Comment by jtotheh

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.