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Today's average smartphone is a more general computing device than the PC 20 years ago when Microsoft had it's anti-trust case. And Apple is far more egregious

Today's average smartphone is a more general computing device than the PC 20 years ago when Microsoft had it's anti-trust case. And Apple is far more egregious than Microsoft in this case. Would love to hear other views.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Would love to hear other views Literally a court case.
vlovich123 5y ago
They have successfully marketed that their model is safer than the alternative which MSFT never managed to do. With Android as a counterpoint, that’s not necessarily obviously untrue. The consistent focus maintained around user safety does appear to be their primary motivator with financial and strategic reasons being secondary. With MSFT it seemed the reverse. It’s also possible they are entirely similar and Apple just has the benefit of a more mature SW development ecosystem and more experience navigating the legal and political systems learning from the missteps of others and themselves. I don’t think this is a black and white thing though. In fact, the closedness insulates any underperforming engineering teams from competition because competitors are unable to get access to the same APIs and compete on providing alternate implementations of the same thing. That’s a challenge for Apple in terms of continuing to excel in the products they ship. I doubt it’s a big one they care about though.
izacus 5y ago
> Would love to hear other views. Views heard: [downvote]
ghaff 5y ago
>Today's average smartphone is a more general computing device than the PC 20 years ago I have trouble seeing that. 20 years ago, you even had a choice of operating systems and could execute arbitrary code on a PC so it's hard to see that PC as less general purpose than a smartphone which is generally designed to use only an OS and apps allowed by the app store maintainer.
codefreakxff 5y ago
I’m not sure what your point is. Case details are fuzzy right now, but wasn’t Microsoft accused of anti competition practices. Things like blocking browsers or apps that competed with their apps. They had a solid lock on the desktop operating system and were actively hurting competition Apple is not competing against Epic games here. They aren’t blocking them to force users to buy their Apple version of whatever. And the Epic games can run on tons of popular platforms. This is really just about payment transactions? So I don’t see a comparison in any way with the facts of the Microsoft case. Other than two big companies asserting greedy rules on their platform. Is that enough for anti-trust? I can’t argue that case in a post
- bagacrap 5y ago
  Apple does compete against and block other apps quite regularly. You can't change your default browser, heck you can't even install a different web rendering engine from the one they provide (which is another way of forcing app distribution to go through the web store since other browser vendors can't push the web forward on iOS). The crux of the Epic case is that there's no alternative to the app store. If there were an alternative to the app store, Epic would not be subject to Apple's capricious whims or 30% tax. So, yes, Apple is blocking competition with their services on their platform.
  - codefreakxff 5y ago
    I see. So you are expanding the scope from Epic complaining about fees to _everything_. You make good arguments. Just to play devils advocate, PlayStation and XBox are also closed platforms and I think they take a cut. Amazon Fire devices take a cut by making you buy their virtual currency. I don’t know if Apple is doing anything different. And the real issue in my mind is Microsoft had a real monopoly. Epic is free to put their games on millions and millions of other devices. They aren’t locked out of “the market” as a whole
curt15 5y ago
>Today's average smartphone is a more general computing device than the PC 20 years ago when Microsoft had it's anti-trust case. Can I write programs for my smartphone using my smartphone?
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Can I write programs for my smartphone using my smartphone? Yes; at least if its Android you can develop, package, and deploy apps to your device from the same device (for ergonomic/UX reasons this works better with external keyboard and display, or a tablet, than a bare smartphone) as well as editing code and running it in any one of many available interpreter apps.
- mshaler 5y ago
  Yes with Pythonista, among others http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ http://omz-software.com/pythonista/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
simion314 5y ago
Also needs to be mentioned that iOS is still locked on the Pro devices so I am not sure how someone could claim that those devices are not computers and so justify a "child mode restriction for all" as per Apple owns world.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> Would love to hear other views Literally a court case.

vlovich123 5y ago

They have successfully marketed that their model is safer than the alternative which MSFT never managed to do. With Android as a counterpoint, that’s not necessarily obviously untrue. The consistent focus maintained around user safety does appear to be their primary motivator with financial and strategic reasons being secondary. With MSFT it seemed the reverse. It’s also possible they are entirely similar and Apple just has the benefit of a more mature SW development ecosystem and more experience navigating the legal and political systems learning from the missteps of others and themselves. I don’t think this is a black and white thing though. In fact, the closedness insulates any underperforming engineering teams from competition because competitors are unable to get access to the same APIs and compete on providing alternate implementations of the same thing. That’s a challenge for Apple in terms of continuing to excel in the products they ship. I doubt it’s a big one they care about though.

izacus 5y ago

> Would love to hear other views. Views heard: [downvote]

ghaff 5y ago

>Today's average smartphone is a more general computing device than the PC 20 years ago I have trouble seeing that. 20 years ago, you even had a choice of operating systems and could execute arbitrary code on a PC so it's hard to see that PC as less general purpose than a smartphone which is generally designed to use only an OS and apps allowed by the app store maintainer.

codefreakxff 5y ago

I’m not sure what your point is. Case details are fuzzy right now, but wasn’t Microsoft accused of anti competition practices. Things like blocking browsers or apps that competed with their apps. They had a solid lock on the desktop operating system and were actively hurting competition Apple is not competing against Epic games here. They aren’t blocking them to force users to buy their Apple version of whatever. And the Epic games can run on tons of popular platforms. This is really just about payment transactions? So I don’t see a comparison in any way with the facts of the Microsoft case. Other than two big companies asserting greedy rules on their platform. Is that enough for anti-trust? I can’t argue that case in a post

bagacrap 5y ago
Apple does compete against and block other apps quite regularly. You can't change your default browser, heck you can't even install a different web rendering engine from the one they provide (which is another way of forcing app distribution to go through the web store since other browser vendors can't push the web forward on iOS). The crux of the Epic case is that there's no alternative to the app store. If there were an alternative to the app store, Epic would not be subject to Apple's capricious whims or 30% tax. So, yes, Apple is blocking competition with their services on their platform.
- codefreakxff 5y ago
  I see. So you are expanding the scope from Epic complaining about fees to _everything_. You make good arguments. Just to play devils advocate, PlayStation and XBox are also closed platforms and I think they take a cut. Amazon Fire devices take a cut by making you buy their virtual currency. I don’t know if Apple is doing anything different. And the real issue in my mind is Microsoft had a real monopoly. Epic is free to put their games on millions and millions of other devices. They aren’t locked out of “the market” as a whole

curt15 5y ago

>Today's average smartphone is a more general computing device than the PC 20 years ago when Microsoft had it's anti-trust case. Can I write programs for my smartphone using my smartphone?

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Can I write programs for my smartphone using my smartphone? Yes; at least if its Android you can develop, package, and deploy apps to your device from the same device (for ergonomic/UX reasons this works better with external keyboard and display, or a tablet, than a bare smartphone) as well as editing code and running it in any one of many available interpreter apps.
mshaler 5y ago
Yes with Pythonista, among others http://omz-software.com/pythonista/ http://omz-software.com/pythonista/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

simion314 5y ago

Also needs to be mentioned that iOS is still locked on the Pro devices so I am not sure how someone could claim that those devices are not computers and so justify a "child mode restriction for all" as per Apple owns world.