> If a company invests billions in R&D to create hardware and its integrated software, shouldn’t it have the right to control who or what interacts with it? Why should I be forced to open up the carefully designed ecosystem I’ve built?

Once a company becomes massive enough and displays properties of a monopoly, the rules of free commerce change

(that being said, I agree that Apple largely provides users with a high-quality product)

> There are other options out there.

This isn't about the a consumer's right to buy a different phone. It's about a business's right to do business with customers without Apple in the middle. And it's specifically about Apple's monopoly power over those businesses. No government is going to accept that some company, Apple, gets that kind of control.

I think it's specifically anticompetitive for Apple to force app developers to go through Apple Payments (with a 30% fee to Apple) for all purchases, otherwise their app is disallowed from being sold on the App store. There's no technological reason for app developers to be restricted from using other payment processors - it's purely a strategy for increased revenue for Apple.

In antitrust terms, it is a form of Vendor Lock-In[0], and could be seen as a form of Tying[1]:

> Tying is often used when the supplier makes one product that is critical to many customers. By threatening to withhold that key product unless others are also purchased, the supplier can increase sales of less necessary products.

As an example, Apple was sued successfully in the early 200s for selling music in a format that could only be played on iPods. iTunes is a platform Apple controls and invented, yet still it was deemed illegal for them to unfairly lock in customers and prevent them from using competing portable music players.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

[delayed]

> shouldn’t it have the right to control who or what interacts with it?

In their own machines they can do whatever they want.

Once they sell it to you, not anymore.

> There are other options out there.

That's the catch-22, said ecosystem is what they want to use because it's considered "secure", but it's only considered secure because it's closed.

It's the same with all the other stuff like frequent locations, photos, etc. It's a walled garden yes, but one that protects your data from bad actors (like Meta heisting whatever they can get their grubby little hands on), and the price is that you can't let others into your garden, or it's no longer walled.

> If a company invests billions in R&D to create hardware and its integrated software, shouldn’t it have the right to control who or what interacts with it?

Do you think the same about printer ink?

Regardless, we need to look at the law - and interoperability has a long history of legal support. Patents protect the product itself, but allow interoperable products. Trade secrets product the product from theft but not reverse engineering.

Even the DMCA has explicit carve-outs for interoperability, though that doesn't stop copyright-abusers from trying to wield it (and sometimes winning due to the money game).

> shouldn’t it have the right to control who or what interacts with it?

If they wanted that right they shouldn't have sold the computer.

Competition law exists for a reason, and it doesn't matter how much Apple invested, it's not negating that reason.

If anything, it's the opposite - the bigger Apple is, the worse is the damage they cause.

If you sell me a computer and I don't have a shell on it that's false advertising at best. Doing this en mass with the goal of actually changing people's behavior is even worse IMO. We don't have a word for it because it's not something that could be done before now. Microsoft tried with Windows and IE but the technology at the time meant they couldn't really lock people out of their own devices the way Apple does.

> If a company invests billions in R&D to create hardware and its integrated software, shouldn’t it have the right to control who or what interacts with it?

Was that not the sort of rationale Microsoft used to defend its IE shenanigans back in the day?

It was considered to be a violation of antitrust laws then. I don't think Apple would be off the hook now. Especially considering how much more ubiquitous smartphones are in comparison to web browsers back then.

> shouldn’t it have the right to control who or what interacts with it?

Yes, except when they use that control to stifle competition. Competition is good, so we want to promote it.

That is sort of the basis for all anti trust law, to my layman’s understanding at least.

To an extent, yes.

It's one thing to design and built an iKettle in such a way that every aspect from the water filter to the power cord is well thought out but propitiatory. It's another to refuse to plug in to another "inferior" socket because that cuts into your cut of propitiatory cable sales.

If their stuff is so superior, then people will see that and prefer it. They wouldn't need to make it impossible or deliberately painful to use competitors services.

Why would any of these factors outweigh their dominant position in the market and the value of market competition?

[dead]

> I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory

Don't you think this is _maybe_ an overstatement? I was annoyed about this for years but reading your take is borderline satirical.

> I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory as Apple walling off iMessage

Is that really the worst thing you've seen big-tech do? That's very fortunate.

What about Blackberry Messenger which was the mobile instant-messaging golden standard for years and BB exclusive for as long as it mattered in the market? Was that too long ago to remember?

> - Yes, I know no one outside the US uses iMessage.

Yes, people in the EU use WhatsApp, by Meta & Zuckerberg, and from what I've seen, often act as if that is some sort of mark of superiority.

> Even worse being a teenager and having to endure social shaming for it. It wasn't until the EU signaled it was going to bring down then axe that Apple capitulated to RCS.

Regardless of the merits of Apple's actions as regards technical interoperability I feel compelled to point out that this in particular is a cultural problem, not technical malfeasance. RCS users still appear as green bubbles and even if the lack of functionality has been remedied the stigma has not. People at my lunch table 20 years ago were drawing artificial distinctions between "MP3s" (portable DAPs) and iPods because the latter were expensive luxury products and the former were not. The same thing is at work here because owning an iPhone is a proxy for one's socioeconomic stratum. I own an iPhone and as soon as an Android user appears in an iMessage group chat some joker immediately makes a green bubble quip - no degraded picture message required.

People that define themselves by conspicuous consumption don't care about interoperability. They care about brand recognition.

Apple does not owe Android users a superior non-Apple experience. Android a pretty damn huge platform, right? Way bigger than Apple, I hear? Blame Google. Google failed to compete.

The most evil thing a tech company has done is make a proprietary messaging app?

Apple didn't make SMS bad, it just was. Apple has since implemented RCS and it hasn't changed how I communicate with people from my iPhone at all.

Google should probably take most of the blame for repeatedly fumbling messaging on non-Apple platforms for the past 2 decades. Every time they had something that was getting any amount of traction it got quickly replaced with some stupid new, worse messaging app so a PO could get a promotion.

Actually, iMessage happily harms apple customers all the time.

I know many MANY people who have lost chats with their loved ones (especially deceased ones) because there is no way to export and save their conversations.

I think this should be as easy as saving photos, which apple makes (somewhat) easier to export.

Back to email, it is pretty horrible to set up my local email server on an apple device. You have to go through these dialogs, apple servers have to be contacted (for "redirection"), and I usually barely get it working.

This reads like public affairs copy from Meta/Alphabet/et al looking to distract from the real, measurable harm produced against teens by social media and AI products that are either directly (Instagram) or indirectly (character ai) owned.

Or you could use an actual program on a desktop computer to do it. When did everyone forget how that works?

> I don't think any big tech company has ever done anything as evil and predatory as Apple walling off iMessage

I think you might be living in a bubble, if this is the "most evil" thing you have heard of a big tech company doing. Go read up on IBM's history, especially in the 30s and 40s. Or a more contemporary example, read up on Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Or Amazon's mistreatment of workers in both corporate and warehouse settings. Or Meta scraping data off your devices without permission to train AI.

And, though I know some folks here disagree, plenty of people around the world believe what's happening in Gaza is a genocide, and Big Tech has materially contributed to making it happen. Or, if you want another example of human cost, talk about how resources for electronics are mined, or how electronics are manufactured.

Saying, "the most evil thing big tech has ever done is make some chat bubbles blue" puts a whole lot of human lives below the color of some chat bubbles.

You can think Apple did a really bad thing by doing that, that's fine. No complaints. But to call it the most evil thing ever done erases an incalculable amount of human suffering.

Really?

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

This is hopelessly exaggerated and bad-faith.

First of all, when Apple created iMessage, there was no possible way for them to predict that friend groups would use it as a reason to treat members of their groups poorly due to using Android phones.

Second of all, Apple did not deliberately make interacting with non-iMessage users in group chats "look like trash" in order to exclude them. Apple went out of its way to make it possible for iMessage to interoperate with the ubiquitous (in the US) SMS, with reduced features because SMS did not support the better features. If, instead, Apple had just made iMessage not interoperate with SMS at all, you'd be screaming about that instead.

Third of all, if people are leaving others out of chats, that's not Apple's fault. That's something for those families and friend groups to work out amongst themselves. "Hey, guys, I don't have an iPhone, and don't really have the money to get one, so maybe we could use GroupMe/GChat/WhatsApp/Signal/IRC/email/smoke signals/meeting in person/any of the myriad other ways of communicating instead?" A) "Oh, sure, that shouldn't be a problem!" (everything is solved) B) "What? No, we're not going to change anything just because it makes it impossible to actually include you in stuff. That's a you problem!" (turns out, the problem is your friends are assholes)

Apple cannot by any reasonable standard be held to blame for the way bullying, status-seeking teenagers treat each other.

google with their android anti-fragmentation-agreement is pretty predatory. basically release any/all android devices with google services and pay us cut or release none and use pure aosp. it is some next level shit.

[dead]

Isnt that how the system is supposed to work, unless you think Apple would be always benevolent? I think HNers make a mistake (and believe Apple's marketing) that Apple always stands for users, cares about design, pushing the boundary, "think different" etc.

It is painfully obvious, but Apple's singular goal is to make money (profit for shareholders) and THAT IS A GOOD THING. They'll cut corners, test the boundaries in pursuit of that, and sometimes cross over it.

Suing them is the right way to fix those behaviors.

Different countries have different laws.

It also strikes me as ongoing PR to combat their CEO outing himself as sympathetic to fascists if its good for business.

if all you want is for your apps to come from Apple's store and your payments to go through Apple's system, you would simply continue to use only those options and allowing other people to have other options would not impact you.

what you actually want is to force all developers to use Apple's distribution and payment systems, so that you can have every app and service from any provider delivered via your chosen mechanisms. that takes away freedom from developers and users who prefer other systems. it eliminates the market for anyone to make or use something better than your chosen options

It's not controversial, you can still have your walled garden as-is.

The point of this is so that there is the possibility of escaping that walled garden, arguably welcoming more users into the ecosystem.

Nothing would change for you. Just like android users can keep using all things Google, they have the possibility of installing apps from other sources.

You're free to keep your own device locked down yourself and to only use Apple's own app store if you want.

That's not how choice works.