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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 w

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.
  - granzymes 3y ago
    If Apple in 2020 had allowed third-party text message applications and in 2024 changed their mind because a competitor was eating their lunch, that would be anticompetitive. It's not anticompetitive to never allow a third-party text message application in the first place.
    - civilized 3y ago
      I'm not aware of any requirement that anti-competitive behavior be in response to competitor behavior, but maybe you know more about the law.
  - wharvle 3y ago
    For SMS? Maybe, but that's just a basic phone feature. An old Nokia also only offers one way to send SMS. It's just part of the phone-bits of the phone. And didn't Signal used to be able to send and receive SMS on iPhone, anyway? Thought it could. Messaging apps that compete with iMessage are plentiful and Apple doesn't get in their way. You can also disable iMessage with a toggle on the Messages settings screen (it's well "above the fold" for me, fourth entry down, on that screen, it's the first thing they show other than security/permissions stuff for the app)
    - chimeracoder 3y ago
      > And didn't Signal used to be able to send and receive SMS on iPhone, anyway? Thought it could. On Android, yes. Not on iOS.
      - wharvle 3y ago
        Oh, I thought they had it there too. Nevermind on that part then.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > But they have no duty under U.S. antitrust law to provide equal access in the first place. True, but they're undeniably at a scale where this would just be expected of them either way. We broke up Ma Bell ignoring this exact defense, because at a certain scale of infrastructure you're expected to do the right thing legal or not. If Apple drills down on their "technically legal" defense, they're liable to find out how technically subjective law gets at their scale.
  - granzymes 3y ago
    I agree that it's reasonable to hold platforms like Apple to a higher standard. The issue is that it would likely require new laws be passed, like the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act from the European Union.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      That's not really an issue, as European lawmakers have demonstrated.
manuelabeledo 3y ago
> That's worlds worse than just making sure your app is the most convenient option, while other options can easily be installed. I disagree. Apple is actively hostile to third parties integrating with their own protocols, but Microsoft has been caught several times trying to subvert standards for their benefit, e.g. when they added extensions to their Exchange email servers that would work only with Outlook clients.
olliej 3y ago
You mean "Apple should be required to build messaging services on top of apple's infrastructure". Google also prevents me from making a company that uses its search engine infrastructure and unlike iMessage it is actually the dominant operator in the market. I'm also not allowed to make a Twitter-like service that interoperates with twitter. Explain what makes iMessage, a service that is part of a product apple sells, different from the above? Or in fact any service operated by any other company that sells a product but doesn't allow other companies to resell their services? > they ban third parties from offering apps that interoperate e.g. with iMessage. If you're referring to that company that reverse engineered the iMessage protocol, that entire companies business model was "we're going to give away free access to a service that isn't free, and that a company has to spend money supporting". Again, how would this be different from requiring google, twitter, or GitHub, etc to provide 3rd parties access to their infrastructure to duplicate their services?
- smoldesu 3y ago
  iMessage's problem is that it is functionally an SMS replacement, but architecturally nothing like SMS. If you wanted to extend iMessage so that other companies could support and pay for their own hardware on it, you couldn't. It's not just Apple's willingness either, it's designed specifically so that it embraces and extends SMS without offering the same inter-OS connectivity. Google and Twitter have services to run that compete on generally equal terms (eg. the Internet). Apple's messaging service is integrated with Apple's runtime, and because they control both they can implement features that competitors cannot.
  - olliej 3y ago
    you're right, it's not an sms replacement: it's actually secure, and it has no requirement that you have a sim or phone number. Something RCS does not have. You can use SMS (and apparently RCS in future?) to talk to others, and if there's the option to use iMessage instead it does that. i.e it interoperates with existing standard messaging systems when appropriate. > Apple's messaging service is integrated with Apple's runtime, and because they control both they can implement features that competitors cannot. Every messaging app on Mac and iOS can implement whatever features they want, just like iMessage does. It has nothing to do with the being "part of the system". > Google and Twitter have services to run that compete on generally equal terms (eg. the Internet) No they don't. I can't make a search engine that competes with google I don't have the hardware or existing index, much like apple has infrastructure to support and developer iMessage, google has hardware and infrastructure to support search. Why should I have to build my own infrastructure if google already has that? Similarly I can't make something that competes with twitter if I can't read and reply to tweets on twitter, so why shouldn't twitter be required to let me do that as well? You have created an artificial distinction that makes iMessage (a service that is part of a paid product that requires significant infrastructure) somehow different from every other service operated by every other company for which someone might want to piggy back off to avoid paying the actual operational costs. There is no different from "I want to make my own messaging app that uses iMessage for message delivery so that it interacts with iMessage, so apple must let me do that" and "I want to make a microblogging site that uses twitter's infrastructure so that it can interact with twitter, so twitter must let me do that".

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.
- granzymes 3y ago
  If Apple in 2020 had allowed third-party text message applications and in 2024 changed their mind because a competitor was eating their lunch, that would be anticompetitive. It's not anticompetitive to never allow a third-party text message application in the first place.
  - civilized 3y ago
    I'm not aware of any requirement that anti-competitive behavior be in response to competitor behavior, but maybe you know more about the law.
- wharvle 3y ago
  For SMS? Maybe, but that's just a basic phone feature. An old Nokia also only offers one way to send SMS. It's just part of the phone-bits of the phone. And didn't Signal used to be able to send and receive SMS on iPhone, anyway? Thought it could. Messaging apps that compete with iMessage are plentiful and Apple doesn't get in their way. You can also disable iMessage with a toggle on the Messages settings screen (it's well "above the fold" for me, fourth entry down, on that screen, it's the first thing they show other than security/permissions stuff for the app)
  - chimeracoder 3y ago
    > And didn't Signal used to be able to send and receive SMS on iPhone, anyway? Thought it could. On Android, yes. Not on iOS.
    - wharvle 3y ago
      Oh, I thought they had it there too. Nevermind on that part then.
smoldesu 3y ago
> But they have no duty under U.S. antitrust law to provide equal access in the first place. True, but they're undeniably at a scale where this would just be expected of them either way. We broke up Ma Bell ignoring this exact defense, because at a certain scale of infrastructure you're expected to do the right thing legal or not. If Apple drills down on their "technically legal" defense, they're liable to find out how technically subjective law gets at their scale.
- granzymes 3y ago
  I agree that it's reasonable to hold platforms like Apple to a higher standard. The issue is that it would likely require new laws be passed, like the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act from the European Union.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    That's not really an issue, as European lawmakers have demonstrated.

manuelabeledo 3y ago

> That's worlds worse than just making sure your app is the most convenient option, while other options can easily be installed. I disagree. Apple is actively hostile to third parties integrating with their own protocols, but Microsoft has been caught several times trying to subvert standards for their benefit, e.g. when they added extensions to their Exchange email servers that would work only with Outlook clients.

olliej 3y ago

You mean "Apple should be required to build messaging services on top of apple's infrastructure". Google also prevents me from making a company that uses its search engine infrastructure and unlike iMessage it is actually the dominant operator in the market. I'm also not allowed to make a Twitter-like service that interoperates with twitter. Explain what makes iMessage, a service that is part of a product apple sells, different from the above? Or in fact any service operated by any other company that sells a product but doesn't allow other companies to resell their services? > they ban third parties from offering apps that interoperate e.g. with iMessage. If you're referring to that company that reverse engineered the iMessage protocol, that entire companies business model was "we're going to give away free access to a service that isn't free, and that a company has to spend money supporting". Again, how would this be different from requiring google, twitter, or GitHub, etc to provide 3rd parties access to their infrastructure to duplicate their services?

smoldesu 3y ago
iMessage's problem is that it is functionally an SMS replacement, but architecturally nothing like SMS. If you wanted to extend iMessage so that other companies could support and pay for their own hardware on it, you couldn't. It's not just Apple's willingness either, it's designed specifically so that it embraces and extends SMS without offering the same inter-OS connectivity. Google and Twitter have services to run that compete on generally equal terms (eg. the Internet). Apple's messaging service is integrated with Apple's runtime, and because they control both they can implement features that competitors cannot.
- olliej 3y ago
  you're right, it's not an sms replacement: it's actually secure, and it has no requirement that you have a sim or phone number. Something RCS does not have. You can use SMS (and apparently RCS in future?) to talk to others, and if there's the option to use iMessage instead it does that. i.e it interoperates with existing standard messaging systems when appropriate. > Apple's messaging service is integrated with Apple's runtime, and because they control both they can implement features that competitors cannot. Every messaging app on Mac and iOS can implement whatever features they want, just like iMessage does. It has nothing to do with the being "part of the system". > Google and Twitter have services to run that compete on generally equal terms (eg. the Internet) No they don't. I can't make a search engine that competes with google I don't have the hardware or existing index, much like apple has infrastructure to support and developer iMessage, google has hardware and infrastructure to support search. Why should I have to build my own infrastructure if google already has that? Similarly I can't make something that competes with twitter if I can't read and reply to tweets on twitter, so why shouldn't twitter be required to let me do that as well? You have created an artificial distinction that makes iMessage (a service that is part of a paid product that requires significant infrastructure) somehow different from every other service operated by every other company for which someone might want to piggy back off to avoid paying the actual operational costs. There is no different from "I want to make my own messaging app that uses iMessage for message delivery so that it interacts with iMessage, so apple must let me do that" and "I want to make a microblogging site that uses twitter's infrastructure so that it can interact with twitter, so twitter must let me do that".