I’ve been a fanatical Apple fanboi for over 40 years. I bought my first Apple II in 1980, and I switched to the Mac in 1984, when they first came out. I was an official Apple developer in the 1990s — I persevered throughout that long period when everyone was predicting that the company would eventually fade away, eaten up by the evil Microsoft. I stuck it out through the 6502 era, the 68000 series era, the Intel era, and now the Apple Silicon era. My lab is full of Macs. I’ve got a Mac desktop and a Mac Powerbook and an iPhone. You may not question my devotion.
And then…
The Justice Department sued tech giant Apple on Thursday, kicking off a potentially historic antitrust battle. The lawsuit alleges that Apple’s ecosystem of products are designed to limit competition and put consumers at a disadvantage. “Each step in Apple’s course of conduct built and reinforced the moat around its smartphone monopoly,” the authors write. Later in the filing they add that “this case is about freeing smartphone markets from Apple’s anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct and restoring competition to lower smartphone prices for consumers, reducing fees for developers, and preserving innovation for the future.”
Good! It’s about time! Apple is a big fat bloated tax-evading monster that needs to be smacked down and taught some humility. Every big company needs to be regulated, and I don’t exclude the ones that make great products that I love.
I’m waiting to hear how a 20% market share is a monopoly, especially when Samsung has a 19% share.
@1 The point is (as I understand it) not a monopoly on smartphones in general but Apple unfairly limiting access to their devices for other companies developing software and hardware for them.
The monopoly is within their app store
True story of Apple:
Apple computers, phones, tablets?
You’ve been assimilated by the BORG.
No escape now.
#4 exaggerates a lot, but it’s true: you go Apple, and they lock you into the whole dang ecosystem.
You know, when I was a kid, playing with my Atari ST, Apple was the Computer I thought I would buy when I earn enough money in the future.
By the time I finally got a decent income, I was mostly using Linux and the Apple systems seemed rather limited in comparison. Went with Android mostly because Apple was seriously lacking a budget option and I did not think I needed a quality phone back then.
Don’t know if it’s on the table but they should do something about that proprietary HEIC monstrosity that causes compatibility nightmares. People probably don’t know beforehand to change the default and saving to Files to convert is an unnecessary PITA.
I do like that the App Store is kinda strict though. Android seems more wild west or Hobbesian nightmare. Leviathan can be your benefactor contra every ancap libertarian ever.
I started designing with microprocessors in 1976. First the General Instruments CP1600, then the TI 9900. I needed a minicomputer, but couldn’t afford it. I sneered at Apple’s toy processor. I used the 6502 for a disk controller. My greatest contempt however, was for all of Wozniak’s lock-in design “features”.
Later I switched to the Z80 and CP/M because I could build exactly what I needed. Apple products were never considered, not for a microsecond. 1984-ish I was forced to Intel and Microslime because Zilog and Digital Research dropped the ball. Sold a lot of infrared spectrometers with Z80’s and X86’s. We could make what was required, not what Uncle Steve told us we needed.
Fun to learn that part of your history, PZ! I well remember the “Apple is doomed” era; I was an editor at MacAddict and MacWEEK through that.
There’s an online talk with one of the designers of the Knowledge Navigator project coming up; can share a link if that tickles your nostalgia.
“I’m waiting to hear how a 20% market share is a monopoly.”
Try to actually understanding what the accusation is first before you decide to write stupid stuff. It’s even in the part PZ fucking quoted you imbecile. Here:
The accusation is true and a very common Apple practice.
I am not surprised about the unethical conduct by a big corporation. I am surprised that the Justice Department summoned the courage to go after Apple.
I had a Mac for a couple of years in the early ’90s; and I really liked the user interface, so I understand why lots of folks would stick with it; but I quit having anything to do with Apple because of the well-known vendor lock-in anti-pattern.
AstroLad @9: ah, the TMS9900. 8-)
Back in my wires-and-pliers days, I was working at a hospital in Pittsburg where I designed and built an EKG with a TMS9900 in it. I rewrote about half of TIBUG (I still have the listing to prove it), and I wrote a disassembler for it in Fortran IV that ran on a PDP-11/60 that we had. That was when I decided I wanted to be a programmer. 8-)
By far the largest segment of iPhone users are also Windows PC users, so the “ecosystem” isn’t that locked in. The big rub has been the App Store. Apple takes a pretty hefty cut, nominally to make sure the apps you install on your devices are safe-ish. They could “unlock” the phone to let you buy apps from anywhere but then you have to be responsible for the app that steals your money. Don’t call Apple. But people will call Apple when something bad happens.
robro @14:
That reminds me of a time when I was serving on the ISO standards committee for the C programming language, and it was apparent that we would need a 64-bit integer type. We eventually decided on a new
long longtype rather than just makinglongbe at least 64 bits. The compiler vendors were adamant that they didn’t want the help desk calls when all of the legacy code that assumed (incorrectly) thatlongwas exactly 32 bits started failing.Hemidactylus @8
There is nothing Apple proprietary about HEIC, it’s an ISO/MPEG standard that existed long before Apple used it.
https://www.iso.org/standard/83650.html
Apple just happen to have be one of the first adopters of it.
#10: I subscribed to MacWeek for many years, and was regular reader of MacAddict. I’m happy to have contributed to your employment!
#13: I was a wire-and-pliers guy myself for many years — I made so many RS-232 cables, and even took a soldering iron to an Apple motherboard because I was so peeved that they intentionally disabled interrupts. I did some work on a PDP-8 running RSX, too, which was weird.
#8 – HEIC is actually a standard defined by the MPEG LA. It’s part of H.265, and is licensed by Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Mozilla, as well as Apple.
Most of my experience with them was learning to program on Apple IIs in school, insisting my parents buy me a IIGS instead of something PC compatible when they finally decided to buy me a computer, then getting utterly pissed when Apple decided to end the II line entirely and go full bore Mac – complete with jumping up the prices to insane levels. Won’t even buy an iPhone today, despite a) it being the only thing Apple, outside of the iTunes app for PC, that lets you listen to the songs you bought way back when, and b) 100% because they also decide to make access the freaking library of bleep you already own a subscription. WTF? Even Kindle doesn’t try to pull that on my book library (though they do pull something worse – delete a buck from their published list, keep it in your library, but then basically tell you, “Oh, wait, you didn’t keep a copy of that on our utterly broken Kindles, where it will randomly unhide masses of books, and cram them into your “home list” for no sane reason? Well, unfortunately its not available for redownload or transfer!”
But… at least I don’t have to pay them to download anything I can still get, “just because” they want to make more money from a subscription, like freaking Apple.
Such a massive freaking pain…
I’ve been a loyal Apple user since 1992, and am happy to see them getting held to account.
I’m married to a computer PHD who vowed long ago to never buy Apple products. He much prefers to be able to work in Linux, to write his own programs and to download any app that he chooses and deems safe.
I’m used to using PC computers and android phones. I have a Dell laptop, a Surface tablet, a Kindle and the android phone.
They all play well together and work for me. Since I have my own cybersecurity expert, he has lots of security on all of our devices.
The one and only time that I tried to use an Apple computer was when I was giving a presentation at a teachers’ conference. My presentation wouldn’t load onto the Apple computer. Luckily, I had both my personal laptop and my personal IT guy with me, so he connected my laptop to the projector at the facility and the crisis was averted.
Recently, his office issued him an Apple laptop. We use it when we stay in a hotel to access our Netflix account to watch while decadently snacking in bed. It does have a beautiful picture. He’s not worried about that laptop being corrupted in a public place, since it will never be connected to our system at home.
LOL. Apple products are good for something!
#11: it’s good to see that this place still has some of the spice that it used to have!
Do explain how opening up the App Store will lower smartphone prices, especially when 2/3 of smartphones are Android. (I’m genuinely curious, and posting this from an iPhone.)
I’m all for accountability, but I don’t see how the Apple ecosystem limits consumers. I’ve had my FitBits paired smoothly to my iPhone since day 1 (side note, I won’t be buying a Google-driven Fitbit), rely heavily on Microsoft OneDrive for iPhone to sync my photos, use MS Word and Excel as well as anything can be used on a 6″ screen, I have my Bose headphones paired to the iPhone, I’ve connected my iPhone through iTunes for Windows to my work PC, etc.
Do I lose out on some things? I will admit it would be handy if my FitBit would unlock my Mac the way an Apple Watch will, and it would be nice if Microsoft would implement “handoff” for editing documents, etc. But I don’t see anything there that exceeds normal “our stuff works smoother with our stuff” or limits my choices.
The one exception is the app store–and that is one of the attractions of the platform, especially as the person who does IT support for both my immediate and extended family. (I’m even coming to appreciate the increased security of MacOS, even if it has meant me needing to learn how to turn it off for some things I really wanted to do–my computing history goes back to the Apple ][+ days, I like to poke around). Even the possibility of a third-party store will greatly increase the difficulty in figuring out if Great Uncle Mort approved some malware or just forgot that you can’t interchange “l” and “1” in passwords.
If there’s meat to the accusations, then Apple will lose the cases and pay the fines and modify behavior (as little as possible, based on past actions); if not, then they will successfully defend and carry on.
Huh?
Apple’s market share in terms of units shipped in the US was over 60% at the end of last year. Even globally it’s around 30% these days, which I’m sure the DOJ couldn’t care less about.
Would you rather they wait until it hits 80% or 90% market share before everyone wakes up to find they have a near total monopoly on everything from phone hardware to app sales?
Excerpts from the lawsuit:
Then it talks about how Apple was failing until they the jackpot with ipod which opened the door for their future recipe for success:
This is for suck.. I mean Apple fanboys:
But isn’t it also common practice everywhere else, and in many other industries? Isn’t this the wet dream of every CEO on the planet?
If were about to agree that all companies have to make their products compatible with everyone else’s, I’m totally for it. I just don’t think that’s what’s really happening here. This sounds more like Apply just forgot to bribe the right politicians.
@#25, lotharloo:
Ah, the usual blatant dishonesty. I just went to the Apple online store and the Samsung online store to check. You can get a stripped-down current-gen iPhone (at present that’s the 15 Pro), unlocked (i.e. “you pay full price, no discounts from your carrier”), for $999, but to get a stripped-down current-gen Samsung Galaxy (the S24 Ultra) you pay $1299.99. (It comes with 256 GB of storage where the fully-stripped-down iPhone only comes with 128… but if you bump the iPhone up to parity it only costs $1099.) So the iPhone is actually cheaper than the most directly-comparable competitor. (And if you max out the iPhone — a 15 Pro Max with 1 TB of storage — it still costs less than a maxed-out Galaxy S24: the absolute maxed-out iPhone is $1599, the maxed-out Galaxy is $1659.99 — but Samsung actually sells an even more expensive model; I was using the Galaxy line because it’s their standard one. A maxed-out Z Fold5 is a whopping $2159.99. Is there any word of a government suit against Samsung?)
“But Samsung sells other Android phones as well! You can get cheaper ones than that!” So does Apple. Not only do they have the older iPhone models still in production at lower prices (which come with the same length of warrantee and so forth as the 15 Pro) but they have an explicitly budget line which was never supposed to be anything but cheap — admittedly not as cheap as the absolutely bottom-of-the-barrel, CPU-can-barely-handle-web-browsing, body-and-screen-made-of-flimsy-scratchy-plastic stuff the Android market shades down to at the bottom, but the SE 3 starts at $429 for a completely-unlocked version, and that’s assuming you aren’t interested in a refurb or a new-in-box-but-discontinued model instead.
This tactic of comparing Apple’s latest, most expensive product to pricing of mid- to low-end competition isn’t even new. All through the 90s and 2000s, you would see complaints that “oh, the Mac [Model Name] costs $X, and I can get a PC [with no screen if the Mac came with one, pre-USB ports, no networking, a CPU which would have been considered mid-line 4 years ago, and no sound card] for $[fraction of X]!” Why don’t you guys just admit you really don’t care about the details, you just hate Apple for some psychological reason, and go get therapy for whatever your issue actually is, so the rest of us can stop having to deal with what amounts to clickbait from you?
(And then there’s the “wah wah Apple uses HEIC” complaint — echos of all the people complaining about how iTunes was using the “Apple proprietary” AAC filetype… which is actually defined by the MPEG Group, just like MP3, but is in the MPEG Group’s own estimation technologically superior.)
@#26, LykeX:
No, it’s that Google/Alphabet spent more, by a factor of at least 2, every year for the last decade, to say nothing of the hardware companies making the phones. (The spending is a matter of public record. Apple usually spends noticeably less on lobbying than the other big tech companies, although still a lot more than any reasonable person should really be comfortable with. Google/Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta/Facebook all outspend Apple on a regular basis by significant amounts.) This is a lot like the ebook sales antitrust suit from years ago, where Apple’s share of the market was a small fraction of Amazon’s, and Amazon’s behavior was noticeably worse (including blatant price-fixing), but the DoJ decided to go after Apple instead and never touched Amazon at all.
If the point were just open and compatible systems, then Google’s store would also have to go away to please the people criticizing Apple, because it’s a part of a proprietary closed API running on top of the OS like Apple’s API runs on top of a BSD-derived Unix, and if you want to use Google’s own apps on Android you have to install it. If you buy a brand new Android phone from most companies, it comes preinstalled; they won’t tell you “if you really want this phone to be open-source the way the pundits claim the iPhone is not, you will have to rebuild the OS from scratch, lose all the Google apps, including Google Play”. It’s lies and hypocrisy all the way down.
@vicar:
Blah blah blah, go fuck yourself. https://www.statista.com/statistics/728024/profit-margin-by-smartphone-model-worldwide/
Apple has the highest profit margins by far. Idiot
I used to have (back in the day) a box with both a 6502 and a Z80; it ran both CP/M and Apple DOS.
This around 1979. The Apple setting was much better for games, the CP/M for spreadsheet.
My geeky friends and I were enthused over the Lisa, but knew it was way unaffordable.
Then the lump (Macintosh) came out and one or two rich friends got one; one even got the laser printer.
As I said, rich.
The rest of us wanted speed and power, and let’s face it, the original one-button Macintosh was crapulent. Slow as fuck because of the graphical interface, slower for everything, and more expensive.
Less bang for the buck, basically.
So. I ended up getting a PC clone with MS-DOS in, um, 1981 for like half the price of a Mac but far faster at games and stuff and a full 640k RAM rather than 128k. Could even run a 256k RAMdisk, which was impressive at the time. With a Hercules monochrome graphics card, for which I wrote a screendump TSR the hard way — with a pirated version of ASM.
Anyway. Ever since, I’ve noticed people who care not about value for money (and can afford it) or are not very good at using PCs get Apple products, where the rest get more bang for the buck.
Never, ever, have I even considered getting an Apple product since then.
Why would I want to waste my money?
I mean, sure, if you wanted to be pretty sure that the (very) limited set of software you could get for it would run fairly well, Apple did that well. Because it was a walled garden, where you paid a premium for the same stuff, had less choice, and so forth. Bah.
Ah well.
@#28, lotharloo:
I can’t actually evaluate your source because they won’t show the data or permit downloads without an account, and I’m sure as hell not giving an explicitly statistics-collecting website all the demographic information they demand for a “free” account, but the bits which show up on the page without an account say that their list is from 2017, and quotes the iPhone 5 (which was from 2012) as the record-holder. Wow, so statistic! Very data! Such relevant!
@#29, John Morales:
Neither the Mac nor PC clones existed in 1981! (The Mac first became available in 1984, the Lisa didn’t even come out until 1983, and the first PC clone was in 1982 — and it noticeably sucked… but it was, indeed, cheap.) So you’re either a huge liar with psychological issues about Apple like most of the explicitly anti-Apple crowd, like I said earlier, or a time traveler. I know which one I’m betting on.
@#31, The Vicar:
The PC-heads’ standard complaint is that the Mac platform isn’t designed for professionals, like software developers. To which I say, so f*ckin’ what? I could always use a Mac right out of the box. I can get graphics—anything—done faster and better.
Well, it was a while ago. But certainly in the early 80s. Not like I checked exact dates.
The gist remains the same.
As for sucking, again: I had a PC, others had Macs.
Slow as fuck, they were, because the interface used most of the CPU’s grunt.
Less memory. Shitty monitor. One-button mouse. Less software.
Not modifiable with a new graphics card or whatever.
Nothing to do with professionalism, everything to do with value for money.
Yeah, right. “psychological issues about Apple” :)
heh.
@vicar:
It’s not so hard to find evidence that historically iphones have had the highest profit margins. Here is an article from 2018.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2018/09/27/the-1250-iphone-xs-max-costs-apple-450-to-make-nearly-a-200-profit-margin/amp/
A more recent one:
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/much-iphone-14-pro-max-133617428.html
How is the idea that no one, no inividual, no company is beyond justice, not as obvs as fuck?
@24 Tacitus. I stand corrected. I was looking at the worldwide market.
Yes, Apple need to pay much more tax, but this lawsuit by the DoJ is rubbish. He’re some takes: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/21/snell-us-vs-apple
@37:
Sorry but that take is bullshit. Read the lawsuit yourself. The blog post is vastly misleading.