Re:Dear DoJ: You Need To Sue Apple Again
by danielsoneg on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @03:16PM
(#3829132)
Nobody gets forced into anything. You agree to a 2-year contract when you decide to get a phone for ~$400 below market price.
Re:Dear DoJ: You Need To Sue Apple Again
by rbarooah on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @03:17PM
(#3829135)
Nobody gets locked into a 2 year contract forcing them to do anything with Apple.
iPads are not sold on contract. iPhones come with a contract, but the contract doesn't force you to keep using the device - just the wireless service.
You can sell the phone and buy a different one to use with the same contract if you don't like it.
I am not a lawyer, but to me this seems like they were the market leader in smartphones at the time and using that monopoly to monopolize another market.
Re:Dear DoJ: You Need To Sue Apple Again
by rbarooah on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @04:45PM
(#3829553)
Being the market leader doesn't give you a monopoly in any market, and certainly not in a young and growing one.
Considering that Steve Jobs wanted to "destroy" Android, they were at least headed in that direction, and at the time, they had the majority of the smartphone market, i.e. phones where you could actually buy an ebook.
Re:Dear DoJ: You Need To Sue Apple Again
by rbarooah on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @06:16PM
(#3829926)
These things are irrelevant to the definition of a monopoly.
And the definition of a monopoly is irrelevant to the DoJ case being discussed. So it appears everyone is even.
(edit: crap, just realized I'd been tricked into responding to rbarooah again. Apologies all.)
Re:Dear DoJ: You Need To Sue Apple Again
by rbarooah on Wednesday April 11, 2012 @07:18PM
(#3830130)
When was the last time you saw anyone on HN directly insult someone else here in such a mean and insidious way?
You wrote that edit just to try to hurt and undermine me.
I think this is the first time I've seen anything like it here, and it has a really unpleasant schoolyard bully vibe to it.
(edit for those not reading carefully: Saying that the contract is willful has nothing to do with the argument. Consumers do not sign contracts with retailers. So applying logic about retail sales is a flawed analysis. Doing things like leveraging the illiquidity of platform choice to increase prices in a way that would be legal for a retailer is not, necessarily, legal for a platform vendor. Apple has control over the market that Walmart does not. That's what the whole idea of "restraint of trade" is about.)