems pretty clear that Apple would absolutely have to "support those means" in terms of publishing low level hardware and security chip specs. And distributing secret keys or offering an agnostic signing service. But what I think you mean to propose is a restriction at the software level, not hardware level. That anyone who sells an operating system must allow any app to be installed within that OS. I think we leave it as an exercise for the reader to define "operating system" when it comes to our increasingly "smart" homes and cars.
- wtracy 6y ago
  > Has apple ever blocked or threatened anyone for developing a rival OS? The iPhone boot ROM will only launch operating systems cryptographically signed by Apple: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/hardware-security-overview-secf020d1074/1/web/1 https://support.apple.com/guide/security/hardware-security-o...
simonh 6y ago
Who says the iPhone is a general platform? It’s not, it’s a closed platform with specific features designed and implemented by its manufacturer. One of those features is a mechanism for installing additional software modules. What is an open platform and how does it get defined? Installing software is a feature implemented by the manufacturer. Should we really be requiring Apple or any manufacturer, by law, to implement specific defined features to support and enable side loading and management of external apps. Who gets to define those features and say which products should or shouldn’t have them? Who gets to certify compliance? Who gets to specify open as a technical standard that can actually be implemented? If this had been done in the 80s, we’d probably still be stuck with consoles having an 80s style cartridge slot on them, with specs written in legislation and updatable only by government committee.
- thegayngler 6y ago
  I think this is a great point. We could be opening pandora's box here from a number of perspectives including the security aspect of things. This issue of app stores is not as cut and dry as people are making it out to be. Secondly, you can "side load" iOS apps as well. You just have to go through a process of jailbreaking your iPhone which is not illegal but it may void the warranty. When you buy the iPhone you are also buying into the platform. If having multiple options for app stores is a necessity for you then an iPhone is the wrong device to purchase. Buy something else. There is nothing wrong with voting with your wallet as there are other phones on the market for people to buy.
  - simonh 6y ago
    I have no problem with people jail breaking their devices, which they own. In fact I did exactly that on several phones and an iPod touch back in the day when I handed down some of my devices to relatives in China.
  - thothamon 6y ago
    This isn't really an option if you actually want iOS apps. It's an all-or-nothing play by Apple: accept all our rules, including the ones that greatly limit you, or get none of the benefits of iOS, including the large collection of high-quality apps. And the option of jailbreaking really isn't an option either. Apple does its best to prevent jailbreaking: they'd stop it outright if they could. This is their way of keeping that market unpleasant, small, and marginal. The argument is that that approach is anti-competitive and unfair, especially since Apple itself gets a large cut of app sales. I'm not coming down hard on either side, just yet. But I don't like the feel of this sort of lock-in, and almost no one would question the use of a term like "lock-in." Some lock-in is surely legal, even if almost always unpleasant. But it's only a hop, skip and a jump to full-fledged antitrust.

bravoetch 6y ago

Microsoft was dragged through court for it's aggressive browser install on windows back in the day. Now everybody is getting rich off apple stock and there's not much incentive to hold them to the same standard. They even started with a monopolistic policy - if it's duplicating functionality they'll remove it from the app store. People keep buying iPhones because they don't care.

mehrdada 6y ago
The difference is market share. There was no effective alternative to Windows ecosystem at the time (arguably there still isn’t). The issue was also broader than just bundling the browsers: there were contracts with OEMs that effectively entrenched Windows as the only OS they were practically shipping (not dissimilar to Android contracts with the OEMs). Last time I checked most people don’t even have iPhones.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Except that nobody is alleging they have a monopoly on phones. The market of concern is the app store. Which they obviously have a monopoly on because a customer with an iPhone can't use any other store, and a developer with customers who have iPhones can't distribute to them using any other store. It's like claiming that nobody can have a monopoly on electric car charging stations because the customer could just buy a gasoline powered car and electric cars don't even have majority market share. It's still a monopoly. It's a monopoly on charging stations, not a monopoly on cars.
  - simonh 6y ago
    The App Store is an Apple product, of course they get a monopoly on designing and implementing it. Any mechanism for side loading apps would also be an Apple product, designed and written by them. They would be responsible for supporting it, and ensuring it was secure. Maybe they don’t want to do that, so who gets to force them to, and who gets to decide if they complied with that directive? Who gets to specify it and take responsibility if it causes problems and incurs costs on Apple or issues for their customers? You’re not talking about stopping Apple from doing something, you’re taking about coercing them by legal requirement to do new different things, and you’d better be very specific and careful about what you are forcing them to do.
  - nodamage 6y ago
    If one company (let's say, Tesla) owned half the electric car charging stations in town, and another company (let's say, Nissan) owned the other half, and Tesla's charging stations could only be used on Tesla vehicles and Nissan's charging stations could only be used on Nissan vehicles, would you conclude that both companies have monopolies?
    - username90 6y ago
      It doesn't matter if Apple has a monopoly or not, they can bully other companies all day long anyway since they got the most lucrative users and you can only reach them via Apple phones. If there is no law to handle this case then we need to create one since the current situation is obviously bad. It is kinda like how workers can get bullied by companies since the worker is so much smaller, Apple is way less dependent on app creators than the app creators are on Apple creating an unhealthy power imbalance. Such power imbalances needs to be regulated.
      - nodamage 6y ago
        It does matter if your goal is to sue Apple on anti-trust grounds, as Epic has done.
    - realusername 6y ago
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Apple certainly has the majority of the market when it comes to app store purchases. And the government doesn't classify trusts[1] by the dictionary definition of monopoly: > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
scarface74 6y ago
Microsoft was taken to court for three reasons - forcing OEMs to pay a license fee for each PC sold whether or not the OEM shipped the PC with Windows, Office Productivity monopoly and the browser. It wasn’t until 2010 that IEs market share started eroding. It didn’t have anything to do with the government. Almost 20 years later, MS still has the same market share in both operating systems and office productivity and no one cares about browser dominance except for Google. When MS was under investigation they were the most valuable company in the US. Now they are number 3. So how effective was the government last time?
krrrh 6y ago
If the state hadn’t intervened on behalf of defending Netscape’s commercial interests we may have gotten decent open source browsers a few years earlier than we did. The market solved the problem in ways that the DoJ couldn’t have anticipated. It turned out that licenses fees for closed source web browsers were just not something that businesses and consumers were interested in putting up with. Few remember how much of an equal offender Netscape was when it came to proprietary extensions to the web.

thatguy0900 6y ago

Consoles specifically are sold at a loss to make money on games, though. I wonder how competitive they would be with buying a gaming pc if they were forced to make all their profit on the console itself with no money coming in from games

waisbrot 6y ago
This is untrue. The XBox started out at a loss as a specific strategy by Microsoft to break into a market that was controlled by multiple established rivals. Other than that, consoles are sold at a profit. That is, the revenue Nintendo gets from sale of a Switch is greater than the marginal cost of its manufacture. What you may be thinking of is that the consoles are not the main source of profit. And that the profits from consoles may take some time to make up for the expenses of developing and manufacturing those consoles.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mthoms 6y ago
  Companies generally take huge losses at the beginning of the cycle and a very modest profit towards the end. Overall, it's probably a wash. I think the statement that consoles are sold at a loss is generally/mostly true. [0] >And that the profits from consoles may take some time to make up for the expenses of developing and manufacturing those consoles. Yup, and during which time, they sell at a huge loss.[1] You're right that Nintendo tries to buck this trend, but they also realize it's a delicate balancing act.[2] [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/xbox-one-x-price-explanation-phil-spencer-e3-2017-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/xbox-one-x-price-explanation... [1] https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/06/18/sony-microsoft-game-console-big-loss-leader.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/06/18/sony-microsoft-gam... [2] https://venturebeat.com/2016/10/26/nintendo-wont-sell-switch-at-a-loss-plans-to-ship-2-million-units-in-march/ https://venturebeat.com/2016/10/26/nintendo-wont-sell-switch...
  - thedufer 6y ago

ballenf 6y ago

Has apple ever blocked or threatened anyone for developing a rival OS? For an OS that could run on iPhones to be developed, it seems pretty clear that Apple would absolutely have to "support those means" in terms of publishing low level hardware and security chip specs. And distributing secret keys or offering an agnostic signing service. But what I think you mean to propose is a restriction at the software level, not hardware level. That anyone who sells an operating system must allow any app to be installed within that OS. I think we leave it as an exercise for the reader to define "operating system" when it comes to our increasingly "smart" homes and cars.

wtracy 6y ago
> Has apple ever blocked or threatened anyone for developing a rival OS? The iPhone boot ROM will only launch operating systems cryptographically signed by Apple: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/hardware-security-overview-secf020d1074/1/web/1 https://support.apple.com/guide/security/hardware-security-o...

simonh 6y ago

Who says the iPhone is a general platform? It’s not, it’s a closed platform with specific features designed and implemented by its manufacturer. One of those features is a mechanism for installing additional software modules. What is an open platform and how does it get defined? Installing software is a feature implemented by the manufacturer. Should we really be requiring Apple or any manufacturer, by law, to implement specific defined features to support and enable side loading and management of external apps. Who gets to define those features and say which products should or shouldn’t have them? Who gets to certify compliance? Who gets to specify open as a technical standard that can actually be implemented? If this had been done in the 80s, we’d probably still be stuck with consoles having an 80s style cartridge slot on them, with specs written in legislation and updatable only by government committee.

thegayngler 6y ago
I think this is a great point. We could be opening pandora's box here from a number of perspectives including the security aspect of things. This issue of app stores is not as cut and dry as people are making it out to be. Secondly, you can "side load" iOS apps as well. You just have to go through a process of jailbreaking your iPhone which is not illegal but it may void the warranty. When you buy the iPhone you are also buying into the platform. If having multiple options for app stores is a necessity for you then an iPhone is the wrong device to purchase. Buy something else. There is nothing wrong with voting with your wallet as there are other phones on the market for people to buy.
- simonh 6y ago
  I have no problem with people jail breaking their devices, which they own. In fact I did exactly that on several phones and an iPod touch back in the day when I handed down some of my devices to relatives in China.
- thothamon 6y ago
  This isn't really an option if you actually want iOS apps. It's an all-or-nothing play by Apple: accept all our rules, including the ones that greatly limit you, or get none of the benefits of iOS, including the large collection of high-quality apps. And the option of jailbreaking really isn't an option either. Apple does its best to prevent jailbreaking: they'd stop it outright if they could. This is their way of keeping that market unpleasant, small, and marginal. The argument is that that approach is anti-competitive and unfair, especially since Apple itself gets a large cut of app sales. I'm not coming down hard on either side, just yet. But I don't like the feel of this sort of lock-in, and almost no one would question the use of a term like "lock-in." Some lock-in is surely legal, even if almost always unpleasant. But it's only a hop, skip and a jump to full-fledged antitrust.