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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

#81

I've heard all arguments against Apple's practices, and to me, they all basically come down to 'it's unfair that so many people like to live inside the Apple walled garden'. When it comes to the law, Apple is not a monopoly. When it comes to competition on the market, Apple is competing with Android and Windows, and the vast majority of the world's middle and upper class willingly choose Apple products. Even if you l…

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

#82
post #61

If Apple's iPhone "monopoly" is illegal then sue Google for continuing to make Android worse. That's why I switched to iPhone and have no desire to switch back. Apple's crime here is they made a good product and continued to iterate on it, while Google has churned for years, reinventing and rebranding every app, service, and product multiple times a year and only making them worse so POs can get promotions.

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

#83

I've heard all arguments against Apple's practices, and to me, they all basically come down to 'it's unfair that so many people like to live inside the Apple walled garden'. When it comes to the law, Apple is not a monopoly. When it comes to competition on the market, Apple is competing with Android and Windows, and the vast majority of the world's middle and upper class willingly choose Apple products. Even if you l…

They're not the same. The critical difference is people CAN choose not to use Google Search while keeping their same computer/phone, something you can't do with iPhone and the App Store/Wallet/etc laid out in the article. That's the critical difference that takes it from simply creating a superior product to monopoly, when you use your advantage in one space to lock in customers in a related space.

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

#84
Given iOS doesn’t have a monopoly, even in the US market, this is almost certainly a negotiation move thanks to Apple not being seen to be compliant enough with the US gov wrt privacy and security. Possibly App Store policies differences of opinion as well.

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

#85

> 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…

It seems easy to prove to me; anti-trust law is intentionally vague and broad to allow the government to prosecute all kinds of monopoly tactics. Apple had the option to give a warning to users that using an alternative app store may risk security. It doesn't have to block it all-together. Same with Apple Wallet.

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

#87

I've heard all arguments against Apple's practices, and to me, they all basically come down to 'it's unfair that so many people like to live inside the Apple walled garden'. When it comes to the law, Apple is not a monopoly. When it comes to competition on the market, Apple is competing with Android and Windows, and the vast majority of the world's middle and upper class willingly choose Apple products. Even if you l…

I think Google search and apples ecosystem are extremely different. Google search is trivial to leave, any one can switch to bing by just typing a different address in the URL bar. Switching off of apple products is painful and difficult and it's by design. My wife and I switched from iphone to Android over a year ago and we're still fighting with apple to stop routing some text messages to iMessage when it should be going to our phones over sms.

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

#88

I've heard all arguments against Apple's practices, and to me, they all basically come down to 'it's unfair that so many people like to live inside the Apple walled garden'. When it comes to the law, Apple is not a monopoly. When it comes to competition on the market, Apple is competing with Android and Windows, and the vast majority of the world's middle and upper class willingly choose Apple products. Even if you l…

From a legal perspective, monopoly just means holding undue market power. People seem to really focus on the "mono" part, it's irrelevant from a US legal perspective.

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

#90
post #22

It looked surprisingly pretty weak to my non lawyer eyes. I mean I fully understand that apple business practices are building a moat through highly integrated software but its almost a feature for their system and you buy it knowing that. It feels like it goes back to Android vs Apple approach to their ecosystem.

> that apple business practices are building a moat through highly integrated software

To me, this is the crux of modern antitrust, and the EU absolutely got it correct at a high level.

In simplest form -- doing certain things as an almost-monopoly and/or extremely large business should be illegal, while doing them as a smaller company should not be.

The scale of global businesses, in low-competition industries, allows them to engineer moats that are deeply injurious to fair competition, to their own profit and the detriment of everyone else.

> you buy it knowing that.

I think it's debatable whether the average iPhone customer buys it, knowing it allows Apple to heavily tax all AppStore developers.

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