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Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

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Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#321

Post by michaelmrose »

chungleong wrote: post #286
lalos wrote: post #9

Question: How can Apple have a monopoly if a customer can decide to buy a competitor's phone to use as they please (Android, etc). That's where I get lost. The Windows/Netscape made sense since the claim was that Windows dominated the market almost completely (around 90% on those times?). Can I sue any other hardware device company (smart fridges, smart tvs, rokus) for monopoly since I can't load my own apps on them?…

That's why the suit will probably fail in the end. In terms of app selection, Android is not inferior to iOS. People aren't choosing Apple's products because they have no other choice. They're buying them BECAUSE Apple has tighter control over the platform. If the company conducts a survey asking iPhone users if they want Play Store on their phone, I suspect the vast majority would vote no. The choice to install malw…

Nobody is asking specifically if the majority of users want to specifically install the play store on their phones so answering a question nobody asked in the first place isn't terribly relevant.

The question is if the way Apple controlled the market fell afoul of legal standards in a way that effected makers and users. If this is deemed so it would be true regardless of what percentage of users would install apps from a third party store.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#322

Post by millstone »

robbrown451 wrote: post #244
Fellshard wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly don't like it, no, but that doesn't make it antitrust in this case. My feelings and desires aren't what determines law, and thank goodness for that.

In a democracy, they kind of are. Indirectly, obviously. My feelings and desires affect how I vote, and voting affects legislation as well as such things as who gets appointed to the Supreme Court. (and given our legal system, courts determine law as much as legislators do) I think it is awful that manufacturers of devices have that level of control of who can sell apps to run on them, and I certainly hope enough oth…

Is there a general principle at work here? I have a Wii, a PlayStation, an LG smart TV, a Chromecast. All of these runs apps and are substantially more locked down than my iPhone.

If I make a device, you should not be able to force me to support your software running on it. That seems fundamental.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#323

Post by michaelmrose »

threeseed wrote: post #299
michaelmrose wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A standard pc keeps unauthorized users from modifying the system to protect you. It does not protect your oem from competition. Pretending that this isn't extraordinary is a very questionable tactic that Apple has handled in an innovative fashion.

Apple can legitimately claim that the App Store protect users as well. And it's not extraordinary at all. These days any device with apps/games has their own store e.g. Nintendo, PS, XBox, Fitbit, Thermomix etc.

Phones are transitioning from devices to make phone calls to computers. Even the original iphone was more like a computer than a telephone.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#324

Post by millstone »

shmerl wrote: post #285
mr_toad wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand I dislike that Safari has a monopoly in iOS, but I fear the alternative is a de-facto monopoly for Chrome, which could be even worse.

Firefox could be released for iOS if not for this ban.

And so would Chrome which would, realistically, be far more popular.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#325

Post by millstone »

shmerl wrote: post #316
rubidium wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looses everywhere it competes with Chrome... much as I hate to say it.

It doesn't matter if it can't be even released there. That's the whole point. Apple don't compete on merit, they use monopolistic tactics to ban competition.

When Google puts Chrome banners on google.com, and in gmail popups, is that "competing on merit?" How can I run some ads on google.com?

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#326

Post by millstone »

shmerl wrote: post #252

Can anyone now blast Apple on anti-trust grounds, for banning competing browsers in their store? When Apple want to sabotage universal adoption of certain technology (such as DASH for video streaming), they can avoid implementing needed components on the client side in their engine, forcing everyone who wants to target iOS (a sizable chunk of the Web market) to support their own technology instead of only something e…

Yeah Apple can do that. Thank goodness. Safari lags on web standards. It's ahead on anti-tracking, Reader Mode, etc. Which focus benefits the user more?

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#327

Post by Fellshard »

millstone wrote: post #320
pier25 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Apple advertised the iPad (which is also an iOS device) as a laptop replacement. 2. My point is not to compare the two cases, legally speaking, but you argued that "consumers are well aware of those constraints on purchase". Well, consumers were well aware of the limitations of Windows and that didn't change the fact that Microsoft was charged with unlawful monopolization. 3. Sorry, I'm not sure what you are refer…

A key finding was that Microsoft had a monopoly on the PC OS market, with marketshare > 90%. If 90's Microsoft had Apple's marketshare today, <50% in US, the judgement would have been absurd.

Defining monopoly as level of market share and not just shutting out competition has always and will always be a mistake.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#328

Post by kkarakk »

cataphract wrote: post #236
ashelmire wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 year staggered appointments. So 3 justices terms are up every 2 years. Means one president doesn't get to completely stack the court, but each has a fair impact on it, and we aren't stuck with judges with outdated ideologies forever (unless people vote for it).

The proposal more often floated around is an 18-year term limit (see https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=701121 ), which would give each president 2 appointments. The big difficult, however, is how to make sure that a hostile senate wouldn't just block all nominations (which is the new norm). Some people like Calabresi have suggested that the president and everyone in the senate would be denied all co…

would it even matter when presidents are now billionaires in their own right?

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#329

Post by danesparza »

holy_city wrote: post #80
danesparza wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I suppose the distinguishing factor with apps like Amazon or Home Depot is they deal in physical goods?

I'm pretty sure the distinguishing factor is that Apple takes a cut of all revenue that passes through the app. That was the beef Spotify had at least.

Hmmm ... see the other comment to my post. It sounds like this isn't entirely true. Certain apps like Amazon.com don't have to pay Apple 30% -- I buy plenty of physical goods with the Amazon app, but 30% of those sales don't go to Apple.

Re: Supreme Court rules antitrust lawsuit against Apple can proceed

#330

Post by ashelmire »

eridius wrote: post #202
ashelmire wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 year staggered appointments. So 3 justices terms are up every 2 years. Means one president doesn't get to completely stack the court, but each has a fair impact on it, and we aren't stuck with judges with outdated ideologies forever (unless people vote for it).

6 years is awfully short for this sort of thing. What we absolutely need to avoid is having justices have to care about reelection, which means we need to say justices can only ever serve one term, which means we need longer terms.

> What we absolutely need to avoid is having justices have to care about reelection

It's an appointment, so they would only have to convince the president. Or you can prevent reappointment at all.

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