Quoting: damarrinThey are also not a monopoly in any market

I quite disagree that Apple should get a free pass. Anti-trust should have blasted them years ago for not allowing alternative stores and banning competing browser engines in their own. Even if they aren't literally a monopoly (that's a very edge case anyway), they have enough market influence to harm progress and competition by messing up Web standards because they can (see above about the browsers ban). Apple are one of the most disgusting anti-competitive lock-in driven companies around. I'd say they even outdid MS from the '90s in this regard.

Even though I don't have any respect for Epic's own anti-competitive practices, I hope they win this case over Apple and the later will get the anti-trust treatment they deserve.

Last edited by Shmerl on 29 September 2020 at 9:44 pm UTC

Exercising control over your own platform has nothing to do with monopoly. Plenty of companies do this in the general computing space. Your TV maker does that with your TV, your cable provider does that with your TV box, and so does your router maker/internet provider with your router.

Monopoly is a dominant position in a market. Apple have that nowhere.

Last edited by damarrin on 29 September 2020 at 8:34 pm UTC

Also, the thing I’m personally outraged about is MS’s monopoly in the PC OS market, which is an actual monopoly in the legal sense and not some made up one, and that no one in power deems it fit to do anything about, since practically everyone on the planet, including all the lawmakers, wants it to remain so.

Quoting: damarrinExercising control over your own platform has nothing to do with monopoly. Plenty of companies do this in the general computing space. Your TV maker does that with your TV, your cable provider does that with your TV box, and so does your router maker/internet provider with your router.

Monopoly is a dominant position in a market. Apple have that nowhere.

They do within their own 'mall'. Imagine you are in a small town. There is only one place that has a shopping center. To open your own shop there, it is required that you not only pay your lease for the property/building, but the owner of the shopping center gets a cut of every sale you make as well.
That is Apple in a nutshell. Android at least has some back alley stores that are not muscled away, they just require customers to travel out back to shop with them.
For Android, it is as if the option is there, they just don't get prime real estate, and a reputation for "not google". Apple, you simply have no choice. You want to lice in AppleTown, you have to play by their rules or you get kicked out into the cold.

You’ve never seen a shopping centre lease contract, have you? Your rent increases with your sales.

You can jailbreak your Apple device too, if you’re so inclined. And no matter what you do with your Android phone, no matter how many 3rd party stores and apps you install on it, it’ll continue reporting everything you do to Google to fuel their marketing machine.

Also, you don’t have to live in Apple town. They’re a minority player in the market, Google is bigger and you can get by without Apple. You’d only be unable to if they were a monopoly, which they aren’t.

And yes, if you want to live there, you have to live by their rules. I fail to see the problem here.

Quoting: damarrinApple and Google are getting bad press right now because of the shit Epic has been stirring up that they shouldn't have control over their own platforms. I see value in the argument that a smartphone is just like a computer and should be treated like one, I also see value in it being a closed platform, where users have limited capabilities in exchange for security and peace of mind. Much like gaming consoles, perhaps. Should Sony and MS and Nintendo allow users to install their own software on them, including competitive stores? And if so, should they offer support and warranty if users do that?

At least in the countries I know, there is no warranty in case of modification, so this is just another non-sense argument to support apple's position.

Also the point of security is nonsense.
Because you still could allow users to choose.
If they want the company's "secure" store, they can have it, but if they want something else they shouldn't be denied.

All in all the point of this is much bigger than you think.
As one economic professor pointed out years ago, we are going to see a future of service-economics, if lawmakers don't act.
This means: In the end no one will be able to buy products anymore; that they own, that they can modify and repair and use forever.
Instead you will only be able to pay for services, like subscriptions and then use (former) "products" in the limited way the companies want.

I don't want to live in this future.

Quoting: damarrinExercising control over your own platform has nothing to do with monopoly. Plenty of companies do this in the general computing space. Your TV maker does that with your TV, your cable provider does that with your TV box, and so does your router maker/internet provider with your router.

Monopoly is a dominant position in a market. Apple have that nowhere.

I think a lot of ISP do that, but not all, at least in France we have the FFDN.

Quoting: damarrinExercising control over your own platform has nothing to do with monopoly.

Read about what's the point of competition laws. If Apple was some company with 5 users, no one would care what they exercise. However Apple have power over Web standards development due to having a huge market share (it doesn't have to be a monopoly to have such power). And not allowing competing browsers means they can dictate their garbage terms and everyone has to accept that. And they did it more than once, sabotaging touch events, DASH, WebGPU and other efforts that could go much better if not for Apple making a mess. For me it's clearly a case for anti-trust to handle.

The best solution is to fine Apple until they allow other stores which won't have any of their garbage restrictions, like ban on other browsers. Anti-trust frying them is very long overdue. So I hope Epic win and this disgusting thing will be explicitly prevented.

Last edited by Shmerl on 29 September 2020 at 9:52 pm UTC

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: damarrinExercising control over your own platform has nothing to do with monopoly.

Read about what's the point of competition laws. If Apple was some company with 5 users, no one would care what they exercise. However Apple have power over Web standards development due to having a huge market share (it doesn't have to be a monopoly to have such power). And not allowing competing browsers means they can dictate their garbage terms and everyone has to accept that. And they did it more than once, sabotaging touch events, DASH, WebGPU and other efforts that could go much better if not for Apple making a mess. For me it's clearly a case for anti-trust to handle.

The best solution is to fine Apple until they allow other stores which won't have any of their garbage restrictions, like ban on other browsers. Anti-trust frying them is very long overdue. So I hope Epic win and this disgusting thing will be explicitly prevented.

Is a lot of that due to store lockin, or just greed over what APIs they allow to be used? I mean nkt allowing alternative kwyboards and browsers is a garbage thing to do to your users, unless you can convince them that some engineers ALWAYS know what is best for EVERY user / circumstance...
Disgusting is the correct word for it.

By no means do I think Google is an angel in this, and I think they are only a tad better than Apple, but at least you basically know where Google stands. With Apple it is like that girl you thought was really hot, but then you started talking to her and she didn't have a lot going on upstairs...and had a limited imagination when it came to everything in life and was a spoiled brat to boot.

Google is more like the college roomate who kept drawing a dick on your face when you passed out at the party.