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

nytimes.com

861–870 of 1001 posts

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

#862
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…

> Copying them off the phone with a usb cable is nearly impossible if you don't have a macbook

Even if you have a macbook, it is not much better. The photos app kept crashing on me if I tried to copy more than 500 photos. Also, copying to photos is not enough, you need to export everything too. And that messed up the metadata so bad for me.

Iphone is useless as a camera to me. There is simply no way to get original quality photos and videos out of it. What good is camera if you can't access the media you shot?

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

#863

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…

Does it indicate what the trigger was on the timing? As far as I can tell, most if not all of this has been Apple SOP for some time.

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

#864
post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like it reflects similar actions taken against companies that are dominant in a market. The first one I heard about[1] was IBM versus Memorex which was making IBM 360 "compatible" disk drives. IBM lost and it generated some solid case law that has been relied on in this sort of prosecution. In the IBM case it opened up an entire industry of third party "compatible" peripherals and saved consumers a ton of…

> This feels like it reflects similar actions taken against companies that are dominant in a market. Not simply that a company is dominant; it is more about how and why they are dominant. Update 2:40 pm ET: After some research, the practices below may capture much (though not necessarily all) of what the Department of Justice views unfavorably: * horizontal agreements between competitors such as price fixing and mark…

I’ve read a few takes on this from smart people. This is the first time I’ve seen anything that sounds like a real winnable case. Thanks for the distillation. It’s good to know this isn’t as boneheaded as I’d thought (though they still need to go after the App Store).

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

#865

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 specifically prefer apple because they don't let others fuck around like android does.

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

#866

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…

SMS is inferior to imessage, and less secure, so color coding helps

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

#867

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…

>Apple itself offers a "super app" of course, which is the Apple ecosystem of apps.

Isn't this .. not "super apps" then? If it's multiple apps? Said 3rd party super apps could instead be multiple apps people install a la carte. But companies want to do uber apps for funnel purposes etc.

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

#868

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 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. This is, always has been, and will always remain bullshit. The problem isn't the blue vs green background. It would be the same if the backgrounds were purple and gold, red and gray, or just both blue. The problem is the different capabilities bet…

> Apple doesn't control the featureset of SMS.

Interoperability doesn't have to be through SMS. Apple could allow other developers to implement the iMessage protocol.

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

#869
post #262
post #192

I'm sure there's an argument to justify making it super complicated to move your Whatsapp content from IPhone to Android, but at the time I was having to dump the Whatsapp DB to recover the last messages from a dead relative it sure seemed like a convenient way to encourage people to stick around.

Edit: Actually looks you can do iPhone to Android transfer now: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1295296267926284 or Android to iPhone https://faq.whatsapp.com/686469079565350 Original response below: That's really a WhatsApp product issue, not an OS issue. There's some hints of an OS issue, because Android lets WA put a backup file on the 'sd card' that you can transfer across to a new (Android) phone, and iOS doesn't (or d…

I recently tried to migrate my Grandmothers Galaxy S21 phone to an iPhone and we had to return the iPhone because try as I might I could not get get her 30000 text messages (including 1000s of images and messages from people that are now dead) to transfer over intact.

The built in services transfer failed as did third party software.

Honestly I can’t tell you much about transferring the other way, but interoperability is definitely not seamless in this respect.

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

#870

The way Apple purposefully aims to ostracize young people who don't own/can't afford an iPhone by defaulting to a proprietary, non-interoperable messaging system has been enough to turn me entirely against the company.

How are they ostracized? I hear people gripe about green versus blue and all I can think is: are we all suddenly grade schoolers who think the color of your clothes makes you cool?

Maybe you and me are not like that, but most iPhone users are like that and that's what Apple wanted from the start (to artificially discriminate for the good of their business)?
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