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Just look at what Apple has accomplished in the meteoric rise of the iPhone. This is strong evidence of a company that is competing like hell to keep and grow i

• whimsicalism 6y ago
  > a company that is competing like hell The problem is when by "competing like hell", you compete so hard that you suppress your competition. The issue that anti-competition laws seek to redress is the suppression of other competition.
  • zaroth 6y ago
    Except the competition isn’t suppressed, and there’s no actual monopoly here. What we have is a pretty clear case of a minuscule minority of users bitterly complaining that a company isn’t making its products exactly the way they want them to. A store is allowed to charge what it wants for its products. A store is allowed to set the policies that it wants for the goods that it sells in its own stores. It just so happens that Apple’s customers absolutely love its products, and that Apple’s products are absolute technological leaders in their space. Apple didn’t get there, e.g. like Facebook by buying up the competition any time it started to emerge as a threat. They got there through decades of focused development and investment.
    • whimsicalism 6y ago
      > A store is allowed to charge what it wants for its products. A store is allowed to set the policies that it wants for the goods that it sells in its own stores. A store is allowed to block you from using any other store? These aren't natural continuations or logical extensions of meatspace, stop pretending they are.
      • zaroth 6y ago
        This is literally not what’s happening. The iPhone is their product. If you don’t want to use their products and their store you do not have to. Buy a different device. There are plenty. Apple doesn’t get to tell Google, Samsung, Huawei, LG, OnePlus, Fairphone, etc. how to build their devices. The one device they do get to decide how it works is the iPhone. Because they created it, they own it, and they get to decide its future. Their device, their decision. The consumer gets to decide if they like it or not. Overwhelmingly, they decide that they do.
        • whimsicalism 6y ago
          You're making normative claims as if they are "the way things are." Maybe the above is how you think things ought to be (I disagree), but anti-trust jurisprudence does not agree with your pseudo-libertarian worldview.
          • zaroth 6y ago
            Maybe we can both at least agree the normative claims I’m making are true absent a monopoly finding. Anti-trust only applies if there’s a finding that Apple is a monopoly. The jury, so to speak, is still out. If Apple was found to be a monopoly, then there may need to be some restrictions placed on how they operate. But I think controlling how your own product works is the presumed default, even if that product is wildly successful, as long as that success is through actual product merit, and not done deceptively or through illegal collusion.
            • whimsicalism 6y ago
              > Anti-trust only applies if there’s a finding that Apple is a monopoly. The jury, so to speak, is still out. Wrong again, you can violate anti-competition law without being a monopoly. You're correct that it hasn't been decided in a court of law. I'm saying that I think they are engaging in anti-competitive behavior, you are saying "actually it is okay because they haven't been judged to engage in anti-competitive behavior in a court of law", which does not seem contrary to my claim, which is that I think they should be judged to engage in anti-competitive behavior.
• baq 6y ago
  replace 'apple' with 'standard oil', 'iphone' with 'kerosene' and '2020' with '1900'.