https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....

If you were, however, to penalize Apple; you would need to come up with a legal differentiation between a smartphone and a game console, as well as why the game console business model is moral and legal, but the locked-in smartphone market should be immoral and illegal. Considering there's no such thing as a "general purpose computing device" in the law; you would also need to come up with a pretty good explanation why Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft get to keep their exclusivity privileges but Apple loses theirs.

And that's a tricky nut to solve. Because you might say, "well, a smartphone can do way more than a game console." Well, that's only because the game console is so locked down - but a game console remains theoretically capable of anything a PC could do otherwise. If it wasn't for a lockout, you could install Windows on it and use it as a node in a supercomputer. Does that mean Apple would be legally fine if the smartphone was more locked down then? It's tricky.

Not really, they can just leave it up to the court's interpretation. "I know it when I see it" has been used in a court before. Just define it as a smartphone: No one is going to call a gaming console a smartphone, nor vice versa.

And applying a ruling to a specific industry isn't new either: see that Hollywood anti-trust case again. It was never applied to TV shows. Otherwise Netflix Exclusives wouldn't be a thing. Or any other "Only on Disney Channel/Cartoon Network/etc" show.

They want to have their app/game store everywhere, not just PC and smartphone.

Also, hasn’t “I know it when I see it” been criticized as a poor test since it was stated based on how arbitrary it is?

It’s been used in a court, but not too much effect; the popular source of that is a discussion of “hardcore pornography” in a concurrence to a Supreme Court decision in an obscenity case which was notable for having a majority on the ruling in the case, but no consensus by any more than two justices on either a rationale for the ruling, or (among the dissenters) on the reasons for rejecting the ruling.

1. No one is stopping developers from selling their apps in Android markets.

2. Apple hasn't attempted to prevent android app markets from existing.

3. Apple can make the argument that they own the market on merit, therefore their monopoly on selling iOS apps is legal.

4. It has to be proven this is bad for consumers. Apple is claiming their control benefits consumers, which again justifies their monopoly.

And as mentioned elsewhere, Apple may be forced to allow side-loading, but still require their 30% on all transactions. And nothing stops Apple from enforcing security policies on things like private apis on side-loaded apps.

Unfortunately I think the likely result is going to be a partial victory no one is happy with. :(

The Play Store has almost identical rules and pricing compared to the App Store, how is that a competitor?

The fact that the Play Store is similar to the App Store doesn't mean it's not competitive

You are welcomed to find another explanation, I don't see any other one.

A. There's no legally recognized market for "privacy-friendly phones."

B. "Privacy-friendly phones" is an ill-defined category, with "privacy" meaning different things to different people. Does a phone that blocks trackers qualify? Or does it have to protect me from rogue governments? There's no legal standard for what makes a device "privacy-friendly." Because of that, you are complaining that Apple has a monopoly in a market you just made up, which would be laughed out of court. You might as well claim Apple has a monopoly on phones with Lightning ports.

C. There's always GrapheneOS, which is free for anyone who wants it. There's also CalyxOS. You might claim they don't serve your purpose, but the law doesn't care an ounce about your specific purpose. There's generally-recognized competition in the vague category.

D. Having a monopoly is not illegal in the US. It's abusing your monopoly that's illegal. You would have to show Apple intentionally and specifically suppressed the development of alternative privacy-friendly phones by actively abusing their market power, which nobody is alleging.

This is probably because when phones were first introduced in the previous century, people assumed that nobody would listen in on their conversations.

By the way, who decides what a legally recognized market is?

Primarily, the legal system, courts do. However, they always draw in expertise and considering that privacy experts don't agree on what a "privacy phone" should be, good luck defining that market when the market can't define itself. (Does it need secure boot or not? Hardened malloc? Tracker blocking? Sideloading or no sideloading? Allow background processes or not? Hardware Microphone disable switches or not? Some or all of the above?)

But then, even if there was a standard for a "privacy-preserving phone," is that market large enough to legally matter? Currently, judging by how many people are using GrapheneOS... No. Again, Apple has a monopoly on smartphones with Lightning Ports, but I don't think anybody cares about the "Smartphones with Lightning Ports" market.

In the 80s, I could literally pick up my phone and hear neighbors conversations sometimes.

Also during the analog cell phone era, anyone could buy a receiver from Radio Shack and bypass the frequency block and listen to cell phone conversations.

That’s entirely false. The majority of telephone lines were party lines through the mid 20th century.

The lack of privacy became a topic of pop culture of the time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_Wire

This is a very important point because Epic doesn’t like that either. There was very reasonable speculation that if they won this lawsuit they would immediately turn around and use it to sue the console makers.