No. You can buy software for consoles from numerous vendors without voiding your warrantee. You can't do that in Apple's ecosystem (and Google and Amazon are pretty similar in this regard). To me there still seems to be some damage to the consumer by the Apple's "cornering of the market". Whether this damage is enough to constitute legal grounds for a claim I can't say, and it would appear the Judge thought not.
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Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Alleging App Store Monopoly
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No. You can buy software for consoles from numerous vendors without voiding your warrantee. You can't do that in Apple's ecosystem (and Google and Amazon are pretty similar in this regard). To me there still seems to be some damage to the consumer by the Apple's "cornering of the market". Whether this damage is enough to constitute legal grounds for a claim I can't say, and it would appear the Judge thought not.
I think you can make unlicensed games for home consoles and sell them if you wanted to. That was the case back in the day. They just won't be official. Definitely harder in this era to make unlicensed games, since a typical modern games cause an insane amount of money, and require probably over a hundred people.
True, but the royalty fee is not paid relative to the final sale price, is it? Nor have I ever heard of Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo vetoing a piece of software or requiring purchases to be made solely through the respective companies... You can pick up numerous games from various bargain bins, but it isn't the case with the App Store, is it (and we're not talking about $.99/£.69 games here)?.. And of course you've junked the whole of second-hand market if you go iAppStore...
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It's a bit of a strange area, which I guess is why the case was dismissed. Yes, app-makers compete against each other and therefore set prices accordingly, but through it all Apple is merrily taking their 30% cut.
The issue really is that there is no option to use a different App Store that maybe only takes a 20% cut, but the issue isn't for the end-users, but for the developers trying to sell their apps, as 30% is a pretty big slice.
Problem is whether this prevents competition, which it sort of doesn't (though you sometimes wonder given the strange rules the App Store adheres to). There is also various content that Apple's App Store doesn't encourage but that another App Store might, so it does remove an element of user choice as Apps that Apple refuse to carry could be made available by another App Store, if you're willing to trust them but currently that's impossible, so if Apple won't carry it, neither can any of their customers.
The other issue is that other companies with app stores could easily port these to iOS, but Apple is explicitly preventing this. So while they're not preventing competition in the general sense, they're preventing competition in several areas nonetheless, but I'm not sure current anti-competitive laws adequately cover these.
While I don't like the continual legal action being taken against Apple over frivolous things, this is one of those areas where I think that Apple really should lose, as opening up the platform to at least have the option of using other stores would be a good thing. It means Apple would have more reason to compete not just in terms of ease-of-use for users by offering currently restricted content and making things even easier overall, but also in how they interact with developers to make approval easier and more transparent, maybe even reduce their cut, at least for the less expensive apps anyway. There are tons of areas that Apple really needs to improve with the App Store, but there is currently no incentive to do so which is why the store improves only very slowly.
I don't want to have to use other stores, but when Apple's is the only choice the only way to vote with your money is to switch to a completely different platform, and that's not something you can really expect people to do. This is one of those prime areas where legal action is needed to change things.
Read the summary. This is not why the case was dismissed. It was missed because they lawyers were complete idiots who didn't manage to write down a claim what Apple had supposedly done that hurt their clients. They only wrote "Apple hurt our clients". They didn't bother to write down what Apple had actually done that hurt their clients.
If Apple had been found guilty here, I could have just as well gone into a McDonald's and then sued them for not offering BurgerKing food. That's how I feel about the matter, anyway.
Because the engine of the iPhone is the A6 processor. Cars do not have the theoretical equivalent of an app store.
These car analogies are always terrible.
That would also mean the first iPhone shipped with no engine. Hah!
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The way I see it...
I can't say I agree with what it seems the majority of people here are saying. While I don't think we need a Cydia for example to be on the phone if you're not jailbroken, but honestly, if I can install unsigned code, and tweak the phone how I like it to, I would have no reason to jailbreak.
So it isn't about getting something cheaper on a different App store, it is that the app store has draconian rules about what it thinks I can or cannot have on my iPhone. If I want an app full of smut, I should be able to download it and use it. It shouldn't matter if an app is all rosy or not, Droid and Blackberry both allow users to download and install what they want by just downloading it off a website.
Apple does NOT want this to happen because somebody can sell an app for the same price as the App store, and not give Apple the 1/3 share.
So it is also about apple's greed. And they never wanted native apps to begin with it. Or is this something you all forgot about?
I can't say I agree with what it seems the majority of people here are saying. While I don't think we need a Cydia for example to be on the phone if you're not jailbroken, but honestly, if I can install unsigned code, and tweak the phone how I like it to, I would have no reason to jailbreak.
So it isn't about getting something cheaper on a different App store, it is that the app store has draconian rules about what it thinks I can or cannot have on my iPhone. If I want an app full of smut, I should be able to download it and use it. It shouldn't matter if an app is all rosy or not, Droid and Blackberry both allow users to download and install what they want by just downloading it off a website.
Apple does NOT want this to happen because somebody can sell an app for the same price as the App store, and not give Apple the 1/3 share.
So it is also about apple's greed. And they never wanted native apps to begin with it. Or is this something you all forgot about?
This is garbage
How can you prove you were "deprived of lower cost alternatives, paid higher prices for Apple-approved applications..." when there's no alternative at all? Higher prices is a comparative term. How can you compare something when there's nothing to compare it to? The mere fact that Apple locks you into their app store and will not allow a competing app store is a monopoly. Microsoft got in to far worse trouble for much less with IE. They didnt lock you into IE and IE only, they allowed competing browsers on their products.
How can you prove you were "deprived of lower cost alternatives, paid higher prices for Apple-approved applications..." when there's no alternative at all? Higher prices is a comparative term. How can you compare something when there's nothing to compare it to? The mere fact that Apple locks you into their app store and will not allow a competing app store is a monopoly. Microsoft got in to far worse trouble for much less with IE. They didnt lock you into IE and IE only, they allowed competing browsers on their products.
That's absolutely silly. Your analogy makes no sense. BurgerKing and McD's ARE competition. What competition is there to the Apple Appstore? There isnt any.
A better analogy would be, buying a Dell PC and being forced to ONLY buy software from a Dell Store.
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No, that's absolutely not it. It's like buying a Honda Car and ONLY being able to buy tires from Honda. Or gas ONLY from a Honda gas station. Or even parts from ONLY a Honda parts store.
This "buying gas only from a <car manufacturer> gas station" comes up quite often. People think that would be horrible, so it must be illegal.
It's not. If you used some common sense you would figure out that this would make it quite impractical to use the car, because I would have to plan ahead to find a gas station that I can use. And because of that, I wouldn't buy that car. And so would nobody else. There's absolutely nothing illegal in it, it would just be a very stupid thing for the car manufacturer to do.
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For one, the case was thrown out because the lawyers made all outlandish claims, but forgot to say what Apple actually had done wrong. They say "we were forced to pay higher prices" but they didn't actually tell the court what Apple had done that forced them to pay higher prices.
But second, there are plenty of alternatives. If you want a smartphone with apps that don't come from the Apple store, it's as simple as buying an Android phone and buying your software from Google. Not that I would recommend it, but that's what you can do. Nobody who wants to buy smartphone software is in any way forced to buy it from Apple.
well, i dont have any problem with the app store, they have all the apps i would ever want to add and their premium apps are also selling at a reasonable price, i'm completely happy with the app store
And the hurt is going to come down to 1)is that they didn't like the idea of paying 30%; 2) Apple wouldn't approve the porn they wanted to put on the app; 3) There was malware in the app that Apple caught; or 4) The app was a ripoff of another app and Apple would refuse it on Copyright infringements.
The competition to apps from the AppStore are other apps from the AppStore. It's not Apple that decide what apps you have to buy. If you don't like an application, you may just choose a different one. So, in my opinion my analogy is fine here. If you buy an iPhone, there's the AppStore to buy apps in. If you go into a BurgerKing, there's a BurgerKing-specific menu to choose from.
Ofc there are Apple's guidelines to which you have to adhere, but those are the same for all developers and all apps. That whole case was just utterly pointless.
Edit: Okay, there are no competitors to the AppStore itself. But everybody is entitled to publish apps in the AppStore, so why do people consider it to be not fair? It's Apple's playground and they have their rules. I don't have a problem with that.
Edit2: Alright, I just didn't think properly about this. If I think about being forced to buy all my apps from the Mac AppStore on my laptop, that'd be a terrible idea. However, the thing here is that with iPhones it's always been like that, that's probably why I'm fine with the way it is. Just disregard my posts here, thanks.
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If the App Store for iOS is considered a monopoly, then what about movie theaters, sports stadiums, concert halls etc? Why are they allowed to only sell whatever concessions they want and charge exorbitant prices to boot? I guess because as consumers we have alternatives, one being to not patronize their establishments altogether if we don't like it.
And that's essentially the point about bundling and tying: they are of less or no concern in a competitive market, because consumers are free to choose and undertakings that take unpopular decisions shall be thrown off the market. The crucial aspect is a competitive market. Suppose the car market is a monopoly or that an undertaking with a huge marketshare exists. In such a case bundling and tying could very well be a problem, because it is considered to be an abuse of dominance if consumers are compelled to accept those practices and total welfare is thereby diminished.
One of the most crappy lawsuits ever. Will these guys do the same for Google Play too when Google begins to buckle down and make strict rules for its own Android phones?
Typical "bully shove" of an action. Unfortunately, I'm sure there are more to come.
One can install apps on android from any source. There is a checkbox that "allows apps from 3rd party sources".
You know.. like the way it has been on all computers until iOS...
