People still paid $1400 for PCs in 1999, nothing stopped US govt from suing Microsoft for bundling IE - let alone not allowing users to run "unapproved" software.

Microsoft had a considerably larger share of the worldwide market.

But they weren’t a monopoly. Buy a Mac.

The US gov really cares about the US market. Apple owns half the mobile US market (possibly even more in revenues and way more in profits)

Apple has nothing like the MS market share, though.

In US phone market, they do and this isn't just about monopoly per-say but what it means to "own" a computing device if you can only run manufacturer approved applications on it.

No, in the US phone market they do not have anything like Microsoft’s share of the PC market.

And if you don’t feel Apple gives you sufficient ownership, why not just buy something else?

It’s a boring question to keep asking, but nobody actually seems to want to answer it.

Can you name two viable alternatives to iOS? I can't.

I can buy something else. In fact I did. The problem is that if you are making a product which will be consumed from a phone you have to support iPhone users and do everything Apple wants you to do.

To solidify this point, the majority of phones in the US run on iOS. iOS has 52.4% of the mobile operating system market on phones[1].

If you're selling an app, it's even more important to support iOS users because the App Store is responsible for three times as much revenue as the Play Store[2].

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...

[2] https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2020/01/in-2019...

Yeah, 52% means that Android is nearly matched marketshare wise. The mobile situation is nothing like Windows’s share when Microsoft was sued for antitrust violations: the desktop market share of windows is still like 70%, 20 years ago it was like 97%.

From the US government[1]:

> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.

You quoted selectively. It goes on:

> Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. Some courts have required much higher percentages. In addition, that leading position must be sustainable over time: if competitive forces or the entry of new firms could discipline the conduct of the leading firm, courts are unlikely to find that the firm has lasting market power

It is clear that A) Apple is not a monopoly and B) the market is very competitive

But Appoogle together clearly form a duopoly that does have monopoly power over the market. And they both charge 30% to App devs for the privilege of selling Apps on their respective platforms: coincidence or price collusion? Well it certainly looks like collusion from where I'm sitting.

(Yes, yes: Apple has just cut the rate for small devs. The big sellers still have to pay 30% though.)

Apple has cut the rate for 98% of sellers.

This isn’t a problem, it’s just reality. An app dev needs to support the platforms. You are still free to use something else.

Not sure if you're trolling, but that's not a rational option for most.

I've described elsewhere in thread why switching is not an option for me; Apple has slowly trapped me in their ecosystem of Apple TV, Apple Watch, Macbook, Homepod, my BMW which will only talk to an iOS device, iMessage, HomeKit

They don't provide any external APIs to interact with these products so other platforms/systems could make such a switch less painful.

There's something profoundly silly about this.

I feel your pain: Apple slowly lured you into spending thousands of dollars on high-quality products which work smoothly together, and then they went and changed the EULA on you and now you can't install non-App Store software on it!

Only that didn't happen, of course: the rules have always been the rules, you just don't like them.

Which is fine, actually, complain all you want. But the victim act is hilarious. "My luxury car will only talk to an iPhone! I should sue!"

I personally switched to Apple products because they more or less Just Worked and they prevented me from fiddling with them: the big issue with Android phones for me was that, since I would always root and mod them, they’d always fail at inopportune times: by making this sort of tinkering not an option, Apple phones are just more reliable for me (and, sure, this is partly my fault but, from my perspective, the locked-down status of iDevices is a feature that lets me treat them like appliances)

He didn’t say his luxury car will only talk to an iPhone. BMWs will of course connect to any Bluetooth phone.

He said only an iPhone will properly display album art on the screen of his luxury car as he drives.

I’m certainly not trolling.

You’re not trapped. Over time switch to another provider. Or all at once.

They sell you a service and device with terms. If you don’t like it, get out of that ecosystem.

Certainly don’t use the power of the federal government. Do you like monopolies? Because that’s how you get monopolies.

"They sell you heroin if you don't like it - quit"

A lot of people (e.g. libertarians) would agree with that statement.

They're pretty close in the US mobile phone software market.

Microsoft had 90% market share. And in the end they settled.

By offering the user a choice for the browser, which is exactly what I want from Apple - a choice for app store, or the default maps app.

And yet Apple is forcing the lack of choice in an app store.

So? It’s their platform.

from a European point of view, the market belongs to the people, not Apple and thus they must play by the rules the State set, for and on the behalf of the people.

And quite literally a choice for a browser, because Apple mandates that all browsers on the App Store use Safari on the backend, which means that Chrome and Firefox are just skins over Safari on iOS.

This would be huge because Safari is missing so many APIs and leaves users on an unusable browser when they stop getting OS updates.

This would not be huge, because iOS devices don't stop getting updates for 6-8 years, by which time it is very unlikely that third parties would bother making a special browser app just for that unprofitable 0.1% slice of the market.

But don’t you think — it’s their phone, they have spent billions of dollars developing it, shouldn’t they get the choice of how their own product should work?

It’s not like the user doesn’t know what they are buying. It’s not like Apple doesn’t have strong competitors. It’s not like the app developers are like, “Oh, 30%?! I didn’t know!”

People want the product that Apple is making. They buy it knowingly and willingly in droves.

Look at the M1, the culmination of decades of hard R&D, beating Intel at their own game.

You want to tell this company — which is absolutely killing it and creating absolutely tremendous value for consumers the world over — you want to tell them how their own device should work?!

Explain to me why the free market has not spoken, and spoken clearly in favor of the products that Apple has brought to market for their customers. Why in the world should the US Government say that what this truly amazing company should do in their own code and product roadmap.

Honestly, it’s a travesty in the making. What Apple has accomplished — coming back from the brink — is one of the greatest success stories in the history of capitalism.

Why, why in the world should the US Government — a true paragon of incompetence — dictate terms on how they should run their lawful, competitive business.

>> But don’t you think — it’s their phone, they have spent billions of dollars developing it, shouldn’t they get the choice of how their own product should work?

No. Its MY phone from the moment I bought it. If I want to change some aspect of how it works that's up to me.

The phone doesn’t magically just work the way you want it to, and the functionality you personally desire doesn’t come without trade-offs and consequences to Apple, to other developers, or to other users.

You’re saying that because you bought a single iPhone that Apple now essentially reports to you. That YOU get to decide how Apple spends millions of dollars in its R&D, and that you get to decide how their software should function.

What makes you their master just because you freely chose to buy a single unit of a device from them? A device that, by the way, has sold billions of units.

You're way off base.

If a customer buys a phone, no investment or R&D is required by Apple to support other search engines, apps, browsers or payment systems.

It would actually require a massive investment by Apple to actually support all of those things as tested, enabled, documented, secured, stable, and fully supported (by the help-desk) features of their product.

Calling the work apple would need to do a "massive investment" is disingenuous at best.

On the other hand, you knew these restrictions before purchasing it and still continued with the transaction.

I understand both perspectives here but I don't think one is objectively right.

Most farmers buy John Deere, doesn't mean they shouldn't fight for their right to repair (which btw is an issue with Apple as well).

This is a little harder to deal with because often its not obvious what repair issues you will have in the future or what will stuff up and be difficult to replace. The restrictions on ios are obvious and you would notice them within your 2 week return period.

Then buy another brand which is easier to repair. You buy the tractor with eyes wide open.

I agree with you that repairability would be nice, but some brands prefer not to do that. Let other brands drive them out.

>But don’t you think — it’s their phone, they have spent billions of dollars developing it, shouldn’t they get the choice of how their own product should work?

Maybe? But then they're not selling it, they're leasing it, and they need to say that.

A mistake then as well. Buy a Mac if you don’t like Microsoft’s approach.

What free market? It's a duopoly.

It’s a duopoly, where one of the players offers people the thing that people are asking for I.e sideloading and alternative app stores.

Instead of choosing that product, many people here complain that the other company doesn’t give them what they want.

Doesn't really matter: if you are making a phone app or service (especially one that has any sort of network effect), you need to support both ecosystem which means you must submit to Apple's ukases.

Nope, only when targeting one of the countries where Apple market presence is actually relevant, which are just a couple of tier 1 countries.

The choices are extremely limited if you want a small handset. I don’t even know if there is a Google phone as small as iPhone minis.

I assume it won’t be long before there is a Samsung Galaxy mini.

That player also has a history of tracking, fingerprinting and privacy violations that not everyone is comfortable with, especially relating to a device that has as much control over you as a smartphone.

>That player also has a history of tracking, fingerprinting and privacy violations that not everyone is comfortable with

Forcing Apple to change their financial incentives would likely make them look to the value of tracking, fingerprinting and privacy violations too.

that's a bit of a false dichotomy though.

it is not like these 2 products were identical except for sideloading.

They don't have the same hardware, Apple has an unlimited ad budget, if you want to chat with somebody using iMessages, you are pretty much limited to iOS, you can't transfer app purchases between platforms, etc

If you go into subscription settings on iOS devices, they show a "try out apple music" ad -- you think this position is available to Spotify/others? They don't pay 30% on top of sales to boot.

Same thing with Google, they cross promote their own new properties everywhere in Gmail (left pane) and Google.com but no one else has access to those locations, they can destroy thousands of small business through this practice.

Honestly it is almost funny how Google has been mostly unable to successfully launch new products while they have the capacity to promote them to virtually all of the global north.

In particular with Play Music .. not going to complain, I don't think that this market needs another FAANG product but wow, failing to promote that service is one epic blunder.

Google has an unlimited as budget too. Indeed it has access to advertise on properties that Apple can never purchase access too.

Exactly! And it's a bad kind of duopoly. It's not like I'm customer and I only have two choices. Here, I only two choices and I pretty much to use them both since if I drop one I loose a lot of potential customers.

Just because the people are generally happy with 2 options? If enough people cared about extra app stores, someone would create an alternative as there would be money to make.

and they did, Cydia was a thing when people could jailbreak iPhones. And I definitely remember some of my less tech savvy friends using non-Apple-approved tweaks back in 3GS/4/4S days.

Sorry, I don't use a mac -- could you clarify about ctrl-click to accept? Can you bypass the approved developer check box in system preferences with a right click on the `.app` folder?

Effectively - if you don't have "only app store" selected in gatekeeper, you can bypass the 'unidentified developer' option as well as the message when an app isn't notarized.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from...

Macs famously only supply one button, so right click and control-click are two names for the same thing.

Macs ceased to "famously supply" only one mouse button about a billion years ago.

Once you launch an app around the restrictions you don't need to do it again.

Yes, you can.

I will believe that the market is truly free when I see multiple start-ups attempt to upend Apple's business model and fail to do so.

What’s not free about it? Just because they are popular doesn’t mean the market’s not free.

There are lots of factors in choosing between Android and iOS. Besides, two choices don’t make a competitive market.