Seems a bit hyperbolic. Anti-trust laws are still in place, but I don't see anyone seriously arguing that Apple engages in widespread anti-competitive behavior, much less calling for a legal remedy.

Apple certainly is in a place that they could illegally crush competitors if they were so inclined, but the fact that they're not doing so seems to make the natural read of the situation that they've been hugely rewarded for making products that customers can't wait to spend their money on. Hardly a disaster.

They do engage in widespread anti-competitive behavior, by making really good products that people want to buy! It really hurts their competition's ability to sell cheap plastic laptops.

All joking aside, the fact that Apple could crush anyone but has explicitly chosen not to is worthy of some amount of praise.

The only reason they aren't able to crush people is because of Android and Microsoft. If you look at how the App Store was run and the general way Apple did things before Android became dominant, it was pretty scary. There were stories almost every other day about Apple just arbitrarily banning apps that might have conceivably intruded upon their corporate interests.

But they could drop the prices on their devices and corner the market overnight. If Apple offered an iPhone 6 for $99 off contract and a $299 Macbook Air... not everyone would switch, but enough would that their competitors would have a hard time staying in business. And Apple could do it. Forgetting for a second that dumping is generally illegal, selling products at a loss in order to put competitors out of business isn't unheard of.

The leadership of Apple seems still focused on dominating the "affordable status symbol" sector of IT, which I guess is something they'd want to keep doing for as long as possible because that could be a big part of why they can afford having higher margins.

I guess only time will tell what they'll do if/when that stops working, they certainly have the potential to unleash hell on their competition if they ever decide to go for market share.

Instead they were just illegally crushing employee wages and e-book markets.

> They own or completely control their entire supply chain and can undercut every competitor as well as invest 10x as much as anyone else to beat the competitors.

Huh? Apple has huge margins, and they don't undercut their competitors. Lots of companies make products that are a lot cheaper than Apple's.

As for investing, doesn't Apple actually spend less money on R&D than Google or Microsoft?

> They own or completely control their entire supply chain

Uh? They have OK integration and supply managemnt, but they're a very far cry from controlling their entire supply chain. If it were Samsung then yes, they do pretty literally everything under the sun (and more, they have a logistics and transportation arm, I think the only thing they don't have is mining operations).

> can undercut every competitor as well as invest 10x as much as anyone else to beat the competitors.

And yet they don't, they're usually undercut and the usual complaint about Apple is that their products are overpriced for what they are…

We used to say that about Microsoft.

And we were right. Microsoft's domination of the industry severely harmed it, and eventually was only broken because the industry shifted to a completely different sector.

Any domination will eventually come to an end, but it can still do bad things in the meantime.

Actually, most of what you said is incorrect. As of not that long ago Samsung (Apple's biggest competitor in mobile) is still Apple's largest LCD supplier.

Furthermore, Apple has a ton of competition on both the mobile front (from the Android ecosystem) the computer front (from the Windows ecosystem) and the entertainment front (Spotify for iTunes, ChromeCast for AppleTV etc).

There is a TON of competition in the market, but Apple just crushes everyone on marketing.

It is not marketing, it is build quality and trust. Samsung spends multiples of Apple on marketing.

I don't understand the downvotes to your comment. It is overly simplistic to say that Apple's success is merely due to marketing. As you pointed out, Samsung spends more on marketing (not sure if it is multiples more).

About 6 years ago I switched to Apple for computing needs and now I almost never buy non-Apple products when there is an equivalent Apple product. I trust their build quality and trust the decisions they've made with regard to memory, disk space, etc. Unless they start cutting corners I'm going to be a lifelong Apple person.

I recently bought the Microsoft Band and it feels like a Microsoft product. The build quality is not good. The band does not fit well on my wrist. I'm right in the middle between two sizes. The software quality is not good and I got anomalous results. I'm guessing the Apple Watch will be better and give better results.

Spending does note equate to success. Samsung Series 9 laptops are built as well or better than any Macbook. And Samsung is well-respected.

The bottom line is Apple is very, VERY good at marketing their platform, and much of that marketing stems from the massive fan base they have.

Calling it build quality and trust assumes we consumers are very smart buyers. That's establishing apps not in evidence.