

It is criminal that Apple gets away with not allowing alternative defaults - libovness
http://ma.tt/2013/11/apple-defaults/

======
pkaler
Except that Google does the exact same thing with Google Play Services on
Android. Ask Skyhook. On top of that, Google keeps pushing organic SERP
listings further and further down the page to push people to Google+.

We actually live in much better times than the Microsoft monopoly days. Apple,
Google, Amazon, Facebook have asymmetric business models. Consumers benefit in
the long run as they all battle each other.

Apple doesn't have to monetize Maps so they can chip away at Google's ad
revenue. Google doesn't have to monetize Android OS and devices so they can
chip away at Apple's hardware/software revenue.

~~~
quadrangle
Apple is accused of being criminal. So showing that Google does the same thing
is a refutation?

If Bank of America illegally forecloses on people, it's okay because Citibank
does that too?

~~~
nknighthb
Apple is not being accused of being criminal by anyone who understands
antitrust law. The proof is the comparison to Microsoft, an entity that held a
clear monopoly where Apple does not.

~~~
adventured
Modern anti-trust law is not about monopolies.

You can nearly count the number of substantial monopoly cases in US history on
one hand.

However, take a look over the anti-trust cases just since 1994 (almost none of
which have to do with monopolies):

[http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/index.html#page=page-1](http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/index.html#page=page-1)

~~~
nknighthb
I can tell you haven't read the indictments. If you had, you'd notice a common
theme that A) matches the Apple/Amazon books case you brought up earlier, and
B) very much does not match the Maps case.

The DOJ is concerned with suppression of competition on an industry level.
Amazon/Apple arguably did so. Microsoft certainly did so. Two platforms in
fierce competition, neither in a truly dominant market position, using their
own Maps application, is not what the DOJ is going to worry about.

------
Packeteer
Apple provides a solution that is a single unit, hardware AND software that is
tied together. Think of it as a car, the whole thing is purchased at one time,
functions entirely on its own from end to end, but you can add features to it.

The alternatives are allowed, but you are buying a singular device, not a
platform for other developers per se, it just happens to allow developers to
create software for it.

On the other hand, you have Microsoft which has historically been a platform
software solution, building a culture of allowing anyone to build on it,
licensing portions and features to developers for them to build on. Until
recently, there was only tepid attempts at hardware branded Microsoft where as
Apple has always been hardware bound to software to the point you can't easily
install OSX on anything other than Apple hardware. The same cannot be said for
Microsoft, the only other company that is bound by this rule of multiple
defaults.

That rule came about because Microsoft had licensing rules that prevent devs
from using MS software on their own hardware if that hardware included
competing software. If you wanted to use Windows, you HAD TO use IE only.
Microsoft was using monopolistic practices, but did not have a monopoly btw.

In a nutshell, Apple is selling a singular device that happens to have a
doorway that allows users to install addition software to expand the
hardware/OS beyond its default intended (by Apple standards based on analyzing
the user market) purposes.

Other alternatives are hardware solutions that allow your choice of software
as middleware to gain access to the hardware functionality. Two hugely
different ideologies.

One is a fork, the other is build-a-bear.

------
jlmorton
It's interesting that Google reportedly demanded Apple allow Latitude in Maps
on the iPhone as a prerequisite for providing turn-by-turn navigation. Apple
refused, built their own maps product...and then Google cancels Latitude?

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/26/disagreements-
over...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/26/disagreements-over-turn-by-
turn-directions-prompted-apple-to-ditch-google-maps)

~~~
chalst
I think the Apple Insider piece is a problematic summary of Paczowski's piece,
and leads to a mistaken idea of what went wrong with the Google-Apple
negotiations The original article is at
[http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/26/disagreements-
over...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/26/disagreements-over-turn-by-
turn-directions-prompted-apple-to-ditch-google-maps)

Paczowski's article says that Google's request to include Latitude was one of
four items that were "major points of contention between the two companies"
(besides the general deterioration in the relationship between the two
companies), while claiming that voice navigation was the most important.
Nowhere is it suggested that inclusion of Latitude was non-negotiable or the
point on which negotiations crumbled.

------
kolinko
The dofference is thhat Microsoft was a monopolost at the time, and Apple
right now is far from being the only choice.

~~~
btilly
Exactly.

Also on current growth trends, Apple is going to lose to Android. So not only
don't they have a monopoly, they don't have any prospect of gaining one
either.

~~~
simonh
Not so. Apple is increasing (1) it's market share in the US, and that was in
the quarter before the new phones were released. I assume you're talking about
the US market, since that's the region the DOJ has jurisdiction over to
scrutinize monopolies.

Apple is doing just fine against Android in the US market, and most developed
markets, though I don't expect them to get anything like a monopoly and don't
think they're interested in pursuing one.

(1) [http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/11/05/apple-samsung-
leng...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/11/05/apple-samsung-lengthen-us-
smartphone-marketshare-lead-in-q3)

------
netcan
There's the software politics side of this. They're abstract and legalistic. I
think there is merit in thinking about this stuff in terms of freedom, abuse
of market power & such. There are definitely things companies can do that make
the tech ecosystem worse for users and we need to watch out for them. But
there are also costs to legal interventions, antitrust and such.

Getting regulators involved means these decisions will be made based on
provable things and rigid rules and that's not ideal here. The best thing for
users, progression of technology and such are pretty subjective issues.
Legalistic systems are not good at making these kinds of decisions.

They're not optimal either, perhaps worse than just eating things play out.
Remember that the IE/MS stuff from the 90s basically sorted itself out. The
legal interventions had little effect on the long term. Yes, IE dominance may
have slowed down the development of the web for a while. But, the quality gap
between IE & Firefox/Chrome combined with improvements in software
distribution via the web got the market back to solid competition pretty
quickly. Meanwhile the long antitrust stuff was a huge, expensive distraction.

There are genuine reasons for locking down iOS. The reality is that putting
power in users hands also creates complexity. The ability to change settings
is also the ability to screw up settings. Can't change also means "can't screw
up." If a computer has features like this which a user doesn't understand,
they effectively reduce the power of that computer _for them._

I'm not saying that Apple made the right decisions. I'm not saying their
motivations are all about user experience or that the desire to dictate users'
maps, browsers, calendars, doesn't play a role. " _blatantly self-interested
and user-hostile stance_ " sounds a little strong to me, but it's not
completely unreasonable. What I _am_ saying is that we have no perfect
solution to these things.

If the choice is leave it to Apple & competition or get judges & lawyers
involved, I prefer to let it play out unless things get pretty bad.

------
steelcm
This is the hacker news comment thread from yesterday which I presume sparked
off this post: "Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6711551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6711551)

------
Cthulhu_
Link bait title; it's not criminal, it's Apple's prerogative to not allow
default apps to be replaced, just like how it's Google's prerogative to demand
a Google account to be installed before using an Android phone or the Play
store.

------
nickstinemates
I couldn't disagree more about the problem statement or the solution.

First, people do have a choice. Don't buy iOS/iPhone/Tablet. Buy something
else that fits your needs. Competition is strong. Problem solved. There's
plenty of alternates. As they say, 'vote with your wallet/eyes/?'

Second, shouldn't Apple ultimately fail if this is a bad choice? Won't they
get out innovated? Someone pointed out Microsoft, and I agree. They were great
15 years ago. Less so and less so every year, enough so that OS X is
considered the 'leader' in the tech community. Hell, even my mom wants a mac
now.

------
raverbashing
Well, by default Wordpress doesn't present me with alternatives to Akismet as
well.

~~~
adventured
If the DOJ decides that blogging is an important market, and the theoretical
abuse is meaningful in terms of impacting consumers, they could pursue
Wordpress over the matter.

Smart phones in the US is a market measured in the tens of billions of dollars
per year. Apple has over 40% of it. The money involved makes it a much bigger
issue than eg blogging.

------
chappi42
It is also criminal that Apple and Microsoft get away with enforcing a 'single
point of app store'.

Monopoly or not, states set the rules and these two are points where imho
government should enforce choice.

~~~
simonh
The problem with that is that you'd be making the Kindle business model
illegal too. Same for games consoles, both handheld and portable. There's
nothing novel or unique about app stores. Companies have been able to tightly
control the media ecosystem for their devices for decades. Disrupting that
would make the entire business model of subsidizing the device on the back of
controlling access to the media nonviable.

Goodbye video console market. Asta la Vista Gameboy. So long Kindle e-book
reader. Unless you want to pay triple the current price for your next model of
any of those. A sudden price hike like that would kill those markets stone
dead.

Be careful what you wish for, lest you get it.

~~~
Packeteer
Except the parent is wrong, the federal government limits states in matters of
commerce, the bulk of which would be conducted interstate, not intrastate.

States cannot limit the prosecution of commerce outside itself. It was an
attempt to limit state rivalries, such as Texas telling Other states it had to
pay a premium to use its ports.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
I believe "state" here was used in the generic sense to refer to any organized
political entity rather than the 50 states that make up the US.

~~~
Packeteer
Except he didn't say "state", he said "states" which does mean the 50 states
that make up the US.

~~~
chappi42
I'm no english native speaker, meant state in plural, sorry.

~~~
Packeteer
Well, when someone refers to states, they mean the 50 US states if they are
speaking of US law, otherwise they would refer to it differently. Moving on.

------
pyalot2
The choice of default is meaningless for browsers, even if you had it, because
the only browser that exists on iOS is Safari.

Yes, you might be able to download something called "Chrome" or "Firefox", but
what you're getting isn't those browsers.

What you're getting is iOS Safari the browser, with the interface around it
replaced by Google or Mozilla.

This is because Apples TOS forbid you from creating a program that downloads
and executes code from the internet to drive your application, which basically
means no downloading html/JS and no "executing" html by rendering it, or
running JS.

And this is the really criminal part, the default choice, that's just the
icing on the cake.

~~~
magicalist
I originally came to a similar line of reasoning as you, but I've found a
surprising number of people use Chrome on iOS. It's probably not large in
relative terms, but they are out there. The primary benefit seems to be being
able to sync their browser with their phone, which I do find handy on Android,
so I can see the appeal. Obviously if you use Safari on your desktop machine,
you're then doubly invested in using mobile safari. Often javascript execution
isn't the bottleneck anyway, network is, so interpreted JS can be good enough
(maybe at least if you don't know what you're missing out on when it does hurt
you).

~~~
pyalot2
If you think of a browser as "just this thing that renders the page", you're
correct, it's basically irrelevant how it technically is implemented.

However that'd be a very poor view of what a browser is. A browser is the
platform, the runtime if you will, that lets us build applications on the
internet.

The first browser was pretty much good at nothing but rendering bits of text,
shortly followed by images, and it grew from there.

Today browsers have a myriad of capabilities that make exciting applications
on the internet possible, such as: CSS transitions, CSS animations, CSS
gradients, CSS calc, html5, WebGL, Web Audio Data, media streaming data, video
elements, audio elements, binary data handling, object URLs, zip URLs, binary
data requesting, cross origin resources sharing, WebSockets, WebRTC, realtime
video/audio capture/encoding/transmission/decoding/playback, and so forth.

This are features of the "browser engine implementation". And not all browsers
implement the same features. For instance take iOS safari which lacked the CSS
capability for position:fixed and usable overflow:scroll handling until just
about a year ago. All browsers in 1997 already implemented this flawlessly,
and correctly. But for whatever reason, Apple didn't until more than a decade
after the inception of that feature.

Similarly other features aren't implemented, too numerous to list, save for
the one that annoys me personally most, that is WebGL.

A similar situation was evident on the desktop internet in the time period
between 1998 and 2004, where Internet Explorer 6 ruled supreme. But other
browsers (chiefly Firefox) offered a different implementation, and hence put
Microsoft under pressure to improve internet explorer if they wish to stay
relevant.

The same kind of pressure cannot be exerted on Apples iOS browser, because
you're forbidden from exercising it. This is bad for the Web, it's bad for me
and it's bad for you.

Unsurmountable barriers to competition are always bad for everybody, except
the one building the barrier.

~~~
czr80
Your analogy to IE6 isn't clear, because Apple has a clear incentive to keep
its browser competitive with browsers on Android.

~~~
pyalot2
The incentive to keep iOS safari competitive with Android browsers isn't as
strong, as it would be if iOS Safari would have to compete with browsers on
the same platform.

Significantly, the lack of features on iOS Safari, which might be present on
Android, makes using these features equally infeasible just as effectively.
Nobody wants a mobile webapp that only works on Android.

Lastly, the health of the web should not be governed by the rise and fall of
mobile operating systems. Android or iOS may rise or fall, and with it,
competitive pressure for the predominant browser vendor would change.

------
parley
I have both the GMail and Chrome apps installed on my iPad, though I mostly
prefer Safari. When I open a link in the GMail app, it opens it in Chrome. I
can find no way to alter this setting.

One might argue that it's not the same situation, but it's quite clear that no
player wants us to step outside their dome, and it's equally sad - however not
surprising in any way.

~~~
magicalist
well, the first search result I get for "gmail ios chrome" has a screenshot
and mentions how to turn it off, but for more specific help, here's the help
page on how to enable or disable opening gmail links in Chrome:
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/3114652](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/3114652)

(tl;dr: go to "google apps" in the settings)

~~~
parley
There it was, thanks! That's commendable of them. While I hope everyone now
disregards the specific example in my comment, I'm afraid it doesn't change my
personal view of the involved companies and their intentions very much.

------
gonzo
Nor is Apple the market leader.

~~~
adventured
Apple had almost no market share in e-books when the DOJ pursued them over
price fixing. Amazon was dominant to a dramatic degree.

Being the market leader is not the prime qualifier. Consumer harm is.

I would however argue that Apple is in fact the market leader in the US.
Individual companies are what matter, not open source platforms; that is, the
DOJ is going to look at the behavior of companies. It's the companies who make
the money, and charge consumers, and that's where the DOJ looks. If Apple does
something with its 40% share (with Samsung at 24%, and companies like Motorola
all the way down at 6%), that is viewed as meaningfully harming consumers, the
DOJ will pursue them.

------
frank_boyd
Criminal or not - if you let commercial entities dictate things this way and
you accept this, it shows that your self-esteem is too low.

If you respect yourself, you don't let others play you.

~~~
quadrangle
Yeah, people with low self-esteem _deserve_ to be victims right? If you're a
sucker or a victim, it's because you deserve it. Very compelling argument…
(I'm being sarcastic obviously)

~~~
csmuk
No one deserves to be a victim but it certainly doesn't stop people finding a
large source of victims.

Agree with you and the OP.

