The success of Apple (etc.) are due to choices that developers have made, closing themselves in and then citing anti-trust when they themselves locked the doors and gave away the keys.
General purpose platforms that become overly closed have roundly been rejected or been forced to open up: Carterfone, AOL, Windows, carrier locked phones, etc.. even iOS itself didn't allow apps at first and now does.
Closed platforms for a specific purpose like consoles, kindles, rokus, etc.. do a bit better because they are 1) more likely to have competitors, and 2) have more limited impact from being specific purpose platforms, though are still capable of maintaining monopolies/duopolies.
The phone market is a iOS/Android duopoly, and both are being forced to open up more. Hardly surprising.
With hardware it is different. Nobody forced you to buy an iPhone. Nobody forced you to buy an Android, Windows, Nokia, whatever phone. Same with laptops. If you want an open platform, buy one. If you want an open OS, install one. Don't buy an iPhone, complain about the platform not being open enough for you, and then demand that all platforms be made common infrastructure so that you're absolved of making decisions about the hardware you use.
Imagine if Microsoft required a 30 percent cut for any transaction that is done on a windows PC.
The same exact arguments you are using could justify this. But, obviously, this is illegal, and similar behavior was proven as such, by the courts.
But it is ubiquitous now. As of last month, the iphone now has 52.4% of the US market.
> The 30% cut was there from the very start, and people were fine with it.
Anticompetitive behavior become illegal when a company has enough market power.
> It's only now that people are turning around and complaining
Well yes, that is how anti-competitive laws work. If a company has enough market power, previously legal practices can become illegal.
The Microsoft case is completely different, in that it favored IE over other browsers based on the APIs the software was allowed access to. Apple allows all apps to access the iOS APIs and uses those same APIs to develop its own apps. Taking a 30% cut of software that Apple distributes on your behalf might be steep, but is certainly not anti-competitive. If you think it costs too much, don't pay it! Nobody is forcing you to distribute software for the iPhone. If you're lamenting that people are stupid enough to buy hardware they don't have full control over, then that speaks more of human stupidity and the fact that convenience will always win.
That is not what the court case is asserting is anti-competitive.
The anti-competitive action is that Apple prevents competing app stores on the platform. Preventing competitors from competing is explicitly the definition of anti-competitive. High prices can be a consequence of anti-competitive behavior but is not really the main issue. The main issue has to do with.... reducing competition by stopping competitors, which Apple definitely does.
Apple doesn't even pretend to claim that it is not preventing competitors, honestly. The question is whether Apple is large enough that anti-competition laws apply to them. (Which they obviously are, given that they now have 52.4% of the phone duopoly, as of last month)
> it allows other platforms to compete on price
No, actually. Competing app stores cannot be put on the iPhone, due to Apple's actions. These competing app stores cannot compete for iPhone users.
> it favored IE
Apple favors its own app store, over competitors, in that it literally prevents other app stores from competing at all on the iPhone.
> Apple allows all apps
No, it does not allow other app stores, no.
> If you think it costs too much, don't pay it!
You should read the lawsuit. The anti-competitive behavior is not the price. This instead had to do with Apple preventing competing app stores.
Also, that is a bad argument, because "just dont use it" is not a valid defense when a company is engaging in anti-competitive practices.
> Nobody is forcing you to distribute software for the iPhone
Another bad argument. This would not at all be valid if Microsoft used it as an argument regarding software installed on the PC. That argument would be invalid, if microsoft prevented competitors from being installed on PC.
> If you're lamenting
No, I am saying that anti-competitive practices should be stopped.
No: it allows very specific kinds of apps that follow very specific rules that are selectively enforced, to use iOS APIs.
That's the problem. You can't, for example, build an app that competes with the app store itself.
I don't know about legality, but philosophically it's offensive to me that Apple and Google get to be landlords leeching off app developers. I paid for my phone. It should run the software I want it to, and if I want to buy an app for it I shouldn't need to pay Apple for the privilege.
You know why Windows runs code not from the Microsoft Store. It's legacy. There wasn't always a Microsoft Store, running executable straight from floppy, CD-ROM or the Internet was the norm. Changing it now would be changing the product people already bought and break workflows.
iPhone never had that legacy. From day 0 it only ran Apple code. Then it ran 3rd party code via the App Store. There was no such legacy. But there are older products with such a legacy. Didn't your old Nintendo have precisely the same rules from day 0 and so do modern consoles?
Even if you make a case that for Epic it doesn't matter that much, the Hey mail case was another big one: if you try to make a new email service and ignore Apple/Google, you're dead on arrival. That's a problem.
This "We'll let you develop software for OUR X out of the goodness of our heart as long as you promise not to do Y and pay us Z" BS really gets under my skin.
lol I have a feeling everyone here will hate me for saying that though.