That's true, but odds are they have a lot of e-mails and a lot of employees who can testify to the browser choice decision being driven by lock-in. The iMessage emails were pretty unambiguous with regards to how it is used in an anti-consumer way. (https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22375128/apple-imessage-an...) Similar stuff will exist for everything they do, because they cannot distort the reality that in 2024 their software kind of sucks, and that their customers only use it because they don't have alternatives and Apple prevents those alternatives from being viable.

That's an extremely hot take. When devices are mostly just slabs of glass and the interface and what is done, is entirely the software, customers are choosing the device based on the Apple software, not in spite of it.

UX is complete and utter trash.

But the M1 and onwards hardware is so good, I put up with it.

Just off the top of my head:

- Never had a $2000+ laptop that couldn't connect with more than 2 monitors without an expensive DisplayLink dock and drivers. And even then, it's janky AF

- Rendering on non-Apple external monitors sucks; night and day difference when I connect a Windows laptop to my Dell monitors

- Terrible with system font scaling

- Inconsistent usage of button sizes in their native dialogs

- Can't tab cycle through minimized windows

- Windowing system sucks compared to Windows

- Whatever is happening here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnGT041xkGE

- I ship a PWA for one of my apps and by far Safari is the one that has the most issues with updating

Hardware limitations that were told at launch.

> Rendering on non-Apple external monitors sucks;

It works fine with my old Dell FHD and my current 4k LG.

> Terrible with system font scaling

Apple does not do system font scaling, it applies scaling to the whole UI, not separate elements.

> Can't tab cycle through minimized windows

Different windows management model. You tab cycle through applications, and you backquote cycle through open windows. Minimized windows go to the dock.

> Windowing system sucks compared to Windows

Again above. Windows sizing is a specific concept in Mac OS interface model and there's rules that you can apply to it. I understand the OS not wanting to interfere much with that.

> I ship a PWA for one of my apps and by far Safari is the one that has the most issues with updating

I've not seen your code so I can't say much. But most people who complain about Safari really want Chrome's non-standard API to exists in Safari too.

    > Hardware limitations that were told at launch.

    > It works fine with my old Dell FHD and my current 4k LG.

    > Different windows management model. You tab cycle through applications, and you backquote cycle through open windows. Minimized windows go to the dock.

    > I understand the OS not wanting to interfere much with that.

    > I've not seen your code so I can't say much. But most people who complain about Safari really want Chrome's non-standard API to exists in Safari too. 

This drives me absolutely NUTS and I thought it was a me problem. Where the hell do things go when they're minimized on macos!!? There's all these questions asking about cmd+tabbing to minimized windows and the answer is to hold option while you hold cmd after selecting the minimized window and then let go of cmd.. but if there's 2 Chrome windows and one is minimized this doesn't work at all.

I don't think there's anything macOS is doing better than Windows in so far as UX goes. Put it another way: I use macOS every day and I never think "Wow, I wish Windows had this feature, too" but every day I wish I had some UX element from Windows -- just basic window management feels so clunky on macOS unless you fullscreen everything.

Hardware is great, though.

When you're close all Chrome windows, that just means you're done with the webpages, not that you're done with Chrome. Chrome dev team can set Chrome to terminate when all windows close, but they've not chosen to do so. It's there when you want to create a new window when you want to interact with a new webpage. And again it's up to the developer to choose to tie the application lifecyle to its windows.

    > MacOS applications are more like services,

My issue with the menu bar is purely from an ergonomics and usability perspective, especially with high resolution monitors. If I have a window at the bottom right corner of the monitor, I need to move my mouse all the ways to the top left of the monitor to interact with the menu bar. If you always full screen everything, it makes total sense. But I would make the case that macOS has done a very poor job of adapting to changes in monitor resolutions. Consider ultra-wide screen monitors where I have apps side-by-side or I have 4 windows tiled. The accessibility of the menu bar becomes quite low for three out of the 4 windows.

The key stroke to access the menu bar is (do you know it?) CTRL+F2. Try that stroke yourself and see how it feels. It's not at all obvious that this allows you to access the menu bar with the keyboard.

By attaching the menu bar to the application window, the spatial locality increases usability, especially for modern ultra-wide monitors don't you agree?

> - Windowing system sucks compared to Windows

Checkout: https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos solved most of my pains with it.

In Apple Books, you can't decide which books you want to keep on your device. In iOS Storage, you cannot see the largest pictures/videos (you used to be able to do that, they removed it to make people subscribe to iCloud). The iOS keyboard/autocorrect is so terrible it's almost unusable. You can't even set a vibrating alarm on iPhone without enabling vibration everywhere, come on.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...

that is a society issue, not an apple issue, the different messages should be different colours, so you understand the difference.

Peer pressure is one of the strongest forces in sales.

What are you saying Apple should have done/be made to do? Make all the messages the same colour? This causes issues for the user not being able to tell what features are available in messaging that person and then it can be even more confusing to them, you are going to have to mark it some way which is turn is going to have somewhat of the same affect. A lot of these measures from governments don't actually end up helping users, they end up just making the end user experience worse.

For Apple, this was likely a win-win, they need to show the difference and it has such knock on affect, but I think this is the problem, Apple has a way of looking at things and way of doing certain things, a lot of the things that people are upset about in this lawsuit and beyond area consequence of that, but isn't nessecery the sole purpose of why Apple is doing things this way in the first place, those people that get angry at Apple seem to miss those points or disagree with that way of doing it.

If it weren't for the battery life and speed, I would not use it.

Windows is horrible, it's messy, overly cluttered and bloated. MacOS is so much cleaner and nicer, that with nice hardware is why people buy Apple devices, at least that is the same with everyone I know.

And then either use that to win the trial, or force Apple into settling.

Even if the case continues, it will be a challenge to win. Apple has asymmetric information and knows what they can use to defend the various allegations.

The President/Administration telling the AG what to move forward on (and what not to) is generally not a thing, and when it does happen, there are often headlines:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre

* https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/18/will...

So no, I would say it is absolutely about whether they can open up and still be secure. It seems that they lack confidence that the arguments they had put forward would survive scrutiny asking just that question. Heck, there are even exceptions in the law that would allow them extended time periods in order to comply with the requirements in order to ensure security. So if it is just a question of needing more time, they can get it, and if it is a question of not being possible for users to be secure when interoperable with third parties, they can get exceptions for that.

There is no “going dark” issue on iOS platforms. Apple has played ball in full with the USG on that front. In fact, Android backups are e2ee so the government can get more data from Apple on iPhone users than they can get from Google for Android users.

However nobody buys it besides their most loyal customers.

This one seems different at first glance,

There’s no real way to square the circle: either Apple (and the state) has realtime app censorship control (nominally for malware, as well as any other thing the state or Apple’s business model feels existentially threatened by), or the user can install any app they want, with all of the associated risks. Even with notarization and self-distribution you’re still in the first category because the state can compel Apple to treat protest apps or non-backdoored e2ee messaging apps the exact same as they do malware, and prevent them from launching.

Users mostly want the former, because most users aren’t worried about government censorship or oppression. Tech people and cypherpunks and pirates and protesters usually want the latter. Tech people usually want the former for their parents/grandparents for whom they serve as device sysadmin.

This feels like a vastly different case, and not one that they'll likely be able to win against Apple.

[0] Its essentially those actions where the DoJ is the agency representing the government interest, including all federal criminal cases and some federal civil cases. Civil cases by other agencies have the agency name; so the antitrust complaint by the DoJ, 15 state governments, and the District of Columbia is United States of America, et al. v. Apple, but the SEC action against Coinbase was Securities and Exchange Commission v. Coinbase, Inc., and Coinbase Global, Inc.

Apps that read inbound SMS may be malicious and use that ability to steal verification codes. Or they may not be actively malicious, and meerly handle the data in an insecure way that makes messages available to others.

Performance, I dunno. Maybe they could argue something about how time between user requesting an SMS be sent and it actually getting sent is very important, and similar for display, and that they're more likely to do that right. I've certainly seen some Android manufacturer provided SMS clients that do much better than others on that, although I have no recent performance notes since I no longer get massive floods of SMS from too simple monitoring systems.

> “The #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage ... iMessage amounts to serious lock-in,” was how one unnamed former Apple employee put it in an email in 2016, prompting Schiller to respond that, “moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us, this email illustrates why.”

> “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” was Federighi’s concern

Apple can't make that argument since they allow apps that scan SMS messages for spam.

To clarify macintux's statement, you can only guarantee end-to-end encryption will both remain secure and allow your messages to be read if you control both ends. If you do not control the other end, but you give it the ability to decrypt your messages (and thus let them be read), then whoever does control the other end can save the plaintext, post it elsewhere, and generally do whatever they want with it.

To be "end-to-end encrypted", something has to actually be a service you are using, not merely a method of encryption. An end-to-end encrypted service could use PGP if it wanted (AFAIK), but PGP, in itself, is just a way for you to encrypt your messages, and then, optionally, share your public key to allow them to be decrypted by those you give it to, while also guaranteeing that those messages came from you (as long as you have kept your private key safe).

So I'm afraid your question, as it stands, doesn't really make sense, but I hope this has helped to answer the underlying questions for you.

That is true both for PGP encrypted messages as well as iMessage messages. There's nothing on iPhones or Macs actually protecting your decrypted messages. Most of the on device security is optional and your messages, photos and files can be copied and shared anywhere in plain text.

The question in this thread is whether iMessage can offer secure interop. The answer is yes. They just need to use an open protocol and that protocol can use tools like PGP to encrypt messages end-to-end.

Your claim that both the sending and receiving application need to be "controlled" by some entity for it to have "real" end-to-end security is non-sense.

The question, from tomrod, was "How does PGP solve this?"

Nothing to do with iMessage. I was answering a specific question on a tangent thread. If you want to argue with me about iMessage, go to one of the posts I've made about that on this article. This thread is about PGP.

I don’t think the government could force them to adopt RCS without new legislation or bring iMessage to other platforms.

Could they not have made their own? I don't think they'd be required to use open standards for the argument to be made, they just need to release an iMessage app for Android.

There's no valid technical or security reason to do this. It's a tactical decision on Apple's part.

Does it ACTUALLY matter? Maybe not? But people really do complain about a non-iPhone "degrading" a group chat, so it is indicating something.

At the time they made iMessage at first? It was likely a real advance and only because they could control both ends. But now? They may be large enough that it's unfair use of their monopoly in one area to affect another, and get slapped or forced to interoperate.

That might be worth letting the user know about it.

We only really take these up when they are blatant (price fixing, apple and books, MS and vendors). Or lock ins where there is NO alternative (MS and browsers). This doesn't really meet those bars.

If Apple wins this one at home, then they can quickly cry about other countries regulations being "anti competitive".

I have to wonder if this political on some level.

Not anymore... look at the failed action to stop MS acquiring Activision for instance. Was that "blatant"? I guess not since enforcement failed. Lina Khan's whole thing is aggressively broadening antitrust enforcement.

Didn't work in Europe. The alternative browser growth in Europe is massive. Literally, an industry revitalized overnight.

It feels like it goes back to Android vs Apple approach to their ecosystem.

To me, this is the crux of modern antitrust, and the EU absolutely got it correct at a high level.

In simplest form -- doing certain things as an almost-monopoly and/or extremely large business should be illegal, while doing them as a smaller company should not be.

The scale of global businesses, in low-competition industries, allows them to engineer moats that are deeply injurious to fair competition, to their own profit and the detriment of everyone else.

> you buy it knowing that.

I think it's debatable whether the average iPhone customer buys it, knowing it allows Apple to heavily tax all AppStore developers.

I think if you explained it to the average iPhone customer you might be shocked they side with Apple. The concept of a platform where for free you can take advantage of it and just make 100% of the revenue without cutting in the owner of the platform is completely alien to how things work in what they consider the real world.

I can't just walk into Walmart and set up a stand and make money, if I want to sell in Walmart I have to work with them and give them a similar sized cut. If I even set my stall up on the street I have to pay for permits, certification, suppliers.

Not saying I agree with the App Store tax because I actually don't but I think the way they set it up as a "Store" was very clever in making it seem completely normal when it's completely abnormal compared to all personal computing up to that point, which maybe was an anomaly? Hope not.

> I can't just walk into Walmart and set up a stand and make money, if I want to sell in Walmart I have to work with them and give them a similar sized cut.

Apple's App Store might be Walmart, but the phone I bought is not Walmart.

Regular people understand the idea of "I bought a thing, and now the greedy company won't let me do what I want with it unless I buy their overpriced add-on", see printers.

Apple is no more entitled to a cut of everything I put on my iPhone anymore than Walmart is entitled to a cut of everything I put on my table simply because they made the table.

I don't know if that's inherently correct in people's eyes. For a counterexample, note that video game consoles are very popular, and I don't see any widespread opposition to the idea that e.g. Nintendo is controlling what you can play on a Switch.

Perhaps the "best" counter argument is the Mac App Store and Steam - both of which take a big cut, both of which can be "easily" bypassed for many apps, and both of which customers don't really seem to care about from a monetary point of view.

People care much more about what is or is not permitted, not where the money goes.

This isn't true. You cannot bypass the stream 30% fee from the consumer side.

Because of practices that stream does, which are arguably anti-competitive, I cannot buy the same exact game, from the game developer's website, and receive a 30% discount.

If such discounts were possible, and it was clearly advertised that I could just get the game for cheaper from a different location, customers would absolutely take that option almost always.

See: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

(At the very least, if they're trying to do a most-favored-nation rule, they're not listing it in their policies and are enforcing it through back-channels.)

I think a lot of developers will be surprised how many customers actually side with the convenience of the platform over the actual person creating the value.

(My money is on "I already have this computer for work" being the single biggest factor, with "the graphics can be better on the PC" being #2.)

Now PC games often lose backwards compatibility when upgrading OS versions, but patches, compatibility modes, and even VMs are realistic options and ones that people will use.

I assert that I have rights under the first sale doctrine which let me do whatever I want with the things I own. Apple has no more of a right to dictate what I put on my device than Walmart has a right to dictate when I put on my table simply because they sold it to me.

Unfortunately, it's a tricky question, because it's more akin to compelling speech when the content is served by another party at a future time.

If I get a device that uses cloud functionality... is whoever I sell that device to entitled to that functionality?

But those are more "advanced" questions. We still haven't even established the fact that I should indeed own the thing I purchased (see music or movies or anything). So we have a while to go before we get to questions of transference of services.

It's gonna be the first thing Facebook does, and maybe that's fine but it's going to reduce consumer choice. You won't be able to have the Facebook but with the tracking restrictions anymore because it's bad for their bottom line. I don't really know if there's a good answer for how to strike this balance but it seems drastic that people want it to be illegal to offer a platform where all participants have to play by the platform's rules.

But I chose iPhone (and I think many other customers do) specifically for it being a walled garden. Now some other corporations like Epic, who want to have a cake and eat it too, are going to ruin one of the platform's key selling points.

And if your workflow did require an obscure app, who is Apple to decided that you cannot install it on your own phone?

> But I chose iPhone (and I think many other customers do) specifically for it being a walled garden.

People like this walled garden since apple promises that it's safe and they deal with all of the problems for you. But time and time again we see that their App Store features outright scams and mountains of knockoff garbage apps.

People buy into the marketing of the walled garden, not the reality of it.

I get the "safety" argument, but it's also about the user experience. What if now Microsoft makes me install Microsoft store to use M365 apps, Amazon makes me install whatever store to use their products, etc? What do I win here as a consumer?

I buy iPhone specifically for what it is. I get that some people don't like walled garden approach, so they have Android at their service. Apple is not a monopoly.

What is the point of buying a phone knowing what you are getting, and then complaining about something you knew full well it doesn't have?

The lawsuits is literally about this.

> What is the point of buying a phone knowing what you are getting, and then complaining about something you knew full well it doesn't have?

Because the thing the company is offering is a behaviour that overall is not one we as a society want (Apple being allowed to dictate what businesses will and will not succeed by either locking them out of 1/2 of the major mobile OS, or by taking a 30% tax from their revenue and then competing against them).

All app stores (and most real-world markets and stores) do that. This is a business model. And as a store owner who invested billions of dollars to build it, and the entire platform and infrastructure around it, you are in your full right to decide the rules on what is allowed there and what is not, and how much to charge. If your rules are unfair or disadvantageous to the competition, sellers and customers simply will not come. But as we can see, App Store is the most successful app marketplace on the planet, both for developers and consumers.

Just as Google is the most successful search engine on the planet for advertisers, website owners and consumers, regardless of the fact that Google can fully dictate what appears in its search results or what advertisers can put in their ads, and how much Google charges for it.

So I don't quite understand what exactly the argument here.

This this different argument than allowing sideloading apps (that one is quite fair, I'll admit).

Even with the current side loading changes, which are EU only, they still take a major cut and still dictate who can and cannot run a store.

So I agree with you that the App Store, like other stores have the right to dictate what they do and do not sell. They do not, however, have the right to say that they're the only store allowed, or that any new store must pay them money.

Also, I'd be hesitant of using Google's behaviour, certainly its current behaviour or current market position, as justification for what is okay for others to do.

The moment Apple is forced to "open up to the competition", all Meta apps are going to magically move to the Meta Store, where they'll likely be able to shove all sorts of tracking garbage down my throat.

Same for Alphabet, same for Samsung, same for Microsoft.

The experience will turn into a hopeless struggle against EULAs and consents, unless one refuses to install any third-party spyware and do the digital equivalent of moving into a forest cabin. The oddball, while everyone else sheepishly complies.

Evenyone loves to hate Apple, everyone forgets that the first commercial music store to sell unencrypted and hugh fidelity AAC files was Apple's. The rest was "squirting" tunes on Zune or inflicting Realmedia on their paying customers.

Nope.

So if you're unhappy with their behaviour, that should be made illegal.

Secondly. Apple's protection against tracking comes from the OS level. The OS stops them from accessing my contacts and my GPS location, not apple's 30% tax.

> sell unencrypted and hugh fidelity AAC files was Apple's.

So what. How unencrypted are those audio files now? They've since moved on to FairPlay.

Both are problems, both need solving.

removing/decreasing apples ability to police apps before regulation means you are opening users to hostile apps.

adding regulation and setting standards for apps and data tracking and then removing/limiting apples ability to police apps does not.

these are not the same thing?

Cause there's plenty of examples of Apple's store filled with spam and outright fraudulent phishing apps. There's a big difference between the image Apple advertises for the App Store and what it's actually like.

Ever heard of the expression “closing the barn door after the horse has bolted”?

I was tackling why I don't think that argument holds water with the average person.

"now the greedy company won't let me do what I want with it unless I buy their overpriced add-on"

With printers this is very tangible to the customer, with the App Store what you're describing here isn't as tangible because nothing on the App Store is actually expensive, it's either free or relatively cheap and it's more a case that the user pays little or nothing, Apple gets a cut for doing close to nothing and the dev gets screwed, printers is more the customer gets screwed.

And the only options are to take the deal -- modifiable at any time by the platform owner -- or burn down your digital life and start over on the only other practical competitor.

Who is arguing it should be free? Why create a false dichotomy where it's either the status quo (30%) or nothing (0%)?

I'm sure most people would accept a reasonable fee. It's hard to put an exact number on this because it would have emerged organically if Apple actually allowed fair competition in app stores. In the absence of fair competition, the best comparison I can think of is credit card processing which is about 3%

And don't forget that Apple receives enormous benefit from these apps being in their store. If not, consider what would have happened had Apple not allowed any apps in their store. Hint: Android would have eaten the world.

Most apps are free and are things like 2fa, chat apps, kindle, etc.

Would I be sad if the entire App Store shut down? Probably. Would it be enough to move me to Android? Uncertain, probably not.

Why is this number so bad? Steam: 30% https://medium.com/@koneteo.stories/how-much-money-does-stea...

>> In the absence of fair competition, the best comparison I can think of is credit card processing which is about 3%

Sure 3%, + a flat fee of .02 to .10 per transaction. that flat portion is going to be HUGE if your charing under $5 for something. You get none of that money back for chargebacks, or refunds. And if your charge backs are high your going to pay more as a % or get dropped so your going to have to hire CS people to answer emails or phones, and say nice things to angry people. You're going to pay someone to pay cc compaines to give money back.

Meanwhile you're small, you have no clue if the person on the other end is a refund scammer. Apple (and Steam) have this habit of telling people to "fuck off" if they refund scam. They have the weight with CC processors to do that. you will not. They also have customer trust, because if your product (game/app) is shitty they give customers money back (See Epic 1/2 billion settlement for being bad about this, and kids).

Is 30 percent high. It is. Is it unreasonable... meh maybe not?

The thing with Steam that makes it different to me is the access control and gatekeeping. For example Steam hardware is so open that you can immediately install a different OS on it without even booting it. Steam hardware will happily run any third-party app store you want, including Epic Games their main rival. Steam also (AFAIK) don't do exclusivity BS like the consoles often do. So when it comes to Steam they are clearly competing fairly and evenly in a free market. If Apple were the same (iPhone could run 3rd party app stores, or you could install Android on you Apple hardware) I would have absolutely no problem with 30%. Hell I wouldn't even have a problem with 90%, because if they weren't providing that much value then a competitor would come in and take it from them.

I can buy android devices that are as good as the iPhone or better in their own way and have all those features (side loading other app stores). Is that not the free market in action?

The number of people buying iPhones to run even a slick version of Android would probably be quite small.

Most App developers aren’t even paying 30%, they’re paying the lower 15%.

Amazon seems to inexplicably get away with a lot of anti-competitive behavior. I don't know why.

I'm not, I'm pointing out for the first 50 years of computing it literally was free.

The App Store was not a business innovation by Apple to set expectations, it's how all cell phone software that preceded it worked. Apple's change was to lower the fees and open up access to everyone.

The iPhone is a computer, but unlike past computers it introduced a walled-garden App Store.

Also, software on phones before the iPhone was also gate-kept by carriers. Apple was not maintaining the status quo. They were changing it for their benefit.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that ring tones cost an arm and a leg, that "apps" were awful (I know I designed one)... You had to pay to get your app on a phone even if it was free.

If you told them "you have to pay 30% to the person who invented books every time you write something" they'd scream censorship and call for an armed revolution.

People generally know this, and they generally don't care.

But you can't do that with a mobile app because only Android users can use it, while anyone with an iPhone can't use the app unless you submit to Apple's rules.

It's both of course, but I think they price based on the value rather than on the cost. (ie: percentage of sales, not per shelfspace)

Would this mean that anyone must be able to load any software into any platform that runs on software, or are we just picking on apple because they are popular. And got popular while doing all these things.. if people didn't want it they wouldn't have bought into it in the first place.

I'm also fine with Nintendo selling games via their store and physically, and taking whatever cut they can bear of it.

(80% of App Store revenue is "games" anyway, so it's a much closer analogy than people might expect. They may end up opening everything except games and only cost them 20% of revenue.)

Meanwhile you can get full advantage of the iPhone ecosystem "for $100/yr" which is nearly free, including App Store distribution, etc. If anything, Apple should be charged with dumping in those cases.

Well, yes, antitrust law specifically, by design, focusses more on large market players, not small ones (there are some aspects still relevant to any participant, though.)

That's kind of central to the whole problem it is intended to solve.

Homebrew is a thing, and you should be able to use whatever software you want on a device that you paid for. I have no doubt that there are people who own an iphone and wish they could have a different browser, or wish they could use a game streaming app.

"Popularity" is a precondition to running afoul of antitrust law, yes..

Apple sells something like 70% of phones in the USA due to network effects that might not be apparent to users in other countries - social shaming for not using iMessage. The European equivalent is WhatsApp, which the EU is forcing to open up.

I don't use my Playstation or Switch for banking, ordering taxis, my actual job, so there is a bit of a difference.

Although consoles are another good example of how a locked down platform can make an experience hassle free and how that becomes a selling point.

In my view, my phone is MY DEVICE. It is most definitely not "Google/Apple's platform"!

Google is merely manufacturing my phone, and I intend Google to have no rights or control whatsoever regarding my phone, and merely have the obligation (not right, obligation) to manufacture it correctly and provide open-source software for it that works correctly and properly provides Android interfaces (obviously, I don't use an Apple phone since Apple doesn't offer that, while Google does since they provide devices with unlocked bootloaders that run open-source OSes).

It only runs Android because Google with Android happened to win the adoption lottery and it would run PodunkOS by ACME if PodunkOS by ACME had been the one that managed to gain critical mass.

Again it is absolutely not even remotely close to "Google/Apple's platform", and I have no intention for Google to interfere in my use of it and certainly not interfere in any relations I might have with people providing software for my phone like taking a cut of the transaction or deciding how that software should behave.

I'm talking about the normal persons perception of the situation, not what is right in terms of how a technically savvy person would look at the situation.

Which includes "go to any website and run any app I can download from it, regardless of whether it's illegal or against any rules or against the interests of the phone maker" and "change any aspect of functionality that I don't like (e.g. apps being able to show ads) and that I can find out on the web how to change".

It doesn't include "Google or Apple make rules about what I can do with my phone that I can't override".

At the moment they're double dipping. They're saying they have to be the only app store for security and UX AND then charging high fees. If they're really providing a service for end users, they shouldn't be taking such a large cut from developers.

Bingo. If they're making an argument that they have to retain so much control because it's good for the users, then why are their margins so big?

I'm not saying companies shouldn't be able to run successful, highly-profitable businesses.

I'm saying they shouldn't be able to (a) have significant market share, (b) have significant size / market cap, (c) have high margins, AND (d) claim "but we're so efficient for our users!" as a defense against anti-trust.

One of those things is bullshit, and 3 out of 4 are facts...

I'd suspect most users aren't going to venture outside the garden.

Note: I'm not defending Apple. But the higher dev fees do serve a purpose other than revenue.

It doesn't keep malware from getting in. If it's hurting people by limiting their choices and it isn't keeping people safe then what good is it?

If Apple is really concerned about keeping out the riff raff they could raise the annual flat developer fees.

But we all know that's not what they're actually concerned about - the app store is estimated to have 80% margins right now. They're just charging what the market will bear, and the market will bear quite a lot right now as they're part of a duopoly on smartphones.

Well, that's another conversation then isn't it? If that's the case, then Apple and Google (Play) should be named then, yes?

The “it just works” should be allowed to extend into the entire ecosystem.

Small, minor, annoying issues as a customer that make me think slightly less of Apple while continuing to be in awe of their hardware.

You can buy in iOS Safari and not have to open your laptop.

I'm sure people will pay a bit more to use Apple pay and not get kicked out to a browser and possibly fiddle with re-logging in and re-typing in their payment info to a sketchy site.

Very few will pay 30% more though, because even the people that love Apple pay will be forced to acknowledge it's an obvious ripoff, in no way commensurate to the value provided.

However, I was just making a factual statement that anyone can pay using their browser on iPhone or iPad on the vendor’s website, just the same as they can using their laptop.

My M1 MacBook Pro is probably the second worst computer I've ever bought, and might have been the most expensive I've ever purchased.

I bought another Air this year (M2), and again, it's a far better value.

To the extent that they care, they seem satisfied by being able to switch to other iOS browsers that under the hood use the WebKit engine, but give them the ecosystem-integration with their desktop browser that they want. Shared Chrome bookmarks and tabs matter 1000x more to a random user than details of browser engines.

Anyone arguing for Apple's side is akin to saying we should all be serfs for the King, because he takes care of us well and protects his kingdom.

I couldn’t care less about alternative App Stores. I don’t want them, I don’t need them.

I am very happy the way it is.

Also, I'm not sure why you favor the App Store. It's not safe. Apple is unable to keep malicious apps off of it, and there is no warranty if you lose money due to a malicious app. People think there is some implied safety in the App Store. There is no such thing.

Safety comes from not giving permissions to apps which don't need them.

> I’m a heavy and loyal Apple user AND an app developer.

Do you really think you're representative of the average iphone customer? A heavy, loyal user AND an app developer? I don't think so. And even if you were, your personal situation isn't a rebuttal

However, let’s not assume what the majority of iPhone user thinks. To that end, I thought it is interesting to add my very personal perspective.

It's not merely the integration which is a problem, it's how that + network effects gives apple undue market power to dictate terms to its users, devs, etc.

Being a middleman between users and devs, say, takes on a different character when you're a 2-3T biz at the heart of the economy.

They should be.

So sure, duopoly of real competitors is one thing, but that’s rarely the case once players realize they can set prices and divide the spoils.

But then, the problem is that you have a cartel, not a duopoly. That’s the thing: you can only punish companies for their actions. A duopoly is a fact, in itself it does not imply any particular behaviour from either company. If there is collusion, then it’s anti-competitive behaviour, abuse of their dominant positions in the market, etc. Things that are already illegal and should be enforced.

The reason there is only 1 broadband ISP is because people are not willing to pay sufficiently more for fiber to offset the costs to install fiber to the home, especially in places with buried utilities.

Therefore, the existing coaxial connection is the only economically viable option.

Also, it rarely makes sense for 1 home to have multiple physical infrastructure connections, so they lend themselves to natural monopolies. If a house has access to fiber, it makes no sense to spend resources to run another fiber to the house.

Which is also why ISPs should be utilities, but that is not comparable to personal devices.

Which might be the case if, through taxes, we hadn't collectively paid for a lot of that in the way of subsidies and grants to those ISPs to do exactly that, subsidies and grants which resulted in, generally, more dividends, bonuses and stock buybacks than they did miles of fiber being laid.

> So if there are 2 competitors and one drops out, then it's hardcore illegal, but otherwise it's a-okay?

No, it is absolutely not. There is nothing illegal about having a monopoly in the US. The government even explicitly and purposefully creates and grants monopolies pretty often. Natural monopolies are not illegal. Abusing your government-granted or natural monopoly is the illegal behavior.

I'm curious to see how they even construe a duopoly as a monopoly under current law, because this will have some profound impacts to the entire economy if they succeed.

Typing this on one of many Apple devices I own. I don't hate Apple. But, you're right, comments like yours make this a frustrating exercise indeed.

> No, it is absolutely not. There is nothing illegal about having a monopoly in the US.

Yes yes, it may technically not be illegal per se, but then again, it's a problem. I am not a lawyer and I don't care about the details of the law. That's for other people. I am looking at this from a perspective of a consumer who feels actively harmed by what the tech industry has become. And as a member of society who cares for other people. If one company accrues that much by making it hard for others to compete, then they will rightfully be forced to give back if they don't do it out of their own free will.

You know that I have a point.

>then it's hardcore illegal

You aren't a lawyer, you don't care about the laws as written, yet make false statements about what the law says according to how you feel anyways then back pedal when called out that it's not actually illegal. I think you've said everything you can.

> Monopoly law needs to be reinterpreted in light of network effects.

This is the context of this discussion. If you think dragging me into details of the current law will distract me, sorry, no it won't. This thread is not about that.

> yet make false statements about what the law says

Now you are making false statements. I didn't say that the law says that. What's more, you dragged that piece of a sentence out of its context to make it appear as if it wasn't part of a question. But it was. So it's not a statement. It's a question. Is it a false question, maybe? Sounds a bit laughable to me.

Well, Microsoft eventually got all but forced to port Office and, for a time, Internet Explorer to macOS to evade getting sanctioned by the EU.

In a similar vein, if the market is not healthy any more, the duopolists may be forced by regulatory authorities to make life easier for potential startup competitors: open up file format specifications, port popular applications with network effects (iMessage, Facetime, Find My in the case of Apple) to other platforms or open up specifications to allow others access/federation.

I have seen some people assert this a few times in the last couple of weeks and I don’t know where this comes from. This is not at all what happened.

This was part of an agreement between Apple and Microsoft in 1997, long before any EU decision. Microsoft bought some Apple shares and agreed to support office on MacOS for a few years, and Apple made IE their default browser.

One can argue whether they did it to improve the optics in their (American) antitrust lawsuit (and there are several details that do not make sense if it were the case), but it certainly was not forced on them by any court.

Herfindahl-Hirschman Index

The term “HHI” means the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index, a commonly accepted measure of market concentration. The HHI is calculated by squaring the market share of each firm competing in the market and then summing the resulting numbers. For example, for a market consisting of four firms with shares of 30, 30, 20, and 20 percent, the HHI is 2,600 (302 + 302 + 202 + 202 = 2,600).

The HHI takes into account the relative size distribution of the firms in a market. It approaches zero when a market is occupied by a large number of firms of relatively equal size and reaches its maximum of 10,000 points when a market is controlled by a single firm. The HHI increases both as the number of firms in the market decreases and as the disparity in size between those firms increases.

The agencies generally consider markets in which the HHI is between 1,000 and 1,800 points to be moderately concentrated, and consider markets in which the HHI is in excess of 1,800 points to be highly concentrated. See U.S. Department of Justice & FTC, Merger Guidelines § 2.1 (2023). Transactions that increase the HHI by more than 100 points in highly concentrated markets are presumed likely to enhance market power under the Horizontal Merger Guidelines issued by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. See id.

How much of this is because of evil monopoly forces, and how much of it is because users prefer iOS and Android? It's not like the mobile device market snapped into existence overnight, both Android and iOS beat out Blackberry and managed to fend off Microsoft.

Turns out the phone cartel is the phone company cartel in a trench coat.

I...don't think that's sufficiently self-evident to stand on its own.

Fundamentally, it's hard to have a world with more than a very small number of operating systems for the major form factors of device—unless those operating systems are mandated to interoperate in significant ways.

Creating a new operating system for phones also requires some things that are not at all easy to get:

1) You need hardware. This means that either you're creating an OS for an existing hardware platform (in this case, Android or iOS) or you're building your own phones. Given the legal frameworks that existed over the past decade and a half (as distinct from the particular dominance of one platform or another), that basically means you're building your own phones. Some people have tried to do that, but it adds hugely to the up-front cost of getting an OS going.

2) You need to get a critical mass of people using it. Until and unless this happens, what you've created has to live or die based on the apps and services that you build for the phone. No one's going to dedicate their own time, effort, and money to creating software for a phone that only 10,000 people have ever bought.

Now, I can see a pretty strong argument for a new legal framework that would make #1 much easier—specifically, requiring all hardware platforms (possible "all hardware platforms over X sales") to provide a fully-open specification for third-party OS makers to use (with appropriate clauses about dogfooding the open API to prevent the hardware maker from just using a bunch of private APIs to preference their OS). This would allow people to create their own OS for the iPhone without Apple's interference.

But that's not what we've had since 2007, so your bold but unsupported statement that the lack of third choices for mobile OSes in and of itself proves that Apple is a monopoly (or at least that Apple/Google together make up an abusive duopoly) does not hold up to scrutiny.

I don't see how Apple and Android's competitors failing is any sort of fact about Apple or Google, at all.

I am pretty bullish on Apple right now and could easily see a future where Windows isn't even used for gaming anymore. When Macbook Airs start to be capable of running high end games what is the point of getting a huge Desktop running Windows jammed with bloatware from 100 different companies?

* tin foil hat on *

That may be by design. If the outcome of this is "no monopoly", then it's a win for Apple.

These charges also undercut the next administration's leverage to negotiate with Apple, now that the threat of anti-trust charges are taken off the table.

It's good to know that with everything going wrong on this administration’s watch, they’ve got their laser focus on vacuums, video games, and phones.

Apple's argument is generally that they are making the platform safer for their users, but I was just on the App Store looking for the Google Authenticator, and the first item listed was a scam third party authenticator which was intended to fool users looking like the Google Authenticator. This would be the easiest possible thing for a giant corporation like Apple to catch. The fact that it is Google's customers which are being scammed could be part of the reason why Apple doesn't prioritize safety in this case.

What we're dealing with here is a really duplicitous company. Their marketing is world class. The battery life of their products is world class. Everything else - not so much.

this is conspiracy bordering on paranoia. apple has problems, but willingly abusing customers who use the competitors is not one of them

However, there's no comparison between the Apple app store and Android stores. There is an outrageous amount of straight-up malware on Android. FFS, one actually needs third-party antivirus/malware scanners on Android it's so bad.

I need a drink.

It's a no-win situation for them. If once they established themselves as the dominant player in the cell phone market they started undercutting everyone else on fees that could also be seen as predatory.

FWIW - this is further evidence of anticompetitive behavior. In a competitive market, entrants would be trying to drive distribution costs to 0. The fact that Apple makes its entire App Store revenue off those distribution revenues is highly telling.

It would only be considered predatory if they charging a rate below their own costs of distribution. I.E. If it costs Apple $0.10 to cover the costs of app distribution per download, then it would be completely legal for them to charge $0.11, but illegal and predatory to charge $0.09.

Which is not illegal.

https://hbr.org/2017/12/the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s...

The golden era of anti-trust was 1940s-1970s, but faded with the rise of the Chicago School of Economics.

It does indeed seem to be coming back more now.

and you also could not prove those two things not holding true for any malicious actor simply agreeing to pay the onboarding fees?

If this case is thrown off how long can it take for them to make another antitrust case with a different set of stronger arguments ?

Given that they started in 2019 for this one, if lost there is real risk of waiting another 5 years for any meaningful change.

Then why, for the sake of the argument, do they allow third party browsers, messaging and payments on MacOS ?!?

Apple makes it sound like MacOS is horribly insecure.

And the attack vectors are more numerous. I have ten times as many apps on my phones, it’s always on, always connected, and may frequently connect to wifi networks I don’t fully trust.

The consequences and the attack vectors for a hacker to attack my laptop are fewer.

I’m on the side of wanting Apple to open up a bit more. But I it’s absolutely valid to want the iPhone to be more secure than a laptop. And I seriously hope Apple isn’t forced to let people install apps that aren’t signed and reviewed. I can guarantee you that critical services in your life will force you to install insecure and straight up dangerous apps. The banking sector in some countries is a prime example of that, especially back in the ActiveX era.

I don't buy that argument. I have more important files on my laptop than on my phone.

Personally I see avenues for both outcomes.

This is a very low bar. It is of course the case that if you assume one party's definitions are accepted then they will win. The battlefield will be the definitions (just like in patent law the battlefield is the claim construction).

The complaint literally says verbatim, "But after launching the iPhone, Apple began stifling the development of cross-platform technologies on the iPhone, just as Microsoft tried to stifle cross-platform technologies on Windows."

Apple, on the other hand shares the market with Android. Globally it's a minority share. Yes, in the US, Apple has a bigger market share than it has globally, but Android is a real competitor even there. So I'd suggest the two situations are quite different.

If it's not a monopoly (which would be fine by itself anyway), it's hard to make the case that they are leveraging that monopoly in unhallowed ways.

All that said, clearly the DOJ think they have a case, and I imagine they've spent a LOT of man-hours thinking about it and forming an argument. More than the no-time-at-all I've spent thinking about it.

But unless you can demonstrate that it sucks because Apple is doing something which qualifies as restraint-of-trade, which I would suggest is obviously not the case, that doesn't matter.

Theoretical competition is not sufficient to demonstrate absence of a monopoly.

The doctrine that it's your fault if your competitors suck makes no sense. It's weaponized tall-poppy syndrome.

The doctrine is that you can't exercise monopoly power in certain ways. Monopoly power is an empirical question, and does not turn on merely whether it is possible to describe a market in which another product exists, but whether that is a real market in which the products are in fact competitive.

But even if you have monopoly power, if you aren't illegally exercising it, you aren't in trouble. So you aren't punished for being an empirical monopoly.

iOS is not a monopoly since at least one other major operating system exists, with significant market share. (Whether Linux is or isn't a competitor is irrelevant.)

A monopoly by itself is not a problem. Only behavior ancillary to that monopoly is. But to get there you have you have a monopoly. I don't see how you make the case. Clearly consumers have choice.

Now, there's a case to be made for bad behavior, but its weak. Apple will argue that consumers have choices.

But I am not a lawyer, so I'll leave it up to the lawyers on both sides to earn some fees discussing it.

So, now let's introduce iOS into the equation. Apple can differentiate their product, but how much is considered acceptable before regulators complain? The DOJ was quite straightforward today, accusing Apple of using iMessage to degrade user experiences through exclusion. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's probably a...?

Do they have pricing power? You can select any boundaries you want for markets to come up with any market share number you want, but the key empirical test is is there actual substitution effect or does Apple have the ability to charge monopoly rents. One of the major points of walled gardens is to create vendor lock-in and prevent price conpetition, and Apple has been masterful at that.

Or what the developers would bear. Although I think the actual costs are higher than some people would like to think (with human reviewers and stuff, not just infrastructure).

> If Apple lowered its cut to 8% tomorrow, Google would follow suit because it is still enough money to run the Play Store with.

Would they? Apple changing their fees has no effect on Android. Android suffered from the stigma of being a second-class citizen for a while, when apps were developed for iOS first. If it is as you say, why did they not drop their fees back then?

> For video game consoles, the margins are slim (or negative), so the current cut is the natural price that lets developers sell games for a profit and the hardware companies to subsidize consoles to a level that people can afford them.

Right, but that’s a moral argument, not a legal one. Negative margins on hardware is a business decision. The law does not discriminate depending on your business plan. If 30% is extorsion, then whatever you do on the side does not make it stop being extorsion.

Is it though? On the hardware side sure but on the software side I don't see any competition. Both stores have close to identical practices and do not look like they compete over to get developers onboard. The only pricing change ever made was also made in reaction to an antitrust lawsuit and copied verbatim.

While not a strict monopoly, the lack of competition in this area between the only two players seems obvious.

They do. If you have something they want you will find out about it.

I think Apple is clearly anti-competitive and is definitely powerful enough to warrant regulatory action given past standards, but the same exclusivity deals like consoles (and even audiobooks) have is certainly not a common thing (outside of Apple's first-party apps of course, but I would agree that isn't really what we're talking about here). I think this deserves some explanation, as it does seem like an obvious anti-competitive move that Apple could make but doesn't.

I tend to think Occam's Razor applied here is that Apple realizes their vulnerability to regulation and didn't wish to serve their critics evidence on a silver platter. I think that's why they announced that they will (finally) add (an inferior implementation of) RCS to the iPhone after many years of refusing and telling people to buy their mom an iPhone if they want to text her. Or the (inferior) implementation of PWAs. This is very much speculation of course, and I'd love to hear other theories.

If the relevant market is found to be "Apps on iOS", or "Flagships phones in the US", Apple is more likely to be considered having a monopoly position than if the market is "phones in the world". The courts will have to decide on what the market is before deciding if Apple has monopoly power or not.

Apple has a monopoly though it's AppStore on over 2 billion devices though which it conducts $90,000,000,000 a year. That's more than a lot of countries GDP combined.

Saying Apple doesn't have a 90%+ share of phone market is irrelevant.

The question though, is if Apple as the Platform (phone) provider, maintains it's monopoly (AppStore) though anti-competitive means.

Just like you have an illegal monopoly of 100% of the market of people posting on HN with the username "InsomniacL".

2. people posting on HN with the username "InsomniacL" is not a 'market' in any sense

> Market: an area or arena in which commercial dealings are conducted.

I don't know the details of Epic's case, they may have lost the battle but seems they might not have lost the war...

Apple is not stopping their competitors from making good phones, just like how Apple is not stopping you from buying a phone that wasn't made by Apple. Microsoft was doing both of those things, Apple isn't. The cases aren't even close really.

And you could absolutely buy alternatives to Microsoft Windows in the 90s, from Apple or IBM or others. But that's immaterial. The availability of an alternative says nothing about the market power Apple has or how it's wielding that power. This is why we have anti-trust cases, to determine if that power is being abused.

It's reasonably clear why the Microsoft case was different

> The U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally monopolizing the web browser market for Windows, primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs such as Netscape and Java.

Microsoft made deals with other companies to restrict competition. Apple doesn't need to make up a contract to prevent NFC payments as they just don't offer it in the first place. The Microsoft case actually has a lot more similarities to why Google lost the Epic case, by Apple won.

If they are so concerned with not letting their users drain the battery if they wish, why do they allow games on their store?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1010701/apple-app-store-...

Remember, you (nor apple) are not their parent.

Other people should still be able to decide for themselves.

That brings us back to the question whether they’re a monopoly. The justice department seems to say they have a monopoly on iOS, so that users cannot shop elsewhere.

If such a thing can exist, of course they have a monopoly on iOS, just as Coca Cola has one on Coca Cola, Mercedes has one on Mercedes cars, etc. Next question would be whether they misuse that monopoly.

Apple will argue that ‘a monopoly on iOS’ doesn’t make sense as a concept and that, if you want to run Firefox or Chrome on a smartphone, there’s plenty of choice in the market, and even if there weren’t, there’s no obligation for them or any company to make a product that users want.

In the end, the outcome of this will depend less on logical arguments than about what ‘the people’ want. Laws and their interpretation will change if the people want that. That, I think, is what Apple should be worried about.

They should not be free to prevent others from selling (or providing for free) apps for the computing device that consumers bought.

The problem is that user's can't shop elsewhere, because apple locked the operating system down to prevent that from happening.

Are we ruling out the possibility that competitive browsers could offer better battery performance, too?

And yeah, I think it’s unlikely someone could have made a more efficient browser than Apple since they didn’t give public access to all of their functionalities. And that might have been partly for security reasons, if there were less-secure aspects to hidden functions, for example.

The counter-argument is that they should have opened everything up, but Apple will say they were going as fast as they could responsibly go, and that’s why there were limitations that have been relaxed over time.

For instance giving a special placement to Apple Music and not allowing other apps to get the same privileges, because music playback needs to be efficient, and a bad music experience would hurt the iPhone's image. Same for movies, same for ebooks, same for spreadsheets (including needing to execute macros, so security risk is through the roof)

I feel I could get paid by Apple to come up with excuses for each app they need any.

If you look at any iOS vulnerability reporting, Safari is a big weakness and often the source of zero day attacks. Browsers are hugely complex pieces of software with a lot of attack surface. A large part of Apple’s value proposition is being secure. It sounds like the new approach (in the EU only) that allows additional browser engines requires specific security measures to be taken.

Rightly or wrongly device security is going to be a strong defense Apple has against some of these allegations.

No, a user should be allowed to take the security risk of installing whatever they want on their computers. Security-conscious users will have clean phones, and ordinary users will have phones full of viruses like their computers.

Let people choose.

It might prove to be a significant difference in terms of how it affects competitors as a product.

A browser is a product, and you can install many other browsers.

A HTML rendering engine is a software library, and you can not install another HTML rendering engine.

The justice department definitely cares about products. It's not clear to what degree it cares about software libraries.

In my experience, Firefox does not work as well on the iPhone as does Safari. It's obviously a rendering issue, because large pages will reload on their own over and over again while I'm trying to read them. My guess is it's a sneaky broken part of webkit which Apple knows how to fix in Safari and deliberately leaves broken for the other browser makers to suffer the consequences. Because, that's just the kind of bullshit which Apple is down for.

You're right that a browser normally comes with its own rendering engine, but I don't think it's an artificial distinction. There are plenty of components that most programs call out to the OS for—form elements, drop downs, save/load windows, file system access, and whatnot. The rendering engine is a much larger component, but I don't think it's cut-and-dried that it is categorically different.

> My guess is it's a sneaky broken part of webkit which Apple knows how to fix in Safari and deliberately leaves broken for the other browser makers to suffer the consequences

"Apple sabotages webkit for other Browsers" is a different—and to me at least, much stronger—argument than "Apple requires other browsers to use Webkit".

Sure - user input handling, raster graphics, text formatting... HTML rendering and browser technology though? Apple made WebKit using FOSS desktop libraries, and then turned around to deny users FOSS desktop-grade competition. They TiVoized your browser.

Apple is going to have a tough defense, if they decide to steelman that particular point. The writing is on the wall, competition is coming with or without Apple's approval.

> "Apple sabotages webkit for other Browsers" is a different—and to me at least, much stronger—argument than "Apple requires other browsers to use Webkit".

Strong is an appropriate word for it. Many developers are starting to lose their nerve: https://mozilla.github.io/platform-tilt/

Currently, anyone can create a new iPhone browser, but with one huge restriction: Apple insists that it uses the same WebKit rendering engine as Safari. [0]

And currently you can also delete Safari from your iOS device. An example of this is Firefox [1].

0. https://9to5mac.com/2023/02/07/new-iphone-browsers/

1. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-private-safe-browser/i...

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

if you weren’t anticompetitive to get to that place, thats been good enough?