Is that the same as forcing a company to open up hardware access? We can argue that, and I sort of see where you're coming from, but... I think my bigger point is:
> as that has little to do with the hardware being tied to an OS.
I feel like this is a very narrow interpretation of antitrust. Microsoft was prevented from abusing a market power that could have prevented other competitors from gaining a foothold in the market. Apple directly benefited from the government and regulators stepping in and saying "we don't think a company should be able to unduly block competition."
It feels a little hand-wavy if someone wants to make the argument that it's all different just because Apple now has a different mechanism for locking down the market. The problem was locking down the market, and that's still the problem. And what we're really asking is "should the government be able to stop a company from making the market uncompetitive?"
Sure, someone could make the argument that allowing a custom OS on a phone is technically different from government intervention standardizing electrical outlets so the iPhone can charge, but they're both regulations that serve basically the exact same purpose that are coming from the exact same authority. If Apple wants to claim that opening up the hardware would be a step too far, I'd want to see an argument from them about what is practically different about that regulation that makes it a step too far. We regulated device compatibility for phone networks and that led to an explosion of innovation that shaped the modern Internet.
Not all regulations are good. There should be limits on what the government can do. But I think the onus is on companies like Apple who have benefited from the government saying, "we have a vested interest in making the market competitive" to explain not just why the regulations being proposed are technically different, but to also explain why it matters that we're talking about opening hardware and not just software and why that regulation should be treated differently.
> I think if there is a law it should be about EVERY device. Nintendo Switch, tractors, phones, etc. Just the environmental benefits would be big and always getting bigger.
Completely agreed.
Word was on Mac in 1985, Windows in 1989. There was an earlier version of Word for DOS.
Excel was on Mac first in 1985, and on Windows in 1987.
> Later, the U.S. Department of Justice included the bundling of Internet Explorer among the charges it brought against Microsoft in its antitrust case. "Microsoft, by threatening to cease development of its Office for Macintosh productivity suite, coerced Apple into making Internet Explorer the default browser on all Macintosh operating systems and to disadvantage competing browsers," the federal agency charged in 1998.
It's not really debatable whether an unchecked Microsoft monopoly would have affected Office on the Mac, it was straight-up part of the antitrust case against Microsoft. Delaying and degrading Office releases on Mac was the active policy of Microsoft by the late 1990s, both because it gave Microsoft power over Apple during business negotiations and because it allowed Microsoft to simultaneously hold off competing office-suite products while pulling more users away from Mac towards Windows, which had more up-to-date and less buggy versions of Office and IE.
And to be clear, I'm not pro-Apple on not being able to install another OS. I think if there is a law it should be about EVERY device. Nintendo Switch, tractors, phones, etc. Just the environmental benefits would be big and always getting bigger.