crosslad

FoodLover said:

Samsung is going to inevitably make the same "for the environment" claim.  

If they did, it would be credible. Before Apple Samsung removed the headphones from the Note 20 series "for the environment", while shipping free of charge headphones to any customer who asks for it, i.e. no rip-off of customers.

22july2013 said:

Pascalxx said:

@22july2013 ;

I am somewhat sympathetic to this hypothetical argument on a general level.

I do see a few problems with it, though, as expressed in the following statement:
"the founding principles of general purpose computers were to give full control of the computer to the user"

1. While I like the idea of giving full control to the user, I wonder how this ideal would be relevant to a legal argument since it is not codified anywhere nor promised by Apple (or is it?)
2. Is a smartphone really a general-purpose computer? (could apply to iPad, though)
3. Censorship by private companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, is probably done not because it's an internal priority to these companies but because it is mandated by law  or at least discussed under the issue of platform responsibility/liability (to block illegal content).
4. The critique of censorship (as in approving apps) in these broad strokes also apply to Epic's store or any other App store.

Your questions are legitimate, although not entirely persuasive. Just remember, it's not the job of the argument to see the whole picture or come up with an entire solution. That's the job of lawmakers. Our job is to simply win a judgment in court. One of Epic's original claims was to be allowed to install their own App Store in iOS, and that was exactly the kind of injunction I was aiming for with my argument. I made the best case I could to get that judgment. That's all.