I've heard all arguments against Apple's practices, and to me, they all basically come down to 'it's unfair that so many people like to live inside the Apple walled garden'. When it comes to the law, Apple is not a monopoly. When it comes to competition on the market, Apple is competing with Android and Windows, and the vast majority of the world's middle and upper class willingly choose Apple products. Even if you literally tried to block people from buying Apple products, people will find a way. So, obviously, Apple customers are having a great time in the Apple warden garden and made Apple a $3T company. But for some reason, other companies and regulators feel like Apple and its customers are having too much fun and need to call the cops on their party.
Apple is no different than Google search. Even if you drowned people in search choice popups, 99% of the time people choose Google. Regulators say Google is doing something nefarious when in reality, their product is loved by billions of people. In these situations, like Apple products and Google search, we need to realize that both companies have won the game in certain markets they operate because they made products that people really enjoy using.
I'm not so sure. We are fully bought in to the Apple Ecosystem (Apple One, Apple Fitness, Music, everything). In most cases (like Apple Home), I did enough research and found that it was much more well thought out security-wise and was good enough, compared to the wild west that is the Google/Amazon smart home ecosystem. Again, for the most part, the walled garden is way superior to what I see outside the garden.
Even the app store, I have all my complaints about Apple's arbitrary enforcement of App Review guidelines as an iOS developer. However, as a consumer, I love that I can spend _less_ time worrying about my non-tech loved ones finding garbage in the app store. Yes there's coercive "buy this game" garbage, and tons of it, but I'm less concerned about financial scam apps than I would be for third party app stores.
However, in certain cases (like only Apple Music supported on the HomePod speakers, or Apple Watch only sending fitness data to Apple Fitness), we feel kind of "forced" to use the Apple product when there are superior competitors, because of the (manufactured) ease of use of full integration.
Just FYI, HomePod actually supports multiple music services, and Apple Health (the data store for Fitness) supports integrations with other providers (both input and output).
From a legal perspective, monopoly just means holding undue market power. People seem to really focus on the "mono" part, it's irrelevant from a US legal perspective.
I think Google search and apples ecosystem are extremely different. Google search is trivial to leave, any one can switch to bing by just typing a different address in the URL bar. Switching off of apple products is painful and difficult and it's by design. My wife and I switched from iphone to Android over a year ago and we're still fighting with apple to stop routing some text messages to iMessage when it should be going to our phones over sms.
I think the position oft the European Union is a good approach. It classifies companies like apple not as a "monopoly" but as a "gate keeper".
I don't have a very deep understanding of that topic, but it's possible to regulate those companies a bit. In the EU similar things were already done for the car industry. The manufacturers are required to allow third party repair shops the same access to documentation, diagnostics software and parts like their own shops (not for free, but for a reasonable price). And repairs at a third party shop doesn't void the warranty.
For computers, cloud providers and smartphones similar regulations could improve everybody's life by giving us more flexibility and cheaper products by creating more competition.
In the end apple is collecting a lot of money and seems to just put it on huge piles in their bank accounts. I don't see any reason to increase competition by introducing regulations. Give startups and smaller companies a chance!
I feel like there's a difference between the car regulation you state and the regulation approach being taken in the EU. Specifically the ability of third parties to limit end user choice.
With vehicle repair, I can still choose to use the manufacturer operated/approved repair shops. I truly am gaining additional choice and can continue to service my car as I always have.
The EU regulations allow third parties to remove my choice to live in the walled garden if they wish. So while it could enhance competition for developers I don't know if it greatly improves the users choice, or experience.
This is correct for one side of Apple's market but not the other. You're right that Apple doesn't have monopoly power on the consumer side because there are alternatives and if you cared a whole heck of a lot you could create your own. It's capital intensive sure but being expensive to enter a market and having a moat doesn't mean you have a monopoly. If all your friends hung out on Discord then you're gonna have to use Discord to talk to them, if all your friends play a Windows exclusive game then you're gonna need a PC to play with them, the green bubble thing is nonsense.
But Apple does wield real monopoly power on the other side of their market which is app developers. I don't think large developers have any real choice but to bite the bullet and take whatever terms Apple offers and be on iOS because that's where your users are. Developers aren't choosing Apple as the better product in the way consumers are.
They're not the same. The critical difference is people CAN choose not to use Google Search while keeping their same computer/phone, something you can't do with iPhone and the App Store/Wallet/etc laid out in the article. That's the critical difference that takes it from simply creating a superior product to monopoly, when you use your advantage in one space to lock in customers in a related space.
That seems like something they'd be willing to fix. They allow users to select Ecosia, an extremely niche search engine. Kagi should be on that list too.
Apple is no different than Google search. Even if you drowned people in search choice popups, 99% of the time people choose Google. Regulators say Google is doing something nefarious when in reality, their product is loved by billions of people. In these situations, like Apple products and Google search, we need to realize that both companies have won the game in certain markets they operate because they made products that people really enjoy using.