I'm pretty sure that will have massive opposition, because they are deathly scared of opening their devices back to the general-purpose computers they actually are. However, I remain hopeful that people may finally wake up to the "security" excuse and stop sacrificing their freedom.
Who's the opposition coming from? Apple? They can fart around and waste time and money on appeals, but if they get hit with an antitrust ruling there isn't much they'll be able to do about it.
50% of what is the issue, though. Some arbitrary descriptive market the target company preferred to be used for the antitrust analysis, or the actual market in which substitution, and thus actual competition, occurs as found by the court hearing the case?
Because defining the relevant market is not infrequently a contentious point in antitrust.
Market power is the ability to coerce people into paying more for something via a mechanism other than actually offering a better product or service. A textbook example which most people would agree is bad is a trust/cartel situation where a few players artificially limit supply, and then can raise the price on consumers because there are no competitors. But if a firm is able to drive up prices with impunity for any reason, it's likely they possess market power.
When a firm possesses excess market power it's good for that firm, but bad for the market, consumers, and society. By definition a firm with a lot of market power has very little competition, so even as their margins grow, product quality will decline and price will increase. (Sound like Apple in 2020?) And new firms will find it difficult to compete in that market even as the firm with market power grows very rich, which exacerbates the problem of wealth inequality. (Sound like America in 2020?)
A society which doesn't place some sort of checks on a firm's ability to acquire market power ends up being a place where the way to get ahead is to find an unfair advantage, abuse it, and screw everyone else. (Again, sound familiar?)
At this point it's almost certain that Google is violating antitrust regulation by abusing its market power (proven in the EU, and the US looks poised to start filing lawsuits this year). Apple, Amazon and a few others are up for debate and it's also fair to say that antitrust regulations should evolve to address the tech industry more effectively. The antitrust problem isn't limited to tech however, anti-competitive behaviors of questionable legality have proliferated all over the US since the 80s due to a lax regulatory environment.
If you want to learn more about this topic, Matt Stoller's newsletter "BIG" on Substack is a phenomenal place to start.
How exactly does Apple "coerce people into paying more for their phones via a mechanism other than actually offering a better product or service", and what is that mechanism?
> But if a firm is able to drive up prices with impunity for any reason, it's likely they possess market power.
How is Apple actually able to "drive up prices with impunity for any reason"? It seems to me, the more Apple raises iPhone prices, the more people are priced out and decide to switch to a cheaper phone instead.
In this case, once you buy an iPhone, you're forced to use Apple's system to make in-app purchases. The tying product is the phone, and the tied product is the in-app purchase.
So you need to show that Apple has sufficient market power in the smartphone market, and that is where the question of the ability to control prices of phones comes in.
(Neither does Apple v. Pepper.)
But since you mentioned it, I'm not really sure that Epic will succeed with their argument that the "iOS App Distribution" market is the relevant tying product market absent an analysis of the overall smartphone market.
The government playbook in this sort of situation is normally to start subpoena'ing emails, execs etc. and look for hard evidence of actual anti-competitive practices. They're not only interested in a business model as it's described in the media, they want to know what company execs actually did. If they find something they file a suit.
Well, assuming it is one based on abuse of market power and not the other kinds of antitrust violations (e.g., combination in restraint of trade, etc.), it would fail if the plaintiff couldn't establish that Apple had market power in the market for the product for which they allegedly abused market power. If that was iPhones, for instance, that would be the market for iPhones plus whatever products empirically people substitute for iPhones in response to pricing changes. (Of course, if Apple has market power, there is some range in which the “plus...” part is “none”, since market or pricing power is the ability to raise prices without driving sales to a competing good.)
If the lawsuit was about selling some popular class of app in which Apple leveraged its monopoly over app distribution, I think the plaintiff could have a pretty strong case.
Keep in mind that even if Apple only had 1% market share in the smartphone market they would still have a "monopoly" over app distribution on their own phones.
If price increases for Fortnite IAP don't, empirically, drive people to stop buying them in favor of alternatives of some kind, yes. Or, rather, you can't define the market that way, but if there is no substitution effect a US court considering an anti-trust claim is likely to see that as the relevant market, not some broader, say, battle royale game IAP market in which price-driven substitution does not occur.
I’m much more worried about the government deciding what happens to people randomly than a corporation. I don’t have to buy Apple products. It’s a lot harder for me not to have to deal with a capricious government.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-case-filings-alpha
Most antitrust cases are for things like price fixing, bid rigging, and mergers.
U.S. v Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U.S 150 (1940); United States v. Sealy, Inc., 388 U.S. 350 (1967); United States v. Topco Associates, Inc., 405 U.S. 596 (1972); Craftsmen Limousine, Inc. v. Ford Motor Co., 363 F.3d 761 (8th Cir. 2004), Northern Pac. Ry. Co. v. US 356 US (1940); Agnew v. National Collegiate Athletic Ass’n, 683 F.3d 328 (7th Circ. 2012); or In re Flat Glass Antitrust Litigation 385 F.3d 350 (3rd Cir. 2004), National Soc. of Professional Engineers v. U.S. 435 U.S. (1878); In re Insurance Brokerage Antitrust Litigation, 618 F 3d 300 (2010); or In re Southeastern Milk Antitrust Litigation, 739 F.3d 262 (2014).
I picked one at random.
“Topco, a cooperative association of about 25 small and medium-sized independent regional supermarket chains operating in 33 States.”
I also looked up one about Ford vs a limo company that you deleted.
They all involve multiple companies colluding. It has nothing to do with one company setting prices in their own store.
You seem to be under the impression that anti-trust is isolated to monopolies, when clearly it is not. Apple and Google do not need to have a monopoly for the government to decide that their app store business model is anti-competitive, and there doesn't need to be precedence.
I love my choice of AT&T over Comcast. $70 all fees included gigabit up and down.
> When enterprises are not under public ownership, and where regulation does not foreclose the application of antitrust law, two requirements must be shown for the offense of monopolization. First, the alleged monopolist must possess sufficient power in an accurately defined market for its products or services. Second, the monopolist must have used its power in a prohibited way. The categories of prohibited conduct are not closed, and are contested in theory. Historically they have been held to include exclusive dealing, price discrimination, refusing to supply an essential facility, product tying and predatory pricing.
Apple is exercising exclusive control over the market of apps made for the phones they make, so it looks to me like they satisfy the first requirement. The second requirement is murkier, but several of the examples listed sound quite similar to how apple operates its store. IANAL but the more I read about their behavior, the more I become convinced of their monopoly status. Having a monopoly is not a crime. Abusing monopoly power is.
I’m going to let that sit right there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
Or, keep on using the definition from your imagination. Whatever works.
As far as IBM (the case was dropped after 13 years and nothing came of it) and MS, they clearly had more than 50%.
And I'll remind you, I'm not a lawyer. Technically, zero lawyers is a good number of lawyers, so I must insist that makes me a good lawyer. Just, I'd suck in court.
Yes and consoles makers have control of their consoles, Roku has control of their platform, as does LG with their WebOS based TVs.
Yet and still when you were challenged to come up with an analogous example, the best you could come up with is multiple companies colluding.
The case involved Kodak refusing to sell parts for its copiers to outside repair shops, and they were sued by the shops who claimed this was anticompetitive behavior.
Kodak made a claim that since there was robust competition in the market for copiers, they couldn't have market power in the aftermarkets for "Kodak copier parts and service." The Supreme Court rejected that argument, holding it was possible to show that there was market power (and therefore antitrust liability) in a secondary market even if the primary market is competitive.
Subsequent cases since Kodak have continually narrowed the scope in which Kodak is applied, and it likely would not apply here because people who buy iPhones have known since the App Store launched in 2008 that the App Store is the only place they'll be able to install apps from.
I recognize your username and I recall seeing good and thoughtful comments from you. I hope to meet you again in a more productive conversation.
Instead of using an OS (iOS in this case) with 25% market share that forces you to go through their AppStore, you can choose to use Android (which has 75% market share) and side load apps to your hearts content.
reference: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide
Yeah, you can opt to target only one of them, but you're (usually) going to get out competed by a company that targets both.
There are plenty of markets and Technologies I won’t touch with a ten foot pole.
You're right that there is little difference between a corporation that one is de facto forced to interact with, and a bona fide government. For example, one can easily reframe USG as a corporation that you form a contract with by owning land, renting, or being on a public way. This does not mean that our current society is a libertarian paradise.
Turing completeness shows us the ouroboros of expressivity with programming languages. It's unfortunate people let their guard down in other areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-libertarianism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_in_the_United_S...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_and_libertarianism
On the other hand, left-libertarians oppose capitalism while supporting personal property rights. Left-libertarians and right-libertarians find common ground in rejecting authoritarian governments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism
Libertarianism comprises a diverse collection of views that aim to advance individual freedom, and anyone who is not an authoritarian is likely to agree with some libertarian principles.
Similarly, I can't give up on owning a Mac because you need one to develop for iOS.
On one hand, it's super annoying whenever Apple rejects an update for some arbitrary reason. But on the other hand, making a living by writing and selling my own apps has been a dream of mine pretty much forever -- and something that I didn't think would be possible before the app stores came along.
Of course, Apple would like to have us all believe that app developers couldn't make a living by writing and selling apps before the Invention of the App Store, and that they have done us all a great favor, one that warrants us paying them 30% of our income.
However, the reality is, this has always been possible. As early as the beginning of the 80s, indy developers made millions writing games for the ZX Spectrum, the BBC Micro, the Amiga, and so on. You just had to work with a publisher or distributor, of which there were hundreds and it was a free market. In the 90s millions could be made from DOS and Windows apps in the same way. In the early '00s, it became possible to self-publish on the web and our apps would be indexed and marketed for us by search engines; we didn't even need a publisher, but could still choose to go through one if the value add merited the cost.
So there has been no radical innovation, no Invention that has changed what is possible for us to achieve as app developers. It's arguably a little bit easier to get our apps to market than it used to be, but given how onerous Apple's "guidelines" have become, I'm not even sure that is true. Writing websites serving apps and integrating with checkout engines just isn't that difficult... and most apps still need marketing to succeed because being listed in the App Store is not by itself sufficient.
The only thing that has changed, now that the mobile computing revolution has almost reached saturation point and the majority of screen time by consumers is on mobile devices, is that we are now all forced to publish through a single store on each platform, and we are permitted no alternative if we want to reach our customers. Equally, our customers are permitted no alternative way to obtain our products. There is no competition between publishers on Apple's platform, because there is only one publisher, Apple, by fiat of Apple; and we are now forced to pay a 30% tax, a figure which is not challenged by the usual mechanisms of competition, and supply and demand, which make markets efficient.
Isn't that more a result of mobile devices opening up a new market? I agree the app stores made a lot of difference initially when they provided a lot of visibility (ie: free advertising) to small developers, but those days are over aren't they?
I wonder how many apps actually are ramen-profitable on the App store. I often think that the dream of becoming rich (or even making a living) through the App store is just a myth perpetuated by Apple to attract developers; and nonsense from a statistical point of view. Do we have any numbers?
As developers I think we should all do what we can to nurture the open web. It’s the last truly developer friendly platform.
As a last resort (e.g. if all you have is an Arduino), they advise you to contact Apple support.
I'm pretty sure it would be unlawful to have no way to cancel other than with an Apple device.
Then you go through the same thing each time you push an update, even for a minor bugfix like amending some foreign language strings, get a different reviewer who hasn't read the case notes (I'm guessing these must exist) and decides to do a deep-dive, or maybe a quick rubberstamp in a matter of hours. It seems like a total lottery from my experience. Maybe they just suddenly added a new clause that requires something being done differently and you aren't up on the latest app store guidelines... It really is so frustrating from a developers mental health perspective.
This is why Mozilla's recent layoff is extra painful.
Right because no one ever complained about browser inconsistencies, the inherent limitations of a browser runtime, etc.
No browser quirk is anywhere near as annoying as having a bug fix update to your app rejected for some new random capricious reason.
If any of it was all sunshine and lollipops they wouldn't have to pay us to do it because people would be queuing up to do it for free.
The App Store may have undesirable qualities for some parties but to claim that it is a "broken ecosystem" just tells me that you're looking to exchange ridiculous hyperbole.
Of course, you could always have a personal Android device and an iPhone solely for development purposes. Apple tries to force you to own a Mac and at least one iOS device (be it iPhone or iPad) to develop apps for the App Store. This is yet another example of their corporate greed. You can develop Android apps on Windows, Mac, or Linux, and there's no need for a physical device.
This applies to all platforms. I wouldn't want to do business with a developer that doesn't own the device they're developing for, we learned that lesson with Blackberry thank you.
https://9to5google.com/2013/03/21/google-chairman-eric-schmi...
Steve Jobs didn't let his kids around an iPad because it was dangerous for them
In an interview he said: “Actually we don’t allow the iPad in the home. We think it’s too dangerous for them in effect.”
I think we can trust Steve Jobs when he talks about his (baby) products
$94 million income. RIM was definitely in decline by then. Both the iOS and Android market were very much mature 7 years after the iPhone was introduced.
I never said that they made more money but that the platform was generally better for executives
In 2012 I had a blackberry because clients that had strict security rules (one of them was in the diamonds business) allowed blackberrys but not other smartphones in their offices
Not the same kind of regulation you describe, but still one that may solve a big chunk of your issues was covered here roughly a month ago[1], In which the EU plans to make those kinds of platforms more transparent, especially concerning bans and sudden refusals. But I see how that may not go far enough.
(a). WSL is just a Linux VM. You can do this on any desktop OS. If you're not using WSL, you can even do it with multiple hypervisors at once if you so wish.
(b). macOS isn't, and has never tried to be, "Linux". It's POSIX.
It's not like that, it literally is that, because to enable WSL2 you end up running Windows itself on top of Hyper-V, and the Linux VM as a parallel VM.
> It's lighter and partially integrated.
I don't know what you think it's "lighter" than - it's a VM running on Hyper-V.
They're very different approaches with different tradeoffs for each.
Do you think Android app development can be monetarily worth the time investment for individual developers who would be just starting out?
I made two apps years ago and greatly enjoyed it, much more than any development I've done since. At that time, the markets were dominated by the big players. Only the big apps made any $$. Is that still the case making individual development a hobby with the occasional bit of $$?
You need to get in contact with your customers in another way and then let them know where they can download your app.
Which apps are those? Genuinely interested in seeing the numbers.
Why haven’t you switched yet? Competition is not that good unfortunately.
I've looked at the Windows laptops extensively though, and will likely get a ThinkPad X1 Extreme G2 or G3, or a Dell XPS 15, when the time comes. They both seem very good, with superior keyboards, displays, performance, and value compared to Apple's current lineup.
You can also take a look at linux vendors like System76. Check their line-up here: https://system76.com/laptops
Among Windows laptops did you consider the ASUS Zephyrus G14?
HN has proven to be outrageously gullible time and time again, and this one takes the cake.
Their fees are not so high as to be extortionate. They're not close to being deserving of that hyperbolic label.
The Apple and Google fees are a dramatic improvement over the model that they gradually replaced over the past decade.
Want to get on a retail shelf? Nope, you can't. One in a zillion odds you find someone to publish your box to retail - congratulations, now you get to keep less than 20% of the sale price.
If Apple's fees were 1/2 what they are, developers would be saying exactly the same thing about them. That's because the fees will always be too high unless they're close to zero, and in that scenario Apple is carrying an unfair burden.
And if you forcibly open up more app store competition, and then Apple decides to drop their fees below other competitors, it'll kill the store competition and Apple can sustain that indefinitely thanks to their device margins. They don't need to make money on the market. Then everyone will bitch about that being unfair competition, despite Apple serving up the low fees that were demanded. And on the complaining will go forever until we have a hyper regulated market with pricing set by bureaucrats. Why? Because Apple is really big, that's the real reason why. People hate big corporations almost universally, Apple is in the can do no right group; no matter what they do, a lot of people will bitch about their choices. The end result will be massive, stifling regulation, which everyone will then bitch about the consequences of.
> now I actually make more on Android. The Google Play review process is a breeze compared to Apple's laborious and stifling rules (although it is not perfect either by any means), and at some point, it's just not worth the hassle.
You should be making more on Android, it's a larger market. It's good that that former imbalance has corrected itself. Fortunately you're not entitled to an easy review process. It's a great thing that Apple adds friction to their store. It's their market, they should be able to set the rules. If it's not worth the hassle, then it's not worth the hassle, you've solved your own problem: give up on the Apple store.
iOS owns 25% of the market. How is that a monopoly? You might not like their policies, but as you mention, you have a choice to move to a competitor with a vastly larger market share.
> I'm better off turning to the Play Store or one of the many other app stores that can be used on Android devices.
Doesn't this demonstrate that the Apple AppStore isn't a monopoly? That you have a clear alternative with 74% market share.
> I'd like to see regulation that forces Apple and Google to allow any and all app stores on their devices,
...but why would they do that? There is healthy market competition between Apple and Google. I'm old, so I remember when Windows dominated everything. That was 2007 (or '98 if you wanna talk IE anti-trust case). 13 years later and Microsoft has 0 market share in mobile devices. In another 13 years it is likely a new competitor could supplant the Google and Apple dominance.
reference: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide
b) Apple makes up the plurality of all store revenues, despite having a smaller install base both globally and in the US.
c) You can display monopolistic/duopoly behavior without having 100% of the market.
b) source?
c) But can Apple be a monopoly with 58% of the market and a trillion dollar competitor with 41% of that market...and 75% control of the global market?
A question for the courts, for sure, but it certainly isn't obvious to me.
reference: https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/united...
https://fueled.com/blog/app-store-vs-google-play/#:~:text=Ap...
https://www.statista.com/chart/14590/app-downloads-and-consu...
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cartel.asp
“ A cartel is an organization created from a formal agreement between a group of producers of a good or service to regulate supply in order to regulate or manipulate prices. In other words, a cartel is a collection of otherwise independent businesses or countries that act together as if they were a single producer and thus can fix prices for the goods they produce and the services they render, without competition.”
Do you have any evidence that Apple and Google are conspiring illegally to set prices? Are they talking to each other to agree on price?
“Informal cartel” has no legal meaning.
I've also given up on the MacBook line, tired of the touch bar, the slate-like keyboards, and (now) the transition to ARM. My next laptop will be a Thinkpad or Dell. Most of my development these days is done under Windows using WSL2, and my primary focus is on Android.
It used to be that my apps made more money on Apple devices, but now I actually make more on Android. The Google Play review process is a breeze compared to Apple's laborious and stifling rules (although it is not perfect either by any means), and at some point, it's just not worth the hassle.
It's sad, I was an enthusiastic endorser of Apple products just 7 years ago, but can no longer recommend them. This is the first year I won't be buying a new iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, too - I'm looking to switch to the Pixel or Samsung Galaxy line and Wear OS.
I'd like to see regulation that forces Apple and Google to allow any and all app stores on their devices, and the process of installing apps through those stores must be, by law, equally easy and straightforward as through their own stores (i.e., no security warnings or other jank). The law should make illegal restricting developers to any specific payment processor(s), too.