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>Apple is predatory on a level that 1990s Microsoft could not have dreamed of. That's hilariously wrong. In the 1990s, there were only two computing platforms

>Apple is predatory on a level that 1990s Microsoft could not have dreamed of. That's hilariously wrong. In the 1990s, there were only two computing platforms to speak of: Windows and the Mac. Windows had *90%* of the marketplace. Microsoft had deals with PC makers that required them to include (and charge for) a Windows license on ever machine they sold. When Netscape happened, Microsoft leveraged their immensely dominant desktop position to squeeze the upstart browser company out -- Gates famously said "I'll cut off your oxygen supply," which is more or less an overt confession to monopolistic behavior. Nobody has anything close to the kind of market power and predatory behavior that MSFT had in 1996. To suggest otherwise is to either display profound ignorance of that period of time, or to show you have a weird axe to grind about Apple that causes you to overlook actual facts.

jsnell 3y ago
Yes, Microsoft had 90% of the desktop OS marketplace, and did use that dominance to gain an edge in other markets. But despite that large market share, their leverage was kind of limited by the platform being open. Apple, on the other hand, has unlimited technical leverage. They can make up whatever anti-competitive rule they want to, and enforce it totally. When Microsoft chose to neglect the web after IE6, it didn't take that long for competition to work around it. When Apple chose to neglect Safari in exactly the same way (and probably for the same reasons as Microsoft did with IE6), that was it. There was no workaround, nor any way for anyone to compete with a better browser. PC games are a >$50 billion market, with Microsoft only getting a small slice of that. That's because Microsoft wasn't just able to outlaw direct installs nor competing digital games stores. Games for Windows Live had to compete against e.g. Steam, with the predictable outcome. The size of the iOS gaming market is comparable. Apple collects a 30% cut of it, and will do so indefinitely. Competing with them is literally impossible; nobody else can make a different app store offering better terms or a better user experience. Apple is at around 60% market share in the US. The difference between 60% and 90% is a minor difference in scale. The difference between Apple's absolute control of iOS vs. the limited control that Microsoft had over Windows is a difference in kind. Apple got to choose whether competing software was even allowed on the platform. They could opening up special capabilities to only their own software, and actually enforce that (unlike Microsoft, whose undocumented APIs could still be reverse engineered). They can charge their competitors a 30% cut of revenue, while obviously ignoring it in their internal accounting for their own competing businesses.
- evilduck 3y ago
  At what point did Apple neglect Safari? They didn’t chase Google to implement features that solely benefit ChromeOS, but iPhones have completely dominated Android and any other browser engine for mobile rendering performance since the iPhone 4. A miserably slow browser that can receive push notifications is pointless.
  - tambourine_man 3y ago
    Exactly. People claim Apple neglects Safari because its priorities are not aligned with Chrome's. Maybe not allowing a website to store GBs of data, run in the background or show notifications is a feature for some users.
    - naravara 3y ago
      It’s really only been in the past 3 years or so that I’ve started to see real pushback from Devs on Apple being overly pushy. Prior to that so many of the complaints were on the order of “Apple won’t allow me to do [insert insanely user-hostile or non-performant thing here] woe is me!”
      - tambourine_man 3y ago
        I've been a huge fan of Safari since its introduction. My only major complaint is that they replaced the old dev tools by this current atrocity which forces me use Chrome for development.
- jwells89 3y ago
  IE and Safari are vastly different situations. IE started off with near-total dominance and was truly left to rot, with the teams responsible for it having been scattered across the company because Microsoft was no longer concerned with cornering the market on web browsers. Safari on the other hand has only ever seen ~20% marketshare, has never been truly abandoned, and at least covers core competencies well (recall that IE couldn’t even handle transparent PNGs without DirectX filter hackery). IE made even basic static pages a pain to develop compared to Firefox, whereas most of Safari’s significant shortcomings have to do with more advanced functionalities. If Google got complacent and decided to reallocate nearly the entire Chrome and Blink teams to other projects leaving only tiny skeleton crews on them, allowing both Firefox/Gecko and Safari/WebKit to leave it in the dust in terms of features that would be almost a 1:1 analogue for the situation with Microsoft and IE back in the day.
deleted 3y ago
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jsnell 3y ago

Yes, Microsoft had 90% of the desktop OS marketplace, and did use that dominance to gain an edge in other markets. But despite that large market share, their leverage was kind of limited by the platform being open. Apple, on the other hand, has unlimited technical leverage. They can make up whatever anti-competitive rule they want to, and enforce it totally. When Microsoft chose to neglect the web after IE6, it didn't take that long for competition to work around it. When Apple chose to neglect Safari in exactly the same way (and probably for the same reasons as Microsoft did with IE6), that was it. There was no workaround, nor any way for anyone to compete with a better browser. PC games are a >$50 billion market, with Microsoft only getting a small slice of that. That's because Microsoft wasn't just able to outlaw direct installs nor competing digital games stores. Games for Windows Live had to compete against e.g. Steam, with the predictable outcome. The size of the iOS gaming market is comparable. Apple collects a 30% cut of it, and will do so indefinitely. Competing with them is literally impossible; nobody else can make a different app store offering better terms or a better user experience. Apple is at around 60% market share in the US. The difference between 60% and 90% is a minor difference in scale. The difference between Apple's absolute control of iOS vs. the limited control that Microsoft had over Windows is a difference in kind. Apple got to choose whether competing software was even allowed on the platform. They could opening up special capabilities to only their own software, and actually enforce that (unlike Microsoft, whose undocumented APIs could still be reverse engineered). They can charge their competitors a 30% cut of revenue, while obviously ignoring it in their internal accounting for their own competing businesses.

evilduck 3y ago
At what point did Apple neglect Safari? They didn’t chase Google to implement features that solely benefit ChromeOS, but iPhones have completely dominated Android and any other browser engine for mobile rendering performance since the iPhone 4. A miserably slow browser that can receive push notifications is pointless.
- tambourine_man 3y ago
  Exactly. People claim Apple neglects Safari because its priorities are not aligned with Chrome's. Maybe not allowing a website to store GBs of data, run in the background or show notifications is a feature for some users.
  - naravara 3y ago
    It’s really only been in the past 3 years or so that I’ve started to see real pushback from Devs on Apple being overly pushy. Prior to that so many of the complaints were on the order of “Apple won’t allow me to do [insert insanely user-hostile or non-performant thing here] woe is me!”
    - tambourine_man 3y ago
      I've been a huge fan of Safari since its introduction. My only major complaint is that they replaced the old dev tools by this current atrocity which forces me use Chrome for development.
jwells89 3y ago
IE and Safari are vastly different situations. IE started off with near-total dominance and was truly left to rot, with the teams responsible for it having been scattered across the company because Microsoft was no longer concerned with cornering the market on web browsers. Safari on the other hand has only ever seen ~20% marketshare, has never been truly abandoned, and at least covers core competencies well (recall that IE couldn’t even handle transparent PNGs without DirectX filter hackery). IE made even basic static pages a pain to develop compared to Firefox, whereas most of Safari’s significant shortcomings have to do with more advanced functionalities. If Google got complacent and decided to reallocate nearly the entire Chrome and Blink teams to other projects leaving only tiny skeleton crews on them, allowing both Firefox/Gecko and Safari/WebKit to leave it in the dust in terms of features that would be almost a 1:1 analogue for the situation with Microsoft and IE back in the day.

deleted 3y ago

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