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1. Super Apps are notorious for tracking the user across the "mini" apps within it, which is the argument made by Apple for making them hard to get approval for

1. Super Apps are notorious for tracking the user across the "mini" apps within it, which is the argument made by Apple for making them hard to get approval for. I'm on Apple's side here 2. I was able to use PS Remote Play on my iPhone even many years ago (pre-COVID). A quick google search shows that Steam Link and Shadow PC (my ATF) are also available on iOS. I'm on Apple's side here too 3. I think the situation has recently changed here as someone else has commented, so this feels solvable without a lawsuit. Also it's hard to single out Apple here when everyone out there has their own messaging platforms. It's not like WhatsApp is encouraging third-party clients. An argument can be made that iMessage blurs the line between what's Apple-provided vs. carrier-provided, so I can see the user confusion and the issues that come with it. I'm on the FTC's side here 4. Who cares about smartwatches. It's niche at best. Besides, there are countless other watches you can use and they work with many devices. I'm on Apple's side here 5. It's not like you can't tap your card instead of your phone. I don't think the phone needs to be just a husk with apps created by third parties, especially for things like wallets. I'm happy to trade away that freedom for increased security, Benjamin Franklin's quote notwithstanding. The payments ecosystem is made up of players charging fees from the next player down the chain, so also hard to single out Apple here, but I can see why there's need for increased transparency (I wasn't explicitly aware they charged any fees, even if I would probably guess they were if prompted). I'm on neither side here. So based on my biases and incomplete understanding of the facts, Apple wins 3-1 It's worth remembering that this administration is suing seemingly everyone in Tech, in what I can only assume is being done in the hopes they can make a name for themselves. Lena Khan literally said "you miss all the shots you don't take". I would prefer a more focused approach with higher signal to noise ratio.

ApolIllo 3y ago
> Who cares about smartwatches 219.43 million people use smartwatches
- 0xffff2 3y ago
  I assume that's worldwide? That definitely seems niche to me compared to the global population.
  - Draiken 3y ago
    Regardless of the size, it does that make it okay to hamper competition like they do. If this was such an insignificant niche, Apple Watch wouldn't even exist, would it?
  - 1shooner 3y ago
    I don't think global population is a factor in antitrust law.
    - 0xffff2 3y ago
      It's a factor in whether "219.43 million people" is a lot of people. If that's 219 million people in the US (i.e. well over half the population), that's obviously massively more significant than 219 million people worldwide.
      - PeterisP 3y ago
        But for the question of anti-trust action it doesn't matter whether it's "a lot" of people, it matters whether it's an insignificant number of people - if there were 10 smartwatch users in the US, the argument "who cares about smartwatch users" could be valid, but it makes no difference whether there's 219 million people in the US or 219 thousand people in US, since even 219 thousand users is definitely much, much more than sufficient to justify intervention.
  - skeaker 3y ago
    How large does a business need to be on a global scale before we can smack down bad actors for abusing it? If you are a street corner business and your competitors down the street sell things at a loss just until they can put you out of business, should that be allowed because you were only a local business and didn't have millions of customers?
  - 1shooner 3y ago
    I don't really know about sourcing market data, but this[0] page cites Deloitte and Pew: >The global smartwatch adoption rate has reached an impressive 21.7% of the adult population ... >The adoption rate of smartwatches is expected to continue growing, with industry projections suggesting that it will surpass 25% of the adult population shortly. I don't believe a fifth or a quarter of the adult population could rationally be called 'niche'. 0. https://scoop.market.us/smartwatch-statistics/ https://scoop.market.us/smartwatch-statistics/
- shuckles 3y ago
  This is irrelevant. The primary argument people have against Apple is their platform indirectly impacts how other businesses can operate generally. The smartwatch never took off as a platform, so it exercises no such influence.
  - badrequest 3y ago
    > The smartwatch never took off as a platform And you think Apple had no role to play in this by making most of them useless on their devices?
    - shuckles 3y ago
      There is no reason to believe lack of background activity support on iPhone is the reason smartwatches haven’t taken off as a computing platform.
    - harkinian 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - mattl 3y ago
        I use mine all day, every day... fantastic device. Have you used one? Which one?
        harkinian 3y ago
        I've never used one, because they have no use.
        mattl 3y ago
        Have you used a fitness tracker of any kind?
        harkinian 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bearjaws 3y ago
I love how whenever Apple makes a clearly anti-trust move it's always about privacy. That would be true, if Apple couldn't literally write any TOS they want that allows other App stores or billing methods and then add "but you can't include tracking that invades our users privacy or resell their data". That's just as enforceable on their end, and not anti-competitive, assuming Apple themselves don't launch their own ad platform and tracking...
- itopaloglu83 3y ago
  Apple having access to everything related to end user, every step they can take regarding privacy can be deemed as anti-competitive. Here’s another example: Facebook knows exactly the 100 people they show my ads but not giving me their full name, relationship status, list of friends, their gender, sexual orientation, etc.
  - throw0101c 3y ago
    > Apple having access to everything related to end user, every step they can take regarding privacy can be deemed as anti-competitive. But does Apple have access to things? Or do they (sometimes?) design things so that even they don't have the information? A lot of the time they do things 'on device'.
    - itopaloglu83 3y ago
      Agreed. And that’s something I very much enjoy. My general worry is that the entire discussion is shifting “from what’s good for the customer to this other company cannot do something shady because you protect the customer”. Does Apple enjoy this gatekeeping practice? Of course they do, but so does Google with Android and they abuse the crap out of it.
      - fragmede 3y ago
        Google's also being sued for their antitrust actions, so they're not above reproach here either.
tapoxi 3y ago
1) Apple makes an exception if you're China, unfortunately. This is how WeChat has taken off, and I bet WeChat could bully its way around the App Store rules to the detriment of competitors, another "special deal" from Apple. 2) This is about cloud gaming, when you're streaming the game from hardware in the cloud, like Xbox Game Pass. Streaming the game from your own hardware isn't as competitive to Apple since it requires you buy a $500 console or gaming PC. 3) The biggest issue was Apple not implementing RCS and defaulting every iOS user to iMessage, which has created a two-tier messaging system, friends getting locked out of chat groups, etc simply because Apple doesn't want to use the standard. 4) "Who cares" is not a valid argument in using your dominance in one market to dominate another, which is textbook anticompetitive behavior. They also do this with AirTags, Airpods, any accessory where the Apple product gets to use integrations with the OS and third-parties are forbidden from doing so. 5) Tapping your phone is more secure because the card number is randomized and single-use, protecting it from replay attacks.
- airstrike 3y ago
  Thanks for the thoughtful reply Re: #2 FWIW Shadow PC doesn't require a PC. You get a virtual one for like $20-50 / month depending on the level of virtual PC you'd like. And Microsoft Cloud Gaming is still in beta. Why would Apple even need to consider supporting it?
  - AkBKukU 3y ago
    Apple doesn't need to support it, they need to not block it and let the user decide if they want to participate in a beta.
  - santoshalper 3y ago
    Based on your biases and incomplete understanding of the facts, I think tapoxi wins 1-0.
    - alt227 3y ago
      I think you mean 4-1 ;)
rufus_foreman 3y ago
>> Who cares about smartwatches The Justice Department, 16 US states, and the District of Columbia, among others. Anti-trust violations are crimes.
notnmeyer 3y ago
in #2 you’re talking about something else. those are streaming games from a console you own. _cloud_ streaming where the game is running a ms/sony owned server is only available in a browser. i don’t know about the sony side of things, but apple rejected ms’s native cloud streaming app.
- airstrike 3y ago
  Those barely exist... Microsoft Cloud Gaming is still in beta.
  - evandale 3y ago
    Does Apple have a rule that says beta apps aren't allowed on the app store? As far as I'm concerned Microsoft cloud gaming is like a 1.0 version and works fine on Windows and Android. I had no idea it was a beta product until just now.
  - rpdillon 3y ago
    You keep bringing up MS Cloud Gaming, but there are others that are more established. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/ https://luna.amazon.com/ https://luna.amazon.com/ Luna can only support iOS by using Safari, for example.
kubectl_h 3y ago
> 3. Every single group chat that I use on a day-to-day basis has a non iPhone participant. The biggest argument against the way apple treats SMS vs iMessage I see is people feel ostracized for having green bubbles. I just don't understand why this rises to anti-trust.
- vundercind 3y ago
  What is this “having green bubbles” stuff? My messages are green on threads with Android users, to indicate the capabilities of the messages I am sending. Not theirs. I don’t even know how to tell who’s on what in a mixed-ecosystem thread.
  - airstrike 3y ago
    messages from Android users show up as green to iOS users in group chats with mixed users, so everyone invariably makes fun of them / complains about "the person with the green bubble"
    - vundercind 3y ago
      Do you have an iPhone? I do and my bubbles are green on group chats that involve Android users. Theirs look the same as everyone else’s.
      - airstrike 3y ago
        yes, and if we're in a chat with Bob Android, we will blame Bob for forcing all of us to be in this inferior chat that's green ewww or so the argument goes
      - harkinian 3y ago
        The bubbles are green if you talk to someone with an Android, and they're blue if you talk to someone with an iPhone. People simplify this by saying "you have blue bubbles."
    - ssully 3y ago
jm4 3y ago
It's not just this administration going after tech. The other guys got the ball rolling, although they use a different narrative to sell it. I think most people recognize there are various problems with the industry that essentially all boil down to the amount of power big tech has. There have been warnings from governments and other players in the private sector for years. I happen to like my iPhone a lot, but it's about time Apple and the rest of them get their teeth kicked in.
skeaker 3y ago
> 1. Super Apps are notorious for tracking the user across the "mini" apps within it, which is the argument made by Apple for making them hard to get approval for. I'm on Apple's side here Never heard this argument, could you name an example of this? I figured the reason for the ban was that it would sidestep most of the Apple software that comes with an iPhone, which Apple obviously wouldn't want since they would prefer to lock users in.
- airstrike 3y ago
  I came across it somewhere I Apple developer docs, I think, when I was building my app. Or maybe it was RevenueCat docs or some tutorial... I'm on my phone now but will try to find it later
danaris 3y ago
From what I'm seeing in other places, there are also some pretty weak claims being made beyond this. The first is their attempt to redefine what the market is in order to declare Apple a "monopoly": they've posited a completely separate market for "performance smartphones", and tried to use total revenue rather than number of units sold in order to push Apple up to having a very high percentage of this invented market. The second is their characterization of how Apple got to where they are. Like them or not, you have to be seriously down a conspiracy rabbit hole to believe that the iPhone became as popular as it is primarily through anticompetitive tactics, rather than because it's a very good product that lots and lots of people like. Regardless of whether you, personally, find that value proposition to be compelling. They also point at some of Apple's offerings and make absolutely absurd claims about how they're anticompetitive—for instance, that they're going to somehow take over the auto market with CarPlay 2.0 and the fact that AppleTV+ exercises control over the content it serves. There are some things Apple does that are genuinely concerning and deserve more antitrust scrutiny (for instance, their anti-steering provisions for the App Store are pretty egregious), but so far as I can tell, they're not even mentioned in this suit. I'm frankly disappointed in the DoJ for how they've put this together, and would have loved to see something that was narrower and much more robust.
- nodamage 3y ago
  > The first is their attempt to redefine what the market is in order to declare Apple a "monopoly": they've posited a completely separate market for "performance smartphones", and tried to use total revenue rather than number of units sold in order to push Apple up to having a very high percentage of this invented market. This comes across as very strange, they must not have much confidence in their ability to prove that Apple holds monopoly power in the overall smartphone market. I suspect if they lose this case it's going to be because the court rejects such an intentionally narrowed market definition.
ecronant 3y ago
[dead]
Y_Y 3y ago
> It's worth remembering that this administration is suing seemingly everyone in Tech, in what I can only assume is being done in the hopes they can make a name for themselves Of all the points in your low-effort manifesto I find this the most absurd. Even if you don't see any merit in the case, you must admit that it's likely that the DoJ does.

ApolIllo 3y ago

> Who cares about smartwatches 219.43 million people use smartwatches

0xffff2 3y ago
I assume that's worldwide? That definitely seems niche to me compared to the global population.
- Draiken 3y ago
  Regardless of the size, it does that make it okay to hamper competition like they do. If this was such an insignificant niche, Apple Watch wouldn't even exist, would it?
- 1shooner 3y ago
  I don't think global population is a factor in antitrust law.
  - 0xffff2 3y ago
    It's a factor in whether "219.43 million people" is a lot of people. If that's 219 million people in the US (i.e. well over half the population), that's obviously massively more significant than 219 million people worldwide.
    - PeterisP 3y ago
      But for the question of anti-trust action it doesn't matter whether it's "a lot" of people, it matters whether it's an insignificant number of people - if there were 10 smartwatch users in the US, the argument "who cares about smartwatch users" could be valid, but it makes no difference whether there's 219 million people in the US or 219 thousand people in US, since even 219 thousand users is definitely much, much more than sufficient to justify intervention.
- skeaker 3y ago
  How large does a business need to be on a global scale before we can smack down bad actors for abusing it? If you are a street corner business and your competitors down the street sell things at a loss just until they can put you out of business, should that be allowed because you were only a local business and didn't have millions of customers?
- 1shooner 3y ago
  I don't really know about sourcing market data, but this[0] page cites Deloitte and Pew: >The global smartwatch adoption rate has reached an impressive 21.7% of the adult population ... >The adoption rate of smartwatches is expected to continue growing, with industry projections suggesting that it will surpass 25% of the adult population shortly. I don't believe a fifth or a quarter of the adult population could rationally be called 'niche'. 0. https://scoop.market.us/smartwatch-statistics/ https://scoop.market.us/smartwatch-statistics/
shuckles 3y ago
This is irrelevant. The primary argument people have against Apple is their platform indirectly impacts how other businesses can operate generally. The smartwatch never took off as a platform, so it exercises no such influence.
- badrequest 3y ago
  > The smartwatch never took off as a platform And you think Apple had no role to play in this by making most of them useless on their devices?
  - shuckles 3y ago
    There is no reason to believe lack of background activity support on iPhone is the reason smartwatches haven’t taken off as a computing platform.
  - harkinian 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - mattl 3y ago
      I use mine all day, every day... fantastic device. Have you used one? Which one?
      - harkinian 3y ago
        I've never used one, because they have no use.
        mattl 3y ago
        Have you used a fitness tracker of any kind?
        harkinian 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bearjaws 3y ago

I love how whenever Apple makes a clearly anti-trust move it's always about privacy. That would be true, if Apple couldn't literally write any TOS they want that allows other App stores or billing methods and then add "but you can't include tracking that invades our users privacy or resell their data". That's just as enforceable on their end, and not anti-competitive, assuming Apple themselves don't launch their own ad platform and tracking...

itopaloglu83 3y ago
Apple having access to everything related to end user, every step they can take regarding privacy can be deemed as anti-competitive. Here’s another example: Facebook knows exactly the 100 people they show my ads but not giving me their full name, relationship status, list of friends, their gender, sexual orientation, etc.
- throw0101c 3y ago
  > Apple having access to everything related to end user, every step they can take regarding privacy can be deemed as anti-competitive. But does Apple have access to things? Or do they (sometimes?) design things so that even they don't have the information? A lot of the time they do things 'on device'.
  - itopaloglu83 3y ago
    Agreed. And that’s something I very much enjoy. My general worry is that the entire discussion is shifting “from what’s good for the customer to this other company cannot do something shady because you protect the customer”. Does Apple enjoy this gatekeeping practice? Of course they do, but so does Google with Android and they abuse the crap out of it.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      Google's also being sued for their antitrust actions, so they're not above reproach here either.

tapoxi 3y ago

1) Apple makes an exception if you're China, unfortunately. This is how WeChat has taken off, and I bet WeChat could bully its way around the App Store rules to the detriment of competitors, another "special deal" from Apple. 2) This is about cloud gaming, when you're streaming the game from hardware in the cloud, like Xbox Game Pass. Streaming the game from your own hardware isn't as competitive to Apple since it requires you buy a $500 console or gaming PC. 3) The biggest issue was Apple not implementing RCS and defaulting every iOS user to iMessage, which has created a two-tier messaging system, friends getting locked out of chat groups, etc simply because Apple doesn't want to use the standard. 4) "Who cares" is not a valid argument in using your dominance in one market to dominate another, which is textbook anticompetitive behavior. They also do this with AirTags, Airpods, any accessory where the Apple product gets to use integrations with the OS and third-parties are forbidden from doing so. 5) Tapping your phone is more secure because the card number is randomized and single-use, protecting it from replay attacks.

airstrike 3y ago
Thanks for the thoughtful reply Re: #2 FWIW Shadow PC doesn't require a PC. You get a virtual one for like $20-50 / month depending on the level of virtual PC you'd like. And Microsoft Cloud Gaming is still in beta. Why would Apple even need to consider supporting it?
- AkBKukU 3y ago
  Apple doesn't need to support it, they need to not block it and let the user decide if they want to participate in a beta.
- santoshalper 3y ago
  Based on your biases and incomplete understanding of the facts, I think tapoxi wins 1-0.
  - alt227 3y ago
    I think you mean 4-1 ;)

rufus_foreman 3y ago

>> Who cares about smartwatches The Justice Department, 16 US states, and the District of Columbia, among others. Anti-trust violations are crimes.

notnmeyer 3y ago

in #2 you’re talking about something else. those are streaming games from a console you own. _cloud_ streaming where the game is running a ms/sony owned server is only available in a browser. i don’t know about the sony side of things, but apple rejected ms’s native cloud streaming app.

airstrike 3y ago
Those barely exist... Microsoft Cloud Gaming is still in beta.
- evandale 3y ago
  Does Apple have a rule that says beta apps aren't allowed on the app store? As far as I'm concerned Microsoft cloud gaming is like a 1.0 version and works fine on Windows and Android. I had no idea it was a beta product until just now.
- rpdillon 3y ago
  You keep bringing up MS Cloud Gaming, but there are others that are more established. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/ https://luna.amazon.com/ https://luna.amazon.com/ Luna can only support iOS by using Safari, for example.

kubectl_h 3y ago

> 3. Every single group chat that I use on a day-to-day basis has a non iPhone participant. The biggest argument against the way apple treats SMS vs iMessage I see is people feel ostracized for having green bubbles. I just don't understand why this rises to anti-trust.

vundercind 3y ago
What is this “having green bubbles” stuff? My messages are green on threads with Android users, to indicate the capabilities of the messages I am sending. Not theirs. I don’t even know how to tell who’s on what in a mixed-ecosystem thread.
- airstrike 3y ago
  messages from Android users show up as green to iOS users in group chats with mixed users, so everyone invariably makes fun of them / complains about "the person with the green bubble"
  - vundercind 3y ago
    Do you have an iPhone? I do and my bubbles are green on group chats that involve Android users. Theirs look the same as everyone else’s.
    - airstrike 3y ago
      yes, and if we're in a chat with Bob Android, we will blame Bob for forcing all of us to be in this inferior chat that's green ewww or so the argument goes
    - harkinian 3y ago
      The bubbles are green if you talk to someone with an Android, and they're blue if you talk to someone with an iPhone. People simplify this by saying "you have blue bubbles."
  - ssully 3y ago

jm4 3y ago

It's not just this administration going after tech. The other guys got the ball rolling, although they use a different narrative to sell it. I think most people recognize there are various problems with the industry that essentially all boil down to the amount of power big tech has. There have been warnings from governments and other players in the private sector for years. I happen to like my iPhone a lot, but it's about time Apple and the rest of them get their teeth kicked in.

skeaker 3y ago

> 1. Super Apps are notorious for tracking the user across the "mini" apps within it, which is the argument made by Apple for making them hard to get approval for. I'm on Apple's side here Never heard this argument, could you name an example of this? I figured the reason for the ban was that it would sidestep most of the Apple software that comes with an iPhone, which Apple obviously wouldn't want since they would prefer to lock users in.

airstrike 3y ago
I came across it somewhere I Apple developer docs, I think, when I was building my app. Or maybe it was RevenueCat docs or some tutorial... I'm on my phone now but will try to find it later

danaris 3y ago

From what I'm seeing in other places, there are also some pretty weak claims being made beyond this. The first is their attempt to redefine what the market is in order to declare Apple a "monopoly": they've posited a completely separate market for "performance smartphones", and tried to use total revenue rather than number of units sold in order to push Apple up to having a very high percentage of this invented market. The second is their characterization of how Apple got to where they are. Like them or not, you have to be seriously down a conspiracy rabbit hole to believe that the iPhone became as popular as it is primarily through anticompetitive tactics, rather than because it's a very good product that lots and lots of people like. Regardless of whether you, personally, find that value proposition to be compelling. They also point at some of Apple's offerings and make absolutely absurd claims about how they're anticompetitive—for instance, that they're going to somehow take over the auto market with CarPlay 2.0 and the fact that AppleTV+ exercises control over the content it serves. There are some things Apple does that are genuinely concerning and deserve more antitrust scrutiny (for instance, their anti-steering provisions for the App Store are pretty egregious), but so far as I can tell, they're not even mentioned in this suit. I'm frankly disappointed in the DoJ for how they've put this together, and would have loved to see something that was narrower and much more robust.

nodamage 3y ago
> The first is their attempt to redefine what the market is in order to declare Apple a "monopoly": they've posited a completely separate market for "performance smartphones", and tried to use total revenue rather than number of units sold in order to push Apple up to having a very high percentage of this invented market. This comes across as very strange, they must not have much confidence in their ability to prove that Apple holds monopoly power in the overall smartphone market. I suspect if they lose this case it's going to be because the court rejects such an intentionally narrowed market definition.

ecronant 3y ago

[dead]

Y_Y 3y ago

> It's worth remembering that this administration is suing seemingly everyone in Tech, in what I can only assume is being done in the hopes they can make a name for themselves Of all the points in your low-effort manifesto I find this the most absurd. Even if you don't see any merit in the case, you must admit that it's likely that the DoJ does.