It has a monopoly position on its own created ecosystem that isn't a commodity or industry standard. Why should Apple have to change how it runs its own ecosystem that is profitable and detrimental to arguably only a small percentage of the overall iOS-consumer market?
You bring up an excellent point, and I am glad to have this opportunity to address it.
There are, essentially, three major problems. Two of these I have already addressed: Apple is preventing customers from having full control over the devices they bought, which weakens the doctrine of first sale; and Apple is preventing anyone from offering a competing distribution system, which acts against the free market.
The third issue, however, is potentially the most important. And that is, suppose you are a developer who has made an app, and I am a consumer who wishes to purchase that app. Apple has set themselves up as an arbiter who can unilaterally decide whether or not to allow us to complete that transaction—and Apple will take a substantial cut of the purchase price if they allow it.
The fact that all of this takes place on a platform Apple designed is immaterial. If anything, that merely reinforces the totality of their monopoly. In this regard, the situation is quite similar to Microsoft, when that company was found guilty of abusing its monopoly by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. It all took place in the Windows ecosystem, and that ecosystem was in fact a monopoly.
In much the same way, Apple now has a monopoly—not on iPhones nor on iOS, but on the distribution of apps, the allocation of trust to apps, and the ability to compete in the market for iOS apps.
And while I would be the first to say the patent system is overtly flawed and needs revamping, how is this argument no different from saying nothing should be patentable?
Another good point. Patents exist to serve an important purpose: they promote and encourage innovation, by enabling inventors to make a profit off their ideas. The ultimate goal of patents, as spelled out in the US Constitution itself, is to advance the technology which is available to everyone.
Apple has patents (I believe) on their custom-designed processor chips, among other things. No one else can make an exact copy of the iPhone for a number of years, and that is fine.
But Apple does not have a patent on “software which can run on that chip”. Such a concept would not be patentable in the first place. That would be like saying, just because you invented a new type of table, that gave you the right to decide what your customers were allowed to put on top of that table after you sold it to them.
Apple can use its patents to profit in the sale of its phones, but they should not be allowed to abuse that exclusivity in order to prevent anyone from competing against them in distributing software for those phones.
Or do you also think patents should be eliminated and nothing should be exclusive to a single company whom created/bought the technology/good/service?
Not at all, I strongly support the patent system. (Certain
software patents, however, should be thrown out entirely—you should be able to patent an implementation, not an idea—but that is a topic for a whole different thread. And in that other thread I would argue that the *copyright* system should be reformed to more closely match the patent system, with 20-year durations, but again, different thread.)
And since you seem to be arguing on the behalf of developers, can't the same argument also be made AGAINST developers who only create their product for one platform? If you think Apple should let iOS device owners install iOS apps from any source, shouldn't developers be forced to make their app work on all platforms?
That does not follow. Software developers are free to make programs for whatever platforms they want—or at least they should be.
