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I think the general U.S. population is okay with monopolies that make their lives better. Apple will continue to push the envelope. Developers can fight back (d

by wutman 7y ago

I think the general U.S. population is okay with monopolies that make their lives better. Apple will continue to push the envelope. Developers can fight back (does anyone remember the Apple vs Spotify thing?) but if Apple keeps putting out a consistent quality experience, the vast maturity of the population won't be sympathetic.

otterley 7y ago
I think it's true as long as they're not pricing as a monopolist would. One could argue that Standard Oil and AT&T (pre-1980s Bell System, that is) made people's lives better, but the prices they exacted from their customers were too high. On the other hand, the increasing importance of intellectual property to the American economy (vs. the manufacturing economy) -- and the Constitutionally-sanctioned monopolies that come with it -- suggest that perhaps even monopolistic pricing is no longer the concern it once was.
- r00fus 7y ago
  Is it a monopoly if all other options are ad-infested and privacy lacking? If Apple is considered to have a monopoly on privacy-first devices and ecosystem, then let's first judge the system that allows the other (clearly undesirable) options to even exist. Monopoly as a definitive term has criteria, and Apple doesn't meet those. By your same argument, any luxury brand "prices like a monopolist" and should be shunned.
  - otterley 7y ago
    I don't contend that Apple is a monopolist. We're discussing a hypothetical that assumes that they are, and whether it would be tolerated by law and society in today's climate as opposed to how monopolies were treated in previous generations.
    - r00fus 7y ago
      So you're comparing a hypothetical assertion to previous actual monopolies? Sounds unproductive other than to lend credence to the (false) assertion.
- scarface74 7y ago
  AT&T was a government sanctioned monopoly before they were broken up and their rates were regulated by the government.
- jdsully 7y ago
  That's a common misconception about Standard Oil [1]. In fact they were instrumental in lowering prices (albeit not 1:1 with their reduced production costs). John Rockefeller was a conflicted man in terms of ethics - but it was clear he felt a moral obligation to provide quality products at reasonable prices. The "predatory" part was towards his competition. In areas where they operated he dumped product below cost. He also had the guaranteed best prices with the railroads ensuring his costs would always be dramatically lower than the competition. However even here there was a benevolence not seen in modern business. Before destroying his competition he always offered them a buyout at a favourable valuation. [1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5a78/95f431660f4c41e2050614dc8a140eb7a8e4.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5a78/95f431660f4c41e2050614...
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Correct. This is the issue with the tech giants. Under current law, you need to find actual anticompetitive practices. Some way that Apple harms able competitors. Like maybe something they do to force people to switch to Apple phones. (Note: I did not say "entice", I said "Force".) It's anti-competitive if people would be obliged to buy Apple phones. Or if Apple controlled some essential component of mobile phone hardware and jacked up the price on that component for anyone who wanted to make an Android phone. It has to be something like that. Something Apple is doing, which is at once negatively affecting Apple's competition and entirely dependent on Apple's market position. That's what an anti-competitive practice is.
    - basch 7y ago
      Gating the app store, banning apps and then cloning their functionality could be construed as anti-competitive. It's the way Apple, Amazon, and Facebook work now. Clone a product, add it to your ecosystem with enhanced proprietary integrations to your other services. Your competitors cant compete because they dont have access to the same api or the same paas. It really has nothing to do with product pricing or selling client side phones.
      - bilbo0s 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
nostromo 7y ago
How is Apple a monopoly? They don't even have a majority of the US market. I do agree they have incredible market strength. But that comes from a large base of loyal customers with deep pockets, not from monopolizing the market.
- basch 7y ago
  Closed ecosystem technology service conglomerate is a better way to say it. The word monopoly gets used interchangeably within antitrust conversations all the time to mean abusive market position and behavior. Apple is forcing anyone that uses Sign in With Facebook or Google to also support Sign in With Apple, or they will be removed from the app store. Quite a power play. (hence the title of the article) Can you make the argument that they are abusing their position as one of two mobile operating systems to force unnatural adoption of their service, at the expense of their competition, Google and Facebook.
  - gimmeThaBeet 7y ago
    The fact that they don't have anywhere near a numerical majority of devices always makes me pause on this stuff. The weird thing with Apple using its market position to get their way is that they don't have all the customers, not by a long shot. It's that they have the customers you want. I'd hazard to guess Apple looks more dominant by some customer money-weighted metric. When Apple directly competes against companies on its own platform it does seem a bit shaky a la Spotify. But in the general case, the idea still bites at me that you don't need Apple to access a sufficient customer base, but you want them because you want to access Apple's customers.
    - basch 7y ago
      well said. Heres where I think it is anti-competitive. Lets say you are building a streaming service. You choose to be android only, because you want the majority of the market, and calculate that you dont need the Apple users. Your competitor complies with more apple rules, and goes cross platform. They win because they chose to be cross platform. It's hard to win (and by and large you usually need to be a winner, to exist in the long run) without offering your product to people, whichever device they choose to access it from. Apple, despite being a non majority of the market share, is a king maker, they can choose the winners. And if they want to, they can cripple their competitors through a combination of app store rules, payment processing requirements and limited api access (streaming, payment, maps, etc)
basch 7y ago
I dont think most people give a second thought to decentralized protocols and standards vs institutional monopolies. (Not necessarily in those technical terms, but just the concepts in general.) It's second nature to expect an ATT phone to call a Verizon phone. It's an automatic assumption that outlook and gmail email are cross compatible, along with any other correctly configured email server. But it doesnt even cross peoples minds that they cant order an Uber from Lyft and vice versa. Needing to be on the same closed platform is part of how the internet evolved. Its faster for large companies to release proprietary products than to push industry standardization.

by wutman 7y ago

otterley 7y ago

I think it's true as long as they're not pricing as a monopolist would. One could argue that Standard Oil and AT&T (pre-1980s Bell System, that is) made people's lives better, but the prices they exacted from their customers were too high. On the other hand, the increasing importance of intellectual property to the American economy (vs. the manufacturing economy) -- and the Constitutionally-sanctioned monopolies that come with it -- suggest that perhaps even monopolistic pricing is no longer the concern it once was.

r00fus 7y ago
Is it a monopoly if all other options are ad-infested and privacy lacking? If Apple is considered to have a monopoly on privacy-first devices and ecosystem, then let's first judge the system that allows the other (clearly undesirable) options to even exist. Monopoly as a definitive term has criteria, and Apple doesn't meet those. By your same argument, any luxury brand "prices like a monopolist" and should be shunned.
- otterley 7y ago
  I don't contend that Apple is a monopolist. We're discussing a hypothetical that assumes that they are, and whether it would be tolerated by law and society in today's climate as opposed to how monopolies were treated in previous generations.
  - r00fus 7y ago
    So you're comparing a hypothetical assertion to previous actual monopolies? Sounds unproductive other than to lend credence to the (false) assertion.
scarface74 7y ago
AT&T was a government sanctioned monopoly before they were broken up and their rates were regulated by the government.
jdsully 7y ago
That's a common misconception about Standard Oil [1]. In fact they were instrumental in lowering prices (albeit not 1:1 with their reduced production costs). John Rockefeller was a conflicted man in terms of ethics - but it was clear he felt a moral obligation to provide quality products at reasonable prices. The "predatory" part was towards his competition. In areas where they operated he dumped product below cost. He also had the guaranteed best prices with the railroads ensuring his costs would always be dramatically lower than the competition. However even here there was a benevolence not seen in modern business. Before destroying his competition he always offered them a buyout at a favourable valuation. [1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5a78/95f431660f4c41e2050614dc8a140eb7a8e4.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5a78/95f431660f4c41e2050614...
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Correct. This is the issue with the tech giants. Under current law, you need to find actual anticompetitive practices. Some way that Apple harms able competitors. Like maybe something they do to force people to switch to Apple phones. (Note: I did not say "entice", I said "Force".) It's anti-competitive if people would be obliged to buy Apple phones. Or if Apple controlled some essential component of mobile phone hardware and jacked up the price on that component for anyone who wanted to make an Android phone. It has to be something like that. Something Apple is doing, which is at once negatively affecting Apple's competition and entirely dependent on Apple's market position. That's what an anti-competitive practice is.
  - basch 7y ago
    Gating the app store, banning apps and then cloning their functionality could be construed as anti-competitive. It's the way Apple, Amazon, and Facebook work now. Clone a product, add it to your ecosystem with enhanced proprietary integrations to your other services. Your competitors cant compete because they dont have access to the same api or the same paas. It really has nothing to do with product pricing or selling client side phones.
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

nostromo 7y ago

How is Apple a monopoly? They don't even have a majority of the US market. I do agree they have incredible market strength. But that comes from a large base of loyal customers with deep pockets, not from monopolizing the market.

basch 7y ago
Closed ecosystem technology service conglomerate is a better way to say it. The word monopoly gets used interchangeably within antitrust conversations all the time to mean abusive market position and behavior. Apple is forcing anyone that uses Sign in With Facebook or Google to also support Sign in With Apple, or they will be removed from the app store. Quite a power play. (hence the title of the article) Can you make the argument that they are abusing their position as one of two mobile operating systems to force unnatural adoption of their service, at the expense of their competition, Google and Facebook.
- gimmeThaBeet 7y ago
  The fact that they don't have anywhere near a numerical majority of devices always makes me pause on this stuff. The weird thing with Apple using its market position to get their way is that they don't have all the customers, not by a long shot. It's that they have the customers you want. I'd hazard to guess Apple looks more dominant by some customer money-weighted metric. When Apple directly competes against companies on its own platform it does seem a bit shaky a la Spotify. But in the general case, the idea still bites at me that you don't need Apple to access a sufficient customer base, but you want them because you want to access Apple's customers.
  - basch 7y ago
    well said. Heres where I think it is anti-competitive. Lets say you are building a streaming service. You choose to be android only, because you want the majority of the market, and calculate that you dont need the Apple users. Your competitor complies with more apple rules, and goes cross platform. They win because they chose to be cross platform. It's hard to win (and by and large you usually need to be a winner, to exist in the long run) without offering your product to people, whichever device they choose to access it from. Apple, despite being a non majority of the market share, is a king maker, they can choose the winners. And if they want to, they can cripple their competitors through a combination of app store rules, payment processing requirements and limited api access (streaming, payment, maps, etc)

basch 7y ago

I dont think most people give a second thought to decentralized protocols and standards vs institutional monopolies. (Not necessarily in those technical terms, but just the concepts in general.) It's second nature to expect an ATT phone to call a Verizon phone. It's an automatic assumption that outlook and gmail email are cross compatible, along with any other correctly configured email server. But it doesnt even cross peoples minds that they cant order an Uber from Lyft and vice versa. Needing to be on the same closed platform is part of how the internet evolved. Its faster for large companies to release proprietary products than to push industry standardization.