Huh. I’ve never seen it framed this way and it might be the most compelling argument I’ve heard to date. It’s not simply a debate about whether a company should be allowed to be vertically integrated in isolation, but whether that vertical integration allows them to exert unfair distorting pressure on the free markets we are trying to protect.
1. The size of Apple/Alphabet/Samsung makes it difficult to enter the market (see: factories having ridiculous MOQs for small-batch phone manufacturing), pushing everyone else out.
2. The size of the smartphone market makes it impossible to not have to deal with one of the above companies for certification, market penetrance or such. This makes them kingmakers. If a company somehow manages to become Facebook, Netflix, or Amazon, then the phone companies slide them a secret deal under the table. Everyone else gets a market-limiting set of terms that makes sure "tech" stays one of the "top" industries.
Combined, with no entry allowed, and with forces exerted outwards, we see broad social structures orienting /around/ how we use our phones, rather than the other way around, and that includes ad-monetized-absolutely-everything.
Phones and social media, today, are where TVs and broadcasts were in the 1950s/60s. Ubiquity and centralizing forces. If someone told us in the 1950s a TV manufacturer was exerting pressure on our forms of information distribution and was choosing which voices get a seat at the table, we'd rightly call that archaic and wonder why people would accept a technology provider as a market-shaping force. But today we accept it nonetheless. I refuse to believe the argument that the world's largest company can't figure out how to build a secure pipeline without making plenty of my decisions on my behalf...
> factories having ridiculous MOQs for small-batch phone manufacturing
Ironically in the contract manufacturing area the market is actually efficient. Small batches just cost more as an intrinsic fact about manufacturing. I guarantee you could get a quote for any quantity of manufacturing above 1, you just wouldn't like it.
A smartphone from Google or Apple is also pretty much required for certain government apps, banking/financial services, and so forth. I wouldn't call it a stretch to say that in the future it would be mandatory to have these duopoly controlled devices on your person at all times, like how you need to carry an ID card.
Many of those apps don't work on rooted phones or custom ROMs without workarounds and doing so is a TOS violation in many cases as well. Also imagine what it would be like if your Google or Apple account got banned by accident with no human support to sort it out.
Whether Apple should be regulated into reducing the fees they charge for access to their hardware and software ecosystem (the ecosystem they unarguably did a pretty stellar job at) is a debatable matter of its own, but it doesn’t strike me as addressing the issue of ad-supported business and how it messes with the way the market is supposed to work.
It is true that platform fee means this distorted business model is unfairly favoured. However, this is just an extension of the business based on ad/data mining (especially social media) being generally unfair in so many ways, and even with zero platform fees that business won’t stop being unfair and won’t be seriously challenged. To reiterate, no one can honestly compete with free; fee reduction merely tweaks the formula from “free vs. $X” to “free vs. slightly less than $X”.
Furthermore, there is the obvious issue that even if an app or service is paid, it can still be additionally monetising user data. Reducing fees will only favour this doubly shady business.
Perhaps what could actually move the needle a bit and make this model less attractive is if walled gardens somehow found a way charge a big fat fee off the ad/data mining revenue, in conjunction with appropriately reducing fees for regular sales of B2C apps and services. Could this be technically possible without walled gardens additionally owning ad exchanges (which might be a can of worms that shouldn’t be opened)?
Have you ever been shown a mobile ad, and thought to yourself, “this is a good thing, this is an honest description of a product that I am eager to spend money on?” No, on the contrary, they’re the subject of universal ridicule… and yet they persist. Why? How? Who is paying for them? How are they generating revenue? How can that be worth anything? Where is the value coming from?
So even though I delete apps that force you to sit through ads, and I refuse to be led by ads towards spending money - even though I am in effect ‘voting’ by doing so - it doesn’t seem to have any impact. The ads keep happening anyway, I can only assume because they do actually work on other less canny consumers.
Is the problem really an inability to vote with our wallets? Or is the problem a complete lack of media/marketing literacy, that leads the credulous to engage with ad slop, against their own best interests?
They already do this right now anyway, with App Store ads. Apple doesn't care about privacy. It cares about money, and it makes money any way it can. Unlike pretty much every other phone or tablet, iOS devices don't let you install apps without telling Apple. That privacy violation exists because it makes Apple money.
Microsoft fell foul of this in the early 2000s. It wasn't their monopoly on desktop PC OSs that lost them an anti-trust case. It was the fact they used their monopoly on Windows to push users into adopting IE. They abused their monopoly position. That's the problem.
Schiller argued that App Store should be free after a billion dollars was earned from it. Apple execs pretend they don't even know how much money App Store makes or loses.
And App Store is already monetized: Apple's hardware pays for everything, and more.
It's similar to the notion that killing third party cookies is basically a gift to Facebook and Google.
And lets be honest here, Apple themselves are not subject to ATT and (potentially coincidentally) have a rather large ads business. Many moons ago Apple suddenly started becoming the number 1 provider of installs on Apple as they claimed credit for the click to install which is also bonkers.
One can agree that targeted advertising is bad but also note that Apple made these "privacy focused" decisions for commercial rather than idealistic reasons.
No. Unlike Google, Meta, and Amazon, Apple is not a gatekeeper to the Internet. They are the gatekeeper to one thing: their own app store. It's tiresome to hear the same anti-"big-tech" hysteria aimed at Apple. They aren't a monopoly, period.
But back to this: "The App Store policies hurt privacy"
No, they don't. The plaintiff bases this admittedly novel whine on the fact that Google and its ilk make money on things other than their software. So by that logic, every company that doesn't conduct business through its app hurts every company that does. Give us a break.
Which is also the only allowed way to run software on 58% of US smartphones?
> Unlike Google, Meta, and Amazon
I could agree with Google, but how are Meta and Amazon gatekeepers of the internet? Especially _more than Apple_
They also control the OS and don't allow side-loading or other app stores (without putting absurd obstacles in the way) So in the end they completely control the devices they sell.
If you want that, you can purchase any number of Android devices.
what you actually want is to force all developers to use Apple's distribution and payment systems, so that you can have every app and service from any provider delivered via your chosen mechanisms. that takes away freedom from developers and users who prefer other systems. it eliminates the market for anyone to make or use something better than your chosen options
What if those apps moved to other stores so they can skirt Apple's review and other consumer-friendly restrictions? How is that better for consumers that use Facebook, Insta, etc... for them to have apps with less review and less scrutinized for their behavior? Some of Apples policies have been good for consumers of apps.
Just witness how Fb, etc... already try and skirt those rules that are in place to protect users from tracking and other abuses. Seems pretty logical to assume they would all jump ship to another store to not be under Apple's review process if they could.
I don't doubt for one minute that Fb, etc.. would not jump to another store with less restrictions, and either pull their existing apps or leave them severely restricted in the Apple App Store as an "incentive" to download from the other store.
If users and developers prefer other systems they can simply use those.
Not very. Plenty of people, including on HN, agree with you.
> but I actually use my iPhone because it's locked down with a curated app marketplace and secure payment system.
Except it’s not. That argument would be much stronger if the App Store weren’t full of scammy predatory apps which regularly top the top grossing charts.
> I don't want alternative payment methods or app stores.
And I don’t want everything to be a subscription, yet here we are. Just like I have to avoid the majority of apps today, you’ll avoid other App Stores if that is what you want.
You’re at a significant advantage because ignoring other stores is much easier, and opening up the iPhone to third-party stores has an effect on the policies of the main App Store. This is plainly demonstrated by the acceptance of the emulator from the creator of an alternative store. So even by not using those third-party ones, you’re benefiting.
> They're essentially trying to make it impossible to purchase a product I want, which is more monopolistic than the current status quo.
That doesn’t make sense. There’s no monopoly on a product which doesn’t exist.
> iPhones do not have any sort of monopoly on phones.
You don’t have to be a monopoly to be harmful to consumers. Companies have realised that long ago and it’s time consumers do too.
Not just that - they also actively interfere with search results for essential apps people need. Looking up government or banking apps in the iOS app store will always surface either dodgy insurance sellers or dodgy banks that aren't the one you want to use before the actual app you want to download.
The App Store's curation is absolutely horrendous - these are also bought/sponsored placements, meaning Apple is actively profiting off of people being led to these sorts of misleading apps.
The point of this is so that there is the possibility of escaping that walled garden, arguably welcoming more users into the ecosystem.
Nothing would change for you. Just like android users can keep using all things Google, they have the possibility of installing apps from other sources.
So, you see, it doesn’t matter whether Apple has the walled garden or the third-party devs have the walled garden. Either way, users will be forced to accept someone’s distribution policy. But the difference really lies in the trust on Apple and its security and privacy practices, which is a choice that will be robbed from people buying iPhones to use apps exactly for this purpose.
If my apps are changing, yes it is changing for me.
Right now I can manage all of my app subscriptions from the Subscriptions screen in the Settings app of my devices. If they open up to other payment methods, my subscriptions are no longer centralized, I have to give my credit card information to more parties of variable trustworthiness, I have to worry about subscription renewal policies for every individual app, I have to figure out different methods of cancelling which could be a more difficult process than hitting "cancel" and trusting Apple will stop the payments, etc.
I could hardly believe you only pay through Apple for everything, I mean everything, as THE trustful, others are not trusted, not using other safe payment methods for some products due to security concerns. Not only Apple is secure in this regard.
As there are opt ins on iPhone for so many highly unsecure matters, you could share the most sensitive data with the individual apps with a flick if you wish (sharing personal and very sensitive data, sometimes personal data of others without their consent, like contacts) it is very hard to understand why this particular opt in is ringing your alarm bells of security irrevocably lost and get locked out completely ("impossible to purchase product") that hard....
You can have your choice of not choosing still, while Apple's product design would otherwise remain intact in its current form. Your arguments are very inconsistent.
We once had a Zulip update rejected by Apple because we had a link to our GitHub project with the source code for the app in the app itself. And it turns out, if you then click around GitHub, you can find a "Pricing" page that doesn't pay Apple's tax.
Details are here for anyone curious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28175759
We can play technical gymnastics around this but this just sucks!
I had made a post recently which didn't see any traction https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44398136 maybe it can be a pointer
Ouch. Those are some fighting words.
Just dominant by some significant measure, in some significant dimension, enough for many people to complain. And for a judge to review the practices and find the company is leveraging that dominance to maintain dominance or hold dominance over adjacent markets in a way that is blocking competition.
Apple is using their control of their phone hardware and OS to preclude any alternate source of apps or app stores, in order to charge a large vig on every app and in app purchase. And block competitive, tech like alternate web browser engines, and any app they don’t like.
They are big enough to warp the whole market for mobile apps and browsers. A large percentage of apps become much less viable if they don’t supportiOS. So “choose another phone” isn’t a viable solution to the harm.
Nothing stops Apple from having an App Store. Using it to enforce security rules. Nothing stops users from using it exclusively (EDIT: Don’t download from other sources, or if you do, click “no” when you get asked if you want to install apps from other sources. This is trivial for Apple to do.)
The problem is the app market is massive, highly dependent on having iOS versions to compete in the overall mobile device space, and Apple is both blocking alternative app sources and taxing all those apps, and completely prohibiting some apps, while prohibiting any other options.
Enforcing rules against anti-competitive behavior isn’t a zero cost practice. it is reasonable for some people to prefer the status quo.
But it’s better than allowing anti-competitive behavior, which would encourage more such behavior because not having competition is incredibly profitable. And the harms of letting anti-competitive behavior go unchecked tend to be significant but only obvious in hindsight, or never. That’s part of the problem. Without healthy competition lots of significant but non-obvious progress gets snuffed out before it has a chance.
Either you nip it in the bud, or end up dealing with much worse abuses.
Further, how much do you think should this be (20%? 10%? 5%?) and if zero, why?
Finally, do you believe Apple should be compensated for the services and marketplace that they are offering, if so, what other strategies do you recommend that they deploy to make everyone happy?
Because it doesn't have to compete with third-party distributors like MacOS? The App Store on MacOS is almost entirely empty, every real developer abandoned it years ago. It's almost impossible to buy professional Mac software on the App Store, because real developers like Avid or Adobe or Affinity don't think Apple's deal is fair either.
> Finally, do you believe Apple should be compensated for the services and marketplace that they are offering
They already are, through their developer fees. If Apple can't compensate themselves without forcing people to use their services, then they need to redesign their business model.
Installing software is not a service, arguably Apple has no right to demand compensation for it in the first place.
1. https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/external...
Nintendo for example has NDA where you cannot even share online how much they take.
Also it's not a tax, though arguably it can be termed an "economic rent" (a technical term) that can be considered excessive, but I'm not sure about that.
And regulating Apple is quite different from regulating someperson. If you made a Linux phone in your basement, nobody would tell you what kind of charger you should use. But companies that claim ownership of a substantial economy and can dictate the rights and culture and economic output for a large section of society do need to have more checks on their power than just, "Well if I'm so wrong, then why do I have so much money? Maybe you should make your own phone that won't work well with anyone else's and see if you can sell it."
Same reason any company can't set whatever they want. Vast majority of companies aren't deemed monopolies so this doesn't apply to them but this restriction holds over them once they grow to a certain size nonetheless. Even the most ardent capitalists/free market advocates agree that monopolies have to be regulated by the government.
The real questions are what makes company a monopoly. You can always argue you aren't a monopoly but it's what convinces people that makes most sense and many people are beginning to be convinced that Apple/Google etc are monopolies in certain markets.
Exactly this. There's no competition, because Apple blocks iPhone owners from installing apps through any method other than their App Store (in the US, where this lawsuit is being filed). It's a programmatically-enforced monopoly.
Frankly I'd much rather change that situation than quibble about exactly how much Apple is allowed to charge for their services. Let them charge whatever they want in a free market where they have to compete on a level playing field with everyone else. If developers don't like it, they can use a competing app store to sell their software to iPhone users.
App fees have basically been the same amount for all time. Literally every single developer looked at the numbers and decided to go into business.
Few things are more enraging than people being left out of chats with friends and family because they didn't bend over for Apple. Even worse being a teenager and having to endure social shaming for it. It wasn't until the EU signaled it was going to bring down then axe that Apple capitulated to RCS.
- Yes, I know you are part of the domestic US long tail that use signal/telegram with all your friends.
- Yes, I know no one outside the US uses iMessage.
ETA: A note because people are pretty incredulous about "most evil". Tech companies do a lot of evil stuff, no doubt.
But there is something special about putting social connection behind an expensive hardware purchase and walled garden lock in. Every other messaging app I know of is open to anyone on most platforms for little or no cost. Apple on the other hand purposely leveraged social connections in your life to force you into their garden and keep you there. Lets not pretend that Apple couldn't open up iMessage or even charge a nominal fee for outsiders. Instead you get an iphone and just seemlessly slide into iMessage. So seemless that most users don't even know that it is a separate service than sms/mms/rcs. Apple muddies that too.
But they would never do that, because using people's closest social connections to force them into the ecosystem and lock them there is just too juicy. "Oh you don't want an iPhone anymore? Well looks like you have to leave your social circles main discussion hub to do so..."
It's just evil on another level.
Don't you think this is _maybe_ an overstatement? I was annoyed about this for years but reading your take is borderline satirical.
> For example, when a user purchases an iPhone, the user is steered to use Apple’s default email product, Apple Mail. It is only through a complex labyrinth of settings that a user can change her default email application away from the Apple “Mail” application towards an alternative like Gmail (Google) or Proton Mail.
> At least for mail a user can in theory modify the default setting. On the calendar front the situation is even worse. A user’s default calendar is Apple Calendar, and the default cannot be modified
That's pretty evil & predatory to me. The fact that it is by design (someone decided it needed to this awful) is why Apple is being evil here. And this is just one example.
There's more
> For example, Apple banned apps from its App Store that supported Google Voice because Apple sought to advantage its own services over Google’s
In the difficulty of non-iMessage compatibility, I have had people close to me say "Why don't you just get an iPhone?" with an incredulous tone.
Perhaps tech companies have had more evil things happen on their platforms, that for whatever reason they were slow to react to.
But
"Why don't you just get an iPhone" was a precisely and meticulously engineered line, pure social manipulation, that was intentionally orchestrated to be delivered to me through the mouths of the people I trust most in my life turned unknowing pawns.
That is why I consider it the most evil. Apple is by design purposely exploiting a core human function, close social circle communication, to trap people in their garden.
Specific example: When on dating apps you see "green bubbles" as a red flag/un-dateable trait, it has done considerable harm.
Is that really the worst thing you've seen big-tech do? That's very fortunate.
What about Blackberry Messenger which was the mobile instant-messaging golden standard for years and BB exclusive for as long as it mattered in the market? Was that too long ago to remember?
Apple refusing RCS integration is a very clear example of hurting everyone in pursuit of profit
it's likely not the most evil, but I do think it qualifies as evil. it stands out by being inarguably willful, and having a very broad impact
I find harming hundreds of millions (probably billions) of friendships to be quite evil
I know many MANY people who have lost chats with their loved ones (especially deceased ones) because there is no way to export and save their conversations.
I think this should be as easy as saving photos, which apple makes (somewhat) easier to export.
Back to email, it is pretty horrible to set up my local email server on an apple device. You have to go through these dialogs, apple servers have to be contacted (for "redirection"), and I usually barely get it working.
Yes, people in the EU use WhatsApp, by Meta & Zuckerberg, and from what I've seen, often act as if that is some sort of mark of superiority.
Feels like you weren't able to have a proper discussion with those people. In many EU countries, using SMS made/makes no sense because SMS was/is super expensive as compared to WhatsApp. And using iMessage makes no sense because most people don't have an iPhone. From their point of view, it actually makes no sense.
Now if you tell them "well, where I come from everybody has an iPhone" or "SMS have always been free", probably they won't say "still, I'm better than you for no apparent reason".
I don't think that it is actually seen as a mark of superiority anywhere in the EU to use WhatsApp. Unlike apparently in some places it is seen as a mark of superiority to have an iPhone vs an Android phone.
If you go in a EU country where SMS were not prohibitively expensive in the beginning of WhatsApp (e.g. France), you'll see that WhatsApp has been less successful (at least in the beginning). WhatsApp was a killer app because it was free SMS, really.
Well, you could argue that it's morally superior to be reachable by everyone, regardless of what brand of phone they use.
The ability to install a 3rd party messaging app also shows some technical skill.
Regardless of the merits of Apple's actions as regards technical interoperability I feel compelled to point out that this in particular is a cultural problem, not technical malfeasance. RCS users still appear as green bubbles and even if the lack of functionality has been remedied the stigma has not. People at my lunch table 20 years ago were drawing artificial distinctions between "MP3s" (portable DAPs) and iPods because the latter were expensive luxury products and the former were not. The same thing is at work here because owning an iPhone is a proxy for one's socioeconomic stratum. I own an iPhone and as soon as an Android user appears in an iMessage group chat some joker immediately makes a green bubble quip - no degraded picture message required.
People that define themselves by conspicuous consumption don't care about interoperability. They care about brand recognition.
So pick your poison, either you exclude them because of in-group signalling/conspicious consumption or exclude them because you want non-potato resolution, with Android users getting the blame for Apple's UX. Either way Tim Cook says the solution is to buy an iPhone.
Apple didn't make SMS bad, it just was. Apple has since implemented RCS and it hasn't changed how I communicate with people from my iPhone at all.
Google should probably take most of the blame for repeatedly fumbling messaging on non-Apple platforms for the past 2 decades. Every time they had something that was getting any amount of traction it got quickly replaced with some stupid new, worse messaging app so a PO could get a promotion.
Instead of shaming Apple (which won't be very effective IMO), we should aim to improve education. Teach users how SMS/MMS/iMessage work. Tell them that they can install universal messaging apps and so on.
Are you saying Google should freely give away their products?
I think you might be living in a bubble, if this is the "most evil" thing you have heard of a big tech company doing. Go read up on IBM's history, especially in the 30s and 40s. Or a more contemporary example, read up on Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Or Amazon's mistreatment of workers in both corporate and warehouse settings. Or Meta scraping data off your devices without permission to train AI.
And, though I know some folks here disagree, plenty of people around the world believe what's happening in Gaza is a genocide, and Big Tech has materially contributed to making it happen. Or, if you want another example of human cost, talk about how resources for electronics are mined, or how electronics are manufactured.
Saying, "the most evil thing big tech has ever done is make some chat bubbles blue" puts a whole lot of human lives below the color of some chat bubbles.
You can think Apple did a really bad thing by doing that, that's fine. No complaints. But to call it the most evil thing ever done erases an incalculable amount of human suffering.
I wouldn't count the IBM thing because I don't see it as part of the vernacular "big tech" of today; however I do think it's the most evil so far in this thread.
The others? They are mostly aggressive competition, especially the MS stuff, and altogether I don't see them as more evil than Apple's exclusionary UX. What's at the bottom of it for me is that it harms users directly, e.g. what others said about kids getting shamed for having a non-Apple phone. The one thing not mentioned yet that would qualify for me would be Meta's product altogether with its impact on teenagers; and various gambling simulators like Roblox.
First of all, when Apple created iMessage, there was no possible way for them to predict that friend groups would use it as a reason to treat members of their groups poorly due to using Android phones.
Second of all, Apple did not deliberately make interacting with non-iMessage users in group chats "look like trash" in order to exclude them. Apple went out of its way to make it possible for iMessage to interoperate with the ubiquitous (in the US) SMS, with reduced features because SMS did not support the better features. If, instead, Apple had just made iMessage not interoperate with SMS at all, you'd be screaming about that instead.
Third of all, if people are leaving others out of chats, that's not Apple's fault. That's something for those families and friend groups to work out amongst themselves. "Hey, guys, I don't have an iPhone, and don't really have the money to get one, so maybe we could use GroupMe/GChat/WhatsApp/Signal/IRC/email/smoke signals/meeting in person/any of the myriad other ways of communicating instead?" A) "Oh, sure, that shouldn't be a problem!" (everything is solved) B) "What? No, we're not going to change anything just because it makes it impossible to actually include you in stuff. That's a you problem!" (turns out, the problem is your friends are assholes)
Apple cannot by any reasonable standard be held to blame for the way bullying, status-seeking teenagers treat each other.
The problem is not that iMessage exists, it's that it operates in opaque and unpredictable ways, mixing SMS and iMessage (and now RCS) communication in a way where even more tech-savvy users do not understand how it works (first-hand experience - had to explain to someone why their images are super compressed when they send them to me, but OK when they send them to their friend with an iPhone).
And now it's the same with RCS (Android-iOS). I send person A an image, the conversation switches to RCS. They use the "automatic reply" when I call them, conversation switches back to SMS. With person B, the switching between RCS and SMS is even more unpredictable.
If some teenagers see green bubbles as some sort of challenge to their identities, it's probably a useful life lesson.
>“iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones,” was Federighi’s concern according to the Epic filing.
Among other statements. Apple was very aware of the social effects of iMessage, and leveraged it to force people into getting iphones.
Tech companies have done lots of evil shit. But never, not once, has one ever crossed the line into turning my friends and family against me (however slightly) because I didn't want to lock myself in Apple's cage, however comfortable it is.
Yeah, you can call my friends and family shitty, but the reality is that the are regular non-tech people, explaining the situation to them is impossible, and iMessage Just Works(TM).
However making an argument that some key aspects of the iPhome were not designed for viral growth is disrespectful to Steve Jobs who, like many of that time, was very familiar with engineering platform growth - probably more and better than most.
What a ridiculous statement. Even with your edit it's still an utterly stupid conclusion to come to.
Off the top of my head I can think of way worse things tech companies have done. Cambridge Analytica scandal, Gmail scanning, the Google Shopping lawsuit, Amazon's product clone hijack, Facebooks mood manipulation experiment, Ring doorbell viewing, Uber spying, to name just a few FAR worse things tech companies have done.
If a company invests billions in R&D to create hardware and its integrated software, shouldn’t it have the right to control who or what interacts with it? Why should I be forced to open up the carefully designed ecosystem I’ve built?
If my pitch is premium, high-speed hardware and intuitive software so user-friendly that a monkey can use it, the trade-off is that you agree to my Terms of Service. There are other options out there.
In antitrust terms, it is a form of Vendor Lock-In[0], and could be seen as a form of Tying[1]:
> Tying is often used when the supplier makes one product that is critical to many customers. By threatening to withhold that key product unless others are also purchased, the supplier can increase sales of less necessary products.
As an example, Apple was sued successfully in the early 200s for selling music in a format that could only be played on iPods. iTunes is a platform Apple controls and invented, yet still it was deemed illegal for them to unfairly lock in customers and prevent them from using competing portable music players.
But there is a customer experience reason. As an iOS user, I very much appreciate that I can ask Apple to cancel some bullshit subscription that used to otherwise try to lock me in behind a labyrinth of added friction and timewasting.
Not every problem is technological.
This isn't about the a consumer's right to buy a different phone. It's about a business's right to do business with customers without Apple in the middle. And it's specifically about Apple's monopoly power over those businesses. No government is going to accept that some company, Apple, gets that kind of control.
Toyota Motor Corp., Volkswagen Group (multiple brands), Hyundai Motor Group, GM and Stellantis N.V. are the top 5 largest automakers in the world whose annual output is comparable with that of largest smartphone makers, including Apple (with the adjustment of the scale).
None of the automakers allow anyone outside the vertical(s) they have built to gain a foothold in the verticals. This includes: replacement parts, mandated regular service at an official, brand-certified dealership as the condition of the warranty (for new vehicles), software updates only from the vehicle manufacturer, probably something else. No outsiders are allowed under any circumstances – if one misses a regular service at an official dealership before the warranty period has lapsed, the warranty is automatically voided. Some even extend to chipped/cracked windshields that, if replaced, will void the vehicle warranty, even though there is nothing special about a windshield today.
Vehicle manufacturers are by all definitions stagegate keepers, and they impose expensive services upon their product users without giving them an alternative.
Why are governments allowing this to happen?[0]
[0] I know that it is because of safety regulations as the manufacturer will claim that they can only guarantee the safety of its own vehicle if it has original parts, but let's pretend for a moment that it is not an issue.
Once a company becomes massive enough and displays properties of a monopoly, the rules of free commerce change
(that being said, I agree that Apple largely provides users with a high-quality product)
That’s really the crux of the issue. If I must abide by arbitrary rules to use the package at its full functionality, then I didn’t gain ownership of it, did I?
Why do we oppress any freedom? When doing so protects the society we are trying to build.
You're asking a rhetorical question without providing any argument for why the answer should be yes, which makes it pretty easy to just answer the question with the word no.
> Why should I be forced to open up the carefully designed ecosystem I’ve built?
The premise of this question is that they have the right to interfere with how other people choose to interact with each other.
Meanwhile the premise of the government-granted copyright monopoly they've used to build their lock-in system is that you build something and in exchange you can charge money for it. Leveraging that into control over markets external to the one you developed is a thing that should be expressly prohibited.
Do you think the same about printer ink?
Regardless, we need to look at the law - and interoperability has a long history of legal support. Patents protect the product itself, but allow interoperable products. Trade secrets product the product from theft but not reverse engineering.
Even the DMCA has explicit carve-outs for interoperability, though that doesn't stop copyright-abusers from trying to wield it (and sometimes winning due to the money game).
In their own machines they can do whatever they want.
Once they sell it to you, not anymore.
I think people are conflating ease of modification from legally being able to do so. If it's legal, then Apple retains no control over the device.
If they wanted that right they shouldn't have sold the computer.
That's the catch-22, said ecosystem is what they want to use because it's considered "secure", but it's only considered secure because it's closed.
It's the same with all the other stuff like frequent locations, photos, etc. It's a walled garden yes, but one that protects your data from bad actors (like Meta heisting whatever they can get their grubby little hands on), and the price is that you can't let others into your garden, or it's no longer walled.
Also, facebook can already be a "bad actor" right now, they just have to pay apple their 30%.
So then we get to like, why do we have laws, what's the goal? And this is where you get down to brass tacks. Almost everyone will agree on three basis vectors in principle:
- aggregate prosperity - broad prosperity and security from want - individual liberty
You've got to grind through a bunch of thought on a spectrum ranging from Das Capital to Atlas Shrugged to make it really tight, but it sort of simplifies down to: pick two. Put differently, for a given raw capability and Gini-like target, you get to allocate so much liberty to which people: if you don't impose punitive taxes on wealth, it centralizes and calcifies into fungibility. Rich people buy laws. This is a super linear process.
So then it becomes about:
- would I want to be rich if it was part of a system that engineers avoidable want
- if yes, could I realistically make it into the rich group
For me the answer to one is no, and so I think we should re-impose the punitive taxes and regulations that break the backs of rich people and megacorps.
But on HN a common if not typical answer to #1 is yes, and so my appeal is: be realistic, you already missed.
And if you pick wrong, you get nothing.
>Rich people buy laws.
A totalitarian government does not need to buy laws. Imposing punitive taxes on wealth - it's like express line to what you want to avoid with it.
Breaking the backs of rich people and megacorporations or not, is not a choice about your chances of being wealthy, it is a choice about will you die from starvation or not.
People choose not to break the backs of megacorporations because they don't want to starve to death in totalitarian regimes, not because they hope to get a corporation of their own some day.
I think general purpose computing devices should be open.
This is a moralistic argument, putting legal and business reasons to the side.
Go ahead and lock down specific purpose computing devices, like ATMs, fridge, mouse firmware.
The practice of setting up fiefdoms to become the landlord is an abhorrent practice.
There are at least a few grey areas of such a carve-out that I'd like to ask about, but I wonder if it's even necessary. What if there simply weren't any exceptions?
The ATM would still be locked down - the owner would possess the keys. Business as usual.
The fridge and mouse either wouldn't be locked down or the keys might be physically present somewhere on them. Probably either neutral or a win for the consumer depending on the specific circumstances.
Something like a fridge should either be running a proper OS (and thus fully under the control of the user) or else shouldn't be connected to the network in the first place. Unpatchable proprietary network connected black boxes expected to have a service life of well over a decade are a recipe for disaster after all.
Because not doing so harms the market and society (the article details how). Governments do not exist solely to enforce contracts and property rights. Ideals (e.g. "a man is entitled to the sweat of his brow") are valuable guides, and worth bearing even significant costs to keep, but they are not to be followed blindly, at any cost.
> There are other options out there.
Law and politics (should) step in when "voting with your feet/wallet" fails. You also ignore Apple's middle-man role - consumers can choose (among the very few) different options, but companies serving Apple's captured market cannot.
And it's a shame
>Law and politics (should) step in when "voting with your feet/wallet" fails.
No, they shouldn't. Such stepping in is always vulnerable for abuse and always leads to results worse than original failing
They invite others to sell on that market, but made themselves gatekeeper and simultaneously a player there, controlling the rules of that market in its favor.
Market forces are unable to flow freely, to the point that it affects the "parent" market (in which the iPhone/iPad competes with others) as well as other markets (where other Hardware and Services are sold).
Their closed market reached a significant size now, so it should be reasonable to step in and ensure fair competition also there.
But thanks to those layers of abstraction, billions of dollar in lobbying and marketing, there is always room to argue that ensuring that free market is unjust, hinders innovation, restricts Apple from competing, etc.
Was that not the sort of rationale Microsoft used to defend its IE shenanigans back in the day?
It was considered to be a violation of antitrust laws then. I don't think Apple would be off the hook now. Especially considering how much more ubiquitous smartphones are in comparison to web browsers back then.
I believe that's why they're calling it "a phone", or "a tablet". The computer they actually sell has plenty of shells available, and lets you tinker with whatever you like.
A phone is not simply a computer, it's a regulated piece of hardware that must comply with local laws and regulations regarding radio transmissions and other stuff. You can't just peek and poke around anywhere you like in the system.
Besides that, it must be able to talk to carefully tuned 3G/4G/5G cell towers, which sounds easy in theory, but it's not. When I made mobile phones 20 years ago, we had people driving around all countries where we sold it, with a test setup where the phone connected to every cell tower it could "see", and recorded logs and GPS coordinates, and that work (and that of countless others) is partially what became the beginning of A-GPS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GNSS), which allows you to triangulate your phones location purely from the cell towers it can see.
Of course that's not how it works today, as most carriers these days register their cell towers in a central database with GPS coordinates, so A-GPS these days is simply a database dump (and a whole lot of math).
As a "fun" anecdote, when I wrote software for mobile phones, it was the only place I've ever worked that had a bug category for "potential harm to user". I'm certain companies working in Medicare and other critical industries also has that, but it was the first and only time I ever saw it.
But in this case, I still think Apple has a point. It is not a lawsuit so that consumers can truly own their device, it is not about opening bootloaders and things like that. It is just about not paying the 30% tax to Apple. And while not an Apple fan myself, I understand the appeal of Apple controlling the ecosystem, and paying 30% more for it is not a big deal. By simply buying an Apple device, you show that you are ready to pay a premium for this, so paying a premium for software too seems fitting.
Proton has a point regarding ads though, but it can be seen the other way: maybe Apple should control the ad delivery service too and take its cut too. If Apple does it right, it could actually be a good thing for privacy.
I repeat that it is not what I want, I like being able to do what I want with my hardware, but I see the value in what Apple offers. In this case, let the courts decide.
People get hung up on absolute 100% pure monopolies and how nothing meets that criterion. Monopoly power is a much better way of looking at things. Controlling 100% of a market with insurmountable barrier to entry of course grants a heaping pile of monopoly power, but any company that can influence the market price has some. Generally the higher the market share, the more monopoly power. UK monopoly regulation starts taking a closer look at companies once they have 25% market share.
Yes, except when they use that control to stifle competition. Competition is good, so we want to promote it.
That is sort of the basis for all anti trust law, to my layman’s understanding at least.
Thomas Edison and Company invented a patent system that separated their inventions from being able to be accessed by indie movie makers, and indie producers. Their lawyers would effectively shut down any such movements. This caused them to go all the way to Los Angeles because it was the furthest from New York and they built a movie studio on poverty row that later became the capital of Hollywood movie making.
Once Hollywood became financially strong enough, the lawyers were sent over to shut it down, but the court sided with Hollywood and killed all of the patents because the courts thought that they had abused the pattern system to only benefit a few, what I would like to call the cartel.
The cartel were chosen movie makers, and producers, who had access to the movie making stuff and cameras and equipment by which they would share a percentage of the revenue of the movie production and the theater income with Thomas Edison and Company. Effectively they had what Apple has currently.
I suppose you have the legal right to do whatever you're able to up until people notice the problems you're causing and pass laws against it (or enforce existing ones, as is being attempted here).
Why should it be legally permissible to "sell" general purpose computing devices that are locked by the manufacturer or vendor? How does such behavior benefit society? Aren't locked down, effectively unauditable devices anathema to a free and open society? Isn't the current situation evidence enough that their existence is damaging to the concept of a free market?
If anything, it's the opposite - the bigger Apple is, the worse is the damage they cause.
Of course not. Companies exist only because it is useful to have that sort of legal entity. They should be regulated to ensure that they remain more useful than harmful to society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v_European_Com...
BTW, I wonder have they paid that €860 million in the end - and how can I check this.
> Other companies make stores that deliver application and developers don't get to tell them what to do.
AFAIK Microsoft users can install software not using Microsoft store, however it is called.
I don't own any Apple product, but I do admire occasionally how Apple tries to uphold the quality and security of their ecosystem, even as I principally disagree with the walled garden approach. I certainly hope Apple aspires to keep the quality of their hardware and software high. They should however never control user data or choice of third party services.
These two things are often at odds with each other. If people bought into the Apple ecosystem because of the walled garden, the regulators want to rip down those walls and turn it into a fundamentally different product. Bad 3rd party experiences can break the illusion of the perfect walled garden, which is why Apple has many of its rules. Though, I’d say that illusion has already been broken for many, due to a bunch of apps with timed ad pop-ups and other such nonsense. I won’t allow any of that on my phone, but most people do.
I’ve read articles from developers that say they offer options on iOS to go ad-free, while similar options don’t exist on Android for the same app, since not enough people do it and they can make more on ads (I believe I read this from the Angry Birds devs years ago). I would find this unacceptable as a user. I don’t think this is a rule from Apple, but rather differences in the types of users that gravitate to the various platforms; or maybe it’s simply comfort and trust in Apple to process all the payments. I think it should be a rule that any app with ads has the ability to remove them for a price. For smaller apps, I would have a lot less comfort doing this if it didn’t go through Apple (or some similarly large company). I would be very sad if the monkey paw from this lawsuit was that I end up with apps full of ads that I can’t remove, or don’t feel safe removing. This would fly in the face of Proton’s goals as well.
There is also the registration side of things. Today, I can get an app without an account for it, buy it, delete it, and if I re-download it, I can restore that purchase. Going through the developer means yet another account to manage, track, and entrusting another 3rd party.
I paid $30 a couple weeks ago for lifetime access to the “pro” version of an app I’ve been using. I don’t think I would have done that if I would have had to make an account and all that. It would be too much friction and I don’t know enough about the dev. So the dev got $21-25 from me, instead of the alternative, which would have been 0. And that’s what starts the downward spiral toward ads everywhere, which degrades the whole experience.
"The Sherman Act broadly prohibits 1) anticompetitive agreements and 2) unilateral conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize the relevant market. " source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act
Because once I buy your phone/tablet/whatever, it stops being yours and starts being mine, so I should be in charge of what software it can run from then on.
For companies, there are civil outcomes. This may be undesirable if you have a large financial interest in the company, but it's a tradeoff for the same legislative body allowing you to create a shield from personal liability and taxation.
If you are able to create an ecosystem on your own, do what you like with it.
Does the manufacturer of your refrigerator have the right to control what food you're allowed to put into it? If not, why do you have different standards for computing devices? Why did it ever become okay for Apple to decide what you do with your device after they've sold it to you?
Apple isn't dominant in the market worldwide (Android is), and they are competing against Android. Apple often implements things Android did first. That's how competition works.
Apple's global marketshare is 30% or just under.
It's one thing to design and built an iKettle in such a way that every aspect from the water filter to the power cord is well thought out but propitiatory. It's another to refuse to plug in to another "inferior" socket because that cuts into your cut of propitiatory cable sales.
If their stuff is so superior, then people will see that and prefer it. They wouldn't need to make it impossible or deliberately painful to use competitors services.
Apple can. They can retain ownership of "their" devices. Instead of selling electronics, they can rent iPhones and iPads to users and thereby retain all control over how/when/if they are used. But good luck pitching that to consumers.
But seriously though: why do people argue that „investing money“ leads to „I can do whatever the hell I want to my client base“? Even if this argument were to hold for all future customers, companies change their TOS all the time. Can I ask for all my money that I paid them back, to exit their ecosystem?..
It's not a question of what you like, it's a question of antitrust laws. You can disagree with them of course, but it is their right to sue Apple if they think Apple is breaking laws.
Lets be honest here - Netflix, Spotify et al are perfectly capable of running their on subscription business. They dont NEED Apple's crappy payment provider, and yet are forced to use it.
As a user you should be enraged, but here we are.
I think I haven't asked them but I was just trying to do it and I am so frustrated the best I have got is that there is a way to get a curl command with proper cookies etc. to get text written in the comments section but that text is (rightfully) encrypted and I don't know how to decrypt it... I am not sure.
A really dead simple api or library would be.. wonderful. I wish proton could also go like cloudflare except way way more private and could have some proton s3 or proton workers or something tbh.
REQUESTED INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
To remedy Apple’s unlawful unreasonable restraints of trade, monopolization, attemptedmonopolization, and unfair competition, Plaintiff requests that the Court enter injunctive relief,including but not limited to the following:
(a) Enjoin Apple from conditioning any payment, revenue share, or access toany Apple product or service on an agreement by an app developer to launch an app first orexclusively on the Apple App Store;
(b) Enjoin Apple from conditioning any payment, revenue share, or access toany Apple product or service on an agreement by an app developer not to launch a version of theapp with enhanced or differentiated features on a third-party iOS app distribution platform orstore;
(c) Enjoin Apple from conditioning any payment, revenue share, or access toany Apple product or service on an agreement with an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)or carrier not to preinstall an iOS app distribution platform or store other than the Apple AppStore;
(d) Require Apple to provide rival iOS app stores with access to the App Storecatalog to ensure interoperability and to facilitate consumer choice;
(e) Require Apple to permit the distribution of rival iOS app stores through theApple App Store on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms;
(f) Enjoin Apple from requiring developers to use Apple’s IAP system as acondition of offering subscriptions, digital goods, or other IAPs;
(g) Require that third-party application developers be given functionality andaccess to iOS application programming interfaces on terms no worse than the terms Apple allowsfor its first-party applications;
(h) Require Apple to allow developers to fully disable Apple’s IAP system;
...
among other things
Let carriers pre-load apps and app stores on Apple's products? That's insane.
> (d) Require Apple to provide rival iOS app stores with access to the App Storecatalog to ensure interoperability and to facilitate consumer choice;
Wait, what? They want access to Apple's App Store catalog? Also never going to happen.
> (g) Require that third-party application developers be given functionality and access to iOS application programming interfaces on terms no worse than the terms Apple allows for its first-party applications;
As sympathetic as I am to this notion, I'm not sure how it's reasonably achievable. Putting aside the burden of every SPI having to be supported, documented, public API, it would also mean opening up all security-sensitive SPI to the world.
>Apple’s App Store policies disproportionately favor the surveillance capitalism business model employed by companies like Meta and Google and therefore entrench an online business model that routinely violates consumers’ personal privacy.
Spot on.
Their point is that they, as a separate company, can choose to object and attempt to offer products to help people evade authoritarianism and that Apple shouldn't be able to interfere with that in the US market in ways that they do. Obviously in the market of the authoritarian regime they can interfere, but that has no bearing to a US court.
https://res.cloudinary.com/dbulfrlrz/images/v1751299117/wp-p...
I never really understood the monopolistic argument against Apple. In the first place, there are very clear legal criteria that define what a monopoly is and what anti-competitive behaviors are, and it’s not even the case that majority of the world runs on iOS. It is actually Android that is the most popular OS globally by a wide margin, though the split is somewhat equal in the US.
But the core of my contention is that: if you make the platform that others run on and which creates entirely new economies and allows businesses to thrive, don’t you get to define the constraints that you want since it’s _your_ platform? What’s effectively happening here is that companies are using the courts to force the design of OSes in a certain way: That only open OSes can ever be made, not closed ones.
Note that the businesses who are lobbying against Apple are operating on the very same capitalist, profit-optimizing interests that drove Apple to choose a walled-garden approach. They are not doing this to make the world a better place, and the vast majority of smartphone users do not even care about this “issue”.
Huh, the __user__ paid for the product, so they own it. After the user handed over their money, Apple has nothing to say about who I do business with on that product, or what the conditions are.
You can say "platform" as much as you like, but that's just Apple's way of forcing their way into the argument.
Someone has to make the platform. If they want recognition for that or compensation, maybe they should apply for government funding. Don't bother the consumer with it.
And if you don't like a government regulating a market, then you haven't seen a company regulate one.
But this is already the case. You own the device, you can do whatever you want with it (legally ofc). If I buy a fridge without a freezer, the fact that I can't freeze food with it doesn't mean I don't own the fridge.
Furthermore I don't appreciate other companies using the legal system to profit by forcing Apple to design their products in a specific way.
This question has already been asked to the United States Court of Appeals, and the answer was "no"[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
And while Facebook and Google would still be hoarding data, there are a huge amount of games and apps I'd rather pay 5 for that are now ad-fueled invasive crapps and "pay to remove ads" costs 15 instead of 5.
When a significant percentage of the population uses your products and services, expect regulators to prevent you from abusing that significant group.
The capitalism idea that "markets solve all issues" only works when it's regulated so market players play on even-ish odds and the players don't have control of the market. (And even then it doesn't seem to work for public utilities really).
The naive idea that "Apple makes the product let them decide" would fly well for a device with millions of units, but billions is 1000x more and it comes with responsibility, sometimes the responsibility comes late because regulators are slow bureaucrats.
"With power comes responsibility" used to be a thing, now it's "With power responsibility might knock on your doorstep eventually if you abuse it to an extreme level like imposing a third of all REVENUE transacted through their forced store"
Not if you effectively have a monopoly. If there were plenty of (relevant) other app stores, Apple wouldn't be able to tax 30% on every app. The only reason they can is that developers don't have a choice: there are far too many Apple users to ignore, and the only way to sell them an app is through the Apple Store.
Intuitively, this feels right to me, but I think that in this case my intuition fails, because I think of this "right" from the perspective of a person. "They made that thing, it's theirs, they have the right to decide what to do with it."
I don't think the same right applies to a company, though. Especially one so big that it has a significant impact on society, and so big that it's entirely driven by the incentives of capitalism (and not, for example, by a founder's ideals).
In this context I see companies as amoral automata whose only goal is maximizing profits, regardless of the wider consequences of their actions. This seems to produce very good results for the societies in which these companies operate, but it also comes with some side effects. By putting constraints on what companies can do, we can reap most of the benefits and avoid most of the side effects.
</couch-economist>
I did not read this claim. I read the claim that Apple's approach unevenly benefits companies that engage in surveillance capitalism. No one's ad revenue, for instance, must pay a 30% cut of their revenue.
You are making an argument (and then arguing against it) that Proton did not make, as far as I can read.
> if you make the platform that others run on and which creates entirely new economies and allows businesses to thrive, don’t you get to define the constraints that you want since it’s _your_ platform?
I don't think you do. We constrain what companies are permitted to do all the time. Apple must abide by regulatory constraints first, and then they can add the additional constraints they like.
A simple test -- could Apple say, "Everyone is allowed to use Messages, except Hindus"? It's their platform, don't you get to define the constraints because it's your platform? No, we've collectively decided that kicking some people out based on certain characteristics is generally bad.
> Note that the businesses who are lobbying against Apple are operating on the very same capitalist, profit-optimizing interests that drove Apple to choose a walled-garden approach. They are not doing this to make the world a better place, and the vast majority of smartphone users do not even care about this “issue”.
They’re all blatantly self-interested, but Spotify is perhaps the biggest hypocrite among them. They’re continuously bolstering their dominance in the streaming music space at the cost of both users and artists, and when Apple gives them features they’ve asked for they refuse to use them because that’d weaken their case. They only care because if it weren’t for Apple Music they’d for all practical purposes have a monopoly.
Every colleague in my company only targets and tests against Chrome because they honestly considers _everything_ and anything Chrome does as the standard.
As a FF user it hurts me because even if Apple and Mozilla has implemented some feature according to spec these people ignore that in favour of the Chrome way of doing things.
Calling Safari the new ie6 is ignorant of reality.
That said, I do not think this is the way to fight them. Just do not make apps for iPhone, or pass the 30% Apple tax to the Apple fanboys. They enjoy being submissive to walled garden overlords and paying for the privilege, so give them what they want.
These are perfectly valid options. Create value for more open ecosystems if you want to hurt the closed ones.
Challenging one of the most powerful corporations in history, god I feel so much safer already. Sounds like PR campaign speak. I trust Proton as much as I trust Microsoft.
"We don’t question Apple’s right to act on behalf of authoritarians for the sake of profit, but Apple’s monopoly over iOS app distribution means it can enforce this perverse policy on all app developers, forcing them to also be complicit"
I'm not smart enough to get into the politics of other parts of the world, but just because the EU found something illegal doesn't mean its the basis of a good lawsuit under the US rules. Will be interesting to see how this unfolds.
Microsoft was hit with monopoly on browser even though you can install anything or go buy a Mac.
But when you control a huge portion of the PC market, and you put it in by default, you are cascading your monopolistic benefits down to installed software.
Apple does not have complete domination of smartphone across all demographics, but they do have domination in many segments.
For example, it is estimated that around 88% of teenagers have iPhones. Apple makes it very hard to leave their ecosystem because of iMessage, Facetime, and ALL of your digital purchases being tied to their ecosystem. So, what happens when all those teens grow up? Do we really think they will leave Apple ecosystem?
What cascades from that is a long term digital domination strategy, and when you have that only one digital store option, now you have a monopoly argument.
Now why would Apple do this? Because they have hobbled Safari so that it does not have modern web APIs which would allow web developers to create web-apps that use APIs that are only allowed on App-store apps on IOS devices.
This forces developers to either make an app for the App-store, or don't have any IOS users.
This is one of many reasons Apple is being sued by the DOJ - because they won't allow any other browser engines on IOS, at least not in the US, the EU slapped them on the wrist and now it's allowed there.
Safari is the current worst web browser in terms of features and bugs, and Apple wants to keep it this way for no better reason but greed. They want to push people to make App-store apps, which they can extract 30% revenue from.
That is anti-competitive, and monopolistic behavior.
Either this is bad faith, or you are uninformed.
> that's the cost of doing business.
All the question is there. Is that the cost of doing business, or is Apple abusing their dominant position?
Because you've redefined the market.
Which part of this article quote don't you understand?
> but Apple’s monopoly over iOS app distribution means
Sure it's their car and they can do whatever they want with it, but consumers are losing choices - which is what anti-monopoly rules are for. Say, Michelin or Pirelli tires are strictly better but Tesla doing this harms consumer choice and that's why it is bad.
Imagine if this were extended to Tesla branded chargers. Or Tesla branded paint. It's your damn car so you should be allowed to do whatever you want with it.
By this logic, there is also no requirement for one to eat and breathe, anyone can simply stop. The problem is the consequences.
Building an iOS app is requirement if you want to provide lots of services and compete on lots of market. The mobile phone OS landscape has become a duopoly, and society is free to impose certain obligations on those companies.
