For folks who don't have time to read a 90 page document, the case rests on specific claims, not just the general claim that iPhone is a monopoly because it's so big. Here are those claims:
1. "Super Apps"
Apple has restrictions on what they allow on the App Store as far as "Super Apps", which are apps that might offer a wide variety of different services (specifically, an app which has several "mini programs" within it, like apps within an app). In China, WeChat does many different things, for example, from messaging to payments. This complaint alleges that Apple makes it difficult or impossible to offer this kind of app on their platform. Apple itself offers a "super app" of course, which is the Apple ecosystem of apps.
2. Cloud streaming apps
Similar to "super apps", the document alleges that Apple restricts apps which might stream different apps directly to the phone (like video games). It seems there are several roadblocks that Apple has added that make these kinds of apps difficult to release and promote - and of course, Apple offers their own gaming subscription service called Apple Arcade which might be threatened by such a service.
3. Messaging interoperability
Probably most people are familiar with this already, how messages between (for example) iOS and Android devices do not share the same feature-set.
4. Smartwatches
Other smart watches than the Apple Watch exist, but the document alleges that Apple restricts the functionality that these devices have access to so that they are less useful than the Apple Watch. Also, the Apple Watch itself does not offer compatibility with Android.
5. Digital wallets
It is claimed that Apple restricts the APIs available so that only Apple Pay can implement "tap to pay" on iOS. In addition to lock-in, note that Apple also collects fees from banks for using Apple Pay, so they get direct financial benefit in addition to the more nebulous benefit of enhancing the Apple platform.
1. Super Apps are notorious for tracking the user across the "mini" apps within it, which is the argument made by Apple for making them hard to get approval for. I'm on Apple's side here
2. I was able to use PS Remote Play on my iPhone even many years ago (pre-COVID). A quick google search shows that Steam Link and Shadow PC (my ATF) are also available on iOS. I'm on Apple's side here too
3. I think the situation has recently changed here as someone else has commented, so this feels solvable without a lawsuit. Also it's hard to single out Apple here when everyone out there has their own messaging platforms. It's not like WhatsApp is encouraging third-party clients. An argument can be made that iMessage blurs the line between what's Apple-provided vs. carrier-provided, so I can see the user confusion and the issues that come with it. I'm on the FTC's side here
4. Who cares about smartwatches. It's niche at best. Besides, there are countless other watches you can use and they work with many devices. I'm on Apple's side here
5. It's not like you can't tap your card instead of your phone. I don't think the phone needs to be just a husk with apps created by third parties, especially for things like wallets. I'm happy to trade away that freedom for increased security, Benjamin Franklin's quote notwithstanding. The payments ecosystem is made up of players charging fees from the next player down the chain, so also hard to single out Apple here, but I can see why there's need for increased transparency (I wasn't explicitly aware they charged any fees, even if I would probably guess they were if prompted). I'm on neither side here.
So based on my biases and incomplete understanding of the facts, Apple wins 3-1
It's worth remembering that this administration is suing seemingly everyone in Tech, in what I can only assume is being done in the hopes they can make a name for themselves. Lena Khan literally said "you miss all the shots you don't take".
I would prefer a more focused approach with higher signal to noise ratio.
Every single group chat that I use on a day-to-day basis has a non iPhone participant. The biggest argument against the way apple treats SMS vs iMessage I see is people feel ostracized for having green bubbles. I just don't understand why this rises to anti-trust.
What is this “having green bubbles” stuff? My messages are green on threads with Android users, to indicate the capabilities of the messages I am sending. Not theirs. I don’t even know how to tell who’s on what in a mixed-ecosystem thread.
messages from Android users show up as green to iOS users in group chats with mixed users, so everyone invariably makes fun of them / complains about "the person with the green bubble"
Do you have an iPhone? I do and my bubbles are green on group chats that involve Android users. Theirs look the same as everyone else’s.
The bubbles are green if you talk to someone with an Android, and they're blue if you talk to someone with an iPhone. People simplify this by saying "you have blue bubbles."
yes, and if we're in a chat with Bob Android, we will blame Bob for forcing all of us to be in this inferior chat that's green ewww
or so the argument goes
That isn’t how it works. Your own bubbles are green, all the “external” people in the chat have “regular” colors. Ex: I am using dark mode, so their bubbles show as dark for me, and mine are green.
Videos. Every time I get a video from an iphone user it is trash quality. Other iphone users don't have this problem. It's just me on the android. I cannot seem to get any iphone user to understand linking out from whatever icloud or whatever, so whenever someone sends me a video they took, i basically don't get to see. I'm sure there are more, but this the one that actually makes me mad.
From the iphone side, there has to be something, because my family keeps 2 group chats. One with android users and one without. Someone when using an iphone is annoying when group texting android users.
To be fair, on this particular point, you aren't Apple's customer in this scenario. This is like complaining that Tesla has supercharger stations and your non-Tesla has a different charging connector, so your interactions with Supercharging stations is degraded. This really wouldn't be Tesla's problem.
Apple supports the video standards that were available via MMS/SMS when iMessage rolled out, the higher res videos only available in the first place because Apple added it via iMessage. The newer 'standard' was a Google dominated way of trying to make inroads on Apple's superior implementation and in most of the world, Messages isn't even the top Messaging app.
Now that Apple has announced support for RCS incoming, even including messaging in the suit doesn't make sense in the slightest.
The RCS standard was is just about as old as the iPhone and older than iMessage. Google began supporting and pushing the standard forward in a way that benefits everyone. Apple could have done the same, or made iMessage an open protocal or any of a number of things. Instead Apple has consistently chosen to go the anti-competitive route.
It was 'superior' in some ways inferior in other ways, such as communicating with people without an iphone. iMessage isn't particularly better than any other messaging app, but the benefits of user lock-in, and being the default, replaceable sms app. These anti-competitive behaviors do clearly harm users.
Perhaps once the support actually lands you'll have more of a point. However, I expect half-assed support and the bare minimum given Apple's previous reluctance.
It remains to be seen how apple handles RCS. It's a pretty lax standard.
Why not use an app like WhatsApp?
Not mine cause we leave those people out. It's not Apple's fault that SMS sucks, and RCS adoption was very slow even on Android. Even with all Android phones, a group chat is a disaster unless they use FB Messenger or WhatsApp, which is in fact what most people use. Market working as intended there.
My new phone supports RCS, but I have several frinds who use dual SIM where only one of the devices support RCS. If I turn on RCS, only the device supporting RCS gets the message.
Since it's a global switch, I've had to turn it off...
My phone has RCS and sometimes my RCS messages just don't go through for hours. It will randomly switch between RCS and SMS/MMS. Honestly I find Android to iPhone texting to be more reliable than Android/Android texting nowadays because at least I know it will just be SMS/MMS.
It's pretty awful lol. You can say "it's the carriers" but if you make something that relies on some other people who won't do it right, you haven't made something good, you've made something where you can blame other people for it not being good.
FB Messenger is better and I try to use it over texting whenever I can (in part because I don't need my phone at all to use it)
219.43 million people use smartwatches
I assume that's worldwide? That definitely seems niche to me compared to the global population.
I don't think global population is a factor in antitrust law.
It's a factor in whether "219.43 million people" is a lot of people. If that's 219 million people in the US (i.e. well over half the population), that's obviously massively more significant than 219 million people worldwide.
How large does a business need to be on a global scale before we can smack down bad actors for abusing it? If you are a street corner business and your competitors down the street sell things at a loss just until they can put you out of business, should that be allowed because you were only a local business and didn't have millions of customers?
Regardless of the size, it does that make it okay to hamper competition like they do.
If this was such an insignificant niche, Apple Watch wouldn't even exist, would it?
This is irrelevant. The primary argument people have against Apple is their platform indirectly impacts how other businesses can operate generally. The smartwatch never took off as a platform, so it exercises no such influence.
And you think Apple had no role to play in this by making most of them useless on their devices?
There is no reason to believe lack of background activity support on iPhone is the reason smartwatches haven’t taken off as a computing platform.
They're useless period
I love how whenever Apple makes a clearly anti-trust move it's always about privacy.
That would be true, if Apple couldn't literally write any TOS they want that allows other App stores or billing methods and then add "but you can't include tracking that invades our users privacy or resell their data".
That's just as enforceable on their end, and not anti-competitive, assuming Apple themselves don't launch their own ad platform and tracking...
Who else is going to care about privacy though?
For the payment situation for example, Apple Pay (and Google Pay) use EMV Tokenization so that your actual credit card number is obfuscated:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pay#Technology
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Pay_(payment_method)#Te...
Credit card numbers are used by retailers to data mine their customers:
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
As does Samsung Pay. As could any number of tap to pay providers, if Apple would let them on iOS.
Actually Samsung Pay for the longest time supported MST which was not secure and supported transmission of payment credentials that could be intercepted by a MITM.
Apple having access to everything related to end user, every step they can take regarding privacy can be deemed as anti-competitive.
Here’s another example: Facebook knows exactly the 100 people they show my ads but not giving me their full name, relationship status, list of friends, their gender, sexual orientation, etc.
But does Apple have access to things? Or do they (sometimes?) design things so that even they don't have the information?
A lot of the time they do things 'on device'.
If I care about my privacy, I much prefer the world where Apple just restricts APIs/integrations that are harmful to it than that they have to employ armies of lawyers and auditors to go after TOS violations after the fact.
They are more than free to restrict any APIs/integrations they want, as long as these restrictions apply to their own apps as well.
It’s much easier to identify and detect an app that does multiple things than identify trackings across multiple parts of an app.
1) Apple makes an exception if you're China, unfortunately. This is how WeChat has taken off, and I bet WeChat could bully its way around the App Store rules to the detriment of competitors, another "special deal" from Apple.
2) This is about cloud gaming, when you're streaming the game from hardware in the cloud, like Xbox Game Pass. Streaming the game from your own hardware isn't as competitive to Apple since it requires you buy a $500 console or gaming PC.
3) The biggest issue was Apple not implementing RCS and defaulting every iOS user to iMessage, which has created a two-tier messaging system, friends getting locked out of chat groups, etc simply because Apple doesn't want to use the standard.
4) "Who cares" is not a valid argument in using your dominance in one market to dominate another, which is textbook anticompetitive behavior. They also do this with AirTags, Airpods, any accessory where the Apple product gets to use integrations with the OS and third-parties are forbidden from doing so.
5) Tapping your phone is more secure because the card number is randomized and single-use, protecting it from replay attacks.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply
Re: #2 FWIW Shadow PC doesn't require a PC. You get a virtual one for like $20-50 / month depending on the level of virtual PC you'd like.
And Microsoft Cloud Gaming is still in beta. Why would Apple even need to consider supporting it?
Based on your biases and incomplete understanding of the facts, I think tapoxi wins 1-0.
Apple doesn't need to support it, they need to not block it and let the user decide if they want to participate in a beta.
1. Presumably it’s equally likely causality flows in the other direction: WeChat took off before Apple instituted strict controls but the cat was already out of the bag in that market. WeChat is an exceptionally user hostile app, and arguing for more of it is anti-consumer. It’s probably the best example of what can go wrong if you require the freedoms that give rise to superapps.
3) there are tons of other apps in which exluded users can have groups an use other features with other multiplatform users. You can't sue a company because in just their official app it won't support a protocol develop by others. Just install another app, no monopoly here.
Apple Pay doesn’t offer single use card numbers for third party cards. They are different from your regular card number but they stay the same between purchases.
in #2 you’re talking about something else. those are streaming games from a console you own.
_cloud_ streaming where the game is running a ms/sony owned server is only available in a browser.
i don’t know about the sony side of things, but apple rejected ms’s native cloud streaming app.
Those barely exist... Microsoft Cloud Gaming is still in beta.
You keep bringing up MS Cloud Gaming, but there are others that are more established.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/
https://luna.amazon.com/
Luna can only support iOS by using Safari, for example.
Does Apple have a rule that says beta apps aren't allowed on the app store?
As far as I'm concerned Microsoft cloud gaming is like a 1.0 version and works fine on Windows and Android. I had no idea it was a beta product until just now.
Never heard this argument, could you name an example of this? I figured the reason for the ban was that it would sidestep most of the Apple software that comes with an iPhone, which Apple obviously wouldn't want since they would prefer to lock users in.
I came across it somewhere I Apple developer docs, I think, when I was building my app. Or maybe it was RevenueCat docs or some tutorial... I'm on my phone now but will try to find it later
The Justice Department, 16 US states, and the District of Columbia, among others. Anti-trust violations are crimes.
It's not just this administration going after tech. The other guys got the ball rolling, although they use a different narrative to sell it. I think most people recognize there are various problems with the industry that essentially all boil down to the amount of power big tech has. There have been warnings from governments and other players in the private sector for years. I happen to like my iPhone a lot, but it's about time Apple and the rest of them get their teeth kicked in.
From what I'm seeing in other places, there are also some pretty weak claims being made beyond this.
The first is their attempt to redefine what the market is in order to declare Apple a "monopoly": they've posited a completely separate market for "performance smartphones", and tried to use total revenue rather than number of units sold in order to push Apple up to having a very high percentage of this invented market.
The second is their characterization of how Apple got to where they are. Like them or not, you have to be seriously down a conspiracy rabbit hole to believe that the iPhone became as popular as it is primarily through anticompetitive tactics, rather than because it's a very good product that lots and lots of people like. Regardless of whether you, personally, find that value proposition to be compelling.
They also point at some of Apple's offerings and make absolutely absurd claims about how they're anticompetitive—for instance, that they're going to somehow take over the auto market with CarPlay 2.0 and the fact that AppleTV+ exercises control over the content it serves.
There are some things Apple does that are genuinely concerning and deserve more antitrust scrutiny (for instance, their anti-steering provisions for the App Store are pretty egregious), but so far as I can tell, they're not even mentioned in this suit. I'm frankly disappointed in the DoJ for how they've put this together, and would have loved to see something that was narrower and much more robust.
Interesting, I've had 2 Garmin Smart Watches and never felt like Apple was restricting them.
I am curious what things the iPhone does that others aren't allowed to do.
Most of the differences between Garmin and Apple Watch seem like they were conscious decisions where they each decided to take a different direction.
It's one of those weird things where it seems like the case has a bunch of holes. You can use an iPhone with some but not all non-Apple Smart watches. You can use a non-Apple phone with non-Apple smartwatches. There are other non-Apple smart watches that those manufacturers have decided can't be used with an iPhone, no different than Apple. Lots of choices in the market, I certainly don't feel restricted.
I am not sure how requiring something like WeChat to break into multiple apps would be a big issue. Apple even breaks it's own apps up into different apps.
My guess is around notifications and handoff to iPhone apps.
I tried Garmin watches, and they're certainly better as "exercise tracking devices" than anything Apple offers, but they weren't tightly enough integrated with my iPhone to make it "worth it" to me to wear them all the time.
An Apple Watch Ultra - on the other hand - is a poorer exercise tracking device, but gives me enough "integrated with my iPhone" benefit to become the first watch I've worn consistently in 30+ years.
I assumed this was the result of design and development choices by Garmin, but it'll be interesting to see if their are meaningful ways that Apple restricts smartwatch developers from including similar levels of integration.
Can you expand on what "integrated with my iPhone" means in concrete terms? I don't really understand what you mean.
I don't use smart watches but I have an example on the trackers.
Tile created trackers and every so often I get an annoying popup
Apple then created a competitor product, 'AirTags', but their product does not have these popups.
This is anti-competitive because Apple bypass the restrictions they made on their platform for their product that their competitive have to follow.
I would bet most people already know using an Apple product and agreeing to the Find My and other terms in intial setup means Apple is always tracking you. So a pop up from Apple saying that Apple is tracking you makes no sense, it is already known, and accepted by the device user.
Someone other than Apple tracking you, however, is notable, and so people (at least I) would always want to know if someone other than Apple is tracking me via software operating on the device.
Why? Because a user allowed them to track them when using one app, it doesn't mean should extend automatically that to every app they ever develop.
This is clearly Apple apps being treated differently.
The whole point of the notification is to notify you when an entity is tracking you. If you already know Apple is tracking you, then it does not make a difference if Apple's App A or App B or App C is tracking you, it is all Apple.
I must be missing something because that's simply not true in Android. I can individually grant/revoke tracking permissions for each app. I assumed the same would be true for iPhone.
For me it makes no sense to make it only about the entity. It's like saying "the US government is tracking you", instead of saying "the US government is tracking you through this app right now"
I'm pretty sure you're asked whether or not you want to enable Location Services when going through Setup Assistant during the initial device provisioning.
But, some Apple apps do in fact tell you that. This actually does make sense, too. When you collect information for one specific reason, it doesn't mean the user has granted you consent to use it for other purposes carte blanche.
One might retort "Fine, but then granting that permission once is enough." Apparently, that is only true sometimes, and only for Apple.
I would bet most people buying tracking devices know those tracking devices are tracking location.
The point is Apple as a platform provider made something (location without warning) on the platform available to themselves as a platform user (Airtags), that they didn't make available to other platform users who are their competitors (Tile).
Longest-running example is Apple Maps displaying mapping on the lockscreen and having special bespoke turn-by-turn notifications, using a private API to which no other navigation app has access to.
The other big one is Apple muscling itself into the music streaming market by converting Music.app into Apple Music. In a fair world, Apple would have been required to show a pop-up that offered Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer etc. in a random order. You can’t unmake an omelette, so I feel Apple should be forced to pay billions to these competing services as recompense.
People know how to use the App Store. If they want Spotify they know how to find it. It is by no means unfair, immoral, or unethical for a company to prefer and promote their own products.
On a personal note, I never in my life want to see advertisements for third-party software by default.
RIP lala.com, my first and favorite music streaming service - bought out by apple and summarily closed with previous users encouraged to migrate to Apple Music. I think I got a $15 credit or something. As if I needed a reason to further resent Apple.
Apple made iTunes (which already supported Apple Music) into a dedicated Music app, and offloaded some of the other stuff iTunes could do into separate apps and the Finder.
Not saying this to defend Apple, but last week I had that same location tracking pop up for Apples Weather app.
Yes but that doesn't distract from the airtags issue, because airtags are supported by the OS itself, not a specific app. Good on Apple for applying the same rules to it's apps, but not so good on Apple for not giving Tile a way to work in the same manner as airtags.
Not really defending Apple here since they do have an unfair advantage over on these trackers.
But even the weather app triggers that same location pop up.
Not the original poster but for me it means not having to look at my phone for many tasks. I can see who texted or messaged me and the message without opening my phone. I can take or ignore a call. Basically anything that hits your message alerts can be displayed on the watch in most cases.
Maybe the Apple Watch is not the best fitness tracker watch but it’s plenty good for me and it’s health integration is pretty good especially with the ultra.
When setting up my Windows machine I was given the opportunity to pair it with my iPhone via Phone Link. In doing so, my Windows machine was able to get all of the notifications that I saw on the Lock Screen of my iPhone, and call history (make and receive calls too).
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-dev... and https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone...
I assume that this functionality is available to other devices too.
It’s a poor subset of the functionality available to the Apple Watch. One obvious example is that you can reply to a message on an Apple Watch, not so over the API Windows uses.
Does a Garmin watch not do that? I often see people looking at notifications on their non-Apple watch.
Yep. That's exactly right.
When a phone call comes in, or I get a notification (text, calendar, app notification etc) - my Apple Watch does a really good job of (quite often) giving me enough info from my wrist that I don't need to pull my phone out of my pocket.
Garmin watches have some of this integration (IIRC you can definitely get texts, I don't remember what else) - but certainly not all of it. I haven't tried smartwatches from other manufacturers.
I can do all of that with my Garmin watch though?
A Garmin watch can’t track heart rate during an Apple Fitness Plus workout, an example.
Yeah but that’s a separate paid service tied to specific hardware, not so much an iPhone feature as an Apple TV and Watch feature. Garmin can integrate into HealthKit as well as any other fitness tracker.
It's been years, but IIRC the main disparity was with responding to notifications.
On Android you could pick a pre-written reply to texts or even dictate a response.
On iOS you couldn't do anything but close the notification.
Not the parent, but just a few things I’d guess would be Apple Watch specific:
- I’ve had employers that require a confirmation step from an app as a form of 2FA. If my phone isn’t awake, the notification comes to my watch and I can approve my login from my wrist
- If some action requires typing on my watch, I get a prompt on my iPhone to do the typing there instead of on the tiny watch keyboard. The characters I type via the phone appear in real time on the watch as if I were typing directly
- Dismissing and snoozing notifications syncs so I don’t have to dismiss and snooze notifications on multiple devices
- Similarly, if I set an alarm on my phone, the alarm will ring on my phone and, if I’m wearing it, vibrate my watch without further setup. Again, actions I perform to that alarm can all be performed on the watch or phone.
I’d guess these are all tiny, tiny quality of life features, but I’d be very surprised if other non-Apple watches have the ability to implement them.
The Pebble was very obviously hampered by iOS limitations. In order to offload any code to the phone, you either had to write the code in Javascript (so it was basically a web app) or direct the user to manually download a separate companion app from the App Store. If iOS killed the companion app because it hadn't been opened on the iPhone recently (because, y'know, you were using it on your watch and not your phone), you had to manually relaunch the app on your phone.
This is all before even getting into things like ecosystem integration.
The Pebble was released in 2013. The two way communication SDK with Pebble was released in May of 2013. In February of 2015, the 2.0 Pebble SDK was released with further integrations.
The first iWatch was announced in September 2014 and released in April of 2015.
The Pebble was discontinued in 2016.
What integrations are you expecting Apple to have released prior to its own release? What functionality did iOS lack that android provided that hampered Pebble's development on iOS?
"The first iWatch was announced in September 2014 and released in April of 2015."
Just a side note: apple has in past started limiting other companies products as soon as they decide to create a competitor and sometimes years before it hits the market.
IIRC Spotify has been bitten by this at least once, which resulted in a lawsuit.
What limitations did Apple place in 2013 (or 2014 or 2015) that reduced the functionality of Pebble in light of a forthcoming iWatch?
If it was a "it worked and then Apple took away this API that we were going to use" that would be one thing. If it was "the iPhone didn't have the functionality for other devices to read messages over BlueTooth until 2015 with iOS 8" - that's a different claim.
Well to begin with, it is my understanding that the specific limitations listed still exist. Can Bluetooth devices remotely start apps now, or keep them in the background? I only used Pebble as an example because I owned a Pebble, I'm not familiar with Garmen's watches.
But seperately, I think it's really bad for innovation if no new product categories can exist unless Apple makes them first! You can imagine a different type of company that would have been delighted to work with Pebble and add functionality to their operating system, because third party compatibility strengthens their core product.
And of course, if this were the Mac, Pebble would not have needed Apple's cooperation...
The two main differences are notifications filtering (choosing which apps can send notifications to the watch) and actioning notifications from the watch.
Huh? I can filter notifications with third-party smartwatches. Did it on Pebble, Fossil, and others.
Maybe Garmin chooses not to implement it but it is all or nothing on iOS-> Garmin.
Both of which are possible on Android, with a Garmin Fenix 6s.
With non-Apple Watches, you can't 1) reply to texts, 2) answer phone calls (or place calls), 3) interact with other native iPhone applications (like Apple Health).
You'll pry my Garmin from my cold, dead hands but there's no mistaking it for an actual "smart"-watch. I value it entirely for health & fitness, and the very few "smart" things it can do are just nice-to-have icing on the cake.
not sure "non-apple watches" is accurate here. I can do all of those things with my Pixel watch
edit: as comment below points out, I was missing the obvious context of paired with an iPhone.
OP obviously meant non Apple watches paired with iPhones.
Sending messages from watch for example. Apple only allows that for Apple watches
I've also had two Garmin watches and I've always been on Android. I also have had Tiles since long before Airtags existed.
Both Garmin and Tile work flawlessly on my Android devices. I've tried to help my wife add them to her iPhone and it's just not worked right, it's a fight to keep things connected and the Tile app only works when it's open and you can't reply to messages from the Garmin and on and on.
I appreciate the efforts to protect privacy and battery life, I can certainly imagine a different Bluetooth device than the Garmin with a worse app that would use the permissions granted it for nefarious purposes, or a worse tracker than the Tile that would wear down battery life with poorly-coded constant background activity, but Apple are clearly also acting in their own selfish interests.
You can't reply to text messages from other smartwatches, or at least not organically (only canned responses).
replying to sms is one: garmins can do this on Android but only recently (venu 2+, venu 3) got limited ability to do so on ios.
Likewise, I'm a happy Garmin watch owner. Wondering what I'm missing because I don't feel like I'm missing anything.
Not sure I buy this point. Competitors can also offer their own suite of apps. Apple has an advantage that they can come pre-installed. But they aren't really building super-apps, just a variety of default apps - nothing stops third parties from offering multiple apps on the platform, that is actually a common thing to do.
EDIT: My comment was wrong, please see helpful corrections below!
I think there are technical limitations when you have different apps vs. one app. Simples being you need to log in to multiple different apps, but things like data moving between them etc are also complications.
Apps on iOS are allowed to communicate and share data so long as they are published by the same developer.
I didn't know that, can they share logins across apps?
E.g. if I'm logged into Google Spreadsheets, am I also logged into Google Docs automatically?
Yes all apps by the same developer have a shared container.
See here for details: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/keychain_...
Yes, exactly.
I don't think this is actually true. Specifically, once I've logged into one Google app (like Gmail), others automatically pick up the user (like Calendar), so it seems to at least be technically possible.
Having an app that competes with an existing Apple app is considered a duplicate app and you can be rejected because of it.
This was more of an issue early in the App Store’s history than later on. Apple’s relaxed on that a lot a long time ago and you can use any number of contacts, calendars, email clients, browsers, camera apps, messengers, maps apps and so on.
not really for browsers, they allow them but they all have to use Safari's engine
But it still exists in their rules. That they don’t enforce it as often as they used to is cold comfort: they still can whenever they feel the need to do so. So if you get too successful they can still very easily chop you down.
Wouldn't that rule out so many apps? E.g. Netflix competing with Apple TV, Goggle Photos vs Apple Photos, Google maps vs Apple maps, any note-taking app, camera, email client, browser, or weather app... What actually gets you rejected?
Does Apple ever have to give you a reason why you're rejected, or tell the truth even if they give you a reason?
That's probably the biggest reason I think that Society (with a capital S) should rein in Apple a bit. They have a lot of power and money over the consumer, but on top of that they have no obligation to provide transparency and truthfulness. Given how dependent people are on their phones, I think it's perfectly fair for the state to step in and say that the power imbalance between consumers and Apple should be equalized a bit.
Either provide a platform or compete in one. Don't do both.
The problem here is that platform is not precise. You could say this means that Apple should just make the iPhone hardware, and software vendors should compete to create operating systems for it. There's no hard line.
It's not really a hard problem.
Even if you argue that for example a phone and messaging app should/must be preinstalled on a phone, Apple could allow competing apps for that, and uninstalling or disabling the preinstalled one. Then it would be much harder to argue for that they are unfairly competing in the platform they provide.
Courts are used to arguing over problems where there are no hard lines, I don't think they take "there's no hard line" as an excuse to do nothing to enable competition.
I also agree with this. Not permitting the owner of a device to use a different operating system on it should be illegal, by a similar principle
Doing both is fine so long as you as a platform provider don't give any preferential treatment to you as a user of the platform.
I think it refers more to a hypothetical app that, when you're using it, would allow you to completely ignore the entire Apple software ecosystem. It would have its own home screen with launchers to things like a web browser, office tools, media, etc. I think this sort of thing never came to fruition because (aside from it being very hard to make) it would be way too bulky what with having to come in the form of a single app package. The ban on third party stores means it wouldn't be able to offer its own app store or come in segments so you can pick only the apps you want.
Note that the Android equivalent (custom launchers) doesn't need to, and iOS's implementation (Springboard.app), while more integrated than that, is still more modular than you describe. It's only App Store restrictions that prevent you from having an app that opens other apps. (If all apps cooperate, you can use the custom URL handler mechanism to work around the App Store restrictions.)
You also have to buy all apps through Apple's app store to natively download to a device. The Digital Markets Act addressed something similar, requesting that developers can sell through alternate marketplaces. Apple came back with a proposal to (1) stick with the status quo with 30 percent commission on sales, (2) reduce commission to 17 percent with a 50 cent charge on downloads over a million, (3) sell through a competing app store and pay the download fee every time. (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/technology/app-store-euro....)
I've designed several apps (Fitstar, Fitbit, theSkimm) that were dependent on the Apple ecosystem. While it's a huge tax to comply with their rules, they also do a TON to help developers succeed, especially early on. They maintain components, provide developer tools, build entire languages, design new paradigms, and ensure quality. I've had a respect for the tax on a service they provide to both developers and end users. At this point though - they're acting as a monopoly, and it feels anti-competitive.
It's not just the developer tax that's a problem. Hiding behind a veil of privacy also doesn't forgive the introduction of "dark pattern" end user experiences - such as the inability to have a group chat with non Apple users. And no non-Apple share links on Apple Photo albums. These create digital "haves" vs "have-nots" - and not everyone in the world can afford to buy physical Apple devices. There must be protocols that allow information to be more interoperable so people have optionality and control over their digital identities.
Not only that, apparently updates automatically push their apps on you as well, without even asking. Suddenly I had a "Journal" app added to my homescreen from nowhere, and I thought my device had been hacked before I realized what was going on.
Apple also have the advantage of not having to follow their own rules. Their apps can send notifications without asking for permission about it. "Journal" again is an example here where the app sent me a notification asking if I could permit them to send more notifications.
I bet the Apple apps have much, much, better background activity/services support. Doing "background" uploads is nothing short of painful compared to Android.
While we never want to compete with core Apple apps, we're constantly having to say 'sorry that's the restrictions running on Apple' with background support.
(our usecase is we have a B2B app that has visual progress reports - so we'll have the same people on a team - the Android ones get their progress reports uploaded instantly, the iOS ones 'sorry keep your phone open'.)
One thing I hope they mention: Apple put in proprietary extensions to give Apple-made Bluetooth headphones an advantage over all others, then removed the headphone jacks.
“Apple improved upon the notoriously unreliable Bluetooth standard and then slightly degraded wired listening by requiring a $9 dongle” is quite a weak anti-trust argument. Almost all innovation comes from this type of vertical integration.
These days the reliability problems of Bluetooth are effectively gone. Sure, it's not a perfect technology, but Bluetooth devices work completely reliably for me across tons of vendors.
Saying Bluetooth itself is unreliable is an outdated view. There are shitty Bluetooth devices yes, but the protocol works fine when paired with good devices
AirPods came out 8 years ago. It’s good to hear it’s better now, though that doesn’t comport with my experience. Are you saying you’d prefer a world where innovation was held from the market for almost a decade while standards caught up and made them available to everyone and every product simultaneously?
I have high-end Bose headphones from 2020, a new iPhone, and a new Mac. Bluetooth sucks. You're far better off with AirPods than anything else if you're going to use BT.
By the way, it's so bad that I don't use headphones anymore with the iPhone. I use the phone in speaker mode. And the only reason I even have a new iPhone is because AT&T dropped support for my old one.
Huh? It sounds more like they deliberately broke everyone's devices except their own so you either have to pay them more to continue using your existing headset with an adapter, or if you have a bluetooth headset you're just shit out of luck unless you buy an Apple headset. How is that not anticompetitive?
No actually any iPhone with a headphone jack continued to have a functioning headphone jack. And competitors marketed their phones with headphone jacks for a year and ended up also abandoning that feature.
Really? That's a bold claim. Having a large number of companies that are able to offer competing products and services tends to lead to innovation.
Vertical integration and competition are orthogonal. Vertical integration is when Apple improves upon Bluetooth with a proprietary enhancement to the standard. Competition is Pixel Buds advertising a similar feature set.
In what world?
Do you actually use the dongle? It doesn't work with inline mics, making it useless even if you were to carry it around everywhere. It also doesn't work with previous iPhones, so you can't share say a car aux between an old and a new iPhone.
It's hard to tie all that together. Generic Bluetooth devices work just like you are used to everywhere else -- that is, kinda shitty and unreliable. Must we suffer a universally crappy experience by preventing Apple from improving BT for their own headsets?
Maybe they should be required to license the tech, if they are not already. But I don't want to degrade my experience just because that's the only way to have a level playing field. Maybe the BT standards group could get off their ass and make the underlying protocol better.
This isn't accurate, normal Bluetooth works much better than you might imagine. The kind of things that are added on top with Apple's solution are things like fast pairing and instant device switching. They also have their own custom codecs, but most other Bluetooth communication devices also support custom codecs which, on Android for example, are enabled by installing a companion app.
Re: Bluetooth being better than you portray: Don't get me wrong, you can certainly run into problems, but in normal usage it works just fine. And Apple isn't fundamentally improving on the potential issues with their proprietary solutions.
Normal BT drops to very low sound quality when the mic is in use, because it goes into "headset" mode. Apple got around that with an extension. Combined with the jank pairing and device switching, the difference is pretty big.
AirPods also drop audio quality severely when their mic is active, just as with Bluetooth. Apple hasn’t solved that in any way with some nefarious extension.
I'm fine with Apple implementing BT to spec (i.e. crap) and having their own extensions to improve it. I'm not fine with them eliminating the only alternative, the jack. Since the first iPhone, there's been both BT and jack, and people clearly preferred the jack until Apple decided it was time to grow their accessories sector.
The messaging interop point is probably DOA since Apple has stated that they will be adding RCS support to iMessage.
The smartwatch point is interesting and not an argument I've seen made before, but it's a very good example of Apple's vendor lock-in.
Quote from the article:
I read that as 'interop' is a secondary issue, if an issue at all; the actual case is the green/blue segregation. If Apple embedded a fingerprint in every interoperable message and shown blue messages for iMessage-sent content, green background for others, it'd still be a problem even if messages are otherwise identical - unless all the features truly work on both, in which case the color split is purely status signaling.
Strage to see that as an issue; SMS is clearly an inferior protocol compared to iMessage and it's useful to know when messages have been downgraded.
Except that's not why the blue/green difference was created (at least historically).
It dates back to the time where SMS messages cost money for each one sent (though plans often came with x free messages), so the green message was telling you it was (potentially) costing you money when sending/receiving messages. (US$ = greenbacks -> green = cost)
The intent of the color doesn't matter. The actual effect of the color is what matters. Hopefully to the courts, anyway.
The actual effect is to know when my message is secure. No, RCS or another protocol does not mean it’s secure, even if they have some encryption. The other app can still eavesdrop after the message has reached the end.
But perhaps the courts would want to weaken security. It’s definitely a thorn in their side.
The actual effect is ostracism of green bubbles. You literally get kicked out of social circles and get peer-pressured into buying an iPhone.
That's also ahistorical.
The green bubbles came first.
iMessage didn't even exist for the first few years of the iPhone's life. All messages were green. Green could not have been chosen to indicate it cost money, because there was nothing to distinguish it from.
Then, in 2011 (IIRC), iMessage was introduced, and the blue bubbles were to indicate both that it doesn't cost money, and that it supports several other capabilities (which have changed over the years—IIRC, it did not start out with end-to-end encryption, so the people boldly asserting that that's the primary reason for the distinction are also wrong).
I agree. That's why I'm saying interop is not the root of the problem. Segregation of people based on whether they are using iMessage or something else combined with inability to install iMessage on non-Apple devices causes a social problem and a significant smartphone market pressure.
iMessage is the monopoly part. They could make an App or even just an API available on other platforms but don't because they want the lock-in.
Not getting on board with RCS or any other way to improve SMS/MMS until they were (implicitly) forced was motivated by that desire to lock their users in to a messaging platform that only works on Apple devices.
I’ve never understood the messaging interop angle when there are so many non-phone network based messaging apps available. It’s just always seemed the weakest of the arguments against Apple w.r.t. the iPhone. SMS/MMS/RCS standardization was historically a train wreck so it made sense to me for Apple to just support the minimum and be done with it. All of my groups chats that involve a mixture of iPhone and Android users has usually been on something like WhatsApp for this reason.
The other points seem much more specific and actionable.
That would be an interesting development, because apparently the other monopolist in this game is implementing RCS with some proprietary crap, and Apple will deliberately implement the current standard feature set. So they will continue being incompatible but now because of Google. I'll continue investing in the popcorn futures :) .
This makes me so angry. You have a choice in the market! Everything on this list is a feature which I am choosing as the customer. If I didn't want these features and benefits then I would make a different choice as a consumer. As a consumer I am not a victim. I can choose between iOS, Android, or something else.
You are specifically choosing to not have message interoperability? Why?
We have message interoperability already. I can install any messenger of my choosing. I can install WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Signal, etc, etc.
But I don't need any of those because 99% of the people I communicate with are on iMessage.
And again, you choose to not be able to communicate with that 1% over iMessage why? It sounds like being able to do so would only benefit you.
I actually offered to buy that person an iPhone. But regardless, no one is a victim here.
Android has a 70% global market share. You really only communicate with one person of that 70%?
It isn't about you, it's about me who can't install iMessage on an Andorid phone or a Linux desktop and participate in your group chats in reasonable capacity.
One question: Who owns iMessage? Who pays to run the servers? Who pays for the bandwidth?
Do you allow your neighbors to use your yard and driveway that you pay for?
If I had billions of dollars and a yard the size of a small country I probably wouldn't mind...
I postulate people would gladly pay a cup of coffee's worth for a first party app and/or subscription. Certainly easier than shelling out a few hundred bucks for an iDevice.
I wonder if people made comments like these in support of Internet Explorer when Microsoft was dealing with antitrust law in court.
All of these are pretty sane, except for:
Will they force Samsung and Google to have their watches interoperate with iOS too, or are they exempt because they are bit players in the field?
Here's a quote from the complaint:
This actually kind of happened to me. My iPhone 12 Pro was stolen out of my hands last year in July. I had an Apple watch, but decided to replace the iPhone with a Pixel 7 Pro [1] since it was a bit cheaper than replacing the iPhone and I didn't have a job, and as a result my watch didn't work. Initially I was happy enough to use a dumb analog watch, but shortly after this happened, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and wanted something that would track sleep. I ended up getting a Garmin Instinct (per a recommendation on HN actually).
I gotta admit that it would have been pretty nice to not have been forced to buy a new smartwatch, and just use the one I already had. I love the Garmin Instinct, more than I liked the Apple Watch [2], it's a very good, well-made product, and I'm happy that it appears to work fine on iOS and Android, but I really didn't need another watch. If there hadn't been an artificial limitation forcing me to get another watch, I would probably still be using the Apple Watch.
[1] I don't have that phone anymore because the Pixel 7 Pro is a horrible product that Google should be ashamed of themselves over.
[2] In no small part because the battery is like 16 days instead of the 1.5 days I was getting with the Apple Watch.
Then don't buy an Apple Watch? They're pretty upfront about what it is.
1. Samsung watch actually used to support iPhones. They dropped the support, likely due to business reasons and the limitations as described here 2. My naive understanding is that the question is not forcing anyone to support anything, but rather the ability to make it possible to do so. If Apple wants to have full support for Android phones, they are welcome to do so, but not vice versa -- nobody can possibly create a smartwatch that works as well as Apple Watch with iPhones.
I think no because an android compatible watch would be compatible with any other android phone, not only Google Watch <--> Google Phone.
I believe Apple needs more regulatory action taken against it for abusing it's dominant position. But apart from cloud streaming apps (which they've resolved recently by allowing them), I find these claims to be pretty weak and not significantly market-affecting.
I strongly believe Apple is under no obligation to make iMessage cross-platform. It's their service they invented, and they get to run it how they chose. SMS is the interoperable standard between different platforms, and RCS is the new standard which they've comitted to supporting.
I would much rather action taken on Apple for the anti-steering provisions restricting competition for payments. I think this has had a much bigger market impact than limitations on game streaming or smart watches.
As sibling points out and I have argued strongly for in past discussions here, at issue is Apple's control of texting: That is, the ability for a phone to message any other phone with a text message without requiring the other participant to use a custom app. Only iMessage can do this on the iPhone.
In the consumer's eye, all phones can text, so it is a universal way to reach someone who has a phone number. It removes the complexity of having to coordinate ahead of time with a contact about what messaging service they both have. It's why texting is so popular in the US (along with historical actions by US carriers to make texting extremely cheap and ultimately free)
Once they had this control, they then used it to make texting better only when the conversation participants each had iPhones, which produced a network effect where friends would be incentivized to pressure their contacts to also use iPhones. Apple leveraged convenience, features and security to make this happen.
I don't anticipate Apple's upcoming RCS support to materially change this. If we're lucky, we'll get higher quality pictures out of it, but it's possible to support RCS while not supporting a lot of the features that make RCS better than SMS, such as read receipts, replies, typing indicators, and yes, encryption. Encryption is not a standard part of RCS yet, but it could be made so by Apple forcing Google to standardize their encryption and then implementing it. But it's not in Apple's interest given the above to bother. More likely they will do as their initial complaint/announcement about RCS hinted at: Not even engage on encryption because it's "not part of the spec", leaving iPhone/Android messaging unencrypted.
Google is not blameless here, it's insane that they haven't worked themselves to standardize encryption.
That's one of the things I like about this complaint - it points out that they don't allow any other apps to support SMS, so only iMessage has the ability to message anyone with just a phone number, seamlessly upgrading if the other party has iMessage and using SMS otherwise.
It's not solely about iMessage not being open, it's about reserving key features for only iMessage to give it a significant advantage. (Also mentioned are other key bits like running in the background, etc)
Where does that "dominant position" idea come from, that you and others are claiming in this thread? Apple is nowhere near having a dominant position in any of the markest where they compete, such as cell phones or computers.
So if it were up to you all telecom operators would be on separate networks, because you can always use smoke signals to get your message across?
(I'm with you for niche applications where the number of users is small. But we're talking mainstream communication here.)
I just don’t understand the appeal of “Super Apps”. Do users really want to hire a taxi with the same application they use to message their friends, and have that be the same application they use to buy household goods, and have that be the same application they use to control their garage door? It doesn’t make sense to me. These are totally different tasks. Why would a user want to use the same app to do them?
Imagine the extreme end result of this: You buy a phone, and it’s OS comes with only one app installed: The Super App which you launch and do everything through it. How is that Super App not in fact the OS at that point?
Google itself is a superapp at this point as you only have one account. But to answer your question, I think it’s because of interoperability issues. Why can’t my calendar services message me? Or why can’t I quickly create an event inside a chat? If you remember PDAs, they fell under the definition of one ecosystem to manage your communication and time, but now you have several services that refuses to talk to each other. One of the core strength of Apple is that kind of integration. It’s not that you want one company managing it all, you just want an integrated app ecosystem.
The extreme result is indeed what Apple wants to avoid because you would more or less have a custom operating system at that point and could ignore Apple's software, which they would hate. Obviously it is not as good as being able to flash an actual new OS onto the device but it would still impact Apple's bottom line.
The answer is clearly yes in a lot of markets, even if purpose-built apps might be better at a specific tasks, a single app that does dozens of things "well enough" is more convenient than having to juggle dozens of login infos and para-relationships with app developers (managing graymail etc).
This feels like it reflects similar actions taken against companies that are dominant in a market. The first one I heard about[1] was IBM versus Memorex which was making IBM 360 "compatible" disk drives. IBM lost and it generated some solid case law that has been relied on in this sort of prosecution.
In the IBM case it opened up an entire industry of third party "compatible" peripherals and saved consumers a ton of money.
[1] I had a summer intern position in Field Engineering Services in 1978 and it was what all the FEs were talking about how it was going to "destroy" IBM's field service organization.
I’m curious what market opportunities the Apple suit could open up.
- Xbox cloud game streaming
- WeChat like super apps w e-commerce (X wanted to do this play but more likely Facebook Messenger and the like)
- iMessage on android
- a receipt tracking app or something directly tied into Apple Pay tapping
From a hardware standpoint third party fitness trackers with full integration into iHealth and third party ear buds with the same (or better) features than airpods.
Part of the IBM settlement required them to document interoperability. That was used by the DoJ to force Microsoft to document their CIFS (distributed storage) and Active Directory (naming/policy) protocols.
The latter might be particularly instructive as my experience with CIFS when I worked at NetApp was the different ways that Microsoft worked to be "precisely" within the lines but to work against the intent. Documentation like "this bit of this word must always be '1'" Which as any engineer knows, if it really was always '1' then that bit didn't have to be in the protocol, so what did it do when it wasn't '1'?
Not simply that a company is dominant; it is more about how and why they are dominant.
Interesting! So this doesn’t include the 30% Apple tax in this lawsuit?
Epic losing their suit pretty much torpedoed that plank. The findings there would basically tread the same ground and were already found in Apple's favor as a matter of law.
Because the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of Epic v. Apple, even the exact same legal question with the exact same fact pattern would only be bound by that decision if it was (1) between the same parties (res judicata), or (2) in a district court under the Ninth Circuit.
Since US v. Apple is filed in the District of New Jersey, which is under the Third Circuit, the decision in Epic v. Apple is, at best, persuasive precedent, not binding precedent.
What's stopping people from buying or using any other kind of phone, new or old? Or from producing one? None of what's listed here is relevant to that regard.
Absolutely nothing. The claim that Apple has a monopoly on the smartphone market is just laughable. Android has 40% market share in the US and 70% globally.
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/10/iphone-teen-survey-2023...
90% of marketshare with monopolistic practices is relevant?
It's a good list, but I'll be interested to see how it becomes anti-trust actionable and not just "a good list of reasons not to buy an iPhone."
Why is any of this a problem when consumers who find all that too constraining can just use Android?
Because its bad for consumers to have to choose a different device solely because of Apple's anti-competitive practices. This is exactly the sort of scenario when regulation is good - Apple is acting in their best interest, but its on-the-whole bad for the American consumer. We can have the good of Apple without the anti-competitive bullshit like a lack of message interoperability. We just need the government to enforce it
They should have added claims for:
- NFC
apple does have full NFC support for their products but for other apps there are tons of road blocks for using anything close to full NFC functionality
- Bluetooth
same, similar more usable, but some functionality is still not available for 3rd party apps at all meaning certain things can only be provided 1st party by Apple
- Strange behaviour when releasing questionable competive Apps
There had been multiple cases where Apple released 1st party apps and it "happened" that the previous leader(s) of previous existing 3rd party apps "happened" to have issues with releasing updates around that time (or similar strange coincidental behavior). Additionally such new apps often had some new non-documented non public APIs which makes it harder for 3rd parties to compete.
- Questionable app store reviews
Stories of apps running in arbitrary you could say outright despotic harassment when wrt. the app store reviews are more then just few (to be clear legal non malicious apps which should be fully legal on the apple app store).
EDIT: To be clear for the first 2 points apple always have excuses which seem reasonable on the surface until you think it through a bit more (e.g. similar to there excuse for banning PWAs in the EU, I think they might have undid that by now). And for the other points it's always arbitrary enough so that in any specific case you could call it coincidence, but there is a pattern.
Bluetooth remains my biggest gripe with my iphone. When I walk out of range of any connected device, my call switches from my headset to the phone, and I have to manually go in and reconnect to my headset every third or fourth time I want to connect to it.
It stands in stark contrast to literally everything else about the device, which is almost universally easy and thoughtless.
But WeChat is available on iOS isn't it? If not the iPhone would be pretty impossible to sell there, just like Huawei's android without Google play don't sell here in the west.
In this case, could a resolution involve resolving the individual claims, or are the plaintiffs looking for a more all encompassing solution?
I'd be more sympathetic to the government's arguments if Android phones didn't exist. But they do, and people can use them if they don't like Apple's walled garden.
As things are, this lawsuit seems like the government striking an aggressive posture torwards tech companies for no good reason. It's almost like -- as the tech companies get bigger and more powerful -- the government wants to remind them who's really in charge.
As someone who never uses Apple devices, iMessage is the only true form of monopoly based control that Apple imposes. Apple's 30% costs are harsh, but it is not like Google or MSFT charge anything less.
Such cases always seem to reach a pre-determined conclusion, that has more to do with the political winds of the era, than true legal determinism.
Looking at the accusations from that lens:
1. Super Apps - I don't see how 'Apple doesn't share enough data with Chinese super apps' is going to fly 2024 America. It also has huge security and privacy impliciations. This accusation seems DOA.
2. Streaming games is tricky, but it isn't a big revenue stream. The outcome for this point appears immaterail to Apple stock.
3. iMessage - This is the big one. I see the whole case hinging on this point.
4. Smartwatches. Meh, Apple might add inter-op for apple smartwatches on android. I don't think this will lead to any users switching over or an actually pleasing experience.
5. Digital Wallets. This seems tacked on. Apps are PhonePe and PayTm work just fine on Apple and Android. I have never heard of anyone using a Digital Wallet that is not Apple pay, Google Pay or Samsung Pay. Are digital wallets a big revenue stream for Apple ?
This is somewhat aligned with the recent trouble they had in EU as well, so now two different regulatory agencies call them out for the same topics. Are they going to claim "security reasons" again?
Thanks for summarizing. As someone deeply entrenched in Apple's ecosystem, and who admittedly prefers the walled garden, I really have no problem if any of these five things were struck down.
Better competition for cloud streaming apps? Seems good for me as a user. Better messaging interoperability? I don't have anyone in my family or friends group who wasn't already on an iPhone, and I thought this was coming already with RCS anyway, but sure let's go. Better smartwatch support? If it makes Apple want to build even better Apple Watches, I'm all for it. And all of my cards already work with Apple Wallet so this has no bearing on me either.
The only one that's really ambiguous is "Super Apps". I'd be greatly inconvenienced if Apple things stopped working so well together, but I wouldn't be inconvenienced at all if others get a chance to build their own "super apps".
Yet the most important issue for many is missing (unless something changed recently) - inability to access filtered cesspool of scam, malware and annoyance that modern ad-infested internet is.
Jihad against anything actually working well (ie firefox and ublock origin) due to to be polite dubious reasons. Apple gatekeeping is just a move to ads for themselves, it was already multibillion business for them last year. Thats monopolistic behavior in plain sight.
I like the app store, I like the restrictions, I don't want apple to change anything about it. I sort of think apple shouldn't try to comply with these sorts of potential lawsuits by making their app store worse, they should just let people jail break the phone and offer zero support for it.
If people want to buy an iphone and shit it up, let them do it.
Does Apple not let others offer a suite of apps?
This is the reason I am now on an iPhone after being on Android since ~2009. But this could also apply to Samsung too. There were two watches I was considering - Samsung's and Apple's (for health monitoring reasons, I have a family history of heart problems, and am already nearly 10 years older than my dad was when he died). I would either have to buy a Samsung phone or an iPhone to get the functionality I wanted, and TBH I really don't like Samsung's take on Android (I've been either Cyanogenmod or Motorola for over a decade), so an iPhone it was. But I would have preferred to get an Apple Watch and have that work fully with my Android phone, but that's not even a starter, let alone the limited-functionality you would get with a Samsung watch with another Android phone.
I'm happy with the watch, and I now like a lot about the iPhone. But it was 4x the price of my previous phone.
We do have "Super Apps" in the Western world. They're called "web browsers."
Note that Apple doesn't allow alternative web browsers on iOS, so Safari/WebKit is the only Super App allowed on iOS.
https://open-web-advocacy.org/apple-browser-ban/
Do they mention CarPlay? It drives me crazy that it only integrates notifications with Apple first party apps. It will send me notifications for iMessage or Apple calendar, but completely silences and hides Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Google calendar, Google voice, etc no matter what settings I try. It's frankly dangerous because it forces me to check my phone while driving in case of an urgent message or call. Meanwhile Android auto will show me all notifications and I can silence them while driving if I choose.
In terms of (4) Why would the apple watch want to have to build and maintain their apple watch on the google platform. Its funny that a company not wanting to work on another platform (probably due to business costs of doing that) is being considered anti-competitive.
Making it difficult for 3rd party .. sure but trying to force apple to have their hardware work on other platforms is a business decision .
I'm surprised no mention of Apple's forced 30% on all transactions, complete with hard requirement that you never mention the fee to your users.
Holy mother of based.
I love the current US government. Cracking down on pretty much all of Apples bullshit in one fell-swoop. Now just stop them from offering 8gb of ram on the base model macbooks, and apple might be the perfect tech company.