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Comment by eyelidlessness | Hacker News Reader

What I want to know is how there’s any legal basis to compel any business to implement and service specific, arbitrary software features. It would be one thing if there were a law that mandated a class of messaging apps interoperate on a certain standard if they use certain regulated communication networks. But “Apple messages must implement interoperability with Android messages” feels very hamfisted as an expression of that, and doesn’t strike me as legally defensible.

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Sure it is. Anti-trust law gives the government (assuming they prevail in court) broad authority to require that a specific company take specific, tailored actions that the government believes will make it so the company can't abuse its market position to harm consumers anymore.

There's a long history of this, with Microsoft being a fairly recent, famous example.

I think you’re responding to a more basic question than I posed. I think I made it clear I understand the government can compel actions…

> that the government believes will make it so the company can't abuse its market position to harm consumers anymore

… and that I don’t believe “Apple must support Android messages” is that.

Since you mention Microsoft, I think it would be equally indefensible if the government had ordered “Microsoft must create a Windows Subsystem for Linux” as a remedy for their market abuse. Or a much closer analogy, “Microsoft must create a Windows Subsystem for Macintosh”.

I would find it much more compelling if the order were something like “Microsoft must maintain stable interfaces for Linux and/or Macintosh vendors to produce a functioning Windows Subsystem”. But it seems pretty absurd to me that the government could just mandate arbitrary labor on arbitrary products on behalf of their competitors.

In all of these arguments, I haven't heard about any harmed consumer yet. Half the things Apple is accused of actually benefit customers, at least in my opinion.

So you have not read anything about kids being bullied in schools for having green bubbles? And you don't think your Spotify subscription is more expensive than needed since Spotify has to give Apple 30% of their revenue (and Apple Music does not, what a fair competition)?

So the technology of a global company must be hobbled and regulated because of US parents being so foolish as to allow their teens access to age-inappropriate technology? Did I miss the "teen fads determine anti-trust results" section in the legal code?

I don't know, take the high road even if it costs something if you know your decision is causing the bullying? But no, greed wins.

Spotify doesn’t even let you buy Premium in the App on iOS anymore, it’s the same price for everyone. So no, it isn’t increasing prices since Spotify isn’t giving a 30% cut to Apple in the first place. As a consumer there’s literally no way for me to funnel money to Apple via Spotify. Spotify could choose to charge 30% more for an App Store IAP, but they’d rather be hostile to consumers and just offer nothing through that mechanism.

That's Apple being hostile to consumers, not Spotify. And the fact that Apple Music does offer subscriptions and doesn't need to pay 30% was appreciated in Europe with $2B just to make a point to Apple that they absolutely need to stop their BS.

So we’re just going to collectively agree to pretend that Spotify is more expensive due to a made up 30% cut they don’t actually pay?

I don't understand what you mean.

The complaint was that a Spotify subscription is more expensive due to Apple taking a 30% cut. Which they don’t do, because Spotify elected to not use IAP at all. I don’t understand this complaint either, since it’s fictional.

I don't have an iPhone, Spotify was just an example, where Apple is in direct competition with another app and abuse their position as the phone manufacturer to charge fees from their competitors that they don't charge from themselves. Do you think Spotify wouldn't like to be able to have the nice UX of IAP if that didn't cost XX% of revenue?

And in the past they used to allow, apparently their deal with Apple was 15%. Why should Apple earn 15% of all revenue on Music streaming for a service that isn't even their service.

You might be right, I still don't see Spotify being cheaper for Spotify customers if Apple let Spotify users sign up through their iOS app. What's the customer impact? The inconvenience of switching to a web browser for a one time transaction? There are tons of other reasons this happens all the time in other situations.

> I don't have an iPhone

Yeah, we all knew that. You and about 95% of the other complainers in this thread obviously don't know what you're talking about and keep getting exposed as bad faith actors. It's tiresome and only serves the opposite of what you intend. When someone sees claims like yours and then finds the first result on Google proving you're full of shit, they don't believe the next complaint about Apple that could be legit.

The same way we're agreeing that Spotify never took in-app payments and decided to withdraw it's payment processing from IOS for reasons unrelated to Apple, yes.

When I grew up you were bullied for wearing champion and not abercrombie. Look at how the overtone window has shifted now.

Was Abercrombie sued by the government over this?

> So you have not read anything about kids being bullied in schools for having green bubbles?

Have people tried parenting their children?

There isn't, but the way anti-trust works it more or less says "You need to do X by Y date". That X usually nudges a path or least resistance towards iplementing and servicing a new feature (or undoing chokeholds on old features), but as we see with the DMA Apple can play with loopholes for months before getting with the program.

To your example (and excuse my lack of sound legalese), they wouldn't say "Apple must implement RCS", they would say "Apple must allow for an cross-compatible solution" or "Apple must document XYZ features keeping competitors from implementing a proper iMessage alternative".

They don't even need to mandate anything. They need to neuter intellectual property, unambiguously legalize reverse engineering and circumvention, and make it illegal for corporations to retaliate against consumers who exercise those rights. Then all this stuff will happen on its own via adversarial interoperability.

Want to use a custom client to connect to some service? Want to bridge two rival networks? Such things should be our rights.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...

This is much more reasonable IMO.

>unambiguously legalize reverse engineering and circumvention

That'll never happen. It basically opens the door for all kinds of malicious activity that can go unpunished. From Malware to distributing decryption mechanisms for sensitive information. It's pretty important for some of that stuff to be stopped at its root.

Not important enough. Computing freedom is more important. Computers should be free. We should be free. If the cost of that freedom is having to defend against malicious actors, so be it. I pay it gladly.

It's important enough to the people who actually have the power to change it. This wasn't my opinon, this is why it'll never happen with current driving forces. Stallman won't be kicking for that much longer, probably not long enough to argue this sort of angle.

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