ericthehalfbee

carnegie said:

This decision to deny cert on Epic's petition in particular is pretty important. It's going to make it harder for anyone - to include the DOJ - to establish that Apple has monopoly power in certain relevant markets and thus to establish that Apple has violated anti-trust laws.

One of the things the Ninth Circuit did in its opinion in this case is outline the circumstances under which a relevant antitrust market can be limited to a single brand. Under the guidelines the Ninth Circuit established it will be difficult to show that iOS distribution, for example, is a relevant antitrust market. The Supreme Court just decided not to review those guidelines and perhaps overrule or alter them. The Supreme Court didn't actually affirm them, so it's still plausible that it will in the future effectively overrule them. But for now it's a positive development when it comes to the likelihood that those guidelines, or something close, will live on.

What the Ninth Circuit said on this front is only legally binding in that circuit, but courts in other circuits may find it persuasive if they need to consider such matters themselves. At any rate, I think this cert denial makes certain kinds of antitrust actions the DOJ may bring in the future more difficult and may incline it to file such actions in a different circuit.

designr said:

tht said:

designr said:

According to another article these are the things they've been looking into:

1. How the Apple Watch works better with iPhone than other smart watches do.
2. How Apple locks competitors out of iMessage.
3. How Apple blocks other financial firms from offering tap-to-pay services similar to Apple Pay on the iPhone.
4. Whether Apple favors its own apps and services over those provided by third-party developers.
5. How Apple has blocked cloud gaming apps from the App Store.
6. How Apple restricts the iPhone's location services from devices that compete with AirTag.
7. How App Tracking Transparency impacted the collection of advertising data.
8. In-app purchase fees collected by Apple.

(Numbered only so I can address them specifically here.)

1. Is probably just because Apple has great engineers.
2. Totally Apple's prerogative.
3. Might be a bit sketchy of Apple—and a legitimate reason for consumer/owner/user complaints.
4. Not sure exactly what number 4 means.
5. Would be solved by allowing users to load apps from alternative app stores.
6. Might be sketchy of Apple too.
7. Not sure about this one.
8. Would be solved by allowing users to load apps from alternative app stores.

All and all, of the various claims, complaints, and concerns leveled against Apple I would say that not allowing users to load apps from sources other than the Apple App Store perhaps carries the most legitimate weight. This is a bone that Apple can—and should—throw the regulators and anti-trust litigators before it's too late. What's more, Apple should seriously leave even more heavily into enabling a gold-standard platform for web apps (i.e., Progressive Web Apps). Surely they can't be making so much money from the App Store to risk bringing the rest of their profit and revenue structure come tumbling down. Just build the best damn phone (or tablet or computer) for running almost any kind of app (i.e., native, web, etc.) and loaded from anywhere. Do this and much of this brouhaha ends overnight.

P.S. Apple just pulled another bone-head move of rejecting the 37 Signals Hey Calendar app: https://x.com/dhh/status/1743341929675493806 (here's a summary: https://world.hey.com/dhh/apple-rejects-the-hey-calendar-from-their-app-store-4316dc03)
P.P.S. Whether anyone here wants to admit it or not, Apple has become like the Microsoft we hated in the past (and IBM before them). Perhaps this is an inevitable outcome of success and size and dominance. But I think we all expected—perhaps quite naively—better from Apple.

Apple owns their platform: 1st party devices only, the OS and platform only goes on their devices, and as such, every item on the list you have is up to them and them only.

Interesting perspective. The implication is that Apple "owns" the devices that I have purchased.

Bottom line is that I should be allowed to install apps from anyone I choose to.

(NOTE: For some of the other items like Messages, I agree, that's their platform. But there's clearly a line here where Apple is extending its controlling, authoritarian hand into a device that I have paid for—and handsomely I might add.)

Either way, Apple best be careful here.