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> 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 mess

> 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.
        ProfessorLayton 3y ago
        > What percent? I don't know, that's the regulator's job. > 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? Businesses have to deal with new and changing regulations all the time. Once a business starts to worry about being too big and associated regulations, that's their legal team's job. > 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. Right, without regulation we're on a path for these megacoprs to start charging us more, especially if if our attempts to regulate them fail. They won't compete fairly out of the kindness of their hearts. > 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? The beauty of competition is that if they don't continuously add new products or features, someone else will — Just like Apple/Google once did to the older tech incumbents. > 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. While I proposed something, what I'm really looking for is outcomes that change tech into a more competitive landscape, and don't really care how it happens. > I'm aware and I find this to be irrelevant. It's not irrelevant in the context that antitrust regulations looks at the number of people impacted, which is very correlated to how much revenue is being generated.
- error503 3y ago
  I don't see why game consoles or anything else should be exempt from 'on a computer' rules. What it boils down to in my opinion, is that you own the device, and the company that built it should be required to give you all the keys to do what you want with it. The ability for companies to technologically lock out what their customers can do with the devices is relatively new, but there are quite a few areas of law that follow this principle of "once you buy it, it's yours, full stop", and I think this is just following along from that. So I'd like to see general legislation in that direction, that would outlaw all these companies from locking down their devices as a first step. It doesn't have to be super easy, but it absolutely should be possible to run whatever code you want on any device you own. I think antitrust surrounding these marketplaces is also due, but is much less fundamental and a lot more situational, where it matters less what the definition of 'a computer' is and more who's getting screwed, how badly, and whether competition is possible.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    Isn't that already the case with jailbreaking for example? I.e. it doesn't have to be easy. Does Apple have something like a "key" that would allow you to just run arbitrary software on the device? Is it something they would have to build, support, and maintain? I'm guessing this isn't a problem on Android and you can run whatever you want.
    - error503 3y ago
      A jailbreak is not something Apple (or whoever) allows, it's a (serious) security vulnerability being exploited to gain root level permissions on the device and then circumvent whatever checks are in place. These are things that should be fixed. It's also a cat and mouse game that is always changing. > Does Apple have something like a "key" that would allow you to just run arbitrary software on the device? Is it something they would have to build, support, and maintain? I'm guessing this isn't a problem on Android and you can run whatever you want. Not sure about the specifics of Apple's architecture (as it's also undocumented), but most modern secure boot systems have a hardware public key store (TPM) that any boot binaries must be signed with. Apple would closely guard those keys, and without them (and without security flaws), it is impossible to boot other code. Once you get a bit further along into the boot process, the architecture gets much more complicated as far as actually running apps, but it's all predicated on that secure boot key. Such a key store is probably possible to change, but Apple doesn't give any access to it from the userland, so users are unable to do so. It's also possible to make such a verification completely unchangeable in hardware; not sure if Apple may do it this way. An open system would look something like UEFI secure boot, where the owner of the system can manage the keys in that hardware key store, to the extent of removing the manufacturer's keys entirely (which I think is also an important ability - what if I don't want Apple to be trusted on my device?). From there you can patch the OS to allow other code to run, though preferably this is something that would also be opened up explicitly. Yes, it will require intentionally designing those capabilities into the products, but most likely it's not a significant architectural change, just a matter of giving users access to change the keys in the hardware they own.
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/

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.
      - ProfessorLayton 3y ago
        > What percent? I don't know, that's the regulator's job. > 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? Businesses have to deal with new and changing regulations all the time. Once a business starts to worry about being too big and associated regulations, that's their legal team's job. > 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. Right, without regulation we're on a path for these megacoprs to start charging us more, especially if if our attempts to regulate them fail. They won't compete fairly out of the kindness of their hearts. > 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? The beauty of competition is that if they don't continuously add new products or features, someone else will — Just like Apple/Google once did to the older tech incumbents. > 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. While I proposed something, what I'm really looking for is outcomes that change tech into a more competitive landscape, and don't really care how it happens. > I'm aware and I find this to be irrelevant. It's not irrelevant in the context that antitrust regulations looks at the number of people impacted, which is very correlated to how much revenue is being generated.
error503 3y ago
I don't see why game consoles or anything else should be exempt from 'on a computer' rules. What it boils down to in my opinion, is that you own the device, and the company that built it should be required to give you all the keys to do what you want with it. The ability for companies to technologically lock out what their customers can do with the devices is relatively new, but there are quite a few areas of law that follow this principle of "once you buy it, it's yours, full stop", and I think this is just following along from that. So I'd like to see general legislation in that direction, that would outlaw all these companies from locking down their devices as a first step. It doesn't have to be super easy, but it absolutely should be possible to run whatever code you want on any device you own. I think antitrust surrounding these marketplaces is also due, but is much less fundamental and a lot more situational, where it matters less what the definition of 'a computer' is and more who's getting screwed, how badly, and whether competition is possible.
- ericmay 3y ago
  Isn't that already the case with jailbreaking for example? I.e. it doesn't have to be easy. Does Apple have something like a "key" that would allow you to just run arbitrary software on the device? Is it something they would have to build, support, and maintain? I'm guessing this isn't a problem on Android and you can run whatever you want.
  - error503 3y ago
    A jailbreak is not something Apple (or whoever) allows, it's a (serious) security vulnerability being exploited to gain root level permissions on the device and then circumvent whatever checks are in place. These are things that should be fixed. It's also a cat and mouse game that is always changing. > Does Apple have something like a "key" that would allow you to just run arbitrary software on the device? Is it something they would have to build, support, and maintain? I'm guessing this isn't a problem on Android and you can run whatever you want. Not sure about the specifics of Apple's architecture (as it's also undocumented), but most modern secure boot systems have a hardware public key store (TPM) that any boot binaries must be signed with. Apple would closely guard those keys, and without them (and without security flaws), it is impossible to boot other code. Once you get a bit further along into the boot process, the architecture gets much more complicated as far as actually running apps, but it's all predicated on that secure boot key. Such a key store is probably possible to change, but Apple doesn't give any access to it from the userland, so users are unable to do so. It's also possible to make such a verification completely unchangeable in hardware; not sure if Apple may do it this way. An open system would look something like UEFI secure boot, where the owner of the system can manage the keys in that hardware key store, to the extent of removing the manufacturer's keys entirely (which I think is also an important ability - what if I don't want Apple to be trusted on my device?). From there you can patch the OS to allow other code to run, though preferably this is something that would also be opened up explicitly. Yes, it will require intentionally designing those capabilities into the products, but most likely it's not a significant architectural change, just a matter of giving users access to change the keys in the hardware they own.

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/