It comes down to market share. For smart phones, you basically have two options for OS, and Apple is dominant in many markets. For desktops, Microsoft’s position is even more dominant. When you have such a dominant position, there’s a lot of room to abuse that position, so the more restrictions you should have on being able to abuse that position.
Linux has a vanishingly small market position vs Windows and Android/iOS, so it’s not really a competitor when it comes to anti-trust.
But part of the reason Apple is dominant is their closed garden approach - that is literally part of their product. I cannot understand how that’s a bad thing. For me it’s akin to a flute manufacturer producing flutes and everything is okay until they get popular. Suddenly they are hated because they don’t produce flutes incorporating parts from different manufacturers? Even if they produce them to allow exchanging the parts?
Same for Microsoft and their Internet Explorer case. I didn’t understand back then I don’t understand now why they lost lawsuit if they didn’t, IIRC, block you from installing anything else.
It would be different matter for me if it was for example Windows explictly blocking you from downloading another browser than Internet Explorer. That’s abuse. But just having a default made by the same company being bad?
I really don’t think that’s true, I think Apple became dominant through being first to market, having attractive design (was largely sold as a fashion/luxury item), and attracting devs early on (mostly through being first to market). Most of the value of the App Store was the quality of app reviews, which was due to developer fees (raise barrier to releasing trash) and actual app reviews, and that’s how Apple earned their 30% cut. Since iPhones were a luxury item, they attracted people willing to actually spend money on apps, which attracted more developers.
I really can’t see how not having other options somehow improves the attractiveness of iOS. Having high quality apps on the App Store made it more attractive, sure, but it didn’t make other app stores unwanted, in fact not being able to side load apps/stores has been a complaint since pretty much the beginning.
Nobody is saying Apple is bad because they’re popular, they’re saying Apple is bad because they’re anti-competitive.
I didn’t understand back then I don’t understand now why they lost lawsuit if they didn’t, IIRC, block you from installing anything else.
Microsoft restricted access to internal APIs that made the browser work a lot faster, so other browsers would always be slower and a worse experience vs Internet Explorer because Microsoft prevented them from getting the most out of the hardware.
You could install an alternative, sure, but it would be hamstrung and most would blame the browser, not MS.
Having a default wasn’t the problem, Microsoft still has a default browser to this day and it’s totally fine. Being anticompetitive, however, isn’t fine.
Did not know about the API. This clears a lot, thanks.
And about closed garden being wanted - if evrything goes through the people who made the thing, then these things are guaranteed to work on the thing. No wondering, no thinking, it just works. And such closed and tight thing was something I heard from people boasting iphones as best thing.
There are some benefits to Apple’s ecosystem, such as iMessage and iCloud working across devices, but that has nothing to so with the App Store, but Apple’s first party apps. The App Store certainly has value through its audits, but that could still be a thing with rival stores existing on the platform.
What harm does having more options for installing apps have for iPhone users? If they don’t want to use them, they don’t have to. Do it like Android and tell users that those apps aren’t reviewed by Apple and could cause problems, but only the first time (or perhaps the first time per source).
The flute doesn’t make for a good example, as the end user can take it and modify it as they wish, including third party parts.
If we force it: It would be if the manufacturer made it such that all (even third party) parts for These flutes can only be distributed through their store, and they use this restriction to force any third party to comply with additional requirements.
The key problem is isn’t including third party parts, it is actively blocking the usage of third party parts, forcing additional rules (which affect existing markets, like payment processors) upon them, making use of control and market dominance to accomplish this.
The Microsoft case was, in my view, weaker than this case against Apple, but their significant market dominance in the desktop OS market made it such that it was deemed anti-competitive anyways. It probably did not help that web standards suffered greatly when MS was at the helm, and making a competitive compatible browser was nigh impossible: most websites were designed for IE, using IE specific tech, effectively locking users into using IE. Because all users were using IE, developing a website using different tech was effectively useless, as users would, for other websites, end up using IE anyways. As IE was effectively the Windows browser (ignoring the brief period for IE for Mac…), this effectively ensured the Windows dominance too. Note that, without market dominance, websites would not pander specifically to IE, and this specific tie-in would be much less problematic.
In the end, Google ended IE’s reign by using Google Chrome, advertising it using the Google search engine’s reach. But if Microsoft had locked down the OS, like Apple does, and required everything to go through their ‘app store’. I don’t doubt we would have ended up with a similar browser engine restriction that Apple has, with all browsers being effectively a wrapper around the exact same underlying browser.
It comes down to market share. For smart phones, you basically have two options for OS, and Apple is dominant in many markets. For desktops, Microsoft’s position is even more dominant. When you have such a dominant position, there’s a lot of room to abuse that position, so the more restrictions you should have on being able to abuse that position.
Linux has a vanishingly small market position vs Windows and Android/iOS, so it’s not really a competitor when it comes to anti-trust.
But part of the reason Apple is dominant is their closed garden approach - that is literally part of their product. I cannot understand how that’s a bad thing. For me it’s akin to a flute manufacturer producing flutes and everything is okay until they get popular. Suddenly they are hated because they don’t produce flutes incorporating parts from different manufacturers? Even if they produce them to allow exchanging the parts?
Same for Microsoft and their Internet Explorer case. I didn’t understand back then I don’t understand now why they lost lawsuit if they didn’t, IIRC, block you from installing anything else.
It would be different matter for me if it was for example Windows explictly blocking you from downloading another browser than Internet Explorer. That’s abuse. But just having a default made by the same company being bad?
I really don’t think that’s true, I think Apple became dominant through being first to market, having attractive design (was largely sold as a fashion/luxury item), and attracting devs early on (mostly through being first to market). Most of the value of the App Store was the quality of app reviews, which was due to developer fees (raise barrier to releasing trash) and actual app reviews, and that’s how Apple earned their 30% cut. Since iPhones were a luxury item, they attracted people willing to actually spend money on apps, which attracted more developers.
I really can’t see how not having other options somehow improves the attractiveness of iOS. Having high quality apps on the App Store made it more attractive, sure, but it didn’t make other app stores unwanted, in fact not being able to side load apps/stores has been a complaint since pretty much the beginning.
Nobody is saying Apple is bad because they’re popular, they’re saying Apple is bad because they’re anti-competitive.
Microsoft restricted access to internal APIs that made the browser work a lot faster, so other browsers would always be slower and a worse experience vs Internet Explorer because Microsoft prevented them from getting the most out of the hardware.
You could install an alternative, sure, but it would be hamstrung and most would blame the browser, not MS.
Having a default wasn’t the problem, Microsoft still has a default browser to this day and it’s totally fine. Being anticompetitive, however, isn’t fine.
Did not know about the API. This clears a lot, thanks.
And about closed garden being wanted - if evrything goes through the people who made the thing, then these things are guaranteed to work on the thing. No wondering, no thinking, it just works. And such closed and tight thing was something I heard from people boasting iphones as best thing.
That’s mostly copium.
There are some benefits to Apple’s ecosystem, such as iMessage and iCloud working across devices, but that has nothing to so with the App Store, but Apple’s first party apps. The App Store certainly has value through its audits, but that could still be a thing with rival stores existing on the platform.
What harm does having more options for installing apps have for iPhone users? If they don’t want to use them, they don’t have to. Do it like Android and tell users that those apps aren’t reviewed by Apple and could cause problems, but only the first time (or perhaps the first time per source).
The flute doesn’t make for a good example, as the end user can take it and modify it as they wish, including third party parts.
If we force it: It would be if the manufacturer made it such that all (even third party) parts for These flutes can only be distributed through their store, and they use this restriction to force any third party to comply with additional requirements.
The key problem is isn’t including third party parts, it is actively blocking the usage of third party parts, forcing additional rules (which affect existing markets, like payment processors) upon them, making use of control and market dominance to accomplish this.
The Microsoft case was, in my view, weaker than this case against Apple, but their significant market dominance in the desktop OS market made it such that it was deemed anti-competitive anyways. It probably did not help that web standards suffered greatly when MS was at the helm, and making a competitive compatible browser was nigh impossible: most websites were designed for IE, using IE specific tech, effectively locking users into using IE. Because all users were using IE, developing a website using different tech was effectively useless, as users would, for other websites, end up using IE anyways. As IE was effectively the Windows browser (ignoring the brief period for IE for Mac…), this effectively ensured the Windows dominance too. Note that, without market dominance, websites would not pander specifically to IE, and this specific tie-in would be much less problematic.
In the end, Google ended IE’s reign by using Google Chrome, advertising it using the Google search engine’s reach. But if Microsoft had locked down the OS, like Apple does, and required everything to go through their ‘app store’. I don’t doubt we would have ended up with a similar browser engine restriction that Apple has, with all browsers being effectively a wrapper around the exact same underlying browser.