As sibling points out and I have argued strongly for in past discussions here, at issue is Apple's control of texting: That is, the ability for a phone to message any other phone with a text message without requiring the other participant to use a custom app. Only iMessage can do this on the iPhone.

In the consumer's eye, all phones can text, so it is a universal way to reach someone who has a phone number. It removes the complexity of having to coordinate ahead of time with a contact about what messaging service they both have. It's why texting is so popular in the US (along with historical actions by US carriers to make texting extremely cheap and ultimately free)

Once they had this control, they then used it to make texting better only when the conversation participants each had iPhones, which produced a network effect where friends would be incentivized to pressure their contacts to also use iPhones. Apple leveraged convenience, features and security to make this happen.

I don't anticipate Apple's upcoming RCS support to materially change this. If we're lucky, we'll get higher quality pictures out of it, but it's possible to support RCS while not supporting a lot of the features that make RCS better than SMS, such as read receipts, replies, typing indicators, and yes, encryption. Encryption is not a standard part of RCS yet, but it could be made so by Apple forcing Google to standardize their encryption and then implementing it. But it's not in Apple's interest given the above to bother. More likely they will do as their initial complaint/announcement about RCS hinted at: Not even engage on encryption because it's "not part of the spec", leaving iPhone/Android messaging unencrypted.

Google is not blameless here, it's insane that they haven't worked themselves to standardize encryption.

When you put it that way, it certainly sounds a lot like Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. And I've never seen any tech oriented person who is familiar with EEE argue that it is a legitimate business strategy that should be permitted except in this case.

It is exactly embrace, extend, extinguish.

That's one of the things I like about this complaint - it points out that they don't allow any other apps to support SMS, so only iMessage has the ability to message anyone with just a phone number, seamlessly upgrading if the other party has iMessage and using SMS otherwise.

It's not solely about iMessage not being open, it's about reserving key features for only iMessage to give it a significant advantage. (Also mentioned are other key bits like running in the background, etc)

> I strongly believe Apple is under no obligation to make iMessage cross-platform. It's their service they invented, and they get to run it how they chose.

So if it were up to you all telecom operators would be on separate networks, because you can always use smoke signals to get your message across?

(I'm with you for niche applications where the number of users is small. But we're talking mainstream communication here.)

I think that telecom operators are free to offer phones that don’t send SMS, and see how many customers that gets them.

What i meant to say in my original comment - it’s not Apple’s fault SMS sucks and people don’t want to use it.

But it is apples fault that they let the alternatives stagnate and refuse (until recently) things like RCS that would make SMS suck less.

It is clear that Apple considers iMessage a significant network effect and is not interested in having feature parity between iOS and non-iOS

This is exactly my thinking. I can fully understand why green bubbles are annoying, why not being able to send multimedia is annoying, why it all being unencrypted is incredibly unsafe... but why is this Apple's fault? Why is the complaint that Apple is stifling innovation and not that phone carriers are refusing to innovate and or provide these services at a reasonable cost? Why is Apple effectively being required to act as a phone carrier?

>It's their service they invented, and they get to run it how they chose.

That argument only works until there is market dominance, which is the point of anti-trust regulations.

...but Apple doesn't have dominance. They may have slightly more than half the market, but that's not usually considered antitrust territory.

Apple is in a dominant position. It feels wrong to say that their behaviour does not impact the market.

"Impacts the market" is not the same as "controls the market," which is the threshold (usually) for antitrust litigation.

Microsoft, by comparison, OWNED desktop computing in the 90s. Apple was on the ropes badly, and Linux wasn't viable for most people. And they used that dominance to attempt to strangle the open web in its crib. People literally had no where else to go.

Apple has nothing like that control today. Android enjoys a healthy chunk of the market. A host of other messaging tools exist if you don't like iMessage. You can avoid using Apple's tech at every turn if you like (and I know many people who do, as a matter of personal policy).

This is not a situation that warrants governmental intervention. This is a situation where the government is overreaching, and if they succeed the precedent will be set that Washington gets to decide what features a vendor can control on their own platforms. That's not a good place to be.

>This is not a situation that warrants governmental intervention.

I agree that the government has a weak case - but they can make their case in the court of law. And to another degree in the court of public opinion.

There is a case to be made for constraining the dominant consumer tech company. Consider this hypothetical scenario. A tech company has a one year lead over their competitors because their hardware and software is objectively one year ahead. And let's project that every year that lead grows by a couple months. I assume that all would agree that this is a huge threat.

What government oversight and intervention is warranted to address this threat?

In my opinion, all the reasons that the government gave to call Apple a monopoly are just weak rationalizations they've come up with that still hold enough legal validity, and allow them (them being the powers that be who perceive the real long-term threat) to start slowing Apple down.

>I assume that all would agree that this is a huge threat.

I do not. I do not think most people would agree with that. A lead in one area is historically difficult to sustain and extend into another. When attempts have been made that could have been successful, they were made on the back of actual market-controlling dominance, which Apple manifestly and obviously does not have here.

The 90s is not the 20s.

Market share does not equal market power.

> It's their service they invented, and they get to run it how they chose.

So was the Bell telephone network.

My biggest problem is how hard it is to get my data out of apps in usable formats, move it between apps, or put in custom apps. My iPhone would be great if I could use my own data and apps as easily (and freely) as my old Samsung Galaxy.

You can download all your data from the Apple Website. Heartbeat, GPS etc. are plainly available. I wrote an app that converts Lat/lon to distance traveled.

It's hard to use iphone as a general purpose computing device when they make it hard to share between apps. I know it's part of apple's "security model" but it can also be interpreted as killing competition between 3rd party apps and apple apps

They’ve long been anti-competitive against alternatives like Hackintosh’s or file lawsuits over interface similarities. That aggressive suppression of competing suppliers is partly how they got tens of billions of dollars. They’re not doing it for security.

One test, though, would be to look at customizability of Mac OS vs iOS. They claim to be securing both. Can we run custom apps easily on Mac OS, script it, get full access to our files, etc? If so, why would they restrict the iPhones from doing those things, but leave Macs wide open, if it was merely a security issue?

Another example might be remote, access tools. Aka remote control of iPhones. If App Store has any, then they’d put iPhones at much higher risk than users running their own code on their own devices. Even with a review given that a RAT might have a zero day that gives attackers full control. If they restrict user freedom, but allow RAT’s, that would be another hint that they restrict user freedom for anti-competitive reasons.

I don’t have Mac OS, though. It might be as locked down as the iPhone. That would make my argument useless.

They aren't in a dominant position in the market by any normal measure, though.

Where does that "dominant position" idea come from, that you and others are claiming in this thread? Apple is nowhere near having a dominant position in any of the markest where they compete, such as cell phones or computers.

In the U.S. where this lawsuit was filed, Apple controls 50-60% of the smartphone market, where the next largest competitor Samsung holds only 20-25% [1]. Among U.S. teenagers the iPhone has a massive 87% market share [2]. That is indisputably dominant.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/620805/smartphone-sales-...

[2] https://www.pipersandler.com/teens

It is a term of art. How Apple acts has an impact on markets. Indeed, as the EU says directly

> The European Commission has fined Apple over €1.8 billion for abusing its dominant position

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...

iPhone has a 55-60% market share in the US & Canada. So Id be pretty happy with saying they have the 'dominant position' in the North American mobile market.

https://explodingtopics.com/blog/iphone-android-users

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/iphone-ma...

Fair enough, that's dominant in the US.

They control a huge swath of the market and block/limit ability of users and 3rd parties to use their devices, so it's not just about being dominant, it's about how you act as a dominant corporation/company.

I think they are hitting apple pretty broadly on all things you're mentioning. I don't think everyone will agree on all of them but many will agree on various ones and it's left up to courts after that.

> It's their service they invented, and they get to run it how they chose.

What does that have to do with anything? They have a dominant market position and they abuse it. Different position, different rules.