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> My contention is that the lack of a healthy alternative is not due to anything Apple has done. Apple absolutely has done things to prevent alternatives to th

> My contention is that the lack of a healthy alternative is not due to anything Apple has done. Apple absolutely has done things to prevent alternatives to their platforms. Not only can you not make hardware that iOS and MacOS run on (and in rare cases where people have, Apple has sued them[1]). Can you run something other than iOS on an iPhone? Less and less possible, as they lock the phone hardware (and bootloader) down more and more. Can you run an alternative app store? Nope, totally not allowed. You seem to think that if enough capital was gathered, you could do so, but you can't. It's completely locked out by Apple, and any way you have to circumvent it is either blocked by EULA, contract, or digital and physical controls. Without legal intervention, this isn't happening no matter how much capital you have, because Apple has specifically closed off all other avenues. So, is it possible to gather enough capital to compete? I'm not sure sure. You'd have to take a page from Apple's playbook and close everything down to control it, and that's far more expensive now than it was a decade ago, and somehow get enough developers and apps and users in a marketplace that doesn't have anything in it to start. And you have to close everything down to outsiders because otherwise Apple will just support whatever your standards are while not allowing you to interoperate with theirs (look at the history iMessage and XMPP, and why Google eventually had to copy Apple's tactic of a closed IM system). I think it's important to note that this is, at it's essence, anti-competitive behavior. Apple leverages their control over their system to provide benefit to their users, but they do this in a way that denies competition at all but the highest level, even when working at the lowest level. Again, iMessage is a good example of this. You have to buy into the entire Apple platform, from hardware to OS to App Store and control to be able to send messages across that system, and only to other iPhone/MacOS users, because Apple refuses to develop or provide an API to utilize the system from any non Apple device, while at the same time automatically making SMS messages use the system for iPhone to iPhone communication, forcing their users to use it. Is it better than SMS? Yes. Does Apple give it extra capabilities that other systems can't compete with? Also yes. How is this different than Internet Explorer on Windows back in the day? The bottom line is that Apple's behavior is anti-competitive (in the true sense of the word, whether or not it meets with the antitrust definition in all cases). They use their control of different levels of the platform to stifle competition on other levels. No piece of their platform can be exchanged for another, so there's absolutely no competition at individual levels, only on the platform as a whole. I want to be clear here, currently it's not Apple vs Android, it's Apple vs everyone and everything else. There's plenty of Android hardware I can take and load AOSP, or LineageOS, or even a Linux based OS. I can take any of those OS's and run them on lots of different hardware (the limiting factor is what people have bothered to port, not what has been restricted). Calling for enough capital to support another walled garden that can compete on the platform level with Apple in the same manner is not only not useful, it's actively harmful to competition overall as they are only able to compete at the platform level. I want to make one last note. Have you considered that the reason Apple provides a great product and service isn't because they've leveraged their profit from anti-competitive behaviors to their own benefit, to make it even harder to compete with them? What if instead of a couple hundred billion in cash reserves held at Apple, it was partially spread around to various competing companies in the different segments the platform covers over the last decade? A valid third contender maybe? I don't know, but I have a hard time believing that Apple's been the most efficient steward of all that capital, nor that preventing competition leads to a better situation in the end. 1: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2534792/apple-sues-mac-clone-maker-psystar.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2534792/apple-sues-mac...

zepto 6y ago
Preventing people using your software on other hardware is not anti-competitive. It doesn’t do anything to prevent others from developing their own hardware or software. It’s not as if Apple has a monopoly on good operating systems or developers. Apple’s software isn’t magic. It’s just well designed and managed relative to the competition. There is no reason it can’t be bettered, except that nobody is trying. As far as the ‘at every level you can’t substitute other components’ definition of ‘anti-competitive’. That doesn’t work. Every company is like that. The only things which aren’t are certain open source licenses. At any point where you want substitutable components, one must have agreed interfaces. As I said earlier, the competitors failed in the early 2000’s because the process of agreeing on interfaces was hopelessly political. At that time the prevailing wisdom amongst VC’s was ‘there’s no money in hardware’. The only way around that is for competitors (or open source contributors) to establish a truly open platform that commoditizes Apple’s core asset, and then for them all to realize it isn’t in their interest for anyone to seize control of it. That, or someone to just outdo Apple with low end disruption. I’d like to think that this is what Google will do with Fuchsia, but anyone else can do it. I actually agree with you that it would be good to have competition at levels other than the platform. I believe that over a time it’s possible that such an ecosystem could be better for consumers than Apple’s ecosystem. I do not believe that you can create such an ecosystem by forcing Apple to open certain arbitrarily selected parts of their system. If anything, I think this would prevent the emergence of a new model indefinitely. I also don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that it would be better - only that it is a possibility. As for the cash reserves. Those look quite wise in the present situation. At Apple’s scale, geopolitical risk is real. China as a last resort in the trade war with Trump could easily make it impossible for them to continue to work there. Trump could do the same. $200B seems like a reasonable hedge against needing to rebuild their supply chains without Chinese cooperation. It’s also just a concentration of wealth. Look at all the other players with concentrated wealth who could just as easily be funding a competitor, and actually have a business interest in doing so. If your argument is that Apple should be funding its competitors, surely that same argument should apply to anyone with enough money. VC funds, Hedge Funds, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. The part we agree on is that someone should be funding serious competition against Apple. There is plenty of capital outside of Apple which could be doing this. The reason it hasn’t been doing so is that there have been much quicker and easier ways to make money. Advertising engines, Ride share services, Office building scams, etc. Any way you look at it, building a giant company slowly over decades is a bad way to make money compared to a quick investment in a Unicorn which never even becomes profitable. That’s what we should be addressing.

zepto 6y ago

Preventing people using your software on other hardware is not anti-competitive. It doesn’t do anything to prevent others from developing their own hardware or software. It’s not as if Apple has a monopoly on good operating systems or developers. Apple’s software isn’t magic. It’s just well designed and managed relative to the competition. There is no reason it can’t be bettered, except that nobody is trying. As far as the ‘at every level you can’t substitute other components’ definition of ‘anti-competitive’. That doesn’t work. Every company is like that. The only things which aren’t are certain open source licenses. At any point where you want substitutable components, one must have agreed interfaces. As I said earlier, the competitors failed in the early 2000’s because the process of agreeing on interfaces was hopelessly political. At that time the prevailing wisdom amongst VC’s was ‘there’s no money in hardware’. The only way around that is for competitors (or open source contributors) to establish a truly open platform that commoditizes Apple’s core asset, and then for them all to realize it isn’t in their interest for anyone to seize control of it. That, or someone to just outdo Apple with low end disruption. I’d like to think that this is what Google will do with Fuchsia, but anyone else can do it. I actually agree with you that it would be good to have competition at levels other than the platform. I believe that over a time it’s possible that such an ecosystem could be better for consumers than Apple’s ecosystem. I do not believe that you can create such an ecosystem by forcing Apple to open certain arbitrarily selected parts of their system. If anything, I think this would prevent the emergence of a new model indefinitely. I also don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that it would be better - only that it is a possibility. As for the cash reserves. Those look quite wise in the present situation. At Apple’s scale, geopolitical risk is real. China as a last resort in the trade war with Trump could easily make it impossible for them to continue to work there. Trump could do the same. $200B seems like a reasonable hedge against needing to rebuild their supply chains without Chinese cooperation. It’s also just a concentration of wealth. Look at all the other players with concentrated wealth who could just as easily be funding a competitor, and actually have a business interest in doing so. If your argument is that Apple should be funding its competitors, surely that same argument should apply to anyone with enough money. VC funds, Hedge Funds, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. The part we agree on is that someone should be funding serious competition against Apple. There is plenty of capital outside of Apple which could be doing this. The reason it hasn’t been doing so is that there have been much quicker and easier ways to make money. Advertising engines, Ride share services, Office building scams, etc. Any way you look at it, building a giant company slowly over decades is a bad way to make money compared to a quick investment in a Unicorn which never even becomes profitable. That’s what we should be addressing.