Comment by vessenes
2 years ago
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.
You realize that when you add appstores like Cydia to an iphone that you immediately open them up into gaping security holes right?
I assume you have never managed the devices of teenagers or a large group of millenial office workers.
To me, it being closed is an absolute feature that I value.
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.