Consumer harm is pretty easy to argue, Apple doesn&#x27;t tax macos programs but it does tax ios programs. That argument results in billions of dollars of consumer harm. There are many arguments against that view as well, but I just wanted to show that it is easy to argue for consumer harm.

Here is a recent example of consumer harm posted to HN: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39773736">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39773736</a>&gt; I am curious though, why is the iOS version €4.99 but the Android version is free ? I&#x27;ve seen this a lot actually and have always wondered, I figured it might just be Apple&#x27;s annual developer license fee but not sure.Apple users are being forced to pay more for equivalent software because of Apple&#x27;s tax.

US anti-monopoly law is worded requiring proof of &quot;consumer harm&quot; which is normally measured in increased costs?This is more a matter of interpretation, policy and practice rather than statute and these things can change over time. The interpretation you&#x27;re describing was itself an innovation at one time.

“Your honor, my family has to suffer the Green Bubble when chatting with iPhone friends. This has caused us irreparable mental harm and anguish”.

IANAL but that has been the modern interpretation whereas in the past that wasn&#x27;t the case. Standard Oil was good for the consumer for example.

Isn&#x27;t part of the problem how US anti-monopoly law is worded requiring proof of &quot;consumer harm&quot; which is normally measured in increased costs? In the case of Apple&#x27;s monopoly, its not clear how you would measure that let alone prove it to a court.

They have a remarkably durable market share.  Some people are in effect forced to choose apple since apps they need (in some cases medical apps!) are iPhone only as the seller just does not bother with android.

There&#x27;s approximately 2 app stores, I wouldn&#x27;t call that competition.Even in the most egregious days of Microsoft&#x27;s OS monopoly, you could still choose to install software. Apple makes it basically impossible to do this outside of the context of their app store, which they charge heavily for access to and have no qualms removing or preventing apps that compete with its own. If this doesn&#x27;t constitute monopolistic behavior, the bar is so high I&#x27;m not sure anything would ever qualify for it.

There is one competing phone platform with a store that has conveniently decided on identical fees. It&#x27;s a duopoly. But also one where you can only shop with one of them.The comparison is this: Walmart and Target are the only two stores that exist. They&#x27;ve also basically agreed to set the same prices on everything. And once you buy from Target once, you must buy everything else from Target too, and if you want to switch to Walmart, you have to throw out everything you bought at Target.

If Walmart had a 60% market share then yes the JD would be on their balls for store brands.

How is this even a monopoly? That&#x27;s like saying &quot;Walmart has a monopoly on selling products at its stores.&quot; There are thousands of competing phones with their own software and app stores.

IANAL but it&#x27;s baffling to me that this one took so long.  This has been the clearest-cut abuse of monopoly in tech for a long time.  Why did they waste time trying to convince judges that &quot;free&quot; could be monopoly pricing, when this was in broad daylight?

Inevitable settlement with no real change in the market dynamics, or am I too down on the U.S. Justice system?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;magnolia1234&#x2F;bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;magnolia1234&#x2F;bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...</a>

well, it still has the login stuff but just further down. -_-

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20240321143739&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;21&#x2F;technology&#x2F;apple-doj-lawsuit-antitrust.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20240321143739&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytim...</a>

This case has very little overlap with the Epic suite other than one of the defendants being the same.I’m also curious what illegal confidential behaviour you believe was found in the Epic case? The one count that the judge found in favour of Epic didn’t require any form of discovery as it was based on public policy.

Tim Sweeney didn&#x27;t get it done, so the US government will pick up the slack. I imagine they were waiting to see if Epic won before trying the case themselves, but Biden may have wanted to make sure it got moving before the election may take it out of his hands.One of the most impressive successes in Epic&#x27;s cases was just dragging the evidence into the open. A lot of illegal behavior is hidden in confidential agreements mostly to keep them out of regulators&#x27; view for as long as possible.

&gt; it&#x27;s all about collecting the rentWhich is not illegal.

Charging 30% is outrageous to me, but it also appears to be the standard used by almost all of their competitors. It&#x27;ll be interesting to see how the government convicts Apple of doing something that almost all other large companies are doing.It&#x27;s a no-win situation for them. If once they established themselves as the dominant player in the cell phone market they started undercutting everyone else on fees that could also be seen as predatory.

They will make that argument, and the government will point out that Apple is trying to charge 27% everywhere those choice decisions were taken away, pretty conclusively proving... it&#x27;s all about collecting the rent.

The arguments about performance and security aren&#x27;t about whether Apple could open up, but about whether they should. The changes in the EU will answer the latter, but slowly.

I&#x27;m (legitimately) curious could the fact that (almost) all of that is now open in the EU due to their laws but not the US. Would that hurt their argument since they blocked off the change from the US. Or would that all be solved by a statement along the lines of &quot;Well, EU iPhones are now less secure.&quot;

The facts were different in the Microsoft case. If they had built in Internet Explorer as a &quot;free&quot; feature in a Windows upgrade it would have been tough to prove anticompetitive behavior. But they originally sold IE as a separate product, like as boxes in retail stores. They only bundled it with Windows later and there was clear evidence during the trial that they made the change specifically to kill Netscape.

A bit of hyperbole, but otherwise a fair assessment based on my readings. HBR has a piece from 2017 on this.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;12&#x2F;the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s-antitrust-movement" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hbr.org&#x2F;2017&#x2F;12&#x2F;the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s...</a>The golden era of anti-trust was 1940s-1970s, but faded with the rise of the Chicago School of Economics.It does indeed seem to be coming back more now.

The US government has let its definition for monopolistic behavior slip so much over the last few decades I don&#x27;t think you could successfully prosecute for anything short of sending thugs to break your competitors&#x27; kneecaps. The days when the DOJ would prosecute a company for including a web browser with an OS are long gone.

Sometimes these lawsuits are filed not strictly for legal reasons but to put pressure on companies, or as political payback to certain special interest groups (election year). Even if the case is eventually thrown out of court it may succeed in shifting Apple&#x27;s behavior.

Yes, there is a lot of discretion in what cases are brought, and if a new administration comes in next year this may be dismissed&#x2F;deprioritized. Still, I doubt Tim or other Apple employees will be making many donations to Biden&#x27;s challenger! (Shareholders might be a different story.)Even if the case continues, it will be a challenge to win. Apple has asymmetric information and knows what they can use to defend the various allegations.

it&#x27;s quite often shot down by judges as well too because of the vagueries in laws, it&#x27;s a two edge sword and you&#x27;re commonly at the whim of the trial jurisdiction. Just look at recent 5th circuit vs most other circuits.

It seems easy to prove to me; anti-trust law is intentionally vague and broad to allow the government to prosecute all kinds of monopoly tactics.  Apple had the option to give a warning to users that using an alternative app store may risk security.  It doesn&#x27;t have to block it all-together.  Same with Apple Wallet.

Legacy decision? Would they do the same starting a new desktop OS today? Much more high risk personal data on an iPhone (e.g. health data, biometrics) requiring stricter security? Many more sensors which could be abused by nefarious actors on iOS (GPS, lots of mics, lidar, cameras, etc) and these are always with us?

Performance is less of an issue on computers because battery life isn’t as much of a concern. Also, they allow other messaging and payments on iOS just like they do on MacOS. They just don’t offer the unique payment chip access on iOS to third parties.

If a hacker got full remote access to my phone it’d be a complete and utter disaster. Especially since the phone itself is considered a two factor authentication device by several services and my employer.And the attack vectors are more numerous. I have ten times as many apps on my phones, it’s always on, always connected, and may frequently connect to wifi networks I don’t fully trust.The consequences and the attack vectors for a hacker to attack my laptop are fewer.I’m on the side of wanting Apple to open up a bit more. But I it’s absolutely valid to want the iPhone to be more secure than a laptop. And I seriously hope Apple isn’t forced to let people install apps that aren’t signed and reviewed. I can guarantee you that critical services in your life will force you to install insecure and straight up dangerous apps. The banking sector in some countries is a prime example of that, especially back in the ActiveX era.

&gt; Apple will argue that security and&#x2F;or performance reasons drove their decisions related to browser choice, messaging, and Apple walletThen why, for the sake of the argument, do they allow third party browsers, messaging and payments on MacOS ?!?Apple makes it sound like MacOS is horribly insecure.

End to end encryption can only be guaranteed if you control both ends.

I think they&#x27;ll claim security for Messages. I don&#x27;t have nearly enough information to know if they can win that particular issue, and it sounds like there are reasonable arguments on both sides. But they don&#x27;t have a monopoly on messaging — WhatsApp is huge, Signal and others exist. I don&#x27;t think Apple lets you use Siri to send messages via other services, or at least they didn&#x27;t used to let you. But other than that they are granted near parity on iOS.

The messaging claim seemed to be about carrier based messaging; SMS and MMS, and I guess in theory RCS (but is that really carrier based if Google has taken it upon themselves to enroll most Android users on a Google server)Apps that read inbound SMS may be malicious and use that ability to steal verification codes. Or they may not be actively malicious, and meerly handle the data in an insecure way that makes messages available to others.Performance, I dunno. Maybe they could argue something about how time between user requesting an SMS be sent and it actually getting sent is very important, and similar for display, and that they&#x27;re more likely to do that right. I&#x27;ve certainly seen some Android manufacturer provided SMS clients that do much better than others on that, although I have no recent performance notes since I no longer get massive floods of SMS from too simple monitoring systems.

Security: there’s no cross platform E2E messaging standard they could have adopted. Given that the DoJ is already breathing down their neck for working with Google on search, using Google’s RCS extensions and servers might also be problematic.I don’t think the government could force them to adopt RCS without new legislation or bring iMessage to other platforms.

How do you think they would spin Messages interoperability as security or performance?

I&#x27;m guessing the plan is to cast a wide net, then hope that you can dredge up some incriminating or morally ambiguous quotes during discovery. When you have a company of 100,000+ people, there&#x27;s probably some &quot;haha we&#x27;re killing the competition&quot; in there, which you can then use to prop up the case.And then either use that to win the trial, or force Apple into settling.

They may or may not prevail, but in the meantime they will likely have to slam the brakes on any closed feature developments. That alone is good for consumers.

&gt; As I was reading the specific charges detailed in the article, I was thinking this case seems like a stretch and will be difficult to prove.If this case is thrown off how long can it take for them to make another antitrust case with a different set of stronger arguments ?Given that they started in 2019 for this one, if lost there is real risk of waiting another 5 years for any meaningful change.

&gt; If the definitions set forth by the DOJ are accepted by courts, this is a slam dunk on Apple.This is a very low bar. It is of course the case that if you assume one party&#x27;s definitions are accepted then they will win. The battlefield will be the definitions (just like in patent law the battlefield is the claim construction).

The article leaves out a ton over the actual compliant &#x2F;&#x2F; filed in Eastern NJ for a reason. They must be going for Verizon or Samsung witnesses? If the definitions set forth by the DOJ are accepted by courts, this is a slam dunk on Apple. If Apple can redefine things like &#x27;Super Apps&#x27; and &#x27;Mini Apps,&#x27; then this thing is a wet paper bag.Personally I see avenues for both outcomes.

Yeah it&#x27;ll be interesting to see (via discovery) whether Apple has policies like Google&#x27;s regarding &quot;words not to use&quot;.

&quot;the reality that in 2024 their software kind of sucks, and that their customers only use it because they don&#x27;t have alternative&quot;That&#x27;s an extremely hot take. When devices are mostly just slabs of glass and the interface and what is done, is entirely the software, customers are choosing the device based on the Apple software, not in spite of it.

I don’t think those emails are so damning.  A company should not be required to write software for its main competitor platform, just to make it easier for people to adopt its main competitor platform.

&gt; Apple will argue that security and&#x2F;or performance reasons drove their decisions related to browser choiceThat&#x27;s true, but odds are they have a lot of e-mails and a lot of employees who can testify to the browser choice decision being driven by lock-in. The iMessage emails were pretty unambiguous with regards to how it is used in an anti-consumer way. (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;4&#x2F;9&#x2F;22375128&#x2F;apple-imessage-android-ecosystem-lock-in-epic-games-filings-app-store-dispute" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;4&#x2F;9&#x2F;22375128&#x2F;apple-imessage-an...</a>) Similar stuff will exist for everything they do, because they cannot distort the reality that in 2024 their software kind of sucks, and that their customers only use it because they don&#x27;t have alternatives and Apple prevents those alternatives from being viable.

Perhaps, but I&#x27;m glad they&#x27;re at least trying.

The eu case seemed to make more sense and was pro consumer: open up messaging &#x2F; App Store and switch to usb c.This one seems different at first glance,

Nah, users really are dumb and really will follow steps that will result in malware getting on their devices. This happens all of the time in Android-land. Burying the setting won’t change this, people will follow tutorials to disable the security protections if they think it will get them the content they want (and, in some cases, it will, wrt pirate apps etc).There’s no real way to square the circle: either Apple (and the state) has realtime app censorship control (nominally for malware, as well as any other thing the state or Apple’s business model feels existentially threatened by), or the user can install any app they want, with all of the associated risks. Even with notarization and self-distribution you’re still in the first category because the state can compel Apple to treat protest apps or non-backdoored e2ee messaging apps the exact same as they do malware, and prevent them from launching.Users mostly want the former, because most users aren’t worried about government censorship or oppression. Tech people and cypherpunks and pirates and protesters usually want the latter. Tech people usually want the former for their parents&#x2F;grandparents for whom they serve as device sysadmin.

People waved the EU case away with the same argument. Actually it is a kind of iArgument.However nobody buys it besides their most loyal customers.

&gt;&gt; I question the wisdom of it, but the idea of this aggressive antitrust enforcement, which so far has more strikes than hitsWe only really take these up when they are blatant (price fixing, apple and books, MS and vendors). Or lock ins where there is NO alternative (MS and browsers). This doesn&#x27;t really meet those bars.If Apple wins this one at home, then they can quickly cry about other countries regulations being &quot;anti competitive&quot;.I have to wonder if this political on some level.

I think you&#x27;re right: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thebignewsletter.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;whats-coming-in-2024-on-the-monopoly" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thebignewsletter.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;whats-coming-in-2024-on-t...</a>

I agree and I question the wisdom of it, but the idea of this aggressive antitrust enforcement, which so far has more strikes than hits, seems to be to make a grinding, years- (or even decades-) long push to shift the understanding of what antitrust is and make major changes to the landscape; kind of an inverse of what the conservatives have been able to do with various issues, where their positions were initially laughed out of the room but now have the weight of Supreme Court decisions behind them decades later.

Every employee that joins Apple goes through a course that teaches a few case studies about Apple&#x27;s culture. One of those is how Steve Jobs made the decision to kill Flash. IMHO it was a no brainer and if this sort of thing needs to be litigated in court, it&#x27;s a travesty.

I&#x27;m not a lawyer, but I agree. I was alive and working when the US brought it&#x27;s antitrust case against Microsoft back in the early 2000&#x27;s.This feels like a vastly different case, and not one that they&#x27;ll likely be able to win against Apple.

The EU legislation wouldn’t fly for a second in the US system of law.

Well, The Justice Department at least can&#x27;t do that, because they can&#x27;t write laws.

It seems to me the US would be better off copy-pasting EU regulation than trying to smush apples behavior into old school antitrust violations.

&gt; Apple will argue that security and&#x2F;or performance reasons drove their decisions related to browser choiceDidn&#x27;t work in Europe. The alternative browser growth in Europe is massive. Literally, an industry revitalized overnight.

This is a false narrative. iPhones back up full message history and all photos by default in a non-e2ee fashion that is easily readable by both Apple and the government unless the user and everyone they message with specifically opts into e2ee (which approximately nobody has, even in tech circles).There is no “going dark” issue on iOS platforms. Apple has played ball in full with the USG on that front. In fact, Android backups are e2ee so the government can get more data from Apple on iPhone users than they can get from Google for Android users.

Perhaps this is essentially more lawfare against a party antagonistic to the political aims of Washington players. We know that our national (as well as state) law enforcement entities have been alleging for more than a decade now that Apple&#x27;s encryption practices stymie their efforts to catch &quot;bad guys.&quot; What better way to put back room pressure on a company.

yeah its a novel expansion of antitrust law to say that merely maintaining features that the market chose is an antitrust violationif you weren’t anticompetitive to get to that place, thats been good enough?

&gt; The Justice Department, which began its investigation into Apple in 2019, chose to build a broader and more ambitious case than any other regulator has brought against the company.As I was reading the specific charges detailed in the article, I was thinking this case seems like a stretch and will be difficult to prove. Apple will argue that security and&#x2F;or performance reasons drove their decisions related to browser choice, messaging, and Apple wallet. FWIW, I am a former lawyer and spent a little time doing antitrust law for the CA DOJ, a long time ago. Just my two cents.

&gt; ...rest of users should be allowed to leave it whenever they want (at the very minimum at their own risk).You can, though? Just go buy an Android. There are a billion different options there.Heck, you can also still buy old-school type flip phones at Walmart.

I’m fine with more app stores, let others compete, and ideally compete on review security.

The problem with this is that going outside of Apple&#x27;s walled garden benefits 3rd parties who would prefer to do whatever they want so to use the same apps as before, everyone will have to submit to that risk. Apple&#x27;s walled garden is a type of regulation.

You should be allowed to stay inside Apple&#x27;s walled garden while the rest of users should be allowed to leave it whenever they want (at the very minimum at their own risk).

&gt; There is a plethora of evidence that this is not the case.Do you have actual evidence for this claim? Because it&#x27;s pretty widely accepted that the App Store has higher standards and quality, and you just cited a single case.

It&#x27;s always easy to show that something isn&#x27;t perfect: just find a counterexample.It&#x27;s also easy to multiply that tactic by insinuating that this means that it isn&#x27;t good, or isn&#x27;t better than the competition. Which is what you&#x27;re doing here.

&gt; I am willing (and believe I am) paying Apple a premium for a well curated and reviewed App Store (vs android)There is a plethora of evidence that this is not the case. See this recent example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;02&#x2F;08&#x2F;a-fake-app-masquerading-as-password-manager-lastpass-just-got-pulled-from-the-app-store&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;02&#x2F;08&#x2F;a-fake-app-masquerading-as...</a>(Yes, it was pulled, but that was _after_ the public noticed and LastPass had to issue a warning)&gt; I just wish they would stop “double dipping “ and charging far in excess of their costs (and in excess of reasonable profit) to the app sellers.That quarterly growth has to come from somewhere! Line goes up!

That used to be my stance as well, but the App Store has gotten so bad in recent years. These days if there’s an app I want to install, it’s much easier to find the app store link on the developers page than to search in the App Store. At this point the “user experience” argument isn’t really there beyond easy payments and subscription management.

&gt;A premium for a well curated and reviewed App StoreJust 8 days ago: 
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39685272">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39685272</a>

&gt; I do not understand why Microsoft stepped out of the mobile market.Because they failed. And not just once!

This is apart of why I use Android.It&#x27;s understood that you can install random APKs from anywhere. As a hobbyist developer, I want to be able to set up a GitHub pipeline and then just download my APKs from that without fighting Apple or paying for an Apple developer account.I&#x27;m actually open to buying an iPhone as well, iPhones are much better when it comes to music production, by understand I have to abide by Apple&#x27;s rules and not be able to install my own software.

As long as I have to pay Apple a yearly developer fee so that I can load my own software (that no one else will use) on to &#x27;my&#x27; phone, it does not belong me. Yes I know you can reload it every week. Not my phone.I do not understand why Microsoft stepped out of the mobile market.

To add more evidence to your point: SJ loved wall gardens and consistently fought against extensibility. The Apple II only got extension slots because the other Steve insisted. All of the compact Macs have very limited to no extensibility.It&#x27;s so ironic that Apple was pushing the (open) Web apps in the early days of the iPhone (out of necessity of course).

When the iPhone App Store first launched, Steve Jobs claimed[0] the 30% was to cover the cost of certifying software as functional, well-designed, and nonmalicious. Part of it was an ego thing too: he didn&#x27;t want people fucking up apps and making his pet project look bad, so early App Review focused on a lot of UI polish things in order to make people think iPhone software was just inherently better than Android.Even a few years in there&#x27;s already evidence that Apple was entirely aware of how much of a cash cow owning the distribution market for your apps is. There&#x27;s an internal letter asking about reducing the percentage because someone was worried about the Chrome Web Store (?) eating their lunch. Today, App Review is far too inadequate for the level of software submissions Apple gets, and they regularly let garbage onto the store that&#x27;s specifically supposed to be curated.I occasionally hear people complain about how Tim Cook &quot;ruined the company&quot; and that Jobs would never do the kind of control freak shit that he literally pioneered and is literally the selling proposition of the Mac all the way back in 1984. The only thing Tim Cook did was scale the business from &quot;luxury compute&quot; to it&#x27;s inevitable conclusion as a monopolistic nightmare. The way that the App Store business game is played is specifically that you don&#x27;t keep spending all your money on better app review. Once you have users and developers mutually hooked on one another, you siphon money out of them for your other projects (or your shareholders).At one point, you were paying a premium for a better App Store, but not anymore. The business relationship just doesn&#x27;t work out that way long-term.[0] I personally think this belief was genuine at first.

It isn’t that well-curated though: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39685272">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39685272</a>

As an iPhone user I am willing (and believe I am) paying Apple a premium for a well curated and reviewed App Store (vs android).  I just wish they would stop “double dipping “ and charging far in excess of their costs (and in excess of reasonable profit) to the app sellers.

You&#x27;re right - I didn&#x27;t think of the App Store. That&#x27;s a proper monopoly. &quot;Services&quot; are 23b out of 120b in total sales for them last quarter, but at a much higher margin. It cost them 6b to provide those services, but 58b to make 96b worth of hardware.Looks like 1&#x2F;3 of their gross comes from services.Only some of the services are App Store - some of that money is from Apple TV and iCloud storage.App Store income looks to be app fees and also advertising.

And then, they make much much better margins on the App Store.

Apple’s 26% is a net margin - I’m sure their gross on an iPhone is a healthy amount

For practically any hardware startup if their margins aren&#x27;t &gt;33% they will fail to scale, wither on the vine, and die.My employer makes space hardware and our overhead R&amp;D expenses are so high that if we made 26% margin we would be bankrupt in a year.So I think ~30% is probably a minimum floor to shoot for.Just looked it up and Samsung Electronics has a margin that has ranged from 30% to 46% over the last couple of years.I think the majority of people on HN are software guys who are completely oblivious to the challenges of building physical items that exist in the real world which is why your comment is downvoted.That and beyond its stated purpose it seems that HN exists to allow people to complain about Apple in a public forum.What makes all of this so strange is that large software vendors often have astronomical profit margins that hardware companies can only dream of. SAP (~70%) MSFT (~70%) TEAM (&gt;80%)<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ycharts.com&#x2F;companies&#x2F;SAP&#x2F;gross_profit_margin" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ycharts.com&#x2F;companies&#x2F;SAP&#x2F;gross_profit_margin</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ycharts.com&#x2F;companies&#x2F;MSFT&#x2F;gross_profit_margin" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ycharts.com&#x2F;companies&#x2F;MSFT&#x2F;gross_profit_margin</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ycharts.com&#x2F;companies&#x2F;TEAM&#x2F;gross_profit_margin" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ycharts.com&#x2F;companies&#x2F;TEAM&#x2F;gross_profit_margin</a>Perhaps it is good that software companies have such high margins because if they didn&#x27;t HN would be flooded with stories about how every company they get hired at goes out of business and management is clueless.

Perhaps a hardware engineer can help me out here, but I don&#x27;t think Apple makes an unreasonable margin on the iPhone. Overall they make 26% [0]. Really quite reasonable considering highly-developed proprietary software is bundled with the deviceThey make a lot of money because they sell * a lot * of iPhones.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;valustox.com&#x2F;AAPL" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;valustox.com&#x2F;AAPL</a>

That&#x27;s a reason someone might prefer Apple&#x27;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?

Why do you think that apple should get to make this choice for their users?If they are so concerned with not letting their users drain the battery if they wish, why do they allow games on their store?

Most Macs sold are Macbooks that also have batteries

On the browser front, it’s easy. iPhones have batteries so battery life is a concern. That’s why Apple treats them differently than Macintosh computers, which you can choose your own default browser engine for.

Nit: you can install other browsers, but not other browser engines.It might prove to be a significant difference in terms of how it affects competitors as a product.

&gt; you aren&#x27;t allowed to install another browserCurrently, anyone can create a new iPhone browser, but with one huge restriction: Apple insists that it uses the same WebKit rendering engine as Safari. [0]And currently you can also delete Safari from your iOS device. An example of this is Firefox [1].0. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;9to5mac.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;02&#x2F;07&#x2F;new-iphone-browsers&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;9to5mac.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;02&#x2F;07&#x2F;new-iphone-browsers&#x2F;</a>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;firefox-private-safe-browser&#x2F;id989804926" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;firefox-private-safe-browser&#x2F;i...</a>

&gt; yes safari is preinstalled but on an iphone you aren&#x27;t allowed to install another browserA browser is a product, and you can install many other browsers.A HTML rendering engine is a software library, and you can not install another HTML rendering engine.The justice department definitely cares about products. It&#x27;s not clear to what degree it cares about software libraries.

yes safari is preinstalled but on an iphone you aren&#x27;t allowed to install another browser (in this jurisdiction) so there&#x27;s technically no precedent yet

Or operating systems: things like BeOS, OS&#x2F;2, and Linux couldn’t be offered on a given model without paying for a Windows license or giving up volume pricing for the entire line.

One of the big factors was that Microsoft were doing things like paying OEMs to not include other browsers. This was also the crux of the issue in Epic v Google recently.

iOS started out closed and stayed that way for various reasons. Windows OS started with the ability of users to make various choices. One of those choices had to do with web browsers. MS&#x27;s crime was &quot;the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs.&quot;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...</a>.

&gt; but Android is a real competitor even thereIs it though? On the hardware side sure but on the software side I don&#x27;t see any competition. Both stores have close to identical practices and do not look like they compete over to get developers onboard. The only pricing change ever made was also made in reaction to an antitrust lawsuit and copied verbatim.While not a strict monopoly, the lack of competition in this area between the only two players seems obvious.

What is meant by &quot;monopoly&quot; has been evolving, and a majority share acquired through anticompetitive means could be enough to warrant government action.

You use the term Android like it is a corporation or a brand. Are you comparing iOS to Android OS or Apple to Samsung, Google etc.? I agree that Apple commands a relatively small share of the US mobile ecosystem, but where do the competitors stand?

&gt; Is Apple even a monopoly though?Do they have pricing power? You can select any boundaries you want for markets to come up with any market share number you want, but the key empirical test is is there actual substitution effect or does Apple have the ability to charge monopoly rents. One of the major points of walled gardens is to create vendor lock-in and prevent price conpetition, and Apple has been masterful at that.

You&#x27;re mixing the literal definition of monopoly with anti-trust laws. They have over half the market as a single company and the rest of the market is actually a fragmented zone of other companies so yes I think they are. You don&#x27;t have to own the entire market to run afoul of monopoly laws they don&#x27;t require there to be literally only one choice in the market.

This depends on one important question: What is the relevant market? This is a fundamental question in all antitrust law cases:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Relevant_market" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Relevant_market</a>If the relevant market is found to be &quot;Apps on iOS&quot;, or &quot;Flagships phones in the US&quot;, Apple is more likely to be considered having a monopoly position than if the market is &quot;phones in the world&quot;. The courts will have to decide on what the market is before deciding if Apple has monopoly power or not.

Why do the app store policies and prices look so similar between iOS and Android? What competitive forces are going to change a duopoly with soft collusion?

&gt; Is Apple even a monopoly though?Apple has a monopoly though it&#x27;s AppStore on over 2 billion devices though which it conducts $90,000,000,000 a year. That&#x27;s more than a lot of countries GDP combined.Saying Apple doesn&#x27;t have a 90%+ share of phone market is irrelevant.The question though, is if Apple as the Platform (phone) provider, maintains it&#x27;s monopoly (AppStore) though anti-competitive means.

Is Apple even a monopoly though? In the Microsoft case Microsoft had 90+% of desktop market share. (And propped Apple up to create even a semblance of competition.) They were accused of leveraging that position to prevent manufacturers etc from getting out of line.Apple, on the other hand shares the market with Android. Globally it&#x27;s a minority share. Yes, in the US, Apple has a bigger market share than it has globally, but Android is a real competitor even there. So I&#x27;d suggest the two situations are quite different.If it&#x27;s not a monopoly (which would be fine by itself anyway), it&#x27;s hard to make the case that they are leveraging that monopoly in unhallowed ways.All that said, clearly the DOJ think they have a case, and I imagine they&#x27;ve spent a LOT of man-hours thinking about it and forming an argument. More than the no-time-at-all I&#x27;ve spent thinking about it.

Phone sales are hardly the issue here. iOS policies are the issue.And you could absolutely buy alternatives to Microsoft Windows in the 90s, from Apple or IBM or others. But that&#x27;s immaterial. The availability of an alternative says nothing about the market power Apple has or how it&#x27;s wielding that power. This is why we have anti-trust cases, to determine if that power is being abused.

Because unlike the Microsoft case, you have the option to buy a smartphone from a company other than Apple. 1990s Microsoft was quite literally a monopoly, nothing like what is going on today.Apple is not stopping their competitors from making good phones, just like how Apple is not stopping you from buying a phone that wasn&#x27;t made by Apple. Microsoft was doing both of those things, Apple isn&#x27;t. The cases aren&#x27;t even close really.

It&#x27;s really worth a read about what that case was actually about <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...</a>.It&#x27;s reasonably clear why the Microsoft case was different&gt; The U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally monopolizing the web browser market for Windows, primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs such as Netscape and Java.Microsoft made deals with other companies to restrict competition. Apple doesn&#x27;t need to make up a contract to prevent NFC payments as they just don&#x27;t offer it in the first place. The Microsoft case actually has a lot more similarities to why Google lost the Epic case, by Apple won.

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, &quot;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.&quot;

I don&#x27;t consider myself an Apple fan, but Apple users definitely buy into the idea that &quot;it just works&quot; compared to Android or Windows, which the highly integrated software is a key component of.

&gt;I think it&#x27;s debatable whether the average iPhone customer buys it, knowing it allows Apple to heavily tax all AppStore developers.I think if you explained it to the average iPhone customer you might be shocked they side with Apple. The concept of a platform where for free you can take advantage of it and just make 100% of the revenue without cutting in the owner of the platform is completely alien to how things work in what they consider the real world.I can&#x27;t just walk into Walmart and set up a stand and make money, if I want to sell in Walmart I have to work with them and give them a similar sized cut. If I even set my stall up on the street I have to pay for permits, certification, suppliers.Not saying I agree with the App Store tax because I actually don&#x27;t but I think the way they set it up as a &quot;Store&quot; was very clever in making it seem completely normal when it&#x27;s completely abnormal compared to all personal computing up to that point, which maybe was an anomaly? Hope not.

I’m a heavy and loyal Apple user AND an app developer.I couldn’t care less about alternative App Stores. I don’t want them, I don’t need them.I am very happy the way it is.

Indeed - it&#x27;s modern day corporate feudalism.Anyone arguing for Apple&#x27;s side is akin to saying we should all be serfs for the King, because he takes care of us well and protects his kingdom.

&gt; that apple business practices are building a moat through highly integrated softwareTo me, this is the crux of modern antitrust, and the EU absolutely got it correct at a high level.In simplest form -- doing certain things as an almost-monopoly and&#x2F;or extremely large business should be illegal, while doing them as a smaller company should not be.The scale of global businesses, in low-competition industries, allows them to engineer moats that are deeply injurious to fair competition, to their own profit and the detriment of everyone else.&gt; you buy it knowing that.I think it&#x27;s debatable whether the average iPhone customer buys it, knowing it allows Apple to heavily tax all AppStore developers.

Since market cap is a determinant in behavior (the speculative value of a secondary market) where&#x27;s the case for forcing nVidia to open up CUDA or for Microsoft to let Nintendo open a store on the Xbox?

Exactly. From my point of view, nobody needs to be a lawyer to see that this can&#x27;t stand as it is. There are two major operating systems for each form factor. In the last ten years, no other vendor has been able to successfully place a new OS on the market. If there wasn&#x27;t a monopoly (or duopoly or oligarchy or whatever you wanna call it), then this would have happened. And this appears mainly to be due to network effects and the high complexity of the underlying systems.

We need proactive antitrust laws that break up companies beyond a certain size criteria. There are many markets beyond the tech sector that need a breakup. But no, lets wait until there is enough outrage before the DoJ laggardly assembles a case against them.

Monopoly law needs to be reinterpreted in light of network effects.It&#x27;s not merely the integration which is a problem, it&#x27;s how that + network effects gives apple undue market power to dictate terms to its users, devs, etc.Being a middleman between users and devs, say, takes on a different character when you&#x27;re a 2-3T biz at the heart of the economy.

I think most people just like how simple the products are overall. I prefer that my family, who tends to need a lot of basic tech support, have iPhones because they’re able to figure most things out and there’s no real risk of them messing anything important up. I’ve also noticed this strange phenomenon that the majority of people who complain about iPhones and the apple ecosystem don’t even use them. If someone doesn’t like what the company offers, they’re not forced to buy any of their products. I hate the idea of needing to deal with multiple app stores in the future because people who don’t even use the products have some sort of issue with it.

Though the average hackernews reader knows all this, it is not my impression that the average apple consumer is aware of it. Anecdotally, many of the people in my social vicinity choosing apple, are the same people who make their choices based on what they presume the &#x27;cool kids&#x27; believe is the &#x27;in&#x27; choice. I don&#x27;t experience iphone users as tech-savvy, as much as I seem them be &#x27;anxious to be cool&#x27;.

the new form of corp + government collusion does these weak investigations and charges, tying up the space for years and ultimately losing. It allows politicians to claim they are doing something, while securing access for intel agencies and insuring pro status quo election messaging.These charges also undercut the next administration&#x27;s leverage to negotiate with Apple, now that the threat of anti-trust charges are taken off the table.

&gt;It looked surprisingly pretty weak to my non lawyer eyes.* tin foil hat on *That may be by design. If the outcome of this is &quot;no monopoly&quot;, then it&#x27;s a win for Apple.

The problem with a software moat is that it&#x27;s infecting physical objects. Hardware, sure. But things like your tractor refusing to work if you use a non-vendor approved component. Not sued, just bricked.

I for one would never trade my Windows (or Linux w&#x2F; KDE) for the atrocity that is the macOS UX :)

It is a feature, interfaces between pieces of software is some of the most expensive and challenging parts of writing it. When every piece of software is written specifically with that interfacing in mind it will just run better. Now Apple hardware is starting to do the same thing?I am pretty bullish on Apple right now and could easily see a future where Windows isn&#x27;t even used for gaming anymore. When Macbook Airs start to be capable of running high end games what is the point of getting a huge Desktop running Windows jammed with bloatware from 100 different companies?

It looked surprisingly pretty weak to my non lawyer eyes. I mean I fully understand that apple business practices are building a moat through highly integrated software but its almost a feature for their system and you buy it knowing that.It feels like it goes back to Android vs Apple approach to their ecosystem.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;SYlk5" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;SYlk5</a>

Here it is from Justice.gov as well: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justice.gov&#x2F;opa&#x2F;media&#x2F;1344546&#x2F;dl?inline" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justice.gov&#x2F;opa&#x2F;media&#x2F;1344546&#x2F;dl?inline</a>

Direct link<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;s3.documentcloud.org&#x2F;documents&#x2F;24492020&#x2F;doj-apple-antitrust-complaint.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;s3.documentcloud.org&#x2F;documents&#x2F;24492020&#x2F;doj-apple-an...</a>

Here is the non-paywall link to the full NYT article I shared:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;21&#x2F;technology&#x2F;apple-doj-lawsuit-antitrust.html?ugrp=c&amp;unlocked_article_code=1.eU0.rOGs.FT-h0cSMdBpB&amp;smid=url-share" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;21&#x2F;technology&#x2F;apple-doj-laws...</a>

Google could use another pass to put a stop to their aggressive cross-promotion of Chrome, which is difficult if not impossible to compete with given how many Google products people use on a daily basis. Every time I visit Google, YouTube, etc with a fresh non-Chrome browser profile there’s a barrage of, “Download Chrome!” popups to dismiss, not to mention how Google iOS apps use link taps as opportunities to promote Chrome or all the random third party Windows software that has Chrome bundled with it.

&gt; I don&#x27;t care if the developer paysI think you, as the consumer, are the one who pays.

&gt; that will actually make some changes to stop the 30% commission scam once and for all.No. The change they should make is to allow sideloading. I don&#x27;t care if the developer pays less than 30% when Apple can still censor what I run on my phone.

Finally. It was about time that this would happen.Google got one anti-trust lawsuit, Meta should get another one (by owning too many social networks with billions of users each) and after the failed anti-trust lawsuit that Epic tried to sue Apple under, this time the DOJ is finally going after Apple.Good.I&#x27;m really looking forward to the United States v. Apple Inc. anti-trust lawsuit that will actually make some changes to stop the 30% commission scam once and for all.After that, now do Microsoft (again)

Huh? Don’t WhatsApp, Signal, etc. work in the USA? Or does anybody pay for them?

&gt;&gt;universal messaging is not possible without paying the Apple gatekeeperThere is in fact universal messaging - it&#x27;s called SMS. You don&#x27;t need to pay Apple to use it. If you would have added secure to your example then yes that would be correct.

Apple has about 60% of the smartphone market in the US, and about 25% globally.This case is about the US marketplace, globally is irrelevant.And it is about more than just marketshare. Apple&#x27;s tactics restrict the entire marketplace --- not just Apple captives.Whole classes of apps are simply not practically possible on Android without paying monetary tribute to Apple.For example, universal messaging is not possible without paying the Apple gatekeeper. Few people will use a messaging app if it can&#x27;t communicate with 60% of their friends. And the only to make this happen is to pay Apple.

&gt; Apple controls 100% of the iOS market…This is like saying Y Combinator controls 100% of the Hacker News market, or that Amazon controls 100% of the AWS market. It&#x27;s a non-sensical argument.

“Apple controls 100% of the iOS market” as an argument sounds like satire lol. What point does this make?Is the implication that Apple should allow iOS on non-Apple devices? There is not a single hardware company in the world that would integrate iOS to the degree that Apple does. A requirement like this would immediately enshittify Apple’s brand.

&gt; Apple controls 100% of the iOS market“AlotOfReading” controls 100% of your HN posts.

&gt;&gt; Standard oil was at 64% when it was broken up in 1911. [...] Apple controls 100% of the iOS market [...]I find it maddening that a lot of people replying to your fair point have chosen to ignore the first half and decided to exclusively focus on the latter, when that part was clearly meant as an example of how market definitions can have an impact.A fairly recent example of the latter being a commonly mischaracterized or (by members of the public) outright dismissed concern was MSFTs dominance in the Cloud Gaming market, which was often met either with &quot;but MSFTs share of the gaming market overall is less&quot; or the even less applicable &quot;but nobody uses Cloud Gaming anyway&quot;, even though neither should count towards whether something rises to anti-competitive behavior in a given market.

Standard oil was at 64% when it was broken up in 1911. Absolute market share isn&#x27;t the only factor that goes into determining monopoly. You also get different numbers from different definitions. Apple controls 100% of the iOS market, or ~80% of the mobile subscription market, etc.

&gt; That&#x27;s a pretty big stretch to call it a monopolyThe word &quot;monopoly&quot; needs to be banned from these types of discussions because it always derails the conversation into pointless semantic bickering. There is no definition of that word that will make everyone happy. Even if Apple had 99.999% marketshare, as long as there&#x27;s some hacker selling DIY linux phones under a bridge somehwere, someone&#x27;s going to say Apple CAN&#x27;T be a monopoly because they have a competitor.There are many reasons why antitrust laws exist, and these lawsuits tend to be really complex. There&#x27;s not a simple `if(company.is_monopoly()) sue(company);` program that the FTC and DOJ use to decide when to sue.

&gt;that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.Apple doesn&#x27;t have this power though. If they raised prices they&#x27;d lose sales. And they haven&#x27;t been able to exclude competitors, there is a robust ecosytem of Android manufacturers.There&#x27;s a reason the FTC has been losing almost all of their cases recently. They internalized the idea that a large successful company is inherently bad and focus on that rather than any objective legal standard.

&gt; iPhone has had 60% market share (or similar) for a long time now, so it&#x27;s fair to consider that Apple has significant and durable market power in mobile phones.It has market power, but it&#x27;s not significantly larger than its competition. It&#x27;s not 60% for iPhone, and 10% split up amongst 4 other competitors. It&#x27;s 60% vs 40%... and probably more like 58% vs 42% [1].Does 8% truly make Apple &quot;dominant&quot; to the point that integrating their software with watches in a better manner is illegal? I find that wildly difficult to believe.&gt; that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.Apple has been able to raise its own prices, but it hasn&#x27;t been wildly out of line with competitors.And Apple both makes phones and the software on them. They might be excluding or making competitors to their software have a harder time, but excluding? Not really - they have only excluded other large companies who have distinctly decided to run afoul of their guidelines (specifically, Epic).1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;explodingtopics.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;iphone-android-users" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;explodingtopics.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;iphone-android-users</a>

People seem to miss the concept of &quot;market power&quot; vs sales numbers. Apple loyalists love to brag about the fact that Apple users spend something like 7x more on Apps and other services than Android users. They don&#x27;t brag about that so much when anti-trust comes up - on a weighted basis that would suggest Apple has about 95% of market share and should be treated in the same category that late 1990&#x27;s Microsoft was.

I&#x27;ve seen this quoted multiple times now and I do not think it is the slam dunk people think it is. A literal monopoly is 100% market share, of course that is not required for antitrust law to apply. But the people who quote this intend to imply that 60% market share is sufficient to declare Apple a monopolist in violation of antitrust law, and that does not actually follow from a careful reading of this quote.I will reply with a separate quote from the DOJ discussing what thresholds of market share are likely to be considered monopoly power:&gt; In determining whether a competitor possesses monopoly power in a relevant market, courts typically begin by looking at the firm&#x27;s market share.(18) Although the courts &quot;have not yet identified a precise level at which monopoly power will be inferred,&quot;(19) they have demanded a dominant market share. Discussions of the requisite market share for monopoly power commonly begin with Judge Hand&#x27;s statement in United States v. Aluminum Co. of America that a market share of ninety percent &quot;is enough to constitute a monopoly; it is doubtful whether sixty or sixty-four percent would be enough; and certainly thirty-three per cent is not.&quot;(20) The Supreme Court quickly endorsed Judge Hand&#x27;s approach in American Tobacco Co. v. United States.(21) Following Alcoa and American Tobacco, courts typically have required a dominant market share before inferring the existence of monopoly power. The Fifth Circuit observed that &quot;monopolization is rarely found when the defendant&#x27;s share of the relevant market is below 70%.&quot;(22) Similarly, the Tenth Circuit noted that to establish &quot;monopoly power, lower courts generally require a minimum market share of between 70% and 80%.&quot;(23) Likewise, the Third Circuit stated that &quot;a share significantly larger than 55% has been required to establish prima facie market power&quot;(24) and held that a market share between seventy-five percent and eighty percent of sales is &quot;more than adequate to establish a prima facie case of power.&quot;(25)<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justice.gov&#x2F;archives&#x2F;atr&#x2F;competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.justice.gov&#x2F;archives&#x2F;atr&#x2F;competition-and-monopol...</a>My reading of this is that below 50% is very unlikely to be considered monopoly power while above 70-80% is very likely. 60% appears to sit somewhere in between where it is possible but not likely. Historically, I have not seen any major cases where monopoly power was found at the market share level that Apple currently holds.It is worth noting that the DOJ in their filing does not seem very confident in being able to prove that Apple&#x27;s 60% of the smartphone market constitutes monopoly power either. They have instead opted to define a narrower market of &quot;performance smartphones&quot; where Apple apparently holds 70% market share, putting it above the thresholds quoted above. Whether this artificially narrowed market definition will be accepted by the courts will likely determine the outcome of this case.

The FTC is perhaps a biased source, but they say [1]:&gt; 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. That is how that term is used here: a &quot;monopolist&quot; is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm&#x27;s market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. Some courts have required much higher percentages. In addition, that leading position must be sustainable over time: if competitive forces or the entry of new firms could discipline the conduct of the leading firm, courts are unlikely to find that the firm has lasting market power.The US doesn&#x27;t have antitrust authority for the world, only for the US. iPhone has had 60% market share (or similar) for a long time now, so it&#x27;s fair to consider that Apple has significant and durable market power in mobile phones.Is it a complete monopoly? No, but it doesn&#x27;t need to be.From a very brief skim of the claims, the clearest one that stands out to me is the one about smartwatches. If Apple does provide better integrations to Apple Watches than 3rd party watches, that&#x27;s pretty clearly &#x27;tying&#x27; which is prohibited when using a market dominant product to create market dominance in a new market (smartwatches). OTOH, it wouldn&#x27;t have been a big deal if the Microsoft Band had better integrations than other watches on Windows Phone, because tying is allowed without market dominance.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ftc.gov&#x2F;advice-guidance&#x2F;competition-guidance&#x2F;guide-antitrust-laws&#x2F;single-firm-conduct&#x2F;monopolization-defined" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ftc.gov&#x2F;advice-guidance&#x2F;competition-guidance&#x2F;gui...</a>

&gt; There are many non-apple phone optionsOne non-apple phone option. Or you&#x27;re somehow deluded into thinking the hardware matters any more?

You realize the world market is irrelevant. If some company has a monopoly in France, they don&#x27;t care whether or not that company has less market in other countries.  Apple has a monopoly in the USA and so the USA is going to try to break that monopoly.  Google has already been sued and lost on it&#x27;s app store market share. Apple&#x27;s is larger.

60% sounds good enough for DoJ to sue, as a US government agency. Why do you even bother to quote &quot;25% globally&quot;, it&#x27;s meaningless here.

The smartphone market is irrelevant.If my water provider said &quot;We&#x27;re the only water provider so we&#x27;re raising rates 1000%, take it or leave it&quot;, you would still say that&#x27;s a monopoly even though i could move house to an area with another water provider.Apple has a 100% monopoly though it&#x27;s AppStore on 2 billion devices though which $90,000,000,000 in trade is conducted. If that&#x27;s not a market big enough to be considered for Anti-Competitive practices and illegally maintaining a monopoly then i don&#x27;t know what is.That&#x27;s more trade than the entire GDP of Luxembourg!

Apple has about 60% of the smartphone market in the US, and about 25% globally. That&#x27;s a pretty big stretch to call it a monopoly. There are many non-apple phone options that many consumers easily avail themselves of. And at least one other OS choice as well. All of these are fully supported by the entire ecosystem of telcos.Seems like bullying to score political points to me.

If your friends won&#x27;t talk to you because you have an Android phone, you don&#x27;t actually have any friends.

I&#x27;m sure you&#x27;ve seen this before, but only the US uses text messages any more.The rest of the world is on cross platform apps and couldn&#x27;t care less what their friends type from.

Social pressure to use a particular phone and messaging app does not a monopoly make.

If you want to have a functional social circle in the US, choice doesn&#x27;t really exist.

Here&#x27;s the first paragraph of the actual lawsuit. So no, I feel like they probably didn&#x27;t miss the point that Android exists:COMPLAINT
In 2010, a top Apple executive emailed Appl
e’s then-CEO about an ad for the new
Kindle e-reader. The ad began with a woman
who was using her iPhone to buy and read books
on the Kindle app. She then switches to an Androi
d smartphone and continues to read her books
using the same Kindle app. The executive wrote to Jobs: one “
message that can’t be missed is
that it is easy to switch from
iPhone to Android. Not fun to watch.
” Jobs was clear in his
response: Apple would “force” deve
lopers to use its payment system
to lock in both developers
and users on its platform. Over
many years, Apple has repeat
edly responded to competitive
threats like this one by making it
harder or more expensive for its
users and developers to leave
than by making it more attr
active for them to stay.

The point the suit misses is that one can simply buy an Android phone if they like. Millions of people literally do every year.Choice already exists.

IIRC, Apple lost that case because they colluded with publishers to raise ebook prices rather than lower them.I think they would have won if they hadn’t colluded to set prices.

The actual complaint leads off with the iBooks thing, which is a terrible start. Apple lost that case and it shouldn’t have; to this day, that result enables Amazon’s effective monopoly on paid ebooks.

This article actually has the complaint: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;business-news&#x2F;apple-sued-doj-antitrust-monopoly-biden-rcna144424" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nbcnews.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;business-news&#x2F;apple-sued-do...</a>

The apps need to be refreshed weekly though, requiring me to connect my phone to my Mac.Right now my preferred approach is to make web apps, but Apple already tried to take PWAs away in Europe...

I just want to code and sideload my own silly little apps that aren&#x27;t important enough to be in the App Store. I can do this on my Mac and it doesn&#x27;t seem to explode because of it.

Google&#x27;s crime was not having a charismatic leader who could store all the mens rea solely in his own head and then conveniently die before legal scrutiny started over their App Store racket.All of Google&#x27;s monopolistic intent was conveniently detailed out in loads of e-mails. They were caught failing to retain these e-mails, which in a civil suit where the 5th Amendment does not apply, means the judge gets to just assume the worst (make an &quot;adverse inference&quot;).To make matters worse, Google promised openness and then tried to privately walk it back. Legally, this is admitting that the &quot;Android app distribution market&quot; already exists and is the appropriate market definition for a monopoly claim. It&#x27;s harder to argue that an &quot;iOS app distribution market&quot; should exist when Apple is using power words like &quot;intellectual property&quot; - aka &quot;we have a right to supracompetitive profits.&quot;My personal opinion is that the DOJ probably will succeed where Epic failed, however, because of one other critical thing: standing. Epic did reveal market harms that are almost certainly cognizable under US law, but none of those harms were things Epic was allowed to sue over.

Google was already found by a jury to have a monopoly on Android app distribution. And if Google has one, Apple&#x27;s monopoly on iOS app distribution is clearly stronger and more harmful in the US given their larger market share and complete prohibition of alternatives.

I mean, you&#x27;re not wrong, but the lawsuit isn&#x27;t about the quality of the end product. It&#x27;s about the economic leverage Apple has over other businesses by virtue of owning the chokepoints - i.e. the OS software and the signing keys it trusts.I personally would love to switch to iPhone if Apple wasn&#x27;t so much of a control freak about the software you run on it.

&gt; That&#x27;s why I switched to iPhone and have no desire to switch back.Yes, Apple has exactly one competitor in the phone space and their offerings are lower quality so you get an iPhone.So... they have a dominant market position... and they abuse it.

If Apple&#x27;s iPhone &quot;monopoly&quot; is illegal then sue Google for continuing to make Android worse. That&#x27;s why I switched to iPhone and have no desire to switch back.Apple&#x27;s crime here is they made a good product and continued to iterate on it, while Google has churned for years, reinventing and rebranding every app, service, and product multiple times a year and only making them worse so POs can get promotions.

They&#x27;re not the same. The critical difference is people CAN choose not to use Google Search while keeping their same computer&#x2F;phone, something you can&#x27;t do with iPhone and the App Store&#x2F;Wallet&#x2F;etc laid out in the article. That&#x27;s the critical difference that takes it from simply creating a superior product to monopoly, when you use your advantage in one space to lock in customers in a related space.

I think Google search and apples ecosystem are extremely different. Google search is trivial to leave, any one can switch to bing by just typing a different address in the URL bar. Switching off of apple products is painful and difficult and it&#x27;s by design.  My wife and I switched from iphone to Android over a year ago and we&#x27;re still fighting with apple to stop routing some text messages to iMessage when it should be going to our phones over sms.

From a legal perspective, monopoly just means holding undue market power. People seem to really focus on the &quot;mono&quot; part, it&#x27;s irrelevant from a US legal perspective.

I feel like there&#x27;s a difference between the car regulation you state and the regulation approach being taken in the EU. Specifically the ability of third parties to limit end user choice.With vehicle repair, I can still choose to use the manufacturer operated&#x2F;approved repair shops. I truly am gaining additional choice and can continue to service my car as I always have.The EU regulations allow third parties to remove my choice to live in the walled garden if they wish. So while it could enhance competition for developers I don&#x27;t know if it greatly improves the users choice, or experience.

I think the position oft the European Union is a good approach. It classifies companies like apple not as a &quot;monopoly&quot; but as a &quot;gate keeper&quot;.I don&#x27;t have a very deep understanding of that topic, but it&#x27;s possible to regulate those companies a bit. In the EU similar things were already done for the car industry. The manufacturers are required to allow third party repair shops the same access to documentation, diagnostics software and parts like their own shops (not for free, but for a reasonable price). And repairs at a third party shop doesn&#x27;t void the warranty.For computers, cloud providers and smartphones similar regulations could improve everybody&#x27;s life by giving us more flexibility and cheaper products by creating more competition.In the end apple is collecting a lot of money and seems to just put it on huge piles in their bank accounts. I don&#x27;t see any reason to increase competition by introducing regulations. Give startups and smaller companies a chance!

Just FYI, HomePod actually supports multiple music services, and Apple Health (the data store for Fitness) supports integrations with other providers (both input and output).

&gt; like only Apple Music supported on the HomePod speakersFYI, this hasn&#x27;t been the case for a while. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;en-gb&#x2F;guide&#x2F;homepod&#x2F;apd3399d3179&#x2F;1.0&#x2F;homepod&#x2F;1.0#apd0c8469fd6" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;en-gb&#x2F;guide&#x2F;homepod&#x2F;apd3399d3179&#x2F;1...</a>Spotify has elected to not support this API, presumably because of their beef with Apple.

I&#x27;m not so sure. We are fully bought in to the Apple Ecosystem (Apple One, Apple Fitness, Music, everything). In most cases (like Apple Home), I did enough research and found that it was much more well thought out security-wise and was good enough, compared to the wild west that is the Google&#x2F;Amazon smart home ecosystem. Again, for the most part, the walled garden is way superior to what I see outside the garden.Even the app store, I have all my complaints about Apple&#x27;s arbitrary enforcement of App Review guidelines as an iOS developer. However, as a consumer, I love that I can spend _less_ time worrying about my non-tech loved ones finding garbage in the app store. Yes there&#x27;s coercive &quot;buy this game&quot; garbage, and tons of it, but I&#x27;m less concerned about financial scam apps than I would be for third party app stores.However, in certain cases (like only Apple Music supported on the HomePod speakers, or Apple Watch only sending fitness data to Apple Fitness), we feel kind of &quot;forced&quot; to use the Apple product when there are superior competitors, because of the (manufactured) ease of use of full integration.

That seems like something they&#x27;d be willing to fix. They allow users to select Ecosia, an extremely niche search engine. Kagi should be on that list too.

I like my iPhone, and want to be able to use Kagi as my search engine. Why can&#x27;t I?

This is correct for one side of Apple&#x27;s market but not the other. You&#x27;re right that Apple doesn&#x27;t have monopoly power on the consumer side because there are alternatives and if you cared a whole heck of a lot you could create your own. It&#x27;s capital intensive sure but being expensive to enter a market and having a moat doesn&#x27;t mean you have a monopoly. If all your friends hung out on Discord then you&#x27;re gonna have to use Discord to talk to them, if all your friends play a Windows exclusive game then you&#x27;re gonna need a PC to play with them, the green bubble thing is nonsense.But Apple does wield real monopoly power on the other side of their market which is app developers. I don&#x27;t think large developers have any real choice but to bite the bullet and take whatever terms Apple offers and be on iOS because that&#x27;s where your users are. Developers aren&#x27;t choosing Apple as the better product in the way consumers are.

I&#x27;ve heard all arguments against Apple&#x27;s practices, and to me, they all basically come down to &#x27;it&#x27;s unfair that so many people like to live inside the Apple walled garden&#x27;. When it comes to the law, Apple is not a monopoly. When it comes to competition on the market, Apple is competing with Android and Windows, and the vast majority of the world&#x27;s middle and upper class willingly choose Apple products. Even if you literally tried to block people from buying Apple products, people will find a way. So, obviously, Apple customers are having a great time in the Apple warden garden and made Apple a $3T company. But for some reason, other companies and regulators feel like Apple and its customers are having too much fun and need to call the cops on their party.Apple is no different than Google search. Even if you drowned people in search choice popups, 99% of the time people choose Google. Regulators say Google is doing something nefarious when in reality, their product is loved by billions of people. In these situations, like Apple products and Google search, we need to realize that both companies have won the game in certain markets they operate because they made products that people really enjoy using.

Their brief will surely cite NYT articles about how some Gen Z kids don&#x27;t date people with green bubbles.

Realtime: I&#x27;m actually watching the US Attorney General crying about blue bubbles.I need a drink.

&gt;The fact that it is Google&#x27;s customers which are being scammed could be part of the reason why Apple doesn&#x27;t prioritize safety in this case.this is conspiracy bordering on paranoia. apple has problems, but willingly abusing customers who use the competitors is not one of them

Pretty sure that&#x27;s an ad and yeah, it is misleading.However, there&#x27;s no comparison between the Apple app store and Android stores. There is an outrageous amount of straight-up malware on Android. FFS, one actually needs third-party antivirus&#x2F;malware scanners on Android it&#x27;s so bad.

The article is chock full of examples where Apple prevents competition on their platform or in connection with their platform.Apple&#x27;s argument is generally that they are making the platform safer for their users, but I was just on the App Store looking for the Google Authenticator, and the first item listed was a scam third party authenticator which was intended to fool users looking like the Google Authenticator. This would be the easiest possible thing for a giant corporation like Apple to catch. The fact that it is Google&#x27;s customers which are being scammed could be part of the reason why Apple doesn&#x27;t prioritize safety in this case.What we&#x27;re dealing with here is a really duplicitous company. Their marketing is world class. The battery life of their products is world class. Everything else - not so much.

If Apple wanted to, they could drag this out for a decade. In the end, there are probably some details of what they&#x27;ve done with Imessage or the store that you could convince a jury are &quot;unfair.&quot;It&#x27;s good to know that with everything going wrong on this administration’s watch, they’ve got their laser focus on vacuums, video games, and phones.

There&#x27;s also a news article every few months talking about how the FBI or some other government agency wants to make encryption illegal and how iMessage is a boon to pedophiles all over the world and protects criminals. So, not sure how you can confidently say &quot;On the contrary!&quot;

On the contrary, secure computational infrastructure furthers national security. US happens to have a very large footprint of vulnerable infrastructure as compared to other nations that tightly regulate their Internet. Believe it or not, more secure devices are actually good for the US. There have been several articles and discussions around it and the government has been working closely with the industry for years to improve the security posture.

From the complaint, &quot;Apple is knowingly and deliberately degrading quality, privacy, and security for its users&quot;.

The government does not want people to have secure devices. Whether or not Apple&#x27;s are currently secure is not the point; that they are working to make them so is enough to make sure it doesn&#x27;t happen.

Some of those apps are iMovie, imusic, Apple tv, Apple tv+, Final Cut Pro etc. Also the app store has apple arcade and other subscriptions.

Apple genuinely deserves this lawsuit.&gt; By tightly controlling the user experience on iPhones and other devices, Apple has created what critics call an uneven playing field where it grants its products and services access to core features that it denies rivals.Once I read this I was not shocked. Apple is already pushing people to buy their separate apps that should have came in for free, with the purchase of the Iphone or at least make a bundle Apple users could buy. Disgusting Apple totally deserved.

Only works if you use iCloud, which I don&#x27;t.

Can&#x27;t Safari just have an export bookmarks button like Firefox and Chrome? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;DIgddVn.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;DIgddVn.png</a>No need to ask Apple&#x27;s website for some data dump and no need for iCloud. It&#x27;s your data after all.

&gt; One of the most annoying features of the iOS ecosystem is the great lengths they take to prevent easy export of data out of the iOS system to other non-Apple devices.Not only do they not prevent it, but they facilitate it. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;102208" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;102208</a>Exported data includes users&#x27; bookmarks and Reading List.

While others are pointing out your specific case is supported, I do know for experience you need a Mac to be able to smoothly move to a different password manager. Otherwise, it requires you to unlock your passwords at least twice (really like three or four times to do it properly) to copy and paste passwords to a different app.

One of the most annoying features of the iOS ecosystem is the great lengths they take to prevent easy export of data out of the iOS system to other non-Apple devices. E.g. ever tried exporting Safari bookmarks on iOS to a Linux system running Firefox? A simple JSON file is all it would take, but no, you have to sync with a MacOS computer or some such:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discussions.apple.com&#x2F;thread&#x2F;254567613" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;discussions.apple.com&#x2F;thread&#x2F;254567613</a>

What&#x27;s interesting about the legal system is that it is intentionally vague. As in, you can make all different kinds of arguments and the judge and jury decide.iPhone is does not have an overwhelming market share of phones in the US. But Apple does have a complete monopoly on &quot;iPhone apps&quot; (and &quot;app stores&quot; and &quot;iPhone payment services&quot;). So the government certainly can make a case that they are abusing those monopolies.Whether or not the judge and juries will agree is the thing we are all going to be watching for.

Given iOS doesn’t have a monopoly, even in the US market, this is almost certainly a negotiation move thanks to Apple not being seen to be compliant enough with the US gov wrt privacy and security. Possibly App Store policies differences of opinion as well.

U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly