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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

#471

Post by emodendroket »

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.

Does Apple not let others offer a suite of apps?

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

#472

Post by hermannj314 »

bearjaws wrote: post #455
hermannj314 wrote: post #353

The takeaway here is that when a multi-trillion dollar company breaks a 130-year old law in a way that impacts over one hundred million people, our justice system and government is so broken and incompetent that it takes five years of investigation before anything happens. Probably years more before any action is taken. Cool, good job lawyers. The latency of your Leviathan ruins more lives than its power could ever h…

I generally agree with your sentiment, maybe more when it comes to people like Donald Trump or SBF... But what do you want them to do? Build a shitty case in 1 year and get destroyed in court? Remember, Apple has thousands of lawyers too, they aren't going to settle this case.

I think that is a false dichotomy the lawyers have created: have a slow moving system or a system where justice isn't served.

Our current system is slow and unjust. There are other options.

My wife and I tried to be foster parents, we did it for about three months, but everything was so slow moving. We had to spend 30 days just to have a piece of paper signed that no one contested. That moment opened my eyes to the corruption the lawyers have willfully constructed and willfully participate in and I have hated the entire legal profession since that moment. The system from the simplest cast to the most complex is designed to pad billable hours without concern for latency, justice, or consistency.

It is a sham system.

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

#473

Post by jjtheblunt »

skeptrune wrote: post #447

This is awesome. If this goes through then I expect Apple to enter a slump similar to MSFT in the coming years. Their primary selling point in the U.S. for mobile is imessage and their integrated suite. If that open market starts to eat into that then thier edge is much narrower and I don't expect it to hold well.

> Their primary selling point in the U.S. for mobile is imessage and their integrated suite.

Their primary selling point is excellent performance from mobile low power custom silicon, I'd say.

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

#474

Post by danielmarkbruce »

luxuryballs wrote: post #457

You have a monopoly on your product! I wonder what the real motive was here, did Apple not comply with something and now they’re getting slapped? I don’t believe for a second that this is purely good faith as I haven’t seen any actual harm being caused.

antitrust regulators haven't been acting in good faith for years. It devolved into a political game a long time ago. Part of it is the complexity of modern businesses - they simply don't understand what they are regulating. At that point the goal posts move.

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

#475

Post by miloignis »

madeofpalk wrote: post #403
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…

I believe Apple needs more regulatory action taken against it for abusing it's dominant position. But apart from cloud streaming apps (which they've resolved recently by allowing them), I find these claims to be pretty weak and not significantly market-affecting. I strongly believe Apple is under no obligation to make iMessage cross-platform. It's their service they invented, and they get to run it how they chose. SM…

That's one of the things I like about this complaint - it points out that they don't allow any other apps to support SMS, so only iMessage has the ability to message anyone with just a phone number, seamlessly upgrading if the other party has iMessage and using SMS otherwise.

It's not solely about iMessage not being open, it's about reserving key features for only iMessage to give it a significant advantage. (Also mentioned are other key bits like running in the background, etc)

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

#476

Post by robgibbons »

ben7799 wrote: post #391

One thing I don't get about this is say DOJ wins and significantly weakens Apple. They'll basically hand the market to foreign companies. Seems odd. Google does not need an assist here, last I checked they are doing great, and could fix a lot of the things iPhone users don't like about Android if they wanted to.

Not necessarily. If Apple allowed third-party app stores, alternative browser engines, had better cross-platform messaging support, et cetera, a lot of Android owners would buy iPhones.

A significant reason why Android appeals to many folks is that it represents a more open alternative to the iPhone. By opening up their walled garden, Apple still stands to benefit by magically becoming more appealing to a big chunk of Android owners.

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

#477

Post by shagie »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #425
ben7799 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I've had 2 Garmin Smart Watches and never felt like Apple was restricting them. I am curious what things the iPhone does that others aren't allowed to do. Most of the differences between Garmin and Apple Watch seem like they were conscious decisions where they each decided to take a different direction. It's one of those weird things where it seems like the case has a bunch of holes. You can use an iPhon…

The Pebble was very obviously hampered by iOS limitations. In order to offload any code to the phone, you either had to write the code in Javascript (so it was basically a web app) or direct the user to manually download a separate companion app from the App Store. If iOS killed the companion app because it hadn't been opened on the iPhone recently (because, y'know, you were using it on your watch and not your phone)…

The Pebble was released in 2013. The two way communication SDK with Pebble was released in May of 2013. In February of 2015, the 2.0 Pebble SDK was released with further integrations.

The first iWatch was announced in September 2014 and released in April of 2015.

The Pebble was discontinued in 2016.

What integrations are you expecting Apple to have released prior to its own release? What functionality did iOS lack that android provided that hampered Pebble's development on iOS?

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

#478

Post by samatman »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #146
Scubabear68 wrote: post #48

The point the suit misses is that one can simply buy an Android phone if they like. Millions of people literally do every year. Choice already exists.

If you want to have a functional social circle in the US, choice doesn't really exist.

Social pressure to use a particular phone and messaging app does not a monopoly make.

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

#479

Post by bbarn »

sircastor wrote: post #461

Lots of comments here about the duopoly of Apple and Google (and I'm of the opinion that one cannot have a monopoly of its own product) It's telling to me that not even Microsoft was able to make this work. There may have been some other internal interests at play, but their historical strength and background was in providing a platform, and then they dropped out when it didn't last. Likewise, Palm didn't last long i…

Palm and Microsoft both made incredible (for the time) smart phones. The iPhone (and to a lesser extent android phones) were just on a totally different level. While Windows CE and PalmOS phones were trying to fight off blackberry, the iPhone was a different animal all together. The later Microsoft phones trying to compete on that level made a massive mistake of trying to tie in a bad UI design (the windows 8 square tiles for days UI) to it's desktop.

It was all timing, and by the time the war was over, MS would have had to become revolutionary in a field that pretty much every new thing had already been done, so it made sense for them to throw in the towel and get back to their money maker - business apps.

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

#480

Post by boringg »

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…

In terms of (4) Why would the apple watch want to have to build and maintain their apple watch on the google platform. Its funny that a company not wanting to work on another platform (probably due to business costs of doing that) is being considered anti-competitive.

Making it difficult for 3rd party .. sure but trying to force apple to have their hardware work on other platforms is a business decision .

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