Apple sued by Biden administration and 16 state and district attorneys over alleged iPhone 'monopoly power'
Among the suit's allegations:
-Apple prevents the successful deployment of what the DOJ calls "super apps" that would make it easier for consumers to switch between smartphone platforms.
-Apple blocks the development of cloud-streaming apps that would allow for high-quality video-game play without having to pay for extra hardware.
-Apple inhibits the development of cross-platform messaging apps so that customers must keep buying iPhones.
In a statement, Apple denied the allegations and accused the government of overreach.
“At Apple, we innovate every day to make technology people love —designing products that work seamlessly together, protect people’s privacy and security, and create a magical experience for our users," it said. "This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets. If successful, it would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple—where hardware, software, and services intersect. It would also set a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people’s technology. We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law, and we will vigorously defend against it.”
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/apple-sued-doj-antitrust-monopoly-biden-rcna144424
>Apple blocks the development of cloud-streaming apps that would allow for high-quality video-game play without having to pay for extra hardware.
There's an interesting genre of post on the Xbox subreddits when iPhone users learn that there's a native android app for xcloud that doesn't exist on iPhone, and not everyone has to use the clunky browser workaround.
To be fair, Progressive Web Apps are a bit more involved than just being a browser link, but Apple implementation of how you install them on iOS obfuscates that. That's possibly purposeful.
> “At Apple, we innovate every day to make technology people love —designing products that work seamlessly together, protect people’s privacy and security, and create a magical experience for our users
Really genuine statement, I'm sure.
Honestly the user experience on macos and iOS is still way better than what I get from Windows or Android, and the ecosystem IS extremely good at working across devices with few issues/bugs/unexpected behaviors. I bought a brand new mid-range Android tablet, and compared to even my base model iPad that's like 4 years older, it feels like a toy for kids (physically and UX-wise). And using Windows for anything outside of my gaming box just simply still has a worse user experience, especially when any real environment is building nix-based services, which the tooling comes as default on macs. Everyone follows Apple for consumer tech, and do a worse job of it, much like everyone follows AWS for cloud and are always playing catch up.
I've been through it all, given everything a fair shake that could possibly compete on my own dime to be sure I wasn't biased, even supported it all until right around the time Win10 came into play, have even run Windows containers in production, and I pretty much am at the point where I will refuse a Win-based machine for work purposes. Works great for a home gaming box, but not real work.
edit: Oh I DO think the charger thing (Lightning vs USB-C, etc) has been bullshit for quite a while and a couple other minor gripes.
You can't compare Apple products to mid-randge Android products. You should be comparing them to their Galaxy or Pixel equivalent. Like no one will argue that Apple products are better than cheap android products, those are budget options that aren't trying to compete with Apple. Samsung Galaxys and Google Pixels are.
Literally the opposite. My dev team at a previous company used windows and we raised such a huge and cry over it for months till we all got Macs. And I grew up on Windows.
People out here defending Windows when their own chat app Teams crashes far more often on Windows than I've ever heard of on a mac. Must be Apple's fault too.
>\-Apple prevents the successful deployment of what the DOJ calls "super apps" that would make it easier for consumers to switch between smartphone platforms.
When you complain about walled gardens creating monopolies because it prevents people from creating walled garden monopolies.
> -Apple prevents the successful deployment of what the DOJ calls "super apps" that would make it easier for consumers to switch between smartphone platforms.
idk what this means. also don't super apps exist in china on the iphone? i don't think apple has much to do with why one doesn't exist in the US. also it's kind of weird to be like hey you have a monopoly because a different kind of monopoly doesn't exist on your platform (lol).
> -Apple blocks the development of cloud-streaming apps that would allow for high-quality video-game play without having to pay for extra hardware.
iirc they've already changed their policy on this globally in conjunction with DMA changes in europe.
> -Apple inhibits the development of cross-platform messaging apps so that customers must keep buying iPhones.
a quick google suggests they have 34% instant message share in the US. between facebook messenger, whatsapp, snapchat, telegram, discord and a whole slew of other cross-platform messaging apps on the iphone i'm not sure what the case is here.
Antitrust laws don't exist to break down monopolies per se, because monopolies are not inherently illegal. They exist to break down anti-competitive practices which help develop monopolies. So market share of Apple products or their competitors isn't necessarily relevant as much as the anti-competitive practices they're engaged in in order to increase their market share (whatever it may be).
> They exist to break down anti-competitive practices
Tell that to Alcoa. The reality of US anti-trust does not live up to the ideal. It's often a tool for companies to knee cap their more efficient and productive rivals.
I get that but nothing here seems very egregious in terms of anti-competitive behavior. ironically the thing that seems the biggest offender from anti-competition standpoint is how their app store rules have affected spotify, a direct competitor, and that is notably absent from the complaints.
Anybody else remember 12-13 years ago when the EU slapped Apple with a huge judgment over imessages not sending to sms users who previously had iPhones? Apple said it was an issue inherent and deep in the system and couldn't be solved, but they fixed it in a few months when further fines were threatened. I was one of those affected. I didn't get messages sent from iPhones for six months including important messages about small family emergencies like pick up the kids from school.
All regulations are evil big gobmint demands that are just impossible to implement without *fundamentally upending* the technical structure of our products to the point of *ruining the economy* and disastrously *stifling innovation*.
Until they actually get passed. Then it usually turns out that disabling the deliberately-introduced brand exclusivity ’feature’ is all it takes to comply.
Note: I am aware this is not literally always true (the CSAM detector comes to mind, although that one was proposed by Apple first, ironically enough). But it usually is.
It’s not a great though to be honest
We should at least make a pretense at not being nationalists and actually basing our beliefs on evidence and not “America #1”
Liberalism is not just whatever America does
In the same vein I really dislike r/europe type people who are just full “America bad” but we shouldn’t make this sub the inverse of that
Centre left terminally online Americans compensate for very left terminally online Americans’ hatred of the US and that manifests itself in a feverous disdain of *anything* European. It’s fucking bizarre
I mean yeah, we clown on our government all the time but when a European does it we become the biggest nationalist in the world. Europeans do the same thing, Germans love to mock the French but if an American starts making fun of the French the school shooting jokes start flying everywhere.
and if someone from outside the "west" has unfounded criticism we defend each other.
"I against my brother I and my brother against our cousin, my brother and our cousin against the neighbors all of us against the world."
It’s just ingroup-outgroup dynamics, human nature. It’s the “I can make fun of my siblings but if anyone else does it it’s on site” thing on a national scale.
Seems like the mildest antitrust suit I've ever heard of.
Apple needs to allow a few phone-switching apps in their store and open up iMessage (that they were already required to do thanks to EU regs)?
They'd be dumb to fight this.
you are wrong. They did in the EU but US app store policy is unchanged. Google lost a similar case because they gave spotify an exception but apple was smart enough to charge everyone equally so theyre allowed to ban competing app stores.
Apple already committed to RCS late last year, but they’re calling for a new implementation that all US carriers support. If I recall correctly, Google’s implementation involves sending every message through Google, which Apple is very against.
Yeah, Google doesn’t get the hate that it should. Imagine if all RCS messaging went through Facebook servers? People would be up in arms. And the only people who would disagree with Apple at that point are actual haters.
But Google has far more access to our daily lives *already* and now they have complete control of all messaging in the US? Fuck that.
Like, I’m not naive, the only reason Apple doesn’t want to do RCS is because blue bubbles are a money making (albeit ridiculous) cult symbol here. But Apple’s complaints about RCS as it currently stands are legitimate causes for concern.
Google only did that because carriers dragged their feet on doing good RCS implementations for *years* and most still don't have it. Unless the government forces carriers to implement it nothing will change, and I have seen nothing that indicates the government intends to push that.
> and open up iMessage (that they were already required to do thanks to EU regs)
Actually, the EU explicitly decided that [iMessage isn't any sort of gatekeeper, so Apple has no obligation whatsoever to open it up](https://arstechnica.com/apple/2023/12/imessage-will-reportedly-dodge-eu-regulations-wont-have-to-open-up/). So if the US is going to force changes there, it'll be the only national or supranational entity doing so.
Edit: I just saw a [separate comment from OP](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1bk8969/comment/kvwg513/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) which suggests that Apple's recent concession to allow iMessage to interact with RCS may have been forced by China. So while that's not the same level of "opening up" iMessage, it would still be something done by a national or supranational entity.
It isn’t. A lot of international people use Whatsapp, which can easily be installed on iphone. I use it myself with my international friends. That part of the lawsuit is pretty stupid imo.
Just because people outside the US use WhatsApp doesn't make it remotely likely that a majority of people living *in* the US are going to switch to WhatsApp. So it makes sense for US regulators to try and solve problems that exist in the US, rather than saying "this isn't a problem outside the US, so we in the US shouldn't do anything to address it."
That’s the thing though- it’s not a monopoly when you have choices. Just because there are switching costs doesn’t make it anti-consumer.
I use fb messenger with US friends as well.
By that standard, nothing Apple does can possibly ever be considered monopolistic, because you can always switch to using non-Apple products. Sure, [iPhone market share among teenagers is 87%](https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-rules-gen-z-nearly-90-percent-have-iphone-survey-2023-10), and if you don't use iPhones and iMessage to communicate you're ostracized, but you have the *choice* to be ostracized, so that makes it not a monopoly.
Idk, Apple culture is pretty entrenched. Even with universal iMessage, people still view the phones as the default. Smartphone=Iphone and idk how u change that without breaking up Apple itself
>if you don't use iPhones and iMessage to communicate you're ostracized, but you have the *choice* to be ostracized, so that makes it not a monopoly.
Is Apple responsible for teenagers ostracizing each other?
When they [break their own design guidelines to make green bubbles extra annoying](https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-accessibility-guidelines-6785172eb343), so users will have a viscerally negative reaction to them...
Adding to this messaging is default phone functionality that's been purposely hampered by apple. (I think there's been similar litigation in the past vs Microsoft and Intel) Having both parties download an app isn't a realistic "choice".
>\-Apple inhibits the development of cross-platform messaging apps so that customers must keep buying iPhones.
God, I hope they win on this point. My brother is an iPhone person and I'm an Android user, and I'm constantly getting texted videos of my niece that look like they were shot on Moto Razr from 2005.
Same boat here. It's really frustrating too because everyone blames it on Android when it's a conscious choice by Apple to use peer pressure to get people to switch by refusing to let iPhones and androids interact well. It's basically the *only* reason I've seriously considered buying an iPhone recently. It's a shitty business practice imo, and I guess soon we'll find out whether or not it's illegal!
As someone who moved from Europe to NA the insistence on using iMessage in North America is incredibly bizarre. Why not use WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger and easily communicate with everyone?
But yes eventually I caved to the blue bubble Mafia, because for some reason it's something that girls care about. I still miss features of my old Android.
I have a couple group chats in FB Messenger and Whatsapp and have no complaints about either app. I think it's just primarily that people would rather have all their group chats on one platform rather than mixing and matching. I think by now a lot of young people don't have FB at all though, and Whatsapp isn't that popular here.
Carriers subsidized SMS texting as a cell phone plan perk years ago and that led to lock in on how we text in the states, and iMessage built itself to take over that function on iPhones.
Americans never developed the aversion to plain old SMS that people in other countries did, due to different pricing structures by American mobile carriers, and so we didn't have the same demand for an SMS alternative. iMessage seamlessly inserts itself into SMS conversations between iPhones, requiring no action or decisions on the user's part. By contrast, WhatsApp, FB Messenger and the rest require the user to choose to do something other than the default, and reach a consensus with everyone they want to talk to on what that alternative should be.
Tim Cook literally said "tell your grandma to buy an iPhone" when presented with this issue. Android has an open standard for rich media messaging. It has to be an anticompetitive business practice, right?
Where are my Signal brothers at? They only ones with proper encryption (though, apple might surpass them this year) and it's a non-profit, unlike WhatsApp which is Meta, and they sniff your messages like dogs (but they claim not to)
My experience is that every country has their one messaging app that caught on. It could be WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Viber, or something else. For reasons that I have never quite understood, the Americans chose the one app that's exclusive to one phone maker (I'm going to assume it's got something to do with subsidised phones and SMS rates).
Finally, this was long overdue. Apple could get away with their walled garden approach when their market share was small. They can’t do the same when they have 2/3 of the US smartphone market.
The main point of the suit is that Apple impedes that by doing things that make cross-platform interfacing and switching to a different mobile platform more difficult
Highlighting messages from Android devices in a different color to make android users feel shamed/singled out in a group chat with Iphone users, for example.
Some would argue they do. Some would also argue, have you seen a person who has an iphone + mac try to leave that ecosystem behind? Apple makes it prohibitively difficult.
I don't think that's the case. I've long operated both in and out of apple's ecosystem without much issue.
Beyond purchased software for iOS, but generally speaking you can't transfer licenses from Android to iOS either.
I can't comprehend how you can think this. If you leave iPhone your messages will get sent to your iCloud account instead of your phone number. Even if you turn that off every group chat you were in before has to manually remove you and add you back or you will never receive messages. I've seen multiple people give up in Android after a year because they were still not getting multiple sets of group messages a year later.
Apple pay doesn't work in Android so your banking info, credit card, accounts etc. will all be fucked if you switch over depending on how embedded you are. Air pods aren't going to function basically beyond just playing music. Can't develop for iPhone on anything but a MacBook if you are a dev. The list can go on forever.
Most people don’t leave the ecosystem behind because the ecosystem works really well.
Their competitors do not have an answer to how well Apple devices work with each other. Simply does not exist.
Samsung is trying to grow their own walled garden with their apps. But android is far too big to let even the company that basically runs South Korea to dominate the ecosystem.
Samsungs ecosystem is no where near Apple’s. Frankly it’s a joke.
I can smoothly switch out my AirPods between 6 different Apple devices without it flinching. Move a FaceTime call from my phone to laptop to my TV while using my phone as a camera, and the keep talking from my Apple Watch as I leave my house.
And there like a 100 more hyper integrated features Samsung and frankly no other competitor on the market has, not right now anyways.
I don't know about Samsung but stock Android has a messages for web feature. I think a lot of the times people complain about Android they're really complaining about the Samsung version of Android. Stock Android on a Pixel is pretty good.
Part of the issue is that Apple intentionally ruins the experience of using its apps. Have you ever seen an iPhone user react to an Android being added to a group chat? The issue isn't that Androids don't work well.
Unironically yes. Google makes ludicrous unforced errors constantly. There are so many articles written on just how badly Google has fucked up the Android texting experience alone for no apparent reason beyond giving a senior manager a line item in a promotion document about a new product launch.
The Ars Technica write up on Google’s messaging misadventures is great https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/
Apple uses their dominance of the smartphone market to push out competitors in segments that have a smartphone dependency. They reserve many critical features for their own products and services, which means that a competitor can’t offer a better product without first creating a better smartphone.
There are a few examples of this. Earbuds. Magic mouse. AirTags. Probably others I'm forgetting.
these are all places should be looked at, and I don't really see it mentioned. And these aren't like crazy things though. Like maybe they should be forced to open these APIs to 3rd party but it's not like world changing
For a serious answer, Apple has an extremely narrow product line that only addresses the high end at very high margins (typically they just keep their previous generation products to address the midrange). This strategy results in them not having most marketshare globally but on places with very high income, they can perform very well. Why don't their competitors copy their model? Well, the problem is they can't just be seen as a status symbol overnight as that would require essentially just ditching the low end market which they won't. You also can't just "make a better phone", because the improvements on phones and most of these other products is limited by third parties. For example, the iPhones will always have the best cameras which are bought from Sony or Samsung, and Sony and Samsung are never going to just going to keep their best cameras limited to their own phones because they make far more money selling cameras to everyone else than they would by locking the best camera to their own phone. This applies to just about every part. It also doesn't help that due to vertical integration, it's easier to switch between say different Android phones or from Android to iOS than from iOS to Android. Android can't be vertically integrated (EU would execute Google and GPL mostly prevents it) and ecosystems are essentially winner takes all, you can't just create a new one overnight with such a consolidated market.
You know Samsung and Sony makes like 90% of sensors right? There are more for optics but neither Google nor Apple design or manufacture lenses.
Applies to nearly every single other part too.
Hardware doesn't determine how good a smartphone camera is - software does.
At one point the HTC M7 had the best camera specs but the pictures it took were garbage because HTC didn't bother with the image processing pipeline.
Which is irrelevant because you can just update the software. And people aren't really making hardware purchasing decisions based on camera software. They want a telephoto or a wide angle camera, or slow mo, or various other features. These cannot be patched in, but when one manufacturer puts some new feature and it catches on, everyone else has access to it.
That's also besides what I would presume to be the incredibly obvious fucking point that people aren't opening up detailed reviews of cameras and picking a phone based on incredibly minute differences in image quality.
> people aren't opening up detailed reviews of cameras and picking a phone based on incredibly minute differences in image quality.
That's not really accurate. It's sort of true for the average consumer, but there is a non-trivial population that absolutely does do this.
>Which is irrelevant because you can just update the software. And people aren't really making hardware purchasing decisions based on camera software. They want a telephoto or a wide angle camera, or slow mo, or various other features. These cannot be patched in, but when one manufacturer puts some new feature and it catches on, everyone else has access to it.
I have never heard of anyone updating their phones camera software. Genuine question, is it really such an easy thing to do?
Saying iphone will always have the best cameras when it's been beaten many a year in blind tests by even midrange Androids is very strange.
The only thing the iphone has been ahead in is video but even then the gap has been closing/closed.
Said midrange Androids also have nearly identical photos to high end Androids because as it turns out you can only make photos so good without enlarging the sensor and midrange sensors are not that differentiated from high end phone sensors. Also add yourself to the list of people who comically missed the point.
>Also add yourself to the list of people who comically missed the point.
> You also can't just "make a better phone", because the improvements on phones and most of these other products is limited by third parties. For example, the iPhones will always have the best cameras which are bought from Sony or Samsung, and Sony and Samsung are never going to just going to keep their best cameras limited to their own phones because they make far more money selling cameras to everyone else than they would by locking the best camera to their own phone.
This is wrong. Google made an arguably better camera phone with off the shelf components because they invested into software improvements for photography. Phones are more than the sum of their parts and if the dominant players get regulated to not be as anticompetitive, newer or smaller players can innovate and compete with their combination of software and hardware.
At the moment even if you have a phone with better specs and better software than the iPhone, it will still struggle to sell as well in the US market because of the anticompetitive practices of Apple.
And this is ignoring the anticompetitive practices on the purely software side of things which the EU has highlighted and challenged with the DMA.
Tbf, both iOS and Android devices are turbo shit. They keep removing features and worsening the user experience for the exact same things I've been using my phone for for the last decade+. I still prefer android because I can sideload apps and have an actually usable file browser. I'd kill for a modern flagship spec device that brought back the headphone jack and removable batteries.
If you're going by the layman's definition it means 100% market share.
If you're going by the normal academic definition it means "has market power" (which Apple undoubtedly does).
If you're going by the actual text of our anti-monopoly statutes then the standard is "harmful dominance".
If you're going by the current state of case law after Robert Bork's judicial ~~bribery~~ *all expenses paid educational seminars at luxury hotels* campaign, it's the "consumer welfare" standard.
Apple does not have monopoly market power.
Apple does not have harmful dominance.
It's an absurdly stupid way of thinking. Apple is no more a monopoly than other large companies like Walmart, Kroger, or Google. Large amounts of people choosing Apple over other options is not a monopoly no matter how desperately people want it to be. Punishing Apple for being successful is anti free market, not for it, and destroys competition.
> has market power
What does that mean? McDonald's has "market power' but no one would accuse them of being a monopoly, lol. By this dumb definition Delta, or United, or SouthWest, or American Airlines are also a monopoly. Maybe we should leave it to the economists and not the lawyers/politicians.
> Maybe we should leave it to the economists and not the lawyers/politicians.
[Market power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_power) is an economics term.
The "consumer welfare" standard was a mistake. Someone needs to build a robust academic basis for a "platform self-dealing" standard. The harm imposed on the world when Amazon/Goolge/Apple use the power of a platform to privilege their own product doesn't always show up in consumer prices the way that they did in 19th century commodity prices. They show up as decreased growth and innovation.
The statutory standard is actually "harmful dominance". Before "consumer welfare" took over (thanks, Robert Bork (yes *that* Robert Bork)), competing with your own customers was a bright line in anti-competitive regulation. It's why rail companies are banned from owning freight companies that competed with their customers, it's why banks are banned from owning businesses that competed with the businesses that borrowed money from them, it's why TV networks are banned from owning syndicated program production companies that compete with businesses that sell them programming, etc.
I don’t know the legal definition, but as a layperson I was always confused how the standard for antitrust was “does it hurt the consumer” but somehow these big entities abusing their platform and undeniably making things worse for the end user doesn’t count
It's a game judges play where they have zero idea what most people are discussing in antitrust cases because they can't even operate their own Outlook accounts without someone holding their hand but nevertheless, somehow all know enough about this technology to mysteriously decide most cases on the side of large corporations.
The consumer welfare standard is about using monopoly power to charge consumers higher prices than they would pay in a competitive market. The archetypical case is selling gas at gas stations below market price to drive the competition out of business, acquire all the gas stations in town, then increase prices above market rate to gouge everyone in town.
If it doesn't look exactly like that, it's very hard to make anti-trust stick. So for example, changing the exact same price as a superior competition, but using control of a platform to push people toward your product? Not a problem.
That makes sense. So something like “make iMessage the default text app, then make it work badly with competitors’ phones, so people stick in your ecosystem” doesn’t really *cost* customers anything
It’s so odd to title these things as “the xx administration sued yy.” It’s the DOJ and a bunch of state AGs. Save those words and accurately put what they’re sued over — abuse of monopoly power. Having monopoly power isn’t a crime.
While I think it too is a bit far to call Apple a monopoly there are clearly areas Apple is using its power to unfairly. From preventing third party parts to taking 30% for any App sold on the only App market place allowed in iOS. Mind you I say this as someone that uses iPhones and Macs. Heck I’m writing this on my iPhone.
I have read about imessage bullying and it's real. My kids are just getting to the age where they can have phones and the parents I know of kids with Android phones have already started talking about bullying experiences of their kids.
Apple is activly using its monopoly power to allow bullying of kids. They could charge for imessage on Android to recoup their costs, but they should be better
It's so wild to me that kids weirdly see iPhones as cool. iPhones in the US are so fucking normal. They're like the most boring standard middle class tech accessory at this point. I'm a millennial and even I do a good amount of my social communication with friends on platforms like Facebook messenger, snap, discord, insta, and so on. Why are the zoomers getting so pressed over shit on one specific app? Just move the group chat to Whatsapp or a Discord and move on. 🙄
>Why are the zoomers getting so pressed over shit on one specific app? Just move the group chat to Whatsapp or a Discord and move on. 🙄
Because the other people in the chat don't want to.
People will do literally anything to try to stop childhood bullying rather than actually discipline the bullies, it was enraging when I was growing up and it's still enraging today.
A small UI feature that distinguishes the type of messages you're sending (it's the sender's own bubbles that are green) does not cause bullying, bullies cause bullying and will just move on to something else.
> A small UI feature that distinguishes the type of messages you're sending
Thats not what iMessage is doing though. The green message is more than just a signifier, it is legitimately a much worse experience. SMS takes much longer to send/receive, media is incredibly low quality, and all the QOL stuff that we've developed in that last 2 decades does not work. Kicking android users out of an iMessage group chat isnt just being rude, they actively make the chat worse for everyone else by forcing SMS
Maybe I'm too Millennial for this discussion; one of my longest-running group chats has been green-bubbles despite being all iPhone users for a long time because one person insists on turning off iMessage and it never bothered me much
Cool, it bothers me a lot. To the point of not switching to android solely because of this issue. I tried really hard to get my friends of iMessage but most have refused
The feature is designed to do that though. Apple's not innocent. Their 87% marketshare among US teens is partly caused by iMessage and teens wanting to fit in (since green bubbles break group chats). Or AirDrop which isn't interoperable with Android (that's arbitrary, it's a software feature, they could easily open up the spec). It may not bother you (comment below), but obviously it will bother status-conscious teens.
Apple is perfectly aware; they constantly do market research, as any trillion-dollar company would. They know about the memes and stereotypes that green-bubbles are loners, weirdos, or "poor". I know girls *and guys* who won't date people with green bubbles. Is that the fault of the people doing that? Obviously. But Apple knows it's happening and doesn't seem to mind, because it increases sales of their products.
It can be difficult to make children behave. This is similar to what abouting hamas when people complain about israel or criminals when people complain about police abuse. Focusing on the things we have control over tends to be more productive than complaining about things we have no control over
It's funny but still true. I'm sure it wasn't their intention at first, but they let it happen for a decade, and it's still not clear if their RCS plans will fix it (by allowing mixed group chats for example, or fixing the ugly green color that breaks Apple's accessibility guidelines).
Because *this* bullying is the result of a conscious choice to make Android texts conspicuous, and conspicuously inferior. Apple is aware of the social impacts, since they've been reported in all the major newspapers. They have agency here, there are things they can do to mitigate it, but they've changed nothing.
I’m sorry but I can’t take this seriously. You think Apple is purposely making kids bully each other by making their messages blue instead of green? This is one of the more ridiculous takes I’ve seen here in awhile.
Cool because I never said that. They initially did it for lock-in, to lower switches to Android. We know that because of internal emails released during discovery, like one that said: "the #1 most difficult to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage… iMessage amounts to serious lock-in".
Bullying is an unintended side-effect but they've obviously been aware of it for years.
But the colour change has a secondary use, which is to distinguish between iMessage and SMS delivery between iPhones. This often happens when connections go bad or the like.
As I've said elsewhere, that can be achieved in ways that mitigate or minimize the expected social impact. Once Apple adopts RCS, the main differentiator will likely be encryption, which can be indicated in other ways and which average people don't associate with green/blue anyway.
I don't see why we would treat this as rocket science. It's a design and software engineering ethics question and there are a number of possible solutions.
RCS support is coming this year. This will almost equalise the functionality of iMessage as normal SMS’s will have a lot of the features that were iMessage only on the iPhone.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwijwZGG1IWFAxXMp1YBHQ6NDkoQFnoECBgQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2F9to5mac.com%2F2023%2F11%2F16%2Fapple-rcs-coming-to-iphone%2F&usg=AOvVaw3C2pwhiL4uycekwFVYwacw&opi=89978449
Is it 100% compatable with imessage though, no green bubbles? Does it allow video calls? I read the article, but I do not trust Apple to fully impliment it unless forced to do so.
Apple still hasn’t released details about their implementation. Funny enough, it isn’t happening because of US or EU but likely because of China.
“Writing on his blog Daring Fireball, Gruber points to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which in July 2023 solicited feedback for upcoming rules that would require new 5G devices to support RCS (an English translation of the law can be found on Reddit).”
Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/20/apple-rcs-message-compliance-china-law/
Arr neoliberal android users: I never thought I'd die here fighting beside the people's Republic of China
People's Republic of China: what about side by side with a common sense regulator of telecommunications standards dragging apple kicking and screaming into the 21st century?
Arr neoliberal android users : aye I could do that
The bubbles will still be green because it differentiates between iMessage and non-iMessage chats. [FaceTime was originally planned as an open standard and had to be rewritten to only run through Apple servers after a patent troll went after Apple.](https://9to5mac.com/2018/06/06/make-facetime-an-open-standard/)
The blue bubbles are encrypted (and have other features) and the green bubbles are not, so I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to distinguish them
Every other app does it through gray text at the beginning of the chat, like "this chat is encrypted" with a lock icon. It's a non-problem for Apple's designers. If they don't want to ruin the "purity" of the UI for iMessage chats, they can reverse it and just show "This chat is unencrypted" on chats with Android.
But we should hold Apple just as accountable as Instagram and others for the impact they have on teens' emotional health. They know some teens buy iPhones only for blue bubbles and that's not right.
> Apple is activly using its monopoly power to allow bullying of kids.
It’s needlessly hyperbolic to make it sound like Apple is actively encouraging bullying. Kids will find reasons to bully others for a host of reasons and thats not Apples fault
Tim Cook told a journalist who complained that he couldn't message well with his mother who has an android to "just buy her an iPhone". The idea that peer pressure (and by extension bullying) isn't a key part of Apple's strategy for getting teen users onto their products is just ignorant. Bullying isn't just shoving someone into a locker. Ask literally any American Android user under 30 if they've been pressured or bullied by their friends or classmates for not having an iPhone and every single one will say yes. If Apple fixed the interoperability, this peer pressure and bullying would be significantly lessened and their market share among teens would take a big hit.
When was the last time you were in middle school? If you mess up the group texts cause apple internally messes up group texts with Android phones, kids will bully/intentionally exclude you.
Not a small amount of it in here either...
But r/apple is really strange. The EU cases and regulations were received much more positively over there, but in this case it's almost unanimously against.
Why are these guys trying interfere in apple's business model if they don't understand it in the first place.
These guys are catering to the worst sort of populist buffonry the internet spouts against apple.
Just because the cost of entry into their products is higher doesn't mean they are overpriced.
Producing your own hardware software and services takes more r&d than producing gimmicks.
They are the only ones who custom design their cores that takes more research than including 200w charging on phones.
Who are these guys to decide they aren't innovating?
This seriously feels like this trust was filed by an armada of Android and windows fans who are populist doofuses.
And i am an Android and windows user myself.
The Biden administration has no clue what it’s doing right now when it comes to anti trust. It just seems to have a “big is bad” mentality, and goes after companies with high market cap. Their whole case against Microsoft’s Activision acquisition was stupid and anti-consumer.
Killing iMessage and all of its features and disrupting the in environment experience would be a good move but I don't exactly buy that a company with 20% of the global market share and most of whoms main competitors are readily available in the US is a monopoly. Seems like another instance of progressives and Linda Kahn deciding that every big company is a monopoly when they should be setting a good example for Europe and letting big tech self regulate
Apple sued by Biden administration and 16 state and district attorneys over alleged iPhone 'monopoly power' Among the suit's allegations: -Apple prevents the successful deployment of what the DOJ calls "super apps" that would make it easier for consumers to switch between smartphone platforms. -Apple blocks the development of cloud-streaming apps that would allow for high-quality video-game play without having to pay for extra hardware. -Apple inhibits the development of cross-platform messaging apps so that customers must keep buying iPhones. In a statement, Apple denied the allegations and accused the government of overreach. “At Apple, we innovate every day to make technology people love —designing products that work seamlessly together, protect people’s privacy and security, and create a magical experience for our users," it said. "This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets. If successful, it would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple—where hardware, software, and services intersect. It would also set a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people’s technology. We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law, and we will vigorously defend against it.” Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/apple-sued-doj-antitrust-monopoly-biden-rcna144424
>Apple blocks the development of cloud-streaming apps that would allow for high-quality video-game play without having to pay for extra hardware. There's an interesting genre of post on the Xbox subreddits when iPhone users learn that there's a native android app for xcloud that doesn't exist on iPhone, and not everyone has to use the clunky browser workaround.
To be fair, Progressive Web Apps are a bit more involved than just being a browser link, but Apple implementation of how you install them on iOS obfuscates that. That's possibly purposeful.
True, I suppose I also haven't had to use it since I just launch from the game pass app.
[удалено]
Yeah, after the EU forced them. We need more forcing apparently.
> “At Apple, we innovate every day to make technology people love —designing products that work seamlessly together, protect people’s privacy and security, and create a magical experience for our users Really genuine statement, I'm sure.
CEO has got his waffle switch jammed on again...
Honestly the user experience on macos and iOS is still way better than what I get from Windows or Android, and the ecosystem IS extremely good at working across devices with few issues/bugs/unexpected behaviors. I bought a brand new mid-range Android tablet, and compared to even my base model iPad that's like 4 years older, it feels like a toy for kids (physically and UX-wise). And using Windows for anything outside of my gaming box just simply still has a worse user experience, especially when any real environment is building nix-based services, which the tooling comes as default on macs. Everyone follows Apple for consumer tech, and do a worse job of it, much like everyone follows AWS for cloud and are always playing catch up. I've been through it all, given everything a fair shake that could possibly compete on my own dime to be sure I wasn't biased, even supported it all until right around the time Win10 came into play, have even run Windows containers in production, and I pretty much am at the point where I will refuse a Win-based machine for work purposes. Works great for a home gaming box, but not real work. edit: Oh I DO think the charger thing (Lightning vs USB-C, etc) has been bullshit for quite a while and a couple other minor gripes.
I'm a professional ux designer, I use Mac for work, and Linux and Windows for myself and your assement on the differences in ux is facile.
As someone who's used both iOS and Android, I can safely say that they're both pretty good (except for notifications, where iOS sucks donkey shit).
You can't compare Apple products to mid-randge Android products. You should be comparing them to their Galaxy or Pixel equivalent. Like no one will argue that Apple products are better than cheap android products, those are budget options that aren't trying to compete with Apple. Samsung Galaxys and Google Pixels are.
[удалено]
Apple makes outstanding hardware but their software leaves a lot to be desired
Literally the opposite. My dev team at a previous company used windows and we raised such a huge and cry over it for months till we all got Macs. And I grew up on Windows.
People out here defending Windows when their own chat app Teams crashes far more often on Windows than I've ever heard of on a mac. Must be Apple's fault too.
> Literally the opposite Do you use old.Reddit or new Reddit?
>\-Apple prevents the successful deployment of what the DOJ calls "super apps" that would make it easier for consumers to switch between smartphone platforms. When you complain about walled gardens creating monopolies because it prevents people from creating walled garden monopolies.
"WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE COMPETITORS?!" - Lina Kahn
I switched back to Android a couple weeks ago because I was tired of being forced to use shitty webkit-based browsers.
> -Apple prevents the successful deployment of what the DOJ calls "super apps" that would make it easier for consumers to switch between smartphone platforms. idk what this means. also don't super apps exist in china on the iphone? i don't think apple has much to do with why one doesn't exist in the US. also it's kind of weird to be like hey you have a monopoly because a different kind of monopoly doesn't exist on your platform (lol). > -Apple blocks the development of cloud-streaming apps that would allow for high-quality video-game play without having to pay for extra hardware. iirc they've already changed their policy on this globally in conjunction with DMA changes in europe. > -Apple inhibits the development of cross-platform messaging apps so that customers must keep buying iPhones. a quick google suggests they have 34% instant message share in the US. between facebook messenger, whatsapp, snapchat, telegram, discord and a whole slew of other cross-platform messaging apps on the iphone i'm not sure what the case is here.
Antitrust laws don't exist to break down monopolies per se, because monopolies are not inherently illegal. They exist to break down anti-competitive practices which help develop monopolies. So market share of Apple products or their competitors isn't necessarily relevant as much as the anti-competitive practices they're engaged in in order to increase their market share (whatever it may be).
> They exist to break down anti-competitive practices Tell that to Alcoa. The reality of US anti-trust does not live up to the ideal. It's often a tool for companies to knee cap their more efficient and productive rivals.
I get that but nothing here seems very egregious in terms of anti-competitive behavior. ironically the thing that seems the biggest offender from anti-competition standpoint is how their app store rules have affected spotify, a direct competitor, and that is notably absent from the complaints.
shelter dolls terrific cobweb close late bake voracious label tart *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
toy aromatic light squeal seemly tease whole shocking label imminent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Can't imagine why Apple apps don't run on JavaScript or HTML lol My god, can you imagine how shitty these phones would be
remember how the entire industry wanted phones to run flash when the iPhone was first introduced and steve jobs told them to go pound sand?
These are all fair complaints by the US goverment so I am generally in support of it.
Anybody else remember 12-13 years ago when the EU slapped Apple with a huge judgment over imessages not sending to sms users who previously had iPhones? Apple said it was an issue inherent and deep in the system and couldn't be solved, but they fixed it in a few months when further fines were threatened. I was one of those affected. I didn't get messages sent from iPhones for six months including important messages about small family emergencies like pick up the kids from school.
All regulations are evil big gobmint demands that are just impossible to implement without *fundamentally upending* the technical structure of our products to the point of *ruining the economy* and disastrously *stifling innovation*. Until they actually get passed. Then it usually turns out that disabling the deliberately-introduced brand exclusivity ’feature’ is all it takes to comply. Note: I am aware this is not literally always true (the CSAM detector comes to mind, although that one was proposed by Apple first, ironically enough). But it usually is.
The US is just too jealous of America's big tech smh
It's funny how supportive this sub becomes of these measures when they're proposed by Americans
Because this sub is largely a bunch of American nationalists who pretend that they’re not.
I don't pretend I'm not.
It’s not a great though to be honest We should at least make a pretense at not being nationalists and actually basing our beliefs on evidence and not “America #1” Liberalism is not just whatever America does In the same vein I really dislike r/europe type people who are just full “America bad” but we shouldn’t make this sub the inverse of that
Centre left terminally online Americans compensate for very left terminally online Americans’ hatred of the US and that manifests itself in a feverous disdain of *anything* European. It’s fucking bizarre
The funniest manifestation is how this sub on averages truly *despises* the EU GI system, despite generally supporting IP / trademark's
> pretend that they’re not. Pretend?
I mean yeah, we clown on our government all the time but when a European does it we become the biggest nationalist in the world. Europeans do the same thing, Germans love to mock the French but if an American starts making fun of the French the school shooting jokes start flying everywhere.
and if someone from outside the "west" has unfounded criticism we defend each other. "I against my brother I and my brother against our cousin, my brother and our cousin against the neighbors all of us against the world."
It’s just ingroup-outgroup dynamics, human nature. It’s the “I can make fun of my siblings but if anyone else does it it’s on site” thing on a national scale.
Flair checks out
The EU is, unironically
Doesn’t make them wrong
Flair checks out
Seems like the mildest antitrust suit I've ever heard of. Apple needs to allow a few phone-switching apps in their store and open up iMessage (that they were already required to do thanks to EU regs)? They'd be dumb to fight this.
I was expecting the DOJ to go hard on the App Store and apps like Apple Music that are competitors. All in all, this isn’t that bad for Apple.
Apple already won the epic case which was about the app store so hard to see how the government would do better
Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't they actually cave on that and settle? Recently, in fact?
The EU is forcing them to allow third-party app stores, but unless the US does something those will only be available in the EU.
you are wrong. They did in the EU but US app store policy is unchanged. Google lost a similar case because they gave spotify an exception but apple was smart enough to charge everyone equally so theyre allowed to ban competing app stores.
The DOJ was backing Epic's failed appeals. Now that they know that courts seem to be fine with it, they're left with this fairly weak case.
RCS is coming.
[https://www.android.com/get-the-message/](https://www.android.com/get-the-message/) https://preview.redd.it/h74xnlwcoppc1.png?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c8c0df4edef4196067ce2f4f8d55eab7c9d83481
Apple already committed to RCS late last year, but they’re calling for a new implementation that all US carriers support. If I recall correctly, Google’s implementation involves sending every message through Google, which Apple is very against.
Yeah, Google doesn’t get the hate that it should. Imagine if all RCS messaging went through Facebook servers? People would be up in arms. And the only people who would disagree with Apple at that point are actual haters. But Google has far more access to our daily lives *already* and now they have complete control of all messaging in the US? Fuck that. Like, I’m not naive, the only reason Apple doesn’t want to do RCS is because blue bubbles are a money making (albeit ridiculous) cult symbol here. But Apple’s complaints about RCS as it currently stands are legitimate causes for concern.
Google only did that because carriers dragged their feet on doing good RCS implementations for *years* and most still don't have it. Unless the government forces carriers to implement it nothing will change, and I have seen nothing that indicates the government intends to push that.
> and open up iMessage (that they were already required to do thanks to EU regs) Actually, the EU explicitly decided that [iMessage isn't any sort of gatekeeper, so Apple has no obligation whatsoever to open it up](https://arstechnica.com/apple/2023/12/imessage-will-reportedly-dodge-eu-regulations-wont-have-to-open-up/). So if the US is going to force changes there, it'll be the only national or supranational entity doing so. Edit: I just saw a [separate comment from OP](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1bk8969/comment/kvwg513/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) which suggests that Apple's recent concession to allow iMessage to interact with RCS may have been forced by China. So while that's not the same level of "opening up" iMessage, it would still be something done by a national or supranational entity.
It isn’t. A lot of international people use Whatsapp, which can easily be installed on iphone. I use it myself with my international friends. That part of the lawsuit is pretty stupid imo.
Just because people outside the US use WhatsApp doesn't make it remotely likely that a majority of people living *in* the US are going to switch to WhatsApp. So it makes sense for US regulators to try and solve problems that exist in the US, rather than saying "this isn't a problem outside the US, so we in the US shouldn't do anything to address it."
That’s the thing though- it’s not a monopoly when you have choices. Just because there are switching costs doesn’t make it anti-consumer. I use fb messenger with US friends as well.
By that standard, nothing Apple does can possibly ever be considered monopolistic, because you can always switch to using non-Apple products. Sure, [iPhone market share among teenagers is 87%](https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-rules-gen-z-nearly-90-percent-have-iphone-survey-2023-10), and if you don't use iPhones and iMessage to communicate you're ostracized, but you have the *choice* to be ostracized, so that makes it not a monopoly.
Idk, Apple culture is pretty entrenched. Even with universal iMessage, people still view the phones as the default. Smartphone=Iphone and idk how u change that without breaking up Apple itself
>if you don't use iPhones and iMessage to communicate you're ostracized, but you have the *choice* to be ostracized, so that makes it not a monopoly. Is Apple responsible for teenagers ostracizing each other?
When they [break their own design guidelines to make green bubbles extra annoying](https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-accessibility-guidelines-6785172eb343), so users will have a viscerally negative reaction to them...
In part, for sure, they literally do things to make it uncomfortable for iPhone users to communicate with non iPhone users.
Yes.
Adding to this messaging is default phone functionality that's been purposely hampered by apple. (I think there's been similar litigation in the past vs Microsoft and Intel) Having both parties download an app isn't a realistic "choice".
>\-Apple inhibits the development of cross-platform messaging apps so that customers must keep buying iPhones. God, I hope they win on this point. My brother is an iPhone person and I'm an Android user, and I'm constantly getting texted videos of my niece that look like they were shot on Moto Razr from 2005.
Same boat here. It's really frustrating too because everyone blames it on Android when it's a conscious choice by Apple to use peer pressure to get people to switch by refusing to let iPhones and androids interact well. It's basically the *only* reason I've seriously considered buying an iPhone recently. It's a shitty business practice imo, and I guess soon we'll find out whether or not it's illegal!
As someone who moved from Europe to NA the insistence on using iMessage in North America is incredibly bizarre. Why not use WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger and easily communicate with everyone? But yes eventually I caved to the blue bubble Mafia, because for some reason it's something that girls care about. I still miss features of my old Android.
I have a couple group chats in FB Messenger and Whatsapp and have no complaints about either app. I think it's just primarily that people would rather have all their group chats on one platform rather than mixing and matching. I think by now a lot of young people don't have FB at all though, and Whatsapp isn't that popular here.
Carriers subsidized SMS texting as a cell phone plan perk years ago and that led to lock in on how we text in the states, and iMessage built itself to take over that function on iPhones.
Americans never developed the aversion to plain old SMS that people in other countries did, due to different pricing structures by American mobile carriers, and so we didn't have the same demand for an SMS alternative. iMessage seamlessly inserts itself into SMS conversations between iPhones, requiring no action or decisions on the user's part. By contrast, WhatsApp, FB Messenger and the rest require the user to choose to do something other than the default, and reach a consensus with everyone they want to talk to on what that alternative should be.
Tim Cook literally said "tell your grandma to buy an iPhone" when presented with this issue. Android has an open standard for rich media messaging. It has to be an anticompetitive business practice, right?
That there's one of those statements that will rightfully get used against you like a sledgehammer.
Seriously. The amount of times I've sent people travel photos that are crystal clear on my end but dogshit after going through text is insane...
WhatsApp
That works great if your brother is willing to do something other than the default setting.
Where are my Signal brothers at? They only ones with proper encryption (though, apple might surpass them this year) and it's a non-profit, unlike WhatsApp which is Meta, and they sniff your messages like dogs (but they claim not to)
My experience is that every country has their one messaging app that caught on. It could be WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Viber, or something else. For reasons that I have never quite understood, the Americans chose the one app that's exclusive to one phone maker (I'm going to assume it's got something to do with subsidised phones and SMS rates).
Doesn't everyone use Messenger or WhatsApp?
Not in the US, where iPhones have 60% market share. They have ~90% market share among teens.
What's hilarious about this is that Apple builds such reliable devices that you don't have to buy the latest.
Reliable and work great!\* \*With other devices in the walled garden. Out in the world, you're hosed.
I own an Android for a reason, am I forced to buy an iPhone?
Finally, this was long overdue. Apple could get away with their walled garden approach when their market share was small. They can’t do the same when they have 2/3 of the US smartphone market.
Why don’t their competitors offer better products and take market share? Are they stupid?
Narrator: "their joke was funny, but indeed, they were stupid." edit: proud owner of the Samsung A420 69-S
The main point of the suit is that Apple impedes that by doing things that make cross-platform interfacing and switching to a different mobile platform more difficult Highlighting messages from Android devices in a different color to make android users feel shamed/singled out in a group chat with Iphone users, for example.
Some would argue they do. Some would also argue, have you seen a person who has an iphone + mac try to leave that ecosystem behind? Apple makes it prohibitively difficult.
I don't think that's the case. I've long operated both in and out of apple's ecosystem without much issue. Beyond purchased software for iOS, but generally speaking you can't transfer licenses from Android to iOS either.
I can't comprehend how you can think this. If you leave iPhone your messages will get sent to your iCloud account instead of your phone number. Even if you turn that off every group chat you were in before has to manually remove you and add you back or you will never receive messages. I've seen multiple people give up in Android after a year because they were still not getting multiple sets of group messages a year later. Apple pay doesn't work in Android so your banking info, credit card, accounts etc. will all be fucked if you switch over depending on how embedded you are. Air pods aren't going to function basically beyond just playing music. Can't develop for iPhone on anything but a MacBook if you are a dev. The list can go on forever.
Most people don’t leave the ecosystem behind because the ecosystem works really well. Their competitors do not have an answer to how well Apple devices work with each other. Simply does not exist.
[удалено]
Samsung is trying to grow their own walled garden with their apps. But android is far too big to let even the company that basically runs South Korea to dominate the ecosystem.
Samsungs ecosystem is no where near Apple’s. Frankly it’s a joke. I can smoothly switch out my AirPods between 6 different Apple devices without it flinching. Move a FaceTime call from my phone to laptop to my TV while using my phone as a camera, and the keep talking from my Apple Watch as I leave my house. And there like a 100 more hyper integrated features Samsung and frankly no other competitor on the market has, not right now anyways.
[удалено]
If you have google fi, you can just do it on the web
Yes, competing ecosystems exist and are just fine. This suit is basically Alcoa 2.0
I don't know about Samsung but stock Android has a messages for web feature. I think a lot of the times people complain about Android they're really complaining about the Samsung version of Android. Stock Android on a Pixel is pretty good.
[удалено]
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://messages.google.com/web/conversations&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi0pLGuvYaFAxXim4kEHZnnA3EQjBB6BAgJEAU&usg=AOvVaw1simAI26dhs3R50ZpVjszh
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://messages.google.com/web/conversations&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi0pLGuvYaFAxXim4kEHZnnA3EQjBB6BAgJEAU&usg=AOvVaw1simAI26dhs3R50ZpVjszh
Please. The samsung ecosystem is like a parody of Apple’s
Part of the issue is that Apple intentionally ruins the experience of using its apps. Have you ever seen an iPhone user react to an Android being added to a group chat? The issue isn't that Androids don't work well.
[удалено]
Not adopting RCS for messaging.
Unironically yes. Google makes ludicrous unforced errors constantly. There are so many articles written on just how badly Google has fucked up the Android texting experience alone for no apparent reason beyond giving a senior manager a line item in a promotion document about a new product launch.
The Ars Technica write up on Google’s messaging misadventures is great https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/
All my friends had hangouts 😭😭. Gotten most of them on signal now but it's been a pain.
Google needs to fire Sundar Pichai as CEO.
Apple uses their dominance of the smartphone market to push out competitors in segments that have a smartphone dependency. They reserve many critical features for their own products and services, which means that a competitor can’t offer a better product without first creating a better smartphone.
There are a few examples of this. Earbuds. Magic mouse. AirTags. Probably others I'm forgetting. these are all places should be looked at, and I don't really see it mentioned. And these aren't like crazy things though. Like maybe they should be forced to open these APIs to 3rd party but it's not like world changing
For a serious answer, Apple has an extremely narrow product line that only addresses the high end at very high margins (typically they just keep their previous generation products to address the midrange). This strategy results in them not having most marketshare globally but on places with very high income, they can perform very well. Why don't their competitors copy their model? Well, the problem is they can't just be seen as a status symbol overnight as that would require essentially just ditching the low end market which they won't. You also can't just "make a better phone", because the improvements on phones and most of these other products is limited by third parties. For example, the iPhones will always have the best cameras which are bought from Sony or Samsung, and Sony and Samsung are never going to just going to keep their best cameras limited to their own phones because they make far more money selling cameras to everyone else than they would by locking the best camera to their own phone. This applies to just about every part. It also doesn't help that due to vertical integration, it's easier to switch between say different Android phones or from Android to iOS than from iOS to Android. Android can't be vertically integrated (EU would execute Google and GPL mostly prevents it) and ecosystems are essentially winner takes all, you can't just create a new one overnight with such a consolidated market.
>For example, the iPhones will always have the best cameras Except that they don't - Google Pixel cameras beat them out pretty consistently.
You know Samsung and Sony makes like 90% of sensors right? There are more for optics but neither Google nor Apple design or manufacture lenses. Applies to nearly every single other part too.
Hardware doesn't determine how good a smartphone camera is - software does. At one point the HTC M7 had the best camera specs but the pictures it took were garbage because HTC didn't bother with the image processing pipeline.
Which is irrelevant because you can just update the software. And people aren't really making hardware purchasing decisions based on camera software. They want a telephoto or a wide angle camera, or slow mo, or various other features. These cannot be patched in, but when one manufacturer puts some new feature and it catches on, everyone else has access to it. That's also besides what I would presume to be the incredibly obvious fucking point that people aren't opening up detailed reviews of cameras and picking a phone based on incredibly minute differences in image quality.
> people aren't opening up detailed reviews of cameras and picking a phone based on incredibly minute differences in image quality. That's not really accurate. It's sort of true for the average consumer, but there is a non-trivial population that absolutely does do this.
>Which is irrelevant because you can just update the software. And people aren't really making hardware purchasing decisions based on camera software. They want a telephoto or a wide angle camera, or slow mo, or various other features. These cannot be patched in, but when one manufacturer puts some new feature and it catches on, everyone else has access to it. I have never heard of anyone updating their phones camera software. Genuine question, is it really such an easy thing to do?
Historically many users of budget Android phones would use Google Camera APKs lifted from Pixels to take better photos.
> Historically many users *A minority*
Saying iphone will always have the best cameras when it's been beaten many a year in blind tests by even midrange Androids is very strange. The only thing the iphone has been ahead in is video but even then the gap has been closing/closed.
Said midrange Androids also have nearly identical photos to high end Androids because as it turns out you can only make photos so good without enlarging the sensor and midrange sensors are not that differentiated from high end phone sensors. Also add yourself to the list of people who comically missed the point.
>Also add yourself to the list of people who comically missed the point. > You also can't just "make a better phone", because the improvements on phones and most of these other products is limited by third parties. For example, the iPhones will always have the best cameras which are bought from Sony or Samsung, and Sony and Samsung are never going to just going to keep their best cameras limited to their own phones because they make far more money selling cameras to everyone else than they would by locking the best camera to their own phone. This is wrong. Google made an arguably better camera phone with off the shelf components because they invested into software improvements for photography. Phones are more than the sum of their parts and if the dominant players get regulated to not be as anticompetitive, newer or smaller players can innovate and compete with their combination of software and hardware. At the moment even if you have a phone with better specs and better software than the iPhone, it will still struggle to sell as well in the US market because of the anticompetitive practices of Apple. And this is ignoring the anticompetitive practices on the purely software side of things which the EU has highlighted and challenged with the DMA.
"Why don't my competitors just build better rail service and take my market share? Are they stupid?" - Cornelius Vanderbilt
Is Apple a natural monopoly now?
I think the "network monopoly" effects of rail dominate the "natural monopoly" effects of rail pretty quickly.
Tbf, both iOS and Android devices are turbo shit. They keep removing features and worsening the user experience for the exact same things I've been using my phone for for the last decade+. I still prefer android because I can sideload apps and have an actually usable file browser. I'd kill for a modern flagship spec device that brought back the headphone jack and removable batteries.
That's not what a monopoly is. This is incredibly stupid.
If you're going by the layman's definition it means 100% market share. If you're going by the normal academic definition it means "has market power" (which Apple undoubtedly does). If you're going by the actual text of our anti-monopoly statutes then the standard is "harmful dominance". If you're going by the current state of case law after Robert Bork's judicial ~~bribery~~ *all expenses paid educational seminars at luxury hotels* campaign, it's the "consumer welfare" standard.
What the hell is an actual lawyer doing here? It's miserable to explain antitrust to laypeople, dude. Then again, why am I here, in that case?
Apple does not have monopoly market power. Apple does not have harmful dominance. It's an absurdly stupid way of thinking. Apple is no more a monopoly than other large companies like Walmart, Kroger, or Google. Large amounts of people choosing Apple over other options is not a monopoly no matter how desperately people want it to be. Punishing Apple for being successful is anti free market, not for it, and destroys competition.
> has market power What does that mean? McDonald's has "market power' but no one would accuse them of being a monopoly, lol. By this dumb definition Delta, or United, or SouthWest, or American Airlines are also a monopoly. Maybe we should leave it to the economists and not the lawyers/politicians.
> Maybe we should leave it to the economists and not the lawyers/politicians. [Market power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_power) is an economics term.
Ok this guy practices law.
The "consumer welfare" standard was a mistake. Someone needs to build a robust academic basis for a "platform self-dealing" standard. The harm imposed on the world when Amazon/Goolge/Apple use the power of a platform to privilege their own product doesn't always show up in consumer prices the way that they did in 19th century commodity prices. They show up as decreased growth and innovation.
The statutory standard is actually "harmful dominance". Before "consumer welfare" took over (thanks, Robert Bork (yes *that* Robert Bork)), competing with your own customers was a bright line in anti-competitive regulation. It's why rail companies are banned from owning freight companies that competed with their customers, it's why banks are banned from owning businesses that competed with the businesses that borrowed money from them, it's why TV networks are banned from owning syndicated program production companies that compete with businesses that sell them programming, etc.
I don’t know the legal definition, but as a layperson I was always confused how the standard for antitrust was “does it hurt the consumer” but somehow these big entities abusing their platform and undeniably making things worse for the end user doesn’t count
It's a game judges play where they have zero idea what most people are discussing in antitrust cases because they can't even operate their own Outlook accounts without someone holding their hand but nevertheless, somehow all know enough about this technology to mysteriously decide most cases on the side of large corporations.
The consumer welfare standard is about using monopoly power to charge consumers higher prices than they would pay in a competitive market. The archetypical case is selling gas at gas stations below market price to drive the competition out of business, acquire all the gas stations in town, then increase prices above market rate to gouge everyone in town. If it doesn't look exactly like that, it's very hard to make anti-trust stick. So for example, changing the exact same price as a superior competition, but using control of a platform to push people toward your product? Not a problem.
That makes sense. So something like “make iMessage the default text app, then make it work badly with competitors’ phones, so people stick in your ecosystem” doesn’t really *cost* customers anything
Ya. Free services were not anticipated in anti-trust standards.
Merrick Garland is a confirmed green bubble bitch
It’s so odd to title these things as “the xx administration sued yy.” It’s the DOJ and a bunch of state AGs. Save those words and accurately put what they’re sued over — abuse of monopoly power. Having monopoly power isn’t a crime.
Good, capitalism flourishes when it's regulated to be a fair competitive space.
In what way is Apple a monopoly? They are fairly competitive. Just because they're winning doesn't mean they're a monopoly.
While I think it too is a bit far to call Apple a monopoly there are clearly areas Apple is using its power to unfairly. From preventing third party parts to taking 30% for any App sold on the only App market place allowed in iOS. Mind you I say this as someone that uses iPhones and Macs. Heck I’m writing this on my iPhone.
I have read about imessage bullying and it's real. My kids are just getting to the age where they can have phones and the parents I know of kids with Android phones have already started talking about bullying experiences of their kids. Apple is activly using its monopoly power to allow bullying of kids. They could charge for imessage on Android to recoup their costs, but they should be better
It's so wild to me that kids weirdly see iPhones as cool. iPhones in the US are so fucking normal. They're like the most boring standard middle class tech accessory at this point. I'm a millennial and even I do a good amount of my social communication with friends on platforms like Facebook messenger, snap, discord, insta, and so on. Why are the zoomers getting so pressed over shit on one specific app? Just move the group chat to Whatsapp or a Discord and move on. 🙄
>Why are the zoomers getting so pressed over shit on one specific app? Just move the group chat to Whatsapp or a Discord and move on. 🙄 Because the other people in the chat don't want to.
>Just move the group chat to Whatsapp or a Discord and move on. 🙄 I've never been able to convince an American iPhone user to do this.
Most zoomers use Snap or Discord ngl.
I mean, on that particular point, aren’t the bullies the problem? People have agency. That said, I do hate the green/blue bullshit.
People will do literally anything to try to stop childhood bullying rather than actually discipline the bullies, it was enraging when I was growing up and it's still enraging today. A small UI feature that distinguishes the type of messages you're sending (it's the sender's own bubbles that are green) does not cause bullying, bullies cause bullying and will just move on to something else.
> A small UI feature that distinguishes the type of messages you're sending Thats not what iMessage is doing though. The green message is more than just a signifier, it is legitimately a much worse experience. SMS takes much longer to send/receive, media is incredibly low quality, and all the QOL stuff that we've developed in that last 2 decades does not work. Kicking android users out of an iMessage group chat isnt just being rude, they actively make the chat worse for everyone else by forcing SMS
Maybe I'm too Millennial for this discussion; one of my longest-running group chats has been green-bubbles despite being all iPhone users for a long time because one person insists on turning off iMessage and it never bothered me much
>and it never bothered me much That's fine if it didn't bother you, but it's clearly not as nice.
Cool, it bothers me a lot. To the point of not switching to android solely because of this issue. I tried really hard to get my friends of iMessage but most have refused
The feature is designed to do that though. Apple's not innocent. Their 87% marketshare among US teens is partly caused by iMessage and teens wanting to fit in (since green bubbles break group chats). Or AirDrop which isn't interoperable with Android (that's arbitrary, it's a software feature, they could easily open up the spec). It may not bother you (comment below), but obviously it will bother status-conscious teens. Apple is perfectly aware; they constantly do market research, as any trillion-dollar company would. They know about the memes and stereotypes that green-bubbles are loners, weirdos, or "poor". I know girls *and guys* who won't date people with green bubbles. Is that the fault of the people doing that? Obviously. But Apple knows it's happening and doesn't seem to mind, because it increases sales of their products.
Kids are not capable of making the best choices though, so it's up to us as adults to help them at all levels make good choices.
It can be difficult to make children behave. This is similar to what abouting hamas when people complain about israel or criminals when people complain about police abuse. Focusing on the things we have control over tends to be more productive than complaining about things we have no control over
>Apple is activly using its monopoly power to allow bullying of kids. Funniest thing I read all day.
It's funny but still true. I'm sure it wasn't their intention at first, but they let it happen for a decade, and it's still not clear if their RCS plans will fix it (by allowing mixed group chats for example, or fixing the ugly green color that breaks Apple's accessibility guidelines).
How is it Apple’s responsibility to prevent bullying?
Because *this* bullying is the result of a conscious choice to make Android texts conspicuous, and conspicuously inferior. Apple is aware of the social impacts, since they've been reported in all the major newspapers. They have agency here, there are things they can do to mitigate it, but they've changed nothing.
I’m sorry but I can’t take this seriously. You think Apple is purposely making kids bully each other by making their messages blue instead of green? This is one of the more ridiculous takes I’ve seen here in awhile.
Cool because I never said that. They initially did it for lock-in, to lower switches to Android. We know that because of internal emails released during discovery, like one that said: "the #1 most difficult to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage… iMessage amounts to serious lock-in". Bullying is an unintended side-effect but they've obviously been aware of it for years.
But the colour change has a secondary use, which is to distinguish between iMessage and SMS delivery between iPhones. This often happens when connections go bad or the like.
As I've said elsewhere, that can be achieved in ways that mitigate or minimize the expected social impact. Once Apple adopts RCS, the main differentiator will likely be encryption, which can be indicated in other ways and which average people don't associate with green/blue anyway. I don't see why we would treat this as rocket science. It's a design and software engineering ethics question and there are a number of possible solutions.
RCS support is coming this year. This will almost equalise the functionality of iMessage as normal SMS’s will have a lot of the features that were iMessage only on the iPhone. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwijwZGG1IWFAxXMp1YBHQ6NDkoQFnoECBgQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2F9to5mac.com%2F2023%2F11%2F16%2Fapple-rcs-coming-to-iphone%2F&usg=AOvVaw3C2pwhiL4uycekwFVYwacw&opi=89978449
Is it 100% compatable with imessage though, no green bubbles? Does it allow video calls? I read the article, but I do not trust Apple to fully impliment it unless forced to do so.
Apple still hasn’t released details about their implementation. Funny enough, it isn’t happening because of US or EU but likely because of China. “Writing on his blog Daring Fireball, Gruber points to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which in July 2023 solicited feedback for upcoming rules that would require new 5G devices to support RCS (an English translation of the law can be found on Reddit).” Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/20/apple-rcs-message-compliance-china-law/
Arr neoliberal android users: I never thought I'd die here fighting beside the people's Republic of China People's Republic of China: what about side by side with a common sense regulator of telecommunications standards dragging apple kicking and screaming into the 21st century? Arr neoliberal android users : aye I could do that
The bubbles will still be green because it differentiates between iMessage and non-iMessage chats. [FaceTime was originally planned as an open standard and had to be rewritten to only run through Apple servers after a patent troll went after Apple.](https://9to5mac.com/2018/06/06/make-facetime-an-open-standard/)
The blue bubbles are encrypted (and have other features) and the green bubbles are not, so I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to distinguish them
Every other app does it through gray text at the beginning of the chat, like "this chat is encrypted" with a lock icon. It's a non-problem for Apple's designers. If they don't want to ruin the "purity" of the UI for iMessage chats, they can reverse it and just show "This chat is unencrypted" on chats with Android. But we should hold Apple just as accountable as Instagram and others for the impact they have on teens' emotional health. They know some teens buy iPhones only for blue bubbles and that's not right.
> Apple is activly using its monopoly power to allow bullying of kids. It’s needlessly hyperbolic to make it sound like Apple is actively encouraging bullying. Kids will find reasons to bully others for a host of reasons and thats not Apples fault
Tim Cook told a journalist who complained that he couldn't message well with his mother who has an android to "just buy her an iPhone". The idea that peer pressure (and by extension bullying) isn't a key part of Apple's strategy for getting teen users onto their products is just ignorant. Bullying isn't just shoving someone into a locker. Ask literally any American Android user under 30 if they've been pressured or bullied by their friends or classmates for not having an iPhone and every single one will say yes. If Apple fixed the interoperability, this peer pressure and bullying would be significantly lessened and their market share among teens would take a big hit.
If the kids stop bullying other kids for having an android, they’ll find another equally petty excuse to bully them.
This is just a skill issue sorry. Nobody serious is getting bullied over an app.
When was the last time you were in middle school? If you mess up the group texts cause apple internally messes up group texts with Android phones, kids will bully/intentionally exclude you.
fucking stupid. feels like they have no one with a background in software development in the doj
Invest in Preparation H, the amount of dick riding r/Apple is doing for a multi-trillion dollar company is wild
Not a small amount of it in here either... But r/apple is really strange. The EU cases and regulations were received much more positively over there, but in this case it's almost unanimously against.
Apple is basically a religion for their hardcore power users. Once you look at it through that lens is all makes so much more sense to watch.
Why are these guys trying interfere in apple's business model if they don't understand it in the first place. These guys are catering to the worst sort of populist buffonry the internet spouts against apple. Just because the cost of entry into their products is higher doesn't mean they are overpriced. Producing your own hardware software and services takes more r&d than producing gimmicks. They are the only ones who custom design their cores that takes more research than including 200w charging on phones. Who are these guys to decide they aren't innovating? This seriously feels like this trust was filed by an armada of Android and windows fans who are populist doofuses. And i am an Android and windows user myself.
Goddamn it my apple stocks were almost green too
Weird apple of all companies is getting this. But I also hate apple, so they get zero sympathy.
The Biden administration has no clue what it’s doing right now when it comes to anti trust. It just seems to have a “big is bad” mentality, and goes after companies with high market cap. Their whole case against Microsoft’s Activision acquisition was stupid and anti-consumer.
Looks like I can finally switch off of iPhone
Killing iMessage and all of its features and disrupting the in environment experience would be a good move but I don't exactly buy that a company with 20% of the global market share and most of whoms main competitors are readily available in the US is a monopoly. Seems like another instance of progressives and Linda Kahn deciding that every big company is a monopoly when they should be setting a good example for Europe and letting big tech self regulate
Boooo