Google and Apple attacked on app store 'monopoly'

I don&#x27;t care or know if it counts as a &quot;monopoly&quot; (I guess I can use Android...), but as a consumer and human being, I would love it if governments compelled big companies to act more in the public interest and less in their own.<p>In particular, I would love to be able to install 3rd party app stores and software w&#x2F;o having to resort to jailbreaks or weird certificate hacks.<p>To me, it seems obvious this would be a net win for society.<p>(I think you could make the argument that the iPhone is one of the most important creative mediums of our time; from that perspective, it&#x27;s outrageous that it is censored by an unacountable, prude (&amp; often Kafkaesqe) bureaucracy. Imagine if artists had to get each painting approved by the company that manufactured their oil paints? It&#x27;s absurd.)

I think governments should go after cartels rather than monopolies. Google and Apple combined have a &gt;99% market share for mobile OS&#x2F;app store market share. They also impose a synchronized 30% fee cut. There is a case to be made for an antitrust behavior from this cartel.

It&#x27;s hard to argue with the claim - if you have an iOS phone or tablet, for example, it is a monopoly, since it&#x27;s the only place you can buy a program for your computer.<p>The walled garden has real benefits in security and privacy, but seems to require centralized control, and comes at the expense of user freedom.<p>A solution to the monopoly pricing problem could be to treat app store controllers (currently A &amp; G) to the same type of control that credit card issuers are subject to, and place a limit on the rates they can charge.<p>A solution to the security vs freedom question could be to require that users have the option to opt out of app store controls for installing programs.

This will be round 2 in the fight for formalizing the role of OS developers versus App developers. Round 1 was the MS antitrust case, the outcome of which was clearly too weak to survive in the long run.<p>The definition of general-purpose Operating Systems should be formalized, and there should be a clear separation of roles: if you make an OS you cannot make apps and services, end of story. Then force Apple, Google, and Microsoft, to spin off their OS divisions or their apps&amp;services divisions. That would immediately create a level playing-field for everyone.<p>Is this difficult? Yes. Is it necessary? Also yes.

&gt; She also accused Apple of preventing Tile from using the technology behind Apple&#x27;s Find My function, giving AirTags an unfair advantage.<p>I am not a person who uses Apple products so someone please clarify for me. Does Apple grant access to this to other people? Can I create a GPS-enabled product and use Apple&#x27;s SDK to implement &quot;Find My...?&quot;

I find it scary that not a single person in this thread is against the idea of the government using its force against tech. Everyone’s just nodding in unison.

A simple solution to the problem - force Google&#x2F;Apple to implement API&#x27;s to allow the loading&#x2F;code signing verification of applications on their respective platforms.<p>On the PC we have GOG&#x2F;Steam&#x2F;EA&#x2F;Windows Store etc ... why can&#x27;t mobile device be the same ???.

What happens when an app store distributed via apple store contains apps that have malware? Will apple be able to remove them? The entire news will be of apple iphone has malware and such.<p>I would like easy sideloading of different ipa stores. So that we can have modded premium apps. Youtube with adblocker and sponsorblock and so many things

The fact that iOS won&#x27;t let any other browser run on the platform is really the &quot;it&#x27;s not in our interest to allow iMessage on any other platform&quot; keystone of this monopoly.<p>Maybe maybe users could have an ok experience on the web, online, that might make the app-store monopoly not be so insufferable. But Apple also can restrict &amp; deny any online &amp; web experiences they don&#x27;t like, since they prevent any browser &amp;c competition on their devices.<p>&gt; This is only true because Apple prevents other vendors from bringing the modern, secure engines they ship to <i>every other OS</i> to iOS.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;slightlylate&#x2F;status&#x2F;1385669199842844672" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobile.twitter.com&#x2F;slightlylate&#x2F;status&#x2F;1385669199842...</a><p>Apple isn&#x27;t just in a monopoly, they&#x27;re radically restraining the entire web to keep their monopoly, to make sure their monopoly is an important one, that there&#x27;s no threat from standards-based online technologies.

i think it&#x27;s not productive to call it a literal&#x2F;actual&#x2F;effective monopoly, since it&#x27;s designed to be monopoly. The problem is not so much that it&#x27;s a monopoly but that it advertises itself to developers and to users as being an open more or less market, which it isn&#x27;t since it&#x27;s by design rigged and censored. There&#x27;s a legal gap here probably because such situations are unprecedented (where a company builds a market completely controlled by itself). Do sellers and buyers have fundamental rights in a free market economy?

to the people that have experience designing Operating Systems - how difficult is it to have proper application sandboxing ? If everything is user level sandboxed. app can only access it&#x27;s data. then apple | google wouldn&#x27;t need to charge 30% to vet apps. if data is to be shared - it has to be explicit.

We need an Ethereum App Store to handle vouching for apps. Let apps pay a bond and ever reducing insurance to the people who vouch for them, based on auditing and perceived risk by the market<p>Apple doesn’t dare charge a fee to WeChat, we need something as big for the open community

Apple is the best at getting consumers to buy software. US govt cracking down on that is shooting themselves in the foot. Google Play is mostly free ad-supported apps with a higher incentive to resell data.

Can we get an updated title mods?

I feel like the entire world has forgotten what a monopoly is. Apparently both Apple and Google are monopolies despite being competitors of one another. Programmers clearly talk about developing apps for one platform or another and sometimes give up on developing for one because the approval process was annoying or arbitrary. Consumers have a choice in the phones they buy and whether to even use a phone app for that service to begin with. Maybe this isn&#x27;t a healthy ecosystem, but it seems we&#x27;ve completely lost the thread on what a monopoly is.

I really like the Apple app store a lot. I like it because I trust it more than alternatives (google play). I like it because it feels more secure. I like the unified purchase interface. I don&#x27;t think you can say with a straight face that the Google experience is better than the Apple experience for your parents. I moved my parents to Apple devices because it&#x27;s safer.<p>I especially like it because apple is using their &quot;monopoly&quot; position to create anti-business, but pro consumer policy that can&#x27;t seem to get implemented otherwise. The government should be legislating privacy, but is incapable or unwilling. Apple is doing better than the government.<p>Calling it a monopoly is a dubious claim, because it&#x27;s not clear apple is enacting anti-competitive practices in an unfair anti-consumer way. If anything they seem to be enacting pro-consumer policies via monopolistic power.<p>That being said, Apple is doing one thing that should be unacceptable. Apple makes apps that compete with things sold in the store it controls. That is the sole problem with the app store in my opinion. The closed-ness of it is vastly more beneficial than it is harmful, and there are clear competitive alternatives to buying an Apple device if you don&#x27;t like it.<p>Even that being bad is questionable. Kirkland Signature? Half life on steam? Amazon basics? There is clearly precedent. I doubt you feel the same way about each of those implementations of similar behavior.

Do yourselves a favor, and read Ayn Rand. Monopolies are created by governments, and are impossible in laissez-faire. Apple has created the App store when MS was seen as a &quot;monopoly&quot; that no one could move. Innovations beats anyone who dominates the market. Google did the same to a Alta Vista and Lycos, just by being better.

She also must think that Walmart cash registers are literally a monopoly.

I say, “Amy klobuchar is literally a dumbass.”

Can Apple be considered a monopoly with 23% [0] of the mobile market share?<p>0: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.idc.com&#x2F;promo&#x2F;smartphone-market-share&#x2F;vendor" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.idc.com&#x2F;promo&#x2F;smartphone-market-share&#x2F;vendor</a>

Yes, it is a monopoly. You can see the effects in software that doesn&#x27;t even run on Apple devices. The most recent example is Discord being forced to change their entire platform and software on non-apple OSes just to be allowed to have their software run on Apple&#x27;s monopoly walled garden.

&gt; She also accused Apple of preventing Tile from using the technology behind Apple&#x27;s Find My function, giving AirTags an unfair advantage.<p>&gt; Apple said the product was different. &quot;We didn&#x27;t copy Tile&#x27;s product... It&#x27;s extremely different to anything else on the market,&quot; said Apple&#x27;s Chief Compliance Officer, Kyle Andeer.<p>lol! yeah right, Kyle.