Apple to Allow Outside App Stores in Overhaul Spurred by EU Laws {DMA, DSA}

[Holmes108]

49 minutes ago, Sauron said:

It's probably a bad principle if it leads you to bad positions. I don't think there's any inconsistency in believing some regulations are good and some others are bad; you should simply look at the outcome and who is affected.

 

That's such a blanket, and frankly meaningless statement I don't even know what to say about it though. You're only have good principles if your principle leads you personally to a good position? That's selfishness. Are you suggesting all the regulations you support are explicitly good for all people? Impossible. So good for who? Good for how many? That's just such a gross over simplification of it all. 

 

I hate it when someone cuts in line in front of me somewhere too. I'm in an explicitly worse position, and am angry. I also don't want my city council sitting around making a "cutting the line" by-law. And yes, some of these regulations are just as silly to me. 

 

It's all grey. Even with my relatively strong stance against what I deem non-essentials and regulation, there are going to be a shit ton of "oh damn, that's a tricky one... what are the possible unintended consequences of that, good and bad". 

 

We can debate specific instances all day. I find it really interesting. We'll agree on some, and not on others. That's life and most topics in general. I'm only pushing back on, and find it funny when people disagree with a particular regulation, and certain people on the opposite side feel able to boldly claim we're clearly idiots, or don't get it, or are shills, or hate consumers, etc etc.. Like everything in life, there's nuance.

 

We could live in a world with an essentially zero murder rate. Especially with current technology. It's also not hard to imagine the horrible, dystopian future we'd live in to make that happen. Cameras, microships and soldiers everywhere. And we can slide that scale down the complete opposite. Total anarchy.

 

So in our society we effectively allow murders to happen that we don't necessarily need to, in order to live with a certain amount of freedom. It doesn't get more high stakes than that. But I think, broadly speaking, we agree we have that balance largely correct. (Yes, there's lot's of things about the justice system that we can agree needs overhauling. But I think you get my point). 

 

That principle basically applies to everything... criminal laws, technology security vs convenience, and business regulations. It's a sliding scale of trading freedom for hopefully some sort of betterment. What's reasonable on that scale is really a matter of opinion, period. 

 

So that's my only point. I love the topic and think it's really interesting. I've changed others minds in some examples, and had my mind changed in others. But some people out there (not particularly in this thread) need to be a little less smug in their stance on how how much we need government/regulatory oversight in our lives. It's just a difference of opinion, but they default to the "bootlicker/uneducated" type of tone to the argument often, which is silly to me. 

 

People don't even agree on precise solutions regarding something HUGE, like crime and punishment (prison sentences etc), so we just need to relax a little when discussing legalities around fart apps and call of duty.

 

Edit: damn, that turned into way more of a wall of text than intended. Apologies.

 

 

[Holmes108]

22 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

It's in the Corporation's best interest to be as consumer un-friendly as possible to maximize profit.

 

Remember, corporations are not your friends!

 

Agree 100%. People should remember that. Knowing that, and enacting laws and regulations are potentially 2 different things.

 

Although I agree with, say, making false advertising illegal, I think telling someone what charging port they must build should not be. Others will disagree, and that's okay. 

[Doobeedoo]

25 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

There are plenty of things, and no matter what there will be people who view another one and say that's a better thing to tackle.  Things like cigarettes now and days are difficult because it's become such an established thing.  Think the concept of prohibition, where it spawned massive amounts of money that was funneled into crime.  Not to say it can't be done in other ways, but anything trying to introduce essentially prohibition is going to have a boatload of people who vote against you (so political risk) and a lot of people who view it as creating another issue.

 

Now for the specific case of Apple, here's a list:

1) Lets start with the e-book issue, the one where they used their power to collude for higher prices (essentially taking the pricing out of the free market, making users pay more).

2) Tile, air tag competitor, Apple utilized their position to give air tag an advantage after they had analyzed the data on people using Tile and realized how much of a market there was for it (Apple specifically dragged their feet on giving Tile access to the API that allowed fine-tune tracking...instead they implemented it on the air-tag and beat them to market...despite Tile having in talks with Apple before showing them the features)

3) Apple actively prevents applications that allows essentially other programs to run.  It is a pain when you have a company app that relies on it.  (Rather than making one "script" that can run on all devices, Apple has to be carved out)

4) Decision to kill off Adobe Flash.  While I am glad that Flash was finally ended, there are still some aspects that had made it important (streaming video back at that time was better with Flash than without...maybe it's just me but I find that even the experience back then was better, especially when the technology of web dev hadn't caught up yet)  [Apple didn't allow it on iPhone, which I think was what eventually killed it as more sites now had to abandon flash].

5) Developers are forced to use WebKit, so if webkit has a fault that prevents a webpage from loading it's going to break it for all.  It also means that everyone realistically needs to develop for webkit or abandon all iPhone users.

6) iMessage, they literally are using their dominance and implementing features for the sole purpose of locking people into their platform making it difficult to switch.  (Dragging their feet on some things like RCS, so Android users communicating with iPhones groups have a more difficult time)

 

So yes, there is plenty of harm being done to the consumer market by Apple.  It's just that lots of the time people aren't as aware of it.

Yeah I know, I'm aware how people think and act. Also they will position their indulgences before others so most don't care about bettering of the world really.

 

Obviously every company will have many things they do well or straight up bad though. I was primarily talking about the topic post.

Yeah preventing app that allows others programs to run is interesting one. Flash was just bad, maybe they saw it's daily limited and wanted to accelerate that. Doubt killing it on iPhone caused to to die at all. Wouldn't call it having better experience back then, with all plugins and such, was slower too. The WebKit part is understandable, it's kinda similar to Google Chrome Blink and really Chromium how now many switched to it. IMessage is a literal meme, I can't believe people even use it, just why. Imagine depending on a literally basic messaging app. People at least where I am don't even use it. Maybe it's an US thing. Maybe even out of iMessage and WebKit the which is their thing and deep integration, the prevention of app running other programs is probably the most lame. 

I'll be like Tim Cook when he was asked about RCS and he said, get an iPhone. Yeah, what that means to me, get an Android. Done.

 

You can say many Apple users are just casual users and don't even know most of this or barely know some once they arise with some issue. But hey, those people grew that company so, they're also same type of people that continuously support it so there's that. 

[Sauron]

19 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

That's such a blanket, and frankly meaningless statement I don't even know what to say about it though. You're only have good principles if your principle leads you personally to a good position? That's selfishness.

I don't mean "position" as in personal standing, I mean position as in opinion, thought, idea.

20 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

Are you suggesting all the regulations you support are explicitly good for all people? Impossible.

Being good for a majority of people and only mildly bad for a minority of people is usually enough. Of course assuming it is not violating the fundamental human rights of anyone, even if they are a minority. We can then argue whether there's some harm I haven't considered in my assessment, that's a perfectly fine and worthwhile discussion. In this case as far as I can tell it's only "bad" for Apple stakeholders and only financially, so I don't care. If instead you come to me saying that, a priori, all regulation is bad and should not exist then I can't take your argument seriously.

24 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

We can debate specific instances all day. I find it really interesting. We'll agree on some, and not on others. That's life and most topics in general. I'm only pushing back on, and find it funny when people disagree with a particular regulation, and certain people on the opposite side feel able to boldly claim we're clearly idiots, or don't get it, or are shills, or hate consumers, etc etc.. Like everything in life, there's nuance.

But you aren't disagreeing about whether this particular regulation would be good or bad - your issue seems to be with the concept of regulating the actions of a private business at all. If that's not the case then once again I ask you... what's the problem you have with this specific regulation? What harm is being done that you find unacceptable despite the obvious benefits?

27 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

We could live in a world with an essentially zero murder rate. Especially with current technology.

We could not. But even if we could by restricting everyone's agency down to almost nothing, the harm would likely outweigh the good. In this case that's not true. Also I am in favor of murder being illegal, hence "regulated".

30 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

It's just a difference of opinion, but they default to the "bootlicker/uneducated" type of tone to the argument often, which is silly to me. 

I have definitely not done this in this conversation. I don't think you're a bootlicker and even if you were it would be irrelevant to the point, I just think you're wrong if your position is that regulation is bad by default even if it has almost exclusively good outcomes.

34 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

People won't even agree on precise solutions regarding something big like crime and punishment (prison sentences etc), so we just need to relax a little when discussing legalities around fart apps and call of duty.

On the contrary, I think when the stakes are relatively low we can afford to swing the hammer a bit more freely because even if we get it wrong the consequences are also not that bad. Besides it's not like this hasn't been argued to death for years before it got to this point. If there were any significant downsides to this we'd have seen them on android, but we don't because there aren't any.

[saltycaramel]

1 hour ago, PocketNerd said:

It's in the Corporation's best interest to be as consumer un-friendly as possible to maximize profit.

 

Remember, corporations are not your friends!

 

I don’t believe you

 

- Google wanted Android to be open, free and full of rainbows, that’s what every anti-iPhone nerd would tell me in the late 00s 

- Epic wants the best for gamers and game devs

- Elon’s Twitter wants to bring us free speech

 

Some corporations want the best for us

[kumicota]

What I find funny is that a lot of people(some of them are even here) when epic/Spotify and other companies went against Apple App Store laws, said that Apple isn't forcing anyone to sell there, if they don't wanna to follow the store rules they can go to Android while they simped a lot for the apple 30% and laws on App Store.

 

The same argument applies to Apple too, Europe isn't forcing Apple to follow their laws but if they want to sell there, they need to follow their laws.

[AnonymousGuy]

Regular users don't care, malware users rejoice because they just got another vector to finesse old people into.

[Holmes108]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

I don't mean "position" as in personal standing, I mean position as in opinion, thought, idea.

 

 

Ah, Gotcha.

 

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

But you aren't disagreeing about whether this particular regulation would be good or bad - your issue seems to be with the concept of regulating the actions of a private business at all. If that's not the case then once again I ask you... what's the problem you have with this specific regulation? What harm is being done that you find unacceptable despite the obvious benefits?

 

The harm is in not letting people operate freely, in a free market, which yes, is important to me. Because In this case, yes, in the most basic sense I think they should have a right to do so, similar to free speech, and all the other freedoms we have. But of course not without exceptions... It's just that my bar for what's causing 'harm' in a market is just obviously much lower than yours. Or even what the definition of harm is.

 

Obviously there's safety, and criminal laws that need to be adhered to. I agree with preventing outright fraud and misrepresentation, etc... Also certain products are also just too important, even if not directly related to safety (Internet has entered that realm for me now. I am willing to consider it more of a utility where as I was more hesitant many years ago).

 

But if we're talking about simple "competition" laws, for every day non-essential goods... no I don't tend to believe in regulations (although again, there will always be case by case exceptions). Going back to games, If there were no regulations, and videogame prices went up to what, $200 per game and they're all released half finished? Who the hell cares. I mean, I would, as a lover of games, but I don't need resources spent on legally preventing that.

 

Plus I don't think it'd happen. Sales would drop, the market would correct (understanding that isn't ALWAYS the answer, but in this case I believe it would). And even if the market "correcting" in this scenario led to $120 games.... so be it. It's a videogame. Especially in a world where it's never been easier to self publish. You have 1 man crews now making game not just like Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress, but with high end graphics. So you have to take things like that into the equation too.

 

So, much like we allow some extra crime to happen to enjoy our autonomy, I believe that would all be a fair trade for freedom of operating a business the way you see fit (outside of obvious exceptions, which I feel I have to keep saying, or people accuse me of basically wanting anarchy).

 

If I want a cell phone with a proprietary charger, walled garden of apps, no root access, etc etc let's see how it does in the open market. It'd be everything I hate in a phone, but if people want it. Who cares?

 

I really don't believe society will crumble, the stock market will crash, or people will be on the streets if we let industries that are less essential have more freedom in these areas. Do we need to regulate anti competition and pricing of bubble gum? Sex toys? hockey cards? I'm pretty sure I know your answer, but I just inherently disagree. 

 

If there's a real, measurable harm to society (like big harm, the type that makes you change interest rates, or bail out banks or auto industry), then we can look into it. If the harm is consumers might pay a bit more for a non-essential, then not so much, for me.

 

Competition for landline telephones? That was an infrastructure almost nobody can overcome once the big player is in place. But if Sony got Call of Duty tomorrow (I'm going that way because I'm an xbox guy), I think we'll be okay. It's just a matter of degree for me.

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

 

We could not. But even if we could by restricting everyone's agency down to almost nothing, the harm would likely outweigh the good.

 

That's exactly my point. It's all just degrees. I don't think the tradeoff is worth it in some of these instances that I'd personally consider nonsense, like preferred web browsers or app stores. Who's even to say if something really is "anti-consumer". Sometimes it's obvious, but maybe it's not and it's an opinion. maybe the inverse could be more pro consumer, but only in the short term? Simply Making everything only good/easy/cheap for the consumer today is obviously not necessarily the only (or best) answer. Which again just comes back to "it's complicated and case by case", when too often people just look at it more as "business bad" and they just want to dunk on corps they don't like.

 

At the end of the day, it's just very different philosophies I guess. I just don't see regulation that way. To me, it's a tool for basic protections, and I think we've gone a little hog wild with it. People need to keep some power for themselves, or you end up in a world where you aren't allowed to hang your laundry in your yard, or have a company vehicle in your driveway, or cut hair without a license (just some silly overregulated examples I know of in some jurisdictions).

 

I actually think I'm quite moderate compared to most of the real libertarian types out there. There are tons of regulations out there I'll support that aren't necessarily life or death. But then I say something that's pretty benign in my mind ("Hey, maybe if I wanted to make an OS with only one web browser, that should be my business") and people will act like I just want to be stomped all over by all businesses. It's kinda weird.

 

Edit: Too much text again. If the conversation continues, I promise to be more concise. I worry too much about not being clear or being taken out of context, etc.  Really wish we were chatting face to face.

 

[Sauron]

3 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

The harm is in not letting people operate freely, in a free market, which yes, is important to me. Because In this case, yes, in the most basic sense I think they should have a right to do so, similar to free speech, and all the other freedoms we have. But of course not without exceptions... It's just that my bar for what's causing 'harm' in a market is just obviously much lower than yours. Or even what the definition of harm is.

I mean... are you given the same courtesy of operating "freely" if the company controlling a significant chunk of the mobile market doesn't give you equal opportunity to get your app on their devices? A democratic government is at least ostensibly legitimized by public support, a company just does whatever it deems profitable. The end user is also not given a choice in the matter beyond just buying an android device, which also carries its own issues and without a specific regulation may not even offer this feature in the future if google suddenly decides it's not profitable to keep it. The "free market" doesn't work when you have a decades long duopoly where two companies control the entire market you operate in.

9 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

Also certain products are also just too important, even if not directly related to safety (Internet has entered that realm for me now. I am willing to consider it more of a utility where as I was more hesitant many years ago).

And you think smartphones don't reach that bar?

11 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

But if we're talking about simple "competition" laws, for every day non-essential goods... no I don't tend to believe in regulations (although again, there will always be case by case exceptions). Going back to games, If there were no regulations, and videogame prices went up to what, $200 per game and they're all released half finished? Who the hell cares. I mean, I would, as a lover of games, but I don't need resources spent on legally preventing that.

I'm not aware of any regulation on game prices, the only thing that has occasionally been regulated is the presence of insidious content like gambling mechanics in games aimed at children and teens, which I do support. If they release unfinished beyond a certain threshold I would consider it a scam or at least false advertisement though so there may be grounds to regulate on that... it's just difficult to find that threshold.

15 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

So, much like we allow some extra crime to happen to enjoy our autonomy, I believe that would all be a fair trade for freedom of operating a business the way you see fit (outside of obvious exceptions, which I feel I have to keep saying, or people accuse me of basically wanting anarchy).

I mean again, I don't see what valuable freedom of business is being lost by forcing Apple to allow sideloading on their devices. It's a targeted regulation that doesn't risk spilling over with unintended consequences so I don't see the problem.

17 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

If I want a cell phone with a proprietary charger, walled garden of apps, no root access, etc etc let's see how it does in the open market. It'd be everything I hate in a phone, but if people want it. Who cares?

It's not an open market though. If you want a usable smartphone it must come with either iOS or Android, there is no other choice. You're stuck choosing the option you dislike the least rather than the one you like the most. People don't buy iOS devices because of these restrictions, they buy them despite the restrictions.

20 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

I really don't believe society will crumble, the stock market will crash, or people will be on the streets if we let industries that are less essential have more freedom in these areas.

Do you believe that will happen if you apply regulation that benefits consumers and only mildly lowers the megacorp's profits?

21 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

Do we need to regulate anti competition

Yes, if you like the "free market" this is something you should also fully agree on. If you don't think competition should be protected then your argument about how the market will just freely arrive at the best compromise is absurd.

23 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

Competition for landline telephones?

Essential utilities should be nationalized if you ask me, but since that's not likely to happen I will take enforced competition, yes.

24 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

That's exactly my point. It's all just degrees. I don't think the tradeoff is worth it in some of these instances that I'd personally consider nonsense, like preferred web browsers or app stores.

It's actually really important for a market spanning hundreds of millions of people to not be under the sole and direct control of one megacorporation. It's not a small issue.

25 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

Who's even to say if something really is "anti-consumer".

Lawmakers after careful consideration, like in this case. We elect these people for a reason.

26 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

People need to keep some power for themselves, or you end up in a world where you aren't allowed to hang your laundry in your yard, or have a company vehicle in your driveway, or cut hair without a license (just some silly overregulated examples I know of in some jurisdictions).

Don't you think that's a very long shot from baseline anti-monopoly law? By the way I don't see the issue with requiring a license to cut people's hair, scissors are dangerous and I don't want to walk in a barber's shop and have a 50% chance the barber has never cut someone's hair in their life. Regardless, complain about those specific instances if you believe they are bad regulations, not about the concept of regulation in general.

30 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

("Hey, maybe if I wanted to make an OS with only one web browser, that should be my business")

It becomes everyone's business when you've aggressively and maliciously cornered the market of operating systems for decades and are now using that power to also corner the browser market. There's a reason I made this example; Microsoft tried a version of this and was hit with an antitrust lawsuit it lost, because that is a textbook case of an antitrust violation. As in this case, having a monopoly places you in a position of power that can only be contrasted by government regulation; if you personally write your own OS that 5 people in total use then you're perfectly free to include a single browser and prevent or hinder the installation of other browsers, even if I think that's a bit of a dick move.

[Sauron]

39 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Regular users don't care, malware users rejoice because they just got another vector to finesse old people into.

If you think you can "finesse" an 80 year old into sideloading anything into their phone, you've never met an 80 year old. You can barely "finesse" them into saving your number in the contacts list. This doesn't happen with Android, it won't happen with iOS.

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

The API part I can see. Coming without pre installed bloatware really seems fine, you can download browsers who cares, makes no difference here. 

It's nowhere near the same with hardware there, not even comparable.

I don't think you really understand what the situation was like because you are living in a world which benefitted from the antitrust ruling.

It wasn't as simple as "just download a different browser, who cares". The fact that you can just download a different browser today is possibly the result of the antitrust lawsuit.

Browsers at the time were not something you just downloaded for free. It cost money, and Microsoft told companies like Compaq that if they distributed the browsers for free to consumers they would lose the right to sell Windows. 

They basically said: "You are not allowed to sell or give away our competitors products, if you do we won't allow you to sell our product".

 

It was exactly the same situation as if Intel told PC makers "you are not allowed to sell computers with AMD processors. If you do, we won't allow you to sell computers with Intel processors".

It really was that scale of bad. And it involved a lot of other things too, such as Microsoft sending threats to competitors, lying in court, and so on. Anyway, we are really off topic but it really wasn't just "they were sued because they bundled IE". The documentary I linked earlier goes over most of it in a pretty entertaining way, but still leaves out quite some information. It pretty much only focuses on the browser portion, but the lawsuit itself involved far more things. The Wikipedia page has pretty good coverage of it too.

[Kisai]

42 minutes ago, Sauron said:

If you think you can "finesse" an 80 year old into sideloading anything into their phone, you've never met an 80 year old. You can barely "finesse" them into saving your number in the contacts list. This doesn't happen with Android, it won't happen with iOS.

Doubtful. Maybe an 80 year old today, but there are people who 70 year old who only have phones because they were given to them by their kids or other family members, and will never question anything. Ever receive text links? You know the ones that lead to malware or tricking you into something?

 

That's the problem that you're not thinking about.

 

I forget which app it was, but there are apps that install by sending you a text message because they know people aren't tech-savvy. That text message link is a link shortener that loads the app store.

 

And you have garbage apps that have like $10,000 IAP's.

[SeriousDad69]

7 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

 

You’re precisely proving my point?

There’s no state-mandated driving license for using a smartphone or PCs or the internet. 

Who’s in charge of planning the security of user-facing systems needs to take that into account. 

If you build a better system, the universe is just going to build a better idiot. Apple and other companies should really just focus on zero click exploits, that's what's actually scary. Trying to secure the person that clicks on scam links and freaks out when a popup says he's been hacked is the definition of a losing battle. If Apple actually cared about security for old people, they'd let me install a Gecko based web browser with uBlock origin on my grandpa's iPad. Instead they force everyone to use their shitty webkit browser with kneecapped ad blocking.

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

If you think you can "finesse" an 80 year old into sideloading anything into their phone, you've never met an 80 year old. You can barely "finesse" them into saving your number in the contacts list. This doesn't happen with Android, it won't happen with iOS.

If the Indian phone scammer can finesse my grandpa into not only FINDING the settings app, but also digging into it to enable side loading, then getting him to go on a malicious website to download and install something, the guy honestly earned my grandpa's money at that point lol. I just tell him iPhones and iPads are unhackable and any popup saying he got hacked or is under attack or whatever is just a scam. Tech illiterate people just need something to anchor them so they don't freak out and make rash decisions. Also a good idea to set old peoples' DNS server to Quad9, it helps.

[Doobeedoo]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

I don't think you really understand what the situation was like because you are living in a world which benefitted from the antitrust ruling.

It wasn't as simple as "just download a different browser, who cares". The fact that you can just download a different browser today is possibly the result of the antitrust lawsuit.

Browsers at the time were not something you just downloaded for free. It cost money, and Microsoft told companies like Compaq that if they distributed the browsers for free to consumers they would lose the right to sell Windows. 

They basically said: "You are not allowed to sell or give away our competitors products, if you do we won't allow you to sell our product".

 

It was exactly the same situation as if Intel told PC makers "you are not allowed to sell computers with AMD processors. If you do, we won't allow you to sell computers with Intel processors".

It really was that scale of bad. And it involved a lot of other things too, such as Microsoft sending threats to competitors, lying in court, and so on. Anyway, we are really off topic but it really wasn't just "they were sued because they bundled IE". The documentary I linked earlier goes over most of it in a pretty entertaining way, but still leaves out quite some information. It pretty much only focuses on the browser portion, but the lawsuit itself involved far more things. The Wikipedia page has pretty good coverage of it too.

I'm pretty sure other browsers would came to be regardless of how it went down. I may have been hectic back then, still it was a tool for the web and we have various browsers today I think would exist regardless but so be it. You could still get a browser without being distributed with Windows no.

I get the not distributed with Windows machine, you can argue both way really. In the end it's a tool to view webpages, however shady or anti-competitive it may be, being their platform it is what it is. You could say platform like OS > regular programs. You can say make your own OS and rest and compete that way. They don't owe you anything.

 

It's not the same with processors. It's literally not. It's quite different. 

I can understand chaos it was back then because internet and PCs and all was very new and growing and less players. No doubt big companies do shady stuff behind the scenes, not arguing that. I saw the vid. Annoying dramatic edit but yeah. Either way, just saying odd in this Apple topic case, how this and or now is brough up yet there are many different reasons you could think of how some law or regulations could or should be evaluated or carried vs big software companies, yet are not.

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

It was exactly the same situation as if Intel told PC makers "you are not allowed to sell computers with AMD processors. If you do, we won't allow you to sell computers with Intel processors".

Fun fact, you described almost what had happened

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v._Intel_Corp.

It's not 100% the stop buying from them or you are cut off, but pretty similar.  The heres a bag of money if you use us and eliminate AMD and lie about the reason why.

 

You are right though, without anti-trust many things would not exist today, as you mentioned the concept of a choice of a browser wouldn't exist. 

[Ultraforce]

1 hour ago, Doobeedoo said:

I'm pretty sure other browsers would came to be regardless of how it went down. I may have been hectic back then, still it was a tool for the web and we have various browsers today I think would exist regardless but so be it. You could still get a browser without being distributed with Windows no.

I get the not distributed with Windows machine, you can argue both way really. In the end it's a tool to view webpages, however shady or anti-competitive it may be, being their platform it is what it is. You could say platform like OS > regular programs. You can say make your own OS and rest and compete that way. They don't owe you anything.

 

It's not the same with processors. It's literally not. It's quite different. 

I can understand chaos it was back then because internet and PCs and all was very new and growing and less players. No doubt big companies do shady stuff behind the scenes, not arguing that. I saw the vid. Annoying dramatic edit but yeah. Either way, just saying odd in this Apple topic case, how this and or now is brough up yet there are many different reasons you could think of how some law or regulations could or should be evaluated or carried vs big software companies, yet are not.

I will say as far as anti-trust stuff goes in a sense the Microsoft anti-trust is small potatoes it's the anti-trust laws of the century prior to Microsoft. It's worth noting that telecoms were broken up in 1982 because prior to that break up there was 1 company that was the sole provider of telephone service throughout most of the USA as well as most telephonic equipment was produced by it's subsidary, additionally it owned Yellow Pages, Bell Canada one of the massive telecom companies in Canada among other things. The impeding loss of the suit led AT&T to settle with the American government to split off into 7 independent companies but retain control of some of their R&D and retained control of the Telephonic equipment manufacturer and long distance service.

Antitrust laws stuff has, at least from what I've been exposed to is pretty much always when successful helped make things better for everyone but the companies who had a monopoly. There's a reason that the US government tried to dissolve Zaibatsu structures as much as the keiretsu are pretty much just as bad and have effectively reintegrated, but that's honestly not the most surprising as the thing about antitrust and competition laws is if you aren't serious about dealing with monopolies or collusion of the groups they will do it again. In a recent WAN Show Linus and Luke talked a bit about the Canadian bread price fixing.

[Doobeedoo]

39 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

I will say as far as anti-trust stuff goes in a sense the Microsoft anti-trust is small potatoes it's the anti-trust laws of the century prior to Microsoft. It's worth noting that telecoms were broken up in 1982 because prior to that break up there was 1 company that was the sole provider of telephone service throughout most of the USA as well as most telephonic equipment was produced by it's subsidary, additionally it owned Yellow Pages, Bell Canada one of the massive telecom companies in Canada among other things. The impeding loss of the suit led AT&T to settle with the American government to split off into 7 independent companies but retain control of some of their R&D and retained control of the Telephonic equipment manufacturer and long distance service.

Antitrust laws stuff has, at least from what I've been exposed to is pretty much always when successful helped make things better for everyone but the companies who had a monopoly. There's a reason that the US government tried to dissolve Zaibatsu structures as much as the keiretsu are pretty much just as bad and have effectively reintegrated, but that's honestly not the most surprising as the thing about antitrust and competition laws is if you aren't serious about dealing with monopolies or collusion of the groups they will do it again. In a recent WAN Show Linus and Luke talked a bit about the Canadian bread price fixing.

Yeah for sure of those things are very bad and straight up need to be corrected immediately. Especially when it literally affects pretty much everyone in general day to day.

[Kisai]

44 minutes ago, Ultraforce said:

I will say as far as anti-trust stuff goes in a sense the Microsoft anti-trust is small potatoes it's the anti-trust laws of the century prior to Microsoft. It's worth noting that telecoms were broken up in 1982 because prior to that break up there was 1 company that was the sole provider of telephone service throughout most of the USA as well as most telephonic equipment was produced by it's subsidary, additionally it owned Yellow Pages, Bell Canada one of the massive telecom companies in Canada among other things. The impeding loss of the suit led AT&T to settle with the American government to split off into 7 independent companies but retain control of some of their R&D and retained control of the Telephonic equipment manufacturer and long distance service.

Antitrust laws stuff has, at least from what I've been exposed to is pretty much always when successful helped make things better for everyone but the companies who had a monopoly. There's a reason that the US government tried to dissolve Zaibatsu structures as much as the keiretsu are pretty much just as bad and have effectively reintegrated, but that's honestly not the most surprising as the thing about antitrust and competition laws is if you aren't serious about dealing with monopolies or collusion of the groups they will do it again. In a recent WAN Show Linus and Luke talked a bit about the Canadian bread price fixing.

And yet, all those baby bell companies re-merged back into AT&T except for the one part that became Verizon (Bell Atlantic), so instead of 7 companies, there's really only 2. 

 

But before we get too far ahead in the story, let's also point out that some parts of the US and Canada were NEVER part of AT&T. GTE (Verizon), and interests in BCTel and QuebecTel. When GTE and Bell Atlantic merged, THAT became Verizon.

 

So really if you do the math, the US is back to the AT&T monopoly and Verizon. The status quo BEFORE the break up, only now Verizon is larger than it was as GTE then. You might say that Duopoly is weakened with mobile phones, but you have to be fooling yourself to say a mobile phone is a suitable replacement for a landline phone and landline internet. You may get away with replacing the landline phone, but if you rely entirely on a phone for internet, you're going to be in for a bad time when you lose, break, or have to upgrade that phone.

 

[linkboy]

This, along with a switch to USB-C, has me considering an iPhone for the first time in a long, long time (my last iPhone was a 4S).

[saltycaramel]

In this thread:

- one guy having second thoughts about the demise of battery-destroying Adobe Flash

- 2-3 guys randomly hating on “webkit” (it’s not like webkit literally conquered the world in its various forms and derivatives) or the need to develop for webkit

- random people giving TED talks about infosec/cybersec practices and what Apple should focus on when designing the security of one of the most successful, trusted (to the point of allowing a billion-dollars app economy to emerge and thrive) and secure platforms in the world, because they obviously know better

- general obliviousness about the idea that one’s grandad could buy a smartphone without his resident house nerd setting it up for him with “uBlock origin” and stuff, not getting what the whole mobile computing revolution was about (I’m starting to think some nerds deep down resent their fall from grace compared to the pre-smartphones golden age when they were the local gatekeepers of security and setting up systems for friends and family; also they hate or reject the idea that regular people nowadays Get Stuff Done on those silly silly phones instead of a real PC, that’s why they constantly advocate for cheaper phones with weaker CPUs and discount the importance of building a security model aimed at making the smartphone really a platform for everyone, everywhere)

 

The out of touch old school nerd bubble is always a source of comedy gold

[saltycaramel]

Funny thread about how Apple could work around this law anyway:

 

https://twitter.com/nikogenn/status/1602994172214280199?s=46&t=mGNpmWrW65DCzUbwoUW4jg

 

[Mark Kaine]

12 hours ago, PocketNerd said:

It's in the Corporation's best interest to be as consumer un-friendly as possible to maximize profit.

 

doesn't really matter in this case, apple is very apparently profiting off of other people's hard work in a monopoly like environment,  which is *illegal* and for very good reasons.   that this is also anti-consumer is a secondary problem imo.

 

the elephant in the room here is still why corps like Microsoft,  Google, Apple... arent allowed to have this kind of hostile environment, yet on consoles its allowed... the equality principle should apply to everyone here, because the consequences are basically the same no matter the corp name.

 

 

 

 

[Sauron]

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

Ever receive text links? You know the ones that lead to malware or tricking you into something?

 

That's the problem that you're not thinking about.

This is not enough to enable sideloading and install a malicious app on android.

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

I forget which app it was, but there are apps that install by sending you a text message because they know people aren't tech-savvy. That text message link is a link shortener that loads the app store.

If it leads to the app store it's not sideloading...

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

And you have garbage apps that have like $10,000 IAP's

I mean again, what does sideloading have to do with this?

[darknessblade]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

This is not enough to enable sideloading and install a malicious app on android.

If it leads to the app store it's not sideloading...

I mean again, what does sideloading have to do with this?

 

That "10K IAP app" also existed on the appstore to some degree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich

 

So yeah it has 0.0% to do with sideloading.

-------

I am still baffled how many people do not see the benefit of this.

 

Its like they never had any proper CONSUMER PROTECTION. and are not used to companies being "forced" to do something in the wellbeing of their consumers.

 

[Lightwreather]

7 minutes ago, darknessblade said:

CONSUMER PROTECTION.

I'd say this is more about Consumer Choice rather than Consumer Protection. That this is Minor Semantics, I'm aware.