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This is how the free market is intended to work. This opens up the range for several android phones (which have a near split in the US, and a majority globally

This is how the free market is intended to work. This opens up the range for several android phones (which have a near split in the US, and a majority globally last I recall) to offer better hardware. Modern Samsung phones are very good. You’re asserting that Apple should be punished purely because they make good hardware and are successful - and if their hardware wasn’t good and competitive then you wouldn’t care. Part of why I have Apple devices as a tech enthusiast is the good software and the ecosystem that comes with it. Would I like to run an IDE and code on an iPad? Absolutely. But I’d rather have the iPad than the android tablet.

aaomidi 3y ago
The ecosystem doesn’t need to go away to be opened up. Honestly, I am approaching this from another standpoint. Tech has made it more palatable to have walled gardens but battles similar to this have been fought before and the walled gardens have fallen. I have two solutions for Apple here: 1. Either allow more open participation on your platform. 2. Allow other vendors to write OSes for the iPhone device if you don’t want to open your software. Without one of these two, the amount of ewaste we’re generating from this hardware is astonishing. I don’t think Apple the services, should dictate the OS running on Apple the hardware. At that point, you can run the ecosystem you want. I can choose to run Android, or Linux on this hardware. And before anyone brings up consoles: yes. This should also apply to consoles.
- multimoon 3y ago
  You’ve just removed a massive financial incentive for making the kind of hardware Apple does. Their whole ‘thing’ is a unified experience between hardware and software. The entire premise of punishing a company for success when they haven’t violated any laws is insane to me, and I think dangerous to the market because you’ll stifle companies wanting to try new things for fear of someone attacking them for success. Antitrust means that the consumer has no choice - they do they can buy an android phone. Saying “you can’t use other software inside of apples hardware” is an irrelevant argument, since an alternative to that combination is available.
  - falcor84 3y ago
    > The entire premise of punishing a company for success when they haven’t violated any laws is insane to me I'm not clear on what you're implying here, this is a lawsuit, so a punishment will literally only apply if the judge finds Apple in violation of the law. Is your issue with the law not being 100% specific about this ahead of time? Because I would argue that it's by design - law should lag behind innovation (in both tech and business practices) rather than try to predict and potentially stifle it.
  - arrosenberg 3y ago
    > The entire premise of punishing a company for success when they haven’t violated any laws is insane to me The government is arguing they have violated the laws, that's the entire point of a lawsuit. Apple has become a private regulator in the mobile app space, and the government is correct to break this power. > I think dangerous to the market because you’ll stifle companies wanting to try new things for fear of someone attacking them for success. This is the corporate equivalent of "Oh won't someone pleeeeeeeease think of the children". Give me one example where innovation was stifled because of antitrust action. It almost always goes the other way - corporate regulation is broken and small businesses and new ideas are able to flourish in its' absence. As to your last point - having a single alternative is hardly a flourishing marketplace where the best ideas win. Distributors should not have the power to determine winners in the marketplace, and Apple's private power as a distributor of hardware and mobile apps has become such that they can ensure their own success regardless of whether they innovate or their customers love them.
    - multimoon 3y ago
      > This is the corporate equivalent of "Oh won't someone pleeeeeeeease think of the children". Give me one example where innovation was stifled because of antitrust action. It almost always goes the other way - corporate regulation is broken and small businesses and new ideas are able to flourish in its' absence. The EU and their dwarfed tech sector because they’ve made a regulatory environment hostile to business. This argument boils down to “does the maintainer of a platform have the right to maintain their controlling interest in their own platform if that platform itself is not a monopoly” and I’d argue the answer to that is a firm absolutely. If I’m raising sheep on my farm it isn’t my duty to provide my land to my neighbor to also raise sheep.
moooo99 3y ago
I don’t get why people obsess over the phones. Nobody here is trying to argue Apple has a monopoly on the phone market, that is very obviously not the case (although Apple very much contains a market leader position). The argument is very simple: due to the dominant position on the overall phone market, Apple uses this power to mess with another market: the mobile app market. And here it is obvious how Apple is issuing bullying tactics to maintain its dominance (Apple TV vs. Netflix, Apple Music vs. Spotify, Apple Pay/iAP vs literally anything). Wether the US courts come to a similar conclusion as the EU legislators remains to be seen, but there is a precedent
- shuckles 3y ago
  Your list of services where you claim Apple has a dominant position is entirely products where it does not have a dominant position.
  - karmelapple 3y ago
    Totally agreed. And does Apple has a "dominant position" in text messaging? They have around 60% of total phone market share [1], but that seems like a far cry from, say, 80% or 90%, which is what I'd consider "dominant." Microsoft had over 90% market share of the world's personal computers in the 1990s [2], which I'd also consider dominant... and which did result in some similar antitrust lawsuits. 1. https://explodingtopics.com/blog/iphone-android-users https://explodingtopics.com/blog/iphone-android-users 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft
    - moooo99 3y ago
      Saying they don't have a monopoly over those services is still a stawman. They don't have a monopoly on music streaming, but they actively force Spotify to effectively support their own competitor via their 30% fee. Apple TV+ does not have more subscribers than Netflix, but apple famously makes rules that hinder Netflix ability to be competitive on iOS. And if Apple was all about making the better product, why don't they allow the app developers to use their own payment processors. If Apple IAP was so superior to everything else, users and developers alike would surely gladly pay the 20x markup? But heck, they don't even allow an App developer to tell their users about a cheaper price on their website or why the product is more expensive on iOS. Wether you like it or not, as soon as a platform becomes as big as iOS or Android, market watchdogs will come to town. And that is good thing, because with competition the user usually profits over the long term.
raydev 3y ago
> This is how the free market is intended to work. This opens up the range for several android phones (which have a near split in the US, and a majority globally last I recall) to offer better hardware. Then why isn't this happening? Google's platform is not meaningfully different from Apple's in enough ways to actually make me want to switch. Who's shipping an open phone with amazing cameras that match what the iPhone and Galaxy provide, that also allows sideloading without disabling all of Google's nice software features/cloud storage?
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  Ironically, the pixel is the device you want.
  - gaudystead 3y ago
    Graphene OS ftw
beeboobaa3 3y ago
> Would I like to run an IDE and code on an iPad? Absolutely. Great, I'd like that too. So let's work with the regulators to make that happen!

aaomidi 3y ago

The ecosystem doesn’t need to go away to be opened up. Honestly, I am approaching this from another standpoint. Tech has made it more palatable to have walled gardens but battles similar to this have been fought before and the walled gardens have fallen. I have two solutions for Apple here: 1. Either allow more open participation on your platform. 2. Allow other vendors to write OSes for the iPhone device if you don’t want to open your software. Without one of these two, the amount of ewaste we’re generating from this hardware is astonishing. I don’t think Apple the services, should dictate the OS running on Apple the hardware. At that point, you can run the ecosystem you want. I can choose to run Android, or Linux on this hardware. And before anyone brings up consoles: yes. This should also apply to consoles.

multimoon 3y ago
You’ve just removed a massive financial incentive for making the kind of hardware Apple does. Their whole ‘thing’ is a unified experience between hardware and software. The entire premise of punishing a company for success when they haven’t violated any laws is insane to me, and I think dangerous to the market because you’ll stifle companies wanting to try new things for fear of someone attacking them for success. Antitrust means that the consumer has no choice - they do they can buy an android phone. Saying “you can’t use other software inside of apples hardware” is an irrelevant argument, since an alternative to that combination is available.
- falcor84 3y ago
  > The entire premise of punishing a company for success when they haven’t violated any laws is insane to me I'm not clear on what you're implying here, this is a lawsuit, so a punishment will literally only apply if the judge finds Apple in violation of the law. Is your issue with the law not being 100% specific about this ahead of time? Because I would argue that it's by design - law should lag behind innovation (in both tech and business practices) rather than try to predict and potentially stifle it.
- arrosenberg 3y ago
  > The entire premise of punishing a company for success when they haven’t violated any laws is insane to me The government is arguing they have violated the laws, that's the entire point of a lawsuit. Apple has become a private regulator in the mobile app space, and the government is correct to break this power. > I think dangerous to the market because you’ll stifle companies wanting to try new things for fear of someone attacking them for success. This is the corporate equivalent of "Oh won't someone pleeeeeeeease think of the children". Give me one example where innovation was stifled because of antitrust action. It almost always goes the other way - corporate regulation is broken and small businesses and new ideas are able to flourish in its' absence. As to your last point - having a single alternative is hardly a flourishing marketplace where the best ideas win. Distributors should not have the power to determine winners in the marketplace, and Apple's private power as a distributor of hardware and mobile apps has become such that they can ensure their own success regardless of whether they innovate or their customers love them.
  - multimoon 3y ago
    > This is the corporate equivalent of "Oh won't someone pleeeeeeeease think of the children". Give me one example where innovation was stifled because of antitrust action. It almost always goes the other way - corporate regulation is broken and small businesses and new ideas are able to flourish in its' absence. The EU and their dwarfed tech sector because they’ve made a regulatory environment hostile to business. This argument boils down to “does the maintainer of a platform have the right to maintain their controlling interest in their own platform if that platform itself is not a monopoly” and I’d argue the answer to that is a firm absolutely. If I’m raising sheep on my farm it isn’t my duty to provide my land to my neighbor to also raise sheep.

moooo99 3y ago

I don’t get why people obsess over the phones. Nobody here is trying to argue Apple has a monopoly on the phone market, that is very obviously not the case (although Apple very much contains a market leader position). The argument is very simple: due to the dominant position on the overall phone market, Apple uses this power to mess with another market: the mobile app market. And here it is obvious how Apple is issuing bullying tactics to maintain its dominance (Apple TV vs. Netflix, Apple Music vs. Spotify, Apple Pay/iAP vs literally anything). Wether the US courts come to a similar conclusion as the EU legislators remains to be seen, but there is a precedent

shuckles 3y ago
Your list of services where you claim Apple has a dominant position is entirely products where it does not have a dominant position.
- karmelapple 3y ago
  Totally agreed. And does Apple has a "dominant position" in text messaging? They have around 60% of total phone market share [1], but that seems like a far cry from, say, 80% or 90%, which is what I'd consider "dominant." Microsoft had over 90% market share of the world's personal computers in the 1990s [2], which I'd also consider dominant... and which did result in some similar antitrust lawsuits. 1. https://explodingtopics.com/blog/iphone-android-users https://explodingtopics.com/blog/iphone-android-users 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft
  - moooo99 3y ago
    Saying they don't have a monopoly over those services is still a stawman. They don't have a monopoly on music streaming, but they actively force Spotify to effectively support their own competitor via their 30% fee. Apple TV+ does not have more subscribers than Netflix, but apple famously makes rules that hinder Netflix ability to be competitive on iOS. And if Apple was all about making the better product, why don't they allow the app developers to use their own payment processors. If Apple IAP was so superior to everything else, users and developers alike would surely gladly pay the 20x markup? But heck, they don't even allow an App developer to tell their users about a cheaper price on their website or why the product is more expensive on iOS. Wether you like it or not, as soon as a platform becomes as big as iOS or Android, market watchdogs will come to town. And that is good thing, because with competition the user usually profits over the long term.

raydev 3y ago

> This is how the free market is intended to work. This opens up the range for several android phones (which have a near split in the US, and a majority globally last I recall) to offer better hardware. Then why isn't this happening? Google's platform is not meaningfully different from Apple's in enough ways to actually make me want to switch. Who's shipping an open phone with amazing cameras that match what the iPhone and Galaxy provide, that also allows sideloading without disabling all of Google's nice software features/cloud storage?

Workaccount2 3y ago
Ironically, the pixel is the device you want.
- gaudystead 3y ago
  Graphene OS ftw

beeboobaa3 3y ago

> Would I like to run an IDE and code on an iPad? Absolutely. Great, I'd like that too. So let's work with the regulators to make that happen!