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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

#641

Post by dogleash »

epolanski wrote: post #621

The number of people opposing these changes in this thread because "it will make their walled garden experience worse" without being able to bring up a single valid reason why would that be is astonishing.

Apple is such boring stagnant soulless void, I don't know why people wouldn't want it chopped up just to see the component parts trying to innovate again.

What have they done in the last few years? Minor incremental updates to existing products, release another screen-strapped-to-face product years late to the party while also failing to figure out what to do in the software space to justify the device, and started issuing credit cards because they needed to branch out from just getting a cut of all sales that happen on-platform.

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

#642

Post by AnonHP »

aabajian wrote: post #358

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…

> The main question I want addressed is: If SMS messages can be directly shown in iMessage, and are not secure, then the argument of not allowing "insecure" 3rd-parties to integrate with iMessage goes out the window. All I want is Android messages to be shown in iMessage. Sure we can make them green, but at least they will be sent over the data network and not SMS.

There’s the Messages app and the iMessage protocol — two different things. How would Apple allow messages from Android that are not SMS? That’s by adding RCS support, which is coming later this year. It still won’t have end to end encryption (like the iMessage protocol does) because Apple isn’t going to support (as of now) the proprietary and closed extensions Google has developed for RCS. Any Android message that comes over the data network will have to have some sort of encryption. Otherwise SMS is just fine, as it is today.

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

#643

Post by eyelidlessness »

aabajian wrote: post #358

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…

What I want to know is how there’s any legal basis to compel any business to implement and service specific, arbitrary software features. It would be one thing if there were a law that mandated a class of messaging apps interoperate on a certain standard if they use certain regulated communication networks. But “Apple messages must implement interoperability with Android messages” feels very hamfisted as an expression of that, and doesn’t strike me as legally defensible.

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

#644

Post by rqtwteye »

I don’t know about the legal situation here but I welcome every effort to slow down these super mega corporations. They kill a lot of innovation with their market power. I think we would be way better off if we had many smaller companies. When was the last time something truly innovative came from Apple, Google or MS? They either buy a little innovation or suppress it.

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

#646

Post by summerlight »

I wonder what would be Apple's reaction to this case. They've been publicly provoking EU since none of the available options can be an existential threat to Apple thanks to its jurisdiction. Even kicking them off the EU market would be very hard and politically infeasible actions.

But the US is different. They actually have the power to do whatever they want, from small fines to breaking up. It's much more of existential threat to Apple and they probably don't want to piss off those prosecutors and politicians too much?

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

#647

Post by Steltek »

teeray wrote: post #352
brink wrote: post #217

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…

I just want the auto-sync experience of iCloud photos to my own NAS. Paying Apple $2.99/mo forever just so I can have an offsite backup of my photos is so obnoxious.

Sorry this isn't a helpful answer but over in Android-land, Syncthing does exactly this for me right now. I paired Syncthing with a script that pushes any new photos to a self-hosted gallery. It's as fast if not faster than Google Photos and totally independent of any Google ecosystem. Add another offsite Syncthing machine and now you have a magical offsite backup.

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

#648

Post by standardUser »

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…

> 3. Messaging interoperability

The richest company in the world is purposefully generating social and psychology stress for young people so they can edge up their market share just a little bit more. In a just world, people would be imprisoned over this.

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

#649

Post by AnonHP »

fakedang wrote: post #620
brink wrote: post #217

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…

I want to add how much difficult Apple makes it to delete content in general from an iPhone. Deleting simple things like email, which are just a swipe away on Android, are notoriously difficult on the native email app, simply because Apple doesn't give a fuck. And this is the company touted as some design genius? I think it's all a ploy to just grab more users for iCloud, or get users to upscale to a higher storage o…

> Deleting simple things like email, which are just a swipe away on Android, are notoriously difficult on the native email app,

Not sure what exactly you’re talking about, because deleting an email (from the mailbox list) is a long swipe to the left on iOS/iPadOS too, unless you have changed the settings for that to archive the mail instead of deleting. It has been this way for a very long time.

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

#650

Post by kelnos »

slibhb wrote: post #554
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…

I'd be more sympathetic to the government's arguments if Android phones didn't exist. But they do, and people can use them if they don't like Apple's walled garden. As things are, this lawsuit seems like the government striking an aggressive posture torwards tech companies for no good reason. It's almost like -- as the tech companies get bigger and more powerful -- the government wants to remind them who's really in…

If phone OSes and ecosystems were fungible, then I'd agree. It's reasonable to prefer iOS for many reasons, but still be disappointed in the walled-garden, non-interoperable aspects.

Customers don't really have great choices right now when it comes to smartphones:

1. One OS is locked down, has a walled-garden ecosystem, but has many privacy-protecting features.

2. The other OS more open (interop & user-choice-wise, not really in the FOSS sense), but is run by a company that seems hell-bent on eroding user privacy.

These properties are dictated by Apple and Google. But due to the barrier for entry, there are no alternatives that come even close to duplicating Android's and iOS's feature sets. Even simply using a community-developed Android-based OS can cause you to lose access to many useful features Android provides.

I guess I went off on a little tangent here, but my position is that the existence of Android is only a defense if switching between the two doesn't incur high costs, both financial and non-. That's demonstrably not the case.

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