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Let's say you're right and Apple is not a monopoly under current antitrust laws, then all that proves is the laws are too lax.
It’s not about me being right, it’s about what a real judge says.
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Of course it's monopolistic. What standard are you comparing to? You don't need to have 100% of the market to exert monopoly control. Non-monopoly behavior would be users and developers having the choice to offer & install iOS apps outside of Apple's app store, but choosing the app store because the trade-off of fees is considered fair for the trust & platform convenience gained in exchange.
> What standard are you comparing to A real judge saying that Apple isn’t a monopoly… https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/story/resounding-vic...
The behavior is plainly monopolistic and anticompetitive on its face. That it does not suffer judgement as violating any laws about such conduct is a sad reflection of our government corruption and unwillingness to regulate the corporations that provide most political funding.
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That’s just the point. The ruling was incoherent. Amazon was deciding the prices of ebooks and taking a loss selling them below what the publishers were selling them to Amazon. This was hurting the publishers physical books sells. The publishers wanted to control their own prices. But one punisher couldn’t pull their books from Amazon unless they all did. Apple was working as a go between for all of the publishers an…
You are begging a ton of questions there. For one, there was no evidence that physical book sales were impacted by lower priced ebooks. For two, Amazon doesn't even have a monopoly on ebooks, much less books. Their share is almost certainly comparable to the marketshare we are discussing here, amusingly. Further, though, you are literally arguing against the laws here. They were not found guilty of being a monopoly.…
Apple was found guilty of price manipulation because they wanted to make a deal with the publishers to allow the publishers to set their own pricing instead of Amazon price dumping.
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> Phone has a market share of almost 70% in Japan, the location of the plaintiff. iPhone also has a market share of over 50% now in the United States, by the way. Neither one of those market shares are monopolies. > Historical revisionism. For more than 30 years prior to iOS, general-purpose computing platforms were mostly open with no vendor-controlled store. If you don't like the iOS platform then don't develop for…
Does Google have enough of the search engine market share to be considered a monopoly?
I'm old enough to remember the pre-Google internet and how the search engine crown passed between Altavista, Hotbot, Lycos, Yahoo! and probably others. Google did not come down from the heavens heralded by angels a fully formed tech hegemony all at once. The free market made it dominant over time because free people continue to freely choose Google. Google is not blessed with some form of immortality or invincibility either. It's dominance will only come to an end if people stop whining about it and try to outdo it instead.
For the record, I don't use Google services or products nor do I ever feel forced to as it is implied whenever someone whines about Google being a "monopoly."
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Prior to the iPhone there was Palm, which I would certainly call a general purpose computing platform, where it was easy to download and install your own pdb with no vendor restrictions.
There existed general purpose computing platforms, but there’s also been just as many if not more completely closed platforms. Selling ringtones only existed because of how closed most phones were at the time. Palm OS 1.0 was nothing close to a general purpose computing platform. They didn’t even add TCP/IP support until 2.0. If anything the ability to lockdown Palm devices was a major selling point to many customers…
> Since the developer had no idea what it was supposed to have done wrong, it was unable to meet Apple’s appeal requirement of explaining what happened, and how it has resolved the issue. The appeal was thus denied. If nothing else, Apple should fix this. There is ZERO reason to be anything other than 100% transparent.
Most large companies explain this somewhere in their terms of service, like Amazon using their own proprietary mechanisms for determining what fraud is.
> Since the developer had no idea what it was supposed to have done wrong, it was unable to meet Apple’s appeal requirement of explaining what happened, and how it has resolved the issue. The appeal was thus denied. If nothing else, Apple should fix this. There is ZERO reason to be anything other than 100% transparent.
There is ZERO reason to be anything other than 100% transparent. The customary rationale, at least around here, goes something like "B...b...b...but if we actually document the rules and tell you what you did wrong, it helps the BAD GUYS!!!11!!"
Consider competing app stores. Some of them would be stricter than Apple and do a far better job of curation IMO. For example, apps that exist to trick children into in-app purchases could be forbidden. Or maybe someone would start a store for games that only allows up-front sales, no subscriptions, and no ads.
I would gravitate to those stores and it’s where I’d send everyone I know. If others did the same, the “specialty” stores would filter out a huge amount of junk that’s currently on the Apple app store. Maybe the market would even shrink by eliminating the low quality participants.
How do you run an app store filled with garbage if there’s suddenly competition? IMO, that’s what Apple and Google are scared of. They want to keep selling large volumes of junk and competition makes that harder.
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You are begging a ton of questions there. For one, there was no evidence that physical book sales were impacted by lower priced ebooks. For two, Amazon doesn't even have a monopoly on ebooks, much less books. Their share is almost certainly comparable to the marketshare we are discussing here, amusingly. Further, though, you are literally arguing against the laws here. They were not found guilty of being a monopoly.…
How could physical book sales not be impacted when Amazon was selling ebooks for $9.99 when they weee buying the right to sell them from the publisher for $14.99? It’s a classic case of price dumping. Apple was found guilty of price manipulation because they wanted to make a deal with the publishers to allow the publishers to set their own pricing instead of Amazon price dumping.
This is all a side discussion, which I confess is fun; but it seems you agree that Apple has been guilty of antitrust violations in the past, without necessarily having had a monopoly. And... that is the entirety of my point that started this branch. :D
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One can like the iOS platform and still advocate for general-purpose computing. I don't understand why folks on Hacker News, of all places, defend walled gardens so vehemently.
What you call a "walled garden" someone else would call an openly opinionated, thoughtfully designed, and well managed platform with seamless integration and world-class support. Again, if that's not your thing you're perfectly free to spend your money elsewhere.
> Since the developer had no idea what it was supposed to have done wrong, it was unable to meet Apple’s appeal requirement of explaining what happened, and how it has resolved the issue. The appeal was thus denied. If nothing else, Apple should fix this. There is ZERO reason to be anything other than 100% transparent.
Apple business practices are a trade secret. If they disclose them to this developer, they'd lose their presumed advantage in the market. Most large companies explain this somewhere in their terms of service, like Amazon using their own proprietary mechanisms for determining what fraud is.
Their advantage is owning the locked down platform. It’s not a secret.