EU Prepares to Charge Apple in Antitrust Dispute With Spotify

[Alan Wynn]

Dunno, but I'd buy a different laptop, that's for sure.

A perfectly valid solution.

Partially because the Mac App Store app itself sucks.

Funny, I have the opposite experience. I like it as it is easier, safer, faster (especially as it auto installs on all my other systems) and more private. I prefer it so much that I will sometimes pay more to buy using the Mac App Store rather than direct.

Everything is unresponsive, and when you download an app, it tends to get stuck in limbo.

Again, not how it works for me. I cannot think I have ever had an app get stuck in limbo.

I've gotten into the habit of downloading Xcode directly from developer.apple.com/downloads.

I only do that for the betas.

Their CDNs used to also be bad. Devs in China were so fed up with slow Xcode downloads ~2015 that they started pirating Xcode. Pirating freeware. And some of those pirated versions were injecting malware into their apps.

They did not have a Chinese CDN. Their CDNs here have been Akamai and CloudFront, but they are so big that it is still an issue for them.

 

[mattspace]

Last time the US govt took serious antitrust action in tech was against MSFT, and in hindsight, it accomplished nothing.

It accomplished nothing because it had no clear objective (and there was a change of political administration) - it's was a fiddle-at-the-edges "look like you're doing something, but don't actually do anything" waste of time.

What should have happened was an enforced (and code-audited) structural separation of the company, not necessarily in terms of ownership, because companies eventually just coagulate again, but a permanent regulated siloing of operating systems, user-facing applications, and online services, and a requirement that those divisions only allow their products to connect to each other through standardised protocols & openly documented interfaces, so that any competitor can drop in their product in place of Microsoft's and be guaranteed full functionality with the other parts.

An additional punitive measure could have been a requirement for file formats to be openly-documented, and openly developed to break the lockin of document types to applications.

That not only improves the market as a whole, by forcing companies onto a 100% dogfood diet, you make those connection points the highest quality part of the system.

This is what should be done to Apple, as well. You can bet the butterfly keyboard wouldn't have lasted 1 year if Apple weren't able to tie macOS, or the wider Apple ecosystem (iBooks, iMessage etc) to their own branded hardware.

Integration, both horizontal, and vertical, is the choke point at which monopolists exert anti-competitive power, and allows the sort of shortcuts which cause software to become inbred and quality problems to fester.

They can make users sign up online and keep the cut. Or they can ditch iPhone and profit from the 90% of the world market that's on Android.

The problem is, they can't quite do that, as Hey discovered - Apple refuses to allow apps in the appstore that are not fully functional in some way for users who are not subscribed to the service offering the app.

So, you can't just get people to sign up on your website, and then download the app, you have to build some sort of functionality for non-members of your service (Hey had to create a time-limited free email account service), in order for your app to get through app review.

Unless you're a big enough company that Apple gives you a special deal.

 

[Alan Wynn]

It accomplished nothing because it had no clear objective (and there was a change of political administration) - it's was a fiddle-at-the-edges "look like you're doing something, but don't actually do anything" waste of time.

And yet within the period the case would have taken through all the appeals had the government pursed the maximal penalty Microsoft‘s own actions made them barely relevant, due only to the market’s actions. Apple produced the iPod and despite Microsoft’s dominance of the OS market, they were never able to compete in the space.

What should have happened was an enforced (and code-audited) structural separation of the company, not necessarily in terms of ownership, because companies eventually just coagulate again, but a permanent regulated siloing of operating systems, user-facing applications, and online services, and a requirement that those divisions only allow their products to connect to each other through standardised protocols & openly documented interfaces, so that any competitor can drop in their product in place of Microsoft's and be guaranteed full functionality with the other parts.

Why? This is an extreme remedy and by the time it would have been adjudicated and finally implemented no one would have cared. People were so worried about competition from MSN which proved to be completely irrelevant. The creation of the web made the Windows much less important and it was not any government action, but better competition from Google’s chrome that eliminated Internet Explorer. All these things happened without the government trying to figure out the best organization for Microsoft and the industry.

An additional punitive measure could have been a requirement for file formats to be openly-documented, and openly developed to break the lockin of document types to applications.

Again, who cares? Is anyone still worried about MS Word’s file format? Google Docs and Apple’s Pages work just fine for a large group of users. That happened with no government action.

That not only improves the market as a whole, by forcing companies onto a 100% dogfood diet, you make those connection points the highest quality part of the system.

That is your opinion. More likely is that in the 5 or 10 years your remedy would have taken their products would have stagnated and they would just have died.

This is what should be done to Apple, as well. You can bet the butterfly keyboard wouldn't have lasted 1 year if Apple weren't able to tie macOS, or the wider Apple ecosystem (iBooks, iMessage etc) to their own branded hardware.

Actually you can bet that macOS just would not exist, nor would Apple. Apple tired your strategy of licensing their OS and it almost killed the company. They have somewhere between 7% and 10% of the desktop market. What size market do you think the government needs to regulate?

Integration, both horizontal, and vertical, is the choke point at which monopolists exert anti-competitive power, and allows the sort of shortcuts which cause software to become inbred and quality problems to fester.

Integration is what makes the Apple ecosystem compelling, not a monopoly.

The problem is, they can't quite do that, as Hey discovered - Apple refuses to allow apps in the appstore that are not fully functional in some way for users who are not subscribed to the service offering the app.

Sorry, in the case of Spotify in particular, you are simply wrong. They produce what Apple calls a reader app, just like Netflix and Amazon’s Kindle. Reader apps do not have to allow purchase in app, and can require out of band account creation. That is what Netflix has been doing for year.

So, you can't just get people to sign up on your website, and then download the app, you have to build some sort of functionality for non-members of your service (Hey had to create a time-limited free email account service), in order for your app to get through app review.

Yup you can. Go download Netflix‘s app, or Amazon’s Kindly app and you will discover they do exactly that.

In addition, there is absolutely nothing that prevents Spotify form have their music be available via a web app, which has no restrictions from Apple at all.

Unless you're a big enough company that Apple gives you a special deal.

No need for a special deal. Reader apps are apps that do nothing but display or play content generated somewhere else. Spotify’s app is clearly in that category.

 

[mattspace]

Again, who cares? Is anyone still worried about MS Word’s file format? Google Docs and Apple’s Pages work just fine for a large group of users. That happened with no government action.

Every government project, grant application etc I ever have to interact with, is in .docx format, and looks like garbage in Pages.

You can say there's alternatives, but unless file formats are externally regulated, or government bodies are obligated to use non-proprietary formats, there is still a de-facto functional monopoly.

Actually you can bet that macOS just would not exist, nor would Apple. Apple tired your strategy of licensing their OS and it almost killed the company. They have somewhere between 7% and 10% of the desktop market. What size market do you think the government needs to regulate?

This is one of the most tired, and easily disproven fallacies in the the popular memory of the Apple world.

Let's be clear, Apple almost died, because Apple made products were overpriced, underperforming garbage. The cloners undercut Apple, because Apple was making products that were more expensive than the market wanted to buy, and because Apple's expenses were radically higher than they should have been, due to bloated SKUs and garbage product design, pure and simple.

If your business is based on people resentfully buying your products, you're a dead company walking, no matter what.

You're using a flawed understanding of "market", that many people in the computing world seem to share - the "market" is not "personal computers", it's "macOS personal computers". The very fact that Apple can claim unique advantages, or unique features to their operating system, makes it a separate ecosystem, and thterefore a separate market.

That is why they're being investigated for monopoly abuse within the iOS market. There is no "smartphones" market as far as regulators are concerned, and that opinion within regulatory lawmaking is ascendent - the defining of markets more narrowly, and policing how the largest players use their interconnected products to control those markets in ways that reduce consumer choice within those markets.

"If you don't like it, you can leave" is not an argument regulators are buying.

Integration is what makes the Apple ecosystem compelling, not a monopoly.

Regulators are increasingly disagreeing with you.

While it may be compelling to you to only have a single store, and a single company exercising editorial on what choice of applications you can run on the phone you bought, it is monopolistic abuse to others, who want to be able to use their choice of phone, with their choice of apps.

The presence of alternate appstores will not prevent Apple from continuing to offer their curated appstore, unless of course their curated appstore is such a bad deal for developers, that the only reason it survives currently, is because of an artificially created monopoly for appstores within the iOS market. And of course, neither you, nor Apple would acknowledge that, so I don't see why you'd be afraid of developers having a choice.

There's a strange duality that people praise the Almighty Market and Choice, but only as long as it doesn't threaten to impact their comfortable little bubble.

Sorry, in the case of Spotify in particular, you are simply wrong. They produce what Apple calls a reader app, just like Netflix and Amazon’s Kindle. Reader apps do not have to allow purchase in app, and can require out of band account creation. That is what Netflix has been doing for year.

"Reader App" is a kludge category that was created post-hoc to justify a special deal that big companies were getting.

Hey had a simple case - they tried to do the thing that everyone said you can do - have all the signup & payment on your own site, and just have an app on the App store that you have to sign in to your account to activate the service, and Apple refused to allow the app to be in the system, unless they paid Apple a cut via in-app purchases, or offered free functionality.

 

[deevey]

Careful with the store analogies. I think in the EU, stores can't sell their own brands alongside third-party brands either.

Definitely not true. Tesco, for example, have their own brands sitting on the shelf next to others

 

[deevey]

Thy could have, but everyone goes for convenience noways.

No reason that convenience should be free.

 

[I7guy]

It accomplished nothing because it had no clear objective (and there was a change of political administration) - it's was a fiddle-at-the-edges "look like you're doing something, but don't actually do anything" waste of time.

What should have happened was an enforced (and code-audited) structural separation of the company, not necessarily in terms of ownership, because companies eventually just coagulate again, but a permanent regulated siloing of operating systems, user-facing applications, and online services, and a requirement that those divisions only allow their products to connect to each other through standardised protocols & openly documented interfaces, so that any competitor can drop in their product in place of Microsoft's and be guaranteed full functionality with the other parts.

An additional punitive measure could have been a requirement for file formats to be openly-documented, and openly developed to break the lockin of document types to applications.

That not only improves the market as a whole, by forcing companies onto a 100% dogfood diet, you make those connection points the highest quality part of the system.

This is what should be done to Apple, as well. You can bet the butterfly keyboard wouldn't have lasted 1 year if Apple weren't able to tie macOS, or the wider Apple ecosystem (iBooks, iMessage etc) to their own branded hardware.

Integration, both horizontal, and vertical, is the choke point at which monopolists exert anti-competitive power, and allows the sort of shortcuts which cause software to become inbred and quality problems to fester.



The problem is, they can't quite do that, as Hey discovered - Apple refuses to allow apps in the appstore that are not fully functional in some way for users who are not subscribed to the service offering the app.

So, you can't just get people to sign up on your website, and then download the app, you have to build some sort of functionality for non-members of your service (Hey had to create a time-limited free email account service), in order for your app to get through app review.

Unless you're a big enough company that Apple gives you a special deal.

The answer to all the above is no. The last time break up was tried and implemented the American consumers lost out and still are losing out.

(And apple isn’t a monopoly by opinion of MR posters)

Obviously this will work out the way it goes, but within the court of record on the internet when government steps in, consumers lose.

 

[mattspace]

The answer to all the above is no. The last time break up was tried and implemented the American consumers lost out and still are losing out.

The rest of the world doesn't care about American Consumers, they care about an American-based multinational operating in a way that breaches their competition & consumer laws

(And apple isn’t a monopoly by opinion of MR posters)

No, they're being accused of being a monopoly by competition regulators in multiple American states, and in multiple countries.

 

[I7guy]

The rest of the world doesn't care about American Consumers, they care about an American-based multinational operating in a way that breaches their competition & consumer laws


No, they're being accused of being a monopoly by competition regulators in multiple American states, and in multiple countries.

We’ll no. They haven’t breached anything. Or is it, guilty until proven innocent? (Similar to Apple being accused of tax evasion)

And does accused equal guilty?

 

[mattspace]

We’ll no. They haven’t breached anything. Or is it, guilty until proven innocent? (Similar to Apple being accused of tax evasion)

Apple has been found guilty, repeatedly, of breaching consumer laws in multiple jurisdictions. Look it up - here's two from one jurisdiction alone to start you off:

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-relea...ion-for-misleading-“ipad-with-wifi-4g”-claims

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-relea...tations-cost-apple-inc-9-million-in-penalties

And does accused equal guilty?

No, but the law can be changed to make practices which were previously legal, illegal.

 

[I7guy]

Apple has been found guilty, repeatedly, of breaching consumer laws in multiple jurisdictions. Look it up - here's two from one jurisdiction alone to start you off:

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-relea...ion-for-misleading-“ipad-with-wifi-4g”-claims

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-relea...tations-cost-apple-inc-9-million-in-penalties



No, but the law can be changed to make practices which were previously legal, illegal.

Had to dig deep to get those links…especially since it’s’ Australia…

True, laws can be changed and that’s when consumers usually lose, when government steps in to micro-manage business. (Not discussing essential services, like gas, water, food )

 

[mattspace]

Had to dig deep to get those links…especially since it’s’ Australia…

First page of results.

True, laws can be changed and that’s when consumers usually lose, when government steps in to micro-manage business. (Not discussing essential services, like gas, water, food )

When the sort of government that's typified by a failed state steps in, perhaps.

 

[I7guy]

First page of results.



When the sort of government that's typified by a failed state steps in, perhaps.

That article, although ancient, is not directly equivalent to the App Store “situation”.

 

[0924487]

We have that. Android has a dominant position in the market (in most places well over 75%, in many over 80%). There is a rich ecosystem of Android, Android OSP, and Linux Phone devices. Almost every service that Apple offers has substantial competitors that area much larger than Apple is.

• Amazon, Google, and Spotify compete with them for music streaming (with Spotify being the market leader).
• Box, Dropbox, Google and Microsoft compete with them for cloud-based file storage.
• Amazon, A&E, AT&T, CuriosityStream, BBC, Discovery, Disney, Google, Netflix, Paramount and Universal compete with them for video content.
• Google, Microsoft and a million ISPs and smaller players compete with them for mail.

I could go on, but despite the benefits of the integrated ecosystem, in each of these spaces, they remain a much smaller player than their competition.

The keyword is market segment. If Apple's rules can affect the market, or affect their competitors from accessing a significant market segment, then we have a problem. In a perfectly competitive market, no firms can have any influence on the market.

 

[0924487]

I couldn't disagree more. Apple is a minority player from every metric there is. Their app store is wildly successful and a model to be emulated. Not a model to be torn apart.

Apples' entire business model is opt-in. One has to opt-in to buy an iphone. A dev has to opt-in to become part of the Apple Developer Program for $99. That $99 buys a complete platform, technology, management and infrastructure. (I'll leave aside the possibility maybe all don't like the platform buy that's not the point). All for a paltry 15-30% commission.

If that is rent-seeking, Apple is clearly allowed to charge a reasonable and customary fee. Greedy Epic is an example of a dev who paid a few hundred million in fees to apple, but they had earn $700M to pay that few hundred million.

If you don't work with Apple, you lose a significant market segment. That is where Apple has that disproportionate amount of power to move the market, and this behaviour should not exist in a market where there is perfect competition. The App Store scenario is a classic case where the Economists would define it as a Market Failure.

 

[I7guy]

If you don't work with Apple, you lose a significant market segment. That is where Apple has that disproportionate amount of power to move the market, and this behaviour should not exist in a market where there is perfect competition. The App Store scenario is a classic case where the Economists would define it as a Market Failure.

So as a minority player in the smartphone market where Spotify has more customers than Apple Music, apple wields more power than android? At the surface, that seems like a logical fallacy.

Based on the revenue the App Store is a genius invention, that mirrors other app stores and physical store models.

 

[ctyrider]

I couldn't disagree more. Apple is a minority player from every metric there is. Their app store is wildly successful and a model to be emulated. Not a model to be torn apart.

False. Apple is a minority in the pure numbers of mobile devices, as Android phones flood the low end markets where Apple doesn't even compete. But Apple commands around a half of revenues in the mobile marketplace, and controls access to the most lucrative part of the mobile market.

Apple is a part of a duopoly in a mobile market, along with Google. A developer or a business cannot reasonably succeed in a broad marketplace, by being locked out of Apple ecosystem.

Having Apple exert iron-clad control and leverage on a half of global mobile market is untenable. It is only a matter of time before they are forced to loosen or cede that control. The sooner Apple realizes this and takes steps to change their practices - the better off they will be. Unfortunately, I fear Apple as a company is culturally incapable to admit when they are wrong, and course correct themselves.

 

[I7guy]

False. Apple is a minority in the pure numbers of mobile devices, as Android phones flood the low end markets where Apple doesn't even compete. But Apple commands around a half of revenues in the mobile marketplace, and controls access to the most lucrative part of the mobile market.

Apple is a part of a duopoly in a mobile market, along with Google. A developer or a business cannot reasonably succeed in a broad marketplace, by being locked out of Apple ecosystem.

Having Apple exert iron-clad control and leverage to a half of global mobile market is untenable. It is only a matter of time before they are forced to loosen or cede that control. The sooner Apple realizes this and takes steps to change their practices - the better off they will be. Unfortunately, I fear Apple as a company is culturally incapable to admit when they are wrong, and course correct themselves.

False. Apple is minority player in a sea of smartphone makers. Each with the power to define their own markets.

The App Store is apples invention and they should be able to manage it as they see fit. Unfortunately the government(s) have shown they are incapable of regulations that actually benefit consumers where life and limb and finances aren’t at stake.

So they will most likely step in with some draconian regulations and apple (maybe google also)will become another ATT…another successful company that became a shell of its former self.

 

[ctyrider]

So they will most likely step in with some draconian regulations and apple (maybe google also)will become another ATT…another successful company that became a shell of its former self.

LOL, that is a hilarious statement. AT&T - now THAT is a model of innovation that should be held up as a model. Just tells me how little you know about the history of telecommunications and Internet. Yeah we would all be so much better off if AT&T was allowed to remain a monopoly, where you weren't even allowed to connect a non-AT&T phone to their copper wire.

We'd probably still be using landlines and fax machines, had the regulators didn't break up the Bell System.

Try again, you failed.

 

[I7guy]

LOL, that is a hilarious statement. AT&T - now THAT is a model of innovation that should be held up as a model. Just tells me how little you know about the history of telecommunications and Internet. Yeah we would all be so much better off if AT&T was allowed to remain a monopoly, where you weren't even allowed to connect a non-AT&T phone to their copper wire.

We'd probably still be using landlines and fax machines, had the regulators didn't break up the Bell System.

Try again, you failed.

Well the above is a failed opinion, and additionally a bad one at that. The US lags behind the world in cell phone service. ATT wired the United States in spite of being declared a monopoly and what we have today are cell phone providers that are basically fat pipes. US cell phone service shouldn’t be in the middle toward the bottom relative to the rest of the world.

 

[hot-gril]

So as a minority player in the smartphone market where Spotify has more customers than Apple Music, apple wields more power than android? At the surface, that seems like a logical fallacy.

Based on the revenue the App Store is a genius invention, that mirrors other app stores and physical store models.

The person you're responding to used to have links to Chinese state propaganda in the sig. I remember from the articles having anything to do with Hong Kong. That's all I will say.

 

[hot-gril]

Every government project, grant application etc I ever have to interact with, is in .docx format, and looks like garbage in Pages.

You can say there's alternatives, but unless file formats are externally regulated, or government bodies are obligated to use non-proprietary formats, there is still a de-facto functional monopoly.




This is one of the most tired, and easily disproven fallacies in the the popular memory of the Apple world.

Let's be clear, Apple almost died, because Apple made products were overpriced, underperforming garbage. The cloners undercut Apple, because Apple was making products that were more expensive than the market wanted to buy, and because Apple's expenses were radically higher than they should have been, due to bloated SKUs and garbage product design, pure and simple.

If your business is based on people resentfully buying your products, you're a dead company walking, no matter what.

You're using a flawed understanding of "market", that many people in the computing world seem to share - the "market" is not "personal computers", it's "macOS personal computers". The very fact that Apple can claim unique advantages, or unique features to their operating system, makes it a separate ecosystem, and thterefore a separate market.

That is why they're being investigated for monopoly abuse within the iOS market. There is no "smartphones" market as far as regulators are concerned, and that opinion within regulatory lawmaking is ascendent - the defining of markets more narrowly, and policing how the largest players use their interconnected products to control those markets in ways that reduce consumer choice within those markets.

"If you don't like it, you can leave" is not an argument regulators are buying.



Regulators are increasingly disagreeing with you.

While it may be compelling to you to only have a single store, and a single company exercising editorial on what choice of applications you can run on the phone you bought, it is monopolistic abuse to others, who want to be able to use their choice of phone, with their choice of apps.

The presence of alternate appstores will not prevent Apple from continuing to offer their curated appstore, unless of course their curated appstore is such a bad deal for developers, that the only reason it survives currently, is because of an artificially created monopoly for appstores within the iOS market. And of course, neither you, nor Apple would acknowledge that, so I don't see why you'd be afraid of developers having a choice.

There's a strange duality that people praise the Almighty Market and Choice, but only as long as it doesn't threaten to impact their comfortable little bubble.



"Reader App" is a kludge category that was created post-hoc to justify a special deal that big companies were getting.

Hey had a simple case - they tried to do the thing that everyone said you can do - have all the signup & payment on your own site, and just have an app on the App store that you have to sign in to your account to activate the service, and Apple refused to allow the app to be in the system, unless they paid Apple a cut via in-app purchases, or offered free functionality.

I forget how to split up quotes in the new MR, so here goes...

Govt stuck with MS Office: It's pretty hard to make an incompatible .docx, and in school, this was never a problem. I know how govt projects are with software... But the general idea is true, that one company can push their own standard that nobody else has control over and attempt to dominate with it. Nearly every company in all sectors does that. While it's regrettable, the only real solution is to let competitors do their thing. Just because others do it doesn't make it ok, but any enforcement against it will be applied so selectively and unfairly that it's worse than useless.

Regulators disagreeing: I don't care, they do what's politically suitable for themselves. Notice how both major US political parties complain about high tech market power but usually do 0 against them. Notice how the regulators really taking action against high tech monopolies aren't in places that produce high tech themselves. And the EU may be responding to the unnecessary shots Trump "fired" at them with the tariffs. It's protectionism, nothing more.

Reader apps: I totally agree it was an excuse for their exceptions granted to certain big players, and this goes back to my complaints about Apple's ecosystem. At least they've opened it up to more apps, but I still don't like it.

 

[hot-gril]

LOL, that is a hilarious statement. AT&T - now THAT is a model of innovation that should be held up as a model. Just tells me how little you know about the history of telecommunications and Internet. Yeah we would all be so much better off if AT&T was allowed to remain a monopoly, where you weren't even allowed to connect a non-AT&T phone to their copper wire.

We'd probably still be using landlines and fax machines, had the regulators didn't break up the Bell System.

Try again, you failed.

They broke up the firm that created UNIX among many other things, and what did we get out of it? Like i7 guy said, nothing. But it's natural, in such a large country, for ISPs to end up with local monopolies in sparser areas. This is one place I can entertain the idea of regulating them as utilities.

 

[jonblatho]

So they will most likely step in with some draconian regulations and apple (maybe google also)will become another ATT…another successful company that became a shell of its former self.

Which is, once again, why Apple would likely prefer to get out ahead of this and come to a solution that all parties involved can live with before governments come up with a solution on their behalf.

Time is quickly running out for them to render regulation moot.

 

[I7guy]

Which is, once again, why Apple would likely prefer to get out ahead of this and come to a solution that all parties involved can live with before governments come up with a solution on their behalf.

Time is quickly running out for them to render regulation moot.

I think apple is going to fight this out (and imo they should). But we will see.