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

nytimes.com

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

#261

Post by afavour »

endisneigh wrote: post #129

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 fear we're going to see this argument in absolutely every thread on this topic for the next few years and it's going to be argued ad nauseam. "You can just buy an Android phone" barely scratches the surface of the arguments being made.

For example (given the EU gives great context to this): Apple owns and maintains the only App Store that's allowed on the iOS platform. So they have a monopoly on the iOS app market. Is that right and fair? I'm sure plenty will read that want to reply "yes of course it's fair, Apple can do what they want with their own platform" but that's your opinion. Controlled app stores are a dramatic shift from the way software used to be distributed and as a society/whatever we've never actually had a discussion about it. It just happened.

> The government seems to want to make it illegal to have a tight experience, but why?

I'd argue the government seems to want to make it illegal for a tight experience to be the only experience available. And it's not hard to see the argument for why: competition is good. Multiple app stores or whatever would open up the market, Apple would have to make the case for why they should get 15/30% of an app developer's revenue. They might be able to make that case very easily, they might not. But a monopoly means they don't even have to try.

IMO talking solely about Apple and/or arguing about whether they have a "monopoly" isn't going to be that effective (sorry DOJ). The reality is that we live in a world that requires us to be connected, that connection is currently controlled almost exclusively by two tech giants to the extent that even a slightly smaller tech giant, Microsoft, utterly failed in launching a competitive third platform. Is this duopoly good for us as a society? Is it what we actually want? It's fair to at least be asking the question.

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

#262

Post by toast0 »

inasio wrote: post #192

I'm sure there's an argument to justify making it super complicated to move your Whatsapp content from IPhone to Android, but at the time I was having to dump the Whatsapp DB to recover the last messages from a dead relative it sure seemed like a convenient way to encourage people to stick around.

Edit: Actually looks you can do iPhone to Android transfer now: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1295296267926284 or Android to iPhone https://faq.whatsapp.com/686469079565350

Original response below:

That's really a WhatsApp product issue, not an OS issue. There's some hints of an OS issue, because Android lets WA put a backup file on the 'sd card' that you can transfer across to a new (Android) phone, and iOS doesn't (or didn't), and with cloud backups the different OSes both tie into their own clouds.

But the main issue is the WA iOS app and the WA Android app have different schemas for their on device database, which makes it not so easy to move. Maybe that has changed since I stopped working there, but that was the biggest issue with a switch platforms feature that I was aware of. It's a lot of coordination for a feature that most users are never going to use, and if they do use, likely aren't going to use it more than once. When I recently got a new Android, I did see there's a new transfer data flow for at least Android to Android, so maybe there's hope for cross OS data exchange in the future? It's also helpful that there's only two relevant platforms now, instead of 7 (s40, s60, blackberry, blackberry 10, windows phone are all dead)

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

#263

Post by [deleted] »

bruce511 wrote: post #50
smoldesu wrote: post #21

How do you think Apple will differentiate their case from United States v. Microsoft Corp. , where Microsoft was implicated for almost identical monopoly misconduct? The complaint literally says verbatim, "But after launching the iPhone, Apple began stifling the development of cross-platform technologies on the iPhone, just as Microsoft tried to stifle cross-platform technologies on Windows."

Is Apple even a monopoly though? In the Microsoft case Microsoft had 90+% of desktop market share. (And propped Apple up to create even a semblance of competition.) They were accused of leveraging that position to prevent manufacturers etc from getting out of line. Apple, on the other hand shares the market with Android. Globally it's a minority share. Yes, in the US, Apple has a bigger market share than it has globa…

[deleted]

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

#264

Post by [deleted] »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #44

Apple has about 60% of the smartphone market in the US, and about 25% globally. That's a pretty big stretch to call it a monopoly. There are many non-apple phone options that many consumers easily avail themselves of. And at least one other OS choice as well. All of these are fully supported by the entire ecosystem of telcos. Seems like bullying to score political points to me.

[deleted]

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

#265

Post by timmg »

fidotron wrote: post #84

Given iOS doesn’t have a monopoly, even in the US market, this is almost certainly a negotiation move thanks to Apple not being seen to be compliant enough with the US gov wrt privacy and security. Possibly App Store policies differences of opinion as well.

What's interesting about the legal system is that it is intentionally vague. As in, you can make all different kinds of arguments and the judge and jury decide.

iPhone is does not have an overwhelming market share of phones in the US. But Apple does have a complete monopoly on "iPhone apps" (and "app stores" and "iPhone payment services"). So the government certainly can make a case that they are abusing those monopolies.

Whether or not the judge and juries will agree is the thing we are all going to be watching for.

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

#266

Post by bink »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #20
gnicholas wrote: post #13

> 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…

They will make that argument, and the government will point out that Apple is trying to charge 27% everywhere those choice decisions were taken away, pretty conclusively proving... it's all about collecting the rent.

Charging 30% is outrageous to me, but it also appears to be the standard used by almost all of their competitors. It'll be interesting to see how the government convicts Apple of doing something that almost all other large companies are doing.

It's a no-win situation for them. If once they established themselves as the dominant player in the cell phone market they started undercutting everyone else on fees that could also be seen as predatory.

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

#267

Post by btown »

Direct link to the complaint itself: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/9765671b...

Pages 29-31 of the complaint are especially relevant to read for many of us in web development and who value open systems, as they detail the intentionality of Apple's strategy to restrict so-called "super apps" from becoming portals for arbitrary web applications. And page 42+ describes restrictions on alternate digital wallets.

There's a lot here beyond the original headlines, and it's incredibly relevant to read or skim directly.

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

#268

Post by synergy20 »

I'm working on some apple airplay on non-apple platforms, what a pain.

Apple is worse than Microsoft from the past, I mean, 10x or more closed.

I don't want to touch Apple's development ecosystem after this project.

I don't even want to start on other items like PWA support, single app store, iTunes everything,etc.

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

#269

Post by nox101 »

kyleomalley wrote: post #260

Security Engineering is mostly about control and minimizing attack surfaces. Apple iOS implements this exceedingly well, with defaults, while still being one of the most widely used platforms on the planet. I believe IOS gets it right the vast majority of the time with solid architectural changes and not just endless patches and knobs that are hidden and forgot about. This is the key difference of "It just works" ver…

Yes, if someone locks you in a prison cell you're safe. Except from the warden and guards. You get to read only what they let you, eat only what they let you. But, you're safe

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

#270

Post by lkrubner »

It's been many decades since the USA government attempted to go after a vertical trust. During my lifetime, almost all anti-monopoly action has been against horizontal trusts: companies that gain too much market share for some particular product or service. But there was a time, a long time ago, almost a century ago, when it was common for the government to do this kind of thing, for the benefit of the consumer.
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