foregoneconclusion

A. Psystar lawsuit: verdict was that Apple's hardware cannot be considered a monopoly unto itself. Apple could limit installation of its operating systems to its own hardware and could not be forced to allow 3rd parties to install it on Mac clone systems they were selling to the general public. 

B. BlueMail lawsuit: dismissed by judge due to BlueMail's success on alternate platforms with the same app. That success (which BlueMail touted in their own marketing) was considered proof that Apple's control of the App Store did not rise to the level of an anti-trust issue. BlueMail was not dependent on the App Store. 

C. Epic lawsuit: verdict did not conclude that federal anti-trust laws had been violated.

Obviously, Congress can still pass legislation that regulates the App Store regardless of those rulings, but they can't honestly claim it's due to anti-trust issues. The anti-trust claims have failed over and over again in court per Apple's control of its hardware/OS/store. 

libertyandfree said:

Mac Studio seems like a product without a purpose now that the M2 Pro mini is out.  Maybe it was always a stopgap device because the MacPro with ASI was so far behind schedule. 

M1 Max Mac Studio has better graphics performance (more GPU cores), twice the memory bandwidth, and twice the video and ProRes encode engines versus the M2 Pro Mac Mini. M1 Max Studio can also drive a higher number of external displays. 

So despite all the hype about the M2 Pro Mac Mini, it still has some obvious shortcomings. And keep in mind that the M1 Ultra Mac Studio still bludgeons everything else that's currently available from Apple. 

spheric said: If Apple Music is only profitable by not charging the 30% that it demands of competing subscription services, then it is indeed probably not a viable business model. 

Apple's commission model for subscriptions is 30% in 1st year, 15% after that. But if users pay via the internet then Apple gets 0%. Spotify's own financial records show that 99% of their iOS subscriptions are in the 0% category. So Spotify's financial problems don't have anything to do with Apple's commission structure. Does Apple turn a profit on Apple Music? IMO, it seems more likely than less likely. The amount of revenue generated by Apple's services section is quite large overall ($78 billion in 2022) and the music part of it doesn't have as much 1st party investment for content as something like Apple TV+.  

rickwil61 said: Can you tell me what sex outside of marriage has accomplished?  

Only the entirety of the natural world around you. 

CiaranF said:

I fail to see why this is an issue for some. If you’re concerned about other AppStores and side loading apps, then the simple solution is to carry on doing what you’re doing with your phone and don’t download from anywhere else expect the  AppStore. It’s really simple. If someone else’s security or device gets compromised then that’s their problem and not yours. Nothing for you to be concerned about. And just to confirm, I’m not in favour of alt app stores or sideloading either. 

It's easy to understand the issue: the EU doesn't require app developers to provide a version of their app in the App Store. That means that some apps previously available through the App Store could become exclusively available on 3rd party stores. So users could be faced with a choice of downloading from 3rd party app stores or simply not using the app anymore. 

Short term you'll see some lower prices by 3rd party stores as a PR gimmick linked to the EU changes. Long term you're going to see prices the same or higher than the App Store. One of the biggest myths out there is that corporations want to pass savings on to consumers. In reality, they want to put the savings in their own pockets. 

And the other reality is that mobile apps were already the lowest priced apps in computing. There's not much to lower unless you are intentionally taking a loss. 

arthurba said:

My (limited) understanding of this is that they were using the old 'version 1' Twitter API which Twitter had told people not to use for quite some time. Now I believe these app developers did complain that the 'version 2' api was a step backwards in their view, but twitters policy of using api2 did jot change. On top of that, these apps didn't display ads (the thing that pays for Twitter).  All of this was pre-Elon. 

Cutting access abruptly and p*s*ng off customers who use those apps and app developers should be condemned.  

But the writing was on the wall for quite some time. 

According to this November 2021 article from Verge, Tweetbot was already using API v2. 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/15/22779149/twitter-api-version-2-official-decentralized

FYI: Merrick Garland is a centrist/moderate and so is Amy Klobucher who was the Senator spearheading the tech regulation legislation that never gained enough traction in 2021 and 2022.

LOL...it's always been understood that the SE was under the control of the owners. This isn't some anticompetitive strategy dreamed up by Apple. Per the quote/link below, HCE is considered the more open system so it's a better fit for what the EU claims it's after with the DMA anyway. 

"Prior to HCE, the standard for NFC contactless payments was via the secure element (SE). Traditionally, this gave owners of SE (carriers, device manufacturers, etc.) the power to control access.

Support for HCE has changed this, opening possibilities not just for mobile payments, but also other applications including loyalty programs, transit passes, card access, and other custom systems. Cherian Abraham of Drop Labs points out that breaking the dependency on the SE is advantageous for a few reasons, including:

• more open system that reduces reliance on issuers, carriers and TSMs
• no need for complex SE cards provisioning
• ability to use multiple NFC wallets on the same device without worrying about compartmentalizing or SE storage size"

https://medium.com/@ClrMobile/what-is-hce-c8d8e90ecd9d

22july2013 said: But for some reason environmentalists aren't keen on the idea of carbon sinks. They want us to reduce carbon emissions even though adding more sinks has the same end result. Apple's own words cite "carbon emission reduction" but they ignore "carbon sink increases." Why? Because people are stupid.

FYI: global emissions are still rising every year. Sustainable timber/forestry isn't nearly enough by itself.