Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by tiffanyh | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

tiffanyh

> 3. Messaging interoperability

> 4. Smartwatches [interoperability]

Where do you draw the line on forcing interoperability?

This is kind of like (in-person) movie theaters.

Movie theaters don't allow you to bring your own food, you have to buy their food/drink.

Why should a movie theater be forced to allow patrons bring their own food?

Why should Apple be forced to allow it's patrons to brining competitive things to their business?

Note: I ask these questions out of genuine curiosity. Not to troll/stir-the-pot.

View on HN

I presume the question is about impact: At Apple's scale, restricting competition has a very broad impact on the economy. In contrast, a movie theater not allowing outside food is probably not reducing all that much food-related competition in aggregate.

I don't think there's a good real-world "venue/food" analogy. However, hypothetically: Imagine if half of all homes/apartments were controlled by the same company and they also happened to be the largest food producer. They then decided to limit what food could be brought into your home, saying "We have the safest food, so you can only buy our food." Now, they might even be right that their food is the safest, but the market impact would be significant enough to warrant anti-trust action.

Let's say that a movie theatre chain becomes very successful by selling high-quality food instead of stale popcorn laden with artificial butter flavoring. They also curate movies and refuse to screen low-brow garbage pushed out by the studios. The customers love the good movies and good food, so this chain slowly takes over the market, nearly, but not quite, to a level of monopoly. You can still go to competing theatres, but the seats will be sticky, the food will clog your arteries, and you won't enjoy the movie.

So you're saying in this situation the government should step in and force the successful chain with standards to allow competing movie theatres, junk food sellers, and low-budget movie producers to sell their wares in their theatres?

That's literally what's happening with these moves against Apple.

The peddlers of crap are upset that they're locked out of a well-managed market frequented by discerning customers.

That's it.

You seem pretty certain of your opinion, so I doubt anything I can say will sway you.

Nonetheless, it isn't an issue of "quality" or "discerning customers". A company can earn market-share by providing a better product (or a worse product at a lower price) and that's fine.

The issue is when that company uses their market dominance to limit competition. Then it becomes an anti-trust issue. Movie theaters aren't a good analogy since they're far less central to our day-to-day lives, and therefore will have less overall impact on the economy. Nonetheless, imagine your dominant chain makes deals with film producers to prevent their competition from screening popular movies. This prevents the other chains from competing, even if they wanted to.

That analogy breaks down when you look at the state of Safari on iOS. Even ignoring the features of the browser itself, the way its version is tied to the OS version causes tons of support issues for our customers.

No, that's a totally different analogy. The point is the impact of their market power other people who want to sell food, not other people who want to sell movies. Apple controls a very large share of the app market; no movie theater, however successful, controls a significant part of the food market.

They 100% control the food sold inside their theatres! It’s their shop, they can decide what’s sold in it.

People have a choice: it’s called Android.

I don’t see why a private company that isn’t a monopoly should be forced to open up their proprietary products to direct competitors.

This is a very slippery slope and the people advocating for it in the case of Apple will be screaming about how unfair it is for the government to get involved when it happens to them.

Let’s say you have a successful startup selling something like an API marketplace.

One day the government says: It’s unfair to MalwareAPI Co that you lock them out of the market and require a fee. You now have to let them sell their viruses to your customers and you don’t even get a cut.

Would you make the same arguments? Why not?

Once you become large enough to have a say in how significant chunk of online commerce is done by inserting yourself as the mandatory 3rd party in any transaction that takes place on the platform, you stop being "just another business" and become a "gatekeeper", or in Apple's case specifically a TWO sided market.

"Gatekeeper" is an EU legal term, which I'm aware doesn't apply in the US, but the term is on point. These gatekeepers are nothing more than unelected, unregulated, and unaccountable points of taxation that limit and control the flow and type of trade that is allowed to happen in the economy. Through network effects, they keep a stranglehold on both sides of the TWO-sided market because one of the sides (providers) doesn't have any alternatives and the other side (users) is chained to the platform through a variety of lock-in effects.

Financial transactions? Give Apple 30%. Porn? Apple says no! Perhaps 20 years from now, the only way to get a tech job will be to go through a an intermediary called Apple Jobs, and they'll take a 30% of your salary. How would you like that?

Even better analogies:

- Should the government force marketplaces to allow competing marketplaces to set up shop within their area, collect fees, but not pay any fees to the larger market?

- Should the government make laws to require restaurants to allow competing chefs to bring a hot plate and start cooking food at the tables and serve them to their customers?

- Should Google be forced by the government to include support for formats in Android that are used by Apple such a HEIF and HEIC? What about Microsoft and Linux?

These rules are not about individual choice or freedom. This is about giant corporations using the government to give them a way into the walled garden built by a competing mega corporation. This is completely self-serving and in no shape, way, or form serves the common good.

As an iPhone user I do not want government interference in a market place that has been kept mostly free of malware precisely because it keeps out the riff-raff. I want the hucksters and the scammers blocked. I really don't care if they scream "unfair!" at the top of their lungs from outside of the fence.

Similarly, general SMS messaging is a cesspit of unceasing spam precisely because it is so interoperable. Because Apple keeps out garbage devices with zero security, I've seen precisely zero iMessage spam in the last decade. I got a spam SMS in the last hour. I'll get several more today.

> I do not want government interference in a market place

This is just not the world we live in. The Play store is also malware-free, and yet you can sideload apps on Android phones.

The Play Store is absolutely not malware free unless you don’t consider apps that take over your launcher and Lock Screen, serve you ads, and links to their own apps malware. Had to remove this garbage from my grandmother’s Pixel

Even better: no stupid analogies and just talk about topic at hand.

> Should Google be forced by the government to include support for formats in Android that are used by Apple such a HEIF and HEIC? What about Microsoft and Linux?

Yes, please.

> As an iPhone user I do not want government interference in a market place that has been kept mostly free of malware precisely because it keeps out the riff-raff.

Citation needed.

> Yes, please.

Those are patented formats. This would make Android no longer open source in the truly free software sense.

Are you sure you want this kind of precedent on the books?

Whatever runs on Pixel is not AOSP anyway.

In some countries with strong consumer laws, movie theaters are not legally allowed to forbid customers from bringing their own food and drinks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com