I like that Apple has leverage to tell app developers to adhere to their platform rules in ways that benefit Apple's users.
If Apple was wielding this to harm users that'd be one thing, but they're not, they wield it to prevent spammy crap, to make it easy to subscribe and unsubscribe, to prevent spying and tracking, etc.
That's why I value and buy Apple products, if someone wants an open platform they can buy something else. They're not a monopoly and they don't act in a way that harms their users.
walled gardens harm users by definition because they reduce competition. Forcing an open API would immediately create the opportunity for people to offer competing clients for any Apple (or Facebook etc) service, drive down costs, produce new ways to interact with the services of large companies and so on, it would immediately unlock the ability of countless of independent creators to produce new products.
In fact if you were to open up Facebook, Apple's apis and so on and turned them into open protocols you would not even necessarily need invasive privacy regulation, people could just build a privacy respecting Facebook client that lets people interact with the service in a way they want, getting an algorithm free news feed if they want, stripping out baggage they don't need. It would solve a large majority of the exact issues that we have with large tech companies.
Apple does hold a monopoly over all Apple users, which gives them market power the same way a monopolistic company in a larger market exercises power. It's actually straight up depressing for someone to say "well I benefit from the walled garden". It's no different than someone saying "I like the oligarch because he treats me nicely"
Apple has not deceived consumers with regards to their App Store practices. On the contrary, they've been quite boastful about it. There are (and were) plenty of open computing platforms, allowing consumers to experience their benefits and tradeoffs. If consumers prefer to use a more locked down platform, then so be it.
The government should absolutely force it on Facebook and Apple and Google the same way the American government forced it on railroad barons a hundred years ago, when they were forced to make their networks interoperable.
Imagine if Volkswagen owned the streets and you could only drive your car on 30% of all roads. Sure you can go to Toyota, you just have to drive in circles. We'd laugh anyone out of the room who actually defended this. Yet this is literally how the internet is structured right now. We live in little fiefdoms where Android users can't talk to imessage users because feudal lords have decided to draw a line across the territory.
Why? The state makes a variety of judgements that corporations cannot leave things up to user choice because that's too dangerous to wider society.
Apple can't sell an iPhone that occasionally electrocutes users and out it down to "user choice." We rightly ban that.
There is nothing wrong with a consumer being allowed to choose to keep their own phone locked down.
Thats not the problem. The problem is when you go to a consumer and tell them that they aren't allowed to open up their own property, in an easy way.
You can keep your phone locked down. Just give other people the choice to also open up their own phone, easily, if they choose to do so.
Starbucks holds a monopoly over all Starbucks customers.
If I want to be a Starbucks customer I have to go to Starbucks. Goddamn them I want to get my overpriced Starbucks coffee from Dairy Queen!
Speaking of Dairy Queen, why are they the only ones that get to sell a Blizzard??!?
*****
Your statement is just as nonsensical to me.
I can see the argument, I just don’t think the power is being wielded for consumer harm - if it was that’d be different.
If Apple was blocking some company from their store everyone wanted because they were competing with an Apple product that’d be an issue. As it is they’re making it easy for their users to not be spied on.
In the analogy it’d be Walmart checking that what they stock on shelves doesn’t poison their customers.
Are they wielding power? Sure - is that monopoly abuse? No.
In fact, in the past week alone I've bought coffee at both Starbucks and Dunkin. The product lines are similar and buying one does not preclude buying the other. There's zero lock in.
Once you start using your iPhone, you stop buying Android apps. You also don't use Google Wallet.
Of course apple holds a “monopoly” over their own users, exactly the same as how Walmart and Target hold a “monopoly” over the space within their own stores.
If you don’t like the business model of Walmart because of how they have ruined local businesses, you can go shop at the farmers market or local organic shops. But you wouldn’t file a lawsuit which would demand that Walmart host the local farmers market in their own parking lot.
The ones who have been killed in Hong Kong by Apple throwing protestors under a bus might disagree with this.
Or a variety of sexual subcultures, or sex workers, who Apple relentlessly attack.
That’s mostly a separate issue though.
There is a healthy market here. Forcing Apple to do what you suggest is harmful to users and reduces user choice by making the Apple ecosystem like Android. This removes Apple’s ability to do things like block tracking and force store compliance which is the reason I and others choose them.
An option exists for people that don’t want a curated ecosystem. This is about you forcing your preferences on everyone else, specifically users that prefer and chose Apple’s model.
You can choose to only download apps from the Apple app store that follow those rules. You will in no way be effected whatsoever by the platform being open. For you, nothing will change.
Why do you feel everyone else in the world must live with in your limits and not limits they choose for themselves?
If it was left to choice the companies are incentivized to be shitty.
Users are unsophisticated so the incentive will be for companies to track, mine, and sell data and most will do it.
> “You can choose to only download apps from the Apple store that follow those rules”
There will be way fewer of them, if it’s even possible to tell them apart at all.
> “Why do you feel everyone else in the world must live in your limits...”
I don’t - they can buy android and side load if they want to.
Why do you feel I must be forced to suffer an open platform as well? Forcing Apple to do this removes consumer choice, it doesn’t add to it.
In an ideal world, governments would step in and tell them straight up to stop invading people's privacy or face punishment. Obviously that's not going to happen: any proposed law would immediately be defanged by the industry's lobbyists on the basis it would hurt their "legitimate" business interests. Not to mention the fact governments would love to keep these global surveillance tools around.
