I assert it is trivial to not buy Apple products, easy to make alternatives to Apple products and easy to buy feature equivalent devices to Apple products.
In lieu of this what is the problem? If the government has a problem why not say any code should be able to be run on any device?
Honestly I’m curious - what’s the problem? There are android phones that are superior to iPhones and let you run anything you want. Why don’t people buy those?
The government seems to want to make it illegal to have a tight experience, but why? There are open alternatives. It’s like complaining that Teslas don’t support CarPlay. Valid, but does it require legislation? Buy another car.
FWIW I would love if the government made it so all devices should have an option to run any of your arbitrary code.
Please, go do it. You'll be very rich very quick and I'll eagerly buy your products once you succeed.
Unfortunately you'll find out it's not actually easy at all when you realize that consumers care about weight, size, temperature and battery life which are all things apple excels at. Their hardware is really quite good, unfortunately the software is horribly crippled.
This is how the free market is intended to work. This opens up the range for several android phones (which have a near split in the US, and a majority globally last I recall) to offer better hardware.
Modern Samsung phones are very good. You’re asserting that Apple should be punished purely because they make good hardware and are successful - and if their hardware wasn’t good and competitive then you wouldn’t care.
Part of why I have Apple devices as a tech enthusiast is the good software and the ecosystem that comes with it.
Would I like to run an IDE and code on an iPad? Absolutely. But I’d rather have the iPad than the android tablet.
I don’t get why people obsess over the phones. Nobody here is trying to argue Apple has a monopoly on the phone market, that is very obviously not the case (although Apple very much contains a market leader position).
The argument is very simple: due to the dominant position on the overall phone market, Apple uses this power to mess with another market: the mobile app market. And here it is obvious how Apple is issuing bullying tactics to maintain its dominance (Apple TV vs. Netflix, Apple Music vs. Spotify, Apple Pay/iAP vs literally anything).
Wether the US courts come to a similar conclusion as the EU legislators remains to be seen, but there is a precedent
It's not about having a dominant position, it's about using your power in one market to further your position in another one. Apple control iOS and macOS which is always bundled with the hardware, and they use that to strengthen their own applications. Competitors cannot do it as they do not have the same access that Apple does regarding APIs and other features.
Apple uses their own technology to make their products better. That’s not a scandal. Their products aren’t the most dominant in streaming, maps, or payment. Most of the complaints are about what they aren’t doing (going out of their way to make proprietary features available to 3ps), not what they are doing (say: giving themselves special push notification permissions). So what influence are they exerting exactly? Why is it so pernicious?
They're exerting the same influence that Google did over their Android partners. They created a faux-open market with arbitrary rules that ensure their products always win. Google lost their case because of this and Apple should too.
Google lost their case because, among other things, they offered back room deals which favored a blessed few and were not available to all. E.g. you could not get the rate Spotify was getting charged for in app purchases (zero%).
The DOJ's 90 page lawsuit is a lot of things, but precise or even factual it is not. For example, it doesn't even cite the selling price or terms of the original iPhone correctly (off by almost 2x) and invents vague terms like "the performance smartphone market."
You didn’t ask “what was the price of the original iPhone”. Your questions were…
> So what influence are they exerting exactly? Why is it so pernicious?
Which are both answered in the document.
Almost the entire document is defining the performance smartphone market. It’s mentioned in the document 88 times. The definition isn’t “phones over $400” because it’s defined by the market forces that Apple creates - there’s a feedback loop
Okay. But what happened to the Windows Phone and its integration with the Windows OS? It simply failed.
There is a valid argument to be made here against Apple and how their firm grip is stopping a market from advancing further. But not by using their technical success in creating a great platform.
It's all about economical fair play. If you create a market, but position yourself as the de-facto winner, it will not be a healthy one. It was all good, especially when default apps provided by Apple were free, but now with Apple Music, Apple TV, and iCloud being paid services, competitors worry about being not able to compete.
Yes. That’s it. That’s anti-competitive. That’s where the consumer benefit was curtailed and competition was limited.
People usually talk about companies who cannot compete with Apple on fair grounds and then claim foul. Which sounds like they’re trying to punish a company for being successful not for playing unfairly.
> Your list of services where you claim Apple has a dominant position is entirely products where it does not have a dominant position.
I am not claiming that. I am claiming that Apple has a very dominant position over the most important sales channel lots of companies have to rely on to compete.
Just one example is the at this point famous App Store tax. From a 10$ Apple Music subscription, 9.8$ (lets use these cents for processing) goes to Apple.
For a 10$ Spotify subscription, Spotify makes 7$ after Apple takes their 30% fee. Sure one may say, hey, but Spotify isn't forced to use Apple's service for payments, except they are. Otherwise they loose access to *the* platform most people listen to their music nowadays. Spotify also isn't allow to make Apple subscriptions more expensive and inform users about cheaper subscriptions on their website, because otherwise they'd loose access to the important platform. I guess one can see how this could be considered a abuse of the dominant marked position?
Strictly speaking, for this example past tense would have been fitting. Not because Apple is so generous, but because the EU also considered much of this behavior to be anti-competitive. Hence me wondering if the US courts would be following this line of thinking.
What frustrates me the most is Apple's double dipping. They argue that those fees are required for the development of the platform and technology, pretending as if they didn't already charge a hefty price tag on the products they sell. And in the end, its still the user who is getting screwed. It's not like Spotify or any other provider is eating the platform cost, they charge it up to the user by making their services more expensive.
Also, in their defense in the EU hearings Apple argued that Spotify's success is in large part thanks to the App Store, so it would only be fair for them to pay that amount. The amount of arrogance in that statement is astonishing imho. Developing for a platform is a mutually beneficial relationship, not an altruistic development aid by Apple. What would iPhone sales look like if there was no third party Mail client, no Twitter app and no Instagram or Facebook for their phones?
TD;DR: easy demonstration of how Apple makes more money selling the same product, not because they're more efficient but because they make all the rules.
Your stylized example is unrelated to reality. Users cannot subscribe to Spotify in app, so Apple makes no money from them while providing all the R&D they use to play audio on the device for free. Next, people say that the hassle of subscribing to Spotify outside the app is an insurmountable friction for Spotify, yet somehow Spotify is the dominant streaming music provider.
So Apple has built all the key innovations which make mobile music streaming a viable product, gives it to the biggest music streaming service for free, and then gets slammed because it doesn’t also go out of its way to allow that service to integrate with Apple’s assistant AI product (except when it does build that functionality, the streaming service doesn’t even adopt it!).
> Users cannot subscribe to Spotify in app, so Apple makes no money from
They don’t? This is because of the limitation puts on the App. Apple Music users can easily subscribe thanks to Apple being not negatively affected by its own restrictions.
> while providing all the R&D they use to play audio on the device for free
So you’re saying the developers fees pay for their R&D. So am I with my phone purchase. So I’m simply paying twice. To quote yourself, that is
> Simply absurd logic.
> Apple has built all the key innovations which make mobile music streaming a viable product, gives it to the biggest music streaming service
Have they? Spotify was a thing on the desktop way before it was on iPhone. Apple didn’t invent mp3 and all sorts of other stuff. They built the platform for their phones, no more, no less.
> gives it to the biggest music streaming service for free
It’s not free, quite the opposite. It comes with a steep fee when you sell on their platform.
> They don’t? This is because of the limitation puts on the App.
Just because there’s some reason for why Apple does not make money from Spotify does not invalidate the fact. Meanwhile, your entire argument depended on a false premise.
> Have they? Spotify was a thing on the desktop way before it was on iPhone.
And Rhapsody was on desktop way before Spotify. There’s a reason it didn’t take off.
> It’s not free, quite the opposite. It comes with a steep fee when you sell on their platform.
What steep fee? The one that the biggest music streaming company does not pay? How can a fee be both required and uncollected?
It doesn’t matter. I’m not the one whose arguments depend on Apple making money from Spotify.
> The device owner paid for their device and the OS.
I have to assume people writing on Hacker News are not so naive about software business models. The vast majority of software is not sold with a free license to developers to build anything they want packaged with the hardware sale.
This entire comment is wildly misinformed. Are you forgetting Apple charges like $1200 for a phone these days? They’re the most profitable company on the planet. Are you suggesting that in order to cover the extensive research and development costs of music playback (sorry did you really say this?), they need to take a 30% cut of every song played on the device?
As far as I can tell, you don't dispute a single statement in my comment.
> Are you forgetting Apple charges like $1200 for a phone these days?
This is a strawman. iPhone starts at $429 in the US, and there is no law saying companies can only monetize with up-front hardware costs. Such a law would be unprecedented in software.
> Are you suggesting that in order to cover the extensive research and development costs of music playback (sorry did you really say this?)
I didn't say that. I said mobile music playback. Streaming the world's music catalog to a mobile phone reliably with all-day battery life would be unthinkable 17 years ago, and the primary innovator making it happen was Apple, not Spotify. Core Media APIs are simply the tip of the iceberg, yet are widely recognized as best in class by a lot. Android took over a decade to catch up to iOS audio latency in 2013: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/03/an-update-....
Remember when Spotify released their take on music playing hardware with Car Thing? They literally couldn't sell their first run of inventory and ended up taking a 8+ figure write down. That project probably cost Spotify more than they've paid Apple in fees in the last decade, yet the Spotify in-car experience is great because of CarPlay, an Apple technology!
> they need to take a 30% cut of every song played on the device?
I made no claims about how much Apple should be paid for this. I simply pointed out that Apple is paid nothing for it by Spotify, yet people still are upset by that.
> the world's music catalog to a mobile phone reliably with all-day battery life would be unthinkable 17 years ago
The reliability of the streaming is more dependent on the internet connection and the quality of Spotify's services. Apple made bluetooth reliable, but most music enthusiasts see Apple's killing of the audio jack (because innovation?... no wait it was greed) was a huge step back for audio quality. Samsung phones have better battery life while Sony has better audio hands down.
> the primary innovator making it happen was Apple
Based on what metric? Apple utilized patents from Nokia, Qualcomm, Sony, etc.
> there is no law saying companies can only monetize with up-front hardware costs.
I didn't say there was. Your assertion that "so Apple makes no money from them while providing all the R&D they use to play audio on the device for free", is what I was responding to. Consumers are paying for that R&D. You strawmanned my strawman... Apple's most popular phone is $999.
> Core Media APIs are simply the tip of the iceberg, yet are widely recognized as best in class by a lot
Best in class by what measure? It's no surprise that when HackerNews attempts to explain the ins and outs of the music industry they start and end with APIs... Have you heard of Beyonce? I promise you Apple's customers don't give a shit about what APIs are used to listen to their music. They'll listen to their music on car speakers. It's completely irrelevant to customers. And the people that really do care about audio quality want cables, which again, Apple killed. The audio latency article you referenced has absolutely no bearing on music playback, it pertains to real-time communications and games with user interaction. Listening to music isn't impacted by this metric, unless you think an extra 80ms after hitting play on Spotify is worth a 30% cut of Spotify's revenue. But somehow I suspect you'll attempt to justify that.
Totally agreed. And does Apple has a "dominant position" in text messaging? They have around 60% of total phone market share [1], but that seems like a far cry from, say, 80% or 90%, which is what I'd consider "dominant."
Microsoft had over 90% market share of the world's personal computers in the 1990s [2], which I'd also consider dominant... and which did result in some similar antitrust lawsuits.
Saying they don't have a monopoly over those services is still a stawman. They don't have a monopoly on music streaming, but they actively force Spotify to effectively support their own competitor via their 30% fee. Apple TV+ does not have more subscribers than Netflix, but apple famously makes rules that hinder Netflix ability to be competitive on iOS.
And if Apple was all about making the better product, why don't they allow the app developers to use their own payment processors. If Apple IAP was so superior to everything else, users and developers alike would surely gladly pay the 20x markup?
But heck, they don't even allow an App developer to tell their users about a cheaper price on their website or why the product is more expensive on iOS.
Wether you like it or not, as soon as a platform becomes as big as iOS or Android, market watchdogs will come to town. And that is good thing, because with competition the user usually profits over the long term.
Apple does not force Spotify to support its competition. Spotify does not offer any IAP so in fact it’s Apple that is giving away all its R&D into AVFoundation and various other cutting edge APIs for free to its competition. Apple does not make any money from Spotify.
It’s true when you become as successful as Apple, the rentiers will come knocking. That doesn’t make the rentiers’ case particularly strong or honorable.
Apple doesn’t build the platform as a generous gift to developers on their platform. The build this stuff because they have to, otherwise iOS would be an awful platform for developers and by extension the users of Apples platform.
You are pretending you cannot build a foundational platform without double dipping, yet they do with macOS.
The ecosystem doesn’t need to go away to be opened up.
Honestly, I am approaching this from another standpoint. Tech has made it more palatable to have walled gardens but battles similar to this have been fought before and the walled gardens have fallen.
I have two solutions for Apple here:
1. Either allow more open participation on your platform.
2. Allow other vendors to write OSes for the iPhone device if you don’t want to open your software.
Without one of these two, the amount of ewaste we’re generating from this hardware is astonishing.
I don’t think Apple the services, should dictate the OS running on Apple the hardware.
At that point, you can run the ecosystem you want. I can choose to run Android, or Linux on this hardware.
And before anyone brings up consoles: yes. This should also apply to consoles.
You’ve just removed a massive financial incentive for making the kind of hardware Apple does. Their whole ‘thing’ is a unified experience between hardware and software.
The entire premise of punishing a company for success when they haven’t violated any laws is insane to me, and I think dangerous to the market because you’ll stifle companies wanting to try new things for fear of someone attacking them for success.
Antitrust means that the consumer has no choice - they do they can buy an android phone. Saying “you can’t use other software inside of apples hardware” is an irrelevant argument, since an alternative to that combination is available.
> The entire premise of punishing a company for success when they haven’t violated any laws is insane to me
I'm not clear on what you're implying here, this is a lawsuit, so a punishment will literally only apply if the judge finds Apple in violation of the law.
Is your issue with the law not being 100% specific about this ahead of time? Because I would argue that it's by design - law should lag behind innovation (in both tech and business practices) rather than try to predict and potentially stifle it.
> The entire premise of punishing a company for success when they haven’t violated any laws is insane to me
The government is arguing they have violated the laws, that's the entire point of a lawsuit. Apple has become a private regulator in the mobile app space, and the government is correct to break this power.
> I think dangerous to the market because you’ll stifle companies wanting to try new things for fear of someone attacking them for success.
This is the corporate equivalent of "Oh won't someone pleeeeeeeease think of the children". Give me one example where innovation was stifled because of antitrust action. It almost always goes the other way - corporate regulation is broken and small businesses and new ideas are able to flourish in its' absence.
As to your last point - having a single alternative is hardly a flourishing marketplace where the best ideas win. Distributors should not have the power to determine winners in the marketplace, and Apple's private power as a distributor of hardware and mobile apps has become such that they can ensure their own success regardless of whether they innovate or their customers love them.
> This is the corporate equivalent of "Oh won't someone pleeeeeeeease think of the children". Give me one example where innovation was stifled because of antitrust action. It almost always goes the other way - corporate regulation is broken and small businesses and new ideas are able to flourish in its' absence.
The EU and their dwarfed tech sector because they’ve made a regulatory environment hostile to business.
This argument boils down to “does the maintainer of a platform have the right to maintain their controlling interest in their own platform if that platform itself is not a monopoly” and I’d argue the answer to that is a firm absolutely.
If I’m raising sheep on my farm it isn’t my duty to provide my land to my neighbor to also raise sheep.
> If I’m raising sheep on my farm it isn’t my duty to provide my land to my neighbor to also raise sheep.
It's more like you providing land to raise sheep, but put your nephew's sheep in the best spots, pushing your customers' sheep where they can't eat so well. So your customer will rightfully complain that you're hurting their business.
But the other farms are suitable for cows and goats, not sheep. And some do have cows and goats over there, but you're the only farm which is suitable for sheep.
iOS apps to use on the iPhone. If you want an app on the iPhone, you have to go through the App Store unless you make it a PWA which is not suitable for a lot of use cases. You can’t run Android Apps on the iPhone and there’s no alternative App Store.
Your farm example does not have the scale of damage for the government to bother itself suing you for. Nor is it actually relevant here since it’s an entirely different landscape.
I don’t think we can look at EU and point at a single thing and say that’s why they have a smaller tech sector. Heck, here’s a random argument I can throw out of nowhere for it: they are far less migrant friendly.
> If I’m raising sheep on my farm it isn’t my duty to provide my land to my neighbor to also raise sheep.
This is the wrong analogy. If you want to use the feudalism analogy (which I always find appropriate for antitrust discussions), Apple is the Ducal landlord and also owns several farms that compete with their tenants.
Now, in medieval England, you would be right that the landlord has every right to do this. In the modern United States of America, antitrust laws are specifically written to avoid this arrangement. That there is another farm is irrelevant - we have laws to keep the power of landlords in check as a matter of governing philosophy.
For the last 50 years, a pro-consolidation school of thought has formed that specifically precludes enforcement of the laws, but the laws are still on the books that specifically aim to prevent an incestuous relationship between producers and distributors. In Apple's case, they have bundled the App Store and OS in a way that allows them to make the rules of the market and precludes a reasonable degree of competition in a major sector of the economy - it's an obvious target for competent law enforcement to take this type of action.
Let’s pretend there’s a world where Apple can’t ban android from getting installed on an iPhone.
Is Apple going to quit making iPhones then?
Their financial incentive is that they’re effectively the default OS on these devices. How many people are installing Linux or ChromeOS on a laptop that was preinstalled with windows?
What this does mean though is that if Apple makes the consumer experience worse, switching OSes doesn’t mean buying a new phone. It means reinstalling with a third party OS.
> This is how the free market is intended to work. This opens up the range for several android phones (which have a near split in the US, and a majority globally last I recall) to offer better hardware.
Then why isn't this happening? Google's platform is not meaningfully different from Apple's in enough ways to actually make me want to switch. Who's shipping an open phone with amazing cameras that match what the iPhone and Galaxy provide, that also allows sideloading without disabling all of Google's nice software features/cloud storage?
Real battery life, or marketing spec sheet battery life?
One of the things that impressed me about Apple when I started using their products was that advertised battery life was usually within 10% of what I’d actually get. I was used to those being lies to the tune of 30-50% from other vendors (phone and laptop alike)
iPhone SE battery life is shockingly poor versus the last 3 previous Androids I had which would last 2 days of light use.
It's probably my number one gripe with the SE. It runs flat when I need it. One time 4 hours walk because couldn't call a taxi (_luckily_ I hitched ride with a dodgy drug dealer instead - battery life matters!). Or staying overnight and not charging so needing to carefully manage power for day. Not everyone has a spare charger for iPhone.
Apple prioritise phone size/weight instead of battery life.
If I could buy a bigger internal battery (maybe needs to replace back of phone too), I would. Carrying a power bank is too bulky. I lose backpacks, and dislike the other alternatives.
Besides the fact that consumers aren't as rational as your question seems to imply, some of the reasons for the iPhone's dominance are the same reasons Apple are getting sued.
The Apple ecosystem is part of what you're buying with an iPhone. As a consumer, I really like that I can buy a MacBook, an iPhone, and AirPods, and have them all work seamlessly together because they were designed to do so. I'm even willing to pay extra for each product to ensure that they work together in concert, as well as a subscription for a service (iCloud) that glues them all together.
You can buy an "Android" phone, use it until EOL (no OS updates), get a new "Android" phone and it's a 100% different experience UI-wise and even the buttons are in different places.
Tinkerers love it, normal users just want a phone that works the same as the previous one.
If they posted the bootloader keys to Twitter right now it wouldn't lose them any money. Nobody is going to stop buying their shit because of that, but rather they might start selling more because now they can use the hardware for applications that would have been previously impossible.
To put it differently, Skyrim would have died as a game within a few months of release if it didn't support mods, but instead they didn't try to restrict them and made a horrifying quantity of money as a result.
"Easy" means there are no barriers to entry, not that it's trivial to make a good product.
In particular, there are no barriers to entry imposed by Apple. For any product Apple sell, there are numerous competing products in the same category. Apple's versions uniformly dominate third party rankings of these products, but all that means is that they're good at what they do.
> Unfortunately you'll find out it's not actually easy at all when you realize that consumers care about weight, size, temperature and battery life which are all things apple excels at. Their hardware is really quite good, unfortunately the software is horribly crippled.
They really don't. iPhone is a status symbol, especially for the new up-and-coming consumers (teens)
Apple + Google form a duopoly. Apple has locked down iOS to let them do whatever they want and overcharge as much as they like, and Google has no incentive to be any better, because there's no serious 3rd contender*.
For typical users not buying Apple means having to compromise on privacy with Google, which isn't a great option either. Both are trying their best to create vendor lock-in and make it hard for users to leave.
From developer perspective not having access to iOS users is a major problem. Apple inserts themselves between users and developers, even where neither users nor developers want it. Users and devs have no bargaining power there, because Play Store does the same, and boycotting both stores has a bunch of downsides for users and devs.
*) I expect people on HN to say that some AOSP fork with f-droid is perfectly fine, but that's not mainstream enough to make Apple and Google worried, especially that Google has created its certification program and proprietary PlayStore Services to make degoogling phones difficult.
It's an interesting perspective, but as I understand this case, the case is not interested in a developer's bargaining power against their distributor. The case is interested in the impact on consumers (fewer choices, higher prices). There's certainly no argument to make that consumers lack a variety of apps and app features.
I care about you as a developer, but I'm not sure this case does. Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong.
I think these are two sides of the same coin, because ultimately developers must pass the extra costs to users. The devs aren't subsidizing the 30%/15% cut, it's a tax that users pay.
App Store rules and the greedy cut also make certain kinds of apps and lower-margin businesses impossible to create in such environment, so this blocks innovations that could have benefited users.
When Apple bans competitors, blocks interoperability, drags their feet on open standards, and gives their own apps special treatment nobody else can have, then users miss out on potentially better or cheaper alternatives. This helps Apple keep users locked in, not innovate when they don't want to, and overcharge for services users can't replace.
All of that was more forgivable when smartphones were just a novelty, and digital goods were just iTunes songs. But now a lot of services have moved online. Mobile phones have become a bigger platform than desktop computers, and for billions of people they are their primary or the only computing device.
> *) I expect people on HN to say that some AOSP fork with f-droid is perfectly fine
As you explained yourself, it's not a real alternative, because it relies on Google itself, who can always decide to break it. A real alternative is GNU/Linux phones, Librem 5 and Pinephone. And yes, they are very niche and not easy to make.
Your mobile device is a gateway to much of the world. You seem to think it would be okay for a car manufacture to make it impossible to use your car except to drive to business that pay the car maker 30% of every purchase. I'm guessing you'll say people should be able to opt into such a car if they want but if that car has 60% of the market now it's effectively influencing the entire economy. Prices of groceries are 30% higher. Prices of clothing are 30% higher. Any company who wants people to come to their store are forced to sign up to pay the car company 30% or else they won't have access to 60% of the population.
Can you see the issue now? It doesn't matter that people could by other cars. It matters that Apple's market is so large that its influence is too big to be left as is.
The question is, can you buy a car from a different manufacturer? When it comes to cars, yes you can.
Is apple a monopoly? Probably not, because you can also switch to android.
Does Apple have a large enough share of the market to influence the market? Likely, which is why the EU has DSA and DMA now.
No, the question is "does one company have too much influence over the digital economy". The answer is yes. Apple has influence over 60% of the population. They extract 30% from all digital transactions. If you want to sell digital content to iPhone user's you're required to give Apple 30%. That's too much influence for one company.
> The question is, can you buy a car from a different manufacturer? When it comes to cars, yes you can.
You can, but why would you if you have no idea that your Apple purchase comes with all of these negative consequences?
I would guess that most Apple users don't know the implications of their purchase, and therefore they have no real incentive to look outside of Apple. Garland even addressed this in his speech: Apple disincentivizes you from choosing non-Apple products. They make it look like their products are better, but really it's the opposite: they make their competitors look worse due to their own purposefully terrible interoperability.
Contrast that to an Apple Car that only lets you drive to Apple Grocery stores with a 30% toll: the user is going to see how bad that is and naturally they'll find better alternatives on their own.
Poor analogy. This is already an issue with servicing automobiles. Overly-complicated construction and proprietary tools that can only be acquired by licensed dealerships. Read: Audi, Mercedes-Benz.
> I assert it is trivial to not buy Apple products
While it is easy to not buy Apple products, I think the thing that often gets missed is that once someone is significantly invested in Apple's ecosystem, getting out of that ecosystem is highly disruptive and difficult.
For example, suppose you are a person who for historical reasons owns a MacBook, and iPad, and an iPhone, and a large chunk of your friends group also has those. The default choice then for you to use a cloud storage solution is Apple's iCloud Drive. The default choice for you to store and share photos is Apple's Photos App. The default choice for you to message your friends is the iMessage App. The default way for you to store passwords is Apple's Keychain Manager.
If you then decide "you know what, I'm fed up with Apple, I'm going to buy an Android", suddenly your cloud storage solution, your photo storage and syncing solution, your messaging solution, and your password management solution are all not supported, so you not only need to find an alternative on your new device, but you also have to do so on all your other devices if you want your phone to be in sync with them. This is a really high friction environment, and makes it so that a lot of people feel trapped in Apple's ecosystem.
So you can be a person who would not choose to buy Apple products today if you were starting from scratch, but you can feel compelled to continue buying them because Apple has made it so that switching in the future is very inconvenient and impacts all your other devices. It's specifically people in this situation who are being taken advantage of by Apple and why Apple's practices are labelled as monopolistic.
Apple spent a long time acquiring customers and coaxing them into their walled garden, and now they're switching tactics to milking those customers now that it's inconvenient for them to leave the walled garden.
It doesn't matter if someone was forced into buying too many apple products or not. Governments have a responsibility to prevent Apple from abusing their market position and captive audience.
If governments truly had that mandate the world would look quite a bit different than today. The same american government allows boeing to be the one american jetliner manufacturer with all the problems that has created, for example.
Yes, antitrust laws have been largely ignored in most of the western world for decades now. I'd argue that's a bad thing though, not an argument in favour of continuing to ignore and not apply antitrust laws.
You seem to totally misunderstand the whole concept of what the competition law is about.
It's not about whether people can choose not to buy an iPhone, really at all. It's about once they do choose iPhone, is Apple unfairly using their control of the platform to influence whether they choose Apple's product vs a competitor for future things they buy.
Seems to me that if I already own an Android device and am in the market for a tablet, I would probably choose Android again because a lot of the apps that I have bought & paid for include a tablet version as well. Not sure if most would consider that anti-competitive.
I just bought Garmin GPS Watch. I'm appalled that it only let's me download apps from the Garmin watch app store. It's unfair that I can only install Garmin's OS on it. I bought the watch. I should be able to do anything I want to it. I need Garmin's software engineers to develop open solutions so that anyone can do anything on the watches they sell.
Do you see what the problem is with the above statement? How far does the government go? Shouldn't all products (electronic or not) be "open" if Apple loses?
This maybe sounds smart until you take a few seconds and notice the crazy amount of work these companies put into doing the exact opposite of your premise: preventing you from installing alternative operating systems and preventing you from using alternative marketplaces. When Apple claims they have to do extra work to make their devices support alternatives that is them lying to you and you are apparently eating it up :/.
It's far more work to create a free for all platform (what US & EU governments want) than a single product that has no external specifications.
Let's say there is an emergency breaking fix that is needed to make NFC payments reliable. Instead of just pushing the fix asap for Apple Pay, Apple would need to comply with these regulations and have to make sure other companies who implemented an Apple Pay competitor also have time to do the fixes. Imagine spending Apple employee hours coordinating this without any compensation to Apple. You'd have to beg 3rd party implementations to update their payment setup asap. Otherwise, the government/media might accuse Apple of unfairly favoring their own.
Again, this sounds smart until you think about it. Apples apps such iMessage use a protocol which Apple developed. Its not even secret how it works, people have reversed engineered it multiple times and are ready to use it in other apps so people can chat to iPhone users with no issue.
The only thing stopping this is Apple saying no. It wouldnt take any extra work to allow this, they just need to say yes and then everyone in the world can talk together no matter what platform or app they are using.
Its not about creating a free and open platform, its just about saying yes to letting others play with your toys.
When you open something up, you have to do a lot more work than just using it internally. Maybe 10x more. Try opening up your API up for external use instead of 100% internal.
What company do you work for or have you worked for? Let's see if we can get your company's market share to 20% using some arbitrary definition of the market. We'll then force your company to spend time and resources to open it up to competition.
Is 60% of mobile marketshare in the US (over 85% for teens, apparently!) an "arbitrary definition" of a market to you? Plus they're literally the number 1 richest megacorp in the world, surpassing the GDP of most countries.
This should've happened long before Apple made that first trillion, not now so late after the fact.
For every thing that the DOJ is complaining about there’s a Google version: Chat, Wallet, Auto, Pixel, etc.
This suit reminds me of the phrase, “I’ve been convicted by a jury of my peers… who couldn’t get out of jury duty.”
Apple is under the gun because their main competitors (at least Google and Samsung) aren’t as good / successful, even when they have greater market shares.
The difference is that the underlying protocols in those android apps are open, and so can be communicated with by any other app that anyone chooses to write an app.
Apples apps are built on top of proprietary protocols which they do not allow anyone else to use, and so there are lots of features and functionality that can only be used by Apple giving them the edge over anybody else.
> and so can be communicated with by any other app that anyone chooses to write an app
...and so, win?
> Apples apps are built on top of proprietary protocols which they do not allow anyone else to use
So Google let's anyone use their APIs but no one does, because developers would rather "win" by writing to more limited APIs that Apple controls and keeps for themselves.
Doesn't make sense to me.
Google's continuity in general, and in Android, is shoddy. Their support across "n" platforms is weak. Compare remote mobile automated QA services for iOS devices vers Android devices. The latter is a nightmare.
Even giving everyone full (but not really, because there are closed and controlled private APIs to Google services, too) access, as you say, can't bring them greater success. Because developers hate open platforms. /s
What they hate is poorly architected, sadly supported and non-revenue generating platforms.
You assertions are immaterial to the fact that they are breaking the law. Monopolies and monopolistic practices are flatly illegal.
You're also viewing this exclusively through the lens of the "consumer" experience while fully ignoring the effects on the "labor" and "supplier" market.
> The government seems to want to make it illegal to have a tight experience
Is there some evidence that a monopoly is absolutely required to have a "tight experience?"
Your first sentence is incorrect. Monopolies are not illegal.
From the press conference this morning: "It is not illegal to hold a monopoly, Garland said. "
"That may sound counterintuitive in a case intended to fight monopolies. But under US antitrust law, it is only illegal when a monopolist resorts to anticompetitive tactics, or harms competition, in an effort to maintain that monopoly."
There is always a first entity to start any market and always a last one to exit it. So technically it happens thousand of times per day. Surely it’s not illegal. I could decide to sell a completely useless crocodile-alike decorative robot companion for programmers that includes a powerful GPU that finetune your toy language model of choice or mine crypto when the GPU is not used as a robot. It would be silly, and I’d never actually do it, but surely the FCC or justice department wouldn’t have a problem with it.
> Monopolies and monopolistic practices are flatly illegal.
You are mistaken.
Section 2 of the Sherman Act makes it unlawful for a company to "monopolize, or attempt to monopolize," trade or commerce. As that law has been interpreted, it is not illegal for a company to have a monopoly, to charge "high prices," or to try to achieve a monopoly position by what might be viewed by some as particularly aggressive methods. The law is violated only if the company tries to maintain or acquire a monopoly through unreasonable methods. For the courts, a key factor in determining what is unreasonable is whether the practice has a legitimate business justification.
This has absolutely nothing to do with consumer choice. Apple device popularity among consumers has created a market of apps and technology that exists. That market is larger than the GDP of most countries. It is governed by Apple’s policies, and those policies are anti-competitive against companies wishing to participate in that market.
Spotify, just by virtue of the fact that someone installs their app, must pay Apple 30% of their revenue. Imagine trying to compete in a market where you have to pay your largest direct competitor 30%… And on top of all that, Apple keeps the internal fancy APIs all to themselves. It’s insane this hasn’t come sooner
Can it transfer the photos you have in iCloud? Or the passwords that Apple will “conveniently” store in its internal password manager? Or the bookmarks you have on safari? Or the messages you have on iMessage? Or the notes you have saved in your phone? Or the reminders you have set up? Or the alarms that you have?
I also recently switched from Android to iPhone. There was also an app that automated a lot of it. But there are a ton of tiny things that build up and lock you in to a platform. And they’re all marketed as helpful little addons! Why not backup your pictures to iCloud or get more storage space? It’s great in theory, but it makes that transition so much harder. It’s funny too, I’m actually very unhappy with my iPhone and want to switch back to an android, but I’m waiting. Why? Because it took me like 3 days to fully switch all my stuff over the first time and I don’t feel like going through that again.
> Can it transfer the photos you have in iCloud? Or the passwords that Apple will “conveniently” store in its internal password manager? Or the bookmarks you have on safari? Or the messages you have on iMessage? Or the notes you have saved in your phone? Or the reminders you have set up? Or the alarms that you have?
Just want to comment, some of these (like passwords & bookmarks) are very easily exportable. iMessage is backed by MySQL, exportable in its own. Google can very easily make that integrations seamless if it so wanted.
While we’re waiting for that to happen, hopefully this might help explain to you what the lawsuit is actually about. Because it has nothing to do with what you’re arguing
There are precisely zero computing platforms in which one may expect to transfer application code to a device running a different operating system. None.
I own lots of Steam games including BG3 and can play exactly none of them on the Mac because several years into Apple Silicon, even for universal and Apple Silicon native games, Steam won't release Steam that doesn't require rosetta (which I won't install).
Also, Steam charged those games' developers 30%. Which seems to really upset people when Apple charges that.
> 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.
> 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.
What’s the relevance of that? If that were the case the law should be to make everything available by the web which is inherently interoperable, which I think we both agree with, but still doesn’t have anything to do with Apple.
If it is de facto mandatory for a business to make an app for Apple’s store because of Apple’s market share of smartphones, and Apple uses their market power to influence those markets for apps to their own advantage (for example, crippling other web browser apps except Safari), that is anti-competitive and may be against the law.
It is not legal to use your power in one market to gain an upper hand in another different market.
EU tries to force apple to allow different browser engine but apple still don't want that - safari mobile is crippled and support for PWA is half baked on purpose. Most businesses (such as banks, dating apps, music apps) who would stick to support only Web with half baked user experience on iOS would loose to anyone who would provide native mobile app.
Maybe not the App Store fees, but they are paying the apple tax.
* $100/year for the developer account. You may think this is nothing for a bank, and you may be right, but it's still $100 more than it should be.
* MacBooks for every developer that should be able to work on the mobile app and every QA person that should be able to test the app on an emulator, even if they already have a windows/linux laptop. The Apple devtools only run on macos. There is no choice. If the org was not already running MacBooks they will be forced to do so now, and invest in everything that comes with it.
No more than it would be OK for government apps to support only iPhone.
What's your point here? AFAIK, there aren't any important government apps or bank apps that are exclusive to the iPhone, nor is there any pressure Apple is putting on banks or governments to be exclusive to them.
It sounds like you made a completely unjustifiable leap from "because of the popularity of the iPhone, governments and banks need to make sure they have iPhone apps (because it's discriminatory and irresponsible of basic services like these not to support a widely-used computing platform)" to "Apple is forcing governments and banks to exclusively support iPhone".
No they can’t because consumers have already made that choice. It’s done. We are talking about this moment in time, not some fantasy world where everyone ditched their iPhones.
It's a moot point... We're saying the same thing. Sure they could, if they wanted to immediately tank their business. You could set your house on fire. What's your point?
The point is you can have a valuable business without having any presence on Apple stores to begin with. If you disagree with that, well you’re just wrong.
We're not talking about a fart app. We're talking about multi-billion dollar businesses that have been entrenched in App Store for a decade. Exiting that market isn't an option. If it was an option they would have done it.
> The government seems to want to make it illegal to have a tight experience, but why? There are open alternatives.
> Buy another car.
That argument goes both ways.
Once Apple is forced by law to allow other app stores, then you are free to continue to just use the Apple app store.
Just don't install other app stores. It is even more trivial to do that. So please don't complain about other app stores in the future, as your own exact argument refutes it.
Apple and Tesla aren’t competing in the same market
> It’s like complaining that Teslas don’t support CarPlay
It would be like that if the Tesla dash App Store somehow generated $1.1T annual revenue while taking 30% off the top of third party app manufacturers, while using that revenue and their own competitive advantage (not paying 30%) to grow and erode secondary markets via their own first party apps
Why does the percent taken matter? How much is appropriate? Ultimately they’re transparent about the fee, the choice is the developers.
In any case there should be a way to put your phone into some insecure mode and then you can explicitly download any app you want, yes.
But about Tesla - if you could make money, lots of money, selling Tesla dash apps, who cares if they take 30%? The alternative is today, you don’t really make anything at all.
These are legitimate businesses taking aim at Apple's predatory anti-competitive behavior. If the percent taken was 0, there would be no case. Why does it matter? Because profit margins
> How much is appropriate?
It depends. That's what this case is about. In the case of Spotify, probably 0% because Apple is their largest direct competitor. It's the definition of anti-competitive.
> Ultimately they’re transparent about the fee, the choice is the developers.
Stop saying there's a choice... There's no choice. Again, that's what the whole case is about. The market is what it is. Consumers are using iPhones. A business like Spotify can't choose to reduce their revenue by 50%. They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders.
> if you could make money, lots of money, selling Tesla dash apps, who cares if they take 30%?
You keep missing the part where Apple is a direct competitor. So in this very terrible analogy, say my app was a music app, and after seeing that my music app is making lots and lots of money, Tesla releases their own music app, they would effectively earn 30% of my revenue and could freely use it to drive my business into the ground. 30% extra to advertise, do research and development, and acquire more music licenses. It's impossible to compete in a market where your competitor has their hands in your pockets. So in that (again very terrible) analogy, yes it would be anti-competitive, and who cares? I would.
We should agree to disagree. Perhaps in your world the government makes profit illegal and everyone is happy.
I will say your whole thing about Spotify reducing revenue by 50% is also just wrong. Apple along with others are the one who curated such users willing to pay to begin with. How much would they be making if the iPhone didn’t exist? If android didn’t exist? Clearly google and apple respectively should profit off their effort.
My last comment will be: despite what you keep on saying, companies do have a choice. That’s why there are both iOS and Android exclusive apps and businesses.
> Apple along with others are the one who curated such users willing to pay to begin with.
In what world is Apple responsible for curating the users of _music_? The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce curated those users. If Apple never existed, just as many people would still be listening to their music. For the last time, Apple created the App Store - the Market for apps, yet they also have their own music app. They're a direct competitor of Spotify, which is why their tax is anti-comptetitive.
> That’s why there are both iOS and Android exclusive apps and businesses.
Again, you're going in circles. I'm not talking about those businesses and never have been. It's existing businesses. They can't leave because their customers are using those devices... They're contractually obligated to their customers and shareholders. Perhaps in your world Apple makes profit illegal and everyone is happy.
Apple is not transparent about the fee at all. Developers are not allowed to use other payment processors, can't mention that prices are cheaper elsewhere, or tell users why the prices are higher.
Irrelevant. Monopoly doesn't mean coercing people into the market.
> easy to make alternatives to Apple products and easy to buy feature equivalent devices to Apple products
It's not only not easy, it's not possible. Your mistake is thinking of phones as computers. They are not computers, at least not to the vast majority of users. They are devices that connect to other compatible devices to do telecommunications. It's just like if plain old telephones ran a proprietary protocol and only one vendor could make them.
Let’s hear some examples? Even things like iMessage have fallback to SMS, not to mention dozens of alternatives that work on android, iOS and more. What’s the problem?
You know what the problem is. Nobody cares about technicalities, what matters is practicalities. You can't buy an iPhone from anyone but Apple. It's as simple as that. No, Android phones are not iPhone alternatives and you know damn well they are not.
Depends on how you use the devices. For many or most users, it's possible they are nearly equivalent. For some, iOS does offer things Android does not. Media creators get access to different kinds of software on iOS than on Android, similar to certain software that is only on macOS. It can make a difference to that sort of userbase. Similar to how if you are into gaming, other desktop platforms are better than macOS. There are also some aspects of the underlying technology that in practice can make a difference. CoreAudio on iOS blows Android out of the water, and the huge ecosystem of electronic music creation software for that platform is very different than what you get with Android.
The difference is cars don't interoperate with each other, they operate with the road and the road is an open and public platform. Not only do you not have to buy a Tesla to use the road, you don't even have to use a car.
> I assert it is trivial to not buy Apple products, easy to make alternatives to Apple products and easy to buy feature equivalent devices to Apple products.
Swap the name Apple with Microsoft and you might see a different perspective. Microsoft was beaten over the head for anti-competitive practices with browsers back in the day and Apple is behaving no different. It's easily arguable that they are behaving much worse in multiple aspects to what Microsoft was up to.
I fear we're going to see this argument in absolutely every thread on this topic for the next few years and it's going to be argued ad nauseam. "You can just buy an Android phone" barely scratches the surface of the arguments being made.
For example (given the EU gives great context to this): Apple owns and maintains the only App Store that's allowed on the iOS platform. So they have a monopoly on the iOS app market. Is that right and fair? I'm sure plenty will read that want to reply "yes of course it's fair, Apple can do what they want with their own platform" but that's your opinion. Controlled app stores are a dramatic shift from the way software used to be distributed and as a society/whatever we've never actually had a discussion about it. It just happened.
> The government seems to want to make it illegal to have a tight experience, but why?
I'd argue the government seems to want to make it illegal for a tight experience to be the only experience available. And it's not hard to see the argument for why: competition is good. Multiple app stores or whatever would open up the market, Apple would have to make the case for why they should get 15/30% of an app developer's revenue. They might be able to make that case very easily, they might not. But a monopoly means they don't even have to try.
IMO talking solely about Apple and/or arguing about whether they have a "monopoly" isn't going to be that effective (sorry DOJ). The reality is that we live in a world that requires us to be connected, that connection is currently controlled almost exclusively by two tech giants to the extent that even a slightly smaller tech giant, Microsoft, utterly failed in launching a competitive third platform. Is this duopoly good for us as a society? Is it what we actually want? It's fair to at least be asking the question.
Can a argument be made that by not supporting other software on their platform, essentially platform is inhibiting competition, which hinders true price discovery and customer loses ? Like if cars don't allow other FSD on their platform, what choice does the customer has.
Yeah, cars should totally allow third party FSD integrations, provided they are certified to be safe. We can't risk pedestrians getting hurt just so we can have more app choices.
But side-loading apps or having an alternative App Store only exposes you to liability, not other people. So it's not the same thing. We should be free on our own risk.
The problem is monopolization of markets that are typically contestable. All computers are Turing machines and all the code is just assembly. There is zero technical rationale for the restrictions Apple imposes. And the assumption in free market capitalism is that of competition. In tech world this means adversarial interoperability. Which, by the fun fact, is how every current Big Tech company grew. Facebook used to interoperate with MySpace in dislike of MySpace in a manner that today we would even categorize as infringing on IP laws. Adversarial interoperability is demonstrably beneficial for the user. When a company implements social and technical barriers to it, the state has all the right to reign in such behaviour in the benefit of markets being contestable.
Their platform is big enough that it affects the market even if you never use their products. Idiotic decisions that they make can ooze into other unrelated products in order to compete with them. Try buying a flagship Android with a microSD slot and a headphone jack. Now recall where the trend of eliminating those two things came from. The average consumer is not very keen to these things. They see the biggest player, Apple, gut a feature and lie to them about it being a good thing, and they will believe it. Now to recapture the average consumer the other players in the market have to adhere to those changes.
> There are android phones that are superior to iPhones
Sorry to report this is not true for my grandparents, father, mother, brother and sister and in fact my entire extended family. iOS is far easier to use by a thousand miles. Just some anecdata.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. The USA is a surveillance state and Apple’s security posture combined with its market share is a considerable hindrance. The arguments against anti-competitive and consumer-hostile mechanisms ad nauseam pale in comparison to this. I very much want to see real numbers, perhaps survey data, supporting the narrative that customers are locked in, unhappy with their experience, or otherwise underserved by Apple. Because IRL, I see nothing but happy customers.
The majority of people I see complaining about apple’s walled garden ecosystem are people who are also proud to admit they don’t use apple products. It’s never made sense to me why people who don’t even use the products care so much about it. If people wanted to be able to do the things they claim they want to, they would switch to android but they don’t.
I have never understood the inverse: Apple users defending their lack of features. Being able to send iMessages to your Android user friends or install software that you wrote without paying extra would only benefit you, yet you vehemently reject having the ability to do so for no apparent reason. "Security" is the word I see thrown around which doesn't make too much sense to me given that you can do all these things and be secure already on basically any desktop environment. What makes phones the special exception? Is phone architecture exceptionally insecure by default or something?
You really think there’s no reason whatsoever? I have to believe that’s disingenuous. It’s just a phone to me and all I need is basic phone features to work. That’s also the reason I’m still using my iPhone X, it works as a phone and for basic tasks if I don’t want to get onto my computer or grab my laptop. I care more about my phone simply working than having additional features I don’t value. I don’t want to have to download multiple app stores in order to get specific apps. I already have to deal with that when it comes to epic on PC and it’s a pain in the ass. It also is going to make having to help the tech support for the technically challenged in my family so much more of a pain. There is a platform available if I want the features and capabilities you’re bringing up. I’m not telling anyone that their android is a bad choice or that it doesn’t work for them. Why do android users constantly seem to be telling me to be unhappy with the iPhone and that I need things I don’t want.
The only point that you’ve mentioned that can be annoying is sending a video to a friend with an android but it’s not a big enough of an issue that I care enough to do anything about it considering google photos and or an iCloud link is easy.
> The only point that you’ve mentioned that can be annoying is sending a video to a friend with an android but it’s not a big enough of an issue that I care enough to do anything about it
...except defend Apple at every given opportunity when it would be just as easy to ask them to fix it so it wouldn't be as annoying, or even ignore the discussion altogether. That is the mentality I don't get. If it works for you, great. Clearly it doesn't work for others. Why go out of your way to tell them that their problems are invalid?
What about it do you not get? I said it’s an inconvenience but not a huge issue. There are many ways of getting around it and iMessage only exists because of the way carriers used to charge for texting. I clearly said I wish it wasn’t the case but it’s just not impactful enough to me to really care about it. You’ll notice that most iPhone users don’t really care about the way android runs or works but a whole lot of android user seem to get really offended that iPhones aren’t androids and that iPhone users don’t care about that.
But clearly there are plenty of iPhone users who do care to install their own software. One solid way to tell is that if there weren't then there wouldn't be an iOS homebrew scene. Is your point then is that because you personally don't care that nothing should improve? I just don't see why you would even enter this discussion if you don't care. What compels you to jump to Apple's defense by downplaying real issues and falsely claiming nobody who has an iPhone has them?
> given that you can do all these things and be secure already on basically any desktop environment
My grandma had her bank account drained by a scammer who walked her through how to install a bank-looking app on her phone because android allows sideloading. I cannot fix my grandma. I can get her an iPhone.
"Oh, but computers...."
No. No scammer will walk her through apt-getting something that will mess with her bank account access in firefox on the ubuntu linux box we left her. Too many variations. Phones are easier targets as there are only two OSs.
Sorry that happened to you. I have worked with a lot of elderly people in the past and it is always a shame when that happens to them. You are right that you can't really "fix" them. Even if you lock down iMessage and prevent sideloading, scammers will still send them to phishing pages in their browsers, or get them to read out a gift card over the phone. These methods are actually way, way more common than getting them to install a malicious sideloaded app. Ultimately I think Apple's anticompetitive tactics had no bearing on your grandmother being scammed.
If their tight experience is so superior, why do they restrict competition? Wouldn't they win anyways?
IMO it's clear that without abusing its position, we would actually have competition for all of the bundled services from Apple.
But this is capitalism. The ultimate goal is always monopoly, so they'll keep chasing that by whatever means necessary.
>easy to make alternatives to Apple products
What? This is plain false. Entering this market is extremely expensive and hard to do. The duopoly is there for a reason. Even giants like Microsoft tried to enter it and couldn't.
> If their tight experience is so superior, why do they restrict competition? Wouldn't they win anyways?
iOS today regularly updates with improvements across the full software stack, up to the Apple apps themselves. Sometimes these changes are major. In the world the justice department is asking for, big changes to —for example, Messages app— would have to be coordinated with every app developer in that category. Changes would takes much, much longer, and in many cases would have to be watered down.
If you're genuinely interested in this below are a couple things you could read to help get some background. Its actually a pretty fascinating history.
Judging by your phrasing, your interpretation of antitrust stems from Robert Bork and has been the mainstream thought for a long time. Read The Antitrust Paradox by him to see how we got here and why the courts have acted how they have for the past 40 years.
The current chair of the FTC, Lina Khan, was actually an academic prior to working for the government and has a long paper trail of how she interprets the law. In short (and extremely oversimplified), it modernizes the Brandeis interpretation that bigness is bad for society in general, regardless of consumer pricing. EX: If Apple were a country its GDP would surpass the GDPs of all but four nations. They argue this is bad flat out.
Can't say it was the only cause, but Khan's paper, Amazon's Antitrust Paradox - note the reference to Bork's book - is partially what resparked a renewed interest in antitrust for the modern era if you want to check it out.
The 0.01% who hate apple anyway can't live without the need to turn the iphone into an android because it's what's good for the children (users). It's really amazing the lengths folks talk about how superior android on these threads and apple is the root of all evil.
The other 99.9% could care less and I predict they will be unhappy with the results of forced-enshitification of iOS.
In lieu of this what is the problem? If the government has a problem why not say any code should be able to be run on any device?
Honestly I’m curious - what’s the problem? There are android phones that are superior to iPhones and let you run anything you want. Why don’t people buy those?
The government seems to want to make it illegal to have a tight experience, but why? There are open alternatives. It’s like complaining that Teslas don’t support CarPlay. Valid, but does it require legislation? Buy another car.
FWIW I would love if the government made it so all devices should have an option to run any of your arbitrary code.