You know, I was thinking last night about the parallels between this and the anti-trust investigation into Microsoft back in the 90s. Back then Microsoft was in a heap of trouble over the fact that they bundled IE and didn't allow vendors to bundle other alternative browsers. Users could still install other browsers, but the fact that the OS came bundled with IE was seen as an abuse of Microsoft's market position.

Yet here we are, in 2021, and Apple won't even allow you to install software on the device you own without their say-so. There are admittedly other browsers on the app store, but they all must use Safari's rendering engine.

I think this analysis misses how dominant Microsoft was in the 90s and the myriad methods they used to stay in that position. Apple may be a huge chunk of the North American phone market, but Microsoft's share of the PC market in the 90s was over 90%. The only computers around were PCs[1] (desktop or laptop) and servers - there were no phones - so if you had a computer in your house, it was almost certainly running DOS/Windows.

To maintain this monopoly Microsoft employed tactics like offering discounts if OEMs promised exclusivity. Basically punishing any manufacturer that might want to ship another operating system. My read on the browser verdict was that this was what the justice department thought was sufficiently low-hanging fruit to convict Microsoft. But it was far from the only anticompetitive tactic Microsoft used at the time. "DOS ain't done till Lotus won't run"[2]

[1] I'm ignoring exotic stuff like SGI workstations that were priced out of reach of typical consumers.

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10434133

Edit: Here's an example. In 2002 Dell started offering PCs without Windows pre-installed[2] - this was considered a big deal in the linux forums I hung out in. Why? Because until then you had to pay Microsoft to own a PC (practically the only consumer computing hardware available at the time), even if you wanted to install Linux on it. This is like if nearly every phone had to come with iOS pre-installed (and Apple collected a licensing cut), even if you wanted to install/use Android.

[3] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2577666/dell-offering-...

I don't think it matters how dominate the iPhone is. Google and Apple are joined at the hip.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/technology/apple-google-s...

You think Google is going to piss off Apple too much with Android? Not likely.

> A forced breakup could mean the loss of easy money to Apple. But it would be a more significant threat to Google, which would have no obvious way to replace the lost traffic. It could also push Apple to acquire or build its own search engine.

So I would definitely argue that the future of Android and iPhone are intertwined.

You said it yourself:

> an abuse of Microsoft's market position

Apple has no such market position to abuse.

It's perfectly legal to put restrictions on your product. It's perfectly legal to be a monopoly. It's only a problem when you abuse your monopoly position to restrict competitors.

>Apple has no such market position to abuse.

It depends how you want to measure things, in US iOS has more then 50% mobile market share but Apple fanboys will use only this numbers (or how many more purchases are on Apple sore) in the conversations about how cool Apple is, when we talk about the monopoly/duopoly then world wide numbers are used, maybe throw more type of devices in there...

I would say that Apple is clearly anti-competitive, not allowing other browsers, giving their own apps access to private APIs, their own apps ignoring the users firewall and security rules etc, but judges will have to decide on this and if they still consider is legal we might need to update some laws .

IMO the society is more important then a company, so if we decide that we no longer want this bullshit we will advocate and hopefully have the issue corrected.

The Apple situation looks to me similar to when mobile providers would lock phones to their network, then charge you to unlock them, this was made illegal , if you own your phone then the unlock should be possible for free, exception is if you are still renting/paying for the device so you are not owning it fully.

It seems you skipped preliminary hearing in September 2020. Judge already asked why Epic thinks Apple walled garden (closed platform) is illegal while such types of businesses were legal for decades.

Also judge rejected comparison of open and closed platforms. So she asked Epic lawyers what's the difference between Apple's closed platform and Xbox/PlayStation and Nintendo.

Epic lawyers failed badly without answering. Also failed to answer question when did Apple become monopoly.

Let's see what happens in EU. And FYI Sony and Nintendo are also wrong in my opinion for locking their devices though people don't complain as much since so far they found ways to bypass the locks.

I wonder if just business size can be used here rather than monopoly position. If your business is above a certain size, then more restrictions apply to what you can do. The reasoning is that the bigger you are the more people you impact, regardless of your market position and poor behaviors of smaller players to compete with larger players is also an issue. The current economic model of monopolies is very limited in scope (only looks at pricing) whereas there are many negative externalities a business may have beyond just consumer prices. Look at the consumer unfriendly business practices that take hold in industries (eg 24hr fitness famously making it really hard to Vance their service, poor competition on the part of ISPs, etc).

I think size may also be construed as "infrastructure." For example, Facebook now has a couple of billion users. It has reached the point where we often have to get Facebook accounts/pages, if we want to reach certain users. In short, Facebook has become necessary to "survive," in a sense.

That sort of puts it into the realm of a utility; like power or water.

The idea of a utility, is that it is deliberately allowed to become a monopoly, sometimes, with state enforcement. The flip side, is that it is now required to provide a lot of services.

For example, if some old folks can't pay their electric, in winter, the utility might be required to supply them with electricity anyway, and eat the cost, or claim it as a tax deduction.

That's the downside. The upside is...MONOPOLY, BABY! WOO-HOO! PAAAARTAAAY!

So there's a big carrot, as well as stick. People who own utilities tend to get pretty damn rich.

This all kinda breaks down, if the utility is already a monopoly, so the state assigning them monopoly status means nothing. No carrot; only stick. It also breaks down, if the utility manages to corrupt the regulators, thus eliminating the stick.

Facebook is already a monopoly. It doesn't need the state to give it anything; certainly not with a stick, attached. Thus, the "Standard Oil" remedy.

Apple isn't quite like Facebook, but it's getting there. The problem is that a lot of what gives its products value, is that iron-fisted control Apple has over their configuration. If that control is diluted, then it would also reduce the value of Apple products.

> For example, Facebook now has a couple of billion users. It has reached the point where we often have to get Facebook accounts/pages, if we want to reach certain users. In short, Facebook has become necessary to "survive," in a sense.

Not in any meaningful sense that I can understand. Seems hard to argue that all the people on HN who've plainly stated that they left Facebook can be considered dead or struggling to survive. That's not a sensible definition of survival. Also, Facebook cannot and does not prevent anyone from reaching its users. Facebook users often use other products and platforms as well.

It was a figure of speech. I was talking about a business, or other type of endeavor (note quotes around “survive.” Gives a clue).

I ran an open-source initiative for ten years, barely making headway.

Then I set up a Facebook group for it.

Within a few months, its reach had exploded worldwide, it became the de facto world standard, and a huge new team had taken it over.

It was not all Facebook, but the Facebook presence was a big part of it. It’s the most active hub for that effort by far.

Also, due to the nature of that particular effort, I guarantee that there are people (probably many) that are alive today, because of Facebook.

It’s entirely possible to hop in a sailboat, and get to Hawai’i, but most people would prefer flying there.

It can be said that Hawai’i requires air travel to “survive” (but I suspect that there are a number of native Hawai’ian folks that feel as if this ease of access has been anything but a blessing).

My bad for being unclear, I know it's not literal survival, I was responding to the implication: because Facebook is needed for some kind of "survival", it follows that Facebook is a utility that cannot be controlled by a company. That may be true for actual survival of actual people, but you're not talking about that. Guaranteed utilities/things in most countries are classified as such because they are necessary for literal human survival in modern society - electricity, water, food stamps, shelter - but you use the word "survive" which suggests actual survival while disclaiming the meaning by putting quotes around it and saying it's just a figure of speech. Facebook is not even close to a utility, it may only seem so if "survive" is re-defined to mean something totally different than what we use when we talk about a public utility.

I appreciate your story but open source projects don't inherently deserve to survive. Businesses don't inherently deserve to survive.

More importantly, the fact that Facebook can and has saved lives doesn't make it necessary for survival either. I'm sure a Taylor Swift song has brought someone back from the brink of suicide and indirectly saved lives by some definition, but it would be absurd to consider Taylor Swift songs to be a public utility necessary for survival.

I understand. I suspect that we see things differently, and probably won't be able to find common ground.

But, the project I worked on is definitely not something to be compared to a Taylor Swift song, and I understand that this comes from a position of unfamiliarity. That's fine, but I'm happy to elucidate, offline, if you wish.

Fair enough, I appreciate the honesty & civility. I'd love to see a link to your open source project or related material in a reply, mostly out of curiosity.

No. I won't post it publicly. It's not a state secret, and can be figured out, by looking through my links, but it's easier to simply email me, and I'll send it.

It's the kind of thing that is best left relatively "uncredited," and is important only to a certain demographic; but within that demographic, it is very, very important.

Ah I didn't realize that. I've contacted you through the contact form in one of your company websites.

Do you actually believe this? I have a hard time thinking that anyone believes "Apple has no such market position to abuse.". It's absurd.

>It's only a problem when you abuse your monopoly position to restrict competitors.

Like what Spotify is suing them over, for example.

They do. They have a total monopoly on phones running iOS. Way stronger of a monopoly than PCs running windows in the 90s, given that every single iPhone is locked into this vertically integrated market.

By that logic, every company has a monopoly on its own products.

Microsoft wasn’t selling the computer.

Anyone is free to buy an iPhone, install apps on it, and resell it.

In the 90s, anyone could buy a Windows PC, install apps on it and resell it.

The point was that Microsoft were giving Internet Explorer away for free, pre installed with Windows. This abused the market dominance of Windows to expand use of Internet Explorer.

Was it the giving away for free? Or prohibiting resellers from installing other browsers?

To be honest, I always thought the IE issue was stupid, and surely from a modern perspective it even more bonkers. Google has an OS that is literally a browser engine, they're not the only one, and web technologies are commonly built into OSes nowadays at a low level.

The other anti-trust claims against MS were I think largely credible and reasonable, but that one really has not aged well.

> Google has an OS that is literally a browser engine

It's not though. Chrome OS is literally Linux. You can install Firefox.

You may be able to install Firefox now, but originally it was literally a web-only affair. "Chrome OS is literally Linux" is about as accurate as "Android is literally Linux". Chrome OS is not just some rebadged Debian distro.

Do all chromebooks support linux apps now? AFAIK that's not true, and only a subset of them support it.

> "Chrome OS is literally Linux" is about as accurate as "Android is literally Linux". Chrome OS is not just some rebadged Debian distro.

It's not rebadged Debian. The default Linux in Chrome OS is literally Debian. It has apt, bash, Wayland, X11. And of course the Linux kernel is there. What more do you want before you call it Linux?

> Do all chromebooks support linux apps now?

According to this page all 2019+ Chromebooks support Linux apps: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-suppo...

Chrome OS is Gentoo based and did not let you install arbitrary Linux apps until relatively recently. I think the comparison is apt.

It's a Debian container.

> "Chrome OS is literally Linux" is about as accurate as "Android is literally Linux".

I agree, but I don't think that you're making the point you wanted to.

Linux != a distro though.

That would actually make the problem with scam apps even worse. Getting software on iOS is super easy and safe compared to Windows where you can install any program you like. The amount of scams, malware, etc that regular people get tricked into installing in Windows is immense.

An open ecosystem does have advantages, but reducing scam apps and malware is not one of them.

Do you even understand the volume of apps they deal with? Apple claims 100k a week[0]. How do you propose to handle that?

People are complaining about a small number of bad apps getting through and at the same time we have quite a few stating that not allowing people to load up anything they want is bad. Can you imagine trying to sort through the mess if there was no gate keeper because there is an actual chance if people get their legislative wish list through.

Even if you could get an independent system up and running who is going to pay for it? The staffing is going to be very large and who determines what is a good app and what is not?

I am all for Apple having and managing their store by their rules. While I think it is dumber than all get out to allow for people to install any app they find I am certainly not going to stand in their way as long as the companies which make the phones and provide the software are fully protected from such a choice. After all if a rogue app does something bad who do you think the lawyers will come for?

[0]https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/09/24/app-store-rejecte...

> Do you even understand the volume of apps they deal with? Apple claims 100k a week[0]. How do you propose to handle that?

Since it seems that Apple can't handle the problem they've delegated to themselves exclusively, and they prevent parties that might be better suited to solve it from solving it, they should allow the power of markets and competition to develop better, more efficient solutions. That way, consumers don't have to suffer while Apple insists that they're the only company allowed to serve the app distribution market as their customers are being scammed to the tune of several million dollars, or more, each month.

> Do you even understand the volume of apps they deal with? Apple claims 100k a week[0]. How do you propose to handle that?

Is this a serious question? The answer is: by hiring people. Lots of them. Apple has over $200 billion just in cash in the bank.

This reminds me of a section in the game Divinity Original Sin 2.

There's this area that can only be reached by crossing one of two bridges. The first bridge you encounter when you leave the starting town is guarded by a rude and aggressive troll. The bridge is a mess, falling apart, and he charges an expensive toll if you want to pass.

But if you explore for a bit instead of paying, you'll find another bridge with another troll, except this troll is super polite, soft-spoken and friendly, the bridge is very neat and tidy, and his toll is like 10x cheaper. He even thanks you for your patronage when you pay him.

When you encounter the mean troll again, he'll offer you a reward if you kill the other troll.

Apple charging 30% for a scam/malware-infested store, and keeping the profits rather than reinvesting them to try and actually improve the store makes them the first troll in this story.