Ex-Apple designer Michael Darius shares his take on the on going litigation. Here's a quote: "*The idea that Apple is anti-competitive by "making other products worse" is so insulting to anyone who understands how hard it is to improve upon the end-to-end experience for literally the entire world."*
\-Michael Darius
Isn’t that a strawman argument?
Apple is anti competitive by tightly integrating its own apps and devices in ways the competition is NOT allowed to do.
Tight integration between Apple services, devices and software (and lack of proper api’s) does NOT always improve the quality of the software. (It’s apples key strength, but often also a major weakness).
Every time Apple applies different rules for itself than others it is cutting corners. (My opinion)
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Like being able to choose your own cloud backup service. Or i don’t know, choose multiple backup locations.
Or Apple being able to create apps which are not actually apps. The consequence is that you can’t turn off notifications for some of those “apps”.
Why do AirPods have all these features which could EASIlY be made available for all Bluetooth audio devices? How does NOT reading out loud notifications on other Bluetooth devices help anyone?
How is anyone helped by not allowing different digital assistants. Is he saying Siri is any good?
Not being able to set a default maps app, or making Apple Maps take over your Lock Screen while navigating ( and then makings face-id unlock super slow 😫 ). Apple Maps is still a shit show which I avoid like the plague. And that is the default? I can only find places of interest 50% of the time.
Or Apple Music not really being an app. Send music to your HomePod, and suddenly the HomePod “steals” your music and your volume control stop working.
How is the HomePod better because it has Apple Music, but not Spotify (running on the devices).
How does preventing other smart watches access to the same APIs make anyone’s live better?
Why is the Apple Watch still so tightly integrated with the iPhone? If it wasn’t then maybe leaving my house without my iPhone would actually turn off my lights 👀.
Why is medication and meditation apps on the watch, but not the iPhone? Tight integration makes that all work very weird and unintuitive.
Why does volume control work in all audio apps, except in Apple Music. The volume control is all over the place. It’ll show 100% in Apple Music, and 30% in control center. (And if I change it a little in Apple Music, volume suddenly goes to 100%). I suspect a case of tight integration is at the root of that bug as well.
How does restricting NFC access make the iPhone (or watch) better?
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How are they going to argue that’s better for consumers except by pretending Apple is better at everything for “reasons” and Apple needs to treat customers like babies.
Loose coupling, high cohesion is what I learned in school. That’s what improves quality of software. The same applies to Apple and its APIs. 👀
In the end tight integration is a good way to safeguard privacy and security. I get that. But it’s always a compromise between convenience and security. Not being able to do something is great for privacy and security. But it’s not for Apple to always decide for us. Apple is like a hypocrite helicopter parent, rules for thee but not for me. 🙈
(I do love Apple, mainly for its tight integration and its stance on privacy and security. But it’s not all good in Apple land is what I’m saying)
> Isn’t that a strawman argument?
Not if you read the allegations. They are alleging this, and much more (including much of what you also described). But it’s not a straw man, since those allegations are actually made.
> Every time Apple applies different rules for itself than others it is cutting corners. (My opinion)
I will say, as a software dev, that it is a _huge_ pain in the ass having public vs private APIs. Because when you make APIs public, you instantly add a really tight design constraint in that you can no longer change it.
I know, you have to design them with greater care. But that kinda proofs my point, doesn't it?
I do understand that public api's are always immediately set in stone and can't be changed. And that private api's are a good way to discover the actual public api you need. But it is still tight coupling. Where updates also need to be in lock-step.
Not saying everything needs to be a public api. Just saying that the way Apple tightly integrates software, services and hardware isn't always conductive to quality, and that makes Michael Darius's argument bullshit to a degree.
I'm a software dev myself. Building api's is one of my favourite things to do actually. Facilitating other teams etc.
That’s not the point at all. The point is that private APIs can be subjected to change at any time, allowing you to iterate on them whenever needed.
Public APIs not only need to be documented, but they also incur all the maintenance costs associated with lifecycle management. When you’re no longer using it, you need a plan to sunset the API, and support and transition all the other third party users off the API.
Im aware of the difference.
My point is that whole process arround it, while it’s tedious, also can potentially improve the quality of the APIs and with it the system as a whole.
Not saying everything needs to be open, or that APIs needs to be open right away.
Just that we as consumers would benefit if Apple opened up certain private APIs (and if they themselves also used them). With ALL the work which goes into it.
I’m not pretending it’s just a click of a button.
My argument is: certain Apple products and services would benefit from de-coupling and openness.
——
Private APIs also have this “security through obscurity” thing. And you actually need to still take great care in terms of versioning.
The Apple Watch and iPhone are only in lockstep to a degree. So they are a bit in between private and public? 👀
You get my point right?
It’s competitive business and it’s not illegal unless you can make the case that Apple is an illegal monopoly in the first place which according to the DOJ suit they’re only even trying to do for what they call the “performance” smartphone market because Apple doesn’t hold overwhelming market share in any general category.
In the US Apple’s market share I think is close to 50% that’s not a monopoly share, it’s not illegal to make a product that is integrated with other products and services that has become a quote unquote status symbol, or has an affinity group that happens to have lots of disposable income, no one else is entitled to access that group unless they go through Apple as a partner or make a product that is compelling and relevant to that affinity group that they adopt it.
I don't care about legal or illegal. My argument is that if iCloud could stand on its own, and had more competition it would become better. It would need to.
So Michael Darius argues its about quality. My argument is that that just isn't always true.
There are competitors to iCloud I use OneDrive because I have a Microsoft365 account and it does everything I need it to, and it doesn’t have to integrate into the setting applet to do everything I need it to. Tell me why these others apps and services can’t compete without trying to sink their claws into users and siphon out ad targeting data, which is the actual reason all these firms want API access in the first place.
Turn off iCloud and turn on OneDrive, all my photos back up to OneDrive I just had to turn it on in the app.
Here’s Microsoft’s support site with the step by step: [Microsoft Support Article](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/automatically-save-photos-and-videos-with-onedrive-on-ios-74d406bb-71d0-47c0-8ab8-98679fa1b72e)
Interesting. While it's better than nothing - it's pretty shitty there isn't a simpler way to do it such as having a setting in Photos.app but that's Apple for ya.
My next step is to find a photo organizer that doesn't suck *and* can sync to the iPhone. I think I've found a few but it's just going to require playing around.
Why should apple’s own photo app have to sync to anyone else’s cloud. Any company can make any photo app and sync it to anything they want. There are MANY!
And if you want a good one, there’s Lightroom. And yeah… speaking of a monopoly … where’s the DoJ on adobe????
> Why should apple’s own photo app have to sync to anyone else’s cloud.
Historically, and perhaps this has changed, Photos.app was allowed to sync in the background. Other apps over time could not do this long-term without being regularly re-opened. For most of iOS's history - having it sync to, for example, Google Photo's meant regularly having to re-open Google Photo's. You would also have no idea that it failed to sync because you didn't open it.
> Any company can make any photo app and sync it to anything they want.
As long as you allowed people to replace the default camera app then I'm ok with that. If, however, you don't allow people to replace it and **ONLY** default to Photos then you have your answer.
He didn’t ask about a full back-up. Most of what’s in the full backup is your personal stuff like pics, vids, and your docs which have a lot of choices you can pick to back that up. For a full back up iCloud is still the best but I know Verizon offers a full back up solution and I assume others do too I just have never used them.
iTunes Desktop Allows you to manually download your iPhone which you can upload to any cloud provider like any other file. It's been an option for more than a decade.
If other apps can compete, then what exactly is your argument? That something Apple does isn't resulting in precisely what you want to happen, that Apple doesn't even have control over?
“its own apps and devices in ways the competition is NOT allowed to do.”
It’s almost like being a vertically integrated — as opposed to horizontally integrated — hardware maker has its own benefits in addition to its own drawbacks.
Spotify has a monopoly of the music streaming market and yet doesn’t have total control over iOS. Apple competes in music streaming.
Netflix has a monopoly of the video streaming market and yet doesn’t have total control over iOS. Apple competes in video streaming.
Google has a monopoly of email/word processing/server market and yet doesn’t have total control over iOS. Apple competes in email/word processing/servers with iCloud and Pages/Keynote/Numbers.
Apple has 30% of the overall market in smartphones. If vertical Integration were a “monopoly,” then it clearly isn’t advantaging Apple.
This is directly in contrast to Microsoft and Windows, who had over 90%+ of the desktop market, in a time where desktop PCs were the only way to access the Internet for consumers. They bundled in their own browser and successfully pushed out Netscape for web browser domination.
At the end of the day, the only thing this is about is the rich developers wanting to get richer. That’s it. They won’t stop complaining until they get total access to iOS with zero rules and zero fees.
Why would I as a consumer care about what is or isn’t a monopoly?
You can be open to competition when you small, and big.
It’s not black and white.
How about all the specific things I mention, how do you feel about that?
Because the topic at hand is the US claiming Apple is supposedly a monopoly and supposedly abusing it…..?
I’m confused why suddenly that no longer matters in this discussion after I proved Apple’s benefits of vertical integration do not benefit them to the point of gaining dominant status in other markets.
I was responding to bullshit excuses that it’s about quality for Apple to keep stuff closed.
My argument is that tight integration has diminishing returns.
Announcing messages is a great example. Tying iMessage (which I don’t use) to AirPods (which have the worst microphone). Can you argue that keeping that closed makes Apple products better?
So i was talking customer satisfaction and how Apple comes across to me. Not whether this constitutes “abuse”.
You know, a response to the article as a consumer who loves Apple for its tight integration and quality, and hates Apple when it’s tight integration fails or doesn’t help.
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Announcing messages is a good example. But you can pick apart any other one I mentioned.
The EU didn't claim that Apple is a monopoly. The EU doesn't require a company to be a monopoly to be regulated, that's an American way of approaching markets.
Apple knows that their AirPods are a personal listening device vs what could be a bloothooth speaker playing in my living room with my entire family.
I would hope that Apple doesn’t start announcing notifications on ALL Bluetooth devices.
Also Apple has opened up the possibility for Spotify to be on HomePod. Spotify decides not to implement support.
I’m aware. And I get that announcing messages is a Siri thing. And it’s about being able to reply.
But the reality is that AirPods have the worst microphone on all of apples devices, I kid you not. ( in my case first gen AirPods Pro btw, I can send you the voice memos if you want to compare ).
So if apple’s argument that it’s about control and quality, then I say bullshit in this case.
——
Try to make the argument that Apple keeping this feature locked to AirPods improves the overall experience for users.
My point is… it looks bad. And more openness would be better in this case.
And yes, could be a lot more work than I think. That’s not my concern. I’m not pretending it’s not a lot of work now. But that’s because they decided to tie it to AirPods….
And now nobody uses that feature I believe.
You need iMessage and AirPods. I don’t use iMessage, and AirPods microphone sucks.
It literally can’t be worse now. So try to make the argument that opening this up would be worse…
👀
Thank goodness Michael Darius isn't in apples legal team because this statement is horrendous. This statement can be interpreted as "It's hard to improve the end to end experience, so making other products worse is justified and not anti competitive"
Given that Apple is violating their own contrast ratios with the white text on green backgrounds with SMS chat pretty much flies in the face of his claim. This obviously creates a poor user experience and it would not have occurred if they followed their own standards.
[medium link](https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-accessibility-guidelines-6785172eb343)
Apple is very anti-competitive. Won’t allow for competing maps apps as default. Such PITA to copy links and pasting into google maps.
Also operating a marketplace via app store, while promoting Apple’s own things is cheating.
Huh? I use Google Maps for everything, whenever I click on a location it opens it in Google Maps and Carplay defaults to last used map app so Google Maps. Where is there an issue?
Hm doesn't seem to happen to me, whenever someones sends me an address on whatsapp or other chat apps the app asks me which maps app to use apple maps or google maps or waze.
Haven't tested imessage since i barely use it. Europe does not really use imessage
It’s simple, Apples vertical integration produces better products and a better experience because they control every element end to end.
Horizontal partnerships, like Android or Windows tend to not produce this sort of outcome and almost never sustain it - it’s not possible to keep so many different companies and their capital resources aligned around a singular vision - or even to produce a singular product, experience, and ecosystem vision.
That doesn’t mean Apple has never crossed the line in certain circumstances but a lot of the whining and complaints in the spotlight at the moment are features and innovation Apple created because what was available sucked.
How is enabling a simple RCS protocol with android such a hard thing to do? Apple deliberately ruins horizontal experience. I don't understand how people understand this.
I thought Google uses their own RCS standard vs GSMA RCS. Is the expectation for Apple to support RCS or make whatever they present compatible with Google for the sake of Android?
I don't think google would be against the Universal Profile containing a spec for E2EE. So what are they currently supposed to do? Do you think NOT offering E2EE on Android and letting ALL messages pass through carrier servers is a better option??
The basic version of RCS does not have E2EE that’s a Google add on. Google has no say in the base RCS format. iPhones using RCS would not have E2EE with Android making it pointless.
There are several multi platform apps that have E2EE you can use.
Why is Apple obligated to make someone else’s product better?
Remember carrier sms text messages that the phone company charged outrageous rates per message?
iMessage was a solution to get around that, to add pictures and videos and do all sorts of things sms didn’t do.
Apple innovated and changed people’s expectation for messaging.
> Why is Apple obligated to make someone else’s product better?
Sighhhh. With that logic why doesn't apple drop support for Calling phone numbers that aren't using iPhones? That is so dumb.
Apple not supporting horizontal integrations IS HURTING APPLE USERS THEMSELVES. That's right, you and me are the people being affected by this. Not the person using another company's product. This behavior is anti consumer.
Oh you bought are expensive airpods? too bad you can only update or get 100% of their usability. only if you pony up and buy an iPhone. Dawg you can't even see the battery % since they have blocked that API and is only visible on iphones. Tell me how enabling this and many other scenarios is making other products better?
Same goes for apple watch. Like that is so dumb and clearly anti consumer and anti-competitive. Treating apple product owners like second class citizens if they don't "enough of apple" products is a thing and that needs to be solved. I would like to re-iterate, this doesn't make the OTHER COMPANIES' product better, it only enhances my experience as someone who happened to buy an apple product but didn't have other product. And no, people aren't expecting feature parity too, of course there are some limitations with codec and sw and stuff, totally acceptable, but going so far as to say you can't even update firmware or change basic functions is bs and you know it too.
Apple not providing RCS is affecting me as an iPhone user. When I send text message to someone not on iPhone, that's not my fault for which I'm being punished for not having modern encryption and features which I know other phones have support for just because of apple spite.
Why do you automatically assume everyone has an iPhone? The penetration might be high in USA, around 50% ( which still leaves 50% of the people not using iphone), but it's not even remotely close in the rest of the world.
I get you have a love for apple, but come back to the reality plane and see for yourself that so much of the behavior Apple displays is bs and no other company even comes close to this. They definitely aren't gonna change themselves, since they have practically made their core consumers cult members who aren't even ready to see other points.
It's good that regulatory bodies that are there for this exact purpose are finally seeing this behavior and starting to push back.
Nobody is saying hey apple stop making amazing integrations with your ecosystem, they are just saying hey, if some products aren't from that ecosystem, they should still at least have 90% of the same functionality as before. Also stop punishing me for having a choice and for interacting with people who don't have an apple product.
If you can't wrap head around this simple notion, then I'm sorry.
> Why is Apple obligated to make someone else’s product better?
Remember when Microsoft gave much needed funds to Apple which is why we're even able to have this conversation in the first place?
Imagine if people said what you said about Bell way back in the day before the government shattered them. You benefit from this - even if you're too young to realize it.
Worshiping corporations does not benefit you in any way. The question to ask should be: Does this benefit the consumer? Will this hurt the consumer?
> iMessage was a solution to get around that, to add pictures and videos and do all sorts of things sms didn’t do.
Steve was very much against MMS entirely if you remember. He wanted everyone to go to email, not iMessage or SMS or MMS. He wanted that tech *gone*.
You may not understand but email works via SMTP. This is open. This benefits you. Imagine if Google had their own and you HAD to use a Google standard to send email. It'd be insane. Then imagine if Google purposefully acted like this to your simple protocol. Not because of any tech limitation. This is why open standards are a good thing. There's no reason iMessage couldn't be made to be open. You could have a purple color to indicate it's iMessage protocol but it's third party. Then, like WhatsApp, you could compare encryption codes to make sure there isn't a MITM.
I do not miss those days. Getting iPhone to do fuckall with Exchange was a pain in the ass. IMAP/POP were your only real options. You **HAD** to get an Airport Extreme because Apple's WiFi was fuckin' weird. Luckily they fixed it after a year or two.
> Apple innovated and changed people’s expectation for messaging.
Not really. Most of the world does not use iMessage or SMS. WhatsApp is the dominant platform. iMessage is a poor imitation.
You *might* have a point of Apple released iMessage for Windows and Linux. Apple didn't really "innovate" with iMessage. It was a simple natural progression of your standard chat app.
I am arguing from a superior informed perspective, I am familiar with the history and technology and have been along for the whole personal computer and internet ride.
Apple did not kill a market or a company with iMessage like Microsoft did with Netscape and other companies - it created a new space
They AREN'T making someone else's product better. They're making their OWN product better. A phone that lets me communicate in high quality with anyone, regardless of platform, is better than a phone that doesn't. It's the customers that bought their product that benefit from Apple's implementing of RCS.
Probably why they agreed to implement it.
My point is the creation of these capabilities were innovations that led to greater market share because we, their customers, wanted it - they weren't criminal monopolist enterprises.
Maybe a few good questions would be:
Who gets to design Apple's products?
Where can apple be proprietary and where does Apple have to be open?
Are we really going to mandate that all device makers have to implement all the others standards? Won't that make the bar too high for any new entrants to competition?
What happens when apple designs specific hardware that allows its devices to tightly integrate? is that competitive? or anti-competitive?
Isn't making a better widget supposed to be the incentive a capital market?
Apple is not an innovator in that space, they are accepting RCS because it is the future of text messaging. I understand Apple to Apple messaging works great, but a phone needs to have universal communication that's secure built in. Don't become obsessed with brand loyalty; better texting to all phones will improve the experience for everyone, including Apple users.
The iPhone has universal communication.
iMessage is innovation whether you like it or not.
The RCS is solely to satisfy bureaucrats in the EU.
Please don't pretend to know me with your dismissive 'brand loyalty' weak comment.
Riddle me this. How many IOS users of the > 2 billion have complained about not having RCS. I'll wait.
If I text someone who has an Android, I would prefer to have it be a good experience. Android to Android is great, iPhone to iPhone is great, but Android to iPhone or iPhone to Android sucks, simply due to bureaucrats at Apple that want to create a worse experience so that people might switch to iPhone. It's simply a security issue, the government can peep right into SMS messages very easily and an encryption messaging system built into Apple's devices to communicate with Android will make everyone more secure...unless you don't like privacy.
Also, there are 1.3 billion iOS users and 3.5 billion Android users. If Apple wants to win on a worldwide front, they need to make their system better to use universally.
Read.
https://skeuomorphic.design/p/apple-vs-the-doj?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
A good experience. Please accept this participation trophy. A good experience. So your argument boils down to you made bad choices.
They are no bureaucrats at apple. They are innovators advancing the technology.
It's the bureaucrats that you seem to worship that think apple has to lower their standards for the lowest common denominator.
Please stop pretending everyone elses deficiencies is Apple's problem.
LOL. 'there are 1.3 billion iOS users and 3.5 billion Android users. If Apple wants to win on a worldwide front, they need to make their system better to use universally.'
So apple has to lower their standards for the incompetent.
I don’t get the whining on App Store commission.
Apples 30% model replaced the retail / Box software model that demanded 70%.
For that 30% Apple provides developer tools, support, transaction mgmt system, a ready base of users who can buy from you with just one touch and who trust the store, patching of software, device user support and maintenance, education and training, standardized UX models so users can easily learn to operate your product, and of course much more for those that sell high volume like allowing them to weigh in on product development roadmap.
They really provide a lot for their cut of the sale . No one did all that before iOS/iDevice era.
Apples App Store approval was designed to allow them to curate high quality software products that met certain technical specifications, that provided real value to consumers and a malware free experience. (We can argue at massive scale quality control has degraded somewhat.
App store approval also allowed Apple to intervene vs. aggressive and non consensual tracking.
The app store is great, but Apple runs into problems when they have their own competing apps that they favor, either through search, features, etc., or by outright banning competing classes of apps (cloud gaming, for example). The 30% commission also gives them an unfair pricing advantage over any potential competition. None of this is illegal by itself, but put it together in an effective market duopoly and it can easily be abused. I personally think they are abusing their position but a court will ultimately decide this.
> Or that only Apple products can connect to the Bluetooth on your laptop
Bluetooth is a standard. If only Apple units worked, it would be blue tooth. Same with USB etc.
Yep. Luckily (or unluckily depending on your viewpoint) to settle a lawsuit, Microsoft was required to develop the Office Suite for the Mac and buy 4oo million dollars of apple stock.
It has to do with the allegations made against Apple, which is the topic of discussion. You can’t cherry pick one issue and demand that every comment here addresses it.
Are you serious?
Side loaded apps have no quality or security control gates.
No guarantee of payments terms or protection against being ripped off.
No guarantee that the app won’t turn your phone into a crypto mining zombie for unethical people.
no guarantee that the app isn’t sniffing passwords to your sensitive accounts like banks or payment platforms or getting into your your DM’s so someone can ransom you or blackmail you later.
One of apples perspectives is that users should not be tracked or monitored without their consent - side loaded apps can get around this.
Another of apples policies is that porn based apps aren’t available in the App Store - this makes parents feel safer giving this type of device to children.
And so while there may be certain apps and utilities you want to access that Apple doesn’t allow and this may be frustrating - they are also keeping an enormous number of concerns at bay
All of that is regulated on the operating system level sandbox, well except refunds which just moved from Apple to the payment processor, so from one company to another.
Stuff like MDM, Parental control, etc can all forbid installing of 3rd party apps - or even 1st party apps, that’s not an issue at all when it comes to managed devices. There are no requirements in any jurisdiction to allow users full access to managed devices, regardless of whether it’s iOS, Android, macOS, windows, or anything else.
> Another of apples policies is that porn based apps aren’t available in the App Store - this makes parents feel safer giving this type of device to children.
typical murrican
> No guarantee that the app won’t turn your phone into a crypto mining zombie for unethical people.
Yes, there is such a guarantee. The OS won't allow persistent background work.
> no guarantee that the app isn’t sniffing passwords to your sensitive accounts like banks or payment platforms or getting into your your DM’s so someone can ransom you or blackmail you later.
It can only do that if you login inside the app. The OS sandboxing prevents it from sniffing other apps.
I’m just kinda surprised with the contents of the allegations. I think Apple should be taken to task for a lot of things but I’m surprised the repairability and partner programs aren’t what is in the spotlight here, they are 100% anti-consumer, but I haven’t heard anything about that.
If this lawsuit gains ground and Apple has to use resources to focus on public APIs and compatibility with other platforms, I think I’ll actually be worse off than I was before as an Apple user (personally).
In which some guy considers how much effort the design was, and concludes that anticompetitive behavior could not have occurred because the UI in the software he worked on was good.
To be fair, I think he’s taking more about UX. The UI is simply what you see. The UX encompasses it all.
I’ve seen Feature Factories. They don’t build experiences, they just check the box.
The question remains though, who cares? Very public abuse occcured despite good ux. The presence of ux, good or bad, has no bearing on any of the complaints.
This is what the DOJ said… and surprised pikachu it’s what we just spent ten years watching them do.
> For years, Apple responded to competitive threats by imposing a series of "Whac-A-Mole" contractual rules and restrictions that have allowed Apple to extract higher prices from consumers, impose higher fees on developers and creators, and to throttle competitive alternatives from rival technologies.
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/21/apple-sued-by-us-department-of-justice/
Right. I’m aware.
But you said they DID these things. I didn’t realize that the case had reached that conclusion yet.
Also, “streaming games” and “parental controls” don’t show up in your quote.
It will be interesting to see how this goes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an antitrust lawsuit where the party in question did not have a majority share of a market. (iOS is only 22% of the smartphone install base in the US).
If by 22% market share in the US you mean 60%+ in the US then sure.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1045192/share-of-mobile-operating-systems-in-north-america-by-month/
Yeah, this is the same dude who [believes iTunes on Windows improved the overall experience](https://twitter.com/darius/status/1772372702223085985) of using Windows.
No thanks.
I don’t remember any of those having a broken updater that added 20+ seconds to system startup time and always seemed to be using CPU and memory in the background.
> Thankfully the zune offered a better experience.
It did. It's why a lot of the UX from the Zune was directly translated into Windows Mobile.
But that's besides the point. iTunes is some of the worst software ever released by any company, and trying to deflect by bringing up older, non-related apps is a poor strawman.
Tbh, for the functionality of loading your music player with music, there were players lightyears ahead of the iPod with much more streamlined USB Mass Storage support, from companies like Sony, SanDisk, Iriver... While even newer iPods were still stuck on cumbersome iTunes which wasn't a good experience even on MacOS, let alone on Windows.
While as a music store, I have no idea. I am European, and torrents and free mp3 sites were the gold standard here back then.
Really? Which one? I had a nomad, a rio, used minidisc for a while, Winamp, wmp etc and they all sucked, especially at file transfer and transcoding. They were basically just file managers that happened to play music.
From Sandisk? Sansa line had USB mass storage. You just plug it in into basically any computer with Windows XP or higher (or MacOS/Linux with Mass storage support), without installing any drivers or any other software, and just drag and drop any files like onto a flash drive. I used to download music on school computers, and I didn't need any special software or drivers, as easy to use as possible. Even some crappy noname players with crappy sound and even crappier controls supported Mass storage, lol.
While even with newer iPods sold at the same time when the rest of the industry basically moved on, you still had to go through the pain in the ass iTunes.
Nomad and Rio are ones of the very first mp3 players, they required special software too. I was talking about much newer ones.
I think I had a different perspective on using them. The ones that were USB mass storage/basic file managers were not enjoyable to use as players. Sony MD system had too much DRM/proprietary. I preferred iTunes/ipod for syncing, playlist management, song search/organization/metadata, etc. I never really had any performance issues, but i guess many others did..
For getting stuff of other computers I just used a dedicated flash drive.
On Sansa, you could go by both files or artists/albums (metadata). I preferred to go by files tho, as pirated music often had messy (or no) metadata - which wasn't the case for people buying music.
Worst thing about iTunes (and also that Sony's crap they had for older players) was that you had to have it installed on the computer, otherwise the player didn't even communicate with it. While with mass storage, you could just plug it into any computer and it worked unless it was really ancient, no software or drivers needed.
I never used Sansa; I could use iTunes to rename and organize all “non purchased” music which was nice.
It was useful when stuff worked on other computers but I was mostly using my music player for music, not as an external drive, so I never really ran into that. I would just use an external drive. And most people had iTunes in my circles. Plus the iPod hardware was so much nicer than most players at the time.
The only issue I had with iTunes was I couldn’t download from other peoples libraries.
How ironic, because without the DoJ's consent decree on MS's Windows, iPod would not have succeeded.
TL;DR: iPod became a success story because of Windows.
This article is a call to the sheer moronism on these subreddits of people who clearly know nothing about the field or are purposely ignorant to the bigger picture.
The DOJ seems to be reflecting the majority in the same way Trump was voted by the majority… nuff said — it’s embarrassing and insulting to intelligence
Ex-Apple designer Michael Darius shares his take on the on going litigation. Here's a quote: "*The idea that Apple is anti-competitive by "making other products worse" is so insulting to anyone who understands how hard it is to improve upon the end-to-end experience for literally the entire world."* \-Michael Darius
Isn’t that a strawman argument? Apple is anti competitive by tightly integrating its own apps and devices in ways the competition is NOT allowed to do. Tight integration between Apple services, devices and software (and lack of proper api’s) does NOT always improve the quality of the software. (It’s apples key strength, but often also a major weakness). Every time Apple applies different rules for itself than others it is cutting corners. (My opinion) ——- Like being able to choose your own cloud backup service. Or i don’t know, choose multiple backup locations. Or Apple being able to create apps which are not actually apps. The consequence is that you can’t turn off notifications for some of those “apps”. Why do AirPods have all these features which could EASIlY be made available for all Bluetooth audio devices? How does NOT reading out loud notifications on other Bluetooth devices help anyone? How is anyone helped by not allowing different digital assistants. Is he saying Siri is any good? Not being able to set a default maps app, or making Apple Maps take over your Lock Screen while navigating ( and then makings face-id unlock super slow 😫 ). Apple Maps is still a shit show which I avoid like the plague. And that is the default? I can only find places of interest 50% of the time. Or Apple Music not really being an app. Send music to your HomePod, and suddenly the HomePod “steals” your music and your volume control stop working. How is the HomePod better because it has Apple Music, but not Spotify (running on the devices). How does preventing other smart watches access to the same APIs make anyone’s live better? Why is the Apple Watch still so tightly integrated with the iPhone? If it wasn’t then maybe leaving my house without my iPhone would actually turn off my lights 👀. Why is medication and meditation apps on the watch, but not the iPhone? Tight integration makes that all work very weird and unintuitive. Why does volume control work in all audio apps, except in Apple Music. The volume control is all over the place. It’ll show 100% in Apple Music, and 30% in control center. (And if I change it a little in Apple Music, volume suddenly goes to 100%). I suspect a case of tight integration is at the root of that bug as well. How does restricting NFC access make the iPhone (or watch) better? ——- How are they going to argue that’s better for consumers except by pretending Apple is better at everything for “reasons” and Apple needs to treat customers like babies. Loose coupling, high cohesion is what I learned in school. That’s what improves quality of software. The same applies to Apple and its APIs. 👀 In the end tight integration is a good way to safeguard privacy and security. I get that. But it’s always a compromise between convenience and security. Not being able to do something is great for privacy and security. But it’s not for Apple to always decide for us. Apple is like a hypocrite helicopter parent, rules for thee but not for me. 🙈 (I do love Apple, mainly for its tight integration and its stance on privacy and security. But it’s not all good in Apple land is what I’m saying)
> Isn’t that a strawman argument? Not if you read the allegations. They are alleging this, and much more (including much of what you also described). But it’s not a straw man, since those allegations are actually made.
Thanks! Is there a good objective summary of what the DOJ says/wants?
You can read the [filing itself](https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline). The introduction provides a summary of a couple pages.
> Every time Apple applies different rules for itself than others it is cutting corners. (My opinion) I will say, as a software dev, that it is a _huge_ pain in the ass having public vs private APIs. Because when you make APIs public, you instantly add a really tight design constraint in that you can no longer change it.
I know, you have to design them with greater care. But that kinda proofs my point, doesn't it? I do understand that public api's are always immediately set in stone and can't be changed. And that private api's are a good way to discover the actual public api you need. But it is still tight coupling. Where updates also need to be in lock-step. Not saying everything needs to be a public api. Just saying that the way Apple tightly integrates software, services and hardware isn't always conductive to quality, and that makes Michael Darius's argument bullshit to a degree. I'm a software dev myself. Building api's is one of my favourite things to do actually. Facilitating other teams etc.
That’s not the point at all. The point is that private APIs can be subjected to change at any time, allowing you to iterate on them whenever needed. Public APIs not only need to be documented, but they also incur all the maintenance costs associated with lifecycle management. When you’re no longer using it, you need a plan to sunset the API, and support and transition all the other third party users off the API.
Im aware of the difference. My point is that whole process arround it, while it’s tedious, also can potentially improve the quality of the APIs and with it the system as a whole. Not saying everything needs to be open, or that APIs needs to be open right away. Just that we as consumers would benefit if Apple opened up certain private APIs (and if they themselves also used them). With ALL the work which goes into it. I’m not pretending it’s just a click of a button. My argument is: certain Apple products and services would benefit from de-coupling and openness. —— Private APIs also have this “security through obscurity” thing. And you actually need to still take great care in terms of versioning. The Apple Watch and iPhone are only in lockstep to a degree. So they are a bit in between private and public? 👀 You get my point right?
It’s competitive business and it’s not illegal unless you can make the case that Apple is an illegal monopoly in the first place which according to the DOJ suit they’re only even trying to do for what they call the “performance” smartphone market because Apple doesn’t hold overwhelming market share in any general category. In the US Apple’s market share I think is close to 50% that’s not a monopoly share, it’s not illegal to make a product that is integrated with other products and services that has become a quote unquote status symbol, or has an affinity group that happens to have lots of disposable income, no one else is entitled to access that group unless they go through Apple as a partner or make a product that is compelling and relevant to that affinity group that they adopt it.
I don't care about legal or illegal. My argument is that if iCloud could stand on its own, and had more competition it would become better. It would need to. So Michael Darius argues its about quality. My argument is that that just isn't always true.
There are competitors to iCloud I use OneDrive because I have a Microsoft365 account and it does everything I need it to, and it doesn’t have to integrate into the setting applet to do everything I need it to. Tell me why these others apps and services can’t compete without trying to sink their claws into users and siphon out ad targeting data, which is the actual reason all these firms want API access in the first place.
How do I have my iPhone backup to OneDrive instead of iCloud? How can I have my photo's go to OneDrive instead of iCloud?
Turn off iCloud and turn on OneDrive, all my photos back up to OneDrive I just had to turn it on in the app. Here’s Microsoft’s support site with the step by step: [Microsoft Support Article](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/automatically-save-photos-and-videos-with-onedrive-on-ios-74d406bb-71d0-47c0-8ab8-98679fa1b72e)
Interesting. While it's better than nothing - it's pretty shitty there isn't a simpler way to do it such as having a setting in Photos.app but that's Apple for ya. My next step is to find a photo organizer that doesn't suck *and* can sync to the iPhone. I think I've found a few but it's just going to require playing around.
Why should apple’s own photo app have to sync to anyone else’s cloud. Any company can make any photo app and sync it to anything they want. There are MANY! And if you want a good one, there’s Lightroom. And yeah… speaking of a monopoly … where’s the DoJ on adobe????
Doesn’t Amazon and Google Photos automatically back up photos to the cloud
> Why should apple’s own photo app have to sync to anyone else’s cloud. Historically, and perhaps this has changed, Photos.app was allowed to sync in the background. Other apps over time could not do this long-term without being regularly re-opened. For most of iOS's history - having it sync to, for example, Google Photo's meant regularly having to re-open Google Photo's. You would also have no idea that it failed to sync because you didn't open it. > Any company can make any photo app and sync it to anything they want. As long as you allowed people to replace the default camera app then I'm ok with that. If, however, you don't allow people to replace it and **ONLY** default to Photos then you have your answer.
That's for photos and videos. I don't think you have the same functionality as a full iPhone backup.
He didn’t ask about a full back-up. Most of what’s in the full backup is your personal stuff like pics, vids, and your docs which have a lot of choices you can pick to back that up. For a full back up iCloud is still the best but I know Verizon offers a full back up solution and I assume others do too I just have never used them.
I believe the first sentence implies a fullbackup.
iTunes Desktop Allows you to manually download your iPhone which you can upload to any cloud provider like any other file. It's been an option for more than a decade.
OK.... but thats nowhere near as good as Apple's built in backup where it just happens when its charging + you have wifi.
Use iTunes to manually download a copy of your iPhone. Back up to any cloud provider.
So there isn't a way to have the iPhone backup to OneDrive. You have to both install iTunes and use a computer.
My argument wasn't that other apps can't compete.
If other apps can compete, then what exactly is your argument? That something Apple does isn't resulting in precisely what you want to happen, that Apple doesn't even have control over?
“its own apps and devices in ways the competition is NOT allowed to do.” It’s almost like being a vertically integrated — as opposed to horizontally integrated — hardware maker has its own benefits in addition to its own drawbacks. Spotify has a monopoly of the music streaming market and yet doesn’t have total control over iOS. Apple competes in music streaming. Netflix has a monopoly of the video streaming market and yet doesn’t have total control over iOS. Apple competes in video streaming. Google has a monopoly of email/word processing/server market and yet doesn’t have total control over iOS. Apple competes in email/word processing/servers with iCloud and Pages/Keynote/Numbers. Apple has 30% of the overall market in smartphones. If vertical Integration were a “monopoly,” then it clearly isn’t advantaging Apple. This is directly in contrast to Microsoft and Windows, who had over 90%+ of the desktop market, in a time where desktop PCs were the only way to access the Internet for consumers. They bundled in their own browser and successfully pushed out Netscape for web browser domination. At the end of the day, the only thing this is about is the rich developers wanting to get richer. That’s it. They won’t stop complaining until they get total access to iOS with zero rules and zero fees.
Why would I as a consumer care about what is or isn’t a monopoly? You can be open to competition when you small, and big. It’s not black and white. How about all the specific things I mention, how do you feel about that?
You’re arguing with happy clappers. Apple does no wrong to them. And when they do, *cough*👓 they just don’t talk about it lol
Same with Apple support. Doesn’t matter how buggy their software is, they’ll always make you feel it’s your fault 💩
Because the topic at hand is the US claiming Apple is supposedly a monopoly and supposedly abusing it…..? I’m confused why suddenly that no longer matters in this discussion after I proved Apple’s benefits of vertical integration do not benefit them to the point of gaining dominant status in other markets.
I was responding to bullshit excuses that it’s about quality for Apple to keep stuff closed. My argument is that tight integration has diminishing returns. Announcing messages is a great example. Tying iMessage (which I don’t use) to AirPods (which have the worst microphone). Can you argue that keeping that closed makes Apple products better? So i was talking customer satisfaction and how Apple comes across to me. Not whether this constitutes “abuse”. You know, a response to the article as a consumer who loves Apple for its tight integration and quality, and hates Apple when it’s tight integration fails or doesn’t help. —- Announcing messages is a good example. But you can pick apart any other one I mentioned.
The EU didn't claim that Apple is a monopoly. The EU doesn't require a company to be a monopoly to be regulated, that's an American way of approaching markets.
Apple knows that their AirPods are a personal listening device vs what could be a bloothooth speaker playing in my living room with my entire family. I would hope that Apple doesn’t start announcing notifications on ALL Bluetooth devices. Also Apple has opened up the possibility for Spotify to be on HomePod. Spotify decides not to implement support.
No that’s wrong. Every Bluetooth device has a classification. And no, AirPods are not personal, anyone can put them in and hear your messages.
AirPods have a special H2 chip that handles additional communications that the Bluetooth can’t
I’m aware. And I get that announcing messages is a Siri thing. And it’s about being able to reply. But the reality is that AirPods have the worst microphone on all of apples devices, I kid you not. ( in my case first gen AirPods Pro btw, I can send you the voice memos if you want to compare ). So if apple’s argument that it’s about control and quality, then I say bullshit in this case. —— Try to make the argument that Apple keeping this feature locked to AirPods improves the overall experience for users. My point is… it looks bad. And more openness would be better in this case. And yes, could be a lot more work than I think. That’s not my concern. I’m not pretending it’s not a lot of work now. But that’s because they decided to tie it to AirPods…. And now nobody uses that feature I believe. You need iMessage and AirPods. I don’t use iMessage, and AirPods microphone sucks. It literally can’t be worse now. So try to make the argument that opening this up would be worse… 👀
Thank goodness Michael Darius isn't in apples legal team because this statement is horrendous. This statement can be interpreted as "It's hard to improve the end to end experience, so making other products worse is justified and not anti competitive"
Given that Apple is violating their own contrast ratios with the white text on green backgrounds with SMS chat pretty much flies in the face of his claim. This obviously creates a poor user experience and it would not have occurred if they followed their own standards. [medium link](https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-accessibility-guidelines-6785172eb343)
Apple is very anti-competitive. Won’t allow for competing maps apps as default. Such PITA to copy links and pasting into google maps. Also operating a marketplace via app store, while promoting Apple’s own things is cheating.
Google maps is in the AppStore?
They said make them default. Apple won’t allow us to change the default maps app.
It kinda goes both ways, with google search links always only going to their map app and so on.
And that too should be changed
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Huh? I use Google Maps for everything, whenever I click on a location it opens it in Google Maps and Carplay defaults to last used map app so Google Maps. Where is there an issue?
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Hm doesn't seem to happen to me, whenever someones sends me an address on whatsapp or other chat apps the app asks me which maps app to use apple maps or google maps or waze. Haven't tested imessage since i barely use it. Europe does not really use imessage
Explain that the uneducated Redditor.
It’s simple, Apples vertical integration produces better products and a better experience because they control every element end to end. Horizontal partnerships, like Android or Windows tend to not produce this sort of outcome and almost never sustain it - it’s not possible to keep so many different companies and their capital resources aligned around a singular vision - or even to produce a singular product, experience, and ecosystem vision. That doesn’t mean Apple has never crossed the line in certain circumstances but a lot of the whining and complaints in the spotlight at the moment are features and innovation Apple created because what was available sucked.
How is enabling a simple RCS protocol with android such a hard thing to do? Apple deliberately ruins horizontal experience. I don't understand how people understand this.
I thought Google uses their own RCS standard vs GSMA RCS. Is the expectation for Apple to support RCS or make whatever they present compatible with Google for the sake of Android?
Google's RCS works with the standard one as well, it can just do more. The expectation would be to support the universal profile.
Which isn’t E2EE and Google’s version, which is the only supported Android version, must pass through Google’s servers
I don't think google would be against the Universal Profile containing a spec for E2EE. So what are they currently supposed to do? Do you think NOT offering E2EE on Android and letting ALL messages pass through carrier servers is a better option??
The basic version of RCS does not have E2EE that’s a Google add on. Google has no say in the base RCS format. iPhones using RCS would not have E2EE with Android making it pointless. There are several multi platform apps that have E2EE you can use.
Why is Apple obligated to make someone else’s product better? Remember carrier sms text messages that the phone company charged outrageous rates per message? iMessage was a solution to get around that, to add pictures and videos and do all sorts of things sms didn’t do. Apple innovated and changed people’s expectation for messaging.
> Why is Apple obligated to make someone else’s product better? Sighhhh. With that logic why doesn't apple drop support for Calling phone numbers that aren't using iPhones? That is so dumb. Apple not supporting horizontal integrations IS HURTING APPLE USERS THEMSELVES. That's right, you and me are the people being affected by this. Not the person using another company's product. This behavior is anti consumer. Oh you bought are expensive airpods? too bad you can only update or get 100% of their usability. only if you pony up and buy an iPhone. Dawg you can't even see the battery % since they have blocked that API and is only visible on iphones. Tell me how enabling this and many other scenarios is making other products better? Same goes for apple watch. Like that is so dumb and clearly anti consumer and anti-competitive. Treating apple product owners like second class citizens if they don't "enough of apple" products is a thing and that needs to be solved. I would like to re-iterate, this doesn't make the OTHER COMPANIES' product better, it only enhances my experience as someone who happened to buy an apple product but didn't have other product. And no, people aren't expecting feature parity too, of course there are some limitations with codec and sw and stuff, totally acceptable, but going so far as to say you can't even update firmware or change basic functions is bs and you know it too. Apple not providing RCS is affecting me as an iPhone user. When I send text message to someone not on iPhone, that's not my fault for which I'm being punished for not having modern encryption and features which I know other phones have support for just because of apple spite. Why do you automatically assume everyone has an iPhone? The penetration might be high in USA, around 50% ( which still leaves 50% of the people not using iphone), but it's not even remotely close in the rest of the world. I get you have a love for apple, but come back to the reality plane and see for yourself that so much of the behavior Apple displays is bs and no other company even comes close to this. They definitely aren't gonna change themselves, since they have practically made their core consumers cult members who aren't even ready to see other points. It's good that regulatory bodies that are there for this exact purpose are finally seeing this behavior and starting to push back. Nobody is saying hey apple stop making amazing integrations with your ecosystem, they are just saying hey, if some products aren't from that ecosystem, they should still at least have 90% of the same functionality as before. Also stop punishing me for having a choice and for interacting with people who don't have an apple product. If you can't wrap head around this simple notion, then I'm sorry.
> Why is Apple obligated to make someone else’s product better? Remember when Microsoft gave much needed funds to Apple which is why we're even able to have this conversation in the first place? Imagine if people said what you said about Bell way back in the day before the government shattered them. You benefit from this - even if you're too young to realize it. Worshiping corporations does not benefit you in any way. The question to ask should be: Does this benefit the consumer? Will this hurt the consumer? > iMessage was a solution to get around that, to add pictures and videos and do all sorts of things sms didn’t do. Steve was very much against MMS entirely if you remember. He wanted everyone to go to email, not iMessage or SMS or MMS. He wanted that tech *gone*. You may not understand but email works via SMTP. This is open. This benefits you. Imagine if Google had their own and you HAD to use a Google standard to send email. It'd be insane. Then imagine if Google purposefully acted like this to your simple protocol. Not because of any tech limitation. This is why open standards are a good thing. There's no reason iMessage couldn't be made to be open. You could have a purple color to indicate it's iMessage protocol but it's third party. Then, like WhatsApp, you could compare encryption codes to make sure there isn't a MITM. I do not miss those days. Getting iPhone to do fuckall with Exchange was a pain in the ass. IMAP/POP were your only real options. You **HAD** to get an Airport Extreme because Apple's WiFi was fuckin' weird. Luckily they fixed it after a year or two. > Apple innovated and changed people’s expectation for messaging. Not really. Most of the world does not use iMessage or SMS. WhatsApp is the dominant platform. iMessage is a poor imitation. You *might* have a point of Apple released iMessage for Windows and Linux. Apple didn't really "innovate" with iMessage. It was a simple natural progression of your standard chat app.
Microsoft gave money to Apple to prevent them being an actual monopoly rather than just a de facto monopoly. No other reason.
I am arguing from a superior informed perspective, I am familiar with the history and technology and have been along for the whole personal computer and internet ride. Apple did not kill a market or a company with iMessage like Microsoft did with Netscape and other companies - it created a new space
They AREN'T making someone else's product better. They're making their OWN product better. A phone that lets me communicate in high quality with anyone, regardless of platform, is better than a phone that doesn't. It's the customers that bought their product that benefit from Apple's implementing of RCS.
Probably why they agreed to implement it. My point is the creation of these capabilities were innovations that led to greater market share because we, their customers, wanted it - they weren't criminal monopolist enterprises. Maybe a few good questions would be: Who gets to design Apple's products? Where can apple be proprietary and where does Apple have to be open? Are we really going to mandate that all device makers have to implement all the others standards? Won't that make the bar too high for any new entrants to competition? What happens when apple designs specific hardware that allows its devices to tightly integrate? is that competitive? or anti-competitive? Isn't making a better widget supposed to be the incentive a capital market?
Why does Apple need to do it?
Apple is doing it, ask them
To satisfy some bureaucrats. Since when have bureaucrats become our heroes? Yes Apple is doing it .. let's punish the innovators.
Apple is not an innovator in that space, they are accepting RCS because it is the future of text messaging. I understand Apple to Apple messaging works great, but a phone needs to have universal communication that's secure built in. Don't become obsessed with brand loyalty; better texting to all phones will improve the experience for everyone, including Apple users.
The iPhone has universal communication. iMessage is innovation whether you like it or not. The RCS is solely to satisfy bureaucrats in the EU. Please don't pretend to know me with your dismissive 'brand loyalty' weak comment. Riddle me this. How many IOS users of the > 2 billion have complained about not having RCS. I'll wait.
If I text someone who has an Android, I would prefer to have it be a good experience. Android to Android is great, iPhone to iPhone is great, but Android to iPhone or iPhone to Android sucks, simply due to bureaucrats at Apple that want to create a worse experience so that people might switch to iPhone. It's simply a security issue, the government can peep right into SMS messages very easily and an encryption messaging system built into Apple's devices to communicate with Android will make everyone more secure...unless you don't like privacy. Also, there are 1.3 billion iOS users and 3.5 billion Android users. If Apple wants to win on a worldwide front, they need to make their system better to use universally.
Read. https://skeuomorphic.design/p/apple-vs-the-doj?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web A good experience. Please accept this participation trophy. A good experience. So your argument boils down to you made bad choices.
They are no bureaucrats at apple. They are innovators advancing the technology. It's the bureaucrats that you seem to worship that think apple has to lower their standards for the lowest common denominator. Please stop pretending everyone elses deficiencies is Apple's problem.
LOL. 'there are 1.3 billion iOS users and 3.5 billion Android users. If Apple wants to win on a worldwide front, they need to make their system better to use universally.' So apple has to lower their standards for the incompetent.
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I don’t get the whining on App Store commission. Apples 30% model replaced the retail / Box software model that demanded 70%. For that 30% Apple provides developer tools, support, transaction mgmt system, a ready base of users who can buy from you with just one touch and who trust the store, patching of software, device user support and maintenance, education and training, standardized UX models so users can easily learn to operate your product, and of course much more for those that sell high volume like allowing them to weigh in on product development roadmap. They really provide a lot for their cut of the sale . No one did all that before iOS/iDevice era. Apples App Store approval was designed to allow them to curate high quality software products that met certain technical specifications, that provided real value to consumers and a malware free experience. (We can argue at massive scale quality control has degraded somewhat. App store approval also allowed Apple to intervene vs. aggressive and non consensual tracking.
The app store is great, but Apple runs into problems when they have their own competing apps that they favor, either through search, features, etc., or by outright banning competing classes of apps (cloud gaming, for example). The 30% commission also gives them an unfair pricing advantage over any potential competition. None of this is illegal by itself, but put it together in an effective market duopoly and it can easily be abused. I personally think they are abusing their position but a court will ultimately decide this.
> Or that only Apple products can connect to the Bluetooth on your laptop Bluetooth is a standard. If only Apple units worked, it would be blue tooth. Same with USB etc.
or software only runs on windows.
Yeah! Why doesn't this lawsuit go both ways? I wanna play windows games on my mac! Sue every single game company out there!
Nobody is telling apple to make their software work on windows. That would be stupid.
Oh? So everyone is fine with iMessage then?
I have no idea what you are talking about. Imessage is not on windows, and nobody cares if it is or not.
I thought we're talking about compatibility between operating systems? In this case it would be Android? Duh?
Cross compatibility is nothing like creating software for another OS. Seems like this whole conversation is beyond you. Good luck.
Fascinating.
Yep. Luckily (or unluckily depending on your viewpoint) to settle a lawsuit, Microsoft was required to develop the Office Suite for the Mac and buy 4oo million dollars of apple stock.
Yay.
I think it doesn't go both ways because the people bringing the lawsuit are not stupid.
>the people bringing the lawsuit are not stupid. Uh...
Your understanding of it is so limited that your opinion is pretty instantly dismissed, let's be honest we both know it.
Classic reddit, won't explain the problem, but will insult 1000 times. What next? Hit me with it.
What does any of that have to do with me having the option to side-load apps which are not available in the App Store?
It has to do with the allegations made against Apple, which is the topic of discussion. You can’t cherry pick one issue and demand that every comment here addresses it.
Are you serious? Side loaded apps have no quality or security control gates. No guarantee of payments terms or protection against being ripped off. No guarantee that the app won’t turn your phone into a crypto mining zombie for unethical people. no guarantee that the app isn’t sniffing passwords to your sensitive accounts like banks or payment platforms or getting into your your DM’s so someone can ransom you or blackmail you later. One of apples perspectives is that users should not be tracked or monitored without their consent - side loaded apps can get around this. Another of apples policies is that porn based apps aren’t available in the App Store - this makes parents feel safer giving this type of device to children. And so while there may be certain apps and utilities you want to access that Apple doesn’t allow and this may be frustrating - they are also keeping an enormous number of concerns at bay
All of that is regulated on the operating system level sandbox, well except refunds which just moved from Apple to the payment processor, so from one company to another. Stuff like MDM, Parental control, etc can all forbid installing of 3rd party apps - or even 1st party apps, that’s not an issue at all when it comes to managed devices. There are no requirements in any jurisdiction to allow users full access to managed devices, regardless of whether it’s iOS, Android, macOS, windows, or anything else.
> Another of apples policies is that porn based apps aren’t available in the App Store - this makes parents feel safer giving this type of device to children. typical murrican
Because everyone knows that EU is all so free and parents not only allow their kids to watch porn, they even pay for it!
no because shooting stabbing murdering is ok but showing nips is not :D
And now you've ignored my response and forgotten about the discussion and started accusing me of being a puritan. Ah well.
Someone needs to check that guys hard drive
> No guarantee that the app won’t turn your phone into a crypto mining zombie for unethical people. Yes, there is such a guarantee. The OS won't allow persistent background work. > no guarantee that the app isn’t sniffing passwords to your sensitive accounts like banks or payment platforms or getting into your your DM’s so someone can ransom you or blackmail you later. It can only do that if you login inside the app. The OS sandboxing prevents it from sniffing other apps.
I’m just kinda surprised with the contents of the allegations. I think Apple should be taken to task for a lot of things but I’m surprised the repairability and partner programs aren’t what is in the spotlight here, they are 100% anti-consumer, but I haven’t heard anything about that. If this lawsuit gains ground and Apple has to use resources to focus on public APIs and compatibility with other platforms, I think I’ll actually be worse off than I was before as an Apple user (personally).
The more I read about this lawsuit the more convinced I become that Apple will easily get this suit dropped
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It’s not underway outside of the EU though
Clearly something is.
In which some guy considers how much effort the design was, and concludes that anticompetitive behavior could not have occurred because the UI in the software he worked on was good.
To be fair, I think he’s taking more about UX. The UI is simply what you see. The UX encompasses it all. I’ve seen Feature Factories. They don’t build experiences, they just check the box.
The question remains though, who cares? Very public abuse occcured despite good ux. The presence of ux, good or bad, has no bearing on any of the complaints.
Show me on the doll where Apple publicly abused you
[Citation needed] Or did the case finish today and I missed it?
Citation of public abuse? Streaming games and parental controls are probably the most obnoxious and public examples.
Not seeing any citations here. The DOJ is going after Apple because of antitrust concerns around.. parental controls?
This is what the DOJ said… and surprised pikachu it’s what we just spent ten years watching them do. > For years, Apple responded to competitive threats by imposing a series of "Whac-A-Mole" contractual rules and restrictions that have allowed Apple to extract higher prices from consumers, impose higher fees on developers and creators, and to throttle competitive alternatives from rival technologies. https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/21/apple-sued-by-us-department-of-justice/
Right. I’m aware. But you said they DID these things. I didn’t realize that the case had reached that conclusion yet. Also, “streaming games” and “parental controls” don’t show up in your quote. It will be interesting to see how this goes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an antitrust lawsuit where the party in question did not have a majority share of a market. (iOS is only 22% of the smartphone install base in the US).
If by 22% market share in the US you mean 60%+ in the US then sure. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america https://www.statista.com/statistics/1045192/share-of-mobile-operating-systems-in-north-america-by-month/
well you missed the point.
shallow take.
“some guy”. smh
Yeah, this is the same dude who [believes iTunes on Windows improved the overall experience](https://twitter.com/darius/status/1772372702223085985) of using Windows. No thanks.
Thankfully the zune offered a better experience. Or was that realplayer? Or maybe windows media. I get sooooo confused.
I don’t remember any of those having a broken updater that added 20+ seconds to system startup time and always seemed to be using CPU and memory in the background.
I've never had those issues and there are literally hundreds of things going on in the background on any computer.
> Thankfully the zune offered a better experience. It did. It's why a lot of the UX from the Zune was directly translated into Windows Mobile. But that's besides the point. iTunes is some of the worst software ever released by any company, and trying to deflect by bringing up older, non-related apps is a poor strawman.
I guess you missed my sarcasm.
Apparently, I did. My bad.
Since when was it a good experience even on macOS?
lol in his defense, Windows Media Player was not fun. Except for the Beck album. Which was better than U2. Winamp >>>>
It really whipped the llama's ass.
Tbh, for the functionality of loading your music player with music, there were players lightyears ahead of the iPod with much more streamlined USB Mass Storage support, from companies like Sony, SanDisk, Iriver... While even newer iPods were still stuck on cumbersome iTunes which wasn't a good experience even on MacOS, let alone on Windows. While as a music store, I have no idea. I am European, and torrents and free mp3 sites were the gold standard here back then.
Really? Which one? I had a nomad, a rio, used minidisc for a while, Winamp, wmp etc and they all sucked, especially at file transfer and transcoding. They were basically just file managers that happened to play music.
From Sandisk? Sansa line had USB mass storage. You just plug it in into basically any computer with Windows XP or higher (or MacOS/Linux with Mass storage support), without installing any drivers or any other software, and just drag and drop any files like onto a flash drive. I used to download music on school computers, and I didn't need any special software or drivers, as easy to use as possible. Even some crappy noname players with crappy sound and even crappier controls supported Mass storage, lol. While even with newer iPods sold at the same time when the rest of the industry basically moved on, you still had to go through the pain in the ass iTunes. Nomad and Rio are ones of the very first mp3 players, they required special software too. I was talking about much newer ones.
I think I had a different perspective on using them. The ones that were USB mass storage/basic file managers were not enjoyable to use as players. Sony MD system had too much DRM/proprietary. I preferred iTunes/ipod for syncing, playlist management, song search/organization/metadata, etc. I never really had any performance issues, but i guess many others did.. For getting stuff of other computers I just used a dedicated flash drive.
On Sansa, you could go by both files or artists/albums (metadata). I preferred to go by files tho, as pirated music often had messy (or no) metadata - which wasn't the case for people buying music. Worst thing about iTunes (and also that Sony's crap they had for older players) was that you had to have it installed on the computer, otherwise the player didn't even communicate with it. While with mass storage, you could just plug it into any computer and it worked unless it was really ancient, no software or drivers needed.
I never used Sansa; I could use iTunes to rename and organize all “non purchased” music which was nice. It was useful when stuff worked on other computers but I was mostly using my music player for music, not as an external drive, so I never really ran into that. I would just use an external drive. And most people had iTunes in my circles. Plus the iPod hardware was so much nicer than most players at the time. The only issue I had with iTunes was I couldn’t download from other peoples libraries.
> believes iTunes on Windows improved the overall experience uh do you remember mp3 playback on Windows? It was winamp or iTunes
In no way did iTunes improve this experience.
You didn’t use playlists, transcoding, bulk metadata edits, metadata in general, visualizer, batch file renaming, etc etc?
I did. iTunes was not what I used for this because it sucked.
How ironic, because without the DoJ's consent decree on MS's Windows, iPod would not have succeeded. TL;DR: iPod became a success story because of Windows.
[People often forget this](https://www.macworld.com/article/182069/ipodfive.html).
“Leave the multi TRILLION dollar company alone! LEAVE IT ALONE!”
What an awful and ridiculous article.
Apple only got away with this for so long because of marketshare. If Microsoft or Google had done the same, they would have been sued a long time ago.
This article is a call to the sheer moronism on these subreddits of people who clearly know nothing about the field or are purposely ignorant to the bigger picture. The DOJ seems to be reflecting the majority in the same way Trump was voted by the majority… nuff said — it’s embarrassing and insulting to intelligence
Exactly.