601–610 of 1001 posts
Seems rather unfair on Apple to me. You don't have to buy an Apple product, when you do, you know what you are getting, there is choice. These things always seem like some strange powerplay, if such bodies weren't happy, they should of been discussing this with Apple and changing the laws to match rather than making a big public spectacle out of it, this really hurts innovation. Of course the HN comment crowd are goi…
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 like the app store, I like the restrictions, I don't want apple to change anything about it. I sort of think apple shouldn't try to comply with these sorts of potential lawsuits by making their app store worse, they should just let people jail break the phone and offer zero support for it. If people want to buy an iphone and shit it up, let them do it.
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 like the app store, I like the restrictions, I don't want apple to change anything about it. I sort of think apple shouldn't try to comply with these sorts of potential lawsuits by making their app store worse, they should just let people jail break the phone and offer zero support for it. If people want to buy an iphone and shit it up, let them do it.
The blue background on messages sent between two iMessage users has to be one of the most brilliant vendor lock-in strategies. It is an artificial form of discrimination. I feel a slight annoyance whenever a non-Apple user forms a group chat as I know that person will limit the messaging functionality. In my opinion, the "monopolistic" aspect of it comes down to the fact that they tied it into an otherwise open messa…
> On the other hand, I think the long-term sequalae of the blue-green message is to push people to use stand-alone apps like WhatsApp and FB Messenger I find it amusing that in 2024 people in the US still talk about WhatsApp as a future step. Where I'm from already 10+ years ago every single person you know would have a WhatsApp account. With WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat, Telegram etc. I think this is pretty much a solved…
"The tech giant prevented other companies from offering applications that compete with Apple products like its digital wallet, which could diminish the value of the iPhone, the government said." They literally offer APIs for any company to integrate with their wallet. As a consumer, I wish more apps would do so instead of half-heartedly implementing their own thing.
And if I want to be a wallet provider on iOS and compete with Apple Wallet, what then, big brain?
As a consumer, I don't want to have to use 23 different wallet apps on my phone but am happy to have one secure implementation that's easy to use. You could argue that Apple Pay imposes lots of processing fees that will raise prices for consumers as vendors pass on processing fees to consumers and that prices would be lower if there was more competition, but I highly doubt this is the case in reality as Apple Pay processing fees are the same as regular payment processor fees for merchants.
Apple 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…
Some googling would find you several ways to do this (directly on the phone to external storage is possible, but yeah selecting all the photos on the iphone sucks as you have to click one and scroll-select them all): https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/iphone/iph480caa1f3/io... The easiest way is to export them via photos for mac. If you don't have a mac, then there's ways to get the photos on a PC: https://support…
How do you think Apple will differentiate their case from United States v. Microsoft Corp. , where Microsoft was implicated for almost identical monopoly misconduct? The complaint literally says verbatim, "But after launching the iPhone, Apple began stifling the development of cross-platform technologies on the iPhone, just as Microsoft tried to stifle cross-platform technologies on Windows."
Because unlike the Microsoft case, you have the option to buy a smartphone from a company other than Apple. 1990s Microsoft was quite literally a monopoly, nothing like what is going on today. Apple is not stopping their competitors from making good phones, just like how Apple is not stopping you from buying a phone that wasn't made by Apple. Microsoft was doing both of those things, Apple isn't. The cases aren't eve…
And you could absolutely buy alternatives to Microsoft Windows in the 90s, from Apple or IBM or others. But that's immaterial. The availability of an alternative says nothing about the market power Apple has or how it's wielding that power. This is why we have anti-trust cases, to determine if that power is being abused.
But the real point that HN commenters seem to be missing is that the Apple we grew up with hasn't existed for a long time. They abandoned their charter decades ago. Which was originally to bring the power of computing to everyone, especially children, to liberate us all from Big Brother and the limits on creativity handed down to us by megacorps like IBM, Microsoft and now Amazon.
I can't list everything that Apple has down wrong that caused me to stop endorsing them. But I can provide at least a start of a vision of what a real Apple would look like with today's technology and expertise. A real Apple would:
* Strive to reduce the cost of technology through innovation and economies of scale.
* Sell user-serviceable hardware with interchangeable parts and conveniences like no-tools battery replacement.
* Use its vast access to capital and resources to innovate, rather than dump its R&D costs onto early adopters with stuff like VR headsets and "high end" computers costing 2-10 times the market rate.
* Sell value-added services and leverage proven technologies like BitTorrent to provide users searchable access to every kind of media ever created, rather than bowing to the RIAA/MPAA and creating walled gardens like iTunes and yet another streaming service in Apple TV that locks users into a proprietary vendor providing limited usability.
* Build handhelds with P2P wireless technology that "just works", the way early Kindle had free cellular access, to negate the monopoly power of 5G.
* Empower users with real revolutionary technologies such as highly multicore processors, auto-scaling CPU clusters and parallelized functional programming languages, not just halfhearted evolutionary proprietary solutions like M1 and Metal which mostly just copy other monopolies like Nvidia.
* Fund and maintain open source software ecosystems instead of endlessly deprecating previously working frameworks with no backwards compatibility or migration tools, to skim even more profit at tremendous expense to developers.
* Encourage a developer-first mindset by providing up-to-date documentation instead of expired links and a drink-the-kool-aid mindset comprised of cookie cutter proprietary frameworks handed down from on high by middle managers and designers.
* Stand up to authoritarianism by selling its products unmodified in foreign markets, rather than weakening encryption or bowing to censorship like Twitter/X did for China and India at the people's expense.
* Pay the wealth forward into grants, trusts and UBI instead of hoarding an almost $3 trillion market cap that only benefits people of means who can afford to buy AAPL stock and sell it short for almost guaranteed profit at times like this.
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…
You can read the full document but of course very few of us would do that.
Instead, I think this Youtube video of the US Attorney General is giving a good summary of the case.