Never said anything about the illegality of Monopolies
Monopolies however are BAD for business and BAD for the consumers. there's a reason why there are anti-trust regulations (and they used to be better enforced)
Monopolies are bad for us. we would all benefit with competition in the space. Competition in business keeps the company honest.
The trouble is from an end user's perspective, Apple is absolutely correct.
In reality, we see a new sort of “monopoly” arising - the aggregator. The reason why companies like Apple and Amazon have grown to be as big as they are is because they do genuinely offer a great user experience for the consumer.
Millions and millions of people buy Apple products because they vote with their wallets and have decided that Apple products really do work best for them. Through the iPhone, Apple has aggregated the best consumers, which they use the attract the best developers to their platform.
Buying an iphone is like joining a union. There are annoying parts, but as a whole it gives users a collective voice to force app makers to behave. If there are rival app stores then the user base can be divided, losing power to app developers.
I like that apple forces app developers to update their apps for new features. I like that they force apps to support their privacy protecting authentication. I like that they are strict about background usage. I like that they audit UIs, and enforce quality standards. I like that I can rely on apple pay working in every app. It is why I paid for an iphone over a cheaper alternative.
So in this context, I am not really seeing the benefits of increased competition in the app store for me. Maybe that makes me selfish in that I seem largely unsympathetic to the plight of developers, but it doesn’t help that the face of the app coalition is made up of largely irksome companies like Epic, DHH and Tile so yeah, there’s that.