U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly • Hacker News Board

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

#911

Post by fsflover » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 8:42 AM UTC

pornel wrote: post #282

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…

Apple + Google form a duopoly. Apple has locked down iOS to let them do whatever they want and overcharge as much as they like, and Google has no incentive to be any better, because there's no serious 3rd contender*. For typical users not buying Apple means having to compromise on privacy with Google, which isn't a great option either. Both are trying their best to create vendor lock-in and make it hard for users to…

> *) I expect people on HN to say that some AOSP fork with f-droid is perfectly fine

As you explained yourself, it's not a real alternative, because it relies on Google itself, who can always decide to break it. A real alternative is GNU/Linux phones, Librem 5 and Pinephone. And yes, they are very niche and not easy to make.

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

#912

Post by Sparkyte » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 8:55 AM UTC

It's not an iphone monopoly it is a platform monopoly. The lawsuit is over the ecosystem not allowing users to pick or choose and being forced into a dependency with Apple products.

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

#913

Post by astrange » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 9:19 AM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #745

ChuckMcM wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like it reflects similar actions taken against companies that are dominant in a market. The first one I heard about[1] was IBM versus Memorex which was making IBM 360 "compatible" disk drives. IBM lost and it generated some solid case law that has been relied on in this sort of prosecution. In the IBM case it opened up an entire industry of third party "compatible" peripherals and saved consumers a ton of…

> This feels like it reflects similar actions taken against companies that are dominant in a market. Maybe they should be. Our societies are ostensibly consumer-centric. It's about time our laws and organisations strongly sided with consumers against any opposition, especially against business.

Economies are producer-centric when you have international competition.

An example being Intel, which is currently getting billions in government subsidies via the CHIPS Act, because their business fell behind because it was impeded by the government suing them for antitrust issues.

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

#914

Post by dariosalvi78 » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 9:23 AM UTC

I don't understand what people don't understand about this. Comments like "you are free to buy another phone" or "regulating is only going to stifle innovation" show an utter ignorance about how tech industry works and a very naive view about capitalism.

Apple, as all other big tech companies, grow and thrive because of the ecosystem of companies, suppliers, consumers, researchers, and (importantly) those who offer products and services on top of them. They have built a very successful "platform": the iPhone. Because a mobile phone is not a "device" any longer, it's part of an infrastructure, used by companies, banks, healthcare and governments to offer consumers and citizens services, on which often life depends on. If you build a platform to keep it half-opened, at your convenience, with aggressive lock-in strategies, favouring your own products (apps) at the damage of others, you are playing dirty. No matter how much consumers love and trust you, you are playing dirty at the expenses of all those companies, banks, healthcare and governments that rely on you and at the expenses of consumers and society at large. Apple can still have its own wonderful walled garden for its iPhone, but give the possibility to others to create their own gardens too.

Regarding interventionism (ruling, punishing etc.), that's done for _protecting_ capitalism. I often read comments on HN that criticise the EU for creating pointless regulations that are anti-competitive or a burden and what not. What these people completely get wrong is that the EU institutions are as capitalistic as they can be. Capitalism is excellent at creating wealth, but it's also excellent at destroying itself as proven multiple times. Those regulations are meant to create a _healthy_ capitalism, one that fosters competition, creates jobs and favours consumers. Something that the US used to worry about in the past, but then got too lobbied (or maybe too nationalistic?) and stopped doing it. I am happy that someone is starting to wake up now.

Making iPhones more open comes with some risks, yes, but the current situation is unsustainable and something must be done about it.

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

#915

Post by vorticalbox » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 9:26 AM UTC

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…

4. Smartwatches

This is true, my wife and I have Huawei smart watches.

After my wife's android phone broke she got an iPhone and the watch is basically useless.

It can't receive notifications, can't control music playback, it can't use "find my phone" which makes the phone shout "I'm here" really loud.

The only thing it can do is sync the step counter.

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

#916

Post by minhdanh72 » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 9:40 AM UTC

I believe that the best solution would be for Apple to open up iMessage to other platforms. This would allow users to choose the messaging app that they prefer, regardless of what type of phone they have. It would also promote competition and innovation in the messaging market.

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

#917

Post by nojvek » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 9:45 AM UTC

Suing is the easy part. Getting courts to rule that Apple is a monopoly is a much bigger deal. And Apple will surely appeal, and that appeal has to also result in same ruling.

Otherwise it’s a performance like Lina Khan does with FTC with little to to show.

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

#918

Post by tim333 » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 9:49 AM UTC

ants_everywhere wrote: post #548

This quote is pretty consistent with my take on what Apple has been up to: > In the end , Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple's financial and business interests .

The securtiy aspects are a big deal and I say this as someone who is not bothered at all by ad tracking and cookies and the like. But I and a lot of people have banking and crypto stuff on the phone and not having people able to hack in and steal your money is significant.

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

#919

Post by rmbyrro » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 9:51 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #481

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…

This feels like it reflects similar actions taken against companies that are dominant in a market. The first one I heard about[1] was IBM versus Memorex which was making IBM 360 "compatible" disk drives. IBM lost and it generated some solid case law that has been relied on in this sort of prosecution. In the IBM case it opened up an entire industry of third party "compatible" peripherals and saved consumers a ton of…

Ironic that Jobs started by fighting the big, fat, corporate IBM, and now they turned the company he founded, Apple, into a big, fat, corporation with despicable practices...

When are people going to stop buying Apple?

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

#920

Post by WhyNotHugo » Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 10:03 AM UTC

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…

The "messaging interoperability" point strikes me as a weird one.

In the US, people tend to use iMessages, which is not interoperable with other ecosystems. But iPhone place no limitation on third party messaging apps. Indeed, the rest of the world simply ignores the existence of iMessages and uses other applications for messaging (these vary per country/region, but I don't think that iMessages has any significant market share in any other country).

There's not technical reason preventing people in the US from using another messaging platform, and there are no limitations imposed on third party messaging apps. It's really just a cultural issue of people _choosing_ iMessages. Probably just network effect.