smoldesu

  "It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn't compete with six people in blue jeans."

- Steve Jobs, on Apple's suit following his resignation (Newsweek, September 30, 1985)

If you want to run a non-default OS, don't install one. Blocking competitors for competition's sake is a regulatory tightrope walk, the exact same mentality that nearly annihilated Microsoft.

Historically, the first amendment has never been used as a defense in antitrust law (and for good reason). A business and it's self-expression is kinda besides the point when you're analyzing market harm and extrinsic impact. Microsoft was not within their means to "self-express" coordinated first-party limitations to stifle competing browsers. Apple using the same tactic does not automatically make it legal because they're percieved as some form of underdog.

If Apple really wants to express themselves, United States law won't stop them from disincorporating and relocating their private assets to a nation they're more comfortable with like Russia or China. They could become a PRC-subsidiary and fulfill their destiny of being the man in the glasses on the grey TV.

It's an even better deal if you live in Europe, now: https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/29/24086792/setapp-subscript...

While I agree that Microsoft's treatment of Windows is basically criminally negligent at this point, it's a lot harder to prove damages with them than it is with Apple right now. I also suspect that any prosecution against desktop OS service bundling would end up lumping Apple in as well anyways. One step at a time, eh?

Solenoid in a box!

Google is under similar scrutiny. They are designated as a service and digital market Gatekeeper under EU law and will be reprimanded if they abuse a potential monopoly position. I personally support regulating Google, and the scrutiny of their (comparatively few) anticompetitive practices.

You and I can feel whatever way we want about it, it doesn't change a thing. Apple's market abuses are unique from Google's, and specifically you are asking the DOJ to punish Google for abuse that hasn't happened. Google's most egregious violation so far has been their advertising racket, which they were already punished for last year: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-wraps-up-antitrust-case-aga...

That's speculatory, and furthermore I'd argue Apple is already failing to compete if their only competitive tactic is lock-in. Apple's anticompetitive behavior may well be the last thing stopping a browser monopoly. That's for the free market to decide though, and it's an entirely different lawsuit in the making.

> So without extra encryption they could snoop on that too.

This is basically the crux of your argument. I mostly agree with you - neither Apple nor Google do enough to protect user traffic in the big-picture. You can Wireshark a lot of data off both OSes, the throughput is even scarier when you track radio emissions.

That being said, a lot of people have taken notes from Apple's "protect user privacy" shtick. Many logging libraries contain the app-equivalent of screen-recording baked in to the app framework, enabling a pipeline where PII gets ingested as a part of the logging process. Startups that incorporate these processes then brag about their self-imposed security compliance as a result of their own ass-backwards philosophy. And these aren't even the bad guys!

Companies like TikTok and Facebook collect lord knows how much information, and use the same "security" tautology as their scrappy startup peers. They consciously stretch the limits of their API capabilities, and then turn around and make puppy-eyes whenever regulators act concerned. Meanwhile, the actual users of these smartphones aren't empowered to regulate their own device's security. They can't turn off their phone because the modem is still on. They can't firewall Facebook analytics when the app is closed. They can't even stop their notifications from being snooped on without disabling the feature altogether. Where's Apple or Google when that's under scrutiny?

It's a bit tangential, but this is why I think Apple made an enormous mistake attempting to commodity privacy. Privacy is idealistic - there will always be perennial exploits on the iPhone to prove them wrong. Because Apple commits to imperfect, conditional privacy, scummier-and-scummier companies can follow their imperfect lead and make the same claims. And because none of them are as big as Apple, they rarely take flak when their systems fail. Apple's attempts to market security is like watching a leading F1 driver start turning into a tailspin, and taking the rest of the racers with them in a firey crash.

Yup. It wouldn't be quite so close of a comparison if third-party browsers could ship with their engines intact, let alone at-cost to their users. Apple is using their control to block competitors. At their scale, that's a dangerous game.

Probably got killed alongside the free API. There's very little financial incentive to support Twitter at the prices they're demanding.

It would be increasing regardless of what we did in Ukraine. It should surprise nobody that the United States does not negotiate with terrorists.

> and can play exactly none of them on the Mac because several years into Apple Silicon

You think that's some kind of low blow? This is a problem on the Mac App Store, too; if you buy software Apple depreciates, your Apple hardware won't run it. Don't get mad at Adobe or Steam, get mad at the person depreciating things with wild abandon and expecting everyone to cater their whims. Get mad at yourself for accidentally trusting Apple and updating to their new OS without reading the conditional changes they're introducing to your computer's software. Steam and it's publishing partners have no intrinsic obligation to support software that didn't exist when they wrote their programs.

> Which seems to really upset people when Apple charges that.

The App Store could take a 99% cut, for all most developers care. The point-of-contention is Apple's lack of an alternative, which makes any percentage unsubstantiated because there's no way to deliver software at-cost. Apple isn't charging for convenience, they're commoditizing privlidge.

Nobody cares when Steam takes their 30% because people deliberately install it on their PC. The App Store on MacOS is a great example of what happens when you let an arbitrary payment surcharge meet the free market. It becomes a fucking ghost town.

Maybe Apple shouldn't use their dominant position as a smartphone manufacturer to knowledgeably exploit human insecurity and exacerbate user woe in hope of selling families another iPhone: https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/21/24107676/buy-your-mom-an-...

> There are plenty of components that most programs call out to the OS

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/

Apple is competing against multiple companies, all of which are minorities relative to the iPhone's market share. These companies use derivatives of Android, but still compete against one another and Apple all the same. Android and Linux aren't competing companies, they're operating systems that are forked by OEMs and manufacturers to provide an OS.

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...?

Be careful guys, this is Russia's "Final Warning": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China's_final_warning

You're all good. It's been a few months since I've written one of these comments out entirely, so I'll give you the rundown:

- Android is Open Source. Google itself is a ghoulish company nowadays, few people are wrong in assuming that. For all of iOS' security taglines though, you can't build it yourself and create a further-hardened version. "Features" like Apple routing traffic around your VPN cannot be un-programmed. This doesn't necessarily make Android a better OS, but it absolutely enables better overall privacy and proves that a better ideal is realistic. I don't personally hold Google in high regards security-wise, but the AOSP has nothing to hide. You can go see for yourself.

- Apple's software can't be trusted. pbourke's correct in that consumers have to make a choice about trust when selecting hardware, but I see no evidence that Apple's approach is working. Their services turn over personally-identifying data to governments by the ten-thousands, and in countries like China your iCloud server lives in a CCP-owned facility. Apple does nothing to resist obvious government censorship ploys, and is indeed a decade-old member of America's PRISM program. Without any transparency holding Apple accountable, you really have to hold on the question - can you trust them?

- Neither Google nor Apple make good OSes, in part because neither one is motivated to compete with the other. Google treats Android as a technology dumping ground and a defacto unifying platform for their various hairbrained hardware endeavors. Apple treats iOS like Hotel California. Both companies have found a niche in ignoring each other, and Apple has used it as an excuse to pursue business strategies Google could never dream of. It's a threat to the market no matter how either of us feel about it.

The DOJ put it best, this morning: "Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests."

> someone being held as property, their family members terrorized, raped, beaten, whipped, murdered, etc. at the whim of their legal owners.

Which is coincidentally quite similar to the treatment of North Korean and Chinese penal workers. Russian labor camps are pretty far up there too.

Many Foxconn factories have armed guards, but it's not to keep people out...

If you get a complaint from the Department of Justice, you should probably be more focused on preventing a break-up than counting your nest eggs.

If you pry up the pavement on the way to hell, you'll find good intentions underneath. Trust whoever you want, but don't turn around and make claims you're unwilling to defend. The security Apple offers is far from unconditional - the plethora of iPhone-related data leaks is a dead horse well-beaten on this site.

For your safety, I hope the government looks out for you. Because nobody else is going to do your due diligence, evidently not even yourself.

If the current trade-off is considered anticompetitive, there may be enough incentive to create a new model. Bell telephone offered free long distance calls on their network, the happiness of their customers didn't protect them when regulators started questioning how competitive Bell's strategy was.

Maybe it will negatively affect those who are happy with the status quo. That has no bearing on the righteousness of a person or company's actions, especially if they're in a position to deny competitors market access.

For your safety, I hope the government is looking out for you.

Epic's sentiment certainly resonated with the European Commission, and apparently the DOJ as well. Do any of us really believe Apple's App Store control is harmless?

> Could you really expect a company to justify the kind of work

Well they certainly justified it to support their own first-party service just fine. So... yes?

I hope he's using it as an opportunity to reflect on FOMO-based business strategies and the impacts of regressive software censorship. Tim made a lot of tough choices in his tenure, and now his chickens are coming home to roost.

Hopefully he's happy with the decisions he made.

That's a reason someone might prefer Apple's first-party browser, sure. How does it justify banning third-party browser engines though?

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

How do you think Apple will differentiate their case from United States v. Microsoft Corp., where Microsoft was implicated for almost identical monopoly misconduct?

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."

I'm not sure how this would be a better investment than regulating the mobile duopoly, though. Even if they did pursue an Open phone as an initiative, there's no baseline rules for their competitors to play against. Both Google and Apple would be enabled and encouraged to extend their lock-in and create more exploitative ecosystems. Users would be caught in the middle, and surely nobody would switch to the Open phone as a matter of principle.

It kinda feels like recommending that a country build it's own car instead of dictating which cars are and aren't road-safe. They could, but creating an example of what compliance looks like does not in any way ensure the competition will follow.

They don't need to. I'm not sure if you're aware, but it's actually possible to encrypt traffic using things other than TLS. A regular app on non-jailbroken iOS can completely circumvent TLS decryption. First-party Apple Apps will bypass your profile and custom CA.