Good. Well past needed.
I hope one thing that comes to light and is talked about is something they do that other companies are partaking in as well, cutting out in-app competition by outrageous business practices or downright blocking the competition with banning when it -overlaps- an Apple offering.
Prime example: iTunes music store versus Spotify.
But that could all change soon, at least in Europe. In the next few months, we will start to see the effects of the Digital Markets Act, a 2022 EU law that clamps down on anticompetitive practices by tech giants it has deemed gatekeepers, Apple included. The law prohibits gatekeeper services like Apple’s App Store from charging a fee for apps to promote their own products and subscriptions or requiring apps to use a specific payments processor, something that gets at the core of Spotify’s fury with Apple and attacks the heart of Apple’s app business.
It should also be noted this lead to another conversation had here in other threads:
Epic Games, which makes Fortnite, also fought against Apple by suing the company in US federal court over its App Store policies. It won a minor victory: The court ruled that Apple needed to make it easier for app developers to at least provide a pathway to off-app payments. Apple’s compliance with the ruling elicited even more rage from Epic, Spotify, and other developers. Instead of charging 30 percent for in-app purchases, the company said it would charge a mere 27 percent of revenue from digital products and services if an app so much as linked to an off-app payment portal. The move signaled to the tech industry that Apple would not comply easily or quietly with the Digital Markets Act.
The Google antitrust stuff exposed some really weird arguments surrounding apple. Like, some of the stuff Google was fined for was ok for Apple to do, because Apple was an even more closed ecosystem which they held even more monopolistic power over? It was nonsensical.
Well, the idea was, they were telling their customers it was closed, so there was no expectation going in of an open ecosystem.
Which isn’t really a fix for their monopolistic hold over that marketplace.
I’m no fan of Apple per se, even though I have an iPhone, a watch, and an iPad. They make good stuff, in general, but I can’t say I’m a fan of their rather cut-throat approach to maintaining their walled garden.
Still, these sorts of anti-trust actions always leave me feeling a bit uneasy. In the long run, I’m not sure they ever achieve their intended objective, and often it seems the net result for consumers is not always positive.
We shall have to see the details here I think.
What falls into the “these sorts” category?
The DOJ specifically calls out Apple’s policy to not allow imessage to work fully with android devices, and how Apple’s policies make competing messaging apps (Meta’s offerings) work worse on the system.
Officials said that conversations between iPhone users and Android users are not encrypted, videos are grainier and they and do not offer the same editing features. The complaint says these bugs are by design and are intended to encourage Android users to purchase iPhones.
“As a result, iPhone users perceive rival smartphones as being lower quality because the experience of messaging friends and family who do not own iPhones is worse — even though Apple is the one responsible for breaking cross-platform messaging,” Garland said in his statement.
Also, quite literally, they are calling out Apple for doing what Microsoft was once found guilty by the DOJ over 20 years ago.
DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter said Thursday that Apple has been a “significant beneficiary” of the U.S.’s landmark antitrust case against rival Microsoft more than two decades ago, which he said “paved the way for Apple to launch” many of its products. In that case, courts found that Microsoft invested significant resources to quash threats to its web browser, including from Apple.
But Apple has since “engaged in many of the same practices that Microsoft used” to entrench its dominance, said acting associate attorney general Benjamin Mizer.
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
I mean the sorts of legal actions that intend to mitigate anti-consumer behavior through methods that often seem to end up hurting consumers anyhow. Part of it is that I am rather skeptical of the logic when the government claims our economy is built on free competition and all that, when the government itself is complicit in supporting all sorts of anti-competitive and anti-consumer activity, either by action or inaction.
And again, I’m no fan of Apple, and this suit certainly raises what I think are very valid concerns. I’m just not convinced the remedy will end up being better than the disease for consumers.
The consumer electronics industry in particular has benefitted from standardization and elimination of confusion, and that has of course also come with a severe reduction in choices and options. You pick your poison. It’s entirely possible, probably a near certainty, that Apple needs to be chastised for their practices, but it’s not like anyone didn’t have plenty of time to see all of this unfold.
If Apple’s monopoly power has improved standardization, why do I have so many lightning connectors
I’m all for burying Apple just for how heinously bad their iOS keyboard, autocorrect, and voice to text is. For a $1000+ you get a texting experience that’s worse than a 15 year old burner Android phone.
Don’t worry, swiftkey and other android keyboards are getting enshittified by the day.
There are many anti-competitive things Apple does that need to be addressed (eg anti-steering practices), in my mind, but messaging is not really one of them.
There are many third party messaging apps that allow everything the DoJ listed as wanting to see available in the App Store. It’s not big deal to download one of them and use it instead of Messages. I guess the argument is people are lazy and just use the default? I hope this isn’t some roundabout way to get Apple to weaken the E2E encryption on Messages so that the US government can finally get their dream “backdoor” into messaging on iOS.
Apple could pretty easily adopt RCS and fix a lot of the texting woes. But they didn’t for reasons? They continue to keep all non imessage cross communications in MMS/SMS.
That is my big issue. They are fixing that, but I worry they are dragging their feet and we will end up with something less than actually usable. They gave us “sometime in 2024” and this is only being done because of the pressure being put on them by global agencies and governments.
Keep in mind Microsoft’s antitrust suit was over far less on a far more open platform.
Hahahaha
I’m curious if the ruling will let me use Apple Tags on my Android phone. There’s no Android equivalent that’s even remotely as good.
I am shocked, SHOCKED the CEO of a company recommends buying his company’s products to solve a problem. :)
This was pretty inevitable, but now it’s official. Five EU investigations into non-compliance with the DMA, against Apple, Google and Meta.
Amazon is doing a seriously annoying thing now where if you type in, say, a Blu-ray you want to buy, all of the top results are all Prime Video streams…including streams of movies that you didn’t even search for. I’ve had to go to wade through more than a page full of stream results to even find the listing for the actual Blu-ray I wanted to buy. It’s often the same with music.