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| ▲ | alt227 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | But you can install other OSes such as Graphene on Android phones, I dont think you can do that on iPhones can you? https://grapheneos.org/ | | |
| ▲ | NekkoDroid a day ago | parent [-] | | On a lot of Android devices you can't install ANY other custom OS because of locked down bootloaders. If you want GrapheneOS specifically that list is even narrower due to 1. official support 2. hardware security features just missing from the devices. | | |
| ▲ | alt227 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Can you install any other OS on any iPhone at all? As far as I am aware the best Android phone for installing non stock OSes on is the Google Pixel itself, Googles own 1st party phone. | | |
| ▲ | floydnoel 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | I have seen Android booted on an iPhone. It was a long time ago, and I don’t think anybody continued working on it because... why do it when you could already buy an Android device? Also, I'm curious... can you really install an OS besides Android on a Pixel, etc? AFAIK it's just different distros of Android, it's not like you could install BSD or something, right? |
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| ▲ | handedness a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sure, but on many, you can, which supports their point. Painting Apple and Android devices with the same brush in this particular regard doesn't make a lot of sense. |
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| ▲ | joemi a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's not how monopolies work, though. | | |
| ▲ | lxgr a day ago | parent [-] | | It's absolutely how they work. If there's only a single grocery store in town (and for whatever reason others can't be opened), is that somehow not a monopoly even though there are several pharmacies and hardware stores? | | |
| ▲ | mingus88 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | You can buy whatever phone you want. Many of them can run multiple OSes if that’s what you want. There is not a single mobile platform in town. When Ford sells me an F150 I don’t cry about them having a monopoly on their Sync platform. That’s not now monopolies work | | |
| ▲ | lxgr 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you don’t like the town with only one grocery store, you can move to any other place you want. And what about the other mobile platform (singular)? That one’s also making it harder and harder to sideload apps. |
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| ▲ | joemi a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's not a good analogy for the situation. A better grocery-based analogy would be if there's only a single Bob's Grocery in town (and for whatever reason more Bob's Groceries can't be opened) but there is a Sally's Groceries in town. Then Bob's Groceries isn't a monopoly. The only thing Bob's Groceries is a monopoly of is Bob's Groceries, which is a useless tautological argument. Apple has neither a monopoly on phones nor on app marketplaces. | | |
| ▲ | lxgr 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | They don't have a monopoly on phones. They do have (something like) a monopoly on app distribution on the iOS platform. Maybe monopoly is not the right legal category, and maybe what they are doing is perfectly legal and always will be, but I don't think the fundamental point can be argued away with analogies like these. | | |
| ▲ | floydnoel 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | Bob's Grocery likewise has a "monopoly" on distribution of products in their store. They have no control over Sally's Groceries. Still not any kind of monopoly |
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| ▲ | mingus88 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Does Ford have a monopoly position on the F150 because I can’t run Linux on it? |
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| ▲ | snapcaster a day ago | parent [-] | | How do you defend a company with 30% marketshare being a monopoly but the other company with 70% market share isn't? I can see the duopoly argument, but no idea how apple could be a monopoly by itself | | |
| ▲ | protimewaster a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm not defending anybody. I'm just saying, if I live in a market where one company has 99% of the market, somebody coming in and saying "There's not a monopoly. They only have 30% of the global market! " isn't going to make me feel any better, because I don't live everywhere in the world. I live where I live, and that company has 99% of the market there. I just don't think the 30% of the global market number is relevant to anything in terms of arguing if somebody has a monopoly. Are there even any countries who use a definition of "monopoly" that uses global marketshare to determine if there's a monopoly? Surely those definitions all look at marketshare within some specific region? | | |
| ▲ | floydnoel a day ago | parent [-] | | that argument doesn't relate to this discussion at all, though. you aren't limited to only buying Apple devices in your neighborhood, are you? | | |
| ▲ | protimewaster a day ago | parent [-] | | There are entire countries where one company has 93%+ marketshare. Yes, maybe people can go to another country where the marketshare is different, but do we all seriously think that the global marketshare not resembling a monopoly definitely means that there's no one market where a monopoly exists? I imagine trying to effectively use (or market) a competing product in a region with 93%+ marketshare is a painful experience, regardless of whether the global marketshare is more balanced. Using global marketshare hides details like that. Apple could have 100% of the market in China and India, and Android could have 100% of the marketshare in the rest of the world. This would put, worldwide, Apple at about 35% and Android at about 65%. I would argue there are clearly monopolies in that case, though, even if the worldwide numbers are 65 and 35. | | |
| ▲ | floydnoel a day ago | parent [-] | | ok, so in which countries does iOS have 93%+ or 100% marketshare (as you claimed)? |
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| ▲ | bigyabai a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Being a monopoly isn't illegal. So many discussions gloss over this fact, and people get at each other's throat over hypothetical abuses and ad-hominem scenarios. Abusing a monopoly is illegal. Alphabet and Apple are both unquestionably monopoly businesses, and make incredible year-over-year revenue through market-damaging services like AdSense and the App Store. If they are allowed to continue, then other Fortune 500 businesses will copy their decisions, thereby destroying genuine market value that they provide in exchange for safer, more exploitative revenue streams. In the case of AdSense and Apple's App Store both, I think that any fair FTC investigation would conclude they are shakedown services that harm the greater economy. | | |
| ▲ | snapcaster a day ago | parent [-] | | When nothing is stopping you from using an alternative i just don't see it | | |
| ▲ | bigyabai a day ago | parent [-] | | You could have said the same thing about Windows during it's antitrust case. Fat lot of good that logic would do Microsoft when they were deliberately gimping competitors. | | |
| ▲ | mithr a day ago | parent | next [-] | | You couldn't have, though. Market share was a part of that Microsoft decision. At the time, they had 90-95% of the global market share — there were very few competitors. Apple has a higher though still in the 50s percentage-wise market share in the US, but a 20-30% share globally. Alternatives are much more viable in Apple's case, and often cheaper. You have to want an Apple device to get one, and it's very easy to get an Android instead and not lose out on any important software or functional ability. In addition, I think Apple has so far somewhat successfully argued that they have reasons for restricting their ecosystem that aren't just a thinly veiled "because we want to crush competition". They argue that their devices are safer to use, and that allowing arbitrary software full access to the system would compromise that. Similarly, they limit third-party software from tracking you. They certainly aren't saints, and I disagree with a many of their choices (their app store cut could've decreased long ago, for one, and they're now adding ads into their own services) but they often seem like the only large corporation of their kind that even tries to have a set of beliefs and care about their users, and I think intent should matter. I personally like that there's one popular ecosystem that has a particular perspective, and another competing popular ecosystem that has a totally different perspective. If you think all of the above is bullshit and Apple sucks, you're free to use Android and install exactly what you want on your phone. I've never really understood why folks are so adamant that this alternative should not be allowed to exist. | | |
| ▲ | bigyabai a day ago | parent [-] | | > I've never really understood why folks are so adamant that this alternative should not be allowed to exist. Apple is responsible for market damages inflicted onto software distribution by picking-and-choosing who gets to ship, and where their money goes. It is reflected in Apple's astronomical service margins, which unfairly reward them with even higher ROI than the iPhone hardware itself (!!!), somehow. It is seen in Apple's back-room negotiations with Amazon, Netflix, Google, Epic and X, where they use their de-facto power to force unfavorable distribution terms and draw up protection fees. It's present in their entitlement system, which gives Apple the option to artificially hamstring competing services that want to integrate with iOS. It's inherent to Apple's developer program, which has been used to revoke software signing certificates when Apple simply disagrees with a competitor. Do we really think they deserve that money and power? It's not encouraging them to make smart choices. In a fair market, I'd say that Apple can offer their services as an option. A factory-new iPhone could use all of Apple's offered services with a hardware-attested eFuse that says the device was never jailbroken. If a user wants to do foolish things like play Fallout: New Vegas with Proton, give Dropbox system-level integration a-la iCloud, use an updated RCS client instead of iMessage, install Fortnite or use a third-party app store, then Apple can give them that choice without endangering other people. It isn't impossible, they already do this with macOS, running the same XNU kernel, and with an architecturally indistinct ARM chip. That would alleviate the market damages that Apple is responsible for, and create a positive pressure on iOS development to improve software-wise. Right now, Apple is being rewarded for extorting their competitors, pettily attacking consumers, blocking software features, stuffing ads[0] into first-party apps, and visually degrading iOS. They are clearly being protected from software alternatives that offer a less-invasive alternative to Apple's disgraceful OEM packins. Which is a shame, since Apple was historically not opposed to taking advantage of free software and making high-quality packin software that legitimately did compete against alternatives, like QuickTime and iTunes. [0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/how-to-ditch-unsolicited-f1-ads-n... | | |
| ▲ | mithr 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | > In a fair market, I'd say that Apple can offer their services as an option But… they do offer their services as an option. One option is to use their devices and services, and another is to use a different, equally popular company’s devices and services. Why should they be forced to make hardware that can be used in ways they don’t think it should be? I agree that Apple could change or build many of the things you’ve described. You’d like them better if they did. Maybe I would too. I still don’t understand why they should be required to. It feels odd to say that the market would only be fair if they were forced to be more similar to their main competitor in one of the core ways in which they’re different. | | |
| ▲ | bigyabai 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I still don’t understand why they should be required to. It harms the market. There are good indie devs and companies being unfairly punished for trying to ship good software on iOS. Apple's double-standards are the #1, red-alert issue. The secondary issue, and one that upset me, is that it encourages Apple to make worse products. If Apple has an adjustable taxation knob that users have no control over, they can extort developers in exchange for making the platform worse. Apple knows that alternative App Stores and billing methods will destroy this status quo, which is why they invest millions lobbying against Europe's common-sense DSA/DMA laws. If the United States adopted a similar regulation, then Apple's financials would crater, jeopardizing their company's future simply by making iOS behave like a normal Mac or PC. Apple should not be gambling their future on an exploitative status-quo, they should be reinvesting in capabilities, security and making products that people want to buy. Just like Google and their AdSense monopoly, I think Apple's terrible choices are informed by a captive revenue stream that they abuse to boost their quarterly reports. |
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| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | jasonlotito a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > How do you defend a company with 30% marketshare being a monopoly but the other company with 70% market share isn't? One allows you to install different browsers, the other does not. Being a monopoly isn't illegal (in the US). It's what they do that matters. Now, that doesn't mean Apple is a monopoly with iOS, because the Sherman act doens't dictate it only looks at US only markets. It look at what makes sense in the context. Of course, a court could decide that regardless of what the numbers are internationall, what matters in this case is just the US market. Trying to predict that is useless at the moment though because the US courts are all over the place. |
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