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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

#431

Post by samatman »

brink wrote: post #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 p…

It's amusing how often you see this sort of substantive claim which can be trivially disproven.

"Apple operates a walled garden! I can't get my photos out of iCloud!" [half a dozen ways to get the photos off the phone are proffered] "Well. Nevertheless!"

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

#432

Post by Vt71fcAqt7 »

lkrubner wrote: post #270

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.

I think Kodak fits what you describe, and it was decided in 1992.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Kodak_Co._v._Image_Tec....

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

#433

Post by Draiken »

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…

If their tight experience is so superior, why do they restrict competition? Wouldn't they win anyways?

IMO it's clear that without abusing its position, we would actually have competition for all of the bundled services from Apple.

But this is capitalism. The ultimate goal is always monopoly, so they'll keep chasing that by whatever means necessary.

>easy to make alternatives to Apple products

What? This is plain false. Entering this market is extremely expensive and hard to do. The duopoly is there for a reason. Even giants like Microsoft tried to enter it and couldn't.

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

#436

Post by [deleted] »

Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #432
lkrubner wrote: post #270

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.

I think Kodak fits what you describe, and it was decided in 1992.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Kodak_Co._v._Image_Tec... .

[deleted]

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

#437

Post by inasio »

londons_explore wrote: post #251
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.

Whatsapp themselves could easily solve this if they wanted... Just add a "backup to file" button in settings. Then add a "restore from file" option in Android. Quite why they don't do this is a mystery to me - if a user loses all their chats in a phone migration, they're more likely to start using another messaging app.

I don't think Whatsapp gained anything by preventing this, if anything they gave people a little momentum to switching to another app. The one that clearly benefited was Apple, and I don't thing Whatsapp/Meta did it just to be nice.

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

#438

Post by pradn »

LargeWu wrote: post #205
Workaccount2 wrote: post #173

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…

It already works with SMS, though. You can choose to use 3rd party apps like WhatsApp. I fail to see how users are meaningfully "locked-in" any more than an android

Teens get bullied if they show up as green bubbles in group chats. I've had people tell me they wouldn't want to show up as green bubbles to potential romantic partners. The iMessage lock-in effects are real.

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

#439

Post by jvolkman »

choxi wrote: post #406
multimoon wrote: post #332

I don’t understand why Apple is the target and everyone - govts included - walk right past MS repeating what they’re best at. MS is currently pushing popup ads into windows that installs unsolicited extensions into google chrome and switches the search engine to bing - and will fear monger the user with vague security claims about switching back.

Or Google or Amazon, how are those not way more blatant antitrust targets?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTC_v._Amazon

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

#440

Post by KptMarchewa »

jacobr1 wrote: post #388
Fripplebubby wrote: post #287

For folks who don't have time to read a 90 page document, the case rests on specific claims, not just the general claim that iPhone is a monopoly because it's so big. Here are those claims: 1. "Super Apps" Apple has restrictions on what they allow on the App Store as far as "Super Apps", which are apps that might offer a wide variety of different services (specifically, an app which has several "mini programs" within…

> Apple itself offers a "super app" of course, which is the Apple ecosystem of apps. Not sure I buy this point. Competitors can also offer their own suite of apps. Apple has an advantage that they can come pre-installed. But they aren't really building super-apps, just a variety of default apps - nothing stops third parties from offering multiple apps on the platform, that is actually a common thing to do.

Either provide a platform or compete in one. Don't do both.
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