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> Preventing people using your software on other hardware is not anti-competitive. ... It doesn’t do anything to prevent others from developing their own hardwa

> 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. Actually, since they also provide the hardware, in the truest sense of the word, it is. They are preventing alternative hardware for their software (they've sued over this), and preventing alternative software on their hardware. No competition is allowed in these areas, to compete you have to replace both. If you then consider that they lock down what apps can run on their software, that extends the link to software able to run on the device. That means to actually compete on an App level with an Apple app on iOS, you need to not just write a better app, but provide an OS of comparable quality and hardware of comparable quality means they have artificially prevented competition at those levels, since there's no reason that they have to be linked. It provides some small benefits, but there's a large difference between not supporting their OS on other hardware and actively preventing it from running on it, and not providing any softawre except their own for their hardware, and locking it down so no other software will boot. That difference is why those actions are anti-competitive. > I do not believe that you can create such an ecosystem by forcing Apple to open certain arbitrarily selected parts of their system. And yet the only reason we don't have that competition is because Apple has closed certain non-arbitrary selected parts of their system/platform. I'm not sure why preventing them from closing those to competition wouldn't help spur more competition in them. > If anything, I think this would prevent the emergence of a new model indefinitely. I'm not even sure "model" means in this context. What do you suspect preventing arbitrary removal of competition, which is what Apple does, would somehow prevent a new model? > $200B seems like a reasonable hedge against needing to rebuild their supply chains without Chinese cooperation. Having a few full years worth of profit stacked away so they can replicate their entire manufacturing infrastructure needs of a nation that specializes in manufacturing is ridiculous. The comparison to Japanese Zaibatsu was apt before, but you're actually saying it's a good idea if some conditions are met here. Those are known to have outsize negative effects on economies. > If your argument is that Apple should be funding its competitors No, my argument is that they have too much control over their platform, with allows them to be anti-competitive. This makes them more money, but at the expense of their users (who do not benefit from that competition), and most likely some ceompetitors, unless you believe Apple would still provide a much better solution, in which case it's just he users that win. > The part we agree on is that someone should be funding serious competition against Apple. The fact that you think VC is the answer is part of the problem. Right now VC is the answer, because it's almost impossible for anyone to compete without huge amounts of money, but that's because of Apple's arbitrary barriers to compete.

zepto 6y ago
You say it’s ‘ridiculous’ for Apple to have money in case they need to rebuild their supply chains. Ok, what do you think they should do if China starts to interrupt their manufacturing there? I’m saying the risk is obviously real, and that it’s obviously reasonable for them to make contingencies. What would you do in their situation, and how much would it cost? The rest of your argument is based on the idea that the only way to compete with Apple is by using either their software, or their hardware. That seems like an extraordinarily claim, which you need to justify. At face value it is obviously false given that most phones do not use Apple’s software or hardware. As for the comment about VC. I didn’t just say VC. I listed a range of people who might be interested in investing in competitors to Apple. It seems like a weird argument to suggest here on Hacker news, that competing with the world’s largest corporations shouldn’t require investment. This is a very bizarre assertion. I’d seriously like to live in a world where it was true - e.g. where we had UBI and hackers could get together to collaborate on an open solution without having to make a living. I’m not saying this as a rhetorical maneuver. I am quite serious. However, solving that problem has nothing to do with Apple. As for the ‘model’ question. What you are talking about - where there is competition at every level of the stack, is known as a modular approach. Generally modularity is possible when the components are commodities. People agree on standards and then innovate in other areas. If we want the competitive environment you are proposing, what we are talking about is a modular approach to personal computing. Apple’s approach is an integrated one, where modularity is not part of their offering. M One way to attempt a modular environment would be to seize control of apple and have a committee dictate how they open up parts of their system to competition. This is what you are proposing. Another way would be for a group of people who believe that a modular approach would yield better consumer products to create a modular platform. I believe that this is what Google originally wanted to do with Android. The reason they failed and reversed course towards an integrated approach is that we simply are not at the stage where software can be treated as a commodity. The pace of change in how we build software is still rapid. I agree with you that a modular landscape might potentially be better, but I believe that we can only know if it is by building a modular platform that produces better consumer experiences than the integrated ones. Again, I don’t think this has anything to do with Apple. I see no reason why for example, WASM couldn’t be a vehicle for a more modern, modular approach to software creation. Of course you can argue that Apple will hobble it, but that doesn’t matter over time. Their platform will become expensive to develop for compared to the others, and stop being people’s first choice. If it yields a faster path to better software, the open platform will win. We just need to build it. But if we just dismantle Apple by force, it will not.

zepto 6y ago

You say it’s ‘ridiculous’ for Apple to have money in case they need to rebuild their supply chains. Ok, what do you think they should do if China starts to interrupt their manufacturing there? I’m saying the risk is obviously real, and that it’s obviously reasonable for them to make contingencies. What would you do in their situation, and how much would it cost? The rest of your argument is based on the idea that the only way to compete with Apple is by using either their software, or their hardware. That seems like an extraordinarily claim, which you need to justify. At face value it is obviously false given that most phones do not use Apple’s software or hardware. As for the comment about VC. I didn’t just say VC. I listed a range of people who might be interested in investing in competitors to Apple. It seems like a weird argument to suggest here on Hacker news, that competing with the world’s largest corporations shouldn’t require investment. This is a very bizarre assertion. I’d seriously like to live in a world where it was true - e.g. where we had UBI and hackers could get together to collaborate on an open solution without having to make a living. I’m not saying this as a rhetorical maneuver. I am quite serious. However, solving that problem has nothing to do with Apple. As for the ‘model’ question. What you are talking about - where there is competition at every level of the stack, is known as a modular approach. Generally modularity is possible when the components are commodities. People agree on standards and then innovate in other areas. If we want the competitive environment you are proposing, what we are talking about is a modular approach to personal computing. Apple’s approach is an integrated one, where modularity is not part of their offering. M One way to attempt a modular environment would be to seize control of apple and have a committee dictate how they open up parts of their system to competition. This is what you are proposing. Another way would be for a group of people who believe that a modular approach would yield better consumer products to create a modular platform. I believe that this is what Google originally wanted to do with Android. The reason they failed and reversed course towards an integrated approach is that we simply are not at the stage where software can be treated as a commodity. The pace of change in how we build software is still rapid. I agree with you that a modular landscape might potentially be better, but I believe that we can only know if it is by building a modular platform that produces better consumer experiences than the integrated ones. Again, I don’t think this has anything to do with Apple. I see no reason why for example, WASM couldn’t be a vehicle for a more modern, modular approach to software creation. Of course you can argue that Apple will hobble it, but that doesn’t matter over time. Their platform will become expensive to develop for compared to the others, and stop being people’s first choice. If it yields a faster path to better software, the open platform will win. We just need to build it. But if we just dismantle Apple by force, it will not.