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Comment by antipaganda | Hacker News Reader

That's why I'm confused - I agree with you, Apple is way out of line on this. So why are they doing this, when they're not a monopoly? Do they think that having a walled garden of approved apps and the best UI will work forever?

It didn't work for their desktop business 20 years ago, why should it work now?

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The thing is that at least temporarily and at least in certain niche markets they come close to being a monopoly. There is no credible competitor to the Ipad in the tablet market. In the smartphone arena, the Iphone is a run away success with more marketshare than any other by far.

Also, remember there are a lot of people that want a walled garden. It makes them feel safe and shields them from needing to really understand any of the details. I am certainly not one of those people, but that market segment will exist even as new tablets come out and the competing smartphones gain marketshare.

Their desktop business was never a walled garden, was it?

A monopoly exists when a customer has no alternative then to do business with the monopolizer. Microsoft was/is a monopoly because Dell, HP, etc have no recourse then to agree to MCSFT's terms or look elsewhere for their OS. And considering the general public hasn't embraced Linux, that pretty much locks those manufacturers in place.

Apple on the other hand develops its own hardware and software. I think they have every right to control their environment, even if I don't agree with it.

Developers are not locked into developing for the iPad, iPhone, etc. Don't like Apple? Develop for Android. Apple doesn't owe you a living. If you want to sell on their marketplace, you need to abide by their rules.

I don't disagree that it would nice if Apple was more open, but comparing them to MCSFT is somewhat of a red herring.

so replace MS with apple and Dell with app store developer and Linux with WebOS or Android. The exact same argument applies.

Same applies to the other Devs aren't locked in to windows, IE, etc. MS doesn't owe them a living. Develop for Linux.

Entity(MS, Apple) has vast majority of sales in the market place(os, phone applications) sets rules that favor themselves and you can either go along or die in a corner(develop for Linux, develop for WebOS.) Personally I prefer die in the corner with freedom than happy subjugation.

So you're implying that something like 80-90% of smartphones in use are iPhones? Because that's pretty much what the situation was with Windows in the 90s.

Probably 80-90% of general-purpose mobile computing devices are iPhones.

I am saying that 80-90% of apps sold market share is on iPhone. No one really cares how many devices are in the wild if people who have those handsets refuse to buy software.

it won't

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