Comment by airstrike
2 years ago
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.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply
Re: #2 FWIW Shadow PC doesn't require a PC. You get a virtual one for like $20-50 / month depending on the level of virtual PC you'd like.
And Microsoft Cloud Gaming is still in beta. Why would Apple even need to consider supporting it?
Apple doesn't need to support it, they need to not block it and let the user decide if they want to participate in a beta.
Based on your biases and incomplete understanding of the facts, I think tapoxi wins 1-0.
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You're still missing the point. PlayStation Plus and GeForce Now are both production products, and you can't get apps for iOS/iPad OS/tvOS
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...
> I love how whenever Apple makes a clearly anti-trust move it's always about privacy.
Who else is going to care about privacy though?
For the payment situation for example, Apple Pay (and Google Pay) use EMV Tokenization so that your actual credit card number is obfuscated:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pay#Technology
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Pay_(payment_method)#Te...
Credit card numbers are used by retailers to data mine their customers:
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
> For the payment situation for example, Apple Pay (and Google Pay) use EMV Tokenization so that your actual credit card number is obfuscated
As does Samsung Pay. As could any number of tap to pay providers, if Apple would let them on iOS.
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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.
> Apple having access to everything related to end user, every step they can take regarding privacy can be deemed as anti-competitive.
But does Apple have access to things? Or do they (sometimes?) design things so that even they don't have the information?
A lot of the time they do things 'on device'.
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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.
They are more than free to restrict any APIs/integrations they want, as long as these restrictions apply to their own apps as well.
It’s much easier to identify and detect an app that does multiple things than identify trackings across multiple parts of an app.
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.
in #2 you’re talking about something else. those are streaming games from a console you own.
_cloud_ streaming where the game is running a ms/sony owned server is only available in a browser.
i don’t know about the sony side of things, but apple rejected ms’s native cloud streaming app.
Those barely exist... Microsoft Cloud Gaming is still in beta.
You keep bringing up MS Cloud Gaming, but there are others that are more established.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/
https://luna.amazon.com/
Luna can only support iOS by using Safari, for example.
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.
> Who cares about smartwatches
219.43 million people use smartwatches
I assume that's worldwide? That definitely seems niche to me compared to the global population.
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?
I don't think global population is a factor in antitrust law.
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Regardless of the size, it does that make it okay to hamper competition like they do.
If this was such an insignificant niche, Apple Watch wouldn't even exist, would it?
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'.
0. https://scoop.market.us/smartwatch-statistics/
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.
> The smartwatch never took off as a platform
And you think Apple had no role to play in this by making most of them useless on their devices?
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> 3.
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.
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Why not use an app like WhatsApp?
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?
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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.
Google Pay is absolutely available on iPhone.
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"
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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)
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> Even with all Android phones, a group chat is a disaster unless they use FB Messenger or WhatsApp
Excellent point. This is a large part of why I don't agree with iMessage "exclusion" somehow rising to the level of antitrust.
iMessage doesn't make Android texting worse, it just reveals how bad it already is.
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.
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>> Who cares about smartwatches
The Justice Department, 16 US states, and the District of Columbia, among others. Anti-trust violations are crimes.