10 ms·
Apple built their controlled ecosystem and set their rules. And now others are insisting that Apple should not have that control (even when they themselves are
by electriclove 6y ago
Apple built their controlled ecosystem and set their rules. And now others are insisting that Apple should not have that control (even when they themselves are doing the same thing).
- mFixman 6y agoIt's a monopoly, and it's illegal.
- dleslie 6y agoApple clearly has competitors that have a much larger share of the market.
- emptysongglass 6y agoThey have one competitor on which users are allowed to install their own market (see F-Droid.) [1] [1] https://www.f-droid.org/ https://www.f-droid.org/
- dleslie 6y agoF-Droid itself relies upon Android's openness to allow it to be installed. If you don't like Apple's walled garden then use Android.
- im3w1l 6y agoAnd if you want to install whichever apps you want, AND not be spied on by your OS, there are basically no options. Linageos is a possibility, but with the play services situation, running any mainstream app without phoning home to google is if not impossible, extremely difficult and filled with footguns. Pine and Librem are exciting emerging possibilities but they have only been available for a very short time so it remains to be seen what will happen there.
- dleslie 6y agoPinePhone is available to order right now; and it's cheap as hell.
- onion2k 6y agoWhen people talk about Apple having a monopoly they're referring to Apple having complete control over the sale of iOS software. There is no one else in that market. Apple has 100% market share.
- dleslie 6y agoThere are other people in the _mobile software_ market; if the argument for monopoly requires being as specific as _mobile software that operates on a specific manufacturer of a minority of all phones_ then perhaps it's not a monopoly at all.
- shadowgovt 6y agoCorrect. The relevant terms are "horizontal monopoly" and "vertical monopoly." A horizontal monopoly is if one company made all the cars. A vertical monopoly is if one car manufacturer owned all the roads in Detroit and only their cars were authorized to drive on those roads. Apple is a vertical monopoly across its hardware, the software that runs on that hardware (they don't own the software, but they own the distribution channel), and some of the suppliers that manufacture components for the hardware.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago> A vertical monopoly is if one car manufacturer owned all the roads in Detroit and only their cars were authorized to drive on those roads. That's not a good analogy. It's more like if you bought X's car model and X had a policy that you could only buy official, certified parts from certified dealers through which they get a cut. (App Store) You can go for after market parts but if you break the car it's on you. ("Jailbreaking" AKA flashing your device)
- sixstringtheory 6y agoiOS is not a market, it’s a product. This is like saying Uber has a monopoly on all of their own assets. Wrong terminology.
- nodamage 6y agoSorry but a market consisting of a single manufacturer's own product is generally not considered a valid antitrust market for legal purposes. You can't simply declare an arbitrarily narrow market like this because every manufacturer would then have a monopoly over its own products.
- notatoad 6y agoyou don't need to have a literal monopoly to engage in illegal anticompetitive behaviour, nor is having a monopoly even illegal. Apple has monopoly-like control over the mobile app market - if you don't make an iPhone app, your product is dead in the water. and apple is using that power to crush any competition to their own in-app payment solution.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y agoApple does not have a monopoly on phones. Not even smartphones.
- supercanuck 6y agoThey have a monopoly over the apps on the iOS.
- zepto 6y agoIn that case every single retail store has a monopoly on the products they sell. This is a meaningless definition of monopoly.
- supercanuck 6y agoI don’t need to spend $1,000 to enter a store. The issue is market power
- realusername 6y agoExcept in the retail world, there's competition between stores. Competition is non-existent in the mobile world, there's only two companies and both have the exact same fees and very similar policies.
- zepto 6y agoSo we need more entrants. Why doesn’t this coalition of multi-billion dollar corporations invest in creating an Android based alternative with different policies? That would add choice to the market rather than taking it away. They can clearly afford to do so, but it seems like they just don’t feel the need to make the investment.
- realusername 6y agoThat's because of the market lock-in and power of both companies, you can't use any of the Apple stack and Android without the Play Store is a commercial death sentence.
- dimitrios1 6y agoCalling a company that has ~13% of the market share in mobile devices is quite the take. It will never hold up in court.
- tempsy 6y agoIt's a duopoly between Android and iOS. Better? And the current lawsuits are arguing that Apple has a monopoly on payments on their own devices, not that they have a monopoly on the smartphone market. Big difference.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- supercanuck 6y agoThey control 100% of the apps on an iPhone
- zepto 6y agoEveryone controls 100% of what happens on their own platform. Epic is a monopolist.
- onion2k 6y agoEpic has a share of the PC games software market.
- zepto 6y agoYes - and they control their own platform. Therefore they are a monopolist. /s I clearly don’t actually believe this, but the point is that if Apple is a Monopolist, then so is Epic.
- shadowgovt 6y agoApple is a vertical monopolist across a large-market-share hardware platform it manufactures and an exclusive system for putting software onto that platform. Epic has a store, but doesn't have a large-market-share hardware platform they control exclusively to go with it. Any machine I can install the Epic app store on, I can also install Steam on.
- disposekinetics 6y agoIt's a monopoly in the same way Spotify not hosting some episodes of Joe Rogan is a monopoly.
- ijidak 6y agoI don't believe monopolies are illegal. It's using an advantage in one area to force concessions in an unrelated area that I believe is illegal. For example, Microsoft had an effective monopoly over PC operating systems. That was unfortunate, but not illegal. It was when they used that monopoly to disadvantage a rival browser maker --- Netscape -- that they broke anti-trust law. I'm most interested in seeing what happens over Apple's decisions to force app providers to use Apple Sign-in if the offer any other 3rd party SSO. As a developer, I may have valid security concerns regarding Apple Sign-in. So their app store dominance seems unrelated to SSO infrastructure. And I don't fully understand how they can force me to use it if I decide to support Google or Facebook SSO in my app. So I do wonder if that is an anti-trust violation.
- 0xDEEPFAC 6y agoWe are at a state where these tech companies have the same value as countries and entire stock indexes. It is obscene, and yet they make their devices more locked down, harder/ILLEGAL! to fix by paying off politicians both to not enforce laws and to write them in their favor at the expense of smaller competition. The merger of state and corporate powers is complete. We live in a fascist world with surveillance that Stalin could only dream of. So yea, a bit "unfortunate"
- arrosenberg 6y ago> It's using an advantage in one area to force concessions in an unrelated area that I believe is illegal. Can you find me a single example of a monopoly (excluding regulated utilities) that don't use their power to force concessions in an unrelated area? What's the point otherwise?
- izacus 6y agoSounds like a great time to make sure we ban all the closed ecosystems and reestablish free market at its best.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoA free market is mutually exclusive with a ban on closed ecosystems. You are arguing against a free market.
- damnyou 6y agoYou are talking past each other. Markets can be free in principle but not in practice for various reasons (oligopolies, monopsonies, etc).
- kstrauser 6y agoI think you're right. Although I'm with Apple on this one, in other contexts I've made the argument that I want my markets free as in GPL, not free as in BSD. That is, I want the market itself to be free, even if that means its participants have some restrictions. Actually, in this case I guess that means I like the restrictions that Apple's app store places on developers. Sure, lose the ability to publish malware and other profitable things, but that protects my ability to use it peacefully.
- 0xDEEPFAC 6y agoBut it is impossible to bypass the store for any normal person. Think about it, you are a normal person who wants to continue to use an application and for some reason the dev has been kicked out of the store (this often happens and the devs often have no idea why or how). You would be frustrated no? Not to mention the mental stress of the poor devs which are subject to inhuman automated responses, neglect, and abuse by Apple/Google. Apple/Google is essentially shutting down small businesses arbitrarily and remorselessly. The only way action happens is if the dev somehow gets enough attention on sites like this that Apple is forced to act. These tech monopolies have MORE than enough money for a customer/creator/dev service department - they just don't care, or, perhaps, maliciously use the lack of one to control their platform: "Oops sorry, you have been talking to our super-smart infallible AI, we don't know why its acting this way, but we are sure its right! You have one week to fix the issues - have a nice day!"
- rblatz 6y agoSo I’m not sure what point you are arguing but it’s either that consumers are stupid and don’t really want a secure phone and walled garden and would want to take that choice away from customers by law. Or that Apple needs to charge less for access to the App Store while also spending more money (to stop the inhuman auto replies and actions) Both are terrible arguments
- 0xDEEPFAC 6y agoApple has more than enough money to both protect users and actually help developers - it doesn't need to squeeze them. For example, why isn't it a one-time fee for the initial scan? Why must they take a share of every purchase. Without competition (like gasp competing app stores) Apple will continue to be negligent to devs and ban applications that compete with their services. For example, the Apple watch without cellular cannot use Spotify in offline mode since that would compete with Apple music. My girlfriend and I had to find this out after the purchase and completely defeated the purpose of buying the product for her workouts.
- rblatz 6y ago
- throwaway_USD 6y ago>And now others are insisting that Apple should not have that control (even when they themselves are doing the same thing). Exactly Apple organized developers, giving the developers a collective power to rival Apple's unilateral dictatorship...sure Apple could call their bluff like they always do with any one single developer, except if these developers collectively withdraw from the Apple ecosystem in mass, Apple would lose developers/market share/market cap. Now if only consumers would collectively organize against big tech in the same fashion, big tech wouldn't seem so big, and consumer could begin to dictate how these platforms collect use their data.
- m_ke 6y agoiOS has around 70% share of mobile app revenue and most of the premium customers. If you're building a business, media or communication tool you can't compete without an iOS app.
- M4v3R 6y agoApple's "walled garden" approach is exactly the reason why they have gathered 70% share of mobile app revenue. One of the reasons is that people feel generally more safe on iOS because there's almost no malware there. The other is that Android being more "open" actually hurts the developers because there's rampant piracy on Google's OS [1]. On iOS piracy is almost non-existing (unless one jailbreaks their phone which nowadays pretty much no one does [2]). [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/02/03/android-piracy-vs-apple-app-store/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/02/03/android-p... [2] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-iPhones-have-been-jailbroken https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-iPhones-have-been-j...
- sixstringtheory 6y agoNobody is entitled to build a business, media or communication tool. Nobody is entitled to “success.”
- lostgame 6y agoEpic; in particular, is just handling this situation laughably at best. I can't imagine taking someone to court over my own intentionally sneaky violation of a company's set of rules. The conversation about Apple's 30% is a valid one. Epic is, intentionally, at this point; taking a sledgehammer to any validity that conversation had. The way Epic handled this situation was with a maturity level of a 6-year-old kid yelling 'no!' to their parents and throwing a tantrum. We need serious, mature discussion over these issues. Spotify, in particular; while a horrible, heartless company to artists like myself, could at least make the excuse that they could funnel more of that 30% to the artists, although I doubt any more than 1% of it would actually go to us. (Spotify CEO is worth $3.8bn and the company claims they can't pay artists more...) I'm not sure wtf leg Tinder has to stand on beyond greed?
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Epic; in particular, is just handling this situation laughably at best. I can't imagine taking someone to court over my own intentionally sneaky violation of a company's set of rules. There's nothing laughable about having a layered strategy of “try not to get caught, and, in case you are caught, have a backup argument that enforcement of the rules is illegal in any case.”
- lostgame 6y agoI believe it doesn't uphold the 'spirit' of the law. It's sneaky/sneaking. They could've had a discussion with Apple, or gone to court about it; ahead of time. What they did was sneaking around; plain and simple, and Apple just responded the way they would to any app that suddenly activated a secret backdoor that would violate their terms and conditions. They invalidated their own potential for legal standing by intentionally sneaking around instead of working through the system like, for instance, LGTBQ+ people (I'm lesbian) did. If something is an injustice; you don't just, e.g. walk into a church and try to get married in a state or country that forbids it. You'll be prosecuted or killed. Doesn't matter that it's not fair. Apple's stance isn't as black/white, cut/dry as gay rights. But the point is, these guys took the absolutely wrong approach, have made themselves look like fools, and taken away power from people taking the time to properly (e.g. not intentionally sneaking around, which a backdoor switch to violate their terms and conditions is, by definition) try to move through the legal system and make these changes. All Epic has done is made that harder for real champions of Justice to approach in the future. It's the stuff conspiracy theories are made of. They're not standing for rights. They're standing for profits. Nobody's falling for it, especially not the judges.
- criddell 6y agoIt's about power. The importance of mobile platforms has grown over the past decade. Apple is in a much different position now than they were when the app store started. It makes some sense that opinions on that have changed.
- kstrauser 6y agoAnd furthermore, the Apple ecosystem is so popular because Apple curates the app store. I recommend their stuff to my non-techie relatives because I trust that they're not going to stumble their way into installing malware from some weird knockoff from Elbonia. With an iPhone, for better or for worse, I can point them at the App Store... app... ("say 'app' again! I dare you!") and be reasonably confident they're getting the official Instagram app. There are multiple apps with "Instagram" in the name, but the official one is the top search result. Contrast with the Chrome Web Store. The search results for "Instagram"[0] have a bunch of results from who-knows-where, and many of them contain the official logo somewhere inside their preview image. They all look they could be the real thing, but as far as I can tell, none of them are. Going to the family's house for holidays use to mean spending some time cleaning the weird programs off of the in-laws' computer. Now it means uninstalling the odd Chrome extensions they've manage to find, and making them change their website passwords. If it ever becomes super easy for Apple users to install random software they find on the Internet, I am throwing my older family members' iPhones into a lake and giving them a flip phone. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/instagram?hl=en-US&_category=extensions https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/instagram?hl=en-US...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- strictnein 6y ago"Standard Oil built their ecosystem and set their rules." "AT&T built their ecosystem and set their rules."
- MrScruff 6y agoIs the iPhone a monopoly?
- sixstringtheory 6y agoFrom Wikipedia's entry on Standard Oil [0]: > Standard Oil dominated the oil products market initially through horizontal integration in the refining sector, then, in later years vertical integration; the company was an innovator in the development of the business trust. Horizontal then vertical integration is exactly what Epic is doing, by first getting onto a bunch of platforms and app stores, then creating their own app stores and auxiliary purchasable items. Apple has always been vertically integrating, when have they horizontally integrated? AFAIK they've always been a platform into which other companies, like Microsoft with their original Office suite, have horizontally integrated. > The Standard Oil trust streamlined production and logistics, lowered costs, and undercut competitors. The group of companies coming together to form this advocacy group is a trust. Apple is not. From Wikipedia's entry on US v AT&T [1]: > [AT&T was] using monopoly profits from its Western Electric subsidiary to subsidize the costs of its network Companies selling apps on the app store are not subsidiaries of Apple, they are customers of Apple. A company reinvesting profits into itself is not anticompetitive. Maybe you had a different idea of why AT&T relates to Apple, but I don't see it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- strictnein 6y agoCongrats on discovering Wikipedia. Notice how those two companies were broken up for abusing their positions in different ways? Weird, huh? It's almost like the issue was them abusing their positions, not how they were put together? I'll save you some additional wikipedia searches: Microsoft was under significant legal assault for bundling its browser with its operating system. It paid out billions of dollars and was forced to allow computer manufacturers to bundle other browsers.