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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday July 22 2020, @04:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the who-should-I-root-for-again? dept.

who am I rooting for again?

Microsoft Tells Congress That iOS App Store Is Anticompetitive:

US regulators are taking aim at big tech firms like Google, Apple, and Amazon, with the potential for antitrust cases later this year. A House committee is gearing up to question the CEOs of major technology companies, but Microsoft President Brad Smith has already chatted with the committee. Smith reportedly expressed concerns about Apple in particular, specifically when it comes to its handling of the App Store.

[...] According to Smith, the recent disagreement over the Basecamp Hey email app on iOS exemplifies the problem. The app needs a $99 annual subscription, but there was no way to purchase it in the app — users had to go to the web. That didn't please Apple, as it circumvented the 30 percent revenue charge. Apple resisted approving the app, only doing so when public pressure ramped up, and the developers added a 14-day free trial for iOS users.

[...] And that's at the heart of the antitrust probe: Is Apple harming competition with its policies now that iOS is one of two dominant mobile platforms? It might take a few years for the government to decide that one.


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  • (Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 22 2020, @07:34PM (2 children)

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 22 2020, @07:34PM (#1025046)

    You'll note just how quickly they dropped the DRM when they had amassed a nearly impossible to defeat marketshare.

    Nitpick: They dropped it because it cost money to maintain and it wasn't preventing piracy or increasing their sales numbers. The reason it happened when it did was the music industry finally quit fighting it. (The movie/tv industry has not, which is why you have DRM in streaming services. Can't license the show unless you include DRM, not an Apple decision.)

    In short, this isn't simply a matter of being proprietary, Apple has regularly engaged in anticompetitive activities that would breach antitrust laws if they were being enforced.

    I'm trying to drill down into what anti-trust laws you're referring to. Nothing you've described so far rings to me as 'illegal', for example the 'one browser on ios' thing is not actually illegal. If it suddenly were you'd be seeing changes across electronic products all over the spectrum. The reason I'm being kinda ratty about it is lots of people that got their news from Slashdot think that Microsoft trying to make IE exclusive was the issue. It's not, there's a mountain of context around that that iPhones don't qualify for because ... Android is actually winning.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2020, @12:28PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2020, @12:28PM (#1025369)

    Then you're a know nothing moron. There's two big antitrust laws that cover pretty much all of this Sherman and Clayton. They're rather vague because it was intended for the courts to take it on a case by case basis as to whether or not given behavior was as businesses have a tendency to look for technicalities to get the benefits without getting crushed. And they routinely go unenforced because the companies that are engaging in it just bribe politicians via campaign contributions.

    Apple was only able to make that move on DRM because they were finished abusing their ITMS to push their iPods and had the marketshare that allowed them to pressure the music industry to take it. That's what happened, you can deliberately misinterpret that as much as you like, but the fact of the matter is that there were at least 2 antitrust violations there.

    As far as the browser goes, it's definitely not something that Apple gets to do. MS got smacked because they were abusing their position to push their product. Just because Apple no longer has the top spot doesn't make it any less anticompetitive for them to prevent other browsers from being installed on their hardware. Arguing that Android has more marketshare is rather foolish when the cost of switching and giving up your catalog of apps can be rather expensive. In short, customers don't really have the ability to switch away from iOS the way that I can switch manufacturers of my desktop to other brands.

    Interestingly enough, you bring up Android, Google is another company that has massively benefited from antitrust violations. It's a blatant violation of Clayton to buy up the number 2 competitor to give yourself an unfair advantage over other potential competitors.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @12:02AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @12:02AM (#1026018)
      You're thinking of Amazon, not Apple.