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Comment by PhasmaFelis | Hacker News Reader

> I see. So Apple watches, iPads, and iPhones & other devices owning at least half the US market

They don't. Not in the US, not in phones[1] or watches[2]. They may have the majority market share in US tablets.

> isn't a monopoly whatsoever?

No, not even if that was true. Monopoly doesn't mean "any company I don't like." You're acting like "Apple isn't a monopoly" means "there's no problems with Apple at all."

Monopoly has a specific meaning. Look it up.

[1] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...

[2] https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/08/15/us-smartwatch-shipm...

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Legal definitions change all the time and laws are updated.

Monopoly means whatever the decision of the high court says it means and that is squared with the legislative.

There are no hard and fast rules in litigation or civil law.

> Monopoly means whatever the decision of the high court says it means and that is squared with the legislative.

Monopoly has a very specific definition in US law, in fact. https://definitions.uslegal.com/m/monopoly/ The legislature might conceivably change that definition in the future, but that's not relevant to the law as it stands today, which is what we're talking about. Microsoft came much closer to that definition a few decades ago than Apple does now, and they still managed to avoid serious consequences.

> There are no hard and fast rules in litigation or civil law.

There are quite a lot of hard and fast rules to be found in every area of the law. It's kind of a fundamental property of the law.

Even those hard and fast rules leave a lot of room for interpretation hence why many cases are decided in months and years and not days.

Laws change and are updated all the time.

I stand by my original assertion.

Apple with its App store most certainly is a monopoly/oligarch with unchecked power in the mobile space to destroy entire companies on a whim, companies like Uber would be irreparably damaged for example if removed from Apple’s platform. I believe this fact to be self evident and indisputable - Apple clearly has monopolistic power in this space.

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