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Comment by bArray | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure if Microsoft can be successfully sued for anti-competitive practices for shipping Microsoft only with Internet Explorer [1], Apple should also be sued for this. This isn't the first time or last time they've pulled this stunt either, just look at Spotify [2]. Just because they own and run the market place doesn't mean it is without regulation.

There may be an even bigger case if you consider proprietary connectors, Apple certification chips (which is a whole other scam if you've ever worked with them) and third party repair. People must be allowed to choose, even if there is some acceptance of fault upon things not working correctly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

[2] https://www.ccn.com/spotify-smacks-apple-with-antitrust-comp...

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> Just because they own and run the market place doesn't mean it is without regulation.

That's exactly what Apple is doing - in this case protecting their ecosystem from providers that use undocumented APIs and MDMs whose business model is fingerprinting customers and selling to advertisers.

What exactly do people expect of Apple here? Apple gets criticized if it doesn't take a hard line on customer privacy, but when it does exactly that it is abusing monopoly power and needs to be regulated and broken up.

If people want third party app stores that's fine, but let's be very clear about what that means. It is going to come with compromises in terms of crappy UX, dark patterns, privacy violations, private APIs and all sorts of stuff that users pretty much hate.

The issue is that the moment you introduce the third-party app store, these gambling, privacy-disrespecting apps will flourish. That unique Advertising identifier is now worthless if they can just target ads based off of <more permanent unique ID>. All of the private APIs, like getting your phone's actual Tel number, will now be used and sent off to Facebook. Overall, your phone becomes just as "free" as android, and just as "apps can do anything, even if it's bad" as Android.

I’m pretty sure the APIs to get the device’s phone number, along with most other identifying characteristics, are gated behind entitlements that Apple will not grant third party developers.

Please stop calling these undocumented and private APIs. I know you feel that there is no difference, but continuing to spread flawed information even after being told that it’s incorrect is not arguing in good faith.

What’s inaccurate about it? They’re undocumented, and they’re APIs. Hence “undocumented API”.

They are documented: https://help.apple.com/deployment/ios/

Apple has an App Store, they want to take unfair advantage by limiting competition. Third party have an App Store, they want to take advantage by using dark UI and other unethical practices. Every approach has its own advantages and disadvantages. No one is doing you a favor by providing you services, they want to earn money in return and usually more than the worth of services they put in. Choose which devil you want to liv with

Personally, give me apps that don't use MDM and flout the clearly stated "rules of the garden" over having five different versions of WhatsApp, four of which are stuffed with malware.

At least in the OP, it looks more like disgruntled responses to the 'standard' Apple policy of

1) make iOS/inhouse app changes

2) throw every competing app under the bus.

It is a well established history that says to developers "if you have an app that fills a need iOS hasn't addressed, your days are numbered, good luck when somebody at Apple writes the mvp of your app themselves".

Not hard to imagine an App Store future that is just corporate portals and games, with everything else covered by Apple thus off limits.

So by that logic WhatsApp, Fantastical, VSCO, Camera+, Halide, Google Photos, Evernote, Bear Notes, Google Maps, Spotify should all be worried then?

No because these apps don't abuse undocumented APIs or look for loopholes in Apple's review guidelines.

> these apps don't abuse undocumented APIs or look for loopholes in Apple's review guidelines

Many of these apps do exactly this.

Would you like to back up that statement with some facts?

I know Uber has been smacked before for using private API’s before. Maybe not as hard as a no-name developer would have been but the uncomfortable truth is not all app developers are equal and honestly I understand the reasons for that.

Ms wasn't merely sued for bundling browser with OS, the absolute dominance of Windows was a factor in that. A dominance that iOS doesn't have.

Unfortunately you have the limited hardware, walled garden app store approach of apple

Or the crap privacy of Google.

Pick your poison or wait for the Purism phone.

> the absolute dominance of Windows was a factor in that.

The absolute dominance of Windows was the reason it was an issue in the first place.

Controlling your own platform is not a monopoly. Controlling a market is, and at the time, Windows controlled the market for PC operating systems. Without a monopoly, it's much, much harder to make a reasonable legal case for the government stepping in and telling you what you can and can't do with your own platform.

Just bundling IE isn't what got Microsoft in trouble. In addition they also used a combination of payments, discounts and threats of withholding access to software to prevent PC manufacturers and sellers from both providing alternative operating systems and browsers.

It's called oligopoly, and can also be legislated against. ios and android together run the mobile market.

What you’re describing is a cartel under competition laws. It would be hard to prove that Apple and Google are conspiring together against other market players.

I disagree. An oligopoly does not need to be a cartel, but a cartel is a special case of an oligopoly, and here I'm talking of oligopoly, not the narrower case. A structural deficit in a market can lead to oligopolistic markets and exploitation without collusion, sometimes with regulation and sometimes wihtout. For more details, see (for example) here: https://www.diffen.com/difference/Cartel_vs_Oligopoly

Don't they both take a 30% cut?

Android at least lets you use other app-stores and easily distribute and install apps by sideloading. On iOS you have to use the Apple App Store - everything else is a massive inconvenience or against Apple’s T&Cs (e.g. Facebook+Google’s use of enterprise certs).

You can also go the LineageOS route in the meantime.

Microsoft was 90% of the market and did no lobbying in Washington. You can’t ignore politics and expect politics to ignore you too.

Let’s look at the article. Kasperky labs is trying to sell fraudulent “virus protection” and the apps are basically spyware.

Nothing of value was loss.

Almost all connectors are “proprietary” and require license fees.

What about all the companies mentioned that aren't Kasperky ?

By definition a third party company that can control your apps remotely and can intercept traffic from all of your apps is spyware.

You personally can install MDM software on your device where you control the traffic and the profile.

I still don't see how you can't imagine a legitimate usage for this class of apps. Or maybe you can and you're not even saying that in which case I have no idea what point you're making.

Yes and you are free to buy legitimate MDM software where you control the profile and you know what data is being captured.

https://www.air-watch.com/pricing/

You also free to have your own VPN server hosted on your own computer.

The MS case was due to a monopoly that they had. Apple is not and will probably never be in that position for phones (or computers for that matter).

We can discuss how we would like things to be more open (personally I love jailbreaking my phone but being on A12 and A11 before that means I haven’t been able to JB for some time now) but comparing Apple to MS in this case is apples and oranges.

I’ll take the Apple locked down ecosystem over the Wild West of malware that is Android any day of the week.

The problem is that Apple doesn't have anything close to a monopoly if you consider them a player in "PCs" or "Smartphones". It's only when you consider "Apple PCs" or "iPhones" as a separate market that it would be comparable to the MS situation.

As a non-Apple user, I see no reason to see the government interfere with Apple.

There is no reason for me to use Apple products(Except when I need to hit Compile on my Javascript apps)

There is plenty of competition, its that Apple users want the government to fix Apple for them. Its easy, stop buying products that are anti-consumer.

I don't even think that Apple users want the government to fix Apple, it's the App vendors that want a better position in negotiations and journalists are happy to help if it's "big tech company does bad thing" because it's trendy.

I think "monopoly/not monopoly" has always been the bad criterion to judge this problems (when I say "always", I include the "Sherman Antitrust Act" of 1890).

The problem is more generically when some company use is its power (company size in a market as buyer or seller, technical possibility to block competitor, etc ...) to disable competition instead on fighting on quality and price of their product and services.

"trust" is not the same as "monopoly". Sherman Antitrust is already ahead of you on that.

Why wouldn't the application market for iPhone users be the relevant market? The EU didn't consider iPhones and Androids fungible when applying antitrust regulations to Android.

I suppose because every manufacturer has a monopoly if you limit the market to his products. 100% of Blackberry phones are made by Blackberry.

I believe that you can make this argument for Apple easier than you can make it for others because they make most of the product (i.e. hardware, OS, most of the services), but it's still a lot harder than looking at Microsoft with >90% market share of all PCs and agreeing that that's a monopoly.

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