Spotify CEO renews attack on Apple after Musk's salvo

Back in the PC days I posed the question: What if Apple sold its computers with options for the OS, e.g., [ ] Apple-provided [ ] User-provided. In other words, what if one could buy just the Apple hardware, without a pre-installed OS. I used to run NetBSD on the Mac. I did not care about getting 100% support for every feature of the hardware, I just wanted a working computer. It is funny because today iOS is the mandatory Apple-installed OS and it borrows heavily from BSD. The old AirPort Extreme even ran a NetBSD 6.1 kernel. If there is line somewhere between "convenience", e.g., supply of a pre-installed OS, and "loss of meaningful ownership", e.g., ceding control to a seller even after purchase, it seems to me that Apple is way over that line on the side of denying meaningful ownership. If iOS is truly valuable, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, then sell it separately and let purchasers decide if and when to purchase, install or uninstall it. If the buyer does not want to use iOS then why should they have to pay for it. This question, as boring as it is, still triggers HN commenters, so there is obviously something coveted about the obligatory bundling of consumer hardware with proprietary OS, in spite of all the non-proprietary options.

Agree, I think the solution here is to separate the app store from apple(the hardware manufacturer).

It would be a very clean split and would take away the onvious monopoly where a single company can control what users can or cannot use on their personal communication devices.

Furthermore apples monopoly is even more eggregious than microsofts in 2000 as back then microsoft did not own the PC hardware, imagine if microsoft did and told you what programs you could and couldn't put on your personal computer!

He makes a good case.

Apple and Google have an oligarchy in mobile and Google has a monopoly in search.

The amount of self-dealing is overwhelming. Google consistently prefers their own experiences to those of other companies.

Apple does as well, in addition they lock out apps from the platform.

This is 100% an anti-competitive situation the fact there is no competition in a situation that should not otherwise have natural monopolies is the primary evidence of this.

I suggest that Google needs to be broken up and that it cannot defer search results to it's other lines of businesses.

Apple must not be able to compete with services offered in the App Store, or, the App Store needs to be a separate business.

Alternative app stores must be allowed on mobile platforms.

While I'm on the anti-trust bandwagon - the money that AWS pours into Amazon retail, and their subsequent tax advantages are a form of economic dumping. Amazon is washing through retail with 'tech money' putting a lot of competition out of business, after which they will raise prices. A strong argument could be made for breaking up AWS from Amazon Retail.

Finally, throw in some basic privacy rules and 'right to repair' etc. and then you have some semblance of basic governance.

That there is no discussion about this whatsoever tells you who has power.

Traditional media (even ostensibly Left Wing) outlets won't spend much time talking about it ... because money.

If a 'Great Leader' emerged and did those things, I think we would look back upon it as a 'total no brainer' in hindsight. Much like whenever we provide Ukraine some new gear after months of fretting about 'upsetting Putin', we never regret it at all, ergo the question begs asking: why not sooner?

This discussion needs to be had on a national scale, and though I'm generally not a huge fan of the EU, this is one area they could actually be useful.

So since all computers are Unix* or Windows, there's no competition? Ridiculous.