> Are we really better off having competition for competitions sake rather than looking at what delivers the best outcome?

Yes, because there's a fundamental cost to society.

The cost v. benefit and what's actually an acceptable payoff is of course up for debate.

However the day has been coming for a long time. It doesn't take that much in the way of critical thinking, to have been able to preempt that this situation would manifest.

Many people have been asking for this for a long time.

Let's hope it's not too late when the destructive effect of monopolies are taken seriously.

Any discussion of monopoly must demonstrate harm to the consumer. Breaking up companies for breaking ups sake is not the spirit of antitrust law.

In this case, I can argue that Apple is protecting us from crappy companies. Tile sold its business to Life360. Life360 sells users' location data to anyone willing to pay for it. What's the fundamental cost to society of keeping companies like Tile around?

Maybe Life360 goes out of business. A bunch of engineers get hurt, some product people, marketers, accountants, administrators. 300 employees, laid off. That sucks, I agree. The effort of earning 27 million MAUs will be thrown down the toilet if they fail. That sucks. Now Life360 users must migrate to something that Apple offers. Is the product better? Yes. Does Apple have a fundamentally rivalrous relationship with its users? No. Does Apple sell users' data? No. I see no demonstration of consumer harm in this segment.

Let's take a real hard look at the people harmed by Apple's monopoly. These are other monopolists of their own vertical who are incensed that they can no longer enjoy monopolistic rents. Furthermore, that company may go out of business. The people being put out of business are likely engineers who would have no trouble finding another job. I do not have sympathy for technologists. I do have sympathy for the tens if not hundreds of millions of people in America who struggle to make a living. What's the effect to them if we break up Apple? Nothing. What's the effect if we don't break up Apple?

Apple at this point in their life has reached a point where its value proposition is more than just a luxury. They've created meaningful products creating meaningful changes in lives. Apple Watch has helped vulnerable folks (including me) get emergency services via fall detection, which leverages technologies and products made possible by Apple's "monopoly". Apple gives consumers the option to privately monitor their own home and premises through Homekit whereas other surveillance services brazenly monetize their services by selling data to law enforcement.

In the case of Homekit, what do consumers gain if Apple had to break out its home automation unit? They may have to pay more for that standalone service or else have their data monetized in other ways. Is that good for consumers? Heck no. What's paying for those services now? Apple's "monopolistic" profits.

I could go down the line with every one of Apples units and services. They've helped my family experience a level of richness that we've never enjoyed before.

For as much as pockets of the tech industry grandstands about "monopoly" because they don't like IAP rules, actual people don't care because they have benefitted greatly from what this "monopolistic" entity has contributed to their lives. You're going to have a tough time convincing me that this would all be possible had Apple not consolidated many parts of the industry.

> Yes, because there's a fundamental cost to society.

Insofar as my non-tech family and friends see it, this "cost" to society has been more like a dividend. When Apple starts acting maliciously, I'll drive everyone here to your local Attorney General's office.

Here's how I see Apple: Apple is Jupiter. It's the largest planet in the solar system. Is it terrifyingly large? Yes. Is it protecting me, Earth, from getting smashed by asteroids? Definitely. I like Jupiter.

> Any discussion of monopoly must demonstrate harm to the consumer. Breaking up companies for breaking ups sake is not the spirit of antitrust law.

Historically this was not true, although it has been true in the U.S. since the 1970s. Historically it was understood that a lack of competition was itself harmful, regardless of whether the monopolist was benevolent or not.

In the case of technology, harm is more difficult to demonstrate. How do you quantify the harm done by the absence of new products or services launched? It's easy to say Company B undercut Company C until Company C went out of business after which Company B raised prices. It's harder to say Company A had such a strong position in the market that companies D-Q never got past step 1 before either shutting down or being acquired by one of companies A, B, or C. Harder to prove the absence is harmful, but there is still harm being done.

If nothing else, a company so large it engenders a fan base that will defend its every action is edging toward "too big to regulate" in a way that doesn't bode well.

For what it's worth, I'm not big on breaking up existing companies along arbitrary lines as much as I am on unwinding acquisitions. M&A activity is what I think is knee-capping technology, and Apple is less guilty of that than many others.

Don’t forget to calculate into the picture all the companies that can’t even emerge due to Apple being there. What if down the road Apple Home start to suck for anything more than the most basic usage. There is no way to compete with it on merits base, as integration is essential for such a domain and apple would not let it not due to having a better product but due to simply owning the platform.

I have considered this and, in a former life, I likely would have agreed with you. To use another analogy:

Apple builds a beautiful, big house with no locks. A very wealthy family moves in. They love their new house. Then some folks started snooping in to spy on the household or to steal from them. Some of those thieves decide to use their loot to create more houses for the community. This causes the community to flourish. Others keep the loot to themselves.

Apple realizes this house needed locks from the start, so they install them. The community is arguably negatively affected, as there is no longer a home to steal from. Does this make it wrong for Apple to install locks?

Early, unfettered access to users and user data created a sort of primordial soup for innovation. It's impossible to argue that it didn't increase company formation. However, many companies grew by trodding on ground they should have had no right to.

This analogy is so wildly off the mark I don't even know where to start.

The core of the issue here is not user data, but the ability to interoperate with the phone OS. It's absolutely possible to do that without exposing sensitive data, by providing APIs and adopting open standards (for payments, notifications, message extensions, maps, etc etc). Case in point, it would have been technically impossible for Tile, or anyone else, to create a product as good as AirTags. That was not a matter of product vision or creativity, only of who has actual access to the phone hardware.

A better analogy would be that Apple does not allow you to bring third-party furniture into the house. You must buy theirs. And then the same for food, and eventually clothing, and water, and electricity... one day you bring this really cool TV into the house, just released, guess what's their next product offering that will slot in seamlessly with your furniture?

(I use all things Apple, but this power is starting to get me concerned)

There are apps build on top of the Homekit environment: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/home-5/id995994352

Home+ has been in the top 50 for as long as I can remember and it's a $15 paid app.

.. and if Apple want to get rid of it at any point, they will.

One whole section of the keynote was dedicated to how HomeKit is being subsumed by Matter, a standard all of the major home automation companies are collaborating on.

Here's how I see Apple: They will do anything to continue to grow. Including things that are seen as pro-consumer.

This is actually is a cost, as it's used to justify their continued domination.

The harm done shouldn't be examined purely in the sphere of the consumer .. it should be extended to society. The cost of Apple's continued success, is the probably failure of other smaller ventures. They stifle, and they dwarf most other commercial entities.

In another comment I mentioned that any set of user-positive functionality is underlain with a far more strategically important business benefit.

The only reason they do good is to continue to grow. Let's not kid ourselves.

And if we're talking space analogies, I'd argue it's actually closer to a black hole ..

I think Apple is doing a great job, but I also think trusting by default is a mistake. Apple’s leadership might change. In fact, no one can claim to know apple’s long game. You guys should watch Love+Death+Robots, Season 3, the Swarm episode. I think it’s very elucidating.

Harm to consumer is only one side of antitrust. There is another different side about power and control. Both are valid.

> Apple completely obsoleted Tile with AirTags, but the airtags work so much better and users are better off for having them.

not on android

There are no technical barriers on Android manufacturers adding AirTag support to their phones. The whole system is open.

But they won't, because they'll lose face and control of the data.

> AirTags are different from other Bluetooth trackers like Tile because they rely on Apple's U1 chip to provide complete functionality. Functionality is limited in iPhones that lack the U1 chip, and it's even more limited in non-Apple devices. You need an iPhone, iPad, or Mac to set up AirTags because they require the Find My app that's only available for Apple devices. You also need an iPhone, iPad, or Mac to put AirTags into Lost Mode or find your AirTags on a map because both of those functions require the Find My app.

I'm mostly fine with monopolies that exist because nobody can make a better product. It's scary, but there's not much to be done about it.

Unfortunately, Apple is not the kind of product I would actually want to use. They are still behind Android on many features, because the lock so much down, don't prioritize compatibility, etc.

They also cost more, and you can't develop apps for them unless you also have a Mac. To any techie, that's a problem, especially when a MacBook costs more than anything else I've ever owned.

iOS apps also seem to often cost a few bucks, despite free equivalents existing for Android. Perhaps because they are more expensive to make, or because they can't rely on a data collection business model, whatever the case pretty much everything seems more expensive.

There are lots of reports that third party stuff is just a bit worse because of the privacy restrictions.

The UI is non-customizable in a very annoying way, it's all based on gestures and shortcuts with many things hidden.

Apple makes appliances more than computers. Android, Windows, and Linux all share a general idea of doing anything, in any scenario.

With Apple you're never quite sure what they'll do. Anything beyond core phone use cases seems more like a bonus, and a lot of the exclusive features have to do with some other Apple specific thing.

Plus, apparently, they don't have per app notifications, and some are saying that push notifications can be unreliable.

There is essentially never a time when I want anything like a full do not disturb. So... I'd have to be interrupted every 4 seconds by crappy apps that spam notifications to avoid being unreachable?

With Android, you feel like no matter what tech task you want to do, you can probably do it with an app. I don't get the impression Apple is really trying to be more than an appliance.

> To any techie, that's a problem, especially when a MacBook costs more than anything else I've ever owned.

I don’t mean to be adversarial, but are you saying you’re a techie who never owned something costing more than $1K?

I'm not exactly sure how much my computer costs offhand, since it's been upgraded with RAM and an SSD, but it is probably still a bit under $1k, although likely a bit over if you count all the accessories.

I made the very highly questionable choice of getting into embedded systems with no degree or math talent, and while being clumsy enough I probably shouldn't drive.

.... so I have never made more than $30k a year, usually less, even when I've been in semi-leadership-ish roles designing $10k equipment.

A lot of the big companies that have a spare 100 grand laying around seem to want people who can do RF design and hand solder a BGA.

Low volume work for ultra small non-tech companies is a pretty different skillset.

There's nothing all that advanced, but the schedules are tight, things have to be repairable by people with very limited training, you're doing lots of unrelated work, there's legacy gear everywhere, arbitrary marketing related restrictions, and hardware costs matter.

Admittedly not a very big issue for most working professionals, but I would think it could be a bit of a problem for anyone in a non-tech industry trying to learn on their own.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that there's a huge range of incomes around the world, and iGadgets are distinctively premium. They're targetted at Californian yuppies, and get less popular as you move further from that target demographic. In third-world countries, Android has nearly 100% market share. In some Western countries, Apple is supreme.

At the same time, there have been comments (here also), that because iDevices have such amazing support and hence longevity, they're actually more cost-efficient. Hand-me-downs and resale value make an investment into an iPhone or iPad actually better value for money than replacing an Android device several times over the same time span because Samsung et al like to drop support like it's going out of style. For example, an iPhone I bought 6 years ago is still actively supported and in-use by some elderly relatives. It still gets updates!

Reminds me of this quote from Terry Prattchet's discworld series:

A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”

I'm not sure they're targeted at California yuppies. There are people way worse off than me who not only have an iPhone, it's less than 3 years old. In some places it seems like you can even get looked down on for not having one. Seems like there's a lot of premium goods in that category.

iPhones kind of have to be, they wouldn't be very useful if they weren't mass market with the ecosystem that comes with that.

They might be very slightly more cost effective in the long run, but many modern Android devices promise multiple years of support, and of course, one can(As I'm currently doing, but should probably stop) use them beyond that period, or install aftermarket firmware on some of them.

Samsung seems to do security updates for about 4 years now, and OnePlus promises 3 major versions.

Great points, thanks!

If you are under 30 and live in a major city with access to public transport, you might not be able to afford the downpayment for a house while never needing to buy a car, the other big ticket item. (And usually other appliances/toys are cheaper than Apple products, be it bikes, TVs, game consoles etc).

I understand. I have been under 30 in a major city. I'm a lot older than that now and am still unable to afford the downpayment for a house, regardless of the need for a car.

That said, a 1K computer that would wholly replace your other (probably >1K) computer shouldn't really affect your ability to afford that.

The fact that Android seems to fill all of your needs shows that there is viable competition and the market is still working fine.

Most of the stuff you listed as an is things that others desire as a feature. And if that isn’t you, Android is a great alternative.

> There is essentially never a time when I want anything like a full do not disturb. So... I'd have to be interrupted every 4 seconds by crappy apps that spam notifications to avoid being unreachable?

Your solution is focus modes, which they spent rather a long time talking about in the keynote.

Now that I read about them, focus modes do seem like they're usable, but I'm not 100% sure, without spending a half hour looking into it.

Some say you can whitelist the messages app and let all contacts message you, some say that doesn't work? There's a lot more discussion and confusion than I'd hope to see about it.

It just seems a little less smooth than I'd expected, like as if "No affect on any other notifications, just make this Aliexpress app stop spamming" isn't really a core use case.

Why do you even have its notifications on if you don’t like them?

nb there’s also time sensitive vs not time sensitive notifications that can be filtered on, but it’s up to the app to say which are which.

> Plus, apparently, they don't have per app notifications, and some are saying that push notifications can be unreliable.

iOS does have per application notification settings. Also apps have to ask permissions to even send them. You can also change how each app's notifications behave. It's also possible to group all notifications from an app or a group of apps to be shown at certain time of a day, all at once. I don't think there's any reliability issues.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/11/01/how-to-manage-not...

The focus modes expand this so that you have even more power to control how notifications work at certain time of day (or location etc). Focus modes also apply to all your Apple devices at once.

> iOS apps also seem to often cost a few bucks, despite free equivalents existing for Android. Perhaps because they are more expensive to make, or because they can't rely on a data collection business model, whatever the case pretty much everything seems more expensive.

This has a benefit that there are more high quality apps on iOS than on Android and the apps aren't abandoned as often.

"I'm mostly fine with monopolies that exist because nobody can make a better product. It's scary, but there's not much to be done about it."

It could be that nobody can make a better product, because of their power. Buying power for parts, for startups, for marketing, lawyers.

That said, I'm not for regulating too much, they do indeed make a fine product. I have an iPhone, it's to closed for my tasted but it just really works well.

The new EU open platform regulations seem like about the right amount of regulation to me.

>Are we really better off having competition for competitions sake rather than looking at what delivers the best outcome?

No but competition is the bedrock of the resource distribution philosophy at hand. If thats not the case then we should just let all companies consolidate in to a large monopoly because their products are superior to non existing companies.

If Apple only made better products than their competitors, a case could be made, sure. The problem is things like the 30% shake out on transactions in other apps.

Why do you force me to defend Apple?

Trotting the 30% tax as an Apple exclusive problem is extremely disengenuous.

Sony, Microsoft and Valve also charge 30% (and have draconian agreements that are even worse than apples).

It’s like Foxxcon all over again; when Apple does the same as everyone else, suddenly it’s a pariah. (For context I’m talking about the suicides at Foxconn due to the abhorrent working conditions, despite the fact that nearly every large OEM and board maker used them: Apple got the most shit).

Sometimes I think the media might have a bit of bias against Apple for some reason.

Not that the criticism isn’t justified, but it’s definitely not levied even handedly.

Similar as they may appear, the comparison between Steam and Apple's AppStore is disingenuous.Valve doesn't prohibit developers from selling the app directly to customers and installing the app on their devices, bypassing the middleman. Apple absolutely locks down iOS devices and direct installation of anything is impossible (testflight and MDM options do not count).

This makes these two appstores completely incomparable. Enrolling in one is voluntary, and is done by developers because it is beneficial to them, another one is extortion.

As far as I understand (I was only working in the same building as uplay/Ubsioft connect) there were rules about payment processing (ie; all games downloaded through steam have to use the steam payments api: this is all I can find on the matter at a glance: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/1755779919109...)

Second; while you can sell your program in other places, you may not charge differently than steam. Which makes a lot of sense but is quite hard to grapple with in reality. I think there are cheeky “letter of the law” ways of working around this but obviously Valve don’t want that and then look for other reasons to just drop your entire catalog at random (this was not done by Ubisoft, despite the title and article claiming that: https://gamerant.com/ubisoft-remove-game-steam/)

After all; why go outside of steam if it’s not cheaper?

Some people don't like Steam since its proprietary. I own around 200 games on Steam and almost all of them have Steam's DRM that prevents me from running the game without being logged into Steam.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm

Some games can be bought on Steam, GoG (DRM-free), and/or their website.

Example:

https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/games-kerbal-space-progra...

https://www.gog.com/en/game/kerbal_space_program

https://store.steampowered.com/app/220200/Kerbal_Space_Progr...

Others doing the same doesn't justify the practice. I am calling out Apple right now because this discussion is about Apple, not because I just want to blame Apple and give a pass to the others. What is this argument, is Apple now the 12 year old 'bad' kid in class who gets blamed for everything? Should I be considerate of its feelings? Anyway, Google still allows alternative app stores on the platform like F-droid that is a major difference.

Since Apple has locked down the platform, they are the price setters: they decide for you that 30% is fair. Seems extortionate to me.

I’m more pointing out that as far as “platform costs” go, Apple is in-line with its contemporaries.

In fact it’s likely by virtue of the platform being so closed that the rate is so high (as my examples are console platforms which also seek to be hermetically sealed environments), so trotting out f-droid as a refutation does little.

Maybe I’m numb to this from working in games; try making a game and avoiding the 30% tax; even on a free and open platform like PC, outside of Epic and some home-grown launchers you’re going to be paying 30%. For consoles; forget about it, that’s the price.

It’s pay to play, and if you don’t want to pay then… don’t, nobody puts a gun to your head any forces you to support the iPhone. At least you have an alternative platform to target that is cheaper (Android).

Where as I got death threats when we put The Division 2 on Epic Games; the public opinion was not a good one: https://reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/ae8vnd/_/ednd9fr/?...

>> It’s pay to play, and if you don’t want to pay then… don’t, nobody puts a gun to your head any forces you to support the iPhone

Right? If you don't like their monkeys then don't join their circus! Apple is spending billions of dollars to create their iPhone market that these people then want to tap into and profit from for free! Apple doesn't get paid unless you get paid, distribute your app for free and you don't have to pay Apple anything. Oh, you want to make money? Then you're going to have to pay for that!

If these people don't like it then I suggest they try distributing their software via Walmart, Gamestop, or Staples. Wait, what? You can't access their stores for free to sell your stuff! Say it ain't so!

Frankly I'm tired of this juvenile discussion. These people obviously have no clue as to how retail works and can't see that Apple has actually cut them a hell of a deal! A better deal than you're going to get distributing any product via a traditional retail channel.

Perhaps people would rather take the side of the consumer instead of the multi-trillion-dollar global conglomerates?

Feel free to donate as much money as you want to them though.

The consumer wants everything for free. Get back to me when you're willing to work for free - I'd love to "hire" you! :)

Consumers already pay for the hardware which is why they're a trillion dollar company.

However there are other trillion-dollar companies that have free consumer services if that's really the issue (which it isn't). By the way, millions of apps are not monetized and therefore free to host so clearly there's not a critical cost associated with the app store but rather pure profit margin.

Simply allowing the install of additional app stores would solve all these issues and allow for more competitions and the free market to discover the real price of app store services.

The problem isn't the tax, it's that there is no way around it.

Let people install alternative app stores and every single issue is resolved.

If Apple didn’t generate a sizable profit from the App Store, would they really be bothered to keep making changes to the silicon and APIs that make developers apps run faster? It’s a genuine question; a good chunk of the A15 is dedicated to machine learning and Apple makes available a wide array of new APIs that almost seem pre-baked, eg this[0], and yet all a single iOS developer pays for in the $100 yearly fee is maybe 1 hour of an engineer’s time.

Apple may make a large chunk of profit from the iPhone (which only comes from scale, mind you; 1 new iPhone would cost a million dollars to make but 100M copies of a new iPhones only costs ~$40B to make), but the solution can’t be “App Store revenue drops 99%” (which would certainly happen; why would anyone stay with IAP and not switch to PayPal or stripe for a <5% fee?).

0: https://developer.apple.com/wwdc22/10127

The problem is not AppStore-downloaded app using AppStore for IAP, it is that I am not able to download anything I would deem necessary on my very own general purpose device if Apple deems it not a good fit for their platform. For all I care force IAPs to go through their servers for 30%, the majority of the users will still use it just fine.

Just put a scary looking, click 35 times on this hidden menu option to allow proper sideloading, not this 3 apps for 7 days bullshit.

That is the argument most monopolies make. Look at all the good things I am doing! I might not do them if I make less money! (While swimming in money and spending a fraction to R&D) Same can be said about the customers: they could've spend the 30% on things that are better for their life.

I think you're leaving out the fact that the airtags system is part of an intrusive global surveilance botnet run by the likes of apple. But I suppose putting all this power in the hands of so few people is worth it if some clueless consumers can find their keys faster.

Edit: This may sound ridiculous, but I seriously do not think companies like apple or microsoft have ever contributed anything of value to society. They are merely rent-seeking operations.

I love Linux, though my love is waning and I’m starting to see the light of BSD, so don’t get me wrong here… but what you wrote is just painful to read.

Firstly, the “botnet” is afaik opt-in and it still has a semblance of privacy in its design. You might do well to inform yourself of how it works and how people have played around with it.

Saying that Apple or Microsoft have not added value to the world is just absurd.

For one thing; we would very unlikely be running windowing systems of any kind without them. I know that sounds absurd and like it was inevitable, but there was nobody else doing that at the time afaik.

Second to that Apple did put a lot of effort into typography on computers, something nobody else was doing: so you can thank them for fonts.

Microsoft made popular the idea of ad-hoc file sharing with samba/smb.

Microsoft’s office suites, love them or hate them, literally run the world; I can’t even imagine a company that doesn’t interact with excel.

Apple created (or at least heavily developed) CUPS; which remains the best way to print on every UNIX system I’m aware of.

These are just a few examples, and sure, the history is mired with anti-competitive bullshit and forced attempts at pushing awful technology, but…

Such blatant ignorance is unjustified on this forum. I’m honestly ashamed.

> I can’t even imagine a company that doesn’t interact with excel.

That's some very poor imagination. I run a company since 2007, haven't opened MS Excel even once since ~2006, ask me anything. Thing is, companies existed long before excel came to be, and will exist long after it will fade away to history.

Which bank do you use? They all use excel fairly extensively. Sometimes to disastrous effect[0].

Ever been audited? Nearly every auditing company is using excel.

Even if you’re not using excel, it is the lingua Franca of spreadsheets. The next closes thing is a CSV which largely exists as an interchange medium.

Excel is undoubtedly the world's most used and most popular database software even though there is a multitude of alternative more, efficient and frankly, even more, user-friendly solutions out there. It is frankly ubiquitous.

I hate that this is true, but it is reality.

[0]: https://www.efinancialcareers.co.uk/news/2020/10/excel-mista...

My business is not located in the US so the names of my banks will hardly say anything to you, but yes, I've been audited and always provided necessary information in stable open formats like PDF.

If I would ever be asked to provide some report in a proprietary format like MSOffice (I know it is pretending to be open, but this OOXML is nothing more but a mockery and corruption of an open standardization process), I'll ask to buy me licences for the necessary software to compile such report, including a licence for the operating system to run the OS-specific software on.

While this puffy talk holds no water of course if the tax man just demands you deliver files in a format he wants, you can easily do so for very cheap using the Office365 cloud offering, which doesn’t require you to be running a paid OS. I don’t think you can take someone to court for the $10 a month that costs.

I'm not familiar with how 'tax men' work in the US, but in countries i'm familiar with government officials do not dictate file formats, and all communication is done in formats that are open standards. In the slim chance that some bureaucrat would continue to insist on using .xls or .xlsx, I'd probably ship him an exported file from LibreOffice, and say that it's the best I can do. And then again, being a proponent of Free Software and open standards, I'd probably refuse using a proprietary format. So far, I had some luck in avoiding using microsoft office file formats in the past 15 years of entrepreneurship.

Many US Senators haven't used email, let alone a computer. Their imaginations must be incredible.

> Firstly, the “botnet” is afaik opt-in

You “opt in” by enabling “find my iPhone”. The same feature has now been scope creeped to include constant active scanning in your local area and reporting back. The original feature sent Apple your devices location periodically.

You have to dig through a series of menus and scary warnings to turn the additional garbage off.

There is a specific setting for it under find my.

https://imgur.com/a/puh7JOY

You can retain the capability of the “find my” while not participating in the network.

EDIT: decided to see how hidden and scary the warnings are: https://imgur.com/a/lTgxzHt

I think we’re saying the same thing?

It also gets used to find your iPhone if it’s turned off.

That does sound ridiculous. They have market dominance because of the value that they offer. IBM is a great example of a company falling from grace; it happens all the time and can happen to Apple.

Rent-seeking is a seperate issue, but no different to the Industrial Age and how Railway providers would do the same. We have inadequate governance.

> They have market dominance because of the value that they offer.

This isn't true for Microsoft.

They're a monopoly for most of the PCs on this planet and since they've been that for years now, changes to a different system which may still work out are hard and sometimes even impossible.

Same goes for the mobile infrastructure for different reasons. Someone who "grew up" in the Apple infrastructure will have a hard time changing to Android and vice versa. However people within the Android infrastructure have at least a greater choice of hardware (and for a few of them choice of an Android version).

Exactly.

Microsoft makes so completely bonkers amounts of money just from Windows and Office that they can use it to prop up other branches of their business that aren't generating profit yet.