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Comment by kobalsky | Hacker News Reader

> a forced dismantling of Apple's vertical integration consumers continue to deliberately choose

"deliberately choose" is too strong when you are picking the lesser evil.

> Apple should be allowed to benefit from the sweat they invested and sell a mobile console appliance, while others should be allowed to make build-your-own mobile compute. Put another way, there's room for an iPad Pro 13 and a Frame.work Laptop 13. None of these should be forced to break their model to accommodate one of the others'.

Is the sweat of the literal biggest company in the world by market cap more important than the sweat of the users paying thousands of dollars for devices they can't control? These guys don't need protection of their vertical integration, they are not selling hardware at a loss.

I don't like Google nor Apple, so I'm not picking between them, I'm picking the users side. What I'd like is to be able to put a different OS on my phone. We've seen what happened with Asahi Linux and the M Macs, if the iPhone were not locked down we would have a proliferating open source OS community around it and everyone would benefit directly and indirectly.

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> "deliberately choose" is too strong when you are picking the lesser evil.

Lesser evil of what? There are plenty of Android phones/tablets, and there are _many_ flavors of Android. There are _so_ many Linux/Windows laptops.

People choose Apple both because it's a good experience, and because the alternatives suck. The answer to the problem is _not_ to make Apple's products worse

People installing what they like on their devices doesn’t change how your device works

No amount of repetition is going to convince such people. Their entire argument is predicated on an absolutely erroneous belief that sideloading or user modifications will somehow ruin the experience of people who don’t wish to modify their phone knowing fully well that more setting for users won’t diminish the experience for other users. They’re literally playing stupid to defend a corporation and its practices.

You're welcome to share your thoughts, but please don't just assume what others are thinking.

I don't have a strong opinion about sideloading applications.

What I'm more concerned about is Apple being forced to allow non-WebKit browsers in the App Store.

Apple requiring the use of WebKit on iOS is the only thing stopping Chrome from having a complete monopoly, aside from Firefox with its 5% marketshare.

I am equally terrified of Chrome's dominance in the browser market.

I don't agree that forcing WebKit on iOS is the solution, however. The law should seek to break Chrome's monopoly, not enforce another.

Interesting take. I’ve de-giogled my life so I didn’t think about chrome. Fair enough

> What I'd like is to be able to put a different OS on my phone.... if the iPhone were not locked down we would have a proliferating open source OS community around it and everyone would benefit directly and indirectly.

There are plenty of Android phones available for that. The OS choices are technically interesting, but not suitable for anyone but the most dedicated techie. I probably wouldn't call the situation "proliferating" either. At least not on a level where everyday people would see the benefit.

But in any event, developing a well-functioning phone OS take billions of dollars, especially when it comes to regulatory things like radio use. And even more especially when it comes to phone companies certifying the phone for use.

Opening the iPhone wouldn't make any difference there, with things on the Android side as strong evidence of that.

> Opening the iPhone wouldn't make any difference there, with things on the Android side as strong evidence of that.

I'd say that projects like Ahahi Linux are evidence of the contrary.

The hardware standardization that an open iPhone would bring to the table would be fertile ground for OSS.

Android is a clusterfuck of abandoned and shitty drivers and hardware that no one cares to reverse engineer due to fragmentation and fast obsolescence. It's the Internet Explorer 6 of mobile hardware and software, it's misery.

> .. everyone would benefit directly and indirectly.

The question here for me is does this 'everyone' include the entity that made, invested & owns the device in question (im assuming no), and if its acceptable to force them to do something against their wishes for something they own then why don't we just force them to hand over billions of dollars directly to users as well (both forms of theft to me.)

> The question here for me is does this 'everyone' include the entity that made, invested & owns the device in question

Yes. Apple heavily benefits from market standardization and interoperability: from transportation, to currency, to electricity, to the web. That standardization prevents other companies from heavily abusing Apple in ways that would probably have prevented the company from ever rising to the prominence it is today. Apple the company benefited from antitrust when it was younger, particularly antitrust around Microsoft. Without that market interference, it is not clear that Apple would have survived long enough to launch an iPhone in the first place.

Now that Apple is as powerful as it is today, in a few areas it would like to avoid interoperability and it would like the ability to lock-down the market and to lock down devices that consumers own -- extracting additional value from those consumers against their will after the device has already been purchased by restricting the user's freedom to control their own devices.

But what's good for the goose is good for the gander. It's enormously hypocritical for a company that was historically an underdog that benefited dramatically from interoperability between computing ecosystems to now claim that no one else should get the same benefits.

I think the Microsoft judgement was opening up their APIs for other companies to make apps. If that's all you're comparing than that's a tough argument as that has little to do with the hardware being tied to an OS.

And to be clear, I'm not pro-Apple on not being able to install another OS. I think if there is a law it should be about EVERY device. Nintendo Switch, tractors, phones, etc. Just the environmental benefits would be big and always getting bigger.

The antitrust fights against Microsoft I think were a big reason why IE and Word ended up coming to MacOS. Apple also benefited from being able to reverse-engineer Word's format without facing legal trouble. And I think there were a lot of knock-on effects from that; even if we just look at the IE bundling would the web have looked the same if that ecosystem had never changed? Remember that iOS started out primarily supporting web apps; a closed down web ecosystem would have fundamentally changed the device.

Is that the same as forcing a company to open up hardware access? We can argue that, and I sort of see where you're coming from, but... I think my bigger point is:

> as that has little to do with the hardware being tied to an OS.

I feel like this is a very narrow interpretation of antitrust. Microsoft was prevented from abusing a market power that could have prevented other competitors from gaining a foothold in the market. Apple directly benefited from the government and regulators stepping in and saying "we don't think a company should be able to unduly block competition."

It feels a little hand-wavy if someone wants to make the argument that it's all different just because Apple now has a different mechanism for locking down the market. The problem was locking down the market, and that's still the problem. And what we're really asking is "should the government be able to stop a company from making the market uncompetitive?"

Sure, someone could make the argument that allowing a custom OS on a phone is technically different from government intervention standardizing electrical outlets so the iPhone can charge, but they're both regulations that serve basically the exact same purpose that are coming from the exact same authority. If Apple wants to claim that opening up the hardware would be a step too far, I'd want to see an argument from them about what is practically different about that regulation that makes it a step too far. We regulated device compatibility for phone networks and that led to an explosion of innovation that shaped the modern Internet.

Not all regulations are good. There should be limits on what the government can do. But I think the onus is on companies like Apple who have benefited from the government saying, "we have a vested interest in making the market competitive" to explain not just why the regulations being proposed are technically different, but to also explain why it matters that we're talking about opening hardware and not just software and why that regulation should be treated differently.

> I think if there is a law it should be about EVERY device. Nintendo Switch, tractors, phones, etc. Just the environmental benefits would be big and always getting bigger.

Completely agreed.

> The antitrust fights against Microsoft I think were a big reason why IE and Word ended up coming to MacOS.

Word was on Mac in 1985, Windows in 1989. There was an earlier version of Word for DOS.

Excel was on Mac first in 1985, and on Windows in 1987.

This is technically true (the best kind of true), but fails to mention that there was both a huge gap between Office on the Mac between 4.2 and 98 (coincidentally the version that came out in 1998 right around the antitrust case), and more importantly, ignores the fact that Microsoft literally is on record threatening to use Office to kill Mac, and negotiations around Office were literally presented as evidence during the antritust case against Microsoft: https://www.macworld.com/article/184614/macoffice.html

> Later, the U.S. Department of Justice included the bundling of Internet Explorer among the charges it brought against Microsoft in its antitrust case. "Microsoft, by threatening to cease development of its Office for Macintosh productivity suite, coerced Apple into making Internet Explorer the default browser on all Macintosh operating systems and to disadvantage competing browsers," the federal agency charged in 1998.

It's not really debatable whether an unchecked Microsoft monopoly would have affected Office on the Mac or whether it would have affected the trajectory of Apple's ecosystem as a whole -- it was straight-up part of the antitrust case against Microsoft. Delaying and degrading Office releases on Mac was the active policy of Microsoft by the late 1990s, both because it gave Microsoft power over Apple during business negotiations and because it allowed Microsoft to simultaneously hold off competing office-suite products while pulling more users away from Mac towards Windows, which had more up-to-date and less buggy versions of Office and IE.

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And of course, notably, this is an example of antitrust being relevant to a company choosing not to provide a service. It's not merely that Microsoft went out of its way to block Apple's access, Microsoft was threatening to withhold development on Apple-compatible products. So let's not pretend that asking a company to go out of its way to do something can't be part of antitrust or that companies have an unimpeachable moral right to refuse to expend developer resources or adapt their business models when their business models are anticompetitive. Apple certainly wasn't arguing that it was "theft" in 1998 when the government was pointing out that Microsoft withholding active support could be an anticompetitive action.

How can your arguments not be used to also force airlines to make your favourite pickle sandwich on every flight or to force McDonalds to serve Pepsi and not only Coke? These are also giant businesses who "benefitted from electricity", so they owe you big time, right? Or just Apple?

> These are also giant businesses who "benefitted from electricity", so they owe you big time, right? Or just Apple?

If you mean, are businesses other than Apple subject to antitrust law, the answer is yes, they obviously are. That's not really a gotcha, that's just how the US/EU markets have always worked.

> not be used to also force airlines to make your favourite pickle sandwich on every flight

Whether or not an airline serves pickles is not an antitrust concern. There's this idea people bring up where if the market is regulated in any way at all, then suddenly all bets are off and nobody has any freedom. But it's just plain silly, it's a ridiculous way to think about regulation.

It's like saying, "Oh, you support laws? Cops should be able to pull you over for speeding? So what, they should also be able to come into a restaurant, steal your food, and then slap you?" No, of course not, because those are different things and our society is capable of looking at different actions and judging them differently depending on context. Heck, you want to get wild -- we are even capable as a society of deciding that individual regulations are good or bad on a case-by-case basis based on their likely effects and side-effects.

So saying "the government has the authority to interfere with business practices when businesses are harming the entire market" is not carte-blanch permission for the government to do literally anything it wants. It's a specific category of regulation, one that is well-established within US and EU law.

But yes, if an airline was engaged in anticompetitive activity we would as a country be justified in regulating it. In fact, airlines are regulated today. It's not theoretical, we force airlines to follow rules to prevent excessive customer abuse. We force airlines to follow safety regulations. And yes, part of the reason why we can force them to do that is that airlines are a part of a regulated market where they benefit from regulations, and as willing participants in that market who have benefited from that market, they can't just randomly decide, "no, I'm not part of the market now when you want to regulate me, I've decided that I'm suddenly now a completely independent entity that's divorced from the rest of the economy."

I haven't seen any evidence of anticompetitive activity on Apple's part. Not mass producing products and services to the exact and exquisite taste of each hacker news poster is not anticompetitive activity, just like an airline not serving your favourite pickle sandwich is not anticompetitive activity. Ford will make their cars compatible with Ford engines only, and if you want to put another engine inside your truck you'll have to do it yourself. Just as with Apple hardware. There's nobody stopping you.

Then of course the law and justice system are able to and will do whatever they want, in a completely arbitrary fashion as they usually do. That's reality. If they want to go after Apple they will.

The reality is also that it seems the general public and hackers take all innovation, products and services for granted. Something that just magically pops up to be taken advantage of by forcing other people to bend to your will, using the government as a club to hammer them with. Sure, if there's abuse. But not making a Linux-compatible iPhone is not abuse, no matter how hurt hackers feel. Why not focus on actual abuse instead, of which there is a lot?

> "no, I'm not part of the market now when you want to regulate me, I've decided that I'm suddenly now a completely independent entity that's divorced from the rest of the economy."

That is what has always happened and is called brain-drain. People and companies move to places that reward entrepreneurship instead of exploiting it.

> I haven't seen any evidence of anticompetitive activity on Apple's part.

I guess agree to disagree? Apple has a massive effect on the computing market, particularly around smartphones. We're currently legislating a Google antritust case in the US (which I hope Google loses) that alleges having default settings on an iPhone was worth billions of dollars to Google to help cement their place in the market.

But sure, you can disagree with that if you want. Lots of people do. Just don't pretend that regulation is inherently some slippery slope, argue against the specific regulation that you don't like.

> Ford will make their cars compatible with Ford engines only, and if you want to put another engine inside your truck you'll have to do it yourself. Just as with Apple hardware. There's nobody stopping you.

Not a great example, it would honestly take me a minute or two to think of a bigger industry off the top of my head where standardization and cross-device compatibility is more regulated than the auto industry. And it's been hecking fantastic; it is extremely good that the auto-industry uses mostly compatible parts and that it's forced to allow for 3rd-party repair and aftermarket customization and swapping of parts.

I would kill to have regulations for compatibility and 3rd-party support in the computing industry that were as strict as automotive regulations. Imagine it being illegal for Apple not to make diagnostic information available to all 3rd-party repair shops using the same physical port on the phone and using the same standardized communication format to query diagnostics that every other OS and phone uses. By all means, let's copy the auto industry, that is a great idea :)

> The reality is also that it seems the general public and hackers take all innovation, products and services for granted.

I would argue that if you look at the history of computing, increased competition between vendors and Open access to platforms between vendors has historically strongly coincided with innovation and better products for consumers. But... again, you can disagree with that if you want.

> People and companies move to places that reward entrepreneurship instead of exploiting it.

They're welcome to do so. Look, I'm not trying to force anyone to be part of a market; if Apple doesn't want to sell in the EU or US, there are very few companies in the world who have more capital and resources at their disposal to help them move markets. It's not like they're a mom-and-pop shop that can't afford to move and that are trapped under regulations, they are one of the biggest computing companies in the world and they have the resources to go elsewhere if they don't like the arrangements.

> entity that made, invested & owns the device in question

They made have made and investors in the device, but they sure as shit don’t own it once they sell it to me.

It’s absolutely ludicrous that anyone can describe their relationship to a device as “ownership” after the sale. We’ve given up so much as consumers. We’re in such an abusive relationship that we can’t even _see_ what a normal and healthy consumer relationship with these companies would actually look like.

> but they sure as shit don’t own it once they sell it to me.

Are you really sure about that? Apple can, at any time, and without any permission from you, remotely access your device and make changes including :

  reverting settings you've intentionally configured
  Adding software
  Removing software
  Changing the way already installed software works
  Disable features you're using
  Enable features you don't want 
  View/modify/delete "your" files 
  Restrict your access to access certain files/features/software 
  Brick your entire device

In what way really is the cell phone in your pocket "yours"? Your ability to use a cell phone you paid for is entirely dependent a company granting you permission and you are totally powerless to prevent them from revoking that permission if they wanted to.

"Your" device is already filled with encrypted storage and software you can't access but others can, along with chips from companies like Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom, etc. that you cannot access, modify, or control but which can be remotely accessed to execute code on "your" device or transmit data collected from "your device" without your knowledge or consent

It really doesn't matter if your phone is apple or android. Under no sane definition of "ownership" do you own your cell phone. You are, at best, a low privileged user of someone else's system. It doesn't matter how benevolent the true owners of "your" cell phone are. It doesn't matter if they've never cut you off from your device entirely, or if every update they've ever silently installed has been something you approved of after the fact. It doesn't matter if they never do anything you object to with their device. It's still their device. They allow you to use it after you paid for it because it's profitable for them that you do use it and for no other reason.

Sure, your cell phone manufacture can't come into your home and take the brick of plastic metal and glass you paid for away from you, but it doesn't matter because they don't have to do that. They can take all of it's functionality away from you without ever physically touching it and if they ever do it'll be left useless to you for anything other than scrap or parts.

That’s kinda my point. That’s the abusive relationship.

I am the legal owner of the device, however. That part is still true. If you ask any Court in the United States who is the owner of the device, they will tell you that I am the owner and that Apple is not.

We vote with our dollars. We can buy devices that are open if it's important. Not sure how it's theft if we opted in.

Please consider this if you value a device that is yours https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

Or we vote with the government, and this is what they're doing.

> owns the device in question

Users owns the device. Why would you think Apple does? And Apple forbids users from using devices that the user owns in ways that the user wants to. Why are users forbidden from programming html rendering?

> Users owns the device... Apple forbids users from using devices that the user owns in ways that the user wants to.

If apple is able to prevent users from doing things they want to on a device, that device belongs to apple and not to the users.

Are you talking about ownership from:

- a moral perspective

- a legal perspective

- a "might makes right" perspective

Because all of those are different things. People are not saying that they practically own an iPhone in the sense that they control it; they are saying that they are the moral and/or legal owners of an iPhone and it's messed up that Apple is still allowed to exercise a "might makes right" kind of ownership over a device that the user purchased, essentially overriding and stealing ownership back from the user.

Be cautious about talking past each other in these situations. Apple's exertion of control is the thing people are complaining about here, and that exertion of control is not a legal or moral doctrine that dictates whether Apple should have that control.

If I get sued for stealing someone's car, and I tell the judge, "but it's not his car, it's mine. Look, I have it and I have the keys and he doesn't and I can drive it and he can't, so by definition it belongs to me", well... that's not an argument that's going to get me very far legally with that judge even though technically, sure, that is a definition of ownership. I don't think if Apple ever gets sued for antitrust the lawyers are going to be arguing, "but the consumer doesn't own their iPhone because we can remotely brick it, so by definition we own it." Again, not wrong, that is technically a definition of ownership. But it's just not what people here are talking about.

> something they own

That's just the thing. The whole idea that they should be able to own the iPhone is nonsense. They shouldn't be able to own the hardware after they sold it to you.

> We've seen what happened with Asahi Linux and the M Macs, if the iPhone were not locked down we would have a proliferating open source OS community around it

Yes!! I want this so much.

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