Yes but if the ‘taking steps to prevent other companies’ results in worse Apple products, will there be another company ready to step in and take the mantle?
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How would it result in worse Apple products? Opening up the APIs they use for FindMy wont make FindMy worse, opening up the default apps APIs won't make the default Apps worse. Opening up the Apple watch integration won't make the Apple Watch worse. Opening these tools only makes it possible to connect third party Apps and hardware to the same standard as Apple's own. It is only fear mongering by Apple and their defenders that try to make this out to be some existential threat (it might be a threat to Apple's leaderships's bonuses). If Apple cannot build a better Watch or browser then they don't deserve to win in browsers or smartwatches (I think they can build a better watch and browser).
Edit: Scare tactics aren't convincing when you just put out these hypotheticals with no chain of causality on how not being evil will result in worse products.
No I'm referring to the products that Apple will stop/won't make due to having to give access to competitors. Will there be a more innovative company who are permitted to keep the technology to themselves spring up to replace Apple holding that spot?
At the minute Apple can make all the good products they do because they don't need to worry about what the competition are doing. In the future Apple will have to plan and make products not only considering their own customers, but the customers of competing products. That is likely to change Apple into a less innovative company.
Is there another company ready to step in who can provide us with what Apple used to be before being banned by regulation? Because I'd be very interested in their products.
So you're saying that if people could compare Apple's products to competitors then they would find out that Apple can't make a better product so they (Apple) wouldn't bother to make one in the first place? That seems both nonsensical and counter to why most people profess to love Apple products on these forums, we think the products are better in enough ways to choose them over other products.
Another weird conclusion you seem to be drawing is that Apple will compete so poorly with others that it won't make enough money to recoup any investment in these new products. If this is true, then Apple is already such a poor innovator and creator that again, why should it keep its system locked down so that we are stuck with (according to you) worse Apple products?
If Apple products are good enough to win customers they have nothing to fear, if they aren't then they should open up the platform and give us access to the better products of its competitors.
No they won't. This is not what is being required. What is being required is that when Apple builds an API to let its own products do something they have to open up that API. They don't need to build APIs to competitors standards, nor do they need to keep competitors in mind when building the APIs. They don't need to build the Watch to iPhone APIs to handle Galaxy watches, they just need to open the APIs they do build (which Galaxy could then use too).
As I explained above, if Apple is making great products it has nothing to fear from doing this.
Apple isn't being banned from doing its standard vertical integrated stuff, it is merely being required to allow other companies to use the same APIs it uses itself. That doesn't stop Apple from building a vertically integrated product.
No I mean if Apple's magic sauce that makes their products good and desirable to end users, is regulated away, will there be another company ready to swoop in and take those customers (because the new entrant is not hampered by the same regulation)?
I'm not bothered about the Apple brand/name/logo, what's important is how good their products/services are. If Apple's products/services become worse because of the regulations being introduced, it's in consumer's best interests for a new competitor to emerge who can take Apple's mantle.
I don't actually know if it's possible to have a conversation with you if you're just going to cite "magic" as the reason Apple products are better...
I don’t think it’s magic, i think it’s being unhampered by burdensome regulation.
But I guess the one silver lining is that smaller companies won’t be encumbered in that way, so we might get some Apple like products from other companies that we can switch to.
When I tried to ask you how Apple was being burdened in a way that would change their products you cited that they had some "magic sauce"
Apple is a trillion dollar company with a $30 Billion dollar R&D budget, if that isn't enough to continue to make great products while being regulated they can pull some money out of the $77 Billion they use every year for share buybacks....
Money alone doesn’t make great products, it’s being able to do so in an unhampered way. You can’t expect Apple to make products as good as they previously have once you tie one hand behind their back.
But hopefully another company will be able to step in and take Apple’s place.
How are their hands being tied? You haven't explained this. What will change in how they develop a new product?
Apple’s new products will not only have to work with their own devices, they’ll have to spend time and effort making them work with competitors devices. That adds overhead and additional cost to Apple’s development, which may result in more expensive products and/or fewer/worse integrated features.
A company that isn’t hampered by regulation by being a smaller player will hopefully be able to offer that level of integration that Apple users know and love so that we can switch.
This isn't true.
They do not have to make sure they work with competitors devices. They just have to make sure the APIs they use for their own devices are open to third parties.
They don't have to write new APIs, just open existing ones they have to write for their own devices anyway.
They don't have to test competitors devices against their APIs, they just aren't allowed to prevent competitors from using them.
None of what you are claiming here is true. The existence of an API doesn't mean that it is viable for third-party use. Apple specifically explained that supporting other smartwatches with the same level of functionality as the Apple Watch would require them to add support for every model and OS on the market.
Earlier you made a similar claim that this was just about Apple preventing integration. In reality, it's the opposite. You want Apple to be forced into supporting integration.
So say Apple stops making the Apple Watch because competition start making better smart watches than Apple?
That is kind of the point by your logic Apple Watch is only the default because there is no way to compete so we all have lesser products because of it.
As a software developer who has to work with interoperable systems all the time, I simply don't believe Apple when they say this. If Apple wants to secure this API we already know how to do that, there are decades of work on secure protocols for communication. There is no reason to believe that the watch to phone APIs need to be hardcoded to support each model. Apple might be making this claim because they want to implement it in such a way that they can show the regulation to be burdensome but that isn't a requirement.
You're simply begging the question here. You're assuming facts that support your conclusion.
Your conclusion is based on just taking Apple at their word. I don't believe Apple because there is no reason to do so.
No, it's not. Because I didn't state a conclusion. I don't know if Apple is telling the truth or not. We'll find out at the trial. I'm simply pointing out the possibility that there are technical reasons to not allow access to certain functionality without Apple doing additional work.
That looks to me like poor code architecture on Apple's part.
No, apple tweaks their operating system to support their products. That’s the tight integration. Unlike windows where drivers can be installed via elevation, there is no way to install third party drivers on iOS.
It's not cynicism; hardcoding is universally recognized as bad practice, and Apple doing it so they can flaunt technical burden is disingenuous and doesn't make it any better.
Sure it is. You don’t know what they are doing, so you just assume it’s bad because if fits your argument.
Aside from the obvious irony, hard-coding is literally one of the first thing software engineers are told not to do. And since having to add support for every model of watch *is* hard-coding, then it follows from logic that their code (regarding that aspect alone) is bad. Now one must wonder whether it was done intentionally to flaunt technical hardship or if simply no dev at the company noticed what was going on til it was too late.
Where’s the irony? I didn’t make an assumption either way.
Again, you’re assuming the problem is hard-coding because that fits your conclusion.