Comment by khazhoux
2 years ago
Ok here's one big one:
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.
So the best argument you can come up with is that there will need to be less API breaking changes less often?
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.
This lawsuit is anti-consumer.