It's a bad thing if you don't want multibillion dollar corporations abusing their position to stamp out competition.
By the same logic, is Apple maps anticompetitive, even though google technically landed the first blow by opting to withhold their service from the iOS platform?
I don’t see this as an abuse of power. Rather, in the interest of security and being able to provide a minimum viable experience to their users, Apple realises that there are certain key parts of their infrastructure that they are better off doing themselves, rather than farming out to third party vendors they cannot trust.
And if the consequence here is that some companies feel they are not able to complete on an even footing with Apple, I feel it’s a worthwhile trade off.
After all, Apple offers a default podcast app. That hasn’t stopped developers from releasing their own third party offerings like overcast, which has found its own thriving fan base. So Apple is not unaware of this, and their own offerings tend to come with just the bare functionality so third parties still have a fighting chance.
So I go back to my original point. That Spotify was still proudly trumpeting the benefits of competition late last year shows that they are growing desperate now. The real problem isn’t Apple’s purported anticompetitive practices, but Spotify’s own unsustainable business model.
Spotify really should take a long hard look at cleaning out their own back yard first, rather than biting the hand that feeds them.
I see Apple are worried about Kasperskys ties to the Russian government. They were happy enough to shift iCloud data to China though, funny how that goes ...
Apple does the best they can within the confines of the law. The manner in which Kasperskay accomplishes the way their app works is clearly a blatant security risk and I don’t think Apple was wrong to have quashed it when they did.
At the end of the day, I feel that the safest hands are still Apple’s own.
