[HN Gopher] U.S. moves closer to filing antitrust case against A...
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U.S. moves closer to filing antitrust case against Apple
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 220 points
Date : 2024-01-05 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| granzymes wrote:
| > _Specifically, investigators have examined how the Apple Watch
| works better with the iPhone than with other brands, as well as
| how Apple locks competitors out of its iMessage service. They
| have also scrutinized Apple's payments system for the iPhone,
| which blocks other financial firms from offering similar
| services, these people said._
|
| I'm not sure if current U.S. antitrust law condemns this behavior
| from Apple. In general, companies have no duty to deal with
| competitors. It can be anticompetitive to _worsen_ access for
| competitors from a prior baseline without a procompetitive
| justification, but it 's generally _not_ anticompetitive to never
| offer access at parity with your own products (self preferencing)
| in the first place.
|
| While these are reasonable complaints, it might take new
| legislation from Congress to remedy. I'm looking forward to
| seeing the actual complaint when it is filed so we can assess
| whether the Justice Department is working within existing
| frameworks or is instead attempting to push the envelope of
| antitrust law without Congressional authorization.
|
| Still, this article is helpful in that is tells us what areas are
| the focus of the government's case (notably: nothing about the
| App Store).
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I think it is kind of funny that one arm of the government is
| saying Apple can't sell its watches, while another arm is
| saying the watches are furthering their monopoly position.
| neogodless wrote:
| And I don't think these two things contradict each other.
|
| Apple can't sell its watches _because of intellectual
| property theft_. So not only did they take features from a
| smaller potential competitor, but they lock their Watch
| buyers into the iPhone ecosystem.
| zug_zug wrote:
| What?
|
| I remember microsoft getting into huge shit over mandating
| preinstalling internet explorer on their OS.
|
| This feels 100x worse because you can't install any alternative
| sms application afaik.
|
| I think the only mismatch is that lawmakers always 20 years
| behind the times, so it's taken them this long to realize that
| sms/imessage/whatever is just as fundamental as a browser for
| modern interconnectivity.
| granzymes wrote:
| Microsoft got in trouble for tying its monopoly in operating
| systems to OEMs preinstalling Internet Explorer. Essentially,
| they told OEMs that they would not sell them Windows unless
| they agreed to help Microsoft kill Netscape. That's a very
| different kind of antitrust complaint than what the article
| describes, which is Apple building seamless connections
| between its hardware and services while offering second-tier
| connections for competitors.
|
| Also, Microsoft won that case on appeal and then settled with
| a much friendlier administration.
|
| Of course, this is all being filtered to us from rumors told
| to journalists who are not subject matter experts. We can
| better assess any similarities when the actual complaint is
| filed.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I feel like you really didn't address what I said at all.
|
| These are two cases of OS dictating which software comes on
| their platform. To make it worse, the microsoft case was
| just about defaults, you could still install whatever the
| heck you wanted. Whereas in IOS you can't, period.
|
| So just imagine if microsoft windows never allowed you to
| install any other web-browsers without breaking the OS.
| Spivak wrote:
| You're talking past the issue.
|
| When Microsoft tells OEMs -- someone not Microsoft, "we
| won't license you Windows unless you include and set as
| default Internet Explorer" that's anticompetitive.
|
| It's the act of using your pull of needing to buy Windows
| get another business to do something unrelated.
|
| MS could absolutely not allow you to have any other
| browser without it being anticompetitive, to wit this is
| what happens on Xbox.
|
| This is why Apple won and Google lost their case with
| Epic. Google tried to have an open platform but then used
| their pull with gapps to force OEMs to privilege the Play
| store. The mere act of privileging your own products and
| services on your own platform isn't anticompetitive.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| They did address it by explaining why it's not only not
| worse, but different.
|
| Microsoft to OEMs: you can only put our OS on the devices
| you sell if you make IE the default.
|
| Without Windows, PC makers knew they had no market to
| sell to because there was no viable alternative OS being
| demanded by consumers (hence the asserted monopoly
| position of Microsoft). They were restraining other
| business from engaging alternatives from competing
| browser makers.
|
| Apple: we build our messaging product, in our OS, on our
| devices
|
| There are no other businesses involved between Apple and
| end users, who can use competing device makers, OS makers
| and contrary to what you stated, messaging services like
| Telegram, Signal, Matrix etc etc.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > There are no other businesses involved between Apple
| and end users, who can use competing device makers, OS
| makers
|
| How do you install Android or some other OS competitor on
| an iPhone, or install iOS on a Samsung or Google device?
|
| > and contrary to what you stated, messaging services
| like Telegram, Signal, Matrix etc etc.
|
| Only with Apple's blessing, which they then deny for
| competing payment systems, browser engines, app stores
| etc. And iMessage is still the default.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| > How do you install Android or some other OS competitor
| on an iPhone, or install iOS on a Samsung or Google
| device?
|
| You don't, you either choose to buy an Android or an
| iPhone.
|
| This is like asking why I can't go to Princeton but have
| my favorite Stanford professor come teach my class, or
| why I can't play CS:GO inside Mario Party.
|
| Life is full of tradeoffs. You can't have your cake and
| eat it too all the time.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > This is like asking why I can't go to Princeton but
| have my favorite Stanford professor come teach my class
|
| You can do that. You just convince them to teach the
| class at Princeton. Professors move from one school to
| another all the time. You can also go take a class at one
| school while attending another if you want to do that,
| and the other school will not only not stand in your way,
| you'll generally get transfer credit.
|
| > or why I can't play CS:GO inside Mario Party.
|
| These are two different games. The example you're looking
| for is that you can't play Mario Party on a PlayStation.
| But that's barely even an analogy, it's just the same
| situation -- why shouldn't you be able to play Mario
| Party on a PlayStation except for nefarious
| anticompetitive BS?
|
| This is distinct from technical capability. If you can't
| play Mario Party on a Sega Genesis because it only has
| 64KB of RAM, too bad. But if you can't play it on
| <whatever device> even though you paid for it solely
| because of some anti-competitive lock-in even if the
| hardware is capable and you're willing to e.g. create a
| compatibility layer, that's something else.
| sbuk wrote:
| You _may_ have a point with regards to Webkit, however
| even that is potentially tenuous. The difference that you
| are missing, and that _was_ addressed is how Microsoft
| levereged their market postion in the OS market ( >85% in
| the late 1990's) to stop vendors and OEM pre-packaging an
| alternative browser; USA vs Microsoft was _never_ about
| IE being bundled - that came later and that was the EU -
| it was always about how they killed the main competitor
| to their browser with threats.
|
| * Edited for spelling
| matwood wrote:
| Not even remotely the same with the biggest difference
| being that MS was telling other business to shut out
| competitors or lose access to Windows, which at the time
| was pretty much required for computing. If MS had its own
| hardware, they would have been free to do what they
| wanted with it.
|
| In fact, Apple will like argue (and has successfully
| already in the Epic case) that it's the entire ecosystem
| that the courts have to look at and not any single
| feature. And at an ecosystem level there is a huge
| competitor in Android. Apple forcing webkit for example
| is Apple's choice as they control the entire platform. If
| they licensed iOS, then it would become harder to make
| that claim.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Statutory antitrust law in the US is _extremely_ broad, to the
| point that it relies on the courts to interpret it to not
| prohibit anyone from so much as entering into a 30 day
| purchasing contract because it would restrain the buyer from
| patronizing a competitor for 30 days. By its terms that would
| nominally be a violation.
|
| As a result most of what you have to look at is case law. But
| antitrust cases are rare to begin with and ones dealing with
| this kind of "huge conglomerate that ties its products and
| services together with computer code" -- try to name one
| dealing with a company of that nature other than Microsoft.
| Maybe AT&T? It's not a lot of precedent until you're looking at
| cases of much smaller companies doing much narrower things,
| which leaves plenty of room for the judge to "distinguish" them
| (i.e. do whatever they want in this case).
|
| > In general, companies have no duty to deal with competitors.
|
| It seems like a major difference here isn't just that they
| won't deal with competitors, it's that they don't allow _their
| customers_ to deal with competitors. This is quite stark when
| you 're looking at their _products_ -- someone who owns an
| iPhone can 't reasonably modify or replace the system software
| to integrate a competing payments system (or, for that matter,
| app store) because Apple doesn't allow it even on a piece of
| hardware they sold and is now owned by someone else.
|
| You could make that argument for services, i.e. iMessage, but
| there are at least two other ways to get at that. First,
| iMessage is tied to their other offerings and so then you get
| them for the tying. Second, maybe routing something with a
| network effect through a centralized service is a different
| kind of thing than refusing to provide your competitors with
| delivery service when you don't have a monopoly on delivery
| service. Maybe it's more like refusing to provide your
| competitors with delivery service when you do have a monopoly
| on delivery service.
|
| > I'm looking forward to seeing the actual complaint when it is
| filed so we can assess whether the Justice Department is
| working within existing frameworks or is instead attempting to
| push the envelope of antitrust law without Congressional
| authorization.
|
| Congress pretty much authorized the courts to do whatever they
| want on this. The real question is what they want to do. You
| have to go back to Congress if they do something dumb.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > to the point that it relies on the courts to interpret it
|
| The courts have been used to chip away at the very simple and
| straight forward anti trust laws that were established in
| this country after years of having grappled with the problem
| in it's unchecked form.
|
| > But antitrust cases are rare to begin with
|
| This is a feature of _recent_ history and does not at all
| fairly represent the large body of jurisprudence that has
| been issued on this subject. People really seem to
| misattribute much of our modern system of commerce to
| modernity and ignore the laws and decisions that were laid
| down nearly a century ago.
|
| > try to name one dealing with a company of that nature other
| than Microsoft.
|
| Iqvia holdings.
|
| > Maybe it's more like refusing to provide your competitors
| with delivery service
|
| They have a monopoly on the device and the app store. So,
| they create their own monopoly over the delivery service.
| They're not competing with "delivery" in general, but with
| "apps that are allowed to use these special features on the
| iphone and are directly approved by apple's own internal
| process."
|
| This seems exceptionally clear cut.
|
| > Congress pretty much authorized the courts to do whatever
| they want on this.
|
| No, they have not. Congress has ignored the courts
| interference int he law and has made no effort to clarify
| their statues. This is not the same as "authorizing" the
| courts to "do whatever they want."
| pests wrote:
| The exception makes the rule.
| majormajor wrote:
| > While these are reasonable complaints, it might take new
| legislation from Congress to remedy. I'm looking forward to
| seeing the actual complaint when it is filed so we can assess
| whether the Justice Department is working within existing
| frameworks or is instead attempting to push the envelope of
| antitrust law without Congressional authorization.
|
| I would not be surprised if they are trying to push the
| envelope of the current law is fine and I think that's fine. If
| you're unwilling to try to enforce unless you're 100% sure no
| judge would ever disagree with you, you're going to let people
| get away with a LOT of stuff by default that could very well be
| found to be covered by existing statute.
|
| And the failures could galvanize additional legislation more
| than doing nothing.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The big issue is Apple air tags. They work so well because
| people own lots of iPhones, and there is nothing really
| equivalent that uses all Android phones to do the same. Air
| tags pretty much lock you into the Apple ecosystem given how
| useful they are, and the lack of an alternative from the
| competition.
| goatlover wrote:
| Why is this Apple's fault that they've built their devices
| from the ground up to work seamlessly together and other
| companies haven't? A competitor is free to make their own
| version of air tags that work with Android phones.
| LoganDark wrote:
| The only reason AirTags work is because every iPhone runs
| code that tracks them. There are thousands of different
| models of Android phones, 99% of them have software that
| will never see another update again. How exactly do you add
| code that detects "their own version of air tags that work
| with Android phones"? The answer is you don't. AirTags took
| off because Apple had the ability to retroactively make
| every existing iPhone start to track them. No other company
| can pull that off.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| >investigators have examined how the Apple Watch works better
| with the iPhone than with other brands
|
| This is such a misleading way to phrase it. The Apple Watch
| _only_ works with the iPhone (unfortunately. I would buy one if
| it worked on Android. Android watches are universally hopeless)
|
| If you don't have it paired to an iPhone, an Apple Watch won't
| even tell you the time.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I really hope Big Tech, including but not limited to Apple, gets
| broken up, they've gotten too big and have expanded far beyond
| tech, and I'm not sure we're all the better for it.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| >I really hope Big Tech, including but not limited to Apple,
| gets broken up, they've gotten too big and have expanded far
| beyond tech, and I'm not sure we're all the better for it.
|
| Many of our retirement and wealth portfolios would beg to
| differ. S&P minus FAANG is virtually flat for the past few
| years (and depending upon which estimate you observe, likely
| negative if you factor inflation); almost all of the growth in
| the S&P 500 is from tech growth.
| checker wrote:
| "Too big to fail"
| pixl97 wrote:
| All hail Moloch, who giveth and taketh our money under threat
| of distress if we do not offer all to him.
| ianbutler wrote:
| What's your preferred alternative?
| Podgajski wrote:
| Not financial capitalism?
| waynesonfire wrote:
| > S&P minus FAANG is virtually flat for the past few years
|
| I don't know if this is true or not; but regardless, that's
| the whole point of this. The US won't be moving to file
| sweeping anti-trust cases against failing companies.
|
| We need more competitors, we need more diverse tech
| companies. A few large players that are siphoning all the
| value and dictating how technology evolves isn't optimal for
| the things I value.
|
| The growth will happen regardless, don't worry.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The growth will happen regardless, don't worry.
|
| I do not see why this has to be true (especially with
| declining fertility rates). Scale itself is a competitive
| advantage, especially when competing against a well oiled
| machine like China. The game is global, not national.
| wharvle wrote:
| In my perfect world the bad practices Apple's resistance of
| which are a _core_ thing that makes their products attractive--
| would be outlawed. Totally destroyed, eliminated from the
| market. _Then_ they 'd go after Apple (yes! Please! Do! ... but
| maybe remove the bad shit they use their vertical integration
| and market power to shield me from, first? That'd be nice.)
| summerlight wrote:
| I understand the feeling looking for justice served by
| "breaking up", but in this case I don't think that's ever going
| to work. In fact, that will make even harder to regulate them
| in future since they're nominally smaller entities, but forming
| a cohesive cartel.
|
| The market itself is reinforcing this distorted incentive
| structure, so even if you break them up into 100 smaller
| companies they will keep doing so in a more secretive way since
| they will still operate in the same market with aligned
| incentives. Breaking up works effectively only when you can
| effectively split the market those are operating on, something
| like AT&T or Standard oil. Big techs are not bound on
| geographic areas, so you're going to spend several years on
| uncertain fights only to make it even worse.
|
| What we really need is precisely targeted legislation that will
| prevent anti-competitive business practice itself. EU has been
| successful here with GDPR, DMA and they're willing to extend
| them even further. US is holding everyone back here. This is a
| highly political problem. Any judicial treatment will only be
| temporary mitigation and those will quickly find out a way to
| circumvent it.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| There are anti-trust concerns then there is geopolitics, with
| big businesses that are easier to control for US politicians...
| I mean the whole Prism thing relied on big tech olygopoly.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| People often say they're being "punished for their success" but
| I think that's an interesting concept.
|
| Apple raked in $93bn in profits last year. It's such an
| aberration compared to other companies I feel like there _must_
| be anti-competitive barriers somewhere. You expect me to
| believe that no competition is able to take a slice of that? It
| 's too juicy not to! Competition should be eroding those
| margins to a more reasonable figure and it's not IMO.
| Detrytus wrote:
| Why is it so hard to believe that competing products are
| simply inferior? $93bn in profits might seem huge, but is it
| really such an outlier for a company of this size?
|
| Microsoft profits are over $150bn.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Microsoft's profit is $72B for the most recent year.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/ne
| t...
| munk-a wrote:
| Yes - Apple is literally the outlier. Apple is the single
| most profitable company by a wide margin.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > I feel like there must be anti-competitive barriers
| somewhere
|
| The barrier is inventing and organizing the logistics of
| delivering the most cutting edge technology and the
| accompanying software and support to hundreds of millions of
| people around the world every year.
|
| If anyone else could do it, they would do it. Samsung and
| Alphabet come sort of close.
| el-dude-arino wrote:
| > The barrier is inventing and organizing the logistics of
| delivering the most cutting edge technology
|
| LOL, nothing Apple does is cutting edge. They took Linux
| and made it easy for corporate system admins. Touchscreens
| were invented back in the 60's. GUI's were created by
| Xerox.
|
| Steve Jobs was a hack and a douche by all accounts, the
| reverence people have for him is laughable. But this is the
| behavior of the oligarchs and the monopolies they run; they
| have such centralized power that they're able to vacuum up
| all competitors, even potential or tangential ones.
| sbuk wrote:
| Apple used 486BSD, some userland from FreeBSD, and the
| Mach Microkernel from *CMU, all from the acquisition
| _from NeXT_ , who developed XNU and NeXTStep 18 months-2
| years before the Linux kernel was released. The
| innovative thing with the touch screen was smooth and
| accurate touch based gestures on a capacitive screen.
| GUI's were argubably invented by Ivan Sutherland and
| further developed by Doug Engelbart at SRI, which is
| where PARC poached the majority of their engineers.
|
| If your going to troll, have the decency to get your
| facts straight.
|
| * Edited for clarity
| wharvle wrote:
| > You expect me to believe that no competition is able to
| take a slice of that?
|
| IMO they don't _have_ competition. Nobody 's actually
| _directly attacking them_ at the specific thing they do.
|
| I really, really wish they did. The current situation makes
| it hard to get away from them when they release (relatively
| speaking) dud products like certain MacBook revisions.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It just runs counter to everything I think I know about
| capitalism. That all these disruptors and competitors would
| turn their nose up at a $93bn pile of money. The only other
| company more profitable that I could find was Saudi Aramco-
| a state owned petroleum company with all of the protection
| that that entails. Why is the iPhone so much more
| profitable (and the moat so much wider) than their other
| products? It doesn't pass the smell test IMO.
| wharvle wrote:
| I don't think anyone else wants to make the bet that they
| could take a sufficient slice out of that pie to make the
| gamble pay off, given Apple's significant lead, and ~all
| of the likely-competitor tech companies with enough
| capital & expertise to try having cultures _and existing
| lines of business_ that run contrary to such an attempt.
|
| How's Google going to credibly do that, especially
| without going _wildly_ into monopolist territory by
| freezing out ad & spying competitors while surely still
| allowing their own? Why _would_ they when getting more
| eyes and ears on "their users" and defending against a
| rise of platforms that might hinder them was _the point_
| of not just developing Android, but making it free so
| that others would stop trying to do their own thing?
|
| Microsoft could maybe try, but is running fast the other
| direction instead, probably for similar reasons of
| wanting to grab that sweet, sweet data (gotta feed LLMs,
| now; more reason than ever!)
|
| To viably compete you need:
|
| 1) Software that actually works _really really well_
| (perfectly? Not even close. Wildly above the median in
| the world of consumer software, even from big vendors? Oh
| my, yes). Lots, and lots, and lots of such software. So
| very much. Operating systems, server-side systems of
| several kinds, an "office" suite, advanced camera-
| related software, mapping software, utilities galore
| (things like Preview and Digital Color Meter are great
| and are _absolutely_ part of Apple 's "moat")--maybe even
| a browser, if you want to approach things like Apple's
| real-world-use battery life on MacBooks. _So_ much
| software. And it 'll need to all work together well
| enough not to look pathetic next to the relatively-
| excellent integration that Apple's stuff has.
|
| 2) You're gonna _have to have_ tight integration with
| probably-custom hardware across _several_ fairly-
| different product lines to achieve a similar quality
| level on #1, _and_ to approach their levels of
| profitability. That 's a huge investment, and _hard_.
| Your organization needs to be able to S-rank procurement,
| logistics, packaging, and hardware design on some balance
| of a functional and aesthetic level--at least more often
| than not.
|
| 3) You're gonna need to be able to play the "privacy
| defender" card and not have your pants immediately
| combust--whatever you think of Apple's credibility on
| this, it's surely well above the other tech giants. That
| also means forgoing or abandoning other opportunities at
| income (Apple's tentative move into ads is... worrisome,
| for this reason)
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Random examples:
|
| AMD is steadfastly refusing for provide software support
| equivalent to CUDA for their GPUs. They're leaving a
| trillion dollars on the table. NVIDIA isn't being anti-
| competitive, it's AMD being un-competitive.
|
| The Windows & Linux PC ecosystem badly lags behind Apple
| on a number of basic features. E.g.: literally just
| _color!_ If I want to edit videos in HDR (which is just
| better color), I have to start with... buying a Mac.
| Windows essentially can't do this without enormous
| effort, and Linux is hopeless. MacOS and all Apple
| hardware "just works".
|
| No Android phone manufacturer even begins to provide the
| quality and the service that Apple does. I give my old
| iPhones to my relatives to use and they still get updates
| and full support after six or more years! I can walk into
| an Apple Store, and they'll fix or replace my phone on
| the spot. Etc...
| mckn1ght wrote:
| Google posted almost $60B profit in 2022.
|
| Samsung posted $3.2B profit in Q4 2022. Extrapolate that to
| $12.8B yearly. And they're one of several Android device
| makers, with about 1/3 of that market share. Apparently
| Samsungs profits fell dramatically in 2023 because just over
| half of their business is structured towards memory chips,
| and they have too much inventory and not enough demand.
| Meanwhile, Apple in-housed their CPU design and their new
| chips are crushing it.
|
| Are these numbers not big enough to qualify as a "slice"?
|
| > I feel like there _must_ be anti-competitive barriers
| somewhere
|
| That's not a very compelling argument. By all means look for
| them, but show results, not hypotheticals alone.
|
| It could also be that Apple is just competing much better,
| and each X gained per year leads to X+n gains the next year,
| compounding. They're vertically integrated from end user
| software services to OSes to devices to ISA's, and they have
| decades of experience in each. You don't just go out and
| raise a series A and knock them out of the lead.
| m463 wrote:
| remember their apps are not only a monopoly (you can only buy
| ios apps from apple), but a monopsony (developers can only
| sell ios apps through apple)
| s3r3nity wrote:
| >Specifically, investigators have examined how the Apple Watch
| works better with the iPhone than with other brands, as well as
| how Apple locks competitors out of its iMessage service.
|
| I'm suspicious that much of this is a ploy to weaken the tight
| security controls & encrypted data so that the US government (and
| potentially other governments?) can get easier access to
| surveillance data on US citizens.
| paxys wrote:
| There are dozens of messaging apps out there with equal or
| better encryption than iMessage and also multi OS support.
| Vendor lock-in doesn't mean better security.
| wharvle wrote:
| Quality of security aside, I'd be curious which encrypted
| messaging apps have the highest quantity of (encrypted--some
| support unencrypted, also, as Messages does) messages flowing
| through them in a given day--for, say, US users, as that's
| the jurisdiction of the government whose motives are being
| questioned, so seems the most relevant.
|
| One can imagine a case of a particular app drawing law
| enforcement's and/or intelligence services' ire not because
| it's the best, but because they're seeing a lot more
| conversations they _wish_ they could read, but can 't
| (easily), going over that channel than any other single one.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'd say Facebook Messenger is probably near the top of that
| in the US now that they've defaulted to end to end
| encryption.
| apapapa wrote:
| Apple is a joke when it comes to security... They are all
| speech.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| Why do you say that?
| jeffbee wrote:
| As a person who uses almost all of Apple's hardware, and almost
| all of Google's services, and none of Apple's services, the
| behavior that always strikes me as the most harmful to consumers
| is the constant nagging of users about the intended behavior of
| their chosen third-party apps, while their operating systems
| remain silent about the exact same behaviors of first-party apps.
| For example iOS has several silent default-opt-in location data
| features that I do not want or need, and at the same time it
| regularly tries to trick me into disabling location features of
| Google Maps, that I've used daily since 2005.
|
| The other issue is the constant nagging, that can't be disabled,
| about iCloud backups being full, when in fact I never wanted them
| in the first place and as far as I can tell or recall they stole
| that data from me.
| kstrauser wrote:
| > it regularly tries to trick me into disabling location
| features of Google Maps, that I've used daily since 2005.
|
| Citation needed. I periodically get popups for even Apple's own
| first-party apps asking if I still want to share location. "Do
| you still want Weather to know where you are?" Yes, I do,
| because I use it. You may very well be getting the same message
| for Google apps, but that's not special anti-Google behavior.
|
| > The other issue is the constant nagging, that can't be
| disabled, about iCloud backups being full
|
| Then turn off iCloud backups. It's an optional feature that
| makes sense to be on by default, but that's trivially easy to
| disable if you don't want it.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > Citation needed.
|
| Apple launders the location features of Apple Maps through
| platform location service controls. iOS will never, ever
| prompt you about Maps' own background location access. The
| controls for Maps' background location access are buried in
| System Services, and are defaulted on, and do not produce the
| tracking nag. The fact that the first-party Weather app is
| not also immune to the nag doesn't seem material.
|
| The whole situation is in stark contrast to Android, where if
| you throw the phone in a drawer for a few months the platform
| will automatically revoke all of the privacy allowances of
| Google's own apps. Which is maybe not great, since resuming
| the use of such a device is sort of impossible (it will
| prompt you for shit like whether Phone is allowed to record
| audio), but you can't say it's anti privacy.
| wharvle wrote:
| ... I wonder if the Maps app itself plays some role in
| _providing_ Location services. That 'd explain why they'd
| privilege it for location data, but _not_ other first part
| apps that use location (why wouldn 't they do that with all
| of them, if they were really doing this to "cheat"?)
|
| [EDIT] Though, regardless, I do see why it'd rankle that
| _in fact_ Apple Maps ends up seeing fewer permission-
| reminders than Google Maps, even if it 's for a not-
| exactly-intended-as-nefarious reason--I don't mean to
| dismiss your complaint.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Your experience is vastly different from my own. Where do
| you see documented that Maps is immune from location
| permission popups? And if you're not using Apple Maps, what
| indication have you see that it's using your location? That
| is, why would it ask you if it could continue accessing
| your location if you're not opening the app and triggering
| it to find you?
| mkehrt wrote:
| I don't know if the location services permission is
| initially on in Apple Maps, but I just checked to see if
| you can turn it off, and you definitely can, without
| affecting other apps' ability to use it.
| more_corn wrote:
| The nag to sign up for iCloud is terrible. It is literally not
| possible to arrange Apple devices and not pay for that. There's
| no reason under the sun for it to be required (architecturally
| speaking) they just do it to force you into becoming another
| revenue stream. This is (in my opinion) the biggest example of
| Apple's abuse of their monopoly position.
| noiseinvacuum wrote:
| The fact that none of the Apple apps have privacy labels for
| users to see if extremely annoying.
|
| I can go to AppStore and see what data each app uses or read
| user reviews but there's no way to do that for any Apple apps
| for some reason.
| shmerl wrote:
| Good, very long overdue. Blast them for forbidding competing
| browsers on iOS.
| kevingadd wrote:
| I really feel like the browser ban is one of their biggest
| unforced errors here. They could have utilized their discretion
| to ban Chrome[1] while allowing alternative browser engines
| like Firefox or classic Opera onto their store, which would
| have helped Mozilla compete against Google and slowed down
| their eventual takeover of the entire internet. Instead they
| decided to go it alone, making iOS a Safari-only territory,
| which helped establish Chrome's dominance due to their shared
| technical foundations and common nonstandard features.
|
| 1: There's a bunch of stuff the commercial Google Chrome does
| that they could easily ban through store policy. They could
| also just arbitrarily refuse to approve it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > which would have helped Mozilla compete against Google and
| slowed down their eventual takeover of the entire internet
|
| Why would one assume this when Chrome took over on non iOS
| and ipadOS machines?
|
| > Instead they decided to go it alone, making iOS a Safari-
| only territory, which helped establish Chrome's dominance due
| to their shared technical foundations and common nonstandard
| features.
|
| Logically, the fact that the only place Chrome did not
| dominate is iOS and ipadOS means making those Safari only is
| the only thing that stopped Chrome's dominance.
| kevingadd wrote:
| The only browsers on iOS are webkit browsers, and when
| Chrome was new it was also webkit. Because of this, the
| ideal target for a web developer became webkit, including
| webkit-only features and workarounds for webkit bugs.
|
| This automatically pushed Firefox, Opera, Edge, IE out of
| the picture, because we basically had an emerging browser
| monoculture already. If the people who were already using
| Firefox could have kept using it on their new phone or
| tablet as well, syncing bookmarks and history, that would
| have probably slowed its defeat a little bit and perhaps
| slowed Chrome's growth. We eventually got a Firefox-branded
| wrapper around Safari's webviews but Apple's architecture
| guarantees that those webview frames will always be
| inferior to Safari.
|
| Safari being available on Windows might've helped too, but
| I understand why Apple chose not to do that.
| philwelch wrote:
| Safari _was_ available on Windows.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| I disagree with this. When chrome was released the ideal
| target for a web developer was Internet explorer, because
| everyone who wasn't a technology enthusiast just used the
| built-in browser. Many business related websites still
| required internet explorer to function properly years
| after IE was discontinued.
|
| Additionally, this video shows FireFox's marketshare was
| still increasing, even two years after chrome was first
| released.
|
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/internet-browser-market-
| sha...
|
| The reason google Chrome succeeded is because it was a
| better browser. It syncs all your favorites, passwords,
| and history with the google account you already have. It
| works on every platform. And Firefox had several years
| where it just wasn't very good. I was a Firefox user but
| around the time they killed legacy extensions I bailed.
|
| I remember helping many family members when their
| Internet Explorer was filled with spyware toolbars taking
| up 50% of their screen. I would just install chrome and
| log them into their gmail account and never have to fix
| it again.
|
| As others have mentioned, Safari was available on windows
| for many years.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| If they would have allowed alternate web engines and excluded
| google then google could have easily sued the crap out of
| them. As it stands they can viably say it's for OS integrity
| and security by forcing everyone to use the say "guts"
| dataking wrote:
| > Blast them for forbidding competing browsers on iOS.
|
| They allow competing browsers but they have to use the OS-
| provided JavaScript engine. I guess one could make an argument
| that allowing third-party engines would encourage innovation in
| the browser space but at the same time, there is a strong
| security argument for very narrowly limiting the JIT-code
| execution entitlement.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Not just javascript but also the rendering engine
| m463 wrote:
| can you block any site you want (without restrictions), or
| modify we pages on the fly? I don't think you can.
| Dioxide2119 wrote:
| > The company has previously said that its practices do not
| violate antitrust law. In defending its business practices
| against critics in the past, Apple said that its "approach has
| always been to grow the pie" and "create more opportunities not
| just for our business, but for artists, creators, entrepreneurs
| and every 'crazy one' with a big idea."
|
| Tell that to Beeper Mini who had the crazy idea of growing the
| pie of iMessage users, following the original protocol seamlessly
| through adversarial interoperability.
|
| It is quite debatable over whether Apple should be forced to
| allow another company to make money using adverse
| interoperability and server runtime costs etc.
|
| In the same way it was quite debatable over whether IBM should be
| forced to allow another company (Compaq) to make money using
| adverse interoperability and reverse engineering IBM's BIOS.
|
| I'd argue that the second debate was settled in the right way,
| and am partial to Apple being forced to interoperate as well. If
| you run a service with more than, say, 5% of a market, and that
| market has a network lock-in effect, you should eventually be
| considered a public service and have to interoperate.
|
| Pidgin / Blackberry Inbox / WP7 homescreen / Matrix bridges and
| other services that unify incoming and outgoing text and binary
| messages for 1x1/group chats should be table stakes, not selling
| points. Email and IM, whether on PC, mobile, XR, whatever, vendor
| agnostic!
| zug_zug wrote:
| > If you run a service with more than, say, 5% of a market, and
| that market has a network lock-in effect, you should eventually
| be considered a public service and have to interoperate.
|
| I think this would create a whole new generation of tech
| startups in a stalled/captured industry.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > If you run a service with more than, say, 5% of a market, and
| that market has a network lock-in effect, you should eventually
| be considered a public service and have to interoperate.
|
| I would _love_ to see iMessage available to people not on Apple
| devices.
|
| However, I am _not_ enthusiastic about a government defining
| what "interoperate" means in general. By way of example, I can
| think of many definitions of "interoperate" that would prevent
| the use of end-to-end encryption, or prevent upgrading the
| protocol and not supporting old versions, or prevent fixing
| security issues because some third-party client was relying on
| the insecure behavior, or prevent setting requirements on
| acceptable client behavior...
|
| I want interoperability. I _don 't_ want to end up in a world
| in which, once you get large enough, it's impossible to
| innovate without slowing down and waiting for the slowest and
| most recalcitrant/adversarial folks who want to interoperate
| with you to catch up.
| kevingadd wrote:
| fwiw in this case iMessage is easily funded by all the profit
| Apple earns off of iPhone/iPad sales, app store 30%, and iCloud
| subscriptions. It's not as if Apple is being forced to let
| millions of Android users communicate with each other for free
| over iMessage - Beeper exists because people want to
| communicate with Apple's customers, who already paid them
| money.
| valec wrote:
| Ok, then sell it as a service. Say $3/mo.
| eruleman wrote:
| The US should focus on breaking up the app store duopoly that
| charges 30% on all digital items. Apps are not even allowed to
| link out to their website or tell users that Apple/Google is
| taking a 30% cut!
|
| Apple & Google don't have to pay the app store tax & have
| products that compete with books, audiobooks, Spotify etc -- this
| is the most blatant antitrust issue. I hope the US lawsuit leads
| with this.
| whatever1 wrote:
| And they definitely increase the prices for the customers. Apps
| charge you more when you buy from the app/play store vs if you
| buy from the internet.
| darklion wrote:
| > Apps are not even allowed to link out to their website or
| tell users that Apple/Google is taking a 30% cut!
|
| What business in their right mind would want to sell or stock a
| product that comes with a label that says, in effect, "Don't
| spend your money here, go somewhere else"?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Is my phone a business, or hardware that I own? That seems to
| be in contention here.
| darklion wrote:
| > Is my phone a business, or hardware that I own? That
| seems to be in contention here.
|
| It's not in contention: it's both of those things. It's
| just that some people want it to be exclusively one of
| those things.
| summerlight wrote:
| A large number of products are being sold with some docs that
| has a link to their own merchandise store and promote them?
| Apple doesn't have to tell about the competitions on their
| app store, but they should allow each app whatever they want
| to do.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Not just that, but you can buy an iphone in an apple store
| directly or on amazon, in a walmart, or whatever local tech
| store is near you.
| darklion wrote:
| I'm not sure how that has any relevance here.
|
| So to be clear: if Apple printed on every iPhone box,
| "This phone is 30% cheaper on Apple.com", you feel that
| Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, %LOCAL_TECH_STORE%, etc.
| should be legally obligated to stock those iPhones?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Why should they be obligated to stock them? Grandmas that
| live in cities with walmarts and no apple stores will
| just buy a samsung or whatever is available in the store.
|
| A better question is, why aren't iphones cheaper at apple
| stores?
| darklion wrote:
| > Apple doesn't have to tell about the competitions on
| their app store, but they should allow each app whatever
| they want to do.
|
| So you think it's OK that Walmart doesn't want to sell a
| product that says, "Hey, don't buy this from Walmart", but
| you think it's wrong for Walmart not to want to sell a
| product that links to a website, where the website says,
| "Hey, don't buy any more of our stuff from Walmart"?
| error503 wrote:
| Is that not pretty much exactly what happens when you buy
| say a Nintendo Switch at Wal-Mart?
|
| Nintendo will encourage you to buy from their online
| store, competing with Wal-Mart selling physical media
| (and maybe digital codes too on their own store?).
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| But this is standard in every other business. Want to buy a
| samsung phone? You can buy it at a samsung store directly or
| from amazon/walmart/your local telco. Printer? hp.com, or
| amazon, or walmart or whatever. You can even buy apple
| devices directly from apple stores or from other retailers.
| munk-a wrote:
| A business that effectively feels consumer pressure. With
| their oligopoly neither Apple nor Google are feeling any
| consumer pressure to behave as good actors.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| The literal most obvious start is apple, who doesn't allow
| users to even install another app store, or even an unapproved
| app at all.
|
| After that sure, they can try to go after Google.
| isodev wrote:
| Why is suddenly "able to install another App Store" a thing
| or even a necessity?
|
| I think this entire situation has been blown out of
| proportion. There are a few "loud" voices lobbying for stuff
| that are of no consequence or just false.
| error503 wrote:
| It seems like a fundamental right that I should have full
| control of a device which I own outright.
|
| That control, over something I paid for and ostensibly
| 'own' _will_ be used against me, as in the case of App
| Store cuts and digital payments. Why should that be
| allowed? If I own it, it is mine, and control over its
| technology should be mine as well.
| m463 wrote:
| you can't even secure your own device. You have no
| ability to see what is running, what it is talking to, or
| prevent the communication in or out.
| olliej wrote:
| Isn't 30% standard across pretty much every App Store? Steam
| does not have lock in and yet I thought charged 30%, GoG is
| 30%, etc.
|
| Obviously other app stores could in principle charge lower
| amounts because they don't actually have to do any development
| work, unlike google or apple who both actually do real
| development work for products after they've been sold. Despite
| that GoG and Steam seem to charge 30% anyway.
|
| I'm curious what you think the development model for companies
| that aren't just store fronts should be if they aren't able to
| make money from development, especially given they appear to be
| charging that same amount as those companies that aren't doing
| anything other than providing a store front? Maybe software
| updates should cost money again? Or you should only get one
| year of updates for a device? Maybe free apps should be banned
| as well? After all supporting those costs money but makes none?
|
| I'm genuinely curious how you think development should be paid
| for when 15-30% is too high for developers but fine for store
| fronts?
| eikenberry wrote:
| What % should they charge then? It was my understanding that
| 30% was/is a fairly standard cut taken by retailers in general
| and they are just aligning with the industry. A quick search
| seems to confirm this idea with articles like this..
| https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...
| kevingadd wrote:
| If the market was actually open, people would compete on
| different cuts and the % would eventually drift towards
| whatever the right number is.
|
| Epic seems to do just fine charging 12% on their PC games
| store, vs Valve's variable (maximum of 30%; lower for big
| rich game studios) cut on Steam.
|
| Apple and Google have also both put in place a lower cut for
| independent developers, which is further evidence that 30%
| isn't the 'right' number. It's just a number the market has
| no choice but to put up with.
|
| I certainly don't blame them for wanting to pocket 30% of the
| filthy billions of dollars kids and gambling addicts pump
| into stuff like Genshin Impact. That's free money for Apple.
| telot1 wrote:
| Epic is in fact not doing just fine charging 12%.
|
| https://www.techspot.com/news/100767-after-almost-five-
| years...
| moogly wrote:
| Well, they are also giving away a ton of games for free
| to try to bust Valve's defacto monopoly. That's probably
| not cheap.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >What % should they charge then?
|
| How about we go by European credit and debit card interchange
| fees capped at 0.2%. Credit Card CEOs seem reasonably happy,
| healthy and well fed. Maybe we'll get some cultural surplus
| value out of it if Valve is actually forced to make a video
| game again, Half Life 3 might actually happen, or maybe we'll
| get a new Portal or Team Fortress out of it.
| TillE wrote:
| All of these platforms do far, far more than just basic
| payment processing.
| noiseinvacuum wrote:
| I think that is why payment processing fees and platform
| fees need to be separated out.
| internet101010 wrote:
| I am guessing the 30% quoted is specifically for digital
| goods because 10-15% is the fair price for connecting buyers
| with sellers of physical goods. At least that is the case
| with platforms like eBay, Walmart, and Amazon.
|
| Maybe someone can explain how the selling/labor costs of
| digital goods are twice that physical goods and justify 2-3x
| the commission. I would like to hear it because I am
| admittedly ignorant when it comes to the costs of content
| delivery - all I know is that egress can get expensive.
| m463 wrote:
| I thought you even had to agree not to criticize apple.
| noiseinvacuum wrote:
| Exactly. This is the most problematic anti-competitive behavior
| and it's easily addressable by existing antitrust laws.
| flax wrote:
| About time. Apple has been getting a free pass on the exact same
| things that Microsoft was slapped down for. Notably: unchangeable
| default apps (browser, email, text messaging in particular).
|
| I don't believe that they necessarily are violating antitrust by
| choosing to make imessage or apple watch ios only, but it would
| be obviously better for consumers in my opinion if they were more
| open.
|
| One aspect which keeps annoying me is how hostile Apple is to
| developers that want to use anything other than Apple hardware to
| publish on the app store. The requirement to use xcode, and the
| fact that xcode only runs on Mac means they are leveraging their
| control of ios app stores to force hardware sales. I was
| particularly annoyed to find that even if I have a compiled .ipa
| file, the app store requires xcode to even upload it. It's a file
| upload! This has been working cross platform since before the
| advent of the web.
| granzymes wrote:
| This case, at least as described in the article, has
| essentially no similarity to the Microsoft Internet Explorer
| trial (which, in case you forgot, Microsoft won on appeal).
|
| Microsoft got in trouble for tying its monopoly in operating
| systems to OEMs preinstalling Internet Explorer. Essentially,
| they told OEMs that they would not sell them Windows unless
| they agreed to help Microsoft kill Netscape. That's a very
| different kind of antitrust complaint than what the article
| describes, which is Apple building seamless connections between
| its hardware and services while offering second-tier
| connections for competitors.
|
| The Xcode angle is interesting, but likely not important enough
| for the Justice Department to sue over. Hardware for developers
| is negligible in the grand scheme of things.
| civilized wrote:
| Apple's behavior seems much more anticompetitive because, for
| example, they ban third parties from offering apps that
| interoperate e.g. with iMessage.
|
| That's worlds worse than just making sure your app is the
| most convenient option, while other options can easily be
| installed.
| granzymes wrote:
| There's a difference between obstructing (generally bad!)
| and refusal to deal (perfectly fine). Apple can't go out
| into the market and trip their competitors so they fall on
| their face. However, they are allowed to build themselves a
| nice road for their exclusive use on their own hardware and
| a winding dirt path for everyone else.
|
| Put another way, Apple cannot _worsen_ access for
| competitors on its platform absent a procompetitive
| justification. But they have no duty under U.S. antitrust
| law to provide equal access in the first place.
| civilized wrote:
| My understanding is they also ban third-party text
| message applications, but I could be confused on the
| details.
| granzymes wrote:
| If Apple in 2020 had allowed third-party text message
| applications and in 2024 changed their mind because a
| competitor was eating their lunch, that would be
| anticompetitive.
|
| It's not anticompetitive to never allow a third-party
| text message application in the first place.
| civilized wrote:
| I'm not aware of any requirement that anti-competitive
| behavior be in response to competitor behavior, but maybe
| you know more about the law.
| wharvle wrote:
| For SMS? Maybe, but that's just a basic phone feature. An
| old Nokia also only offers one way to send SMS. It's just
| part of the phone-bits of the phone. And didn't Signal
| used to be able to send and receive SMS on iPhone,
| anyway? Thought it could.
|
| Messaging apps that compete with _iMessage_ are plentiful
| and Apple doesn 't get in their way. You can also disable
| iMessage with a toggle on the Messages settings screen
| (it's well "above the fold" for me, fourth entry down, on
| that screen, it's the first thing they show other than
| security/permissions stuff for the app)
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > And didn't Signal used to be able to send and receive
| SMS on iPhone, anyway? Thought it could.
|
| On Android, yes. Not on iOS.
| wharvle wrote:
| Oh, I thought they had it there too. Nevermind on that
| part then.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > But they have no duty under U.S. antitrust law to
| provide equal access in the first place.
|
| True, but they're undeniably at a scale where this would
| just be expected of them either way. We broke up Ma Bell
| ignoring this exact defense, because at a certain scale
| of infrastructure you're expected to do the right thing
| legal or not. If Apple drills down on their "technically
| legal" defense, they're liable to find out how
| technically subjective law gets at their scale.
| granzymes wrote:
| I agree that it's reasonable to hold platforms like Apple
| to a higher standard. The issue is that it would likely
| require new laws be passed, like the Digital Markets Act
| and Digital Services Act from the European Union.
| smoldesu wrote:
| That's not really an issue, as European lawmakers have
| demonstrated.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > That's worlds worse than just making sure your app is the
| most convenient option, while other options can easily be
| installed.
|
| I disagree.
|
| Apple is actively hostile to third parties integrating with
| their own protocols, but Microsoft has been caught several
| times trying to subvert standards for their benefit, e.g.
| when they added extensions to their Exchange email servers
| that would work _only_ with Outlook clients.
| olliej wrote:
| You mean "Apple should be required to build messaging
| services on top of apple's infrastructure".
|
| Google also prevents me from making a company that uses its
| search engine infrastructure and unlike iMessage it is
| actually the dominant operator in the market.
|
| I'm also not allowed to make a Twitter-like service that
| interoperates with twitter.
|
| Explain what makes iMessage, a service that is part of a
| product apple sells, different from the above? Or in fact
| any service operated by any other company that sells a
| product but doesn't allow other companies to resell their
| services?
|
| > they ban third parties from offering apps that
| interoperate e.g. with iMessage.
|
| If you're referring to that company that reverse engineered
| the iMessage protocol, that entire companies business model
| was "we're going to give away free access to a service that
| isn't free, and that a company has to spend money
| supporting".
|
| Again, how would this be different from requiring google,
| twitter, or GitHub, etc to provide 3rd parties access to
| their infrastructure to duplicate their services?
| smoldesu wrote:
| iMessage's problem is that it is functionally an SMS
| replacement, but architecturally nothing like SMS. If you
| wanted to extend iMessage so that other companies could
| support and pay for their own hardware on it, you
| couldn't. It's not just Apple's willingness either, it's
| designed specifically so that it embraces and extends SMS
| without offering the same inter-OS connectivity.
|
| Google and Twitter have services to run that compete on
| generally equal terms (eg. the Internet). Apple's
| messaging service is integrated with Apple's runtime, and
| because they control both they can implement features
| that competitors cannot.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think you make a great point. Still, the insidious way that
| Apple introduced iMessage is something right out of the
| "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" playbook that feels
| fundamentally wrong to me:
|
| 1. 15 years ago everyone in the US just used SMS to text
| between cell phones.
|
| 2. When iMessage came out, it wasn't like "Switch to
| iMessage!" Instead, it just _was_ the default texting app you
| used with iPhone. So it replaced an existing, open standard
| with a closed one, but in a way where 99.9% of people didn 't
| realize it.
|
| 3. In true "embrace, extend, extinguish" fashion, Apple added
| a lot of features to iMessage, but also didn't totally
| exclude Android users, but just made it seem to iOS users
| that when they got crappy photos or messages that randomly
| wouldn't deliver or crappy emoji responses "it was Android's
| fault".
|
| Everything about the iMessage tactics (including getting
| teens to bully other teens for an out-group bubble color) is
| from the worst part of "protect the monopoly" playbook.
| Almost regardless of the legal nuances, I'm shocked when I
| hear anyone's broken logic trying to defend what they've done
| from a consumer utility perspective.
|
| (One side note, yes, I fully know the situation outside the
| US isn't comparable due to the high cost of SMS in the late
| 00s in other countries that forced a migration to WhatsApp,
| etc. earlier. That still doesn't give Apple a break for their
| monopoly-preserving tactics in the US).
| wharvle wrote:
| > including getting teens to bully other teens for an out-
| group bubble color
|
| Whose messages turn green or blue depending on protocol in
| use in a given (potentially group) thread in Apple's
| Messages?
|
| [EDIT] The up-and-down voting pattern suggests my point may
| not have come through: if you were _trying to_ cause this,
| where would you place this indicator? On messages from the
| person with phone sending SMS, right? Apple places it on
| the _iPhone user 's messages that they send_, to indicate
| what kind of message you've sent so you have some idea what
| the other end's experience will be, and why certain
| features may not appear in your UI (you don't need to see
| what kind of message is coming in--its capabilities are
| evident, whatever you see is the result of that message
| using whatever features it needed and could access)
|
| Is Apple _unhappy_ that Android users feel excluded? I
| doubt it. Was this feature evidently designed to do that,
| on purpose? I mean, if so, they didn 't do it very well.
|
| "Green bubble" became a thing, initially, because you'd add
| an Android users to a group text (actually iMessage) thread
| and it'd "green bubble" _everyone else_ and make things
| work less-well. There had to be some kind of indicator so
| this wouldn 't seem to happen just at random, and that was
| it--but the affordance pointedly _does not_ single out who
| 's responsible, indeed, in a group thread that starts out
| with mixed Android and iOS users, I'm not even sure how to
| tell who's a "green bubble" and who's a "blue bubble" (I
| suppose you'd tap each contact and see if iMessage-related
| features were available?)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| oh right - as if a Billion users are forced to use iMessage
| </sarc>
|
| _edit_ an OS web browser tied to the base OS is not the
| same as an instant msg app on a phone. The OS Browser
| bundling is not at all comparable, by a long measure. Some
| context is needed on such a large situation.
|
| source: read direct testimony on the MSFT anti-trust case
| megaman821 wrote:
| Serious question. How do you text on an iPhone without
| using iMessage?
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| I predominantly use Google Voice, but there are a slew of
| other alternative iOS SMS apps.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| With SMS using the Messages app. iMessage is 100%
| optional and can be disabled.
| wharvle wrote:
| Settings -> Messages -> Tap the "iMessage" toggle so it's
| off.
|
| Don't even have to scroll to find it (at least on mine).
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Again, I don't understand why people try to defend
| Apple's shitty behavior here. As I said in my comment,
| I'm less arguing from the technical legal details and
| more from a "this is just shitty, monopolistic-preserving
| behavior that serves no benefit besides protecting a
| company's marketshare" perspective. Apple could trivially
| easily:
|
| 1. Allow better interoperability from 3rd party clients.
| All of Apple's "user security" arguments are complete and
| total BS given that iMessage _already_ degrades to the
| most insecure method of communication if any messages
| (including group chats) contain a non-iMessage user.
|
| 2. Provide a compatible Android client for iMessage (like
| literally every other single message app out there). At
| the very least they could _stop breaking_ other iMessage
| Android clients.
|
| 3. Make it easier to choose a text client on startup.
|
| 4. Support a more functional interoperability standard -
| which, thankfully, Apple has _finally_ said they will do
| by supporting RCS, but only after it looked like they
| became wary that their blatant tactics would look too
| monopolistic from a regulatory perspective.
|
| There is just 0 user-centered rationale for defending
| Apple's behavior here.
| saurik wrote:
| > which, in case you forgot, Microsoft won on appeal
|
| I was under the impression that Microsoft won in the sense
| that the punishment was undone, but merely due to procedural
| issues in the trial: that they seemed to have done the thing
| they weren't supposed to have done stood after the appeal.
|
| > Ultimately, the Circuit Court overturned Jackson's holding
| that Microsoft should be broken up as an illegal monopoly.
| However, the Circuit Court did not overturn Jackson's
| findings of fact, and held that traditional antitrust
| analysis was not equipped to consider software-related
| practices like browser tie-ins.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_C.
| ...
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Microsoft got into trouble because they were a supplier to
| computer companies (they supplied the OS and some software) and
| abused their market share to mess with other suppliers (browser
| makers).
|
| Apple is themselves the computer maker. The situation is not
| similar even though both MS and Apple are big companies.
| adrr wrote:
| Microsoft required the OEMs to pay for windows license on
| every computer they sold whether it had Windows installed on
| it or another OS. It put a huge tax on consumers who didn't
| want to use windows since they were paying for a license no
| matter what. Its a textbook case for antitrust.
|
| Apple, people have choice. I can buy an Android phone, I can
| buy one of the open source phones like PinePhone, Fair Phone
| or Librem 5. Consumers have lots of choice. As for not being
| able to uninstall default apps, You can use other messaging
| apps. Consumers have a choice. I am willing to bet money,
| that 80%+ of IOS users have no desire to change apps. I am
| also willing to bet most IOS users don't want iMessage to
| work with other messaging apps. I am in that boat. Forcing
| Apple to open up iMessage is anti-consumer.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > Apple has been getting a free pass on the exact same things
| that Microsoft was slapped down for. Notably: unchangeable
| default apps (browser, email, text messaging in particular).
|
| I think this is due to regulators not understanding that phones
| are computers.
|
| Apple definitely lets you change the default apps in macOS. If
| it didn't, that would be a problem. But until recently, both
| Google and Apple were given an exception on mobile computing,
| i.e. tablets, phones.
| ericmay wrote:
| I think it's less to do with regulators not understanding
| that phones are computers and more to do with genuine
| disagreement over what constitutes a computer and even more
| so what societal and economic effects regulation might have
| on these changes.
|
| For example, if the United States says that the iPhone is an
| arbitrary computer and as such is subject to thus and thus
| regulations, why wouldn't that include other arbitrary
| computation devices like the Nintendo Switch, Steamdeck, TV,
| or Alexa device?
|
| I haven't seen a convincing argument yet that would say this
| definition stops at "phones and tablets". So now you're not
| _just_ regulating phones and "opening them up" and instead
| you're regulating broad swaths of trade with not just
| American companies but global companies as well and that has
| much more important considerations than whether or not you
| can install a 3rd-party app store or access a manufacturer-
| only API. Even if you are just regulating phones and tablets,
| you still have to consider more than the American companies.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| IMO regulation should kick in based on market share,
| regardless of device type. If 50% of the population was
| being taxed 30% on digital transactions by the platform
| owner, it doesn't really matter if it happened on an
| iPhone/Android or Nintendo Switch.
| ericmay wrote:
| Market share of devices sold? Does it change by the year?
| Market share of the company? What if companies just
| introduce small changes to the device that result in
| different SKUs?
|
| Take a look at the Nintendo Switch market share in 2020
| [1]. We should regulate Nintendo and make them open up
| APIs but not Microsoft?
|
| [1] Assume this is accurate for the sake of argument
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/276768/global-unit-
| sales...
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| Percent of revenue of digital transactions should open up
| companies to regulation. Nintendo should be free to do
| whatever they want up until a certain percent of the
| digital pie is controlled by them. What that number is
| should be up to regulators/we the people.
|
| Apple/Google's app store duopoly is a tax on competition
| and innovation. BTW these two app stores dwarf anything
| Nintendo is doing with theirs.
| ericmay wrote:
| What percent?
|
| Apple for example is known (I don't have the numbers in
| front of me) for making high margins on their hardware
| and not digital transactions though they're certainly
| trying to grow that sector.
|
| If you mean of the overall pie, wouldn't that just place
| burdensome regulation on new and small businesses or new
| sectors since as soon as you own a percent of the
| "digital pie" (what exactly is that anyway?) you have to
| then comply with regulations that could just open up your
| proprietary business features to your competitors?
|
| Why is it that Apple and Google's app store duopoly a tax
| on competition when they created the sector that enabled
| businesses to sell products? If anything they should
| charge _more_.
|
| But aside from that, doesn't this also discourage Apple,
| Google, and others from profiting off of or creating
| software features? Why even build the API? And if another
| company forks Android or creates a new mobile operating
| system they can keep all of their stuff closed until a
| later point in which they're beating incumbents and then
| just open up?
|
| Idk I feel like there's already too much additive logic
| here to make this worthwhile. Good regulation would be
| much cleaner and ideally subtractive instead of additive.
|
| > BTW these two app stores dwarf anything Nintendo is
| doing with theirs.
|
| I'm aware and I find this to be irrelevant.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| > What percent?
|
| I don't know, that's the regulator's job.
|
| > If you mean of the overall pie, wouldn't that just
| place burdensome regulation on new and small businesses
| or new sectors since as soon as you own a percent of the
| "digital pie" (what exactly is that anyway?) you have to
| then comply with regulations that could just open up your
| proprietary business features to your competitors?
|
| Businesses have to deal with new and changing regulations
| all the time. Once a business starts to worry about being
| too big and associated regulations, that's their legal
| team's job.
|
| > Why is it that Apple and Google's app store duopoly a
| tax on competition when they created the sector that
| enabled businesses to sell products? If anything they
| should charge more.
|
| Right, without regulation we're on a path for these
| megacoprs to start charging us more, especially if if our
| attempts to regulate them fail. They won't compete fairly
| out of the kindness of their hearts.
|
| > But aside from that, doesn't this also discourage
| Apple, Google, and others from profiting off of or
| creating software features? Why even build the API? And
| if another company forks Android or creates a new mobile
| operating system they can keep all of their stuff closed
| until a later point in which they're beating incumbents
| and then just open up?
|
| The beauty of competition is that if they don't
| continuously add new products or features, someone else
| will -- Just like Apple/Google once did to the older tech
| incumbents.
|
| > Idk I feel like there's already too much additive logic
| here to make this worthwhile. Good regulation would be
| much cleaner and ideally subtractive instead of additive.
|
| While I proposed something, what I'm really looking for
| is outcomes that change tech into a more competitive
| landscape, and don't really care how it happens.
|
| > I'm aware and I find this to be irrelevant.
|
| It's not irrelevant in the context that antitrust
| regulations looks at the number of people impacted, which
| is very correlated to how much revenue is being
| generated.
| ericmay wrote:
| > I don't know, that's the regulator's job.
|
| Ok but you should at least have an idea because it's the
| central premise of your proposal. I'm not asking for you
| to split hairs between a percent or something but to
| provide something meaningful from a categorical
| standpoint.
|
| > Businesses have to deal with new and changing
| regulations all the time. Once a business starts to worry
| about being too big and associated regulations, that's
| their legal team's job.
|
| Sure that's fair though I'm still concerned about
| decreases in competition here due to this regulation as
| noted.
|
| > Right, without regulation we're on a path for these
| megacoprs to start charging us more, especially if if our
| attempts to regulate them fail. They won't compete fairly
| out of the kindness of their hearts.
|
| On the consumer side I don't see this as a big threat,
| it's more of a threat to developers. The vast majority of
| apps, games, etc. are junk and not worht acquiring for
| free or paid, and if those prices increase because
| companies are charging more then the likely scenario is
| they just die off which is good for the economy and the
| quality of the app stores.
|
| On the developer side this also has the added benefit of
| weeding out uncompetitive apps and poor products, and the
| cost burden is beared by developers instead of the
| corporations and personally I don't really care that much
| if, say, Epic gets more or less revenue than Apple
| because of these dynamics. Neither are lowering their
| prices so it's not relevant to me.
|
| > The beauty of competition is that if they don't
| continuously add new products or features, someone else
| will -- Just like Apple/Google once did to the older tech
| incumbents.
|
| Nothing stops those new products or features today though
| so I'm not sure what the argument here is. Are you
| suggesting if Apple and Google open up their APIs then
| other competitors will... open up their non-existent
| APIs? If anything these things just further cemement
| Apple and Google dominance.
|
| > It's not irrelevant in the context that antitrust
| regulations looks at the number of people impacted, which
| is very correlated to how much revenue is being
| generated.
|
| Are you suggesting regulation overall due to company size
| or regulation within a sector? If it's the former I think
| there's likely to be some faulty rationele here and if
| it's the latter it's irrelevant because Nintendo isn't
| competing in the same sector as Apple or Google.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| >Ok but you should at least have an idea because it's the
| central premise of your proposal. I'm not asking for you
| to split hairs between a percent or something but to
| provide something meaningful from a categorical
| standpoint.
|
| The central premise of my proposal is that once a company
| reaches antitrust-size, it should be regulated as such.
| Perhaps percent of all digital transactions is one way to
| do it without writing company-specific regulation that
| could be worked around in the future, perhaps not. I
| categorically do not want a handful of companies to
| control our digital landscape, and we need regulators to
| step in.
|
| >On the consumer side I don't see this as a big threat,
| it's more of a threat to developers. The vast majority of
| apps, games, etc. are junk and not worht acquiring for
| free or paid, and if those prices increase because
| companies are charging more then the likely scenario is
| they just die off which is good for the economy and the
| quality of the app stores. On the developer side this
| also has the added benefit of weeding out uncompetitive
| apps and poor products, and the cost burden is beared by
| developers instead of the corporations and personally I
| don't really care that much if, say, Epic gets more or
| less revenue than Apple because of these dynamics.
| Neither are lowering their prices so it's not relevant to
| me.
|
| Just because you don't feel personally impacted doesn't
| mean others aren't.
|
| > Nothing stops those new products or features today
| though so I'm not sure what the argument here is. Are you
| suggesting if Apple and Google open up their APIs then
| other competitors will... open up their non-existent
| APIs? If anything these things just further cemement
| Apple and Google dominance.
|
| If you zoom out a bit, you'll notice the _entire web_ is
| effectively controlled by 2-3 companies via Chrome
| /Safari. It's not about being able to build on particular
| APIs per se. It's that if Apple/Google want web browsers
| to have (or NOT have) certain features, it's them who get
| to decide, and developers will fall in line. Google in
| particular has been working on features that make ad
| blocking worse, thus protecting their advertising empire,
| for example [1].
|
| >Are you suggesting regulation overall due to company
| size or regulation within a sector?
|
| I meant that if we lived in a world where 1 in 2 people
| had to pay Nintendo ~30% when buying a digital good
| (Costs are passed to consumers), they too should be
| regulated. The rationale is protecting consumers from
| harm via higher prices, which result from a lack of
| competition.
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/google/2023/12/chromes-next-
| weapon-i...
| error503 wrote:
| I don't see why game consoles or anything else should be
| exempt from 'on a computer' rules.
|
| What it boils down to in my opinion, is that you own the
| device, and the company that built it should be required to
| give you all the keys to do what you want with it. The
| ability for companies to technologically lock out what
| their customers can do with the devices is relatively new,
| but there are quite a few areas of law that follow this
| principle of "once you buy it, it's yours, full stop", and
| I think this is just following along from that.
|
| So I'd like to see general legislation in that direction,
| that would outlaw all these companies from locking down
| their devices as a first step. It doesn't have to be super
| easy, but it absolutely should be _possible_ to run
| whatever code you want on any device you own.
|
| I think antitrust surrounding these marketplaces is _also_
| due, but is much less fundamental and a lot more
| situational, where it matters less what the definition of
| 'a computer' is and more who's getting screwed, how badly,
| and whether competition is possible.
| ericmay wrote:
| Isn't that already the case with jailbreaking for
| example? I.e. it doesn't have to be easy.
|
| Does Apple have something like a "key" that would allow
| you to just run arbitrary software on the device? Is it
| something they would have to build, support, and
| maintain? I'm guessing this isn't a problem on Android
| and you can run whatever you want.
| error503 wrote:
| A jailbreak is not something Apple (or whoever) allows,
| it's a (serious) security vulnerability being exploited
| to gain root level permissions on the device and then
| circumvent whatever checks are in place. These are things
| that _should_ be fixed. It 's also a cat and mouse game
| that is always changing.
|
| > Does Apple have something like a "key" that would allow
| you to just run arbitrary software on the device? Is it
| something they would have to build, support, and
| maintain? I'm guessing this isn't a problem on Android
| and you can run whatever you want.
|
| Not sure about the specifics of Apple's architecture (as
| it's also undocumented), but most modern secure boot
| systems have a hardware public key store (TPM) that any
| boot binaries must be signed with. Apple would closely
| guard those keys, and without them (and without security
| flaws), it is impossible to boot other code. Once you get
| a bit further along into the boot process, the
| architecture gets much more complicated as far as
| actually running apps, but it's all predicated on that
| secure boot key. Such a key store is probably possible to
| change, but Apple doesn't give any access to it from the
| userland, so users are unable to do so. It's also
| possible to make such a verification completely
| unchangeable in hardware; not sure if Apple may do it
| this way.
|
| An open system would look something like UEFI secure
| boot, where the owner of the system can manage the keys
| in that hardware key store, to the extent of removing the
| manufacturer's keys entirely (which I think is also an
| important ability - what if I don't want Apple to be
| trusted on my device?). From there you can patch the OS
| to allow other code to run, though preferably this is
| something that would also be opened up explicitly.
|
| Yes, it will require intentionally designing those
| capabilities into the products, but most likely it's not
| a significant architectural change, just a matter of
| giving users access to change the keys in the hardware
| they own.
| ericmay wrote:
| You said it didn't need to be _easy_ to run arbitrary
| code. Why would security not fall under that purview? You
| can jailbreak your phone and run arbitrary software on
| it. If there are security problems that 's kind of _your_
| problem that you introduced by running your arbitrary
| software.
|
| How would Apple/Google be able to monitor malware here?
|
| How do we know that the secure boot key for example isn't
| part of the security architecture and by giving it out
| you basically enable those root level permissions?
|
| Are we really trusting users to not lose or compromise
| secure boot keys that they manage on their own? If
| grandpa gets scammed out of his life savings are
| taxpayers footing that bill?
|
| I'm not necessarily looking for answers to those
| questions, but it really just seems like there's a lot of
| open items here that have to be addressed for not a lot
| of benefit and instead it seems like people just want an
| effectively jailbroken iPhone that's somehow secured by
| Apple/Google more easily.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _I think this is due to regulators not understanding that
| phones are computers._
|
| What _isn 't_ a computer nowadays?
|
| * https://a16z.com/why-software-is-eating-the-world/
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| This is true even for web apps. If you want to debug web apps
| to make them work on iOS, you need an iOS device and a macbook.
| jwells89 wrote:
| The thing about Xcode and associated tools is that they
| _heavily_ rely on the entire Apple platform stack and would be
| quite a bear to port to other platforms. The iOS simulator, for
| example, simply runs the iOS userland on top of the core shared
| between macOS and iOS rather than emulating a full device. It
| might be practical to release CLI tools for cross-compilation
| but anything beyond that would be quite expensive.
|
| Apple could afford to do this work of course, but the ROI of
| doing so is questionable. Ignoring the hit to Mac sales, it
| opens their platforms up to vast amounts of low effort
| shovelware -- far more than already exists on the App Store.
| That's the natural consequence of access to a platform being a
| single tickbox away.
|
| Of course the actual problem might come down to lack of tools
| and services that push junkware into the gutters where it
| belongs while putting quality apps in the spotlight, but I'm
| not confident that this will magically appear should iOS as a
| platform be opened up.
| eli wrote:
| Google and Apple simply shouldn't be allowed to operate exclusive
| App Stores on their devices.
| dazilcher wrote:
| Google's app store is not exclusive.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| It is not exclusive _if you are tech literate_.
|
| But then again, Google paid billions to manufacturers so
| their store was the only option preinstalled in their
| devices, which meant that the vast majority of users would
| just stick with it.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Nor is Apple's as AltStore and browser PWA app stores exist.
| layer8 wrote:
| AltStore exploits a loophole that exists for app
| developers, and you have to "refresh" the app from a
| computer each week. It's quite inconvenient and not
| practical for the average user.
| apapapa wrote:
| They make it seem like it is to the vast majority of people
| with their dark patterns
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Apple's been a walled garden since the early 80's. They let
| vendors make Mac-compatibles and then screwed them, IIRC. They've
| always preferred to have their own everything until absolutely
| forced to open up, e.g. USB ports. They had their own networking
| architecture in the 90's (AppleTalk).
|
| Does that mean it's OK? Definitely not. But I think a general
| mandate of interoperability would be preferable to any point
| solutions. It's not clear how a court could rule that way, so it
| might require legislation.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The MS antitrust settlement included a "general mandate of
| interop" wrt. the issues that were raised there, such as web
| browsers as part of the OS and the use of private API's.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _They 've always preferred to have their own everything until
| absolutely forced to open up, e.g. USB ports._
|
| You must not have been alive at the time. Apple's early
| adoption of USB is _why_ USB became the dominant peripheral
| interface. People were quite upset to have lost their legacy
| ports in 1998.
|
| And of course, Apple's contributions to and early support for
| USB-C were also industry-leading. Apple has played a key role
| in creating and/or mainstreaming many standards: FireWire,
| Thunderbolt, Wi-Fi, ISOBMFF/MPEG-4, AAC, Mini-SIM/Nano-SIM, and
| I'm sure more I'm forgetting.
| wharvle wrote:
| > And of course, Apple's contributions to and early support
| for USB-C were also industry-leading.
|
| And _still_ on the... bleeding edge. Most of the USB
| peripherals one can go buy right off the shelves at, say,
| Target are _still_ USB-A.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Could it be that no one in the industry trusts them on
| standards?
| wharvle wrote:
| It's not their standard. It's in wide use on video game
| consoles and Android phones. The rest of the "PC"
| industry just hasn't moved so hard away from USB-A as
| they have, such that it _remains_ the _de facto_ PC
| standard for peripherals. It 's largely displaced micro-
| usb, but not USB-A (comically, the one place it's
| dominated in the rest of the electronic-crap industry is
| where Apple lags, not the area in which they lead on its
| adoption)
| layer8 wrote:
| No, it's that USB-A is cheaper and "good enough", and
| still more ubiquitous on the installed base of PCs and
| laptops.
| CharlesW wrote:
| _(In a now-deleted post, the parent commenter requested
| citations, and also remembered Apple dragging their feet on
| TCP /IP support. Here's my reply since I'd already written
| it.)_
|
| A typical response was John Breeden's in _The Washington
| Post_ : "The iMac has only USB adapters, no SCSI port...non-
| USB devices can't be connected. Offices that have SCSI- or
| parallel-port printers will find the iMac an unsuitable
| replacement for older Macs. It's odd, because Apple was a
| SCSI pioneer."
|
| It's true that AppleTalk was proprietary, but it was
| introduced in _1985_. It was plug-and-play, amazing for its
| time, and showed what standards-based networking should
| aspire to.
|
| Apple's MacTCP was the first OS-level, application-
| independent TCP/IP stack for personal computers, in 1988 --
| many years before TCP/IP was mainstream. Apple also shipped
| TCP/IP support by default in 1994, a year before Microsoft.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| talk about selective rewriting of history: Wikipedia tells
| us
|
| _The rise of TCP /IP during the 1990s led to a
| reimplementation of most of these types of support on that
| protocol, and AppleTalk became unsupported as of the
| release of Mac OS X v10.6 in 2009._
|
| > It was plug-and-play, amazing for its time, and showed
| what standards-based networking should aspire to.
|
| I believe the IETF was quite active during that time,
| particularly in the 90's when I got somewhat involved, and
| even in the 80's. What role did Apple play in that? It
| seems to me they could have advanced their "aspirations"
| more effectively that way.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > In a now-deleted post
|
| It's not deleted, it got flag killed. Turn on showdead in
| your profile and you'll be able to see the comment.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I turned on showdead, and still don't see what he's
| talking about.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Your comment is the flagged dead one. You can see it with
| or without showdead on. You can tell it is dead by trying
| to reply to it yourself.
|
| CharlesW was the one I was responding to who had thought
| your comment was deleted when it wasn't. I was clarifying
| for them (and others) that the comment had not been
| deleted. I honestly have no idea why this confuses you.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I honestly have no idea why you feel compelled to be so
| rude.
| epakai wrote:
| Yet we still had bullshit like this:
| https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-
| gu...
|
| Note that 3 of those came about long after M.2 was done, and
| Mini-PCIe/mSATA existed before all of them.
|
| Apple's commitment to standard hardware is at best skin deep.
|
| People were quite upset to have lost their ports in 2016 too.
| 5 years later Apple added some back.
| layer8 wrote:
| > Apple's early adoption of USB is why USB became the
| dominant peripheral interface.
|
| That's hard to believe. Apple was rather insignificant
| compared to the Wintel quasi-monopoly at the time, and
| Windows 98's USB support actually slightly precedes Apple's.
| Apple also wasn't part of the initial USB alliance. USB
| became popular due to digital cameras, USB printers and
| scanners, flash drives and the like, and with USB 2.0 there
| was no legacy interface providing the same data rates.
| sbuk wrote:
| And yet, look at the clear blue plastic peripherals that
| saturated the PC market post iMac.
|
| > USB became popular due to digital cameras, USB printers
| and scanners, flash drives and the like
|
| In the late 90's/early 00's, who were using technology like
| that? Designers. _What_ were they using? iMacs...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| You're really grasping at straws here. They've been an
| NIH company since the beginning, and now you & few others
| are desperately touting the one, or one of the few areas
| where they embraced standards. Assuming they did.
|
| As for "In the late 90's/early 00's, who were using
| technology like that? Designers. "
|
| I believe that is just wrong. Mac users might have had an
| outsized impact, but the mass market always refrained
| from jumping on things until they were available for
| Windows.
| sbuk wrote:
| > They've been an NIH company since the beginning
|
| So who did Woz copy for the Apple I ][ and ///?
|
| > and now you & few others are desperately touting the
| one, or one of the few areas where they embraced
| standards. Assuming they did.
|
| They were one of the first adopters, if not _the_ first.
| They have been involved in the design of nearly every USB
| standard since; Micro USB being a notable exception.
|
| > I believe that is just wrong. Mac users might have had
| an outsized impact, but the mass market always refrained
| from jumping on things until they were available for
| Windows.
|
| Go get a copy of a computer magazine from around 6 months
| after the iMac G3 was released...
|
| The thing is that on one hand, you're claiming that
| they're not innovative and on the other, suffering from
| NIH syndrome, so by implication, _innovating_. Which is
| it?
| layer8 wrote:
| No one I know who was using those technologies at the
| time (including myself) was a designer nor used a Mac.
| Apple had 2-3% market share in the early 00s, and still
| below 5% in 2005. Virtually every computer user was using
| USB for one thing or another by then.
| sbuk wrote:
| So a base of N+1. I _was_ a designer in the late 90
| 's/early 00's. I worked for a large, well known global
| agency. We had iMacs. I also had one at home and remember
| the "pain" of USB, though supported peripherals (Iomega
| ZIP disks spring to mind) came fast, mainly aimed at the
| largest userbase for Macs at the time - _designers_.
| layer8 wrote:
| I happened to use a ZIP drive as well on the PC. There's
| no relation to Macs here. Designers in the US tended to
| use Macs, yes, but this isn't what drove USB adoption,
| and it would have happened in much the same way without
| them.
| sbuk wrote:
| USB ZIP drive on a PC in 1999? Possibly with an added
| card. I called ZIP drives out specifically because I
| remember being surprised at how quick they were in
| comparison to SCSI attached ZIP drives. And how much less
| hassle they were.
|
| I sort of agree with what you are saying, but don't
| underestimate the impact that the G3 had on the desktop
| computing landscape.
| sbuk wrote:
| > They let vendors make Mac-compatibles and then screwed them,
| IIRC.
|
| It nearly caused Apple to go bankrupt.
| mikestew wrote:
| _They 've always preferred to have their own everything until
| absolutely forced to open up, e.g. USB ports._
|
| I don't think you could have picked a worse example to attempt
| to make your point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-
| free_PC#1990s
|
| I'll save you a click: the Apple iMac is credited with
| popularizing USB.
| jcomis wrote:
| I know it seems absurd, but as an android user I really do get
| cut out of group message convos due to not being on imessage. I
| realize many other countries use whatsapp or whatever, but my
| social circle in the US explicitly does not and won't. Even my
| parents have issues and frequently try to send me large videos.
| I've had to to completely decouple my phone number from my
| imessage email to be able to chat with people. Frequently things
| get messed up because iOS will always default to imessage over
| sms, so if your primary way to talk is via sms, but you do have
| an imessage and the person has both in your contact card you
| don't actually get anything on your phone. I can't really see how
| it isn't anticompetitive.
| hangonhn wrote:
| As an iPhone user, I find it super annoying too. I love my
| iPhone and Apple products in general but it's not fair to
| expect all my friends to be the same. One of my friends has an
| iPhone but turned off iMessage out of an abundance of caution.
| As a consumer, I would really like it if non-iMessage user can
| get the same experience as all the iMessage users. We know
| there is a way. The standard wasn't great when it was new but
| it has matured a lot. I would really like it if Apple supported
| it. Its behavior seems needlessly antagonistic.
| pmarreck wrote:
| > One of my friends has an iPhone but turned off iMessage out
| of an abundance of caution
|
| In my experience, iMessages have far greater delivery
| reliability than SMS text messages.
|
| I've actually gotten into inadvertent fights with people over
| undelivered SMS text messages.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The issue isn't that Apple should be using SMS in
| particular -- SMS sucks. But they should either use _some_
| standardized protocol, or publish a protocol standard for
| iMessage.
|
| Someone willing to do the work should be capable of
| producing an interoperable implementation.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| You'll get your wish later this year with iOS support for
| RCS.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Not exactly.
|
| It's a step in the right direction but it's the same
| problem as iMessage supporting SMS _in addition to_ its
| own protocol. If the proprietary protocol supports
| something the open protocol doesn 't, or that Apple
| doesn't implement for the open protocol, a competing
| implementation can't do it. And if it doesn't do that
| then why does the proprietary protocol exist?
|
| If you're going to make your own protocol, publish a
| spec.
| naravara wrote:
| The touchy part is the end-to-end encryption. The whole
| point is that Apple is the trusted party there. As an
| iMessage user I don't want my messages passing through
| who knows which other parties' servers when I send
| messages to others.
|
| The point of the blue bubble is to ensure the encryption
| is there.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _I 've actually gotten into inadvertent fights with
| people over undelivered SMS text messages._
|
| Oh, man.
|
| Thankfully I haven't had an undelivered text in over a
| decade.
|
| But back in the early-to-mid 2000s, it was maybe a 5%
| failure rate in the country I was living in then? With no
| indication.
|
| And yes it really did cause arguments with romantic
| partners. There were times I had to pull out my phone and
| prove I'd asked/invited/told them whatever. But it's not
| like that ever really fixes the situation either.
|
| But if you asked anyone to confirm they'd gotten your
| message you seemed paranoid or needy.
|
| You just couldn't win. So much friction.
| jorvi wrote:
| > Its behavior seems needlessly antagonistic.
|
| It is just standard fare across the modern bigtech world.
|
| Prior to the iPhone / iOS, Apple would have happily built in
| support for something like Google Cast, because they operated
| from the idea that their products should be the most useful
| for their customer.
|
| These days it's all about forcing people into your ecosystem
| for increased lock-in. Thus, no baked in support for Cast
| (except in the Apple Music app on Android). As far as Apple
| is concerned, if you are visiting a friend and want to play
| some music on his Chromecast, the solution is to buy your
| friend an Apple TV for AirPlay.
| pmarreck wrote:
| > Prior to the iPhone / iOS, Apple would have happily built
| in support for something like Google Cast
|
| I really don't think you can assume this. For example, a
| long time ago in computer years, Apple rolled out "Yellow
| Box for Windows" which was a way to get NeXTStep apps
| running on Windows http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/a
| pple/os_pictures/ybn... as part of Rhapsody Developer
| Release 2 (this was a prerelease OS X)... and then promptly
| ditched it.
|
| Being able to develop once and then deploy to both OS X and
| Windows sounds great to developers, but think about this:
| If you had access to Mac apps from a Windows machine, then
| why would you buy a Mac, when Apple is competing on quality
| and not price? It'd be a win for app developers but a big
| "lose" for Apple.
|
| So why would Apple have ever built a way to cast to Google
| Cast if they already had an AppleTV product that wasn't
| competing on price with Google Cast? (AppleTV's are great,
| btw)
| bloppe wrote:
| Google can and has done the same thing. They stopped
| supporting YouTube on FireTV because Amazon refused to
| sell ChromeCast devices on their website. All these
| competitors have options to force you to buy their
| hardware just to use their services and vice versa.
| Google could start slowly degrading all their services
| for users without Chromebooks. Microsoft could force you
| to buy a Windows phone just to use ChatGPT.
|
| Clearly, all of this is bad for users across the board.
| Apple is by far the most aggressive when it comes to this
| kind of anticompetitive bundling. You can't just say "of
| course they want to be anticompetitive, that's just
| business!". You're supposed to not let them pull this
| shit.
| jorvi wrote:
| > So why would Apple have ever built a way to cast to
| Google Cast if they already had an AppleTV product that
| wasn't competing on price with Google Cast? (AppleTV's
| are great, btw)
|
| Because it makes iPhone and Mac users their (digital)
| life better?
|
| Let me give you a different example: you visit a hotel.
| They have Cast-enabled TV's, but those do not support
| AirPlay. Anyone with an iPhone or Mac is SoL. It
| literally goes against Apple's old "It Just Works" adage,
| when they probably would have looked at Cast as just
| another protocol to support. The only reason to do that
| is if you think the net decrease in usability will
| increase the company's profitability via lock-in.
|
| To be clear, it is not just Apple doing this. A different
| vector is a product like YouTube: often when I'm
| scrolling the comments after a video ends, an ad will
| play that extends down vertically, making me tap it. If I
| swipe it away, the entire screen shifts again, but now
| there is an ad strip at the bottom, that I accidentally
| tap _again_ , taking me out of the app. This is obviously
| horrid UX, but Google doesn't care because the only thing
| Google wants from you is eyes on ads. They don't have to
| deliver a good product (users first), they just have to
| make the product barely not-shitty-enough that you won't
| leave.
|
| A great counter-example is 1Password: they support
| numerous ways to export their own or import other
| services their vaults. If you have a running subscription
| with a competitor, they will credit you the remainder of
| your bill if you switch. If you asks customer support for
| help if you are switching to, say, Bitwarden, they'll
| help you. They believe in their product and that you'll
| either come back or stick with them because it is the
| best on the market. Which frankly, for now, it is. Due to
| user-first perspective :)
| soperj wrote:
| > Because it makes iPhone and Mac users their (digital)
| life better?
|
| They have never cared about this.
| jorvi wrote:
| You should really watch a bunch of the old Jobs' videos.
|
| A prime example is price. Jobs' was asked why they didn't
| make a competing MacBook at the $600 Windows laptop price
| point (I think this was the mid 2000s?). He said that it
| might have sold really well but that they would have to
| severely degrade the user experience to hit that price
| point, and he refused to do that because he wanted to
| make great devices.
|
| Back in those days you could plug any non-exotic device
| into a Mac, and it would mostly just work instantly,
| which was paradise compared to XP and 7's driver and .dll
| hell. These days, I'd expect Apple to do stuff like patch
| the AirPods Max firmware to break the Android apps that
| enable all the cool non-basic features.
| davisr wrote:
| Free software (libre -- free as in freedom) is the antidote
| to this entire mess. We should always choose free software
| whenever we can, so that we cannot get used by agents of
| corporate media in their hunt for more loot.
|
| https://fsf.org
|
| https://gnu.org
| adamomada wrote:
| Google chrome cast is a really bad example of something
| they could add because it is s locked down proprietary
| technology that you need to have permission from Google to
| use now and at all times in the future.
|
| The open cast protocol (miracast?) was lacking in some ways
| or other and therefore they chose to make something that
| did what they wanted and also could guarantee it would
| still be working down the road (AirPlay)
|
| What they should have done is open up AirPlay and perhaps
| turn it into the next standard that everyone expects to be
| able to use.
| jorvi wrote:
| > Google chrome cast is a really bad example of something
| they could add because it is s locked down proprietary
| technology that you need to have permission from Google
| to use now and at all times in the future.
|
| They have added it though, in Apple Music on Android, so
| they clearly already have both a license and a developed
| Cast "app" that gets loaded onto the Chromecast.
|
| > The open cast protocol (miracast?)
|
| It was DIAL. Why it died is anyone's guess. Perhaps
| Google wanted more control, and Netflix et al didn't feel
| like carrying the development burden.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I know it seems absurd, but as an android user I really do
| get cut out of group message convos due to not being on
| imessage._
|
| I'm a U.S. iPhone user on many "green bubble" (standards-based)
| group chats, as are my wife and kids. I don't think we're
| outliers in this respect. If you're getting pushback on this,
| consider that this may say more about your social circle.
| nvy wrote:
| >If you're getting pushback on this, consider that this may
| say more about your social circle.
|
| Maybe, just maybe, technology should serve the user by
| enabling people to socialize with whom they wish, rather than
| the opposite.
| pmarreck wrote:
| The problem is that someone always has to be in charge. If
| no one is in charge, usually nothing good happens.
|
| So for example, we have Ecosystem A and Ecosystem B, each
| led by a company. Their users (note: NOT those companies)
| want an enhanced messaging standard between them. Who
| should be in charge of it? One of those two, or someone
| else? WHY would either company be incentivized to do so,
| since it hypothetically facilitates losing users to the
| other ecosystem? WHY would a third party come up with the
| best possible standard between these two (as well as
| maintaining it!) that they wouldn't then be compensated
| for?
|
| So when you say "technology should serve the user", _who_
| or _what_ "should" do this, and _why_ "should" they do it?
| For free? You have to find or build the right incentives if
| you want something to _be_.
|
| This is the same reason we are still grappling with a
| single medical records standard/exchange format. No one
| wants anyone else to be in charge of it, and yet someone
| must be, otherwise you have dilution of responsibility and
| perverse incentives.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > WHY would a third party come up with the best possible
| standard between these two (as well as maintaining it!)
| that they wouldn't then be compensated for?
|
| This is the easiest one to solve, because it's not that
| expensive to make a decent messaging standard (Open
| Whisper Systems was _very_ small, for example; solitary
| individuals have done it in other cases). It 's not a
| matter of getting someone to do the work.
|
| It's that messaging systems have a network effect, so
| when one comes as the default on a device with a billion
| users, it has a big network regardless of whether or not
| a competing protocol might be just as good. And then they
| want to lock competitors out of that network effect,
| which is an antitrust issue, and so here we are.
| noiseinvacuum wrote:
| In this case, the simple solution is for Apple is to have
| an Android app. Which, as per the email revealed in court
| cases, they have had and haven't launched since 2013.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| I'm a U.S. iPhone user, and I have approximately 0 confidence
| in MMS message delivery. They're _extremely_ unreliable in my
| experience. I 'll suggest going to Signal or something
| similar if I need a group chat that includes non-iPhone
| folks.
| jcomis wrote:
| Lol, this response always happens in the discussion of
| Android and imessage. It's great that it works for you, but I
| don't think this is the case for most given the level of
| discussion on this topic across the web here, reddit, etc. I
| totally agree standard messages work fine. But nothing is
| really standard anymore. Videos for example are the typical
| culprit in degrading the experience: If I'm in a group chat
| and someone sends a video it gets reduced to such low quality
| you often can't even tell what it is. Same with facetime,
| large amounts of photos, the list goes on. Recently stuff
| like message reactions were fixed, but still cause hiccups.
| godelski wrote:
| > Videos for example are the typical culprit in degrading
| the experience
|
| My dad does this to me all the time. For those that don't
| know, the videos we receive are 320x240p. Talk about
| potato... No matter how many times I tell him, he still
| does it. It's quite deliberate from Apple. For example, I
| have a video that I received which is 0.1MP (262kb) but an
| image I received that is 1536x2048 or 3.1MP (548kb). Why
| are my images double the size of the videos? I find it hard
| to buy an argument about bandwidth when doubling the video
| size would make it substantially more visible (though still
| quite annoying). I can't think of how this is anything but
| deliberate. Even if it isn't, clearly it's going to be
| taken that way.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| It's shi*y human behavior, but it shouldn't be encouraged by
| the technology.
| shortformblog wrote:
| > If you're getting pushback on this, consider that this may
| say more about your social circle.
|
| It can't be the multi-trillion-dollar company that's
| terrible, it must always be the people in your life.
| error9348 wrote:
| This may be ignorant, but why does green/blue bubble matter
| for US folks? Almost all cell providers have free SMS/MMS.
| Would people even notice it if the color was always blue?
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Green/MMS messages end up having much lower quality images
| and videos than iMessages. Send the video to another iPhone
| user and they see it in HD. Send it via MMS and someone
| gets a blurry postage stamp video.
| izzydata wrote:
| But from an Android phones perspective it is the iPhone
| users that have low quality images and compatibility.
| Whenever someone sends me an image or video from an
| iPhone it seems like their phone must be terrible.
|
| These systems could work together if Apple wanted them
| to. Google / Android isn't the part that is preventing
| interoperability. So ultimately it really is an iPhone
| being bad problem. They've marketed the problem well to
| make it seem like it is the other way around in order to
| make iPhones more desirable.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| because it doesn't allow nearly as large images/videos/etc
| to be sent. They either get dropped or reduced in size by
| various means. If you stick to text I've had no problems,
| if you don't you're on your own if your doing Android
| <-->iPhone . most of my friends use signal or whatsapp so
| it's not a big deal for me, but others have issues.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Come on. It's such a known problem in the US that even people
| from other continents know about it.
|
| It is nice that it works for you, but do not play stupid
| here. You know it's huge.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Their message app is kinda weird in that it seems to be
| impossible to see which number a messages has been sent from. I
| found myself messaging a person and asking them what their
| current personal phone number is because it wasn't clear from
| the app.
| pmarreck wrote:
| This is because iMessage (somewhat notoriously) allows not
| just multiple single identifiers (such as a phone number or
| email address) but multiple identifiers AT ONCE (such as BOTH
| a phone number AND an email address)... And all of these are
| treated _differently!_
|
| iMessages from the same person will end up in 3 different
| conversations based on whether they specified (for that
| conversation) only their cell number as the recipient
| identifier, only their email address as the recipient
| identifier, OR BOTH! Which is of course madness. Which is why
| I tell everyone within earshot to ONLY check off the cell
| number identifier (even on their non-cell devices) and
| uncheck ALL other identifiers, for sanity. (This is under
| iCloud settings somewhere.)
|
| But that explains this. Why is it like this? Well, once upon
| a time there was the iPod Touch, which had iMessage but
| didn't have a cell connection or cell radio or cell number
| (think: kid with an iPod Touch who never had a cell number).
| Also, Macs have iMessage and don't have those either.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > it seems to be impossible to see which number a messages
| has been sent from
|
| If you tap on the contact at the top of a conversation, then
| on "info", there'll be a "RECENT" tag on the source of the
| most recent message.
|
| (Now, admittedly, this won't help much if they're sending
| from an Apple ID rather than their phone number but it might
| work sufficiently for you and your conversations.)
| pmarreck wrote:
| > as an android user I really do get cut out of group message
| convos due to not being on imessage
|
| Well, that's the drawback of having an Android I guess, at
| least in those spaces (I also inhabit one). The evidence of the
| disjoint relationship between a product space that competes on
| price and one that competes on quality. /satirical-elitist-
| shrug-with-smirk
|
| But seriously, didn't Google try at least 10 different ways to
| roll out their own iMessage competitor and SMS eclipser, and
| failed every time? This is not all Apple's fault, here.
|
| > Even my parents have issues and frequently try to send me
| large videos
|
| Yeah, my S.O.'s parents kept trying to send videos from their
| Androids to our iPhones and they come in as tiny thumbails. I
| FINALLY got them onto a Whatsapp group text to exchange videos
| and photos over, although they still miss out on LivePhotos,
| which is a favorite Apple feature of mine.
| Bud wrote:
| It's not anticompetitive because you're misunderstanding what
| Apple Messages fundamentally is.
|
| It's not just a protocol. It's a very expensive service
| platform that Apple runs as a service to its users. Apple is
| simply not obligated to let Android users use that platform and
| derive all its benefits for free. It's not.
|
| This isn't anticompetitive; it's an example of Apple being
| simply better at competing in this particular arena.
|
| The fact that your social circle has certain dynamics doesn't
| change this at all, of course.
| Krasnol wrote:
| You make it sound as if it's something innovative or special.
|
| It is not.
|
| The only reason it's causing problems is that it is an
| intentional tool to drive users as OP into the environment
| through the external pressure from his peer group.
|
| This is a highly anti-social behavior by a company which
| obviously has to do it because it lacks true innovation or
| actually good reasons which would draw customers such as OP
| to their products.
|
| It's nothing to defend or be proud of.
| godelski wrote:
| > but as an android user I really do get cut out of group
| message convos due to not being on imessage.
|
| I'll second this complaint. Though personally I try to use
| Signal with my friends and this led to the strategy of "it's
| like iMessage, but cross platform" for those who aren't
| security conscious. Sure, not exactly, but close enough.
| There's a lot I like about Apple, but the closed walls are a
| major hindrance. I really wish companies would see the value of
| open source or at least open protocols. I mean hasn't our
| entire technological framework essentially been built due to
| source code being available? Certainly we can point to the
| internet, android, any programming language, linux, and many
| other common systems that we use daily (knowingly or
| unknowingly). I mean it's like turning down free work... Why?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I mean it's like turning down free work... Why?"
|
| It is currently also creating lots of pressure for people to
| also buy an IPhone to not be cut out of circles. And once
| they have an IPhone, they can integrate it better with other
| Apple devices and once you are inside the walled garden, you
| will likely stay there, if you can afford it.
|
| I don't see Apple opening up on their own anytime soon.
| diziet wrote:
| https://archive.is/F3LN0
| neonate wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240105204348/https://www.nytim...
| flenserboy wrote:
| This seems to be far more about breaking security barriers than
| helping consumers.
| kevingadd wrote:
| If you need anti-competitive tactics or the freedom to violate
| the law in order to protect your customers I'm not sure you're
| very good at protecting your customers. And even so, why should
| I trust you to use your "i'm violating the law for a good
| reason" blank check responsibly in the future?
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| It will be interesting to see any growth of short activity
| against APPL with this release by NY Times. This does not seem to
| have had a significant hit yet, as the put-call ratio for APPL is
| within its normal range?
|
| https://www.alphaquery.com/stock/AAPL/volatility-option-stat...
|
| https://marketchameleon.com/Overview/AAPL/VolatilitySkew/
| barelysapient wrote:
| With enough litigation and legislation, we can make Apple
| products as amazing as the other competitors in the marketplace.
| stephenr wrote:
| > as amazing as the other competitors in the marketplace
|
| Do you mean worse?
| m463 wrote:
| if you can install whatever app you please without asking
| permission, you would have a better platform.
|
| (I would love to firewall my phone - especially against
| apple)
| CharlesW wrote:
| Yes, government's definitely the answer here. Once the
| government forces Apple to open iMessage, then competitors
| (RCS, Signal, Telegraph, etc.) can all just die in peace,
| making life simpler for everyone.
| ckbishop wrote:
| The fact that they do not have a platform agnostic version of
| iMessage -- even if it requires 2FA from an Apple device like the
| $1200 iPhone that I was forced to buy -- is utter bullshit. I had
| to convert my friends one-by-one over to Telegram because I
| prefer Windows/Linux PCs and I don't really check my phone that
| much.
|
| I'm knee-deep in Apple's ecosystem, because I like all of their
| other products, but I can't use iMessage because I prefer to use
| a PC. This has been a thorn in my side for years.
|
| There can be only one reason that iMessage is available on Apple
| devices exclusively and it's at least antitrust adjacent. For
| this alone, I hope they get fined a gigantic amount of money.
| tiltowait wrote:
| > I had to convert my friends one-by-one over to Telegram
| because I prefer Windows/Linux PCs and I don't really check my
| phone that much.
|
| I'm sorry, but this sounds pretty obnoxious as presented. You
| made your friends adopt a new messaging service because you
| don't want to check your phone?
| dqv wrote:
| On one hand it's "obnoxious" to ask people to switch to
| another messaging app, on the other hand, the solution if you
| want people to not use iMessage is to "simply" use a
| different messaging app. But if it's obnoxious, it doesn't
| really seem that simple.
| iamthirsty wrote:
| I don't see Apple ever capitulating to opening iMessage unless
| absolutely forced, which will take a while even if it succeeds.
|
| Almost everyone I know (less than 30 and outside of tech, in the
| south Florida area to be specific) uses an iPhone, specifically
| for iMessage. If you don't have an iPhone, people _will_ avoid
| talking to you over text. Your social standing will also take a
| hit.
|
| While I personally think it would be cool, since it would
| basically open the door to buying an Android phone Apple is not
| going to let it happen voluntarily.
| kderbyma wrote:
| and til that people are living sad realities....won't talk to
| someone because of android....wow....you obviously don't know
| intelligent people haha
| windowsrookie wrote:
| Android is not the reason they won't message you, The lack of
| iMessage is. Nobody I know cares what kind of phone you have.
| But they do care if you have iMessage or not.
|
| Lack of iMessage essentially breaks group chats. So if you
| don't have iMessage, and everyone else does, you will
| intentionally not be added to the chat.
|
| Lack of iMessage also means sending videos to you is going to
| take additional steps compared to other iMessage users. So
| they likely just won't send you the video.
|
| Over time, the additional steps required to include a non-
| iMessage user, means you will receive less messages from your
| friends.
|
| I don't like the situation, but that's how it is. If the
| majority of your friends/contacts use iMessage but you don't,
| then you will be excluded from chats. Not because you use
| Android, but because it is just more difficult to include you
| without iMessage.
| gwright wrote:
| > Your social standing will also take a hit.
|
| I can wrap my head around the usability and interoperability
| arguments but this idea that "social standing" is contingent on
| iOS vs Android just seems alien to me.
|
| Are there really people that adjust their social circles based
| on what type of phone someone is using?
| matwood wrote:
| Not so much adjust circles, but typically (obviously not
| always) Androids are seen as cheap and iPhones are seen as
| premium. (Young) people doing quick judgements of others use
| blue bubbles as a filter like nice cars and expensive clothes
| and watches.
| phyllistine wrote:
| People will specifically not add android users to group
| texts. If I am making a casual group text, and there is one
| android user, it may just be easier to not add a person than
| turn everyone's text boxes green, reduce image size, etc.
|
| Not social standing per se, but a 0.01% chance of being
| excluded isn't going to feel good.
| caddemon wrote:
| I'm sure there are some obnoxious people out there, but also
| I think there is a bit of a social hit resulting directly
| from the poor functionality. People are often lazy and/or not
| super tech literate, so for example when someone wants to
| send a couple pics from an event they'll default to iPhone-
| only group chat to avoid destroying the quality of the image,
| rather than using a different sharing mechanism. This is
| sometimes accompanied by a misunderstanding that Android
| phones are at fault for the downsampling, when actually it is
| the iPhone causing the issue and getting away with it due to
| majority rule.
|
| Additionally, when you first make the switch (at least circa
| 5 years ago), any iPhone-only group chats you were already in
| will need to be restarted (with some care taken by each
| iPhone user involved), otherwise you will not receive those
| messages because iOS will continue to treat it as an iMessage
| on others' end. It is very easy to miss out on communications
| this way, and from there it's not all that hard to fall out
| of touch with people who weren't closer friends to begin
| with. Either you need to be proactive or your larger social
| circle needs to be thoughtful and/or really like you.
|
| So with all these issues, there is a bit of extra work
| involved for everyone when Android phones are involved. Some
| circles are so iPhone-heavy already it would be a little
| awkward to be that guy making the whole chat green. Couple it
| with a false perception that Android coincides with lower
| socioeconomic status (obviously not true for certain devices
| anyway) and it's easy to see shallow people being petty about
| them. Plus less tech literate circles just accidentally
| excluding people and you get a real fear of social hurdles.
| dqv wrote:
| > Are there really people that adjust their social circles
| based on what type of phone someone is using?
|
| Your wording suggests it's an active decision where they
| immediately cut someone out because the communication turns
| green. And for some, it is an active decision. It's a common
| "joke" to poke fun at people for making the bubbles green
| too. But the more insidious way it arises is like how you
| might see patches of grass dying off due to shade and
| eventually turning to dirt. Someone sends a meme or a video
| or a picture to the MMS friendgroup, no one can see it as it
| was originally intended, so the iPhone users create a
| "sidechannel" (way easier than moving to an entirely
| different app) iMessage group where they share the memes and
| videos. Eventually the culture between the MMS friendgroup
| and the sidechannel friendgroup diverge until they no longer
| associate. The blue grass grows while the green grass turns
| into a patch of dirt.
| caddemon wrote:
| They don't need to open iMessage IMO, they just need to use
| better practices for text messaging between iPhone/Android.
| Like images are downsampled to hell if a single Android user is
| in an iPhone group chat -- but any time I've texted groups
| containing only various Android phones, images are decent
| quality (even if the members are using different text messaging
| platforms, so not like this is a Google Messages or Samsung
| thing).
|
| Idc about green bubbles or cloud access/being integrated with
| the Apple ecosystem, but the core functionality should be
| decent. They should not be using outdated standards for non-
| Apple messages, which sure seems like a ploy to keep people
| away from Android.
| matwood wrote:
| Without legislation dictating interop of all messaging
| platforms, I don't see how iMessage would ever be opened up. I
| just don't see an antitrust case against iMessage.
| nova22033 wrote:
| _Specifically, investigators have examined how the Apple Watch
| works better with the iPhone than with other brands_
|
| Apple is under no obligation to make sure that the Apple watch
| works well with an android phone. Unless they have specific
| evidence that Apple is doing something to explicitly block non-
| iOS devices, this is weak.
| matwood wrote:
| Yeah, if that's really what they are looking at, then it's a
| very weak case. Next up, why won't my AirPod case charge my
| Google Buds?
| neogodless wrote:
| An Apple Watch does not pair with anything but an iPhone. You
| cannot call the product a "smart watch." All you can all it is
| an iPhone accessory.
|
| Let's check in with Apple's marketing department[0]
|
| > Apple Watch can do what your other devices can't because it's
| on your wrist. When you wear it, you get a fitness partner that
| measures all the ways you move, meaningful health insights,
| innovative safety features, and a connection to the people you
| care about most.
|
| So how many of those things work _without_ a paired iPhone?
|
| Even Family Setup (which requires at least one family member to
| own an iPhone) doesn't give the watch full functionality.
|
| > Not all features will be available if the Apple Watch is set
| up through Family Setup
|
| From a third party[1]
|
| > In short, anyone can wear an Apple Watch, including Android
| phone users. However, the reality is that anyone looking to
| have a proper smartwatch experience should stay within their
| own OS lanes. Android users should use Wear OS or third-party
| platform watches, iPhone users should use Apple Watches, and
| that's what it all really boils down to.
|
| [0] https://www.apple.com/watch/why-apple-watch/
|
| [1] https://screenrant.com/apple-watch-android-phone-pairing-
| com...
| m463 wrote:
| They seem to be giving preferential treatment to the apple
| watch:
|
| _" Users of Garmin devices have complained in Apple's support
| forums about being unable to use their watches to reply to
| certain text messages from their iPhones or tweak the
| notifications they receive from the iPhone that they have
| connected to their watch."_
| goatlover wrote:
| Agreed, why should Apple watches have to work with android
| phones? Apple users understand it's an ecosystem they're buying
| into. If you don't like it, then don't purchase Apple products.
| MichaelTheGeek wrote:
| How will this help.
| chewmieser wrote:
| Gift link:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/technology/antitrust-appl...
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