A sad developer treatment, and a sorry-ass state for a platform, but not related to antitrust law, much less a "textbook antitrust case".
For starters, Apple is not a monopoly. You are not a monopoly on your own platform, especially if that platform doesn't even have the majority of the relevant market. A company makes a platform or product so that they dictate the terms and if it's a marketplace, what and how it accepts to sell in it.
Antitrust isn't limited to only monopolies. That is just the most easily discussed violation, no?
For example, you are not a monopoly on your own platform, but working with anyone to raise the prices on another platform is illegal under this framework, as well.
>For example, you are not a monopoly on your own platform, but working with anyone to raise the prices on another platform is illegal under this framework, as well.
That's when the players the work with form a "cartel". And even there it's not an antitrust case until we're talking about a majority of combined share. Else two or more two-bit players deciding to sell at the same price is not a cartel (nor a trust). If Panic and BareBones meet and decide to sell their editors for $100, it's nobody's concern.
>I picked that example because Apple has already lost in that scenario before.
It has, but it's not really relevant to the case, nor is the employee thing.
Nor I find the court decision particularly correct in that case anyway. Amazon had for over a decade (and still) applies 10000-pound coercion pressure upon the publishers from big monopoly position, yet Apple got the fines because the publishers decided to sell where they'd be allowed a higher selling price instead of the one forced upon them by Amazon's wieght.
I was pointing out that your claim of monopoly is irrelevant for the question, though. You can totally be found guilty of antitrust without having or abusing a monopoly. As evidenced by Apple on multiple occasions.
If you are arguing that those decisions were wrong, good luck with that. They lost handily in both of the cited cases I picked.
Again, I'm only stating that antitrust is not completely defined by monopoly. That is just the one people think they understand the most.
That's an irrelevant scenario because it involves multiple companies working in concert. This is just Apple.
I don't understand how this is any different than Sony or Nintendo deciding the terms to release games on their hardware. Is it because they charge for dev-kits and Apple doesn't.
Are we certain it's in the public's interest to make development for Apple platforms more restrictive?
It is only relevant as evidence that antitrust != monopoly laws. They include monopoly laws, of course; but there is more to them than that.
This isn't a decided case, such that I don't know what you are asking? Do we have evidence that Sony/Nintendo won't let you be a paying developer? More, do we have evidence that they would let you, but then after possibly benefiting from your efforts, kick you off their platform with no recourse?
I confess I would not be too surprised if we do have some of that evidence, but I haven't seen it. We have seen plenty of shady crap from those companies, but there are material other differences that make them hard to compare.
Amazon was deciding the prices of ebooks and taking a loss selling them below what the publishers were selling them to Amazon. This was hurting the publishers physical books sells. The publishers wanted to control their own prices. But one punisher couldn’t pull their books from Amazon unless they all did.
Apple was working as a go between for all of the publishers and wanted to give the publishers the right to set their own prices and Apple would take a cut. This is where the case came in.
You are begging a ton of questions there. For one, there was no evidence that physical book sales were impacted by lower priced ebooks. For two, Amazon doesn't even have a monopoly on ebooks, much less books. Their share is almost certainly comparable to the marketshare we are discussing here, amusingly.
Further, though, you are literally arguing against the laws here. They were not found guilty of being a monopoly. They were found guilty of antitrust violations that included price manipulation in the one case, and wage manipulation in the other.
How could physical book sales not be impacted when Amazon was selling ebooks for $9.99 when they weee buying the right to sell them from the publisher for $14.99? It’s a classic case of price dumping.
Apple was found guilty of price manipulation because they wanted to make a deal with the publishers to allow the publishers to set their own pricing instead of Amazon price dumping.
I don't really care to defend Amazon in this, but your argument here is pretty weak. Which is why nobody has really accused Amazon of this in court. Note that antitrust lawsuits have been brought against them, but from what I can find, they were dismissed. https://www.reuters.com/legal/amazon-major-publishers-win-di...
This is all a side discussion, which I confess is fun; but it seems you agree that Apple has been guilty of antitrust violations in the past, without necessarily having had a monopoly. And... that is the entirety of my point that started this branch. :D
I'm not really clear what you are showing me here? Nobody argued in court that Amazon was price dumping. It is speculated that the NYT BestSeller deal of $9.99 was maybe in that direction, but nobody really argued that in court. Quite the contrary, it was argued, successfully, that it was perfectly legal for Amazon to offer discounts like this. (Ironically to this debate, they didn't blankly sell all ebooks at 9.99, and no numbers were released to indicate how many were sold at the publisher suggested prices. As a customer at the time, I know I bought many NYT listings that I wouldn't have bought otherwise, thanks in part to that being a very low friction price.)
More, your argument was that sales of physical books were impacted. But, to show that you would have to be able to actually show it. With book sales continuing to climb, that will be hard to say "but it could have been even bigger!" Indeed, most evidence is that the ebooks were additional sells.
That all said, and I quote your article, "In a major rebuke, a federal judge has ruled that Apple violated antitrust laws..." Again, the point I was raising is that antitrust is more than just monopoly laws.
You can try and argue that the case was ruled incorrectly, but Apple was unable to do that with probably some of the best lawyers that you can get. Appeal was struck down and they were guilty of antitrust. Pretty convincingly.
Really? No one was arguing that Amazon was price dumping?
The publishers sold the right to sell the ebooks to Amazon for $x where $x was greater than $9.99. Amazon sold the ebook for $9.99. Was Amazon trying to make it up in volume?
> More, your argument was that sales of physical books were impacted
If the publisher sold the physical books for $16.99 and the right to sell the ebook for $14.99 to Amazon and then Amazon sold it for $9.99, how could it not be impacted?
> You can try and argue that the case was ruled incorrectly, but Apple was unable to do that
So in that case do you agree that the Epic vs Apple case was ruled correctly?
Price dumping is a very specific claim, and one that was not in the article you linked. By your definition, if I go to my local bookstore and they have a best seller discount at the front, they are price dumping, too? Sales pricing is a thing that is allowed by many contracts from publishers to sellers. For mostly very good reasons. (That is, you are misunderstanding a lot about that case by thinking that Amazon was breaking a deal with publishers to sell at a lower rate. That was contractually allowed by their current agreement with publishers. The "suggested retail price" was basically that, a "suggested" price. Apple helped the publishers move to a new contract that allowed the publishers to flat out set the price.)
Again, I'm not really wanting to defend Amazon here. I suspect it wouldn't be hard to find practices of theirs that I disagree with. I am not convinced they are or were breaking antitrust laws, though; by evidence of them not being accused of that.
I don't really have an opinion on the Epic case. Such that that is just another non-sequitur. Apple has been guilty of antitrust violations in the past, despite not having a monopoly. Any other argument can be fun, but is a different argument.
Why else do you think Amazon was selling below the wholesale costs? The local bookstore may be selling below list price. But they aren’t selling below wholesale costs.
Again did you read the link I posted, the publishers explicitly did not want Amazon selling ebooks below list cost.
> The "suggested retail price" was basically that, a "suggested"
Again you didn’t read the article. There are three prices involved
1. The wholesale price - this is the price that the publisher sells the right to Amazon to sell the book. For example $14.00
2. The suggested retail price could very well be $20.00
A “sale” that the bookstore would do would be somewhere between $14.00 and $19.99. They would not sell the book for $9.99 and lose $5.01
> Any other argument can be fun, but is a different argument.
But yet an argument about Apple being accused of “collusion” about books is somehow relevant to a discussion about a “monopoly” on the app store.
But a lawsuit about App Store where Apple was found not to be a monopoly isn’t relevant about selling an app?
The local bookstore is free to sell below wholesale cost, as well. Has often been done...
I did read the link. It did not, specifically, call out price dumping. What it called out was that publishers wanted people to value books at more than $9.99. Something that the Best Seller list of Amazon's was undermining. As someone that remembers this as it was happening, I also remember that other ebooks that Amazon was selling were at the suggested price.
Again, you are misrepresenting things. Wholesale price is the price the store paid to get the item. When they are not in the "agency" agreement, they are free to sell the item for whatever they value it at. Higher or lower. After all, the cost they paid is a sunk cost at that point and it may be worth it to move the item at a loss than to continue to store it. You are correct that price dumping resembles that idea, but it is a technically different thing. (I'll note that referring to ebooks as some sort of fixed inventory is silly for many other reasons...)
I don't know how to make it clearer, sadly, and feel you are purposely ignoring all points. An argument about Apple being guilty of antitrust violations despite not having a monopoly is solely an argument about monopoly not being a required factor of antitrust claims.
You have tried to argue that Amazon was actually the monopolist. There are some factual problems with that claim, but it is completely a non-sequitur on whether or not Apple needs to be a monopoly to run afoul of antitrust law. Same with whatever point you are trying to bring in about Epic. It is literally not relevant to the point that Apple may again be running afoul of antitrust rules.
Selling at a loss over wholesale is not, specifically, price dumping. In particular, price dumping is something that is specific to producers. Consider the old "movie theaters lose money showing the movies, but make it up on the concessions." By the naive argument, that would not be allowed. Yet here we are.
My main claim with regards to Amazon is mainly if they were guilty of price fixing, than it would have been pursued. Can you find any legal proceedings that take that charge against them? Heck, if they were guilty of price discrimination, that would likely have been pursued. It has been brought against them, but it has not gone anywhere that I can remember.
The discussion, per the top post of mine in this thread, is over whether or not Apple could be afoul of antitrust. I entered this branch by pointing out that antitrust != monopoly. It is a type of antitrust concern, but it is not the only one. You keep trying to pull up non-sequitur points that don't change that. Apple has been guilty of antitrust law in the past despite not having a monopoly.
If you are worried that Amazon has a monopoly on ebooks, note that their current ebook share is evidently close to what Apple's phone share is in Japan. Which... doesn't look good for your monopoly argument there, to be honest. That all said, I don't think that should change much of the legal issues here.
The majority of books they sold were not done so at a loss, oddly. Only the "best sellers" and that was something publishers didn't want to allow.
What goal post have I moved? It is incoherent to try and argue whether or not Amazon is a monopolist in a thread about whether or not Apple can be held to antitrust concerns. I continue responding as it is a little fun, though I confess I'm growing weary.
The claim of wholesale versus suggested retail is precisely what Apple helped publishers push. Apple conspired with the publishers to force an "agency" model where Amazon could not set the sale price. Contrasted with the outstanding "wholesale" model that they were in before.
You are arguing that Amazon was price dumping and that is specifically not something Amazon has been accused of. They have been accused of loss-leader pricing on the best sellers to get people to buy other books. But that is a different thing, entirely. You seem to think any loss-leader sales are illegal, and that isn't the case. It can look and feel very like predatory pricing, but it is a different thing.
Why exactly would people buy other books just because they bought best sellers at a loss. Are you really going to say now that you didn’t switch in mid stream from referring to selling below suggested retail price to selling below wholesale cost?
Even worse in a conversation about ebooks you brought up “holding costs” like we were talking about physical books.
The idea is that you would buy other books to read on your ereader between best sellers that you were interested in. This isn't exactly rocket science...
The "holding costs" is precisely why the publishers stuck to the wholesale contract, and is why I brought it up. They kept the same terms and added ebooks to the deal. Then got upset when Amazon took advantage of that. (And... I noted that that is a silly model here.)
And you did bring up the idea that Amazon was a monopolists here. Which I pointed out was incoherent to the topic. Apologies for letting you continue it. :(
That is... my point? Antitrust laws are not confined to monopoly concerns. To try and steer the conversation into that direction is a non-sequitur that doesn't necessarily matter. The headline isn't "textbook case of monopoly abuse."
That antitrust != monopoly. That is it. Do I also need to add that antitrust != collusion?
I am not even really arguing that they are guilty in this case. I flat out don't know. I do find it odd to see the unwavering defense of Apple in this.
No one is defending Apple. I’m pushing back against the silliness of the armchair lawyers on HN that say Apple must be a monopolist even though a real judge in the Epic vs Apple case said otherwise.
> You are not a monopoly on your own platform, especially if that platform doesn't even have the majority of the relevant market.
iPhone has a market share of almost 70% in Japan, the location of the plaintiff. iPhone also has a market share of over 50% now in the United States, by the way.
> A company makes a platform or product so that they dictate the terms and if it's a marketplace, what and how it accepts to sell in it.
Historical revisionism. For more than 30 years prior to iOS, general-purpose computing platforms were mostly open with no vendor-controlled store.
>Historical revisionism. For more than 30 years prior to iOS, general-purpose computing platforms were mostly open with no vendor-controlled store.
That's quite the historical revisionism.
Phones weren't "general-purpose computing platforms" for the most part of those 30 years (Gordon Gecko's phone didn't have apps). Nor where they considered as such.
And there were tons of capable of "general purpose computing" popular devices in those 30 years with closed markets or even restricted acccess to the SDKs themselves, almost all game consoles for example.
> Phones weren't "general-purpose computing platforms" for the most part of those 30 years (Gordon Gecko's phone didn't have apps). Nor where they considered as such.
We're all well aware of that, but so what? There's nothing inherent to smartphones that requires vendor-locked stores, and indeed some other smartphone platforms allow various levels of so-called "sideloading".
> And there were tons of capable of "general purpose computing" popular devices in those 30 years with closed markets or even restricted acccess to the SDKs themselves, almost all game consoles for example.
I used the term "general-purpose computing platforms" specifically to contrast with platforms such as game consoles, which are by their very name single-purpose.
By the way, I don't accept that vendor lockdown of game consoles is ok either, especially at present. My understanding is that the original motivation was that game consoles were sold at a loss to encourage adoption (which I don't think is true anymore), and thus a cut of the game revenue was required to make the consoles viable. So the console developers and the game developers had a kind of mutual interest in that. In contrast, iPhone was never sold at a loss, always at a massive profit for Apple. 3rd party app developers never needed to sacrifice their revenue to encourage iPhone adoption.
It should also be said that Apple itself considered "sideloading" on iPhone before the App Store was introduced, as shown by the emails from the Epic Games trial. Scott Forstall even said that they implemented sideloading in an internal iOS build, which he discussed in an email to Steve Jobs. AFAIK it hasn't been revealed why Apple decided against it ultimately. https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/21043913-2008-may-...
What makes a phone a "general-purpose computing platform" that is also not true for game consoles? They seem the same to me: They both have general purpose processors which -can- run arbitrary programs, but the owners of their ecosystems choose to limit what is allowed to run on them. If one is a "general-purpose computing platform" then the other must be, and vice versa.
It's the design and marketing of the product. Game consoles are designed and marketed to play games. General-purpose computing platforms are designed and marketed to do almost anything (including but definitely not exclusively to play games). Apple says "There's an app for that", while console developers don't say that, nor should they, because it would be false marketing.
If game consoles were marketed and sold as general-purpose computing platforms, then consumers would be very disappointed with them, because they make crappy general-purpose computing platforms. If iPhone or Mac were marketed and sold as game consoles, consumers would be similarly disappointed with them.
Prior to the iPhone there was Palm, which I would certainly call a general purpose computing platform, where it was easy to download and install your own pdb with no vendor restrictions.
There existed general purpose computing platforms, but there’s also been just as many if not more completely closed platforms. Selling ringtones only existed because of how closed most phones were at the time.
Palm OS 1.0 was nothing close to a general purpose computing platform. They didn’t even add TCP/IP support until 2.0.
If anything the ability to lockdown Palm devices was a major selling point to many customers’s internal IT systems. That’s something I think people arguing for open platforms are ignoring, some customers really do want closed systems for various reasons.
The Commodore 64 also lacked TCP/IP. What's important is that programs doing a wide variety tasks could be programmed. Companies can and do lock down general purpose computing devices all the time, we don't need the manufacturer to decide beforehand.
That’s a personal preference. I do want the manufacturer to lock down the device when I am handing it to a young kid. Zero need for any administrative assistance is a major selling point. I can point to a ton of kid’s computers from the 90’s that included a basic interpreter and no permanent storage so a reboot fixed any problem, they where toys not general computing devices.
As to TCP/IP, a Commodore 64 included the capability to use external storage to exchange information. You don’t need both, but the capability to directly exchange information with similar devices is a major hallmark of “general purpose computing” unlike say calculators or other specialized devices. Palm 1.0 included an email application, thus TCP/IP was a core feature. Instead you need to go from palm > computer > palm, just like say an early iPod or USB stick.
Thus palm started as glorified terminals, and people still loved them.
> Phone has a market share of almost 70% in Japan, the location of the plaintiff. iPhone also has a market share of over 50% now in the United States, by the way.
Neither one of those market shares are monopolies.
> Historical revisionism. For more than 30 years prior to iOS, general-purpose computing platforms were mostly open with no vendor-controlled store.
If you don't like the iOS platform then don't develop for it or buy iOS devices. There is an endless kaleidoscope of Android devices you can choose from.
Of course it's monopolistic. What standard are you comparing to? You don't need to have 100% of the market to exert monopoly control.
Non-monopoly behavior would be users and developers having the choice to offer & install iOS apps outside of Apple's app store, but choosing the app store because the trade-off of fees is considered fair for the trust & platform convenience gained in exchange.
> the judge cleared the Cupertino-based company of monopolistic malpractices
That does not appear to be anything like affirming that they are not a monopoly. One can be a monopoly without being guilty of anticompetitive monopolistic behavior. Likewise, Epic failing to make their narrow case is not a statement of absolute fact about Apple's market or industry position; it is a statement that Epic's specific argument was not valid or sufficient to confirm their claims.
Neither? Judges are also just random people chosen to interpret "the law". That doesn't mean their interpretation can accurately determine what is or isn't monopolistic. Judges make historically "wrong" decisions all the time.
So we shouldn’t believe judges because after looking at the law, the case being argued by Epics high price lawyers and multiple appeals, all of the judges got it wrong. But only contact9879 knows the “truth”
No. My point is that case law and judges only operate within precedent and an interpretation of law. That doesn't mean that the conclusions drawn are "truth"-ful. I'd even argue that case law can not determine a "truth". What constitutes monopolistic behaviour is subjective and case law is reflective of that. In fact, decisions are called "judicial opinions". They are a best effort to determine a truth given the tools and environment within which courts operate. That doesn't mean that the verdict is "correct" (whatever that means in the context of deciding monopolies).
I don't particularly care what the current case law says, antitrust has been eroded for four decades to the point of being a joke. We need to overhaul this around the world and tame megacorps everywhere.
The behavior is plainly monopolistic and anticompetitive on its face. That it does not suffer judgement as violating any laws about such conduct is a sad reflection of our government corruption and unwillingness to regulate the corporations that provide most political funding.
Who said any of that? I mean our elected government (US and Canada alike) is evidently unwilling to enact & enforce toothsome antitrust. And that's a source of a huge portion of our bigger problems. Outsized influence by a small number of voices, and a toxic cycle of using the proceeds to buy more deregulation via political donation.
One can like the iOS platform and still advocate for general-purpose computing. I don't understand why folks on Hacker News, of all places, defend walled gardens so vehemently.
What you call a "walled garden" someone else would call an openly opinionated, thoughtfully designed, and well managed platform with seamless integration and world-class support.
Again, if that's not your thing you're perfectly free to spend your money elsewhere.
You can be opinionated, thoughtfully designed, and well managed without being a walled garden. Maybe once Apple is a primarily services company, they'll care less about their "walled garden" and let their devices play nice.
I honesty think that would be nice to see Apple loosen up in some ways.
But I really appreciate some of the ways in which they are strict. Developers really need to restrained from their own worst behaviors like slurping up private data, abusive advertising practices, not providing simple one-click cancelation of subscriptions, and so on.
> Again, if that's not your thing you're perfectly free to spend your money elsewhere.
You are in fact not, it's the whole problem. There's two actors colluding in the market, Apple & Google with very similar practices and rules ... and that's it.
The fact that the only change of pricing ever done was due to an anti trust lawsuit and copied straight over to start with? It's basically admission of guilt.
> If you don't like the iOS platform then don't develop for it or buy iOS devices. There is an endless kaleidoscope of Android devices you can choose from.
I didn't say I don't like the iOS platform. I said there's one thing about it that I don't like. Smartphones are very complex devices with countless features, both software and hardware. It's absolutely absurd to say to people, "If you don't like [specific thing] about this hugely complex device, then buy another brand." Moreover, there is no perfect device out there, otherwise I would buy it. Everything is a compromise, with pros and cons. And yes, there are cons. But there are also pros.
I think it's absurd to say something is a "monopoly" when clearly there are plenty of alternatives.
I'm old enough to remember the pre-Google internet and how the search engine crown passed between Altavista, Hotbot, Lycos, Yahoo! and probably others. Google did not come down from the heavens heralded by angels a fully formed tech hegemony all at once. The free market made it dominant over time because free people continue to freely choose Google. Google is not blessed with some form of immortality or invincibility either. It's dominance will only come to an end if people stop whining about it and try to outdo it instead.
For the record, I don't use Google services or products nor do I ever feel forced to as it is implied whenever someone whines about Google being a "monopoly."
Anti-trust also encompasses anti-competitive behavior, such as limiting consumer choice and stifling competition. It's a bit grey since Apple's marketplace is pretty unique. We need actual litigation to bring out clear answers.
Judges are actively ignoring each other’s rulings these days, what matters is the newest case that will ensue, what happened in the case you are citing is basically an eternity as far as legal regimes go.
Yes, because if you look at the ruling, she does not actually reference United States v. Apple Inc. (the Amazon ebooks case), meaning it did not factor into her decision in the slightest.
Therefore, you admit your question "So did the Epic judge ignore the ruling of another judge where Apple was accused of behaving monopolistic in regards to the App Store?" was made in bad faith, empty rhetoric. Also you agree with me that you bring it up was a non sequitur.
I asked “So did the Epic judge ignore the ruling of another judge where Apple was accused of behaving monopolistic in regards to the App Store?”
And you bought up a completely irrelevant case that the judge ignored. She also ignored the case about Apple Music (the company owned by the Beatles) suing Apple, was that a relevant case too?
Why does it matter? One case was about collusion between Apple and the book publishers and the other was about whether Apple had a monopoly on the App Store.
Why would the judge care about the other case? What precedence did the first cass set on the other?
To answer the question: "So did the Epic judge ignore the ruling of another judge where Apple was accused of behaving monopolistic in regards to the App Store?"
If the judge didn't care about the other case, then they are plainly ignoring the ruling of the other judge, thus substantiating my assertion that "Judges are actively ignoring each other’s rulings these days, what matters is the newest case that will ensue"
Really? So are you saying that the judge in the Epic case about the App Store should have taken into account a completely unrelated case just because it involved Apple? To what end?
Sounds like the answer to "So did the Epic judge ignore the ruling of another judge where Apple was accused of behaving monopolistic in regards to the App Store?" is a NO, then.
You still don’t get it. Apple in no way shape or form had a monopoly on ebooks in 2013.
There is a huge difference between monopolistic practices and collusion. You and I could have two competing taco stands in Nebraska and if we colluded to fix prices that would be illegal collusion even though it isn’t monopolistic.
So what other ruling did the Epic judge not ignore or ignore? I don’t care about Apple being a monopoly or not in the context of this conversation. I am trying to establish judges ignoring precedence.
What other ruling did the Epic judge ignore? She ignored the trial of the person who kidnapped Lindbergh’s baby, the OJ trial and literally millions of other cases that had nothing to do with whether Apple had a monopoly on the App Store.
Even if there had been trial in a different district than where she SSD working and it didn’t make it the Supreme Court, there is no “precedence” to ignore.
Yeah you are right that people are applying the wrong laws and expecting results. Ideally we would consider creating new laws. But it is hard to explain why a company's control over its own platform can be harmful especially if competition exists.
IMO the reason is that both customers and small creators end up losing in this scheme. They end up purchasing/making products often not for creativity or joy, but for necessity and FOMO. And yet these products are planned obsolescence. So even if this isn't a monopoly, it is exploitative.
I'm not sure whether the US can/should make a law against exploiting customers. But people should at least talk more about this weird tech environment we are in.
> For starters, Apple is not a monopoly. You are not a monopoly on your own platform
Doesn't matter. Antitrust laws address competition, monopoly is just a subset. The Apple App Store is an 800lb Gorilla is the app space, ergo, subject to pro-competition laws. The app developer can't sell his app on iPhones via another channel, iPhones make up a substantial part of the market, and that's why those laws exist and apply in this case.
Please do not distort the court decision. No official entities (such as FTC or DoJ) were involved in this case, it's just a private firm that failed to prove Apple's illegal monopoly (which is also different from market monopoly and/or antitrust conduct). Gonzalez has already explicitly revoked your statement.
> "While the Court finds that Apple enjoys considerable market share of over 55% and extraordinarily high profit margins, these factors alone do not show antitrust conduct," Gonzalez Rogers said. "The Court does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal monopolist."
Not ruled a monopoly only in the market of digital mobile gaming transactions. But it’s not illegal to be a monopoly, the judge still ruled they broke competition law by banning Epic from linking to their own store front.
Or it might prove that the current antitrust laws correctly deal with trusts.
And that if we want new laws, to be e.g. about "each platform must be open to third parties" regardless of market share, we need to push for them and get them, not abuse antitrust laws for something they weren't meant to cover.
I cannot imagine the effect a ruling like this would have on businesses if you actually got your way. It would very clearly lay out that investing in an ecosystem of hardware products and doing it well will only result in all that investment, time, energy, employee sweat and tears, ALL OF IT, to be rendered useless. Basically setting an entire business on fire.
Quite frankly I find it ridiculous people here are even suggesting this.
That's hysterical. If I had my way, Apple would be required by law to allow fair and reasonable pricing, alternate app stores, as well as transparency in whatever bureaucratic decisions they make. They'd still make an absurd amount of money on their hardware.
I find it ridiculous that we allow a private company to act as regulator over any sector of the economy, let alone one they have over 50% market share in.
> I find it ridiculous that we allow a private company to act as regulator over any sector of the economy, let alone one they have over 50% market share in.
If you feel that way then there are countries with economic models that don’t allow this. Venezuela comes to mind. Maybe you should relocate there so you can experience the outcome of heavy handed government control.
Again with the hysterical straw man. Right now I'm experiencing the outcome of heavy handed corporate control. There are a whole range of outcomes between that and full state control of the markets.
Do you believe that competitive markets are good? The App Store isn't one, I'm advocating for more competition, more trade and prosperity.
> Right now I'm experiencing the outcome of heavy handed corporate control
Except, you’re not? Nobody has a gun to your head forcing you to use an iPhone. There are other options instead of crying on the internet about how bad Apple is.
App store bud, try and focus. No one is claiming Apple has a problem on the hardware side. If I buy an iPhone, can I get any apps I want? No, I have to use the Apple app store. Vertical integration is anticompetitive and de jure illegal. I’m sorry you don’t understand the concepts of antitrust law, try reading the Tim Wu book.
Walmart doesn't have a monopoly on toasters because you can go across the street and buy a toaster at Target or order one from Amazon, and it plugs into the same power outlet and works with the same bread and may even be the exact same model of toaster. If you want to sell your toasters and Walmart won't give you a good price for them, you can sell them to the same set of customers through dozens of other channels.
If you want to install an app on your iPhone, you cannot get it from Google Play. If you are an app developer who wants to reach your entire customer base, you cannot choose between Google and Apple, you must use both. Because the customer with one type of device cannot use the other store.
> You are not a monopoly on your own platform
It certainly isn't inherently necessary for you to be. For example, Microsoft has no existing monopoly on app distribution to customers with Windows. But if there is no on else who can distribute apps to that distinct identifiable set of customers, you have a monopoly on app distribution to those customers, because "monopoly" means no one but you can do that. And no one but you can do that.
It is textbook in that we have a pretty famous precedent with the Hollywood studios and the Paramount Case. None of the studios were a monopoly. Each of the studios were only dictating the terms of their own movies and how they could be purchased. It's a landmark vertical integration ruling. And that's what Apple are doing with their app store.
It’s a textbook case, yet the hundreds of times we’ve heard this story before the lawsuit went nowhere. Perhaps reality isn’t as cut and dried as this article makes it look.
Really good lawyers still can’t defend textbook cases. But you mean to say that for all those indie developers who got their life’s work destroyed it was about the money anyway? Why would you settle otherwise?
> Really good lawyers still can’t defend textbook cases.
In many cases they can, because while the violation is textbook, they find some unrelated technicality to have the case dismissed. The plaintiff is in the wrong jurisdiction, or filed too late, or too early, or agreed to a binding arbitration clause etc. etc.
And when they run out of all of that, they open their wallet and pay the plaintiffs to settle so the prospective loss doesn't set a precedent against them or result in an injunction that would order them to discontinue their behavior in general.
If you're making the excessively literal claim that they don't put cases dismissed on procedural grounds in the textbook, actually sometimes they do, because the procedural issue gets appealed and the appellate court writes a significant opinion about it.
But that still doesn't affect whether the substantive issue is a textbook case. You could have the facts of the case exactly match an existing Supreme Court precedent, but that doesn't help the plaintiff if the statute of limitations has run.
> Since the developer had no idea what it was supposed to have done wrong, it was unable to meet Apple’s appeal requirement of explaining what happened, and how it has resolved the issue. The appeal was thus denied.
If nothing else, Apple should fix this. There is ZERO reason to be anything other than 100% transparent.
There is ZERO reason to be anything other than 100% transparent.
The customary rationale, at least around here, goes something like "B...b...b...but if we actually document the rules and tell you what you did wrong, it helps the BAD GUYS!!!11!!"
I agree. Imagine a legal system where the laws are hidden from citizens and they are only informed of their guilt without meaningful appeal.
I feel that any severed contract should require a clear reason with evidence along with an real opportunity for a rebuttal. If that fails then the court system can handle the rest.
I used to believe that companies should be allowed to halt business with whomever they please, but this is really just being abused by large companies to avoid the costs of scaling their business.
This is how anti-money laundering laws, bank account closures and money freeze work.
Any compliance officer, as long as they follow the rulebook, can decide to freeze your account on mere suspicion. How the law is written, they do not need to justify their actions any way, there is no lower threshold for suspicious activity, where a suspicion can be anything. To make matter more complex, compliance staff members, or anyone, are not allowed to tell about this to the customer because of “tip off” risk. In fact it is a criminal act to tip off money launderers. Any freeze can last as long as is needed for “investigation” which does not need to be an investigation by authorities.
I think the app store monopoly is literally the thing that lets the bad guys participate in the first place.
Consider competing app stores. Some of them would be stricter than Apple and do a far better job of curation IMO. For example, apps that exist to trick children into in-app purchases could be forbidden. Or maybe someone would start a store for games that only allows up-front sales, no subscriptions, and no ads.
I would gravitate to those stores and it’s where I’d send everyone I know. If others did the same, the “specialty” stores would filter out a huge amount of junk that’s currently on the Apple app store. Maybe the market would even shrink by eliminating the low quality participants.
How do you run an app store filled with garbage if there’s suddenly competition? IMO, that’s what Apple and Google are scared of. They want to keep selling large volumes of junk and competition makes that harder.
> Or maybe someone would start a store for games that only allows up-front sales, no subscriptions, and no ads. [...] [Those] stores would filter out a huge amount of junk that’s currently on the Apple app store.
While I'd love to live in a universe where this could actually happen, in reality this is a pipe dream.
The reason the app store is full of freemium apps stuffed with ads and microtransactions is because that's overwhelmingly the thing that consumers choose, and what makes the most money. Even desktop, a market that has historically used the up-front model is starting to switch to the "freemium or SaaS" model.
Any app store that tried to have such principles would find that they get almost no devs willing to add their apps, and those that did would get barely any sales compared to their less scrupulous peers (rendering the store unable to stay solvent at worst, or having almost no effect on the wider market at best)
> The reason the app store is full of freemium apps stuffed with ads and microtransactions is because that's overwhelmingly the thing that consumers choose
But that's the problem with a generalist store. They're leaving too much money on the table to exclude those things, so they include them, and then the store is full of crap and you can't trust anything.
If anyone could start a store then you could have a store operated by a tiny startup with low overhead who only has to pay one or two salaries and can therefore be sustainable with only a tiny fraction of the market, because they have a niche. Which enables the quality store to exist, and serve all of the customers who prefer that.
I feel like you're missing the point that the existence of such a niche store would have no effect on the "money left on the table" of the main app store. To affect the main store, they would have to
a) Put their app on the niche store and not on the main store (which would lose them money; fewer people will go to a niche store and buy a paid app than a freemium app. Therefore, developer have no incentive to do this)
b) Alternatively, they could release both the niche paid app and the free-main-store app, in which case consumers have little incentive to pick the pay-up-front one - so no change there.
Sure, such a store could exist (and should), but it will be a blip on Apple's radar (and all the more reason they should just allow sideloading)
> Put their app on the niche store and not on the main store (which would lose them money; fewer people will go to a niche store and buy a paid app than a freemium app. Therefore, developer have no incentive to do this)
You're assuming that all customers want the same thing.
Right now if you want to make a paid non-freemium game, no one can find it because the freemium games will have more downloads and the main store sorts by popularity. The customers who want such games hate this too, but because the main store has no competitors, they're just as stuck with it. And since customers can't find them, developers don't make them.
If you had a store that has only non-freemium games, the developer who makes one can go there and actually reach their customers, because being at the top of the list on a store with 1% of the market generates more sales than being on page 5000 of the main store's search results where even fewer people will see it. And then more of those games actually get made, which grows the market for the alternate store, which allows more of those games to get made.
Meanwhile that store doesn't take a huge chunk out of the main store's market, but it takes a percent or three. Many other niche stores each take a little share. And then a big store that competes directly with the main store but only charges 3% instead of 30% takes the rest.
> The reason the app store is full of freemium apps stuffed with ads and microtransactions is because that's overwhelmingly the thing that consumers choose, and what makes the most money.
No, it's because Apple threw the App Store together very quickly (after realizing that the "sweet solution" of web apps wasn't going to fly), and in order to accelerate this process they directly cloned the iTunes Music Store in almost every way. This turned out to be a complete disaster and resulted in a race to the bottom, because the music store was designed to sell 99 cent songs, not software that may have traditionally been $99, or at least $29.
One of the best ways to get visibility is to be in the "top charts", which makes a kind of sense for music, because all singles and all albums are more or less the same price, but to get into the top charts for software you've got to optimize for volume rather than price.
In so many ways, trying to sell apps like songs completely destroyed the software market. Indeed, it wasn't great for the music market either. Apple convinced the music publishers to unbundle albums and resulted in a race to the bottom there too. Musicians need the money from album sales; very few can "make it up in volume" with just hit singles.
> Even desktop, a market that has historically used the up-front model is starting to switch to the "freemium or SaaS" model.
Only because of the downward pressure from the mobile market.
The existence of F-Droid demonstrates the existence both of devs willing to list apps in restrictive "stores" and of users who seek such software.
Even assuming commercialized stores, that proposed race to the bottom dynamic doesn't hold up - Walmart is not the only retailer. People are happy to pay for quality and curation.
I use F-Droid (mostly just for Termux) on Android. It's an entirely different thing than GP was proposing. It's a host for FOSS apps that don't expect to be paid for the delivery of their software. Its existence essentially zero effect on the existence of freemium/SaaS apps the play store, which is kind of evidence for my point.
They're afraid of competition in general, because competition benefits customers.
You could find stricter or more specialized stores where you can trust everything in them more than you can from a general purpose store.
You could find stores that allow apps you may want that Apple prohibits even though they're not malicious, like BitTorrent or third party browser engines or adult content.
The competition would reduce their margins; 30% is absurd and only exists because it's a monopoly rent.
Everything about it benefits you, which is why there are supposed to be laws constraining them from removing your ability to choose.
> I think the app store monopoly is literally the thing that lets the bad guys participate in the first place.
Yes! I've been arguing for a long time that the crApp Store is actually a honeypot for criminals. It's a single point of failure, and Apple's reviewers can only spend a few minutes on each submission.
Before the crApp Store, indie devs already set up their own web stores, did their own marketing, etc. Apple has now made it trivial for anyone to publish an app, and that includes criminals! Criminals don't want to make an effort like serious indie devs do. They don't want to bide their time and build up a loyal audience. Criminals just want the quick easy scam money.
Not to mention that it's vastly easier and less expensive to game crApp Store search—and also to buy crApp Store Search Ads!—than it is to game Google search.
The worst part of the crApp Store is that Apple tells consumers, falsely, that the crApp Store is safe. It lowers their guard when they should be suspicious and careful. And of course crApp Store crowdsourced ratings and reviews can't be trusted at all. They're easily faked and/or purchased. Even when ratings and reviews are real, they're often ignorant and badly written, not done by professional reviewers. (As a developer myself, it drives me nuts that reviewers never contact support before writing, and they also put feature requests and bug reports in there instead of writing an actual review of the app.)
Apple business practices are a trade secret. If they disclose them to this developer, they'd lose their presumed advantage in the market.
Most large companies explain this somewhere in their terms of service, like Amazon using their own proprietary mechanisms for determining what fraud is.
We don't know all the facts yet, but there's one surefire way to get terminated:
> If you attempt to cheat the system (for example, by trying to trick the review process, steal user data, copy another developer’s work, manipulate ratings or App Store discovery) your apps will be removed from the store and you will be expelled from the Apple Developer Program.
Considering they engaged legal representation and it sounds like Apple rather than fight it restored their account.
So we can probably safely assume it wasn't a glaringly obvious or serious breach of the terms that Apple felt it could defend. I don't imagine Apple would make cost benefit decisions about who can break their terms of service with nothing more than a letter with a legal letterhead.
That being said we will know for sure as the plaintiff seems to be bound to make Apple foot the legal bill one way or another. Good for them.
I bet what happened is that one of Apples internal qualia changed and caused them to flag this developer, and no human being with any ability to fix things ever actually took a look at what happened until the lawsuit was filed and Apple was at risk of actually losing money because of it.
I hope they get a multiplier on their damages. $725,000 for 4 months of downtime for 7 people doesn't seem like enough.
If you count up news headlines for your statistics, you may end up biased on the utility a platform provides to end users by shutting down fraudulent dev accounts and erring on the side of caution.
Because there are "think of the innocents" headlines when a small dev gets caught in the dragnet, but no headlines about the hordes constantly getting shutdown before more consumers are harmed. The ratio of reporting gives a false impression of the utility.
Instead of looking for stories of bad devs getting shut down, you will find plenty pearl clutching headlines castigating Apple for failing to "clean up the app store" (although again, with no denominator under the numerator).
In general, though, from the conception of the Mac as a "bicycle for the mind" to the last revamp into Apple-as-a-Service, Apple's platform is, and has always been, for everyday end users, not for devs.
It's increasingly difficult to keep it safe for everyday users, and that's pain borne both by the platform creator, and app creators, so that users can do their jobs to be done with less friction, worry, or risk. (See IAP subs vs. any subscription to any other online service, effectively un-cancelable.)
If one doesn't agree with that goal, and the costs of maintaining that goal, there are other platforms one can develop for. Meanwhile, 99% of apps, especially ad-supported apps, can be delivered through HTML5: https://developer.ibm.com/tutorials/x-html5mobile3/
All that said ...
Devs are a user persona too, and Apple can afford to take accountability for any "we're in this together"-driven policy errors.
TL;DR:
Apple should automatically and proactively make-good any losses caused by mistaken shutdowns.
They have the stats: recurring revenue + projected growth + inconvenience/opportunity-cost coverage, auto-deposited for duration. That would be a fine motivation to get better at discriminating on the margins.
Would show user trust is important, and dev trust is of value too.
- - -
* Should have gone without saying: “Anti-trust” is not synonymous with “anti trust”, this was just a hook to talk about trust.
There are so many people that would happily take the risk for significant reward though. Like, make millions of dollars a year, 1% chance you go to prison? Lots of takers.
Your assumption is wrong, a large corp is not an organized crime corporation.
To be a CxO of a large corp you just can’t be “people”. You have to be a person qualified way above the rest of us. If you can make millions in a different place not taking the risk of going to jail you won’t take a role in a risky corp.
May be they are psychos, but not idiots.
I disagree. Plenty of folks incurred very high fines and even jail time over backdated options. People still backdate options. The risk is low enough, and the return is high enough, for people to creatively interpret the law. As long as there is an interpretation that could be valid, laws will be bent.
The hard part is to sort the "good apples" from the "bad apples" (pun intended)... And I would not be surprised to see some "too good" apples disturbing Big Tech and its friends being sorted as "bad apple"...
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 211 ms ] threadFor starters, Apple is not a monopoly. You are not a monopoly on your own platform, especially if that platform doesn't even have the majority of the relevant market. A company makes a platform or product so that they dictate the terms and if it's a marketplace, what and how it accepts to sell in it.
For example, you are not a monopoly on your own platform, but working with anyone to raise the prices on another platform is illegal under this framework, as well.
That's when the players the work with form a "cartel". And even there it's not an antitrust case until we're talking about a majority of combined share. Else two or more two-bit players deciding to sell at the same price is not a cartel (nor a trust). If Panic and BareBones meet and decide to sell their editors for $100, it's nobody's concern.
There is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L..., so Apple hasn't exactly been free of antitrust legislation in the past...
It has, but it's not really relevant to the case, nor is the employee thing.
Nor I find the court decision particularly correct in that case anyway. Amazon had for over a decade (and still) applies 10000-pound coercion pressure upon the publishers from big monopoly position, yet Apple got the fines because the publishers decided to sell where they'd be allowed a higher selling price instead of the one forced upon them by Amazon's wieght.
If you are arguing that those decisions were wrong, good luck with that. They lost handily in both of the cited cases I picked.
Again, I'm only stating that antitrust is not completely defined by monopoly. That is just the one people think they understand the most.
I don't understand how this is any different than Sony or Nintendo deciding the terms to release games on their hardware. Is it because they charge for dev-kits and Apple doesn't.
Are we certain it's in the public's interest to make development for Apple platforms more restrictive?
This isn't a decided case, such that I don't know what you are asking? Do we have evidence that Sony/Nintendo won't let you be a paying developer? More, do we have evidence that they would let you, but then after possibly benefiting from your efforts, kick you off their platform with no recourse?
I confess I would not be too surprised if we do have some of that evidence, but I haven't seen it. We have seen plenty of shady crap from those companies, but there are material other differences that make them hard to compare.
Amazon was deciding the prices of ebooks and taking a loss selling them below what the publishers were selling them to Amazon. This was hurting the publishers physical books sells. The publishers wanted to control their own prices. But one punisher couldn’t pull their books from Amazon unless they all did.
Apple was working as a go between for all of the publishers and wanted to give the publishers the right to set their own prices and Apple would take a cut. This is where the case came in.
Further, though, you are literally arguing against the laws here. They were not found guilty of being a monopoly. They were found guilty of antitrust violations that included price manipulation in the one case, and wage manipulation in the other.
Apple was found guilty of price manipulation because they wanted to make a deal with the publishers to allow the publishers to set their own pricing instead of Amazon price dumping.
This is all a side discussion, which I confess is fun; but it seems you agree that Apple has been guilty of antitrust violations in the past, without necessarily having had a monopoly. And... that is the entirety of my point that started this branch. :D
More, your argument was that sales of physical books were impacted. But, to show that you would have to be able to actually show it. With book sales continuing to climb, that will be hard to say "but it could have been even bigger!" Indeed, most evidence is that the ebooks were additional sells.
That all said, and I quote your article, "In a major rebuke, a federal judge has ruled that Apple violated antitrust laws..." Again, the point I was raising is that antitrust is more than just monopoly laws.
You can try and argue that the case was ruled incorrectly, but Apple was unable to do that with probably some of the best lawyers that you can get. Appeal was struck down and they were guilty of antitrust. Pretty convincingly.
The publishers sold the right to sell the ebooks to Amazon for $x where $x was greater than $9.99. Amazon sold the ebook for $9.99. Was Amazon trying to make it up in volume?
> More, your argument was that sales of physical books were impacted
If the publisher sold the physical books for $16.99 and the right to sell the ebook for $14.99 to Amazon and then Amazon sold it for $9.99, how could it not be impacted?
> You can try and argue that the case was ruled incorrectly, but Apple was unable to do that
So in that case do you agree that the Epic vs Apple case was ruled correctly?
Again, I'm not really wanting to defend Amazon here. I suspect it wouldn't be hard to find practices of theirs that I disagree with. I am not convinced they are or were breaking antitrust laws, though; by evidence of them not being accused of that.
I don't really have an opinion on the Epic case. Such that that is just another non-sequitur. Apple has been guilty of antitrust violations in the past, despite not having a monopoly. Any other argument can be fun, but is a different argument.
Again did you read the link I posted, the publishers explicitly did not want Amazon selling ebooks below list cost.
> The "suggested retail price" was basically that, a "suggested"
Again you didn’t read the article. There are three prices involved
1. The wholesale price - this is the price that the publisher sells the right to Amazon to sell the book. For example $14.00
2. The suggested retail price could very well be $20.00
A “sale” that the bookstore would do would be somewhere between $14.00 and $19.99. They would not sell the book for $9.99 and lose $5.01
> Any other argument can be fun, but is a different argument.
But yet an argument about Apple being accused of “collusion” about books is somehow relevant to a discussion about a “monopoly” on the app store.
But a lawsuit about App Store where Apple was found not to be a monopoly isn’t relevant about selling an app?
I did read the link. It did not, specifically, call out price dumping. What it called out was that publishers wanted people to value books at more than $9.99. Something that the Best Seller list of Amazon's was undermining. As someone that remembers this as it was happening, I also remember that other ebooks that Amazon was selling were at the suggested price.
Again, you are misrepresenting things. Wholesale price is the price the store paid to get the item. When they are not in the "agency" agreement, they are free to sell the item for whatever they value it at. Higher or lower. After all, the cost they paid is a sunk cost at that point and it may be worth it to move the item at a loss than to continue to store it. You are correct that price dumping resembles that idea, but it is a technically different thing. (I'll note that referring to ebooks as some sort of fixed inventory is silly for many other reasons...)
I don't know how to make it clearer, sadly, and feel you are purposely ignoring all points. An argument about Apple being guilty of antitrust violations despite not having a monopoly is solely an argument about monopoly not being a required factor of antitrust claims.
You have tried to argue that Amazon was actually the monopolist. There are some factual problems with that claim, but it is completely a non-sequitur on whether or not Apple needs to be a monopoly to run afoul of antitrust law. Same with whatever point you are trying to bring in about Epic. It is literally not relevant to the point that Apple may again be running afoul of antitrust rules.
From the article:
> Amazon was actually losing money on e-book sales, but it didn’t care. The long-term goal was to get people to buy its Kindle e-readers.
—-
> After all, the cost they paid is a sunk cost at that point and it may be worth it to move the item at a loss than to continue to store it
You realize the discussion is about ebooks that Amazon was selling at a loss?
My main claim with regards to Amazon is mainly if they were guilty of price fixing, than it would have been pursued. Can you find any legal proceedings that take that charge against them? Heck, if they were guilty of price discrimination, that would likely have been pursued. It has been brought against them, but it has not gone anywhere that I can remember.
The discussion, per the top post of mine in this thread, is over whether or not Apple could be afoul of antitrust. I entered this branch by pointing out that antitrust != monopoly. It is a type of antitrust concern, but it is not the only one. You keep trying to pull up non-sequitur points that don't change that. Apple has been guilty of antitrust law in the past despite not having a monopoly.
If you are worried that Amazon has a monopoly on ebooks, note that their current ebook share is evidently close to what Apple's phone share is in Japan. Which... doesn't look good for your monopoly argument there, to be honest. That all said, I don't think that should change much of the legal issues here.
So exactly how was Amazon making money by selling ebooks at a loss and Kindles at a loss?
And you keep moving the goal posts. At first you claimed that Amazon was and bookstores were selling below suggested retail.
> My main claim with regards to Amazon is mainly if they were guilty of price fixing
No one claimed that Amazon was price fixing. The contention was that Amazon was price dumping to drive competitors out of the market.
What goal post have I moved? It is incoherent to try and argue whether or not Amazon is a monopolist in a thread about whether or not Apple can be held to antitrust concerns. I continue responding as it is a little fun, though I confess I'm growing weary.
The claim of wholesale versus suggested retail is precisely what Apple helped publishers push. Apple conspired with the publishers to force an "agency" model where Amazon could not set the sale price. Contrasted with the outstanding "wholesale" model that they were in before.
You are arguing that Amazon was price dumping and that is specifically not something Amazon has been accused of. They have been accused of loss-leader pricing on the best sellers to get people to buy other books. But that is a different thing, entirely. You seem to think any loss-leader sales are illegal, and that isn't the case. It can look and feel very like predatory pricing, but it is a different thing.
Even worse in a conversation about ebooks you brought up “holding costs” like we were talking about physical books.
i didn’t bring up the Amazon case.
The "holding costs" is precisely why the publishers stuck to the wholesale contract, and is why I brought it up. They kept the same terms and added ebooks to the deal. Then got upset when Amazon took advantage of that. (And... I noted that that is a silly model here.)
And you did bring up the idea that Amazon was a monopolists here. Which I pointed out was incoherent to the topic. Apologies for letting you continue it. :(
I am not even really arguing that they are guilty in this case. I flat out don't know. I do find it odd to see the unwavering defense of Apple in this.
iPhone has a market share of almost 70% in Japan, the location of the plaintiff. iPhone also has a market share of over 50% now in the United States, by the way.
> A company makes a platform or product so that they dictate the terms and if it's a marketplace, what and how it accepts to sell in it.
Historical revisionism. For more than 30 years prior to iOS, general-purpose computing platforms were mostly open with no vendor-controlled store.
That's quite the historical revisionism.
Phones weren't "general-purpose computing platforms" for the most part of those 30 years (Gordon Gecko's phone didn't have apps). Nor where they considered as such.
And there were tons of capable of "general purpose computing" popular devices in those 30 years with closed markets or even restricted acccess to the SDKs themselves, almost all game consoles for example.
We're all well aware of that, but so what? There's nothing inherent to smartphones that requires vendor-locked stores, and indeed some other smartphone platforms allow various levels of so-called "sideloading".
> And there were tons of capable of "general purpose computing" popular devices in those 30 years with closed markets or even restricted acccess to the SDKs themselves, almost all game consoles for example.
I used the term "general-purpose computing platforms" specifically to contrast with platforms such as game consoles, which are by their very name single-purpose.
By the way, I don't accept that vendor lockdown of game consoles is ok either, especially at present. My understanding is that the original motivation was that game consoles were sold at a loss to encourage adoption (which I don't think is true anymore), and thus a cut of the game revenue was required to make the consoles viable. So the console developers and the game developers had a kind of mutual interest in that. In contrast, iPhone was never sold at a loss, always at a massive profit for Apple. 3rd party app developers never needed to sacrifice their revenue to encourage iPhone adoption.
It should also be said that Apple itself considered "sideloading" on iPhone before the App Store was introduced, as shown by the emails from the Epic Games trial. Scott Forstall even said that they implemented sideloading in an internal iOS build, which he discussed in an email to Steve Jobs. AFAIK it hasn't been revealed why Apple decided against it ultimately. https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/21043913-2008-may-...
If game consoles were marketed and sold as general-purpose computing platforms, then consumers would be very disappointed with them, because they make crappy general-purpose computing platforms. If iPhone or Mac were marketed and sold as game consoles, consumers would be similarly disappointed with them.
Palm OS 1.0 was nothing close to a general purpose computing platform. They didn’t even add TCP/IP support until 2.0.
If anything the ability to lockdown Palm devices was a major selling point to many customers’s internal IT systems. That’s something I think people arguing for open platforms are ignoring, some customers really do want closed systems for various reasons.
As to TCP/IP, a Commodore 64 included the capability to use external storage to exchange information. You don’t need both, but the capability to directly exchange information with similar devices is a major hallmark of “general purpose computing” unlike say calculators or other specialized devices. Palm 1.0 included an email application, thus TCP/IP was a core feature. Instead you need to go from palm > computer > palm, just like say an early iPod or USB stick.
Thus palm started as glorified terminals, and people still loved them.
Neither one of those market shares are monopolies.
> Historical revisionism. For more than 30 years prior to iOS, general-purpose computing platforms were mostly open with no vendor-controlled store.
If you don't like the iOS platform then don't develop for it or buy iOS devices. There is an endless kaleidoscope of Android devices you can choose from.
Non-monopoly behavior would be users and developers having the choice to offer & install iOS apps outside of Apple's app store, but choosing the app store because the trade-off of fees is considered fair for the trust & platform convenience gained in exchange.
A real judge saying that Apple isn’t a monopoly…
https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/story/resounding-vic...
That does not appear to be anything like affirming that they are not a monopoly. One can be a monopoly without being guilty of anticompetitive monopolistic behavior. Likewise, Epic failing to make their narrow case is not a statement of absolute fact about Apple's market or industry position; it is a statement that Epic's specific argument was not valid or sufficient to confirm their claims.
2) The case is on appeal to the Supreme Court.
3) Apple paid out a settlement in another monopolist case: https://smallappdeveloperassistance.com/
The behavior is plainly monopolistic and anticompetitive on its face. That it does not suffer judgement as violating any laws about such conduct is a sad reflection of our government corruption and unwillingness to regulate the corporations that provide most political funding.
No, but control of your own platform is not considered a monopoly if you don't have a monopoly on the overall market.
Again, if that's not your thing you're perfectly free to spend your money elsewhere.
But I really appreciate some of the ways in which they are strict. Developers really need to restrained from their own worst behaviors like slurping up private data, abusive advertising practices, not providing simple one-click cancelation of subscriptions, and so on.
You are in fact not, it's the whole problem. There's two actors colluding in the market, Apple & Google with very similar practices and rules ... and that's it.
I didn't say I don't like the iOS platform. I said there's one thing about it that I don't like. Smartphones are very complex devices with countless features, both software and hardware. It's absolutely absurd to say to people, "If you don't like [specific thing] about this hugely complex device, then buy another brand." Moreover, there is no perfect device out there, otherwise I would buy it. Everything is a compromise, with pros and cons. And yes, there are cons. But there are also pros.
I'm old enough to remember the pre-Google internet and how the search engine crown passed between Altavista, Hotbot, Lycos, Yahoo! and probably others. Google did not come down from the heavens heralded by angels a fully formed tech hegemony all at once. The free market made it dominant over time because free people continue to freely choose Google. Google is not blessed with some form of immortality or invincibility either. It's dominance will only come to an end if people stop whining about it and try to outdo it instead.
For the record, I don't use Google services or products nor do I ever feel forced to as it is implied whenever someone whines about Google being a "monopoly."
https://qz.com/103169/how-apple-tried-to-turn-the-e-book-ind...
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since people are ignoring a judges ruling that Apple isn’t a monopoly and saying it’s irrelevant.
Unless you somehow think Apple had a monopoly on ebooks.
And you bought up a completely irrelevant case that the judge ignored. She also ignored the case about Apple Music (the company owned by the Beatles) suing Apple, was that a relevant case too?
Why would the judge care about the other case? What precedence did the first cass set on the other?
If the judge didn't care about the other case, then they are plainly ignoring the ruling of the other judge, thus substantiating my assertion that "Judges are actively ignoring each other’s rulings these days, what matters is the newest case that will ensue"
There is a huge difference between monopolistic practices and collusion. You and I could have two competing taco stands in Nebraska and if we colluded to fix prices that would be illegal collusion even though it isn’t monopolistic.
This is why HN users make bad keyboard lawyers.
Even if there had been trial in a different district than where she SSD working and it didn’t make it the Supreme Court, there is no “precedence” to ignore.
IMO the reason is that both customers and small creators end up losing in this scheme. They end up purchasing/making products often not for creativity or joy, but for necessity and FOMO. And yet these products are planned obsolescence. So even if this isn't a monopoly, it is exploitative.
I'm not sure whether the US can/should make a law against exploiting customers. But people should at least talk more about this weird tech environment we are in.
Doesn't matter. Antitrust laws address competition, monopoly is just a subset. The Apple App Store is an 800lb Gorilla is the app space, ergo, subject to pro-competition laws. The app developer can't sell his app on iPhones via another channel, iPhones make up a substantial part of the market, and that's why those laws exist and apply in this case.
> "While the Court finds that Apple enjoys considerable market share of over 55% and extraordinarily high profit margins, these factors alone do not show antitrust conduct," Gonzalez Rogers said. "The Court does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal monopolist."
And if you haven’t been paying attention - government lawyers haven’t been doing too great lately making cases against BigTech.
Yet, HN posters are sure that Apple is a monopoly. Did their high price lawyers miss something that HN posters found?
And that if we want new laws, to be e.g. about "each platform must be open to third parties" regardless of market share, we need to push for them and get them, not abuse antitrust laws for something they weren't meant to cover.
Quite frankly I find it ridiculous people here are even suggesting this.
I find it ridiculous that we allow a private company to act as regulator over any sector of the economy, let alone one they have over 50% market share in.
If you feel that way then there are countries with economic models that don’t allow this. Venezuela comes to mind. Maybe you should relocate there so you can experience the outcome of heavy handed government control.
Do you believe that competitive markets are good? The App Store isn't one, I'm advocating for more competition, more trade and prosperity.
Except, you’re not? Nobody has a gun to your head forcing you to use an iPhone. There are other options instead of crying on the internet about how bad Apple is.
In what sense is it not a monopoly?
Walmart doesn't have a monopoly on toasters because you can go across the street and buy a toaster at Target or order one from Amazon, and it plugs into the same power outlet and works with the same bread and may even be the exact same model of toaster. If you want to sell your toasters and Walmart won't give you a good price for them, you can sell them to the same set of customers through dozens of other channels.
If you want to install an app on your iPhone, you cannot get it from Google Play. If you are an app developer who wants to reach your entire customer base, you cannot choose between Google and Apple, you must use both. Because the customer with one type of device cannot use the other store.
> You are not a monopoly on your own platform
It certainly isn't inherently necessary for you to be. For example, Microsoft has no existing monopoly on app distribution to customers with Windows. But if there is no on else who can distribute apps to that distinct identifiable set of customers, you have a monopoly on app distribution to those customers, because "monopoly" means no one but you can do that. And no one but you can do that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
> 5 months afterwards, the firm's lawyer sent a letter to Apple.
> 2 months later, Apple reinstiated the app without any explanation.
> The firm is now suing for damages & lost revenue. $765k.
In many cases they can, because while the violation is textbook, they find some unrelated technicality to have the case dismissed. The plaintiff is in the wrong jurisdiction, or filed too late, or too early, or agreed to a binding arbitration clause etc. etc.
And when they run out of all of that, they open their wallet and pay the plaintiffs to settle so the prospective loss doesn't set a precedent against them or result in an injunction that would order them to discontinue their behavior in general.
But that still doesn't affect whether the substantive issue is a textbook case. You could have the facts of the case exactly match an existing Supreme Court precedent, but that doesn't help the plaintiff if the statute of limitations has run.
If nothing else, Apple should fix this. There is ZERO reason to be anything other than 100% transparent.
The customary rationale, at least around here, goes something like "B...b...b...but if we actually document the rules and tell you what you did wrong, it helps the BAD GUYS!!!11!!"
That’s almost the definition of kafkaesque.
Any compliance officer, as long as they follow the rulebook, can decide to freeze your account on mere suspicion. How the law is written, they do not need to justify their actions any way, there is no lower threshold for suspicious activity, where a suspicion can be anything. To make matter more complex, compliance staff members, or anyone, are not allowed to tell about this to the customer because of “tip off” risk. In fact it is a criminal act to tip off money launderers. Any freeze can last as long as is needed for “investigation” which does not need to be an investigation by authorities.
And oh boy, this gets abused.
Consider competing app stores. Some of them would be stricter than Apple and do a far better job of curation IMO. For example, apps that exist to trick children into in-app purchases could be forbidden. Or maybe someone would start a store for games that only allows up-front sales, no subscriptions, and no ads.
I would gravitate to those stores and it’s where I’d send everyone I know. If others did the same, the “specialty” stores would filter out a huge amount of junk that’s currently on the Apple app store. Maybe the market would even shrink by eliminating the low quality participants.
How do you run an app store filled with garbage if there’s suddenly competition? IMO, that’s what Apple and Google are scared of. They want to keep selling large volumes of junk and competition makes that harder.
While I'd love to live in a universe where this could actually happen, in reality this is a pipe dream.
The reason the app store is full of freemium apps stuffed with ads and microtransactions is because that's overwhelmingly the thing that consumers choose, and what makes the most money. Even desktop, a market that has historically used the up-front model is starting to switch to the "freemium or SaaS" model.
Any app store that tried to have such principles would find that they get almost no devs willing to add their apps, and those that did would get barely any sales compared to their less scrupulous peers (rendering the store unable to stay solvent at worst, or having almost no effect on the wider market at best)
But that's the problem with a generalist store. They're leaving too much money on the table to exclude those things, so they include them, and then the store is full of crap and you can't trust anything.
If anyone could start a store then you could have a store operated by a tiny startup with low overhead who only has to pay one or two salaries and can therefore be sustainable with only a tiny fraction of the market, because they have a niche. Which enables the quality store to exist, and serve all of the customers who prefer that.
a) Put their app on the niche store and not on the main store (which would lose them money; fewer people will go to a niche store and buy a paid app than a freemium app. Therefore, developer have no incentive to do this)
b) Alternatively, they could release both the niche paid app and the free-main-store app, in which case consumers have little incentive to pick the pay-up-front one - so no change there.
Sure, such a store could exist (and should), but it will be a blip on Apple's radar (and all the more reason they should just allow sideloading)
You're assuming that all customers want the same thing.
Right now if you want to make a paid non-freemium game, no one can find it because the freemium games will have more downloads and the main store sorts by popularity. The customers who want such games hate this too, but because the main store has no competitors, they're just as stuck with it. And since customers can't find them, developers don't make them.
If you had a store that has only non-freemium games, the developer who makes one can go there and actually reach their customers, because being at the top of the list on a store with 1% of the market generates more sales than being on page 5000 of the main store's search results where even fewer people will see it. And then more of those games actually get made, which grows the market for the alternate store, which allows more of those games to get made.
Meanwhile that store doesn't take a huge chunk out of the main store's market, but it takes a percent or three. Many other niche stores each take a little share. And then a big store that competes directly with the main store but only charges 3% instead of 30% takes the rest.
No, it's because Apple threw the App Store together very quickly (after realizing that the "sweet solution" of web apps wasn't going to fly), and in order to accelerate this process they directly cloned the iTunes Music Store in almost every way. This turned out to be a complete disaster and resulted in a race to the bottom, because the music store was designed to sell 99 cent songs, not software that may have traditionally been $99, or at least $29.
One of the best ways to get visibility is to be in the "top charts", which makes a kind of sense for music, because all singles and all albums are more or less the same price, but to get into the top charts for software you've got to optimize for volume rather than price.
In so many ways, trying to sell apps like songs completely destroyed the software market. Indeed, it wasn't great for the music market either. Apple convinced the music publishers to unbundle albums and resulted in a race to the bottom there too. Musicians need the money from album sales; very few can "make it up in volume" with just hit singles.
> Even desktop, a market that has historically used the up-front model is starting to switch to the "freemium or SaaS" model.
Only because of the downward pressure from the mobile market.
Even assuming commercialized stores, that proposed race to the bottom dynamic doesn't hold up - Walmart is not the only retailer. People are happy to pay for quality and curation.
You could find stricter or more specialized stores where you can trust everything in them more than you can from a general purpose store.
You could find stores that allow apps you may want that Apple prohibits even though they're not malicious, like BitTorrent or third party browser engines or adult content.
The competition would reduce their margins; 30% is absurd and only exists because it's a monopoly rent.
Everything about it benefits you, which is why there are supposed to be laws constraining them from removing your ability to choose.
Yes! I've been arguing for a long time that the crApp Store is actually a honeypot for criminals. It's a single point of failure, and Apple's reviewers can only spend a few minutes on each submission.
Before the crApp Store, indie devs already set up their own web stores, did their own marketing, etc. Apple has now made it trivial for anyone to publish an app, and that includes criminals! Criminals don't want to make an effort like serious indie devs do. They don't want to bide their time and build up a loyal audience. Criminals just want the quick easy scam money.
Not to mention that it's vastly easier and less expensive to game crApp Store search—and also to buy crApp Store Search Ads!—than it is to game Google search.
The worst part of the crApp Store is that Apple tells consumers, falsely, that the crApp Store is safe. It lowers their guard when they should be suspicious and careful. And of course crApp Store crowdsourced ratings and reviews can't be trusted at all. They're easily faked and/or purchased. Even when ratings and reviews are real, they're often ignorant and badly written, not done by professional reviewers. (As a developer myself, it drives me nuts that reviewers never contact support before writing, and they also put feature requests and bug reports in there instead of writing an actual review of the app.)
Why do people accept these terms?
Most large companies explain this somewhere in their terms of service, like Amazon using their own proprietary mechanisms for determining what fraud is.
Their advantage is owning the locked down platform. It’s not a secret.
We don't know all the facts yet, but there's one surefire way to get terminated:
> If you attempt to cheat the system (for example, by trying to trick the review process, steal user data, copy another developer’s work, manipulate ratings or App Store discovery) your apps will be removed from the store and you will be expelled from the Apple Developer Program.
So we can probably safely assume it wasn't a glaringly obvious or serious breach of the terms that Apple felt it could defend. I don't imagine Apple would make cost benefit decisions about who can break their terms of service with nothing more than a letter with a legal letterhead.
That being said we will know for sure as the plaintiff seems to be bound to make Apple foot the legal bill one way or another. Good for them.
I hope they get a multiplier on their damages. $725,000 for 4 months of downtime for 7 people doesn't seem like enough.
Anti whose trust?*
Apple targets users' trust.
If you count up news headlines for your statistics, you may end up biased on the utility a platform provides to end users by shutting down fraudulent dev accounts and erring on the side of caution.
Because there are "think of the innocents" headlines when a small dev gets caught in the dragnet, but no headlines about the hordes constantly getting shutdown before more consumers are harmed. The ratio of reporting gives a false impression of the utility.
Instead of looking for stories of bad devs getting shut down, you will find plenty pearl clutching headlines castigating Apple for failing to "clean up the app store" (although again, with no denominator under the numerator).
In general, though, from the conception of the Mac as a "bicycle for the mind" to the last revamp into Apple-as-a-Service, Apple's platform is, and has always been, for everyday end users, not for devs.
It's increasingly difficult to keep it safe for everyday users, and that's pain borne both by the platform creator, and app creators, so that users can do their jobs to be done with less friction, worry, or risk. (See IAP subs vs. any subscription to any other online service, effectively un-cancelable.)
If one doesn't agree with that goal, and the costs of maintaining that goal, there are other platforms one can develop for. Meanwhile, 99% of apps, especially ad-supported apps, can be delivered through HTML5: https://developer.ibm.com/tutorials/x-html5mobile3/
All that said ...
Devs are a user persona too, and Apple can afford to take accountability for any "we're in this together"-driven policy errors.
TL;DR:
Apple should automatically and proactively make-good any losses caused by mistaken shutdowns.
They have the stats: recurring revenue + projected growth + inconvenience/opportunity-cost coverage, auto-deposited for duration. That would be a fine motivation to get better at discriminating on the margins.
Would show user trust is important, and dev trust is of value too.
- - -
* Should have gone without saying: “Anti-trust” is not synonymous with “anti trust”, this was just a hook to talk about trust.
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The hard part is to sort the "good apples" from the "bad apples" (pun intended)... And I would not be surprised to see some "too good" apples disturbing Big Tech and its friends being sorted as "bad apple"...
Even funnier, none of the claims in the lawsuit are antitrust claims:
Count 1: Breach of Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing.
Count 2: Intentional Interference with Contractual Relations
Count 3: Intentional Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage
Count 4: Negligent Interference with Prospective with Prospective Economic Advantage
Count 5: Violations of Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200, ET SEQ.
(17200 is unfair trade practices, which is at least somewhat related to antitrust, but not actually an antitrust claim)
I do think you could make out plenty of good antitrust claims against Apple, but this would not be one of them.