Epic, Spotify, and Tinder form advocacy group to push for app store changes

I appreciate the attempt to connect this to the anti-trust suit, but I don't see this as a good justification for why your original critique is relevant for a few reasons:

- Many of the practices in your original critique are allowed on (or not prevented by) Apple's app store. The argument you are making here only makes sense as pertaining to anti-trust to the extent that you are critiquing practices that Apple is preventing.

- It doesn't particularly matter whether the people trying to overturn Apple's practice are the bad actors, or third parties are, since the lawsuit affects all parties (third party or not) equally. So while you could make a consumer benefit argument based on bad actors (indeed, Apple has tried to in the lawsuit), it makes little to no sense to focus on the parties suing (and simultaneously falls into the trap of just arguing that people you don't like don't deserve justice).

On a separate note - I also find the argument for Apple's bundling of services here unconvincing. I have seen no argument for why Apple's curation service needs to be bundled with the phone - which is the prerequisite of the anti trust suit. Consider that apple could perfectly well sell the hardware and OS, and separately sell (or even offer for free) a software package that locks out third party app stores and third party payment providers. Doing so would practically destroy any argument that they are using their monopoly on IPhone hardware and IOs to acquire a monopoly on app distribution and payment services. To the extent that people find the lock in useful, I expect they would install that software package.

Look at the Amazon Appstore for Android and you'll see an anemic limited app marketplace that while subpar, doesn't seem to be doing anything particularly nefarious to consumers nor developers alike. And it's precisely anemic and limited because it contains far fewer apps than the Play Store. We have the entire Android ecosystem to use as a case study to see why competing iOS app stores wouldn't be a threat to either to the App Store's prominence nor to the livelihoods of developers.

> Acquiring customers can be done without giving good terms to most developers. All you need is a small number of exclusives.

Which does not obviate the ability of the vast majority of non-FANMG affiliated developers to stay on the App Store as they please, or only join the specific app stores that they wish to live on out of desire and not necessity.

> There is no reason these stores would need the long tail of apps as long as they had a few very popular ones, and that would reduce exposure for the long tail that did remain in the Apple store.

You seem to be operating under the misunderstanding that the existence of alternative app stores creates lock-in.

> Your point about standardization of store rules isn’t obvious - what industry do you think this compares with?

I'm saying any industry that involves multiple players will see the standardization of norms and operating conventions, much like how UX patterns across different apps standardizes over time. (Take the adoption of the "hamburger button" to mean menu back in the '10s). If there are multiple entrants into the app store space, standard business practices will arise as a new and exciting place for entrepreneurs is created.

> There is no reason to think that this would do anything to democratize the industry, indeed it would be likely to have the opposite effect, of increasing barriers to entry for smaller developers.

And there's no reason to think that the existing situation is any more democratic than the hypothetical you're spinning.

> It is the obvious extrapolation of the behaviors of current players.

And is it being borne out on Android? There's no Facebook nor Microsoft Play store there. There doesn't even seem to be interest in that direction. Yes, comparing the iOS and Android ecosystems (especially in the service of delineating a hypothetical open iOS ecosystem) is imprecise, but it's useful for the sake of this discussion.

> An extreme position would be the emergency of a utopia of developer centric stores all bending over themselves to make things better for the little guy.

Which isn't what I'm arguing for, either. I think there's the potential for that. Certainly more than in the status quo.

> Standard Oil dominated the oil products market initially through horizontal integration in the refining sector, then, in later years vertical integration; the company was an innovator in the development of the business trust.

Horizontal then vertical integration is exactly what Epic is doing, by first getting onto a bunch of platforms and app stores, then creating their own app stores and auxiliary purchasable items. Apple has always been vertically integrating, when have they horizontally integrated? AFAIK they've always been a platform into which other companies, like Microsoft with their original Office suite, have horizontally integrated.

> The Standard Oil trust streamlined production and logistics, lowered costs, and undercut competitors.

The group of companies coming together to form this advocacy group is a trust. Apple is not.

From Wikipedia's entry on US v AT&T [1]:

> [AT&T was] using monopoly profits from its Western Electric subsidiary to subsidize the costs of its network

Companies selling apps on the app store are not subsidiaries of Apple, they are customers of Apple. A company reinvesting profits into itself is not anticompetitive. Maybe you had a different idea of why AT&T relates to Apple, but I don't see it.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T

Nobody would buy a phone that only plays (a few) games and has very little useful apps. You're not arguing in good faith.