
Dear Apple: Here’s How to Stop the Antitrust Investigations - mpweiher
https://astropad.com/dear-apple/
======
dustinmoris
> Open up alternate payment mechanisms… without the Apple tax

I don't agree with this, as a developer and a consumer. As a consumer it is
extremely nice that I don't have to deal with all sorts of exotic and
different payment gateways. Some accept Amex, some don't. Some try to store my
card without my consent, some don't. Some make it really obvious that not
being charged during a trial period some don't. Some payment gateways are
buggy, slow and frustrating and some are really good. As a consumer I bloody
hate that and I love iOS and Apple for the fact that I can securely put
payment methods behind Apple Pay and then know that I can do any in-app
purchases via an already established and well working gateway. No faffing
about with some other shite.

From a developer perspective I don't see why anyone should use the AppStore as
a distribution channel to a huge market and completely circumvent Apple's cut
when clearly they are offering a lot of value by making this possible in the
first place?

For example, my VPN I can either buy a license by going to their website and
go through a 5 minute checkout process or I can do a 5 second checkout via the
iOS app. The first one goes 100% to the VPN developers, the second also means
that a cut goes to Apple. Sounds fair to me, because I literally purchased a
VPN in a moment where I didn't have the time of going to a website. I was
abroad, I was on a mobile and I had limited time to get quickly a subscription
so I could use the VPN and I would have not bought it if it wasn't for the
ease and speed which the app allowed me to do. This was only the case because
Apple does such a diligent job in keeping it so sleek. Without Apple Pay I
would have not bought that license and they would have not lost 30% of the
sale, but effectively 100%.

~~~
jakub_g
> why anyone should use the AppStore as a distribution channel to a huge
> market and completely circumvent Apple's cut

 _There 's no other option_. It's not possible to sideload apps. Developers
are _obliged_ to use appstore.

Regarding payments, the developers are not only obliged to have a way to pay
with Apple (would be okay), they are obliged _to not have another way_.

Your argument is "I like pepsi, therefore I'm fine with the fact that no one
can buy coca-cola".

~~~
ryanwaggoner
And yours is like “I don’t like Pepsi but this restaurant I like only serves
Pepsi, so I want the government to force them to serve Coca-Cola, instead of
just going to another restaurant.”

~~~
peterwoerner
No its more like, “I don’t like Pepsi but all the restaurants in town only
serves Pepsi, so I want the government to force them to serve Coca-Cola,
because I can't just go to another restaurant.”

~~~
ryanwaggoner
What is the “town” supposed to be here? People? People with smartphones? Nah,
can’t be those, because you’re ignoring Android and the open web as
alternatives to Apple. So I assume you mean “people with iPhones”.

I always find it amusing when the boundaries for monopoly are drawn around the
set of the customers of a company. By that logic, every company is a monopoly!
United Airlines has a monopoly on every customers that flies in one of their
airplanes. How dare they only offer a certain brand of snack! They’re
extorting their customers who have no choice!

~~~
wayneftw
Teens in the US are a market unto themselves.

The iPhone has somewhere between 80-90% market share with them.

Even outside of teens, they're at close to 50% and you don't need a strict
majority in order to have control over the market. That's why, legally, you
don't need a strict majority to be considered a monopoly.

Next.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
None of that is how anti-trust works.

~~~
wayneftw
Yes, it is.

You can read about it here -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_power#Measurement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_power#Measurement)

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_U.S. courts almost never consider a firm to possess market power if it has a
market share of less than 50 percent._

And as much as you might wish it to be so, anti-trust courts are not going to
take seriously an argument that Apple is a monopoly because you find a
demographic (teens) that they have a larger market share in. Again, you can
easily slice and dice markets by customer demographics to make any company a
monopoly.

Next.

~~~
wayneftw
Incorrect. They’ve already lost a preliminary antitrust suit.

They can absolutely be sued for this. Look it up.

Here: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/supreme-
court...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/supreme-court-
antitrust-apple.html)

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Apple Inc. v. Pepper did not cover what you think it did. The Supreme Court
ruled that consumers had standing to sue for antitrust violations with regard
to how Apple regulates the App Store because they pay fees for apps in that
store.

It has nothing to do with your bizarre argument that because Apple has greater
than 50% market share in the demographic of "teens", they're a monopoly and
the government must step in. Does that also apply for a company who has a
monopoly on "27-year-old web designers in Brooklyn who own a dog"?

I'm done with this conversation. You clearly have an axe to grind against
Apple, and it's leading you to avoid arguing in good faith.

~~~
wayneftw
> The Supreme Court ruled that consumers had standing to sue for antitrust
> violations...

Thank you for acknowledging the exact point that I just made?

> It has nothing to do with your bizarre argument ...

I didn't say that it was because of my argument. My demographic argument was
simply a point of interest. And actually, you can disregard it and still know
that Apple is the largest single manufacturer of smartphones in the US and
they’ll soon surpass the 50% mark based on their trajectory and the new $399
iPhone. Samsung is a distant second.

How bizarre is that??

> I'm done with this conversation. You clearly have an axe to grind against
> Apple...

Pffft. Okay. Why shouldn't I have an axe to grind? And while we're at it -
you're clearly apologizing for Apple where they deserve none. _Defending a
company that is basically the fucking China of tech with their Great Wall of
bullshit isn 't a real good look._ You're going to be on the wrong side of
history when this bears out.

But please, do stop arguing because nothing you say will make what Apple is
doing right. Even if the law were on their side, which it's not, we'd have
reason enough here to make new laws that target these essential devices with
new regulations. So, change your attitude, get on the correct side and stop
defending your favorite corporation.

------
throwawayftc7
I wrote to US Justice Department back in ~2013 to complain that I could not
find the protocol documents to connect to my iPhone over USB. Specifically I
was not willing to accept iTunes terms of service and wanted a workaround.
Microsoft was required by consent decree to document all wire protocols, so I
wanted to begin the process for Apple to so the same.

I got a personalized response from the Justice Department. The response said
since the iPhone had closed protocols from the beginning, before it was
dominant, there is nothing they could do to force opening up. While I didn’t
like the outcome, I did understand it, and I was pleasantly surprised to get
an actual response.

I suspect there is a similar argument for the App Store model. Apple never
allowed side-loading apps. We may need new legislation to change this if we
want.

~~~
kungato
I respect you so much for writing to them. I feel like in the USA people
really write to the authorities and congressmen and the like while in eastern
Europe people never do such things because I guess we think the system is so
broken there is not fixing it from within. Since EU things really changed from
the government side but the culture remains the same and we are not using the
tools at our disposal

------
gampleman
As a consumer of Apple products I am not too keen on any of these suggestions.
I agree that developers for Apple's platforms would like these and perhaps
there is some trickle-down effect for consumers.

> 1: Enable users to set default app preferences.

Fine, but really Maps and Email is pretty much the only one I care about. This
is the best suggestion of the bunch.

> 2: Open up alternate payment mechanisms… without the Apple tax.

Nah. Last thing I want is to have to fill out my credit card information in
every app and worry about what's going to happen with it. Apple Pay and IAP
work perfectly adequately from the consumer standpoint.

> 3: Allow sideloading of iOS apps.

I don't think we have a problem with lack of iOS apps. In fact I wish App
Store Review was stricter and took more issue with quality and dodgy business
practices (i.e. excessive and addictive use of IAP).

> 4: Give third-party developers equal access to APIs.

What this is asking for is for Apple to effectively release features later or
not at all. Or have some even more draconian App Store rules. I don't want
every random app having full hardware access to spy on me as it pleases.

> 5: Stop sherlocking third-party developers.

Right, so Apple is not supposed to give me free access to nice features so I
can continue to pay money to someone else. Right.

~~~
mpweiher
> [alternate payment mechanisms] ...fill out my credit card information in
> every app

Why is that the only alternative? How about

    
    
         app1 \                                  / payment service1
         app2 -  OS payment service framework    - payment service2
         app3 /                                  \ payment service3
    
    

This is how OSes should and used to work. To define the interfaces and provide
frameworks for services to integrate.

~~~
rimliu
And ditch the Apple tax, right? So Apple will end up will all of the headaches
of the integration with none of the benefits. And if some "payment service"
stops working, guess whose fault it would be.

~~~
lifty
What about the fact that we buy their 1k phones or 3k laptops? Does that not
count for anything? Apparently not, it's not enough anymore. Large companies
like apple want a piece of every pie. If this trend continues you will soon be
able to enlist your whole life into the Apple or Amazon ecosystem, they will
provide everything you need, and will just take all your productive output.
Don't worry, you will have entertainment, food, accommodation... everything
you need. And if you don't like it, you can switch feudal lords of course.
It's a free market after all.

------
fsflover
Congress: "Does Apple restrict, in any way, the ability of competing web
browsers to deploy their own web browsing engines when running on Apple’s
operating system?"

Apple: "The purpose of this rule is to protect user privacy and security."

[https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG...](https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG-116-JU05-20190716-SD036.pdf)
via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21587191](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21587191)

Upd: Giving the freedom to users is not the goal of Apple. Quite the opposite.

~~~
simonh
Alternate Apple: "Yes, so what?"

Creating an obligation on companies to support competitors products on their
own products, and dictating the commercial and technical terms of how they
must implement that access seems a pretty extreme step.

Many vendors sell devices that allow limited customisation via apps. Cars
allow some software client options and not others. Games consoles allow some
software such as games and entertainment apps and not others. Feature phones
had limited curated app download options in their 'stores' long before the
iPhone. If we can require Apple to accept apps we dictate onto their store
using their infrastructure on terms they don't get to determine, why can't we
also require Nintendo to accept non-game apps or even a third party browser on
the Switch? Why can't Spotify, or hundreds of streaming media or podcast
companies require car companies to provide access to them to install their
client app on car infotainment systems?

Where does this principle of imposing design features and commercial
obligations, and technical implementation details on companies to benefit
their competitors end?

~~~
virtue3
I think you should re-read everything about the Microsoft antitrust cases and
apply that to Apple. It's pretty obvious to me what accounts to antitrust here
and it's been very obvious for years.

I think you should ask yourself really deeply "if this was the case on OSX
would I be ok with it?" And use that lens.

~~~
simonh
I thought the browser finding against Microsoft was misconceived. The decision
that including a browser in the operating system was anti-competitive bundling
seems, from a modern perspective, utterly absurd.

>It's pretty obvious to me what accounts to antitrust here and it's been very
obvious for years.

It's not obvious to me.

>I think you should ask yourself really deeply "if this was the case on OSX
would I be ok with it?" And use that lens.

OSX is marketed as an OS that can run whatever software you like, and on which
you can develop whatever software you like. Sure if they changed that I
wouldn't be happy about it and I would move to another desktop OS. I would
complain about it and fight it, but I wouldn't claim that Apple didn't have
the right to do it. I don't have the right to dictate to Apple what products
they design. OSX is a different tool for a different purpose. Not all tools,
or even all screwdrivers have to be multi-bit screwdriver sets.

------
Eric_WVGG
I disagree with a lot of this list, it this particular item I think deserves
so,e attention.

> #4: Give third-party developers equal access to APIs.

AirPods are great. Maybe a little… too great. It is actually impossible for a
competitor to make a pair of earbuds that matches with the iPhone as easily as
AirPods because that API is private. This strikes me as unfair and
anticompetitive; no matter how much better a particular pair of earbuds might
be, they cannot work as well as AirPods because Apple doesn’t want them to.

There’s a similar thing happening with the Apple Watch. Google Maps has
abilities that Apple Maps doesn’t have, but Apple won’t let you use drop-in
replacements for mapping. So instead of a safe bike ride, I’m heading the
wrong direction on one-way streets or on freeways thanks to Apple Maps. This
just sucks.

Some commenters here say “I don’t want third parties to have access to private
information.” There’s a line somewhere, I don’t think anyone sane would demand
access to _all_ APIs. But there are some clear examples where the platform
maker is giving unfair advantage to their own accessories and services, this
is dipping into antitrust territory.

~~~
tachion
One could argue, that you can create an experience as good as AirPods or even
exceeding it. All you need to do is to develop a 'protocol' better than the
horrible Bluetooth, make it an industry standard and convince companies to
adopt it.

The only reason why Apple had to (and could at the same time) work on that
aspect of headphones is because Bluetooth sucks and Apple is in a business of
taking things that are widely used and suck, making them suck much less and
selling them for a premium price.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
Right, that’s sort of the “well if you don’t like Apple, you can always use
Android” argument.

The problem with that is, let’s say there’s one thing on the Google-controlled
platform you don’t like (let’s say privacy, to over-simplify)… “well if you
don’t like Android, you can always use iOS”

Platform makers have a level of power over consumer choice that monopoly law
isn’t equipped to address.

~~~
tachion
Mind, I've said nothing about operating systems or platforms nor have I said
about abandoning them if you don't like one thing about them. I have said,
that if you don't like something and if you do come up with a better
standard/protocol and convince companies to use it, it will show up on all of
them (just like Bluetooth is on macOS, BSD, Linux, Windows, iOS, Android,
etc.).

Until better solutions are available all companies are free to and most likely
will try to find better solutions themselves and to do it in a way that will
give them an edge over competition. Some more than others, and Apple here is
known for being in exactly that type of business.

------
woadwarrior01
This coming from a company whose primary product has a rent seeking
subscription model, seems a bit like a case of the pot calling the kettle
black. When Apple released Sidecar, it was a net positive for all the
consumers who didn't want to pay a monthly subscription fee for a simple
feature like using your iPad as a secondary display for their Mac.

There are a few holdouts from the days when you could pay for software up-
front and then pay for major updates if you wished to. Products from Serif
(makers of Affinity Photo) come to mind. I wish more software products went
back to this simpler and IMHO, better revenue model.

~~~
bonaldi
The model you like also vanished because of Apple: first, they sold their own
apps like Keynote for <$10, creating a really low price anchor, second – they
don't support free trials, creating pressure for free versions of apps, and
third and most importantly they don't support upgrade pricing, which pushes
everyone to subscription pricing.

------
seven4
The trouble is that as a tech company - first you want to build a moat around
your success and barriers to competitors usurping your hard-won position/user-
base.

IF you do this very well you become a "tech giant" \- then you want to
continue building that moat/pulling away from your competitors BUT now you
have to look like you aren't anti-competitive.

So i guess it's useful to think about: _what does Apple want to do vs what
does apple want to look like its doing?_ Wherever the internal/external
impetus of an organisation are at odds - progress will be painful/prolonged.
Then again if you ran Apple would you be quick about ceding the moat?

~~~
Mindwipe
> Then again if you ran Apple would you be quick about ceding the moat?

I'd hope I'd be smart enough to see how completely corrosive it's been to
Apple. It's made their software development process fat and lazy, and propped
up bad products that should have been dropped or fixed. Apple's software
reputation was invincible ten years ago, and now it's shipping Mac apps that
can't even full screen video properly. I think, in the long run, that will
cost the company far more than it gains from it's behaviour.

------
jsjohnst
As someone who bought and paid for their products (including two hardware
dongles), I’m glad Apple developed Sidecar. It’s faster, more stable, and
generally works better for my use case. If their product was better, I’d
definitely still use it, as I sank a lot of money into it, but it’s not _to
me_. If a customer pays around a hundred dollars (I think that’s right, need
to check) for your product and then decides to use a free alternative, what’s
that say about your product?

Not to be callus, but “when your entire business is adding a feature to a
platform that can be added easily by the platform provider, you have no real
business” is a saying that’s been around for a long time for a reason.

~~~
Bud
Just to add to this, it was always an extremely obvious use case to use any
external device with a nice display as, well, a display, perhaps for another
device.

Pretending that you're Edison when all you did was to enable an already-
obvious use case, and then whining when someone else also enables that use
case, kinda strains credulity. Accusing Apple of doing something untoward, or
even surprising, here, is just silly.

~~~
jsjohnst
> Pretending that you're Edison when all you did was to enable an already-
> obvious use case

Not sure if you were aware, but your analogy is more fitting than it seems on
a quick read. Sir Joseph Swan was an early inventor of the lightbulb (he, like
Edison wasn’t the first, but his was earlier than Edison). Swan had moderate
success with his lightbulb, but Edison’s proved to be superior in the market
and ultimately won.

In that analogy, I think Luna is Sir Joseph Swan and Apple is Edison.

------
dave_aiello
I think Apple hasn't made payment on the App Stores nearly flexible enough.
For instance, why should there be one and only one payment method supported?

I run a small business, and I have to keep a running total of App Store
purchases I made for business purposes and write a monthly reimbursement check
to myself. This is ridiculous for accounting purposes.

It should be easier to have an Apple ID for business and a separate personal
ID.

There should also be an option to choose another payment method whenever you
make a purchase.

------
_ph_
A great article with some very good points. 1) should be kind of obvious and
easy to do, but especially 3) and 4) are extremely important in my eyes.

The biggest restriction on iOS (and on iPadOS, but for simplicity, I will only
use the term "iOS") is the requirement to go through the App Store approval
process. The justification is the promise of security and curation of app
quality. First of all, those are two separate things and shouldn't mixed up.
Second, in my eyes, Apple fails at both of them.

Of course, I don't know how many truly horrible apps (from a security point of
view) are rejected by the process, but there are enough examples, where
dubious apps made it past the review process. But the elephant in the room -
no its actually a diploducus - is the so-called curation. On the one side,
there are tons of very useful apps which cannot be submitted, just think of
Termux, by the app store rules. On the other side, Apple does have zero
restraint approving all those games which only are a vehicle of selling in-app
purchases. Furthermore, they sell the prices for amounts which should be
considered fraudulent. If you buy a AAA-title for your computer or console, at
most you pay $50-$100. How can it be allowed that even the most basic games
sell in-app purchases which can amount to several hundred dollars or even more
without any limit? That is plain immoral in my eyes.

But Apple allows this. Worse even, they seem to quite support this, as the
whole App Store design has driven most other game styles from the platform. On
the other side, a lot of useful apps get disallowed from the App Store just
for certain "rules".

Another bad example is the App Store search. When searching for an app, you
get paid for app placements in the search result _before_ the results which
best matched your search. Germany released a covid-19 tracing app yesterday,
but a simple search yielded my everything but that app. Only when searching
for the exact app name, I got to it. This is bad with general legit apps, a
disaster in this specific case.

In consequence, I do think Apple should urgently overthink their App Store
approach. Otherwise, legislators should enforce an opening of the platform.

Towards using private APIs: while it totally makes sense to develop APIs by
co-developing them with the apps which use them as a test case for the APIs,
in general, they should be opened up to all apps. Not doing so is not only
unfair competition, but dumb in the long term, as it encourages the existence
of semi-maintained APIs for internal applications. And harms the quality of
third party apps.

~~~
photonios
Termius is in the app store?
[https://termius.com/ios](https://termius.com/ios)

~~~
_ph_
Sorry, my mistake, I of course meant Termux. But I keep mixing them up :).
Thanks for pointing that out, have corrected it.

------
riclad
There's only smartphone platforms, apple and android.neither is perfect.
Google drops apps and services it it does not have millions of users or it
does not make a profit eg Google reader I use android I can sideload apps on
my phone. Google does not seem to copy popular apps like apple does Apple is
unlikely to provide an option to pay via PayPal or some credit card unless its
forced to by Congress, like the EU forced Microsoft to provide a browser
ballot Eg choose Firefox , chrome etc instead of Internet explorer years ago
before Windows 10 was released Companys realise more and more products will be
bought online using apps, if you can get people used to using apple pay or
Google payment services you have an almost unlimited source of income. Even if
apple is forced to allow apps to be paid with Other finance options like
mastercard will they be easy to use will they have access to the api that
apple uses for contact less payment We have seen before in tech the public
tends to use the most easy to use app or services, it's easy to just put in
your credit card into the apple app once and just buy any app or service with
a few clicks without thinking about it The law is slow to catch up with tech.
10 tears ago people did not expect consumers to be Able to buy products and
services using a smartphone app. Apple was the first company to offer an easy
to use app to buy music or TV shows on a mobile device. The first music apps
on phones were limited and hard to use

------
patwolf
> #4: Give third-party developers equal access to APIs.

I used to work for a company that produced an app server. They sold the app
server as well as applications that ran on the app server. Other companies
also sold competing applications that ran on the app server.

One of the things I had to do was write a tool that scanned our applications
for API usage to ensure none of them were using APIs internal to the app
server. It would have been anti-competitive to create APIs that only our own
apps were allowed to use.

It has always surprised me that Apple has gotten away with this for so long.
I'm not sure if the company I worked for was concerned about being sued by the
government or by other companies, but I don't think they would have worked so
hard to stamp out private API usage if there weren't some risk of litigation.

------
LockAndLol
Apple doesn't and won't care as long as its customers don't care. One can
already see from some comments here that Apple is infallible and ever correct
to some - and this is more of a technical crowd. Imagine what it's like for
those who have a slight to little understanding of the issue at hand.

Unless a strong competitor comes along that does things differently _and_
better (especially in marketing) Apple can continue delivering mediocre
products and being an ass to devs. Unless it directly affects the majority in
a tangible fashion, it won't care.

------
dave_aiello
I think sideloading of apps on iOS would end up being a disaster for third-
party developers and the platform. Some of the most pervasive hacks on the
Android platform begin with a sideloaded app.

~~~
HiddenCanary
Exactly, and giving third party developers access to private (privileged) APIs
would just increase risk of malware on the platform.

------
SllX
Astropad undermines their own argument by pointing out that Apple forced them
to change their business plan by adding features to their product they
otherwise wouldn’t have.

One of my first jobs was at a coffee shop, owned by a guy who once tried to
expand his coffee shop to other locations, only to see Starbucks snatch those
locations from his fingertips at the last second by walking in and offering
the landlord a lot more money. He never did expand, and actually he just went
out of business in part due to this government mandated economic shutdown, but
he was old enough to retire so I wouldn’t cry for him, he’s got his wife and
health and plenty of time to enjoy his retirement. I digress. The guy who
owned the coffee shop knew the real estate fellow at Starbucks who would walk
in and offer these last minute deals. He would always tell him, “it’s just
business.”

Apart from walking in and taking the prime pickings of the potential retail
spots to open a coffee shop, Starbucks had another much more well known
practice of opening up shop across the street or right next door to other
coffee shops. Now what would happen really depended on what how the coffee was
like at the indie.

Starbucks would actually drive up interest in the area for coffee, so if your
small indie coffee shop served good coffee, then Starbucks opening up next
door might be the best thing to ever happen to you. Sales would go up, more
people in the neighborhood would start drinking coffee increasing your
possible pool of customers.

If your coffee sucked though, then you were probably going out of business.
Your customers would try the Starbucks coffee, find it was better than you
served and the writing would be on the wall. People would still come by and
try your coffee, but if it wasn’t as good, they wouldn’t be back.

Software isn’t special. You can break your back putting your all into a
product that people love and get a lot of value out of, but you’re not
entitled to success just because you worked hard, and you aren’t entitled to
go without competition, even from the platform vendor. When you find yourself
at odds with the platform vendor, then you go multi-platform, you change, you
adapt.

I bought my phone and iPad knowing their limitations, and I was okay with
them. Every one of those developers I see in the App Store chose to be there,
and if they weren’t there, somebody else would be. The App Store created the
opportunity for small indies like Marco Arment to build sustainable businesses
on, and for services like Spotify to reach a larger audience, and for services
like Uber and Lyft and AirBnB to get their start. Facebook and Google changed
strategies and went mobile first more than a decade ago when it became clear
how big of a deal it would be, and Facebook paid $1B for Instagram, what was
then a small startup of about 30 employees that got their start making an
iPhone app.

Not every business is successful though, and going through Apple is part of
the cost of doing business because it’s _their_ storefront on _their_
platform, a software platform where the included list of features can expand
or shrink on a dime. App Store developers are in the same boat as YouTubers
where their stream of revenue depends on a platform that changed over time,
and YouTubers figured it out a while ago that to stay in business, they have
to have a revenue stream other than YouTube and toe the policies.

If your business plan relies on the government coming in and busting your
platform vendors chops, then you don’t have a very good business plan.

Life is tough, and so is business.

~~~
specialist
Agree with your assumptions and conclusions. Especially impact of Starbucks on
indies. Just adding some color.

Insiders regard McDonalds as a real estate company, not a burger franchiser.

Similarly, back in the day, Starbucks' real estate group was their secret
sauce, IMHO. They knew exactly how much revenue a store would generate. So
while they likely paid more than that indie owner, they most definitely did
not over pay. I assume they've only become more sophisticated since.

Source: Worked in Store Planning, wrote some tools to help the architects
draft designs based on budgets provided by real estate group.

~~~
SllX
That is interesting. Thanks for the added color, my former boss was under the
impression that they were overpaying given the numbers they were quoting, but
well, he didn’t have perfect info either.

------
ubermonkey
This strikes me as a bunch of wishful thinking that Apple shouldn't do.

Apple ought not be subject to ANY antitrust action because the only monopoly
it has is a monopoly on _its own phones and tablets_. If that's a monopoly,
then so is every other walled garden. Android's market share dwarfs iOS
worldwide. It's bizarre to go after this minority player with these laws.

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spinningslate
Not commenting on the merit or otherwise of the specific suggestions, because
the only part that really matters is this:

"71% budget increase in the Department of Justice’s antitrust division to
investigate big tech monopolies.

It’s in Apple’s best interest to be proactive and tackle the antitrust problem
itself rather than waiting for the government to step in. "

That is: Tim Cook and the Apple board have to weigh up the risks. How likely
is it that the justice department will _actually_ come after them in a
meaningful way? Can they head that off? Lobbying will be a _much_ more
attractive option, commercially and strategically. They will do the least they
possibly can to head off any imposed change to the status quo.

That the DoJ actually went after Microsoft was very much the exception rather
than the rule. Apple will likely learn from that: it's unlikely but not
impossible. An enforced breakup would be catastrophic for Apple (even if -
possibly - good for the market). Tim Cook certainly wouldn't survive that.
OTOH, loosening any of the current constraints will hurt Apple's services
play.

So this is 100% about risk management for Apple. Neither the welfare of its
contributing app developer community, nor "fair" market competition, are
remotely first order determinants of outcome.

\--

EDIT: fixed typo

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pier25
#6 allow third party browser engines in iOS

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talkingtab
Organizations can be really stupid. There is some test about delayed
gratification. If you wait you get two candies, if not you only get one. Apple
is currently a one candy company. You see this in how it deals with the Mac
and in the policies about IOS Apps.

Please note this is not to say the people at Apple are stupid, but rather
there is a very, very low level of organizational intelligence at work here.
Very. Low. Sadly.

The article is great, well worth the read and written with great clarity!

------
LoSboccacc
"dear paesant, thanks for your concern, but we are going to stop the
investigation the traditional way, using our millions from anticompetitive
customers practices"

\- apple

~~~
ThaJay
First sensible post on this topic. All others talk about the content like the
premise rings true, but Apple will never do stuff like that, same as how the
current tech giants don't have a place in this world post capitalism.

~~~
LoSboccacc
well it's "hacker news" so people around here will keep spinning around
technological solutions patting the back of each other and wondering why is
apple so shortsighted while they're so smart and all-seeing

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rimliu
Lots of wishful thinking. If these were allowed none of them would have the
effect author claims they would. See Android.

1\. There are already alternative mail clients. Does author think that not
allowing any of them being default tehy do not compete on quality? This is the
only one I see as the reasonable one, albeit not for the reasons claimed in
the article.

2\. Uhm, Apple Pay is as frictionless as it can get. I have no desire to keept
entering my credit card details into every app which thnks they have a better
payment processor.

3\. Apple does not "arbitrarily" reject apps. And it's restrictions that bring
innovation, not the other way around. Author wants sideload apps, but somehow
Apple would still be responsible for the security. Let's see how that works
for Android.

4\. Just no. I do not want John Doe's app accessing my text messages.

5\. Well you wanted the competition in #1, so how about that.

~~~
lifty
I agree that Apple provides a great experience, and I am an Apple user for
most of my computing needs; but Apple's approach uses the user experience
stick to squeeze out monopolistic benefits out of their platform when it suits
them, and when it doesn't, they ignore user expereince.

1\. This is a clear one, and Apple chooses to ruin user experience here. I
only use Apple Mail because it's the default app.

2\. Me neither. Why don't they do something for payments that is similar to
how they treat password managers. A standardised way to treat payment data.

3\. Apple does arbitrarily reject apps. They just signed a special deal with
Amazon that bypasses the app store rules, for gods sake.

4\. I agree, and Apple has come out with good ways of allowing apps to special
APIs.

5\. Well, what competition is it when someone has to pay 30% from their
revenue?

~~~
rimliu
I've been using iPhones for 11 years now and I have never used Apple Mail app.
Currently I am using Outlook which is very good on iOS.

