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Oh come on. It is a similar issue with network locked terminals - networks fought tooth and nail to keep the unlock codes away from the people who finished thei

by yholio 6y ago

Oh come on. It is a similar issue with network locked terminals - networks fought tooth and nail to keep the unlock codes away from the people who finished their contracts. In the end, it costs them nothing to provide the codes, but real money to lose customers. The "none of the users want it" is circular reasoning. If unlock was possible on a mass scale, developers would build for the unfettered iDevices and a market would emerge separate from the one Apple controls. Then users would want it, since it provides value for them - cheaper apps, legal apps that are banned in the Store etc. Of course Apple will fight to the death to prevent such a thing.

johncolanduoni 6y ago
The difference was when that was common, virtually all the carriers in certain countries did it because as you said it netted them more money and for a while they mostly refused the compete on it. There are plenty of competitors selling rootable phones and laptops, there’s even ones completely without stuff like Intel’s Management Engine. These are more niche, because the desire for them is more niche, but they’re by no means extinct or on the way out. The users have the option to opt for different products with the properties you want. There is less money overall put into these products, and correspondingly less software, but that’s not because of anti-competitive practices. It’s because the reality is less people care about this stuff. I don’t think “people are obligated to put effort into the products I want” is a particularly noble political position, since you seem to be insistent on framing it that way. The position you’re talking about in the carrier case is different, it’s “people are obligated not to conspire together to do things that none of their users want and give them no options to vote with their feet”.
- toyg 6y ago
  In the "carrier era" you could still buy unlocked phones directly from the manufacturer. Your analogy doesn't hold. The truth is that there is a threshold, a level of user complaints that turns a legitimate practice into an anti-competitive one. People disagree on where this threshold lies - is it at 0, is it at 1000, is it at millions? Until recently, most of Apple's shenanigans have kept the complaints under thresholds small enough to be socially acceptable, that's all. If more people complain, that threshold could be reached.
  - johncolanduoni 6y ago
    That wasn’t the case for CDMA phones in the US (and back then not every manufacturer made models for multiple bands). There was no SIM card to swap in. If you could buy unlocked phones from the manufacturer without the carrier subsidy, what was anti-competitive about it? That’s an interesting metric for anti-competitive practice. Isn’t a large number of user complaints basically the core mechanism that drives market competition? Once you have enough users complaining about an aspect of a product (or otherwise being underserved), why would they not go to a competitor if one is allowed to exist (as they are in this situation)?
    - toyg 6y ago
      A manufacturer had to have a relationship with carriers to move enough product to make its prices affordable even off-carrier. Manufacturers who couldn’t sell through carriers were effectively made uncompetitive by the carrier cartel, that also resulted in a number of other restrictions (how one can pay for stuff etc). In this sense, as I wrote elsewhere, Apple strong-arming ATT was a big step forward; but it also took legislation on this side of the pond to force carriers to play nice with unlockings, there was no chance the market would self-correct. Which takes me to the second point: the market alone often does not self-correct. This is why we have antitrust laws and authorities to enforce them. People lack the education to be able to reason about “voting with their wallet” in an effective way; and even when they do, they often don’t have the resources to follow through. This is why contract bundles are so popular, despite the fact that they make handset more expensive overall: people can’t do math, and when they do they still often lack the cash reserves to buy a handset in one go rather than paying small instalments for a long time. If a market fails, it’s legitimate for the law to step in; and one indication of failure is the level of discontent from consumers.

by yholio 6y ago

johncolanduoni 6y ago

The difference was when that was common, virtually all the carriers in certain countries did it because as you said it netted them more money and for a while they mostly refused the compete on it. There are plenty of competitors selling rootable phones and laptops, there’s even ones completely without stuff like Intel’s Management Engine. These are more niche, because the desire for them is more niche, but they’re by no means extinct or on the way out. The users have the option to opt for different products with the properties you want. There is less money overall put into these products, and correspondingly less software, but that’s not because of anti-competitive practices. It’s because the reality is less people care about this stuff. I don’t think “people are obligated to put effort into the products I want” is a particularly noble political position, since you seem to be insistent on framing it that way. The position you’re talking about in the carrier case is different, it’s “people are obligated not to conspire together to do things that none of their users want and give them no options to vote with their feet”.

toyg 6y ago
In the "carrier era" you could still buy unlocked phones directly from the manufacturer. Your analogy doesn't hold. The truth is that there is a threshold, a level of user complaints that turns a legitimate practice into an anti-competitive one. People disagree on where this threshold lies - is it at 0, is it at 1000, is it at millions? Until recently, most of Apple's shenanigans have kept the complaints under thresholds small enough to be socially acceptable, that's all. If more people complain, that threshold could be reached.
- johncolanduoni 6y ago
  That wasn’t the case for CDMA phones in the US (and back then not every manufacturer made models for multiple bands). There was no SIM card to swap in. If you could buy unlocked phones from the manufacturer without the carrier subsidy, what was anti-competitive about it? That’s an interesting metric for anti-competitive practice. Isn’t a large number of user complaints basically the core mechanism that drives market competition? Once you have enough users complaining about an aspect of a product (or otherwise being underserved), why would they not go to a competitor if one is allowed to exist (as they are in this situation)?
  - toyg 6y ago
    A manufacturer had to have a relationship with carriers to move enough product to make its prices affordable even off-carrier. Manufacturers who couldn’t sell through carriers were effectively made uncompetitive by the carrier cartel, that also resulted in a number of other restrictions (how one can pay for stuff etc). In this sense, as I wrote elsewhere, Apple strong-arming ATT was a big step forward; but it also took legislation on this side of the pond to force carriers to play nice with unlockings, there was no chance the market would self-correct. Which takes me to the second point: the market alone often does not self-correct. This is why we have antitrust laws and authorities to enforce them. People lack the education to be able to reason about “voting with their wallet” in an effective way; and even when they do, they often don’t have the resources to follow through. This is why contract bundles are so popular, despite the fact that they make handset more expensive overall: people can’t do math, and when they do they still often lack the cash reserves to buy a handset in one go rather than paying small instalments for a long time. If a market fails, it’s legitimate for the law to step in; and one indication of failure is the level of discontent from consumers.