Apple doesn't have the authority to shut down Meta's business. Only our congress, department of justice, and the governments of foreign markets have this power.

You can measure just how big of a monopoly the iPhone App Store is by how many billions of dollars shift with simple changes to Apple policy.

As much as I hate ads and tracking, it's not Apple's right to be the sole defender of the American people. That's what laws are for. (And besides, Apple is already a direct beneficiary of all that tracking themselves. They're absolutely doing business and making decisions based on your behavior.)

Too much economic activity (50+% of American computing) is happening on iPhone for Apple to be afforded the monopolistic privilege of taxing it all. Apple makes so much money from sales of their remarkable hardware, subscription services, and other incredible and highly profitable business units that they won't be at risk by giving this up.

For the health of the broader industry and the enduring benefits of fair competition, Apple must relinquish the App Store monopoly.

Apple will be more than okay. And they'll shift efforts that used to be spent on protectionism into true innovation.

> it's not Apple's right to be the sole defender of the American people

They're not. They are (and want to continue to be) the sole defender of Apple iDevice customers. The American people (and in fact anyone else), can choose a non-Apple device, and therefore non-Apple ecosystem.

To me it all boils down to - is the app ecosystem a public commons or a private commons subject to the owner's T&C's? (for clarity - the owner is not the customer. The customer owns the device, but they do not own the ecosystem).

If I like neither Apple nor Google, how can I realistically choose a non-Apple non-Google ecosystem? It's getting increasingly difficult to find a bank that does not require one of these 2FA apps that are only available from the Play Store or App Store (and which refuse to work on Android phones with non-standard OSs like Lineage).

You can’t, but then you can’t choose to ride a genetically engineered unicorn either.

In either case someone would have to make one first.

Great question. Believe me, I too want a non-Apple, non-Google solution. Ideally, we'd figure out a way to support a true "public commons" for phone apps, one that also supports an ecosystem of trust/reputation based "security validators/assessors" that provide independent assessments of apps on the public commons. People would be free to ignore these assessments. Or something.

To be honest, I have been recently looking at trying out an Android phone that supports Lineage, but the 2FA issue would be a deal breaker. Is it just some 2FA, or most/all?

> Apple doesn't have the authority to shut down Meta's business.

This is a silly statement that has nothing to do with reality.

Apple has the right not to be forced to work for Meta.

If people want Meta so much, they can choose an android device, or Meta can license Android themselves.

> An app can lie about what it does, and nothing at a technical level can prevent that

I was thinking of the tracking restrictions when I wrote this. The OS simply doesn’t give the app the data.

It’s much harder than that to prevent fingerprinting, or the use of legitimate APIs for illegitimate purposes.

In any case the idea that you can achieve privacy and security solely through managing APIs is simply false.