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U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly
531–540 of 1001 posts
Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly
#532Lots 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…
> It's not clear to me if there simply is not room for 3+ operating systems in a widely distributed mobile market. I think there would be, if interoperability were a requirement. Microsoft and Blackberry both tried to make their own walled gardens, and maybe that's why it didn't work out. If consumers didn't feel locked in to one platform, they'd be more open to exploring other options. Smartphones aren't the sexy ne…
Microsoft employee, but no affiliation to Windows Phone other than a happy former user. How do you believe MS tried to create a walled garden?
Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly
#533Apple 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…
I simply installed Google Photos app and now every single iphone photo is automatically synced to my google account. Super easy, barely an inconvenience.
Do you have to open the Google Photos app to sync or you set it and forget it, like take a photo and in a few moments its available everywhere?
Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly
#534For 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…
As someone who never uses Apple devices, iMessage is the only true form of monopoly based control that Apple imposes. Apple's 30% costs are harsh, but it is not like Google or MSFT charge anything less.
Such cases always seem to reach a pre-determined conclusion, that has more to do with the political winds of the era, than true legal determinism.
Looking at the accusations from that lens:
1. Super Apps - I don't see how 'Apple doesn't share enough data with Chinese super apps' is going to fly 2024 America. It also has huge security and privacy impliciations. This accusation seems DOA.
2. Streaming games is tricky, but it isn't a big revenue stream. The outcome for this point appears immaterail to Apple stock.
3. iMessage - This is the big one. I see the whole case hinging on this point.
4. Smartwatches. Meh, Apple might add inter-op for apple smartwatches on android. I don't think this will lead to any users switching over or an actually pleasing experience.
5. Digital Wallets. This seems tacked on. Apps are PhonePe and PayTm work just fine on Apple and Android. I have never heard of anyone using a Digital Wallet that is not Apple pay, Google Pay or Samsung Pay. Are digital wallets a big revenue stream for Apple ?
Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly
#535For 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 China, WeChat does many different things, for example, from messaging to payments. This complaint alleges that Apple makes it difficult or impossible to offer this kind of app on their platform.
But WeChat is available on iOS isn't it? If not the iPhone would be pretty impossible to sell there, just like Huawei's android without Google play don't sell here in the west.
Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly
#536> 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…
I agree and I question the wisdom of it, but the idea of this aggressive antitrust enforcement, which so far has more strikes than hits, seems to be to make a grinding, years- (or even decades-) long push to shift the understanding of what antitrust is and make major changes to the landscape; kind of an inverse of what the conservatives have been able to do with various issues, where their positions were initially la…
I think you're right: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/whats-coming-in-2024-on-t...
Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly
#537For 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…
They should have added claims for:
- NFC
apple does have full NFC support for their products but for other apps there are tons of road blocks for using anything close to full NFC functionality
- Bluetooth
same, similar more usable, but some functionality is still not available for 3rd party apps at all meaning certain things can only be provided 1st party by Apple
- Strange behaviour when releasing questionable competive Apps
There had been multiple cases where Apple released 1st party apps and it "happened" that the previous leader(s) of previous existing 3rd party apps "happened" to have issues with releasing updates around that time (or similar strange coincidental behavior). Additionally such new apps often had some new non-documented non public APIs which makes it harder for 3rd parties to compete.
- Questionable app store reviews
Stories of apps running in arbitrary you could say outright despotic harassment when wrt. the app store reviews are more then just few (to be clear legal non malicious apps which should be fully legal on the apple app store).
EDIT: To be clear for the first 2 points apple always have excuses which seem reasonable on the surface until you think it through a bit more (e.g. similar to there excuse for banning PWAs in the EU, I think they might have undid that by now). And for the other points it's always arbitrary enough so that in any specific case you could call it coincidence, but there is a pattern.
Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly
#538Another big, annoying one is password managers. I use an open source password manager with an iPhone app, but there’s no way to integrate it system wide, so the experience of using it on my phone is terrible. And yet! No matter how much worse third party integration is on iPhone, I still don’t want to use an operating system made by an advertising company.
Are you sure the password manager is using all the APIs available to it? I use 1Password and it feels extremely well integrated.
Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly
#539Apple 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…
an option for easy backup in addition to the already-mentioned google photos is to use a hosted nextcloud instance (hetzner, shadow.tech) to backup photos from your phone. the nextcloud app available on the ios store will backup to the configured remote nextcloud instance and the corresponding nextcloud app on your laptop etc. can then sync these photos to you.
Re: U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly
#540For 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…
What's stopping people from buying or using any other kind of phone, new or old? Or from producing one? None of what's listed here is relevant to that regard.
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/10/iphone-teen-survey-2023...
90% of marketshare with monopolistic practices is relevant?