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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

#321

Post by bb86754 »

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 you're genuinely interested in this below are a couple things you could read to help get some background. Its actually a pretty fascinating history.

Judging by your phrasing, your interpretation of antitrust stems from Robert Bork and has been the mainstream thought for a long time. Read The Antitrust Paradox by him to see how we got here and why the courts have acted how they have for the past 40 years.

The current chair of the FTC, Lina Khan, was actually an academic prior to working for the government and has a long paper trail of how she interprets the law. In short (and extremely oversimplified), it modernizes the Brandeis interpretation that bigness is bad for society in general, regardless of consumer pricing. EX: If Apple were a country its GDP would surpass the GDPs of all but four nations. They argue this is bad flat out.

Can't say it was the only cause, but Khan's paper, Amazon's Antitrust Paradox - note the reference to Bork's book - is partially what resparked a renewed interest in antitrust for the modern era if you want to check it out.

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

#322

Post by stephc_int13 »

cyclecount wrote: post #252
stephc_int13 wrote: post #242

Apple top management should have seen this coming ~years~ ago. Both Apple and Google could have prevented this by being smarter and less greedy in the first place, understanding the central role of developers and third party companies in their ecosystems. Not sure about this lawsuit, I don't really care at this point, the whole process in unrolling and won't stop until this is over, and this won't end up in a nice pl…

Or, both Apple and Google did see this coming years ago, have been smart about supporting politicians in both major US political parties, and calculated that the amount of money they could make by maintaining their monopoly positions — even if only for a few more years — was likely far greater than any fine or other regulatory headache it might cause down the line.

Time will tell, for sure.

The thing is, they are both overflowing with cash, more than enough to afford being strategic about its use.

If you're only looking at cash flow for the next few quarters, sure, that was the smart decision.

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

#323

Post by dartos »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #320
gnicholas wrote: post #13

> 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…

Every employee that joins Apple goes through a course that teaches a few case studies about Apple's culture. One of those is how Steve Jobs made the decision to kill Flash. IMHO it was a no brainer and if this sort of thing needs to be litigated in court, it's a travesty.

Everything needs to be litigated.

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

#325

Post by multimoon »

beeboobaa3 wrote: post #224
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…

> easy to make alternatives to Apple products Please, go do it. You'll be very rich very quick and I'll eagerly buy your products once you succeed. Unfortunately you'll find out it's not actually easy at all when you realize that consumers care about weight, size, temperature and battery life which are all things apple excels at. Their hardware is really quite good, unfortunately the software is horribly crippled.

This is how the free market is intended to work. This opens up the range for several android phones (which have a near split in the US, and a majority globally last I recall) to offer better hardware.

Modern Samsung phones are very good. You’re asserting that Apple should be punished purely because they make good hardware and are successful - and if their hardware wasn’t good and competitive then you wouldn’t care.

Part of why I have Apple devices as a tech enthusiast is the good software and the ecosystem that comes with it.

Would I like to run an IDE and code on an iPad? Absolutely. But I’d rather have the iPad than the android tablet.

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

#326

Post by twodave »

crop_rotation wrote: post #280

Great news. They should next should sue Ford for monopoly over the F150.

They probably would if Ford found a way to prevent any after-market accessories from being sold without taking a cut or made proprietary trailer hitches that you had to pay them directly for. Pickup trucks are some of the most hackable devices on the planet.

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

#329

Post by pvg »

bedros wrote: post #317

can someone explain how different is the iphone ecosystem anti-competitive practices vs sony playstation ecosystem?

I can't explain it but one fairly straightforward argument is just scale - everyone has a smartphone, few people (comparatively) have Playstations. There is a more obvious case for legitimate government interest in the regulation of a market that affects a much bigger proportion of consumers and consumer activity.

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

#330

Post by darkwizard42 »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #288

It's wild to me to see people defending Apple in the comments here. 60% of Americans own a phone they're not allowed to install third party apps on, and the ONLY way to get apps is to pay a 30% fee to Apple on every purchase. Imagine if Windows allowed you to only install apps acquired through their store, and with the same 30% fee. Microsoft literally had a huge anti trust case against them for simply setting a defa…

60% of Americans CHOOSE to own a phone that has those features...

I think that is the issue. Android offers (nearly) all of the same functionality and yet people still choose iPhone.

Abusing your ecosystem is one thing (ex. defaulting to Apple Maps for location links, only allowing Safari as default browser), but not allowing 3P app stores seems perfectly within a company's rights.

Amazon isn't forced to list your product and Apple shouldn't be forced to give you access to it's hardware/software users.

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