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Comment by smoldesu | Hacker News Reader

How do you think Apple will differentiate their case from United States v. Microsoft Corp., where Microsoft was implicated for almost identical monopoly misconduct?

The complaint literally says verbatim, "But after launching the iPhone, Apple began stifling the development of cross-platform technologies on the iPhone, just as Microsoft tried to stifle cross-platform technologies on Windows."

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Is Apple even a monopoly though? In the Microsoft case Microsoft had 90+% of desktop market share. (And propped Apple up to create even a semblance of competition.) They were accused of leveraging that position to prevent manufacturers etc from getting out of line.

Apple, on the other hand shares the market with Android. Globally it's a minority share. Yes, in the US, Apple has a bigger market share than it has globally, but Android is a real competitor even there. So I'd suggest the two situations are quite different.

If it's not a monopoly (which would be fine by itself anyway), it's hard to make the case that they are leveraging that monopoly in unhallowed ways.

All that said, clearly the DOJ think they have a case, and I imagine they've spent a LOT of man-hours thinking about it and forming an argument. More than the no-time-at-all I've spent thinking about it.

> but Android is a real competitor even there

Is it though? On the hardware side sure but on the software side I don't see any competition. Both stores have close to identical practices and do not look like they compete over to get developers onboard. The only pricing change ever made was also made in reaction to an antitrust lawsuit and copied verbatim.

While not a strict monopoly, the lack of competition in this area between the only two players seems obvious.

Edit: I give up trying to help people

When was the last exclusive deal like we have on console then? I never heard of one.

This is maybe the first interesting/novel point I've read on this topic. (this Apple debate has mostly been beat to death and the whole thread here looks to be full of the same talking-point style arguments repeated ad nauseum by people on both sides who don't seem to be engaging any critical thinking).

I think Apple is clearly anti-competitive and is definitely powerful enough to warrant regulatory action given past standards, but the same exclusivity deals like consoles (and even audiobooks) have is certainly not a common thing (outside of Apple's first-party apps of course, but I would agree that isn't really what we're talking about here). I think this deserves some explanation, as it does seem like an obvious anti-competitive move that Apple could make but doesn't.

I tend to think Occam's Razor applied here is that Apple realizes their vulnerability to regulation and didn't wish to serve their critics evidence on a silver platter. I think that's why they announced that they will (finally) add (an inferior implementation of) RCS to the iPhone after many years of refusing and telling people to buy their mom an iPhone if they want to text her. Or the (inferior) implementation of PWAs. This is very much speculation of course, and I'd love to hear other theories.

What is meant by "monopoly" has been evolving, and a majority share acquired through anticompetitive means could be enough to warrant government action.

Anticompetitive != monopoly.

You use the term Android like it is a corporation or a brand. Are you comparing iOS to Android OS or Apple to Samsung, Google etc.? I agree that Apple commands a relatively small share of the US mobile ecosystem, but where do the competitors stand?

Apple sells over 60% of new smart phones in the US.

Android is a brand. It's trademarked by Google.

Linux is trademarked as well. Is Linux a competitor to the iphone?

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_mobile_devices

Imagine you're an Apple lawyer, and you're explaining to the regulators that you are facing serious competition. You gonna send them that link?

I didn't say Linux was especially good competition for iOS.

But unless you can demonstrate that it sucks because Apple is doing something which qualifies as restraint-of-trade, which I would suggest is obviously not the case, that doesn't matter.

It actually does matter if it has no practical bearing on Apple’s market (most easily seen in pricing) power.

Theoretical competition is not sufficient to demonstrate absence of a monopoly.

It's not theoretical competition. It's actual competition, which is bad. These are not the same thing.

The doctrine that it's your fault if your competitors suck makes no sense. It's weaponized tall-poppy syndrome.

That's not the doctrine.

The doctrine is that you can't exercise monopoly power in certain ways. Monopoly power is an empirical question, and does not turn on merely whether it is possible to describe a market in which another product exists, but whether that is a real market in which the products are in fact competitive.

But even if you have monopoly power, if you aren't illegally exercising it, you aren't in trouble. So you aren't punished for being an empirical monopoly.

You're correct, it is a brand. The point stands though. Comparing "Apple" to "Android" does not work. Perhaps a comparison between iOS App Store and Google Play Store would be more apt, but that is another discussion.

iPhone is not a monopoly since z lot of companies sell phones, and with significant market share.

iOS is not a monopoly since at least one other major operating system exists, with significant market share. (Whether Linux is or isn't a competitor is irrelevant.)

A monopoly by itself is not a problem. Only behavior ancillary to that monopoly is. But to get there you have you have a monopoly. I don't see how you make the case. Clearly consumers have choice.

Now, there's a case to be made for bad behavior, but its weak. Apple will argue that consumers have choices.

But I am not a lawyer, so I'll leave it up to the lawyers on both sides to earn some fees discussing it.

Apple is competing against multiple companies, all of which are minorities relative to the iPhone's market share. These companies use derivatives of Android, but still compete against one another and Apple all the same. Android and Linux aren't competing companies, they're operating systems that are forked by OEMs and manufacturers to provide an OS.

So, now let's introduce iOS into the equation. Apple can differentiate their product, but how much is considered acceptable before regulators complain? The DOJ was quite straightforward today, accusing Apple of using iMessage to degrade user experiences through exclusion. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's probably a...?

> Is Apple even a monopoly though?

Do they have pricing power? You can select any boundaries you want for markets to come up with any market share number you want, but the key empirical test is is there actual substitution effect or does Apple have the ability to charge monopoly rents. One of the major points of walled gardens is to create vendor lock-in and prevent price conpetition, and Apple has been masterful at that.

In their App Store they absolutely have pricing power. They take a high tax, which is higher than most actual taxes, on nearly every single application installed despite doing basically nothing. Things like denying a application the ability to even mention services can be bought elsewhere are the worst offender of their misconduct and other offenses would be forcing apps to use their payment system, again with an extremely high fee, even on recurring subscription charges. Normally a payment processor takes 2 to 3 percent, not 30 %.

Sony (PlayStation store), Microsoft (Xbox store), and Valve (steam) all take 30%. No one can speak on what Nintendo takes due to NDA. Why are they never brought up?

Sony is currently facing antitrust lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions over the Playstation Store.

Those stores can be abusing their monopoly position as well. Apple has the greatest sales of all of those stores though so it should rightly be targeted first. They flew under the radar for far too long. People are literally going back to using websites rather than apps because of their decision, but Apple even tried to kill progressive web apps recently - which are basically just shortcuts to websites on the Home Screen.

You're mixing the literal definition of monopoly with anti-trust laws. They have over half the market as a single company and the rest of the market is actually a fragmented zone of other companies so yes I think they are. You don't have to own the entire market to run afoul of monopoly laws they don't require there to be literally only one choice in the market.

Not a lawyer (let alone one specializing in antitrust law), but it looks like the relevant legal standard is "dominant position". Basically, it's legal to have a dominant position, but that position can be abused through certain categories of actions. By contrast, under the Sherman Act it's nominally a felony to even attempt to become a monopoly (although the application of this by courts has apparently been both complex and contentious).

This depends on one important question: What is the relevant market? This is a fundamental question in all antitrust law cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevant_market

If the relevant market is found to be "Apps on iOS", or "Flagships phones in the US", Apple is more likely to be considered having a monopoly position than if the market is "phones in the world". The courts will have to decide on what the market is before deciding if Apple has monopoly power or not.

Why do the app store policies and prices look so similar between iOS and Android? What competitive forces are going to change a duopoly with soft collusion?

Given the discovery both Apple and Google went through in their Epic trials, I would think that any collusion would have been documented by now. You don’t need collusion to have price convergence, just market forces. Are you arguing that Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are conspiring to fix the prices of console video games? All of them have fairly similar licensing requirements.

But we know the cost of providing app store services is quite low, so the convergence price is as high as the other party willing keep it at. If Apple lowered its cut to 8% tomorrow, Google would follow suit because it is still enough money to run the Play Store with. For video game consoles, the margins are slim (or negative), so the current cut is the natural price that lets developers sell games for a profit and the hardware companies to subsidize consoles to a level that people can afford them.

> But we know the cost of providing app store services is quite low, so the convergence price is as high as the other party willing keep it at.

Or what the developers would bear. Although I think the actual costs are higher than some people would like to think (with human reviewers and stuff, not just infrastructure).

> If Apple lowered its cut to 8% tomorrow, Google would follow suit because it is still enough money to run the Play Store with.

Would they? Apple changing their fees has no effect on Android. Android suffered from the stigma of being a second-class citizen for a while, when apps were developed for iOS first. If it is as you say, why did they not drop their fees back then?

> For video game consoles, the margins are slim (or negative), so the current cut is the natural price that lets developers sell games for a profit and the hardware companies to subsidize consoles to a level that people can afford them.

Right, but that’s a moral argument, not a legal one. Negative margins on hardware is a business decision. The law does not discriminate depending on your business plan. If 30% is extorsion, then whatever you do on the side does not make it stop being extorsion.

> Is Apple even a monopoly though?

Apple has a monopoly though it's AppStore on over 2 billion devices though which it conducts $90,000,000,000 a year. That's more than a lot of countries GDP combined.

Saying Apple doesn't have a 90%+ share of phone market is irrelevant.

The question though, is if Apple as the Platform (phone) provider, maintains it's monopoly (AppStore) though anti-competitive means.

This is exactly the same argument Epic made, and lost.

Just like you have an illegal monopoly of 100% of the market of people posting on HN with the username "InsomniacL".

Epic's sentiment certainly resonated with the European Commission, and apparently the DOJ as well. Do any of us really believe Apple's App Store control is harmless?

1. It's not illegal to have a monopoly, it is illegal to abuse it or gain it though anti-trust means

2. people posting on HN with the username "InsomniacL" is not a 'market' in any sense

> Market: an area or arena in which commercial dealings are conducted.

I don't know the details of Epic's case, they may have lost the battle but seems they might not have lost the war...

Because unlike the Microsoft case, you have the option to buy a smartphone from a company other than Apple. 1990s Microsoft was quite literally a monopoly, nothing like what is going on today.

Apple is not stopping their competitors from making good phones, just like how Apple is not stopping you from buying a phone that wasn't made by Apple. Microsoft was doing both of those things, Apple isn't. The cases aren't even close really.

Phone sales are hardly the issue here. iOS policies are the issue.

And you could absolutely buy alternatives to Microsoft Windows in the 90s, from Apple or IBM or others. But that's immaterial. The availability of an alternative says nothing about the market power Apple has or how it's wielding that power. This is why we have anti-trust cases, to determine if that power is being abused.

It's really worth a read about what that case was actually about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

It's reasonably clear why the Microsoft case was different

> The U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally monopolizing the web browser market for Windows, 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.

Microsoft made deals with other companies to restrict competition. Apple doesn't need to make up a contract to prevent NFC payments as they just don't offer it in the first place. The Microsoft case actually has a lot more similarities to why Google lost the Epic case, by Apple won.

One of the big factors was that Microsoft were doing things like paying OEMs to not include other browsers. This was also the crux of the issue in Epic v Google recently.

Or operating systems: things like BeOS, OS/2, and Linux couldn’t be offered on a given model without paying for a Windows license or giving up volume pricing for the entire line.

That's still the case. Its still almost impossible to buy a Linux laptop from one of the big vendors. Even the rare models that they do sell, like the Dell XPS Developer edition, are hidden so deep in their website that they're almost impossible to find unless you're sure it exists.

Have you looked recently? It's pretty easy to get models from Dell and Lenovo.

The issue was not the lack of computers with alternative OSes. It was Microsoft using its dominant status in the market to enforce it.

That’s Dell’s management problems. What I was referring to was the policy Microsoft had in the 90s of, say, telling Dell that they could license Windows for the XPS line at, say, $10/unit if it was on every device sold or list price if they offered a different OS. That was very effective at making it cost more not to use Windows and did exactly what they intended.

A whole generation of people who don't know how horrible Microsoft was. Two decades later, people are still bitter. The amount of great tech that got stifled.... SMH.

On the browser front, it’s easy. iPhones have batteries so battery life is a concern. That’s why Apple treats them differently than Macintosh computers, which you can choose your own default browser engine for.

That's a reason someone might prefer Apple's first-party browser, sure. How does it justify banning third-party browser engines though?

Are we ruling out the possibility that competitive browsers could offer better battery performance, too?

The argument would be that they didn’t want iPhone users, especially with early models, to end up choosing other engines that were much worse on battery life and that would hurt the image of the iPhone. Back then, there was no battery settings where you could see what was eating your battery. It was all opaque and could make people think the device had lousy battery life.

And yeah, I think it’s unlikely someone could have made a more efficient browser than Apple since they didn’t give public access to all of their functionalities. And that might have been partly for security reasons, if there were less-secure aspects to hidden functions, for example.

The counter-argument is that they should have opened everything up, but Apple will say they were going as fast as they could responsibly go, and that’s why there were limitations that have been relaxed over time.

That feels like an argument that could apply to bar any category of apps to compete with Apple ones on the phone.

For instance giving a special placement to Apple Music and not allowing other apps to get the same privileges, because music playback needs to be efficient, and a bad music experience would hurt the iPhone's image. Same for movies, same for ebooks, same for spreadsheets (including needing to execute macros, so security risk is through the roof)

I feel I could get paid by Apple to come up with excuses for each app they need any.

The real justification for browser engine restrictions is not battery life but security.

If you look at any iOS vulnerability reporting, Safari is a big weakness and often the source of zero day attacks. Browsers are hugely complex pieces of software with a lot of attack surface. A large part of Apple’s value proposition is being secure. It sounds like the new approach (in the EU only) that allows additional browser engines requires specific security measures to be taken.

Rightly or wrongly device security is going to be a strong defense Apple has against some of these allegations.

Then by the same argument, it should be ok for Microsoft to prevent users from installing any other browser on Windows besides Edge because it could make that person’s device less secure…

No, a user should be allowed to take the security risk of installing whatever they want on their computers. Security-conscious users will have clean phones, and ordinary users will have phones full of viruses like their computers.

Let people choose.

Why do you think that apple should get to make this choice for their users?

If they are so concerned with not letting their users drain the battery if they wish, why do they allow games on their store?

I’m not saying I think they should be able to, I’m saying this is unlikely to be proven as an antitrust violation under the Microsoft precedent.

The user is choosing the Apple ecosystem and is happy to make these rules. They allow games because some people like to spend their battery power on games.

The user is choosing an iphone because their friends have one. Do you actually think the average person thinks about these things before buying a phone? No. They are just told by apple "you don't get to do that" once they realize they want to try it.

Remember, you (nor apple) are not their parent.

Most of the things I see Apple stop developers from doing I'm grateful for. Most developers have really bad ideas.

Feel free to not install their apps. Or in the case of the EU, feel free to only install apps from the official marketplace. That is your choice.

Other people should still be able to decide for themselves.

They allow games because that's where the largest chunk of appstore revenue comes from...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1010701/apple-app-store-...

The user is choosing out of an artificial lack of better options, which Apple can only get away with by having a big share in the US market. In markets where they are not dominant, the consumer benefits.

I'm the user and I know what I'm doing. I'm not being tricked into anything. I'm trying to avoid a certain type of personality that thinks they are saving the world.

I think Apple’s argument would be that making choices as to what you sell and for what price more or less is the core of what running a company is. If users don’t like the choices they make, they can shop elsewhere. That’s capitalism 101.

That brings us back to the question whether they’re a monopoly. The justice department seems to say they have a monopoly on iOS, so that users cannot shop elsewhere.

If such a thing can exist, of course they have a monopoly on iOS, just as Coca Cola has one on Coca Cola, Mercedes has one on Mercedes cars, etc. Next question would be whether they misuse that monopoly.

Apple will argue that ‘a monopoly on iOS’ doesn’t make sense as a concept and that, if you want to run Firefox or Chrome on a smartphone, there’s plenty of choice in the market, and even if there weren’t, there’s no obligation for them or any company to make a product that users want.

In the end, the outcome of this will depend less on logical arguments than about what ‘the people’ want. Laws and their interpretation will change if the people want that. That, I think, is what Apple should be worried about.

Apple sells a computing device. They also sell apps. They are free to choose what phone to sell, and they are free to choose what apps to sell.

They should not be free to prevent others from selling (or providing for free) apps for the computing device that consumers bought.

The problem is that user's can't shop elsewhere, because apple locked the operating system down to prevent that from happening.

Most Macs sold are Macbooks that also have batteries

Battery life is more of a concern on mobile devices because if your phone dies you can't call 911, get an uber, navigate with maps, or message a friend. There's more reason to protect mobile batteries than laptop batteries.

iOS started out closed and stayed that way for various reasons. Windows OS started with the ability of users to make various choices. One of those choices had to do with web browsers. MS's crime was "the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

yes safari is preinstalled but on an iphone you aren't allowed to install another browser (in this jurisdiction) so there's technically no precedent yet

Nit: you can install other browsers, but not other browser engines.

It might prove to be a significant difference in terms of how it affects competitors as a product.

> you aren't allowed to install another browser

Currently, anyone can create a new iPhone browser, but with one huge restriction: Apple insists that it uses the same WebKit rendering engine as Safari. [0]

And currently you can also delete Safari from your iOS device. An example of this is Firefox [1].

0. https://9to5mac.com/2023/02/07/new-iphone-browsers/

1. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-private-safe-browser/i...

> yes safari is preinstalled but on an iphone you aren't allowed to install another browser

A browser is a product, and you can install many other browsers.

A HTML rendering engine is a software library, and you can not install another HTML rendering engine.

The justice department definitely cares about products. It's not clear to what degree it cares about software libraries.

This is an artificial distinction. A browser normally comes with its own rendering engine.

In my experience, Firefox does not work as well on the iPhone as does Safari. It's obviously a rendering issue, because large pages will reload on their own over and over again while I'm trying to read them. My guess is it's a sneaky broken part of webkit which Apple knows how to fix in Safari and deliberately leaves broken for the other browser makers to suffer the consequences. Because, that's just the kind of bullshit which Apple is down for.

> This is an artificial distinction. A browser normally comes with its own rendering engine.

You're right that a browser normally comes with its own rendering engine, but I don't think it's an artificial distinction. There are plenty of components that most programs call out to the OS for—form elements, drop downs, save/load windows, file system access, and whatnot. The rendering engine is a much larger component, but I don't think it's cut-and-dried that it is categorically different.

> My guess is it's a sneaky broken part of webkit which Apple knows how to fix in Safari and deliberately leaves broken for the other browser makers to suffer the consequences

"Apple sabotages webkit for other Browsers" is a different—and to me at least, much stronger—argument than "Apple requires other browsers to use Webkit".

> There are plenty of components that most programs call out to the OS

Sure - user input handling, raster graphics, text formatting... HTML rendering and browser technology though? Apple made WebKit using FOSS desktop libraries, and then turned around to deny users FOSS desktop-grade competition. They TiVoized your browser.

Apple is going to have a tough defense, if they decide to steelman that particular point. The writing is on the wall, competition is coming with or without Apple's approval.

> "Apple sabotages webkit for other Browsers" is a different—and to me at least, much stronger—argument than "Apple requires other browsers to use Webkit".

Strong is an appropriate word for it. Many developers are starting to lose their nerve: https://mozilla.github.io/platform-tilt/

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