- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
The US Department of Justice and 16 state and district attorneys general accused Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in a new antitrust lawsuit. The DOJ and states are accusing Apple of driving up prices for consumers and developers at the expense of making users more reliant on its iPhones.
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The crux of this suit seems to be that the DOJ believes that Apple needs to make its hardware fair to everyone that can develop on it, and make its software fair to all possible hardware that can run it, which is particularly interesting because Apple’s main product seems to be a pleasant and easy user experience that cuts through the physical barriers of the pieces of hardware it sells. And part of that user experience is the sense of security that is supposed to come with knowing that Apple is (more or less) able to decide who is allowed to access important, secure elements of their hardware.
On the software side of things, I don’t fully understand why or how the DOJ could force Apple to develop better integration support for cross-vendor hardware usage? Why do they need to go the extra mile to make an Apple Watch work well with an Android phone? Because the DOJ says so? I mean, sure I guess that would be better for everyone but it’s a weird thing to require.
Is this really the biggest problem in the US right now? Can the justice department maybe spend some time on gun violence, climate denial, misinformation, dark money in politics…. Like 1000 other things that are literally killing people before we worry about this? Or is this just because it’s an election year and they think it will be popular…
When your family does spring cleaning, does the entire family all focus on each specific thing individually, or are you capable of collectively handling multiple things at the same time?
Not necessarily the best example, if you split the work up too much, you can end up with a bunch of unfinished projects, when everyone works together on specific items together you are more likely to get specific things done quickly and have them be more fully ‘completed.’
Source: Actually have a family, actually do spring cleaning.
Well, in the case of the DOJ the “individual family member” is a group of people. I was just pointing out that one thing being done doesn’t mean other things are not also being done.
were you breathing as you typed this out?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The US Department of Justice and 16 state and district attorneys general accused Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in a new antitrust lawsuit.
It alleges that Apple “selectively” imposes contractual restrictions on developers and withholds critical ways of accessing the phone, according to a release.
“Apple exercises its monopoly power to extract more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses, and merchants, among others,” the DOJ wrote in a press release.
“For years, Apple responded to competitive threats by imposing a series of ‘Whac-A-Mole’ contractual rules and restrictions that have allowed Apple to extract higher prices from consumers, impose higher fees on developers and creators, and to throttle competitive alternatives from rival technologies,” DOJ antitrust division chief Jonathan Kanter said in a statement.
Apple is the second tech giant the DOJ has taken on in recent years after filing two separate antitrust suits against Google over the past two administrations.
It’s instituted new rules through the Digital Markets Act to place a check on the power of gatekeepers of large platforms, several of which are operated by Apple.
The original article contains 691 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Passing this would destroy Apple’s entire business, where they spend their effort and money deeply integrating their products to work together.
Instead, they’ll have to spend their time and money creating an API to let random Joe make a watch for an ecosystem they did nothing to create, foster, or maintain.
Maybe they shouldn’t have based their business on monopoly?
People don’t need to use an iPhone. A symptom of our declining society is expecting people or businesses to accommodate your personal interests instead of you making an adult decision.
A symptom of our declining society is expecting people or businesses to accommodate your personal interests instead of you making an adult decision.
A symptom of your declining society is expecting that the rules in place could be ignored.
It is true, nobody is forced to buy an iPhone but this not means that Apple could play in the game with a different set of rules from everyone else.
What existing rules? The rules designed for 19th/20th century oil companies that don’t apply to modern tech companies?
New rules are being written.
Apple could play in the game with a different set of rules
They’re playing a different game because they’re the ones who built the ballpark they’re playing in. Don’t like the game? Don’t go to the ballpark.
It’s so exhausting how you people simply can’t accept “don’t buy Apple” and leave it alone.
Man, can you fanboy any harder?
Apple has some aggressive “in-club” style marketing and exclusivity practices.
iMessage intentionally massively degrades user experience when a non-iMessage user is in the chat, to encourage their iPhone users to harass their friends into getting an iPhone too.
The cruelty is the point. They want their users to ostracize their friends into converting friends and family to their platform.
I hate to say it man, but you are talking to a brick wall. That don’t understand, and more importantly they don’t want to understand.
And I’m speaking to a bunch of incel teenagers who are baby raging about a green bubble and how their parents won’t get them an iPhone.
That’s literally an argument in the DoJ’s case, btw. A case led by incels.
And that tells me everything I need to know about your opinions. Horray for the block feature
Thanks for being my first, I guess
How is “cruelty the point” while you’re saying that expanding their market share is the point? That would make cruelty a means to an end, not an end itself.
Boo fucking hoo, android has done it for years and is fine. Apple doesn’t want to do it because if they don’t they can charge as much as they want for things because you can only get it from them. If they put half as much into innovation as they do into walling everything off they might actually have new ideas instead of the exact same phone with minor hardware and software upgrades that makes it the exact same phone but with a heftier price tag each subsequent generation.
To be fair, the unwalled garden of Android hasn’t really come back with anything compelling in a decade, either. Just iterative hardware improvements.
Which is fine. The space has matured. There will be other frontiers.
But at least this might result in a decrease of friction between users with different platforms.
I mean, I’m using the fold 3 which I am really liking and is definitely something new. But it is true more could be being done.
You don’t need to buy an iPhone, and if you don’t have one then this doesn’t affect you and you’re baby raging about nothing. If you do have one and are still mad, then perhaps evaluate how little self control you have over your purchases.
Lol, try and lecture all you want little troll, you are just making yourself look like even more of a tool and a child. I couldn’t care less either way what your opinion is because you have literally no idea what anyone else’s circumstances are and you think you are better. Go study more and do a little more growing up next time you think you have any leg to stand on in judging what others situations are.
Passing this would destroy Apple’s entire business
I think that is, indeed, the point.
You think you want this, but you really don’t. If Apple is gone then Android is all that exists and THAT IS A REAL MONOPOLY.
You mean, like the business model that Android has been using for years?
Or Windows / Linux have been using for decades?
What a weird thing to paint in a bad light.
Android is an ecosystem made up of OEMs under the lead of Google, and all these OEMs have different business models. Google’s however, is an ad-based monopoly. Totally different business model. You referring to Android as a single entity shows how clueless you are about this topic.
Mobile is a different environment compared to desktop, so you’re comparing Apples to oranges.
Be prepared for a lot of hand-wringing about “security”.
Apple, Microsoft, and Google all learned in the last couple years “security” shuts down any arguments, and they use it at every turn to justify whatever they want, regardless of the actual dangers or alternative mitigation methods they could take.
They learned this line from the government. You can’t criticise goverments after they utter the magical national security buzzwords.
If they utter “security for children” the government will probably not only drop the lawsuit but pay Apple $20 billion.
they could get an extra 50 billion if they say “security for children, against terrorists”
Make it $100 billion if the terrorist children have brown faces.
Market security maybe What’s next im not allowed to read the EULA because i may come up with nefarious ways to still use the service?
If you can read the EULA, then you can learn how to skirt around it, and therefore, letting you read the EULA is against the spirit of the EULA, and should be banned.
Epic was unsuccessful so I don’t have hopes for this
Lol nice
What? Unbelievable. I’m shocked. Shocked, I say. This really comes as a surprise. I would’ve never expected this. No one would have seen this coming. This ir really outrageous. They are innocent. I can’t comprehend this. No way! It’s not acceptable! /i
– Apple Fan, probably (without the irony flag then)
I mean I’m an Apple user, although not exclusively, and I am very surprised, not because Apple doesn’t deserve it, they absolutely need to be reigned in like all big tech companies. I’m surprised as hell that the US government in 2024 is attempting to crack down an extremely profitable business. You love to see it
It would take a big dose of hopium to believe this will amount to anything.
We can hope. Happy to take a chunk out of Apple as they’re often given a free pass as their marketing and branding is so good that customers lap it up.
The anti-trust pressure has increased with this administration. Lina Kahn has been effective at the FTC in bringing a number of cases forward.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/ is a very well executed newsletter with more detailed information regarding anti-trust if you’re interested.
Substack 🙄
The content is good, so I support the content.
If all we ever do is hold purity contests over secondary and tertiary concerns, like the platform, we’ll never accomplish anything.
Yeah and hasn’t she lost pretty much every case she’s brought forward? She failed big fucking time with the Microsoft/Activision merger even though all the antitrust evidence was right in front of her nose. I’m glad the FTC is trying, because they’re actually doing their job, but they’re doing an awful job when it comes to actually being in court and proving their case.
People shit on Sony for trying to block the merger, but they absolutely were right for trying to block it and now games like starfield, the new Indiana Jones, and probably more in the future will be deliberately left off the PlayStation platform altogether. But that’s all okay right? Because now you get call of duty on gamepass!!! RIGHT???
I see a bunch of complaints against Kahn, but I haven’t been able to find articles on what she did that someone else would have done to be more effective. I don’t normally follow this type of news, so if anyone can point me to some articles, I’d appreciate it.
I’ve heard a few interviews with Kahn, and she sounds like someone looking to make a difference, so I’d like to cheer her on, but if she’s not the right person for the job, it’d be nice to see some examples why. I’d think much could go on to make her lose without it necessarily being due to her actions or inactions.
https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2023/07/18/lina-khans-antitrust-losses-cast-doubt-on-her-sue-dont-settle-philosophy/?slreturn=20240221150002 apparently she’s just taking the sledgehammer approach of suing companies instead of working with them to understand their motives and to make reasonable concessions that will benefit everyone. If those concession discussions fail then you sue and have more leverage in your case I guess. Either way, it’s a fair criticism IMO, and for the record I’m not really a right leaning individual, I just think she’s jumping into lawsuits without doing her homework first.
Dang paywall. That’s at least something I can look into more directly though, so thank you.
Lemmy makes me feel right wing anymore. I think the general news and politics here might be worse than Reddit, which is a shame. There’s a lot of things I’d like to learn or discuss, but half the threads might as well be bizarro MAGA rallies with how cultish they get.
I just came back to this post from one on Angela Chao, and just like the last one about that story, people are cheering on this lady’s death because they don’t like her brother-in-law. I haven’t been able to find anything about Angela that would indicate she had it coming, but that isn’t stopping anyone. If people have valid criticism of a person or idea, share it. Don’t just keep shouting “such-and-such bad!” over and over.
It’s getting worse and worse, completely agree. The reasonable people are getting pushed out by brainless zombies, just like on Twitter or something.
We need to work more on getting in the first few comments before they get there. If I come in and hot takes are all I find, I just move on. I’m sure others do the same.
It didn’t used to seem that way but some of the discussions I’ve had here are actually worse than reddit recently. Take a discussion about Instagram drug sale spammers. I mean, people selling likely counterfeit “xanax” etc to anyone on social media by spamming. Who would stand up for these scumbags? People on Lemmy, apparently, who consider themselves leftists and communicate like sophomoric 19 year olds. “Drugs should be legalized anyway!” Well, that’s not going to make it legal or safe for addictive drugs to be sold on social media and uh, Xanax is legal. I found discussion of the same article on Hacker News and the difference in quality of comments was vast.
Lol that’s exactly the stuff I mean. Legalize drugs, sure. Make them safe and take the business from cartels. Legalize anonymous strangers selling random chemicals, nah.
It was good maybe the first 3 months of the Great Migration, then had a sharp decline. Those first few months were great.
I’m not here for anyone’s militant views on politics, software licensing, diet, or religion. I just tend to avoid most comment sections anymore.
Why are so many people misspelling her surname? Or is the URL to the news article wrong?
I mean the Activision case was a bad case though. Microsoft bought their way into… Third place, it’s not enough to need anti trust. Furthermore, Starfield and Indy were already going to be exclusives, those are Bethesda and that acquisition was already long since completed. Plus, it’s not like that’s the invention of exclusives. Sony isn’t exactly pumping over their games to Xbox here.
Lina Kahn
She was pretty good on Planet Money : https://www.npr.org/2023/11/03/1197954506/lina-khan-interview-amazon-ftc-antitrust-paradox-monopoly
Damn, I am stealing this. Too many good uses:
“She lives in a hopium den”
“Hopium addict”
“Hopium of the masses”
Oh it’s a pretty common Internet thing these days. Hopium and copium.
All I want is RCS on iPhone. I know Apple already said they’re working on it, but I hope legal pressure like this will force them to make the RCS/iMessage integration actually work well (instead of half-assing it which I assume is what they want to do, cuz they want their users to feel frustrated when texting their Android friends)
All I want is RCS on iPhone
Me too, but isn’t this a chicken and egg situation?
- why should Apple add it if carriers don’t support and you haven’t go through Google if you want secure messaging?
- why should carriers support it if so many phones don’t, and why are they ceding security to Google?
- is not Google also a monopolist?
- is RCS even a useful standard if there’s not a consensus to make it ubiquitous?
Can’t we just move past carrier managed messaging? I’d rather my telecom to just be dumb pipes and move everyone to Signal and similar.
The iMessage lock-in is too real for some of us. I know some iPhone users who won’t even install FB Messenger (I know, I don’t use it either. Fuck the Zuck) because it’s not Apple/iMessage. I finally got my family on Signal and “OMG! We can send videos and pictures now!” Yeah, been saying it for years lol.
I’m willing to take the movement as a good sign. The fact that we haven’t even been talking about this shit for decades now was just depressing. It’s long past time for this shit, and the ball needs to get rolling.
There’s a lot of corporate competitive behavior that’s ok, when you’re one of many, that isn’t anymore when you dominate the market.
- Apple hasn’t dominated US cell phone market for decades yet
- the same behavior is perfectly legit for laptops, because Apple is a small player in that market
- Smartwatches are interesting - I don’t know the dynamics of that market but I don’t know anyone whose smartwatch is not Apple
- Phones haven’t been around for decades and that’s a dumb point
- They actually don’t do the same behavior on macs because it’s illegal
- Thank you for demonstrating the case’s point.
Apple has dominated the smartphone market since the iPhone 5 in the us. I’ve managed my works mdm tool for a decade and never have I seen the android collective share surpass 10% in the pie chart it shows me of versions
Looks like the stats are all over the place but iPhones are about 50% of US market ± 10%. Neither you nor I are representative
Did EU bite US?
We’re contagious, and we’re not sorry
Good, don’t sorry, bite more.
Kinky! Are you on Recon?
👀
Can you be more contagious? Virulently so? Pandemic level? I need some of that good EU user privacy law plague in my life.
Uuuh careful what you wish for, that’s how you get a Napoléon
As long as he destroys the HRE
If you enjoy a good laugh, then head over to hackernews to see the meltdown apple bros are having: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39778999
Apple did some sort of “tech innovations” through years, but its economical success has always been based on its locked down ecosystem.
Apple’s marketing about its customers being part of an elite, hence zero compatibility with the ‘mass’, is disgusting imho.
Glad to hear it could be over, especially if it comes from US lawmakers.
I think they were fine before, because they were offering the best experience for the people who want someone else to configure things for them and make decisions on privacy, security, etc., for them. Problem now is that they no longer offer much in the way of brand new user experiences that no one else offers, and additionally they don’t prioritize the user’s privacy and convenience and prioritize how much money they can make with the centralized user information they control and don’t allow the user to make decisions on their own privacy and security.
EU has been trying to regulate them for years.
Were perhaps finally getting somewhere with this. I’m still afraid it’s too slow though.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66708571
#New iPhone, new charger: Apple bends to EU rules
lol this is going to go nowhere
I don’t think so. EU did push through with reform, the US will join sooner or later.
The EU passed new laws to address new needs. The US is trying to see if they can provide consumer protection with existing consumer protection laws from the past.
Passing consumer protection laws is pretty hard when people don’t vote enough democrats into the senate and house. The GOP hates consumer protection regulation.
The EU passed a massive, sweeping law. This is a federal lawsuit in front of an infamously conservative and pro-business Supreme Court.
Little will come of this.
Even without the DMA, the EU and US have very different judicial systems. I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t really understand the specifics, but if I had to describe it in a very hand-wavy fashion from my anecdotal, non-scientific experiences, US courts are more likely to favor preserving individual/personal freedoms over the common public good, and vice versa in the European system.
SCOTUS rarely (like ultra rare) gets involved in technical economic cases – they don’t have the expertise and single-issue cases which don’t present a Constitutional question are beneath the Court. Cases like this go to judges who have experience in the details of antitrust actions and are well-versed in the economic and marketplace analysis required by the type of action the DOJ is bringing here.
And Apple will appeal and appeal until they get to SCOTUS where they will win that appeal
Dude, you’re out of your element. SCOTUS doesn’t take cases to reverse errors of fact.
The DOJ will lose because we don’t have modern antitrust laws designed for modern industries, not because of anything SCOTUS is going to do.
This SCOTUS will clearly do whatever they want. And if all your argument consists of is ad hominem attacks, this conversation is over.
I mean no they won’t. Also, you being out of your element isn’t ad hominem; it questions the argument. You’re out of your depth on that one.
At least it happened.
If it was all Blue States, if probably agree, but it does include a few Deep Red States with North Dakota, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Tennessee, etc. That makes me cautiously optimistic.
Because???
Bet you’re not quite right on that.
We all know that these accusations are true.
So much so that I need to ask: is it really illegal to do all these things?
Smarter Americans in that past recognized that freedom, including the free market, doesn’t just happen of its own accord, that it has to be defended, legislated. That is how antitrust laws came to be in arguably the most capitalist nation on earth.
Apathetic Americans now have lost sight of the importance of protecting their freedoms.
“Illegal” is not just some hypothetical moral absolute. It is the politics of defending one’s values. Americans clearly no longer value either their freedoms or the free market.
I’ve wondered that in the past when people say Apple has a monopoly - there seems to be choice in the market. One can function fine with an Android phone. But people have said “they have a monopoly on iPhones” which doesn’t make much sense to me. Of course they do, but that’s not the same as a monopoly on mobile phones. Also having a monopoly isn’t illegal, only abusing it is. It’s not legal to have a successful proprietary product?
I’ve wondered that in the past
Well, now you have your answers here in all detail, but it seems you didn’t read them.
I also wonder the same, and wish you’d point to those answers, but I think that’s what this whole thing is : a day in court to establish those answers
I didn’t say I was wondering now. I said I was wondering in the past. In any event, i expect to find out from the court case, not online comments from people who probably lack expertise in antitrust law and are not attorneys.
Why did you respond that all the answers are here but I didn’t read them, when you seem to be asking the same question yourself?
Because I asked a different question than you asked. How old are you?
No, these are not illegal activities until you add “as a monopoly”. Antitrust laws are fine with all sorts of behavior as part of competition but not when you dominate a market and it keeps new competitors out
Everything here will hinge on whether Apple is a monopoly in the markets of concern. I’m sure there are legal definitions and precedents for that.
The EU said so, and the US did successfully sue valve for monopoly practices.
EU decisions carry no legal weight in US, and I’m sure the laws are very different. Maybe it signals opportunity and regulator opinion but they’re completely independent decisions
Except it wasnt successful since its still in the court, and Valve has counter sued for the lawsuit “abuse(ing) the legal process and interfer(ing) with Valve’s relationships with its customers”
Oh lol my b. I saw the ads for being eligible for compensation and thought they lost.
antitrust law does not regard as illegal the mere possession of monopoly power where it is the product of superior skill, foresight, or industry
United States v. Grinnell Corp. (1966).
A market share of ninety percent "is enough to constitute a monopoly; it is doubtful whether sixty or sixty-four percent would be enough; and certainly thirty-three per cent is not.
United States v. Aluminum Co. of America (1945)
In my opinion, the first quote doesn’t apply at all. Unless you can express how Apple is objectively superior?
And Apple smartphone market share is at the higher end of your second quote. When all competitors are much lower, it may very well be that it is considered a monopoly. Though that’s literally what this case will determine.
Objectively superior? Superior user experience is entirely subjective, but that is the main selling point of almost everything Apple has done in the last 17 years
Marketing and reality are two different things. It’s definitely not a superior experience. When Apple’s stuff stops working, and it frequently does, the user has zero control to fix anything. Instead, they’re shoehorned into having no recourse other than to use Apple’s support, making them entirely dependent on the company in order to use their device.
Apple purposely hamstrings the user experience to exert control over users.
I think you’re just proving that it is entirely subjective. If it was objectively an inferior experience, I’m confident they wouldn’t be nearly as popular as they are. I get that there are plenty of people who believe firmly that total control over their own electronics is the best experience, and I can understand that. I enjoy tinkering in a Linux machine as much as any Lemmy user. However the vast majority of people do not want to be overwhelmed with the amount of ways they can configure their devices to the point that they can’t discern one choice from another. And my iPhone does exactly what I need it to just as much as my Android did.
Yeah, marketing is definitely part of it. They make their devices sound, look, and appear like they’re some sort of luxury experience. But there’s definitely something extremely smooth about the way Apple’s suite of software works with their hardware, and how their hardware works with each other, and I appreciate that for what it is.
Whoever down voted you is coping, this is easily seen all over their products. RCS, headphone ports, charging ports, not allowing you to side load apps, the walled garden, yadda yadda. Apple makes good (really expensive) hardware but the rest is marketing.
Apple has been more successful in the US, so by definition one could conclude they’ve done something better than competitors, whether it’s the products, timing, or something else about their business activities. People aren’t forced to buy iPhones any more than they are forced to buy Android.
By this same logic, on a global scale they are not dominant, so they can be argued to be a worse product, not superior. Therefore, their dominance on the US must be forced by coercive actions and categorized as a monopoly.
By this logic all monopolies could be described as being better.
I think you could analyze it based on a company’s history. Some companies clearly didn’t earn a monopoly, for instance if they had a market handed to them by the government. Or, if they did the thing that’s actually illegal under antitrust law - used a monopoly in one market to expand to another.
