I get the Apple is trying to spread propaganda that anti-competitive laws are bad for consumers, but in this case, consumers will just buy from another brand and it's a simple net loss for Apple.
They are simply weighting potential fines / loss of revenues due to being forced to share technology with competition against monetary losses due to fewer sales. So far fewer sales win.
These are features that apple are dedicating a huge amount of resources to. Tim Cook frequently talks up the importance of artificial intelligence as the future. Apple Intelligence is a tentpole feature of new iPhones, it has heavily influenced their advertising, and takes prime position in their marketing materials.
Withholding these features, even for just 6 months, is harmful to Apple. Especially when Apple appear weaker in the category, and competitors are frequently releasing AI products.
However here you'll read a byzantine concoction on how this is acshually a 4D anticompetitive chess move.
Will those users buy OTHER headphones than Apple then, or still buy Airpods...?
From my observation the "properly locked-in" Apple user buys Airpods and mostly replaces them with newer Airpods when needed, because of Apple's artificial advantage in ecosystem interoperability (the exact reason of the dispute with the EU)
I also think there is little for them to litigate at this point, they were exchanging extensively for more than a year on how to reach compliance, then the decision [0] was made.
There are also separate procedures for the specification of compliance and investigating (non)compliance. Apple might continue to have a hard time litigating on non-compliance if they co-worked with the EU on the exact expectation of compliance beforehand.
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
Apple might be doing the same thing, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it, since their ecosystem is a closed gate.
I want to switch to Android, but I have all the following problems:
1. iMessage, unlike whatsapp etc, does not have an android app, and some of my family uses iMessage, so I would be kicked from various group chats
2. My grandma only knows how to use facetime, so I can't talk to her unless I have an iPhone
3. My apple books I purchased can't be read on android
4. Lose access to all my apps (android shares this one)
5. I have a friend who uses airdrop to share maps and files when we go hiking without signal, and apple refuses to open up the airdrop protocol so that I can receive those from android, or an airdrop app on android
6. ... I don't have a macbook, but if I did the sreen sharing, copy+paste sharing, and iMessage-on-macos would all not work with android.
It's obvious that apple has locked in a ton of stuff. Like, all other messages and file-sharing protocols except iMessage and airdrop work on android+iOS. Books I buy from google or amazon work on iOS or android.
Apple is unique here.
1. Fortnite doesn't have an iPhone app, so if I switch to iOS I can't play with my friends
2. My friends only play Fortnite, so I can't play with them unless I play Fortnite.
3. My skins can't be used on Roblox.
4. I lose access to all my custom worlds
5. Other game engines don't work for building Fortnite custom worlds, I have to use Unreal.
It feels like a certain amount of lock-in is expected just from network effects of products, no?
I think there are classes of product that have an outsized amount of power and should be subject to more strict judgement on this however.
ISPs, payment processors, web browsers, general purpose operating systems, etc... all of these should not discriminate and give partners an unfair leg up.
Chrome should not block bing.com from loading, and should publish everything needed for anyone to write a webpage Chrome can render. Windows should not block iTunes from running, and should publish specs on how to write software for win32 APIs. iOS should publish airdrop specs to allow alternative implementations.
The rest of my complaints amount more to norms for certain things. It has become the norm that someone who sells digital books, music, or movies allows people to access them on the platforms they're on (spotify works on iOS and android, ditto for youtube music, etc etc). Apple is the only company I know of that abuses an OS+Media monopoly for basically all media, like Amazon has the Kindle, but they still let you read books on normal Android too. Apple is violating the norm in a way that feels intended to create an anti-competitive moat.
Similarly, every other messaging app is cross-platform, and iMessage not being cross platform, banning users who use it on android (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39156308), and refusing to publish their own android app, that also feels like it violates the norms of messaging apps in a way that is either gross incompetence, or anti-competitive.
I think Fortnite doesn't qualify as an "operating system" because it can't gatekeep how someone interacts with competitors. If, in some weird future, Epic started selling "Fortnight Decks" (like the steam deck), included the "Deck Apps" app store, and it became a general way of computing for some appreciable fraction of kids, then yes, I think that hypothetical "Deck Apps" store and the device could have such lock-in and I'd have the same complaints.
I also think if fortnight became the default way the next generation communicates (akin to iMessage), it would indeed be wildly anti-competitive if they partnered with Google, and made it so the chat app was only available on ChromeOS.
However, as it is now, Fortnite isn't violating norms, nor is it going out of its way to gatekeep access to the community, nor is it anyone's gateway to general computing, so it doesn't feel comparable to iMessage, nor to the app store.
Also, what do you mean by "coy" there? I don't understand the meaning in that context.
Apple does this very clever, it works, but it has so many annoyances and bugs. By making 3th party products “annoying” to use, Apple nudges people to just buy Apple products/the ecosystem…
Every day. But I never ran into what you suggest. My iPad is not more annoying than my Dell laptop when it comes to Bluetooth (and both are light years away from my Linux box).