On: How Apple Cheats

[jacquesm]

My argument is, since you insist that I don't have any, that since Apple has total control of an ecosystem they themselves created that there might be an anti-trust issue there along the lines of Microsoft when they decided to include 'mediaplayer' with every windows install when and if an Apple app competes with a 3rd party supplied app.

Whether or not I'm a subject expert or not has no bearing on that. I suspect that the answer is 'probably not', but I have seen weirder lawsuits being won. The bar in anti-trust cases is very high but there are multiple standards of proof and multiple instances of potentially anti-competitive behaviour.

[jboy55 → jacquesm]

Microsoft including a media player, meant that >95% of desktop PCs had a Media Player from microsoft, thus there was no 3rd party market for Media Players. But microsoft did more than merely include a Media player with regards to IE. They embeded the media player into the operating system so you could not remove it. You had no option but to get it.

Lets say there was a device that allowed you to pay tolls from your car in bitcoin. GM including a version of that in their cars would not dominate the market. It would diminish it, but not devastate. But lets say GM sold 80% of the cars in the world. Even then, including the device wouldn't be a violation of anti-trust.

Through the early 90s, MS did this often, Media Players, Disk Compression, Defrag, the list goes on and on.

But, if GM had 95% of the car market, and included a device that only paid in fiat currency, and it was 'artificially' tied into the ignition computer, so removing it made the cars useless. Then had the device subtly interfere with any alternate device. Finally, there was evidence, (emails from CEOs, VPS) that GM did this with the sole purpose of preventing BitCoin as a currency. Then you'll understand the scope of M$'s efforts in the browser wars, and what it took to finally get them at antitrust.