Put another way, Apple cannot worsen access for competitors on its platform absent a procompetitive justification. But they have no duty under U.S. antitrust law to provide equal access in the first place.
Put another way, Apple cannot worsen access for competitors on its platform absent a procompetitive justification. But they have no duty under U.S. antitrust law to provide equal access in the first place.
True, but they're undeniably at a scale where this would just be expected of them either way. We broke up Ma Bell ignoring this exact defense, because at a certain scale of infrastructure you're expected to do the right thing legal or not. If Apple drills down on their "technically legal" defense, they're liable to find out how technically subjective law gets at their scale.
It's not anticompetitive to never allow a third-party text message application in the first place.
Messaging apps that compete with iMessage are plentiful and Apple doesn't get in their way. You can also disable iMessage with a toggle on the Messages settings screen (it's well "above the fold" for me, fourth entry down, on that screen, it's the first thing they show other than security/permissions stuff for the app)
On Android, yes. Not on iOS.