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> You are not a monopoly on your own platform, especially if that platform doesn't even have the majority of the relevant market. iPhone has a market share of

by lapcat 3y ago

> You are not a monopoly on your own platform, especially if that platform doesn't even have the majority of the relevant market. iPhone has a market share of almost 70% in Japan, the location of the plaintiff. iPhone also has a market share of over 50% now in the United States, by the way. > A company makes a platform or product so that they dictate the terms and if it's a marketplace, what and how it accepts to sell in it. Historical revisionism. For more than 30 years prior to iOS, general-purpose computing platforms were mostly open with no vendor-controlled store.

coldtea 3y ago
>Historical revisionism. For more than 30 years prior to iOS, general-purpose computing platforms were mostly open with no vendor-controlled store. That's quite the historical revisionism. Phones weren't "general-purpose computing platforms" for the most part of those 30 years (Gordon Gecko's phone didn't have apps). Nor where they considered as such. And there were tons of capable of "general purpose computing" popular devices in those 30 years with closed markets or even restricted acccess to the SDKs themselves, almost all game consoles for example.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > Phones weren't "general-purpose computing platforms" for the most part of those 30 years (Gordon Gecko's phone didn't have apps). Nor where they considered as such. We're all well aware of that, but so what? There's nothing inherent to smartphones that requires vendor-locked stores, and indeed some other smartphone platforms allow various levels of so-called "sideloading". > And there were tons of capable of "general purpose computing" popular devices in those 30 years with closed markets or even restricted acccess to the SDKs themselves, almost all game consoles for example. I used the term "general-purpose computing platforms" specifically to contrast with platforms such as game consoles, which are by their very name single-purpose. By the way, I don't accept that vendor lockdown of game consoles is ok either, especially at present. My understanding is that the original motivation was that game consoles were sold at a loss to encourage adoption (which I don't think is true anymore), and thus a cut of the game revenue was required to make the consoles viable. So the console developers and the game developers had a kind of mutual interest in that. In contrast, iPhone was never sold at a loss, always at a massive profit for Apple. 3rd party app developers never needed to sacrifice their revenue to encourage iPhone adoption. It should also be said that Apple itself considered "sideloading" on iPhone before the App Store was introduced, as shown by the emails from the Epic Games trial. Scott Forstall even said that they implemented sideloading in an internal iOS build, which he discussed in an email to Steve Jobs. AFAIK it hasn't been revealed why Apple decided against it ultimately. https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/21043913-2008-may-steve-jobs-scott-forstall-sideloading-was-a-thing/#document/p1 https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/21043913-2008-may-...
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    What makes a phone a "general-purpose computing platform" that is also not true for game consoles? They seem the same to me: They both have general purpose processors which -can- run arbitrary programs, but the owners of their ecosystems choose to limit what is allowed to run on them. If one is a "general-purpose computing platform" then the other must be, and vice versa.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      It's the design and marketing of the product. Game consoles are designed and marketed to play games. General-purpose computing platforms are designed and marketed to do almost anything (including but definitely not exclusively to play games). Apple says "There's an app for that", while console developers don't say that, nor should they, because it would be false marketing. If game consoles were marketed and sold as general-purpose computing platforms, then consumers would be very disappointed with them, because they make crappy general-purpose computing platforms. If iPhone or Mac were marketed and sold as game consoles, consumers would be similarly disappointed with them.
- rkagerer 3y ago
  Prior to the iPhone there was Palm, which I would certainly call a general purpose computing platform, where it was easy to download and install your own pdb with no vendor restrictions.
  - Retric 3y ago
    There existed general purpose computing platforms, but there’s also been just as many if not more completely closed platforms. Selling ringtones only existed because of how closed most phones were at the time. Palm OS 1.0 was nothing close to a general purpose computing platform. They didn’t even add TCP/IP support until 2.0. If anything the ability to lockdown Palm devices was a major selling point to many customers’s internal IT systems. That’s something I think people arguing for open platforms are ignoring, some customers really do want closed systems for various reasons.
    - goosedragons 3y ago
      The Commodore 64 also lacked TCP/IP. What's important is that programs doing a wide variety tasks could be programmed. Companies can and do lock down general purpose computing devices all the time, we don't need the manufacturer to decide beforehand.
      - Retric 3y ago
        That’s a personal preference. I do want the manufacturer to lock down the device when I am handing it to a young kid. Zero need for any administrative assistance is a major selling point. I can point to a ton of kid’s computers from the 90’s that included a basic interpreter and no permanent storage so a reboot fixed any problem, they where toys not general computing devices. As to TCP/IP, a Commodore 64 included the capability to use external storage to exchange information. You don’t need both, but the capability to directly exchange information with similar devices is a major hallmark of “general purpose computing” unlike say calculators or other specialized devices. Palm 1.0 included an email application, thus TCP/IP was a core feature. Instead you need to go from palm > computer > palm, just like say an early iPod or USB stick. Thus palm started as glorified terminals, and people still loved them.
stalfosknight 3y ago
> Phone has a market share of almost 70% in Japan, the location of the plaintiff. iPhone also has a market share of over 50% now in the United States, by the way. Neither one of those market shares are monopolies. > Historical revisionism. For more than 30 years prior to iOS, general-purpose computing platforms were mostly open with no vendor-controlled store. If you don't like the iOS platform then don't develop for it or buy iOS devices. There is an endless kaleidoscope of Android devices you can choose from.
- bfdm 3y ago
  Of course it's monopolistic. What standard are you comparing to? You don't need to have 100% of the market to exert monopoly control. Non-monopoly behavior would be users and developers having the choice to offer & install iOS apps outside of Apple's app store, but choosing the app store because the trade-off of fees is considered fair for the trust & platform convenience gained in exchange.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    > What standard are you comparing to A real judge saying that Apple isn’t a monopoly… https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/story/resounding-victory-apple-claims-win-in-anti-trust-case-against-fortnite-maker-epic-games-378767-2023-04-25 https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/story/resounding-vic...
    - anonymousab 3y ago
      > the judge cleared the Cupertino-based company of monopolistic malpractices That does not appear to be anything like affirming that they are not a monopoly. One can be a monopoly without being guilty of anticompetitive monopolistic behavior. Likewise, Epic failing to make their narrow case is not a statement of absolute fact about Apple's market or industry position; it is a statement that Epic's specific argument was not valid or sufficient to confirm their claims.
      - scarface_74 3y ago

by lapcat 3y ago

coldtea 3y ago

>Historical revisionism. For more than 30 years prior to iOS, general-purpose computing platforms were mostly open with no vendor-controlled store. That's quite the historical revisionism. Phones weren't "general-purpose computing platforms" for the most part of those 30 years (Gordon Gecko's phone didn't have apps). Nor where they considered as such. And there were tons of capable of "general purpose computing" popular devices in those 30 years with closed markets or even restricted acccess to the SDKs themselves, almost all game consoles for example.

lapcat 3y ago
> Phones weren't "general-purpose computing platforms" for the most part of those 30 years (Gordon Gecko's phone didn't have apps). Nor where they considered as such. We're all well aware of that, but so what? There's nothing inherent to smartphones that requires vendor-locked stores, and indeed some other smartphone platforms allow various levels of so-called "sideloading". > And there were tons of capable of "general purpose computing" popular devices in those 30 years with closed markets or even restricted acccess to the SDKs themselves, almost all game consoles for example. I used the term "general-purpose computing platforms" specifically to contrast with platforms such as game consoles, which are by their very name single-purpose. By the way, I don't accept that vendor lockdown of game consoles is ok either, especially at present. My understanding is that the original motivation was that game consoles were sold at a loss to encourage adoption (which I don't think is true anymore), and thus a cut of the game revenue was required to make the consoles viable. So the console developers and the game developers had a kind of mutual interest in that. In contrast, iPhone was never sold at a loss, always at a massive profit for Apple. 3rd party app developers never needed to sacrifice their revenue to encourage iPhone adoption. It should also be said that Apple itself considered "sideloading" on iPhone before the App Store was introduced, as shown by the emails from the Epic Games trial. Scott Forstall even said that they implemented sideloading in an internal iOS build, which he discussed in an email to Steve Jobs. AFAIK it hasn't been revealed why Apple decided against it ultimately. https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/21043913-2008-may-steve-jobs-scott-forstall-sideloading-was-a-thing/#document/p1 https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/21043913-2008-may-...
- ryandrake 3y ago
  What makes a phone a "general-purpose computing platform" that is also not true for game consoles? They seem the same to me: They both have general purpose processors which -can- run arbitrary programs, but the owners of their ecosystems choose to limit what is allowed to run on them. If one is a "general-purpose computing platform" then the other must be, and vice versa.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    It's the design and marketing of the product. Game consoles are designed and marketed to play games. General-purpose computing platforms are designed and marketed to do almost anything (including but definitely not exclusively to play games). Apple says "There's an app for that", while console developers don't say that, nor should they, because it would be false marketing. If game consoles were marketed and sold as general-purpose computing platforms, then consumers would be very disappointed with them, because they make crappy general-purpose computing platforms. If iPhone or Mac were marketed and sold as game consoles, consumers would be similarly disappointed with them.
rkagerer 3y ago
Prior to the iPhone there was Palm, which I would certainly call a general purpose computing platform, where it was easy to download and install your own pdb with no vendor restrictions.
- Retric 3y ago
  There existed general purpose computing platforms, but there’s also been just as many if not more completely closed platforms. Selling ringtones only existed because of how closed most phones were at the time. Palm OS 1.0 was nothing close to a general purpose computing platform. They didn’t even add TCP/IP support until 2.0. If anything the ability to lockdown Palm devices was a major selling point to many customers’s internal IT systems. That’s something I think people arguing for open platforms are ignoring, some customers really do want closed systems for various reasons.
  - goosedragons 3y ago
    The Commodore 64 also lacked TCP/IP. What's important is that programs doing a wide variety tasks could be programmed. Companies can and do lock down general purpose computing devices all the time, we don't need the manufacturer to decide beforehand.
    - Retric 3y ago
      That’s a personal preference. I do want the manufacturer to lock down the device when I am handing it to a young kid. Zero need for any administrative assistance is a major selling point. I can point to a ton of kid’s computers from the 90’s that included a basic interpreter and no permanent storage so a reboot fixed any problem, they where toys not general computing devices. As to TCP/IP, a Commodore 64 included the capability to use external storage to exchange information. You don’t need both, but the capability to directly exchange information with similar devices is a major hallmark of “general purpose computing” unlike say calculators or other specialized devices. Palm 1.0 included an email application, thus TCP/IP was a core feature. Instead you need to go from palm > computer > palm, just like say an early iPod or USB stick. Thus palm started as glorified terminals, and people still loved them.

stalfosknight 3y ago

> Phone has a market share of almost 70% in Japan, the location of the plaintiff. iPhone also has a market share of over 50% now in the United States, by the way. Neither one of those market shares are monopolies. > Historical revisionism. For more than 30 years prior to iOS, general-purpose computing platforms were mostly open with no vendor-controlled store. If you don't like the iOS platform then don't develop for it or buy iOS devices. There is an endless kaleidoscope of Android devices you can choose from.

bfdm 3y ago
Of course it's monopolistic. What standard are you comparing to? You don't need to have 100% of the market to exert monopoly control. Non-monopoly behavior would be users and developers having the choice to offer & install iOS apps outside of Apple's app store, but choosing the app store because the trade-off of fees is considered fair for the trust & platform convenience gained in exchange.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  > What standard are you comparing to A real judge saying that Apple isn’t a monopoly… https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/story/resounding-victory-apple-claims-win-in-anti-trust-case-against-fortnite-maker-epic-games-378767-2023-04-25 https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/story/resounding-vic...
  - anonymousab 3y ago
    > the judge cleared the Cupertino-based company of monopolistic malpractices That does not appear to be anything like affirming that they are not a monopoly. One can be a monopoly without being guilty of anticompetitive monopolistic behavior. Likewise, Epic failing to make their narrow case is not a statement of absolute fact about Apple's market or industry position; it is a statement that Epic's specific argument was not valid or sufficient to confirm their claims.
    - scarface_74 3y ago