4 Internal Apple Emails That Helped the DOJ Build Its Case
wired.com
wired.com
It's ridiculous that apple can leverage my social connections as a tool to keep me on iOS.
What am I supposed to do?
"Dear friends and family, I need you all to download this app called Signal so we can restart all our group chats in a new app because I am getting an android phone."
Our group chat with her family is evenly split between iOS and Android. No one’s ever said one word about it.
We absolutely have run into the issue where I can’t send my wife multiple photos at the same time over text (a single photo works fine)…so I just use one of several other methods to send photos in bulk.
To me, this topic is the ultimate “touch grass” example.
Sending video is atrociously bad potato quality. How to send to android? Easiest is email and then the many other options. According to Steve Jobs “get your mom an iPhone”.
I swear at one time I could not edit a group chat if an android was in the group chat but that must have recently changed.
Maybe they think they lose the group chat transferring to android or the chat history. Windows phone link is bad with an iPhone also. Can’t even text an android phone. For me, Android->Iphone->Macos->Windows and now I’m considering looping back to Android.
They were resistant. It took a long time. But there are ample new opportunities appearing on a daily basis to show them why a cross platform privacy-focused messenger is a better idea than being trapped in a walled garden.
But eventually they understood. And because they care about me, they use Signal to communicate with me. For some of them I'm their only Signal contact. With others, they now have other friends from other circles who have similar concerns.
The more other people they hear mention Signal, the more likely they are to use it. Be the change you want to see.
People talk about downloading an app as if it's this great endeavor like lifting a huge boulder. The app will live on their phone and send them notifications. It's not that big of a deal. They'll forget to use it most of the time at first. It's not that big of a deal.
However, in court, you have to compare what a company is doing to the letter of the law. It seems US anti-trust laws are vague enough that, if the way big tech companies operate today violates them, the enforcement over the years has been so little that it is hard to apply them now in the spirit they were intended. That’s my impression, anyway.
Apple will, of course, argue they are not a monopoly (all their products have competitors, like iOS has Android—even if they tried to kill it). They will argue that having an ecosystem of products in different categories that work together is not illegal, and that executives wanting to entice users to use their products, or deter them from switching, is all the same thing and just good business, not anti-competitive behavior.
If it’s already illegal for Apple to prefer and promote their own apps and products and extract exorbitant rent from everyone else, then please, DOJ, put a stop to it.
Maybe it’s just all the articles about this that are really poor. As it stands, not having dug into the matter deeply, I’m on the DOJ’s side, but I’d rather be a lawyer for Apple.
No, it is literally the court's job to interpret the law. They are the ones who take the letter of the law and figure out what that actually means, and if history has shown us anything, they have tremendous latitude in that regard.
But lots of good business becomes anti-competitive behavior once you’re judged to be the subject to antitrust law.
So, the main issue is whether antitrust law should apply to them. That, IMO, is a case won as less on the letter of the law (which, as I understand it, is fairly vague) than on what ‘the people’ want it to mean today.
You can still SMS anyone. But it’s much better on iPhone. They should not open iMessage to Android it’ll just turn into a big spammy dumpster fire.