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About time. Apple has been getting a free pass on the exact same things that Microsoft was slapped down for. Notably: unchangeable default apps (browser, emai

by flax 3y ago

About time. Apple has been getting a free pass on the exact same things that Microsoft was slapped down for. Notably: unchangeable default apps (browser, email, text messaging in particular). I don't believe that they necessarily are violating antitrust by choosing to make imessage or apple watch ios only, but it would be obviously better for consumers in my opinion if they were more open. One aspect which keeps annoying me is how hostile Apple is to developers that want to use anything other than Apple hardware to publish on the app store. The requirement to use xcode, and the fact that xcode only runs on Mac means they are leveraging their control of ios app stores to force hardware sales. I was particularly annoyed to find that even if I have a compiled .ipa file, the app store requires xcode to even upload it. It's a file upload! This has been working cross platform since before the advent of the web.

manuelabeledo 3y ago
> Apple has been getting a free pass on the exact same things that Microsoft was slapped down for. Notably: unchangeable default apps (browser, email, text messaging in particular). I think this is due to regulators not understanding that phones are computers. Apple definitely lets you change the default apps in macOS. If it didn't, that would be a problem. But until recently, both Google and Apple were given an exception on mobile computing, i.e. tablets, phones.
- ericmay 3y ago
  I think it's less to do with regulators not understanding that phones are computers and more to do with genuine disagreement over what constitutes a computer and even more so what societal and economic effects regulation might have on these changes. For example, if the United States says that the iPhone is an arbitrary computer and as such is subject to thus and thus regulations, why wouldn't that include other arbitrary computation devices like the Nintendo Switch, Steamdeck, TV, or Alexa device? I haven't seen a convincing argument yet that would say this definition stops at "phones and tablets". So now you're not just regulating phones and "opening them up" and instead you're regulating broad swaths of trade with not just American companies but global companies as well and that has much more important considerations than whether or not you can install a 3rd-party app store or access a manufacturer-only API. Even if you are just regulating phones and tablets, you still have to consider more than the American companies.
  - ProfessorLayton 3y ago
    IMO regulation should kick in based on market share, regardless of device type. If 50% of the population was being taxed 30% on digital transactions by the platform owner, it doesn't really matter if it happened on an iPhone/Android or Nintendo Switch.
    - ericmay 3y ago
      Market share of devices sold? Does it change by the year? Market share of the company? What if companies just introduce small changes to the device that result in different SKUs? Take a look at the Nintendo Switch market share in 2020 [1]. We should regulate Nintendo and make them open up APIs but not Microsoft? [1] Assume this is accurate for the sake of argument https://www.statista.com/statistics/276768/global-unit-sales-of-video-game-consoles/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276768/global-unit-sales...
      - ProfessorLayton 3y ago
        Percent of revenue of digital transactions should open up companies to regulation. Nintendo should be free to do whatever they want up until a certain percent of the digital pie is controlled by them. What that number is should be up to regulators/we the people. Apple/Google's app store duopoly is a tax on competition and innovation. BTW these two app stores dwarf anything Nintendo is doing with theirs.
        ericmay 3y ago
        What percent? Apple for example is known (I don't have the numbers in front of me) for making high margins on their hardware and not digital transactions though they're certainly trying to grow that sector. If you mean of the overall pie, wouldn't that just place burdensome regulation on new and small businesses or new sectors since as soon as you own a percent of the "digital pie" (what exactly is that anyway?) you have to then comply with regulations that could just open up your proprietary business features to your competitors? Why is it that Apple and Google's app store duopoly a tax on competition when they created the sector that enabled businesses to sell products? If anything they should charge more. But aside from that, doesn't this also discourage Apple, Google, and others from profiting off of or creating software features? Why even build the API? And if another company forks Android or creates a new mobile operating system they can keep all of their stuff closed until a later point in which they're beating incumbents and then just open up? Idk I feel like there's already too much additive logic here to make this worthwhile. Good regulation would be much cleaner and ideally subtractive instead of additive. > BTW these two app stores dwarf anything Nintendo is doing with theirs. I'm aware and I find this to be irrelevant.
- throw0101d 3y ago
  > I think this is due to regulators not understanding that phones are computers. What isn't a computer nowadays? * https://a16z.com/why-software-is-eating-the-world/ https://a16z.com/why-software-is-eating-the-world/
nickff 3y ago
[flagged]
- civilized 3y ago
  It contains factual claims which you can dispute. "I am personally not convinced and dislike your tone" doesn't add anything to the conversation.
  - nickff 3y ago
    The only factual questions are non-sequiturs, in that they do not lead to any of the conclusions the post seems to come to. Perhaps I just don't fit in with HN anymore.
granzymes 3y ago
This case, at least as described in the article, has essentially no similarity to the Microsoft Internet Explorer trial (which, in case you forgot, Microsoft won on appeal). Microsoft got in trouble for tying its monopoly in operating systems to OEMs preinstalling Internet Explorer. Essentially, they told OEMs that they would not sell them Windows unless they agreed to help Microsoft kill Netscape. That's a very different kind of antitrust complaint than what the article describes, which is Apple building seamless connections between its hardware and services while offering second-tier connections for competitors. The Xcode angle is interesting, but likely not important enough for the Justice Department to sue over. Hardware for developers is negligible in the grand scheme of things.
- civilized 3y ago
  Apple's behavior seems much more anticompetitive because, for example, they ban third parties from offering apps that interoperate e.g. with iMessage. That's worlds worse than just making sure your app is the most convenient option, while other options can easily be installed.
  - granzymes 3y ago
    There's a difference between obstructing (generally bad!) and refusal to deal (perfectly fine). Apple can't go out into the market and trip their competitors so they fall on their face. However, they are allowed to build themselves a nice road for their exclusive use on their own hardware and a winding dirt path for everyone else. Put another way, Apple cannot worsen access for competitors on its platform absent a procompetitive justification. But they have no duty under U.S. antitrust law to provide equal access in the first place.
    - civilized 3y ago
      My understanding is they also ban third-party text message applications, but I could be confused on the details.
      - 3y ago
snowwrestler 3y ago
Microsoft got into trouble because they were a supplier to computer companies (they supplied the OS and some software) and abused their market share to mess with other suppliers (browser makers). Apple is themselves the computer maker. The situation is not similar even though both MS and Apple are big companies.
- adrr 3y ago
  Microsoft required the OEMs to pay for windows license on every computer they sold whether it had Windows installed on it or another OS. It put a huge tax on consumers who didn't want to use windows since they were paying for a license no matter what. Its a textbook case for antitrust. Apple, people have choice. I can buy an Android phone, I can buy one of the open source phones like PinePhone, Fair Phone or Librem 5. Consumers have lots of choice. As for not being able to uninstall default apps, You can use other messaging apps. Consumers have a choice. I am willing to bet money, that 80%+ of IOS users have no desire to change apps. I am also willing to bet most IOS users don't want iMessage to work with other messaging apps. I am in that boat. Forcing Apple to open up iMessage is anti-consumer.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
This is true even for web apps. If you want to debug web apps to make them work on iOS, you need an iOS device and a macbook.
jwells89 3y ago
The thing about Xcode and associated tools is that they heavily rely on the entire Apple platform stack and would be quite a bear to port to other platforms. The iOS simulator, for example, simply runs the iOS userland on top of the core shared between macOS and iOS rather than emulating a full device. It might be practical to release CLI tools for cross-compilation but anything beyond that would be quite expensive. Apple could afford to do this work of course, but the ROI of doing so is questionable. Ignoring the hit to Mac sales, it opens their platforms up to vast amounts of low effort shovelware — far more than already exists on the App Store. That’s the natural consequence of access to a platform being a single tickbox away. Of course the actual problem might come down to lack of tools and services that push junkware into the gutters where it belongs while putting quality apps in the spotlight, but I’m not confident that this will magically appear should iOS as a platform be opened up.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by flax 3y ago

manuelabeledo 3y ago

> Apple has been getting a free pass on the exact same things that Microsoft was slapped down for. Notably: unchangeable default apps (browser, email, text messaging in particular). I think this is due to regulators not understanding that phones are computers. Apple definitely lets you change the default apps in macOS. If it didn't, that would be a problem. But until recently, both Google and Apple were given an exception on mobile computing, i.e. tablets, phones.

ericmay 3y ago
I think it's less to do with regulators not understanding that phones are computers and more to do with genuine disagreement over what constitutes a computer and even more so what societal and economic effects regulation might have on these changes. For example, if the United States says that the iPhone is an arbitrary computer and as such is subject to thus and thus regulations, why wouldn't that include other arbitrary computation devices like the Nintendo Switch, Steamdeck, TV, or Alexa device? I haven't seen a convincing argument yet that would say this definition stops at "phones and tablets". So now you're not just regulating phones and "opening them up" and instead you're regulating broad swaths of trade with not just American companies but global companies as well and that has much more important considerations than whether or not you can install a 3rd-party app store or access a manufacturer-only API. Even if you are just regulating phones and tablets, you still have to consider more than the American companies.
- ProfessorLayton 3y ago
  IMO regulation should kick in based on market share, regardless of device type. If 50% of the population was being taxed 30% on digital transactions by the platform owner, it doesn't really matter if it happened on an iPhone/Android or Nintendo Switch.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    Market share of devices sold? Does it change by the year? Market share of the company? What if companies just introduce small changes to the device that result in different SKUs? Take a look at the Nintendo Switch market share in 2020 [1]. We should regulate Nintendo and make them open up APIs but not Microsoft? [1] Assume this is accurate for the sake of argument https://www.statista.com/statistics/276768/global-unit-sales-of-video-game-consoles/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276768/global-unit-sales...
    - ProfessorLayton 3y ago
      Percent of revenue of digital transactions should open up companies to regulation. Nintendo should be free to do whatever they want up until a certain percent of the digital pie is controlled by them. What that number is should be up to regulators/we the people. Apple/Google's app store duopoly is a tax on competition and innovation. BTW these two app stores dwarf anything Nintendo is doing with theirs.
      - ericmay 3y ago
        What percent? Apple for example is known (I don't have the numbers in front of me) for making high margins on their hardware and not digital transactions though they're certainly trying to grow that sector. If you mean of the overall pie, wouldn't that just place burdensome regulation on new and small businesses or new sectors since as soon as you own a percent of the "digital pie" (what exactly is that anyway?) you have to then comply with regulations that could just open up your proprietary business features to your competitors? Why is it that Apple and Google's app store duopoly a tax on competition when they created the sector that enabled businesses to sell products? If anything they should charge more. But aside from that, doesn't this also discourage Apple, Google, and others from profiting off of or creating software features? Why even build the API? And if another company forks Android or creates a new mobile operating system they can keep all of their stuff closed until a later point in which they're beating incumbents and then just open up? Idk I feel like there's already too much additive logic here to make this worthwhile. Good regulation would be much cleaner and ideally subtractive instead of additive. > BTW these two app stores dwarf anything Nintendo is doing with theirs. I'm aware and I find this to be irrelevant.
throw0101d 3y ago
> I think this is due to regulators not understanding that phones are computers. What isn't a computer nowadays? * https://a16z.com/why-software-is-eating-the-world/ https://a16z.com/why-software-is-eating-the-world/

nickff 3y ago

[flagged]

civilized 3y ago
It contains factual claims which you can dispute. "I am personally not convinced and dislike your tone" doesn't add anything to the conversation.
- nickff 3y ago
  The only factual questions are non-sequiturs, in that they do not lead to any of the conclusions the post seems to come to. Perhaps I just don't fit in with HN anymore.

granzymes 3y ago

This case, at least as described in the article, has essentially no similarity to the Microsoft Internet Explorer trial (which, in case you forgot, Microsoft won on appeal). Microsoft got in trouble for tying its monopoly in operating systems to OEMs preinstalling Internet Explorer. Essentially, they told OEMs that they would not sell them Windows unless they agreed to help Microsoft kill Netscape. That's a very different kind of antitrust complaint than what the article describes, which is Apple building seamless connections between its hardware and services while offering second-tier connections for competitors. The Xcode angle is interesting, but likely not important enough for the Justice Department to sue over. Hardware for developers is negligible in the grand scheme of things.

civilized 3y ago
Apple's behavior seems much more anticompetitive because, for example, they ban third parties from offering apps that interoperate e.g. with iMessage. That's worlds worse than just making sure your app is the most convenient option, while other options can easily be installed.
- granzymes 3y ago
  There's a difference between obstructing (generally bad!) and refusal to deal (perfectly fine). Apple can't go out into the market and trip their competitors so they fall on their face. However, they are allowed to build themselves a nice road for their exclusive use on their own hardware and a winding dirt path for everyone else. Put another way, Apple cannot worsen access for competitors on its platform absent a procompetitive justification. But they have no duty under U.S. antitrust law to provide equal access in the first place.
  - civilized 3y ago
    My understanding is they also ban third-party text message applications, but I could be confused on the details.
    - 3y ago

snowwrestler 3y ago

Microsoft got into trouble because they were a supplier to computer companies (they supplied the OS and some software) and abused their market share to mess with other suppliers (browser makers). Apple is themselves the computer maker. The situation is not similar even though both MS and Apple are big companies.

adrr 3y ago
Microsoft required the OEMs to pay for windows license on every computer they sold whether it had Windows installed on it or another OS. It put a huge tax on consumers who didn't want to use windows since they were paying for a license no matter what. Its a textbook case for antitrust. Apple, people have choice. I can buy an Android phone, I can buy one of the open source phones like PinePhone, Fair Phone or Librem 5. Consumers have lots of choice. As for not being able to uninstall default apps, You can use other messaging apps. Consumers have a choice. I am willing to bet money, that 80%+ of IOS users have no desire to change apps. I am also willing to bet most IOS users don't want iMessage to work with other messaging apps. I am in that boat. Forcing Apple to open up iMessage is anti-consumer.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

This is true even for web apps. If you want to debug web apps to make them work on iOS, you need an iOS device and a macbook.

jwells89 3y ago

The thing about Xcode and associated tools is that they heavily rely on the entire Apple platform stack and would be quite a bear to port to other platforms. The iOS simulator, for example, simply runs the iOS userland on top of the core shared between macOS and iOS rather than emulating a full device. It might be practical to release CLI tools for cross-compilation but anything beyond that would be quite expensive. Apple could afford to do this work of course, but the ROI of doing so is questionable. Ignoring the hit to Mac sales, it opens their platforms up to vast amounts of low effort shovelware — far more than already exists on the App Store. That’s the natural consequence of access to a platform being a single tickbox away. Of course the actual problem might come down to lack of tools and services that push junkware into the gutters where it belongs while putting quality apps in the spotlight, but I’m not confident that this will magically appear should iOS as a platform be opened up.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]