This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The apple watch thing is kinda interesting.
So you make a watch and it has super tight integrations with OS level software on the phone.
I can't imagine they can force apple to write an Android app, which doesn't even have the same system level access as their OS app and provide some sort of degraded service.
Maybe they could force them to let it function in some limited way but where do you draw the line on forcing them to write android apps?
I can't imagine they can force apple to write an Android app, which doesn't even have the same system level access as their OS app and provide some sort of degraded service.
No, they can’t really force it. But it’s evidence in support of the accusation.
But I wanted to point out, Android is much, much more permissive in what peripherals and apps can do. And they’d likely be able to bake Android support in by utilizing the already available Wear OS API.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The US Department of Justice and 16 state and district attorneys general accused Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in a new antitrust lawsuit.
It alleges that Apple “selectively” imposes contractual restrictions on developers and withholds critical ways of accessing the phone, according to a release.
“Apple exercises its monopoly power to extract more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses, and merchants, among others,” the DOJ wrote in a press release.
“For years, Apple responded to competitive threats by imposing a series of ‘Whac-A-Mole’ contractual rules and restrictions that have allowed Apple to extract higher prices from consumers, impose higher fees on developers and creators, and to throttle competitive alternatives from rival technologies,” DOJ antitrust division chief Jonathan Kanter said in a statement.
Apple is the second tech giant the DOJ has taken on in recent years after filing two separate antitrust suits against Google over the past two administrations.
It’s instituted new rules through the Digital Markets Act to place a check on the power of gatekeepers of large platforms, several of which are operated by Apple.
The original article contains 691 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 74%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
what issues do people here have with buying a phone not made by Apple?
While I prefer remaining in the Walled Garden because Apple makes it a veritable Eden compared to so many customer-hostile apps, I can see this. I still think the Walled Garden is better for customers (assuming you can also choose a different ecosystem) and it’s ok for one of many competitors, the rules have to change once you dominate the market. se la vie.
“using private APIs to undermine crossplatform technologies like messaging, smartwatches, and digital wallets,”
I want to be able to choose a walled garden for my phone, just like I want to choose for game compatibility on my laptop, and ultimate freedom on my servers. Those are the right tools for my needs
You can only use an Apple Watch with an iPhone. While you CAN use one without a phone, you need an iPhone to configure it the first time (or if you need to reset).
Thry are very locked in.
I'm always impressed how far corporations managed to convince people to be loyal to them. Not saying it's a person's fault, I used to fall pretty badly for corporate bullshit myself.
The whole "walled garden" concept is inherently anti-consumer. Have you ever asked yourself why there hasn't been any real innovation in the phone/smartwatch fields for years now. Or why phones aren't cheap to fix anymore. Or why battery life gets so bad after two or so years that most people are forced to buy a new one.
Things don't have to be this way. We can have well designed products that work together without all the lock in.
The crux of this suit seems to be that the DOJ believes that Apple needs to make its hardware fair to everyone that can develop on it, and make its software fair to all possible hardware that can run it, which is particularly interesting because Apple’s main product seems to be a pleasant and easy user experience that cuts through the physical barriers of the pieces of hardware it sells. And part of that user experience is the sense of security that is supposed to come with knowing that Apple is (more or less) able to decide who is allowed to access important, secure elements of their hardware.
On the software side of things, I don’t fully understand why or how the DOJ could force Apple to develop better integration support for cross-vendor hardware usage? Why do they need to go the extra mile to make an Apple Watch work well with an Android phone? Because the DOJ says so? I mean, sure I guess that would be better for everyone but it’s a weird thing to require.
Is this really the biggest problem in the US right now? Can the justice department maybe spend some time on gun violence, climate denial, misinformation, dark money in politics…. Like 1000 other things that are literally killing people before we worry about this? Or is this just because it’s an election year and they think it will be popular…
were you breathing as you typed this out?
