Pet peeves:
* WKWebView is the only browser engine allowed on iOS.
* Apps can only be distributed through the iOS app store.
* No formal appeals processes based on established judicial principles for either Apple or Google.
* WKWebView is the only browser engine allowed on iOS.
* Apps can only be distributed through the iOS app store.
* No formal appeals processes based on established judicial principles for either Apple or Google.
> Regulators, lawmakers and legal experts, however, worry that significant slices of the high-tech marketplace have become uncompetitive. Those include advertising, search, social media, app sales and certain retail sectors, among others.
If Google and Apple were operating in a truly competitive market, they couldn't get away with treating app developers so poorly. Because said app developers would just use a competitor. It's basically a duopoly.
Games are generally the only apps users are willing to pay for, and the games market is not only Apple and Google but also Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft (XBox). All five of those markets are closed to 3rd party stores.
Netflix and Hulu and Disney+ and HBO Go and all the video apps are also closed to 3rd parties.
It should be obvious why console games are a different market from mobile games, but it's no different within console games. I always find it strange that people consistently point to that as something different even though the whole point is that it's basically the same, and they shouldn't get away with it either.
The best argument that there's a difference is that a lot of customers have both a PlayStation and Xbox so neither of them has a monopoly on those customers, especially if you count PC gaming as the same market (which is a lot more plausible than lumping mobile gaming in there). But then that's a relevant distinction from mobile apps, because the percentage of people who carry both an iPhone and an Android phone rounds to zero.
> Netflix and Hulu and Disney+ and HBO Go and all the video apps are also closed to 3rd parties.
That's the same thing again. Most people have more than one video service (e.g. both Netflix and HBO), so neither of them has a lock on those customers. And substantially everyone also uses YouTube or another free video distribution service (cf. no F-Droid/homebrew on iOS).
If anti-trust is on the table it's the government who will be deciding whose ecosystem it is and exactly who owes what to whom.
You don't get to choose which phone the customer for your app already bought.