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Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by sigmar on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @03:00PM (#43403445)
Couldn't you make that argument for literally any anticompetitive practice? Like in the 1990s: "Microsoft isn't making an OS for people that want to try different browsers"
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by liquid_thyme on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @03:08PM (#43403573)
Yes, you could. It's indeed troubling to see this mindset on HN. We have an overflow of professional "explainers" these days, we need more doers and fighters.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by frollogaston on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @03:26PM (#43403837)
If you want to do and fight, use Linux. Apple made their intentions clear decades ago.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by _aavaa_ on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @04:15PM (#43404502)
Better than voting with your wallet is voting with your vote and getting regulations in place.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by macrocosmos on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @08:20PM (#43406886)
You state that as if it is fact despite there being no evidence to support that viewpoint.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by shakna on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @12:09AM (#43408199)
Is not the EU's regulations largely successful? Some have underestimated maliscious compliance, but for most.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by nickff on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @02:53AM (#43408930)
It depends on how you define success; the EU has certainly managed to achieve a great deal of standardization and compliance, at the cost of rate of progress and business model innovation. You might think this is a worthwhile trade off, but people differ in their priorities.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by shakna on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @03:19AM (#43409049)
Fewer deaths, higher quality of life, more job security. Seems like for the average person, the trade off is well worth it.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by _aavaa_ on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @06:21AM (#43410136)
> business model innovation

The OpenAI grift, the Facebook & Google stalking advertising, the Uber “independent contractors”, and the Amazon two-for of workers pissing in bottles and squeezing your suppliers so prices rise everywhere.

Yes, what a loss for the EU.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by realusername on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @07:57AM (#43410765)
Citations needed. The DSA never applied to a single EU company and GDPR is the bare minimum on user privacy.

And by the time the EU attempted any of those, we already had the duopoly and the competition was already dead.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by Defletter on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @12:18PM (#43414024)
> at the cost of rate of progress and business model innovation

That's a pretty massive claim. Do you have any examples of this?

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by frollogaston on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @12:32PM (#43414207)
Their entire tech sector compared to the US or China
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by Defletter on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @12:43PM (#43414337)
Goodness, how specific.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by frollogaston on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @01:03PM (#43414566)
If you want a more specific example, it's the company we're already talking about. There's no EU parallel to Apple, or the other FANG.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by shakna on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @07:38PM (#43418412)
SAP, NXP, ASML, Hexagon, Infineon... These are all companies guaranteed to be touching hardware or software, they you use today, and will use tomorrow.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by frollogaston on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @08:13PM (#43418653)
Biggest market cap out of those is SAP at $333B, which is less than the least valuable FAANG company Netflix.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by shakna on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @10:09PM (#43419298)
We were talking innovation, not market cap, right?

If the software you use today, that the businesses you go to, even in the US, are using it, then there's hardly stagnation, is there?

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by frollogaston on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @11:59PM (#43419796)
I drink milk every day, but there's no innovation there
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by shakna on Thursday March 20, 2025 @12:16AM (#43419860)
[delayed]
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by Defletter on Thursday March 20, 2025 @01:37PM (#43426295)
He is conflating progress and business model innovation with profits. That since the US allows its corporations to get repugnantly large and wealthy, enough to rival many developed nations' GDPs, the US necessarily has more progress and business model innovation. It's just American exceptionalism.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by _aavaa_ on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @09:23PM (#43407365)
Emphasizing voting with your wallet means those with the most money dictate how things work. Google and Apple vote with their wallet all the time. When they’re buying competitors, buying preferential treatment for each other, and buying law makers and regulators.

We aren’t going to out bid them on any of these things. We have to make it illegal, and vote in people who will enforce the laws.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by frollogaston on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @08:22PM (#43406902)
Please don't "source?" this, it's just a viewpoint.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by macrocosmos on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @08:39PM (#43407049)
We’re in agreement that it is a viewpoint. I think it’s bad for productive conversation to state viewpoints as absolute facts that everyone else holds.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by frollogaston on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @08:51PM (#43407143)
Then I'm guilty of this too.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by liquid_thyme on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @10:50PM (#43407825)
Sure, but I hope you recognize that it is possible to do two things at once.

Corporations have pressure points and there are a myriad of ways to contribute to the overall progress that each one wants to see for themselves.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @03:20PM (#43403749)
The "hackers" grew up and made money. Don't rock the boat!
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by lanyard-textile on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @08:22PM (#43406909)
Oh whatever :P Don’t be condescending about a mindset you don’t experience yourself.

I ran debian as my daily driver for like half my life; now I’m on mac and never have to worry about my friggin wifi driver.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by liquid_thyme on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @10:52PM (#43407842)
You can both use macs and criticize Apple to be and do better. Why would they change for no reason? I've heard this myth about companies listening to customers :)
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by dingnuts on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @10:43PM (#43407786)
I haven't had a problem with my Wi-Fi in Linux since 2006, what are you on about?
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by rasmus-kirk on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @04:55AM (#43409603)
Yeah, I'm running PopOS woth minimal issues and have been doing so for 5 years. The only issues I have is that they built it on a jank stack of Gnome, but they're fixing that at this moment.

It sounds like a lot of the "I used to use Linux, but nothing worked" crowd are either previous Arch-users (no shit you had to do everything manually) or older folks.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by underdeserver on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @05:00AM (#43409637)
You're squarely in the minority, mate.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by kraf on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @07:02AM (#43410437)
Nah he's not. Stuff has been pretty stable, impressively so. Especially if you keep to certain hardware options which Apple users also accept.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by Defletter on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @05:52AM (#43409949)
Congrats? I've personally experienced driver issues on my laptop and desktop, both from the hardware being too new for the kernel (or at least the version being used by that distro), within the past two years. And this is LMDE, not some fringe one-man fork.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by Aachen on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @06:35AM (#43410236)
If we want to pile anecdotes, it just works for me as well. The most recent driver problem I had was Windows, needed to preload something during the installer to get it to recognise hard drives in proxmox working if I remember correctly, and that's not even speaking of printer problems on Windows compared to the seamless integration they now seem to have on Debian (or is my desktop environment responsible for that? Not sure, I'm not super deep into Linux stuff)
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by kraf on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @07:00AM (#43410426)
It's been many years since I had my last driver issue. I find that impressive considering how many different platforms Linux has to run on.

Have you noticed how bad the Docker experience is on Macs though, after how many years?

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by cowsandmilk on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @07:51AM (#43410732)
Not sure how that’s the fault of MacOS
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by fsflover on Monday March 24, 2025 @10:17AM (#43461406)
Whose fault is it? Also, as opposite to the Linux wifi driver?
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by aiisjustanif on Sunday March 23, 2025 @01:56PM (#43454544)
I have never had an issue with WiFi drivers as an Arch and EndeavourOS user for 6 years now. And for the last 3 years my Framework Laptop does just work as my daily driver.

I think it is unjust to share strong opinions about previous issues that Linux distributions had without recent evidence.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by lanyard-textile on Saturday March 29, 2025 @08:24PM (#43519975)
That’s fair :) Guess I’m just scarred.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by maccard on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @09:33AM (#43411750)
If you want an alternative, android exists. I actively want a tightly integrated system that I know works well together. I don’t want to worry “does this device really work with this other device, even if it says it’s compatible” which was a constant source of issues I had on Android.

Your desire for Apple to become an open system removes my choice to opt into a closed ecosystem, when you already have an open ecosystem to play in.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by liquid_thyme on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @07:53PM (#43418518)
>I actively want a tightly integrated system that I know works well together. I don’t want to worry “does this device really work with this other device, even if it says it’s compatible” which was a constant source of issues I had on Android.

Yeah, I mean Linux is an abject failure, nothing ever works or runs on it. Nobody needs open data formats or open protocols for interoperability. Binary blobs for the win! /s

>Your desire for Apple to become an open system removes my choice to opt into a closed ecosystem, when you already have an open ecosystem to play in.

Don't worry, it's easy to lock down any open system and we can give you that should you desire it.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by maccard on Thursday March 20, 2025 @05:25AM (#43421150)
I don’t think this comment is in good faith. I gave you a reasonable viewpoint and you just dunked on me with snark.

>, I mean Linux is an abject failure, nothing ever works or runs on it. Nobody needs open data formats or open protocols for interoperability. Binary blobs for the win! /s

I didn’t say anything of the sort. I said I actively choose a “more closed” ecosystem. Linux has similar problems IMO - “I want to buy a GPU” shouldn’t come with trying to figure out whether the device drivers will actually work, to me. If you want that, you have that choice.

> Don't worry, it's easy to lock down any open system and we can give you that should you desire it.

Only within the constraints of what you want which is that everything should adhere to a standard and be interoperable. Which, again, as I said you can have on android. Go buy a pixel phone, and a samsung watch and see how good the experience is.

I’ll say this again - there are open ecosystem alternatives for you out there, in android. Some people, even technical people, are ok with a smaller ecosystem knowing that there is lock in. If you don’t want that, don’t use it. But if you push your choices on me, you restrict my options and remove my preferred platform to have one more platform you want

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by liquid_thyme on Thursday March 20, 2025 @08:57PM (#43430803)
You have your own viewpoint, and are assuming its "resonable" and so by definition I'm "unreasonable" is GOOD FAITH? No thanks, no interest in engaging with you.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by maccard on Friday March 21, 2025 @08:45AM (#43434979)
No I think you’re being unreasonable by making strawman arguments against me and using those strawmen to attack my character, which you’ve done again here.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by wat10000 on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @03:32PM (#43403918)
Making your own products interoperate better than competitors' products is pretty typical and I don't think it rises to the level of "anticompetitive practice."

If you don't like it (and I can totally understand why), there are numerous other smartphone makers out there with products that allow better integration with these watches and you're free to buy one.

MS didn't get into trouble because they went after competing browsers, they got into trouble for doing that while also having a monopoly on PC OSes. Apple doesn't have anything like a monopoly in this market (their US market share is about 50%, worldwide is around 28%).

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by Osiris on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @04:22PM (#43404570)
Microsoft absolutely got in trouble for purposefully making other Office suites not work correctly on Windows, for using private Windows APIs in Office that other companies didn't have access to, etc.

If Apple makes a watch that can receive and send iMessages then there is no reason any other device shouldn't be able to use the same APIs that Apple uses.

It absolutely creates a system where competitors literally cannot compete with the same features.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by wat10000 on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @05:00PM (#43405045)
They got in trouble for doing that stuff while having a monopoly on PC OSes. Using private stuff to give your own products an advantage is (legally) fine if you're not leveraging a monopoly to do it.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by conception on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @07:24PM (#43406429)
And really, these days that’s only illegal if it makes things more expensive for consumers.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by frollogaston on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @03:33PM (#43403938)
I honestly don't care about Microsoft bundling a browser. The real problem was that they intentionally broke web standards to push websites to "work best on Internet Explorer," so even those who chose not to use Windows were affected.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by apatheticonion on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @05:18PM (#43405251)
Apple do this too with their products - but in more subtle ways.

For instance, try to play a video game on MacOS. While Vulkan is available on every playform, it's not available on MacOS or iOS despite the fact that it would take an engineer at Apple a weekend to implement (figuritively speaking). Apple are also killing off OpenGL support for MacOS.

Generally, Apple deliberately build a "dependence ecosystem" for their consumers on the product side while also actively preventing engineers from using portable technologies on their platforms.

The fact that MacOS is as open as it currently is is a miracle and I am sure executives hate that.

They create the fastest and most ergonomic mobile hardware on Earth but, outside of web browsing, video editing and some engineering workloads, there's very little you can actually do on it.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by frollogaston on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @05:23PM (#43405311)
Oh yeah, Mac video games sorta don't exist. The dev can jump through all those hoops and still have random OS updates break it constantly. Almost as bad just for regular apps.

Re executives being mad: The thing is, they make money off Mac hardware, and even then its profits are dwarfed by iPhone and iPhone accessories. Which are of course locked down.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by adhamsalama on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @05:36PM (#43405445)
Isn't the WebKit the only allowed browser engine on iOS?
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by frollogaston on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @05:40PM (#43405483)
Yes. Essentially Safari is the only iOS browser. Ironically, this is the only thing stopping a Chrome web monopoly.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by golergka on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @08:34PM (#43407010)
> The real problem was that they intentionally broke web standards to push websites to "work best on Internet Explorer," so even those who chose not to use Windows were caught up in it.

Microsoft tried to build their own extensions to the internet standards, like activex and proprietary DOM/JScript extensions, explicitly designed to lock devs into IE’s ecosystem. It's quite impressive that they managed to miss this opportunity to Adobe. And how Adobe then just... squandered it. I would expect that "being the necessary proprietary piece in significant chunk of internet" would have some deep strategic advantage, but both tech giants couldn't be bothered to do a good job.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by frollogaston on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @08:50PM (#43407134)
Both Adobe and Microsoft missed the mobile boat.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by sneak on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @03:21PM (#43403754)
Not any anticompetitive practice, just the ones that allow in competitors who have different security models for human/computer interaction.

Imagine if you could swap out Siri for Alexa. The privacy guarantees are nothing alike. People buy iPhones because they prohibit unsafe choices.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by Osiris on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @04:23PM (#43404589)
Source? What data do you have that "prohits unsafe choices" is the only or #1 reason that people buy an iPhone over an Android?
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by saagarjha on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @07:36AM (#43410649)
I mean the security model for both is pretty similar, you have a provider which gets your audio and then decides what they want to do with it.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by eddieroger on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @03:24PM (#43403800)
Unlike Microsoft of the 90s, there are alternative mobile operating systems that are actually competing with iOS and Apple, so the argument isn't the same. In fact, people point out that iOS doesn't have majority share when you look at global usage, and only has a small majority when you look at the US. Microsoft's next nearest OS competitor didn't make a browser, and a lot more than half of computer users were using Windows.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by crazygringo on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @05:31PM (#43405392)
Only if they're a monopoly.

In the 1990's, Microsoft Windows had over 90% of operating system market share. They were a monopoly.

iPhones are only 58% versus Android in the US right now. That's nowhere close to monopoly. Globally Android has 71%. Android is thriving.

With Windows, you didn't have a choice. With iOS and Android, you have choice.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by clemiclemen on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @06:01PM (#43405677)
At which point does a monopoly becomes a monopoly?

There is no need to have a "clear" monopoly like Windows in 1990's to abuse your power and presence in the market.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by crazygringo on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @06:08PM (#43405757)
> At which point does a monopoly becomes a monopoly?

It's generally in the 70-90% range. Right now, it's much easier to argue that Android has a global monopoly.

> There is no need to have a "clear" monopoly like Windows in 1990's to abuse your power and presence in the market.

Well it depends what you mean by "abuse". I mean, even small companies can "abuse" their customers by not building the interoperability their customers want. But we generally prioritize individual freedom, that private businesses ought to have free choice in what they work with or don't. That's important.

That only becomes a problem when consumers aren't able to switch to a competitor. I.e. when there is a monopoly provider. I.e. which controls 70-90%+ of the market.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by dvngnt_ on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @06:43PM (#43406057)
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by crazygringo on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @09:02PM (#43407217)
The median in the first chart is 53%. So not really. Apple is just seasonally high in Q4 presumably because iPhones make good Christmas presents. And still below 70%.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by Aachen on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @06:40AM (#43410265)
> it's much easier to argue that Android has a global monopoly.

Sorta. My understanding is that Google Play has the global monopoly. If it were plain Androids that users bought to own, to do with as they wanted, I'd be much less sombre about where mobile ecosystems are headed (namely, that governments, banks, public transport companies, and many other organisations will require a DRM-locked device if you want to live a normal life, buying bus tickets while passing the algorithmic fraud checks instead of needing to travel to a remaining ticket counter for example). It's barely even the future anymore, bank and transit company apps already mostly only run if you have a Google account and are on a locked-down ("Google Safetynet") device or go to great lengths to hide that you've got full access to your own data on your bought-to-own device

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by NotPractical on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @11:57PM (#43408158)
> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

Presumably the DoJ wouldn't have sued Apple for being a monopoly if it was impossible for them to legally qualify as one?

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/gallery/justice-departm...

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by crazygringo on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @08:37AM (#43411048)
The DoJ can sue over whatever they want. They also lose suits all the time. So now it's up to a court decision to make the determination, and it may very well be that Apple is not, contrary to the DoJ's assertion.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by NotPractical on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @02:45PM (#43415837)
Sure, but you claimed that they were definitely not a monopoly, which hasn't been determined yet.
Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by realusername on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @07:58AM (#43410777)
If it's not a duopoly, then why there's no competition between the play store and the app store to get developers or users from each other?

The only tariff change ever made on the appstore was as a reaction to an antitrust lawsuit and copied straight to Google. Just that is enough of a proof.

Re:Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones by ubermonkey on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @09:18AM (#43411546)
Well, no, at least not honestly, because in the 1990s Microsoft was sitting on a true monopoly. Apple is one of several (3, at least) players in desktop computing, and one of two in mobile. Nobody has the kind of power Redmond wielded now.

And that's a key part of the discussion.