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 it, like apps within an app). In China, WeChat does many different things, for example, from messaging to payments. This complaint alleges that Apple makes it difficult or impossible to offer this kind of app on their platform. Apple itself offers a "super app" of course, which is the Apple ecosystem of apps.
2. Cloud streaming apps
Similar to "super apps", the document alleges that Apple restricts apps which might stream different apps directly to the phone (like video games). It seems there are several roadblocks that Apple has added that make these kinds of apps difficult to release and promote - and of course, Apple offers their own gaming subscription service called Apple Arcade which might be threatened by such a service.
3. Messaging interoperability
Probably most people are familiar with this already, how messages between (for example) iOS and Android devices do not share the same feature-set.
4. Smartwatches
Other smart watches than the Apple Watch exist, but the document alleges that Apple restricts the functionality that these devices have access to so that they are less useful than the Apple Watch. Also, the Apple Watch itself does not offer compatibility with Android.
5. Digital wallets
It is claimed that Apple restricts the APIs available so that only Apple Pay can implement "tap to pay" on iOS. In addition to lock-in, note that Apple also collects fees from banks for using Apple Pay, so they get direct financial benefit in addition to the more nebulous benefit of enhancing the Apple platform.
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 money.
[1] I had a summer intern position in Field Engineering Services in 1978 and it was what all the FEs were talking about how it was going to "destroy" IBM's field service organization.
> 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 market allocation
* vertical agreements between firms at different levels of the supply chain such as resale price maintenance and exclusive dealing
* unilateral exclusionary conduct such as predatory pricing, refusal to deal with competitors, and limiting interoperability
* conditional sales practices such as tying and bundling
* monopoly leveraging where a firm uses its dominance in one market to gain an unfair advantage in another
Any of these behaviors undermines the conditions necessary for a competitive market. I'd be happy to have the list above expanded, contracted, or modified. Let me know.
And that is stuff Apple absolutely does. I have been at a company for which Apple was a customer. But you'd think that Apple owned the company the way they through around their power and demands.
It's like that everywhere unfortunately. You get a client with enough disparity in size and they are pretty much calling the shots. Can't even imagine that scaled up to Apple size.
It’s not though. My company partners with several other Apple sized and larger tech companies. Some are better than others, and we have running jokes about the ones that like to try to throw around their weight. Because, as you might expect, they are unpleasant to work with.
From experience, the size doesn’t matter as much as the delta in revenue, or size of that client’s project vs. typical projects. And on the flip side some of the clients that paid least were the hardest to get to sign off on projects, but at least those don’t actually think they’re entitled to harass your team.
very few companies sign an agreement with "Apple". You sell a good or service to a single person, small group or maybe a department. There are countless customers this size, the difference is do they treat you like they are the embodiment of "Apple"? We have lots of big, well-known clients and for the most part they do not.
I mean, Apple does have a procurement process. If you're selling at the large team / department level or up (i.e. not individuals within Apple), you're dealing with "Apple" at least for the sale through security and contract reviews, etc.
It should be based in size of contract, not size of company. If Apple wants to buy a stick of bubble gum from me, they go to the back of the line like everyone else. If my contract with Apple represents 80% of revenues for the year, yeah, they own me.
It's a trap! The notion that doing well on a small contract will net you bigger and bigger ones is a nice fantasy, but I've not seen it play out. I have seen it crush a lot of hopes and dreams, though.
The reality is (IMHO) running a small contract and running a big one requires different skills sets, procedures in place, etc. Doing well at one will not guarantee doing well at another, and I think they know it.
so true. got my ass handed to me chasing a large client and their promises of massive expansion with a bit of exclusivity. We got over exposed because I ignored some of the risks involved, and the large firm ultimately found a similar sized firm that could offer mostly the same product, with the benefit of also being a public company.
> Real GDP (purchasing power parity): GDP (purchasing power parity) compares the gross domestic product (GDP) or value of all final goods and services produced within a nation in a given year. A nation's GDP at purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates is the sum value of all goods and services produced in the country valued at prices prevailing in the United States.
Second, look at COGS for Apple: "Apple annual cost of goods sold for 2021 was $212.981B" according to https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/cost-go.... COGS is arguably "close enough" to a nation-state's GDP to make for a useful comparison.
Given the above two, if Apple were a country with a GDP matching its COGS, it would rank about 66th, using a mix of 2022/2021 numbers from the sources above:
1 China $24,861B
2 United States $21,132B
3 India $9,279B
4 Japan $5,126B
5 Germany $4,523B
6 Russia $4,027B
7 Indonesia $3,246B
8 United Kingdom $3,136B
9 Brazil $3,128B
10 France $3,048B
11 Turkey $2,817B
12 Italy $2,478B
13 Mexico $2,418B
14 South Korea $2,289B
15 Canada $1,832B
...
36 Switzerland $618B
37 Belgium $600B
38 Sweden $580B
39 Singapore $578B
40 Ireland $516B
...
63 Kenya $251B
64 New Zealand $220B
65 Burma $217B
66 Dominican Republic $207B
67 Angola $204B
68 Kuwait $192B
69 Ecuador $190B
70 Belarus $184B
...
150 Namibia $23.1B
151 Kosovo $21.2B
152 South Sudan $20.0B
153 Iceland $20.0B
154 Somalia $19.4B
...
220 Palau $248M
221 Falkland Islands $206M
222 Anguilla $175M
223 Montserrat $167M
224 Nauru $149M
225 Wallis and Futuna $60M
226 Tuvalu $55.2M
227 Saint Helena... $31.1M
228 Niue $18.7M
229 Tokelau $7.7M
But I wouldn't stop here. What happens if we compare Apple's COGS with the _technology spend_ of each of the nation-states above? If we estimate that 10% of GDP is technology-related, making it comparable to Apple, then Apple's ranking would be 15th on the list, right in front of Canada.
It boils down to the fact that iPhone is a pervasive computing device and similar to a "public good" should be regulated tightly.
For millions of people, it's their main/sole computing and internet access device so should be a neutral platform - with clear evidence as cited that Apple has not maintained its neutrality. As a neutral platform, customers should have the freedom to use their devices without undue interference or restrictions from Apple.
These are similar arguments made in the Microsoft vs. Netscape case. The lone example of being unable to install non-App Store apps is enough to justify the DOJ's case. Question is what would the verdict be? Similar to the EU's DMA rules would be a likely starting point.
> It boils down to the fact that iPhone is a pervasive computing device and similar to a "public good" should be regulated tightly.
Extremely authoritarian / communist take.
A $1000 luxury phone is not a "public good" just because many have FOMO and feel like they need one. There are many cheap alternative Androids that are just as good with virtually identical features. Nor is it a device that is absolutely necessary to function in society, like say other real public goods like running water or electricity.
Ha, my point is iPhone has become so ubiquitous that is has created a natural monopoly for Apple (50%+ US market share).
Like it or not, there are different rules for the biggest players who wield market power. If you want an iPhone, then Android is not an alternative option. DOJ's argument is that Apple has added artificial disincentives to enable switching to a non-iPhone and also favor its own apps/services.
This is verbatim the argument against Microsoft and how it was wielding its Windows monopoly to stifle competition like Netscape. Easy to forget that Microsoft had closed APIs for 3rd parties and dictated how OEMs installed its OS before the US government judgement. You could've made the same counterpoint at the time that there's theoretical alternative OSes like Linux and Unix.
What's authoritarian is Apple's lockdown of the iPhone. I should be able to run whatever application I want on my own device. Not the governement telling Apple, "Hey, people should be able to run what they want on their own device".
“Authoritarianism is a _political_ system characterized by the rejection of democracy and political plurality.” - Wikipedia
When a company _sells_ you a device (that you choose to buy or not), it is _not_ about political freedom.
There are countries that are actually authoritarian. Let’s not blur the lines between that and a corporation. I can appreciate the free software movement as well as the right to repair and so on, but let’s keep things in perspective here. There are governments that jail people for dissent.
If you want to run a non-default OS, don't install one. Blocking competitors for competition's sake is a regulatory tightrope walk, the exact same mentality that nearly annihilated Microsoft.
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).
From a hardware standpoint third party fitness trackers with full integration into iHealth and third party ear buds with the same (or better) features than airpods.
Part of the IBM settlement required them to document interoperability. That was used by the DoJ to force Microsoft to document their CIFS (distributed storage) and Active Directory (naming/policy) protocols.
The latter might be particularly instructive as my experience with CIFS when I worked at NetApp was the different ways that Microsoft worked to be "precisely" within the lines but to work against the intent. Documentation like "this bit of this word must always be '1'" Which as any engineer knows, if it really was always '1' then that bit didn't have to be in the protocol, so what did it do when it wasn't '1'?
> From a hardware standpoint third party fitness trackers with full integration into iHealth and third party ear buds with the same (or better) features than airpods.
As someone who makes apps in the health space, I couldn’t care less if other tracker data was integrated into HealthKit. HealthKit honestly sucks - it's some bastard of objc naming schemes and methods jammed into Swift. The async is horrible to debug, too. No one has a good time in HK.
The issue with other trackers is that they are more locked down than Apple. You can't just get HR from Oura for instance - and that's not a health kit issue either.
The reason you can't get heart rate data from Oura is that they don't want people looking at it except in aggregate, because then they would notice the accuracy problems and data gaps.
I had a similar experience with MSFT docs when working at Sun. The docs were not very good, and though they seemed somewhat redacted, it felt like in fact their internal docs probably weren't much better.
Many years ago I knew an ex-microsoft engineer. Microsoft had poor interoperability with something, and I speculated that engineers in microsoft didn't know what 3rd parties were doing and accidentally broke things.
He told me, "don't be naive - microsoft would have meetings saying 'how can we own this?'"
Not to cast doubt on your friend's story, I worked on both the SQL Server team and later on the Windows kernel team in the early 2000s (the bad years). I came from "outside" meaning I had already had a career at non-Microsoft-related companies (mostly startups using linux on the server). I was continually shocked at how _little_ the MSFT employees seemed to know about the industry, or how their customers used their own products.
As an example, this was the era of the J2EE App Server. Almost none of the people I worked with knew what an App Server was, despite the #1 database in use by App Server customers being MSFT SQL Server.
During the Ballmer era MSFT was famous for the lack of cooperation between and within teams. That's what you get when you use stack ranking to decide compensation.
I still don't know what an app server is. Isn't that one of those things from the enterprise programming era where they'd get "architects" to design an "enterprise system" and it would come with twenty different things with names like "message bus" and "dependency injection" that no program in history has ever actually needed?
In case you are honestly interested--although your hyperbole suggests otherwise--an app server then was what the docker daemon (or podman or other container launcher) would be now. The two most common in my career were JBoss and Tomcat. Since Java packaged applications into Jars which could be run anywhere (up to environmental assumptions made by developers), you could simply scale up by sending these jars to the app servers to run. Actually, the Alibaba group was quite annoyed in the JCP that western members had given up on these aspects of the Java platform and were moving to support containerization. Arguably, CGI servers for php/python etc. were also a type of app server, although I rarely heard them referred to as such. App servers standardize what it means to start an application which makes operating many applications much easier.
Message buses were generally in memory or in process streaming brokers. Most of these have moved externally today via Kafka, RabbitMQ or cloud proprietary versions like SQS. Some people may lean on ZeroMQ to build similar behaviors when doing multiprocessing and some people may even do it in process if they like the api. Definitely very much part of large scale application development today although the terms of art have changed.
Dependency injection is just a fancy name for polymorphism via fields in your struct, although if you have too much exposure to spring you will associate it with that plus an inversion of control on the actual injection part: that is, you will associate it with heavy use of annotations. If you have polymorphism with a switch (or chained ifs) on a parameter, you don't have dependency injection but if you have polymorphism by having different inplementations of a field of your struct then you are doing dependency injection. Very much part of good software design today, the annotation driven wiring possibly not so common outside of Java + Spring.
I think of dependency injection as a generalization of LD_PRELOAD, the point being that the "injection" is done via configuration that is external to the application's code.
That's a good take, I hadn't really thought of that one before and I had certainly used LD_PRELOAD or some incarnation thereof (forgive my memory is was more than a decade ago) to swap out different implementations of the same API.
> In case you are honestly interested--although your hyperbole suggests otherwise--an app server then was what the docker daemon (or podman or other container launcher) would be now.
Sure. I have worked on JVMs before, but not server side, and I never had to touch anything sold by IBM.
> Arguably, CGI servers for php/python etc. were also a type of app server, although I rarely heard them referred to as such.
No, I think there's a difference. The deployment story for PHP was that you copied it to the web server and that was that. The mandatory part was a webserver you had anyway. There is FastCGI, but in PHP's case it can be thought of as purely a cache and is not necessary.
> App servers standardize what it means to start an application which makes operating many applications much easier.
A PHP web app does have some moving parts like needing to start nginx/fastcgi/mysql, so in that sense it still needs a container.
But the difference between the PHP source itself and Java is that PHP is 1. stateless and 2. doesn't take nearly as long to start up.
The first one is the big one and means you don't need to restart anything to update the app. This part of PHP is so well designed it practically makes up for how bad the rest of it is.
The second one was more of a Java flaw; the runtime is undercooked (which is why it had all that other super complex stuff on top of it) and everything has to go on the heap, instead of having more of a concept of constant data that could just be mapped in from the binary/jar file. That's what they got for not adding value types I guess.
The C# documentation was, at least in its initial years, very good. It even had working examples that demonstrated functions. Compare that to typical javadoc of its time.
>Documentation like "this bit of this word must always be '1'" Which as any engineer knows, if it really was always '1' then that bit didn't have to be in the protocol, so what did it do when it wasn't '1'?
Maybe it was a deprecated part of the protocol, and setting it would cause an error or do nothing.
Or it could be a placeholder for future expansion and while it would do nothing now, in the future it might break things if you've ignored the documentation.
If you design a protocol without at least one field reserved for future expansion you are a bad engineer. Generally I would call this the protocol version number field, but there are other options. The important thing is there is some field that currently has a defined range, but can get an a larger range in the future and you check that field and abort if it is out of range.
I also recommend a second field called protocol ID which is set to a known random value (your wife's birthday) so that if someone gets an unknown message if they see that value they can guess what the protocol is.
I'm not a developer in this space myself, but my impression is that HealthKit is one area where 3rd party apps have access to the same data as 1st party apps.
Forget iMessage, I just want media messages from iPhone to not be sub-144p pictures/videos. I know sms is limited but I doubt that's a technical limitation.
And yea, Gamepass was an immediate thought of something a company wanted to ship but Apple blocked. Between that and the Epic Games store it looks like there's gonna be a lot more options to game on IOS by the turn of the decade.
yeah, but the one blocking its sun-setting is apple with their artificial barriers.
if apple didn't do it's shenanigans, RCS or something similar with a different name would've have replaced MMS by now.
if apple didn't do it's shenanigans, RCS or something similar with a
different name would've have replaced MMS by now.
The only reason there's any RCS interoperability right now is because most carriers have bought into the Google RCS stack. Before that you absolutely had to be aware of which carrier the recipient was using. If memory serves T-Mobile is running both a Google and non-Google RCS stack. RCS is and was a mess.
Hell, if you've a rooted Android you can't access Google RCS and any RCS messages sent your way will disappear into the ether.
There are no third party RCS apps outside of hardware manufacturer skins on Google Messages as Google has shut them all out.
If you want to interact with the RCS world as a non-wireless carrier, expect to pay upwards of 10 cents a message and have a minimum revenue commit of thousands of dollars a month. Carriers also don't get paid for inbound texts on RCS, creating a huge new cost center instead of symmetrical texting volume resulting in minimal costs like the current SMS/MMS ecosystem.
This is untrue, the US carriers had a "cross-carrier" consortium that had built most of its own RCS stack, complete with animating dots when the other party was typing, and good image and video support. But Samsung refused to use it (not sure if Google was bribing them in the background) so it got killed in favor of supporting Google's flavor of RCS.
> In October 2019, the four major U.S. carriers announced an agreement to form the Cross-Carrier Messaging Initiative to jointly implement RCS using a newly developed app. This service was to be compatible with the Universal Profile.[34] However, this carrier-made app never came to fruition. And later, both T-Mobile and AT&T signed deals with Google to adopt Google's Messages app.
Um no, if the powers that be who control the LTE and 5G (and soon 6G) standards would improve or replace MMS, apple would be forced to improve their ability to send images/videos because they must comply with the standards to have their phone allowed on the carrier networks.
This is a dumb complaint honestly. The carriers and Qualcomm closely control the standards bodies and could address this problem. Instead they focused on the bag-of-garbage that is RCS, which Apple has finally said they will support. But because RCS is a bag-of-garbage, Apple plans to support a different flavor (the basic standard) from Google's. $0.50 says Google will magically start supporting the basic standard too once Apple ships it.
That is a shockingly user hostile take, especially considering you call out the reason why so many people still use it: it is the only solution for most users that consistently works.
The main reason people still use it is despite the issues with MMS (and SMS in general) the reality is that every vendor wants to own the messaging stack to build or strengthen moat, and the regulators who are in a position to enforce standard protocols have incentives in many or all countries to weaken the security of messaging protocols to meet surveillance objectives (whether those objectives are well scrutinized methods with judicial oversight, or blanket surveillance requirements).
Blaming the user as lazy or incompetent completely overlooks the significant financial incentives that platform owners and network providers have to maintain the status quo, or force the new status quo to strengthen their moats.
Both your post and OP's are confident and emotionally forceful without any reasoning why. On one hand, in most of the world, especially countries less developed than the US, messaging apps are very popular and SMS is either not even provided in the plan or barely used. On the other I do think that at the very least phone manufacturers consider MMS/SMS to be a core functionality because it's built into most phones. As such it does feel user hostile to not care about MMS/SMS. I can see the merits of both but don't know why I'd believe one over the other.
I'm curious where y'all's confidence comes from in user hostility or not and what indicators you have to tip your hand one way or the other. That might result in more elucidating conversation too.
Sure, I consider calling users lazy and incompetent very hostile because I have spent nearly 22 years building, testing and securing systems starting with ecommerce apps in the early 2000s, through government, finance, browsers and supporting services (Mozilla), internet scale infrastructure at OpenDNS, Cisco, And Fastly, and now at Amazon.
All along the way people routinely attack users for making poor decisions when they are simply using defaults, or the easiest to use and most compatible technologies.
* Pffft... Of course they got hacked, they used IE
* Of course they got hacked, they opened an email attachment
* Of course they got hacked, they clicked that homoglyph
In this particular case, SMS and MMS are baked into the phone, and delivered by the wireless provider, and for better or worse on the UX front, work with just a phone number and across all mobile OS. For anything other than that, if users have peers using other device or services, the alternative is to use multiple services to communicate with different groups based on which services they use. That means repeating messages across multiple providers, and/or missing folks because all the platform services have actively silo'd their platforms to prevent interoperability.
Yeah, SMS and MMS suck, but they suck less for the simple use case of messaging folks with cell phones, because the barrier to messaging those folks is having their phone number.
It's lazy and incompetent to attack users when users actually have very little control over the actual security or usability of the services and systems they use, especially as everything is hosted in cloud platforms.
Most people couldnt care less with sub par video message security for most (not all) uses. The fact that every vendor want anything but a good standard stack for keeping their users captive is imo a more powerful incentive.
Please don't conflate messaging apps with texting, it's disingenuous. Texting is the feature users expect of any smartphone to be able to send a message to any other user who has a smartphone, regardless of what apps they have installed.
Android devices can reasonably send messages between each other, by default. The whole issue here is that Apple has been intentionally holding back the cross-platform messaging experience in order to make competitors seem less appealing.
As an iOS user myself, SMS is still a low quality messaging experience, cross platform or not. Apple could have taken RCS seriously years ago, raising the standard of cross platform messaging for everyone. This would result in an objectively better experience for users of all platforms, including iOS.
Contrary to you, I only have a subjective opinion on the matter. In the 12 years that I sometimes use SMS on iOS, I never missed anything. What is it that I am apparently not intelligent enough to miss?
In no way am I intending to insult your intelligence, and I apologize for any lack of clarity that could lead to such a misunderstanding.
Unlike modern messaging platforms, SMS has no:
- guaranteed delivery
- read receipts
- proper support for group chats (MMS adds this, but the implementation is poor compared to modern platforms)
- support for multimedia (again, MMS added this, but support is poor)
- support for replies
- support for reactions
- support for any kind of encryption
- support for typing indicators
- ability to work independently of an active cellular connection
If SMS works for your needs, and you have no issues with it, that’s great. Ultimately, SMS does work, but many users rightfully expect more of a messaging platform at this point. There are real benefits to users from upgrading to a more modern system.
And without wanting to insult your intelligence, none of the features you listed were something I really wanted or needed from SMS. Its just that, a short message service. Relying on encryption in a world where each and every country does an attack on E2EE every two years is unrealistic. Read notifications are just a "let me spy into your day" feature that I, no-control-freak, never ever needed. The rest also just reads like a corporate feature list, many nice to haves, but nothing, for me at least, essential.
I am fine with using SMS, and it has always served me well.
The difference between SMS and iMessage doesn't really count in this context, since usage is largely transparent. Its the same app, and the same contact list.
They have completely different privacy and reliability expectations: SMS is ephemeral, unreliable, unencrypted and short; whereas iMessage is semi-persistent, reliable, end-to-end encrypted and long.
The legacy phone system has a lot of features that aren't present in its replacement, such as freedom to connect with anyone who has a phone number, the ability to move your phone number from carrier to carrier, and the knowledge that as an individual the phone company can't block me from contacting its subscribers entirely for free as long as I pay a fee to my own phone company.
It's way better than being on Whatsapp or iMessage or Slack or Teams or whatever you're proposing to replace it because I have a lot of control over who can contact me and nobody is using my presence on the phone network as a means to drag all of my friends over to the same phone network.
The legacy phone system currently enables breathtaking amounts of abuse and fraud. I know all the benefits you're listing, and I would enthusiastically surrender them just to watch the legacy phone system be decommissioned.
If we invented the legacy phone system today, it would be illegal to operate because it's so insecure. We certainly wouldn't dream of forcing everyone to use it.
Any replacement would have the same fraudulent traffic migrate to it.
You can already see this type of fraudulent traffic occur on Telegram with the constant crypto bots and on Signal with the romance scams.
A PSTN sunset would force this fraudulent traffic to migrate to the over the top communications platforms, eliminate many people's ability to access emergency services reliably, destroy reliable voice quality on cellular networks as there's no consistent way to prioritize third party voice and video traffic.
> Any replacement would have the same fraudulent traffic migrate to it.
We've had SSL on the web for 30 years now. We don't visit our bank's web site and wonder if we're really talking to our bank, but we casually accept that of course someone calling from our bank's phone number could be a fraudster. There might be some fraud that is able to migrate, but it wouldn't be the smorgasbord for fraudsters that the legacy phone system has created.
> eliminate many people's ability to access emergency services reliably
This is like saying that we can't put out the dumpster fire because it provides some people with warmth. The 911 system (at least in the US) is already a travesty. Caller locations are a crapshoot for wireless calls. Call centers aren't centralized, standardized, or coordinated, and they're overloaded. The technology is outdated. Moving it off the phone network and onto a centralized digital platform would be a massive improvement.
Right now it's easy for me to buy a look-alike domain name for a bank, host a page on that domain that looks like a bank's login page, and pass through to the real bank to take over someone's account in an automated fashion. TLS doesn't prevent me from doing that.
What TLS does do is ensure that when I communicate with a third party on the internet, that communication can't be intercepted by any intervening switches or routers. TLS per se does not have any other properties. However, we've constructed a system of chains of trust using TLS certificates and trusted third parties. That system is not a technical system and TLS does not have the innate property of enabling you to trust or not to trust someone.
It's an important distinction because the PSTN and our system of TLS Certificate Authorities is a social solution to a social problem. And so suggesting that TLS somehow magically has a property that it prevents fraud is hard for me to follow, because fraud is also a social problem and you can't use technology to solve social problems. Technology can be used to lubricate, to bring people together, and to ensure that conventions are followed and that peoples' solutions can interoperate. But the real innovation in TLS from a fraud perspective is actually the network of companies, nonprofits, third parties, and government agencies who have collectively established root Certificate Authorities and who have ensured that those CAs control who you trust. None of that is specified in any RFC. It's entirely something we humans made up after someone created an enabling technology.
As for problems with PSTN, there are similar technical solutions, but largely PSTN fraud and spam are a social problem and require social interventions. This is why we have the FCC in the US, for example, because when the scope of an intervention becomes large enough it has to be administered by someone. When you say PSTN doesn't work because of fraud and spam, in my mind what you're saying is that the FCC does not do enough to prevent fraud and spam.
All you would need to replace this is a messaging app that uses email addresses as identifiers and then falls back to sending messages via email if the recipient doesn't have the app.
What organization runs the messaging app? Do we have some kind of consortium of companies? And how do we add or remove companies from that list? There are actually a lot of social problems around this that are already solved by the network of arrangements between the companies that run our phone system and the users of the phone system and so on. You'd likely end up recreating that and at the end of the day you'd have rebuilt the phone system. The technical problems are a very small part of this.
No organization runs the messaging app, it's a protocol that anyone can implement. Publish an RFC. The first time you contact someone who uses a different provider, their messaging app or service sends you an email asking you to confirm that you sent the message, after which your app is associated with your email address on their provider. A combined messaging+email app could handle this automatically. At that point you can make calls, video chats, group chats, E2E encrypted direct messaging etc., using an email address as an identifier.
In general, solve problems in the same way that email does but add protocol support for realtime direct communications and end-to-end encryption.
Somebody has to pay for the infrastructure. You can either have a very loose federation of a lot of individuals running their own infrastructure like in the early Internet on one end of the spectrum or a couple of big companies that essentially run everything like we have now with Google and Meta. But someone has to run it. If you rely on a single company to stand up everyone's instance of the application, then you're right back where we are right now. And how do you manage all of the configuration data for all of the users? There are a lot of practicalities here that I worry you don't appreciate when you say "It's a protocol that anyone can implement." Well, so is PSTN. It just so happens that you need a certain amount of infrastructure to implement it, which is true of everything, even email. I'm not convinced that a new protocol gets us anywhere because it doesn't solve the underlying very human tendency to want to pay someone to deal with all the unsightly stuff so you can get on with your life, which is incidentally also the problem we have with email vis a vis Google.
> You can either have a very loose federation of a lot of individuals running their own infrastructure like in the early Internet on one end of the spectrum or a couple of big companies that essentially run everything like we have now with Google and Meta.
Or you could have thousands of medium-sized companies that each operate nodes that interoperate with each other even though none of them is the size of Google or Meta, and users could choose one based on whether they want to see ads or pay a few bucks a year, or run their own if they're into that sort of thing.
> It just so happens that you need a certain amount of infrastructure to implement it, which is true of everything, even email.
The infrastructure you need for email is any functioning general purpose computer, including ones you can find in the trash, and a domain name, which you can also get for free if you really want to and in practice costs around $15/year to do it properly. Anyone with the inclination can do this and many solitary individuals actually do.
The infrastructure you would need for this thing would be even less, because the premise is that you already have an email address/provider, so all you'd really need is the ability to map a port so you can make a direct connection to the other endpoint -- or IPv6.
Whereas the infrastructure you need to participate in the PSTN... I think you're required to be a CLEC to even have a block of numbers assigned. If all you had to do was install Asterisk on the trash PC it would be something else entirely, but the telcos do a lot of regulatory gatekeeping, which is another reason the legacy phone network should be decommissioned and replaced by a modern IETF protocol.
My understanding is that used to be how most text messaging was done pre-smartphone in Japan.
Currently the only similar thing I'm aware of is https://delta.chat/en/, though I believe it does all of its networking over email, rather than only using it as a fallback.
I wonder what the pitfalls of using email this way are; it seems like a great way to get a free backend and growth-hack a chat app, so there must be some reason it's not more common.
It's the idealist's solution because it benefits the user. Companies typically want to use phone numbers because they're more expensive for users to maintain separate identities with, which helps when you want to track them. Moreover, companies want lock-in to their own network effect, not a federated network that anybody else can permissionlessly join.
It's the sort of thing you get when somebody builds it as a hobby project, or a skunkworks project escapes from a large corporation and is already open source by the time the MBAs get their hands on it. Or, in the old days, DARPA funding.
Except that the popular messaging apps don't have published standards and you can't interoperate with them even if you wanted to. How do you implement the iMessage protocol on Android or Windows?
Point me to the existing IETF RFC for e.g. mapping email addresses as identifiers for use in a standard communications protocol for voice and video calls.
This might be the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s literally legal in my country to spam me on my phone number and there is ZERO I can do to change that. Ergo I have fuck all control over who can contact me.
> freedom to connect with anyone who has a phone number
This is actually a bug, not a feature, as it enables all kind of robocalls and sms spam. That's why I love the iPhone feature that allows me to block all the calls from numbers not in my contact list. It does not allow this for SMS though...
It does allow it for SMS apparently, but the UI is easy to misunderstand. In the "Unknown & Spam" settings where you picked "Filter Unknown Senders" there is an option below it marked "SMS Filtering" and you need to set that to... "SMS Filter".
Even if it couldn't do this, that would just bolster the case that Apple is making SMS worse than it has to be on their platform to promote iMessage and its network effects.
EDIT: I booted up my iPhone 14 on the latest iOS and I guess this has changed? There isn't a "SMS Filtering" option near the Filter Unknown Senders option which has moved to the top level Messages settings page versus when the guide was written.
I'm not sure if that means it always filters SMS or it never does, but again if it doesn't filter SMS at all that's an Apple choice, it doesn't mean you can't do it on SMS.
But that didn't address GP's comment. Apple states that green bubbles are pariahs because messages can't be sent to androids so it breaks the system, or something like that [BS]
Iphone users think that green bubbles are pariahs because they aren't part of their exclusive group, and because green bubbles turn chat groups into rubbish, because yada yada not iphone. (spoiler alert, apple does it on purpose)
The file size limits on iOS for MMS are far below what most carriers permit, making photos and videos sent from iPhone look much worse when sent via MMS.
Doubt that. AT&T still limits attachments to 1 megabyte for picture, video, and audio files. That's not an iOS limitation. I just sent an animated GIF to a Google Voice number and it was compressed to about 800 kilobytes.
I suspect the people whining the most are communicating with folks that have "Low Quality Image Mode" enabled on their iPhone.
The other thing though is that even if attachment limit were not a thing, I don’t think it’s spec compliant to send a video codec other than 3GP or whatever the format is formally called (ironically it’s a QuickTime format dating back to when 3G was an exciting up and coming standard and the iPhone didn’t exist).
If you sent an h.264 for instance, many flip phones would be unable to play it. So I think the MMS standard itself is holding us back.
I still blame Apple. If they prioritized the experience of their own customers above the value of the blue bubble in getting teens to bully Android users they could have obviously been the ones pushing a good RCS implementation with carriers by threatening credibly to drop MMS support. Instead they left it to carriers and Google who each screwed things up pretty well.
Now try sending to an at&t iPhone. By your experience it seems that Apple is limiting iOS-iOS image size, to promote iMessage. That's inherently not a bad thing, and wouldn't matter if iMessage wasn't a platform gatekeeping/discrimination tool. I say discrimination because of the GenZ opinion on blue/green bubbles.
Why? Sending a message to a Google Voice number will always happen over SMS or MMS. iMessage does not work over GV. RCS does not work over GV. If you mean try receiving messages from an AT&T Android phone, sure, I've done that. No complaints, although AT&T seems to throttle the image size more than other carriers in my experience.
By your experience it seems that Apple is limiting iOS-iOS image size, to promote iMessage
What? If I were sending messages to an iOS device directly it would go out over iMessage. Instead I chose to send a message via MMS to a Google Voice number where Google serves as the end device. iMessage does not work over Google Voice. There. Is. No. 200. Kilobyte. Limit. There's no gatekeeping, just shitty carrier MMS implementations.
Are you sending that to another iPhone? Trt exchanging text messages between an Android phone and an iPhone. It's completely broken. Apple wants to force Android users into iPhones so that their tect messages stop sucking, as if it's and Android issue.
No, I'm sending them from an iPhone to Google Voice via MMS. iMessage does not work over Google Voice. All that an iPhone knows is that the Google Voice number is not an Apple device.
It's completely broken.
Yes. MMS implementations are terrible, just like carrier implementations of RCS.
Apple wants to force Android users into iPhones so that their tect messages stop sucking, as if it's and Android issue.
Repeat after me: Poor MMS implementations are not Apple limitations.
> No, I'm sending them from an iPhone to Google Voice via MMS. iMessage does not work over Google Voice. All that an iPhone knows is that the Google Voice number is not an Apple device.
> Repeat after me: Poor MMS implementations are not Apple limitations.
Except that some of my family cannot send me a text on my Android phone because iOS absolutely refuses to treat it as anything other than an iMessage. Their contact for me does not have my iMessage/iCloud email. My iMessage/iCloud account has had my phone number deregistered from it. However, their iPhones cannot send me a text. It always sends it as an iMessage, even on threads where I send a text from my Android phone. Any reply just goes straight back to iMessage.
There are plenty of instances where Apple just does not care about text messages and protocols and will refuse to treat them properly. It is absolutely anti-competitive. They have been taken to court over this, which is why there is even a website that allows you to deregister your number. You used to have to use your iPhone to do it, which isn't exactly convenient if you lose or steal it. If you switched to Android, there was no way to get a text message from an iOS device while your number was registered with iMessage.
Does the MMS protocol allow querying the receiving device capabilities? As far as I know it doesn't, and I don't know how else iOS would know the receiver is an android phone to be able to purposefully downgrade the experience just for them. Unless your theory here is that if a contact number is in your contacts list as ever being iMessage compatible that it will always use higher quality even when sending over MMS? That seems easily testable by sending to an iPhone over MMS, and then removing the contact from your address book and messages and sending again over MMS
Why would you think that discovery would have to be an SMS/MMS thing?
Since you’ve never used an iPhone, let me explain the experience. When you type in a random new number it starts off green. If the user uses iMessage, once you finish typing it magically turns blue. Apple doesn’t care about whether the other number is an Android phone per se, although if it’s not using iMessage then it’s almost certain that the number routes to an android phone.
Because the assertion was that the OP's experience with sending MMS media in excess of the supposed 200k limitation must have been because they were sending to an iPhone. In order for that to happen, the sending phone would have to know the receiving phone was an iPhone so that it could enable "send bigger pictures to iPhones over MMS" mode. They can't retroactively change the media size once they've sent the message, so either somehow Apple is determining the receiver capabilities over MMS before sending the message, or the 200k limit isn't real / is a carrier imposed limit.
No, I was sending it to a Google Voice number which means it goes out via MMS. Google no longer does SMS/MMS forwarding so I logged into the Google Voice site and downloaded the image that Google received via MMS. There is no 200 kilobyte limit.
I really love how folks are frothing at the mouth over things they don't understand.
They don't, nobody does. Android users exchanging high quality media are using RCS, iPhone users exchanging high quality media are using iMessage. Fanbois pinning the blame for this on Apple are missing the role of telcos entirely.
I still want to see Matrix get adopted for messaging by default. Purism actually did it with their Librem 5 (probably one of the few good things about that company, but that's a rant for another day).
That sounds like hell. If you think that carrier interop is bad now, wait till everyone is using a different matrix provider with different optional features turned on or off. At least today there are some barriers to SMS spam, matrix would open the floodgates while making blocking it exponentially worse.
MMS was much more common before data messaging apps like Discord or Facebook Messenger became some of the normalized places for cell phone chatter, which anecdotally I think that switch started happening (or at least I began recognizing that switch) around the early 2010's.
So I'm guessing you're a very young person based on how little MMS you claim to have received. Which is fine, it's fair to point out that technologies us old folk use may differ slightly from what the whippersnappers are doing. And there are no wrong answers there, except that it's also fair to point out that when you purchase a cell phone, before you install any apps, you have some ingrained cell phone messaging features. One of which is a messenger app built on top of SMS and MMS.
I've probably sent and received thousands of MMS messages over the years, because it was the primary method for a cell phone user to send a picture to your friends and family. Back in the day, at least, and still today for some. It was also the way that us old folk were able to send group texts at a time.
Must be a regional thing. Where I live in Europe, MMS were just too expensive to use regularly, roughly 5-10x more expensive than SMS, and they came roughly around the time when phones were slowly getting simple email clients and usable data (GPRS and sane pricing).
I’m around 30, I grew up with a dad who was a fan of modern phones and technologies (first camera phones, Windows smartphones, PDAs) so I always had fancy phones, and I’ve received < 20 MMS in my whole life.
That might be it then. I'm around your age from the US, and the cell phone plans I grew up with were not prohibitively expensive, even for my somewhat modest household.
I remember MMS being used here (Poland) as, essentially, faster postcards. Most people would only use it when on holiday to send pretty pictures to their family back home.
MMS has always been extremely rare here, and I am around ~30 years old, so I guess it depends, of course. Personally I have never received, nor have I known anyone who has either received or sent a single one that was not by accident.
Ah then I was very wrong, you are in fact a bit older than me :)
Thanks for teaching me a new thing about life outside of the US. Out here, cell data plans (which is the budget that sending/receiving MMS would eat into) were relatively affordable (even for my somewhat modest household) through the latter half of the 2000s and early 2010s. And now it's basically assumed that most people have "unlimited" data. So I guess MMS was a regional phenomena based on prices.
You didn't miss out on much, not that you probably thought you may have. MMS was a useful tool for sharing pictures digitally, but it was somewhat poor user experience waiting for it to reach the other person. Sometimes waiting for a reaction for an hour because the person on the receiving end wasn't near enough to a cell tower owned by their provider. Less of an issue with all the cell towers around now, but there are better mediums than MMS now.
Until 2010 I worked for Route Messaging (now they are called Telesign) on internal systems as well as integrations with mobile operators and other "messaging brokers" around the world.
MMS was indeed order of magnitude more expensive than SMS and several orders of magnitude less used.
Reasoning for such high prices was more about mobile internet/data back then being really expensive "1G" - and MMS was (still is I guess) using mobile data to send/receive "multimedia messages".
At this point I expect that cost of MMS is more about maintaining legacy systems/servers for that.
Although in something like 2008/2009 integrating through legacy SMS protocols (those previously used by beepers/pagers) was cheaper than through modern protocols. Some operators had hardware boxes supporting those that were already paid off long time ago.
The newer RCS standard would be better, but Apple has already announced they're going to support it this year (after dragging their heels for a few years).
No, it's not. It's an implementation detail. MMS is basically just SMTP on the back end. There's no technical reason you couldn't allow much larger attachments aside from cost and shitty implementations.
The last time folks got worked into a frenzy over RCS I ended up looking at the MMS specs. If memory serves 3GPP recommended an upper bound of at least 5 megabytes. American carriers typically limit attachments to like 3 megabytes or less and they mandate ancient video codecs.
This. And it actually doesn't even need to be done through SMTP.
MMS being basically SMS with a link/url to where the phone fetches multimedia part from - it could also be sent via older EMI-UCP (that was originally used for pagers).
At some point pre 2010 (when I worked in Routo Messaging - now called Telesign) we also got an SS7 connection - so we could finally start doing stuff like a real mobile operator/provider.
Do we really believe though that Apple doesn’t like it? I believe their top executives are glad it sucks because things like this make people (especially teens) bully anyone who’s not on iMessage, resulting in additional sales.
I think Apple has enough pull with carriers to tell them whatever configuration parameters for MMS they want.
Prove this, because I'm pretty certain this is not the case. I helped build a messaging app for iOS (Technically a TeleHeath app that needed to accept MMS/SMS also) and I saw absolutely none of this. That was a few years ago so it's possible it's changed but I'd have to see actual documentation for that. Otherwise I firmly believe this is BS and completely made up.
Media messages from Androids to iPhones are in fact technologically-limited by MMS. That's not an Apple-imposed limitation, it's written in stone in the MMS standard.
MMS limitations are only relevant because Apple makes them relevant. I have never sent or received an MMS outside of the iMessage interoperability context. This is obviously deliberate.
You can send whatever you want through SMS, as a link.
The GP comment is about sending media between iPhone and Android, and claims that that is limited by MMS. That’s obviously not true. And has nothing to do with SMS/MMS.
Please show me where that's written because iPhones have no problems sending full-resolution images to my droid device but I can't do the same to them.
Forcing Apple to allow third party payments without Apple's cut would improve market opportunities for many businesses. Facebook could have its marketplace conduct peer to peer transactions. Amazon could allow the purchase of digital goods (books, movies, etc.) and put it on more equal footing with Apple itself. While big businesses are best positioned to take advantage today, the effects directly trickle down to small startup businesses.
While I personally don't care for it, cryptocurrency use would have more potential. Apple blocked apps for NFT features in the past because they couldn't get their 30%.
Having third party marketplaces might make it so that there is some actual curation at the App Store.
> Forcing Apple to allow third party payments without Apple's cut would improve market opportunities for many businesses.
It would, but that is how Apple collects their commission. Where regulations where Apple has been forced to provide this separation (such as the US), they have split 3% to cover payment fees out of the commission, and put additional considerations for when leaving the app to make a payment would result in a commission and that Apple may audit that you are properly reporting commissions.
The DMA mandated that Apple decouple their commission structure from a single App Store in favor of multiple marketplaces, and they put in a 50 Eurocent core technology fee per user per year (after a margin of free installs).
> Amazon could allow the purchase of digital goods (books, movies, etc.) and put it on more equal footing with Apple itself.
Amazon does have digital purchasing of Video. Amazon added the ability to subscribe to a limited video version of Prime using in-app purchasing, and that kind of account will bill purchases using in-app purchasing.
They likely have razor thin margins for anyone who chooses to do this, but expect customers to either have existing Prime accounts or to want to upgrade from Video to the full Prime account for the other services. I suspect they did the math and think their margins on Kindle wouldn't support this.
The DMA did not mandate that they decouple their commission structure. That is Apple’s interpretation of the DMA which seems to change every few weeks so far. PWAs on home screens were disallowed and then allowed again. Apple looks like they do not have legal and execution discipline and is being caught flat footed. It is somewhat alarming that they have made so many mistakes (see Epic being revoked from their third party marketplace and then Apple being strong armed to re-allow because of a EU comment about investigation).
The idea that Apple is compliant with the DMA has yet to be tested. There are many direct statements by the enforcing commissioner and complaints from third parties that I think only a direct ruling will settle things.
I forgot about Prime Video purchases having a special back door deal for some of their purchases. I wasn’t referring to the subscription service but the purchase of digital books/movies. My point stands though. Digital goods could be sold and bought without special exceptions or loopholes from the 30% fee. That alone is a huge market opportunity.
> Amazon does have digital purchasing of Video. Amazon added the ability to subscribe to a limited video version of Prime using in-app purchasing, and that kind of account will bill purchases using in-app purchasing.
Amazon Prime was originally an add-on to regular Amazon accounts that provided expedited delivery as a flat rate subscription. Later, Amazon got into the streaming business and bundled access to films and shows into the Prime subscription. For a while it was kind of a useless perk since the available content was old or low quality.
Later, as Amazon acquired more popular content and then created an in-house production studio, they added the ability to rent or "purchase" (rent) streaming video content on a per-episode/season/film basis without requiring the full Prime subscription service.
This was designed to address Amazon customers who were primarily (pun intended) interested in the video content, not the physical goods.
I wonder if this will have a trickle down effect on other app stores, specifically gaming consoles. Would XBox Live or Playstation Store, for example, be on the hot seat if they rejected an application or "game" that was basically a storefront for streaming other games?
I don't think so, at least not as a consequence from this case if Apple loses. Antitrust cases are usually very limited in scope. Microsoft's loss required many actions (documenting Active Directory and other protocols/formats, browser choice screens, etc.), but no one else in tech were required to do so.
John Sircacusa (from ATP.fm) pointed out years ago that the heart of Apple's biggest issues is business relationship management. This was when Apple only had a handful of issues with a few companies and made some poorly received statements about developers. Their ability to build mutually agreeable relations has only gotten worse in recent years.
Sony and Microsoft have kept their relations with third parties tough but ultimately agreeable. They promote practically all of their third parties (unlike the App Store which has so many apps that its like winning the lottery to be promoted). Consoles have stores which are probably more curated but which third party publishers/developers actually like.
IMO, DoJ, EU, etc. are acting primarily because they have received so many complaints from Spotify, Microsoft, Epic Games, Google, Meta, Tile, etc. Governments don't take action for the "public" interest on its own.
My understanding is the reason they are dead in the US is even though the banks might let you build payments into it they will not let you negotiate any discount in fees so you will have to add your own fees on top of their own fees. It begs the question of why a bank or consortium of banks hasn’t developed a super app.
Exactly. Most people would rather use the best app for the niche thing they want to do rather than the shittier version from some mega-app they happen to have for some other reason.
A lot of people are used to WeChat, so it can feel natural to make another one. LINE is also basically WeChat.
I don't think that's enough to make them competitive though. For instance, a scandal in one feature of the app (or Facebook being considered lame by kids) will hurt the rest of it.
Facebook tried this with games and cash transfer within Messenger but it never really took off.
Personally, I don’t think Western (or at least American) consumers are all that interested in a super app. Asia has a ton of players in this space like WeChat, QQ, Line and Kaokao but those have never taken off in the West outside of diaspora communities.
Tim Hortons had gift and loyalty cards ("every 7th coffee free"). Then they introduced an app with "rewards" as an alternative to loyalty and gift cards. Then the app turned into a bank. Then they stopped the physical loyalty cards. Now you can't "earn" free coffee without giving them your personal information and signing up for the bank of Tim Hortons. It's ok though. I stopped being a customer because of it.
Facebook’s attempt didn’t work out because they lost the youth market to Snapchat, TikTok, Discord and Instagram(It’s funny, I know). They tried to bring in Instagram users into Facebook but that didn’t(hasn’t) work out yet.
I mean even the old people barely play Facebook games or use Messenger money transfer. Western consumers just tend to trust product specialists rather than an all in one app.
Why don't twitter. com just do the super apps w/ e-commerce thing? It's financial regulations, not App Store regulations, isn't that the case?
What are challenges for implementing such "payment" system on iOS that can transfer, say Monopoly money vs real USD? Aren't those almost entirely legal or compliance matters for very good reasons? The Alaskan 737 MAX 9 landed largely intact thanks to still-working parts of regulations and we all value that.
> Why don't twitter. com just do the super apps w/ e-commerce
X, the company formerly known as twitter, fairly explicitly plans to, they are just taking time to pivot, in part because they don’t seem to have any real clear roadmap from where they are to where they want to be.
What you call "fairly explicitly plans to" I call "supposedly is working on, according to statements by its owner, who has a history of vaporware announcements".
It is possible to export iMessage threads by purchasing an Apple computer and enabling "iCloud for Messages", at which point the messages will be synced to the computer and stored locally in an SQLite database then exported using open source tools... unless you sent too many messages or attachments, at which point you also have to purchase an additional iCloud subscription based on how much storage you need.
Hopefully you can accomplish all this within the return window of the computer (or purchase a used one). The iCloud subscription fees are non-refundable. You can also just give up, keep the computer, and embrace the Apple ecosystem.
> It is possible to export iMessage threads by purchasing an Apple computer and enabling "iCloud for Messages"
And hoping Apple's broken client actually downloads full history or by forcing it to download by scrolling up through years of chat by hand.
And hoping Apple doesn't interpret a read lock on the db as malicious activity and temporary ousting you from iMessage and causing every message you send on unrelated hardware to drop to SMS until you login / logout from every device you "own".
nothing you’ve cited has any factual basis in reality other than that you have convinced yourself that it’s a possibility. it’s purely a mirror of your own personal preconceptions and fears, none of which have a supportable factual basis.
gotta love when someone is so deep into fanboyism that they go through life utterly paralyzed and victimized by the apple that only exists inside their head.
literally, unsarcastically, why do you do this to yourself? it’s a fearsome depth of parasocial attachment in a way that’s incredibly unhealthy and warping. Why do you choose to get this bent out of shape about what phone other peolle buy? it doesn’t matter.
I'm someone who has primarily used OS X, iOS, and Linux for pretty much the entirety of my life. The story about getting data out of iMessage comes from 100% personal experience. This isn't fanboyism — Apple's hostility toward people like me is palpable and factual.
Interacting with Apple's products as a software developer who cares about open source, data portability, etc. is getting harder and harder to justify. The same goes for Google.
What drew me to Apple initially was that they had an actually-existing polished POSIX-compliant desktop environment that was far more open than anything Windows had (or has, to this day).
What you're seeing here are the lamentations of early adopters witnessing all those great features, and the philosophy behind them, slowly going away.
This is one thing that no-one else seems to mention (not even Spotify).
When Apple Music launched it was around the time that 3rd party apps were allowed to hook into Siri - so you could say "Hey Siri, tell MyToDoApp to remind me to do X in six hours" and MyToDoApp would add the reminder.
But it was only allowed for certain categories of app (strangely enough, categories where Apple didn't have a paid service). It wasn't permitted for music apps until a few years later, by which time Apple Music was established.
Similarly - when I connect my iPhone to my car over Bluetooth or wired connection[1] - with Spotify I get the normal play/pause/skip controls. But I can't see the upcoming play-queue, nor browse my playlists through the car's interface. If I listen through Apple Music, I can see not only my queue, playlists, albums and artists but also podcasts from the totally separate Apple Podcasts app.
Of course, the car interface is shite, but why can Apple's app do this and the third party not? Is it just that Spotify didn't bother implementing the relevant APIs or because those APIs were not available?
As a long-time Apple fan, my distrust of them is so great at the moment, I suspect the latter.
[1] The inbuilt head-unit doesn't do CarPlay, but I have a standalone wireless CarPlay screen. I like to connect the phone through Bluetooth (or wired) so the display unit shows my apps but I can adjust the volume and skip tracks using the steering wheel controls.
> It wasn't permitted for music apps until a few years later, by which time Apple Music was established.
My understanding - Siri is at its heart a command and control system. It was able to do Music (and iTunes before) because it knew The Who and The Rolling Stones from the hosted music catalog, even if those weren’t downloaded locally.
Apple needed to provide the localized commands, but also still needed the nouns to go with the verbs.
> Is it just that Spotify didn't bother implementing the relevant APIs or because those APIs were not available?
The former. There are plenty of other CarPlay media apps. They are all limited (first and third party) in that CarPlay is basically like a low bandwidth VNC display.
I meant the Bluetooth API so the head unit can see playlists and so on. the Spotify CarPlay interface is OK, but if I'm just on bluetooth, the head unit can't see my Spotify playlists, but it can see Apple Music's.
> This feels like it reflects similar actions taken against companies that are dominant in a market.
Maybe they should be. Our societies are ostensibly consumer-centric. It's about time our laws and organisations strongly sided with consumers against any opposition, especially against business.
As a small business owner, I'm actually keen on the benefits to other businesses that antitrust enforcement and pro-competition enforcement can have.
As a really specific example in the case of Apple, I really hope the DMA causes wider availability of browser choice on iOS so that we as a business that ships a web app can offer our customers features like notifications and other PWA benefits. Our customers are somewhat willing to switch browsers to get the best experience when using our app. But switching to Android? Not a reasonable ask from us.
Most consumers also have jobs right? Making their lives better and easier at work, increasing competition to give their employers more opportunity to thrive, is just as important as making their groceries cheaper.
The flip side of this as a consumer is that I'm happy that mandating safari on iOS means I can be relatively sure any given site is going to work in Safari. I'm glad I don't live in the days where I needed 3 separate browsers on my computer (Safari, Firefox and IE) to ensure that I can use websites when I need to. In "ye olde days", even if you were using Safari for most of your browsing because it gave the best battery life on MacOS, you'd run into some sites that wouldn't work with it. You'd try Firefox maybe next, hoping that it was just some site that didn't have any developers who knew what a mac was. But even then, you'd run into sites where, no the problem was the developers just assumed everyone used IE and used a bunch of IE specific stuff.
I can't remember the last time I saw a "this site only works in XYZ" message. Some of that is a lot of modern sites are all built on big frameworks, but some of that is also because only supporting Safari, or only supporting Chrome or only supporting IE is going to lose you huge swaths of customers.
What if I don't want to switch browsers for the "best experience" when using your app? What if I want you to make your app the best experience on my browser of choice?
As always these things are tradeoffs and balances.
> What if I don't want to switch browsers for the "best experience" when using your app? What if I want you to make your app the best experience on my browser of choice?
What if I cannot do that due to there being no incentive for Apple to support web standards in Safari?
We don't want our users to have to switch browsers, but that leaves us with no ability to use lots of the features that make modern web apps competitive at all with native apps.
Like I said, it's all tradeoffs. It's worth noting though that software companies definition of "best experience" and the consumer definition of "best experience" aren't always in sync, and plenty of Apple's restrictions align more with the consumers version of things. The most obvious example is mandating apps ask for tracking permissions, or location permission or access to photos and calendars. I'm sure Facebook and Google and plenty of other vendors would argue the "best experience" is a seamless one where the user doesn't need to be bothered with such minutia. And yet, I for one am quite glad they can't deliver their "best experience" to me.
True. On my iPhone, I just did an extremely complicated checkout flow involving registration on multiple websites as well as a credit check, and it worked like a charm.
Several years ago I wouldn't have even bothered trying to do that on my phone. There is some benefit to Safari being so ubiquitous.
Because then there would only be one option? How did you go from "hey the fact that Apple has enough clout these days and control over iOS to ensure that the web doesn't suck as bad for alt browser users like it did in the IE days is a good thing" to "it would be awesome if the federal government outlawed all other browsers"
Nothing in the DMA does anything about Chrome taking over completely. Actually the DMA is more or less a dream come true for Google, Amazon and Meta, it drastically strengthens their market hold at the cost of making the Apple ecosystem more diluted.
It will be a sad day in the near future when the web becomes “Chrome”, even on mobile, much as it was “IE” not that long ago, alas, we seem to never learn.
I am aware but that does nothing to prevent total dominance of Chrome as the primary browser on all platforms moving forward. The EU is not calling for a random subset of the population to forcibly run Firefox.
With the power of Google they will corner the market incredibly fast, and it will all be “user choice”.
Google has already given Chrome an unfair advantage by leveraging their other services. I suspect the browser market is an unstable system where absent outside intervention Chrome’s 65% market share naturally becomes 100%.
Chrome is such a complicated piece of software that the “forks” are highly dependent on Google and when Google unilaterally makes decisions they have to follow suit. Brendan Eich explains that Brave will continue to support Manifest V2 as long as Google doesn’t remove the underlying code paths: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1534893414579249152
I think a lot of people don’t appreciate how delicate the balance of web standards is right now. We have it so good (three high-quality implementations of an open spec) and I’m not willing to throw that away just to run Chrome on my iPhone.
Maybe, but I doubt it, and who will prosecute them? I doubt EU will keep good track of their entire portfolio and their push for dominance, I could be wrong of course.
Isn’t chromium still bloated with tracking? Last time I read about it, it was far from a “clean Chrome” at least, now if it was truly open sourced and not mainly controlled by Google I would be much more hopeful.
As someone who’s heavily invested in web I don’t see it being a competition with apps at all, different sports altogether, but sure, supporting notifications are nice, allowing websites to scan networks and Bluetooth, not so much.
I don't think Chromium based browsers such as Brave, Vivaldi or Edge have to send data to Google.
Chromium development is highly dependent on Google of course. Google could theoretically do to Chromium what they have done to AOSP, i.e make sure it's not longer a viable platform for competitors. But I think that's exactly what the DMA could prevent.
>As someone who’s heavily invested in web I don’t see it being a competition with apps at all
I think it's an empirical fact that they do compete. Almost all the installed apps I use could be web apps if it wasn't for arbitrary restrictions.
>but sure, supporting notifications are nice, allowing websites to scan networks and Bluetooth, not so much.
How about not randomly deleting or arbitrarily restricting local data?
The biggest threat to the open web is Chrome’s dominance. Firefox is dwindling away and even Mozilla doesn’t seem to care about it, leaving Safari the only thing stopping Chrome from completely taking over. Google are already executing the Embrace & Extend playbook with non-standard functionality.
Everybody who says “Safari is the new IE” seems to be too young to know what IE and front-end web development were really like during the 00s. I’d take WebKit on iOS over a Blink monoculture any day, and so should any web developer.
No argument from me, I disregard anyone who says “Safari is the new IE” as someone who doesn’t know better but claim to do, or someone who is just trolling. I had to work with both IE on Mac and IE6 on Windows, Safari is not even remotely close to the isolated non-conforming nightmare it was back then.
It’s also a bit terrifying how many seem to think Chrome gets it right all the time, even when they blatantly ignore standards or leave implementations with bugs for what feels like forever. But they get away with it since they’re so big, just like Microsoft did with IE.
I don’t know what the solution would be, not like you can mandate the existence of a web browser engine into existence and making one gets harder for every new thing added.
A lot of small business is more similar to consumers than to large corporations. It's really no wonder that some pro-consumer regulations might benefit small business.
Agitation for consumer rights might actually be an easier way to get benefits to small business.
Because when you try to lobby for small business it becomes lobbying for all business and in the end it's the big business that benefits because somewhere in the process they outlobbied every other interested party and the end form of legislation or action benefits them the most.
Like the right to repair. If it was focused on helping small business it would have been defanged way easier.
Economies are producer-centric when you have international competition.
An example being Intel, which is currently getting billions in government subsidies via the CHIPS Act, because their business fell behind because it was impeded by the government suing them for antitrust issues.
Political action that benefits the business is the default mode. It's the easiest because businesses have easiest way to accumulate enough captital to bribe the politicians. Business is naturally concentrated while consumers are naturally dispersed.
While the business in US was content to sit on their throne and milk the consumers, US consumers uplifted the entire country of China. Consumers are way more economically powerful than the business. Seeing economy through business and workers lens is as misguided as it is traditional.
> It's the easiest because businesses have easiest way to accumulate enough captital to bribe the politicians.
This is the easiest way to tell someone is wrong about politics. This doesn't happen, but everyone who doesn't know how anything works thinks it does. You just can't handle the truth that other voters actually believe different things than you.
> While the business in US was content to sit on their throne and milk the consumers, US consumers uplifted the entire country of China.
The alternative is that either supporting largest business is completely accidental or that it's done for the good of the voters.
Both alternatives are completely rudiculous. You can be sure that money is flowing. You can see some of the money flowing in the form of lobbying and cosy retirements if government officials in corporate boards. You can be sure there's more. US is incredibly overtly and covertly corrupt at every level.
> Think you forgot every other country exists here.
All other countries that are running trade deficit for decades without much issue?
Yes, historically the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) and the Clayton Act (1914) define the roll of "regulated capitalism" rather than simply "free market capitalism". There has been a continuous battle between people who wanted to get infinitely wealthy by exploiting their dominance and the Government ever since.
I've had some great conversations with folks about why this form of "American Capitalism" is the most efficient economic engine with regard to an industrial economy. As a system, this, and a graduated taxation that provides a damping function on "infinite wealth" and feeds it into government services has the potential to create an economy where everyone has a chance to get rich, and everyone's basic needs are met. That combination maximizes participation in the economy and thus GDP.
The macroeconomics class I took spent several weeks on this relationship and the "Great Courses" economics class also talks about it.
The challenge is that rich men (typically its men) don't like being told they can't do something, or told they have to do something which will reduce their total wealth, and they respond by corrupting legislators into changing the rules.
It isn't "good" or "bad" per se, some people always eat all the cookies if they think they can get away with it. As a systems analyst though the system is an excellent study in 'tuning.' In theory, as a government maximizing GDP is a goal because the more GDP the more gets done the happier people are, etc etc. Technology strongly affected the rate of change of wealth, people who were middle class at a startup suddenly being in the top 10% in terms of wealth over the course of a few years, rather than a life time of work and savings. Others leveraging their wealth in technology startups having it rocket them into the 1%.[1] Something that the US system of laws does not do well is respond to changes "quickly" (my lawyer friends tell me that is a design feature not a bug). But as we saw with Microsoft's antitrust case they do respond eventually.
[1] Back in the dot com days there was an article in Wired about the "Billionaire Boys Club" which talked about members of the several VC firms whose net worth had ballooned to over a billion dollars.
I think if the system could limit the ability of rich guys to corrupt legislators, then regulation would just work. I think "Citizen's United VS FEC" kind of broke regulation in that sense. It probable had a positive effect on the economy for some years, but imo it broke American politics. We've even started to see regulators like the EPA and SEC lose high profile court cases.
I'm no lawyer and I think this looks like a great case, but I'm not too confident.
Ironic that Jobs started by fighting the big, fat, corporate IBM, and now they turned the company he founded, Apple, into a big, fat, corporation with despicable practices...
Interesting, I've had 2 Garmin Smart Watches and never felt like Apple was restricting them.
I am curious what things the iPhone does that others aren't allowed to do.
Most of the differences between Garmin and Apple Watch seem like they were conscious decisions where they each decided to take a different direction.
It's one of those weird things where it seems like the case has a bunch of holes. You can use an iPhone with some but not all non-Apple Smart watches. You can use a non-Apple phone with non-Apple smartwatches. There are other non-Apple smart watches that those manufacturers have decided can't be used with an iPhone, no different than Apple. Lots of choices in the market, I certainly don't feel restricted.
I am not sure how requiring something like WeChat to break into multiple apps would be a big issue. Apple even breaks it's own apps up into different apps.
The Pebble was very obviously hampered by iOS limitations. In order to offload any code to the phone, you either had to write the code in Javascript (so it was basically a web app) or direct the user to manually download a separate companion app from the App Store. If iOS killed the companion app because it hadn't been opened on the iPhone recently (because, y'know, you were using it on your watch and not your phone), you had to manually relaunch the app on your phone.
This is all before even getting into things like ecosystem integration.
The Pebble was released in 2013. The two way communication SDK with Pebble was released in May of 2013. In February of 2015, the 2.0 Pebble SDK was released with further integrations.
The first iWatch was announced in September 2014 and released in April of 2015.
The Pebble was discontinued in 2016.
What integrations are you expecting Apple to have released prior to its own release? What functionality did iOS lack that android provided that hampered Pebble's development on iOS?
"The first iWatch was announced in September 2014 and released in April of 2015."
Just a side note: apple has in past started limiting other companies products as soon as they decide to create a competitor and sometimes years before it hits the market.
IIRC Spotify has been bitten by this at least once, which resulted in a lawsuit.
What limitations did Apple place in 2013 (or 2014 or 2015) that reduced the functionality of Pebble in light of a forthcoming iWatch?
If it was a "it worked and then Apple took away this API that we were going to use" that would be one thing. If it was "the iPhone didn't have the functionality for other devices to read messages over BlueTooth until 2015 with iOS 8" - that's a different claim.
I don't know about Pebble, but Tile got restricted really hard once Apple decided to make the Apple Tag. There's many rants/statements from the Tile CEO on this subject.
> > If you look at the history between Tile and Apple, we had a very symbiotic relationship. They sold Tile in their stores, we were highlighted at WWDC 2019, and then they launched Find My in 2019, and right when they launched their Find My app, which is effectively a competitor of Tile, they made a number of changes to their OS that made it very difficult for our customers to enable Tile. And then once they got it enabled, they started showing notifications that basically made it seem like Tile was broken.
> Prober is talking about changes that Apple made to location services permissions. For privacy purposes, Apple stopped making it easy for apps to get permanent access to a user's location. Apps in iOS 13 were not initially allowed to present an "Always Allow" option when requesting location access, and the feature had to be enabled in the Settings app. Apple also started sending regular reminders to customers letting them know their location was being used.
> Tile was not happy with these privacy changes and that privacy tweak set Tile against Apple, with Tile in 2019 calling on Congress to "level the playing field."
> > The main points of differentiation of AirTags vis a vis Tile are enabled by platform capabilities that we don't have access to.
> Apple has, in fact, launched the Find My network that gives third-party accessories some of the same access that AirTags have, and Find My network accessories will be able to access the U1 chip in the iPhone 11 and 12 models much like the AirTags, but Tile won't be able to use the Find My network unless it abandons its own app and infrastructure, which it is likely unwilling to do.
> Prober said that Tile has been "seeking to access" the U1 chip since its introduction in the iPhone , and has been denied.
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Should Apple have a "grant once for app, always allow location service?" (note: this would allow an innocuous app to turn into a tracker with a later update). Or should Apple have a "this app has accessed your location {N} times in the last 24 hours?" ... or some other functionality?
Is "grant once, always allow" a security risk for users?
> Should Apple have a "grant once for app, always allow location service?" (note: this would allow an innocuous app to turn into a tracker with a later update)
Users should be allowed to grant grant “always” permission, for that app version. The next time it gets updated, they get hit with the prompt again.
In fact I’d like that to happen for all permissions, so I regularly review them, and I know when an app update has occurred.
At a minimum if there were no changes in permissions wanted a notification saying X app updated and is using the same permissions, click here to see how many times each permissions was used (with the more privacy related ones at the top of the list) would be nice.
Then you don't run the risk of normalizing people always just clicking allow on the prompt that happens all the time (hello windows 7 UAC), which still giving them easy diacoverability and hints of poor behavior with existing permissions.
Apps can change their functionality without an official update as long as they can access the internet, and if they're enabling secret trackers they have no reason not to do this.
The example given there is the Weather app and widget which I've gotten notifications for myself.
You will also note:
> Navigation apps like Google Maps, Waze, Apple Maps, and so forth work best when they can pinpoint your exact location with precision. But a weather app, on the other hand, works just fine even if it’s only allowed to determine the city where you live or just an approximate region.
Maps, Messages, HomeKit, Clock, Siri, Weather, Wallet - they're all in there. System services too (and you can disable the system service's access to location data - e.g. Apple Pay Merchant Identification, Compass Calibration, Setting Time Zone).
For things that like to access the location in the background (Weather especially does this) you may get "Weather" has been using your location in the background. An example of this can be seen at https://www.lifewire.com/turn-on-mobile-location-services-41...
Its not just "I am using the location data always" but also "this has been accessing your location in the background" which is the type of thing that Tile does.
Apple tends to not have apps that access location information in the background and so this sort of message is not one that people tend to see. Weather is the one that does for weather alerts.
Apple Maps doesn't access location in the background so one wouldn't ever see the a message from it.
"Find my".app (for lack of a better designator) doesn't use the location information in the background. Weather.app does use location services in the background. Weather (like all user space apps) can also be restricted to only getting the approximate location rather than exact location.
Find my system is part of the operating system itself - not an application running in user space. It can be disabled in the "Share My Location" settings in Location services in settings and in System Services "Find My iPhone" because that part of is not a user space app running but rather part of the kernel.
What functionality that Apple has are you suggesting be extended to Tile?
Access to the U1 chip? They can do that.
Show up in Find My? Let's get some standards for secure and authenticated transmission of item location to other parties.
Have Apple's phones automatically detect 3rd party BTLE products and report their whereabouts to a 3rd party? This is a privacy nightmare. Side note - why Apple's phones? How about a patch to Android too?
> Apple stopped making it easy for apps to get permanent access to a user's location.
> The main points of differentiation of AirTags vis a vis Tile are enabled by platform capabilities that we don't have access to.
Apple makes it easy for their product (AirTags) to have always on location permissions. Apple makes it hard for their competitor (Tile) to have always on location permissions.
Apple is using their ecosystem to advantage their AirTag business instead of competing on the same playing field as Tile.
You are asking to have Apple pick up random BLE messages and send them to various 3rd party vendors with corresponding location information?
Does Tile have a secure way of receiving those messages that does not compromise the security and anonymity (exposing the identity of either the device or the receiver, or the location of either) of the person whose device picked up the message so that this can be implemented in Android core and Apple?
Pre launch of AirTags, users could opt in to always on location permissions for the Tile app. Post launch of AirTags, Apple makes it hard for Tile users to have always on location permissions.
> You are asking to have Apple pick up random BLE messages and send them to various 3rd party vendors with corresponding location information?
I'm not asking for anything. This is just one of many examples of the form: Apple offers API for 3rd party accessory, accessory is successful, Apple launches 1st party accessory, Apple restricts 3rd party accessory API.
Is this behavior illegal? The Department of Justice says it is. The courts will decide.
there are many examples on this, IOS makes warning messages for other developer apps, but none for their own apps. I received warnings that google maps has used my background location, or than google photos or synology photos have access to my photos, but not a message on the same access from apple maps or apple photos.
> IOS makes warning messages for other developer apps, but none for their own apps.
This is not true. Apple's own apps, like the Weather widget, will display location permission "nag" screens occasionally just like third-party apps do.
> ... but not a message on the same access from apple maps or apple photos.
Apple Maps doesn't use your location in the background. It only uses your location while the app is open, or while you're actively navigating using it.
Apple Photos is your photos. It'd be weird to warn the user that it "has access" to itself.
Well to begin with, it is my understanding that the specific limitations listed still exist. Can Bluetooth devices remotely start apps now, or keep them in the background? I only used Pebble as an example because I owned a Pebble, I'm not familiar with Garmen's watches.
But seperately, I think it's really bad for innovation if no new product categories can exist unless Apple makes them first! You can imagine a different type of company that would have been delighted to work with Pebble and add functionality to their operating system, because third party compatibility strengthens their core product.
And of course, if this were the Mac, Pebble would not have needed Apple's cooperation...
Bluetooth devices can start apps in the background. I have two that do this, Beddit and <redacted because they famously don't let you mention you have one>.
With non-Apple Watches, you can't 1) reply to texts, 2) answer phone calls (or place calls), 3) interact with other native iPhone applications (like Apple Health).
You'll pry my Garmin from my cold, dead hands but there's no mistaking it for an actual "smart"-watch. I value it entirely for health & fitness, and the very few "smart" things it can do are just nice-to-have icing on the cake.
You can! I use my garmin a lot to switch songs on my iPhone, change volume, etc.
But like the other commenter said, you can’t reply to notifications or calls when the watch is paired to an iPhone, but you could when paired to an Android, which is a feature I definitely miss from when I had a Pixel.
My guess is around notifications and handoff to iPhone apps.
I tried Garmin watches, and they're certainly better as "exercise tracking devices" than anything Apple offers, but they weren't tightly enough integrated with my iPhone to make it "worth it" to me to wear them all the time.
An Apple Watch Ultra - on the other hand - is a poorer exercise tracking device, but gives me enough "integrated with my iPhone" benefit to become the first watch I've worn consistently in 30+ years.
I assumed this was the result of design and development choices by Garmin, but it'll be interesting to see if their are meaningful ways that Apple restricts smartwatch developers from including similar levels of integration.
Longest-running example is Apple Maps displaying mapping on the lockscreen and having special bespoke turn-by-turn notifications, using a private API to which no other navigation app has access to.
The other big one is Apple muscling itself into the music streaming market by converting Music.app into Apple Music. In a fair world, Apple would have been required to show a pop-up that offered Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer etc. in a random order. You can’t unmake an omelette, so I feel Apple should be forced to pay billions to these competing services as recompense.
> Longest-running example is Apple Maps displaying mapping on the lockscreen and having special bespoke turn-by-turn notifications, using a private API to which no other navigation app has access to.
This is a huge one! I love this feature, but really would like to see it shared with Google and Waze.
People know how to use the App Store. If they want Spotify they know how to find it. It is by no means unfair, immoral, or unethical for a company to prefer and promote their own products.
On a personal note, I never in my life want to see advertisements for third-party software by default.
> On a personal note, I never in my life want to see advertisements for third-party software by default.
You might want to avoid buying any new Apple products then, or your iPhone settings screen will regularly show you adverts for free trials for Apple News, Apple TV, Apple fitness, Apple Arcade.
Better still, unlike every other free trial in this ecosystem, these terminate the moment you cancel the trial, rather than at the end of the trial period.
> It is by no means unfair, immoral, or unethical for a company to prefer and promote their own products.
Unfairness is at the heart of so many antitrust lawsuits (whether successful or not). Anyone old enough to recall Microsoft in the 1990s would say that many people (not at MSFT) were pointing out how unfair bundling Internet Explorer was. You may disagree but it was one of the reasons MSFT got sued.
>On a personal note, I never in my life want to see advertisements for third-party software by default.
Maybe I misunderstood your point, but could you clarify a bit what you mean? If I open App Store on my iPhone, it is full of third-party software advertisements by default and I don't even know if they can be turned off.
After downloading the software that I know I need I rarely ever open the App Store. I really only do for updates every once in a while. I don't mind them in the App Store because that is an appropriate place for them. Seeing them as apart of the normal platform UI (Microsoft Start menu, looking at you) is distasteful. I go out of my way to avoid advertisements both on and off the internet and my QOL has improved greatly as a result.
RIP lala.com, my first and favorite music streaming service - bought out by apple and summarily closed with previous users encouraged to migrate to Apple Music. I think I got a $15 credit or something. As if I needed a reason to further resent Apple.
Apple made iTunes (which already supported Apple Music) into a dedicated Music app, and offloaded some of the other stuff iTunes could do into separate apps and the Finder.
I’m mostly talking about iOS. Mac market share isn’t too huge, but iPhone market share in the US (where Apple Music exploded in user count immediately after) is.
Ordinarily I hate market interventions like this, but with iOS+Android being a duopoly, we don’t have a free market so special rules start to apply.
Yes but that doesn't distract from the airtags issue, because airtags are supported by the OS itself, not a specific app. Good on Apple for applying the same rules to it's apps, but not so good on Apple for not giving Tile a way to work in the same manner as airtags.
> > The main points of differentiation of AirTags vis a vis Tile are enabled by platform capabilities that we don't have access to.
> Apple has, in fact, launched the Find My network that gives third-party accessories some of the same access that AirTags have, and Find My network accessories will be able to access the U1 chip in the iPhone 11 and 12 models much like the AirTags, but Tile won't be able to use the Find My network unless it abandons its own app and infrastructure, which it is likely unwilling to do.
> Prober said that Tile has been "seeking to access" the U1 chip since its introduction in the iPhone , and has been denied.
Using the U1 chip for precise location finding in the local area doesn't appear to require using the Find My network for items. That API has been opened up to all 3rd party developers - probably not initially (the "we can't get access to the U1 chip" was from May 4th, 2019. It was opened up to 3rd party developers with iOS 16 ( https://www.macrumors.com/2022/07/20/ios-16-expands-u1-enabl... ).
For "find my" integration this would suggest two things.
First, that Find My should also query some 3rd party services for location of items - that I should be able to register a 3rd party with a standard API (akin to IMAP for email) that has location tracking info. That's reasonable - I look forward to a standard (and secure) API that doesn't leak my own location data when querying it.
Secondly, if it was "I want tiles to seamlessly be found by Apple devices just like AirTags are - the entire Apple network can find them" this gets into a question of how much cryptography and security would Apple need to open up to have 3rd party BLE devices ping to other services outside of their control that may leak the location information of people walking past them. Why should {arbitrary phone creator} need to ping a 3rd party whenever someone comes within range of the BLE device? That is, if Android devices aren't required to ping Apple's Find My network when in range of an AirTag, why should Apple be required to ping Tile's servers when in range of a Tile?
> how much cryptography and security would Apple need to open up to have 3rd party BLE devices ping to other services outside of their control that may leak the location information of people walking past them.
None, simply proxy it through Apple's existing servers and do not include any information about the device that found the tracker. If you are worried about rogue devices telling iPhone to ping rogue services, then just add a service whitelist to the scheme: Apple trusts Google's service and Tile's service, Google trusts Apple's service and Tile's service, but <random URL> isn't going to get pinged.
Now just make a process by which you prove legitimacy in order to get added to the list and require platform approval.
> Why should {arbitrary phone creator} need to ping a 3rd party whenever someone comes within range of the BLE device?
Because if every phone could ping the network associated with every tracker, then the strength of the network is all participating devices, not just OEM's brand. Apple gets the benefit of having a better Find My network outside the US where Android dominates, and Android gets the benefit of a better Find My network inside the US where iPhone dominates.
> That is, if Android devices aren't required to ping Apple's Find My network when in range of an AirTag, why should Apple be required to ping Tile's servers when in range of a Tile?
Required is a strong word, but Android should ping Apple's network when it sees an airtag, and I bet Google would take that deal if it were available.
All this is sidelong to the point though, that Tile cannot build an app that iPhone users can use that can tie into the beacon functionality the iPhone is already doing in order to enable Tile users with iPhones (that is, those iPhone users with the Tile app installed) have as reliable and friction-free an experience as iPhone users have with airtags.
> None, simply proxy it through Apple's existing servers and do not include any information about the device that found the tracker. If you are worried about rogue devices telling iPhone to ping rogue services, then just add a service whitelist to the scheme: Apple trusts Google's service and Tile's service, Google trusts Apple's service and Tile's service, but <random URL> isn't going to get pinged.
Doing a "ping this other service" leaks information about the device that has been found. It also opens up Apple to knowing about who found the device or where it was found from information sent across the network. This is an important thing in security of the AirTag (and the rest of the Find My network) - the person detecting the BLE message has zero knowledge about it (other than its existence), Apple has zero knowledge about the person finding it or the device - only the Apple account that is associated with, and the person who owns the Apple account only has knowledge about where and what device - not who found it.
To not compromise the security of the Find My network, other vendors
> In addition to making sure that location information and other data are fully encrypted, participants’ identities remain private from each other and from Apple. The traffic sent to Apple by finder devices contains no authentication information in the contents or headers. As a result, Apple doesn’t know who the finder is or whose device has been found. Furthermore, Apple doesn’t log information that would reveal the identity of the finder and retains no information that would allow anyone to correlate the finder and owner. The device owner receives only the encrypted location information that’s decrypted and displayed in the Find My app with no indication as to who found the device.
This would be an opportunity for Tile to work at trying to establish a standard like was done with UWB ( https://www.nxp.com/applications/enabling-technologies/conne... ) so that multiple vendors could use the technology and chips for interoperability.
> Tile is preparing to introduce a new product this year that will serve as a rival to Apple’s long-awaited AirTags and other lost-item trackers coming to the market, including those from Samsung, TechCrunch has learned. While previous Tile trackers have leveraged Bluetooth to help users locate lost items — like a misplaced set of keys, for example — Tile’s new product will take advantage of UWB (ultra-wideband) technology to find the missing items. It will also use augmented reality to help guide users to the lost item’s location via the Tile mobile app.
> ...
> Apple last year began to give third-party developers access to its U1 chip, which uses UWB technology to make the iPhone spatially aware, via its “NearbyInteraction” framework. Some Android devices also ship with the technology. It’s unclear to what extent Tile is using the new frameworks with its forthcoming product, and the company is likely under NDA with regard to its work with Apple specifically, per earlier reports.
> ...
> Meanwhile, according to a new research note from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will reveal its own Tile competitor, AirTags this year. Apple has already all but confirmed AirTag’s existence, as it even accidentally published references to its lost-item tracker in an official support video at one point. Leaked images of the AirTags also began to circulate this week, adding fuel to these reports of a “soon-ish” AirTags launch.
> A UWB-powered tracker could help allow Tile to maintain its position in the market. Tile, as of last year, had sold 26 million Tile devices, and was locating around six million items per day across 195 countries. Tile’s website now says its devices reach over 230 countries and territories. With this scale, Tile today leads the market. But Apple’s AirTags could have a first-party advantage with deep integrations into its “Find My” app — a concern that was brought up by Tile in last year’s antitrust hearings in reference to how Apple wields its platform and market power to overrun competitive businesses.
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I would like to see an integration similar to how mail and homekit work for the Find My : Devices. Enter in the server and account info and be able to get the location of a device registered to that service. Note that that has all sorts of privacy issues if not properly designed.
However, such integration would also eliminate the moat that tile perceives that it has for its product and the differentiation for it.
I would bet most people already know using an Apple product and agreeing to the Find My and other terms in intial setup means Apple is always tracking you. So a pop up from Apple saying that Apple is tracking you makes no sense, it is already known, and accepted by the device user.
Someone other than Apple tracking you, however, is notable, and so people (at least I) would always want to know if someone other than Apple is tracking me via software operating on the device.
I would bet most people buying tracking devices know those tracking devices are tracking location.
The point is Apple as a platform provider made something (location without warning) on the platform available to themselves as a platform user (Airtags), that they didn't make available to other platform users who are their competitors (Tile).
But, some Apple apps do in fact tell you that. This actually does make sense, too. When you collect information for one specific reason, it doesn't mean the user has granted you consent to use it for other purposes carte blanche.
One might retort "Fine, but then granting that permission once is enough." Apparently, that is only true sometimes, and only for Apple.
>Why? Because a user allowed them to track them when using one app, it doesn't mean should extend automatically that to every app they ever develop.
The whole point of the notification is to notify you when an entity is tracking you. If you already know Apple is tracking you, then it does not make a difference if Apple's App A or App B or App C is tracking you, it is all Apple.
I must be missing something because that's simply not true in Android. I can individually grant/revoke tracking permissions for each app. I assumed the same would be true for iPhone.
For me it makes no sense to make it only about the entity. It's like saying "the US government is tracking you", instead of saying "the US government is tracking you through this app right now"
I'm pretty sure you're asked whether or not you want to enable Location Services when going through Setup Assistant during the initial device provisioning.
Not the parent, but just a few things I’d guess would be Apple Watch specific:
- I’ve had employers that require a confirmation step from an app as a form of 2FA. If my phone isn’t awake, the notification comes to my watch and I can approve my login from my wrist
- If some action requires typing on my watch, I get a prompt on my iPhone to do the typing there instead of on the tiny watch keyboard. The characters I type via the phone appear in real time on the watch as if I were typing directly
- Dismissing and snoozing notifications syncs so I don’t have to dismiss and snooze notifications on multiple devices
- Similarly, if I set an alarm on my phone, the alarm will ring on my phone and, if I’m wearing it, vibrate my watch without further setup. Again, actions I perform to that alarm can all be performed on the watch or phone.
I’d guess these are all tiny, tiny quality of life features, but I’d be very surprised if other non-Apple watches have the ability to implement them.
Not the original poster but for me it means not having to look at my phone for many tasks. I can see who texted or messaged me and the message without opening my phone. I can take or ignore a call. Basically anything that hits your message alerts can be displayed on the watch in most cases.
Maybe the Apple Watch is not the best fitness tracker watch but it’s plenty good for me and it’s health integration is pretty good especially with the ultra.
When setting up my Windows machine I was given the opportunity to pair it with my iPhone via Phone Link. In doing so, my Windows machine was able to get all of the notifications that I saw on the Lock Screen of my iPhone, and call history (make and receive calls too).
It’s a poor subset of the functionality available to the Apple Watch. One obvious example is that you can reply to a message on an Apple Watch, not so over the API Windows uses.
> Read and reply to messages with ease, make and receive calls, and manage your device’s notifications right on your PC (1) (2)
> 1 Messaging feature is limited by iOS. Image/video sharing and group messaging is not supported. Messages are session based and will only come through when phone is connected to PC.
> 2 Phone Link for iOS requires iPhone with iOS 14 or higher, Windows 11 device, Bluetooth connection and the latest version of the Phone Link app. Not available for iPad (iPadOS) or MacOS. Device compatibility may vary. Regional restrictions may apply. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
When a phone call comes in, or I get a notification (text, calendar, app notification etc) - my Apple Watch does a really good job of (quite often) giving me enough info from my wrist that I don't need to pull my phone out of my pocket.
Garmin watches have some of this integration (IIRC you can definitely get texts, I don't remember what else) - but certainly not all of it. I haven't tried smartwatches from other manufacturers.
Yeah but that’s a separate paid service tied to specific hardware, not so much an iPhone feature as an Apple TV and Watch feature. Garmin can integrate into HealthKit as well as any other fitness tracker.
So IIRC, you need the Apple TV to actually participate in the Fitness+ workouts, this is used to display them and as far as I know this hasn’t changed, but if it has, someone else can chime in and correct me.
The Apple Watch itself has WiFi and optionally LTE. It does like to boost off an iPhone’s Bluetooth and let the iPhone do the heavy lifting, but it isn’t required to connect to the Internet and honestly works better when it does (at the cost of battery life). So yeah, more or less, but you still need the Watch paired to an iPhone (because it is an iPhone accessory at its core), and the data is going to be logged to the Health app, and the relevant data (heart rate, workout time, whatever else gets logged for the workout) can be made available to an ecosystem of independent hardware and services. The weight my scale logs for example gets tracked by the vendor service, the Health app, and my food tracker via the Health app.
Either way, Fitness+ is a premium service, not a feature of the iPhone. That it requires specific hardware doesn’t make it particularly special in this regard either.
Most Garmin users wouldn't ever be using Apple Fitness+ to workout.
Totally different markets. The lack of sensor compatibility and lack of battery life make the Apple Watch a non-starter for a lot of the really serious fitness/sports use cases.
> Interesting, I've had 2 Garmin Smart Watches and never felt like Apple was restricting them.
>
The two main differences are notifications filtering (choosing which apps can send notifications to the watch) and actioning notifications from the watch.
In the Garmin Connect iOS app, you can choose to display notifications for any combination of Calls, Texts (i.e. Messages app), or Apps (i.e. every other app). With Pebble and Fossil, are you for example saying you can choose to display Instagram notifications but hide Snapchat? Garmin seems to indicate that their limitation of iOS, as the Android Garmin Connect app allows the user to choose individual apps to display on the watch.
Yes, that is absolutely possible. I did that on my Pebble 5 years ago, on a Fossil 3 years ago, and on various other devices (Amazfit GTR4?) when I was testing out devices a year ago.
IIRC, when the Fossil hybrid smartwatches first launched, this capability was not enabled, and they got a lot of feedback on it. By the time I tried one a few months later, the capability was live.
It looks like on Garmin you can only roughly affect which apps send notifications through via the "notification center" designation. If you otherwise don't care about the notification center (I don't), then it's a decent way to filter. But if you otherwise would care about what's in your notification center, then it's not great.
I wonder if Garmin thought they were helping people by mirroring the notification center preferences? If so, they should have let people choose between "use my notification center preferences" and "I'll choose my own apps".
I don’t have a Fossil smartwatch, but the way they’re describing the notification filtering is you have to get a notification first to be able to filter that app’s notifications. That’s markedly different than how it’s done for Apple Watch, which allows mirroring the iPhone’s notification settings or changing them on just the watch.
It’s pretty obvious what Apple’s argument would be for why third party smartwatches can’t access the notification settings of all apps - security. It’s totally feasible for them have iOS manage those notification settings and send the desired notifications to the smartwatch. They just don’t because… why would they? It makes the Apple Watch enticing. I love my Forerunner enough that this only slightly annoys me.
Both the notification center workaround Garmin created and the “wait for a notification from the app before you can start filtering them” workaround suck. Apple should be providing the APIs to implement the same notification options on a third party smartwatch.
The Garmin solution is not great. I didn't mind the Pebble/Fossil solution. Basically, if an app sends notifications a lot, you can pretty quickly set the setting for it. And if an app rarely sends notifications (like the United app, if you travel rarely) then it will show up by default the first time and you can change the preference if you want. I didn't really mind this process, and in some ways it's better than having to scroll through every app that could conceivably send a notification. I wore my Pebble for almost 5 years — until the battery was down to 1 day — and this was never something that I minded or even thought about. I would slap my Pebble back on if the battery were fixed, for sure!
If you clear a notification on your watch does it clear it from the phone? It's a tiny thing, but it's really nice to have.
Similarly, if the notification has a "Reply" option (say a Slack message), can you reply on your watch? Very useful when I get a work message when I'm walking the dog.
I don’t think clearing a notification on the watch affects the phone, but that’s not actually bad for me. Since I can’t reply from a Pebble anyway, having the notifications still on my Lock Screen is helpful so I can immediately reply from the phone.
As I mentioned in another comment, the inability to reply from third party watches is a bummer.
I've also had two Garmin watches and I've always been on Android. I also have had Tiles since long before Airtags existed.
Both Garmin and Tile work flawlessly on my Android devices. I've tried to help my wife add them to her iPhone and it's just not worked right, it's a fight to keep things connected and the Tile app only works when it's open and you can't reply to messages from the Garmin and on and on.
I appreciate the efforts to protect privacy and battery life, I can certainly imagine a different Bluetooth device than the Garmin with a worse app that would use the permissions granted it for nefarious purposes, or a worse tracker than the Tile that would wear down battery life with poorly-coded constant background activity, but Apple are clearly also acting in their own selfish interests.
Yeah, there are some inconsistencies with Apple products interop-ing with non-Apple stuff.
I've noticed this with wireless bluetooth headphone pairing. Sometimes it works, othertimes there are odd limitations and devices unpair randomly.
Also Samsung's Adaptive Fast Charging sends lower wattage through the cable if it detects a non-Samsung device. So Apple is not the only offender here.
I’ve got an iPhone and an Apple Watch. Wife has an iPhone and a Garmin.
The Garmin sadly misses out on notification filtering, focus modes, replies, solid Bluetooth (it drops out from time to time and the app needs reopening).
I've had friends that have trouble syncing their Garmin devices with syncing to their iPhone. I've wondered if this is caused by their wireless communication protocol that is proprietary and only available on other apple devices.
Airpods and other bluetooth Apple devices seamlessly sync with iPhones because of a wireless protocol they use that is only available on Apple devices. I forget what it's called, but this definitely limits connectivity of devices that aren't made by Apple.
I used to be able to approve my duo notifications from my Garmin when I had an Android phone, but that functionality isn't available when using an iPhone. I found out recently that you can still do that from an apple watch on an iPhone, when my wife got one. So there is at least one area of functionality that Apple is likely restricting.
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.
I want iOS to be like macOS in that there's one "blessed" store, but I can sell, distribute, and install apps outside of it without giving Apple a cut.
macOS has proven for decades that a reasonably proprietary OS can be distributed and kept reasonably secure when apps are installed on it outside of an App Store. There's even third-party App Stores on macOS like Steam, Homebrew, and a few more that Indie developers use to distribute apps.
> , but I can sell, distribute, and install apps outside of it without giving Apple a cut.
I want this personally for me. But I paid extra money to get my mom an iPhone exactly because she won't be able to stuff like this.
I used to regularly have to fix her android phone and the last time she was trying to download an app for tracking hours at work, and somehow downloaded the wrong app with a similar name, this app loaded with 3 different pop ups telling her to install other ad filled apps with generic names like "PDF reader".
OP is right, it should be an explicit jailbreaking process that has a technical barrier to entry where my mom can't be talked into doing it over the phone but an enterprising young person could figure it out.
Apple has a setting in macOS that disables installing apps outside of the App Store. This would be a completely reasonable setting for iOS for less tech savvy people.
They'll lock it down like an iPhone soon enough. The writing has been on the wall for years. Apple and Microsoft are frothing at the mouth to do this. But they have to do slowly boil the frog, because they know it's the only way people will accept these kind of changes.
People have been saying this for more than a decade, but it still hasn’t happened; there are still zero restrictions about what you can and can’t install on macOS.
There are plenty of junk apps in the App Store now. Apple does a good job marketing trustworthiness, but having competing app stores may at least get them to put more effort into backing it up.
As a heavy Linux user for most things I feel the same.
I love that I have all non tech savvy people in my life are using. Devices that just work, they all seem happy too. I get the idealistic nature of these lawsuits but people buy these phones for the fact they work and for the protected App Store. Including myself.
I used to regard myself highly as somewhat of an expert in tech, with my relatives and friends as a reference. I would spend days (cumulatively, weeks) customizing and locking down my Windows and Linux machines. I could not imagine paying for a closed product if an open alternative was available, even if it meant more ongoing hassle.
At first I got into Apple’s ecosystem because it ticked the boxes of being Unix-compatible yet very capable (perhaps rivaling Windows) of working with multimedia, which I did and do.
However, the older I get and the more I lurk here and elsewhere, the more I realize there is another reason: I am not an expert, the aforementioned weeks spent on securing my device are not substantially benefitting my life and are better spent on something else, and while no one should completely give up on keeping up-to-date with modern attack vectors paying someone to do that work more competently is worthwhile.
I still go to crazy lengths to avoid closed products in actual work I do, but I consider a base system that is maybe proprietary but just works, and securely enough, to be providing value in that way and enabling me to provide more value in turn.
And I still consider myself more knowledgeable than 95% of my friends and relatives, so there’s them to think about.
Are you suggesting your Mom has/would have the same experience on macOS? For whatever reason it doesn't seem to be as much of an issue.
It probably doesn't need to be as cumbersome as a jailbreak. Maybe it's just a "Allow apps not approved by Apple" toggle hidden deep in the settings. I actually would love the ability to set "IT administrator account" on device setup. Then mom can't even change the setting without notifying "dmix" :)
Now, everyone bow to dmix'es preferences about his mom.
If you want to child-lock you mom's phone, you should have the ability to do so. Default for adults getting any sort of hardware should be that they are in charge, and any nanny should be opt-in.
Imagine a car manufacturer (say Tesla, who has an edge over others much like Apple) could decide where you can go and who your passengers could be?
It's much safer! Just think what could happen to you in some ghetto! And that guy is completely creepy anyway.
That's pretty much what your argument sounds like to me. Hardware vendors (perhaps other than hardware preconfigured for a particular purpose, i.e. picture frame) should have no say in what runs on that hardware, full stop.
> Imagine a car manufacturer (say Tesla, who has an edge over others much like Apple) could decide where you can go and who your passengers could be?
I assume it is legally possibly to sell a car under those conditions, so I don’t even have to imagine. Nobody does it because it would be unpopular and serve no benefit to anyone, not because it’s illegal.
If the first manufacturer to offer decent cars did that and captured the market, it's quite possible that many would put up with it, just as they put up with iphones today.
Oh, and pay a 30% tax on all petrol purchases straight to Mr Ford, how's that?
It’s awful twisted that the people trying to use government fiat to reduce consumer choice and narrow the range of acceptable business models try to cloak themselves in the language of rights and freedoms.
Just not the freedom to choose a walled garden (with its own set of - yes - positives). That choice needs to be taken away. For your freedom.
Should this be judged against Apple, nothing prevents Apple from maintaining their walled garden, and nothing prevents you from staying in it. It's more freedom, not less.
If nothing would prevent Apple from doing what they're doing today, then what is this case all about? Apple's value proposition with iOS isn't just the app store. It's that the app store IS the only way to get something on to iOS. It has to go through them and their review process first. Their value claim is that if you can install it on an iPhone, then you can be assured that it goes through some review process that Apple controls and has been checked against some set of restrictions Apple has, and complies with various things Apple demands. Whether that value is sufficient for any individual consumer is up to them, but very clearly they can't make that same claim if they're required by law to allow apps to come from outside sources and bypass those restrictions.
"If you check the box 'only allow Apple store' on first startup and never uncheck it, you get only apps reviewed by Apple and giving up 30% of revenue".
Remind me again why "buy any other phone in the world" isn't sufficient for everyone else if this check box is supposed to be sufficient for current iPhone customers? If the only viable smart phone in the world was Apple's, there might be a point to all of this. But the market is almost exactly split right in half and there is nothing at all that you can't do in an Android phone that you would suddenly be able to do if only Apple allowed side loading on the iPhone. So why does Apple and their customer base have to give up things they seemingly want for the minority of people who want to install apks from websites?
> So why does Apple and their customer base have to give up things they seemingly want
Wrong, they are not giving anything up. They gain an option and lose nothing. Gaining a new opt-in feature is not a loss and is in fact the opposite. Nobody has to "give up" anything.
You appear to have decidedly ignored the key of the comment you replied to:
> Remind me again why "buy any other phone in the world" isn't sufficient for everyone else if this check box is supposed to be sufficient for current iPhone customers?
Also - whilst you're correct in spirit - people are giving up an element of safety. The concept of being able to install anything I want on my iPhone is appealing to me, but not to when I support the technology my 90 year old grandmother uses. Having a locked down device is appealing to me and a complete non-issue to her.
We (in my country, I assume yours has similar rules) don't allow children to buy alcohol, cigarettes, knives or spraypaint, don't allow people to drive without seatbelts, don't allow guns without a license, don't allow cars to be sold without minimal safety ratings etc. These restrictions are annoying for a few but are a positive for most of society.
And unlike most of the above examples, you can easily and legally purchase another smart phone without the guard rails in place. This is for sure a loss for the consumer market as a whole.
Your grandma being scammed is not dependent on being able to install software. The vast majority of phone scams are reliant on browser-based phishing pages, convincing the victim to send a bank transfer, or getting a gift card code from the victim. If you believe it is an issue regardless then safeguards can be implemented such as child safety features or simply allowing you to opt-out (or even not opt-in) when you're setting up your grandma's iPhone for her or whatever.
Yes, you can buy a different phone, but Apple still has a serious hold on the market that affects its competitors, especially when it acts in a way that is anti-competitive. If Apple locking down their store in a way that is extremely user-hostile makes them a billion dollars and they walk away unpunished, how long will its competitors refrain from doing the same for? Apple is large enough that they affect me personally even if I do not use their products.
> Your grandma being scammed is not dependent on being able to install software.
Agreed. But just because there are multiple potential vectors doesn't mean we should ignore them.
> If you believe it is an issue regardless then safeguards can be implemented such as child safety features or simply allowing you to opt-out (or even not opt-in) when you're setting up your grandma's iPhone for her or whatever.
You can MDM lock an iPhone (and I assume Android), but only from initial setup. This also requires a technical skillset and a backend or paid subscription. I agree opt-in safeguards are more appropriate. However until those are a simple option, taking away the alternative is not great.
> If Apple locking down their store in a way that is extremely user-hostile makes them a billion dollars and they walk away unpunished, how long will its competitors refrain from doing the same for?
> Apple is large enough that they affect me personally even if I do not use their products.
How? I genuinely don't understand this rationale, it always seems so vague.
If a vendor acts in a way you don't like, you purchase from elsewhere. If an Android vendor decided to follow suit, another would choose not to and you could stick with them.
If bizarrely they all chose to, ColourOS, Graphine etc are all options, significantly easier than in the past.
Even Linux phones and KaiOS are potentially viable alternative to fill the needs of the average user.
How does Apple having a walled garden have any impact on you at all, aside from a theoretical house of cards that consumers wouldn't tolerate?
Your mom would have to go out of her way to find and install a separate app store. You could make it give all sorts of warnings that would scare off a non-tech user like your mom.
Agreed. I primarily work as a sysadmin and the amount of people in my organization that fall for phishing is alarming. It’d be incredibly easy to get someone to turn on the “Allow third party apps” setting and install malicious software. People don’t read warnings, they’ll just click “ok” as many times as they need without reading.
That being said I don’t think that’s necessarily a valid reason to completely lock things down, but it definitely should be prohibitively difficult for a vulnerable-to-phishing person to enable.
I urge you to ask anyone who provides technical support to the elderly or tech inept what the split is iOS to Android RE scams,
malware etc. Nobody's arguing the app store is perfect, but "the exact same problems" is absolutely an incorrect statement.
To me, for the problem to be "exactly" the same, it would need to occur at a similar level. I do not believe (based on my personal or professional experience) that this is occuring at a similar level on iOS or Android.
You're right the same specific style of problem happens at both, but if it's significantly more on one than the other then it's hard to honestly say they're the same.
This seems reasonable and I like the idea of unlocking the capabilities the hardware already has. What makes iPhone different from Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch?
This is mostly as simple as striking out DMCA 1201. The device maker need not bless the activity so long as they do not have a cudgel with which to threaten users from modifying their own devices they bought.
I agree we should force platforms to be more.open and interoperable, but we can get at least part way there by not allowing them to sue innovators.
> macOS has proven for decades that a reasonably proprietary OS can be distributed and kept reasonably secure when apps are installed on it outside of an App Store.
That’s not really true. Despite the dangers of centralized app censorship, the state of security on iOS is far beyond that of macOS.
The thing is, Zoom was not being malicious, and weren’t any exploits hypothetical? That server was a good idea, because it allowed launching Zoom calls without the constant warning popups that Apple injected into the process of launching of a custom URI scheme, which was what it used before and after that era. With the local server it was one click to join. Calling it “a web server” was a scare tactic to get people to think Zoom was serving a site to the public, or hosting your public files.
No, I don’t want Apple to set the precedent that they will delete your whole business if you make an architecture choice they feel is not perfect.
This would be lovely. As far as I know, right now its entirely possible for an app developer to show clean, trustworthy code on github. And then ship an app bundle on the app store which contains malware.
I'd love it if Apple provided a way to protect against this sort of thing.
I am very pro-users-owning-their-computers, which makes me highly critical of Apple's behavior. However, these sorts of lawsuits or regulations that seek to force Apple to change App Store policies feel so wrong-headed and out of touch. The problem with Apple is not that they take a 30% cut of app sales in their store, or that they don't allow alternative browser engines or wallets apps or superapps or whatever in their store. It's their store and they ought to be able to curate it however they like. The problem is that users cannot reasonably install software through any means other than that single store. The problem is that Apple reserves special permissions and system integrations for their own apps and denies them to anyone else. That is not an acceptable way for a computer to work.
> Luckily, you have a choice. Other companies make handheld computers that align better with your definition of ownership.
The issue is that your choice is constrained by vertical integration. If you like Apple's hardware, or iOS, or iMessage, or any number of other things, these are all tied together with Apple's app store when they should not be. It's like encountering a retail monopoly in California and someone tells you that you're lucky because you can shop at another store and all you have to do is move to Florida, which also has a retail monopoly, but a different one.
Obviously this is not the same thing, and does not have the same benefits, as multiple stores being right next to each other and allowing you to choose the one you want on a per-purchase basis.
The opposing view, in this retail metaphor, is that they like living in a state with this retail monopoly, because the store will not sell them or anyone else... say, bacon. And they find bacon distasteful and like being able to live in a community where nobody eats it. If the retail monopoly were broken, then their neighbors would be able to purchase bacon, and some would have cookouts and they would have to smell it. Perhaps their favorite snack would discontinue its regional bacon-free variant and sell its normal variant in another store now that it is able to. Don't you know that bacon is bad for you?
The counterpoint is: if bacon is so bad awful and bad for you we should probably regulate its sale, rather than leave that up to a company bullying other companies.
> The issue is that your choice is constrained by vertical integration.
No it’s not. It’s constrained by one’s preferences as a consumer. If I am concerned about vertical integration, I will not choose an Apple device. Personally, I am not concerned about vertical integration. It seems to make my devices work better.
> If you like Apple's hardware, or iOS, or iMessage, or any number of other thing, these are all tied together with Apple's app store when they should not be.
Why not? Because you say so? Or because it harms consumers? Can you describe how it harms consumers? Smartphones are cheap and plentiful. Cloud-based apps and services are too.
Yes, I might have to make some tough choices as a consumer. Maybe no company makes the perfect device for me. I might really like iMessage, but hate iPhone hardware. But there are lots of viable competitors to iMessage and plenty of viable mobile devices on which to run them. “I don’t get to use iMessage on my Pixel phone” is not evidence of harm.
> It's like encountering a retail monopoly in California and someone tells you that you're lucky because you can shop at another store and all you have to do is move to Florida, which also has a retail monopoly, but a different one.
No, it’s not. Switching mobile platforms is nothing like migrating 2000+ miles in terms of difficulty or expense. If you want to use a retail analogy, it’s like complaining that you can’t buy Kirkland-branded products at Wal-Mart.
I am quite aware of the landscape. I use a Pixel phone with GrapheneOS and an iPhone. I prefer many aspects of my iPhone, and can understand why many people choose one as their primary or sole mobile computer. A phone is a very special product category, it's where most users keep their digital lives. As such switching costs are quite high, and user agency is quite important. In general software introduces some very odd dynamics into ownership. If you buy a vacuum cleaner you can take it home, plug it in, and vacuum every room in your house; the vacuum cleaner is yours. If you buy a Roomba and take it home, it demands that you sign a unilateral EULA, then install an app on your phone, and then informs you that it will only clean one room unless you sign up for Roomba Pro for $20/mo[0]. So clearly Roomba still owns the vacuum cleaner they just sold you; they have the final say in what it does or doesn't do. That's ownership. Now, technically, you can legally disassemble your Roomba, and if you manage to dump, modify, and reflash its control software, then you'd be allowed to use your product to clean multiple rooms without paying monthly for the privilege. That would require a lot of effort and specialized skills and tooling, and you would then not be allowed to share your modifications with less skilled Roomba owners because doing so would almost certainly involve trafficking DRM circumvention technology, which is a crime. So in practical terms you only own the Roomba as an inanimate plastic puck.
This whole situation maps to iPhones as well. As things stand when you purchase an iPhone you own a glass brick, and Apple owns the phone part. They graciously allow you to use their phone to perform a certain limited set of activities. I am fundamentally opposed to this sort of non-ownership. Whether the buyer had an option to purchase a roughly-equivalent item with different terms is irrelevant; selling someone a product while retaining ownership of it is a mockery of property rights. Some rights are too important to allow people to sign them away with the tap of a button. When the market missteps by rewarding bad behavior like this it is the job of our democratic governments to step in and mandate good behavior.
[0]: this is made up to illustrate a point, I don't actually know how Roomba service works
This is all so exhausting and goes in circles over and over. I honestly can not believe that there are people on HackerNews of all places that want two companies to control pocket computers and just because one is only marginally better it's totally okay that the first one is draconian.
I feel like someone who woke up in the middle ages with a fever and they are trying to cure me with leeches. Yes yes. No need to worry. Let the leech do it's work and you too will be secure from the plague.
Does anyone actually know anyone that has gotten hacked on their Android phone?
Great news! I don’t see many people on HN getting mad when you point out that Apple isn’t the best for everyone. I’m not saying you made it up. Maybe I just don’t read enough comments.
I do see people saying they like how Apple devices work, and that they consciously choose Apple devices over devices from other manufacturers. Those are informed consumers making a choice you wouldn’t make. It’s not sad. Some people won’t agree with you in life. That’s normal.
Choice does exist in the market. There are far more than 2 manufacturers, and some of them focus on more HN-ish people who have more principles than I do.
I don’t really want the government to limit my smartphone choices in this way, but I also realize that Apple devices will continue to exist and will mostly work the way they do today, so it’s not that big a deal to me.
There are 2 parts to this argument, first being people are justifying their iPhone ownership,(and cult membership) with "Apple should do exactly what they are doing" because I like what I get, and I don't want the other folks in my cult ;).
Point 2 being the H in HN stands for Hacker defined as: "a person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data." Then the argument becomes why are people who are reading HN and, presumably, calling themselves hackers so interested in keeping status quo and letting Apple control everything? I think we go back to argument 1 and excluding others, green bubbles and such making a subset "better" than others. Elitist as F and some folks, like myself cannot stand for this and take time to explain the failure to others.
> There are 2 parts to this argument, first being people are justifying their iPhone ownership,(and cult membership) with "Apple should do exactly what they are doing" because I like what I get, and I don't want the other folks in my cult ;).
It sounds like you’re assuming that people are in a “cult” because they don’t share some of your opinions. I’m sure that’s not what you’re doing, because you are a rational person engaging in a rational discussion. Can you help me understand what you really meant?
> Then the argument becomes why are people who are reading HN and, presumably, calling themselves hackers so interested in keeping status quo and letting Apple control everything?
Because they like Apple devices. Next question.
> I think we go back to argument 1 and excluding others, green bubbles and such making a subset "better" than others. Elitist as F and some folks, like myself cannot stand for this and take time to explain the failure to others.
It sounds like you’re upset because some people who buy Apple devices make jokes about “green bubbles” and “blue bubbles”. I’m sorry that happened to you. Nobody likes getting their feelings hurt.
I’m generally opposed to snobbery, but I don’t think it’s illegal.
The reply was mostly tongue in cheek via elaboration...
The point about hackers wanting to change their devices still stands though and as one of other replies noted there is no reason both cannot coexist, some use their iPhone as Apple wants and some don't, if Apple doesn't want to relinquish control, we'll make them, just like MSFT was made to do things it didn't want to.
I don't even use an iPhone, I do use some Apple hardware as well as my household, but still stand for openness and am not in favor of walled gardens.
Snobbery is mostly about people trying to explain their usage of devices that break core tenements of open [internet, hardware, software ...] with poor arguments of "I like what I get" or simply "I got mine" and you can't for reasons.
No… I like my iPhone and get mad when people want the government to force Apple to change how it works. I like how it works now, which is why I bought it.
And you could continue to enjoy that experience by only using Apple's own app store, while everyone else would also be free to use other app stores to install apps they want which Apple does not like. See how this still works? You don't lose here, you win freedom even if you don't want to take advantage of it. You might even win financially because competition from other app stores might force Apple to lower their fees.
Phones are unique in the consumer space because of how thoroughly they can restrict end user usage. Once you buy an iPhone you can use it physically as a hammer if you wish, but if you want to digitally use a non-Apple wallet then you are restricted. Most consumer goods don't behave this way; my TV lets me watch anything I input into it, my bike lets me ride to wherever a pedal to, my vacuum lets me clean my counter if I want it to. Consumers are choosing a desirable physical good with undesirable digital restrictions. Apple is flexing its hardware power to its advantage and end user's disadvantage in software.
> Consumers are choosing a desirable physical good with undesirable digital restrictions.
So long as it is the customers making that choice, and they have access to alternatives, then it's not really a problem. If apple were advertising the iphone as a consumer product that had no such digital restrictions in an effort to hoodwink people into buying them, or if iphone were the only serious game in town, then those restrictions would be an issue, but right now iphones are advertised as being worth more than their competitors specifically because of those restrictions, and people are willing to pay such premiums. That you personally would not make the same decision does not mean they've been manipulated by anti-competitive measures into making theirs.
If someone were to make a consumer product that worked better for my use cases at the expense of being worse at or even incapable of doing things I don't intend to use it for, I should have the option to buy it. If you don't like the restrictions, buy something else. That's not anti-competitive, that is exactly how competition is supposed to work.
There is literally only one other competitor. That is not flourishing, competitive market when consumers can make many different choices. There are two companies that control nearly the entirety of the mobile software market, how can you expect that there would be no oversight to make sure they don't advantage their own software offerings?
Samsung, Sony, Google, LG, Xiaomi, Motorola, Nokia, TCL, Kyocera, Fairphone, Pine64, Purism, and many others are more than "literally only one other competitor". And even if your complaint is that the only other option is "Android", there's no reason why those manufacturers couldn't make their own OS if they wanted to. There's no reason why even if they didn't want to, they couldn't make their own custom Android distribution.
If the linux community as small as it is can produce multiple varied and unique linux distributions largely on the backs of volunteers, there's no reason why these manufacturers (especially some of the bigger names) couldn't do the same with Android / Linux and their own hardware. And whatever reason is behind the failure of literally the entire cellphone industry to do what they were doing before the advent of iOS and Android, it isn't because Apple is somehow stopping them from making their own OS, and SDKs and app stores.
But the reason is there only one other competitor isn't at all because of Apple or the competitor and doesn't have anything to do with their practices. The reason for it is because it's incredibly difficult and complex to put together a device like that and only certain types of companies have the resources and funds to create a product like that.
> Phones are unique in the consumer space because of how—
—they were marketed as phones that can compute, instead of as computers that can phone.
That's the crux: people would never have accepted the restrictions on computers like the iPhone, if that thing were instead sold as a general computer called the iPalm or similar. But since it's sold as a phone, any thing else it can do is more easily perceived as a bonus, and we hardly feel the restrictions at the beginning.
Only people who see smartphones for what they really are, general purpose palmtops that can make phone calls, can really perceive the egregiousness of those restrictions. The first step then, is generalising this understanding to everyone.
A good first step, I think, would be to start naming those things more accurately. I'd personally suggest "palmtop".
It isn't a general purpose computer. The form factor is compromised to make it work as a phone and it doesn't matter how good the CPU is.
A general purpose computer would be hard to use if it had an OOM killer instead of swap and if running the CPU full speed shut it off because it got too hot inside. (Using it too hard can also drain the battery even if it's on a full strength charger.)
>Happens to some crappy laptops. These are basically irrelevant details.
Don't most modern (>2010) CPU's thermal throttle until they are back within operating temps? You'd have to stuff a laptop inside a backpack while maxing it to get it to overheat to the point of resetting
At this point, most people likely associated the word "phone" with something closer to a modern smartphone than a landline. Language can change. From my point of view, the problem is more that Apple set a precedent of these restrictions due to them being the first mover, and few mainstream phone companies have tried to break out of this idea (even though other phones are technically more flexible if you try hard enough).
> From my point of view, the problem is more that Apple set a precedent of these restrictions due to them being the first mover, and few mainstream phone companies have tried to break out of this idea
It's even worse than that: though I stand by what I said, you're correct, people are gradually realising that the difference between their smartphone and laptop/desktop (if any), is one of degree, not kind. But we don't see the push back we would have seen if they had realised right away. Instead, as you rightly point out, companies are building on Apple's precedent to try and expand their model to our good old laptops and desktops.
And it looks like they're succeeding. It would seem one has to pay Apple to even get the right to distribute a regular MacOS program regular users can actually execute (no Apple developer plan, no code signing). And newer versions of Windows are displaying increasingly scary warnings for programs telling you they "protected" your computer, which are bad enough that we get tutorials about how to get past them.
Surely first-mover for smartphones is palm or blackberry or even Windows Mobile.
Yes, apple has about half the market today, that’s not the same thing as being first-mover. In fact it’s actually completely different because people had to make the choice to move away from the first-movers to apple.
People literally did give up their blackberries and palms and Jornadas for iPhone, consciously and deliberately, because it was a better product. And now you want to change the product and erode the benefits back to the minimum standard defined by android. That’s a taking.
It was a better product. But it would be quite a take to say their tolling & gate keeping was a significant contributor.
It was a better product because of its capacitive multi-touch screen and its overall speed (which I must insist depends more on what apps are installed by default than on the restrictions on third party apps).
> But it would be quite a take to say their tolling & gate keeping was a significant contributor.
Do you remember the first iPhone? Or for that matter what "mobile development" looked like before the iPhone? The first iPhone was more "tolled" and "gate kept" than any iPhone we have today. There was NO app store. To get an app on the iPhone, Apple had to make it, which meant you had to be big enough for Apple to care. Google got a Youtube app because they were that big. At some point Facebook had a built in integration (though I don't remember if it was a full fledged app). That was it. Development for the phone was going to be "web apps" only, without the biggest "web app" framework at the time, Flash. Compared to the first iPhones, a modern iPhone is wide open to all sorts of developers.
But perhaps more than that, even that first iPhone was leaps and bounds for most people over what prior devices were (save perhaps Palm Treos) in terms of "openness". Before the iPhone, the carriers decided what your phone could and couldn't do. A Razr phone from AT&T could send and receive data over bluetooth (like contacts and ring tones). That same exact phone from Verizon could only use bluetooth for headsets. Data transfer was locked down to vVrizon's own service (with a fee of course). Mobile app development was a crap shoot of different sdks and licensing costs per device, and then a hope that each carrier would allow your bejeweled clone, and served up through their services, of which they took HUGE cuts of the revenue. The 30/70 split of the iPhone app store was quite literally "revolutionary" in the cell phone space.
Which leads one to wonder if the tolling and gate keeping is such a hinderance, why is it that the iPhone remains so successful despite their largest competitor having none of those restrictions, pretty much from the get go. It's not like Apple was open and suddenly slammed the gates down on apps and iPhone development. And it's not like Android's openness is brand new. So the question that has to be asked is why does Apple continue to sell so well despite the restrictions? Why hasn't Android eaten all of Apple's market share as a massive open platform where anyone can do anything?
> Which leads one to wonder if the tolling and gate keeping is such a hinderance
I don't know, perhaps you should ask that to someone who actually made that argument? If I recall, people are still buying cigarettes, are they not? Stuff doesn't have to be good for you to sell good.
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I don't dispute the facts you lay out here. I'll even cite game console as other general purpose computers that were (and still are) quite heavily locked down too. Apple however made one step further, and managed to sell a locked down general purpose computer for purposes other than gaming.
At the root of it all, I think, is how hardware vendors got away with selling their stuff without the full manual. Some instead provide a proprietary Windows driver. Others hide keys in them, don't tell users what they are, and then lobby to send heroic reverse engineers to jail. If I was the regulator I would probably start there.
Luckily, we have anti-trust and other forms of law and regulation specifically because assuming markets will alway provide meaningful choices has historically proven a bad assumption.
We only have to assume that our legal system will do it's job.
Personally, I think the government has a weak case. No customers are being harmed by Apple's restrictions and there is certainly no monopoly.
It would be fine if companies were extremely clear about it, saying “the car is $30k, but the average customer ends up paying an additional $2k in subscriptions for basic features”. Or “the phone is $1000, but most software will be more expensive due to our 30% tax”. Of course they’re not that clear, and I would argue these business models only make sense when there’s deception involved.
Just because you aren’t being harmed doesn’t mean you can’t think it’s wrong or try to prevent it. There are lots of things people fight against that doesn’t directly impact them (yet).
One good reason in this particular examples is I don’t want subscription based heated seats to become popular, because then I won’t have a choice anymore.
No, the part that's really bad is that they lock up features behind software locks, but these aren't that hard to break for hackers. But then they get laws passed which make it illegal to change these features on your car, or even to tell other people how to do so.
How the DMCA hasn't been struck down by the Supreme Court as an abridgment of the 1st Amendment, I really don't know.
But these computers are so different… But if Apple does that it would be differently different… /s
I mean, what gp wants is literally just there on the shelves and they don’t want it. But they also want it, but in Apple, because it’s nicer when Apple does[n’t] it. Why would they want it after Apple does it?
Surprise, people want more than one thing out of a product.
Voting with your wallet works very badly when there are two main options. Which anti-consumer behaviors do you pick? When something is bad enough, it's better to make it illegal for all options.
I’m all for your device = your control, and I mean your.
But allowing software vendors to ignore AppStore will eventually lead to my bank apps, local maps apps, delivery apps etc to go non-AppStore-only route and do whatever they want on my phone, because I have no alternative (except for not using my phone). The first thing one of my bank apps did on my android phone was to install some sort of an “antivirus firewall” which abused every access and semi-exploit to make sure I’m “safe”.
Your ideas will affect me, and I can’t see why your (and my) inconvenience is more important than my security. It’s not just “better”. I’m asking to consider this perspective as well.
Whatever an "antivirus firewall" does, it sounds like something that should be tied to permissions or not have an API for it, either way easy to stop all apps from doing.
And I'm skeptical that governments would stop Apple from enforcing a rule that says apps have to let you refuse permissions.
By definition apple can’t do anything in that situation, because people don’t want third-party app stores and sideloading to be managed or notarized by apple at all.
This is the very definition of bad-faith motte-and-bailey argumentation, and it’s logically incoherent to boot. Get apple out of regulating apps and App Stores, no more telling developers what they can do! Oh and i guess they can tell developers to do one thing…
These apps usually simply refuse to work without permissions, so this is not a solution. Empty/fake permissions are easily detectable too. Someone will make a “framework” for that and we’ll see it in most important apps.
Sort of. My reading of the DMA is basically what you're saying; Apple has to let people install what they want on their phones, Apple cannot self-preference with app capabilities. Apple is planning to comply not by allowing users to install what they want on their devices, but instead by offering companies an avenue to enter a business relationship with Apple through which Apple will allow users install that company's applications, provided that Apple has vetted and signed them. That is, all told Apple still has final say over what apps are allowed on peoples' phones. It sounds like the EC is going to nix those app-signing requirements, but the rest of the scheme may or may not be deemed acceptable.
So the question remains whether the spirit of the DMA is "users should be able to install the software they want on their computers" or "businesses offering apps and services should be able to compete with Apple on the iPhone". Is this a fundamentally a pro-user law or a pro-business law? There may be overlap, but they are not the same.
The preferred alternatives seems to be to charge 30% more when buying things through the app rather than the website or not doing in app purchases at all. Presumably the restrictions or the not user friendly experience Google enforces for users makes it not worth doing it on Android, so the other options are better.
It is not a “mobile computer”. The fact that it has a CPU and other computer parts is an implementation detail (your dishwasher also probably has a CPU). If you want a mobile computer then buy one, don’t buy an iPhone, and don’t advocate for the government to force Apple to change how iPhones work for those of us who like them.
> The problem with Apple is not that they take a 30% cut of app sales in their store, or that they don't allow alternative browser engines or wallets apps or superapps or whatever in their store.
Nope, the problem very much is that they won't allow alternative browser engines, specifically so that they can force a crippled Safari browser with limited APIs to force people to write apps instead of web apps, forcing more traffic to their store. It's explicitly anti-competitive behavior.
>It's their store and they ought to be able to curate it however they like.
It's kind of forced fraud to call Chrome in iOS as "Chrome". It's like trying to sell someone a Ferrari that's just a facade bolted onto 2010 Honda. It's not Chrome, it's actually Safari - and its seems like people are finally starting to wake up to this abusive behavior that Apple has been getting away with for far too long.
Microsoft had a famous anti-trust case against them for simply bundling IE with Windows - not from forcing their engine on every other "browser" that gets installed. Apple is doing far worse than that and getting away with it for far too long.
>The problem is that users cannot reasonably install software through any means other than that single store.
That's one of the many other problems outlined by the DOJ today.
>The problem is that Apple reserves special permissions and system integrations for their own apps and denies them to anyone else.
Also another problem.
>However, these sorts of lawsuits or regulations that seek to force Apple to change App Store policies feel so wrong-headed and out of touch.
I was clapped out loud when I watched the DOJ announcement today. I cheered. They actually mentioned "Developers", which is a group I am part of, and I feel the pain that dealing with Apple and Safari is. Apple absolutely deserves this, and it's about time.
Sony and Microsoft obviously don’t benefit from opening up the platforms, it’s not just something they don’t care about but something they actively oppose, and they specifically ensured they got legislative exceptions to ensure they would never have to reciprocate under the DMA.
Your goals aren’t aligned, you’re just a useful idiot to them and they’ll cast you aside as soon as they no longer need you. The end result of the push isn’t going to be “free as in freedom” for everybody here, just Microsoft capturing 90% of a revenue stream instead of 70%.
Classic populism moment - but of course it’s “populism, but on the computer”.
Freedoms for users and freedom for business are two fundamentally opposed and conflicting goals, see: GPL vs MIT/BSD. And in their moment of victory, businesses will just steamroll right over you - just like they literally already did with consoles.
It’s just crazy that they have these exceptions when their own hardware is very much general-purpose on a technical level, and when they’re actively pushing to use that general-purpose capability to ensnare users with AI features and other crap.
Sony and Microsoft are two of the platforms that stand to gain the most from AI adoption literally purely on the basis of being closed platforms with proprietary APIs (plus a minimal amount of interop for embrace-extend-extinguish) with millions of active users and a captive audience of dev studios who have no choice but to use Sony and Microsoft’s closed, gatekept platforms.
Somehow the plight of poor little Larian being stepped on by Sony and Microsoft and Epic just doesn’t make the front page of HN like apple hate.
The game console exception in the DMA is very disappointing, but phones are the largest gaming platform regardless. As hardware improves and ownership becomes even more obligatory I suspect we will see more development effort focused there. I can only hope that F2P/Gacha game culture on mobile is destroyed by that point. Perhaps by anti-gambling laws?
> If people want to buy an iphone and shit it up, let them do it.
The next generation isn't necessarily choosing, though.
Their parents are giving into their demands for *an iPhone due to social pressures entirely originated by Apple's monopolistic behavior (iMessage green bubbles).
Then, when they're locked into the Apple ecosystem from the start, it's almost impossible to break out -- even if you grow up into a mature adult that doesn't give a shit about bubble colors.
Interoperability (being able to exit an ecosystem without massive downsides, specifically) between the only two parties in a de facto duopoly is absolutely necessary and morally right, and it's a shame market failures force the judiciary to intervene. But we are where we are and there's no use putting lipstick on a pig -- the system as it stands is broken, and if left alone will feed on itself and become even more broken.
> Their parents are giving into their demands for *an iPhone due to social pressures entirely originated by Apple's monopolistic behavior (iMessage green bubbles).
First of all, we don't have that problem here in europe. People just use cross-platform messengers.
Secondly, I don't understand why a company should be forced to bring its service to a platform it doesn't care about. Apple supports the default carrier messaging standards (SMS/MMS). It's not Apple's fault that they suck. In fact Apple explicitely created iMessage because SMS/MMS were absolutely terrible.
If RCS is considered a standard (is it?), then Apple should absolutely support it and apparently they plan to do so. Seems fine to me.
While I personally don't use iMessage I'd prefer it if the service was available everywhere, but I don't see why Apple should be forced to support other platforms. Just because iMessage is popular? Imagine a world where WhatsApp was either an iOS- or Android-exclusive app. Should they be forced to develop for a platform they don't care about too? What about popular iOS-exclusive apps like Things? What about Garageband or Logic? Or Super Mario games on Nintendo?
> Their parents are giving into their demands for *an iPhone due to social pressures entirely originated by Apple's monopolistic behavior (iMessage green bubbles).
First of all, we don't have that problem here in europe
We also have a smaller percentage of iPhone users here in Europe.
Apple could have open up their API. Or not try to shut it down so hard when someone finds a way around to use their API
> Or not try to shut it down so hard when someone finds a way around to use their API
Find me any other service that would ok with this? Beeper wanted to piggyback on Apple's network _and_ charge users for using Apple's servers for free. Are we going to force companies to provide an open API for all their services _and_ offer them at a reasonable cost? We saw what happened with Reddit and I have no doubt Apple would similarly charge high fees. I'm not saying I think this would be bad thing (forcing open APIs) but it better be a wide sweeping change not something targeted at a single company.
Lastly what are the rules around spam? Where is the line where Apple can tell a client or a company they refuse to do business with them due to the spam/malicious messages they send. Say what you will about iMessage being locked down but I can count on 2 hands max the number of spam iMessage messages I've recieved. On the other hand I get multiple SMS spam messages every day that I cannot unsubscribe from or block (they change numbers with every message). Aside from TOTP (which I wish they'd just let me use my own client instead of sending them) I could block pretty much all SMS and be happier for it.
> I like the app store, I like the restrictions, I don't want apple to change anything about it.
This is basically saying you only use TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, Tinder, Gmail, Google Maps, and play zero to some handful of mega huge F2P games.
Why have an App Store at all then? You don't use it. It's an installation wizard for you, not a store.
Don't you see? This stuff doesn't interact with restrictions at all. The problem with the App Store is that it sucks, not that it's restricted.
> making their app store worse
I've heard this take from so many people. It is already as bad as it gets. The App Store is an utter disaster. They have failed in every aspect to make a thriving ecosystem. It is just the absolute largest, hugest, best capitalized, least innovative apps and games.
This doesn't have to be the case at all. Look at Steam. Even Linux package managers have more diversity with more apps that thrive.
For your first point that is a fairly wild accusation of that user.
For me, one of the features of a centralised app store is that I buy and subscribe to apps through the app store, which centralises my app subscriptions within my Apple account. I wouldn't have this functionality if I was pulling in apps outside of the app store.
I can go into my Apple account and see every subscription I have and cancel it from within. No shoddy dark website behavior that makes it hard to unsubscribe, I can do it all there.
This just one feature that I find handy in having a single store.
If Apple had your best interests in mind they would provide a way to integrate third party payment systems into their management interface so all apps could expose their subscriptions to the user in a consistent way regardless of payment backend. Instead they will keep it as an exclusive feature and point to other processors' lack of compatibility as a harm to end-users inflicted by the DMA. They would rather have a talking point in their ongoing temper tantrum than provide a good experience for their users.
I actively don't want third-party payment systems on my phone. I also actively don't want the ability to load and run arbitrary third-party applications on my phone. Adding these things would make my user experience worse, not better.
My phone isn't a general-purpose computer in the way that my laptop is. My phone is an appliance. When I use my phone, I'm not actually using the phone itself, I'm using the email app to manage my emails, or the web browser to look at some news website, or Instagram to watch some reels, or Slack to communicate with my colleagues, or etc. The phone is just a conduit for apps/workflows.
Same here. I use linux VMs and containers for all my "hacking" where I need total control and customizability of the OS. On my workstation and phone, where I do my banking and read emails, I'm willing to trade control and customizability for an extremely locked down high trust operating environment. I feel like Apple's closed ecosystem, despite all its flaws, gets this compromise right.
> I use linux VMs and containers for all my "hacking" where I need total control and customizability of the OS
> On my workstation and phone, where I do my banking and read emails, I'm willing to trade control and customizability for an extremely locked down high trust operating environment.
Excuse my French, but uh what? A browser accessing a bank in a Linux virtual machine running on bare metal is by far more secure than desktop MacOS running on bare metal.
At the end of the day, for the activity you described (browsing), what you must be able to defend against is the inherent insecurity of the browser. Linux provides all manners of process, network, etc isolation via CGroups and can be enhanced by SecComp to limit the usage of typical exotic syscalls used in kernel exploits.
MacOS has what for that? The best opportunity you have for defense is to run qemu so that you can run... Linux. The corporation you work for doesn't use Apple because of their stellar security posture, it uses Apple because they can buy mobile devices (phones, laptops) preconfigured with MDM which saves a lot of money.
> Excuse my French, but uh what? A browser accessing a bank in a Linux virtual machine running on bare metal is by far more secure than desktop MacOS running on bare metal.
Facts are most definitely not in evidence for this claim.
I'd kill for an Apple-sanctioned way to load Linux VMs on my iPad and have them run at full speed. It's got an M1 in it, the virtualization hardware is there, Apple just doesn't want me using it.
As it currently stands, the options for Linux VMs on an iPad are:
- iSH, a Linux kernel ABI compatible user-mode x86 emulator that uses threaded code (ROP chains) as a substitute for a proper JIT, but doesn't support all x86 applications[0].
- UTM, a port of QEMU that requires JIT (and thus, either an external debugger or a jailbreak) to run a full x86 or ARM OS.
- UTM SE (Slow Edition), which is UTM but using the threaded code technique from iSH, which is not only slower than iSH because it runs both kernel and user mode, but also got banned from TestFlight before they could even make an App Store submission (probably because it can get to a desktop while iSH can't).
All of these suck in different ways.
[0] Notably, rustc gives an illegal instruction error and mysql crashes trying to do unaligned atomics
I don't buy into this narrative. I have a Pixel phone, you can do quite a lot of privacy "hardening" just by going over the Google settings and turning off a lot of tracking (which they were probably forced to put in by regulators).
The rest you can achieve by using Firefox instead of Chrome and choose a different search engine.
I get a lot of hard to solve Google CAPTCHA on many websites I visit so I know Google is having a hard time tracking me :-)
In terms of security, I don't think Pixel is less secure than the iPhone. It gets security updates regularly, Google invests a lot in security and I don't think the Pixel has more zero days than the iPhone...
So all in all, I don't buy into the "iPhone is more secure and handles your privacy better than Android" narrative
Nerd here who started on MS-DOS and later spent nearly a decade running Linux on a laptop as my main computing device. Gentoo, for about half that time. Various other stuff in between, developed software targeting probably a seven or eight different operating systems and/or platforms, et c., et c. I've got a reasonable amount of computer-dork cred, is the point, though around these parts, nothing all that remarkable.
Very nearly every halfway serious computer-involved activity I do these days (=last seven or eight years) that matters in my actual, real life takes place on my phone, including approximately all banking. All the other computers—even the "real" ones—in my life are basically toys. 90% of my real-life important or meaningful stuff I do with computers happens on my phone, 9% on a tablet, and at-most 1% on everything else.
(in my personal life, I mean—unfortunately I still have to try to use "real" computers to accomplish allegedly-important things at work)
Exclusively, yes. Except for that second factor authentication they forced me to install on my phone (without which doing online payments would be a pain). I like and trust my Ubuntu laptop.
Is Macbook less secure because I can install whatever app I want, even my own app? No, it's not. I want to be able to do the same with my iPhone. It's as simple as that.
And yet no one would ever want or think of locking down MacOS like they have locked down iOS. Turns out that grown ups don't need Apple to babysit them for additional "security" when everybody knows that Apple's real reason is just money+greed and the "security" talking point is just a convenient smokescreen.
>And yet no one would ever want or think of locking down MacOS like they have locked down iOS.
https://www.qubes-os.org/intro/, snapd and BSD jails are all forms of locking down a general computer OS ways similar to the way iOS is locked down, and things that individual users choose to do on their own computers. Sure those users can install anything else they want as well, but then there's also a reason why these things are niche, even within the nice of *nix users. Because the administration and management is a headache and people don't generally want to do that.
>Turns out that grown ups don't need Apple to babysit them for additional "security"
I think you have an over estimation of the average "grown ups" ability to judge the safety and security of their computer or the software they run on it. There are plenty of people out there who do not want or need to understand system security and administration and are much better served by having someone else manage that for them. There's a reason why Windows and MacOS are still more popular than Linux, and there's a reason why in the Linux world, Red Hat, CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu are more popular than Arch. People only have a limited amount of time and energy to dedicate to things and not everyone wants to dedicate theirs to our shared hobby.
You forgot to mention that all those Operating Systems you mentioned allow the user to break free from restrictions if they desire to do so because the machine is their property after all. Mechanisms for "Security" only become a jail if there is absolutely no way to break free.
And having certain restrictions to hide complexity from users to hide complexity is by no means comparable to "security" whose only purpose is to shackle users so they can never escape obscene fees because Apple uses the same strategy as the mafia: "pay us for protection".
If it's not voluntary, what's the difference between Apple's behavior and Tony Soprano's behavior?
>You forgot to mention that all those Operating Systems you mentioned allow the user to break free from restrictions if they desire to do so because the machine is their property after all.
If you read past the first sentence, you would discover I wrote more than just that one. In fact, the second sentence which starts with:
>Sure those users can install anything else they want as well
and then goes on to explain why super hardened security OSs aren't even mainstream among tech people who should in theory be all about super hardened security in their OS.
>If it's not voluntary, what's the difference between Apple's behavior and Tony Soprano's behavior?
Except it is voluntary. Apple didn't force anyone to buy an iPhone. They didn't walk into people's homes with a baseball bat in hand commenting on the "nice general purpose computers you've got here". They didn't promise free computing and the ability to install anything from anywhere and then suddenly switch away locking people in after investing in a huge open system where none of their apps are available anywhere else. Any user can walk away from the iPhone simply by buying a device from any one of a number of other sellers, all of which offer Android OSes with all the freedoms they could possibly want, and Apple can't do anything about it, nor will Apple show up at their house in the middle of the night to leave a headless server in their bed sheets.
>>Sure those users can install anything else they want as well
>and then goes on to explain why super hardened security OSs aren't even mainstream among tech people who should in theory be all about super hardened security in their OS.
You are intentionally arguing in bad faith, the point is and was that Apple's intention is not restriction for the sake of "security" but for the sake of funneling everything through their gate so they can impose a tax on everybody. It's the same with their sanctimonious "privacy" arguments, it's all BS and the DOJ realized this too. [0]
>>If it's not voluntary, what's the difference between Apple's behavior and Tony Soprano's behavior?
>Except it is voluntary. Apple didn't force anyone to buy an iPhone.
That's a bullshit framing that's a bait and switch in level, which is similar to saying "well the rail barons didnt force you to use their railroads, just use other railroads LOL". If a product or service becomes so prevalent in society then certain rules and regulations apply in a fair market and the EU commission has recognized that and finally the U.S has recognized that as well. By making that argument you also implicitly admit that the "security" argument is actually bogus and not really for the user's protection otherwise they would see no problem in granting an escape hatch for power users, but they don't do that because it's not about security an it never was.
Security is a consideration, but ultimately it's a design decision for the product. Companies can generally make design decisions for their products as they see fit. Apple is no more obliged to provide the escape hatch you describe for the iPhone, than Zojirushi is obliged to let me to change the song that plays when I press the start button.
> Companies can generally make design decisions for their products as they see fit. Apple is no more obliged to provide the escape hatch you describe for the iPhone, than Zojirushi is obliged to let me to change the song that plays when I press the start button.
That's not true, if those "design decisions" are anti-competitive in nature then they are absolutely not allowed to do that, that's what the EU commission is fixing with the DMA and now the U.S. is suing Apple too.
That's a completely different scenario and those IT departments already have their own mechanisms of enforcing lockdowns, they wouldn't want others to impose lockdowns on them (the administrators) too. For devs, such an Apple imposed lockdown on MacOS would destroy the Macbook's popularity, since it would regress and turn into a glorified ipad.
A locked-down MacOS would be awful but at least you’d still have Linux (thanks Asahi).
With an iPhone you are stuck with whatever new decision from Apple with no opt-out. That’s abnormal.
See, I’d be ok to say that Apple can do whatever they want with iOS the day they give me the keys to the boot loader. Until then, they’ll have to assume their role of gatekeeper.
I have no issues with walled gardens as long as you’ve got the key to leave. Here the key to leave is called "throw your $1000 phone to buy another".
For some people in the world the iphone is the only general purpose computing device they own, so it is even more important that they aren't artificially constrained so Apple can milk users with absurd fees while citing bogus reasons as justification.
Just look at cases where governments abuse Apple's power over users to squash protests and delete important Apps from the Appstore. Without competing Appstores users are left at the mercy of a trillion dollar company which cares about profits and profits only. Not being able to freely install apps from any source the owner of the computing device prefers is outrageous and we can only thank the EU commission for recognizing that.
And one of the main reasons why people feel the need to upgrade their device to a "real computer" is when the users hit those artificial boundaries which they are not allowed to bypass.
Which iPad owner ever thinks "oh I wish my iPad were even less capable"? Most people are annoyed by its limitations but they accept it as a trade off. I personally would use my iPad much more if it were as capable & open as a Mac.
> Which iPad owner ever thinks "oh I wish my iPad were even less capable"?
Me, kinda. I've disliked most of the moves to make it more like a general purpose computing platform and less like a slab of glass that becomes different tools (but mostly one at a time!). I have other options for that other crap, the iPad was (still is... barely) a distinct different category that I liked also having. iOS 6 is peak-iOS to me.
the delightful irony is you’re literally so wrong they put it right in the name. Security Enhanced.
The military knows damn well that limiting unprivileged users to running a limited selection of vetted and approved apps and restricting their ability to make tools that might aid their ability to jump the sandbox increases security. They literally built the canonical OS extension to do it. It’s not sufficient for security by itself, but it does additively increase security vs a non-policy-enforced environment with higher freedom.
It is, however, necessary for security. Literally every enterprise sysadmin, every single one, windows or Linux or otherwise, knows that letting users set policies on their own devices decreases security. And in the real world, those policies/access control are either: (a) mandatory, or (b) ineffective. If you allow a mechanism for users to opt out - they will opt out 100% of the time, and it’s ineffective. There is no middle ground, if there is a way to go around then users will do it, it's either a matter of policy or it functionally doesn't exist.
Facebook et al will certainly exploit their network power to push users to do that, just like any other attacker. No different than Chinese agents going after a debt-laden private. They literally already got caught using their dev credentials trying to pull a sneaky and tunnel users data via a VPN for data mining purposes.
But I’m sure you know infosec better than the NSA. This is HN after all.
And again - such escape valves already exist. You can sideload apps on an iphone without paying any extra money. Altstore/Appstore++ exist to refresh your app notarization automatically etc.
Almost as if this is really all about the transaction fees and apple's cut of money that tim sweeney sees as rightfully his, and not user freedom at all... but I'm sure there's a very good, very pro-consumer reason Sony and Microsoft exempted themselves from the DMA?
it's amusing how you can miss his point so badly and still think that's he is wrong and not you for applying a false analogy and making the false conclusion.
The example you mentioned is fundamentally different, why? The owner has the option to completely disable anything they dislike or install a different OS, especially on linux which prides itself on maximum user choice. And even then it's asinine to compare features that are for enhanced security and Apple's version of "security" which just limits user choice to products that have to pass Apple's gate so they have to pay a tax to enrich Apple.
I don't even let my users have browser extensions without them going through the formal review process. Managing the proliferation of PWAs (potentially unwanted apps) is one of the most unsolvable issues in security. iOS is the gold standard for secure mobile computing due to inability to support alot of these risky use causes.
Exactly, this is marketing talk. Pixel is secure, get regular updates, lesser target than iphone and in terms of privacy can be "hardened" just by going over the Google services setting menu and opting out of everything. Rest can be achieved by using Firefox (which actually runs on Android not like FF on iOS which is a shell) with ad blockers and choosing a different search engine.
I would argue it's much more secure and more private this way
or you could enable ios lockdown mode in one click if you feel like going full "im a targeted individual". I'm more talking appsec here. Even from the personal non-enterprise security angle android has the sideloaded boyfriend stalkerware issue and the flavor of the week banking Trojan PDF readers on google play issue. Apple just seems to stay out the news on the app store security front.
i wouldn't put much stake a zerodium numbers as the benchmark of platform security. People who sell these kind of gray market mobile zero days for big bucks aren't going public about it. Mostly because the only buyers that aren't the OEM are nation states, maybe the top end of criminal land and of course the NSO group. Plus android's at least 10x the market when you start talking IOT and point sale etc.
Wouldn't the value of a zero day be the expected return on what you can get from it? So a lower cost on iOS zero days means less buyers want them, presumably because they're less capable than a zero day on Android?
It’s definitely less secure. IMO that’s an acceptable tradeoff but it’s still true that MacOS allows you to install potentially harmful software in a way that an iPhone doesn’t. With great power comes great responsibility and all.
The problem is that "less secure" is not exactly meaningful without a lot of clarifications.
I'm no security expert, but I know that security is certainly not a linear, at the very least it's some multi-dimensional thing that's exceptionally hard to generalize.
One system can be more or less secure than another for some party or parties, for some particular threat models if you can or cannot install certain apps, etc etc. Skipping all those bits makes the statement vague, increasing the risk of misunderstanding of the implied conditions.
Just a quick example. Installing an app could paradoxically make the device simultaneously more and less secure for the owner. Let's say it's an advanced firewall app. On the one hand it improves the network hygiene, improving the device security against its network peers. On the other hand, it may help in compromising the device, if someone gains access to its control interface and exploits it for nefarious purposes.
If you want to treat your phone like a general-purpose computer, that's fine, but the iPhone doesn't work that way, very much by design. I understand that you want a different user experience, but them's the breaks.
That's the biggest thing, allowing sideloading is 100% optional and lets people stay in the walled garden if they want. Apple not allowing it is absolutely about suppressing competition, which given their >50% market share is a blatant abuse of their monopoly.
I can’t wait for every data hoarding app (Facebook, Reddit, Google) to require sideloading so now we’ll have the choice to either use Android or Apple when being tracked down to granular details.
I want it to be semi onerous to enable apps outside the App Store, for this reason.
Sideloading is already a thing on Android, and I am not forced to use these apps to use the Android ecosystem. Mind you there are certain phone manufacturers who pack their phone full of crap, but I have a large selection of Android phones to choose from to avoid that. Even Google doesn't force me to use their app store.
The real question is : is it Apple’s role to protect people against Facebook or Google ? I mean, if you want to be protected against Facebook, just delete the app.
It’s the role of regulators to stop data hoarding.
Also this narrative is complete bullshit from Apple since those protections never came from App Store’s policies enforcement but from iOS sandboxing mechanisms which are not going to disappear for sideloaded apps.
I’m pretty amazed that on HN, of all the places, people still believe the narrative that the Apple reviewing process can enforce app behavior while all they’ve got to review is a binary. The App Store reviewing is just there to check if you are loyal into Apple.
> It’s the role of regulators to stop data hoarding.
Okay well they can stop Apple's enforcement of their tracking policies after they make regulations against data hoarding. Not beforehand leaving us with the only choices of be tracked or give up on the app entirely when we currently have a third option to use apps without accurate tracking.
> I’m pretty amazed that on HN, of all the places, people still believe the narrative that the Apple reviewing process can enforce app behavior while all they’ve got to review is a binary.
You don't need to believe Apple. You can believe all the ad companies revenue dropping by 30% for mobile users the quarter after Apple rolled out the tracking changes. There's a reason all these apps began you to click yes before showing the iOS system popup for tracking permissions.
The great thing about allowing sideloading is that it enables the community to build 3rd party apps for accessing services like Facebook, even though doing so violates the service's ToS. You can't put a lightweight and tracking-resistant FB client in the App Store.
I don't that's a problem of distribution but rather getting the data in the first place. Why wouldn't Facebook prevent those services from accessing the data? Ask the developer of Apollo, the Reddit client, how well relying on a third-party works.
How much does Apple's privacy restrictions affect a company the size of Meta ?
Sure, there was the direct commercial impact the moment the changes were implemented. But Meta is still doing the same business, it still keeps track of a tremendous amount of user data, and it's revenue is back to where it was before Apple's changes.
Same for Google or Reddit, they are in a position where Apple limiting their tracking range seem to have little to no impact on their whole business.
I still think some limitation is better than none, but it also doesn't look like a huge deal for any of them. At least not enough to force all users to go through sideloading just to get that extra bit of data.
If you're so scared of Facebook, don't use it. Trotting it out as a scare tactic is just whataboutism, considering the scenario you're paranoid about hasn't happened on Android, macOS, etc.
Doubtful, Google got dinged pretty hard in part because there were too many steps to allow other app stores to exist, and becsuse app stores couldn't auto-update apps like Google Play could.
And all that is way easier than rooting/jailbreaking. I doubt that will be enough of a deterrent considering the anti-trust angle being that you can't compete with apple's native software
When friends with iPhones send me images or videos using iMessage, they are very low-quality compared to what iPhone users receive. But when Android users send me the same, they are higher quality.
So I think the specific answer to your question is "iMessage and its lack of support for <protocol (RCS?)>".
Cause it would be better for Apple's customers. This one doesn't even have the "my parents security" defense like installing non app store apples does. Do you honestly think any costumer WANTS iPhone to be shitty at sending images?
Why do you have to defend every little thing that Apple does as if you were their lawyer? I get that you like some parts of their walled garden, but why do Apple stans behave as if Apple was a sacred company that could do no wrong, when there examples like this that they are literally harming their own customers to protect their moat. I get why Apple does it, I don't get why anyone here would side with Apple.
imessage (the protocol) doesn't. iPhones should, because it's a common way for people to communicate. It was fine for us to start laissez faire but now that we see Apple abusing things by not interoperating -- deliberately in order to sell more phones [1], the people should intervene.
> imessage (the protocol) doesn't. iPhones should, because it's a common way for people to communicate.
iPhones are fully capable of transmitting images (and even other types of files--what an amazing world we live in). Feel free to install any of the numerous apps available that allow you to do this.
I never said iMessage needs to support anything, I was merely answering a question that I thought was asked in good faith.
The US government claims that Apple is engaging in anticompetitive practices by degrading the behavior of iMessage when communicating to non-Apple devices.
Your stance seems to be, this should not be something for the government to be involved in, let the market decide.
This is ambiguous. Perhaps you believe that US antitrust laws shouldn't exist, or should be changed so they don't apply to this case, or actually don't apply to this case (ie the government is wrong that Apple's behavior violates the law).
Those are all coherent stances you could have, though I think it would be helpful if you identified which of them you hold if you want to engage in meaningful discourse with others.
My understanding is that Apple wont add RCS support until end-to-end encryption is part of the RCS standard, which it currently isn't. And they wont use property add-ons such as what Google use for encryption.
Competitors stuffed around trying to build a competitor for over a decade and failed. Is that Apple's fault?
> By default was missing from the sentence. You can do it with Whatsapp etc, but both you and the other party need to download a 3rd party app to do so.
It's an obvious abuse of their monopoly to suppress competition. Most kids use iPhone and for the general public in the US iPhone has >50% market share, so to expect most people to stop using iMessage to get better support with Android users is not happening, and it's silly to think that will change without a change in laws, so most kids end up getting iPhones so they're not left out.
Remember, this is all a very arbitrary restriction by Apple that lets them take advantage of their monopoly to suppress sales of competitive products. That's the illegal part.
You ever notice you can
-use tires from arbitrary manufacturers
-use oil from arbitrary manufacturers
-drive to arbitrary locations (even offroad in your Corvette)
-use nearly arbitrary accessories
-use a universal port to get error codes (OBD-II)
-make modifications and keep your warranty on unrelated parts
Ask yourself, would MacOs have all of the restrictions an iPhone has? If not even Macbooks block installation of 3rd party applications, why does it change when you add a cell radio?
Honestly,if someone were being paid to change public opinion around the case, this is what i would expect to read. Don't fall for Apple's marketing
Just like I can put cases from arbitrary manufacturers on my iPhone.
> -use oil from arbitrary manufacturers
Just like I can use chargers from arbitrary manufacturers.
> -drive to arbitrary locations
Visit arbitrary websites...
> -use a universal port to get error codes (OBD-II)
OBD-II is actually a good analogy because it exposes only a small set of standardized data, but the more interesting data (and ability to run diagnostics) is sometimes behind a manufacturer proprietary protocol and requires something more than just the standard OBD-II interface. Similarly Apple can choose what standard interfaces and protocols to implement and which proprietary ones they would like to create.
> why does it change when you add a cell radio?
Because that's what Apple chose to build and sell. You're free to build your own phone with your own feature set and sell that.
> Don't fall for Apple's marketing
Fortunately I'm capable of my own rational thought.
Nobody uses iMessage outside the US, by choice, even in iPhone-dominated markets. So clearly it's possible to avoid it. US iPhone users have the same choice.
Do you have an example of a place that has a similar rate of usage for iPhones but primarily uses WhatsApp for texting? In the US the rate is 87% for teenagers, I'm surprised it's that high elsewhere.
iPhone has 51% market share in Japan across all age group[1] (and even as high as 84.8% in some demographic[2]). From my 5 years of living here, I’ve never seen anyone use iMessage even once. The dominant messaging app is LINE.
Seems like LINE became the predominant app way back in 2012 (it released even before iMessage did in 2011), so my guess is that it took hold before iMessage ever had a chance, unlike in the US where texting was always the main way to communicate on phones up until iMessage integrated texting to absorb all those users.
I think the point is that it's kind not entirely accurate to say that Apple doesn't allow messaging interoperability with Android. They in-fact do through dozens of available third party apps. They don't allow non-apple devices to implement the iMessage protocol, which could be argued to be anti-consumer but it's not really evidence of apple being a monopoly.
Edit: Just realized that you I misread your comment and you and I agree
I guess there’s WhatsApp etc, but it’s not a great experience. And that’s in part due to the ecosystem. I can swipe 200 photos and send them to my wife - it shares them on my iCloud behind the scenes, and sends a link. Messages makes it seem like I’ve sent 200 full quality photos in an instant.
That’s hard to do without the vertical integration.
That argument would make sense of iPhone couldn't send any messages at all to Android or call Android phones.
There's a reason Apple hasn't taken their garden wall that far, lmao. Same as being able to use "non Apple WiFi and Bluetooth devices".
Half the replies in this thread make me think they'd be happy if Apple restricted iPhone WiFi to only connecting to Apple APs becuz muh security, muh feature ecosystem
Note there could easily be even more obstacles than there are. Third party apps like banking apps actually have extra jailbreaking checks; first party apps don't, you can still watch DRM movies, and afaik it doesn't void the warranty. At least not if nobody notices.
If they would only verify quality and provide safe APIs and paths to safely integrate they can have their platform. The issue is that they are both managing the plantform and (unfairly) participating themselves.
If they had one set of APIs for smartwatches that can be used by them for the apple watch and everyone else for their smartwatches they wouldn’t get sued. But instead they give themselves deep integration into the OS and limit everyone elses access. When you are one of the only available platforms thats not okay.
You and I will do this. So will anyone else on HN.
My grandma won’t understand the difference. So when she gets a text saying, hey install this cool new thing, and then gets hacked, these changes will be to blame.
Why can’t we have a close ecosystem and an open ecosystem? If you want to side load, Android is right there ready for you.
I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again. Years ago I worked for Apple retail when Bootcamp was a thing and it was "unsupported" and not only was it behind security switches, but you had to go out of your way to download and set it up.
I had a customer come in one morning steaming mad and demanding a refund for her new macbook. She was mad because (to paraphrase) she has been told that she wouldn't have all the problems and crashes her windows machine had and wouldn't have to deal with viruses and a host of other windows specific issues if she used a mac. But after a few weeks she was still having all of the same problems. The more she described the issue, the more it sounded like she'd never even bought a mac, but here she was with a 3 week old macbook in a box. And beyond that, she described having some hardware issues that had been corrected with a firmware update months earlier. The first boot and software update should have corrected all of that.
So I asked her to show me some of what it was doing. She took it out of the box, switched it on and it booted right into windows. And then proceeded to dump a ton of malware popups all over the screen just as she'd said. It turns out, she did indeed buy the macbook 3 weeks earlier, and then gave it to her "computer smart nephew" to setup for her. Well Mr. Nephew apparently decided in his infinite wisdom that is aunt didn't need macOS, she just needed an expensive windows machine. And so he'd downloaded bootcamp, shrunk the macOS partition to the smallest size it could be, and then installed windows and configured the machine to boot into windows by default. She'd never used macOS and didn't even know it was there, and so had never gotten the firmware updates for the hardware, and was of course having all the same problems she had in windows normally, because she was still using windows, only this time without any malware software because "macs don't need Norton".
The end result is I showed the customer what had happened, got them squared away with the mac OS side an asked them to give it a try for a few weeks with a personal guarantee we'd return it if she still didn't like it. She became one of our best customers. But the moral of the story is twofold:
1) Not everyone who uses tech makes the decisions for how that tech is configured
2) "no support" is a good way to ensure that those #1 people hate your product
What a great story.
I wonder at what stage of Idiocracy lore we’re at, to require locked down software to “protect” people from “smart nephews”.
The more I read from you people, the more I get amazed. I can’t believe how somebody would use such anecdotes with serious face against software freedom.
Who's "requiring" anything? Android is there if you want open smart phone computing. iOS is there if you don't. And at a near 50/50 split, that means both are about as close to continuously feature parity as you could hope for. Listening to all arguments over why iOS should open itself up when Android is right there for anyone that wants that sort of freedom feels like listening to a bunch of C programmers bitch about Rust's borrow checker or Java's Garbage Collector. Your "software freedom" goal is already here in the world's most popular smart phone OS and supported on more devices from more vendors than even the most "open" iOS version will ever be. But not everyone wants or needs to write code in C and not everyone wants or needs the sort of "software freedom" that Android is giving.
Ok, it's great that you want that, Apple clearly doesn't want to provide that for you any more than they want to provide you with Intel based macs, watches that run Linux, or touch screen laptops. No one has explained yet why Apple should be legally obligated to provide that for you. There's a lot of hand waving towards Apple having a monopoly on their own products, which is something of a tautology, but notably no one claims they have a smart phone monopoly or a smart phone OS monopoly because that's patently absurd given the sheer magnitude of the non-iphone smartphone market. Nor has anyone explained why they're not satisfied with getting those things from that non-iphone market.
This isn't like the late 90's computer era. Apple doesn't fine BestBuy and AT&T for carrying non-apple smart phones. They don't obligate Samsung and Sony to buy licenses to iOS for every phone they ship, regardless of whether iOS is installed on it. Heck, even though they're bundling the web browser with the OS you can't even reasonably make the argument doing so is giving them a monopoly in the web browser space.
Yes, and? The question asked was "how would a person [wind up with sketchy software installed] if it is behind a security toggle?". The answer I gave was that not every person that uses tech makes the decisions about setting it up, and that officially sanctioned routes imply support costs regardless of any disclaimers. Are you saying that if Apple had an official ability to root the OS that the number of people who wind up with unknowingly rooted would be the exact same as there are now when the only way to do that is with a jailbreak?
She'll change the toggle and then install it. It's obvious that a lot of HN users didn't live through the period of time where IE was overrun with toolbars for nearly every user because websites would walk people through how to override their security settings so that they could install all kinds of shit. BonzaiBuddy, Yahoo Toolbar, MacKeeper, etc... they all walk people through how to turn off the security settings needed to get themselves installed.
That's the whole problem. People don't know any better so they follow the instructions to get what they think they want. They don't know what they don't know.
Banks can and will block transfers that they believe are fraudulent. They specifically train their customer facing employees to stop customers when they feel like the customer is being scammed. And people have been demanding that banks do even more to help prevent fraud. And if you think Apple's restrictions are invasive and overbearing ... banking regulations and restrictions make Apple look like a freedom loving hippy.
You can definitely tell who has and has not done some for of tech support sort of job interacting with the general public, in these kinds of discussions. "But the user would NEVER do..." oh my god, not only would they, they would in large numbers, it wouldn't even be some super-rare occurrence. Nobody who's done that kind of work would type those words in that order.
I was in such a role in the exact time period you're writing about. At the time, most computer users were still at least kinda enthusiasts, if not particularly well-educated on their new toy. It's no accident that ordinary people got seriously interested using computers for important things in their lives when smartphones came around, and especially the iPhone—phones are like computers that are 80% less rage-inducing utter shit, as far as normal folks are concerned. "Real" computers are horrible for a majority of people. Notoriously horrible, like, listen to people talk about how they interact with "real" computers and their attitudes toward them; they don't trust them at all and often hate them, to them they're like expensive bulky frustration-machines that barely make any sense, don't do very much (the pieces of crap can't even replace a pocket camera, what a joke), and break entirely at random and frequently.
And I don’t give a crap. If it’s so bothersome for you - don’t do it. Just say no.
People complain about shit all the time, shall we now remove all advances of humanity?
I like the iPhone in general but there’s a ton of things I need to keep an old Android around for, because of functionality apple blocks for no good reason: connecting to many non approved bluetooth devices, vehicle gauges and other useful driving data in carplay, etc.
Does this chain of thought apply to any company or just to Apple? At what market share does this become a problem in your opinion? Or are we assuming that the market is ‘free’ and people wouldn’t buy such a device/service because of these ‘restrictions’?
The suit is not about user choice between iPhone and Android. The suit is about control 60% of the digital market. Sure, a user can go buy a different phone. But, an App developer can not reasonable not support iPhone given it has 60% of the market and apple requires 30% of all digital transactions on that market.
I agree people should be able to choose different things. But I also agree with the suit, that once someone gets in the position to control the market of 1000s and 1000s of companies, it's not longer just about user choice in phones. It's about the digital goods (apps/subscribtions/IaP) market itself.
None of these require allowing alternative app stores. Just allowing more apps in. You don’t have to use these apps, and theres nothing inherently insecure about it.
I agree with this take. My one concern is it has the potential to diminish the entire brand. Even with giant warnings about losing warranty/support when installing 3rd party app stores or side loading apps, at the end of the day the back of the phone has a big Apple logo on it. So when the customer fucks it up and Apple refuses to fix it, they’ll still blame Apple.
I think plenty of software development companies quite like to keep that 30% to themselves. I could imagine Microsoft, Adobe and others refusing to ship their software on the app store at all if using their own store let them keep more of the purchase price.
Apple's hardware house of cards might come down if developers are allowed to push the devices past what Apple allows due to form-over-function design decisions they make, and I'm okay with that.
Yeah exactly, for some of us this is a feature not a bug. And I say this as a customer that also supports open source software. Yes it's possible to support both.
Like damn, what if I intend to build this ecosystem from the outset, does that mean as soon as it reaches critical mass the government is going to come in and dismantle it? It's bullshit. This is essentially saying you're not allowed to build ecosystems.
Consumer products don't demand the same flexibility in this regard that enterprise products do. This is just other companies crying that they want a slice of the pie.
Companies are not allowed to leverage their dominant market position in one market in order to gain an advantage in other markets. If you dislike monopoly and antitrust laws, go vote against them.
Mostly agree with this except for "... and offer zero support for it."
Nope, that's covered by basic consumer protections. Apple still has to offer support if the user has issues that weren't likely to have been caused by the modifications.
Your car maker doesn't get to refuse to honor your powertrain warranty just because you put in a custom stereo.
I'm sure this comment will get downvoted and dunked on, but I agree and I would be that if Apple is forced to make changes like these, many peoples' only experience of it would be their iPhone/Apple Watch/etc getting worse.
Some examples:
- A lot of these changes are like mandating that cars have a manual transmission option. Sure, there are plenty of people that love the control, but there are many, many more that appreciate not having to deal with it.
- Every dollar and engineering hour that Apple spends complying with these new requirements is time they won't spend on things people actually want, as well as increasing the surface area for bugs and security holes.
- Apple is the intermediary between other companies like FB, Google, ad networks, data harvesting, government apps, etc. They can't do things on my phone because Apple forbids it. The more Apple is forced to open up, the less protection I have from other powerful players in the tech market.
- Every place where Apple is forced to open up is a place where there's a choice that many users didn't ask for but will have to make (e.g. default browser).
- I've never had to help a relative with their phone. I've had many of them come to me for help with their computers. Their and my experience with computing platforms is worse without the guardrails
I think many computer savvy people don't realize how freeing and liberating it is for normal people to have an "appliance" computer.
- A lot of these changes are like mandating that cars have a manual transmission option. Sure, there are plenty of people that love the control, but there are many, many more that appreciate not having to deal with it.
Please let governments pass legislation which mandate a manual trasmission model. I will never buy an auto!
- Every dollar and engineering hour that Apple spends complying with these new requirements is time they won't spend on things people actually want, as well as increasing the surface area for bugs and security holes.
Except that Apple are literally the richest company in America. They could hire a thousand new programmers in a team to work 24 hours a day on these requirements and it wouldn't even tickle their profits, let alone revenue.
- Apple is the intermediary between other companies like FB, Google, ad networks, data harvesting, government apps, etc. They can't do things on my phone because Apple forbids it. The more Apple is forced to open up, the less protection I have from other powerful players in the tech market.
If apple is forced to open up, it creates a market for more security products, meaning healthier competition and more transparent security.
- Every place where Apple is forced to open up is a place where there's a choice that many users didn't ask for but will have to make (e.g. default browser).
Not really, safari is the only browser which is installed on a iphone by default, so normal users just use it like they did before and dont need to do anything. However other people that do want to use something different are free to.
- I've never had to help a relative with their phone. I've had many of them come to me for help with their computers. Their and my experience with computing platforms is worse without the guardrails
Nobody is suggesting making the iphone harder to use, just allowing additional choices if thats what the user wants. The choices can be hidden away from normal users and grandma, but why cant they be there in the background for people that want them?
> If apple is forced to open up, it creates a market for more security products, meaning healthier competition and more transparent security.
Have you not had to use a third party security product on your work computer? All third party security products for computers are scams and inefficient
Because if you allow apps that haven't been vetted by Apple to be downloaded and executed via the app store, then grandma is inevitably going to run some malware that drains her 401k to a teenager in Russia.
> - Every dollar and engineering hour that Apple spends complying with these new requirements is time they won't spend on things people actually want, as well as increasing the surface area for bugs and security holes.
nothing changes for you, keep living in apple prison. how does other people having more choice make your experience worse? all arguments I heard so far are completely far fetched and contrived scenarios that dont amount to anything but fear mongering.
Every time I refresh you keep adding more contrived BS excuses to allow the trillion dollar company to keep extorting devs and users with obscene fees.
" - A lot of these changes are like mandating that cars have a manual transmission option. Sure, there are plenty of people that love the control, but there are many, many more that appreciate not having to deal with it."
Nonsense analogy. Computers are General Purpose Computing Devices which people increasingly depend on in their lives where single point of control from Apple makes their lives artificially more difficult solely for the purpose of being able to squeeze out profits. It increases prices for consumers and allows oppressive dictatorships to demand certain apps to be removed and Apple always complies, leaving users without alternatives.
" - Every dollar and engineering hour that Apple spends complying with these new requirements is time they won't spend on things people actually want, as well as increasing the surface area for bugs and security holes."
Boohoo, the trillion dollar company has to do a little more work. They could just stop putting so much work into anti-consumer propaganda so they would have more time for actual work.
"- Apple is the intermediary between other companies like FB, Google, ad networks, data harvesting, government apps, etc. They can't do things on my phone because Apple forbids it. The more Apple is forced to open up, the less protection I have from other powerful players in the tech market."
This is exactly the kind of exaggerated, fear mongering narrative I've expected.
Increased competition and openness could also lead to better privacy and security solutions as companies would need to compete on these features to win over users. Also, despite Apple's policies and safeguards, there have been instances where apps have found ways around these limitations or have used data in ways that are not transparent to users, because Apple only cares about Privacy as far as it benefits their bottom line, that why Apple also started to work on an advertising platform. They care about "Privacy" because now they can exclusively monetize user data.[Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims - https://proton.me/blog/apple-ad-company]
" - Every place where Apple is forced to open up is a place where there's a choice that many users didn't ask for but will have to make (e.g. default browser)."
Nonsense, the only thing that changes is that other people can change the default app, so when they don't care nothing changes for them, they don't have to do anything. this argument of yours is the kind of absurd reach that makes your overall position look absurd.
" - I've never had to help a relative with their phone. I've had many of them come to me for help with their computers. Their and my experience with computing platforms is worse without the guardrails"
I've read this meme so many times and every time I read it I doubt that it's an actual thing instead it's something you desperately need to say in order to uphold your indefensible position of defending Apple's anti-competitive practices. It's not a good argument either, just because your relatives are incompetent we all should suffer under that?
" I think many computer savvy people don't realize how freeing and liberating it is for normal people to have an "appliance" computer."
Ah yes, less choice is actually more choice, slavery is freedom and war is peace.
It doesn't matter if you like it. It doesn't matter if you don't like it. What matters is their actions and behavior are against the law. It can be proven,/according to the US Gov.
>If people want to buy an iphone and shit it up, let them do it.
Those choices also affect me, though. Any shared albums, messages or other data I transmit with these users has a higher risk of being leaked.
There's some security in knowing almost all phones are not jailbroken and thanks to regular os upgrades, have a pretty solid security floor.
One way to handle this would be to decorate the comms ID, email / phone name whatever to show they aren't running a standard iOS. But I would want to know as easily as I do that messages I exchange with someone are going to an android device.
>One way to handle this would be to decorate the comms ID, email / phone name whatever to show they aren't running a standard iOS.
I shudder to imagine the headlines complaining about the "scarlet bubbles apple is using to shame freedom loving users" or whatever nonsense the media would scare up if they tried to do something like that.
if you like your prison, that's your thing, you have the right to stay in it, just don't force other people to live in misery under your preferences when they'd rather live in freedom. we also have rules and regulations which decide if something is lawful or not, so it's not just about what you personally like or not.
> they should just let people jail break the phone and offer zero support for it.
Just let people wipe the phone completely - no drivers, no kernel, nothing, and bring their own. That's the proper solution to people wanting to own their hardware and do whatever they want with it. Want to install a different app store/browser/etc? Go for it, start by installing the new kernel and drivers.
Almost none of the "free" apps are actually free. However, the App store makes it impossible to find this out without first supplying credit card information and installing the app, and possibly setting up an account with an app.
> Apple itself offers a "super app" of course, which is the Apple ecosystem of apps.
Not sure I buy this point. Competitors can also offer their own suite of apps. Apple has an advantage that they can come pre-installed. But they aren't really building super-apps, just a variety of default apps - nothing stops third parties from offering multiple apps on the platform, that is actually a common thing to do.
> Apple has an advantage that they can come pre-installed.
Not only that, apparently updates automatically push their apps on you as well, without even asking. Suddenly I had a "Journal" app added to my homescreen from nowhere, and I thought my device had been hacked before I realized what was going on.
Apple also have the advantage of not having to follow their own rules. Their apps can send notifications without asking for permission about it. "Journal" again is an example here where the app sent me a notification and after going to the app, then they asked me for permission to send notifications.
This was more of an issue early in the App Store’s history than later on. Apple’s relaxed on that a lot a long time ago and you can use any number of contacts, calendars, email clients, browsers, camera apps, messengers, maps apps and so on.
But it still exists in their rules. That they don’t enforce it as often as they used to is cold comfort: they still can whenever they feel the need to do so. So if you get too successful they can still very easily chop you down.
Yeah but browser ≠ rendering engine. I know they get conflated a lot in tech, but when I’m using e.g. Arc on my Macintosh, I’m not using Chrome despite using the same rendering engine.
The extension ecosystem of browsers is pretty important though, and that is tied to the rendering engine.
On Android, I can install firefox-for-android and run ublock origin to no longer see ads on websites.
On iOS, that's not possible. Apple prevents mozilla from shipping a browser capable of running firefox addons.
This is a case where Apple's policies are hampering security since, well, blocking ads on the web is the thing has had the single largest positive impact on security for my elderly relatives. Giving them ublock origin stopped them from clicking on a ridiculous number of scammy ads and popups.
Most browsers don’t have a rendering engine unique to them. Apple made that a policy for iPhones and its derivatives, but a browser is more than its rendering engine.
So do I, but that doesn’t negate my original point: for almost every category of App that comes on a stock iPhone, you can replace it with a 3rd party alternative.
The exceptions are: SMS, Settings, and the Phone app for the numbers tied to your SIMs (there’s still a billion VoIP options including extra lines from carriers like T-Mobile’s Digits) and probably a couple others I’m forgetting. I think the Clock app has a couple of privileges not available to 3rd parties actually.
You can use a 3rd party browser, but that browser will use the version of WebKit that comes with the operating system (except soon, in the EU, whenever 3rd party browsers with their own rendering engines ship there).
Wouldn't that rule out so many apps? E.g. Netflix competing with Apple TV, Goggle Photos vs Apple Photos, Google maps vs Apple maps, any note-taking app, camera, email client, browser, or weather app... What actually gets you rejected?
Does Apple ever have to give you a reason why you're rejected, or tell the truth even if they give you a reason?
That's probably the biggest reason I think that Society (with a capital S) should rein in Apple a bit. They have a lot of power and money over the consumer, but on top of that they have no obligation to provide transparency and truthfulness. Given how dependent people are on their phones, I think it's perfectly fair for the state to step in and say that the power imbalance between consumers and Apple should be equalized a bit.
EDIT: My comment was wrong, please see helpful corrections below!
I think there are technical limitations when you have different apps vs. one app. Simples being you need to log in to multiple different apps, but things like data moving between them etc are also complications.
On top of this keychain stores logins by domain. Even if an app is in a different developer’s container you can retrieve the credentials with just a couple taps.
> Simples being you need to log in to multiple different apps, but things like data moving between them etc are also complications.
I don't think this is actually true. Specifically, once I've logged into one Google app (like Gmail), others automatically pick up the user (like Calendar), so it seems to at least be technically possible.
I think it refers more to a hypothetical app that, when you're using it, would allow you to completely ignore the entire Apple software ecosystem. It would have its own home screen with launchers to things like a web browser, office tools, media, etc. I think this sort of thing never came to fruition because (aside from it being very hard to make) it would be way too bulky what with having to come in the form of a single app package. The ban on third party stores means it wouldn't be able to offer its own app store or come in segments so you can pick only the apps you want.
> I think this sort of thing never came to fruition because (aside from it being very hard to make) it would be way too bulky what with having to come in the form of a single app package.
Note that the Android equivalent (custom launchers) doesn't need to, and iOS's implementation (Springboard.app), while more integrated than that, is still more modular than you describe. It's only App Store restrictions that prevent you from having an app that opens other apps. (If all apps cooperate, you can use the custom URL handler mechanism to work around the App Store restrictions.)
I think part of the lawsuit is that there are glaring exceptions to some companies that Apple gives preferential treatment to. WeChat was mentioned elsewhere in the thread, apparently it does something like this and is given a pass arbitrarily whereas Apple disallows other companies from competing with them.
The problem here is that platform is not precise. You could say this means that Apple should just make the iPhone hardware, and software vendors should compete to create operating systems for it. There's no hard line.
Even if you argue that for example a phone and messaging app should/must be preinstalled on a phone, Apple could allow competing apps for that, and uninstalling or disabling the preinstalled one. Then it would be much harder to argue for that they are unfairly competing in the platform they provide.
Courts are used to arguing over problems where there are no hard lines, I don't think they take "there's no hard line" as an excuse to do nothing to enable competition.
It is a hard problem because the line between an OS function and an application function is very blury. Take for example the FindMy functionality. It's open to third party devices and manufacturers like Tile, but to get all the functionality the OS has, you need to use FindMy, not your own app (like Tile used to/still does). But is FindMy an OS functionality as a built in, privacy preserving, low powered tracker service) or is it an application? Or WebKit. Webkit is the only web rendering engine in iOS. Every app has equal access to WebKit, but is it part of the platform or competing in the platform? Sure, on general purpose computers, browsers are applications, but is there any reason they can't / shouldn't be an OS service? The lower level networking stacks are OS services. The higher level screen drawing stacks are OS services. Why would gluing those two things together not be an OS service?
> Then it would be much harder to argue for that they are unfairly competing in the platform they provide.
No it wouldn't, because you could argue that they should allow competing OSes on their hardware platform.
> I don't think they take "there's no hard line" as an excuse to do nothing to enable competition.
I'm not saying they should. You're not responding to what I said. They didn't need to enable apps at all. They did, and allow things like Whatsapp to compete with their phone and messaging apps. They've enabled competition. Courts don't do anything like that.
I bet the Apple apps have much, much, better background activity/services support. Doing "background" uploads is nothing short of painful compared to Android.
While we never want to compete with core Apple apps, we're constantly having to say 'sorry that's the restrictions running on Apple' with background support.
(our usecase is we have a B2B app that has visual progress reports - so we'll have the same people on a team - the Android ones get their progress reports uploaded instantly, the iOS ones 'sorry keep your phone open'.)
You also have to buy all apps through Apple's app store to natively download to a device. The Digital Markets Act addressed something similar, requesting that developers can sell through alternate marketplaces. Apple came back with a proposal to (1) stick with the status quo with 30 percent commission on sales, (2) reduce commission to 17 percent with a 50 cent charge on downloads over a million, (3) sell through a competing app store and pay the download fee every time. (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/technology/app-store-euro....)
I've designed several apps (Fitstar, Fitbit, theSkimm) that were dependent on the Apple ecosystem. While it's a huge tax to comply with their rules, they also do a TON to help developers succeed, especially early on. They maintain components, provide developer tools, build entire languages, design new paradigms, and ensure quality. I've had a respect for the tax on a service they provide to both developers and end users. At this point though - they're acting as a monopoly, and it feels anti-competitive.
It's not just the developer tax that's a problem. Hiding behind a veil of privacy also doesn't forgive the introduction of "dark pattern" end user experiences - such as the inability to have a group chat with non Apple users. And no non-Apple share links on Apple Photo albums. These create digital "haves" vs "have-nots" - and not everyone in the world can afford to buy physical Apple devices. There must be protocols that allow information to be more interoperable so people have optionality and control over their digital identities.
One thing I hope they mention: Apple put in proprietary extensions to give Apple-made Bluetooth headphones an advantage over all others, then removed the headphone jacks.
It's hard to tie all that together. Generic Bluetooth devices work just like you are used to everywhere else -- that is, kinda shitty and unreliable. Must we suffer a universally crappy experience by preventing Apple from improving BT for their own headsets?
Maybe they should be required to license the tech, if they are not already. But I don't want to degrade my experience just because that's the only way to have a level playing field. Maybe the BT standards group could get off their ass and make the underlying protocol better.
This isn't accurate, normal Bluetooth works much better than you might imagine. The kind of things that are added on top with Apple's solution are things like fast pairing and instant device switching. They also have their own custom codecs, but most other Bluetooth communication devices also support custom codecs which, on Android for example, are enabled by installing a companion app.
Re: Bluetooth being better than you portray: Don't get me wrong, you can certainly run into problems, but in normal usage it works just fine. And Apple isn't fundamentally improving on the potential issues with their proprietary solutions.
Normal BT drops to very low sound quality when the mic is in use, because it goes into "headset" mode. Apple got around that with an extension. Combined with the jank pairing and device switching, the difference is pretty big.
AirPods also drop audio quality severely when their mic is active, just as with Bluetooth. Apple hasn’t solved that in any way with some nefarious extension.
Reminds me of how wireless keyboards and mice often don't use BT despite it being totally designed for that use case. They use some random 2.4GHz USB dongle. And well there are BT kbms, but they're unreliable.
I actually love Bluetooth mice and keyboards, especially when they support multi device so I can switch between my phone/laptop/watch with the press of a button. Currently using [0] for a few years, love the build quality and form factor. Then a random Microsoft BT mouse. No problems with reliability.
My Apple BT keyboards+mice run out of battery very quickly and sometimes randomly disconnect/reconnect. A newer non-Apple BT keyboard seems ok on its own, but then there are issues on the other end. My fairly new Windows PC can't wake up from Bluetooth keyboards/mice, so I have to keep a USB one attached. And the BIOS menu requires a USB keyboard too. Dongle eliminates all that complexity.
There are also some BT limitations at play. Key rollover is capped, and mouse polling rate is lower. But that'd only matter to me if I were playing PC games. Ability to switch devices is a plus for BT.
I emphatically disagree. Not in my experience at all. Nearly every single time I use Bluetooth it is a dance of connecting, forgetting, re-pairing, reconnecting, looking for old connected devices to shut them off, etc. Half the time I give up and don't use it. This happens to any combination of Bluetooth devices I have, at all locations, in any situation.
So why is there such a difference between my experience, and the experiences of the other posters here, so different to yours? Could it be that there's something about your situation leading your experience to suck that I'm not having?
I'd put my money on buying cheap devices and painting your experience with them in broad strokes on the technology as a whole. After all, if you have no faith in the tech, why spend money on a good experience? After all, why would $5 earbuds from Walmart have a different experience to a quality pair of headphones for a few hundred dollars to pair with your nearly thousand dollar smartphone?
I don't mean to gatekeep good Bluetooth, because try as I might I can't get my mom to stop getting her own and let me buy the expensive stuff for her, but she still manages to reliably get her Bluetooth paired, connected and working at the start of the phone call whenever I call her despite using budget headphones.
She does have a Pixel though. But it's just the budget one.
I don't really know how all this tech works, but when I bought my new Xiaomi buds, the moment I opened them my Android phone recognised I have new buds and asked me to pair them with one click. It was like magic. My understanding is that this would not be possible on an iphone, whereas this exact behavior works with Apple buds on an Apple phone.
It's not part of AOSP, but something modern Google phones support. It's not a fully open thing - device makers must register with Google - but better than the iPhone situation where only Apple devices can have a nice pairing experience.
I'm fine with Apple implementing BT to spec (i.e. crap) and having their own extensions to improve it. I'm not fine with them eliminating the only alternative, the jack. Since the first iPhone, there's been both BT and jack, and people clearly preferred the jack until Apple decided it was time to grow their accessories sector.
“Apple improved upon the notoriously unreliable Bluetooth standard and then slightly degraded wired listening by requiring a $9 dongle” is quite a weak anti-trust argument. Almost all innovation comes from this type of vertical integration.
Do you actually use the dongle? It doesn't work with inline mics, making it useless even if you were to carry it around everywhere. It also doesn't work with previous iPhones, so you can't share say a car aux between an old and a new iPhone.
Is this a new thing? I haven't used this in a while, but the lightning dongle used to work fine with my headphones+mic (also intended for Apple's headphone jack). I know there's some difference in how the headphone connector is set up between Apple and everyone else though.
I'm pretty sure the commenter is misinformed. The dongle worked with the inline mic on my B&O headphones. But it wasn't worth engaging with that point because I think they're wrong even if the dongle doesn't work perfectly for them.
I use the dongle, fwiw. It stays attached to my "good" wired earphones.
I don't really have any strong feelings either way about it. I dropped my phone once, and the dongle took the brunt of it (saving the expensive stuff) but I did have to buy another.
I used the dongle. I left it permanently attached to my headphone cable, and it was a non-issue to “carry it everywhere.” Needing a wired inline mic is a niche of niche, making the argument about antitrust monopoly even weaker.
Wireless headphones are a better experience is basically every way, and yes microphones on phones aren’t a niche which is why every phone has one. Totally unrelated to wired inline external microphones, though.
If you're taking a call on a phone with headphones, you need an mic on the headphones for anyone to hear you. There were several years you had the option of using BT headphones while the iPhone had both BT and the jack, but you were using the jack.
These days the reliability problems of Bluetooth are effectively gone. Sure, it's not a perfect technology, but Bluetooth devices work completely reliably for me across tons of vendors.
Saying Bluetooth itself is unreliable is an outdated view. There are shitty Bluetooth devices yes, but the protocol works fine when paired with good devices
That is my understanding talking with devs who have worked at the lower layers of bluetooth. Well, two problems. The spec is not an easy one to read with a lot of caveats. But the bigger issue is, a lot of companies half ass their bluetooth implementation. Whether we are talking Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, Linux, etc, if you experience bluetooth problems, often it is the device and not the bluetooth code in the OS.
I have high-end Bose headphones from 2020, a new iPhone, and a new Mac. Bluetooth sucks. You're far better off with AirPods than anything else if you're going to use BT.
By the way, it's so bad that I don't use headphones anymore with the iPhone. I use the phone in speaker mode. And the only reason I even have a new iPhone is because AT&T dropped support for my old one.
I have multiple pairs of high end Sony headphones, Pixel buds, numerous Bluetooth speakers, and Bluetooth works reliably when I pair those phones to my AV receiver, my PS5, my Pixel phone, my tablet, or my TV. I rarely have any problems: the audio is clear, the latency is not noticeable, and devices connect quickly and without fuss.
There are corner cases that cause annoyance, and those corner cases are indeed around where Apple is adding on top of Bluetooth: The ability to instantly switch the connected device without needing to disconnect from a previous device, and the ability to pair just by having the devices close. Those features are replicated in the Android ecosystem but are not standard.
If those two features are what you mean by "sucks" then fine. But that doesn't imply that Bluetooth doesnt work reliably, just that it doesn't have these two features broadly supported.
A difference here is that fast pairing and device switching on Android, while not a standard part of the protocol, is open for device manufacturers to support, unlike Apple's versions of these features.
I tried my Bose NC700 with my Pixel 6. It gave me the quick-pairing notification, asking me also to install an app, which ofc I said no to. Then when it was already paired, I got the pairing notification 6 more times during my call.
Probably doesn't happen for everyone, otherwise it'd be fixed. But that's how it always is with overly complicated stuff, edge cases everywhere.
I have a low end Bose bluetooth speaker that connects up instantly to any of my powered on devices (2x Macbook, iPhone), and can switch between them seamlessly with a button press. I've also never had any issues with Sony WHM1000XM* headphones regarding bluetooth across these devices.
My AirPods frequently hop between my MacBook and iPhone without asking though, because the other device played a split second audio clip.
My Bose NC700 can only remember 3 devices it seems. My corp-supplied laptop+phone put it over the limit, meaning I have to repair whenever I want to switch to another device, and it forgets one as a result (idk how it works, FIFO?). Pairing often takes a few tries, and it's even glitchier on the corp Android phone.
Earphone quality drops to something awful whenever the mic is in use. That's just cause of the BT standard. This gets more complicated with multiple devices involved.
I'll be listening to music on my work laptop with my headphones, my iPhone will get a call, it'll switch to the iPhone only to play a ringtone in my ears, then when I accept the call the iPhone will switch back to its own earpiece instead of my headphones. Juked!
Then some unpredictable things. Like it gets stuck connected to the wrong device, or it starts playing music when I turn them on, or it won't connect even with a device it should remember. I've had my BT headphones connect during a meeting, make my laptop start playing random music, then disconnect, causing the laptop to switch to full volume speakers and blast music into my meeting.
I don't fault Bose for any of this. These are the most reliable BT headphones I've ever owned. The standard just sucks. The iPhone side has issues like randomly switching to my car BT when I walk by wearing my headphones. The car BT can only pair to 1 device at a time, so my wife or I have to disable BT to free it up. Overall it's not worth vs just plugging in the darn cable.
I was gifted AirPods, but I'm on the Android ecosystem. I see a huge difference between what I can configure on an Apple device vs my Android devices. For example, on an Apple device I can enable features to help me hear better in a noisy environment which would be nice to have.
I wonder if they are using a proprietary configuration API that is deliberately kept secret or if no Android devs have figured out how to reverse engineer it yet (seems very unlikely).
If the likely former, I'd like someone to address this as well as it almost feels like if they're getting into hearing assistance features, then accessibility becomes important.
Yeah, and don't get me started on the audiophile perspective on Bose. Bose is an ear candy brand, what you hear out of them is not even close to what the audio engineer intended the experience to be. I won't fault anyone who's fine with them, but I would never buy a pair of Bose.
That being said, they absolutely excel at noise cancellation, and that's because their core market is airmen, Bose is used almost universally by pilots for their in-flight headsets. It's where they make their actual money.
AirPods came out 8 years ago. It’s good to hear it’s better now, though that doesn’t comport with my experience. Are you saying you’d prefer a world where innovation was held from the market for almost a decade while standards caught up and made them available to everyone and every product simultaneously?
> Are you saying you’d prefer a world where innovation was held from the market for almost a decade while standards caught up and made them available to everyone and every product simultaneously?
Not really, I don't particularly have a problem with how Airpods went, except that Apple could have moved to standardize or at least open up fast pairing and instant switching, but they didn't.
I’d prefer if Apple spent its scarce engineering resources on bringing new innovations to market and not facilitating other people to copy what they build. From Apple’s perspective the request is even more twisted: they should move to standardize all their technology and also give it away for free (lest folks complain about paying a “Core Technology Fee”!)?
So? Do you think great engineers or engineering orgs are a dime a dozen? The US government is a many trillion dollar organization. Have you used a government website?
I'm fine with this. Apple can extend sucky BT, Apple can make their faster Apple Silicon chips, Apple can make iMessage since SMS is trash, Nvidia can do CUDA cause OpenCL sucked, whatever. Just don't also intentionally kneecap the competitors by removing their interfaces.
That is very different from saying "Almost all innovation comes from this type of vertical integration."
Innovation comes from many sources and while vertical integration does assist in some cases, your assertion steps so far past plausible that it is simply ridiculous.
What innovation? At the time of removal from iPhone, the LG V35 had a headphone jack but was thinner and lighter than an iPhoe with the same IP rating, and a better camera.
Yes, basically non-Apple headphones are pointless for iPhone owners now. Doesn't matter how much Bose or anyone improves their tech, the port they relied upon got removed. Apple has locked together iPhones and headphones.
I don't get the sense that third party headphones don't work just fine with iPhone, other than a seeming indication that iPhone users seem to think normal Bluetooth doesn't work well, which might indicate Apple has either not invested in their standard Bluetooth stack or at worst, actively degraded it.
But I'm doubtful of this, it seems more likely that some Apple users have an outdated view of how reliable standard Bluetooth actually are, even when paired with their iPhones.
Yes, there have been since 2007. Almost nobody used them until the jack got removed, because they don't work well. BT standard improved over the years, but not enough.
Vertical integration and competition are orthogonal. Vertical integration is when Apple improves upon Bluetooth with a proprietary enhancement to the standard. Competition is Pixel Buds advertising a similar feature set.
Huh? It sounds more like they deliberately broke everyone's devices except their own so you either have to pay them more to continue using your existing headset with an adapter, or if you have a bluetooth headset you're just shit out of luck unless you buy an Apple headset. How is that not anticompetitive?
No actually any iPhone with a headphone jack continued to have a functioning headphone jack. And competitors marketed their phones with headphone jacks for a year and ended up also abandoning that feature.
It's not feasible to use an old iPhone forever, I tried. If the required app updates don't get you, the carrier will.
The big competitors like Samsung removed the jack too once they started selling their own wireless earbuds. They realized they could use Apple's strategy too.
All of these look important to me, but I've been particularly frustrated recently by the smartwatch issue. I've been a Fitbit user for several years and briefly tried an Apple Watch before returning it and resume Fitbit use— I had a few issues with the Apple Watch, most notably around battery life. But that brief experience showed me really starkly how much Apple is able to lock out third parties from doing things that their own stuff can do trivially by hooking right into private operating system APIs:
- Apple Watch can directly use your credit cards without needing to separately add them to Fitbit/Google Pay.
- Apple Watch can "find my" your phone, whereas Fitbit's version of this is limited to just making it beep, and even that only works if the phone is running the Fitbit app in the background (which it often isn't).
- Apple Watch can stream data to the phone all the time, whereas Fitbit relies on the app being opened, meaning your morning sleep data isn't available immediately since opening the app (to look at it) just enables it to begin transferring.
- Apple Watch can unlock itself when your phone unlocks.
- Apple Watch gets much richer notification integration.
And yeah, you can argue that all of this is optional "extra" stuff that is just Apple's prerogative to take advantage of as the platform holder, and maybe that's so to some degree... but these little things do add up. Particularly when Apple doesn't even have a device that competes with Fitbit, it feels unfair that they shouldn't be made to open up all the APIs necessary for this kind of interoperability.
I believe Apple needs more regulatory action taken against it for abusing it's dominant position. But apart from cloud streaming apps (which they've resolved recently by allowing them), I find these claims to be pretty weak and not significantly market-affecting.
I strongly believe Apple is under no obligation to make iMessage cross-platform. It's their service they invented, and they get to run it how they chose. SMS is the interoperable standard between different platforms, and RCS is the new standard which they've comitted to supporting.
I would much rather action taken on Apple for the anti-steering provisions restricting competition for payments. I think this has had a much bigger market impact than limitations on game streaming or smart watches.
As sibling points out and I have argued strongly for in past discussions here, at issue is Apple's control of texting: That is, the ability for a phone to message any other phone with a text message without requiring the other participant to use a custom app. Only iMessage can do this on the iPhone.
In the consumer's eye, all phones can text, so it is a universal way to reach someone who has a phone number. It removes the complexity of having to coordinate ahead of time with a contact about what messaging service they both have. It's why texting is so popular in the US (along with historical actions by US carriers to make texting extremely cheap and ultimately free)
Once they had this control, they then used it to make texting better only when the conversation participants each had iPhones, which produced a network effect where friends would be incentivized to pressure their contacts to also use iPhones. Apple leveraged convenience, features and security to make this happen.
I don't anticipate Apple's upcoming RCS support to materially change this. If we're lucky, we'll get higher quality pictures out of it, but it's possible to support RCS while not supporting a lot of the features that make RCS better than SMS, such as read receipts, replies, typing indicators, and yes, encryption. Encryption is not a standard part of RCS yet, but it could be made so by Apple forcing Google to standardize their encryption and then implementing it. But it's not in Apple's interest given the above to bother. More likely they will do as their initial complaint/announcement about RCS hinted at: Not even engage on encryption because it's "not part of the spec", leaving iPhone/Android messaging unencrypted.
Google is not blameless here, it's insane that they haven't worked themselves to standardize encryption.
When you put it that way, it certainly sounds a lot like Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. And I've never seen any tech oriented person who is familiar with EEE argue that it is a legitimate business strategy that should be permitted except in this case.
That's one of the things I like about this complaint - it points out that they don't allow any other apps to support SMS, so only iMessage has the ability to message anyone with just a phone number, seamlessly upgrading if the other party has iMessage and using SMS otherwise.
It's not solely about iMessage not being open, it's about reserving key features for only iMessage to give it a significant advantage. (Also mentioned are other key bits like running in the background, etc)
> I strongly believe Apple is under no obligation to make iMessage cross-platform. It's their service they invented, and they get to run it how they chose.
So if it were up to you all telecom operators would be on separate networks, because you can always use smoke signals to get your message across?
(I'm with you for niche applications where the number of users is small. But we're talking mainstream communication here.)
This is exactly my thinking. I can fully understand why green bubbles are annoying, why not being able to send multimedia is annoying, why it all being unencrypted is incredibly unsafe... but why is this Apple's fault? Why is the complaint that Apple is stifling innovation and not that phone carriers are refusing to innovate and or provide these services at a reasonable cost? Why is Apple effectively being required to act as a phone carrier?
"Impacts the market" is not the same as "controls the market," which is the threshold (usually) for antitrust litigation.
Microsoft, by comparison, OWNED desktop computing in the 90s. Apple was on the ropes badly, and Linux wasn't viable for most people. And they used that dominance to attempt to strangle the open web in its crib. People literally had no where else to go.
Apple has nothing like that control today. Android enjoys a healthy chunk of the market. A host of other messaging tools exist if you don't like iMessage. You can avoid using Apple's tech at every turn if you like (and I know many people who do, as a matter of personal policy).
This is not a situation that warrants governmental intervention. This is a situation where the government is overreaching, and if they succeed the precedent will be set that Washington gets to decide what features a vendor can control on their own platforms. That's not a good place to be.
>This is not a situation that warrants governmental intervention.
I agree that the government has a weak case - but they can make their case in the court of law. And to another degree in the court of public opinion.
There is a case to be made for constraining the dominant consumer tech company. Consider this hypothetical scenario. A tech company has a one year lead over their competitors because their hardware and software is objectively one year ahead. And let's project that every year that lead grows by a couple months. I assume that all would agree that this is a huge threat.
What government oversight and intervention is warranted to address this threat?
In my opinion, all the reasons that the government gave to call Apple a monopoly are just weak rationalizations they've come up with that still hold enough legal validity, and allow them (them being the powers that be who perceive the real long-term threat) to start slowing Apple down.
>I assume that all would agree that this is a huge threat.
I do not. I do not think most people would agree with that. A lead in one area is historically difficult to sustain and extend into another. When attempts have been made that could have been successful, they were made on the back of actual market-controlling dominance, which Apple manifestly and obviously does not have here.
My biggest problem is how hard it is to get my data out of apps in usable formats, move it between apps, or put in custom apps. My iPhone would be great if I could use my own data and apps as easily (and freely) as my old Samsung Galaxy.
It's hard to use iphone as a general purpose computing device when they make it hard to share between apps. I know it's part of apple's "security model" but it can also be interpreted as killing competition between 3rd party apps and apple apps
They’ve long been anti-competitive against alternatives like Hackintosh’s or file lawsuits over interface similarities. That aggressive suppression of competing suppliers is partly how they got tens of billions of dollars. They’re not doing it for security.
One test, though, would be to look at customizability of Mac OS vs iOS. They claim to be securing both. Can we run custom apps easily on Mac OS, script it, get full access to our files, etc? If so, why would they restrict the iPhones from doing those things, but leave Macs wide open, if it was merely a security issue?
Another example might be remote, access tools. Aka remote control of iPhones. If App Store has any, then they’d put iPhones at much higher risk than users running their own code on their own devices. Even with a review given that a RAT might have a zero day that gives attackers full control. If they restrict user freedom, but allow RAT’s, that would be another hint that they restrict user freedom for anti-competitive reasons.
I don’t have Mac OS, though. It might be as locked down as the iPhone. That would make my argument useless.
You can download all your data from the Apple Website. Heartbeat, GPS etc. are plainly available. I wrote an app that converts Lat/lon to distance traveled.
I think they are hitting apple pretty broadly on all things you're mentioning. I don't think everyone will agree on all of them but many will agree on various ones and it's left up to courts after that.
Where does that "dominant position" idea come from, that you and others are claiming in this thread? Apple is nowhere near having a dominant position in any of the markest where they compete, such as cell phones or computers.
In the U.S. where this lawsuit was filed, Apple controls 50-60% of the smartphone market, where the next largest competitor Samsung holds only 20-25% [1]. Among U.S. teenagers the iPhone has a massive 87% market share [2]. That is indisputably dominant.
iPhone has a 55-60% market share in the US & Canada. So Id be pretty happy with saying they have the 'dominant position' in the North American mobile market.
They control a huge swath of the market and block/limit ability of users and 3rd parties to use their devices, so it's not just about being dominant, it's about how you act as a dominant corporation/company.
With regards to the "super apps", Apple can just as well argue that it aspires to retain access for multiple players ("avoiding monopoles", ironically), so naturally it does not want only a single app becoming the majority of all downloads, which leads the app store idea ad absurdum.
Makes you wonder about something else: Could Apple one day be broken apart like "Ma Bell"? It seems the Apple brand is inconsistent with notions of modularity and openness (which brings with itself a certain messiness), everything is supposed to look at feel alike up to the slightly silly (as a problem to solve, as long as there are still children starving on this planet at the same time) device unpacking experience.
It's good that the U.S. government are doing their job as expected, in this case that's relevant for all other countries, where a lot of the device owners/users are based.
My ultimate wish would be some someone to launch a third mobile platform - beside Apple IOS and Alphabet-Google Android - based on a new open W3C standard (not HTML).
Such a standard would get a chance to grow with the support of the legal apparatus: judges should force the oligopolists to implement said standard, and then people might just say "hey, I can just implement ONE app, and catch all THREE platforms."
>Also, the Apple Watch itself does not offer compatibility with Android.
This is the reason I am now on an iPhone after being on Android since ~2009. But this could also apply to Samsung too. There were two watches I was considering - Samsung's and Apple's (for health monitoring reasons, I have a family history of heart problems, and am already nearly 10 years older than my dad was when he died). I would either have to buy a Samsung phone or an iPhone to get the functionality I wanted, and TBH I really don't like Samsung's take on Android (I've been either Cyanogenmod or Motorola for over a decade), so an iPhone it was. But I would have preferred to get an Apple Watch and have that work fully with my Android phone, but that's not even a starter, let alone the limited-functionality you would get with a Samsung watch with another Android phone.
I'm happy with the watch, and I now like a lot about the iPhone. But it was 4x the price of my previous phone.
Was this before the Google Pixel Watch, or did you eliminate it for other reasons? Also, newer Galaxy watches run Androids WearOS instead of Tizen, and from what I understand, work much better with other Android phones.
It is interesting that in this case "pro-competitive" does not necessarily mean "pro-consumer". I am not sure how stuff like "super apps" are a good thing for consumers (sounds like a nightmare mass surveillance scenario to me). Similar cloud streaming apps where the whole fuss is really about microtransactions in games or less regulation. Message interoperability is not a bad thing, but not sure why we still talk about "MMS" in 2024 when so many different chat apps are around. I don't know about smartwatches, maybe that is a fair point. And as for digital wallets, I already trust apple for the OS, I would not see why I would put the effort to download an extra app from a third party I would need to also trust to put bank details, except if we were talking about some open source gold standard of trust and privacy. I do not care if it is apple or a third party that gets a commission from banks or who gets my transaction history to sell to brokers.
On the other hand, I would like to see interoperability in stuff like airdrop. But that would not be something that other FAANG would make money of, so that is probably not so interesting for these regulators.
> And as for digital wallets, I already trust apple for the OS, I would not see why I would put the effort to download an extra app from a third party I would need to also trust to put bank details
Do you think no one else should be able to build a mobile payment service? Should banks be block from making, say, ChasePay?
It's fine to prefer Apple Pay and to choose Apple Pay even if there are other options. The question is, should everyone be locked into Apple Pay vs choosing Apple Pay because it is better than ChasePay?
Thanks for summarizing. As someone deeply entrenched in Apple's ecosystem, and who admittedly prefers the walled garden, I really have no problem if any of these five things were struck down.
Better competition for cloud streaming apps? Seems good for me as a user. Better messaging interoperability? I don't have anyone in my family or friends group who wasn't already on an iPhone, and I thought this was coming already with RCS anyway, but sure let's go. Better smartwatch support? If it makes Apple want to build even better Apple Watches, I'm all for it. And all of my cards already work with Apple Wallet so this has no bearing on me either.
The only one that's really ambiguous is "Super Apps". I'd be greatly inconvenienced if Apple things stopped working so well together, but I wouldn't be inconvenienced at all if others get a chance to build their own "super apps".
> I don't have anyone in my family or friends group who wasn't already on an iPhone, and I thought this was coming already with RCS anyway, but sure let's go.
I'm skeptical that adding RCS will actually fix the problems because of how Apple is likely to implement it. Their malicious compliance in the EU strongly hints that they are going to hobble their RCS implementation just enough to maintain the status quo just like they are with the DMA requirements. Hopefully legal efforts like this push Apple more towards actual interoperability.
> Apple’s smartwatch—Apple Watch—is only compatible with the iPhone. So, if Apple can steer a user towards buying an Apple Watch, it becomes more costly for that user to purchase a different kind of smartphone because doing so requires the user to abandon their costly Apple Watch and purchase a new, Android-compatible smartwatch.
This actually kind of happened to me. My iPhone 12 Pro was stolen out of my hands last year in July. I had an Apple watch, but decided to replace the iPhone with a Pixel 7 Pro [1] since it was a bit cheaper than replacing the iPhone and I didn't have a job, and as a result my watch didn't work. Initially I was happy enough to use a dumb analog watch, but shortly after this happened, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and wanted something that would track sleep. I ended up getting a Garmin Instinct (per a recommendation on HN actually).
I gotta admit that it would have been pretty nice to not have been forced to buy a new smartwatch, and just use the one I already had. I love the Garmin Instinct, more than I liked the Apple Watch [2], it's a very good, well-made product, and I'm happy that it appears to work fine on iOS and Android, but I really didn't need another watch. If there hadn't been an artificial limitation forcing me to get another watch, I would probably still be using the Apple Watch.
[1] I don't have that phone anymore because the Pixel 7 Pro is a horrible product that Google should be ashamed of themselves over.
[2] In no small part because the battery is like 16 days instead of the 1.5 days I was getting with the Apple Watch.
1. Samsung watch actually used to support iPhones. They dropped the support, likely due to business reasons and the limitations as described here
2. My naive understanding is that the question is not forcing anyone to support anything, but rather the ability to make it possible to do so. If Apple wants to have full support for Android phones, they are welcome to do so, but not vice versa -- nobody can possibly create a smartwatch that works as well as Apple Watch with iPhones.
> Apple also collects fees from banks for using Apple Pay
15 basis points (0.15%) from the issuing bank on something that _undoubtably_ increases tx volume and associated interchange revenue. Sure, the issuing banks would like tx volume for absolutely free. Sure, DOJ should argue the point on NFC access. But 15bp from the party that's making more money on a service that's free and beneficial for {consumer, merchant, card network} just seems like good business.
That's the point of the lawsuit. Chase can't currently make Chase Pay to compete with Apple Pay and offer a mobile payment service with less than 15 basis points.
And fine, let apple collect their fee, but also open up payments on iPhone to other providers. Why can't my native bank app use the nfc hardware itself, hmmmmmmmmm? Oh Apple lock in so they can collect their $$$ for literally no reason; the payment network already exists, Apple is just a middleman.
Did they mention copying photos from your phone to a PC via USB? This is intentionally crippled and such an unpleasant experience in comparison to the experience if you have a Mac, for me at least.
> The company “undermines” the ability of iPhone users to message with owners of other types of smartphones, like those running the Android operating system, the government said. That divide — epitomized by the green bubbles that show an Android owner’s messages — sent a signal that other smartphones were lower quality than the iPhone, according to the lawsuit.
I read that as 'interop' is a secondary issue, if an issue at all; the actual case is the green/blue segregation. If Apple embedded a fingerprint in every interoperable message and shown blue messages for iMessage-sent content, green background for others, it'd still be a problem even if messages are otherwise identical - unless all the features truly work on both, in which case the color split is purely status signaling.
iMessage is the monopoly part. They could make an App or even just an API available on other platforms but don't because they want the lock-in.
> “The #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage ... iMessage amounts to serious lock-in,” was how one unnamed former Apple employee put it in an email in 2016
> “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,”
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...
Not getting on board with RCS or any other way to improve SMS/MMS until they were (implicitly) forced was motivated by that desire to lock their users in to a messaging platform that only works on Apple devices.
> Strage to see that as an issue; SMS is clearly an inferior protocol compared to iMessage and it's useful to know when messages have been downgraded.
Except that's not why the blue/green difference was created (at least historically).
It dates back to the time where SMS messages cost money for each one sent (though plans often came with x free messages), so the green message was telling you it was (potentially) costing you money when sending/receiving messages. (US$ = greenbacks -> green = cost)
iMessage didn't even exist for the first few years of the iPhone's life. All messages were green. Green could not have been chosen to indicate it cost money, because there was nothing to distinguish it from.
Then, in 2011 (IIRC), iMessage was introduced, and the blue bubbles were to indicate both that it doesn't cost money, and that it supports several other capabilities (which have changed over the years—IIRC, it did not start out with end-to-end encryption, so the people boldly asserting that that's the primary reason for the distinction are also wrong).
Remove the color from the equation entirely, and what do you think would happen when someone without an iPhone joins a group chat? Do you think everyone would ignore the change completely, even though it would mean they'd lose all the iMessage features that SMS/MMS group texts lack? Or do you think they'd just be more frustrated about it because it's harder to tell when it's happening, but treat people the same?
Do you really think it has anything to do with the color of the bubbles, rather than the fact that SMS's featureset is much smaller than iMessage's?
Yes, because it's the other way around now: if you have a green bubble, you don't get invited to the chat in the first place. A different thought experiment for you: assume feature parity between green and blue bubbles starts today, what do you think happens? Do green bubbles suddenly start getting invites to group chats?
...Yes, and that's my point. It's not about the color, but lots of people are talking about it as if the color is the primary or sole cause of the ostracization—as if Apple marking iMessages differently than SMS messages is the root of the problem, rather than the disparity in features.
I'm not going to try to deny that there are some people who a) would shun (ex?)friends for using an Android phone, and b) continue to shun them even once the actual reason for that goes away, because Lord there are some petty, shallow people in the world.
I am going to say that I don't think it's Apple's or the government's business to try to fix that problem. If the government wants to force Apple to open up iMessage in some fashion, I think that's potentially reasonable, but holding Apple responsible for the cruelty and cliquishness of what must be a tiny subset of its users is just absurd.
The actual effect is to know when my message is secure. No, RCS or another protocol does not mean it’s secure, even if they have some encryption. The other app can still eavesdrop after the message has reached the end.
But perhaps the courts would want to weaken security. It’s definitely a thorn in their side.
Does this.... actually happen? To like, people over the age of 10?
If so, I'd almost be thankful to Apple for letting me know who not to bother being friends with.
If someone in my social circle ostracized someone else because of their phone, they (the person doing the ostracizing) wouldn't be in my social circle anymore.
I have never heard of this actually happening outside of when iPhone is a topic on HN. I don't really have other social media, so that might be a part of it. But in real life? Never once experienced this, or even know someone who has.
my friend group has a separate group chat for just android users and they get party invites after the main group does.
This makes no sense to me. You exclude some portion of your friends because your text bubble is green instead of blue? Why?
It absolutely happens in real life because of basic human nature. It creates friction in relationships, and even the most minimal amount of unecessary friction can cause divides or make it harder to connect. You seem to underestimate how lazy people can be.
Imagine in 2010 you meet a potential romantic partner and they say, "Hey! Add me on Facebook!" And you reply, "Oh, I'm not on Facebook... can we just talk on the phone instead?" The person may go, "Oh, umm... sure, I guess." But then you never connect because you haven't made it as easy as possible; you've introduced a tiny amount of friction that a lot of people are just not willing to tolerate. If everyone else is on Facebook, why aren't you?
In real life, it creates so much friction that yes, there is pressure to buy an iPhone and change your entire software ecosystem just to fit in and remove this barrier to relationships. It's just text messaging; it's ancient technology at this point and no company should have a monopoly on it in any form. At a minimum they should let other operating systems download iMessage—show them ads, charge a fee, I don't know. But creating a hardware-enforced wall around basic telecommunication is wrong.
I do not understand how the color of a chat bubble creates friction. I text Android friends the same way I text iPhone friends. We exchange phone numbers, then we text each other.
You sound very rational as the core function of a text is maintained. It's a fact that Apple neuters the features when texting Android. It's a social faux pas to have android as a kid, in college, or even as adults.
For me personally, I find that young professional women on the dating scene see it as a signal / red flag for lack of status or wealth when starting an interaction. It puts you in a negative light at the start of it dating, whether a tease or serious concern. There's dumber things people judge, but this is up there. Once you establish trust and comfort, I haven't found issue with texting in this scenario.
So there's initial friction in some cases like dating. And with children/families there's ongoing friction.
This must be some kind of sharp generational divide, right? I'm over 40 and I can't think of anything that has made me feel as old as I do reading the "green message shame" discourse.
the chat bubble color misses the point. it's more the loss of features. because as soon as you add a single android user the experience degrades. reacting becomes clunkier and imessage exclusive features wont work. so it's better to manage two chats
This happened in my family. Except my cousins just banded together and bought our Android using family member an iPhone. She was pleased with the result
I agree. That's why I'm saying interop is not the root of the problem. Segregation of people based on whether they are using iMessage or something else combined with inability to install iMessage on non-Apple devices causes a social problem and a significant smartphone market pressure.
The colors indicate the features available. Even with RCS, there will be a significant list of features available to iMessage users that are not available over RCS. No matter what Apple does there must be some mechanism to visually indicate that standard iMessage features are no longer available. What would be the alternative, pretending that these features exist and then failing silently when one client doesn't support them?
The green/blue bubble thing is irrelevant. It reflects a fundamental reality of the platform technology.
Technology doesn’t matter here. What matters is whether people feel pressured to buy iMessage capable devices by others. In the US the answer is yes. Elsewhere it’s WhatsApp everywhere (with its own homogenous ecosystem issues which should be regulated).
Maybe Apple shouldn't use their dominant position as a smartphone manufacturer to knowledgeably exploit human insecurity and exacerbate user woe in hope of selling families another iPhone: https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/21/24107676/buy-your-mom-an-...
I’ve never understood the messaging interop angle when there are so many non-phone network based messaging apps available. It’s just always seemed the weakest of the arguments against Apple w.r.t. the iPhone. SMS/MMS/RCS standardization was historically a train wreck so it made sense to me for Apple to just support the minimum and be done with it. All of my groups chats that involve a mixture of iPhone and Android users has usually been on something like WhatsApp for this reason.
The other points seem much more specific and actionable.
To be fair, Apple has said a lot of things. Wasn't FaceTime supposed to be an open standard and that never happened? If they give a specific target date I'd feel more encouraged.
That would be an interesting development, because apparently the other monopolist in this game is implementing RCS with some proprietary crap, and Apple will deliberately implement the current standard feature set. So they will continue being incompatible but now because of Google. I'll continue investing in the popcorn futures :) .
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.
Or alternatively in a just world we would teach our children not to be little shits to each other because of their tech choices. I just can't wrap my head around how the whole SMS vs iMessage color thing has become such a dominant "problem". It's been that way for as long as there was any distinction to be made between SMS and non SMS messaging. It's valuable information to the end user, and it's easily dealt with by using any other messaging system other than SMS to communicate, like apparently the entire rest of the world does. But somehow it's too difficult for american teenagers to figure out how to install Signal, or Whats App, or Telegram, or Facebook Messenger, or use email, or Discord, or IRC, or Matrix, or Skype, or Google Chat or literally any other of a few hundred messaging / chat systems that are out there.
In terms of (4) Why would the apple watch want to have to build and maintain their apple watch on the google platform. Its funny that a company not wanting to work on another platform (probably due to business costs of doing that) is being considered anti-competitive.
Making it difficult for 3rd party .. sure but trying to force apple to have their hardware work on other platforms is a business decision .
1. Seems odd, given WeChat is on iOS… the example you used is literally a counterpoint for the allegation.
3. Messages do interop. But it’d be hilarious if the US created some kind of precedent where everything has to work on everything.
4. Samsung, and Google both fall into this trap, where more functionality is available between like devices.
5. So when my Amex isn’t accepted, that’s Visa or Mastercard restricting APIs - and causing lock in right?
These strange legal cases are odd to me. If we think these large tech conglomerates should be regulated, then write laws for them, don’t use the court system to muck things up for no reason.
"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_. "
But that's not a claim. It might be a fact that supports a claim. One which Apple might contest. It seems that no matter how many times web publications in spades remind readers that monopolies are not per se illegal, i.e., something more is required, e.g., anti-competitive conduct, forum commenters remain convinced of some other reality.
- Monopolization: actual, attempted, conspiracies, etc.
- Restraints of trade. Horizontal (rigging bids, fixing prices, allocating markets to avoid competition) and Vertical (resale price limits, exclusive deals)
- Tying: leveraging one monopoly to gain another
- Merger, where the resulting market would not be competitive
- other Unfair Competition (FTC)
While lawsuits are not uncommon, actual relief is rare, in part because the few judgments are overturned on appeal. Antitrust has been steadily eroded for decades.
Recent relief includes US v AT&T 2018 (imposed conditions on the Time Warner acquisition), but there are many more overturned.
So: 1. Super apps and 2 cloud streaming apps (restraint of trade): it's hard to compare all of apple to all of these multi-function apps. One question is whether all the apple functionality in fact complies with whatever constraints are imposed. I suppose the theory is restraint of trade. In NCAA v. Alston (2021) the NCAA lost their ability to restrict student compensation, but that was a blanket restriction.
3. Message interoperability: Apple also color-codes SMS messages, and will argue it helps to indicate the kind of data that can be transferred. That's a losing argument.
4. Smart watches (Restraint and tying): Unclear what limits are placed on other watches. Easy to fix with an updated API, but some risk the court will try to order Apple to license WatchOS. As with patent, watches may end up adding more legal exposure than the product is really worth in the portfolio.
5. Digital wallets (tying): Hard to see the courts requiring openness here when they have not done so for other financial networks, and the government doesn't really want this.
Most are based on tying, but tying has not been effective for some time. Virtually every successful tying case lacked a distinct business or technical rationale. (The right to repair and maintain (from Xerox on) is the furthest they go in rebutting technical rationale's, and they still permit technical standards.)
To be honest, I never got why the message interop was such a big deal. Do people still use text messages in 2024 as opposed to a third party app like Signal, Discord, Whatsapp, Telegram, etc?
I just find it a bit questionable that Apple is being forced open this much. If you want a super app, why don't you just use the browser? Also, is cloud streaming apps such a big deal?
And re smartwatches, isn't it somehow expected that apps made by the same company will always have an edge? You can see this in the Windows+Microsoft Auth combo where Microsoft apps can do stuff that non-Microsoft apps can't just because it is a Microsoft app.
Maybe iPhones are much more popular in the US, but I feel Apple doesn't have such a strong hold of the mobile market in Europe.
My worry is that Apple is be forced open and will have to allow everyone to access the same APIs with all the security implications of it. Surely, if people don't like the way iPhones work they can move to Android or Tizen. I personally wish people moved away from iPhones AND Androids so we could have the thriving and healthy competition we had at the beginning of the smartphone revolution with Android, iOs, Symbian and similar. Support a market full of mobile OSes competitors and not a duopoly with open APIs.
2 - OK, but only if the user is willing to accept the security risk to their apps, Apple and non-Apple. Apple has an interest in keeping the apps they create, or sell for others, secure but should bear no responsibility if a third-party fails to keep to the same standard.
3 - OK. I personally kind of like it because I am a bad person, but OK.
4 - Aren't most of them behind Apple's watches, anyway? I don't have an issue with Apple Watch not being compatible with Android - while Apple shouldn't prevent a third-party (see 2 above) from creating a bridge, they should, in no way, be forced to do it themselves.
5 - (see 2 above) And I don't have an issue with Apple torquing the nuts of banks - the banks do the same to us. And yes, it's my money they're taking from banks, but the banks don't like that, so ... I'm gonna call that one a tie.
>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.
The "messaging interoperability" point strikes me as a weird one.
In the US, people tend to use iMessages, which is not interoperable with other ecosystems. But iPhone place no limitation on third party messaging apps. Indeed, the rest of the world simply ignores the existence of iMessages and uses other applications for messaging (these vary per country/region, but I don't think that iMessages has any significant market share in any other country).
There's not technical reason preventing people in the US from using another messaging platform, and there are no limitations imposed on third party messaging apps. It's really just a cultural issue of people _choosing_ iMessages. Probably just network effect.
Most of this sounds like the DOJ doesn't understand the tech at all.
iMessage is an Apple service, created as a way to provide additional value to people on Apple platforms so that they aren't limited by SMS. The DOJ argument appears to be "oh, you made a better mousetrap, and now you have to let people outside your platform use it." Why? What's the rational argument there?
They then extend that argument to the watch, which is just bananas. It's designed to work with one set of platforms. The tightly coupled nature of Watch/Phone/Mac provides benefits, but Apple is never going to open the technical kimono up to Samsung (e.g.) watches to use the same hooks, and they shouldn't be required to do so.
For a second, let's just assume that Apple is 100% guilty. What will the fine be? If it's anything less than many billions of dollars, there is zero incentive for Apple to do anything at all different in the future.
Suing Apple(or any other company over stuff like this) when the fines will be a tiny slap on the wrist at worst will not incentivize proper behaviour, so there is literally zero reason for doing this except for the govt to feel good about itself, see!! we got a few hundred million from that evil corp for doing bad things. LOL. Apple could plead guilty tomorrow, pay the fine and continue doing business and not even notice.
Ongoing fines until they achieve compliance, or legally barring them from operating in the US. I think that's usually how rulings go in these kinds of cases.
Page 76 of the lawsuit PDF goes into some specifics under the section "Request for relief".
It basically boils down to: stop doing the bad things and pay a fine. The fine being an amount equal to it's costs for bringing the suit, pennies on the dollar next to the dollars Apple made.
There is no incentive to change future behavior here. When the govt broke up AT&T's monopoly, there was an incentive to change behavior. Since then it's weakly enforced "fines" that do nothing to curtail future monopolistic behavior.
I imagine this will happen: Some of this will stick, but it will be stuff Apple has already promised (like adopting RCS) and they will pay a small(to them) fine and will continue on business as usual with no actual changes being made, just like all the other lawsuits of this type the US govt has done in the last few decades. Some people will feel better I suppose, even though absolutely nothing of substance will have changed.
1. Super Apps are notorious for tracking the user across the "mini" apps within it, which is the argument made by Apple for making them hard to get approval for. I'm on Apple's side here
2. I was able to use PS Remote Play on my iPhone even many years ago (pre-COVID). A quick google search shows that Steam Link and Shadow PC (my ATF) are also available on iOS. I'm on Apple's side here too
3. I think the situation has recently changed here as someone else has commented, so this feels solvable without a lawsuit. Also it's hard to single out Apple here when everyone out there has their own messaging platforms. It's not like WhatsApp is encouraging third-party clients. An argument can be made that iMessage blurs the line between what's Apple-provided vs. carrier-provided, so I can see the user confusion and the issues that come with it. I'm on the FTC's side here
4. Who cares about smartwatches. It's niche at best. Besides, there are countless other watches you can use and they work with many devices. I'm on Apple's side here
5. It's not like you can't tap your card instead of your phone. I don't think the phone needs to be just a husk with apps created by third parties, especially for things like wallets. I'm happy to trade away that freedom for increased security, Benjamin Franklin's quote notwithstanding. The payments ecosystem is made up of players charging fees from the next player down the chain, so also hard to single out Apple here, but I can see why there's need for increased transparency (I wasn't explicitly aware they charged any fees, even if I would probably guess they were if prompted). I'm on neither side here.
So based on my biases and incomplete understanding of the facts, Apple wins 3-1
It's worth remembering that this administration is suing seemingly everyone in Tech, in what I can only assume is being done in the hopes they can make a name for themselves. Lena Khan literally said "you miss all the shots you don't take".
I would prefer a more focused approach with higher signal to noise ratio.
1) Apple makes an exception if you're China, unfortunately. This is how WeChat has taken off, and I bet WeChat could bully its way around the App Store rules to the detriment of competitors, another "special deal" from Apple.
2) This is about cloud gaming, when you're streaming the game from hardware in the cloud, like Xbox Game Pass. Streaming the game from your own hardware isn't as competitive to Apple since it requires you buy a $500 console or gaming PC.
3) The biggest issue was Apple not implementing RCS and defaulting every iOS user to iMessage, which has created a two-tier messaging system, friends getting locked out of chat groups, etc simply because Apple doesn't want to use the standard.
4) "Who cares" is not a valid argument in using your dominance in one market to dominate another, which is textbook anticompetitive behavior. They also do this with AirTags, Airpods, any accessory where the Apple product gets to use integrations with the OS and third-parties are forbidden from doing so.
5) Tapping your phone is more secure because the card number is randomized and single-use, protecting it from replay attacks.
1. Presumably it’s equally likely causality flows in the other direction: WeChat took off before Apple instituted strict controls but the cat was already out of the bag in that market. WeChat is an exceptionally user hostile app, and arguing for more of it is anti-consumer. It’s probably the best example of what can go wrong if you require the freedoms that give rise to superapps.
Apple Pay doesn’t offer single use card numbers for third party cards. They are different from your regular card number but they stay the same between purchases.
I'm not sure Apple makes or don't make an exception in China. From what I can see, Chinese chat-pay superapp features are something largely chat and web based. From what I can see, it works something like following:
a) Users may reload HNPay balance by credit card, debit, or bank transfer, through in-app browser.
b) Users may use "send money" button to create some special chat message or link, which will be intercepted at server side, to send HNPay balance to a HNPay address/user ID.
c) (Deprecated)The user may scan QR code on a fading sticker at storefront that does the same as above.
d) The user may also use "show QR code" button, have the other user/store machine scan the code, which allows the other user/store computer to do b) with a negative amount for withdrawal.
e) The HNPay balance can be refunded to bank accounts if needed.
I'm sure people here can come up with half a dozen applicable financial regulations, restrictions imposed by banks and payment processors, cybersecurity attack vectors and massive lawsuit potentials for each of above, plus perhaps couples of solvable App Store guideline difficulties across a)-e). I think those would be problems towards realizing Facebook Messenger pay or TwitterPay, not App Store special treatment that only applies to China. Not many of them, if any, use NFC and secure element hardware in iOS devices like the point 5. misleads.
Even if Apple supports RCS, iMessage supports many features that RCS does not. It will still be a two-tier system but the tiers will be somewhat closer.
3) there are tons of other apps in which exluded users can have groups an use other features with other multiplatform users.
You can't sue a company because in just their official app it won't support a protocol develop by others. Just install another app, no monopoly here.
I love how whenever Apple makes a clearly anti-trust move it's always about privacy.
That would be true, if Apple couldn't literally write any TOS they want that allows other App stores or billing methods and then add "but you can't include tracking that invades our users privacy or resell their data".
That's just as enforceable on their end, and not anti-competitive, assuming Apple themselves don't launch their own ad platform and tracking...
Actually Samsung Pay for the longest time supported MST which was not secure and supported transmission of payment credentials that could be intercepted by a MITM.
Apple having access to everything related to end user, every step they can take regarding privacy can be deemed as anti-competitive.
Here’s another example: Facebook knows exactly the 100 people they show my ads but not giving me their full name, relationship status, list of friends, their gender, sexual orientation, etc.
My general worry is that the entire discussion is shifting “from what’s good for the customer to this other company cannot do something shady because you protect the customer”.
Does Apple enjoy this gatekeeping practice? Of course they do, but so does Google with Android and they abuse the crap out of it.
If I care about my privacy, I much prefer the world where Apple just restricts APIs/integrations that are harmful to it than that they have to employ armies of lawyers and auditors to go after TOS violations after the fact.
It's not just this administration going after tech. The other guys got the ball rolling, although they use a different narrative to sell it. I think most people recognize there are various problems with the industry that essentially all boil down to the amount of power big tech has. There have been warnings from governments and other players in the private sector for years. I happen to like my iPhone a lot, but it's about time Apple and the rest of them get their teeth kicked in.
Does Apple have a rule that says beta apps aren't allowed on the app store?
As far as I'm concerned Microsoft cloud gaming is like a 1.0 version and works fine on Windows and Android. I had no idea it was a beta product until just now.
How large does a business need to be on a global scale before we can smack down bad actors for abusing it? If you are a street corner business and your competitors down the street sell things at a loss just until they can put you out of business, should that be allowed because you were only a local business and didn't have millions of customers?
It's a factor in whether "219.43 million people" is a lot of people. If that's 219 million people in the US (i.e. well over half the population), that's obviously massively more significant than 219 million people worldwide.
But for the question of anti-trust action it doesn't matter whether it's "a lot" of people, it matters whether it's an insignificant number of people - if there were 10 smartwatch users in the US, the argument "who cares about smartwatch users" could be valid, but it makes no difference whether there's 219 million people in the US or 219 thousand people in US, since even 219 thousand users is definitely much, much more than sufficient to justify intervention.
I don't really know about sourcing market data, but this[0] page cites Deloitte and Pew:
>The global smartwatch adoption rate has reached an impressive 21.7% of the adult population
...
>The adoption rate of smartwatches is expected to continue growing, with industry projections suggesting that it will surpass 25% of the adult population shortly.
I don't believe a fifth or a quarter of the adult population could rationally be called 'niche'.
This is irrelevant. The primary argument people have against Apple is their platform indirectly impacts how other businesses can operate generally. The smartwatch never took off as a platform, so it exercises no such influence.
Every single group chat that I use on a day-to-day basis has a non iPhone participant. The biggest argument against the way apple treats SMS vs iMessage I see is people feel ostracized for having green bubbles. I just don't understand why this rises to anti-trust.
Videos. Every time I get a video from an iphone user it is trash quality. Other iphone users don't have this problem. It's just me on the android. I cannot seem to get any iphone user to understand linking out from whatever icloud or whatever, so whenever someone sends me a video they took, i basically don't get to see. I'm sure there are more, but this the one that actually makes me mad.
From the iphone side, there has to be something, because my family keeps 2 group chats. One with android users and one without. Someone when using an iphone is annoying when group texting android users.
To be fair, on this particular point, you aren't Apple's customer in this scenario. This is like complaining that Tesla has supercharger stations and your non-Tesla has a different charging connector, so your interactions with Supercharging stations is degraded. This really wouldn't be Tesla's problem.
Apple supports the video standards that were available via MMS/SMS when iMessage rolled out, the higher res videos only available in the first place because Apple added it via iMessage. The newer 'standard' was a Google dominated way of trying to make inroads on Apple's superior implementation and in most of the world, Messages isn't even the top Messaging app.
Now that Apple has announced support for RCS incoming, even including messaging in the suit doesn't make sense in the slightest.
> The newer 'standard' was a Google dominated way of trying to make inroads on Apple's superior implementation and in most of the world, Messages isn't even the top Messaging app.
The RCS standard was is just about as old as the iPhone and older than iMessage. Google began supporting and pushing the standard forward in a way that benefits everyone. Apple could have done the same, or made iMessage an open protocal or any of a number of things. Instead Apple has consistently chosen to go the anti-competitive route.
> Apple's superior implementation
It was 'superior' in some ways inferior in other ways, such as communicating with people without an iphone. iMessage isn't particularly better than any other messaging app, but the benefits of user lock-in, and being the default, replaceable sms app. These anti-competitive behaviors do clearly harm users.
> Now that Apple has announced support for RCS incoming
Perhaps once the support actually lands you'll have more of a point. However, I expect half-assed support and the bare minimum given Apple's previous reluctance.
>To be fair, on this particular point, you aren't Apple's customer in this scenario.
Yes, but my mother, who wants to text a video to her sons to share a moment from her day, is, and Apple prevents her from doing that. There is no way to spin this as anything but Apple being openly user hostile to anyone who wants to communicate with an android user.
("She can just-" No, she cannot "just". My mother is in her 60s, and she shouldn't have to learn a workaround to use a basic feature of her phone that just works on android.)
I suppose that really depends on where you are in the world and how phones are used. Sending video works over WhatsApp here, and nobody uses anything telco or native for that (so no iMessage, MMS or RCS). Next one down would be FaceBook Messenger and then apps like LINE, Telegram and finally Signal. iMessage, MMS and RCS don't even make the list, including the entire 12 to 70 age range.
> To be fair, on this particular point, you aren't Apple's customer in this scenario.
But Apple's customer is also affected, in two ways:
1. I then have to text the person back, asking them to re-send the video using another chat app, or emailing a link, or something like that. That's annoying for the iPhone user.
2. In the other direction, if I didn't know better, and I tried to send a video to the iPhone user, it would end up looking like crap for them. That's not a good experience for the Apple customer.
> The newer 'standard' was a Google dominated way of trying to make inroads...
Not sure why "standard" is in scare quotes; it's an actual standard, whereas iMessage is just some proprietary thing Apple made. And it's not newer: RCS is from 2008, which is older than iMessage, and almost as old as the iPhone itself. Likely work on the standard started before the iPhone's release.
> ... on Apple's superior implementation
This is of course a matter of opinion, but to me, any protocol that is locked down, with the owners refusing to enable interoperability, is by definition inferior, regardless of its other merits.
> Apple has announced support for RCS incoming
And we'll see how that goes. If Apple works with Google to enable full interoperability, including E2EE, I'll be pleased. Anything less, though, and it'll feel like Apple is just doing the bare minimum to try to avoid regulatory action. It also remains to be seen as to how much Google cooperates in the other direction. The RCS E2EE stuff is a proprietary Google extension; hopefully that gets made into a public standard as well.
The bottom line, though, is that Apple doesn't interoperate until they believe that they're going to be legally forced to. At least if they get in ahead of the regulatory action, they can do their implementation more or less on their own terms. It's a smart move, but IMO is also scummy.
The thing that has always baffled me about Apple keeping iMessage iOS-only, and not supporting RCS, is that they've been hurting their own customers with this stance too. Plenty of iPhone users live with a degraded, less-private experience wen communicating with non-iPhone users, or have to remember to use a different chat app when conversing with certain contacts. This makes a lot of Apple's rhetoric (in general, not just regarding messaging) about protecting user privacy feel a bit hollow at times. Clearly their primary motivation for the privacy stance isn't to protect users, it's because they believe it gives them a competitive advantage.
Google's RCS isn't the standard-RCS. You can't use Google's RCS without using Google's RCS servers and you can't run your own. You can run your own standard RCS, but it's not compatible and does not do the same things either.
Isn't the video issue an MMS problem, not an Apple problem? What do you want them to do, reduce the quality for everyone so at least everyone suffers the same?
Becuase the green bubble makes the user move to an IPhone. Then the user can only use Apple Pay, not Google Pay or Samsung Pay, can only use Apple's Store, can only.. And from having teenagers, the green bubbles MATTER. very, very, very much.
What is this “having green bubbles” stuff? My messages are green on threads with Android users, to indicate the capabilities of the messages I am sending. Not theirs. I don’t even know how to tell who’s on what in a mixed-ecosystem thread.
messages from Android users show up as green to iOS users in group chats with mixed users, so everyone invariably makes fun of them / complains about "the person with the green bubble"
The bubbles are green if you talk to someone with an Android, and they're blue if you talk to someone with an iPhone. People simplify this by saying "you have blue bubbles."
That isn’t how it works. Your own bubbles are green, all the “external” people in the chat have “regular” colors. Ex: I am using dark mode, so their bubbles show as dark for me, and mine are green.
Or you could show an ounce of maturity and just move to a cross-platform messaging app. This antisocial behavior is absolutely crazy to me; maybe it's because my first experiences with IP messaging was Skype and not iMessage. My iMessage-only group chats are the vast minority; Facebook Messenger is where most live, then WhatsApp and some Slack/Discord.
Not mine cause we leave those people out. It's not Apple's fault that SMS sucks, and RCS adoption was very slow even on Android. Even with all Android phones, a group chat is a disaster unless they use FB Messenger or WhatsApp, which is in fact what most people use. Market working as intended there.
My phone has RCS and sometimes my RCS messages just don't go through for hours. It will randomly switch between RCS and SMS/MMS. Honestly I find Android to iPhone texting to be more reliable than Android/Android texting nowadays because at least I know it will just be SMS/MMS.
It's pretty awful lol. You can say "it's the carriers" but if you make something that relies on some other people who won't do it right, you haven't made something good, you've made something where you can blame other people for it not being good.
FB Messenger is better and I try to use it over texting whenever I can (in part because I don't need my phone at all to use it)
My new phone supports RCS, but I have several frinds who use dual SIM where only one of the devices support RCS. If I turn on RCS, only the device supporting RCS gets the message.
Since it's a global switch, I've had to turn it off...
> 1. Super Apps are notorious for tracking the user across the "mini" apps within it, which is the argument made by Apple for making them hard to get approval for. I'm on Apple's side here
Never heard this argument, could you name an example of this? I figured the reason for the ban was that it would sidestep most of the Apple software that comes with an iPhone, which Apple obviously wouldn't want since they would prefer to lock users in.
I came across it somewhere I Apple developer docs, I think, when I was building my app. Or maybe it was RevenueCat docs or some tutorial... I'm on my phone now but will try to find it later
> It's worth remembering that this administration is suing seemingly everyone in Tech, in what I can only assume is being done in the hopes they can make a name for themselves
Of all the points in your low-effort manifesto I find this the most absurd. Even if you don't see any merit in the case, you must admit that it's likely that the DoJ does.
From what I'm seeing in other places, there are also some pretty weak claims being made beyond this.
The first is their attempt to redefine what the market is in order to declare Apple a "monopoly": they've posited a completely separate market for "performance smartphones", and tried to use total revenue rather than number of units sold in order to push Apple up to having a very high percentage of this invented market.
The second is their characterization of how Apple got to where they are. Like them or not, you have to be seriously down a conspiracy rabbit hole to believe that the iPhone became as popular as it is primarily through anticompetitive tactics, rather than because it's a very good product that lots and lots of people like. Regardless of whether you, personally, find that value proposition to be compelling.
They also point at some of Apple's offerings and make absolutely absurd claims about how they're anticompetitive—for instance, that they're going to somehow take over the auto market with CarPlay 2.0 and the fact that AppleTV+ exercises control over the content it serves.
There are some things Apple does that are genuinely concerning and deserve more antitrust scrutiny (for instance, their anti-steering provisions for the App Store are pretty egregious), but so far as I can tell, they're not even mentioned in this suit. I'm frankly disappointed in the DoJ for how they've put this together, and would have loved to see something that was narrower and much more robust.
> The first is their attempt to redefine what the market is in order to declare Apple a "monopoly": they've posited a completely separate market for "performance smartphones", and tried to use total revenue rather than number of units sold in order to push Apple up to having a very high percentage of this invented market.
This comes across as very strange, they must not have much confidence in their ability to prove that Apple holds monopoly power in the overall smartphone market. I suspect if they lose this case it's going to be because the court rejects such an intentionally narrowed market definition.
This is like nailing Al Capone for tax evasion. They missed the one actual example of Apple abusing its ownership in one industry (the OS) to then give itself a monopoly over another industry (app stores/app store fees).
I love the current US government. Cracking down on pretty much all of Apples bullshit in one fell-swoop. Now just stop them from offering 8gb of ram on the base model macbooks, and apple might be the perfect tech company.
This is somewhat aligned with the recent trouble they had in EU as well, so now two different regulatory agencies call them out for the same topics. Are they going to claim "security reasons" again?
> "Apple has restrictions on what they allow on the App Store as far as "Super Apps" ... In China, WeChat does many different things, for example, from messaging to payments."
The WeChat super-app is available on iOS, complete with installable "mini apps", and most of the same functionality that is available on Android. So it's not clear exactly what the complaint is here. Unless Apple makes exceptions for WeChat and China that are not available to developers elsewhere?
I am sure each of these items are a pain for a different sets of people. The most irritating one for someone who moved recently is: NFC lock down.
Like my Xiaomi phone was able to store any card I wanted and do a Tap to Pay, but I have to use Apple Pay and I can’t do that because my region is locked to somewhere Apple Pay isn’t a thing. Here in Melbourne even public transport is affected by this. The local myki transport cards can be digitally carried on an Android phone but not an iPhone.
Yet the most important issue for many is missing (unless something changed recently) - inability to access filtered cesspool of scam, malware and annoyance that modern ad-infested internet is.
Jihad against anything actually working well (ie firefox and ublock origin) due to to be polite dubious reasons. Apple gatekeeping is just a move to ads for themselves, it was already multibillion business for them last year. Thats monopolistic behavior in plain sight.
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 charge.
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.
> 1. One OS is locked down, has a walled-garden ecosystem, but has many privacy-protecting features.
I wonder, if you open up iOS, do you lose the privacy-protecting features? One of the benefits of iOS is that it makes good privacy decisions for you, where it can
If you take away the defaults, you kind of take away the design choices that were made to improve privacy. People (myself included) are not the best at making decisions that preserve their own privacy
Many people will hit whatever button gets them to the next stage of whatever it is they are trying to achieve. If Apple is not allowed to intervene in that experience, will we see a lot more people being taken advantage of by dark patterns and other software tricks?
You see this as about two major phone companies when in reality it is about all the small phone/os/app companies(competition is good in a free market) that get pushed out because the only two major companies (apple and google) share insane contracts between eachother essentially creating a horizontal monopoly that squashes competition.
Individually, yes. But each app has its own app store approoval process and fees. Also they are jailed privately so they cannot share information with each other. Only Apple Apps are the ones that can do that.
I don’t see Messaging interoperability of the iMessage protocol in the complaint.
I see:
* third-party apps not being able to send/receive carrier messages (SMS)
* only Messages getting background running
* blue/green colored bubbles.
The background running thing is a bit of a surprise. If you had asked me, I’d have said iMessages didn’t run in the background given it’s load delay for new messages.
Yeah, iMessage completely craps out when sending messages without signal. A red dot and manual “retry now” button? What is this? ICQ in 1995?
WhatsApp on iOS does a much better job, ironically (it just sends all queued outgoing messages once connectivity is back in the background, like every email client did back in dialup days).
I remember how Apple Watch wouldn't let you download podcasts or songs on Spotify. Apparently they changed that to allow some recently, but that change did get me to switch to the Apple Podcast app for awhile, which I feel like is inferior.
Thats for the writeup. I tend to agree with most of those, although the "super app" things is weird to me...I don't like the idea of "super apps" because it is hard for the user to share only the minimal permissions.
Epic losing their suit pretty much torpedoed that plank. The findings there would basically tread the same ground and were already found in Apple's favor as a matter of law.
> The findings there would basically tread the same ground and were already found in Apple's favor as a matter of law.
Because the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of Epic v. Apple, even the exact same legal question with the exact same fact pattern would only be bound by that decision if it was (1) between the same parties (res judicata), or (2) in a district court under the Ninth Circuit.
Since US v. Apple is filed in the District of New Jersey, which is under the Third Circuit, the decision in Epic v. Apple is, at best, persuasive precedent, not binding precedent.
Unless there is legislation that forces something, the ship for the app store has sailed. Not to mention, several companies have some version of this, including game consoles. And even legislation in the area seems hard to draft, as seen by DMA.
> Unless there is legislation that forces something, the ship for the app store has sailed.
Simply asserting that doesn't make it true. Even if the app-store related claims in US v. Apple were identical, legally and in alleged facts, to those in Epic v. Apple, the ruling in the latter is not binding precedent for the former because Circuit Court decisions don't bind Districts in other Circuits. And, they aren't identical, anyway.
> Not to mention, several companies have some version of this, including game consoles.
So what? “Other companies do similar things” is not an argument against it being part of an illegal monopolization scheme when others do it. Like browser/OS bundling with Internet Explorer, its not the act in isolation, but its function in context and in conjunction with other business practices that is at issue.
Its not a question of whether an app store fee is on its face illegal, its a question of whwther Apple’s app store fee is part of a broader anticompetitive effort to defend and extend monopoly intthe smartphone and/or performance smartphone markets.
> Apple itself offers a "super app" of course, which is the Apple ecosystem of apps.
...if that counts, is the suit claiming that they somehow don't let other developers have multiple related apps? Because it seems that something like Meta's suite of apps (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) that all share login data and suchlike should qualify if "the Apple ecosystem of apps" does.
I presume the question is about impact: At Apple's scale, restricting competition has a very broad impact on the economy. In contrast, a movie theater not allowing outside food is probably not reducing all that much food-related competition in aggregate.
I don't think there's a good real-world "venue/food" analogy. However, hypothetically: Imagine if half of all homes/apartments were controlled by the same company and they also happened to be the largest food producer. They then decided to limit what food could be brought into your home, saying "We have the safest food, so you can only buy our food." Now, they might even be right that their food is the safest, but the market impact would be significant enough to warrant anti-trust action.
Let's say that a movie theatre chain becomes very successful by selling high-quality food instead of stale popcorn laden with artificial butter flavoring. They also curate movies and refuse to screen low-brow garbage pushed out by the studios. The customers love the good movies and good food, so this chain slowly takes over the market, nearly, but not quite, to a level of monopoly. You can still go to competing theatres, but the seats will be sticky, the food will clog your arteries, and you won't enjoy the movie.
So you're saying in this situation the government should step in and force the successful chain with standards to allow competing movie theatres, junk food sellers, and low-budget movie producers to sell their wares in their theatres?
That's literally what's happening with these moves against Apple.
The peddlers of crap are upset that they're locked out of a well-managed market frequented by discerning customers.
You seem pretty certain of your opinion, so I doubt anything I can say will sway you.
Nonetheless, it isn't an issue of "quality" or "discerning customers". A company can earn market-share by providing a better product (or a worse product at a lower price) and that's fine.
The issue is when that company uses their market dominance to limit competition. Then it becomes an anti-trust issue. Movie theaters aren't a good analogy since they're far less central to our day-to-day lives, and therefore will have less overall impact on the economy. Nonetheless, imagine your dominant chain makes deals with film producers to prevent their competition from screening popular movies. This prevents the other chains from competing, even if they wanted to.
That analogy breaks down when you look at the state of Safari on iOS. Even ignoring the features of the browser itself, the way its version is tied to the OS version causes tons of support issues for our customers.
No, that's a totally different analogy. The point is the impact of their market power other people who want to sell food, not other people who want to sell movies. Apple controls a very large share of the app market; no movie theater, however successful, controls a significant part of the food market.
They 100% control the food sold inside their theatres! It’s their shop, they can decide what’s sold in it.
People have a choice: it’s called Android.
I don’t see why a private company that isn’t a monopoly should be forced to open up their proprietary products to direct competitors.
This is a very slippery slope and the people advocating for it in the case of Apple will be screaming about how unfair it is for the government to get involved when it happens to them.
Let’s say you have a successful startup selling something like an API marketplace.
One day the government says:
It’s unfair to MalwareAPI Co that you lock them out of the market and require a fee. You now have to let them sell their viruses to your customers and you don’t even get a cut.
Once you become large enough to have a say in how significant chunk of online commerce is done by inserting yourself as the mandatory 3rd party in any transaction that takes place on the platform, you stop being "just another business" and become a "gatekeeper", or in Apple's case specifically a TWO sided market.
"Gatekeeper" is an EU legal term, which I'm aware doesn't apply in the US, but the term is on point. These gatekeepers are nothing more than unelected, unregulated, and unaccountable points of taxation that limit and control the flow and type of trade that is allowed to happen in the economy. Through network effects, they keep a stranglehold on both sides of the TWO-sided market because one of the sides (providers) doesn't have any alternatives and the other side (users) is chained to the platform through a variety of lock-in effects.
Financial transactions? Give Apple 30%. Porn? Apple says no! Perhaps 20 years from now, the only way to get a tech job will be to go through a an intermediary called Apple Jobs, and they'll take a 30% of your salary. How would you like that?
- Should the government force marketplaces to allow competing marketplaces to set up shop within their area, collect fees, but not pay any fees to the larger market?
- Should the government make laws to require restaurants to allow competing chefs to bring a hot plate and start cooking food at the tables and serve them to their customers?
- Should Google be forced by the government to include support for formats in Android that are used by Apple such a HEIF and HEIC? What about Microsoft and Linux?
These rules are not about individual choice or freedom. This is about giant corporations using the government to give them a way into the walled garden built by a competing mega corporation. This is completely self-serving and in no shape, way, or form serves the common good.
As an iPhone user I do not want government interference in a market place that has been kept mostly free of malware precisely because it keeps out the riff-raff. I want the hucksters and the scammers blocked. I really don't care if they scream "unfair!" at the top of their lungs from outside of the fence.
Similarly, general SMS messaging is a cesspit of unceasing spam precisely because it is so interoperable. Because Apple keeps out garbage devices with zero security, I've seen precisely zero iMessage spam in the last decade. I got a spam SMS in the last hour. I'll get several more today.
The Play Store is absolutely not malware free unless you don’t consider apps that take over your launcher and Lock Screen, serve you ads, and links to their own apps malware. Had to remove this garbage from my grandmother’s Pixel
Even better: no stupid analogies and just talk about topic at hand.
> Should Google be forced by the government to include support for formats in Android that are used by Apple such a HEIF and HEIC? What about Microsoft and Linux?
Yes, please.
> As an iPhone user I do not want government interference in a market place that has been kept mostly free of malware precisely because it keeps out the riff-raff.
None of these arguments are very satisfactory to me as a consumer and this appears to be more Mafia like behaviour than a genuine concern for market based competition.
Ah if that is your true point, then no, I am not an Apple fanboy. My daily primary use phone is Android but my work machine is typically the highest available MacBook. (I can not stand windows). I buy iPhones for my family members.
What's stopping people from buying or using any other kind of phone, new or old? Or from producing one? None of what's listed here is relevant to that regard.
Absolutely nothing. The claim that Apple has a monopoly on the smartphone market is just laughable. Android has 40% market share in the US and 70% globally.
I keep seeing references here to the teen market and teen attitudes toward green bubbles. Should the anti-monopoly law toward a large, but globally minority market-share company hinge on the attitudes of US teenagers?
Thanks for the summary. My "Open Apple" wishlist includes:
• Allowing alternate web browser implementations, including alternate Javascript and WebAssembly implementations.
• Which would include third party developer access to the memory allocation/permissions API used for JIT compilers. Make iOS a first class ARM development OS. Please.
Perhaps removing restrictions to general APIs for competitive apps and "Super apps" would implicitly include those changes?
Interesting that this doesn't address Apple's iOS "taxation" of tangential non-web transactions, or the lack of App Store alternatives. If Apple has monopoly power, those seem like suitable concerns.
Do they mention CarPlay? It drives me crazy that it only integrates notifications with Apple first party apps. It will send me notifications for iMessage or Apple calendar, but completely silences and hides Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Google calendar, Google voice, etc no matter what settings I try. It's frankly dangerous because it forces me to check my phone while driving in case of an urgent message or call. Meanwhile Android auto will show me all notifications and I can silence them while driving if I choose.
CarPlay supports notifications with non-first party apps like Microsoft Teams. I don't use everything on your list, but WhatsApp definitely supports CarPlay notifications. You may have them muted. You can mute/unmute on a per-app basis -- go to the app settings and adjust the "Show in CarPlay" toggle.
I haven’t used WhatsApp for while so maybe I’m wrong about that one, but Messenger definitely doesn’t work. I wish it was opt in by default for all notifications, it’s annoying so many don’t work.
As someone who never uses Apple devices, iMessage is the only true form of monopoly based control that Apple imposes. Apple's 30% costs are harsh, but it is not like Google or MSFT charge anything less.
Such cases always seem to reach a pre-determined conclusion, that has more to do with the political winds of the era, than true legal determinism.
Looking at the accusations from that lens:
1. Super Apps - I don't see how 'Apple doesn't share enough data with Chinese super apps' is going to fly 2024 America. It also has huge security and privacy impliciations. This accusation seems DOA.
2. Streaming games is tricky, but it isn't a big revenue stream. The outcome for this point appears immaterail to Apple stock.
3. iMessage - This is the big one. I see the whole case hinging on this point.
4. Smartwatches. Meh, Apple might add inter-op for apple smartwatches on android. I don't think this will lead to any users switching over or an actually pleasing experience.
5. Digital Wallets. This seems tacked on. Apps are PhonePe and PayTm work just fine on Apple and Android. I have never heard of anyone using a Digital Wallet that is not Apple pay, Google Pay or Samsung Pay. Are digital wallets a big revenue stream for Apple ?
You can't possibly equate the situation on windows or android with iOS. It's trivial to install an app from outside of the app stores on both, whereas it's entirely impossible on iOS.
> When you download Chrome, Firefox or any other browser that isn't Safari on an Apple device, that browser is forced to use Safari's rendering engine WebKit. Chrome normally uses Chromium, and Firefox Gecko. However, Apple will not allow those browsers to use their own engines. Without the ability to use their own engines, those browsers are unable to bring you their latest and greatest features, and can only go so far as whatever WebKit has added.
Although Apple now has to allow alternative browsers to ship their engines in the EU, they actually set out ridiculous conditions for browser vendors to be able to do so. Therefore, as of now, none have done it.
This is malicious compliance from Apple to try and make the law ineffective.
It'll get done sooner than later, that's money just left on the table right now for EU browser makers. And the enforcement of the DMA correcting Apple's most obvious malicious compliance has been swift (backtracking on EU PWAs).
No, for a a platform to survive, its maintainers need the leverage to call out laggards and make them truly sweat and work with it. Not just build 10 layers of Cordova fluff
Your second paragraph is incorrect and is explained why in your quote. Apple does allow alternative browsers, it does however restrict the rendering engine. Saying there is only one browser on iOS is like saying Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge are the same browser because they both use chromium.
You got that right. I have an old basic 6th gen ipad with a cracked screen and slowly disappearing battery life but I refuse to get a new one until they drop the requirement for webkit because the web has become a miserable place without ublock. It's amazing that what was once a surfing champ has been reduced to almost unusable with all the trackers, frameworks, adworks, et. I'm mostly reading text, I should not need a super computer.
I see it as Apple allowing a facade around their browser. You can't really call Chrome on iOS as "Chrome" if it's still just Safari under the hood. It's like putting Ferrari body on a 2010 Honda frame. Is it a "Ferrari" or is it really a "Honda"?
No, I do not think it's fair to say that Apple allows other browsers, and neither does the DOJ.
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Chrome and Safari on iOS aren't using Webkit because they both use the WebKit source and compile it into their browsers... They are both using webkit because Chrome offloads rendering to a WKWebView. Chrome on iOS is not rendering anything at all
This isn't a sufficient description. Apple actually requires all third-party browsers to use the WebKit framework. If they actually allowed browsers to use the WebKit engine, then you could make a new browser incorporating the open source WebKit engine compiled into it. But this is not allowed.
> Saying there is only one browser on iOS is like saying Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge are the same browser because they both use chromium.
No, Edge and Chrome both use the Chromium engine. They are different browsers that incorporate the same engine. Edge can do this because Chromium is open source.
But Chrome on iOS doesn't have its own engine at all (not even the Webkit engine). It just offloads to the WebKit framework.
Microsoft __chose__ to use Blink, ostensibly because they felt that maintaining EdgeHTML was too costly. On iOS, you either use WebKit or your browser is technically and legally banned.
Chromium is open source and both Google and Microsoft do whatever they want to it as part of developing their browsers. WebKit on iOS is a closed source blob of rendering engine and assorted bits that it is not possible to deeply extend or alter.
That’s a specific strategic choice, wanted by Steve Jobs himself to maintain leverage on the browser ecosystem.
If Chrome was let loose indiscriminately on any platform, how long before it became a Macromedia Flash, hobbling battery life and performance on whatever platform didn’t align to Alphabet’s strategy?
Also, how long before Alphabet began prime-timing Android, leaving Apple versions trailing months of not years behind, and restoring the “Works best on IE” experience of the ‘00s?
That is stretching the definition of a browser. Superapps enable all the miniapps in them to access the same user data, the history of app interactions (e.g., message history, shopping history), and to integrate closely. Webapps are nowhere close to that.
Arguably, F-Droid is a (Android-only, not possible to make such an app on iOS) super app that very much exists in the western world.
> Apple itself offers a "super app" of course, which is the Apple ecosystem of apps.
To be fair to Apple, both Google and Meta have loads of apps for iOS that compare to the Apple suite of apps. Although there is definitely a pre-installed advantage for the Apple apps.
apple does have full NFC support for their products but for other apps there are tons of road blocks for using anything close to full NFC functionality
- Bluetooth
same, similar more usable, but some functionality is still not available for 3rd party apps at all meaning certain things can only be provided 1st party by Apple
- Strange behaviour when releasing questionable competive Apps
There had been multiple cases where Apple released 1st party apps and it "happened" that the previous leader(s) of previous existing 3rd party apps "happened" to have issues with releasing updates around that time (or similar strange coincidental behavior). Additionally such new apps often had some new non-documented non public APIs which makes it harder for 3rd parties to compete.
- Questionable app store reviews
Stories of apps running in arbitrary you could say outright despotic harassment when wrt. the app store reviews are more then just few (to be clear legal non malicious apps which should be fully legal on the apple app store).
EDIT: To be clear for the first 2 points apple always have excuses which seem reasonable on the surface until you think it through a bit more (e.g. similar to there excuse for banning PWAs in the EU, I think they might have undid that by now). And for the other points it's always arbitrary enough so that in any specific case you could call it coincidence, but there is a pattern.
Bluetooth remains my biggest gripe with my iphone. When I walk out of range of any connected device, my call switches from my headset to the phone, and I have to manually go in and reconnect to my headset every third or fourth time I want to connect to it.
It stands in stark contrast to literally everything else about the device, which is almost universally easy and thoughtless.
my biggest gripe is NFC, through more then their not-so-competitive parts but also that they didn't support it at all until they had their own 1st party use-case for it (which isn't anti-competive just sucks)
the reason is that it crippled a whole industry of smart door looks
NFC is (by far!) technically the best way to handle them (for many of the common security levels). (Through I mean proper secure application of NFC, something you often do not get in a satisfying way with a lot of the RFID card solutions. And I'm aware that a ton (most?) of smart door room solutions are a complete security nightmare, but that is companies cheeping out and/or not hiring anyone who know anything about security etc.)
EDIT: stuff like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39779291 is what I mean with most RFID based solutions are shit. Through not sure how much this specific case was very competent hackers and how much bad security.
Sure, Apple should jump both feet into whatever shaky tech standard and go to umpteenth lengths to guarantee simultaneous interoperability and compatibility with all of them as they evolve to something workable , forever.
Otherwise if they fail to walk on their own feet it’s not the fault of their stewards and their poor performance. Nope, it’s Apple’s fault for not having helped enough.
sorry but you seem to have absolutely no idea what you are speaking about
NFC has not been a "shaky" standard long long long before Apple adopted it
and most other phone vendors had at least some models which support it
even before that there where extension systems to try out and test it before phones did support it
so it was pretty much Apple holding the industry in that specific area back
and like I said it wasn't anti-competive, it was there right to do so
but it shows how apple often doesn't care too much about what would be good for the user if it isn't good for them, I mean they are in the end a stock traded company it would be strange if they didn't
and if one vendor has a huge usage base to a point it has monopoly like powers (even if the usage base is only around ~50% that still is monopoly like power in the phone marked due to the marked/usage dynamic of phones) then you can't rely on a technology 50%+(1) of your customers can't use because the vendor they use doesn't support it or artificially locks it down especially if it's something like a phone where the network effects makes it basically impossible to expect people to switch it (1: 50%+ as while the marked share wasn't 50%+ the marked share in the audience such a system would reach was.)
EDIT: And yes I'm fully aware of the while NFC<->SIM secure module<->carrier power being annoying thing. But that thing had been solved a long time ago outside of the US (and later in the US by virtual secure modules) and while the initial solutions to that problem (e.g. in the EU) where still annoying non of it was a major road block and would have been resolved if there would have been insensitive to do so. But if your product doesn't work with iPhone users and you potential customers are mainly people which high end phones it just never mattered because the marked was dead anyway.
One of the big reasons I buy into the Apple ecosystem is for that next level of first-party interoperability. It works far better than any collection of more open systems I’ve even seen/used.
I don’t use Apple in spite of this, I use it because of this. Trying to support everything will likely lead to a worse experience for everyone in a multi-device world.
Apple is a hardware company making their own software to run that hardware, much like a game console. It seems like many of the criticisms here could be adapted and applied to Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation. Why can’t my PS VR work with my Xbox… it’s a Sony monopoly /s
There are areas where I think Apple can improve, such as right to repair and reliability in general. But it seems like some of what these governments are trying to kill is the very reason some people went to Apple in the first place. That doesn’t lead to more choice, it leads to less choice… as the government tries to turn iOS into an Android clone. Kind of odd that Apple is being told to act more like the platform that has the lead in global market share.
I just don’t understand the appeal of “Super Apps”. Do users really want to hire a taxi with the same application they use to message their friends, and have that be the same application they use to buy household goods, and have that be the same application they use to control their garage door? It doesn’t make sense to me. These are totally different tasks. Why would a user want to use the same app to do them?
Imagine the extreme end result of this: You buy a phone, and it’s OS comes with only one app installed: The Super App which you launch and do everything through it. How is that Super App not in fact the OS at that point?
The answer is clearly yes in a lot of markets, even if purpose-built apps might be better at a specific tasks, a single app that does dozens of things "well enough" is more convenient than having to juggle dozens of login infos and para-relationships with app developers (managing graymail etc).
Does't this "the market is right" logic also apply to Apple itself and its walled garden? E.g.: "Do users really want a walled garden where they can't install 'everything apps'? The answer is clearly yes in a lot of markets..."
The extreme result is indeed what Apple wants to avoid because you would more or less have a custom operating system at that point and could ignore Apple's software, which they would hate. Obviously it is not as good as being able to flash an actual new OS onto the device but it would still impact Apple's bottom line.
Google itself is a superapp at this point as you only have one account. But to answer your question, I think it’s because of interoperability issues. Why can’t my calendar services message me? Or why can’t I quickly create an event inside a chat? If you remember PDAs, they fell under the definition of one ecosystem to manage your communication and time, but now you have several services that refuses to talk to each other. One of the core strength of Apple is that kind of integration. It’s not that you want one company managing it all, you just want an integrated app ecosystem.
The one area I have concerns about is superapps. I’m of the opinion that user experience is better when an app does one thing and does it well. WeChat and Facebook as platforms or just a digital variant of platform lock-ins.
> In China, WeChat does many different things, for example, from messaging to payments. This complaint alleges that Apple makes it difficult or impossible to offer this kind of app on their platform.
But WeChat is available on iOS isn't it? If not the iPhone would be pretty impossible to sell there, just like Huawei's android without Google play don't sell here in the west.
Because its bad for consumers to have to choose a different device solely because of Apple's anti-competitive practices. This is exactly the sort of scenario when regulation is good - Apple is acting in their best interest, but its on-the-whole bad for the American consumer. We can have the good of Apple without the anti-competitive bullshit like a lack of message interoperability. We just need the government to enforce it
Consumers would have to choose a different device if, say, Apple saved money by putting in a lousy screen or a cellular radio that was unreliable... What transitions these ecosystem misfeatures to anti-consumer in a way that an inferior screen isn't?
(I submit they aren't anti-consumer; they're ecosystem control and some consumers find that to be a feature. I know I feel safer recommending my grandma an iPhone because scammers won't trick her into side-loading a root kit into it or loading some fake banking app that she pays money into that just disappears).
This makes me so angry. You have a choice in the market! Everything on this list is a feature which I am choosing as the customer. If I didn't want these features and benefits then I would make a different choice as a consumer. As a consumer I am not a victim. I can choose between iOS, Android, or something else.
Uh, yeah they did. Many people thought at that time that DOJ was overstepping. Many still do. In hindsight, Microsoft’s behavior at the time seems like small potatoes compared to the ecosystem protection that occurs today.
It isn't about you, it's about me who can't install iMessage on an Andorid phone or a Linux desktop and participate in your group chats in reasonable capacity.
I postulate people would gladly pay a cup of coffee's worth for a first party app and/or subscription. Certainly easier than shelling out a few hundred bucks for an iDevice.
That’s kind of what I think. Make an iCloud subscription tier that includes access to messages and then include it in the web-browser version of iCloud and make an Android app for messages. I can’t imagine it would have to cost much more than $10-$15.
This would be an Apple service. It'd cost $99/month to view the text of messages on non-iPhone devices, and an additional $99/month to view any photos/videos/emojis attached to messages.
We have message interoperability already. I can install any messenger of my choosing. I can install WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Signal, etc, etc.
But I don't need any of those because 99% of the people I communicate with are on iMessage.
Many victim are adamant that they are not actually a victim no matter what evidence is provided. Luckily anti-trust law doesn't care about your opinion.
While the smartphone market is not exactly a broad selection of competing standards, you can chose between Android and iPhone, and over time they've more or less come to represent opposing poles, where Android initially embraced openness and iPhone was the walled garden.
People picked based on preferences, but it's not like any of the platforms lock you in. They even have tools to facilitate easy switching between platforms.
Many companies, especially in highly regulated industries, specifically pick iPhone over Android for the ability to lock down the device. In my industry, our IT department has essentially given up getting Android "certified" to comply with regulations.
Apple recently opened up the App Store in the EU, in theory allowing 3rd party stores, but despite almost everybody i know using iPhones, i have yet to see anything 3rd party installed.
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 messaging system - SMS. You cannot separate SMS messages from iMessages (to my knowledge). So, the only way to know a message was sent via SMS is the green background for incoming messages and the green background plus the "sent via SMS" for outgoing messages. This creates a disdain for SMS, and anyone who uses it over iMessage. It is such a strong feeling, that having green messages makes you "uncool", especially in the younger crowd.
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 think it'll be a hard sell at this point to convince a jury that iMessage is an overt monopoly.
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.
> 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 problem in the rest of the world, really only the US is behind here.
It's really not. It's a step up from SMS, but the real future is true end-to-end encrypted communications. Signal is the next step up, and then hopefully we'll eventually get really secure messaging where the core OS doesn't help leak out your information.
> It's really not. It's a step up from SMS, but the real future is true end-to-end encrypted communications.
I thought this was a board filled with futurists? Can we really imagine no future scenario where the RCS spec gets E2EE?
At least Apple seems to think it's worth trying. And I think they'll succeed.
This kind of annoying defeatism is why SMS took so long to upgrade to RCS in the first place. "Eh it sucks right now and there's no use working together to make it better, lets just lock everyone into our own app and move on." If this mentality never changed we would not be enjoying RCS's benefits at all.
And to be clear, over 1 billion monthly active users are benefiting from RCS features _right now_ (and a good chunk of them are enjoying Google's proprietary E2EE). Look at a line chart of RCS adoption and tell me again it's not the future.
> I thought this was a board filled with futurists? Can we really imagine no future scenario where the RCS spec gets E2EE?
The quality of posts on this site notably declines when Apple needs to be defended. You get posts lacking intellectual curiosity abundant, seemingly not putting in the work to think critically about policy implications, what's best for the industry, or even how technologies work. You'd be forgiven for thinking you were on Reddit on these threads, as the typical respondent fails to read the other threads, fails to learn from each other, fails to be deep and thoughtful about their position, their arguments and the positions and arguments of their fellow chatters.
You see the same misconceptions and the same falsehoods long debunked on every previous thread discussing these matters regurgitated with confidence. And it's another struggle to try to educate on these issues.
Thanks for approaching this with curiosity and a desire to improve these standards, it's so unfortunate so many who would claim themselves technologists would embrace the status quo and ignore what's possible in the future.
Google implemented E2E four years ago. While they could have got started (and announced that they had gotten started) on the path to standardization of standard E2E on day one, it takes a lot of time for this stuff to be developed. It goes a lot faster though when Apple and Google work together, because the usual stakeholders (GSMA) are forced to move faster.
What Google's approach proves is that it is perfectly possible to layer E2E encryption on top of RCS in a way that does not require a carrier to add their own support, which is something I am sure Apple is interested in. For details on that here is Google's white paper: https://www.gstatic.com/messages/papers/messages_e2ee.pdf
The reason it took so longe is because carriers are still involved with RCS, and carriers suck.
Every successful messaging protocol aside from SMS does so by routing around the carrier and sending messages over data. iMessage, WhatsApp, telegram, signal etc.
Yeah, although I do like RCS, for instance my network dragged their heals in updating to latest specs and was always broken and patchy at best, until they just gave up and handed all their RCS infrastructure over to Google to run directly. Networks are surprisingly bad at implimenting tech.
Why is E2EE the argument people keep jumping to with RCS? The bigger problem is the reliance on carriers, that's far worse. Far fewer people are talking about that issue (thankfully there are some in the comments below, I've never seen anyone on Reddit mention it)
Signal the protocol can be and is implemented by third parties. Signal the platform, is different. Keep in mind Signal's only centralised part is thin server that acts as a relay. Matrix is a thin client protocol that relies on server to enforce soundness rules.
IDK what's your point.
A encryption protocol isn't enough to replace SMS.
Linearized Matrix is, and uses the Signal Protocol, though MLS probably would be a more future proof solution
RCS is trash. No E2E by default should make mentioning it on a site like HN an instant dismissal. Secondly it's effectively owned by Google (or as good as) and it relies on the carriers (the same people who brought us SMS). Why people want to run headfirst into the arms of carrier+Google is beyond me, especially for a "standard" that is anything but and will undoubtedly wither on the vine. Carriers will not make any improvements (see SMS/MMS) and Google will probably lose interest when they turn their attention to their 10014124120412412th attempt at a chat app.
First, the pricing model. Similar to SMS, RCS is a service provided by carrier. Many carriers include unlimited text messages in their phone plans, but not all carriers do that. And that's only for domestic messaging. When it comes to international communication, would carriers handle RCS like an instant messaging app or charge users per text message like SMS? That could be a huge number on the bill.
Second, the structure and server. Currently, most carriers have given up on making their own RCS infrastructure and let Google's Jibe run it. If iOS joins RCS, and RCS is implemented globally in the future, how would messages be transferred between different carriers, different cloud platforms, and different operating systems?
This "Zuckerware" is powerful enough to defeat judges, governments. It works just like Signal, same end-to-end encryption implementation.
Network effects make the perfect solutions dead on arrival. It's pointless to complain. I'll just count my blessings instead: never in the history of humanity have so many people used something this secure to communicate with each other.
Most people with a phone have a phone number and can thus use SMS (literally the opposite of a "perfect solution," mind). I can't think of a bigger network effect than literally every person that owns a cellphone.
Maybe other countries should catch up to the US and make texting free.
> I'll just count my blessings instead: never in the history of humanity have so many people used something this secure to communicate with each other.
Alternatively, never in the history of humanity has so much of our core, private communications been captured by a single for-profit entity. An entity with a rich, recent history of serious moral failings (Cambridge Analytica, internal teen suicide studies, etc.)
Meta can and will molest WhatsApp to suit their needs. Be real careful with that auto-update. Call me Chicken Little but I would never have made a comment like this 10 years ago. Facebook's behavior is a matter of history now.
Yeah, a decent litmus test is if you sign into a service from a new device and without much effort all your chats/messages/history or whatever is there, the security is weak.
I got off WhatsApp years ago so I am not sure what's changed but back then if you signed on from any random browser, it was able to sync everything instantly and you'd see all your messages. This was after they claimed that it was E2E encrypted. What was explained to me at the time was that you share your encryption key with Facebook and hence the syncing.
Chat backups are end-to-end encrypted now. You're right that it wasn't encrypted for a long time though.
I'm not claiming it's the ideal solution. I'm claiming it's much better than lots of other things that came before. There's no point in having a perfect solution if the people I know don't use it. Everyone I know uses WhatsApp. It's a fact that life could be much worse than it is. They could be using SMS.
RCS does not support any end to end encryption. Yes you can send end to end encrypted messages over it, same as over SMS, but it's not part of the protocol. I don't hope RCS is the future, I don't want my ISP or any intermediate party to read my text messages, thank you.
Traveling with family it’s been nice to use the WhatsApp but it’s ui is and the onboarding was so bad - took about 10 tries to get it working … I’m amazed how many people use it… but pretty hard to compete with 0 cost service…
Oh I definitely agree with you that I hope WhatsApp is the past. I sure do hope for something open, not sure if RCS is the solution here though.
In any case, iMessage share the exact same issues and also adds the issue of locking you to a single platform, so at least WhatsApp solves one issue that iMessage has.
> let's trade international protocols for Zuckerware. What could go wrong?
To be clear, you want to use "international protocols" that aren't even E2EE by default over WhatsApp, which is built on the Signal protocol with the help of Signal engineers?
To be clear, I am fine delaying my personal use of E2EE for several years as the GSMA and Apple work together on adding it to the spec.
If you are a political dissident or in a vulnerable position, I don't know your situation and my advice may not apply.
In the meantime, my texts have been unencrypted since I've owned my first phone. If continuing the status quo for 2-4 more years means that Meta does not become even more entrenched and powerful, so be it.
My emphasis on "international protocols" was to highlight how big an advantage that is when we're seeing countries including the US building up their own Great Firewalls and tightening export controls. If WhatsApp came from China we might be talking about banning that instead of (or in addition to) TikTok right now. Regardless of the merits, that's just the direction countries are moving in now.
It's a bit harder to just ban SMS. You can try, but it's a hell of a lot harder and there's going to be more holes to drive vulnerabilities through.
Carriers are basically infinitely evil all the time. I'd much rather be at the mercy of a Silicon Valley company than an "open standard" that leaves anything up to the telecoms.
I never thought I'd defend ISPs... (especially since an ISP destroyed my credit "on accident" 10 years ago) but there is no comparison to Facebook.
ISP's list of evil acts: failing to update infrastructure, failing to protect against intrusions, general technical and customer service ineptitude, absolute fealty to state requests for information (both official and sometimes unofficial), hijacking web requests to inject ads, and adding surprise undisclosed fees on a seemingly-random basis.
Facebook's: Where to even start.
Burying internal research directly linking Instagram to teen suicides (including a majority of teens surveyed saying they wish Instagram didn't exist even though they use it 5+_hours a day).
Running nonconsensual psyop experiments on unsuspecting users and measuring their emotional responses like unpaid guinnea pigs (in fact, because of Facebook's revenue model, it was like users were paying Facebook for the privelege!)
It's like comparing a molotov cocktail to a dirty bomb. Yes, both are evil and bad, but we can tell there's a difference there, right?
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To go beyond list wars, it's also just a matter of scale. You can be a mini-Hitler but if you're in an empty room you're not going to do that much damage. If you're at the Superbowl, though...
The largest US ISP is Comcast at about 30,000,000 subscribers.
Facebook has 2,900,000,000 monthly active users.
The sheer scale is also the problem. Scale gives them unfathomable power and access. It should make every non-Meta shareholder uncomfortable IMO. If there were only one mega-monopoly-ISP for the whole of the US, I'd feel similarly uncomfortable. But that isn't the case, in fact more ISPs seem to be starting up recently.
Put another way: An evil act from an ISP would hurt X number of people. An evil act from Facebook would hurt X^5 people. And I believe Facebook's acts are in general more evil than an ISPs.
You left out the fact that ISP’s are effectively a monopoly in most regions of the US, which is a problem even if it happens to be a different company holding the monopoly per region.
Exactly my point. Everyone knows that "Facebook sells your data" but what's actually demonstrable is Facebook uses your data internally for ad targeting purposes, which I'm fine with. Verizon, AT&T, et al are at just as problematic a scale (if not more!) and they are literally out there exchanging CSVs for cash.
Supporting open standards and getting mad about Cambridge Analytica in the same breath is incoherent. The critique here, and the response that Facebook and other tech companies actually undertook to placate the outrage, was that the platform APIs were too generous, and users should not have been allowed to delegate their accounts’ privileges to third parties not vetted by the platforms.
What I find amusing is that all of those WhatsApp users don't know or don't care that they are uploading their entire list of contacts (with phone numbers) to Meta/Facebook and syncing it every day.
That "end-to-end encrypted" advertising has done its job, and most people don't want to be bothered with thinking too much anyway.
WhatsApp is a gold mine of real-world social graph data for Facebook/Meta. If you think for a moment how much you can infer by merging that data with other information you get from people using other FB apps and sites, it's incredible.
> I find it amusing that in 2024 people in the US still talk about WhatsApp as a future step.
One person said that. Almost nobody I know has any interest in WhatsApp. The infatuation with putting all of your messaging into Facebook's hands is a European thing. What I don't understand at all is why Europeans think Facebook is superior to Apple.
> With WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat, Telegram etc. I think this is pretty much a solved problem in the rest of the world, really only the US is behind here.
I have a hard time believing that having multiple chat apps is any kind of solution to the problem. The nice thing about iMessage in the US is that it covers about 90% of everyone I talk to. Right out of the box, no asking what ecosystem someone else is using, it just works. And if I'm talking to someone who does not have iMessage ... it still just works, albeit with fewer features.
I heartily disagree that Europe or the rest of the world has a better system. Best would be if every phone from every manufacturer supported a modern protocol equivalent to iMessage or Google's proprietary RCS. Until then, iMessage in the US is the closest things to universal modern messaging.
I've been using the Internet since the 80s, I've seen every possible incarnation of instant messaging. I have no illusions of Apple inventing messaging.
And it's pretty rude of you to resort to namecalling just because you disagree.
WhatsApp took off in a big way in Europe before it was acquired by Meta.
Android is more popular in Europe than in the US. WhatsApp provided an early way of easy cross platform communication that was superior to SMS/MMS and didn't involve having to share new usernames or anything like that, it just relied on your existing mobile number.
You can add India to the list. WhatsApp is so popular here that people talk of recharging WhatsApp when they actually mean paying their mobile internet bill.
> it still just works, albeit with fewer features.
If it doesn't have features I rely on then I don't see how can I treat it as "it still just works".
> iMessage in the US is the closest things to universal modern messaging.
The key part here is "in the US". What if you want to message someone who is outside the US? To be honest I am not sure about carrier prices in the US, but I am sure the person on the other side of the conversation would get extremely high bills for international MMS messages. Personally I don't see how the words "universal solution" can apply to something that works well in only a single country in the entire world.
I don’t know if iMessage makes for an antitrust claim. But you are absolutely right: it covers the majority of my friends and family, and for folks that use Android everything still works well enough.
Why would I ever want 6 messaging apps instead of using the default?
Are people defending WhatsApp, or just saying its widely used? In the places I go, you use it for everything from contacting friends to messaging businesses to schedule appointments. It's unavoidable.
Sure, I understand the point, but I just don't think it's any kind of better solution. It's different, and has pros and cons. I don't want to install multiple apps just to have cross-platform compatibility. And I have that already with Apple's solution -- sure, iMessage itself is not compatible with Android, but I can still message people on Android phones without pre-arranging a platform to communicate on. Messaging works regardless, no matter who I'm talking to, it just works a little bit better if they happen to be on an iPhone.
To me that's the ideal solution, or at least the basis for one. Would I like everyone to have iMessage capabilities (or equivalent, like Google's proprietary RCS)? You bet. Let's try for that reality. Get Google to release their upgrades to RCS so everyone can use it, make that a standard, make every phone OS support it.
Could also say it was 'solved' 30 years ago with ICQ (OK, I know it was centralized and insecure, but from a strictly user-experience perspective I honestly liked it better than anything that came since) or maybe 35 years ago with IRC.
In most countries one of these is the one everybody uses, and it works on every phone. In the US, the country is split, mostly by economic class, between people on iMessage and “the rest”.
I’m not saying “whatsapp is effectively a monopoly in $country” is great, but it’s better than the US situation. You can buy a $50 phone and use the ubiquitous messaging app.
>I’m not saying “whatsapp is effectively a monopoly in $country” is great, but it’s better than the US situation.
Ah, so it's better to have a monopoly than not have a monopoly?
Also, what are your thoughts on the "US situation" given that the US is suing Apple for having a monopoly (literally the headline of the article)? Sounds like the rest of the world.
Can I ask why the rest of the world, particularly the EU, which is supposedly so "pro-consumer", isn't breaking up these monopolies held by billion dollar corporations in their countries?
There are differences between monopoly and centralization, and usually the government steps in to resolve such distinctions as a party that is (theoretically) serving the people instead of profis. That's what SMS was supposed to do and why they invested billions on landlines to support it.
But government most like molasses and sms is decades behind, so tech surpassed such standards. It's not a preferred result but an inevitable one.
>Can I ask why the rest of the world, particularly the EU, which is supposedly so "pro-consumer", isn't breaking up these monopolies held by billion dollar corporations in their countries
Is this rhetorical or have you not in fact heard about the DMA more or less doing the same thing the US is doing here, but years prior?
The big obvious problem here is that an EU country can't just order a US company to disband. And the result of anti-trust to begin with isn't to destroy companies, they want to level the playing field and open the door for more companies to compete properly.
1. The monopolies literally make no money - WhatsApp is run at cost and doesn't turn a profit.
2. You are not gonna have universal phone-number based messaging that is E2EE without a monopoly. Even RCS has monopolistic gateways. Decentralized/federated systems suck and don't easily work with phone numbers.
3. If you keep breaking up chat applications as soon as they reach a certain size, you're not helping consumers in any way. People use WhatsApp because it's good, reliable, and E2EE. Breaking it up provides literally no value to consumers.
I live in NZ, there's no standard here. It's damned annoying. I've heard that Facebook Messenger is the most popular, but I only know one person who uses it and I don't have an account myself.
In the US there is only iMessage and regular SMS. SMS is interoperable with iMessage. People are just making a much bigger deal about the green bubbles than they should.
>People are just making a much bigger deal about the green bubbles than they should.
If you didn't grow up Gen Z you don't really understand. It's just another of the endless ways you can get bullied indirectly for being "poor" or "nerdy".
Peer pressure is a real phenomenon, and there is a point here when that peer pressure is manufactured by the company itself to get people to buy their stuff.
It's a solved problem as in it's one single problem that is solved. I agree that WhatsApp is a really bad solution overall, just compared to iMessage it does solve the cross-platform issue.
I would also by far prefer a more open solution, but between relying on Apple for your country's messaging to relying on Facebook, at least by relying on Facebook you have one less issue.
Except for all the US people that keep in touch with Europeans! Source: me (a European) that has a GF in the US. They all get converted to WhatsApp :')
It's not really a "big" pain these days, but it was definitely a problem more annoying than it should have been for much longer than it needed to be. The main problem as you can guess, is that US transfers are either fast and relatively expensive, or free/cheap and takes a few days.
Ofc in this case Musk "solves" this problem as Venmo is one of the most popular solutions, as a spinoff of Paypal. just what we needed, to turn our financial transfers into social media.
Zelle is a much better solution nearly identical to what a bank to bank transfer is, but it's not quite as prevalent.
> With WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat, Telegram etc. I think this is pretty much a solved problem in the rest of the world, really only the US is behind here.
I don't think this is accurate. In ANZ at least it's fairly uncommon, and I'd imagine there are a number of other similar countries. I would be surprised if the number isn't 100m+ first world users who don't fall into that bucket, not including the US.
I can't speak for everything else, but LINE was not well known for privacy.
Everything people complain about WRT Meta was being done with impunity; their privacy policy basically said that they could read your messages and tailor ads based on them.
I really don't understand why people are crowing about using platforms like LINE and WhatsApp and sneering at Americans; they are not better.
> This creates a disdain for SMS, and anyone who uses it over iMessage. It is such a strong feeling, that having green messages makes you "uncool", especially in the younger crowd.
The thing is, I think it's perfectly fine, reasonable, and correct to have a disdain for SMS. The problem is that people transfer this disdain onto anyone they are "forced" to communicate with over SMS.
> I think the long-term sequalae of the blue-green message is to push people to use stand-alone apps...
Defaults matter. The friction to using iMessage on a brand-new iPhone is zero: it's right there, front and center, and doesn't require anyone to download anything new or confer with family and friends to figure out what the "right" other messaging platform is.
> ... like WhatsApp and FB Messenger
Oof, no thanks. I'd rather not be pushed toward using messaging apps owned by a company known to do shady things with user data. I've managed to get a few friends and group chats off those platforms and onto something else, but unfortunately there are still a few on them that I don't want to just cut ties with.
I find this whole debate over what is essentially the background color of chat messages to be rather silly.
iPhones implement SMS/MMS, which are both standards set forth by the GSM specification. That's the level of message exchange the underlying protocol offers. RCS is the "next gen" SMS, which is also being implemented. SMS/MMS/RCS does not support E2E encryption.
Apple then offers iMessage as a seperate service, on par with WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger, etc. It is literally just a messaging service running over the internet, using some form of identifier to identify you, which might be your phone number, like signal, or your email.
iMessage also offers proper E2E encryption, which is hit or miss with competitors. The challenge with E2E encryption is peer discovery. iMessage has made encryption easy, to the point that nobody thinks about it, but that's really what the blue bubble indicates, that your message is E2E encrypted.
There is literally no monopoly there other than Apple offering the superior tool. There is open communication with other phones, using SMS/MMS, which is the lowest common denominator when you're talking phones. That is literally the level of capability you can guarantee when talking over GSM.
> I find this whole debate over what is essentially the background color of chat messages to be rather silly.
Are you aware that it's actually so serious that Apple officially uses it in their marketing? They quite literally say "iMessages are blue. So you're not." and most notably: "SMS texters will be green with envy."
So what ?
Your reply doesn't make it about anything else than the color of the messages.
It's no different than WhatsApp creating an add saying "I give the same color chat bubbles to everybody".
It is essentially a dispute over people wanting iMessage because people delivers the superior tool. iMessage does nothing that any other messaging client doesn't already do, but with fewer users.
Any evidence of that image in context? It really doesnt look like it abides by Apples strict design standards, so unless proven otherwise Im inclined to think it is fake.
You cannot separate SMS messages from iMessages (to my knowledge)
I have only had an iphone for a few months, and I haven’t tried it yet, but when I enabled imessage I had the option of using an email address instead of my phone number. and From an android users perspective texting an iphone user is terrible, because they are incapable of sending quality photos, i suspect they just default to over compression for mms
…on a side note, the overall iphone experience is not great, everything just feels like it is trying to stop me from doing what i want. Not that android was all that better, but I definitely felt a bit more free with even simple things like how copy/paste works.
I’m actually thinking I will switch after my iPhone 8 packs it in. iPhone is now about extracting money not providing the best phone. Every app has an in app purchase. Let us have root to our iPhones so we can install open source projects.
It seems like DOJ might force Apple to make separate "SMS" and "iMessage" apps, and perhaps forbid preinstalling iMessage so users have to download it from the App Store when they get a new phone (giving it equal footing with its competitors). This would diffuse the claim that iOS is downgrading Android users within the same app.
I would prefer they just require Apple implement RCS (which they've already agreed to do), and -- crucially -- require feature parity with Android's RCS implementation. Which means standardizing Google's proprietary E2EE extension, and implementing that as well.
While I'd prefer being able to install a standalone Android iMessage app over the current situation, I really don't need or want another chat app.
End result - Apple is forced to do whatever Google wants.
I find it hard to imagine a company - that cares about its own future - would agree that they are required to implement things that their _competitor_ decides.
That scenario will just hand over the monopoly keys to Google, and we're back to square one.
Apple is adopting the Universal profile. If GSMA wants to add E2EE to that profile then they should. I believe that there was some talk of Apple working with GSMA to add or improve encryption on that profile. AFAIK rcs is licensed out to OEMs and so there are a number of different implementations around. In my opinion it would be better for all if there was a secure standard in place - for all to adopt - instead of hoping that everyone works with google to try to get googles proprietary implementation working.
The only open question (in my mind) is if Google's E2EE extension is intrinsically tied to Jibe. If it wasn't designed to eventually become part of the RCS standard, it could be real messy trying to open it up after the fact while remaining security.
Possibly split Messages and SMS in to distinct apps.
Have the latter handle SMS/MMS/RCS with options (in its settings area) to enable/disable each of the three, such that any or all of them may be individually allowed (or not).
Then also have an additional pair of options in the SMS app to indicate which other message app can operate as a proxy. Said proxy being able to send or receive SMS/MMS/RCS as appropriate. Possibly have the default set to Messages, but allow it to be set to any other app which has opted in.
Remove all of the SMS/MMS options from Messages, except the 'Send as SMS', which would then try to do the existing fall back when there is no data service.
The default behaviour would be as now. Disabling the 'Send as SMS' option would keep Messages and SMS as two distinct services, and one could then run the that way. Further flipping the config in SMS would allow any other app to be the preferred primary contact point.
I'm not sure how one would handle 'Group Chats' in such a situation.
With such a situation, I'd split the two and operate as distinct systems, iMessages in its own app, SMS/MMS/RCS in the SMS app, all other message facilities confined to their own playpen.
I know some relatives who would prefer to keep the proposed defaults such that everything appears in the Messages app.
The DOJ can’t really force Apple to do anything here without a consent decree, and with the case they just filed I’ll be surprised if they even get that much. Although, who knows, maybe a New Jersey district court will be a friendlier jurisdiction for this spaghetti case.
Man that would so awesome. The lack of control over what I'm actually sending the message on is annoying as hell on iPhone's. I want to explictly send and receive SMSes at points.
The annoying thing about any other messaging service except SMS is that if you're out in BFE, as long as you can ping a tower, you can get a message out ... or in.
The person not using iMessage doesn't limit anything, in most cases, now that RCS is a thing on most Androids. Apple is the one that breaks the experience for everyone and then implies it was the non-iMessage user.
Oh, do iPhone users also see those messages when an android user is in the chat?
I had assumed that reactions worked fine for them and they were unaware that their iPhone was making them look like a bit of a buffoon to the rest of us.
The main thing I miss about having an iPhone is the ability to send full resolution pictures and videos over iMessage. In practice, SMS and MMS are seriously limited in the size of files they can send.
That won't do anything for Android-to-iPhone messages until Apple implements RCS. Almost all of my friends use iPhones.
As an aside: I actually don't have RCS on my Android phone because I run LineageOS without any Google apps, and apparently Google hasn't added an API for RCS, so there are no open source alternatives to the Google Messages app if you want support for it. (Please, correct me if I'm wrong!)
You don't really need an OS API for RCS like you need for SMS/MMS, as RCS works over IP network. If you want/need to use USIM based authentication, you need a system privilege, so that you can talk to the SIM card.
Someone has written an open source RCS prototype app, but it is only for carrier-provided RCS and I don't know if anyone has even attempted to use it with Google's servers:
> This creates a disdain for SMS, and anyone who uses it over iMessage. It is such a strong feeling, that having green messages makes you "uncool", especially in the younger crowd.
When iMessage was introduced it was at a time SMS and MMS incurred extra charges, or, at best, came out of a fixed monthly allowance.
Making the user aware of whether they were using SMS/MMS or iMessage was actually a technically important feature, not a way to shame Android users.
My guess is even if iMessage bubbles were green, the sheer horribleness of SMS would still make communicating with Android a second class experience in a way everyone found frustrating. Sure RCS might make that better (I’m skeptical — standards support in the Android ecosystem is very inconsistent and varying in quality), but it’s a decade late. The basic argument is: Apple can’t make anything better for iPhone users until they can make it a standard for every mobile computing platform and competing service provider. About as absurd as it sounds.
>Sure RCS might make that better (I’m skeptical — standards support in the Android ecosystem is very inconsistent and varying in quality)
Maybe, but my old mom and her old Huawei phone works with zero problems with my brand new OnePlus and whatever mix of phones her friends have. All of them on RCS. The only one that has a problem is a friend with an iPhone that cannot receive images in the size everyone else shares them in. No-one here uses zuckerware - it is all SMS (IE. all RCS except for the few that likes old style Nokias so they get it as a SMS).
The blue background isn't lock-in -- it's branding and fashion. It's labeling the in-group and the out-group. The cool kids with their Nike shoes and the kids who got their shoes from Payless Shoe Store. The Abercrombie & Fitch wearing kids vs Costco or Walmart wearing kids.
The sooner it can be learned that a symbol on a shoe is ... kind of a silly status symbol, the better. Same with blue background or blue check mark.
At the time most everyone was on verizon which gave free in network sms and mms regardless of your plan. Social pressure at least in my area was therefore huge to get on verizon in particular since it was more dominant. Then that stopped once everyone had unlimited texting from any carrier.
I fear that's a losing battle. Forming cliques seems to be basic human behavior. It's not so much about the status symbol itself, as it's about being able to "other" people for whatever reason du jour.
This seems especially true for children, who lack the maturity to judge social interaction less superficially. Not saying adults are immune to this sort of thing, of course.
This strategy doesn't work in all the other more sophisticated markets, where WhatsApp/Telegram/FB Messenger/etc are the most popular communication apps.
It's not artificial. SMS is terrible on its own, and that's none of Apple's fault. It's not like Android users are getting together and happily having SMS/RCS group chats.
> It's not artificial. SMS is terrible on its own, and that's none of Apple's fault. It's not like Android users are getting together and happily having SMS/RCS group chats.
What? RCS is a real thing that works between Android users. It is Apple's choice to not support (or contribute to it or improve the standard) it because it locks people in and creates a very cozy, very real in-group sentiment.
I think the problem is uniformity in social groups. Everyone who has an iPhone gets iMessage and it's a seamless experience because it's the messaging app you have on the phone. Google was so poorly organized over its messaging solution that it couldn't push anything by default. Even if your social group is made up of a bunch of Android users, they all have the messaging app they want to use: WhatsApp, Hangouts, Telegram, Signal, etc. Very few people are willing to change because they have their own network of people who have decided on their preference.
RCS is a good idea (sort of), but it's too late. I suspect that Apple moving to Support RCS will make very little difference in terms of messaging solutions, when all is said and done.
>Very few people are willing to change because they have their own network of people who have decided on their preference.
This sounds radical, but: why can't people just use multiple apps? That was the whole marketing scheme for smartphones and yet we decide to corral back into the same little gates as 20 years ago. I have Whatsapp, Discord, regular messages, facebook messages, and probably 3 other stupid abandoned Senior Engineer Google promotion fodder on my phone. Hell, I'll answer of LinkedIn if you so incline. it's not like they don't all just flow onto my notification bar anyway.
And I guess since it's an inevitable question: I'm a 30YO single male. of course I don't have large friend group chats; We barely have friends that aren't busy with their SO's. on the one off per year we need to coordinate we'll pick and choose a platform.
That’s not Apple’s doing. They introduced iMessage as a direct result of telecom companies charging customers for text messages a la carte. If DoJ has issues with those blue bubbles then they should’ve sued telecom back then. This entire suit is a joke.
The problem isn't the messaging service, the problem is the artificial hardware requirement in order to use it. Second would be the inability to make another app the primary/default once you have said hardware.
That’s not what antitrust is about. Functionally speaking, you would not be able to prove there’s economic harm. Apple’s share of smartphone does not even compare to MSFT’s share of PC back in 90/00s.
Anti-trust law has gone through a variety of interpretations over the long history of its existence, and I think your characterization of it is incorrect, even under today's recent interpretations.
This suit seems to follow the interpretation of: "it is bad if consumers are being harmed in some way". Having a monopoly position via market share is not a necessary condition for that to happen.
How were consumers harmed from iMessage? Apple doesn’t stop people from downloading Whatsapp and hundreds of other communication apps. The only semi-valid argument they have is the app store. And even that is 10-20% chance considering Apple’s market share. Even though this is DoJ, this is all a part of Lina Khan’s naive crusade against NATURAL monopolies. Just because she doesn’t understand economics and how the real world operates in 2024.
Sounds like you need new colleagues. Why would you wish to be part of such a snobbish group? I fail to see why anti-trust law should be brought to bear on issues concerning teen fads. How about wearing the right kind of sneakers? Branded purses, handbags? Parkas? Should uniformity reign universal across all consumer products lest someone, somewhere be excluded to a faddish distinction?
As a European living in the US, I've found that it's nearly impossible to get on American's group chats without an iPhone. Hence I've had to shift my friend groups to be mostly other foreigners.
The Americans all say that to get in, you need an iPhone. So definitely a smart monopolistic strategy from Apple.
Agree, but its also more importantly the (...) bubbles that people have become addicted to. Green doesnt show that.
So when you see (...) and then it goes away and comes back a bunch of times - peoples fear and anxieties project into that (...) -- and its that fear dopamine that people are addicted to wrt to gree/blue...
where people are annoyed at green when they basically send a UDP txt - whereas blue is a TCP txt, so to speak...
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.
Sure it is. Anti-trust law gives the government (assuming they prevail in court) broad authority to require that a specific company take specific, tailored actions that the government believes will make it so the company can't abuse its market position to harm consumers anymore.
There's a long history of this, with Microsoft being a fairly recent, famous example.
I think you’re responding to a more basic question than I posed. I think I made it clear I understand the government can compel actions…
> that the government believes will make it so the company can't abuse its market position to harm consumers anymore
… and that I don’t believe “Apple must support Android messages” is that.
Since you mention Microsoft, I think it would be equally indefensible if the government had ordered “Microsoft must create a Windows Subsystem for Linux” as a remedy for their market abuse. Or a much closer analogy, “Microsoft must create a Windows Subsystem for Macintosh”.
I would find it much more compelling if the order were something like “Microsoft must maintain stable interfaces for Linux and/or Macintosh vendors to produce a functioning Windows Subsystem”. But it seems pretty absurd to me that the government could just mandate arbitrary labor on arbitrary products on behalf of their competitors.
In all of these arguments, I haven't heard about any harmed consumer yet. Half the things Apple is accused of actually benefit customers, at least in my opinion.
So you have not read anything about kids being bullied in schools for having green bubbles? And you don't think your Spotify subscription is more expensive than needed since Spotify has to give Apple 30% of their revenue (and Apple Music does not, what a fair competition)?
So the technology of a global company must be hobbled and regulated because of US parents being so foolish as to allow their teens access to age-inappropriate technology? Did I miss the "teen fads determine anti-trust results" section in the legal code?
Spotify doesn’t even let you buy Premium in the App on iOS anymore, it’s the same price for everyone. So no, it isn’t increasing prices since Spotify isn’t giving a 30% cut to Apple in the first place. As a consumer there’s literally no way for me to funnel money to Apple via Spotify. Spotify could choose to charge 30% more for an App Store IAP, but they’d rather be hostile to consumers and just offer nothing through that mechanism.
That's Apple being hostile to consumers, not Spotify. And the fact that Apple Music does offer subscriptions and doesn't need to pay 30% was appreciated in Europe with $2B just to make a point to Apple that they absolutely need to stop their BS.
The same way we're agreeing that Spotify never took in-app payments and decided to withdraw it's payment processing from IOS for reasons unrelated to Apple, yes.
The complaint was that a Spotify subscription is more expensive due to Apple taking a 30% cut. Which they don’t do, because Spotify elected to not use IAP at all. I don’t understand this complaint either, since it’s fictional.
I don't have an iPhone, Spotify was just an example, where Apple is in direct competition with another app and abuse their position as the phone manufacturer to charge fees from their competitors that they don't charge from themselves. Do you think Spotify wouldn't like to be able to have the nice UX of IAP if that didn't cost XX% of revenue?
And in the past they used to allow, apparently their deal with Apple was 15%. Why should Apple earn 15% of all revenue on Music streaming for a service that isn't even their service.
Yeah, we all knew that. You and about 95% of the other complainers in this thread obviously don't know what you're talking about and keep getting exposed as bad faith actors. It's tiresome and only serves the opposite of what you intend. When someone sees claims like yours and then finds the first result on Google proving you're full of shit, they don't believe the next complaint about Apple that could be legit.
You might be right, I still don't see Spotify being cheaper for Spotify customers if Apple let Spotify users sign up through their iOS app. What's the customer impact? The inconvenience of switching to a web browser for a one time transaction? There are tons of other reasons this happens all the time in other situations.
There isn't, but the way anti-trust works it more or less says "You need to do X by Y date". That X usually nudges a path or least resistance towards iplementing and servicing a new feature (or undoing chokeholds on old features), but as we see with the DMA Apple can play with loopholes for months before getting with the program.
To your example (and excuse my lack of sound legalese), they wouldn't say "Apple must implement RCS", they would say "Apple must allow for an cross-compatible solution" or "Apple must document XYZ features keeping competitors from implementing a proper iMessage alternative".
They don't even need to mandate anything. They need to neuter intellectual property, unambiguously legalize reverse engineering and circumvention, and make it illegal for corporations to retaliate against consumers who exercise those rights. Then all this stuff will happen on its own via adversarial interoperability.
Want to use a custom client to connect to some service? Want to bridge two rival networks? Such things should be our rights.
>unambiguously legalize reverse engineering and circumvention
That'll never happen. It basically opens the door for all kinds of malicious activity that can go unpunished. From Malware to distributing decryption mechanisms for sensitive information. It's pretty important for some of that stuff to be stopped at its root.
Not important enough. Computing freedom is more important. Computers should be free. We should be free. If the cost of that freedom is having to defend against malicious actors, so be it. I pay it gladly.
It's important enough to the people who actually have the power to change it. This wasn't my opinon, this is why it'll never happen with current driving forces. Stallman won't be kicking for that much longer, probably not long enough to argue this sort of angle.
> 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 between SMS and iMessage. And because those capabilities are different, it is useful and productive to communicate that in a clear, but unobtrusive way—like making their message bubbles different colors.
And when iMessage was introduced it was at a time SMS and MMS incurred extra charges, or, at best, came out of a fixed monthly allowance.
Making the user aware of whether they were using SMS/MMS or iMessage was actually a technically important feature so the user could understand if/how they would be charged.
If they control how SMS is received and displayed, they absolutely do control the featureset of SMS. On Android it's trivial to use different SMS apps, the receiver gets to decide how, if at all, they'll be separated.
Technically not in general but practically yes on iOS since it's either just SMS, MMS or iMessage on iOS instead of also RCS. That's a constraint they enforce on the colloquial SMS experience, it's limited to whatever they decide it is, and they decide that it's strictly old tech.
Saying they don't control SMS is like saying they don't control HTTPS or access to the web. Sure they don't get dictate the protocol itself, but they do control practically the singular implementation of it on their platform, heavily influence what people can do with it, and also control the entire software stack underneath. My iPad 3 is functionally useless despite being just as capable as it ever was (not very) because although it can still run apps, I'm only allowed to run whatever happens to still be on the app store.
Sure, if Apple wanted to, they could implement some kind of layer over SMS, using "hidden" characters sent with each message, that would let it act as if it has features like typing notifications and reactions. I'm...not 100% sure whether they could do the same with E2EE between iPhones, but let's say for the sake of argument they could.
That still doesn't change the situation between iPhones and Android phones. In fact, it makes it worse, because SMSes to Android phones would have all this garbage in them—but the main point is that Apple can't add any of that stuff to SMS between iPhones and non-iPhones.
And Apple has already committed to implementing RCS. However, I will be absolutely gobsmacked if RCS messages appearing in the Messages app show up with the same color as iMessage messages.
They will still be differentiated.
There will still be differences in featureset. (For one thing, Apple has, at least for now, said they will not be attempting to implement Google's fully proprietary E2EE extension for RCS.)
Some (shallow, petty) people will still use it as an excuse to shun other people.
And none of that will be because Apple is deliberately degrading the experience.
But they are deliberately restricting who can make SMS clients. Google also needs to open APIs for RCS as far as I know, but you can make an SMS client that acts as default. I used Signal for both at some point, no RCS but I could make a choice about how I want to interact with people over SMS.
> 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.
> How would Apple allow messages from Android that are not SMS?
Quite easily: by releasing a standalone iMessage app on Android. The Beeper folks have shown this of course can be done (even if Apple doesn't like it and blocks them).
Doing this would certainly be orders of magnitude easier than implementing RCS. It's quite telling that Apple still wants to maintain iMessage as iOS-only. And if Apple doesn't work with Google to implement the E2EE extension (assuming Google is reasonable about it), that tells us all we need to know (and should have already known): Apple doesn't actually care about their users and user privacy. They just care about their market position and "prestige", and want to maintain these silly "class divisions".
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 photos. Copying them off the phone with a usb cable is nearly impossible if you don't have a macbook, exporting them off of the website is nearly impossible if you have over 1k photos.. meanwhile google takeout allows me to download all of my photos in my browser in a couple clicks. In my experience, it feels like Apple makes getting out of their walled garden as difficult as legally possible.
If you're on linux I can only recommend ifuse with the libimobiledevice package. I followed the guide on the arch wiki[0] and could simply mount my iPhone to a directory[1] and then just drag and drop them over. For some reason there were 1000 pictures per folder so I had a few different folders, but otherwise it was super simple.
I connect and disconnect my iPhone often, so I prefer Gnome's default file manager Nautilus with gvfs-afc and or gvfs-gphoto2 (1).
My devices show up when I plug them in and I can see all my apps that expose storage in Apple's Files, with accompanying icons (2). Device folders like Downloads are off limits, though (3).
3: This entails much pointless duplication of files on the iPhone just to be able to see them from my PC. Apple would prefer, no doubt, that I use AirDrop or iCloud. But my Linux laptop means staying out of Apple's walled garden.
Can also testify to this, also works for transferring files to the device from Linux if app supports (ref VLC, etc). However, the speed is mind-numbingly slow.
Faster and easier to just sync with iCloud, then download from iCloud.
So, why not just vote with my wallet, and get a device that either is more friendly to 3rd party software interaction or simply allows saving to a movable SD card? Because overall things work very smoothly, and it is easy to find and manage settings. These things balance out well against the frustrations, especially when I know from experience that non-Apple devices will present their own frustrations.
To be fair, the philosophical/theoretical/economic foundations of antitrust legislation confuse me. This has not been helped by media bites a la NYT. Maybe if I had months and years of free time and good material I could form a worthy opinion. But for now, I just have trouble seeing how statements like this from OP are contradictory: "The company says this makes its iPhones more secure than other smartphones. But app developers and rival device makers say Apple uses its power to crush competition."
The Dropbox comment was a highly technical person belittling an app without realising that it solves problems for normal people. They thought that normal people would have no problem finding and purchasing a managed FTP service, mount it with curlftpfs, and then use SVN to get a Dropbox-like service.
The comment you’re responding to is a technical person offering advice on a way out of a sticky situation to another (assumed) technical person. It didn’t feel like they were trying to say that the average person should be able to read archwiki and use libimobiledevice to pull pictures off an iPhone… but I could be misreading the situation
Definitely didn't want to come across as belittling or anything. Just stumbled on that tool a few weeks ago when I tried to backup my iPhone photos and was surprised how well it worked and how painless it was. Maybe it's because I'm not a native speaker, but I had no bad intentions, just wanted to tell what worked for me.
>a technical person offering advice on a way out of a sticky situation to another (assumed) technical person.
even if that assumption was correct, they mentioned this being done for their wive's iPhone. Which is assumedly a non-technical person given that the best solution was a paid cloud subscription.
I don't think this is comparable. The parent comment doesn't make a value judgment on whether the strategy of using the Linux utility is a comparable offering; it's just a potentially suggestion to try to help when it seems like someone is frustrated with the solution they currently have. Giving a highly technical way of doing something isn't inherently a problem; the issue is when someone claims that it's more than sufficient and that no easier way needs to exist, but that didn't happen here.
I think that's a little unfair. The Dropbox comment was "it's absurd that people would need this consumer-friendly thing; just do [thing that only fairly-technical people could realistically accomplish]". This situation is "so-called easy-to-use consumer device is blocking you from doing something? here's an alternative that requires some technical know-how, but unfortunately there isn't a great solution here".
Look, they're clearly trying to help someone deal with a real problem using the tools available today. They're out here offering someone sunscreen and you're mad they're not yelling at God instead.
I do that as well (Android user, so it's pretty much the default), but aside from not having to pay Google, there isn't a meaningful difference here: it's just trading one company's propriety cloud backup for another's.
Google's data interoperability is quite good though (Takeout). That was something Google did right 10+ years ago and I'm glad it hasn't died on the vine (and will probably see more development now, what with all this antitrust in the air).
There’s a giant difference. The claim is that Apple restricts other companies from providing cloud backup of photos. Google Photos proves this is incorrect.
Unless things have changed, yes but no. You have to leave the app running, and turn off display sleep/lock so the phone is always awake. Which practically means it has to be plugged in. It's a major pain. As someone else commented, a classic example of Apple limiting background sync in the name of "stability and battery life". That has a grain of truth to it, but let users make that choice!
>Original quality - Store photos & videos with no change to their quality
>Storage saver - Store more at a slightly reduced quality
but I haven't really checked.
It did seem to not preserve some of the special iphone format stuff like if you edit a photo on an iphone it keeps the original and the edit wheras on google photos I just got the edited image.
Yes, but of course, that takes more data without their compression and one eventually has to pay more for storage as expected, but at least that option is there.
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.
I was trying to be helpful. I was responding to someone else who said they have a Mac. But, if you want to relate it to the title, I don't believe there's any technical limitation to developing an app for Windows that can help you transfer files from an Iphone. And as far as I remember, the Android transfer app on Windows (or maybe Mac) is pretty bad as well. Maybe the issue is that there's no money to be made from this, so nobody develops nicer apps. In general I do agree that Iphones are easier integrated with Macs, I personally don't have a problem with that
I have ~200K photos in iCloud and do not have this problem of exporting, I “export” regularly onto new backup media.
However, I don't really export, I turn on iCloud Photos on Windows and set it to store on an external media with sufficient space (over 2TB now) and then tell it to locally store all media in full quality.
Once it's synced, I have a local folder with all the media. I have accomplished an export. Then I can turn it off, remove the media, and go back to a c:\ folder and not saving locally.
Now, you wanted without iCloud, so then, Windows 10 or newer? Microsoft has a phone companion that can pull things, or there's file explorer for just photos.
But absent iCloud, what I've done is run OneDrive on the iPhone, and let that mirror everything to OneDrive.
(An alternative used to be Amazon Photos, but I can't keep track of their business model, and Google Photos I can't keep track of what makes them decide to replace my originals with badly compressed alternatives.)
I sort of don't understand buying an iPhone, though, if you're not buying into the ecosystem.
The ecosystem is the point.
The ease of use of iCloud, the paired camera roll for your family (not same thing as shared albums), the family sharing of apps and subscriptions, the bring-your-own domain email with "hide my email" throwaway accounts to put into spammy sites, it's all there increasingly seamless, increasingly secure, and none of it is selling you out into third party ad-tech.
If you're not into that, there are other phone systems and operating systems and other hardware all grounded on different and separate principles. There's only one place for a cohesive coherent curated "don't make me think" peace of mind, and consumers should have a right to choose that since it stands alone in opposition to the DIY bricolage everyone else offers.
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.
I tried that but the downloads time out for me a few hundred in, and the nature of the script is such that it doesn’t auto restart or crash but it hangs and needs manual interactive intervention.
I'm running it in a container. So I haven't noticed any such issues. Other than having to re-authenticate every few weeks. The container itself is configured to auto restart on failures. But I'll keep an eye on it. Maybe it is failing and I just never noticed it. But I do see that my NAS has the latest images and videos downloaded. So at least as a container, its working as advertised.
I use photo sync for this, which was a one off payment. Of course you have to trigger it manually every few days because only Apple apps can actually work on iOS
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.
This is something I really want, but I've never been quite sure how to set it up properly. Ideally I'd want to run it in the cloud so I don't have to be on my home network (and don't have to expose my home network in that way). I have a VPS that I use for a variety of things, but it doesn't have enough space for my photos. Syncthing doesn't seem to support S3 as storage.
I suppose I could put it on a machine at home, and expose it to the internet (perhaps using Wireguard), but I have very limited upload bandwidth (25Mbps), and would still want to sync the files to S3 (say with a script that runs nightly). I guess the initial sync would take forever, and then new photos would be relatively quick.
I guess I could also put it on my VPS and use something like Amazon's NFS service as the backing store. But I expect that would be quite a bit more expensive than the lower-cost S3/Glacier tiers I'd prefer to use.
With that kind of upload speed, I can see why you'd want cloud hosting. I'm paranoid enough to want a local copy so my first instinct is to still sync to home with an inotify script to trickle-push everything to S3 (quicker to start than a nightly script).
So the parent got flagged after I did the math. I hope you don't mind my posting it here just to qualify what the justification looks like:
The exaggerated use-case:
0.0000000001% is:
0.000000000001 (10^-12)
Multiplied by 1,460,000,000
----
0.00146 persons.
And we already know that there are at least 2 people (myself and parent up there) who are interested in that. This is off by a factor of 1000. I'm willing to guess that it's actually off by a factor of at least 1,000,000, possibly 10,000,000. It seems completely reasonable to me that we could find in the entire world of iPhone users 146,000 people who would want to setup their own photos backup.
All of this is simply to say that the user base is absolutely massive, and we need to appreciate how huge it is. Even a very very small subset of users represents a very large number of actual people.
an option for easy backup in addition to the already-mentioned google photos is to use a hosted nextcloud instance (hetzner, shadow.tech) to backup photos from your phone. the nextcloud app available on the ios store will backup to the configured remote nextcloud instance and the corresponding nextcloud app on your laptop etc. can then sync these photos to you.
It's amusing how often you see this sort of substantive claim which can be trivially disproven.
"Apple operates a walled garden! I can't get my photos out of iCloud!" [half a dozen ways to get the photos off the phone are proffered] "Well. Nevertheless!"
The company hosting that URL offers a product for syncing between various clouds, I haven't used it but it does exist. https://www.multcloud.com/download
So I guess this is another one of those things that just isn't true. Go figure.
Not really. For Dropbox, Nextcloud, Photo Sync, et c to upload your photos, the app needs to remain open; it can't upload in the background for more than a minute or so.
This means that only iCloud can do real background syncing. If you want to upload a full camera roll to a non-iCloud service, you're in for a world of frustration. You'll have to disable screenlock and put the phone on a power cord and leave it open with the app up for hours and hours. Of course iCloud doesn't have such limitations.
No non-Apple app is allowed to do background sync, no matter what you install. They have put iCloud Drive and iCloud Photos in a privileged position.
It is as much about perception and convenience as anything else. When I talk about smartphones with non-technical people, the top complaint (against both Apple and Google) is that they try to trap customers by making it hard to move your stuff from iOS to Android or vice versa. They're running into issues for different reasons (forgotten passwords, data migration tool not getting everything) but it's fundamentally the same complaint: why does this require some specific procedure instead of just working the way I expect it to work? This may just be the grumpy nerd in me talking, but all of this would be a lot easier if mobile apps dealing with interchangeable things like photos and text saved user data to files instead of inscrutable databases by default.
> 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?
I also suspect that there isn't an easy way to reduce the resolution that the default iPhone camera app takes photographs at (that I could find) because Apple wants them to be big so that you will need to buy cloud storage.
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 on their next iPhone.
> 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.
This thread has me feeling like I'm taking crazy pills. There are many things people can plausibly criticize Apple about, but these aren't among them.
These complaints sound like the equivalent of "Apple won't let you use your own email server", or "Safari only loads apple.com web pages". Can't archive photos? Can't delete emails? Are these people even talking about the same iPhone I have that can do all those things?
> In 2010, a top Apple executive emailed Apple’s then-CEO about an ad for the new
Kindle e-reader. The ad began with a woman who was using her iPhone to buy and read books
on the Kindle app. She then switches to an Android smartphone and continues to read her books using the same Kindle app. The executive wrote to Jobs: one “message that can’t be missed is that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android. Not fun to watch.”
This attitude explains a lot. This logic applies to every app that's available on both iPhone and Android, and to every web app.
This behavior is so overt that I am constantly baffled that otherwise rational people continue to make up excuses for Apple. See also this article where they overtly state that the green bubble thing is deliberately intended to cause lock-in: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...
I have been called a "violent criminal" on this very site because I criticized Apple's decision to remotely brick swapped components to prevent DIY repairs. I do not understand what it is about Apple that causes this behavior in people when they make it so, so, so obvious that they are just trying to lock people in for cash.
“Locking people in for cash” is a common business practice in tech and other industries. Try mounting a Nikon lens on a Canon camera, for example. You might not like it, but I’m not sure why Apple deserves special condemnation in this regard.
> Try mounting a Nikon lens on a Canon camera, for example.
You can simply buy the adapter from amazon or almost any shop. You've really chosen a bad example because companies have tried to patent their connectors to limit production of these kinds of adapters and the courts always rule the patents invalid. Locking people in for cash is a common illegal practice; it happens and take time to remediate, but is and should be illegal.
Yes, even if you want to use autofocus. I don't really like posting product links, but you can google it. Maybe at some point in your past you were personally not able to find such a product and make a purchase and that may have shaped your ideas of the situation. Also they keep making new connector types to keep this arms race going. As I said, the law takes a dim view of such shenanigans and certainly protects interoperability.
There's little you can do with a camera, even if you're able to swap lenses from another vendor. There are infinite things you could do with a modern smartphone if had access to it.
So because phones are useful, lock-in should be prohibited? I don’t think that’s how the law reads. Should we also prevent lock-in for car parts, because there are infinite places to go in cars?
> Try mounting a Nikon lens on a Canon camera, for example. You might not like it,
Right, I don't. Things like these not being standardized when it would be so easy for them to be just so that one provider can make a little extra money selling their own peripherals is scummy and I would love to see it stopped. Apple does this, Nikon does this, both can either fix it or burn.
Also, what exactly is your point? That you admit Apple is doing anti-competitive things to lock customers in, just that you don't care?
There is a big gap between lock in by screwing competitors (Apple) and lock in by screwing customers. The latter can be solved by jumping ship and will resolve itself when enough people get pissed off and stop buying, but the former needs regulatory oversight
The green bubble complaining must have the lowest level of credibility among all the anti-apple complaints. The method of "monopolization" here is to make their product cooler than their competitors product. The idea that we need to government to step in and force apple to make android cool too is so silly.
The method of monipolization is to increase lock in, by Apple's own internal emails. There are emails of them literally saying that to themselves. Why do people conjure hypotheticals on why Apple is just "acting for their users interest" when we have legal evidence of them saying that their plan for iMessage is to cause user lock in.
If the green bubbles didn’t violate Apples own accessibility standards for text contrast (https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-acce... would agree it’s a silly complaint.
But there is no technical limitation requiring that a message be less readable because it came from an Android. So it’s not just “less cool” they actively make the user experience worse for you when you are messaging someone that doesn’t have an iPhone.
You can buy an android. It’s not hard. You can eliminate all your problems. The solution exists. I do find any further argument temping when not only can you buy an Android, you can buy a cheaper phone that does all the same things.
I do not angry when I use Netflix and the program I wanna watch is on Hulu. I do not complain to Hulu. They offer a app/website and I can buy it that very day. You can, this very day, buy an Android
I wish everything good was free too and I only had one app and one computer OS and didn’t have to choose between car brands too but that’s not Reality
How does buying an android fix the issues surrounding the green bubble? How does buying an android let you use an apple watch? How does buying an android fix all the cross dependencies of super apps that would be utilised between android and iphones?
To fix the apple issue in the US you don't need to buy 1 android phone you need to buy 175 million of them (and, to apple's credit, not the cheaper ones if you want to match apple performance)... or you could enforce the law to curtail the more aggregious of apple's anti-competitive behaviours.
I do use an Android. Doesn't mean I can't point out glaringly obvious issues across the pond. Apple's decisions affect me regardless:
- If I develop an app and want to port it to an Apple device, I need to spend a ton of money on devices from their ecosystem to do so or else I miss out on their whole market.
- Members of my close family use iPhones and will ask me for help with things like getting videos off of them. Lock-in features like iCloud make it extraordinarily difficult and prevents them from getting an Android without leaving their things behind.
- Apple has enough market pull that if they do something user-hostile for money and walk away unpunished legally, others in the market tend to copy them. See the headphone jack issue and how Samsung and Google have dropped it.
- When my family sends me videos over text they look terrible. It's a small thing, but considering that the Beeper Mini thing revealed how easy it would be for Apple to just not actively break iMessage solutions, it's pretty annoying.
Being able to use your own software on your own device is not a fantasyland, it is the default for most devices. Apple is a standout exception and it is insane to me that Apple users will shrug that off with "well, that's just reality," because it clearly isn't. It is a conscious decision by Apple to block you from owning your device and you are rolling over and taking it.
> Apple has enough market pull that if they do something user-hostile for money and walk away unpunished legally, others in the market tend to copy them. See the headphone jack issue and how Samsung and Google have dropped it.
Great point. For many years Google police was that in app purchases, if you were not using Googles play service to handle them for you, were allowed and without any Google tax. That meant that the Kindle app on Android allowed you to buy books. After they changed their policy to be more like Apples, now I need to open the browser to buy a book. Why should either Apple or Google get ANYTHING from me buying a book from Amazon? Do they own me or something?
The solution to "this device engages in bad/anticonsumer behaviour" is not "buy something else" when the said device is 60% of all devices in its category (smartphones) sold. The only true solution is to either petition Apple to stop it, or like in this case, use the available laws. Apple isn't the first company trying to pull a fast one nor will it be the last.
What an asinine comment. What you are basically saying is to buy an iPhone to use with friends that use iPhone and then buy an Android to use with friends that have an Android phone or that you pick your friends based on their phone.
Because you cannot have only one of them and not either have a problem or cause a problem for others. So which of those are you? The one that cause problems?
Not really. It isn't that simple, which you'd know if you read only a few comments here. For example, my mother has only one friend with an iPhone. Of all her friends, she is the only one she cannot send images to directly. Her friends iPhone refuses and sends back an "image too large" SMS error message. The only way to get the iPhone to accept the image is to first reduce it in size via an app. Huawei, OnePlus, Samsung, Nokia - they all send and receive just fine (most on the same provider as the iPhone) but if the same image is sent from the iPhone the problem disappears, unless you try to send it back, then the error message reappears.
Then there's all the iMessage versus SMS/MMS/RCS green/blue issues. Read the comments. Apple is using lots of small dirty tricks.
I have sent many a images on an iphone via sms when imessage lacks any connectivity so this is a little weird for me to read. Maybe my OS version automatically sizes these images for sms.
I assert it is trivial to not buy Apple products, easy to make alternatives to Apple products and easy to buy feature equivalent devices to Apple products.
In lieu of this what is the problem? If the government has a problem why not say any code should be able to be run on any device?
Honestly I’m curious - what’s the problem? There are android phones that are superior to iPhones and let you run anything you want. Why don’t people buy those?
The government seems to want to make it illegal to have a tight experience, but why? There are open alternatives. It’s like complaining that Teslas don’t support CarPlay. Valid, but does it require legislation? Buy another car.
FWIW I would love if the government made it so all devices should have an option to run any of your arbitrary code.
Please, go do it. You'll be very rich very quick and I'll eagerly buy your products once you succeed.
Unfortunately you'll find out it's not actually easy at all when you realize that consumers care about weight, size, temperature and battery life which are all things apple excels at. Their hardware is really quite good, unfortunately the software is horribly crippled.
This is how the free market is intended to work. This opens up the range for several android phones (which have a near split in the US, and a majority globally last I recall) to offer better hardware.
Modern Samsung phones are very good. You’re asserting that Apple should be punished purely because they make good hardware and are successful - and if their hardware wasn’t good and competitive then you wouldn’t care.
Part of why I have Apple devices as a tech enthusiast is the good software and the ecosystem that comes with it.
Would I like to run an IDE and code on an iPad? Absolutely. But I’d rather have the iPad than the android tablet.
I don’t get why people obsess over the phones. Nobody here is trying to argue Apple has a monopoly on the phone market, that is very obviously not the case (although Apple very much contains a market leader position).
The argument is very simple: due to the dominant position on the overall phone market, Apple uses this power to mess with another market: the mobile app market. And here it is obvious how Apple is issuing bullying tactics to maintain its dominance (Apple TV vs. Netflix, Apple Music vs. Spotify, Apple Pay/iAP vs literally anything).
Wether the US courts come to a similar conclusion as the EU legislators remains to be seen, but there is a precedent
It's not about having a dominant position, it's about using your power in one market to further your position in another one. Apple control iOS and macOS which is always bundled with the hardware, and they use that to strengthen their own applications. Competitors cannot do it as they do not have the same access that Apple does regarding APIs and other features.
Apple uses their own technology to make their products better. That’s not a scandal. Their products aren’t the most dominant in streaming, maps, or payment. Most of the complaints are about what they aren’t doing (going out of their way to make proprietary features available to 3ps), not what they are doing (say: giving themselves special push notification permissions). So what influence are they exerting exactly? Why is it so pernicious?
They're exerting the same influence that Google did over their Android partners. They created a faux-open market with arbitrary rules that ensure their products always win. Google lost their case because of this and Apple should too.
Google lost their case because, among other things, they offered back room deals which favored a blessed few and were not available to all. E.g. you could not get the rate Spotify was getting charged for in app purchases (zero%).
The DOJ's 90 page lawsuit is a lot of things, but precise or even factual it is not. For example, it doesn't even cite the selling price or terms of the original iPhone correctly (off by almost 2x) and invents vague terms like "the performance smartphone market."
You didn’t ask “what was the price of the original iPhone”. Your questions were…
> So what influence are they exerting exactly? Why is it so pernicious?
Which are both answered in the document.
Almost the entire document is defining the performance smartphone market. It’s mentioned in the document 88 times. The definition isn’t “phones over $400” because it’s defined by the market forces that Apple creates - there’s a feedback loop
Okay. But what happened to the Windows Phone and its integration with the Windows OS? It simply failed.
There is a valid argument to be made here against Apple and how their firm grip is stopping a market from advancing further. But not by using their technical success in creating a great platform.
It's all about economical fair play. If you create a market, but position yourself as the de-facto winner, it will not be a healthy one. It was all good, especially when default apps provided by Apple were free, but now with Apple Music, Apple TV, and iCloud being paid services, competitors worry about being not able to compete.
Yes. That’s it. That’s anti-competitive. That’s where the consumer benefit was curtailed and competition was limited.
People usually talk about companies who cannot compete with Apple on fair grounds and then claim foul. Which sounds like they’re trying to punish a company for being successful not for playing unfairly.
> Your list of services where you claim Apple has a dominant position is entirely products where it does not have a dominant position.
I am not claiming that. I am claiming that Apple has a very dominant position over the most important sales channel lots of companies have to rely on to compete.
Just one example is the at this point famous App Store tax. From a 10$ Apple Music subscription, 9.8$ (lets use these cents for processing) goes to Apple.
For a 10$ Spotify subscription, Spotify makes 7$ after Apple takes their 30% fee. Sure one may say, hey, but Spotify isn't forced to use Apple's service for payments, except they are. Otherwise they loose access to *the* platform most people listen to their music nowadays. Spotify also isn't allow to make Apple subscriptions more expensive and inform users about cheaper subscriptions on their website, because otherwise they'd loose access to the important platform. I guess one can see how this could be considered a abuse of the dominant marked position?
Strictly speaking, for this example past tense would have been fitting. Not because Apple is so generous, but because the EU also considered much of this behavior to be anti-competitive. Hence me wondering if the US courts would be following this line of thinking.
What frustrates me the most is Apple's double dipping. They argue that those fees are required for the development of the platform and technology, pretending as if they didn't already charge a hefty price tag on the products they sell. And in the end, its still the user who is getting screwed. It's not like Spotify or any other provider is eating the platform cost, they charge it up to the user by making their services more expensive.
Also, in their defense in the EU hearings Apple argued that Spotify's success is in large part thanks to the App Store, so it would only be fair for them to pay that amount. The amount of arrogance in that statement is astonishing imho. Developing for a platform is a mutually beneficial relationship, not an altruistic development aid by Apple. What would iPhone sales look like if there was no third party Mail client, no Twitter app and no Instagram or Facebook for their phones?
TD;DR: easy demonstration of how Apple makes more money selling the same product, not because they're more efficient but because they make all the rules.
Your stylized example is unrelated to reality. Users cannot subscribe to Spotify in app, so Apple makes no money from them while providing all the R&D they use to play audio on the device for free. Next, people say that the hassle of subscribing to Spotify outside the app is an insurmountable friction for Spotify, yet somehow Spotify is the dominant streaming music provider.
So Apple has built all the key innovations which make mobile music streaming a viable product, gives it to the biggest music streaming service for free, and then gets slammed because it doesn’t also go out of its way to allow that service to integrate with Apple’s assistant AI product (except when it does build that functionality, the streaming service doesn’t even adopt it!).
> Users cannot subscribe to Spotify in app, so Apple makes no money from
They don’t? This is because of the limitation puts on the App. Apple Music users can easily subscribe thanks to Apple being not negatively affected by its own restrictions.
> while providing all the R&D they use to play audio on the device for free
So you’re saying the developers fees pay for their R&D. So am I with my phone purchase. So I’m simply paying twice. To quote yourself, that is
> Simply absurd logic.
> Apple has built all the key innovations which make mobile music streaming a viable product, gives it to the biggest music streaming service
Have they? Spotify was a thing on the desktop way before it was on iPhone. Apple didn’t invent mp3 and all sorts of other stuff. They built the platform for their phones, no more, no less.
> gives it to the biggest music streaming service for free
It’s not free, quite the opposite. It comes with a steep fee when you sell on their platform.
> They don’t? This is because of the limitation puts on the App.
Just because there’s some reason for why Apple does not make money from Spotify does not invalidate the fact. Meanwhile, your entire argument depended on a false premise.
> Have they? Spotify was a thing on the desktop way before it was on iPhone.
And Rhapsody was on desktop way before Spotify. There’s a reason it didn’t take off.
> It’s not free, quite the opposite. It comes with a steep fee when you sell on their platform.
What steep fee? The one that the biggest music streaming company does not pay? How can a fee be both required and uncollected?
It doesn’t matter. I’m not the one whose arguments depend on Apple making money from Spotify.
> The device owner paid for their device and the OS.
I have to assume people writing on Hacker News are not so naive about software business models. The vast majority of software is not sold with a free license to developers to build anything they want packaged with the hardware sale.
This entire comment is wildly misinformed. Are you forgetting Apple charges like $1200 for a phone these days? They’re the most profitable company on the planet. Are you suggesting that in order to cover the extensive research and development costs of music playback (sorry did you really say this?), they need to take a 30% cut of every song played on the device?
As far as I can tell, you don't dispute a single statement in my comment.
> Are you forgetting Apple charges like $1200 for a phone these days?
This is a strawman. iPhone starts at $429 in the US, and there is no law saying companies can only monetize with up-front hardware costs. Such a law would be unprecedented in software.
> Are you suggesting that in order to cover the extensive research and development costs of music playback (sorry did you really say this?)
I didn't say that. I said mobile music playback. Streaming the world's music catalog to a mobile phone reliably with all-day battery life would be unthinkable 17 years ago, and the primary innovator making it happen was Apple, not Spotify. Core Media APIs are simply the tip of the iceberg, yet are widely recognized as best in class by a lot. Android took over a decade to catch up to iOS audio latency in 2013: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/03/an-update-....
Remember when Spotify released their take on music playing hardware with Car Thing? They literally couldn't sell their first run of inventory and ended up taking a 8+ figure write down. That project probably cost Spotify more than they've paid Apple in fees in the last decade, yet the Spotify in-car experience is great because of CarPlay, an Apple technology!
> they need to take a 30% cut of every song played on the device?
I made no claims about how much Apple should be paid for this. I simply pointed out that Apple is paid nothing for it by Spotify, yet people still are upset by that.
> the world's music catalog to a mobile phone reliably with all-day battery life would be unthinkable 17 years ago
The reliability of the streaming is more dependent on the internet connection and the quality of Spotify's services. Apple made bluetooth reliable, but most music enthusiasts see Apple's killing of the audio jack (because innovation?... no wait it was greed) was a huge step back for audio quality. Samsung phones have better battery life while Sony has better audio hands down.
> the primary innovator making it happen was Apple
Based on what metric? Apple utilized patents from Nokia, Qualcomm, Sony, etc.
> there is no law saying companies can only monetize with up-front hardware costs.
I didn't say there was. Your assertion that "so Apple makes no money from them while providing all the R&D they use to play audio on the device for free", is what I was responding to. Consumers are paying for that R&D. You strawmanned my strawman... Apple's most popular phone is $999.
> Core Media APIs are simply the tip of the iceberg, yet are widely recognized as best in class by a lot
Best in class by what measure? It's no surprise that when HackerNews attempts to explain the ins and outs of the music industry they start and end with APIs... Have you heard of Beyonce? I promise you Apple's customers don't give a shit about what APIs are used to listen to their music. They'll listen to their music on car speakers. It's completely irrelevant to customers. And the people that really do care about audio quality want cables, which again, Apple killed. The audio latency article you referenced has absolutely no bearing on music playback, it pertains to real-time communications and games with user interaction. Listening to music isn't impacted by this metric, unless you think an extra 80ms after hitting play on Spotify is worth a 30% cut of Spotify's revenue. But somehow I suspect you'll attempt to justify that.
Totally agreed. And does Apple has a "dominant position" in text messaging? They have around 60% of total phone market share [1], but that seems like a far cry from, say, 80% or 90%, which is what I'd consider "dominant."
Microsoft had over 90% market share of the world's personal computers in the 1990s [2], which I'd also consider dominant... and which did result in some similar antitrust lawsuits.
Saying they don't have a monopoly over those services is still a stawman. They don't have a monopoly on music streaming, but they actively force Spotify to effectively support their own competitor via their 30% fee. Apple TV+ does not have more subscribers than Netflix, but apple famously makes rules that hinder Netflix ability to be competitive on iOS.
And if Apple was all about making the better product, why don't they allow the app developers to use their own payment processors. If Apple IAP was so superior to everything else, users and developers alike would surely gladly pay the 20x markup?
But heck, they don't even allow an App developer to tell their users about a cheaper price on their website or why the product is more expensive on iOS.
Wether you like it or not, as soon as a platform becomes as big as iOS or Android, market watchdogs will come to town. And that is good thing, because with competition the user usually profits over the long term.
Apple does not force Spotify to support its competition. Spotify does not offer any IAP so in fact it’s Apple that is giving away all its R&D into AVFoundation and various other cutting edge APIs for free to its competition. Apple does not make any money from Spotify.
It’s true when you become as successful as Apple, the rentiers will come knocking. That doesn’t make the rentiers’ case particularly strong or honorable.
Apple doesn’t build the platform as a generous gift to developers on their platform. The build this stuff because they have to, otherwise iOS would be an awful platform for developers and by extension the users of Apples platform.
You are pretending you cannot build a foundational platform without double dipping, yet they do with macOS.
The ecosystem doesn’t need to go away to be opened up.
Honestly, I am approaching this from another standpoint. Tech has made it more palatable to have walled gardens but battles similar to this have been fought before and the walled gardens have fallen.
I have two solutions for Apple here:
1. Either allow more open participation on your platform.
2. Allow other vendors to write OSes for the iPhone device if you don’t want to open your software.
Without one of these two, the amount of ewaste we’re generating from this hardware is astonishing.
I don’t think Apple the services, should dictate the OS running on Apple the hardware.
At that point, you can run the ecosystem you want. I can choose to run Android, or Linux on this hardware.
And before anyone brings up consoles: yes. This should also apply to consoles.
You’ve just removed a massive financial incentive for making the kind of hardware Apple does. Their whole ‘thing’ is a unified experience between hardware and software.
The entire premise of punishing a company for success when they haven’t violated any laws is insane to me, and I think dangerous to the market because you’ll stifle companies wanting to try new things for fear of someone attacking them for success.
Antitrust means that the consumer has no choice - they do they can buy an android phone. Saying “you can’t use other software inside of apples hardware” is an irrelevant argument, since an alternative to that combination is available.
> The entire premise of punishing a company for success when they haven’t violated any laws is insane to me
I'm not clear on what you're implying here, this is a lawsuit, so a punishment will literally only apply if the judge finds Apple in violation of the law.
Is your issue with the law not being 100% specific about this ahead of time? Because I would argue that it's by design - law should lag behind innovation (in both tech and business practices) rather than try to predict and potentially stifle it.
> The entire premise of punishing a company for success when they haven’t violated any laws is insane to me
The government is arguing they have violated the laws, that's the entire point of a lawsuit. Apple has become a private regulator in the mobile app space, and the government is correct to break this power.
> I think dangerous to the market because you’ll stifle companies wanting to try new things for fear of someone attacking them for success.
This is the corporate equivalent of "Oh won't someone pleeeeeeeease think of the children". Give me one example where innovation was stifled because of antitrust action. It almost always goes the other way - corporate regulation is broken and small businesses and new ideas are able to flourish in its' absence.
As to your last point - having a single alternative is hardly a flourishing marketplace where the best ideas win. Distributors should not have the power to determine winners in the marketplace, and Apple's private power as a distributor of hardware and mobile apps has become such that they can ensure their own success regardless of whether they innovate or their customers love them.
> This is the corporate equivalent of "Oh won't someone pleeeeeeeease think of the children". Give me one example where innovation was stifled because of antitrust action. It almost always goes the other way - corporate regulation is broken and small businesses and new ideas are able to flourish in its' absence.
The EU and their dwarfed tech sector because they’ve made a regulatory environment hostile to business.
This argument boils down to “does the maintainer of a platform have the right to maintain their controlling interest in their own platform if that platform itself is not a monopoly” and I’d argue the answer to that is a firm absolutely.
If I’m raising sheep on my farm it isn’t my duty to provide my land to my neighbor to also raise sheep.
> If I’m raising sheep on my farm it isn’t my duty to provide my land to my neighbor to also raise sheep.
It's more like you providing land to raise sheep, but put your nephew's sheep in the best spots, pushing your customers' sheep where they can't eat so well. So your customer will rightfully complain that you're hurting their business.
But the other farms are suitable for cows and goats, not sheep. And some do have cows and goats over there, but you're the only farm which is suitable for sheep.
iOS apps to use on the iPhone. If you want an app on the iPhone, you have to go through the App Store unless you make it a PWA which is not suitable for a lot of use cases. You can’t run Android Apps on the iPhone and there’s no alternative App Store.
Your farm example does not have the scale of damage for the government to bother itself suing you for. Nor is it actually relevant here since it’s an entirely different landscape.
I don’t think we can look at EU and point at a single thing and say that’s why they have a smaller tech sector. Heck, here’s a random argument I can throw out of nowhere for it: they are far less migrant friendly.
> If I’m raising sheep on my farm it isn’t my duty to provide my land to my neighbor to also raise sheep.
This is the wrong analogy. If you want to use the feudalism analogy (which I always find appropriate for antitrust discussions), Apple is the Ducal landlord and also owns several farms that compete with their tenants.
Now, in medieval England, you would be right that the landlord has every right to do this. In the modern United States of America, antitrust laws are specifically written to avoid this arrangement. That there is another farm is irrelevant - we have laws to keep the power of landlords in check as a matter of governing philosophy.
For the last 50 years, a pro-consolidation school of thought has formed that specifically precludes enforcement of the laws, but the laws are still on the books that specifically aim to prevent an incestuous relationship between producers and distributors. In Apple's case, they have bundled the App Store and OS in a way that allows them to make the rules of the market and precludes a reasonable degree of competition in a major sector of the economy - it's an obvious target for competent law enforcement to take this type of action.
Let’s pretend there’s a world where Apple can’t ban android from getting installed on an iPhone.
Is Apple going to quit making iPhones then?
Their financial incentive is that they’re effectively the default OS on these devices. How many people are installing Linux or ChromeOS on a laptop that was preinstalled with windows?
What this does mean though is that if Apple makes the consumer experience worse, switching OSes doesn’t mean buying a new phone. It means reinstalling with a third party OS.
> This is how the free market is intended to work. This opens up the range for several android phones (which have a near split in the US, and a majority globally last I recall) to offer better hardware.
Then why isn't this happening? Google's platform is not meaningfully different from Apple's in enough ways to actually make me want to switch. Who's shipping an open phone with amazing cameras that match what the iPhone and Galaxy provide, that also allows sideloading without disabling all of Google's nice software features/cloud storage?
Real battery life, or marketing spec sheet battery life?
One of the things that impressed me about Apple when I started using their products was that advertised battery life was usually within 10% of what I’d actually get. I was used to those being lies to the tune of 30-50% from other vendors (phone and laptop alike)
iPhone SE battery life is shockingly poor versus the last 3 previous Androids I had which would last 2 days of light use.
It's probably my number one gripe with the SE. It runs flat when I need it. One time 4 hours walk because couldn't call a taxi (_luckily_ I hitched ride with a dodgy drug dealer instead - battery life matters!). Or staying overnight and not charging so needing to carefully manage power for day. Not everyone has a spare charger for iPhone.
Apple prioritise phone size/weight instead of battery life.
If I could buy a bigger internal battery (maybe needs to replace back of phone too), I would. Carrying a power bank is too bulky. I lose backpacks, and dislike the other alternatives.
Besides the fact that consumers aren't as rational as your question seems to imply, some of the reasons for the iPhone's dominance are the same reasons Apple are getting sued.
The Apple ecosystem is part of what you're buying with an iPhone. As a consumer, I really like that I can buy a MacBook, an iPhone, and AirPods, and have them all work seamlessly together because they were designed to do so. I'm even willing to pay extra for each product to ensure that they work together in concert, as well as a subscription for a service (iCloud) that glues them all together.
You can buy an "Android" phone, use it until EOL (no OS updates), get a new "Android" phone and it's a 100% different experience UI-wise and even the buttons are in different places.
Tinkerers love it, normal users just want a phone that works the same as the previous one.
If they posted the bootloader keys to Twitter right now it wouldn't lose them any money. Nobody is going to stop buying their shit because of that, but rather they might start selling more because now they can use the hardware for applications that would have been previously impossible.
To put it differently, Skyrim would have died as a game within a few months of release if it didn't support mods, but instead they didn't try to restrict them and made a horrifying quantity of money as a result.
"Easy" means there are no barriers to entry, not that it's trivial to make a good product.
In particular, there are no barriers to entry imposed by Apple. For any product Apple sell, there are numerous competing products in the same category. Apple's versions uniformly dominate third party rankings of these products, but all that means is that they're good at what they do.
> Unfortunately you'll find out it's not actually easy at all when you realize that consumers care about weight, size, temperature and battery life which are all things apple excels at. Their hardware is really quite good, unfortunately the software is horribly crippled.
They really don't. iPhone is a status symbol, especially for the new up-and-coming consumers (teens)
Apple + Google form a duopoly. Apple has locked down iOS to let them do whatever they want and overcharge as much as they like, and Google has no incentive to be any better, because there's no serious 3rd contender*.
For typical users not buying Apple means having to compromise on privacy with Google, which isn't a great option either. Both are trying their best to create vendor lock-in and make it hard for users to leave.
From developer perspective not having access to iOS users is a major problem. Apple inserts themselves between users and developers, even where neither users nor developers want it. Users and devs have no bargaining power there, because Play Store does the same, and boycotting both stores has a bunch of downsides for users and devs.
*) I expect people on HN to say that some AOSP fork with f-droid is perfectly fine, but that's not mainstream enough to make Apple and Google worried, especially that Google has created its certification program and proprietary PlayStore Services to make degoogling phones difficult.
It's an interesting perspective, but as I understand this case, the case is not interested in a developer's bargaining power against their distributor. The case is interested in the impact on consumers (fewer choices, higher prices). There's certainly no argument to make that consumers lack a variety of apps and app features.
I care about you as a developer, but I'm not sure this case does. Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong.
I think these are two sides of the same coin, because ultimately developers must pass the extra costs to users. The devs aren't subsidizing the 30%/15% cut, it's a tax that users pay.
App Store rules and the greedy cut also make certain kinds of apps and lower-margin businesses impossible to create in such environment, so this blocks innovations that could have benefited users.
When Apple bans competitors, blocks interoperability, drags their feet on open standards, and gives their own apps special treatment nobody else can have, then users miss out on potentially better or cheaper alternatives. This helps Apple keep users locked in, not innovate when they don't want to, and overcharge for services users can't replace.
All of that was more forgivable when smartphones were just a novelty, and digital goods were just iTunes songs. But now a lot of services have moved online. Mobile phones have become a bigger platform than desktop computers, and for billions of people they are their primary or the only computing device.
> *) I expect people on HN to say that some AOSP fork with f-droid is perfectly fine
As you explained yourself, it's not a real alternative, because it relies on Google itself, who can always decide to break it. A real alternative is GNU/Linux phones, Librem 5 and Pinephone. And yes, they are very niche and not easy to make.
Your mobile device is a gateway to much of the world. You seem to think it would be okay for a car manufacture to make it impossible to use your car except to drive to business that pay the car maker 30% of every purchase. I'm guessing you'll say people should be able to opt into such a car if they want but if that car has 60% of the market now it's effectively influencing the entire economy. Prices of groceries are 30% higher. Prices of clothing are 30% higher. Any company who wants people to come to their store are forced to sign up to pay the car company 30% or else they won't have access to 60% of the population.
Can you see the issue now? It doesn't matter that people could by other cars. It matters that Apple's market is so large that its influence is too big to be left as is.
The question is, can you buy a car from a different manufacturer? When it comes to cars, yes you can.
Is apple a monopoly? Probably not, because you can also switch to android.
Does Apple have a large enough share of the market to influence the market? Likely, which is why the EU has DSA and DMA now.
No, the question is "does one company have too much influence over the digital economy". The answer is yes. Apple has influence over 60% of the population. They extract 30% from all digital transactions. If you want to sell digital content to iPhone user's you're required to give Apple 30%. That's too much influence for one company.
> The question is, can you buy a car from a different manufacturer? When it comes to cars, yes you can.
You can, but why would you if you have no idea that your Apple purchase comes with all of these negative consequences?
I would guess that most Apple users don't know the implications of their purchase, and therefore they have no real incentive to look outside of Apple. Garland even addressed this in his speech: Apple disincentivizes you from choosing non-Apple products. They make it look like their products are better, but really it's the opposite: they make their competitors look worse due to their own purposefully terrible interoperability.
Contrast that to an Apple Car that only lets you drive to Apple Grocery stores with a 30% toll: the user is going to see how bad that is and naturally they'll find better alternatives on their own.
Poor analogy. This is already an issue with servicing automobiles. Overly-complicated construction and proprietary tools that can only be acquired by licensed dealerships. Read: Audi, Mercedes-Benz.
> I assert it is trivial to not buy Apple products
While it is easy to not buy Apple products, I think the thing that often gets missed is that once someone is significantly invested in Apple's ecosystem, getting out of that ecosystem is highly disruptive and difficult.
For example, suppose you are a person who for historical reasons owns a MacBook, and iPad, and an iPhone, and a large chunk of your friends group also has those. The default choice then for you to use a cloud storage solution is Apple's iCloud Drive. The default choice for you to store and share photos is Apple's Photos App. The default choice for you to message your friends is the iMessage App. The default way for you to store passwords is Apple's Keychain Manager.
If you then decide "you know what, I'm fed up with Apple, I'm going to buy an Android", suddenly your cloud storage solution, your photo storage and syncing solution, your messaging solution, and your password management solution are all not supported, so you not only need to find an alternative on your new device, but you also have to do so on all your other devices if you want your phone to be in sync with them. This is a really high friction environment, and makes it so that a lot of people feel trapped in Apple's ecosystem.
So you can be a person who would not choose to buy Apple products today if you were starting from scratch, but you can feel compelled to continue buying them because Apple has made it so that switching in the future is very inconvenient and impacts all your other devices. It's specifically people in this situation who are being taken advantage of by Apple and why Apple's practices are labelled as monopolistic.
Apple spent a long time acquiring customers and coaxing them into their walled garden, and now they're switching tactics to milking those customers now that it's inconvenient for them to leave the walled garden.
It doesn't matter if someone was forced into buying too many apple products or not. Governments have a responsibility to prevent Apple from abusing their market position and captive audience.
If governments truly had that mandate the world would look quite a bit different than today. The same american government allows boeing to be the one american jetliner manufacturer with all the problems that has created, for example.
Yes, antitrust laws have been largely ignored in most of the western world for decades now. I'd argue that's a bad thing though, not an argument in favour of continuing to ignore and not apply antitrust laws.
You seem to totally misunderstand the whole concept of what the competition law is about.
It's not about whether people can choose not to buy an iPhone, really at all. It's about once they do choose iPhone, is Apple unfairly using their control of the platform to influence whether they choose Apple's product vs a competitor for future things they buy.
Seems to me that if I already own an Android device and am in the market for a tablet, I would probably choose Android again because a lot of the apps that I have bought & paid for include a tablet version as well. Not sure if most would consider that anti-competitive.
I just bought Garmin GPS Watch. I'm appalled that it only let's me download apps from the Garmin watch app store. It's unfair that I can only install Garmin's OS on it. I bought the watch. I should be able to do anything I want to it. I need Garmin's software engineers to develop open solutions so that anyone can do anything on the watches they sell.
Do you see what the problem is with the above statement? How far does the government go? Shouldn't all products (electronic or not) be "open" if Apple loses?
This maybe sounds smart until you take a few seconds and notice the crazy amount of work these companies put into doing the exact opposite of your premise: preventing you from installing alternative operating systems and preventing you from using alternative marketplaces. When Apple claims they have to do extra work to make their devices support alternatives that is them lying to you and you are apparently eating it up :/.
It's far more work to create a free for all platform (what US & EU governments want) than a single product that has no external specifications.
Let's say there is an emergency breaking fix that is needed to make NFC payments reliable. Instead of just pushing the fix asap for Apple Pay, Apple would need to comply with these regulations and have to make sure other companies who implemented an Apple Pay competitor also have time to do the fixes. Imagine spending Apple employee hours coordinating this without any compensation to Apple. You'd have to beg 3rd party implementations to update their payment setup asap. Otherwise, the government/media might accuse Apple of unfairly favoring their own.
Again, this sounds smart until you think about it. Apples apps such iMessage use a protocol which Apple developed. Its not even secret how it works, people have reversed engineered it multiple times and are ready to use it in other apps so people can chat to iPhone users with no issue.
The only thing stopping this is Apple saying no. It wouldnt take any extra work to allow this, they just need to say yes and then everyone in the world can talk together no matter what platform or app they are using.
Its not about creating a free and open platform, its just about saying yes to letting others play with your toys.
When you open something up, you have to do a lot more work than just using it internally. Maybe 10x more. Try opening up your API up for external use instead of 100% internal.
What company do you work for or have you worked for? Let's see if we can get your company's market share to 20% using some arbitrary definition of the market. We'll then force your company to spend time and resources to open it up to competition.
Is 60% of mobile marketshare in the US (over 85% for teens, apparently!) an "arbitrary definition" of a market to you? Plus they're literally the number 1 richest megacorp in the world, surpassing the GDP of most countries.
This should've happened long before Apple made that first trillion, not now so late after the fact.
For every thing that the DOJ is complaining about there’s a Google version: Chat, Wallet, Auto, Pixel, etc.
This suit reminds me of the phrase, “I’ve been convicted by a jury of my peers… who couldn’t get out of jury duty.”
Apple is under the gun because their main competitors (at least Google and Samsung) aren’t as good / successful, even when they have greater market shares.
The difference is that the underlying protocols in those android apps are open, and so can be communicated with by any other app that anyone chooses to write an app.
Apples apps are built on top of proprietary protocols which they do not allow anyone else to use, and so there are lots of features and functionality that can only be used by Apple giving them the edge over anybody else.
> and so can be communicated with by any other app that anyone chooses to write an app
...and so, win?
> Apples apps are built on top of proprietary protocols which they do not allow anyone else to use
So Google let's anyone use their APIs but no one does, because developers would rather "win" by writing to more limited APIs that Apple controls and keeps for themselves.
Doesn't make sense to me.
Google's continuity in general, and in Android, is shoddy. Their support across "n" platforms is weak. Compare remote mobile automated QA services for iOS devices vers Android devices. The latter is a nightmare.
Even giving everyone full (but not really, because there are closed and controlled private APIs to Google services, too) access, as you say, can't bring them greater success. Because developers hate open platforms. /s
What they hate is poorly architected, sadly supported and non-revenue generating platforms.
You assertions are immaterial to the fact that they are breaking the law. Monopolies and monopolistic practices are flatly illegal.
You're also viewing this exclusively through the lens of the "consumer" experience while fully ignoring the effects on the "labor" and "supplier" market.
> The government seems to want to make it illegal to have a tight experience
Is there some evidence that a monopoly is absolutely required to have a "tight experience?"
Your first sentence is incorrect. Monopolies are not illegal.
From the press conference this morning: "It is not illegal to hold a monopoly, Garland said. "
"That may sound counterintuitive in a case intended to fight monopolies. But under US antitrust law, it is only illegal when a monopolist resorts to anticompetitive tactics, or harms competition, in an effort to maintain that monopoly."
There is always a first entity to start any market and always a last one to exit it. So technically it happens thousand of times per day. Surely it’s not illegal. I could decide to sell a completely useless crocodile-alike decorative robot companion for programmers that includes a powerful GPU that finetune your toy language model of choice or mine crypto when the GPU is not used as a robot. It would be silly, and I’d never actually do it, but surely the FCC or justice department wouldn’t have a problem with it.
> Monopolies and monopolistic practices are flatly illegal.
You are mistaken.
Section 2 of the Sherman Act makes it unlawful for a company to "monopolize, or attempt to monopolize," trade or commerce. As that law has been interpreted, it is not illegal for a company to have a monopoly, to charge "high prices," or to try to achieve a monopoly position by what might be viewed by some as particularly aggressive methods. The law is violated only if the company tries to maintain or acquire a monopoly through unreasonable methods. For the courts, a key factor in determining what is unreasonable is whether the practice has a legitimate business justification.
This has absolutely nothing to do with consumer choice. Apple device popularity among consumers has created a market of apps and technology that exists. That market is larger than the GDP of most countries. It is governed by Apple’s policies, and those policies are anti-competitive against companies wishing to participate in that market.
Spotify, just by virtue of the fact that someone installs their app, must pay Apple 30% of their revenue. Imagine trying to compete in a market where you have to pay your largest direct competitor 30%… And on top of all that, Apple keeps the internal fancy APIs all to themselves. It’s insane this hasn’t come sooner
Can it transfer the photos you have in iCloud? Or the passwords that Apple will “conveniently” store in its internal password manager? Or the bookmarks you have on safari? Or the messages you have on iMessage? Or the notes you have saved in your phone? Or the reminders you have set up? Or the alarms that you have?
I also recently switched from Android to iPhone. There was also an app that automated a lot of it. But there are a ton of tiny things that build up and lock you in to a platform. And they’re all marketed as helpful little addons! Why not backup your pictures to iCloud or get more storage space? It’s great in theory, but it makes that transition so much harder. It’s funny too, I’m actually very unhappy with my iPhone and want to switch back to an android, but I’m waiting. Why? Because it took me like 3 days to fully switch all my stuff over the first time and I don’t feel like going through that again.
> Can it transfer the photos you have in iCloud? Or the passwords that Apple will “conveniently” store in its internal password manager? Or the bookmarks you have on safari? Or the messages you have on iMessage? Or the notes you have saved in your phone? Or the reminders you have set up? Or the alarms that you have?
Just want to comment, some of these (like passwords & bookmarks) are very easily exportable. iMessage is backed by MySQL, exportable in its own. Google can very easily make that integrations seamless if it so wanted.
While we’re waiting for that to happen, hopefully this might help explain to you what the lawsuit is actually about. Because it has nothing to do with what you’re arguing
There are precisely zero computing platforms in which one may expect to transfer application code to a device running a different operating system. None.
I own lots of Steam games including BG3 and can play exactly none of them on the Mac because several years into Apple Silicon, even for universal and Apple Silicon native games, Steam won't release Steam that doesn't require rosetta (which I won't install).
Also, Steam charged those games' developers 30%. Which seems to really upset people when Apple charges that.
> and can play exactly none of them on the Mac because several years into Apple Silicon
You think that's some kind of low blow? This is a problem on the Mac App Store, too; if you buy software Apple depreciates, your Apple hardware won't run it. Don't get mad at Adobe or Steam, get mad at the person depreciating things with wild abandon and expecting everyone to cater their whims. Get mad at yourself for accidentally trusting Apple and updating to their new OS without reading the conditional changes they're introducing to your computer's software. Steam and it's publishing partners have no intrinsic obligation to support software that didn't exist when they wrote their programs.
> Which seems to really upset people when Apple charges that.
The App Store could take a 99% cut, for all most developers care. The point-of-contention is Apple's lack of an alternative, which makes any percentage unsubstantiated because there's no way to deliver software at-cost. Apple isn't charging for convenience, they're commoditizing privlidge.
Nobody cares when Steam takes their 30% because people deliberately install it on their PC. The App Store on MacOS is a great example of what happens when you let an arbitrary payment surcharge meet the free market. It becomes a fucking ghost town.
> The App Store could take a 99% cut, for all most developers care. The point-of-contention is Apple's lack of an alternative, which makes any percentage unsubstantiated because there's no way to deliver software at-cost.
What’s the relevance of that? If that were the case the law should be to make everything available by the web which is inherently interoperable, which I think we both agree with, but still doesn’t have anything to do with Apple.
If it is de facto mandatory for a business to make an app for Apple’s store because of Apple’s market share of smartphones, and Apple uses their market power to influence those markets for apps to their own advantage (for example, crippling other web browser apps except Safari), that is anti-competitive and may be against the law.
It is not legal to use your power in one market to gain an upper hand in another different market.
EU tries to force apple to allow different browser engine but apple still don't want that - safari mobile is crippled and support for PWA is half baked on purpose. Most businesses (such as banks, dating apps, music apps) who would stick to support only Web with half baked user experience on iOS would loose to anyone who would provide native mobile app.
Maybe not the App Store fees, but they are paying the apple tax.
* $100/year for the developer account. You may think this is nothing for a bank, and you may be right, but it's still $100 more than it should be.
* MacBooks for every developer that should be able to work on the mobile app and every QA person that should be able to test the app on an emulator, even if they already have a windows/linux laptop. The Apple devtools only run on macos. There is no choice. If the org was not already running MacBooks they will be forced to do so now, and invest in everything that comes with it.
No more than it would be OK for government apps to support only iPhone.
What's your point here? AFAIK, there aren't any important government apps or bank apps that are exclusive to the iPhone, nor is there any pressure Apple is putting on banks or governments to be exclusive to them.
It sounds like you made a completely unjustifiable leap from "because of the popularity of the iPhone, governments and banks need to make sure they have iPhone apps (because it's discriminatory and irresponsible of basic services like these not to support a widely-used computing platform)" to "Apple is forcing governments and banks to exclusively support iPhone".
No they can’t because consumers have already made that choice. It’s done. We are talking about this moment in time, not some fantasy world where everyone ditched their iPhones.
It's a moot point... We're saying the same thing. Sure they could, if they wanted to immediately tank their business. You could set your house on fire. What's your point?
The point is you can have a valuable business without having any presence on Apple stores to begin with. If you disagree with that, well you’re just wrong.
We're not talking about a fart app. We're talking about multi-billion dollar businesses that have been entrenched in App Store for a decade. Exiting that market isn't an option. If it was an option they would have done it.
> The government seems to want to make it illegal to have a tight experience, but why? There are open alternatives.
> Buy another car.
That argument goes both ways.
Once Apple is forced by law to allow other app stores, then you are free to continue to just use the Apple app store.
Just don't install other app stores. It is even more trivial to do that. So please don't complain about other app stores in the future, as your own exact argument refutes it.
Apple and Tesla aren’t competing in the same market
> It’s like complaining that Teslas don’t support CarPlay
It would be like that if the Tesla dash App Store somehow generated $1.1T annual revenue while taking 30% off the top of third party app manufacturers, while using that revenue and their own competitive advantage (not paying 30%) to grow and erode secondary markets via their own first party apps
Why does the percent taken matter? How much is appropriate? Ultimately they’re transparent about the fee, the choice is the developers.
In any case there should be a way to put your phone into some insecure mode and then you can explicitly download any app you want, yes.
But about Tesla - if you could make money, lots of money, selling Tesla dash apps, who cares if they take 30%? The alternative is today, you don’t really make anything at all.
These are legitimate businesses taking aim at Apple's predatory anti-competitive behavior. If the percent taken was 0, there would be no case. Why does it matter? Because profit margins
> How much is appropriate?
It depends. That's what this case is about. In the case of Spotify, probably 0% because Apple is their largest direct competitor. It's the definition of anti-competitive.
> Ultimately they’re transparent about the fee, the choice is the developers.
Stop saying there's a choice... There's no choice. Again, that's what the whole case is about. The market is what it is. Consumers are using iPhones. A business like Spotify can't choose to reduce their revenue by 50%. They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders.
> if you could make money, lots of money, selling Tesla dash apps, who cares if they take 30%?
You keep missing the part where Apple is a direct competitor. So in this very terrible analogy, say my app was a music app, and after seeing that my music app is making lots and lots of money, Tesla releases their own music app, they would effectively earn 30% of my revenue and could freely use it to drive my business into the ground. 30% extra to advertise, do research and development, and acquire more music licenses. It's impossible to compete in a market where your competitor has their hands in your pockets. So in that (again very terrible) analogy, yes it would be anti-competitive, and who cares? I would.
We should agree to disagree. Perhaps in your world the government makes profit illegal and everyone is happy.
I will say your whole thing about Spotify reducing revenue by 50% is also just wrong. Apple along with others are the one who curated such users willing to pay to begin with. How much would they be making if the iPhone didn’t exist? If android didn’t exist? Clearly google and apple respectively should profit off their effort.
My last comment will be: despite what you keep on saying, companies do have a choice. That’s why there are both iOS and Android exclusive apps and businesses.
> Apple along with others are the one who curated such users willing to pay to begin with.
In what world is Apple responsible for curating the users of _music_? The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce curated those users. If Apple never existed, just as many people would still be listening to their music. For the last time, Apple created the App Store - the Market for apps, yet they also have their own music app. They're a direct competitor of Spotify, which is why their tax is anti-comptetitive.
> That’s why there are both iOS and Android exclusive apps and businesses.
Again, you're going in circles. I'm not talking about those businesses and never have been. It's existing businesses. They can't leave because their customers are using those devices... They're contractually obligated to their customers and shareholders. Perhaps in your world Apple makes profit illegal and everyone is happy.
Apple is not transparent about the fee at all. Developers are not allowed to use other payment processors, can't mention that prices are cheaper elsewhere, or tell users why the prices are higher.
Irrelevant. Monopoly doesn't mean coercing people into the market.
> easy to make alternatives to Apple products and easy to buy feature equivalent devices to Apple products
It's not only not easy, it's not possible. Your mistake is thinking of phones as computers. They are not computers, at least not to the vast majority of users. They are devices that connect to other compatible devices to do telecommunications. It's just like if plain old telephones ran a proprietary protocol and only one vendor could make them.
Let’s hear some examples? Even things like iMessage have fallback to SMS, not to mention dozens of alternatives that work on android, iOS and more. What’s the problem?
You know what the problem is. Nobody cares about technicalities, what matters is practicalities. You can't buy an iPhone from anyone but Apple. It's as simple as that. No, Android phones are not iPhone alternatives and you know damn well they are not.
Depends on how you use the devices. For many or most users, it's possible they are nearly equivalent. For some, iOS does offer things Android does not. Media creators get access to different kinds of software on iOS than on Android, similar to certain software that is only on macOS. It can make a difference to that sort of userbase. Similar to how if you are into gaming, other desktop platforms are better than macOS. There are also some aspects of the underlying technology that in practice can make a difference. CoreAudio on iOS blows Android out of the water, and the huge ecosystem of electronic music creation software for that platform is very different than what you get with Android.
The difference is cars don't interoperate with each other, they operate with the road and the road is an open and public platform. Not only do you not have to buy a Tesla to use the road, you don't even have to use a car.
> I assert it is trivial to not buy Apple products, easy to make alternatives to Apple products and easy to buy feature equivalent devices to Apple products.
Swap the name Apple with Microsoft and you might see a different perspective. Microsoft was beaten over the head for anti-competitive practices with browsers back in the day and Apple is behaving no different. It's easily arguable that they are behaving much worse in multiple aspects to what Microsoft was up to.
I fear we're going to see this argument in absolutely every thread on this topic for the next few years and it's going to be argued ad nauseam. "You can just buy an Android phone" barely scratches the surface of the arguments being made.
For example (given the EU gives great context to this): Apple owns and maintains the only App Store that's allowed on the iOS platform. So they have a monopoly on the iOS app market. Is that right and fair? I'm sure plenty will read that want to reply "yes of course it's fair, Apple can do what they want with their own platform" but that's your opinion. Controlled app stores are a dramatic shift from the way software used to be distributed and as a society/whatever we've never actually had a discussion about it. It just happened.
> The government seems to want to make it illegal to have a tight experience, but why?
I'd argue the government seems to want to make it illegal for a tight experience to be the only experience available. And it's not hard to see the argument for why: competition is good. Multiple app stores or whatever would open up the market, Apple would have to make the case for why they should get 15/30% of an app developer's revenue. They might be able to make that case very easily, they might not. But a monopoly means they don't even have to try.
IMO talking solely about Apple and/or arguing about whether they have a "monopoly" isn't going to be that effective (sorry DOJ). The reality is that we live in a world that requires us to be connected, that connection is currently controlled almost exclusively by two tech giants to the extent that even a slightly smaller tech giant, Microsoft, utterly failed in launching a competitive third platform. Is this duopoly good for us as a society? Is it what we actually want? It's fair to at least be asking the question.
Can a argument be made that by not supporting other software on their platform, essentially platform is inhibiting competition, which hinders true price discovery and customer loses ? Like if cars don't allow other FSD on their platform, what choice does the customer has.
Yeah, cars should totally allow third party FSD integrations, provided they are certified to be safe. We can't risk pedestrians getting hurt just so we can have more app choices.
But side-loading apps or having an alternative App Store only exposes you to liability, not other people. So it's not the same thing. We should be free on our own risk.
The problem is monopolization of markets that are typically contestable. All computers are Turing machines and all the code is just assembly. There is zero technical rationale for the restrictions Apple imposes. And the assumption in free market capitalism is that of competition. In tech world this means adversarial interoperability. Which, by the fun fact, is how every current Big Tech company grew. Facebook used to interoperate with MySpace in dislike of MySpace in a manner that today we would even categorize as infringing on IP laws. Adversarial interoperability is demonstrably beneficial for the user. When a company implements social and technical barriers to it, the state has all the right to reign in such behaviour in the benefit of markets being contestable.
Their platform is big enough that it affects the market even if you never use their products. Idiotic decisions that they make can ooze into other unrelated products in order to compete with them. Try buying a flagship Android with a microSD slot and a headphone jack. Now recall where the trend of eliminating those two things came from. The average consumer is not very keen to these things. They see the biggest player, Apple, gut a feature and lie to them about it being a good thing, and they will believe it. Now to recapture the average consumer the other players in the market have to adhere to those changes.
> There are android phones that are superior to iPhones
Sorry to report this is not true for my grandparents, father, mother, brother and sister and in fact my entire extended family. iOS is far easier to use by a thousand miles. Just some anecdata.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. The USA is a surveillance state and Apple’s security posture combined with its market share is a considerable hindrance. The arguments against anti-competitive and consumer-hostile mechanisms ad nauseam pale in comparison to this. I very much want to see real numbers, perhaps survey data, supporting the narrative that customers are locked in, unhappy with their experience, or otherwise underserved by Apple. Because IRL, I see nothing but happy customers.
The majority of people I see complaining about apple’s walled garden ecosystem are people who are also proud to admit they don’t use apple products. It’s never made sense to me why people who don’t even use the products care so much about it. If people wanted to be able to do the things they claim they want to, they would switch to android but they don’t.
I have never understood the inverse: Apple users defending their lack of features. Being able to send iMessages to your Android user friends or install software that you wrote without paying extra would only benefit you, yet you vehemently reject having the ability to do so for no apparent reason. "Security" is the word I see thrown around which doesn't make too much sense to me given that you can do all these things and be secure already on basically any desktop environment. What makes phones the special exception? Is phone architecture exceptionally insecure by default or something?
You really think there’s no reason whatsoever? I have to believe that’s disingenuous. It’s just a phone to me and all I need is basic phone features to work. That’s also the reason I’m still using my iPhone X, it works as a phone and for basic tasks if I don’t want to get onto my computer or grab my laptop. I care more about my phone simply working than having additional features I don’t value. I don’t want to have to download multiple app stores in order to get specific apps. I already have to deal with that when it comes to epic on PC and it’s a pain in the ass. It also is going to make having to help the tech support for the technically challenged in my family so much more of a pain. There is a platform available if I want the features and capabilities you’re bringing up. I’m not telling anyone that their android is a bad choice or that it doesn’t work for them. Why do android users constantly seem to be telling me to be unhappy with the iPhone and that I need things I don’t want.
The only point that you’ve mentioned that can be annoying is sending a video to a friend with an android but it’s not a big enough of an issue that I care enough to do anything about it considering google photos and or an iCloud link is easy.
> The only point that you’ve mentioned that can be annoying is sending a video to a friend with an android but it’s not a big enough of an issue that I care enough to do anything about it
...except defend Apple at every given opportunity when it would be just as easy to ask them to fix it so it wouldn't be as annoying, or even ignore the discussion altogether. That is the mentality I don't get. If it works for you, great. Clearly it doesn't work for others. Why go out of your way to tell them that their problems are invalid?
What about it do you not get? I said it’s an inconvenience but not a huge issue. There are many ways of getting around it and iMessage only exists because of the way carriers used to charge for texting. I clearly said I wish it wasn’t the case but it’s just not impactful enough to me to really care about it. You’ll notice that most iPhone users don’t really care about the way android runs or works but a whole lot of android user seem to get really offended that iPhones aren’t androids and that iPhone users don’t care about that.
But clearly there are plenty of iPhone users who do care to install their own software. One solid way to tell is that if there weren't then there wouldn't be an iOS homebrew scene. Is your point then is that because you personally don't care that nothing should improve? I just don't see why you would even enter this discussion if you don't care. What compels you to jump to Apple's defense by downplaying real issues and falsely claiming nobody who has an iPhone has them?
> given that you can do all these things and be secure already on basically any desktop environment
My grandma had her bank account drained by a scammer who walked her through how to install a bank-looking app on her phone because android allows sideloading. I cannot fix my grandma. I can get her an iPhone.
"Oh, but computers...."
No. No scammer will walk her through apt-getting something that will mess with her bank account access in firefox on the ubuntu linux box we left her. Too many variations. Phones are easier targets as there are only two OSs.
Sorry that happened to you. I have worked with a lot of elderly people in the past and it is always a shame when that happens to them. You are right that you can't really "fix" them. Even if you lock down iMessage and prevent sideloading, scammers will still send them to phishing pages in their browsers, or get them to read out a gift card over the phone. These methods are actually way, way more common than getting them to install a malicious sideloaded app. Ultimately I think Apple's anticompetitive tactics had no bearing on your grandmother being scammed.
If their tight experience is so superior, why do they restrict competition? Wouldn't they win anyways?
IMO it's clear that without abusing its position, we would actually have competition for all of the bundled services from Apple.
But this is capitalism. The ultimate goal is always monopoly, so they'll keep chasing that by whatever means necessary.
>easy to make alternatives to Apple products
What? This is plain false. Entering this market is extremely expensive and hard to do. The duopoly is there for a reason. Even giants like Microsoft tried to enter it and couldn't.
> If their tight experience is so superior, why do they restrict competition? Wouldn't they win anyways?
iOS today regularly updates with improvements across the full software stack, up to the Apple apps themselves. Sometimes these changes are major. In the world the justice department is asking for, big changes to —for example, Messages app— would have to be coordinated with every app developer in that category. Changes would takes much, much longer, and in many cases would have to be watered down.
If you're genuinely interested in this below are a couple things you could read to help get some background. Its actually a pretty fascinating history.
Judging by your phrasing, your interpretation of antitrust stems from Robert Bork and has been the mainstream thought for a long time. Read The Antitrust Paradox by him to see how we got here and why the courts have acted how they have for the past 40 years.
The current chair of the FTC, Lina Khan, was actually an academic prior to working for the government and has a long paper trail of how she interprets the law. In short (and extremely oversimplified), it modernizes the Brandeis interpretation that bigness is bad for society in general, regardless of consumer pricing. EX: If Apple were a country its GDP would surpass the GDPs of all but four nations. They argue this is bad flat out.
Can't say it was the only cause, but Khan's paper, Amazon's Antitrust Paradox - note the reference to Bork's book - is partially what resparked a renewed interest in antitrust for the modern era if you want to check it out.
The 0.01% who hate apple anyway can't live without the need to turn the iphone into an android because it's what's good for the children (users). It's really amazing the lengths folks talk about how superior android on these threads and apple is the root of all evil.
The other 99.9% could care less and I predict they will be unhappy with the results of forced-enshitification of iOS.
This quote is pretty consistent with my take on what Apple has been up to:
> In the end , Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple's financial and business interests .
In the EU / app store ballyhoo, privacy / security has been used too often.
But in general, Apple has relentlessly set standards for data privacy that no other business seemed willing or able to provide. Far from perfect, (CN datacenters) but still seemingly far out ahead.
People don't normally pay for privacy or data security because they're not considered valuable until something bad happens.
So I can at least understand why the company might lean on this loss-leader to try and prop up its position in the face of unwanted regulation.
> Apple has relentlessly set standards for data privacy that no other business seemed willing or able to provide
One of the big differences between Google and Apple is that users treat Google (IMO rightly) as a privacy threat, but treat Apple as a privacy ally. Apple's data privacy positions look a lot different if you treat them also as a privacy threat. For example, it becomes really odd that you can't set a non-Apple secure messaging app as your SMS app, or set a non-Apple browser as your default web browser. Apple insists that you share your browsing and messaging data with them.
What's the risk here? The risk is that, as has happened with nearly every darling tech company in history, Apple decides to end the honeymoon period at some point because that's what the market demands. Then you're in a position where you've handed over to Apple gobs of private data that they have unencrypted backups of.
Apple is in the process of getting into the ad business. Why not sell privacy and personal data at the same time? They are in a perfect position to sell ad attribution.
iCloud E2EE ("Advanced Data Protection") is far from perfect:
- hashes of files and photos are not E2E encrypted even with ADP on, and are accessible by Apple, "so Apple can perform deduplication". It also means they still know if you have a given photo in your photo roll.
- file type, file size, modifid/created timestamps (Photos/Drive) are not E2E encrypted even with ADP on, and are accessible by Apple
Apple says these are due to technical limitations and they're working on it, but be aware of these limitations.
> But in general, Apple has relentlessly set standards for data privacy that no other business seemed willing or able to provide.
I find this hard to believe nowerdays given what I read 3 months ago regarding law enforcement and push notification data. Google had set the standard higher in this situation.
The standards Apple set are for others, not for itself; Apple is all too happy to extract as much data as possible from its customers to build its own ad empire while limiting others'. I'd prefer a level playing field where I can control how much data Apple and others can extract from me ("none").
Also, the whole "security" bs is exactly the same thing as governments saying we're doing this to protect you citizens from pedophiles / terrorists / druglords.
The securtiy aspects are a big deal and I say this as someone who is not bothered at all by ad tracking and cookies and the like. But I and a lot of people have banking and crypto stuff on the phone and not having people able to hack in and steal your money is significant.
The sarcasm isn't really necessary. I think most of us would prefer to live in a world where the capitalist mentality didn't trump all other considerations. It's actually possible for a company like Apple to be laser-focused on privacy and giving their users the best possible options, and still make a more-than-healthy profit margin.
Hell, with Apple's cash hoard, they could afford to give iPhones away for at least a couple years without much trouble. I'm not saying companies should be obligated to do crazy things like this once they have "enough" money, but I think it illustrates that there's no inherent reason why many companies need to take any particular action that increases revenue, regardless of the consequences.
Apple's long-standing culture of secrecy and exclusivity is the problem, really.
The point of the quote was not that it's in their interest to differentiate. The point was that, according to the complaint and for reasons they lay out, their marketing is dishonest and they frequently put their users at increased risk when it's to their financial to do so.
In other words, they're saying Apple's privacy and security stance is a bit like the trope of politicians saying "think of the children!" whenever they are selling a law that restricts liberty.
It's been many decades since the USA government attempted to go after a vertical trust. During my lifetime, almost all anti-monopoly action has been against horizontal trusts: companies that gain too much market share for some particular product or service. But there was a time, a long time ago, almost a century ago, when it was common for the government to do this kind of thing, for the benefit of the consumer.
There's also a pretty large econ literature questioning that it actually benefited the consumer, much of which concludes that in cases where the trust's anticompetitive power didn't itself rest on government-granted monopolies, it probably hurt.
That's because the government's definition of anti-competitive is ticky-tacky and is rooted in bullshit.
US anti-competitive policy and enforcement has always been dancing around the double standards of who can do market manipulation, the double standards of white collar crime enforcement, the double standards of "consumer benefit" in a capitalist system, etc.
"Consumer benefit" for example is a cowardly way to say price controls. Consumer benefit is inversely correlated with price. That implies the US government should be doing price controls and setting acceptable profit margins for everyone, but in practice due to the enforcement issues and the way the law is constructed it means that the government regulates prices only in extremely detailed technical cases.
Meaning you can manipulate consumer benefit AKA prices AKA extract profits all you want as long as you don't get into these narrowly defined, often unenforced technical cases.
In fact all of these charges or facsimiles of them existed in different forms 10 years ago, they were there on launch 15 years ago. Apple is being sued now simply because other large powerful interests like Epic games, don't like the revenue split rules on the App store.
Most of these laws are written not as regulations, but ways not to regulate.
Citation needed and not from some ooga booga free marketer.
Price control schemes exist in almost every country and in the US, every subsidy is a form of price control. Price controls are not just ceilings and floors. The Prime Interest rate is a price control for money. Ration cards are price controls.
The reason that price controls are dangerous to an economy (esp. a capitalist one) is typically that if you're controlling for price (via floor and ceiling) you have to also control for distribution. Price controlled goods must be distributed as a nonprofit service with limits rather than a for profit enterprise. That's often the "fuck up" that's most cited but that's a "learn basic economics" issue.
Literally that was Nixon's entire fuck up, and it was compounded by the death of Bretton Woods. Price controls worked just fine before/during/after WWI and WWII.
Public transit is the most obvious form of price controls that work because the distribution and the commodity/service are both run as a nonprofit service.
Also if you care about the whole 'OMG BLACK MARKETS' thing, see distribution, and understand that if you have a price that actually represents the cost of delivering a commodity to a consumer, a black market forming around that commodity is the same kind of market as a "free market". It is simply dudes trying to get the most amount of profit for arbitrage of a good they get at cost.
Also "subsidies don't work", the subsidy often not a consumer subsidy it's a producer profit subsidy. See EV's which all have subsidies built into their price except the Leaf.
You see the problem here? In order to actually do this correctly and have the desired effect on consumers, you need everyone to open their books. That's not going to happen in a capitalist system. So their alternative is "get lucky". Private profit guides economic policy more than the actual data or methodology.
The more interesting thing of "regulation" here. Is if the government can effectively regulate a company's backlog. Apple's walled garden is intentionally constructed on their side such that there cannot be competition because the controls for such competition are unbuilt. The PWA issue in the EU shows that if you take them at face value which I would having worked with Apple products and done a bit of jail breaking back in the day. So effectively they need to create public features for supporting alternative wallets in a secure way.
Outside of iMessage, wallets are the only real thing the gov has to stand on.
Super apps are just a semantic exercise.
Cloud-streaming is a non-issue Apple doesn't compete in a cloud streaming vertical. Apple Arcade is just a subscription to an app store. They don't stream the games.
The Smart Watches thing is also bunk. Samsung does the same thing, with watches and headphones. If I switch to a Google Pixel my headphones lose features. Unless the government is in the mood to create and regulate open tech standards this a nothing burger.
It's in practice arguing that Apple cannot have a private SDK which I would be fine with but they're not actually arguing that.
The reason that this is not like US vs MS is because MS's settlement did not result in forcing MS to CHANGE the code, only allowing OEM's to bundle other browsers. US vs MS in practicality was just a big nothing burger. Not even the EU government is in a place to regulate and enforce Open APIs.
Also speaking of ooga booga free marketers. Milton Friedman predicted that US vs MS is going to be a dark age of government regulation of tech and prevent innovation. Lmao.
To put it more precisely, price controls create market distortions and Pareto inefficiency. Though I think they are worth the cost in some instances, they aren’t a scalable solution to anything. Also, it’s almost impossible to know what the “correct” price of a good should be because the factors that determine that are part of a very complex network.
In context you've unlocked the tautology that underpins capitalism.
> Pareto inefficiency
> almost impossible to know what the “correct” price
Yes it's really really hard to price things, but the market itself is Pareto inefficient unless you labor under the axiom that the market price is the "correct" price, which it cannot actually be.
> market distortions
Why is this a bad thing?
> they aren’t a scalable solution to anything
Do you believe in UBI or that UBI is scalable? That's a price control. Again every public transportation system in the world is price controlled, market distorted, and Pareto inefficient. So they are a scalable solution to providing a public service of regional/urban travel.
> Also, it’s almost impossible to know what the “correct” price of a good should be because the factors that determine that are part of a very complex network.
Most companies that are not trying to grow and are trying to turn a profit literally have prices that not only take into account the cost of the good but marginal profit on a unit basis. This chain goes all the way back to digging out the raw materials from the earth.
Your entire "complex" network of calculations is done there. Why can it not be done elsewhere?
I think we might be talking about different things, because some of the issues you've mentioned are not examples of price controls or direct market intervention. UBI, for example, is a post-market transfer payment that is certainly a "cleaner" way to redistribute wealth than to futz with individual price signals. (I don't actually support UBI, but not for reasons relevant to this discussion.)
> the market itself is Pareto inefficient unless you labor under the axiom that the market price is the "correct" price
This mischaracterizes my original argument. I don't think anyone who is serious believes that real-world markets establish optimal prices. Perfection isn't relevant: the question is whether markets perform better than government planning, and fortunately we don't have to speculate on that question. Resoundingly, the historical record shows that central planning reduces the total amount of wealth available to be distributed.
> Why [are market distortions] a bad thing?
An example might be useful. Consider when California capped retail electricity prices in 2000. Even though this was far from a competitive market to begin with, the result was predictable: shortages. The price caps reduced utilities' incentive to expand production, and simultaneously increased consumers' incentive to use electricity. (There were other factors involved in this debacle, but the price caps were a key feature.)
> This chain goes all the way back to digging out the raw materials from the earth. Your entire "complex" network of calculations is done there. Why can it not be done elsewhere?
I think you have to broaden your field of view on this a bit to appreciate the problem. You're only considering the perspective of a single supplier in a single market, in isolation. In reality, there is a complex equilibrium that results not only from the forces acting inside a market, but also from the forces exerted by other markets.
Suppose you're a pencil manufacturer. Of course you can calculate some output price for your pencils that reflects costs + some profit margin. However, we don't know if that output price will incentivize good pencil-purchasing behavior. Perhaps you're the only seller of pencils worldwide, and the price is too low. In this case, people who don't really value pencils buy them anyway, and your inventory is depleted. Now, pencils are sitting unused in random drawers, while there are art classes that have to be canceled because the students can't get the supplies they need. (You've mentioned a need to control distribution, but haven't suggested a way for these distributive decisions to be made.)
Consider also that graphite is an input price. How much should that cost? It's useful for making pencils, but it's also used in nuclear reactors and lithium-ion batteries. If the Department of Homeland Prices is going to choose a good price for graphite, they're going to need to decide how many pencils the world needs, how many nuclear reactors, and how many lithium-ion batteries. Of course, those items feed into other items...
Any payment transfer is a complex price control on money. UBI literally means for an individual, for a certain period of time, the first $X of spend cost nothing. That's a complex price floor for a complex commodity (money itself).
> markets perform better than government planning, and fortunately we don't have to speculate on that question. Resoundingly, the historical record shows that central planning reduces the total amount of wealth available to be distributed.
Nobody actually makes this argument with any seriousness anymore in real academic economics. Modern economics is data driven, and the reality is that in order to make this argument like economists in the past have made you need to cherry pick not only your data, but cherry pick your goals. What does it mean to "perform better" why does it matter that the "total available wealth" is lower? You're attempting to use market logic to prove markets, market logic smooths everything into $ and by applying market logic to non-markets you can easily prove it's better by market logic. It's like saying races are the best way to judge vehicle performance.
Not only that but htis is a sociological arugment. Not an economic one. That's why Karl Marx is the father of sociology and not Carl Menger.
> An example might be useful. Consider when California capped retail electricity prices in 2000. Even though this was far from a competitive market to begin with, the result was predictable: shortages. The price caps reduced utilities' incentive to expand production, and simultaneously increased consumers' incentive to use electricity. (There were other factors involved in this debacle, but the price caps were a key feature.)
You didn't actually answer the question. Shortages and market distortions are not the same thing. A shortage is a shortage. A market distortion is in the optimal abstract the inability of our system of value to accommodate for value that isn't speculative. In hindsight a market distortion is the "incorrect" pricing of goods. However practically, all markets are distorted as you concede in your second paragraph that it isn't about finding the optimal price.
You're simply saying market distortions are bad because some market distortions are also shortages. Rectangles are bad because some rectangles are also squares.
> Suppose you're a pencil manufacturer. Of course you can calculate some output price for your pencils that reflects costs + some profit margin. However, we don't know if that output price will incentivize good pencil-purchasing behavior. Perhaps you're the only seller of pencils worldwide, and the price is too low. In this case, people who don't really value pencils buy them anyway, and your inventory is depleted. Now, pencils are sitting unused in random drawers, while there are art classes that have to be canceled because the students can't get the supplies they need. (You've mentioned a need to control distribution, but haven't suggested a way for these distributive decisions to be made.)
I could have stopped reading this paragraph at "we don't know if that output price will incentivize good pencil-purchasing behavior". The only need for pencil purchasing behavior in the case we are talking about the price controls case, is when profit is part of the mix. I've already conceded that price controls and profit are volatile. Price controls are about providing a service, in fact known commodities don't "really" have the issue of nobody wants to buy them. People need pencils. You're talking a lot here about how hard it is to get people to buy pencils AND make an optimal amount selling those pencils. That's simply not the case we are discussing with price controls.
> (You've mentioned a need to control distribution, but haven't suggested a way for these distributive decisions to be made.)
A lot of these are easy for base commodity goods. And as a society we know how much the average person uses pencils / tooth brushes / etc. That's actually what markets are good at, experimenting and collecting data. You can survey people. You can collect information about shortages in real time. This is an inventory problem, these are simple computer models that can solve this.
>Consider also that graphite is an input price. How much should that cost? It's useful for making pencils, but it's also used in nuclear reactors and lithium-ion batteries. If the Department of Homeland Prices is going to choose a good price for graphite, they're going to need to decide how many pencils the world needs, how many nuclear reactors, and how many lithium-ion batteries. Of course, those items feed into other items...
The government in various layers already chooses how much consumption happens. You've hit on one here which you've ironically not commented on. Governments all around the world essentially some to a lesser degree and some to a command economy degree control the distribution and allocation of power plants.
Yeah let's talk about the price of graphite though. The current price of graphite is a speculative price based on what the average buyer is willing to pay for it. Does that price accurately reflect the cost of extracting that graphite? At what scale of extraction does that price reflect the extraction of graphite? How much capital expenses are needed to extract graphite? What happens when the cost of graphite is less than the actual cost of extracting it, but demand does not change? What if the price equilibrium of graphite and all of it's dependent commodities or some other commodity is predicated on slave labor?
In this entire chain someone is getting fucked breathing in graphite fumes and getting compensated pennies for the actual value of their work. This is entirely the problem with how markets are applied, it's making software for software's sake, not making software for people. This is just spinning cubes untethered to the real needs of humans, making numbers go up. You're just playing EVE online IRL.
Seriously EVE Online shows you how you can easily solve this problem. All the data is there and it's actually "open". Even better that EVE ISK doesn't need to feed anyone. You can compute the costs of entire supply chain of EVE very simply. Literally https://evetycoon.com/ solves the very problem (pricing out the whole chain accurately) you're trying to say is a huge unsolvable problem by a singular entity. All you need is the data and the rest of the software is just basic calculations of supply costs and a constraint solver that includes every commodity weighted by demand.
This mystification of capitalism as being a complex beast was simply the woo of a bunch of 20th century men (and a minority of 19th century men -- e.g. Austrian school founders) who were too lazy, too dumb, or didn't have enough tools to cope with the explosion of commodities and production of the second industrial revolution (first industrial revolution for the 19th century guys, and also they were dumb and/or lazy not giving them the tooling doubt -- e.g. Menger and the gang).
This entire line of thinking has been swiftly discredited within the last 30 years in the mainstream because it is not just ideological, it's just plain wrong. It is also a fun house mirror of those it credits to make the claims. The "Invisible Hand" of Adam Smith was a pejorative for a market that dominates the lives of people living under it, not a fantastical near utopia where men are entitled to the sweat of their brow.
>every subsidy is a form of price control. Price controls are not just ceilings and floors.
You make many points and I didn't read the whole thread bellow but on this point specifically I think you are wrong especially in the context of GP which was saying that price controls are not effective. What GP means is that actual price controls are not effective. So I don't see how redefining price controls here is meaningful. That is, it would not be fair to say, for example, that since things that are "a form of price control," however we define that, are effective, therefore true price controls are also effective. So I don't see why you are trying to redefine this word here. And it is obvious that GP means price ceilings and floors. And, importantly, that's what people mean by the term. For example that is how Wikipedia defines it.[0] Also importantly, that's what the phrase literally means. If you subsidize something, you did not control the price as someone can still charge more for it after subsidies. They just won't choose to due to market forces. Even then if you only subsidize one company then they will not lower prices assuming that the scale effeciency created by more buyers does not provide more profit than keeping the current price. I suppose you can say that since the market force is so strong that the government giving subsidies amounts to literal price control. But this is obviously a very different meaning, and since it is not the common usage it makes no sense to define it that way in this one comment. Additionally, by that same token we would have to define every market action as a form of price control. So my point here is that nobody defines subsidies as price control and it makes no sense to do so from both a linguistic and economic standpoint.
>Also "subsidies don't work", the subsidy often not a consumer subsidy it's a producer profit subsidy. See EV's which all have subsidies built into their price except the Leaf.
I don't know who you're quoting here or what this paragraph is saying. But I didn't see GP say subsidies don't work. And nobody has said that price controls not working amounts to subsidies not working. Subsidies obviously work and have been shown to work for decades. Not in all cases does it work, but many times it has worked and the outcome is one that would most likely not have occurred in a completely free market. And this shouldn't be surprising as using capital to grow a company is one of the main 'discoveries' of Capitalism along with the division of labor. The only issue is that you lose market signals and you have to increase taxes. Government-free markets and Capitalism are not the same thing. To deny this is to say that the East India Company was not a form of Capitalism as it had government mandated monopolies over several markets.
My usage of price controls in that way is intentional. The average argument against price controls (e.g. price ceiling sand price floors) is like saying knives bad because I can cut my fingers off. Price controls are tool, it's about how you use them.
> Subsidies obviously work and have been shown to work for decades.
Subsidies obviously work and subsidies don't work in the same way that price controls obviously work and price controls don't work.
These are tools.
You're not talking about the application of tools, you're simply talking about ideologically preferential ways to change an economy.
Subsidies are considered good and price controls are considered bad because of how they affect private capital not due to any argument that a rigorous data driven modern application of economics would provide. By modern standards those statements "price controls are bad" and "subsidies are good" and their inverses are unfalsifiable.
I take back some of what I said about subsidies. This was because of how I read "every subsidy is a form of price control." On reading your post again you are talking more about welfare specifically. I was thinking of subsidies meant as part of industrial policy, but thinking about this more we are talking about welfare. Although this wasn't obvious to me at the time as price controls are also used in industrial policy. And arguably the Apple lawsuit and anti competition law in general is about industrial policy. I should also point out that I never said price controls never work, although I perhaps implied that by saying subsidies do work implying that price controls don't. But that wasn't my point. My point was that you cannot conflate subsidies with price controls because they are not the same. I don't think your usage of price controls being intentional here makes it any better and FWIW it didn't read that way at all to me, it just read like you don't know what you're talking about, especially combined with your usage of "ooga booga free marketers." I don't mean this in an offensive way I'm just trying to explain how your comment read to me.
>Subsidies are considered good and price controls are considered bad because of how they affect private capital not due to any argument that a rigorous data driven modern application of economics would provide.
For industrial policy this is certainly wrong. For welfare which is what I again assume now you are talking about I don't know enough to make a statement on it. I have read that price controls often decrease supply of the product in question. For example in a housing shortage price controls on rent decrease the number of new apartments built. Price controls make sense when the market in question is monopolized by a single company like in the case of utility companies. Generally these monopolies are given by the government and can be thought of as contractors for the government in the market in question.
For folks that have worked with Apple, since the 1980s, it’s sort of surreal, to see this happening.
We remember Apple as this scrappy, scruffy outfit, struggling to stay alive.
We never dreamed that they would ever get to the place, where they would be sued as a monopoly.
I remember the old WWDCs, when you could just walk up to anyone at Apple (including Steve), and just start chatting. If you did talk to Steve, he might not be so nice, responding, but you didn't have bodyguards or bouncers.
Those days, they are long gone.
I have a friend that worked for Apple for a while. He told me that his onboarding training had a special section on dealing with "The Principals."
Basically, if you passed Tim or Craig, or somesuch, in the hallway, you were to act as if they weren't there. Avoid eye contact, don't say hi, no nods, etc.
> Basically, if you passed Tim or Craig, or somesuch, in the hallway, you were to act as if they weren't there. Avoid eye contact, don't say hi, no nods, etc.
It is believed within the upper echelons of the Cult of the Executive that employees' eyes are the windows to their souls, a dangerous place for any sociopath to gaze lest a tiny drop of empathy develop and ruin the quarterly numbers.
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.
I think we should lead with the fact that cell phones became the new personal computing device and they should be turn into open platforms, like computers. But the same thing should apply to gaming consoles, TVs, and other software heavy platforms as well. Otherwise, it sounds like an arbitrary anti-Apple regulation, not pro-consumer or pro-free-market regulation.
My one fear for this is the leverage it gives large tech companies.
What's to stop Microsoft, Meta, or Amazon from forcing you to download their own app store to use their apps? We kind of see this on PC already with every company having their own game or app store.
When Chrome is on iOS and is pushed on every Google search, what happens to health of the web? Does that create a new web monopoly?
It's not totally fair that Apple gives themselves special permissions and blocks competitors, or forces the prices they do from devs who would otherwise sell their apps through their website, but is that the lesser of two evils?
> What's to stop Microsoft, Meta, or Amazon from forcing you to download their own app store to use their apps?
Like Apple does now, except for every app.
> We kind of see this on PC already with every company having their own game or app store.
No we don't. Those are fringe and mostly unsuccessful. And even then, those companies should not have to pay 30% of their revenue to steam, so fuck that.
> When Chrome is on iOS and is pushed on every Google search, what happens to health of the web? Does that create a new web monopoly?
Yeah, Amazon make their own App Store for Android that I assume nobody uses outside of Fire devices because it’s terrible. They still make their apps available on the Google Play store, so this theoretical concern seems like it will remain theoretical.
I don't see how any of the things you describe is necessarily a bad thing for users.
And if other large tech companies (as if Apple wasn't one of the biggest monopolies itself) have to be broken down, so be it. I too consider companies like Google way too big.
But as a user, and a small developer, I have more pressing issues with the iOS ecosystem than "what ifs" about Google.
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.
Apple Silicon Macs. Aside from that, yes very boring, especially the silly stuff like watches, pencils, and credit cards. That said, I'd rather our country respect private property, also it's not like there's a ton more innovation left in these spaces anyway.
1. Allowing other app stores would immediately mean each app wanting you to go to a separate store. I barely use apps in the first place but would imagine this being bothersome for those who use them a lot.
2. I don't want my phone to run arbitrary code, that's what my Mac is for. People install unknown third-party apps on their iPhones all the time, which is safe enough. Now imagine Apple was forced to make iPhones more like Macs in this respect. When was the last time you installed an unknown third-party Mac app?
3. If the govt does something along the lines of preventing Apple from pre-installing their own apps, or some other way of forcibly informing users that they have alternatives, that's annoying for anyone who uses those default apps anyway.
4. Forcibly opening the iMessage protocol could lead to more spam or hold up Apple adding new features that Android doesn't support. And Apple is going to adopt RCS anyway.
5. Govt regulations on software have historically not done much good for regular users. GDPR got us modal cookie notifications on every site, which some nerds really liked along with the takeout stuff, but most people saw as useless and annoying. Plenty of iPhone users are happy with the status quo.
> 2. I don't want my phone to run arbitrary code, that's what my Mac is for.
Then don't run it. Personally, I want all my devices that run third-party software to have strong sandboxing and defense-in-depth security. Even apps from developers I trust and admire can be compromised due to vulnerabilities and other types of attack.
> 1. Allowing other app stores would immediately mean each app wanting you to go to a separate store. I barely use apps in the first place but would imagine this being bothersome for those who use them a lot.
Except Android allows other stores since forever and that didn't happen so this is proven to be an incorrect assumption.
I see this and other blatantly wrong, easily verifiable, takes so often that I wonder if those who write even know how things work in Android or they just live in an iOS bubble and assume things about Android.
Android heavily warns users against installing those, which might not fly if the ruling is to treat them equally. Despite that, a major app Fortnite is only available via the Epic Games store on Android.
Because users get a scary warning if they don't do that. Unlike Mac or Windows, where users can download stuff outside the Mac or MS store without warning, so big companies don't use the stores.
Today the development process inside Apple treats the full software stack, from underlying OS to the homescreen UI (SpringBoard) to the user-facing apps (built-in or not), as a virtual monolithic system. All these gets built and integrated every day, leading up to each iOS (and MacOS) release. This allows new features to be released which are integrated together across many apps. This is what the people come to know as "The Apple Experience." When your phone does its big iOS update overnight, you get all the new features together.
Critically, these iOS updates can introduce any number of breaking changes to their internal APIs, databases, protocols, configuration files, etc. The daily integration and daily testing is responsible for making sure the final product still Just Works.
If the government gets its way here, Apple would be forced to develop all the built-in apps using public APIs, and would need to make sure those APIs don't ever break -- or else risk another "uncompetitive behavior" lawsuit.
Could that be made to work? Sure. But then the overall Apple Experience would very likely be worsened, as Apple would not be able to make certain breaking changes any more, and would overall move slower due to having to carry all the external apps along with any internal plans. The experience of Apple customers becomes worse because some people want it to mimic Android's model.
No that’s not it at all. Perhaps you don’t understand how Apple builds its software. It is essentially one giant software product that undergoes CI every day until launch, when all the new apps and features are released together. This unification is only feasible in a closed system, and forcing Apple to open all the internals (APIs, datastores, etc) to third parties would prevent Apple from delivering the kind of user experience it does today.
Apple has about 60% of the smartphone market in the US, and about 25% globally. That's a pretty big stretch to call it a monopoly. There are many non-apple phone options that many consumers easily avail themselves of. And at least one other OS choice as well. All of these are fully supported by the entire ecosystem of telcos.
Seems like bullying to score political points to me.
The FTC is perhaps a biased source, but they say [1]:
> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. Some courts have required much higher percentages. In addition, that leading position must be sustainable over time: if competitive forces or the entry of new firms could discipline the conduct of the leading firm, courts are unlikely to find that the firm has lasting market power.
The US doesn't have antitrust authority for the world, only for the US. iPhone has had 60% market share (or similar) for a long time now, so it's fair to consider that Apple has significant and durable market power in mobile phones.
Is it a complete monopoly? No, but it doesn't need to be.
From a very brief skim of the claims, the clearest one that stands out to me is the one about smartwatches. If Apple does provide better integrations to Apple Watches than 3rd party watches, that's pretty clearly 'tying' which is prohibited when using a market dominant product to create market dominance in a new market (smartwatches). OTOH, it wouldn't have been a big deal if the Microsoft Band had better integrations than other watches on Windows Phone, because tying is allowed without market dominance.
People seem to miss the concept of "market power" vs sales numbers. Apple loyalists love to brag about the fact that Apple users spend something like 7x more on Apps and other services than Android users. They don't brag about that so much when anti-trust comes up - on a weighted basis that would suggest Apple has about 95% of market share and should be treated in the same category that late 1990's Microsoft was.
Serious question. Why is it though, despite forming over 40% of the smart phone market in the US, Android users only spends 5% of the money? It can’t simply be about control, otherwise Nokia or BlackBerry should’ve accomplished that in their hay day.
I'm guessing because outside the Apple ecosystem apps are primarily free.
Apple App Store is $99 annually + cost of owning a Mac, compared to a one time $25 Google Play Store (develop on PC or Mac, with the possibility to avoid the Play Store). More people own PCs (even within the developer community) so this leads to more apps in the PC and Android ecosystem. More competition, means lower prices.
I've also heard Apple is much more strict about what they allow on their App store, which further restricts supply and keeps prices high. I don't think this is an accident, Apple intentionally wants high prices on their platform, because it keeps the illusion alive that Apple devices are luxury devices and a status symbol.
There is no way that developer costs of $100/year + a $2k Mac is the reason why all the money gets spent on iOS.
“Keep prices high”. The top grossing iOS apps are all like $1-2. That is not high. In fact, from what I could tell on sensortower.com, apps from the same developers were priced identically between stores, and the average prices of Android top grossing apps were higher. Probably because of the LOW VOLUME, not related to overhead.
You’re trying hard to find reasons to blame Apple for an active marketplace. What exactly do you want to achieve?
The PlayStore on iOS? The free market doesn’t work. It’s a myth. I’d much rather pay $10 for a good app here or there than have a store full of “free” or $0.05 trash where it’s not worth anyone’s time to invest in building something good.
But if was to guess, I would say that Android users fall into two camps primarily. One is high end tech-savvy users who want it because it's more open, powerful and flexible. These people don't buy apps and services because they are "smart" and use their tech knowledge to solve the problems those things are solving cheaper ways (or for free).
Then there are a second group of Android users who simply buy it because it is cheaper, or they just have absolutely no interest / affinity for Apple's branding. These users aren't going to buy things because their primary motivation in the first place was to not spend excessive money on something they don't care about (or they just don't have the money).
I'd also suggest that perhaps the 7x is a bit exaggerated. It's just harder to account for the revenue from Android apps because it's more driven by off-market streams. But I totally believe iOS is much much more. It might just not be 7x.
>that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.
Apple doesn't have this power though. If they raised prices they'd lose sales. And they haven't been able to exclude competitors, there is a robust ecosytem of Android manufacturers.
There's a reason the FTC has been losing almost all of their cases recently. They internalized the idea that a large successful company is inherently bad and focus on that rather than any objective legal standard.
Samsung has a similar ecosystem if one wants to buy it. Plenty of people have macs and android phones, or windows computers and iphones.
Certainly other companies can't be in Apple's walled garden, but in antitrust exclude means exclude from the market. Apple hasn't done that, there's a vibrant market in phones, computers, tablets, smartwatches, etc.
> iPhone has had 60% market share (or similar) for a long time now, so it's fair to consider that Apple has significant and durable market power in mobile phones.
It has market power, but it's not significantly larger than its competition. It's not 60% for iPhone, and 10% split up amongst 4 other competitors. It's 60% vs 40%... and probably more like 58% vs 42% [1].
Does 8% truly make Apple "dominant" to the point that integrating their software with watches in a better manner is illegal? I find that wildly difficult to believe.
> that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.
Apple has been able to raise its own prices, but it hasn't been wildly out of line with competitors.
And Apple both makes phones and the software on them. They might be excluding or making competitors to their software have a harder time, but excluding? Not really - they have only excluded other large companies who have distinctly decided to run afoul of their guidelines (specifically, Epic).
Is Google doing any of the things the DoJ complaint alleges against Apple?
a) supressing super apps
b) supressing cloud streaming apps
c) restricting capabilities of 3rd party messaging apps, specifically carrier based messaging (SMS)
d) restricting the best smartwatch integration to only their own devices
e) something I don't grok about digital wallets
There's maybe a case that Google is doing c; I think they made it harder to get the permissions for reading and writing SMS. And I don't think they allow non-Google, non-manfuacturer apps to do RCS, if RCS counts as carrier-based messaging and not yet another Google messaging service.
I don't understand the complaint about Digital Wallets, so I don't really know if Google is doing it.
I don't follow smartwatches, but I thought the Android ecosystem was pretty agnostic there? Back when Google Wear was Google Glass, they did let Google push notifications from a phone with Bluetooth, but everyone else had to push through Google servers, but I think when they moved it to wrists, that changed and everyone can push direct from the phone to the watch.
I haven't heard any drama over super apps or gaming streaming apps being blocked from Google Play... And worse case, developers can serve apks from their website directly.
I'm sure there's room to find things Google does with Android that could be market manipilation, but Google does seem to be aware of the risk and try to avoid crossing the line.
> It's not 60% for iPhone, and 10% split up amongst 4 other competitors
That is basically what it is though. Google is not the 40%, it's Google, Samsung, LG, Motorola, etc. Yes Google Play Store is on 40% of those devices, but they can ship with other stores and some do.
1. It is not Apple iPhone vs Samsung, LG, Pixel Android. But Apple iOS vs Android.
2. The 60% of Apple iPhone / iOS Market "usage" share ( incase people want to be pedantic and refer it as shipping market share ), commands over 70% if not 80% of purchasing power in Apps or other sub market sector. That is a huge difference in market power.
I've seen this quoted multiple times now and I do not think it is the slam dunk people think it is. A literal monopoly is 100% market share, of course that is not required for antitrust law to apply. But the people who quote this intend to imply that 60% market share is sufficient to declare Apple a monopolist in violation of antitrust law, and that does not actually follow from a careful reading of this quote.
I will reply with a separate quote from the DOJ discussing what thresholds of market share are likely to be considered monopoly power:
> In determining whether a competitor possesses monopoly power in a relevant market, courts typically begin by looking at the firm's market share.(18) Although the courts "have not yet identified a precise level at which monopoly power will be inferred,"(19) they have demanded a dominant market share. Discussions of the requisite market share for monopoly power commonly begin with Judge Hand's statement in United States v. Aluminum Co. of America that a market share of ninety percent "is enough to constitute a monopoly; it is doubtful whether sixty or sixty-four percent would be enough; and certainly thirty-three per cent is not."(20) The Supreme Court quickly endorsed Judge Hand's approach in American Tobacco Co. v. United States.(21) Following Alcoa and American Tobacco, courts typically have required a dominant market share before inferring the existence of monopoly power. The Fifth Circuit observed that "monopolization is rarely found when the defendant's share of the relevant market is below 70%."(22) Similarly, the Tenth Circuit noted that to establish "monopoly power, lower courts generally require a minimum market share of between 70% and 80%."(23) Likewise, the Third Circuit stated that "a share significantly larger than 55% has been required to establish prima facie market power"(24) and held that a market share between seventy-five percent and eighty percent of sales is "more than adequate to establish a prima facie case of power."(25)
My reading of this is that below 50% is very unlikely to be considered monopoly power while above 70-80% is very likely. 60% appears to sit somewhere in between where it is possible but not likely. Historically, I have not seen any major cases where monopoly power was found at the market share level that Apple currently holds.
It is worth noting that the DOJ in their filing does not seem very confident in being able to prove that Apple's 60% of the smartphone market constitutes monopoly power either. They have instead opted to define a narrower market of "performance smartphones" where Apple apparently holds 70% market share, putting it above the thresholds quoted above. Whether this artificially narrowed market definition will be accepted by the courts will likely determine the outcome of this case.
> That's a pretty big stretch to call it a monopoly
The word "monopoly" needs to be banned from these types of discussions because it always derails the conversation into pointless semantic bickering. There is no definition of that word that will make everyone happy. Even if Apple had 99.999% marketshare, as long as there's some hacker selling DIY linux phones under a bridge somehwere, someone's going to say Apple CAN'T be a monopoly because they have a competitor.
There are many reasons why antitrust laws exist, and these lawsuits tend to be really complex. There's not a simple `if(company.is_monopoly()) sue(company);` program that the FTC and DOJ use to decide when to sue.
Apple has about 60% of the smartphone market in the US, and about 25% globally.
This case is about the US marketplace, globally is irrelevant.
And it is about more than just marketshare. Apple's tactics restrict the entire marketplace --- not just Apple captives.
Whole classes of apps are simply not practically possible on Android without paying monetary tribute to Apple.
For example, universal messaging is not possible without paying the Apple gatekeeper. Few people will use a messaging app if it can't communicate with 60% of their friends. And the only to make this happen is to pay Apple.
The fact that people are shallow is not a reason to break up companies. Some social circles will kick you out if you don't wear luxury clothes, but you don't see the government forcing those companies to lower prices.
I'm not talking about teenagers. If you think that your social life is the same with and without imessage you're wrong, regardless of how old you are.
Using any other app just adds friction - obviously your best friend isn't going to stop talking to you because of it but weaker relationships might not survive.
And in my circle, my home address, the kind of car I drive, the universities I attended, and the places I vacation all affect -- subtly and sometimes more blatantly -- my relationships. Are you arguing for absolute uniformity across all choices in life?
>>universal messaging is not possible without paying the Apple gatekeeper
There is in fact universal messaging - it's called SMS. You don't need to pay Apple to use it. If you would have added secure to your example then yes that would be correct.
Standard oil was at 64% when it was broken up in 1911. Absolute market share isn't the only factor that goes into determining monopoly. You also get different numbers from different definitions. Apple controls 100% of the iOS market, or ~80% of the mobile subscription market, etc.
>> Standard oil was at 64% when it was broken up in 1911. [...] Apple controls 100% of the iOS market [...]
I find it maddening that a lot of people replying to your fair point have chosen to ignore the first half and decided to exclusively focus on the latter, when that part was clearly meant as an example of how market definitions can have an impact.
A fairly recent example of the latter being a commonly mischaracterized or (by members of the public) outright dismissed concern was MSFTs dominance in the Cloud Gaming market, which was often met either with "but MSFTs share of the gaming market overall is less" or the even less applicable "but nobody uses Cloud Gaming anyway", even though neither should count towards whether something rises to anti-competitive behavior in a given market.
It's bikeshedding. People respond to the parts that they can, and ignore the parts they can't. Even if everyone else has already responded with the same thing.
This is like saying Y Combinator controls 100% of the Hacker News market, or that Amazon controls 100% of the AWS market. It's a non-sensical argument.
Of course it's non-sensical, right up until that thing grows to be a large part of the US economy.
I have no idea what the numbers are, but if 80% of all commerce on mobile is going through Apple's devices then yes, it's likely that the Government will want to ensure there is "fairness" in that eco-system.
On the contrary, it's exactly on the spot. EU used the term "gatekeeper" for such a market position, where you can dictate the terms of the market (and have oversized influence over other participant's behviour), while dodging classification of "monopolist" on technicality. It's exactly the point.
Yeah! Microsoft owns 100% of the Windows market, so users shouldn't be able to install software on their Windows devices unless they use the Microsoft store. Installing your own software from the internet or writing your own code would be non-sensical because Microsoft owns that.
You used the phrase “Windows deceives” to mean “general purpose PCs”, and I think it’s worth noting this because Windows Phone was a Windows device. I acknowledge that this is not cognitive dissonance if you also believe PlayStation is a monopoly.
Not sure I get your point since I'm not super familiar with the Windows phone. If the argument is that the Windows phone was locked down and could only load software from a Microsoft store, then I'm glad it died. Same way I'm glad Internet Explorer as the default on Windows had government action taken against it. Let me use my machine for my code. I don't care if you are Apple or Microsoft or whoever. I do not care if you "own" your company, the fact is that if you sell me a device, I want to to own my device by running whatever I want.
Okay, so you're an absolutist about this. I think that's fine, but it doesn't jive with my experience that not everyone wants to be (or is even capable of being) their own IT department. This quote by Benedict Evans resonated with me:
"It sometimes just amazes me that people who actually work in the tech industry, and are in their 30s and 40s, claim that it would be just fine if smart phones had the same app security and privacy model as the Mac or Windows, and that there is no benefit at all from additional controls. Where have these people been for the last 30 years? You seriously want to let any developer do whatever they want to a device that billions of people carry around every day?"
I would honestly be fine if Apple was at least as lenient as Android in terms of sideloading. Doesn't seem like a big ask to me, given that just about every other phone manufacturer in the world except for Apple does it and the world hasn't ended. Apple has other issues beyond the software thing, but saying that you shouldn't be allowed to actually own a device you purchased because "apple owns 100% of iphones!" is very silly to me.
“Apple controls 100% of the iOS market” as an argument sounds like satire lol. What point does this make?
Is the implication that Apple should allow iOS on non-Apple devices? There is not a single hardware company in the world that would integrate iOS to the degree that Apple does. A requirement like this would immediately enshittify Apple’s brand.
I wasn't implying anything of the sort. I was simply trying to illustrate that market share is relative to the definition of "market" you use with extreme examples. Frankly, I'm not even saying that defining iOS/the app store as a market unto itself is a good definition.
They're using emotional arguments, not rationale ones. Like calling Apple's cut of app sales a "tax", as it is literally not a tax but a normal part of doing business. Similarly the lawsuit claims that iPhone users somehow are "undermined" from messaging other phones, when in reality there are zero restrictions on messaging to and from any phone. None of these arguments are based on the reality of the situation, but some emotional response to it.
If my water provider said "We're the only water provider so we're raising rates 1000%, take it or leave it", you would still say that's a monopoly even though i could move house to an area with another water provider.
Apple has a 100% monopoly though it's AppStore on 2 billion devices though which $90,000,000,000 in trade is conducted. If that's not a market big enough to be considered for Anti-Competitive practices and illegally maintaining a monopoly then i don't know what is.
That's more trade than the entire GDP of Luxembourg!
You realize the world market is irrelevant. If some company has a monopoly in France, they don't care whether or not that company has less market in other countries. Apple has a monopoly in the USA and so the USA is going to try to break that monopoly. Google has already been sued and lost on it's app store market share. Apple's is larger.
> 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 browser choice, messaging, and Apple wallet. FWIW, I am a former lawyer and spent a little time doing antitrust law for the CA DOJ, a long time ago. Just my two cents.
> Apple will argue that security and/or performance reasons drove their decisions related to browser choice
That's true, but odds are they have a lot of e-mails and a lot of employees who can testify to the browser choice decision being driven by lock-in. The iMessage emails were pretty unambiguous with regards to how it is used in an anti-consumer way. (https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...) Similar stuff will exist for everything they do, because they cannot distort the reality that in 2024 their software kind of sucks, and that their customers only use it because they don't have alternatives and Apple prevents those alternatives from being viable.
There’s nothing wrong with having “words not to use.” Companies have to think ahead to some possible lawsuit in ten years where a jury might have a damning interpretation of some minor word choice.
I don’t think those emails are so damning. A company should not be required to write software for its main competitor platform, just to make it easier for people to adopt its main competitor platform.
"the reality that in 2024 their software kind of sucks, and that their customers only use it because they don't have alternative"
That's an extremely hot take. When devices are mostly just slabs of glass and the interface and what is done, is entirely the software, customers are choosing the device based on the Apple software, not in spite of it.
I don't know if I'm the exception, but I also think Apple's software absolutely sucks.
UX is complete and utter trash.
But the M1 and onwards hardware is so good, I put up with it.
Just off the top of my head:
- Never had a $2000+ laptop that couldn't connect with more than 2 monitors without an expensive DisplayLink dock and drivers. And even then, it's janky AF
- Rendering on non-Apple external monitors sucks; night and day difference when I connect a Windows laptop to my Dell monitors
- Terrible with system font scaling
- Inconsistent usage of button sizes in their native dialogs
This drives me absolutely NUTS and I thought it was a me problem. Where the hell do things go when they're minimized on macos!!? There's all these questions asking about cmd+tabbing to minimized windows and the answer is to hold option while you hold cmd after selecting the minimized window and then let go of cmd.. but if there's 2 Chrome windows and one is minimized this doesn't work at all.
I agree. I've had people tell me "That's not the Mac way; use another desktop". Oh, OK; but it sure would be handy if I could somehow access my minimized windows easily with my keyboard can we have that, too?
> Never had a $2000+ laptop that couldn't connect with more than 2 monitors without an expensive DisplayLink dock and drivers
Hardware limitations that were told at launch.
> Rendering on non-Apple external monitors sucks;
It works fine with my old Dell FHD and my current 4k LG.
> Terrible with system font scaling
Apple does not do system font scaling, it applies scaling to the whole UI, not separate elements.
> Can't tab cycle through minimized windows
Different windows management model. You tab cycle through applications, and you backquote cycle through open windows. Minimized windows go to the dock.
> Windowing system sucks compared to Windows
Again above. Windows sizing is a specific concept in Mac OS interface model and there's rules that you can apply to it. I understand the OS not wanting to interfere much with that.
> I ship a PWA for one of my apps and by far Safari is the one that has the most issues with updating
I've not seen your code so I can't say much. But most people who complain about Safari really want Chrome's non-standard API to exists in Safari too.
Sure, but still silly that even an 8 year old Dell can drive 3 monitors without issue. And clearly, the hardware CAN do it since attaching it to a DisplayLink dock and adding a driver works. Fundamentally, the GPU is capable of doing it.
> It works fine with my old Dell FHD and my current 4k LG.
Oh it definitely works, but using Chrome on Windows, everything is super crisp on the same exact monitor whereas there is a noticeable softness on macOS
> Different windows management model. You tab cycle through applications, and you backquote cycle through open windows. Minimized windows go to the dock.
Yeah, an inferior one. The minimized windows go to the dock and are inaccessible by keyboard. This is clearly a flaw.
> I understand the OS not wanting to interfere much with that.
I'd argue that, you know, the purpose of the graphical user interface system in an OS in the context of UX at a very fundamental level is managing windowing.
> I've not seen your code so I can't say much. But most people who complain about Safari really want Chrome's non-standard API to exists in Safari too.
Works fine in Firefox and it's just using Vite PWA; really basic, standard PWA templates. Nothing special.
"UX is complete and utter trash" is a bit hyperbolic — you listed a handful of nits that don't affect 99.9% of their users. On the other hand, iOS is undoubtedly more efficient, smoother, and more stable than Android. I have a Pixel phone where the Google camera app crashes about 10% of the time when I tap the shutter button. The cellular connection often gets stuck in a disconnected state, without telling me. The "Always on Display" stopped working entirely. Along the core dimensions where Apple invests their energy, their software can be pretty good.
Just my opinion -- I'm a daily MacBook Pro user; I really struggle to find one thing that Apple is doing better than Microsoft from a UX perspective. Less options for customization; tiny buttons all over the place (very abundant in the system dialogs); the notch causing some apps to disappear from top bar on the right; the spatial distance between the window and the top bar as opposed to Microsoft where the app bar is attached to the window; the poor window snapping options for organizing desktops; the childish default animations; lots of issues with Finder versus Explorer; the seemingly random organization, sizing, and placement of windows in Mission Control; the weird behavior when you CLOSE all of your windows like Chrome and then CTRL+N creates a new Chrome window -- no, you need to quit the app, too.
I don't think there's anything macOS is doing better than Windows in so far as UX goes. Put it another way: I use macOS every day and I never think "Wow, I wish Windows had this feature, too" but every day I wish I had some UX element from Windows -- just basic window management feels so clunky on macOS unless you fullscreen everything.
It's just different. Like KDE/Gnome/i3/Windows is different from each other. MacOS applications are more like services, while windows let you perform the current task you have. As an example Preview.app allows you to open PDFs and picture files. But you need to open a file to do anything to it, and when you do so, it creates a window allowing you to interact with the file. When you're done, you close the file by closing the window (which is why it duplicates the window when you chose "Save As"). The window has a 1:1 relationship with the files. The menu bar is part of the application, but the currently focused window can interact with it.
When you're close all Chrome windows, that just means you're done with the webpages, not that you're done with Chrome. Chrome dev team can set Chrome to terminate when all windows close, but they've not chosen to do so. It's there when you want to create a new window when you want to interact with a new webpage. And again it's up to the developer to choose to tie the application lifecyle to its windows.
That's all well and good, but when I've closed the interfaces with which I'm interacting with the Chrome "service", isn't it pretty clear that the intent is that "I'm done with the service"? "Chrome team chose to build it like that" -- I guess the question here is "why is this even an option at the OS level?" and "shouldn't we expect window and application behavior to be consistent?". Davinci Resolve on macOS, for example, exits when I close its window while Chrome does not. Do you not think that even having this option to create an inconsistent application interaction seems like bad design? Sometimes the app exits when I close all windows, sometimes it doesn't.
My issue with the menu bar is purely from an ergonomics and usability perspective, especially with high resolution monitors. If I have a window at the bottom right corner of the monitor, I need to move my mouse all the ways to the top left of the monitor to interact with the menu bar. If you always full screen everything, it makes total sense. But I would make the case that macOS has done a very poor job of adapting to changes in monitor resolutions. Consider ultra-wide screen monitors where I have apps side-by-side or I have 4 windows tiled. The accessibility of the menu bar becomes quite low for three out of the 4 windows.
The key stroke to access the menu bar is (do you know it?) CTRL+F2. Try that stroke yourself and see how it feels. It's not at all obvious that this allows you to access the menu bar with the keyboard.
By attaching the menu bar to the application window, the spatial locality increases usability, especially for modern ultra-wide monitors don't you agree?
I do agree that you have a point. But it’s an interaction model that works for many people and there are customization options to alleviate some of the pain points from keyboard shortcut (administrated at OS level) to 3rd parties software. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a complete reworking of the interface.
I use Windows all day and it’s garbage as well. Perhaps they are both garbage? I’m talking the latest release of Windows 10. Or maybe it’s 11. Whatever it is it sucks too
Yeah this stuff usually ends up "I don't like the interface" when you press people. Which is fine. However my macbooks have been perfectly serviceable and still ticking while my former asus and dell laptops died after a few years right before I switched over to mac laptops and one is 7 years old and still ticking with not too bad battery life. That said I find apple has probably overstepped their social contract as a corporation and it's likely time for a little audit
>Yeah this stuff usually ends up "I don't like the interface" when you press people.
In Apple Books, you can't decide which books you want to keep on your device. In iOS Storage, you cannot see the largest pictures/videos (you used to be able to do that, they removed it to make people subscribe to iCloud). The iOS keyboard/autocorrect is so terrible it's almost unusable. You can't even set a vibrating alarm on iPhone without enabling vibration everywhere, come on.
Did it occur to you that Apple deliberately designed iMessages in such a way as to take advantage of the inevitable tribalism to further increase adoption of their own products?
Peer pressure is one of the strongest forces in sales.
Yes, but how much software does something similar? if you are going to penalize Apple for this you will have to penalize a huge amount of companies, it's a very slippery slope, as what do you define as being anti-competitive and what do you define also being a genuine need to highlight the difference?
What are you saying Apple should have done/be made to do? Make all the messages the same colour? This causes issues for the user not being able to tell what features are available in messaging that person and then it can be even more confusing to them, you are going to have to mark it some way which is turn is going to have somewhat of the same affect. A lot of these measures from governments don't actually end up helping users, they end up just making the end user experience worse.
For Apple, this was likely a win-win, they need to show the difference and it has such knock on affect, but I think this is the problem, Apple has a way of looking at things and way of doing certain things, a lot of the things that people are upset about in this lawsuit and beyond area consequence of that, but isn't nessecery the sole purpose of why Apple is doing things this way in the first place, those people that get angry at Apple seem to miss those points or disagree with that way of doing it.
It really depends. With MacBooks, for example, many people who buy them these days do so because of things like battery life and quality of the trackpad, while quietly hating on macOS.
Windows is horrible, it's messy, overly cluttered and bloated. MacOS is so much cleaner and nicer, that with nice hardware is why people buy Apple devices, at least that is the same with everyone I know.
I'm in this camp. I find some of the UX to be really, really questionable. The default animations and sounds feel so unbefitting for a machine in a professional context. The stupid notch; when I use a screen recording app, it uses a slot on the right to stop recording once I start using the app but if there are just enough icons, that icon disappears under the notch......
If it weren't for the battery life and speed, I would not use it.
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.
it's quite often shot down by judges as well too because of the vagueries in laws, it's a two edge sword and you're commonly at the whim of the trial jurisdiction. Just look at recent 5th circuit vs most other circuits.
Yes, there is a lot of discretion in what cases are brought, and if a new administration comes in next year this may be dismissed/deprioritized. Still, I doubt Tim or other Apple employees will be making many donations to Biden's challenger! (Shareholders might be a different story.)
Even if the case continues, it will be a challenge to win. Apple has asymmetric information and knows what they can use to defend the various allegations.
> Good point, although the decision to move forward with the case was made under the current administration.
The President/Administration telling the AG what to move forward on (and what not to) is generally not a thing, and when it does happen, there are often headlines:
The President selects the AG. He doesn't then have to direct every single decision. It's well known in legal circles that changes in administration affect DOJ behavior. Wall Street knows this too — it's why certain stocks pop after election surprises.
I'm guessing the plan is to cast a wide net, then hope that you can dredge up some incriminating or morally ambiguous quotes during discovery. When you have a company of 100,000+ people, there's probably some "haha we're killing the competition" in there, which you can then use to prop up the case.
And then either use that to win the trial, or force Apple into settling.
I'm (legitimately) curious could the fact that (almost) all of that is now open in the EU due to their laws but not the US. Would that hurt their argument since they blocked off the change from the US. Or would that all be solved by a statement along the lines of "Well, EU iPhones are now less secure."
The arguments about performance and security aren't about whether Apple could open up, but about whether they should. The changes in the EU will answer the latter, but slowly.
The EU laws allow exceptions for security, but most of the Apple shenanigans related to the DMA were walked back the minute the EU said they would launch an investigation into the matter.
So no, I would say it is absolutely about whether they can open up and still be secure. It seems that they lack confidence that the arguments they had put forward would survive scrutiny asking just that question. Heck, there are even exceptions in the law that would allow them extended time periods in order to comply with the requirements in order to ensure security. So if it is just a question of needing more time, they can get it, and if it is a question of not being possible for users to be secure when interoperable with third parties, they can get exceptions for that.
Every employee that joins Apple goes through a course that teaches a few case studies about Apple's culture. One of those is how Steve Jobs made the decision to kill Flash. IMHO it was a no brainer and if this sort of thing needs to be litigated in court, it's a travesty.
Nah, users really are dumb and really will follow steps that will result in malware getting on their devices. This happens all of the time in Android-land. Burying the setting won’t change this, people will follow tutorials to disable the security protections if they think it will get them the content they want (and, in some cases, it will, wrt pirate apps etc).
There’s no real way to square the circle: either Apple (and the state) has realtime app censorship control (nominally for malware, as well as any other thing the state or Apple’s business model feels existentially threatened by), or the user can install any app they want, with all of the associated risks. Even with notarization and self-distribution you’re still in the first category because the state can compel Apple to treat protest apps or non-backdoored e2ee messaging apps the exact same as they do malware, and prevent them from launching.
Users mostly want the former, because most users aren’t worried about government censorship or oppression. Tech people and cypherpunks and pirates and protesters usually want the latter. Tech people usually want the former for their parents/grandparents for whom they serve as device sysadmin.
Legacy decision? Would they do the same starting a new desktop OS today? Much more high risk personal data on an iPhone (e.g. health data, biometrics) requiring stricter security? Many more sensors which could be abused by nefarious actors on iOS (GPS, lots of mics, lidar, cameras, etc) and these are always with us?
If a hacker got full remote access to my phone it’d be a complete and utter disaster. Especially since the phone itself is considered a two factor authentication device by several services and my employer.
And the attack vectors are more numerous. I have ten times as many apps on my phones, it’s always on, always connected, and may frequently connect to wifi networks I don’t fully trust.
The consequences and the attack vectors for a hacker to attack my laptop are fewer.
I’m on the side of wanting Apple to open up a bit more. But I it’s absolutely valid to want the iPhone to be more secure than a laptop. And I seriously hope Apple isn’t forced to let people install apps that aren’t signed and reviewed. I can guarantee you that critical services in your life will force you to install insecure and straight up dangerous apps. The banking sector in some countries is a prime example of that, especially back in the ActiveX era.
> If a hacker got full remote access to my phone it’d be a complete and utter disaster. (...) The consequences and the attack vectors for a hacker to attack my laptop are fewer.
I don't buy that argument. I have more important files on my laptop than on my phone.
Performance is less of an issue on computers because battery life isn’t as much of a concern. Also, they allow other messaging and payments on iOS just like they do on MacOS. They just don’t offer the unique payment chip access on iOS to third parties.
They may or may not prevail, but in the meantime they will likely have to slam the brakes on any closed feature developments. That alone is good for consumers.
The messaging claim seemed to be about carrier based messaging; SMS and MMS, and I guess in theory RCS (but is that really carrier based if Google has taken it upon themselves to enroll most Android users on a Google server)
Apps that read inbound SMS may be malicious and use that ability to steal verification codes. Or they may not be actively malicious, and meerly handle the data in an insecure way that makes messages available to others.
Performance, I dunno. Maybe they could argue something about how time between user requesting an SMS be sent and it actually getting sent is very important, and similar for display, and that they're more likely to do that right. I've certainly seen some Android manufacturer provided SMS clients that do much better than others on that, although I have no recent performance notes since I no longer get massive floods of SMS from too simple monitoring systems.
In the Epic lawsuit it was shown that Apple really actually more cared about this than "security":
> “The #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage ... iMessage amounts to serious lock-in,” was how one unnamed former Apple employee put it in an email in 2016, prompting Schiller to respond that, “moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us, this email illustrates why.”
> “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” was Federighi’s concern
> Apps that read inbound SMS may be malicious and use that ability to steal verification codes. Or they may not be actively malicious, and meerly handle the data in an insecure way that makes messages available to others.
Apple can't make that argument since they allow apps that scan SMS messages for spam.
PGP isn't an end-to-end encryption service; it's a public-key encryption package.
To clarify macintux's statement, you can only guarantee end-to-end encryption will both remain secure and allow your messages to be read if you control both ends. If you do not control the other end, but you give it the ability to decrypt your messages (and thus let them be read), then whoever does control the other end can save the plaintext, post it elsewhere, and generally do whatever they want with it.
To be "end-to-end encrypted", something has to actually be a service you are using, not merely a method of encryption. An end-to-end encrypted service could use PGP if it wanted (AFAIK), but PGP, in itself, is just a way for you to encrypt your messages, and then, optionally, share your public key to allow them to be decrypted by those you give it to, while also guaranteeing that those messages came from you (as long as you have kept your private key safe).
So I'm afraid your question, as it stands, doesn't really make sense, but I hope this has helped to answer the underlying questions for you.
No, his question makes perfect sense and your response doesn't really make any. End-to-end encryption doesn't imply encryption from one end of the universe to the other. It is what it says on the tin: encryption from one end to another. Your message is insecure beyond the the other end.
That is true both for PGP encrypted messages as well as iMessage messages. There's nothing on iPhones or Macs actually protecting your decrypted messages. Most of the on device security is optional and your messages, photos and files can be copied and shared anywhere in plain text.
PGP makes no claims of being an "end-to-end encrypted service", because it's not a service. It's an end-user product. It doesn't have to "solve this" problem, because that's not what it's for.
You keep saying "service" when no one asked anything about services.
The question in this thread is whether iMessage can offer secure interop. The answer is yes. They just need to use an open protocol and that protocol can use tools like PGP to encrypt messages end-to-end.
Your claim that both the sending and receiving application need to be "controlled" by some entity for it to have "real" end-to-end security is non-sense.
The statement, from macintux, was "End to end encryption can only be guaranteed if you control both ends.".
The question, from tomrod, was "How does PGP solve this?"
Nothing to do with iMessage. I was answering a specific question on a tangent thread. If you want to argue with me about iMessage, go to one of the posts I've made about that on this article. This thread is about PGP.
Well you sure know how to dodge being wrong I'll give you that. Even ignoring the thread context, your comments on end to end encryption and PGP are woefully misinformed so we can just leave it there.
I think they'll claim security for Messages. I don't have nearly enough information to know if they can win that particular issue, and it sounds like there are reasonable arguments on both sides. But they don't have a monopoly on messaging — WhatsApp is huge, Signal and others exist. I don't think Apple lets you use Siri to send messages via other services, or at least they didn't used to let you. But other than that they are granted near parity on iOS.
Siri does let you send messages with other services these days. (I think it got added in the last year or two, and those apps need to be updated to support it, but it's there!)
Security: there’s no cross platform E2E messaging standard they could have adopted. Given that the DoJ is already breathing down their neck for working with Google on search, using Google’s RCS extensions and servers might also be problematic.
I don’t think the government could force them to adopt RCS without new legislation or bring iMessage to other platforms.
> there’s no cross platform E2E messaging standard they could have adopted.
Could they not have made their own? I don't think they'd be required to use open standards for the argument to be made, they just need to release an iMessage app for Android.
But they already do support Android to some extent. Apple Music (don't know if you can subscribe via the Android app), Shazam, and an AirTag detector are all already available.
There are many industries in the world regulated to be interoperable. I suspect the primary reason you find the notion weird is simply because you're not used to it.
It seems weird to degrade their own users' experience (when receiving texts from friends with Android phones), but Apple does it deliberately as a nudge to get people to use Apple products.
There's no valid technical or security reason to do this. It's a tactical decision on Apple's part.
If iMessages have benefits (they do) then there is a technical reason to show you the bubble colors - so you know the benefits apply. If sending video to a blue contact is better than sending it to green, there's a reason to know.
Does it ACTUALLY matter? Maybe not? But people really do complain about a non-iPhone "degrading" a group chat, so it is indicating something.
At the time they made iMessage at first? It was likely a real advance and only because they could control both ends. But now? They may be large enough that it's unfair use of their monopoly in one area to affect another, and get slapped or forced to interoperate.
Since when does “the US” consist exclusively of “the Justice Department” and not, e.g., the FTC (which writes antitrust regulations within existing law) and Congress (which writes laws).
To the extent that is correct [0], that doesn't justify reinterpreting “the US should adopt regulations like X” to mean “the Justice Department and not any other part of the US government should adopt regulations like X”.
[0] Its essentially those actions where the DoJ is the agency representing the government interest, including all federal criminal cases and some federal civil cases. Civil cases by other agencies have the agency name; so the antitrust complaint by the DoJ, 15 state governments, and the District of Columbia is United States of America, et al. v. Apple, but the SEC action against Coinbase was Securities and Exchange Commission v. Coinbase, Inc., and Coinbase Global, Inc.
I agree and I question the wisdom of it, but the idea of this aggressive antitrust enforcement, which so far has more strikes than hits, seems to be to make a grinding, years- (or even decades-) long push to shift the understanding of what antitrust is and make major changes to the landscape; kind of an inverse of what the conservatives have been able to do with various issues, where their positions were initially laughed out of the room but now have the weight of Supreme Court decisions behind them decades later.
>> I question the wisdom of it, but the idea of this aggressive antitrust enforcement, which so far has more strikes than hits
We only really take these up when they are blatant (price fixing, apple and books, MS and vendors). Or lock ins where there is NO alternative (MS and browsers). This doesn't really meet those bars.
If Apple wins this one at home, then they can quickly cry about other countries regulations being "anti competitive".
> We only really take these up when they are blatant (price fixing, apple and books, MS and vendors).
Not anymore... look at the failed action to stop MS acquiring Activision for instance. Was that "blatant"? I guess not since enforcement failed. Lina Khan's whole thing is aggressively broadening antitrust enforcement.
Perhaps this is essentially more lawfare against a party antagonistic to the political aims of Washington players. We know that our national (as well as state) law enforcement entities have been alleging for more than a decade now that Apple's encryption practices stymie their efforts to catch "bad guys." What better way to put back room pressure on a company.
This is a false narrative. iPhones back up full message history and all photos by default in a non-e2ee fashion that is easily readable by both Apple and the government unless the user and everyone they message with specifically opts into e2ee (which approximately nobody has, even in tech circles).
There is no “going dark” issue on iOS platforms. Apple has played ball in full with the USG on that front. In fact, Android backups are e2ee so the government can get more data from Apple on iPhone users than they can get from Google for Android users.
Apple has option to enable e2ee on backups now. It sort of defeats the purpose of backup though because if you lose device you lose the backup (assuming you only have one device and didn’t setup recovery keys off device)
The article leaves out a ton over the actual compliant // filed in Eastern NJ for a reason. They must be going for Verizon or Samsung witnesses? If the definitions set forth by the DOJ are accepted by courts, this is a slam dunk on Apple. If Apple can redefine things like 'Super Apps' and 'Mini Apps,' then this thing is a wet paper bag.
> If the definitions set forth by the DOJ are accepted by courts, this is a slam dunk on Apple.
This is a very low bar. It is of course the case that if you assume one party's definitions are accepted then they will win. The battlefield will be the definitions (just like in patent law the battlefield is the claim construction).
Sometimes these lawsuits are filed not strictly for legal reasons but to put pressure on companies, or as political payback to certain special interest groups (election year). Even if the case is eventually thrown out of court it may succeed in shifting Apple's behavior.
They will make that argument, and the government will point out that Apple is trying to charge 27% everywhere those choice decisions were taken away, pretty conclusively proving... it's all about collecting the rent.
Charging 30% is outrageous to me, but it also appears to be the standard used by almost all of their competitors. It'll be interesting to see how the government convicts Apple of doing something that almost all other large companies are doing.
It's a no-win situation for them. If once they established themselves as the dominant player in the cell phone market they started undercutting everyone else on fees that could also be seen as predatory.
> it also appears to be the standard used by almost all of their competitors
FWIW - this is further evidence of anticompetitive behavior. In a competitive market, entrants would be trying to drive distribution costs to 0. The fact that Apple makes its entire App Store revenue off those distribution revenues is highly telling.
It would only be considered predatory if they charging a rate below their own costs of distribution. I.E. If it costs Apple $0.10 to cover the costs of app distribution per download, then it would be completely legal for them to charge $0.11, but illegal and predatory to charge $0.09.
It's the standard used by almost all app stores, save for new entrants trying to buy their way into the market. Steam is 30% and there's nothing stopping you from installing alternatives. Nintendo's eStore is 30% and they control 100% of the mobile console market.
It should be. Note that the economics word "rent" essentially refers to any and all unearned income that you acquired through raw power. Which, yes, includes real estate rent in excess of maintenance and financing costs.
The US government has let its definition for monopolistic behavior slip so much over the last few decades I don't think you could successfully prosecute for anything short of sending thugs to break your competitors' kneecaps. The days when the DOJ would prosecute a company for including a web browser with an OS are long gone.
The facts were different in the Microsoft case. If they had built in Internet Explorer as a "free" feature in a Windows upgrade it would have been tough to prove anticompetitive behavior. But they originally sold IE as a separate product, like as boxes in retail stores. They only bundled it with Windows later and there was clear evidence during the trial that they made the change specifically to kill Netscape.
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.
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?
I've been left out of family and friend group chats for not having an iPhone.
I nearly missed a birthday party for my friend that his girlfriend organized because she didn't want to lose iMessage features when sending out the group invite. I only found out the day before because my friend asked if I would be coming to his party the day before.
I only got added to my family group chat after I got a mac and installed AirMessage.
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)?
When did we as a society stop behaving like that? The scarlet letter was from 1800s, but at no time since then would I say that society suddenly realized that the designation of pariahs was problematic.
You talk about the color of your clothes as if people are someone enlightened about it, but the whole plot of American Psycho is essentially a lens on 1980s Yuppie culture where what you are wearing is more interesting and memorable to people than your name [and who you are]. Such attitudes persist in tech circles although flipped: wear an AC/DC t-shirt = one of us, show up in a 3 piece suit = outsider.
Absolutely, designating someone as different because of how they connect is enough to create a designation as an outsider. Almost by definition.
The super apps point is very interesting. The quotes in the complaint from Apple are exactly right: super apps are sucky and don’t follow native platform conventions. The DOJ then says this is a good thing and pro-consumer innovation. If only they knew the tactics WeChat and others use in China to keep users trapped. (For example: have you ever tried to send an Alipay link through WeChat? Good luck!)
The government has been pretty adamant about wanting a backdoor placed in peoples' phones.
A super-app probably seems a like pretty good option to them, as once they compromise it, they'll have access to a large amount of data or, more likely, pressure the super-app owner into placing a backdoor into their service.
Meanwhile those monopolies can be good for the employees that work there, they are terrible for the rest of the Americans that don't, and they make up the majority of Americans.
I hope that, in the end, America sees that it is feeding those monopolies itself and even considers joining the European Union in believing that regulations are important.
When people come and say that regulations have an impact on innovation, I point out the fact that the object in question isn't that innovative. What is so innovative about the iPhone? They just made really good choices and got the rewards from consumers, on making it perhaps the biggest brand in the world.
But just by doing great products don't give you the right to go against the interests of your own customers or developers that helped you build that platform.
I'm sure by the end of this arc of those platforms that behave more monopolies, governments will realize that by regulating this space, it creates much more economic activity, jobs, and, of course, more space for innovation.
> I'm sure by the end of this arc of those platforms that behave more monopolies, governments will realize that by regulating this space, it creates much more economic activity, jobs, and, of course, more space for innovation.
Like there are in the EU, with amazing tech salaries that too, far superior than the USA ! :(
Lots of comments here about the duopoly of Apple and Google (and I'm of the opinion that one cannot have a monopoly of its own product)
It's telling to me that not even Microsoft was able to make this work. There may have been some other internal interests at play, but their historical strength and background was in providing a platform, and then they dropped out when it didn't last. Likewise, Palm didn't last long in the space either.
It's not clear to me if there simply is not room for 3+ operating systems in a widely distributed mobile market.
> It's not clear to me if there simply is not room for 3+ operating systems in a widely distributed mobile market.
I think there would be, if interoperability were a requirement. Microsoft and Blackberry both tried to make their own walled gardens, and maybe that's why it didn't work out. If consumers didn't feel locked in to one platform, they'd be more open to exploring other options.
Smartphones aren't the sexy new tech they once were. They're just boring old utilities now, and it makes sense IMO to start regulating them. Forcing companies to implement open standards seems like a good idea, and maybe this lawsuit is a first step in that direction if it ends with Apple being forced to fix iMessage interoperability.
It's been a very long time since I've used a Windows Phone, but the way I remember it they were just doing the same thing Apple and Google did with the Microsoft Store/whatever it was called. I don't remember if they allowed side loading, but if they did I bet it required you to enable "developer mode" or something like that, just like Google. I doubt an attempt to create anything that competes with them on their own platform would've survived.
Palm and Microsoft both made incredible (for the time) smart phones. The iPhone (and to a lesser extent android phones) were just on a totally different level. While Windows CE and PalmOS phones were trying to fight off blackberry, the iPhone was a different animal all together. The later Microsoft phones trying to compete on that level made a massive mistake of trying to tie in a bad UI design (the windows 8 square tiles for days UI) to it's desktop.
It was all timing, and by the time the war was over, MS would have had to become revolutionary in a field that pretty much every new thing had already been done, so it made sense for them to throw in the towel and get back to their money maker - business apps.
Regarding the Apple Wallet: what about it is uncompetitive? I can add credit cards from many providers to it, and as far as I can tell Apple doesn't get anything if I add my Chase card and use it with Apple Pay. I don't think banks have to pay Apple anything for their cards to be used in the Apple wallet. Nor do non-financial cards like memberships.
That seems...fair to me? Apple makes a phone a lot of people want to buy, and adds NFC to it to enable mobile payment, and they provide security guarantees for the end user and the card issuer alike. I don't know why they should be obligated to provide this functionality to the card issuers for free.
Sure, but on my Android smartphone, my bank still has the ability to implement their own payment solution using NFC directly using their app, which is something they did and offer as an alternative next to Google Pay. It even has certain advantages, such as allowing one to unlock a banks doors outside regular hours to access the self-service area for things that are beyond regular ATMs, something that currently does not work with Google or Apple Pay.
On iOS, my bank does not get to offer that ability, and I do not get that choice. If I owned an iPhone and wanted to do something like deposit some cash, pickup or ship a package via the postal service (as our postal service has the same security measures) outside business hours without a physical credit or debit card, I'd be out of luck, because of Apple's restrictive nature.
Having talked to a few of my friends and family, a lot of Apple Pay users are surprised and/or unaware that this is even an option they could have, and I am certain that at some point, Apple will implement something similar, whereupon Google Pay will also enable such functionality, cause the industry does follow Apple to a large extent when it comes to what is considered the minimum of neceessary features one has to offer.
But until then, I see this as restricting innovation, similar to how AT&T prevented a lot of developments, and we got the internet in its current state in part thanks to antitrust action against them, which they promised, we'd regret in a similar manner to Apple today.
Security. I'm quite happy as an iPhone user to have Apple be the only ones in the loop for NFC payments. I'm generally happy with all other restrictions mentioned in the suit (no 3rd party app stores, no super apps, etc). It seems that this suit is brought on behalf of other companies (device and app makers, etc) and has a tenuous benefit to the public. There is a fair alternative available in Android for those who don't want to be in the iOS ecosystem.
FWIW I use Linux on my desktop computer, believe in open source, etc. Since mobile phones have become much more than phones and are now a sort of master key to your entire life, I am happy to have that key reside in as high a trust environment as I can find.
Why do you think a banks NFC payment app might not be secure? If ios is a platform then another NFC app could be as secure. Regardless, users should be given a choice. You can continue using Apple Wallet app, some other users might prefer other apps.
The concern is bad actors - that some random app (not your bank) gets access to NFC.
Choice isn't always good. Especially where consumers don't really understand all the implications. My mom doesn't benefit from choice here, she is actively harmed by it, she knows it, she uses Apple to avoid it.
Your mom already chooses to use Apple for this reason, so presumably would also not use a third-party App Store or sideloaded apps, so she could still benefit from the Apple security blanket even while theoretically having choice.
Yeah, though hopefully there is some sort of warning (or setting that prevents sideloading when enabled) that makes her think twice. Or, you could perhaps make her a “kids” profile unable to install anything without permission.
Sure - but why? Part of Apple's value prop is convenience. This extra app store thing doesn't sound convenient for Apple's customers. Apple isn't trying to make life difficult for consumers, they do make life difficult for developers and others in the ecosystem in many cases - but it's almost always to make life easier for their end customers.
Then nobody will use them if Apple allows them. If they do it like Google, by default users cannot sideload or install alternative app stores anyway. It's opt-in. Why do you want to prevent people who actively want to do these things with their phones from doing them?
If Apple's goal is to make things as "easy" for people as possible, then they should just not have any app store at all. And they shouldn't offer different configurations. They should just release an Apple iPhone that comes however it comes and nothing about it can be modified. That would be super convenient!
>> Why do you want to prevent people who actively want to do these things with their phones from doing them?
I don't want to. I want Apple to make the decision. I want Apple to make 1000s of decisions for me around my phone. They seem to be good at it, at least with respect to end users.
And, no, a non-app store phone wouldn't be convenient. Uber is very convenient. So is my banking app. There are dozens of very convenient apps on my phone.
Honest question: Do you have any example that the approach Android takes to the NFC stack enables exploits that are not possible on iOS in regard to NFC payments?
I don't have an example, but I believe your question supports my point. From everything I've observed, Apple is generally better at providing a secure ecosystem than the variety of major parties that comprise the Android ecosystem. So if I remain in the Apple ecosystem I'll need to devote less energy to answering questions like the one you've asked than otherwise.
Ok, that is fair and there can be a difference in opinion between making such choices more based on subjective opinion and personal feeling vs. basing that mainly on evidence and I do not want to dismiss the former. I understand that the convenience and peace of mind of a solution one trusts have value, and I do not discount those facts, even if I take a different approach to this situation, digging into White papers and whatnot, partly for enjoyment and personal interest. I can even recommend the Apple Platform Security Guide [0]. It's quite a good read, actually.
But no one would force you or anyone else to leave that Apple ecosystem you hold in high regard. There would simply be more opportunity for alternatives that, if they are well implemented, may even provide such a robust product for such a long time that even devoting little energy to the decision on security grounds may make it more appealing than Apples. Or maybe some feature, such as the one I described for accessing banking institutions after office hours, might make such an impact on your situation, that you become more open to those additional choices. And if not, again, you may stick with Apple all the same.
> But no one would force you or anyone else to leave that Apple ecosystem you hold in high regard. There would simply be more opportunity for alternatives
“Opportunity for alternatives” is not free. There will be a trade off to enabling it, and my perception is that it’ll negatively affect those who are happy with the status quo.
If the current trade-off is considered anticompetitive, there may be enough incentive to create a new model. Bell telephone offered free long distance calls on their network, the happiness of their customers didn't protect them when regulators started questioning how competitive Bell's strategy was.
Maybe it will negatively affect those who are happy with the status quo. That has no bearing on the righteousness of a person or company's actions, especially if they're in a position to deny competitors market access.
It has bearing on whether a case should be brought. The goal of antitrust legislation in the US has been largely to protect consumers. It's slightly more gray than that, but by and large that's the goal.
With respect, this second part is so dependent on "well implemented" and a party acting in good faith (ie not being a scam) that it's basically a worthless argument.
I don’t know what you’re referring to. Trust is a fundamental part of security. Without trust you need to be ever vigilant in an ever expanding set of domains and technologies, or you have to shrink your vulnerability surface area down to something that you can at all times personally comprehend and manage. This will not work for 99.99% of the population.
If you pry up the pavement on the way to hell, you'll find good intentions underneath. Trust whoever you want, but don't turn around and make claims you're unwilling to defend. The security Apple offers is far from unconditional - the plethora of iPhone-related data leaks is a dead horse well-beaten on this site.
For your safety, I hope the government looks out for you. Because nobody else is going to do your due diligence, evidently not even yourself.
You imply Apple isn't a better choice than the android ecosystem(s) with respect to safety/security/privacy (because you reply to the comment that this appears to be the case). This is, at least on the surface, not the general perception. But given you talk so much about doing due diligence, I assume you have some insight as to why Apple isn't the better choice on these dimensions?
I'm genuinely all ears, because this has not been my observation, but I've never done and in-depth study of the matter.
You're all good. It's been a few months since I've written one of these comments out entirely, so I'll give you the rundown:
- Android is Open Source. Google itself is a ghoulish company nowadays, few people are wrong in assuming that. For all of iOS' security taglines though, you can't build it yourself and create a further-hardened version. "Features" like Apple routing traffic around your VPN cannot be un-programmed. This doesn't necessarily make Android a better OS, but it absolutely enables better overall privacy and proves that a better ideal is realistic. I don't personally hold Google in high regards security-wise, but the AOSP has nothing to hide. You can go see for yourself.
- Apple's software can't be trusted. pbourke's correct in that consumers have to make a choice about trust when selecting hardware, but I see no evidence that Apple's approach is working. Their services turn over personally-identifying data to governments by the ten-thousands, and in countries like China your iCloud server lives in a CCP-owned facility. Apple does nothing to resist obvious government censorship ploys, and is indeed a decade-old member of America's PRISM program. Without any transparency holding Apple accountable, you really have to hold on the question - can you trust them?
- Neither Google nor Apple make good OSes, in part because neither one is motivated to compete with the other. Google treats Android as a technology dumping ground and a defacto unifying platform for their various hairbrained hardware endeavors. Apple treats iOS like Hotel California. Both companies have found a niche in ignoring each other, and Apple has used it as an excuse to pursue business strategies Google could never dream of. It's a threat to the market no matter how either of us feel about it.
The DOJ put it best, this morning: "Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests."
No no, peace of mind has no value. Just ask the big brains at the DOJ. Safety, peace of mind, convenience - these are zero value items. Only choice matters.
Sorry, that was a joke. I should have lathered on more obvious sarcasm. The DOJ don't understand very basic computer security. It's disgraceful. Agree with everything you say here - the antitrust regulators seem to have forgotten who they are supposed to be protecting - consumers, not apple competitors.
The fee is paid by card issuers. It's 0.15% for cc and 0.5 pennies for debit cards. Card issuers take a large chunk of change in interchange fees, this is a tiny, tiny proportion of it. Even if they managed to pass the cost on (which they almost certainly cannot given the nature of that business), spread across it might be 0.00000x % increase in costs. And, it's quite likely to actually reduce costs for card issuers due to reduced fraud and reduced physical card issuance (those cards actually cost money to produce).
And once you get into grad school they teach that those nice little graphs you drew in high school and undergrad were simplifications of the real world, and whether costs are passed on or not is very dependent on the specifics of the market. And then you hit the real world and realize, it's even more complex again when the costs are felt for some subset of transactions and not others, there are multiple parties to a transaction, etc etc.
Yes, exactly. Free money from the sky is exactly it.
It's definitely not coming out of card issuers pockets, from their fat interchange fees, that they may be happy to pay due to reduced fraud and other costs. Nope, the free sky money thing is it.
I question the governments decision to include this in the complaint. Surely Visa's 2-3% fee has a greater impact on the wider economy than Apple's 0.15%.
While that may be true for nfc payments, a lot of the accusations in the document are excused by Apple using bad-faith arguments in the name of security. Then there’s the 30% tax, which is just anticompetitive extortion.
While I would love to see a more open iphone NFC chip (primarily for identification/access control system integration), I shudder to think of bank implementations of contactless payments. Bank apps I’ve used have been “meh” at best, usually bad (and filled with ads!!) and don’t even support modern secure authentication (totp/webauthn). I’d like to see them fix their core technology before trying to figure out a way to sell me a loan using mobile payments.
> It even has certain advantages, such as allowing one to unlock a banks doors outside regular hours to access the self-service area for things that are beyond regular ATMs, something that currently does not work with Google or Apple Pay.
Have you tried it? I’ve been able to open Chase bank ATM lobbies using the NFC Jimmy John’s loyalty card in my Apple Wallet (along with every brand of payment card I have in there). This “security” appears to be primarily to keep unbanked (read: homeless) people out.
Here in Austria, it does not appear to be possible on either Apple Pay or Google Pay. Just tried with Google Pay, did not work and had a friend try it with Apple pay a few weeks ago, equally failed.
You could also frame it as they sold you an NFC capable phone and not really providing NFC functionality, which doesn't seem fair or at least deceptive.
I find it somewhat entertaining that the press conference, and to a lesser extent the brief, argues that giving 3rd party dev access to Wallet functionality would result in a more security for the user. I don't always trust monoliths (might be the wrong word?) but I trust Apple Wallet integrations more than anything my bank would try to roll out.
I'm fine with the claim of more competition and more privacy (although I'm not particularly worried about Apple here).
I worked as a contractor for a company offering a mobile payment solution in central europe. They were able to negotiate, with some weighty backing, an app entitlement that prevents Apple Pay from popping up when the phone is held close to an NFC-enabled payment terminal while the app is open.
Just saying that there are ways, but they‘re not open to everyone.
A big part of what makes a phone platform competitive is the apps for it. In the Netscape/ie days, Netscape ran on many platforms and made the underlying OS less important.this led to Microsoft going to great lengths to make windows/ie a walled garden. I saw this in working developing intranet apps. Things that “just worked “ on windows/ie didn’t work for Mac/linux/unix users.
The “super app” part of this lawsuit seems to me to describe a sort of layer that allows smaller apps —- “mini programs”— to program to that layer instead of to android/ios, and makes the app the same on either OS. It seems apple is being anticompetitive in its actions to prevent this.its sort of like QT letting you have one code base for various os’s. I think apple can try and make the native apps for iOS be better through innovation, but anticompetitive behavior is not ok.
From page 29 of the lawsuit: “Apple did not respond to the risk that super apps might disrupt its monopoly by
innovating. Instead, Apple exerted its control over app distribution to stifle others' innovation.
Apple created, strategically broadened, and aggressively enforced its App Store Guidelines to
effectively block apps from hosting mini programs. Apple's conduct disincentivized investments
in mini program development and caused U.S. companies to abandon or limit support for the
technology in the United States.”
If apple has capabilities on iPhones that androids don’t have, then native iOS apps that use them will be more desirable . That would be beneficial competition. If apple makes it hard to write cross platform lowest common denominator apps, that is anticompetitive.
I think it’s interesting this is one of the first large anti-tech anti-trust lawsuits that has actually materialized since the FTC/DOJ signaled interest in going after these giants.
Perhaps the case is less complex and this could be brought earlier? Or there were some really damning things in discovery proving other justifications Apple has (security, performance, etc) are secondary to punishing competitors products.
The case for consumer harm is much more vague than what other firms are doing in my view. iMessage incompatibility with Android group texts is going to be remedied and maybe deserves a slap on the wrist.
The Google monopoly seems way worst and straightforward to me. Why it isn’t addressed first and why does everyone seemingly ignore them and obsess with Apple is a mystery to me.
Note in some of these were chased even though Google has been less restrictive than Apple (e.g. on the Play Store payment case Google has always allowed 3rd party app stores on Android).
But you can still buy an Android phone, iOS is only around 65% in the US (way less in the rest of the world btw). Compare with Google with the Chrome platform (> 90%) and Search engine (> 90%). Try being a web dev without Chrome or a web business without Google, way harder than having an Android phone (like the rest of the world do btw). Apple abusing its power is one thing, but Google has a way bigger monopoly.
But what about ism isn't a solution, the problems above still exist, they exist for 65% of Americans, who thought they were buying a general purpose phone, but actually are buying a device for running apple software.
The downsides to the apple monopoly are much more straightforward. "Apples iMessage policy lead to this kid being bullied and because of that they did x" is a much easier sell than whatever sound bite you can come up with about google.
Say someone produces a reading chair. Now say the company desires to restrict, shape or dictate which books one is allowed to read while sitting in the chair.
One could argue they should have such rights but historically it is quite unusual.
Similarly, if you pay for the chair and put it in your home it is tempting to think you've purchased it and that you own and control it.
The tos could state that the company may at nay time introduce a monthly fee, render the chair unusable or force you to return it without providing a reason.
They may revoke the unisex version and force the user to choose a sex or limit the license to a single user.
It could introduce tools to measure the weight of the user and use that to determine a violation of the single user agreement.
A popular book vendor might require you own one of their competing reading chairs and disallow reading in other chairs.
The company building the house can also grant it self all kinds of privileges. You must buy compatible appliances. They can put some weird connectors on them with some drm logic. np
The only reason not to have such possibly wonderful eco systems imho is that we already have hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations.
If we are to use and make products it should be as simple as possible. Using your weight to check if you are the registered user is not the point to start fixing it. The law should simply state that chair and subscription are separate products.
I don’t think this analogy works because you could have bought the competing chair - which proponents of loudly claim is better than the Apple chair - and gotten similar service. As a matter of fact I’m told the competing chair is much better, and not only that it’s cheaper! And I’m an idiot for buying the Apple chair
If you get the chance to dictate how the user of the chair uses it (without to much blowback) it would make good business sense.
If you can prevent manufacturers from gaining control over unrelated parts of the customers life it would make good sense as a law maker.
Can someone make a portable computer with networking a camera, mic and nothing else? It seems entirely possible.
Then there is no need for the chair maker to want a percentage of all food revenue eaten in the chair, no need to demand specific food vendors or demand they use a specific payment system they also happen to own. No need to control who you can talk to, which games you play.
Why are antitrust laws so reactive? Why not have proactive laws that break up companies if they grow beyond a certain size criteria? Ideally, the criteria would be aggressive enough to kill large corporations leaving behind only small to medium-sized businesses. The result would be markets with increased competition, more innovation, lower prices, more options for employment and self-employment, and the elimination of Big Corp's big money political influence.
> leaving behind only small to medium-sized businesses
I only partially agree. If you kill all big businesses your country will no longer be able to compete with outsiders in industries where economies of scale matter. A few examples: cars, computer chips, cloud computing. This in turn means a lot of jobs and talent will go elsewhere.
In the US during the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis I had some pretty strong opinions about banks. Is there any justification for having a mammoth bank that is "too big to fail"? (Serious question.)
Approaching "too big to fail" status might be a good marker for when a corporate entity needs to be split. We should not be beholden to oversized companies.
> Why are antitrust laws so reactive? Why not have proactive laws that break up companies if they grow beyond a certain size criteria?
I've skimmed past a number of comments that say that Apple isn't a monopoly because it doesn't have a large enough share of the market. So is the DoJ too early or too late on this one?
Anyway, it shouldn't be about the size of the company, just how they act.
Some of today’s big corporations and mega hedge funds are almost bigger than the good old British Empire. Are we definitely sure that they will not just use that power for their own good only.
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.
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 didn't), and with cloud backups the different OSes both tie into their own clouds.
But the main issue is the WA iOS app and the WA Android app have different schemas for their on device database, which makes it not so easy to move. Maybe that has changed since I stopped working there, but that was the biggest issue with a switch platforms feature that I was aware of. It's a lot of coordination for a feature that most users are never going to use, and if they do use, likely aren't going to use it more than once. When I recently got a new Android, I did see there's a new transfer data flow for at least Android to Android, so maybe there's hope for cross OS data exchange in the future? It's also helpful that there's only two relevant platforms now, instead of 7 (s40, s60, blackberry, blackberry 10, windows phone are all dead)
Yeah the feature exists on paper at least, but not in principle from my experience.
I switched to iPhone 15 Pro recently from Android and after trying to import my data from Android couple of times and iOS failing to import WhatsApp specifically, I had to resort to buying third party software to perform the message transfer via a Windows laptop.
Bear in mind the import process took like 3 hours each time and I had to keep both phones close to each other, couldn't use them while importing and had to keep power supplied to them.
After about 10 hours of trying, I gave in and put 100$ towards proper third party software to transfer my messages. This is ridiculous, as I have Google Drive on my iPhone with my WhatsApp backups from my old phone, however for one reason or another these backups cannot be utilised by WhatsApp on iOS.
Moving between two Android phones "it just works".
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.
Whatsapp themselves could easily solve this if they wanted... Just add a "backup to file" button in settings. Then add a "restore from file" option in Android.
Quite why they don't do this is a mystery to me - if a user loses all their chats in a phone migration, they're more likely to start using another messaging app.
I don't think Whatsapp gained anything by preventing this, if anything they gave people a little momentum to switching to another app. The one that clearly benefited was Apple, and I don't thing Whatsapp/Meta did it just to be nice.
I can see why they don't want to let it be possible to export from whatsapp and re-import into a competing chat app. They've gone to quite some efforts to encrypt databases etc. to make that hard.
Allowing cross-platform transfers means they can't use the platforms secure storage features to achieve this - instead they need to write server side code to generate some per-user key, and some DRM-like scheme to validate that only the official client app is requesting the key to decrypt a backup.
I can see why they want to just leave all of that to the platform.
One thing I don't get about this is say DOJ wins and significantly weakens Apple.
They'll basically hand the market to foreign companies. Seems odd.
Google does not need an assist here, last I checked they are doing great, and could fix a lot of the things iPhone users don't like about Android if they wanted to.
Not necessarily. If Apple allowed third-party app stores, alternative browser engines, had better cross-platform messaging support, et cetera, a lot of Android owners would buy iPhones.
A significant reason why Android appeals to many folks is that it represents a more open alternative to the iPhone. By opening up their walled garden, Apple still stands to benefit by magically becoming more appealing to a big chunk of Android owners.
I unfortunately think you're dramatically overstating how many people would actually switch after they're forced to open up rather than finding some other goalpost or simply not caring anyways.
Dr. Seuss wrote a book about the blue iMessage bubble. It’s called “The Sneetches”. There are lots of other chat app options that work just as well as iMessage and are cross-platform, but some people like to lord even very superficial superiority over others. And of course Apple fuels this by making it the default.
But what would it be like if we all had “stars upon ours”?
Whats interesting that most of iphone users i know (eastern europe), doesnt use iMessage at all or only for sms type of messaging only and for rich messaging we use whatsapp, messenger, telegram, signal, slack, discord, viber (?) and my almost first / only question question over sms (imessage) always is- do you have whatsapp?
> By tightly controlling the user experience on iPhones and other devices, Apple has created what critics call an uneven playing field, where it grants its own products and services access to core features that it denies rivals.
I once worked on a large enterprise platform. We developed our own applications for the platform, and other third parties developed applications for the platform. We had to regularly scan our code to make sure we weren't inadvertently using internal or non-documented APIs that weren't available to third parties.
I always assumed this was related to some anti-trust lawsuit, but it always boggled my mind that Apple never seemed to worry about that. Remember the brazenness in which they booted third-party screen time and parental control apps from the app store after the introduction of Screen Time.
> Remember the brazenness in which they booted third-party screen time and parental control apps from the app store after the introduction of Screen Time.
You misremember. Apple sherlocked RescueTime and brought it to iOS, where no such app existed because the platform security model prevents an app from snooping on other apps and websites. Developers were upset that Apple didn't give them access to the same functionality; Apple eventually released an API (but it doesn't look like RescueTime uses it, even today).
iMessage is the most egregious monopolistic tool in Apple's garden.
If the DOJ accomplishes nothing else besides forcing Apple to open up iMessage, it will be a victory.
The lock-in of having functional communication with your friends and family is insane. Take that away and it becomes almost a no-brainier for people to consider competing devices.
And no, nobody with an iPhone is interested in switching to whatever messaging app you beg them to use, just so they can message you.
I totally don't get this perspective. There are so many competing messaging platforms and they all work reasonably well on iOS. Because my various family and friend groups use different messaging apps I use all the following: WhatsApp, Signal, SMS, iMessage, Viber, and once in a while Facebook Messenger. I would say iMessage is kind of middle of the pack here. If I had to pick a favourite it's probably WhatsApp, but unfortunately it's owned by Meta - so I try to use Signal whenever I can. What's so special about iMessage that people think it's a monopolistic tool?
Are your various friends/family all tech-y people?
My "normal" friends and family are majority iPhone users. I'm Android.
I "literally ruin" their group texts. I've seen people actually reject relationships because they don't date people with "green bubbles".
Don't even get me started about work group texts.
I know restaurants where some of the servers have group iMessage chats with customers for early notification about nightly specials, Android users literally can't be added.
Likely not maliciously, but this has created almost a "second/lower class" of phone users that encompasses ~50% of the country.
> Are your various friends/family all tech-y people?
Not at all. A few of my friends are techies and they use Android/iPhone about 50/50. Family is mixed as well. No one in family uses iMessage.
> I've seen people actually reject relationships because they don't date people with "green bubbles".
This seems like a feature, not a bug. I don't think you want to date someone who makes important life choices based on Apple marketing.
Edit: Is this a "Bay Area" problem or something? Or maybe a "young people" problem? I just can't imagine caring about whether someone messages me with "blue" or "green" text bubbles.
> I've seen people actually reject relationships because they don't date people with "green bubbles".
No, that's stupid. Sorry, not trying to be a jerk, but there's no other way to put it: that's just stupid and not worth any consideration in this argument.
Even putting aside the unlikelihood of what kind of idiot would someone have to be to reject a relationship with an Android user, the basic premise of caring about blue vs green is too shallow to form as any basis of a massive suit like this.
"Apple must be broken up because people think my Android phone isn't cool" ??
Its the default iPhone messenger and it works really well when messaging your friends and family, who all also have iphones because it works really well when messaging your friends and family.
HN chronically forgets that the average american cell phone user might know what iMessage actually is. Nevermind even having the faintest idea what a WhatsApp is. Or ever even heard of signal.
> If the DOJ accomplishes nothing else besides forcing Apple to open up iMessage, it will be a victory.
Couldn't Apple just make the shittiest Android iMessage client anyone could ever imaging and the go "See, there it is, nobody wants it"
My take is that Apple has engineered iMessage in such a way that if anyone could just use it, then Apple would be stuck with a massive bill for running the infrastructure, without any benefits. They could in theory charge people a small amount to cover the cost, but that would also just keep people of the platform. WhatsApp made next to nothing when they attempted to charge people and Signal rely on donations. There's no way to push a for-pay messaging app.
iMessage being Apple only isn't what keeps me from buying an Android phone (Google manages to do that all by themselves). I already have three messaging apps on my phone, and four on my laptop, there's plenty of choice on that front.
Agreed. I remember seeing a YT review of the camera on the S23U and really raving about it.
Then he said that he wouldn't use it, because his family and friends won't let him... said they practically staged an "intervention" last time he used a device without imessage.
This wasn't a small YouTuber. Among teens, the pressure is even more real. imessage is being used to drive adoption in a really bizarre way.
antitrust law considers things like substitutability. It refers to the degree to which consumers can replace a good or service with a close alternative, considering factors like price, quality, and performance. Conversely, if there are no close substitutes and consumers are less likely to switch, the relevant market might be narrower. If the barriers to switching are high, the availability of an alternative may not be enough to let a monopolist off the hook.
It already works with SMS, though. You can choose to use 3rd party apps like WhatsApp. I fail to see how users are meaningfully "locked-in" any more than an android
Teens get bullied if they show up as green bubbles in group chats. I've had people tell me they wouldn't want to show up as green bubbles to potential romantic partners. The iMessage lock-in effects are real.
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.
>I think it's debatable whether the average iPhone customer buys it, knowing it allows Apple to heavily tax all AppStore developers.
I think if you explained it to the average iPhone customer you might be shocked they side with Apple. The concept of a platform where for free you can take advantage of it and just make 100% of the revenue without cutting in the owner of the platform is completely alien to how things work in what they consider the real world.
I can't just walk into Walmart and set up a stand and make money, if I want to sell in Walmart I have to work with them and give them a similar sized cut. If I even set my stall up on the street I have to pay for permits, certification, suppliers.
Not saying I agree with the App Store tax because I actually don't but I think the way they set it up as a "Store" was very clever in making it seem completely normal when it's completely abnormal compared to all personal computing up to that point, which maybe was an anomaly? Hope not.
> I can't just walk into Walmart and set up a stand and make money, if I want to sell in Walmart I have to work with them and give them a similar sized cut.
Apple's App Store might be Walmart, but the phone I bought is not Walmart.
Regular people understand the idea of "I bought a thing, and now the greedy company won't let me do what I want with it unless I buy their overpriced add-on", see printers.
Apple is no more entitled to a cut of everything I put on my iPhone anymore than Walmart is entitled to a cut of everything I put on my table simply because they made the table.
> Apple's App Store might be Walmart, but the phone I bought is not Walmart.
I don't know if that's inherently correct in people's eyes. For a counterexample, note that video game consoles are very popular, and I don't see any widespread opposition to the idea that e.g. Nintendo is controlling what you can play on a Switch.
Anecdotally, the people I know who do console gaming are really fed up with the lack of backwards compatibility; New console comes out, all your old games are now incompatible.
Now PC games often lose backwards compatibility when upgrading OS versions, but patches, compatibility modes, and even VMs are realistic options and ones that people will use.
Rights are things that you cannot choose to give up. You explicitly cannot trade them away since the poorest people would be forced to do that in order to afford anything.
I assert that I have rights under the first sale doctrine which let me do whatever I want with the things I own. Apple has no more of a right to dictate what I put on my device than Walmart has a right to dictate when I put on my table simply because they sold it to me.
Well the more important question is are you entitled to that functionality, or can it be taken away on a whim?
But those are more "advanced" questions. We still haven't even established the fact that I should indeed own the thing I purchased (see music or movies or anything). So we have a while to go before we get to questions of transference of services.
The point of the suit is, they should be free to make that choice on their iPhone. No one is going to remove the app store, and if you love sucking from the teat of Apple so much, you can continue to do so in an environment where there are competing app stores
Your point is fine but you have to at least acknowledge the dynamic that users are takers of software and companies have every incentive to take their popular apps off the app store.
It's gonna be the first thing Facebook does, and maybe that's fine but it's going to reduce consumer choice. You won't be able to have the Facebook but with the tracking restrictions anymore because it's bad for their bottom line. I don't really know if there's a good answer for how to strike this balance but it seems drastic that people want it to be illegal to offer a platform where all participants have to play by the platform's rules.
What tracking restrictions do you refer to that are implemented through app-store policies that are not (or cannot) be implemented through OS level restrictions?
The consoles are the most obvious example, but there are other things, too.
Perhaps the "best" counter argument is the Mac App Store and Steam - both of which take a big cut, both of which can be "easily" bypassed for many apps, and both of which customers don't really seem to care about from a monetary point of view.
People care much more about what is or is not permitted, not where the money goes.
Plenty of people complain vocally if you don't release your game on Steam, same deal when a musician doesn't release their music on Spotify.
I think a lot of developers will be surprised how many customers actually side with the convenience of the platform over the actual person creating the value.
Steam value to customer is huge - and it's understandable why people just go to Steam and "don't have to think about it" even when you can get the same item elsewhere, perhaps even cheaper.
> both of which take a big cut, both of which can be "easily" bypassed for many apps, and both of which customers don't really seem to care about from a monetary point of view.
This isn't true. You cannot bypass the stream 30% fee from the consumer side.
Because of practices that stream does, which are arguably anti-competitive, I cannot buy the same exact game, from the game developer's website, and receive a 30% discount.
If such discounts were possible, and it was clearly advertised that I could just get the game for cheaper from a different location, customers would absolutely take that option almost always.
You can bypass the Steam fee as the publisher. Steam's rule is that you can't sell a Steam key for your game somewhere else consistently cheaper than it's sold on Steam. You're free to go wild with pricing, so long as it's on a completely separate distribution platform.
(At the very least, if they're trying to do a most-favored-nation rule, they're not listing it in their policies and are enforcing it through back-channels.)
While interest in doing so on handhelds has lessened a little due to phones almost always being more capable, wanting to be able to run custom software on consoles is common enough that lots of effort is spent on the cat and mouse game between console hackers and console makers.
You might think that, but at least back during the PSP and PSVita days (when I was into consoles), a large chunk of it was about the homebrew. For a decent chunk of the Vita's existence you only could do homebrew and emulators. Piracy is always just a service problem, with most other pirates being people who weren't going to be customers anyway.
"Being able to do exactly what you want with a thing you paid for" is a very different angle of argument to "knowing it allows Apple to heavily tax all AppStore developers"
I was tackling why I don't think that argument holds water with the average person.
"now the greedy company won't let me do what I want with it unless I buy their overpriced add-on"
With printers this is very tangible to the customer, with the App Store what you're describing here isn't as tangible because nothing on the App Store is actually expensive, it's either free or relatively cheap and it's more a case that the user pays little or nothing, Apple gets a cut for doing close to nothing and the dev gets screwed, printers is more the customer gets screwed.
As an iPhone user, if I wanted a phone with Samsung, Amazon, Epic and Huawei stores, 3 different preinstalled browsers and my workflows depended on sideloading some obscure app for a website in Turkey, I'd go with Android. Such an option exists for people who are into that.
But I chose iPhone (and I think many other customers do) specifically for it being a walled garden. Now some other corporations like Epic, who want to have a cake and eat it too, are going to ruin one of the platform's key selling points.
> my workflows depended on sideloading some obscure app
And if your workflow did require an obscure app, who is Apple to decided that you cannot install it on your own phone?
> But I chose iPhone (and I think many other customers do) specifically for it being a walled garden.
People like this walled garden since apple promises that it's safe and they deal with all of the problems for you. But time and time again we see that their App Store features outright scams and mountains of knockoff garbage apps.
People buy into the marketing of the walled garden, not the reality of it.
>People like this walled garden since apple promises that it's safe and they deal with all of the problems for you.
I get the "safety" argument, but it's also about the user experience. What if now Microsoft makes me install Microsoft store to use M365 apps, Amazon makes me install whatever store to use their products, etc? What do I win here as a consumer?
I buy iPhone specifically for what it is. I get that some people don't like walled garden approach, so they have Android at their service. Apple is not a monopoly.
What is the point of buying a phone knowing what you are getting, and then complaining about something you knew full well it doesn't have?
> What is the point of buying a phone knowing what you are getting, and then complaining about something you knew full well it doesn't have?
Because the thing the company is offering is a behaviour that overall is not one we as a society want (Apple being allowed to dictate what businesses will and will not succeed by either locking them out of 1/2 of the major mobile OS, or by taking a 30% tax from their revenue and then competing against them).
>Apple being allowed to dictate what businesses will and will not succeed by either locking them out of 1/2 of the major mobile OS, or by taking a 30% tax from their revenue and then competing against them
All app stores (and most real-world markets and stores) do that. This is a business model. And as a store owner who invested billions of dollars to build it, and the entire platform and infrastructure around it, you are in your full right to decide the rules on what is allowed there and what is not, and how much to charge. If your rules are unfair or disadvantageous to the competition, sellers and customers simply will not come. But as we can see, App Store is the most successful app marketplace on the planet, both for developers and consumers.
Just as Google is the most successful search engine on the planet for advertisers, website owners and consumers, regardless of the fact that Google can fully dictate what appears in its search results or what advertisers can put in their ads, and how much Google charges for it.
So I don't quite understand what exactly the argument here.
This this different argument than allowing sideloading apps (that one is quite fair, I'll admit).
It is related to side loading. Apple for a long time disallowed side loading (even now it barely counts). So if you wanted to sell anything to iPhone users you had to go through Apple's store and potentially compete with them at a 30% tax disadvantage.
Even with the current side loading changes, which are EU only, they still take a major cut and still dictate who can and cannot run a store.
So I agree with you that the App Store, like other stores have the right to dictate what they do and do not sell. They do not, however, have the right to say that they're the only store allowed, or that any new store must pay them money.
Also, I'd be hesitant of using Google's behaviour, certainly its current behaviour or current market position, as justification for what is okay for others to do.
How can you know that it’s the most successful store in the absence of any competition at all? You don’t have a choice. The App Store app comes preinstalled on iPhones and iPads and you cannot choose any other store, so no wonder it’s successful. The only conclusion that you can draw from that is the iPhone and iPad owners like to buy apps.
I've been a loyal iPhone user since what? the iPhone 3.
The moment Apple is forced to "open up to the competition", all Meta apps are going to magically move to the Meta Store, where they'll likely be able to shove all sorts of tracking garbage down my throat.
Same for Alphabet, same for Samsung, same for Microsoft.
The experience will turn into a hopeless struggle against EULAs and consents, unless one refuses to install any third-party spyware and do the digital equivalent of moving into a forest cabin. The oddball, while everyone else sheepishly complies.
Evenyone loves to hate Apple, everyone forgets that the first commercial music store to sell unencrypted and hugh fidelity AAC files was Apple's. The rest was "squirting" tunes on Zune or inflicting Realmedia on their paying customers.
I don't think your points about Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Firstly. If they are doing things we don't want them to do, the solution is regulations, not a monopoly.
So if you're unhappy with their behaviour, that should be made illegal.
Secondly. Apple's protection against tracking comes from the OS level. The OS stops them from accessing my contacts and my GPS location, not apple's 30% tax.
> sell unencrypted and hugh fidelity AAC files was Apple's.
So what. How unencrypted are those audio files now? They've since moved on to FairPlay.
Where are all these hostile apps on Android?
Even the Facebook example, last I checked it's still on the Google's App Store.
Cause there's plenty of examples of Apple's store filled with spam and outright fraudulent phishing apps. There's a big difference between the image Apple advertises for the App Store and what it's actually like.
I don't think so. It seemed very strong about "Even if they would know, they still wouldn't care". Which I think is absolutely false. See people constantly complaining about having to buy expensive inkjet cartridges.
But this is why the eu case made more sense? It went after Apple for not allowing side loading of app stores vs this one which seems to be going after what Apple does on its own store?
Arguably phones are becoming less like stores and more like a significant part of life. This is especially true as more and more of modern life demands a smart phone and apps.
And the only options are to take the deal -- modifiable at any time by the platform owner -- or burn down your digital life and start over on the only other practical competitor.
This is a framing issue. I think your comment is a great comment and probably does reflect a popular understanding. A farmer can't just set up shop in a supermarket without first paying and submitting to some vetting by the store owner. The problem here is that Apple doesn't just own the store or the platform for publicity and distribution. They also own the platform on which the software is run. It is analagous to Walmart also owning your house and not allowing you to buy home goods from any store except Walmart. I don't believe an average consumer would find that to be an acceptable business practice.
> I think if you explained it to the average iPhone customer you might be shocked they side with Apple. The concept of a platform where for free you can take advantage of it and just make 100% of the revenue without cutting in the owner of the platform is completely alien to how things work in what they consider the real world.
Who is arguing it should be free? Why create a false dichotomy where it's either the status quo (30%) or nothing (0%)?
I'm sure most people would accept a reasonable fee. It's hard to put an exact number on this because it would have emerged organically if Apple actually allowed fair competition in app stores. In the absence of fair competition, the best comparison I can think of is credit card processing which is about 3%
And don't forget that Apple receives enormous benefit from these apps being in their store. If not, consider what would have happened had Apple not allowed any apps in their store. Hint: Android would have eaten the world.
I don’t know where this idea that 30% is an unreasonable monopoly-sustained fee comes from. Stripe’s fee is 2.9% plus 0.30, so it would be way more than 3% on small purchases, which I assume are a lot of App Store transactions. Steams is 30% even though there’s compition (Discord tried to run a store with a 90/10 split and shut it down very quickly). Google Play is the same as Apple’s, and they allow other payment processors (for non-games). On the other hand, Audible has no competition, and they have a 75% fee (as in they keep 75%).
Most App developers aren’t even paying 30%, they’re paying the lower 15%.
>> In the absence of fair competition, the best comparison I can think of is credit card processing which is about 3%
Sure 3%, + a flat fee of .02 to .10 per transaction. that flat portion is going to be HUGE if your charing under $5 for something. You get none of that money back for chargebacks, or refunds. And if your charge backs are high your going to pay more as a % or get dropped so your going to have to hire CS people to answer emails or phones, and say nice things to angry people. You're going to pay someone to pay cc compaines to give money back.
Meanwhile you're small, you have no clue if the person on the other end is a refund scammer. Apple (and Steam) have this habit of telling people to "fuck off" if they refund scam. They have the weight with CC processors to do that. you will not. They also have customer trust, because if your product (game/app) is shitty they give customers money back (See Epic 1/2 billion settlement for being bad about this, and kids).
Is 30 percent high. It is. Is it unreasonable... meh maybe not?
The thing with Steam that makes it different to me is the access control and gatekeeping. For example Steam hardware is so open that you can immediately install a different OS on it without even booting it. Steam hardware will happily run any third-party app store you want, including Epic Games their main rival. Steam also (AFAIK) don't do exclusivity BS like the consoles often do. So when it comes to Steam they are clearly competing fairly and evenly in a free market. If Apple were the same (iPhone could run 3rd party app stores, or you could install Android on you Apple hardware) I would have absolutely no problem with 30%. Hell I wouldn't even have a problem with 90%, because if they weren't providing that much value then a competitor would come in and take it from them.
>> So when it comes to Steam they are clearly competing fairly and evenly in a free market. If Apple were the same (iPhone could run 3rd party app stores, or you could install Android on you Apple hardware)
I can buy android devices that are as good as the iPhone or better in their own way and have all those features (side loading other app stores). Is that not the free market in action?
That would be an interesting way for Apple to side-step the whole question: unlock the bootloaders and make it clear how you could do whatever you wanted with it (except run hacked iOS).
The number of people buying iPhones to run even a slick version of Android would probably be quite small.
> I think the way they set it up as a "Store" was very clever in making it seem completely normal
The App Store was not a business innovation by Apple to set expectations, it's how all cell phone software that preceded it worked. Apple's change was to lower the fees and open up access to everyone.
>> Apple's change was to lower the fees and open up access to everyone.
Everyone seems to have forgotten that ring tones cost an arm and a leg, that "apps" were awful (I know I designed one)... You had to pay to get your app on a phone even if it was free.
General computing on a mobile device was never mainstream, or even common, before the iPhone. Smartphones are much closer to laptops than pre-smart phones, IMO.
Sure, but that doesn't change the point. The App Store exists as it is because the iPhone was a phone and that's how things were done on phones. Apple didn't create the model, they just continued it.
The iPhone is a computer, but unlike past computers it introduced a walled-garden App Store.
Also, software on phones before the iPhone was also gate-kept by carriers. Apple was not maintaining the status quo. They were changing it for their benefit.
In my view, my phone is MYDEVICE. It is most definitely not "Google/Apple's platform"!
Google is merely manufacturing my phone, and I intend Google to have no rights or control whatsoever regarding my phone, and merely have the obligation (not right, obligation) to manufacture it correctly and provide open-source software for it that works correctly and properly provides Android interfaces (obviously, I don't use an Apple phone since Apple doesn't offer that, while Google does since they provide devices with unlocked bootloaders that run open-source OSes).
It only runs Android because Google with Android happened to win the adoption lottery and it would run PodunkOS by ACME if PodunkOS by ACME had been the one that managed to gain critical mass.
Again it is absolutely not even remotely close to "Google/Apple's platform", and I have no intention for Google to interfere in my use of it and certainly not interfere in any relations I might have with people providing software for my phone like taking a cut of the transaction or deciding how that software should behave.
Normal people don't think that deeply about it or understand even 10% of the terms you just reeled out.
I'm talking about the normal persons perception of the situation, not what is right in terms of how a technically savvy person would look at the situation.
It's pretty simple: "it's my phone, I do what I want with it, just like my house or car".
Which includes "go to any website and run any app I can download from it, regardless of whether it's illegal or against any rules or against the interests of the phone maker" and "change any aspect of functionality that I don't like (e.g. apps being able to show ads) and that I can find out on the web how to change".
It doesn't include "Google or Apple make rules about what I can do with my phone that I can't override".
Or any nintendo or playstation or xbox. I can't just sideload games into any of them either.. or any of my 'smarttvs' etc.
Would this mean that anyone must be able to load any software into any platform that runs on software, or are we just picking on apple because they are popular. And got popular while doing all these things.. if people didn't want it they wouldn't have bought into it in the first place.
> are we just picking on apple because they are popula
Well, yes, antitrust law specifically, by design, focusses more on large market players, not small ones (there are some aspects still relevant to any participant, though.)
That's kind of central to the whole problem it is intended to solve.
Nope, 100M consoles in an internet of several billion where Apple has literal billions of devices in market are not at all the same thing and bringing that up suggests you don't think very hard before you post or you're trying to derail those who do.
I’m sorry that me asking a question is so emotionally upsetting to you that it leads to you attempting to insult me. I’ll try not to ask anymore question about Microsoft the 3.19 trillion dollar company, Sony the 113 billion dollar company, and Nintendo the 10 billion dollar company. I hope my question didn’t hurt these mom and pop businesses. You also made me completely aware of the fact that these aren’t the big three players in the console market which is a pretty fair comparison to this situation. Thanks again for your wonderful contribution.
You could have initially responded with that instead of reasoning that apple is being focused due to being a large player while dismissing other large companies being brought up.
sorry i can sideload my xbox and playstation. Just because they've been dinged for antitrust in other areas (i don't think sony has .. but certainly microsoft in my lifetime)..
> Or any nintendo or playstation or xbox. I can't just sideload games into any of them either
Homebrew is a thing, and you should be able to use whatever software you want on a device that you paid for. I have no doubt that there are people who own an iphone and wish they could have a different browser, or wish they could use a game streaming app.
They absolutely can. I can compile and install anything i want on my iphone, have to have a dev account is all. Also i think there are still iphone jailbreaks to be had.
I would love all hardware to have an "open option" that disables all security keys, doesn't let you run signed software, whatever, but lets you "hack" the device.
I'm also fine with Nintendo selling games via their store and physically, and taking whatever cut they can bear of it.
(80% of App Store revenue is "games" anyway, so it's a much closer analogy than people might expect. They may end up opening everything except games and only cost them 20% of revenue.)
Meanwhile you can get full advantage of the iPhone ecosystem "for $100/yr" which is nearly free, including App Store distribution, etc. If anything, Apple should be charged with dumping in those cases.
Apple convinced us that only they could keep us safe. Turns out their argument is specious - they can't keep us safe either. They haven't been able to keep malicious apps off of their App Store.
They are probably not monopolies in the legal sense, since there are three of them with comparable market share and they also compete with the PC, which is open. I suspect there would be more pressure to do something about it if those weren't the case.
Apple sells something like 70% of phones in the USA due to network effects that might not be apparent to users in other countries - social shaming for not using iMessage. The European equivalent is WhatsApp, which the EU is forcing to open up.
Most consumers are not even aware of how restrictive iOS is - for the same reason why they aren't aware game consoles do the same thing but way worse. All they know is where to buy compatible software.
If you told them "you have to pay 30% to the person who invented books every time you write something" they'd scream censorship and call for an armed revolution.
Authors often receive much less than that for each book they sell - the best you can get is self-publishing on Kindle or something where you can net 70%: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634560
People generally know this, and they generally don't care.
Anyone can buy a laser printer, print any book, sell it, take 100% profits, and anyone can buy and read it.
But you can't do that with a mobile app because only Android users can use it, while anyone with an iPhone can't use the app unless you submit to Apple's rules.
Walmarts cut is largely based on their costs to stock and sell the item. Appstores costs are not related to the cut they take as they have >80% profit margin.
I don't consider myself an Apple fan, but Apple users definitely buy into the idea that "it just works" compared to Android or Windows, which the highly integrated software is a key component of.
In my opinion, Apple have a choice. They go down the "just works", tight integration and lower the fees for other developers OR they open up for competition and keep the fees.
At the moment they're double dipping. They're saying they have to be the only app store for security and UX AND then charging high fees. If they're really providing a service for end users, they shouldn't be taking such a large cut from developers.
> If they're really providing a service for end users, they shouldn't be taking such a large cut from developers.
Bingo. If they're making an argument that they have to retain so much control because it's good for the users, then why are their margins so big?
I'm not saying companies shouldn't be able to run successful, highly-profitable businesses.
I'm saying they shouldn't be able to (a) have significant market share, (b) have significant size / market cap, (c) have high margins, AND (d) claim "but we're so efficient for our users!" as a defense against anti-trust.
One of those things is bullshit, and 3 out of 4 are facts...
But doesn't the higher fees on dev help to keep the riff raff out? Sure, it's a nice profitable margin-padding fee but how else do they keep out the bottom feeders? Do Apple users what to pay a premium to get more useless noise?
Note: I'm not defending Apple. But the higher dev fees do serve a purpose other than revenue.
If high fees (with high margins) are there to ensure the integrity of the store, then Apple could invest more of that margin into ensuring the integrity of the store.
Back in the day you used to have to pay a bunch of money upfront to buy the software that allows you to develop software for a particular platform, then you were free to distribute your software as you wish.
If Apple is really concerned about keeping out the riff raff they could raise the annual flat developer fees.
But we all know that's not what they're actually concerned about - the app store is estimated to have 80% margins right now. They're just charging what the market will bear, and the market will bear quite a lot right now as they're part of a duopoly on smartphones.
I’m an Apple user (own iPad, iPhone, Mac Studio, among other devices) since the 90:s and I buy into that. But I _also_ think Apple has grown way too much into a bully and way too much into disallowing third party developers to do things Apple allows themselves to do with competing apps.
The “it just works” should be allowed to extend into the entire ecosystem.
Same, I like Apple hardware and while the OS experience has suffered recently, it’s great as a tool to get things done. But making Music.app and other services part of the ecosystem has not been a great move. Some things should allow for interoperability so that the user can make his choices. I think Apple has been too heavily handed in imposing its services to users.
"It just works" except I have to remember to not pay inside the app to get the cheapest price because the app price is 30% higher to pay the Apple tax. I need to open my laptop to buy a Kindle book instead of continuing to use my phone.
Small, minor, annoying issues as a customer that make me think slightly less of Apple while continuing to be in awe of their hardware.
But how would you know to do this if they're gagged developers from informing users about Apple's cut, cheaper prices elsewhere, or from giving them a link.
I'm sure people will pay a bit more to use Apple pay and not get kicked out to a browser and possibly fiddle with re-logging in and re-typing in their payment info to a sketchy site.
Very few will pay 30% more though, because even the people that love Apple pay will be forced to acknowledge it's an obvious ripoff, in no way commensurate to the value provided.
I know because I compare the price on the vendors website versus the app. And I know that because I am up and up on how these things work, and I do not expect everyone else to be.
However, I was just making a factual statement that anyone can pay using their browser on iPhone or iPad on the vendor’s website, just the same as they can using their laptop.
I bought an Air (M1) at the same time and felt like the air was the better value. For one, the fact that you can't hit a button to volume up/down, but instead have to activate the Touchbar, click the sound icon, try to move the volume left or right to desired location is too many steps, not precise and a pain.
I bought another Air this year (M2), and again, it's a far better value.
I doubt that a regular user has any opinion on whether Safari "just works". Some developers care about Safari vs Chrome vs Firefox browser engine features, but the average end user at most is just going to think some website sucks if it doesn't work. (And, personally, I don't see any problems in day to day usage, so I doubt it comes up much to those less technical than myself.)
To the extent that they care, they seem satisfied by being able to switch to other iOS browsers that under the hood use the WebKit engine, but give them the ecosystem-integration with their desktop browser that they want. Shared Chrome bookmarks and tabs matter 1000x more to a random user than details of browser engines.
Bear in mind that the article mentions other issues, such as preventing third party banks managing your NFC wallet, degrading interoperability with non-Apple products, etc.
Also, I'm not sure why you favor the App Store. It's not safe. Apple is unable to keep malicious apps off of it, and there is no warranty if you lose money due to a malicious app. People think there is some implied safety in the App Store. There is no such thing.
Safety comes from not giving permissions to apps which don't need them.
>> I think it's debatable whether the average iPhone customer buys it, knowing it allows Apple to heavily tax all AppStore developers.
> I’m a heavy and loyal Apple user AND an app developer.
Do you really think you're representative of the average iphone customer? A heavy, loyal user AND an app developer? I don't think so. And even if you were, your personal situation isn't a rebuttal
Monopoly law needs to be reinterpreted in light of network effects.
It's not merely the integration which is a problem, it's how that + network effects gives apple undue market power to dictate terms to its users, devs, etc.
Being a middleman between users and devs, say, takes on a different character when you're a 2-3T biz at the heart of the economy.
Exactly. From my point of view, nobody needs to be a lawyer to see that this can't stand as it is. There are two major operating systems for each form factor. In the last ten years, no other vendor has been able to successfully place a new OS on the market. If there wasn't a monopoly (or duopoly or oligarchy or whatever you wanna call it), then this would have happened. And this appears mainly to be due to network effects and the high complexity of the underlying systems.
You don’t need to be a lawyer to see that there’s a duopoly, but duopolies aren’t illegal. The DOJ has to prove illegal conduct, which is harder than just showing a lack of widespread competition.
So if there are 3 competitors and one drops out, the other two are now guilty of something? In all my years studying economics and law, I never heard anyone suggest anything remotely this draconian.
Considering in the Google antitrust case it came out that the companies were working hand in glove for years, what were have is a duopoly where the participants collude. This is also the case in broadband where ISPs carved up neighborhoods between themselves to reduce competition.
So sure, duopoly of real competitors is one thing, but that’s rarely the case once players realize they can set prices and divide the spoils.
> Considering in the Google antitrust case it came out that the companies were working hand in glove for years, what were have is a duopoly where the participants collude.
But then, the problem is that you have a cartel, not a duopoly. That’s the thing: you can only punish companies for their actions. A duopoly is a fact, in itself it does not imply any particular behaviour from either company. If there is collusion, then it’s anti-competitive behaviour, abuse of their dominant positions in the market, etc. Things that are already illegal and should be enforced.
> This is also the case in broadband where ISPs carved up neighborhoods between themselves to reduce competition.
The reason there is only 1 broadband ISP is because people are not willing to pay sufficiently more for fiber to offset the costs to install fiber to the home, especially in places with buried utilities.
Therefore, the existing coaxial connection is the only economically viable option.
Also, it rarely makes sense for 1 home to have multiple physical infrastructure connections, so they lend themselves to natural monopolies. If a house has access to fiber, it makes no sense to spend resources to run another fiber to the house.
Which is also why ISPs should be utilities, but that is not comparable to personal devices.
> is because people are not willing to pay sufficiently more for fiber to offset the costs to install fiber to the home
Which might be the case if, through taxes, we hadn't collectively paid for a lot of that in the way of subsidies and grants to those ISPs to do exactly that, subsidies and grants which resulted in, generally, more dividends, bonuses and stock buybacks than they did miles of fiber being laid.
> So if there are 3 competitors and one drops out, the other two are now guilty of something?
Well, Microsoft eventually got all but forced to port Office and, for a time, Internet Explorer to macOS to evade getting sanctioned by the EU.
In a similar vein, if the market is not healthy any more, the duopolists may be forced by regulatory authorities to make life easier for potential startup competitors: open up file format specifications, port popular applications with network effects (iMessage, Facetime, Find My in the case of Apple) to other platforms or open up specifications to allow others access/federation.
> Well, Microsoft eventually got all but forced to port Office and, for a time, Internet Explorer to macOS to evade getting sanctioned by the EU.
I have seen some people assert this a few times in the last couple of weeks and I don’t know where this comes from. This is not at all what happened.
This was part of an agreement between Apple and Microsoft in 1997, long before any EU decision. Microsoft bought some Apple shares and agreed to support office on MacOS for a few years, and Apple made IE their default browser.
One can argue whether they did it to improve the optics in their (American) antitrust lawsuit (and there are several details that do not make sense if it were the case), but it certainly was not forced on them by any court.
Ugh, this entire thread will be a frustrating exercise in folks insisting their feel-feels are the law of the land because they hate Apple and that takes precedence over facts and reality.
> So if there are 2 competitors and one drops out, then it's hardcore illegal, but otherwise it's a-okay?
No, it is absolutely not. There is nothing illegal about having a monopoly in the US. The government even explicitly and purposefully creates and grants monopolies pretty often. Natural monopolies are not illegal. Abusing your government-granted or natural monopoly is the illegal behavior.
I'm curious to see how they even construe a duopoly as a monopoly under current law, because this will have some profound impacts to the entire economy if they succeed.
> Ugh, this entire thread will be a frustrating exercise in folks insisting their feel-feels are the law of the land because they hate Apple and that takes precedence over facts and reality.
Typing this on one of many Apple devices I own. I don't hate Apple. But, you're right, comments like yours make this a frustrating exercise indeed.
> No, it is absolutely not. There is nothing illegal about having a monopoly in the US.
Yes yes, it may technically not be illegal per se, but then again, it's a problem. I am not a lawyer and I don't care about the details of the law. That's for other people. I am looking at this from a perspective of a consumer who feels actively harmed by what the tech industry has become. And as a member of society who cares for other people. If one company accrues that much by making it hard for others to compete, then they will rightfully be forced to give back if they don't do it out of their own free will.
Your point is not based on laws though, you're just wishing the laws were different. Which is fine, but the process here should be to change the laws first instead of warping the current laws' definition to punish Apple first, collateral damage be damned.
>then it's hardcore illegal
You aren't a lawyer, you don't care about the laws as written, yet make false statements about what the law says according to how you feel anyways then back pedal when called out that it's not actually illegal. I think you've said everything you can.
> Monopoly law needs to be reinterpreted in light of network effects.
This is the context of this discussion. If you think dragging me into details of the current law will distract me, sorry, no it won't. This thread is not about that.
> yet make false statements about what the law says
Now you are making false statements. I didn't say that the law says that. What's more, you dragged that piece of a sentence out of its context to make it appear as if it wasn't part of a question. But it was. So it's not a statement. It's a question. Is it a false question, maybe? Sounds a bit laughable to me.
The term “HHI” means the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index, a commonly accepted measure of market concentration. The HHI is calculated by squaring the market share of each firm competing in the market and then summing the resulting numbers. For example, for a market consisting of four firms with shares of 30, 30, 20, and 20 percent, the HHI is 2,600 (302 + 302 + 202 + 202 = 2,600).
The HHI takes into account the relative size distribution of the firms in a market. It approaches zero when a market is occupied by a large number of firms of relatively equal size and reaches its maximum of 10,000 points when a market is controlled by a single firm. The HHI increases both as the number of firms in the market decreases and as the disparity in size between those firms increases.
The agencies generally consider markets in which the HHI is between 1,000 and 1,800 points to be moderately concentrated, and consider markets in which the HHI is in excess of 1,800 points to be highly concentrated. See U.S. Department of Justice & FTC, Merger Guidelines § 2.1 (2023). Transactions that increase the HHI by more than 100 points in highly concentrated markets are presumed likely to enhance market power under the Horizontal Merger Guidelines issued by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. See id.
>In the last ten years, no other vendor has been able to successfully place a new OS on the market.
How much of this is because of evil monopoly forces, and how much of it is because users prefer iOS and Android? It's not like the mobile device market snapped into existence overnight, both Android and iOS beat out Blackberry and managed to fend off Microsoft.
Most of it was because of the channels. People buy a phone from their carrier. They don't buy from an OS manufacturer. They don't even buy from a phone manufacturer. They get a plan and it comes with a phone. Carriers only distribute phones from a few proven vendors, and that decision involves a lot of games of golf and karaoke nights on company tabs.
Turns out the phone cartel is the phone company cartel in a trench coat.
Before either iOS or Android existed, you could get phones running Windows CE from carriers. Why didn't that stick around? Especially since those primitive smartphones gave carriers a lot more control over their app stores.
> If there wasn't a monopoly (or duopoly or oligarchy or whatever you wanna call it), then this would have happened.
I...don't think that's sufficiently self-evident to stand on its own.
Fundamentally, it's hard to have a world with more than a very small number of operating systems for the major form factors of device—unless those operating systems are mandated to interoperate in significant ways.
Creating a new operating system for phones also requires some things that are not at all easy to get:
1) You need hardware. This means that either you're creating an OS for an existing hardware platform (in this case, Android or iOS) or you're building your own phones. Given the legal frameworks that existed over the past decade and a half (as distinct from the particular dominance of one platform or another), that basically means you're building your own phones. Some people have tried to do that, but it adds hugely to the up-front cost of getting an OS going.
2) You need to get a critical mass of people using it. Until and unless this happens, what you've created has to live or die based on the apps and services that you build for the phone. No one's going to dedicate their own time, effort, and money to creating software for a phone that only 10,000 people have ever bought.
Now, I can see a pretty strong argument for a new legal framework that would make #1 much easier—specifically, requiring all hardware platforms (possible "all hardware platforms over X sales") to provide a fully-open specification for third-party OS makers to use (with appropriate clauses about dogfooding the open API to prevent the hardware maker from just using a bunch of private APIs to preference their OS). This would allow people to create their own OS for the iPhone without Apple's interference.
But that's not what we've had since 2007, so your bold but unsupported statement that the lack of third choices for mobile OSes in and of itself proves that Apple is a monopoly (or at least that Apple/Google together make up an abusive duopoly) does not hold up to scrutiny.
Since market cap is a determinant in behavior (the speculative value of a secondary market) where's the case for forcing nVidia to open up CUDA or for Microsoft to let Nintendo open a store on the Xbox?
We need proactive antitrust laws that break up companies beyond a certain size criteria. There are many markets beyond the tech sector that need a breakup. But no, lets wait until there is enough outrage before the DoJ laggardly assembles a case against them.
the new form of corp + government collusion does these weak investigations and charges, tying up the space for years and ultimately losing. It allows politicians to claim they are doing something, while securing access for intel agencies and insuring pro status quo election messaging.
These charges also undercut the next administration's leverage to negotiate with Apple, now that the threat of anti-trust charges are taken off the table.
The problem with a software moat is that it's infecting physical objects. Hardware, sure. But things like your tractor refusing to work if you use a non-vendor approved component. Not sued, just bricked.
Though the average hackernews reader knows all this, it is not my impression that the average apple consumer is aware of it. Anecdotally, many of the people in my social vicinity choosing apple, are the same people who make their choices based on what they presume the 'cool kids' believe is the 'in' choice. I don't experience iphone users as tech-savvy, as much as I seem them be 'anxious to be cool'.
I think most people just like how simple the products are overall. I prefer that my family, who tends to need a lot of basic tech support, have iPhones because they’re able to figure most things out and there’s no real risk of them messing anything important up. I’ve also noticed this strange phenomenon that the majority of people who complain about iPhones and the apple ecosystem don’t even use them. If someone doesn’t like what the company offers, they’re not forced to buy any of their products. I hate the idea of needing to deal with multiple app stores in the future because people who don’t even use the products have some sort of issue with it.
It is a feature, interfaces between pieces of software is some of the most expensive and challenging parts of writing it. When every piece of software is written specifically with that interfacing in mind it will just run better. Now Apple hardware is starting to do the same thing?
I am pretty bullish on Apple right now and could easily see a future where Windows isn't even used for gaming anymore. When Macbook Airs start to be capable of running high end games what is the point of getting a huge Desktop running Windows jammed with bloatware from 100 different companies?
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.
It's wild to me to see people defending Apple in the comments here.
60% of Americans own a phone they're not allowed to install third party apps on, and the ONLY way to get apps is to pay a 30% fee to Apple on every purchase.
Imagine if Windows allowed you to only install apps acquired through their store, and with the same 30% fee. Microsoft literally had a huge anti trust case against them for simply setting a default browser, one you could have switched away from at any time.
It's probably the clearest monopoly in America right now. The damage to consumers is immediately visible (30% fee leaves a lot of margin on the table for competitors). Just look at the number of apps that either don't allow you to purchase their subscription on Apple at all, or charge substantially more. It should be a slam dunk case.
It's nothing like a slam dunk case. In fact, it's an attempt by DOJ to stretch and redefine the edges of their rights under anti-trust rules.
It's also nothing like Microsoft -- Microsoft was a monopoly, full stop, in the 1990s. They were well over 90% of desktop market share in business, and likely close in consumer. And as 1990s era Microsoft employees will remind you if you ask them -- "there's nothing wrong with being a monopoly, only abusing your monopoly power". Forcing IE on people was considered abuse by the courts of the time, and even then was widely considered to be a result of a Clinton-era DOJ, e.g. politics were involved. As they are now, both progressive anti-big-tech politics, and bipartisan anti-consumer encryption politics.
Today there are hundreds of functional choices you could make for any sane definition of the product categories Apple is in. Mobile phone? Sure - from totally open Pinephone type systems to vanilla Android to stripped-down Android to ... Laptop? yep. Servers/Desktop? Please. Watches? Check.
Are there any major pieces of software that consumers must have that are locked to Apple, and that Apple is charging egregious rent on? Nope. Most Macbook airs are really just browser engines. As of 2020, about 50% of those macbook airs ran Google's chrome as their primary browser.
You might, like me, feel Apple's App store walled garden is on balance a net positive, leaving me with almost no worries related to upgrade problems, my family's phones being compromised by malware, etc, or you might like many others hate the controls, want to root your Android phone and install your own apks directly, and thus choose Android or some other unix-a-like-on-mobile -- more power to you.
What we've seen you won't get the US courts to do is conclude that Apple's huge user base and developer base, controlled through their App store, is somehow a 'public good' that needs to be given away to others that didn't pay to develop, build and market it -- that's pretty much settled. It's valuable, super valuable. It's a competitive moat. But it's not abuse of a monopoly position to have such a thing.
> In fact, it's an attempt by DOJ to stretch and redefine the edges of their rights under anti-trust rules.
Given the incredibly attenuated state of antitrust enforcement in this country, maybe that's not such a bad thing. Going after the most profitable company in human history would make quite a statement, producing a chilling effect to the corporations.
>You might, like me, feel Apple's App store walled garden is on balance a net positive, leaving me with almost no worries related to upgrade problems, my family's phones being compromised by malware, etc, or you might like many others hate the controls
You realize the app store can remain a walled garden, and users can be allowed to install their own applications right?
It's wild to me the number of people who argue for less freedom when the topic of Apple's walled garden comes up.
>It's also nothing like Microsoft -- Microsoft was a monopoly, full stop, in the 1990s.
Plenty of anti trust cases have been brought against companies that don't have 90% of a market. 60+% is quite a lot.
Blame Apple for that. They require you to disable security by jailbreaking your phone in order to install Cydia. On Android you can easily install other appstores while keeping security intact.
If you don't want other app stores, just deploy an MDM profile that bans them.
> You realize that when you add appstores like Cydia to an iphone that you immediately open them up into gaping security holes right?
Then this is an OS sandboxing issue, not an App Store issue. The only difference between an app store and a regular app is the app store is permitted to install other apps. This extra permission should not introduce any security flaws if sandboxing is working properly.
What no one seems to be able to explain to my satisfaction is why this logic doesn't also apply to game consoles. The "well they sell it at a loss" argument is not persuasive. That's Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft's choice as a business, it's not the government's role to make their loss-leader business model possible.
> What no one seems to be able to explain to my satisfaction is why this logic doesn't also apply to game consoles.
Sony is currently facing antitrust litigation in multiple jurisdictions over it; more generally, the fact that a particular other actor has not yet been successfully sued under a law for actions similar to those for which some actor is currently being sued does not mean the law does not apply to their actions. It just means they haven't been successfully sued yet.
Regulations come into place when there's consumer harm, and consumers have TONS of choices in regards to games.
The vast majority of the library on Xbox/PS is cross platform. PC gamers are enjoying their vast Steam library and there's plenty of Switch clones that can handle everything from AAA gaming to indy titles.
Also the largest gaming market is on mobile phones by far. So here we are with this antitrust suit.
Consumers are not terribly harmed by this because gaming is a leisure activity while smartphones are critical components of everyday life. Also, no game company has billions of users and there are several players with little moat who actually have to compete to win users so prices come down even if there isn't much cross OS play.
60% of Americans CHOOSE to own a phone that has those features...
I think that is the issue. Android offers (nearly) all of the same functionality and yet people still choose iPhone.
Abusing your ecosystem is one thing (ex. defaulting to Apple Maps for location links, only allowing Safari as default browser), but not allowing 3P app stores seems perfectly within a company's rights.
Amazon isn't forced to list your product and Apple shouldn't be forced to give you access to it's hardware/software users.
>Abusing your ecosystem is one thing (ex. defaulting to Apple Maps for location links, only allowing Safari as default browser), but not allowing 3P app stores seems perfectly within a company's rights.
Is taxing every purchase on your platform for 30% not abusing your ecosystem?
>I think that is the issue. Android offers (nearly) all of the same functionality and yet people still choose iPhone.
iMessage is a non zero cause of this, and looking at the percentage of teens with iPhones, 85+%, likely a colossal cause. Which directly falls into Apple abusing their ecosystem.
That isn't a tax. It is a cost. In the same way you probably don't look at the overhead a clothing store puts on every pair of jeans you buy. You don't have to buy those jeans from that store, but you should realize that every store has a "tax" on clothes they carry.
Apple isn't abusing its ecosystem if users prefer it. I don't follow this logic on your second point.
It is absolutely a tax. The "cost" you pay upfront, the hundred dollar annual membership cost. Though even that could be considered a tax and not a "cost", because without it you can't even write software and deploy it on your own devices.
I don't understand what people don't understand about this. Comments like "you are free to buy another phone" or "regulating is only going to stifle innovation" show an utter ignorance about how tech industry works and a very naive view about capitalism.
Apple, as all other big tech companies, grow and thrive because of the ecosystem of companies, suppliers, consumers, researchers, and (importantly) those who offer products and services on top of them. They have built a very successful "platform": the iPhone. Because a mobile phone is not a "device" any longer, it's part of an infrastructure, used by companies, banks, healthcare and governments to offer consumers and citizens services, on which often life depends on. If you build a platform to keep it half-opened, at your convenience, with aggressive lock-in strategies, favouring your own products (apps) at the damage of others, you are playing dirty. No matter how much consumers love and trust you, you are playing dirty at the expenses of all those companies, banks, healthcare and governments that rely on you and at the expenses of consumers and society at large. Apple can still have its own wonderful walled garden for its iPhone, but give the possibility to others to create their own gardens too.
Regarding interventionism (ruling, punishing etc.), that's done for _protecting_ capitalism. I often read comments on HN that criticise the EU for creating pointless regulations that are anti-competitive or a burden and what not. What these people completely get wrong is that the EU institutions are as capitalistic as they can be. Capitalism is excellent at creating wealth, but it's also excellent at destroying itself as proven multiple times. Those regulations are meant to create a _healthy_ capitalism, one that fosters competition, creates jobs and favours consumers. Something that the US used to worry about in the past, but then got too lobbied (or maybe too nationalistic?) and stopped doing it. I am happy that someone is starting to wake up now.
Making iPhones more open comes with some risks, yes, but the current situation is unsustainable and something must be done about it.
1. Allowing such apps to handle their own payment processing across multiple applications. This means Apple doesn't get to force everyone through the in-app purchasing funnel and collect a transaction fee. There could be an exception made that the fee is waived for purchasing physical goods and services through the super-app. This shouldn't be a hard change. The big fight will be over selling digital content and what is a fair percentage.
2. Allow users to install binary plugins or extensions into a single app without going through an AppStore review. Apple does not currently allow this unless the plugins or extensions are web-based and can run inside the webkit sandbox.
They'll have a strong argument that forcing them to allow running arbitrary, unreviewed code will open up big security holes.
The actual complaint leads off with the iBooks thing, which is a terrible start. Apple lost that case and it shouldn’t have; to this day, that result enables Amazon’s effective monopoly on paid ebooks.
> “all that matters is who has the cheapest hardware” and consumers could “buy[] a [expletive] Android for 25 bux at a garage sale and . . . have a solid cloud computing device” that “works fine.”
I'd like to see them chastised/regulated for their anticompetitive browser policies which cripple PWAs and web technologies in general. I was truly thrilled to hear about this month's UK and European legislation on the matter.[0]
Security Engineering is mostly about control and minimizing attack surfaces. Apple iOS implements this exceedingly well, with defaults, while still being one of the most widely used platforms on the planet. I believe IOS gets it right the vast majority of the time with solid architectural changes and not just endless patches and knobs that are hidden and forgot about. This is the key difference of "It just works" verses other platforms.
If someone wants to run another platform, go for it. Of course are shortcomings in iOS (as with any system), but viewing entire problem space of security and privacy, the default install of IOS + Safari could rarely be any better for the average consumer. This is why Security and Privacy is literally a paid feature of the IOS platform, and anecdotally everyone professional I know (who isn't in tech) is using IOS devices.
Personally, I'm planning to blocking RCS and any third party app stores on any of my own (and families) devices -- again, control and minimizing attack surfaces and eliminating an entire class of issues is better than trying to manage them to no end.
Yes, if someone locks you in a prison cell you're safe. Except from the warden and guards. You get to read only what they let you, eat only what they let you. But, you're safe
This isn't a very honest statement, either. Your choices for mobile platforms are Android and iOS. That's it. That is not a free market; that's a duopoly, and stating that you have a "choice" is, while literally true, misleading to the point of being disingenuous.
Moreover, it's extremely clear that Apple is not pursuing the edge of the security-freedom efficient frontier, but is intentionally sacrificing freedom in order to lock consumers in to its ecosystems, acting in ways that are clearly anti-free-market and anti-competitive and are entirely deserving of lawsuits like the one in the posted article even if there was more competition than there is now.
The complaint doesn't talk much about alternative app stores or web browser engines. If Apple lost, would they even need to start allowing alternative stores or browsers? I guess it would be all up to a judge in that case, but the complaint isn't specifically stating that alternative app stores or browser engines should be allowed.
A user should be able to load a cryptographic key to the bootloader and boot any OS of their choosing. I'm kind of more on the extreme "Free Market" way of thinking, but even I think that government should step in and force an iPhone to be like a Macbook in this way.
Apple has removed competitors apps and taken their markets in the past. They are not a neutral party, and the weights of public interest must be to sustain open markets. It is good for everyone, it's unfortunate Apple has to be forced to do it but they only did it to themselves.
This seems like such a waste of time for the Justice Department. Despite what we may think about Apple's walled garden, the case for consumer harm is very limited. There are only so many anti-trust cases they can pursue, and I don't know why they aren't digging into things that clearly damage consumers.
For example CVS Caremark, Optum Rx, and Express Scripts control 80% of the consumer drug market as PBMs. CVS Caremark controls 1/3 of the market and that control definitely drives up prices and bottlenecks drug availability. You can also easily identify how delays with PBM adversely effect patient outcomes.
Why did it take a person injury lawyer to finally take on the national association of realtors on fees?
Good. It's hilarious how Apple complains that it "threatens our core practices". If their core practices are based on anti-competitive behavior (and they are), they should be totally threatened.
I want to see ban on competing browsers being mentioned in this case.
It's so funny I'm gonna go out and say it, this is only because Microsoft threw its weight into Epics lawsuit.
I believe, entirely, that Microsoft is the most important corporation in America, by far. In that anything they want, will get done. this is why the senators turned around on Sony claiming MS buying ActiBlizzKing was monopolistic and started threatening Sony instead, this is why Bill Gates gets to sit with Xi and Xi calls him a friend, this is why MS has unopposed access to sell its games in China.
They are an "arm" of the government and not even Apple can counter it.
Thought experiment: how would the world respond if Apple decided to go full Atlas Shrugged and just closed their business? Turned off all their servers, closed all the Apple stores, fired everyone, etc.
What are you trying to convey, something along the lines that we should be grateful?
I suspect unless they destroyed everything the gov would force them open, after all their products and services have layers upon layers of service agreements, SLAs etc.
I was sincere in my thought experiment idea. I'm curious what would happen.
I expect they would be in beach of contract because of the underlying SLAs, but then what happens if they refuse to comply? Could the board go to jail or be sued? Could company assets be seized?
...
I'm not trying to convey anything. At least nothing along the lines of you should be grateful to Apple.
But it's their ecosystem and their vision for how it all fits together. And there are alternative smartphone vendors, consumers have choices.
Maybe I don't understand anti trust law well enough to see what Apple has done wrong and why they should have to compromise their vision.
My provocative take of your thought experiment is that there might be social strife from the fallout, from the mass bricked devices and effects on communications. This in itself implies anti-monopoly investigation is warranted, I'd also argue it's a failure of government to allow it to get this far in the first place. That is to say the government itself should be interrogated as to why this took so long, I don't like how the gov is cheered in these circumstances whilst allowing it to get to this.
I don't think consumer choice is an argument for the allowance of these walled gardens because it's mostly an illusion of choice, that's what these corporations are experts at, and this applies to the Android ecosystem too.
I say all this as a Adam Smith fanboy and general fan of free market economics.
How would you respond if Apple started requiring access to all your data to let you keep using your phone? Reading the thread, many people would probably still defend them.
It's not an iphone monopoly it is a platform monopoly. The lawsuit is over the ecosystem not allowing users to pick or choose and being forced into a dependency with Apple products.
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?
The question for the case of US is "why now?". Could this be tightening the screw to make Apple more cooperative with 3-letter agencies, after other methods have failed?
> Google, Meta and Amazon are all facing similar suits, and companies from Kroger to JetBlue Airways have faced greater scrutiny of potential acquisitions and expansion.
while I love to see the government finally getting a sliver of an appetite to go after monopolies, why Apple when there's so many others that are so much more insidious?
The most dangerous monopoly Apple maintains is iMessage. Everyone hates to be the non-blue message recipient.
The reason customers are loyal to Apple iPhones is simple. iMessage and iCloud.
It is definitely anti-competitive the way iMessage and iCloud function to lock out other cloud backup alternatives and to make subordinate non-iPhone recipients.
Like the lightning cable to USB-C migration. There should be 1 message platform for phones that builds upon SMS.
Wow I am surprised to see this coming from the US. Though this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to actions the government could take to empower competition/innovation in the space. I wonder how far they will go?
Right to repair? Unlocked boot loaders? Driver schematics?
After seeing the EU crack down on monopolistic practices, I'm starting to feel hopeful that we might one day see competition, choice and innovation return to the modern computers.
Apple top management should have seen this coming ~years~ ago. Both Apple and Google could have prevented this by being smarter and less greedy in the first place, understanding the central role of developers and third party companies in their ecosystems.
Not sure about this lawsuit, I don't really care at this point, the whole process in unrolling and won't stop until this is over, and this won't end up in a nice place for Apple.
Or, both Apple and Google did see this coming years ago, have been smart about supporting politicians in both major US political parties, and calculated that the amount of money they could make by maintaining their monopoly positions — even if only for a few more years — was likely far greater than any fine or other regulatory headache it might cause down the line.
Apple and Google absolutely saw this coming and both have come to the conclusion that the outcome of this lawsuit will be less costly than trying to preemptively deal with the issue — and risk overshooting the target, leaving money on the table.
Even if the DoJ wins on every aspect of this lawsuit, it still would hardly put a dent in apple’s profits. They aren’t going after the big ticket money makers in a way that is going to impact apple’s profits.
I wonder how they select a venue for these cases. Looks like it's being heard in New Jersey, even though the California attorney general is on board.
Since Apple is based in California, it seems like the case ought to default to being heard there. Would suck if you were a smaller company and had to pay to fly your legal team to wherever whim the DOJ selected, for however long a case takes to hear.
Makes me wonder what’s really going on. I don’t believe for a second this has anything to do with “antitrust” after watching Garland’s presser - they’re stretching the truth pretty bad and the language is along the lines of “they’re making too much money”. Like OK, what does the “GDP of countries” have to do with anything? I thought this is America and making a shit ton of money is legal here.
Yes, Apple and Google have what we call super app capability on their own phones. However unless or until mobile OS permissions structures can grant permissions at a sub app level, I think it's good that random Joe schmo, or worse, someone like meta, cannot make a combination banking-messaging - social credit - maps application that insists on total phone access all the time.
"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.
Antitrust law is there to protect consumers, not your business model.
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.
While I hate losing the feeling that the AppStore and iOS security policy make my device less at risk I sure am tired of not having chromium and Fortnite on my iPad. I’m also torn on how the current locked down state of affairs is the only thing keeping chromium and v8 from achieving 100% market share.
I believe that the best solution would be for Apple to open up iMessage to other platforms. This would allow users to choose the messaging app that they prefer, regardless of what type of phone they have. It would also promote competition and innovation in the messaging market.
I guess this is what it feels like to see the country and institutions you love decay in real time and go to the dogs. The number of HN comments here supporting the government and arguing against Apple boggle my mind, yet I can’t help but notice that I’ve seen this trendline for a while and should honestly be expecting it until something drastic happens.
For those with a more open mind, look at the wasteland of America and try to find the few institutions that houses the most productive, smart and creative people of the world and actively develops and nurtures them. You will find that one of those institutions is Apple, probably the biggest and arguably among the best in the computer industry. Any sane government would decide its first priority is to protect and nurture these institutions as they represent the cream of the crop of institutions in the country. If Apple started in China, you bet the Chinese government would pull all stops to try and subsidize Apple if its business starts to die, that will also kill Apple albeit in a different way. Yet in our government we have decided it’s time to ruin this institution. Quick, what’s the easiest way to take your most productive and motivated employees and make them quit in frustration. Easy, you keep chipping away at their autonomy, narrowing it in scope and replacing all the tasks where they used to think decide with a long complex labyrinthe of rules and processes. Any time they take initiative, make them go through a long and arduous approval by committee and anytime they make an infraction micromanage them in that area for an excessive amount of time. You will find that they will quit in due time.The government seems determined on putting Apple on that diet. In its ideal world, Apple should be another Boeing, a company that exists to embody its regulation. Alas we are fortunately a bit far away from that, Apple I reckon has a few good years of its life left, but I won’t be surprised if we see this happen to the tech industry in 20 years.
> Apple should be another Boeing, a company that exists to embody its regulation
That is pretty funny because you're right, Apple is becoming another Boeing - a profit-above-all-else corporate asshole and just like Boeing what we need is a hell of a lot more regulation, not less: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc
It's gonna hurt me to say this because I'm one of those rabid lefty bust-up-the-corporations types, but the universe is a nuanced place so here it is;
Whether Apple's practices are motivated by blocking competition or not (and I'm pretty sure that's part of their thinking if not the principal driver), there are other effects of a lot of these practices that I would hate to lose as a consumer.
Not having to work to maintain compatibility with a bunch of stuff that might or might not work, and being able to focus on ecosystem interoperability, all adds up to my tablet being a seamless second monitor, being able to shuttle data between my devices, and being able to manage messaging and all sorts of other stuff on whatever device I happen to be looking at at the time, whether it's my tablet, phone, watch, or laptop.
No one else does this even remotely well, and so much of what I do these days would fall under the effort watermark and never happen if it wasn't for this insane level of convenience and "it just works".
Suing is the easy part. Getting courts to rule that Apple is a monopoly is a much bigger deal. And Apple will surely appeal, and that appeal has to also result in same ruling.
Otherwise it’s a performance like Lina Khan does with FTC with little to to show.
I will never understand why people who don’t like the apple ecosystem just simply don’t buy apple products. It’s just really strange to me that it’s considered to be a monopoly when no one is forced to use the platform, there are other options out there.
You have a monopoly on your product! I wonder what the real motive was here, did Apple not comply with something and now they’re getting slapped? I don’t believe for a second that this is purely good faith as I haven’t seen any actual harm being caused.
antitrust regulators haven't been acting in good faith for years. It devolved into a political game a long time ago. Part of it is the complexity of modern businesses - they simply don't understand what they are regulating. At that point the goal posts move.
Seems like a trend across the entire government, the first amendment appears to not be working even though it was intentionally put as step 1 before the 2nd…
Historically, the first amendment has never been used as a defense in antitrust law (and for good reason). A business and it's self-expression is kinda besides the point when you're analyzing market harm and extrinsic impact. Microsoft was not within their means to "self-express" coordinated first-party limitations to stifle competing browsers. Apple using the same tactic does not automatically make it legal because they're percieved as some form of underdog.
If Apple really wants to express themselves, United States law won't stop them from disincorporating and relocating their private assets to a nation they're more comfortable with like Russia or China. They could become a PRC-subsidiary and fulfill their destiny of being the man in the glasses on the grey TV.
I was thinking more in general terms of how every possible art or endeavor has been hijacked by political corruption in one form or another and we’re just still rolling with it, with zero recourse through speaking out.
Though perhaps we haven’t exhausted all the first amendment options yet as we’re all still pretty cozy and can’t be bothered yet to try and unravel it all.
Unfortunately with that approach, by the time it becomes urgent enough to rouse us, it will be too late in many respects.
But if they didn't have the right and asked there'd be almost no chance of success while if they do have the right to ask there's a positive chance of success. So of course it's meaningful. It's an available avenue and one worth mentioning.
Does U.S. make it simple to get into a mobile business so that I could compete with Apple? Can I easily manufacture a phone and get an approval from FCC? If not, then Apple should sue the hell out of DOJ in response.
i don't expect anything to come out of this (really a cash strapped government department trying to take on a trillion dollar company), but at the very least i expect Apple to settle for some things like better interoperability between iMessages and RCS. My SO uses an iPhone and i converted to Android and messages sent between our devices are always a hit or miss.
I really like my old Apple watch but i can't use it anymore because i switched to a Google Pixel.
My hope is that Apple settles this outside of court and agrees to more interoperability.
What kind of payout range is being anticipated here for settlement? Also remind me, where does all that money go exactly? ... could result in a massive redistribution of wealth... we had the banks now its big tech
The US should outright copy EU privacy and other related laws when it comes to big tech companies where possible, it's embarrassing how much we're lagging behind on this.
"The government also said Apple had tried to maintain its monopoly by not allowing other companies to build their own digital wallets. Apple Wallet is the only app on the iPhone that can use the chip, known as the NFC, that allows a phone to tap-to-pay at checkout."
NFC works fine with ChargePoint for example. There are APIs for app developers to take advantage of the chip if they want to use the functionality on their own hardware. This is merely about the level of abstraction that access is allowed to, and as a consumer, I appreciate Apple enforcing rigorous standards there vs dealing with 500 different buggy implementations.
apple should simply allow to replace ios with Android or Linux on iphone (without any support obviously) for those who "feel restricted" and let them have it.. for all the remaining let us keep using Apples walled garden on apples terms (i like having good night sleep knowing that my family members wont fck up their phones, get hacked or their data be used for profit by google, fb and any other "competitor").
Should this make it through, what would this mean for operating systems? Would it mean that Windows and Apple would have to be able to run Windows, Apple, and linux software?
Side thought, many Americans will purchase an Apple products as a means of projecting their identity/lifestyle. Apple, to many, is a luxury tech product company and is used to project their self image to the world.
Remove the exclusivity of their products only being able to integrate with one another, then the image of exclusivity ("part of the club") starts falling apart.
If any of this happens then Apple's in a pretty shit spot. That's a big if tho
It's weird that the focus is so heavily on businesses and alleged harms to businesses (to ie, scam customers with hard to cancel renewals).
One reason folks LIKE apple is because apple has the market power to do things that yes - hurt other businesses but that make the consumer experience better.
When I get my iphone it's not loaded with carrier crap. Seriously, android you might be getting tons of carrier junk on your phone.
When I go to cancel a subscription its super easy. Apple even REMINDS me to cancel if I delete an app with a subscription tied to it (ie, that renews annually). They also notify me in ADVANCE of renewals to let me cancel.
Trial offers with higher renewing rates, the renewal rate is at the same font size and right in the payment acknowledgement for any trials.
And the list goes on.
Look at this against the lack of enforcement against totally blatant scams (billions) from the elderly. Total ripoffs and dark patterns - unconcealable subscriptions etc etc. Of all the consumer harm - apple should be way way way down on the list.
Nobody needs a games console, but a smartphone is increasingly an essential part of daily life - for things like accessing government services, transport, payments, identity, commerce etc.
If you are a company or other organisation that depends on making your service available through smartphones, then you may be affected by Apple's policies.
I can't explain it but one fairly straightforward argument is just scale - everyone has a smartphone, few people (comparatively) have Playstations. There is a more obvious case for legitimate government interest in the regulation of a market that affects a much bigger proportion of consumers and consumer activity.
a few hundred million users vs about 7 billion users tells you a few things, among them which is that game consoles don't effing matter one bit and smartphones are a necessity for modern life. do you not even think before posting stuff like this?
So I'm guessing Apple didn't agree to collude with the government as Google, Facebook, et al has. It's not a monopoly. No one has to buy Apple. Globally, Android phones have a larger share of the market. In the US, Apple is around 55%. As for it's business practices? About like the rest of the tech industry, or industry generally.
Perhaps a hardware engineer can help me out here, but I don't think Apple makes an unreasonable margin on the iPhone. Overall they make 26% [0]. Really quite reasonable considering highly-developed proprietary software is bundled with the device
They make a lot of money because they sell * a lot * of iPhones.
You're right - I didn't think of the App Store. That's a proper monopoly. "Services" are 23b out of 120b in total sales for them last quarter, but at a much higher margin. It cost them 6b to provide those services, but 58b to make 96b worth of hardware.
Looks like 1/3 of their gross comes from services.
Only some of the services are App Store - some of that money is from Apple TV and iCloud storage.
App Store income looks to be app fees and also advertising.
Which is itself another area where Apple forces consumers to use it.
You can't back up your iPhone to Google Drive or Dropbox. So here's your 5GB of space for any and all Apple devices you own, make it last or pay us monthly.
For practically any hardware startup if their margins aren't >33% they will fail to scale, wither on the vine, and die.
My employer makes space hardware and our overhead R&D expenses are so high that if we made 26% margin we would be bankrupt in a year.
So I think ~30% is probably a minimum floor to shoot for.
Just looked it up and Samsung Electronics has a margin that has ranged from 30% to 46% over the last couple of years.
I think the majority of people on HN are software guys who are completely oblivious to the challenges of building physical items that exist in the real world which is why your comment is downvoted.
That and beyond its stated purpose it seems that HN exists to allow people to complain about Apple in a public forum.
What makes all of this so strange is that large software vendors often have astronomical profit margins that hardware companies can only dream of. SAP (~70%) MSFT (~70%) TEAM (>80%)
Perhaps it is good that software companies have such high margins because if they didn't HN would be flooded with stories about how every company they get hired at goes out of business and management is clueless.
Both Apple and Google are ruthless monopolies but when there was a post about an antitrust against Google you could’ve clearly seen a bias against them. Whereas Apple gets a free pass because their products are „cool”. This is a sad state of HN nowadays.
Ok, I understand this may be an unpopular stance and risk downvotes. However, I want to share my perspective on government intervention in business, particularly regarding anti-monopoly actions against companies with proprietary ecosystems.
Firstly, I'm no fan of monopolies. Yet, I'm conflicted about the idea of the government compelling anyone to divulge trade secrets or alter their services to simply foster competition, especially when the company in question has opted to create an ecosystem of products and services designed to be exclusive. For example, Apple's iMessage doesn't integrate with other platforms, and its smartphones are optimized for its ecosystem.
As consumers, we're aware of these limitations and have the "freedom" to choose products that better suit our needs instead. Labeling a company as a monopoly simply because its products don't play well with others overlooks the investment and innovation behind their development. After all, it's Apple's technology, infrastructure, and service on the line.
Why should these companies be forced to share or open their ecosystems? While there are valid arguments for promoting interoperability and open technology, the idea of mandating companies to share their proprietary advancements seems to contradict the essence of free enterprise. Should they then be compelled to 'open up' their infrastructure against their will?
I don't know why, but for some reason why I see something like this, I can't help but imagine what it must be like for Tim Cook receiving this news when he is randomly going about his day. It's got to be a huge punch to the face and I wonder how such people deal with such news.
They've been consistently anti-competitive for years and it's the kind of move that you know will eventually generate legal issues. For them it's just the cost of business. They'll litigate for years, pay a small fine (if they even lose) and keep doing the same.
I hope he's using it as an opportunity to reflect on FOMO-based business strategies and the impacts of regressive software censorship. Tim made a lot of tough choices in his tenure, and now his chickens are coming home to roost.
I hope this lawsuit fails. As a user, I’m very happy with the tight Apple ecosystem, and I don’t want my experience to be compromised just because some other companies wants to make money in Message or Photos space.
The only place Apple needs to change, imho, is the app store tax.
People think iMessage has entrenched iOS but what's actually happened is that iMessage has entrenched the POTS phone number system, which is (frankly) unregulated shit.
You can actually iMessage people with just an email address, but in practice I don't think anyone actually does that since you can't also call them by that identifier (but now you can use any number of services to call digitally while skipping POTS phone numbers entirely)
I understand the evil practices of Apple to lock you up in their walled garden such as iMessage, easy sync between the devices etc. But, ultimately, wouldn't the choice of buying those products in the consumer's hand?
This is hideous though. Why should someone's preference for a mobile phone, chosen for their convenience, hinder them from texting those they care about?
Perhaps societal customs should change instead of infringing on the business practices (which don't violate a law).
The anticompetitive preference for internal apps though is pretty bad and I think Apple should be nailed on that, but they shouldn't be punished for creating a "better" (in quotes because I think Android is on the better standard for messaging) messaging experience.
Stuff like Apple Vision Pro where you need an iPhone to scan your face is annoying. If you want a Apple Watch but have Android phone it's pretty much pointless. How does Apple get away with that?
Worse than that from hardware to browsers over the years it all seems to be less open or to work with other systems, apps, OS. Linux being the exception of course.
> Stuff like Apple Vision Pro where you need an iPhone to scan your face is annoying. If you want a Apple Watch but have Android phone it's pretty much pointless. How does Apple get away with that?
You think of the Apple Watch or AVP as independent pieces of hardware, but the Apple model is that they're all one integrated system, of which you can choose what components to buy or not.
My biggest problem with this suit is that it attacks the core premise of interoperability that is one of the reasons people like the Apple ecosystem to begin with.
>My biggest problem with this suit is that it attacks the core premise of interoperability that is one of the reasons people like the Apple ecosystem to begin with.
I'm sure IBM would have loved to have made that claim in the early 1980s. Thankfully we now have a massive home computer market not just owned by IBM.
I can't wait for this to take seven years to resolve, with the resolution being that the US government gets a big payday in bribes (er, sorry, fines) and nothing actually changes.
"The company “undermines” the ability of iPhone users to message with owners of other types of smartphones, like those running the Android operating system, the government said. That divide — epitomized by the green bubbles that show an Android owner’s messages — sent a signal that other smartphones were lower quality than the iPhone, according to the lawsuit."
Is this even factually true? Messages that are sent as texts appear green, whether it's to other iPhones or devices made by Apple's competitors. The green color warns me that messages are not end-to-end encrypted and can potentially be read by any man in the middle with access to telephony infrastructure.
The problem is Apple is corrupting SMS, which should be a public and interoperable standard. Google/Gmail is doing the same thing to email. There’s no technical reason you couldn’t have end-to-end encrypted text messages between iOS and Android.
I bet way more people would try Android if they could fully participate in group texts.
There are tons of apps that offer end-to-end encrypted messaging between iOS and Android (and Windows, MacOS, Linux fwiw). Apple offers APIs to allow you to associate your contacts with their ID in those apps so you can easily message them or share photos and files as part of iOS. The thing they are accused of is that they provide a great experience for users in their ecosystem on top of that.
There is a lot to complain about Apple’s business practices, but the fact that the green bubble rage has turned into an interoperability monopoly case is laughable.
How much did that one set back Google after their ADHD killed off how many messaging platforms?
Fine, open it up, open them all up. Give me sliders to deny messages from SMS, Whatsapp and anyone else looking for compatibility. Same in the other direction, allow users to choose from which originating platform they’ll accept messages.
As far as the rest, yeah, Apple needs an adjustment. I should not have to pay to run my own app on my own phone. But I do.
Of all the goliaths and titans of industry...Apple....really? Perhaps its a matter of applicable laws/cases...but why not Amazon, Google and Microsoft? They have their tentacles in every direction, I consider that sort of broad-spectrum corporation to be the worst kind. It is not even similar sectors in the case of Amazon (well there are plenty of Google subsidies without the "Google" brand on it) which I find more frightening but hey, I welcome our new corporate overlords!
It has a lot to do with scale. There are 5 million Teslas. There are 2 billion iPhones. If Tesla had 60%+ of the car market and engaged in anti competitive/trust-like behaviour, it would also be ripe for action.
I don’t understand why Apple is the target and everyone - govts included - walk right past MS repeating what they’re best at. MS is currently pushing popup ads into windows that installs unsolicited extensions into google chrome and switches the search engine to bing - and will fear monger the user with vague security claims about switching back.
Microsoft can be targeted but that’s a pretty slow process, I wouldn’t be too surprised if they are sued in a few years if they continue their behavior
so.. based of these claims by US government, would it be good and required for Apple to give full access to users data, financials, health and everything-else-data to say Huaweii smartwatch?
They probably would if Ford found a way to prevent any after-market accessories from being sold without taking a cut or made proprietary trailer hitches that you had to pay them directly for. Pickup trucks are some of the most hackable devices on the planet.
I like the part of the complaint where the government lawyers fantasize that their hard work is the reason why Microsoft allowed iTunes Store on Windows. Some real narcissism and lack of knowledge about technology on display.
> By tightly controlling the user experience on iPhones and other devices, Apple has created what critics call an uneven playing field where it grants its products and services access to core features that it denies rivals.
Once I read this I was not shocked. Apple is already pushing people to buy their separate apps that should have came in for free, with the purchase of the Iphone or at least make a bundle Apple users could buy. Disgusting Apple totally deserved.
TV and Music comes with the OS. iMovie is a free download. Apple Arcade is a subscription to games made by companies other than Apple.
No way in hell would Apple TV+, a premium video service, be free. And in what world would Final Cut Pro be free? I'd love it if they threw in Ableton Live and Pro Tools, but that's also not happening.
Another big, annoying one is password managers. I use an open source password manager with an iPhone app, but there’s no way to integrate it system wide, so the experience of using it on my phone is terrible.
And yet! No matter how much worse third party integration is on iPhone, I still don’t want to use an operating system made by an advertising company.
> The Justice Department has the right under the law to ask for structural changes to Apple’s business — including a breakup, said an agency official
Sometimes neoliberalism feels like it's gaslighting us, like am I really supposed to believe this is going to lead to any substantial change? That this ideology isn't completely delusional?
This makes me wonder who Apple ticked off at the DOJ, because it would be interesting to follow that money trail and see where their lobbying broke down. That's the chink in the armor of all these too-big-to-fail companies, and how we the people reclaim our power.
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.
I could go on.. forever. I'm just so tired of everything that I'm not sure I can even endorse tech as a whole anymore, since this seems to be what always happens. I wish we could erase everything that happened after the Dot Bomb around the year 2000 and start over on a new timeline. Built and funded by us directly as free agents the way we always dreamed of, instead of pulling the yoke for an owner class whose only contribution is access to capital it vacuumed up from the rest of us through everything from gentrification to regulatory capture.
Pages 29-31 of the complaint are especially relevant to read for many of us in web development and who value open systems, as they detail the intentionality of Apple's strategy to restrict so-called "super apps" from becoming portals for arbitrary web applications. And page 42+ describes restrictions on alternate digital wallets.
There's a lot here beyond the original headlines, and it's incredibly relevant to read or skim directly.
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.
Google was already found by a jury to have a monopoly on Android app distribution. And if Google has one, Apple's monopoly on iOS app distribution is clearly stronger and more harmful in the US given their larger market share and complete prohibition of alternatives.
Google's crime was not having a charismatic leader who could store all the mens rea solely in his own head and then conveniently die before legal scrutiny started over their App Store racket.
All of Google's monopolistic intent was conveniently detailed out in loads of e-mails. They were caught failing to retain these e-mails, which in a civil suit where the 5th Amendment does not apply, means the judge gets to just assume the worst (make an "adverse inference").
To make matters worse, Google promised openness and then tried to privately walk it back. Legally, this is admitting that the "Android app distribution market" already exists and is the appropriate market definition for a monopoly claim. It's harder to argue that an "iOS app distribution market" should exist when Apple is using power words like "intellectual property" - aka "we have a right to supracompetitive profits."
My personal opinion is that the DOJ probably will succeed where Epic failed, however, because of one other critical thing: standing. Epic did reveal market harms that are almost certainly cognizable under US law, but none of those harms were things Epic was allowed to sue over.
I mean, you're not wrong, but the lawsuit isn't about the quality of the end product. It's about the economic leverage Apple has over other businesses by virtue of owning the chokepoints - i.e. the OS software and the signing keys it trusts.
I personally would love to switch to iPhone if Apple wasn't so much of a control freak about the software you run on it.
This hard for me to understand. Apple hasn’t changed its approach their wall garden in ages. The consumer market decided to reward that model with adoption of Apple products.
Market adoption is more than a function of ecosystem openness. Blackberry commanded a large chunk of the market back in the day, maybe or maybe not because of the value they generated for consumers, but definitely because of the network effect. Several factors at play here.
I just want to code and sideload my own silly little apps that aren't important enough to be in the App Store. I can do this on my Mac and it doesn't seem to explode because of it.
The comments here seem extremely emotional against Apple. If you want a free device then the android ecosystem has many great examples. The S23/S24 ultra are phones which are as good as the iPhone. I have always been an Android user because of the freedoms. But forcing iOS to become like android makes no sense. Android already exists and you can already use it. The onboarding app will even move all your data. iMessage is even going to support the useless RCS standard. I am not sure what people in this thread have against Apple. Doing the things they require will simply make all the advantages of iPhone evaporate and it will be simply left in the dust. If you want android, buy android.
> iMessage is even going to support the useless RCS standard
What's useless about it? As I understand it, it will provide a massive upgrade over SMS/MMS. Exchanging videos via MMS (currently the only native OS option for Android <-> iOS communication) is an exercise in futility.
It is extremely useless compared to Whatsapp/Signal. It is not even natively supported in android like SMS. Even in android the only app that supports it is Google Messages (unlike several for SMS). Nobody supports the protocol and everyone uses Google's implementation. Google's client, Google's servers, optional encryption. What is good about it. The only reason for it's existence is to make Google get a leg in the messaging clients after failures with their previous attempts (Gtalk, hangouts, allo). That is why nobody outside the USA would ever bother using it.
It doesn't do anything that Whatsapp/Signal don't. And there is nothing native about it in Android, other than Google Messages is force installed on all devices, and the rich vibrant ecosystem of android SMS clients was killed off to make way for it.
Why? People are free to download hundreds of apps to talk to each other. The Signal protocol is so widely adopted. Matrix is a well designed protocol. Why should Apple and Google be the ones dictating messaging protocols.
People aren't going to download some random app just to talk to you, nor will you be able to convince your whole family (who all use FaceTime/iMessage) to use something else just to include you.
I don't believe it is. I think we'd be upset if Tesla cars could only charge at Telsa charger (that charged 30% over the prices of electric supply). Using their position in phone sales to gain a monopolist position over apps and IAP feels wrong.
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.
What's interesting about the legal system is that it is intentionally vague. As in, you can make all different kinds of arguments and the judge and jury decide.
iPhone is does not have an overwhelming market share of phones in the US. But Apple does have a complete monopoly on "iPhone apps" (and "app stores" and "iPhone payment services"). So the government certainly can make a case that they are abusing those monopolies.
Whether or not the judge and juries will agree is the thing we are all going to be watching for.
The government does not want people to have secure devices. Whether or not Apple's are currently secure is not the point; that they are working to make them so is enough to make sure it doesn't happen.
On the contrary, secure computational infrastructure furthers national security. US happens to have a very large footprint of vulnerable infrastructure as compared to other nations that tightly regulate their Internet. Believe it or not, more secure devices are actually good for the US. There have been several articles and discussions around it and the government has been working closely with the industry for years to improve the security posture.
There's also a news article every few months talking about how the FBI or some other government agency wants to make encryption illegal and how iMessage is a boon to pedophiles all over the world and protects criminals. So, not sure how you can confidently say "On the contrary!"
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
-Ronald Reagan
The problem is that private institutions can become their own mini-governments. Reagan denied this, but his quite could equally apply to Apple or Google as it did to, say, late-70s US government.
Apple getting sued in the US and EU is really about finding an equilibrium between 3 stakeholders - Apple, Users & Developers. The status quo favors Apple and Users. Developers led by companies like Epic just want a bigger piece of the pie. That's it.
Finally. It was about time that this would happen.
Google got one anti-trust lawsuit, Meta should get another one (by owning too many social networks with billions of users each) and after the failed anti-trust lawsuit that Epic tried to sue Apple under, this time the DOJ is finally going after Apple.
Good.
I'm really looking forward to the United States v. Apple Inc. anti-trust lawsuit that will actually make some changes to stop the 30% commission scam once and for all.
Google could use another pass to put a stop to their aggressive cross-promotion of Chrome, which is difficult if not impossible to compete with given how many Google products people use on a daily basis. Every time I visit Google, YouTube, etc with a fresh non-Chrome browser profile there’s a barrage of, “Download Chrome!” popups to dismiss, not to mention how Google iOS apps use link taps as opportunities to promote Chrome or all the random third party Windows software that has Chrome bundled with it.
> that will actually make some changes to stop the 30% commission scam once and for all.
No. The change they should make is to allow sideloading. I don't care if the developer pays less than 30% when Apple can still censor what I run on my phone.
I cannot say that it will, though in theory the businesses that want to compete would want to pass the savings to the consumers while staying profitable. But I can say with certainty that increasing the commission will increase the prices. Companies do not pay this fee/commission out of their own pockets.
> in theory the businesses that want to compete would want to pass the savings to the consumers while staying profitable
This is the app market, not the wheat flour market. Most of the time the apps aren't interchangeable. At least those that provide some value *. So... they will charge what the market will bear.
Do you see Apple reducing their commission from 30% to 5% and changing the 0.99 price to 0.79? I don't.
* ok, not flashlight and TODO apps.
Edit: actually Apple reduced the commission from 30% to 15% for some apps. Did you see any app at 0.84 in the app store? Didn't think so...
One of the most annoying features of the iOS ecosystem is the great lengths they take to prevent easy export of data out of the iOS system to other non-Apple devices. E.g. ever tried exporting Safari bookmarks on iOS to a Linux system running Firefox? A simple JSON file is all it would take, but no, you have to sync with a MacOS computer or some such:
> One of the most annoying features of the iOS ecosystem is the great lengths they take to prevent easy export of data out of the iOS system to other non-Apple devices.
While others are pointing out your specific case is supported, I do know for experience you need a Mac to be able to smoothly move to a different password manager. Otherwise, it requires you to unlock your passwords at least twice (really like three or four times to do it properly) to copy and paste passwords to a different app.
Posting anonymously. I worked on an app where Apple gave us special access to private APIs allow listed by the app ID and told us to keep it secret. This access gave the select few apps that got it a huge advantage in performance. I don't want to share too much details at the risk of identifying the app and getting it revoked.
What rubs me the wrong way about the Apple monopoly case(s?) is they sound to me like “we (the people) don’t want to actually solve the problem by through the totally-viable free market approach; we instead feel that we are owed some say in how this company chooses to develop its products; please strongarm them through legal means that don’t really apply, to make that a reality”.
People who are interested in Apple’s “walled garden” can buy iPhones. People who aren’t, can choose not to. Nobody is making people buy iPhones. Nobody is making people buy Androids either. Any company which thinks there is a sufficient market to be had in providing an alternative platform that does not use a walled garden approach can develop the hardware and software which would allow their customers a more open platform. There is absolutely nothing stopping this from happening today. The failure of companies and individuals to do so proves to me that nobody cares enough about this to take real action.
Contrast this with real trusts of days past like Standard Oil. If someone developed a competing company, they could undercut competitors by selling oil at a loss long enough to drive anyone else out of business. What would the parallel be in this universe? If someone developed a new smartphone, there is nothing in Apple’s walled garden approach that would prohibit that platform from taking off.
IMO when consumers buy products, they are entitled to the product they knowingly bought, not the product that they want.
The free market approach went out the window when we decided software was copyrightable and DRM unlock tools are illegal. Otherwise Epic would just release a jailbreak that installed Epic Games Store and we'd be done with it.
I think there's a large contingent of people who want more access and choice with apps and services on their iOS devices.
And frankly, that's what Android is for. Just go get a Samsung Galaxy.
EDIT:
You can downvote it all you want, but part of the appeal of iOS devices is that you have your workable service for the device and there's no real thought to be put into choosing that service. Not everyone wants different app stores, and on the software side of things, it adds a very thick layer of complexity and headaches, especially if you're helping, I don't know, your 64-year-old mother with her iPhone.
A "simple" device isn't mutually exclusive with a configurable device. Just put it inside of the Settings app already available on the phone your mother already has. If she doesn't need it, she'll never see it.
I'd argue that the default experience for some is still too complicated; that's why Apple has Assistive Access, which lets you dumb it down:
IANAL but it's baffling to me that this one took so long. This has been the clearest-cut abuse of monopoly in tech for a long time. Why did they waste time trying to convince judges that "free" could be monopoly pricing, when this was in broad daylight?
Isn't part of the problem how US anti-monopoly law is worded requiring proof of "consumer harm" which is normally measured in increased costs? In the case of Apple's monopoly, its not clear how you would measure that let alone prove it to a court.
US anti-monopoly law is worded requiring proof of "consumer harm" which is normally measured in increased costs?
This is more a matter of interpretation, policy and practice rather than statute and these things can change over time. The interpretation you're describing was itself an innovation at one time.
Consumer harm is pretty easy to argue, Apple doesn't tax macos programs but it does tax ios programs. That argument results in billions of dollars of consumer harm. There are many arguments against that view as well, but I just wanted to show that it is easy to argue for consumer harm.
I don't think that's enough though is it? To my mind the strong counter argument is that consumers are choosing to pay higher prices for "higher quality" (i know that often not the case with the scams on the app store) apps and if they want cheaper apps they are free to switch to android.
> I am curious though, why is the iOS version €4.99 but the Android version is free ? I've seen this a lot actually and have always wondered, I figured it might just be Apple's annual developer license fee but not sure.
Apple users are being forced to pay more for equivalent software because of Apple's tax.
Oh 100% I agree. My question/point is about how the US system treats monopolistic practices, and I worry that actually that example works in Apple's favour as they would likely argue that consumers are free to switch to android if they want cheaper apps.
If apple were to pay for the android replacement phone & perform the transfer of personal data to the new device then that might be a valid argument. As it is they do their best to lock users in to prevent them from ever switching.
How is this even a monopoly? That's like saying "Walmart has a monopoly on selling products at its stores." There are thousands of competing phones with their own software and app stores.
There's approximately 2 app stores, I wouldn't call that competition.
Even in the most egregious days of Microsoft's OS monopoly, you could still choose to install software. Apple makes it basically impossible to do this outside of the context of their app store, which they charge heavily for access to and have no qualms removing or preventing apps that compete with its own. If this doesn't constitute monopolistic behavior, the bar is so high I'm not sure anything would ever qualify for it.
There is one competing phone platform with a store that has conveniently decided on identical fees. It's a duopoly. But also one where you can only shop with one of them.
The comparison is this: Walmart and Target are the only two stores that exist. They've also basically agreed to set the same prices on everything. And once you buy from Target once, you must buy everything else from Target too, and if you want to switch to Walmart, you have to throw out everything you bought at Target.
They have a remarkably durable market share. Some people are in effect forced to choose apple since apps they need (in some cases medical apps!) are iPhone only as the seller just does not bother with android.
It looks like roughly 60% of groceries are sold at Walmart in the US. And unlike phones, where you can choose Android easily, many regions have only Walmart to shop at.
That's the wrong metric. It should be obvious that the US market share of walmart on groceries, merchandise, and health don't conveniently sum to 100%, and that's not how you would present that data. You're looking at the % of WalMart's sales, not market share.
You build a successful product that people love, gain an important position in a market you basically created, offer a closed marketplace for apps to further provide value to your core product, again this is a resounding success and people vote with their $$$ to subsidize your growth.
In the meantime, your competitor comes up with their own product and marketplace. Consumers are able to freely choose between both.
Now your company is forced by the gov to integrate your products with the competition's inferior marketplace. Why? How is this not overreach?
EDIT: easy to downvote, why don't you give me answers instead
It looks like the DOJ doesn't believe that the closed marketplace doesn't add value to consumers or businesses but only to Apple themselves.
I think the crux of the DOJs argument is that apple is using their dominate marketshare to rent seek and create artificial restrictions preventing competition with their own products.
Tim Sweeney didn't get it done, so the US government will pick up the slack. I imagine they were waiting to see if Epic won before trying the case themselves, but Biden may have wanted to make sure it got moving before the election may take it out of his hands.
One of the most impressive successes in Epic's cases was just dragging the evidence into the open. A lot of illegal behavior is hidden in confidential agreements mostly to keep them out of regulators' view for as long as possible.
This case has very little overlap with the Epic suite other than one of the defendants being the same.
I’m also curious what illegal confidential behaviour you believe was found in the Epic case? The one count that the judge found in favour of Epic didn’t require any form of discovery as it was based on public policy.
Here's the first paragraph of the actual lawsuit. So no, I feel like they probably didn't miss the point that Android exists:
COMPLAINT
In 2010, a top Apple executive emailed Appl
e’s then-CEO about an ad for the new
Kindle e-reader. The ad began with a woman
who was using her iPhone to buy and read books
on the Kindle app. She then switches to an Androi
d smartphone and continues to read her books
using the same Kindle app. The executive wrote to Jobs: one “
message that can’t be missed is
that it is easy to switch from
iPhone to Android. Not fun to watch.
” Jobs was clear in his
response: Apple would “force” deve
lopers to use its payment system
to lock in both developers
and users on its platform. Over
many years, Apple has repeat
edly responded to competitive
threats like this one by making it
harder or more expensive for its
users and developers to leave
than by making it more attr
active for them to stay.
Not really. They have ties to specific platforms, just that the platform is not tied to hardware. So it's either installing the app, or losing the connections, same as with the iPhone.
Easier, maybe, but the users are still married to the platforms, now with the added annoyance that there is no cross-talk between the apps at all. Network effect is a huge thing, and the only difference between iMessage and Whatsapp for example is that Whatsapp doesn't have the hardware to lock the users into.
So getting back to the original point, OP bemoans that in order to communicate with some people, one has to have an iPhone. With other apps, you just need to have the specific app. Maybe not as bad, we could say, but the phenomenon is the same: in order to contact some people, you have to install their specific app. No other way in.
Friends will still talk to you. But they won't include you in group messages because apple purposely sabotages group messages with anyone outside the garden.
Unsurprisingly, a lot social planning and banter happens in those group messages.
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."
Is Apple even a monopoly though? In the Microsoft case Microsoft had 90+% of desktop market share. (And propped Apple up to create even a semblance of competition.) They were accused of leveraging that position to prevent manufacturers etc from getting out of line.
Apple, on the other hand shares the market with Android. Globally it's a minority share. Yes, in the US, Apple has a bigger market share than it has globally, but Android is a real competitor even there. So I'd suggest the two situations are quite different.
If it's not a monopoly (which would be fine by itself anyway), it's hard to make the case that they are leveraging that monopoly in unhallowed ways.
All that said, clearly the DOJ think they have a case, and I imagine they've spent a LOT of man-hours thinking about it and forming an argument. More than the no-time-at-all I've spent thinking about it.
You use the term Android like it is a corporation or a brand. Are you comparing iOS to Android OS or Apple to Samsung, Google etc.? I agree that Apple commands a relatively small share of the US mobile ecosystem, but where do the competitors stand?
I didn't say Linux was especially good competition for iOS.
But unless you can demonstrate that it sucks because Apple is doing something which qualifies as restraint-of-trade, which I would suggest is obviously not the case, that doesn't matter.
The doctrine is that you can't exercise monopoly power in certain ways. Monopoly power is an empirical question, and does not turn on merely whether it is possible to describe a market in which another product exists, but whether that is a real market in which the products are in fact competitive.
But even if you have monopoly power, if you aren't illegally exercising it, you aren't in trouble. So you aren't punished for being an empirical monopoly.
You're correct, it is a brand. The point stands though. Comparing "Apple" to "Android" does not work. Perhaps a comparison between iOS App Store and Google Play Store would be more apt, but that is another discussion.
iPhone is not a monopoly since z lot of companies sell phones, and with significant market share.
iOS is not a monopoly since at least one other major operating system exists, with significant market share. (Whether Linux is or isn't a competitor is irrelevant.)
A monopoly by itself is not a problem. Only behavior ancillary to that monopoly is. But to get there you have you have a monopoly. I don't see how you make the case. Clearly consumers have choice.
Now, there's a case to be made for bad behavior, but its weak. Apple will argue that consumers have choices.
But I am not a lawyer, so I'll leave it up to the lawyers on both sides to earn some fees discussing it.
Apple is competing against multiple companies, all of which are minorities relative to the iPhone's market share. These companies use derivatives of Android, but still compete against one another and Apple all the same. Android and Linux aren't competing companies, they're operating systems that are forked by OEMs and manufacturers to provide an OS.
So, now let's introduce iOS into the equation. Apple can differentiate their product, but how much is considered acceptable before regulators complain? The DOJ was quite straightforward today, accusing Apple of using iMessage to degrade user experiences through exclusion. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's probably a...?
Do they have pricing power? You can select any boundaries you want for markets to come up with any market share number you want, but the key empirical test is is there actual substitution effect or does Apple have the ability to charge monopoly rents. One of the major points of walled gardens is to create vendor lock-in and prevent price conpetition, and Apple has been masterful at that.
In their App Store they absolutely have pricing power. They take a high tax, which is higher than most actual taxes, on nearly every single application installed despite doing basically nothing. Things like denying a application the ability to even mention services can be bought elsewhere are the worst offender of their misconduct and other offenses would be forcing apps to use their payment system, again with an extremely high fee, even on recurring subscription charges. Normally a payment processor takes 2 to 3 percent, not 30 %.
Sony (PlayStation store), Microsoft (Xbox store), and Valve (steam) all take 30%. No one can speak on what Nintendo takes due to NDA. Why are they never brought up?
Those stores can be abusing their monopoly position as well. Apple has the greatest sales of all of those stores though so it should rightly be targeted first. They flew under the radar for far too long. People are literally going back to using websites rather than apps because of their decision, but Apple even tried to kill progressive web apps recently - which are basically just shortcuts to websites on the Home Screen.
You're mixing the literal definition of monopoly with anti-trust laws. They have over half the market as a single company and the rest of the market is actually a fragmented zone of other companies so yes I think they are. You don't have to own the entire market to run afoul of monopoly laws they don't require there to be literally only one choice in the market.
Not a lawyer (let alone one specializing in antitrust law), but it looks like the relevant legal standard is "dominant position". Basically, it's legal to have a dominant position, but that position can be abused through certain categories of actions. By contrast, under the Sherman Act it's nominally a felony to even attempt to become a monopoly (although the application of this by courts has apparently been both complex and contentious).
Apple has a monopoly though it's AppStore on over 2 billion devices though which it conducts $90,000,000,000 a year. That's more than a lot of countries GDP combined.
Saying Apple doesn't have a 90%+ share of phone market is irrelevant.
The question though, is if Apple as the Platform (phone) provider, maintains it's monopoly (AppStore) though anti-competitive means.
Epic's sentiment certainly resonated with the European Commission, and apparently the DOJ as well. Do any of us really believe Apple's App Store control is harmless?
If the relevant market is found to be "Apps on iOS", or "Flagships phones in the US", Apple is more likely to be considered having a monopoly position than if the market is "phones in the world". The courts will have to decide on what the market is before deciding if Apple has monopoly power or not.
Why do the app store policies and prices look so similar between iOS and Android? What competitive forces are going to change a duopoly with soft collusion?
Given the discovery both Apple and Google went through in their Epic trials, I would think that any collusion would have been documented by now. You don’t need collusion to have price convergence, just market forces. Are you arguing that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are conspiring to fix the prices of console video games? All of them have fairly similar licensing requirements.
But we know the cost of providing app store services is quite low, so the convergence price is as high as the other party willing keep it at. If Apple lowered its cut to 8% tomorrow, Google would follow suit because it is still enough money to run the Play Store with. For video game consoles, the margins are slim (or negative), so the current cut is the natural price that lets developers sell games for a profit and the hardware companies to subsidize consoles to a level that people can afford them.
> But we know the cost of providing app store services is quite low, so the convergence price is as high as the other party willing keep it at.
Or what the developers would bear. Although I think the actual costs are higher than some people would like to think (with human reviewers and stuff, not just infrastructure).
> If Apple lowered its cut to 8% tomorrow, Google would follow suit because it is still enough money to run the Play Store with.
Would they? Apple changing their fees has no effect on Android. Android suffered from the stigma of being a second-class citizen for a while, when apps were developed for iOS first. If it is as you say, why did they not drop their fees back then?
> For video game consoles, the margins are slim (or negative), so the current cut is the natural price that lets developers sell games for a profit and the hardware companies to subsidize consoles to a level that people can afford them.
Right, but that’s a moral argument, not a legal one. Negative margins on hardware is a business decision. The law does not discriminate depending on your business plan. If 30% is extorsion, then whatever you do on the side does not make it stop being extorsion.
What is meant by "monopoly" has been evolving, and a majority share acquired through anticompetitive means could be enough to warrant government action.
Is it though? On the hardware side sure but on the software side I don't see any competition. Both stores have close to identical practices and do not look like they compete over to get developers onboard. The only pricing change ever made was also made in reaction to an antitrust lawsuit and copied verbatim.
While not a strict monopoly, the lack of competition in this area between the only two players seems obvious.
This is maybe the first interesting/novel point I've read on this topic. (this Apple debate has mostly been beat to death and the whole thread here looks to be full of the same talking-point style arguments repeated ad nauseum by people on both sides who don't seem to be engaging any critical thinking).
I think Apple is clearly anti-competitive and is definitely powerful enough to warrant regulatory action given past standards, but the same exclusivity deals like consoles (and even audiobooks) have is certainly not a common thing (outside of Apple's first-party apps of course, but I would agree that isn't really what we're talking about here). I think this deserves some explanation, as it does seem like an obvious anti-competitive move that Apple could make but doesn't.
I tend to think Occam's Razor applied here is that Apple realizes their vulnerability to regulation and didn't wish to serve their critics evidence on a silver platter. I think that's why they announced that they will (finally) add (an inferior implementation of) RCS to the iPhone after many years of refusing and telling people to buy their mom an iPhone if they want to text her. Or the (inferior) implementation of PWAs. This is very much speculation of course, and I'd love to hear other theories.
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 even close really.
Phone sales are hardly the issue here. iOS policies are the issue.
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.
It's reasonably clear why the Microsoft case was different
> The U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally monopolizing the web browser market for Windows, primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs such as Netscape and Java.
Microsoft made deals with other companies to restrict competition. Apple doesn't need to make up a contract to prevent NFC payments as they just don't offer it in the first place. The Microsoft case actually has a lot more similarities to why Google lost the Epic case, by Apple won.
One of the big factors was that Microsoft were doing things like paying OEMs to not include other browsers. This was also the crux of the issue in Epic v Google recently.
Or operating systems: things like BeOS, OS/2, and Linux couldn’t be offered on a given model without paying for a Windows license or giving up volume pricing for the entire line.
That's still the case. Its still almost impossible to buy a Linux laptop from one of the big vendors. Even the rare models that they do sell, like the Dell XPS Developer edition, are hidden so deep in their website that they're almost impossible to find unless you're sure it exists.
That’s Dell’s management problems. What I was referring to was the policy Microsoft had in the 90s of, say, telling Dell that they could license Windows for the XPS line at, say, $10/unit if it was on every device sold or list price if they offered a different OS. That was very effective at making it cost more not to use Windows and did exactly what they intended.
A whole generation of people who don't know how horrible Microsoft was. Two decades later, people are still bitter. The amount of great tech that got stifled.... SMH.
On the browser front, it’s easy. iPhones have batteries so battery life is a concern. That’s why Apple treats them differently than Macintosh computers, which you can choose your own default browser engine for.
The user is choosing the Apple ecosystem and is happy to make these rules. They allow games because some people like to spend their battery power on games.
The user is choosing out of an artificial lack of better options, which Apple can only get away with by having a big share in the US market. In markets where they are not dominant, the consumer benefits.
I'm the user and I know what I'm doing. I'm not being tricked into anything. I'm trying to avoid a certain type of personality that thinks they are saving the world.
The user is choosing an iphone because their friends have one. Do you actually think the average person thinks about these things before buying a phone? No. They are just told by apple "you don't get to do that" once they realize they want to try it.
I think Apple’s argument would be that making choices as to what you sell and for what price more or less is the core of what running a company is. If users don’t like the choices they make, they can shop elsewhere. That’s capitalism 101.
That brings us back to the question whether they’re a monopoly. The justice department seems to say they have a monopoly on iOS, so that users cannot shop elsewhere.
If such a thing can exist, of course they have a monopoly on iOS, just as Coca Cola has one on Coca Cola, Mercedes has one on Mercedes cars, etc. Next question would be whether they misuse that monopoly.
Apple will argue that ‘a monopoly on iOS’ doesn’t make sense as a concept and that, if you want to run Firefox or Chrome on a smartphone, there’s plenty of choice in the market, and even if there weren’t, there’s no obligation for them or any company to make a product that users want.
In the end, the outcome of this will depend less on logical arguments than about what ‘the people’ want. Laws and their interpretation will change if the people want that. That, I think, is what Apple should be worried about.
The argument would be that they didn’t want iPhone users, especially with early models, to end up choosing other engines that were much worse on battery life and that would hurt the image of the iPhone. Back then, there was no battery settings where you could see what was eating your battery. It was all opaque and could make people think the device had lousy battery life.
And yeah, I think it’s unlikely someone could have made a more efficient browser than Apple since they didn’t give public access to all of their functionalities. And that might have been partly for security reasons, if there were less-secure aspects to hidden functions, for example.
The counter-argument is that they should have opened everything up, but Apple will say they were going as fast as they could responsibly go, and that’s why there were limitations that have been relaxed over time.
That feels like an argument that could apply to bar any category of apps to compete with Apple ones on the phone.
For instance giving a special placement to Apple Music and not allowing other apps to get the same privileges, because music playback needs to be efficient, and a bad music experience would hurt the iPhone's image. Same for movies, same for ebooks, same for spreadsheets (including needing to execute macros, so security risk is through the roof)
I feel I could get paid by Apple to come up with excuses for each app they need any.
The real justification for browser engine restrictions is not battery life but security.
If you look at any iOS vulnerability reporting, Safari is a big weakness and often the source of zero day attacks. Browsers are hugely complex pieces of software with a lot of attack surface. A large part of Apple’s value proposition is being secure. It sounds like the new approach (in the EU only) that allows additional browser engines requires specific security measures to be taken.
Rightly or wrongly device security is going to be a strong defense Apple has against some of these allegations.
Then by the same argument, it should be ok for Microsoft to prevent users from installing any other browser on Windows besides Edge because it could make that person’s device less secure…
No, a user should be allowed to take the security risk of installing whatever they want on their computers. Security-conscious users will have clean phones, and ordinary users will have phones full of viruses like their computers.
Battery life is more of a concern on mobile devices because if your phone dies you can't call 911, get an uber, navigate with maps, or message a friend. There's more reason to protect mobile batteries than laptop batteries.
iOS started out closed and stayed that way for various reasons. Windows OS started with the ability of users to make various choices. One of those choices had to do with web browsers. MS's crime was "the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs."
yes safari is preinstalled but on an iphone you aren't allowed to install another browser (in this jurisdiction) so there's technically no precedent yet
This is an artificial distinction. A browser normally comes with its own rendering engine.
In my experience, Firefox does not work as well on the iPhone as does Safari. It's obviously a rendering issue, because large pages will reload on their own over and over again while I'm trying to read them. My guess is it's a sneaky broken part of webkit which Apple knows how to fix in Safari and deliberately leaves broken for the other browser makers to suffer the consequences. Because, that's just the kind of bullshit which Apple is down for.
> This is an artificial distinction. A browser normally comes with its own rendering engine.
You're right that a browser normally comes with its own rendering engine, but I don't think it's an artificial distinction. There are plenty of components that most programs call out to the OS for—form elements, drop downs, save/load windows, file system access, and whatnot. The rendering engine is a much larger component, but I don't think it's cut-and-dried that it is categorically different.
> My guess is it's a sneaky broken part of webkit which Apple knows how to fix in Safari and deliberately leaves broken for the other browser makers to suffer the consequences
"Apple sabotages webkit for other Browsers" is a different—and to me at least, much stronger—argument than "Apple requires other browsers to use Webkit".
> There are plenty of components that most programs call out to the OS
Sure - user input handling, raster graphics, text formatting... HTML rendering and browser technology though? Apple made WebKit using FOSS desktop libraries, and then turned around to deny users FOSS desktop-grade competition. They TiVoized your browser.
Apple is going to have a tough defense, if they decide to steelman that particular point. The writing is on the wall, competition is coming with or without Apple's approval.
> "Apple sabotages webkit for other Browsers" is a different—and to me at least, much stronger—argument than "Apple requires other browsers to use Webkit".
Currently, anyone can create a new iPhone browser, but with one huge restriction: Apple insists that it uses the same WebKit rendering engine as Safari. [0]
And currently you can also delete Safari from your iOS device. An example of this is Firefox [1].
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 literally tried to block people from buying Apple products, people will find a way. So, obviously, Apple customers are having a great time in the Apple warden garden and made Apple a $3T company. But for some reason, other companies and regulators feel like Apple and its customers are having too much fun and need to call the cops on their party.
Apple is no different than Google search. Even if you drowned people in search choice popups, 99% of the time people choose Google. Regulators say Google is doing something nefarious when in reality, their product is loved by billions of people. In these situations, like Apple products and Google search, we need to realize that both companies have won the game in certain markets they operate because they made products that people really enjoy using.
I'm not so sure. We are fully bought in to the Apple Ecosystem (Apple One, Apple Fitness, Music, everything). In most cases (like Apple Home), I did enough research and found that it was much more well thought out security-wise and was good enough, compared to the wild west that is the Google/Amazon smart home ecosystem. Again, for the most part, the walled garden is way superior to what I see outside the garden.
Even the app store, I have all my complaints about Apple's arbitrary enforcement of App Review guidelines as an iOS developer. However, as a consumer, I love that I can spend _less_ time worrying about my non-tech loved ones finding garbage in the app store. Yes there's coercive "buy this game" garbage, and tons of it, but I'm less concerned about financial scam apps than I would be for third party app stores.
However, in certain cases (like only Apple Music supported on the HomePod speakers, or Apple Watch only sending fitness data to Apple Fitness), we feel kind of "forced" to use the Apple product when there are superior competitors, because of the (manufactured) ease of use of full integration.
Just FYI, HomePod actually supports multiple music services, and Apple Health (the data store for Fitness) supports integrations with other providers (both input and output).
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.
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.
I think the position oft the European Union is a good approach. It classifies companies like apple not as a "monopoly" but as a "gate keeper".
I don't have a very deep understanding of that topic, but it's possible to regulate those companies a bit. In the EU similar things were already done for the car industry. The manufacturers are required to allow third party repair shops the same access to documentation, diagnostics software and parts like their own shops (not for free, but for a reasonable price). And repairs at a third party shop doesn't void the warranty.
For computers, cloud providers and smartphones similar regulations could improve everybody's life by giving us more flexibility and cheaper products by creating more competition.
In the end apple is collecting a lot of money and seems to just put it on huge piles in their bank accounts. I don't see any reason to increase competition by introducing regulations. Give startups and smaller companies a chance!
I feel like there's a difference between the car regulation you state and the regulation approach being taken in the EU. Specifically the ability of third parties to limit end user choice.
With vehicle repair, I can still choose to use the manufacturer operated/approved repair shops. I truly am gaining additional choice and can continue to service my car as I always have.
The EU regulations allow third parties to remove my choice to live in the walled garden if they wish. So while it could enhance competition for developers I don't know if it greatly improves the users choice, or experience.
This is correct for one side of Apple's market but not the other. You're right that Apple doesn't have monopoly power on the consumer side because there are alternatives and if you cared a whole heck of a lot you could create your own. It's capital intensive sure but being expensive to enter a market and having a moat doesn't mean you have a monopoly. If all your friends hung out on Discord then you're gonna have to use Discord to talk to them, if all your friends play a Windows exclusive game then you're gonna need a PC to play with them, the green bubble thing is nonsense.
But Apple does wield real monopoly power on the other side of their market which is app developers. I don't think large developers have any real choice but to bite the bullet and take whatever terms Apple offers and be on iOS because that's where your users are. Developers aren't choosing Apple as the better product in the way consumers are.
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.
That seems like something they'd be willing to fix. They allow users to select Ecosia, an extremely niche search engine. Kagi should be on that list too.
The doj doesn't have a basic understanding of how computers work, how networks work, how computer security works. They cannot effectively regulate a world they do not understand.
In this case... the largest submarket of....computers.
If you think one can regulate the market for X without understanding how X works... you should work at the DOJ or FTC. Lina Khan has a job there waiting, I'm sure.
If you think the regulators understand nothing about computers, operating systems, app markets, privacy, and security, then I'd say you should go get a nice consulting gig with the DoJ because clearly you are more informed and insightful than even their most senior resources.
Half the people on hacker news are more informed and insightful than ftc/doj in this domain. They are clueless. And they don't pay well. Half the people here would be taking a pay cut to get involved with them.
As an iPhone user I am willing (and believe I am) paying Apple a premium for a well curated and reviewed App Store (vs android). I just wish they would stop “double dipping “ and charging far in excess of their costs (and in excess of reasonable profit) to the app sellers.
When the iPhone App Store first launched, Steve Jobs claimed[0] the 30% was to cover the cost of certifying software as functional, well-designed, and nonmalicious. Part of it was an ego thing too: he didn't want people fucking up apps and making his pet project look bad, so early App Review focused on a lot of UI polish things in order to make people think iPhone software was just inherently better than Android.
Even a few years in there's already evidence that Apple was entirely aware of how much of a cash cow owning the distribution market for your apps is. There's an internal letter asking about reducing the percentage because someone was worried about the Chrome Web Store (?) eating their lunch. Today, App Review is far too inadequate for the level of software submissions Apple gets, and they regularly let garbage onto the store that's specifically supposed to be curated.
I occasionally hear people complain about how Tim Cook "ruined the company" and that Jobs would never do the kind of control freak shit that he literally pioneered and is literally the selling proposition of the Mac all the way back in 1984. The only thing Tim Cook did was scale the business from "luxury compute" to it's inevitable conclusion as a monopolistic nightmare. The way that the App Store business game is played is specifically that you don't keep spending all your money on better app review. Once you have users and developers mutually hooked on one another, you siphon money out of them for your other projects (or your shareholders).
At one point, you were paying a premium for a better App Store, but not anymore. The business relationship just doesn't work out that way long-term.
[0] I personally think this belief was genuine at first.
To add more evidence to your point: SJ loved wall gardens and consistently fought against extensibility. The Apple II only got extension slots because the other Steve insisted. All of the compact Macs have very limited to no extensibility.
It's so ironic that Apple was pushing the (open) Web apps in the early days of the iPhone (out of necessity of course).
Jobs loved excellent user experiences, and, rightly or wrongly, saw walled gardens as an important part of providing them. Sometimes.
The counterexample is the iPod, with its advertising slogan "Rip. Mix. Burn.". The first iPod used Firewire and was Mac-only, every edition since then used entirely industry-standard technology, USB and MP3. The value proposition was, as the slogan illustrates, easily taking your CDs and putting the music on the iPod. That too was in pursuit of an excellent user experience.
Later, Jobs fought the entire music industry for the right to buy digital music, not just rent it. And won.
> There is a plethora of evidence that this is not the case.
Do you have actual evidence for this claim? Because it's pretty widely accepted that the App Store has higher standards and quality, and you just cited a single case.
Are you seriously implying Apple catching 17 malware apps in 2022 means the App Store isn’t safer than being able to download whatever you want from the internet?
No, I just provided more examples as requested in an attempt to reduce confusion over which parts of the ecosystem are actually providing security. Apple app store is plagued by malicious apps as much as any other place on the internet, but what's making the difference - why these malicious apps are primarily engaging in ad fraud rather than stealing all of your personal data, is OS-level security.
All Apple can do is revoke app certificates and pull the app from the store after someone else discovers their malicious nature. That's a very low bar that can be met by nearly every app store in existence and it would be a reasonable security requirement for anyone who's operating an alternative app store on iOS.
The rest of it is just theater as there's no security-focused special sauce that Apple is providing in this area, despite prevailing beliefs. This is further demonstrated by their acceptance of an obvious impersonator like "LassPass".
It's always easy to show that something isn't perfect: just find a counterexample.
It's also easy to multiply that tactic by insinuating that this means that it isn't good, or isn't better than the competition. Which is what you're doing here.
You should be allowed to stay inside Apple's walled garden while the rest of users should be allowed to leave it whenever they want (at the very minimum at their own risk).
Completely hamstringed? SMS is the standard, and yes it sucks horribly. Elevating the experience with additional software features and cloud services on one platform does not immediately entitle all smartphone users on the globe to the same experience. Google made a push for RCS, botched it, service providers either didn’t adopt it or only partially implemented it. That was upsetting to me. Do we sue Google and service providers as well?
I do agree that losing app licenses is upsetting. But this is no different than the licensing model for many softwares in the desktop market (e.g. per-user and per-install licenses).
Emails from apple executives have made clear that iMessage is purposefully used as a lock in tool. whether thats legal or not idk, what I do know is that it prevents me from switching to android and I would like the government to make apple stop.
It quite literally does not. Step one: walk into any store and buy an Android. Step two: have your phone service transferred to that Android. Step three: there is no step three.
People do this every day. Hundreds of them, at least. Every day.
Apple is using their market power to degrade their competitors product. Of course I could switch to android, but I dont want to, solely because texting iPhone users would become a much worse experience
> Of course I could switch to android, but I dont want to, solely because texting iPhone users would become a much worse experience
It's 99% the same experience - except for iMessage users your texts become green instead of blue.
On top of that, you can use many other services for texts, like FB Messenger, WhatsApp, etc.
Beyond that, I don't see why it's Apple's problem that Google and/or other carriers can't make a decent texting experience without Apple making theirs less secure or a shittier experience in the process.
If you want Fortnite then you need the Tencent...sorry the Epic Game Store. That comes with all of the PII leaks[0]. Because their game store will require permissions/privileges to install system wide apps, it won't be constrained on what data it can leak about users or what it can decide to install in the background. I for one can't wait for a dozen app stores to pop up all installing Sony root kits or Denuvo malware on people's phones.
The problem with this is that going outside of Apple's walled garden benefits 3rd parties who would prefer to do whatever they want so to use the same apps as before, everyone will have to submit to that risk. Apple's walled garden is a type of regulation.
But I thought all of Apple's users were extremely rational actors who freely chose for their experience to be restricted because they knew it was better. Surely if the alternative app stores were so inferior and dangerous all of these discerning users would reject them, and paying the 30% tax would be well worth the competitive advantage of offering your product at the only marketplace that notoriously lucrative cohort would accept. You're not insinuating that Apple's userbase isn't that sophisticated and doesn't make purchasing choices based on factors other than social vibes?
Let me explain again since it went over your head the first time.
Companies, all else being equal, will choose less regulation over more regulation. If TikTok could release outside of the App Store where no one can inspect what they do, they would only release it there. Users addicted to the app wouldn’t suddenly stop using it but now they would be exposed to whatever TikTok feels like doing. They will choose the path of least resistance, not all the paths. It’s not that hard to understand.
So what. If iOS doesn't suck, their apps won't be able to do anything malicious so no added risk. If a kid in China with an iPad testing the app for 3-4 minutes is a real security benefit, I'm Tim Cook.
As long as I have to pay Apple a yearly developer fee so that I can load my own software (that no one else will use) on to 'my' phone, it does not belong me. Yes I know you can reload it every week. Not my phone.
I do not understand why Microsoft stepped out of the mobile market.
It's understood that you can install random APKs from anywhere. As a hobbyist developer, I want to be able to set up a GitHub pipeline and then just download my APKs from that without fighting Apple or paying for an Apple developer account.
I'm actually open to buying an iPhone as well, iPhones are much better when it comes to music production, by understand I have to abide by Apple's rules and not be able to install my own software.
It's a pity really. The phones were quite good. But they failed for the exact issue under discussion: app store compatibility! They didn't have access to either Android or iOS apps.
That used to be my stance as well, but the App Store has gotten so bad in recent years. These days if there’s an app I want to install, it’s much easier to find the app store link on the developers page than to search in the App Store. At this point the “user experience” argument isn’t really there beyond easy payments and subscription management.
The important question is who loses if apple loses. A whole host of very affluent and powerful politicians and others in influential positions own Apple stocks. Apple's monopoly helps their portfolios. I am not expecting much by way of any significant outcome from this exercise.
Good, computers should not be locked down by trillion dollar companies.
The problem with having the App Store is there is still no opt out (in the US). It works on Mac OS; there's no technical reason for them to avoid giving the user choice. It's all about capturing and holding an entire market.
This is awesome. If this goes through then I expect Apple to enter a slump similar to MSFT in the coming years. Their primary selling point in the U.S. for mobile is imessage and their integrated suite. If that open market starts to eat into that then thier edge is much narrower and I don't expect it to hold well.
The takeaway here is that when a multi-trillion dollar company breaks a 130-year old law in a way that impacts over one hundred million people, our justice system and government is so broken and incompetent that it takes five years of investigation before anything happens. Probably years more before any action is taken.
Cool, good job lawyers. The latency of your Leviathan ruins more lives than its power could ever hope to save.
I think that is a false dichotomy the lawyers have created: have a slow moving system or a system where justice isn't served.
Our current system is slow and unjust. There are other options.
My wife and I tried to be foster parents, we did it for about three months, but everything was so slow moving. We had to spend 30 days just to have a piece of paper signed that no one contested. That moment opened my eyes to the corruption the lawyers have willfully constructed and willfully participate in and I have hated the entire legal profession since that moment. The system from the simplest cast to the most complex is designed to pad billable hours without concern for latency, justice, or consistency.
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 going to be happy with this though.
Is it Coincidence Apple just allowed EU to install 3rd party apps?
Personally I think Apple should never have allowed EU to infiltrate its devices /Apples software.
I always looked at an iPhone, like an Xbox, or PlayStation; locked down device; you have to use the brands own controllers, own App Store.
There’s no way Microsoft/Sony would allow EU 3rd stores on their devices? I didn’t think Apple would either & that looks to have come back & bitten them!?
If Apple wanted to, they could drag this out for a decade. In the end, there are probably some details of what they've done with Imessage or the store that you could convince a jury are "unfair."
It's good to know that with everything going wrong on this administration’s watch, they’ve got their laser focus on vacuums, video games, and phones.
The article is chock full of examples where Apple prevents competition on their platform or in connection with their platform.
Apple's argument is generally that they are making the platform safer for their users, but I was just on the App Store looking for the Google Authenticator, and the first item listed was a scam third party authenticator which was intended to fool users looking like the Google Authenticator. This would be the easiest possible thing for a giant corporation like Apple to catch. The fact that it is Google's customers which are being scammed could be part of the reason why Apple doesn't prioritize safety in this case.
What we're dealing with here is a really duplicitous company. Their marketing is world class. The battery life of their products is world class. Everything else - not so much.
Pretty sure that's an ad and yeah, it is misleading.
However, there's no comparison between the Apple app store and Android stores. There is an outrageous amount of straight-up malware on Android. FFS, one actually needs third-party antivirus/malware scanners on Android it's so bad.
The dating argument seems outlandish but it's a legit problem that Android phones ruin group messaging functions that iMessage offers so they'll be left out.
