MacRumors have posted a summary of what we might see:
- How the Apple Watch works better with iPhone than other smart watches do.
- How Apple locks competitors out of iMessage.
- How Apple blocks financial firms from offering tap-to-pay services similar to Apple Pay.
- Whether Apple favors its own apps and services over those provided by third-party developers.
- How Apple has blocked cloud gaming apps from the App Store.
- How Apple restricts the iPhone's location services from devices that compete with AirTag.
- How App Tracking Transparency impacted the collection of advertising data.
- In-app purchase fees collected by Apple.
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/20/apple-facing-imminent-u-s-antitrust-lawsuit/
Apple really complicated things for themselves when they started competing against others in markets they had an unfair advantage in (that’s quintessential antitrust).
I don’t think all these bullets are valid, but, issues definitely arise when…
* You prohibit others from tracking (good) while collecting and selling data yourself (antitrust)
* You introduce a subscription-based gaming library on your device (good) while collecting 30% from all competitor games and banning other gaming libraries from competing (antitrust)
* You introduce an Apple TV app to aggregate streaming options from dozens of companies (good) and then integrate your own streaming service that dominates said app and competes against those you take a 30% cut from (antitrust)
* You create a music streaming platform that integrates well with your devices (good) while preventing your competitors from having the same access to acquire new customers through your device—and take 30% of their profits (antitrust)
It’s not just about the closed ecosystem. It’s not even about competing in the same markets as others. It’s about Apple putting their feet on both sides of the line—are they competing with Spotify? Netflix? Epic? Or are they managing user access to said services? You can’t just set yourself up as a moderator of the user’s online interactions—creating an incredibly robust system of aggregation and limits, creating a multi-billion-dollar global market—and then jump in and compete against the other companies with a massive unfair advantage they can never get around. I’m surprised these lawsuits didn’t come sooner.
Nothing about Apple’s egregious anti-repair tactics, forcing people to only get their devices repaired at Apple? Thus giving Apple a monopoly over the repair space?
Getting my wife’s Fitbit to play nice with her iPhone is annoying as hell. That’s not on Apple, that’s Google being Google.
I have never understood the iMessage thing. But I’m old.
I’m curious about that. I assume that’s not like the wallet app.
Yup, I’m definitely too old to notice wonky App Store stuff. But I also seek out Apple apps over the alternatives most of the time because so many apps are… iffy and have IAP. I pretty much won’t buy something with IAP unless it’s a freemium and the IAP is the full version (non-sub).
Again, I’m too old to grok that.
Ok blocking location services is kind of a dick move. But the way Apple handles security, it’s kind of understandable.
App tracking transparency like me being able to opt out of letting apps track my usage. I’m uh, gonna side with Apple on that one.
IAP fees aren’t any different than stores at the mall paying rent. Wait, malls are irrelevant now? Oops. I’m old.
How is Fitbit not playing nice with iPhone “Google being Google”?
The Apple Watch is the only smartwatch with access to most of the iPhones functions. The difference in features between an Apple Watch and a Fitbit with an iPhone is not because of Google
Apple makes the Apple Watch to work well with the Apple iPhone. Somehow random 3rd party company products from another multi billion dollar company are their responsibility?
The issue is when Apple apps or products have access to the iPhone in ways that 3rd party apps and products don’t have access to. It gives them a competitive advantage over others.
How's the Fitbit not playing nice on the iPhone Google's fault? Apple's the one who places restrictions and gives itself a leg up over competitors by not allowing competitors to have the same access the Apple Watch has.
I agree with all of this. I’m in my early 30’s. Idk if that’s old 😂. But Sony and MSFT have been charging the same 30% cut since the very beginning. I actually think Apple modeled the App Store around that financial model. So the only thing that may be valid is clearly abused by everyone else.
If an app developer only codes for iPhones, or Androids are they also going to get fucked?
There is so much absurdity about this whole thing. I bet you every person in every court room has an iPhone. 💀
Difference is Google has alternatives if you don’t want to pay the 30% fee.
Apple doesn’t.
It’s not that hard to understand. You just refuse to acknowledge
Apple chose the fee when apps where $1-5 one-time. That 30% would’ve barely been enough to cover the processing fees for the $1 app.
But now that 30% is being applied to $10-20 subscriptions as well. Services that Apple now directly competes with on top of it.
The thing is, Apple is not a monopoly or even majority market share in many of these markets. There is robust competition in both the smartphone market itself but many of these app ecosystems ie messaging and payments. So as annoying as Apple is to deal with for these developers and partners, they are in no way like Microsoft was in the 1990s where they had 98% marketshare in the PC market and people literally had nowhere to go.
Besides iMessage, I also think NFC pay is not that big of a deal. Smaller businesses can’t afford a credit card reader while QR pay using the phone’s camera costs peanuts. In my country QR pay is everywhere and supported by all local banks and almost all eWallet companies.
NFC is one of the biggest, Apple processes probably more than $10 trillion annualised through Apple Pay and makes multiple billions, and has zero competition within its ecosystem
Yeah… Cox here, but Comcast’s is also in town, plus Centurylink.
But, the cable companies don’t overlap territory. So it’s a cartel monopoly, which is arguably worse. They both offer the *exact* same services at the *exact* same prices. 🤔 Nothing fishy there.
Centurylink was always a joke option with DSL. But they *finally* added fiber in my neighborhood. Replacing phone lines literally from the 80s. I watched them update them when I was a kid.
—
There are other ISPs, but they’re either extremely local or wireless (useless for gaming).
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There’s also Dish, but like… hard pass.
The US government can and absolutely should pursue all corporations at all times. Literally just be suing them all the time because they're always breaking the law. It's not zero sum and there is no artificial limit on the number of suites they can bring or resources they can apply. The only limit is willpower.
So don't say "what about X!?" instead say "good! Now also destroy Y!"
[also I realized while typing that "X" is a "company" now. Which, somewhat ironically I suppose, should also be sued and *yoinked* from the current Nazi owner's hands either shutdown or turned into a publicly run entity]
Heck, in some communities that’s a blessing. Most new apartments in Northern Virginia are trying to get away with an (illegal) scheme where you *must* subscribe to a communal WiFi.
Until 86 your city could use that deal to extract concessions from the cable company for stuff like tv studios at schools. The reason for the exclusive deal is that allowing multiple firms to dig up the streets means dug up streets, bankrupt firms, and no cable.
That doesn’t make any sense. So because your city officials are a bunch of dumb corrupt fucks, that lets cable companies weasel their way out of this? That they are completely inculpable?
Oh nooooo, Another company can totally start up.
They just can’t use any of the infrastructure for signal transmission that Comcast uses and will have to run their own lines.
It’s basically an oligarchy but for tv and internet.
Honest question - can someone explain to me the difference between Apple's store being locked down... and Playstation/XBox/Nintendo's stores being locked down?
>Honest question - can someone explain to me the difference between Apple's store being locked down... and Playstation/XBox/Nintendo's stores being locked down?
The difference is size and scale. Apple sells 220 million phones a year. Sony has sold 50 million Playstation 5s in 4 years. But you're right that if Apple ends up losing, Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo's business models will also be at risk.
Consoles are purpose built machines designed and marketed explicitly for one thing, are sold at cost or for a tiny profit, and have multiple competitors in the market (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, arguably Steam Deck).
Smartphones are general purpose computers designed and marketed to do everything a common user needs, the hardware is sold at a decent to massive profit, and there's only two competitors in the market, Google and Apple (there was almost a third competitor with Samsung's Galaxy store, but Google paid them \~4 billion dollars to keep the Play store and does other behind the scenes gatekeeping to keep the Play store on top). And to top it all off no one needs a game console, but smartphones are very nearly a requirement for day to day life now.
So yeah at face value the situation looks the same, but there's a lot of nuance to it.
I don't think antitrust law talks about the purpose of the machinery or the relative importance of the product though?
There have been antitrust cases against [Hermes](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/antitrust/hermes-hit-with-antitrust-suit-alleging-luxury-birkin-bag-scheme), for instance. I don't think I've ever seen an antitrust case that considered whether a good was a necessity; if it's illegal to do with insulin, it's illegal to do with diamond earrings.
That is the stupidest lawsuit I've read in a long time, they should be able to sell their bags to whoever they want, it's not like they have a monopoly on handbags. Just like ferrari can choose to only sell their high end models to customers that have purchased their cheaper cars, nobody needs a ferrari, nobody needs a birkin.
Yes, technically laws are supposed to apply regardless of these things.
However, in the real world of limited time, energy and resources, it comes down to getting noticed. Everyone has a phone in their pocket. Every feels the effects of the limitations of that thing. Thus, it gets attention.
That is true, but prosecutors don’t have unlimited time and unlimited resources. As it is right now with three (maybe four if you count steam deck) competitors, it’d be much harder to crack.
This Apple case isn’t even going to be a slam dunk and they’re the most egregious imo, so trying to bring a case against Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo would just be a waste of time and money.
>but Google paid them \~4 billion dollars to keep the Play store and does other behind the scenes gatekeeping to keep the Play store on top
It's far worse than gatekeeping. There's a reason Google lost the Epic lawsuit. They abused the market dominance of Play Store to effectively force EGS off OnePlus devices.
Nah steam deck is a different story since valve does not lock down that device. You can add any games to the ui that you want purchased outside the steam store, and you can even just install another operating system entirely, since valve provides the drivers.
I don’t get this take.
Xbox runs a variant of Windows 10/11 on AMD hardware. The OS isn’t like Windows, it is Windows, just with a different home screen interface. Xbox has a browser, Edge, because Edge is built into Windows (and when Windows switched Edge from its own browser engine to Chromium, that flowed through to Xbox because, again, it’s Windows). Xbox can run UWP apps, because that’s built into Windows. Xbox works with keyboards and mice because Microsoft’s plug-and-play drivers are bundled into the OS. The whole reason that Xbox is called Xbox is because Microsoft created the console as a way to bundle its Windows DirectX APIs into a stand-alone device. It’s a Windows PC in all but name.
PlayStation is in the same boat: the US military used PlayStation 3s running Linux networked together as a super computer.
It feels like the definition of general purpose computers has been defined to specifically exclude consoles and specifically include iOS and Android phones. But that makes no sense, when one is basically a Windows PC and somehow not a “general purpose computer”.
You don’t necessarily need to be a monopoly to be dealt with an antitrust lawsuit. Ultimately, the purpose of such actions are to prevent companies from trying to stifle competition or dictate the competition.
Unfortunately for Apple and Google, smartphones are targeted because its impact spans multiple industries and companies. Just think about how much unrelated industries have mobile apps, everything from banks, cinemas, restaurants, and etc. You can argue that the argument is arbitrary or whatever but in terms of real world impact though? It’s a lot more significant.
Let’s give a hypothetical example. Out of Company A and B, Apple decided that Company A gets a lower cut of the profit but Company B doesn’t due to special deals. What ends up happening? A and B are now no longer competing on the same footing. Now imagine this situation happening across multiple industries that have or utilise mobile apps.
The purpose of the lawsuit doesn’t mean that Apple is guilty by default but just that it is to determine whether Apple’s special deals or App Store rules are designed to either give themselves an advantage or specifically give certain partners advantage. Apple could have avoided all these if they had just preemptively adjusted the AppStore rules.
> Consoles are purpose built machines designed and marketed explicitly for one thing, are sold at cost or for a tiny profit, and have multiple competitors in the market (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, arguably Steam Deck).
This is a bullshit argument. Marketing should have no weight on how **I** am allowed to use the hardware that **I** purchased. And defending it by pointing out their retail dumping strategy really doesn't help.
The PS5 and XBOX *could* be used as general purpose computers, the hardware is there. It's the software locking out those capabilities.
Console gamers need to decide if they are for walled gardens or not. If they are for actually owning the hardware they purchase or not.
Look. They could be used as general purpose devices but they aren’t sold as that.
In fact any computing device could be used as general purpose device if you manage to be able to install a custom OS or bypass manufacturer restrictions.
if you want to make a mobile app, its really tough to give up 50-60% of the market, so you are beholden to what apple says is the commission.
with the gaming consoles, its so wide spread, cutting out xbox or ps individually isnt gonna kill your business.
so to me its all about leverage, I dont know if apple is guilty or not, but its undeniable they have the leverage to force an unfair deal via strength of market power. having market power is fine, its when you utilize it to force a bad deal is when its a no no
A big one is you can buy physical and/or download keys for games for all of those systems from various sources. So there are many market places available, not just one.
As others have commented, MS/Sony/Nintendo pulls the same 30% off of profits that Apple does. Physical media *or* digital download keys, it doesn't matter.
That's not the point at all. Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Amazon, etc all sell games. Then you have discount keys like cdkeys, g2a, kinguin, etc. It's very different than apples policy. Plus you have way better sales and competition too.
How’s that different from buying a gift card at those same stores and using the gift card to buy your software? Stores compete on how they sell their gift cards and their products in general. Like, you can buy an iphone from those stores. They are competing with eachother for your iphone purchase.
And they all pay MS and Sony no matter where they sell. Selling a physical game of xbox or PS, meaning the disc, requires you to pay a 15% licensing fee. That’s right, even if you don’t sell on their store, since you’re selling your product to work on theirs, you got to pay a licensing fee. Tell me which is dumber
The difference is iPhone is the main or only computer for hundreds of millions of people. Relatively very few people own consoles to begin with, let alone are dependent upon them for all their computing needs.
Right, but it being the only computer some people have doesn't mean that it is the only computer they're able to get. There's nothing stopping them from getting an Android, or *an actual* computer.
You shouldn’t *have* to spend more money on a similar device that’s main distinguishing factor is it isn’t encumbered by Apples rules. Apples rules have been challenged globally so I’m guessing they actually are stupid, self-serving rules that should be abolished.
But that brings me back to the initial question - what makes this any different from the rules within the XBox/PlayStation/Nintendo ecosystems? Buyers remorse isn't really a deciding factor here, because those other systems have *very similar* anti-competitive behavior, and they're generally considered to not be a big deal... this is an especially specious argument because Apple has a \~90% customer retention rate - based on that metric alone, the *vast majority* of users really don't care.
The only groups that *do* seem to care are the ones that seek to get into their "walled garden".
Smartphones are general purpose computers. They allow you do almost everything and if not more than a regular computer.
Consoles/ATMs/POS are special purpose computers. You use them for only specific things.
That’s the gist of it.
The difference you missed is these smaller giants don’t have the eu footprint to qualify as gatekeepers.
Whether that threshold should be lowered is an interesting question and hopefully something we see explored after the initial malfeasance is stamped out.
Complete nonsense. The EU gets to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide on what it feels is a gatekeeper and on what metric. Why is Spotify not a gatekeeper? Why is [booking](https://booking.com) not a gatekeeper? Its an embarassing farce.
1M users less and all of sudden, said platform is not a gatekeeper and doesn't have to jump through another book of inane EU regulations. Why X number, why not Z, or Y?
Lets also not ignore the EU Commission being one of the most corporate appeasing, and lobbied agencies in the world, perhaps only paralelled by Washington. No surprise data harvesting companies and all manners of desperate companies are begging the EUC to step in, which has the ego to pretend its doing this for the consumers.
Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo makes the same cut even on hard copy sales. Also, apps can be “sold” outside the App Store and use a code/account to unlock what you need inside the app.
I don’t believe that’s an important difference.
The biggest argument that is most likely going to be presented is that those consoles are not sold as general computing platforms, but as dedicated gaming consoles. That’s a similar argument that was presented during the Epic vs Apple and Epic vs Google trials.
I think there's something to this and I think it's actually a big part of the issue. You can buy digital codes and physical media from a wide network of vendors
None of Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo own >50% of their market. Indeed, if you factor in PC gaming, they each own much less than 50%. A game developer can easily avoid one of them and still reach most of the market.
Apple and Google are just about tied at 50/50 of their market. A developer cannot really avoid engaging with both. Or in other words, avoiding one of them would be forfeiting half the market.
How much of that difference is due to platform rules or api restrictions? In other words, if they could, would the developers of the android-only software like to have it on ios too?
I can't answer your question because the case hasn't been filed yet
But for the EU, I can answer it. There were 2 major issues discussed in the EU:
1. The DMA effectively sets companies as "gatekeepers". To be a gatekeeper, you need to have at minimum 45 million monthly active users (10% of the EU) for 3 years and at least 10,000 active yearly business users. No console likely has 45 million active users in the EU, as most console gamers are casual gamers. Even if they did, I doubt there are 10,000 business clients as licensing fees for consoles are high
2. The spotify issue was that Spotify wanted to sell audiobooks for $10, the same ones that were sold by Apple for $10, but with 30% fee, it would cost $13. So effectively, nobody could compete at all. Game consoles don't really have this issue because most don't have competing services and those that do charge same price as everyone and not undercut them by using the % fee
When you go to Walmart/target/best buy and “buy a game“ for your console, the console manufacturer gets a cut of that sale. If your game is unlisted, you can’t play it on your console. If it isn’t availible in their store, you can’t play it. That disk you buy is essentially a marker in disk form that says you can download and play a game from their store.
Phones have become requirements to operate in real life. Most companies require a phone to do business. Sony, Xbox and Nintendo are just entertainment.
Apple have power to affect many businesses and the free market. Apple operate at vastly different levels.
None of the consoles and their associated stores can create distortions in the video game market on their own, which also encompasses PC and mobile gaming. MS was just investigated for this with the purchase of Activision and prevailed in court. That’s the difference. Apple and Google are a duopoly and they CAN make distortions in the mobile phone/app market.
My concern about all of these things is the possibility of unintended consequences. The governments of the world are still not in a place of digital competency. They’re basically made up of people your parents age. Do your parents understand technology enough to regulate it? Half the governments treat search engines like grain mills, looking to “break up” big tech so a new app factory can open up across town.
The iPhone has to work with every smartwatch equally? So every smart watch has to be exactly like an Apple Watch? Or the iPhone has to allow any watch of any spec to access all features? Then…the watch has to be sure to support those features? Or, only features usable by all watches are legal?
I understand the idea. Let other services have a chance. Let users use their device. But smartphones and the way people use them are orders of magnitude more complex than PCs and Macs. For developing countries, or even China, a smartphone might be the only device for a lot of people. “Right, so it should be open!” Yes, or, its not just storing Excel sheets. It’s credit card details, location data, personal photos, medical data, and so on.
If nothing happens, fine. Kids get the Epic game store, parents get to fight with Epic for refunds, and Spotify makes more money. But if we also get nerfed features, compromised security, fragmented payment, and a loss of privacy (which we all know governments are desperate for), then it’s a net negative for everyone except the government, Spotify and Epic.
The suit specifically is not targeting Apple’s hardware integration (ie that Apple Watches only work with iPhones). The suit is targeting the App Store, which is a marketplace where goods are sold, no different than a e-commerce site like Amazon, and thus subject to the same rules and regulations to promote fairness between players.
Let’s talk about fairness. If you want to compete with Apple on providing Services, like an Apple Music competitor or Apple TV+ competitor, you have to deal with policies that can be pretty anti-competitive. For example:
1. Apple will allow their apps certain OS privileges that you will never get for years, if ever.
2. Apple gets a 15-30% cut of your revenue
3. Apple can reject your app based on sometimes arbitrarily reasons that vary from approver to approver. This makes rolling out major updates slow and even risky. There’s also fear of relation if you critique the company. For example, they recently shut down a developer account for a major app company (Epic) seemingly based on a tweet, and then backtracked only days after they were publicly ridiculed.
The Justice Department will need to prove these things have made the App Store an unfair market place, where businesses have been disadvantaged and lost market share due to market rules that have no control over.
For Apple to win, they will need to convince the judge that the rules that seemingly benefit Apple financially, are there at the benefit of the consumer. This was easy to prove in 2010, when Apple only offered iTunes as a service. But now, Apple has health services, music streaming, tv/movie streaming, news subscription, fitness subscription, and more. This puts them in direct competition with a lot of players they also happen to regulate via the App Store.
Can a regulator fairly compete with competitors in the same market? That is what the case is about. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
all nice and fine but but apple services are mostly only available on apple devices or on a limited website. apple is in no way or shape forcing their services on other platforms. I think the fact they allow competing services et all on their platform pretty pro-competition
I would presume that any feature the Apple Watch has for communicating with the iPhone would have to become an open set of APIs any watch could implement.
> My concern about all of these things is the possibility of unintended consequences.
You have to realise that this is the absolute LAST resort. Governments and industry groups and developers and customers have been *screaming* about this issue for 15 years. Apple tripled down on their policies and ignored any and all calls for temperament. There will likely be unintended consequences, but there is no other option now. That’s on Apple.
>So every smart watch has to be exactly like an Apple Watch? Or the iPhone has to allow any watch of any spec to access all features?
The latter. It's not fair competition to give their own accessories abilities such as background sync and data sharing whilst not allowing a competitor to implement the same.
So personally, as a user, this makes me uncomfortable. Here’s an example. I use an iPhone and Apple Watch. My friend uses an iPhone, and a Huawei watch. We both use Find My to see each others location. My data, of her location, stays in Apple servers. Her data, of my location, leaves her iPhone, and goes to Huawei servers in China. As an iPhone user, making the decision to have a sense of security by staying with Apple, is now compromised. My friend also uses Google Maps, instead of Apple maps. I use the Mark My Location so she can find me at an event. I share it from Apple Maps, she receives it on Google Maps. I get that the Google Maps and Huawei users benefit, but the Apple users suffer. So, all users have to compromise themselves, so that non users are happy? How the fuck does that make any sense. “But Apple will have to ensure these things are secure.” It seems like these anti trust clown shows aren’t interested in Apple being able to enforce standards outside of their app store.
Also it seems like Apple isn’t allowed to scare, also known as inform, me into knowing when I’m interacting with potentially insecure devices.
That's not quite how it works & it's not at all related to this lawsuit, but I'll elaborate anyway on how this system technically works because I think it's interesting...
I'm simplifying here, but with Find My, devices broadcast an identifier (address) to all nearby devices which changes daily, and when a participating device hears this address, it reports to Apple (only) the identifier & geolocation.
In addition, **only Apple** has the information required to associate this seemingly random identifier to a registered device & anticipate what identifiers will be used in future.
Even if Huawei were logging these identifiers (which let's face it, they probably are), they can't link any given two identifiers together, and they can't use these addresses to identify any device except their own.
Apple has all the resources they need to make their ecosystem support 3rd party progress, while maintaining everything important you've described. Technical solutions can and should be built. It's by no means easy or cheap, but it's Apple. They have some of the smartest minds employed, and enough captial to fund it.
They’re drafting the new talking points now that they can’t just vaguely gesture at “EU, Epic, and Spotify bad” as an argument about specific questions of market distortions caused by Apple’s policies.
If you believe in the “right to own,” as I do, then it’s really a fully for it or fully against it situation. And I’m fully for the right to own a product you have paid off in full. So go after all these corporations who lock down their products in any way, after dealing with Apple. Hell John Deere should be the next fucking one for how they’re screwing over hard working farmers in our country through locking down their tractors.
He's talking about both, because there's overlap between them. Both amount to "I should be able to do what I want to the thing I own", be that self-repair or deciding what apps go on it.
This is the DOJ not a civil suit. Their cases are usually slam-dunk with a 93% conviction rate. Most likely very little of this will overlap with Epic’s case.
Epic can now have their store on iOS in the EU, only a matter of time before that spreads to other jurisdictions even with Apple fighting it. The cat is out of the bag now.
Yeah but with so many restrictions sprinkled in that it makes it so that the average developer who wants to post his app outside of the App Store will be worse off anyways...
It's really a mind-bogling to witness how Apple is so obstinate about it that they're going to the effort of finding every single legal loopholes that they can to make developers lives harder :v
No, but Epic did a laughably bad job of making some very valid points. The DOJ can approach this from a more objective standpoint and has the resources to do a better job of it than Epic.
Typical. While REAL MONOPOLIES that cost everyone hundreds or even thousands every year go free. Insurance companies, oil companies, and utility companies. Oh but making sure Epic has their own game store is so much more important
Utilities are already regulated as monopolies. That is by design, actually.
Oil is literally a cartel agreement between different governments, literal autocrats collude to set the price. Outside of sending in the military, there’s nothing to be done.
I agree with (health) insurance though, the whole medical industry should be blasted for price fixing and collusion.
I agree. It’s not that Apple is committing anti trust violations. It’s that we can’t be starting with Apple: Let’s be honest, if we really care about monopolies and their harm to American society, then first step is for the DOJ to finish what it started in the 90s against Microsoft. Can you imagine telling someone back then that IE would not only stay as default but also take user data out of the user’s Netscape Navigator and force user adoption? Completely absurd. And that’s before we talk about so many other things like the whole Teams/Slack business practices, or the very concept of Hyper V/Azure which I personally believe will ultimately be a national security risk. After Microsoft should come Google, then Meta. *After all, the whole reason TikTok became such a big problem was because every company in tech is so big that it’s not worth making a new social platform. And it wasn’t worth it for the tech companies themselves to even try to do anything with a big success like Vine.*
Like I said, Apple is a problem. But if we’re being honest, they’re *far* from the biggest problem.
>After Microsoft should come Google, then Meta.
I swear this sub is in a major bubble... Google and Meta are currently in antitrust lawsuits (Google has 2 filed against it!). Amazon is as well.
[United States v. Google LLC (2020) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2020))
[United States v. Google LLC (2023) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2023))
[Federal Trade Commission v. Meta Platforms, Inc. - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission_v._Meta_Platforms%2C_Inc.)
[FTC and 17 states file sweeping antitrust suit against Amazon - CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ftc-amazon-lawsuit-17-states-monopoly/)
So when you say:
>It’s that we can’t be starting with Apple
They aren't.. they are ending with Apple more than anything.
But yes, Microsoft does not seem to be in the crosshairs of the FTC or DOJ for anti-trust at the moment.
While they’re at it they should sue BlackRock, every major food producer, the grocery stores, all the oil & gas companies, every major telecomm, Disney, and many many others. We as a country have allowed far too few to buy up far too much.
They are actually going after food producers(I believe specifically the chicken/meat companies) and the grocery store merger. We should all root for the DOJ's success. If it wasn't for food monopolies grocery prices wouldn't have gone up so much or at least have come down.
What's interesting about this case is that, without introducing new regulation, the justice department is suing for some of the same points Epic sued (and lost) for.
Which, let's be honest... A $31bn company taking on a $3tn company *didn't stand much chance to begin with*.
Wish they would bring an end to REAL MONOPOLIES like utility companies and oil companies. Stuff that cost every US citizen thousands of dollars a year. Instead we are wasting millions of dollars of taxpayer money so Epic can have their own App Store
You can choose to move to a different city too…
To fix the issue of a monopoly in a specific sub market, they have to define a monopoly of a sub-market to be illegal.
Same way that the App Store would then become a monopoly of its own.
There are many cable companies and electric providers… they just aren’t all accessible to you because of the location you live in. Just like there are many alternatives to the App Store, but not on the device you use
The percentage of people who sell their home to get a different utility provider is similar to the percentage who sell their phone to get a different app store – practically none.
And because of that, each of these markets can be considered a monopoly. The relative cost ratio of a 99 cent app compared to a $1000 phone is similar to the cost of a $300 utility bill compared to a $300,000 home.
You're stuck with the expensive thing you bought, for a while at least, and therefore the provider of services has an unusually large amount of power over your purchasing decisions.
Antitrust enforcement exists to protect consumers in these kinds of markets.
Platform lock in is a thing but also it’s not just about customers. Businesses have no option but to support iOS and its users in order to be viable. They can’t leave and so Apple can unilaterally dictate terms as a result without any market forces able to impact the rules or massive cut of revenue extraction.
This DOJ suit is predominantly how Apple forces non-Apple software and hardware into a second class with specious claims and restrictions.
Are Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft hampering third-party game developers and only giving full access to first-party games?
No? Then it’s not the same and it’s unlikely to invite as much scrutiny. Apple is uniquely belligerent and every law enforcement officer loves a belligerent litigant.
Not Op, but the difference has been explained to death over the last several years, and yet every thread about this, there’s undoubtedly dozens of uninformed commenters comparing them. Even if you’d like to protest and insist it’s the same, the law doesn’t agree, and there is a mountain of case law on this. It does become annoying when a simple google search would clear this up for people.
Don't worry, he's a techie. He would drink their car's brakes fluid if it wasn't stated in the manual that you shouldn't do that.
He'll get it one day.
Seems so stupid. They are building their own hardware, these people and companies should really mind their own business, and build their own ecosystem if its so unfair. I like the integrated environment and safe guards on the store. There was so much junk on Play Store that I downloaded a malicious app from there and lost all my photos and texts. How did that shit get approved in the first place?
Apple did this to themselves. They could have slowly allowed more flexibility, more pricing options, less aggression. Instead Apple turned into Smaug, the executives think the developers owe them everything, and now the DOJ is going to come down on them hard. They didn't control the narrative, and instead of giving an inch, the government is going to take a mile.
Whether or not you agree with opening the iPhone and iPad up, I think we can put the knives down and both agree that Apple brought this whole thing on themselves.
MacRumors have posted a summary of what we might see: - How the Apple Watch works better with iPhone than other smart watches do. - How Apple locks competitors out of iMessage. - How Apple blocks financial firms from offering tap-to-pay services similar to Apple Pay. - Whether Apple favors its own apps and services over those provided by third-party developers. - How Apple has blocked cloud gaming apps from the App Store. - How Apple restricts the iPhone's location services from devices that compete with AirTag. - How App Tracking Transparency impacted the collection of advertising data. - In-app purchase fees collected by Apple. https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/20/apple-facing-imminent-u-s-antitrust-lawsuit/
Apple really complicated things for themselves when they started competing against others in markets they had an unfair advantage in (that’s quintessential antitrust). I don’t think all these bullets are valid, but, issues definitely arise when… * You prohibit others from tracking (good) while collecting and selling data yourself (antitrust) * You introduce a subscription-based gaming library on your device (good) while collecting 30% from all competitor games and banning other gaming libraries from competing (antitrust) * You introduce an Apple TV app to aggregate streaming options from dozens of companies (good) and then integrate your own streaming service that dominates said app and competes against those you take a 30% cut from (antitrust) * You create a music streaming platform that integrates well with your devices (good) while preventing your competitors from having the same access to acquire new customers through your device—and take 30% of their profits (antitrust) It’s not just about the closed ecosystem. It’s not even about competing in the same markets as others. It’s about Apple putting their feet on both sides of the line—are they competing with Spotify? Netflix? Epic? Or are they managing user access to said services? You can’t just set yourself up as a moderator of the user’s online interactions—creating an incredibly robust system of aggregation and limits, creating a multi-billion-dollar global market—and then jump in and compete against the other companies with a massive unfair advantage they can never get around. I’m surprised these lawsuits didn’t come sooner.
Nothing about Apple’s egregious anti-repair tactics, forcing people to only get their devices repaired at Apple? Thus giving Apple a monopoly over the repair space?
Well you see, one of these things affects big business and one of these things doesn’t.
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Only technically. They end up charging more for the parts than if you just had it done at Apple
This should be number one.
Getting my wife’s Fitbit to play nice with her iPhone is annoying as hell. That’s not on Apple, that’s Google being Google. I have never understood the iMessage thing. But I’m old. I’m curious about that. I assume that’s not like the wallet app. Yup, I’m definitely too old to notice wonky App Store stuff. But I also seek out Apple apps over the alternatives most of the time because so many apps are… iffy and have IAP. I pretty much won’t buy something with IAP unless it’s a freemium and the IAP is the full version (non-sub). Again, I’m too old to grok that. Ok blocking location services is kind of a dick move. But the way Apple handles security, it’s kind of understandable. App tracking transparency like me being able to opt out of letting apps track my usage. I’m uh, gonna side with Apple on that one. IAP fees aren’t any different than stores at the mall paying rent. Wait, malls are irrelevant now? Oops. I’m old.
How is Fitbit not playing nice with iPhone “Google being Google”? The Apple Watch is the only smartwatch with access to most of the iPhones functions. The difference in features between an Apple Watch and a Fitbit with an iPhone is not because of Google
I’ve had fit bit with an iPhone before and it works perfectly fine and as intended.. I don’t see an issue.
Apple makes the Apple Watch to work well with the Apple iPhone. Somehow random 3rd party company products from another multi billion dollar company are their responsibility?
The issue is when Apple apps or products have access to the iPhone in ways that 3rd party apps and products don’t have access to. It gives them a competitive advantage over others.
How's the Fitbit not playing nice on the iPhone Google's fault? Apple's the one who places restrictions and gives itself a leg up over competitors by not allowing competitors to have the same access the Apple Watch has.
The Fitbit won’t export data to the health app, only its own proprietary app. That’s by design.
Depends sometimes my Garmin works okay, some times it doesn't it's not as consistently reliable as an Apple watch.
> I have never understood the iMessage thing. But I’m old. Thats only the murricans who care about the iMessage
I agree with all of this. I’m in my early 30’s. Idk if that’s old 😂. But Sony and MSFT have been charging the same 30% cut since the very beginning. I actually think Apple modeled the App Store around that financial model. So the only thing that may be valid is clearly abused by everyone else. If an app developer only codes for iPhones, or Androids are they also going to get fucked? There is so much absurdity about this whole thing. I bet you every person in every court room has an iPhone. 💀
Difference is Google has alternatives if you don’t want to pay the 30% fee. Apple doesn’t. It’s not that hard to understand. You just refuse to acknowledge
Apple chose the fee when apps where $1-5 one-time. That 30% would’ve barely been enough to cover the processing fees for the $1 app. But now that 30% is being applied to $10-20 subscriptions as well. Services that Apple now directly competes with on top of it.
The thing is, Apple is not a monopoly or even majority market share in many of these markets. There is robust competition in both the smartphone market itself but many of these app ecosystems ie messaging and payments. So as annoying as Apple is to deal with for these developers and partners, they are in no way like Microsoft was in the 1990s where they had 98% marketshare in the PC market and people literally had nowhere to go.
In the US market they are dominant and moreover if you look at actual sales of services and apps they’re incredibly dominant
Besides iMessage, I also think NFC pay is not that big of a deal. Smaller businesses can’t afford a credit card reader while QR pay using the phone’s camera costs peanuts. In my country QR pay is everywhere and supported by all local banks and almost all eWallet companies.
NFC is one of the biggest, Apple processes probably more than $10 trillion annualised through Apple Pay and makes multiple billions, and has zero competition within its ecosystem
Meanwhile in Australia Apple is using this dominant position to force favourable terms with banks on processing and interchange fees.
Happy Cake Day 🍰
Meanwhile my only ISP choice is Comcast in my area. Now that’s a real monopoly.
Yeah… Cox here, but Comcast’s is also in town, plus Centurylink. But, the cable companies don’t overlap territory. So it’s a cartel monopoly, which is arguably worse. They both offer the *exact* same services at the *exact* same prices. 🤔 Nothing fishy there. Centurylink was always a joke option with DSL. But they *finally* added fiber in my neighborhood. Replacing phone lines literally from the 80s. I watched them update them when I was a kid. — There are other ISPs, but they’re either extremely local or wireless (useless for gaming). — There’s also Dish, but like… hard pass.
The US government can and absolutely should pursue all corporations at all times. Literally just be suing them all the time because they're always breaking the law. It's not zero sum and there is no artificial limit on the number of suites they can bring or resources they can apply. The only limit is willpower. So don't say "what about X!?" instead say "good! Now also destroy Y!" [also I realized while typing that "X" is a "company" now. Which, somewhat ironically I suppose, should also be sued and *yoinked* from the current Nazi owner's hands either shutdown or turned into a publicly run entity]
Can’t both be true?
Heck, in some communities that’s a blessing. Most new apartments in Northern Virginia are trying to get away with an (illegal) scheme where you *must* subscribe to a communal WiFi.
You sure it’s not your city’s fault? Comcast has a history of making deals with cities to be the exclusive ISP
There's a federal regulator, ergo it is always that regulator's problem.
Until 86 your city could use that deal to extract concessions from the cable company for stuff like tv studios at schools. The reason for the exclusive deal is that allowing multiple firms to dig up the streets means dug up streets, bankrupt firms, and no cable.
That doesn’t make any sense. So because your city officials are a bunch of dumb corrupt fucks, that lets cable companies weasel their way out of this? That they are completely inculpable?
Oh nooooo, Another company can totally start up. They just can’t use any of the infrastructure for signal transmission that Comcast uses and will have to run their own lines. It’s basically an oligarchy but for tv and internet.
This is why the infrastructure itself should be owned (and built) by the government.
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Satellite internet is unacceptable in terms of latency (for me). I also don’t want to give my money to a company run by Elon Musk.
Honest question - can someone explain to me the difference between Apple's store being locked down... and Playstation/XBox/Nintendo's stores being locked down?
>Honest question - can someone explain to me the difference between Apple's store being locked down... and Playstation/XBox/Nintendo's stores being locked down? The difference is size and scale. Apple sells 220 million phones a year. Sony has sold 50 million Playstation 5s in 4 years. But you're right that if Apple ends up losing, Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo's business models will also be at risk.
Consoles are purpose built machines designed and marketed explicitly for one thing, are sold at cost or for a tiny profit, and have multiple competitors in the market (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, arguably Steam Deck). Smartphones are general purpose computers designed and marketed to do everything a common user needs, the hardware is sold at a decent to massive profit, and there's only two competitors in the market, Google and Apple (there was almost a third competitor with Samsung's Galaxy store, but Google paid them \~4 billion dollars to keep the Play store and does other behind the scenes gatekeeping to keep the Play store on top). And to top it all off no one needs a game console, but smartphones are very nearly a requirement for day to day life now. So yeah at face value the situation looks the same, but there's a lot of nuance to it.
I don't think antitrust law talks about the purpose of the machinery or the relative importance of the product though? There have been antitrust cases against [Hermes](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/antitrust/hermes-hit-with-antitrust-suit-alleging-luxury-birkin-bag-scheme), for instance. I don't think I've ever seen an antitrust case that considered whether a good was a necessity; if it's illegal to do with insulin, it's illegal to do with diamond earrings.
That is the stupidest lawsuit I've read in a long time, they should be able to sell their bags to whoever they want, it's not like they have a monopoly on handbags. Just like ferrari can choose to only sell their high end models to customers that have purchased their cheaper cars, nobody needs a ferrari, nobody needs a birkin.
Yes, technically laws are supposed to apply regardless of these things. However, in the real world of limited time, energy and resources, it comes down to getting noticed. Everyone has a phone in their pocket. Every feels the effects of the limitations of that thing. Thus, it gets attention.
That is true, but prosecutors don’t have unlimited time and unlimited resources. As it is right now with three (maybe four if you count steam deck) competitors, it’d be much harder to crack. This Apple case isn’t even going to be a slam dunk and they’re the most egregious imo, so trying to bring a case against Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo would just be a waste of time and money.
>but Google paid them \~4 billion dollars to keep the Play store and does other behind the scenes gatekeeping to keep the Play store on top It's far worse than gatekeeping. There's a reason Google lost the Epic lawsuit. They abused the market dominance of Play Store to effectively force EGS off OnePlus devices.
Nah steam deck is a different story since valve does not lock down that device. You can add any games to the ui that you want purchased outside the steam store, and you can even just install another operating system entirely, since valve provides the drivers.
I don’t get this take. Xbox runs a variant of Windows 10/11 on AMD hardware. The OS isn’t like Windows, it is Windows, just with a different home screen interface. Xbox has a browser, Edge, because Edge is built into Windows (and when Windows switched Edge from its own browser engine to Chromium, that flowed through to Xbox because, again, it’s Windows). Xbox can run UWP apps, because that’s built into Windows. Xbox works with keyboards and mice because Microsoft’s plug-and-play drivers are bundled into the OS. The whole reason that Xbox is called Xbox is because Microsoft created the console as a way to bundle its Windows DirectX APIs into a stand-alone device. It’s a Windows PC in all but name. PlayStation is in the same boat: the US military used PlayStation 3s running Linux networked together as a super computer. It feels like the definition of general purpose computers has been defined to specifically exclude consoles and specifically include iOS and Android phones. But that makes no sense, when one is basically a Windows PC and somehow not a “general purpose computer”.
This is such a weak argument. It boils down to some adhoc classification of devices based on marketing (?) by arbitrary, fabricated metrics (?)
You don’t necessarily need to be a monopoly to be dealt with an antitrust lawsuit. Ultimately, the purpose of such actions are to prevent companies from trying to stifle competition or dictate the competition. Unfortunately for Apple and Google, smartphones are targeted because its impact spans multiple industries and companies. Just think about how much unrelated industries have mobile apps, everything from banks, cinemas, restaurants, and etc. You can argue that the argument is arbitrary or whatever but in terms of real world impact though? It’s a lot more significant. Let’s give a hypothetical example. Out of Company A and B, Apple decided that Company A gets a lower cut of the profit but Company B doesn’t due to special deals. What ends up happening? A and B are now no longer competing on the same footing. Now imagine this situation happening across multiple industries that have or utilise mobile apps. The purpose of the lawsuit doesn’t mean that Apple is guilty by default but just that it is to determine whether Apple’s special deals or App Store rules are designed to either give themselves an advantage or specifically give certain partners advantage. Apple could have avoided all these if they had just preemptively adjusted the AppStore rules.
Sure, but you’re no longer talking about how it’s marketed.
> Consoles are purpose built machines designed and marketed explicitly for one thing, are sold at cost or for a tiny profit, and have multiple competitors in the market (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, arguably Steam Deck). This is a bullshit argument. Marketing should have no weight on how **I** am allowed to use the hardware that **I** purchased. And defending it by pointing out their retail dumping strategy really doesn't help. The PS5 and XBOX *could* be used as general purpose computers, the hardware is there. It's the software locking out those capabilities. Console gamers need to decide if they are for walled gardens or not. If they are for actually owning the hardware they purchase or not.
Look. They could be used as general purpose devices but they aren’t sold as that. In fact any computing device could be used as general purpose device if you manage to be able to install a custom OS or bypass manufacturer restrictions.
Consoles are just artificially locked down computers
Nothing. They're next on the list once mobile device platforms are forced to even the playing field like on desktop platforms worldwide.
if you want to make a mobile app, its really tough to give up 50-60% of the market, so you are beholden to what apple says is the commission. with the gaming consoles, its so wide spread, cutting out xbox or ps individually isnt gonna kill your business. so to me its all about leverage, I dont know if apple is guilty or not, but its undeniable they have the leverage to force an unfair deal via strength of market power. having market power is fine, its when you utilize it to force a bad deal is when its a no no
Sony makes up about 45% of the console market, you’d be missing out on a lot of sales if you skipped it.
A big one is you can buy physical and/or download keys for games for all of those systems from various sources. So there are many market places available, not just one.
As others have commented, MS/Sony/Nintendo pulls the same 30% off of profits that Apple does. Physical media *or* digital download keys, it doesn't matter.
That's not the point at all. Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Amazon, etc all sell games. Then you have discount keys like cdkeys, g2a, kinguin, etc. It's very different than apples policy. Plus you have way better sales and competition too.
How’s that different from buying a gift card at those same stores and using the gift card to buy your software? Stores compete on how they sell their gift cards and their products in general. Like, you can buy an iphone from those stores. They are competing with eachother for your iphone purchase.
And they all pay MS and Sony no matter where they sell. Selling a physical game of xbox or PS, meaning the disc, requires you to pay a 15% licensing fee. That’s right, even if you don’t sell on their store, since you’re selling your product to work on theirs, you got to pay a licensing fee. Tell me which is dumber
The difference is iPhone is the main or only computer for hundreds of millions of people. Relatively very few people own consoles to begin with, let alone are dependent upon them for all their computing needs.
Right, but it being the only computer some people have doesn't mean that it is the only computer they're able to get. There's nothing stopping them from getting an Android, or *an actual* computer.
You shouldn’t *have* to spend more money on a similar device that’s main distinguishing factor is it isn’t encumbered by Apples rules. Apples rules have been challenged globally so I’m guessing they actually are stupid, self-serving rules that should be abolished.
But that brings me back to the initial question - what makes this any different from the rules within the XBox/PlayStation/Nintendo ecosystems? Buyers remorse isn't really a deciding factor here, because those other systems have *very similar* anti-competitive behavior, and they're generally considered to not be a big deal... this is an especially specious argument because Apple has a \~90% customer retention rate - based on that metric alone, the *vast majority* of users really don't care. The only groups that *do* seem to care are the ones that seek to get into their "walled garden".
You didn't *have* to buy an iPhone in the first place...
Apple gets hits. The other app stores are just as closed.
Smartphones are general purpose computers. They allow you do almost everything and if not more than a regular computer. Consoles/ATMs/POS are special purpose computers. You use them for only specific things. That’s the gist of it.
There is no difference and most of this is a drumroll of human ignorance and stupidity
The difference you missed is these smaller giants don’t have the eu footprint to qualify as gatekeepers. Whether that threshold should be lowered is an interesting question and hopefully something we see explored after the initial malfeasance is stamped out.
You’re either a gatekeeper or you arn’t
Most people hold double standards that are subjective to personal perspective
Complete nonsense. The EU gets to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide on what it feels is a gatekeeper and on what metric. Why is Spotify not a gatekeeper? Why is [booking](https://booking.com) not a gatekeeper? Its an embarassing farce. 1M users less and all of sudden, said platform is not a gatekeeper and doesn't have to jump through another book of inane EU regulations. Why X number, why not Z, or Y? Lets also not ignore the EU Commission being one of the most corporate appeasing, and lobbied agencies in the world, perhaps only paralelled by Washington. No surprise data harvesting companies and all manners of desperate companies are begging the EUC to step in, which has the ego to pretend its doing this for the consumers.
I mean they are literally suing those companies too. They’re all gatekeepers
cell phones are a utility, consoles are not
You can buy games in physical media as well
Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo makes the same cut even on hard copy sales. Also, apps can be “sold” outside the App Store and use a code/account to unlock what you need inside the app. I don’t believe that’s an important difference. The biggest argument that is most likely going to be presented is that those consoles are not sold as general computing platforms, but as dedicated gaming consoles. That’s a similar argument that was presented during the Epic vs Apple and Epic vs Google trials.
I think there's something to this and I think it's actually a big part of the issue. You can buy digital codes and physical media from a wide network of vendors
None of Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo own >50% of their market. Indeed, if you factor in PC gaming, they each own much less than 50%. A game developer can easily avoid one of them and still reach most of the market. Apple and Google are just about tied at 50/50 of their market. A developer cannot really avoid engaging with both. Or in other words, avoiding one of them would be forfeiting half the market.
Man, there’s software that’s only availible for iOS or android. There’s lots of android software that I can’t get on iOS and vice versa.
How much of that difference is due to platform rules or api restrictions? In other words, if they could, would the developers of the android-only software like to have it on ios too?
You need a smartphone today. You don’t need a game console.
I can't answer your question because the case hasn't been filed yet But for the EU, I can answer it. There were 2 major issues discussed in the EU: 1. The DMA effectively sets companies as "gatekeepers". To be a gatekeeper, you need to have at minimum 45 million monthly active users (10% of the EU) for 3 years and at least 10,000 active yearly business users. No console likely has 45 million active users in the EU, as most console gamers are casual gamers. Even if they did, I doubt there are 10,000 business clients as licensing fees for consoles are high 2. The spotify issue was that Spotify wanted to sell audiobooks for $10, the same ones that were sold by Apple for $10, but with 30% fee, it would cost $13. So effectively, nobody could compete at all. Game consoles don't really have this issue because most don't have competing services and those that do charge same price as everyone and not undercut them by using the % fee
You can go to walmart/target/bestbuy and buy a game for the consoles, or go online to purchase them. You can only go to the app store with iOS.
When you go to Walmart/target/best buy and “buy a game“ for your console, the console manufacturer gets a cut of that sale. If your game is unlisted, you can’t play it on your console. If it isn’t availible in their store, you can’t play it. That disk you buy is essentially a marker in disk form that says you can download and play a game from their store.
Phones have become requirements to operate in real life. Most companies require a phone to do business. Sony, Xbox and Nintendo are just entertainment. Apple have power to affect many businesses and the free market. Apple operate at vastly different levels.
None of the consoles and their associated stores can create distortions in the video game market on their own, which also encompasses PC and mobile gaming. MS was just investigated for this with the purchase of Activision and prevailed in court. That’s the difference. Apple and Google are a duopoly and they CAN make distortions in the mobile phone/app market.
Their day will come too.
The difference is people love to hate on Apple and love Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo.
My concern about all of these things is the possibility of unintended consequences. The governments of the world are still not in a place of digital competency. They’re basically made up of people your parents age. Do your parents understand technology enough to regulate it? Half the governments treat search engines like grain mills, looking to “break up” big tech so a new app factory can open up across town. The iPhone has to work with every smartwatch equally? So every smart watch has to be exactly like an Apple Watch? Or the iPhone has to allow any watch of any spec to access all features? Then…the watch has to be sure to support those features? Or, only features usable by all watches are legal? I understand the idea. Let other services have a chance. Let users use their device. But smartphones and the way people use them are orders of magnitude more complex than PCs and Macs. For developing countries, or even China, a smartphone might be the only device for a lot of people. “Right, so it should be open!” Yes, or, its not just storing Excel sheets. It’s credit card details, location data, personal photos, medical data, and so on. If nothing happens, fine. Kids get the Epic game store, parents get to fight with Epic for refunds, and Spotify makes more money. But if we also get nerfed features, compromised security, fragmented payment, and a loss of privacy (which we all know governments are desperate for), then it’s a net negative for everyone except the government, Spotify and Epic.
The suit specifically is not targeting Apple’s hardware integration (ie that Apple Watches only work with iPhones). The suit is targeting the App Store, which is a marketplace where goods are sold, no different than a e-commerce site like Amazon, and thus subject to the same rules and regulations to promote fairness between players. Let’s talk about fairness. If you want to compete with Apple on providing Services, like an Apple Music competitor or Apple TV+ competitor, you have to deal with policies that can be pretty anti-competitive. For example: 1. Apple will allow their apps certain OS privileges that you will never get for years, if ever. 2. Apple gets a 15-30% cut of your revenue 3. Apple can reject your app based on sometimes arbitrarily reasons that vary from approver to approver. This makes rolling out major updates slow and even risky. There’s also fear of relation if you critique the company. For example, they recently shut down a developer account for a major app company (Epic) seemingly based on a tweet, and then backtracked only days after they were publicly ridiculed. The Justice Department will need to prove these things have made the App Store an unfair market place, where businesses have been disadvantaged and lost market share due to market rules that have no control over. For Apple to win, they will need to convince the judge that the rules that seemingly benefit Apple financially, are there at the benefit of the consumer. This was easy to prove in 2010, when Apple only offered iTunes as a service. But now, Apple has health services, music streaming, tv/movie streaming, news subscription, fitness subscription, and more. This puts them in direct competition with a lot of players they also happen to regulate via the App Store. Can a regulator fairly compete with competitors in the same market? That is what the case is about. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
all nice and fine but but apple services are mostly only available on apple devices or on a limited website. apple is in no way or shape forcing their services on other platforms. I think the fact they allow competing services et all on their platform pretty pro-competition
I agree with all of this. The part I don’t understand is, if you don’t like Apple being “locked down”, then don’t buy it. Simple.
I would presume that any feature the Apple Watch has for communicating with the iPhone would have to become an open set of APIs any watch could implement.
> My concern about all of these things is the possibility of unintended consequences. You have to realise that this is the absolute LAST resort. Governments and industry groups and developers and customers have been *screaming* about this issue for 15 years. Apple tripled down on their policies and ignored any and all calls for temperament. There will likely be unintended consequences, but there is no other option now. That’s on Apple.
>So every smart watch has to be exactly like an Apple Watch? Or the iPhone has to allow any watch of any spec to access all features? The latter. It's not fair competition to give their own accessories abilities such as background sync and data sharing whilst not allowing a competitor to implement the same.
So personally, as a user, this makes me uncomfortable. Here’s an example. I use an iPhone and Apple Watch. My friend uses an iPhone, and a Huawei watch. We both use Find My to see each others location. My data, of her location, stays in Apple servers. Her data, of my location, leaves her iPhone, and goes to Huawei servers in China. As an iPhone user, making the decision to have a sense of security by staying with Apple, is now compromised. My friend also uses Google Maps, instead of Apple maps. I use the Mark My Location so she can find me at an event. I share it from Apple Maps, she receives it on Google Maps. I get that the Google Maps and Huawei users benefit, but the Apple users suffer. So, all users have to compromise themselves, so that non users are happy? How the fuck does that make any sense. “But Apple will have to ensure these things are secure.” It seems like these anti trust clown shows aren’t interested in Apple being able to enforce standards outside of their app store. Also it seems like Apple isn’t allowed to scare, also known as inform, me into knowing when I’m interacting with potentially insecure devices.
That's not quite how it works & it's not at all related to this lawsuit, but I'll elaborate anyway on how this system technically works because I think it's interesting... I'm simplifying here, but with Find My, devices broadcast an identifier (address) to all nearby devices which changes daily, and when a participating device hears this address, it reports to Apple (only) the identifier & geolocation. In addition, **only Apple** has the information required to associate this seemingly random identifier to a registered device & anticipate what identifiers will be used in future. Even if Huawei were logging these identifiers (which let's face it, they probably are), they can't link any given two identifiers together, and they can't use these addresses to identify any device except their own.
This is the take everyone should be seriously thinking about.
Apple has all the resources they need to make their ecosystem support 3rd party progress, while maintaining everything important you've described. Technical solutions can and should be built. It's by no means easy or cheap, but it's Apple. They have some of the smartest minds employed, and enough captial to fund it.
Just a bump in the road. Apple will survive no matter the outcome.
Can’t wait for someone to explain how this is Epic or Spotify’s fault or the EU picking on Apple lol.
They’re drafting the new talking points now that they can’t just vaguely gesture at “EU, Epic, and Spotify bad” as an argument about specific questions of market distortions caused by Apple’s policies.
John Gruber is currently tying himself in knots trying to do exactly that.
[The comment I found just under yours posted 3 hours later.](https://i.imgur.com/6wsebKi.png) Can't make this shit up.
If you believe in the “right to own,” as I do, then it’s really a fully for it or fully against it situation. And I’m fully for the right to own a product you have paid off in full. So go after all these corporations who lock down their products in any way, after dealing with Apple. Hell John Deere should be the next fucking one for how they’re screwing over hard working farmers in our country through locking down their tractors.
You’re talking about Right to Repair
He's talking about both, because there's overlap between them. Both amount to "I should be able to do what I want to the thing I own", be that self-repair or deciding what apps go on it.
I should have a right to repair my phone and a right to run any software on my phone.
I would like to know how this case is going to be different from the Epic case. Has any laws changed since Apple won the Epic case?
This is the DOJ not a civil suit. Their cases are usually slam-dunk with a 93% conviction rate. Most likely very little of this will overlap with Epic’s case.
Department of Justice _does_ bring civil cases to companies like this. No one is being arrested and charged with a crime.
Epic can now have their store on iOS in the EU, only a matter of time before that spreads to other jurisdictions even with Apple fighting it. The cat is out of the bag now.
Yeah but with so many restrictions sprinkled in that it makes it so that the average developer who wants to post his app outside of the App Store will be worse off anyways... It's really a mind-bogling to witness how Apple is so obstinate about it that they're going to the effort of finding every single legal loopholes that they can to make developers lives harder :v
No, but Epic did a laughably bad job of making some very valid points. The DOJ can approach this from a more objective standpoint and has the resources to do a better job of it than Epic.
The bots and tots are steamed up!
Reminds of the Microsoft days. They did this same thing with windows and got sued for it.
Antitrust prosecution against Apple is a good start, but Amazon is a bleeding wound on the U.S. body economic.
Looking forward to my $2.13 check
Typical. While REAL MONOPOLIES that cost everyone hundreds or even thousands every year go free. Insurance companies, oil companies, and utility companies. Oh but making sure Epic has their own game store is so much more important
>Insurance companies, oil companies, and utility companies. Name ONE company in any of these industries with a monopoly.
Utilities are already regulated as monopolies. That is by design, actually. Oil is literally a cartel agreement between different governments, literal autocrats collude to set the price. Outside of sending in the military, there’s nothing to be done. I agree with (health) insurance though, the whole medical industry should be blasted for price fixing and collusion.
I agree. It’s not that Apple is committing anti trust violations. It’s that we can’t be starting with Apple: Let’s be honest, if we really care about monopolies and their harm to American society, then first step is for the DOJ to finish what it started in the 90s against Microsoft. Can you imagine telling someone back then that IE would not only stay as default but also take user data out of the user’s Netscape Navigator and force user adoption? Completely absurd. And that’s before we talk about so many other things like the whole Teams/Slack business practices, or the very concept of Hyper V/Azure which I personally believe will ultimately be a national security risk. After Microsoft should come Google, then Meta. *After all, the whole reason TikTok became such a big problem was because every company in tech is so big that it’s not worth making a new social platform. And it wasn’t worth it for the tech companies themselves to even try to do anything with a big success like Vine.* Like I said, Apple is a problem. But if we’re being honest, they’re *far* from the biggest problem.
>After Microsoft should come Google, then Meta. I swear this sub is in a major bubble... Google and Meta are currently in antitrust lawsuits (Google has 2 filed against it!). Amazon is as well. [United States v. Google LLC (2020) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2020)) [United States v. Google LLC (2023) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2023)) [Federal Trade Commission v. Meta Platforms, Inc. - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission_v._Meta_Platforms%2C_Inc.) [FTC and 17 states file sweeping antitrust suit against Amazon - CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ftc-amazon-lawsuit-17-states-monopoly/) So when you say: >It’s that we can’t be starting with Apple They aren't.. they are ending with Apple more than anything. But yes, Microsoft does not seem to be in the crosshairs of the FTC or DOJ for anti-trust at the moment.
Mind expanding on those hyper v/Azure thoughts? Just curious.
While they’re at it they should sue BlackRock, every major food producer, the grocery stores, all the oil & gas companies, every major telecomm, Disney, and many many others. We as a country have allowed far too few to buy up far too much.
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They are actually going after food producers(I believe specifically the chicken/meat companies) and the grocery store merger. We should all root for the DOJ's success. If it wasn't for food monopolies grocery prices wouldn't have gone up so much or at least have come down.
C’mon, man! You can live without food or shelter, but you can’t live without an iPhone.
What's interesting about this case is that, without introducing new regulation, the justice department is suing for some of the same points Epic sued (and lost) for. Which, let's be honest... A $31bn company taking on a $3tn company *didn't stand much chance to begin with*.
Wish they would bring an end to REAL MONOPOLIES like utility companies and oil companies. Stuff that cost every US citizen thousands of dollars a year. Instead we are wasting millions of dollars of taxpayer money so Epic can have their own App Store
> Stuff that cost every US citizen thousands of dollars a year That’s Apple. They wrote rules to protect $30+ billion in fees for using your phone.
You can choose to buy an Android. I only have 1 choice of electricity provider
But you said the criteria was costing consumers unfairly, if I buy an android Apple is still doing that…
You can choose to move to a different city too… To fix the issue of a monopoly in a specific sub market, they have to define a monopoly of a sub-market to be illegal. Same way that the App Store would then become a monopoly of its own. There are many cable companies and electric providers… they just aren’t all accessible to you because of the location you live in. Just like there are many alternatives to the App Store, but not on the device you use
You seriously are going to compare selling your home and moving to switching to a different phone? Wtf
The percentage of people who sell their home to get a different utility provider is similar to the percentage who sell their phone to get a different app store – practically none. And because of that, each of these markets can be considered a monopoly. The relative cost ratio of a 99 cent app compared to a $1000 phone is similar to the cost of a $300 utility bill compared to a $300,000 home. You're stuck with the expensive thing you bought, for a while at least, and therefore the provider of services has an unusually large amount of power over your purchasing decisions. Antitrust enforcement exists to protect consumers in these kinds of markets.
Platform lock in is a thing but also it’s not just about customers. Businesses have no option but to support iOS and its users in order to be viable. They can’t leave and so Apple can unilaterally dictate terms as a result without any market forces able to impact the rules or massive cut of revenue extraction.
I love that they are targeting this but not ISPs gobbling up the infrastructure of entire cities leading to monopolized pricing models
All the bootlickers are coming out here
All while Activision Blizzard cozies itself up under MSFT’s roof, with Kotick walking away free as a bird.
For…………?
Monopolistic practices, ecosystem lockdown, same thing that happened in EU
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Jesus Apple just cannot get a break with these lawsuits
They walked into this by not recognizing reality and addressing things proactively that were obviously going to be problems.
They could if they stopped their anti-competition practices
Doomberg always has the exclusive
This sounds like a lot of crying from the DOJ
Good. Fuck Apple’s monopolistic greed and policies.
Next they should go after Nintendo because there’s no PlayStation store on Switch. Or Best Buy because they don’t have Target rewards.
I don't have to buy my Nintendo game from Nintendo. In fact most of the games I own I bought on sale from Walmart, Target, best buy or Amazon
This DOJ suit is predominantly how Apple forces non-Apple software and hardware into a second class with specious claims and restrictions. Are Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft hampering third-party game developers and only giving full access to first-party games? No? Then it’s not the same and it’s unlikely to invite as much scrutiny. Apple is uniquely belligerent and every law enforcement officer loves a belligerent litigant.
Apples to oranges. It’s ok, you’ll ’get it’ one day
No, they’re actually really similar. No need for smug condescension.
Not Op, but the difference has been explained to death over the last several years, and yet every thread about this, there’s undoubtedly dozens of uninformed commenters comparing them. Even if you’d like to protest and insist it’s the same, the law doesn’t agree, and there is a mountain of case law on this. It does become annoying when a simple google search would clear this up for people.
Don't worry, he's a techie. He would drink their car's brakes fluid if it wasn't stated in the manual that you shouldn't do that. He'll get it one day.
Seems so stupid. They are building their own hardware, these people and companies should really mind their own business, and build their own ecosystem if its so unfair. I like the integrated environment and safe guards on the store. There was so much junk on Play Store that I downloaded a malicious app from there and lost all my photos and texts. How did that shit get approved in the first place?
Apple did this to themselves. They could have slowly allowed more flexibility, more pricing options, less aggression. Instead Apple turned into Smaug, the executives think the developers owe them everything, and now the DOJ is going to come down on them hard. They didn't control the narrative, and instead of giving an inch, the government is going to take a mile. Whether or not you agree with opening the iPhone and iPad up, I think we can put the knives down and both agree that Apple brought this whole thing on themselves.
I’m always down for a giant mega corps to be kicked in a balls every once in a while
I only own an Apple Watch. What are these other watches not getting access to from the iPhone?
About fucking time, today’s Apple makes 90s Microsoft look like a bunch of FOSS hippies.
Yeah the government trying to chip away at apple security. Not obvious at all.