Same story with phones. You are free to buy from other suppliers. But you can’t walk into a Walmart and buy milk from whole foods on their shelf’s, even if you feel that would be great for you personally because Walmart is closer but you prefer Whole Foods.

And I am free to use Google Music, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer and even Tidal. Nobody is forcing me to use Spotify.

But, if I have an iPhone, the only application store I can use is controlled by Apple.

In other words: if I am an artist and I want to offer my music via streaming I have plenty of options. If one of them does have a deal that I find unfair, I can choose others.

If I am a developer and I want to offer my app to iPhone users, I have only one option. And if I am banned from this store for any policy infringement (which sometimes is ridiculous and totally arbitrary) I have no other option to offer my app to iPhone users.

I think it's somewhat frequent to have app submissions denied, but I haven't heard of Apple banning future submissions in the same way that I hear of Google permabanning developers.

I agree with Android it's slightly different because side loading is at least possible, but I doubt many people are going to find your widget if it's not on the play store.

True, and if I’m a dairy farm that wants to sell my products to Walmart’s customers there’s only one distributor of shelf space to go to. You can’t cut through an arbitrary point in the business and just demand they change their model. The iPhone might not even be a viable platform today if they had been forced to carry malware from the start because they had “a monopoly on their own product”

I as a customer don't want your app from outside the App Store, from where I know I can get apps that protect my privacy and information.

Users can’t reasonably be expected to switch smartphone hardware just because of an app. The smartphone hardware market has its own constraints (people generally own only one at a time, they upgrade it every couple of years at a cost of several hundred dollars, etc). Apple may have legitimately earned its position in that hardware market by making products people want, but it’s not legitimate for them to use that dominance to control wholesalers’ access to consumers in a separate marketplace: music streaming. In that marketplace, the relative success of Apple Music vs Spotify should be based on consumer preferences for those services, not on which company also happens to dominate a separate marketplace. See also: Microsoft using its OS market dominance to control the web browser market.

No, that is not the same story. Physical stores can be swapped out on a whim. Phones are something you change at most every couple of years (and hopefully last even longer, if you give a damn about the environment).

Actually, the "Walmart is a choice" claim also only holds up if there actually are multiple stores nearby, because who is going to drive fifty miles to the next store? Food deserts are a thing.

This is a false idea of "choice" and it is just yet another way producers and sellers try to shift responsibility to the end consumer who is largely powerless in most cases.

OK, but there are no iPhone deserts where only iPhones work and Androids get no signal. I don't see any false choice here. There are plenty of other phones on plenty of networks, with plenty of Apps. If there are more or better Apps on the iPhone, arguably that's at least in part because of their careful policies on curation of the platform rather than despite them.

To go to one grocery instead of another in suburban America means driving a few more minutes with a cost of some time, a bit of gas, and a minute amount of wear and tear on a car. To change app stores, it requires spending several hundred dollars on replacement hardware, not including having to repurchase applications, accessories, etc.

That applies as much to Android, or any other phone, as it does to Apple though. It’s just the nature of the market, not some perfidious Apple plot. There’s just nothing substantive here.

> That applies as much to Android, or any other phone, as it does to Apple though.

On Android you can side-load APKs, have alternative app stores like F-Droid and even install custom operating systems. So no, that is again not comparable.

> It’s (…) not some perfidious Apple plot

Sure

> just the nature of the market

Dammit, NO. The market is a human-made artificial construct, not some natural freaking law like gravity that is inevitable and unavoidable. And given that it is human-made we can change it, and make choices on what we demand from it.

This is more like I'm not allowed to keep whole foods milk in my sears refrigerator- I'm only allowed to shop at Walmart stores.

I use spotify and netflix without going through apple, the former on my linux desktop, the latter additionally on my smart tv.

Problem is that Apple is actively trying to prevent that. They have no right to do that and are abusing the power they have in other areas to do it.

Apple is not "actively trying to prevent" people from managing their Spotify, Netflix et al subscriptions outside of their respective iOS apps, what are you talking about?

The app literally can't send you to the Web page so you can sign up there. It has to say something vague for Apple to approve it for publishing. Here's an example from Kobo [1]. They apparently can't even tell you the domain name.

[1] http://imgs.fyi/img/7hut.png

And how does that actively prevent people from using Spotify on their desktop?

Uh, Apple rejects your app if your app talks about being able to subscribe/upgrade via means other than IAP (includes desktop)

How are Apple trying to prevent people using Spotify or Netflix on smart TVs and Linux desktops?

I suspect spiderfarmer meant that Apple is trying to prevent "[Using] spotify and netflix without going through apple", at least on iOS.

How? I use Netflix on my iPad all the time and not once has Apple tried to stop me.

Netflix is not allowed to point people to their website from their App store description, which is absurd to me.

Reads to me like you have to get in a different car to shop at those other stores because one of your cars only drives to one store.

its about payment not app store lock in. there is nothing wrong with paying by browser and not via the appstore besides convenience. your car does come with a 'buy new tires' button but you can still go to the store and pay with cash.

You can't carry neither your TV nor your desktop on the go with you like you can with your smartphone.

But just like my TV and my desktop computer, I've paid for my phone with cash. Its mine. Just like my PC, I don't owe Apple Computers any extra money in exchange for the privilege to install apps like spotify on my device. The benefit of having access to the app store is already factored into the (quite high) price I paid for my phone.

And if you can find a way to defeat it's security, you are free to do so. However being incredibly locked down and secure is one the the product's features. It's up to you if you still want the product, but that's how it comes.

True, but a counter argument could be that Apple has created the ability of your phone to have apps installed on it. And I’m theory you could jailbreak your phone and install any app you’d want.

Sure; but I paid $1000 for my phone in part because of that capability. My phone would be worth less if I couldn't install apps like spotify. And unlike a game console, app purchases aren't used to subsidise the phones. Its pure profit for apple.

And I wouldn't have a problem with that in general, except it feels dirty to claim Apple are saints for graciously allowing apps like spotify to be sold on their platform. They're already being paid for doing so through phone sales. Leveraging the monopoly they hold over the ios app store against Spotify, one of their competitors, is exactly what antitrust legislation is designed to prevent.

And the developers are paying a fee every year just to exist on the app store.

You are free to buy a smartphone from other manufacturers. No one is forcing you to use an Apple product.

It's either Android or iOS really. I'd love for a decent alternative to exist but if you don't want Google tracking everything you do, Apple is the only option.

The thing is there have been loads of other alternatives over the years. Blackberry, WebOS, Windows Mobile, Tizen. Actual customers said no, these are what they want.

A lot of them faced what I would argue anti-competitive behaviour to prevent their growth.

For example, Google banning their apps on Windows Mobile and Amazon Firestore. Google blocking Windows Phone users from accessing maps/mail via a user-agent check. That and Google actively blocking Microsoft developing a native Youtube app.

Is it any surprise that customers were unsatisfied?

Apple and Google's duopoly is natural, no question about it. That doesn't mean we should ignore how they use it.

Google is rightfully scolded for requiring that users sign away their information and following their every move (often using dark patterns).

Apple should be put on hot coals too for how they are abusing their position. Spotify is an excellent illustration because Apple is both the platform and a competitor. I don't understand why an Apple consumer would support their anticompetitive stance.

As soon as you install some apps, your iPhone is tracking you as well. The recent stories about FourSquare have made me realize that things are much worse than I previously thought.

That's one reason I only keep essential apps ;) also use DNS blocking for trackers.

It's much better than Android even without that though. Especially since Google became more aggressive with tricking users to sign away their privacy.

There are lots of Android versions with all Google tracking code excised.

Are they sold like this directly from the manufacturer?

No, you just download them and install the new OS. Just like you have to jailbreak your iphone if you want to use it however you see fit.

You're also free to use Spotify online, on your Desktop, on Android, etc.

You're not forced to have an iPhone.

Err who forced this guy to buy an iPhone?

I think I can safely say absolutely nobody.

Apple has ~15% market share (fluctuating) so it's not really a monopoly situation. Google will give you access to the exact same Spotify service.

Whether what Apple is doing is legal or not I guess the courts will decide. But it's certainly factually incorrect to imply that you're not free to buy from anywhere else.

The Apple Store has 100% market share on all iPhones, iPads and iWatches.

I really don't see this being that much different from the famous United States v. Microsoft Corp. case[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

EDIT: comments have made clear that Windows had a monopoly on the personal computer space, whereas Apple doesn't have a monopoly on the smartphone or tablet space.

MS had a monopoly in the personal computer industry. Apple does not have one in the mobile industry. By this logic Mercedes has a monopoly on all Mercedes cars but they're clearly not one in the auto industry. If Mercedes ever decides to ban or squeeze a supplier, monopoly will not be the argument to nail them.

I'm not saying Apple is right to do this. I'm saying the monopoly on their own product is not the correct argument. Apple is not a monopoly. If they lose this case it won't be based on this.

Fair point.

The other posters are right about the Microsofty monopoly, but what made it particularly egregious was Microsoft's anti-competitive practices using their market dominance to actively damage or destroy competitors. This included:

* Contractually barring licensees from offering competing OSes, or selling boxes without Windows installed.

* Leveraging their OS dominance to get dominance in other markets such as linking OS licensing with licenses for other software.

* Pinching competitor's technology using their advantages as platform owner and rolling it into their own products (Stac).

There was more, but those were the main ones.

>* Leveraging their OS dominance to get dominance in other markets such as linking OS licensing with licenses for other software.

Such as leveraging their preferred status to get dominance for Apple Music (by being able to charge less since they aren't subject to a 30% Apple Store 'fee')?

Although I don't disagree, the difference was that Microsoft had a monopoly on computing. Not just on PC but take computing as a whole and microsoft was hugely dominant. From a legal standpoint there is a huge difference.

Desktop computing -- in the 90s in the server area there was more competition, primarily from Netware.

It wasn't until the end of the 90s when macs started making an impression on peoples desktops, with the imac, but oddly enough if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operati... is to be believed, windows still has a 95% share of the desktop/laptop market.

I believe it because Windows comes on all kinds of devices and supports all kinds of hardware mixes and SKUs. It effectively encompasses the entire price range in a way that Apple doesn't care to.