Anti competitive practices are still illegal, under the sherman anti trust act, even if the company "owns" the platform.

To give a relevant example, most people would agree that it would be illegal and anti-competitive if Microsoft made every single app on the PC go through the microsoft store.

In fact, there was already a court case, 20 years ago, where Microsoft lost an anti-trust case, which was a bit similar to this. (Yes, microsoft had around ~80% of the market share then, but Apple now has ~50% of the smartphone market, which is enough for anti-trust law to apply. Thus it is a similar case)

> I don't understand your argument at all.

The argument is that Apple's actions are illegally anti-competitive, and that similar behavior has already been ruled illegal in the past, and if we thought about other hypotheticals, such as if Microsoft did the same behavior for the PC, that basically everyone would agree that this would be illegally anti-competitive.

Just think about the microsoft example if you are still confused. Basically everyone would agree that it would be illegally anti-competitive for microsoft to prevent people from downloading software onto their PC, and forced everyone to give them a cut through the microsoft PC app store.

Yes you can. Just go look at the microsoft court case, if you don't believe me.

Microsoft created their software. But it was absolutely still possible for them to be engaging in illegal anti-competitive behavior.

The Microsoft case directly proves you wrong. The courts ruled against them. Even though microsoft created windows.

Imagine if microsoft prevented people from installing other software on the PC, that did not go through their app store.

Even IF, they changed their licensings, to whatever Apple's are, I think that basically everyone would agree that this would be illegally anti-competitive.

Or do you instead believe that Microsoft could prevent competiting software (such as web browsers) from being installed on the PC?