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U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

nytimes.com

211–220 of 1001 posts

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#211
post #109

I've heard all arguments against Apple's practices, and to me, they all basically come down to 'it's unfair that so many people like to live inside the Apple walled garden'. When it comes to the law, Apple is not a monopoly. When it comes to competition on the market, Apple is competing with Android and Windows, and the vast majority of the world's middle and upper class willingly choose Apple products. Even if you l…

I'm not so sure. We are fully bought in to the Apple Ecosystem (Apple One, Apple Fitness, Music, everything). In most cases (like Apple Home), I did enough research and found that it was much more well thought out security-wise and was good enough, compared to the wild west that is the Google/Amazon smart home ecosystem. Again, for the most part, the walled garden is way superior to what I see outside the garden. Eve…

> like only Apple Music supported on the HomePod speakers

FYI, this hasn't been the case for a while. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/homepod/apd3399d3179/1...

Spotify has elected to not support this API, presumably because of their beef with Apple.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#212

Apple genuinely deserves this lawsuit. > By tightly controlling the user experience on iPhones and other devices, Apple has created what critics call an uneven playing field where it grants its products and services access to core features that it denies rivals. Once I read this I was not shocked. Apple is already pushing people to buy their separate apps that should have came in for free, with the purchase of the Ip…

Which apps are those?

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#213
post #24

Finally. It was about time that this would happen. Google got one anti-trust lawsuit, Meta should get another one (by owning too many social networks with billions of users each) and after the failed anti-trust lawsuit that Epic tried to sue Apple under, this time the DOJ is finally going after Apple. Good. I'm really looking forward to the United States v. Apple Inc. anti-trust lawsuit that will actually make some c…

> that will actually make some changes to stop the 30% commission scam once and for all. No. The change they should make is to allow sideloading. I don't care if the developer pays less than 30% when Apple can still censor what I run on my phone.

> I don't care if the developer pays

I think you, as the consumer, are the one who pays.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#214

> The Justice Department, which began its investigation into Apple in 2019, chose to build a broader and more ambitious case than any other regulator has brought against the company. As I was reading the specific charges detailed in the article, I was thinking this case seems like a stretch and will be difficult to prove. Apple will argue that security and/or performance reasons drove their decisions related to brows…

[flagged]

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#216

iMessage is the most egregious monopolistic tool in Apple's garden. If the DOJ accomplishes nothing else besides forcing Apple to open up iMessage, it will be a victory. The lock-in of having functional communication with your friends and family is insane. Take that away and it becomes almost a no-brainier for people to consider competing devices. And no, nobody with an iPhone is interested in switching to whatever m…

I totally don't get this perspective. There are so many competing messaging platforms and they all work reasonably well on iOS. Because my various family and friend groups use different messaging apps I use all the following: WhatsApp, Signal, SMS, iMessage, Viber, and once in a while Facebook Messenger. I would say iMessage is kind of middle of the pack here. If I had to pick a favourite it's probably WhatsApp, but unfortunately it's owned by Meta - so I try to use Signal whenever I can. What's so special about iMessage that people think it's a monopolistic tool?

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#217
Apple frustrates the hell out of me with their deceptive tactics to create walled gardens while pretending not to. They feign ignorance to keep you stuck and create the illusion of open doors out of their walled garden that are actually broken and they have no interest in fixing.

I've been paying for iCloud for my wife's iphone for the last several months because of how difficult Apple makes it for us to export our photos. Copying them off the phone with a usb cable is nearly impossible if you don't have a macbook, exporting them off of the website is nearly impossible if you have over 1k photos.. meanwhile google takeout allows me to download all of my photos in my browser in a couple clicks. In my experience, it feels like Apple makes getting out of their walled garden as difficult as legally possible.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#218

I assert it is trivial to not buy Apple products, easy to make alternatives to Apple products and easy to buy feature equivalent devices to Apple products. In lieu of this what is the problem? If the government has a problem why not say any code should be able to be run on any device? Honestly I’m curious - what’s the problem? There are android phones that are superior to iPhones and let you run anything you want. Wh…

> I assert it is trivial to not buy Apple products... Honestly I’m curious - what’s the problem? Is it trivial to move to alternatives once you've already bought said Apple products?

I bought a pixel and there was a process that transferred everything over. Not sure how much easier it can be.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#219
post #193

Posting anonymously. I worked on an app where Apple gave us special access to private APIs allow listed by the app ID and told us to keep it secret. This access gave the select few apps that got it a huge advantage in performance. I don't want to share too much details at the risk of identifying the app and getting it revoked.

Tim Cook came to my house and made my Wi-Fi faster.

Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

#220
It's so funny I'm gonna go out and say it, this is only because Microsoft threw its weight into Epics lawsuit.

I believe, entirely, that Microsoft is the most important corporation in America, by far. In that anything they want, will get done. this is why the senators turned around on Sony claiming MS buying ActiBlizzKing was monopolistic and started threatening Sony instead, this is why Bill Gates gets to sit with Xi and Xi calls him a friend, this is why MS has unopposed access to sell its games in China.

They are an "arm" of the government and not even Apple can counter it.

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