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Comment by hamandcheese | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if it's significant from a legal standpoint, but for as long as there's been an App Store, it's been a walled garden. Yet Apple still became the most profitable phone manufacturer, despite that. It's not like they took advantage of their position in the market to force some new anticompetitive/anti consumer behavior the same way Comcast might.

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Most monopolies are only sued (or considered in anti-trust) when they are in a dominant position. In this case, there are two dominant phone platforms... Apple's iOS (iStore only), and Android (multiple phone vendors, Play Store and options to load whatever software a user wants).

In the Apple case, they've taken whatever legal means possible to stop side-loading and alternative stores, dropped apps that try to sell via other paths. They have a vertical stranglehold on the platform, and are in a dominant position.

It's entirely possible to sideload on iOS, all you need is an OSX machine and a free Dev account.

Practical, no. But possible.

And how do you sell an app to iOS users that don't have an OSX machine and a dev account?

You don't? To build iOS apps you need X-Code. So you need a Mac.

Where can I get a free OSX machine?

Same place you got your free iOS device.

They're in a dominant position on their platform, which makes since as it's their platform. What they're not is in a dominant position in their market.

If you try to define antitrust in terms of platforms instead of markets, then every company that has a platform is a monopoly. And that is, of course, quite absurd and renders the term "monopoly" meaningless. Which is why it's not actually interpreted that way.

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