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I might respect an opposite POV of mine. What I do not respect is a POV that resorts to gaslighting, case is case use Privacy as the core reason why iOS policies are what they are ... when it is not, instead of focusing the argumentation on the merits of the actual reasons. I might disagree with them or not ... but it does weakens the potential merits of the actual reasons ... rising even more suspicions over the act than clarify it.
Fair enough, but does not make the case FOR government intervention, just that you don’t agree with the setup.
 
This is why I am strongly against companies giving stuff away for free by cross-subsiding from a different market (such as using advertising revenue to give away an operating system). This business model de-incentivises anyone else from ever getting into the market and therefore shuts out competition.

Advertising has been used to at least partially support various businesses for ages including newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, etc. and in more recent decades, much of the content on the Internet. I don't see why an advertising-based model should necessarily de-incentivize a company any more than a pay model. If one has a good product and the market is fair and open, advertising support can potentially help a company grow faster than if they had to charge customers.

There can be variety of different barriers to entry, some of which are illegal and that is where antitrust laws and regulations come in.



The whole model is highly anti-competitive. It should be illegal to cross-subsidise and illegal to sell a product for less than it costs to ‘manufacture’ said product as a means to dominate a market.

What is your feeling about Apple giving away CarPlay for "free" to automakers?
 
At this point, illegality is more for the regulators and courts to construct. The EU never investigated Nokia. Clearly, Apple and Google are being targeted for being American companies. The most likely result of all of this is that in 5-10 years, the EU will be swamped in Chinese brands.

I wouldn't say Nokia was never investigated by European regulators. Nokia's deal to buy Navteq prompted a European antitrust investigation in 2008, and there probably have been others over the years.

If Apple, Google or ANY other company are potentially violating antitrust laws, they deserve to be investigated and dealt with accordingly.
 
When Walmart moves in, they decimate local businesses. They drove American jobs to China, but they also 'golden shower' DC with copious amounts of cash and I guess that cash buys them coverage. Too big to jail, or too well covered to jail. Hmm...

None of what you describe is necessarily illegal. However, if Walmart is viewed to have monopoly power and is engaging in illegal anticompetitive practices, they would/should be investigated and charged accordingly. Even many states have antitrust laws that could be applied to activities in that state.
 
It's inevitable. Protectionist governments are gonna do their thing eventually. I'm sure Apple knows it and is just trying to delay as long as possible.
 
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Advertising has been used to at least partially support various businesses for ages including newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, etc. and in more recent decades, much of the content on the Internet. I don't see why an advertising-based model should necessarily de-incentivize a company any more than a pay model. If one has a good product and the market is fair and open, advertising support can potentially help a company grow faster than if they had to charge customers.

There can be variety of different barriers to entry, some of which are illegal and that is where antitrust laws and regulations come in.





What is your feeling about Apple giving away CarPlay for "free" to automakers?
It should be illegal to give things away for free in an attempt to dominate a market.
 
A horse is an animal we trained to carry us places. A car is an invention to completely replace the horse and revolutionise the entire world.
In the context of transportation, a horse is an engine.
You put a saddle on it or a carriage before it, and you’ll have a means of transportation.
You‘ll replace the horse and call it a motorbike or a car.
A cell phone is something that was invented to enable mobile communications, starting with calls, developing into sms, mutating in to a feature phone, further mutating in to a smart phone. Etc.
Today’s smartphones aren‘t „invented“ to start calls or write SMS. If they were, they‘d have (superior) physical keyboards. They’re primarily invented for executing non-calling applications, photography, etc. (while, yes, retaining the calling/texting facility) - some of which (WhatsApp, Zoom) have replaced phone calls and texting.
I'm just in the camp that's baffled as to why Apple is the big target, when other industries, especially video games, have walled garden systems as well.

Also, the bigger baffle, Apple's not even the market leader, so how are they a monopoly?
Apple is the market leader for distribution of mobile apps in many countries (in terms of revenue). And game consoles haven‘t become an integral part of our lives, used everyday to organise one‘s daily live and conduct business on them.
Yep. People act like unseating Apple is impossible, yet they would have said the same about Nokia, Blackberry, etc.

Anything is possible. It won't be happening this year, maybe not in the next 5 years, but it'll happen eventually.
They would have said the same about Microsoft - and have been proven true over the last 40 years.
For a very similar reason: support of, a vibrant ecosystem of third-party apps (that neither Nokia nor Blackberry ever had).
The “duopoly” now is actually the result of competition. When you have a competition, there will be winners and losers. That’s called competition.
Monopolies or duopolies often emerge (as the winners) from competition.

…and then act increasingly anticompetitively.
When they do that in a monopoly or duopoly, it’s not competition anymore (not a fair one, that is).
 
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The world gets along just fine on MacOS, but all of a sudden it's an issue on the phone.
I seriously don't get this argument. You can't compare Mac with iPhone, you simply just CAN'T. How many Mac users world-wide? 100 Millions maybe? Who uses Macs in general? Pretty tech oriented people, the ones that know very well what they are doing in general. Video creators, music creators, students, photographers spring to mind. What about iPhone where complete users life is stored, starting with photos, messages, emails, bank apps, bank cards, passport and driving licences for some, digital keys and the list just never ends. Over a billion users worldwide, including the ones who know absolutely nothing about the tech. Grand parents, children's, builders, fisherman, drivers etc who don't want to know how tech works, they just want it to WORK. The stakes are much much higher on the iPhone. I honestly just don't see how you guys don't get this when you bring up the Mac vs iPhone third party app store subject.
 
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PRIVACY PRIVACY PRIVACY

what a load of BS. It’s a smoke screen for corporations to maintain monopolies.
If Apple is so concerned about peoples’ privacy they ought to lock down MacOS like they do iOS then.

Intelligence agencies use National SECURITY SECURITY SECURITY

to lock down peoples’ social freedoms
 
These government shakedowns of Apple aren’t too different from mafia behavior.
Maybe, but that’s what app developers claim about Apple. It goes both ways. Apple bullied the little guys. So now they all teamed up to with the biggest bully of all (the government). All is fair in love and war!
 
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Maybe, but that’s what app developers claim about Apple. It goes both ways. Apple bullied the little guys. So now they all teamed up to with the biggest bully of all (the government). All is fair in love and war!
Bullied the little guys? Haha - get over it.

They charge them for a service/platform, and then there are rules to follow to be on that platform. It’s just business. It’s the same across every single spectrum. The creator of the app then charges the consumer, recouping the initial outlay to run their business. It’s called running a business.

Bullied 😂 grow up - what a bunch of whiners. It’s embarrassing.
 
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Guess you missed the key part about limited government (not no government). And it was working just fine for the US as a constitutionally limited republic.
True federalism has sadly been dead in the US since the New Deal and Wickard v Filburn. Reagan didn’t change a damn thing. But yes, our system of checks and balances makes it much more difficult to pass legislation and is the reason our own version of DMA, the bipartisan American Innovation and Choice Online Act, is very unlikely to pass. Which is good, because it’s just as poorly thought out as DMA. But our government would be just as bad as the EU if they could.
 
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Bullied the little guys? Haha - get over it.

They charge them for a service/platform, and then there are rules to follow to be on that platform. It’s just business. It’s the same across every single spectrum. The creator of the app then charges the consumer, recouping the initial outlay to run their business. It’s called running a business.

Bullied 😂 grow up - what a bunch of whiners. It’s embarrassing.
It’s called running a business- sure. And who gave Apple copyright protections and IP rights so some rando can’t try and reverse engineer their product and sell something compatible? The government. Who recognized the concept of limited liability so Apple’s investors can’t get screwed? The government. Let’s not get into all the government involvement in telocommunications. The idea that Apple as it currently exists came into being naturally, and any new regulations are intrusions into the “free market” is delusional. Fact is, the government passed laws like DMCA that helped companies like Apple, and now the government may pass laws that hurt companies like Apple. Because the “free market” includes lobbying the government to help you and hurt your competitors (as Apple has done multiple times, and as app developers are doing now).
 
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The phone networks (landline and mobile), water utility, gas utility, electricity utility, radio and television network providers, internet backbone providers and many others, all at one point controlled by one or a couple of big corporations and told to open up to allow other companies to use their networks so they can provide competing services and prices. Why should Apple and Google think they are any different with reagrds to their mobile ecosystems?
 
The phone networks (landline and mobile), water utility, gas utility, electricity utility, radio and television network providers, internet backbone providers and many others, all at one point controlled by one or a couple of big corporations and told to open up to allow other companies to use their networks so they can provide competing services and prices. Why should Apple and Google think they are any different with reagrds to their mobile ecosystems?
Those services all require a huge amount of physical infrastructure that is difficult and impractical to replicate.

There is no physical infrastructure requirement to compete against android and iOS as they are just software that can run on existing and future hardware.

The issue that needs to be addressed is why no company can seemingly compete against either android or iOS. What is stopping Samsung from releasing Samsung OS and it having a chance of being successful? Those are the problems that need to be addressed.
 
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Those services all require a huge amount of physical infrastructure that is difficult and impractical to replicate.
Same argument that’s always made with regards to Apple:

Apple spent huge amounts of R&D to create that platform, the OS and store. So how can developers expect to freeload on it!?

There is no physical infrastructure requirement to compete against android and iOS as they are just software that can run on existing and future hardware.
Physical or not doesn’t make it less difficult to compete against or replicate. We’ve seen that with MS Windows and and Office too. Especially if there’s de facto standards evolving. The market doesn’t ask for a third or fourth big OS.
What is stopping Samsung from releasing Samsung OS and it having a chance of being successful?
Lack of apps - or third-party ecosystem. Network effect at play.
 
Privacy is many things to many people.

What Privacy is, is understood and shared by everyone. It’s not a matter of opinion what privacy is.

Now there are things that one might consider private others do not. Other might consider the same thing private or not depending on context.

The GDPR focus for instance is not to define what privacy is, which is understood, but to give each people the ability to control which data is only for you to see (kept private) and which you allow others to see depending on the context. This became necessary because tech companies where not providing these facilities to citizens … were actually exploiting mass surveillance mechanisms for their own profit … selling the data you deposited without your knowledge … or actually such to be a precondition to use the service without any info being provided.

On governments spying people … I understand that you are mostly anti-gov … you are entitled to that opinion of course. I’m ok with companies, govs and people, very rich or very poor, as long as either aim is to improve social well being and human progress instead of exploitation. To each their own responsibilities and objectives apart from that … that is my mantra.
 
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Same argument that’s always made with regards to Apple:

Apple spent huge amounts of R&D to create that platform, the OS and store. So how can developers expect to freeload on it!?


Physical or not doesn’t make it less difficult to compete against or replicate. We’ve seen that with MS Windows and and Office too. Especially if there’s network effects such as de facto standards evolving. The market doesn’t ask for a third or fourth big OS.


Lack of apps - or third-party ecosystem.
Investment is not the same as infrastructure. There’s no point in having multiple companies lay fibre optic cables to your house.

So if the market doesn’t want more than 2 options, what is the problem with 2 options? We seem to be saying that only having 2 options is a problem, but the market doesn’t want more than 2 options. So are 2 options a problem or not as this seems to be contradictory otherwise?

The way to fix the market is to have multiple different competing operating systems and ecosystems. If that isn’t what we are seeing we need to work out why and fix that. Once that’s fixed all of the other ‘gatekeeper’ issues go away as there is no one company that is a ‘gatekeeper’.
 
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What Privacy is, is understood and shared by everyone. It’s not a matter of opinion what privacy is.

Now there are things that one might consider private others do not. Other might consider the same thing private or not depending on context.

The GDPR focus for instance is not to define what privacy is, which is understood, but to give each people the ability to control which data is only for you to see (kept private) and which you allow others to see depending on the context.
Privacy for me means to not have your next move predicted by an algorithm as a means to serve you a relevant ad.

I do not believe any company should be taking my data or behaviour and using it to work out how I might be thinking or feeling as a means to hawk more *****. This kind of business needs to be outlawed.
 
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