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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

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.
    - aaomidi 3y ago
      Your farm example does not have the scale of damage for the government to bother itself suing you for. Nor is it actually relevant here since it’s an entirely different landscape. I don’t think we can look at EU and point at a single thing and say that’s why they have a smaller tech sector. Heck, here’s a random argument I can throw out of nowhere for it: they are far less migrant friendly.
- jobs_throwaway 3y ago
  Oh no, will someone think of the checks notes $2.6 trillion dollar company. No one would try to do what Apple did for that little financial incentive! Regulation =/= punishment. Its the government's job to look out for the whole of society, not to make the market as free as possible.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  Let’s pretend there’s a world where Apple can’t ban android from getting installed on an iPhone. Is Apple going to quit making iPhones then? Their financial incentive is that they’re effectively the default OS on these devices. How many people are installing Linux or ChromeOS on a laptop that was preinstalled with windows? What this does mean though is that if Apple makes the consumer experience worse, switching OSes doesn’t mean buying a new phone. It means reinstalling with a third party OS.

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.
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    Your farm example does not have the scale of damage for the government to bother itself suing you for. Nor is it actually relevant here since it’s an entirely different landscape. I don’t think we can look at EU and point at a single thing and say that’s why they have a smaller tech sector. Heck, here’s a random argument I can throw out of nowhere for it: they are far less migrant friendly.
jobs_throwaway 3y ago
Oh no, will someone think of the checks notes $2.6 trillion dollar company. No one would try to do what Apple did for that little financial incentive! Regulation =/= punishment. Its the government's job to look out for the whole of society, not to make the market as free as possible.
aaomidi 3y ago
Let’s pretend there’s a world where Apple can’t ban android from getting installed on an iPhone. Is Apple going to quit making iPhones then? Their financial incentive is that they’re effectively the default OS on these devices. How many people are installing Linux or ChromeOS on a laptop that was preinstalled with windows? What this does mean though is that if Apple makes the consumer experience worse, switching OSes doesn’t mean buying a new phone. It means reinstalling with a third party OS.