The issue is the policy makers / department of justices entire focus seems to be on fighting so that companies can make more money and/or scam users by getting outside of app store polices.
Why this level of DOJ involvement against apple (with very little CONSUMER harm) when your grandma is LITERALLY getting scammed by fake tech support etc and they do jake crap over any of that.
Millions of consumers get screwed over, in big ways and small, day in and day out. Crickets.
Apple creates a small ecosystem that is completely optional for consumers to use that does a few things right (little tracking, fights all these companies on everything from tracking to trial periods to cancellations and more). And now that is a crime. The App store is the LEAST of my consumer protection worries.
Most of the "alliance" of folks fighting apple run scammy business. Loot boxes for kids (Epic/Fornighte type folks) / Zynga / Facebook data exploiters / Match.com fake profile type players / NY Times impossible to cancel people.
The Apple ecosystem isn't "optional for consumers to use"; if you want iOS then you absolutely have to participate in the ecosystem. Same reason why the "buy an Android if you want to sideload" argument doesn't work for me: the platforms aren't interchangeable.
A lot of what you're describing here are things that absolutely should be illegal, and a properly-funded government should be investigating and prosecuting. What Apple has done is turn iOS into their own sovereign territory, written their own laws, and levied their own taxes. In other words, they are a digital warlord. If we are going to ban loot boxes or data exploitation, we should be passing actual laws in actual Congresses and Parliaments to ban loot boxes or data exploitation.
Yes, the consumer harm might be minimal, but the consumer is not the end-all, be-all of the economy[0]. Apple bossing developers around creates compliance costs and higher barriers to entry for smaller businesses. This is inherent to monopolies of any kind, pro-consumer or otherwise. Yes, I can absolutely point to scams that Apple has judiciously removed from the App Store; but for every one of those I can also find stories where Apple just absolutely dicked around with a smaller developer and held up their app for no reason. In contrast, large companies like Zynga, Facebook, or Match Group have dedicated staff for making the Apple warlords happy, and know exactly what they can get away with. This isn't an open and vibrant marketplace; it's a group of warlords negotiating who owns what.
[0] More generally, the "consumer welfare" standard that modern antitrust enforcement has adopted is effectively a tacit agreement to not prosecute antitrust violations.
+1 re: “”What Apple has done is turn iOS into their own sovereign territory, written their own laws, and levied their own taxes.””: a few of my friends think I am off the rails on this one, but I think a plausible future is similar to the cyber punk world of William Gibson novels that describe a future maintained and ruled by corporate interests that provide corporate enclaves for people to work and live - sort of replacing countries.
Yes, all the players you mentioned suck, and they suck more than Apple probably. But that doesn’t mean we should not call out Apple’s bad behavior.
Also - Apple has infinite resources. They can be nice to everyone if they want. They choose to be arrogant, just because they can.
None of the companies you listed have a cult following, Apple does. Nobody gives Facebook or Zynga a tenth of the respect they give Apple (I think it is justified, those companies suck real bad).
Is it unfair to expect Apple to behave better than others? In my opinion, no. Others might disagree.
CVS blocked apple pay forever. So did Walmart. They said Apple sucks for wanting control (and providing privacy etc). They launched their competitor CurrentC I think which was of course totally hacked:
The reality is that a lot of these startups have almost NO controls over user data relative to inside actor threats. So I'd much rather sign up and have all my details / home address etc on apple's servers. Is this walmart alliance designed with privacy in mind or to exploit my data? I'm serious?
Ny Times is a good example. My subscription let me use their app, but I couldn't cancel it inside the app. Instead its the phone call BS (maybe they've stopped that).
So as a user, I actually kind of want apple to have a ton of market power, because the folks like DOJ / SEC etc are toothless in these areas. The only thing these agencies seem good at is stupid cookie banners (which are pointless).
Why this level of DOJ involvement against apple (with very little CONSUMER harm) when your grandma is LITERALLY getting scammed by fake tech support etc and they do jake crap over any of that.
Millions of consumers get screwed over, in big ways and small, day in and day out. Crickets.
Apple creates a small ecosystem that is completely optional for consumers to use that does a few things right (little tracking, fights all these companies on everything from tracking to trial periods to cancellations and more). And now that is a crime. The App store is the LEAST of my consumer protection worries.
Most of the "alliance" of folks fighting apple run scammy business. Loot boxes for kids (Epic/Fornighte type folks) / Zynga / Facebook data exploiters / Match.com fake profile type players / NY Times impossible to cancel people.