Comment by horsawlarway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by horsawlarway | Hacker News Reader

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It's a LOT closer than you seem to be painting it.

Apple is a supplier to software companies (of both hardware and software). They are getting in trouble for messing with other suppliers (of both hardware and software).

To quote the charges in the MS case:

"the U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally maintaining its monopoly position in the personal computer (PC) market primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs such as Netscape and Java."

Apple in this case:

"Apple is illegally maintaining its monopoly position in the mobile application market primarily through technical restrictions it puts on the abilities of iOS software developers and users to install 3rd party application and programs."

We're essentially playing out a very similar situation, just with the focus on digital goods.

I don't think this is the case. Here is how I understand this:

Microsoft was accused of having a monopoly in a market (PC) defined by one single software (Windows) and hardware produced by a lot of PC manufacturers.

Apple could be accused of having a "monopoly" in market defined by their own software and their own hardware.

So in a way, IANAL, but Microsoft had a monopoly with their product in a bigger market than the one created by them, while Apple has a "monopoly" on the market (Apple ecosystem) that exists only because they exist. In this way, Microsoft was creating a monopoly in an otherwise free market, while Apple is a monopoly on their own devices, so if Microsoft would stop selling Windows the PC market will still exist, while if Apple will stop selling iPhones with iOS the App Store market will not exist anymore.

The correct comparison could be with Microsoft which has a monopoly on the Surface market where they produce both hardware and software.

The bigger market in this instance is "mobile devices," of which iOS accounts for nearly 60% of users in the US.

It's not nearly as aggressive of a split as MS/everyone else, but being the larger side of a duopoly a lot of vendors don't really have the choice to just ignore them, and meanwhile their users are subjected to this.

The comparison also starts looking a lot closer when you consider the way it impacts web development as a profession that the same ~60% can't choose a browser other than Safari in any sense that has practical meaning.

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