Apple's an unfair monopoly?

[Mike]

Just watched Merrick Garland leveling charges at Apple for being anti-competitive. And specifically the charge is about my own biggest complaint about Apple: that they maintain their advantage by intentionally making the experience of others worse. There's no reason iPhone and Apple users shouldn't be able to share full pics and video, but Apple intentionally degrades the experience when communicating between platforms AND puts a green box around the non-conformists so that iPhone users know who to blame. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

I wonder if this isn't the first step in going after all of the big tech companies. Meta and Amazon both engage in unfair business practices and need to be broken up and/or forced to make restitution in some way.

Who are the iPhone users out there? Anyone want to defend Apple?

[Eliahad]

I have an iPad that I use and I only use it because the software developed for the iPad for musicians isn't cross compatible with non-iPads. I think the user interface is terrible and unintuitive and frustrating as hell. And I feel decently smart most of the time, not as much when I'm using said iPad.

[Kyle]

My whole family uses Iphones, but for the very reasons that Apple is being sued. Once my wife and I got iphones, when our family group text became unworkable. And we could have used a separate app or something like that, but as each kid got new phones, they ended up getting iphones because it was just easier than the hassle. I know that's lame, but that's the truth. Apple's nefarious tactics worked on us.

[Mike]

At least you understand it and realize why it works. Most iPhone users I know think all the issues are because Android sucks and they can't understand why people would buy anything but an iPhone.

My wife has an iPhone, and she shares my Audible account, and for the longest time, she couldn't buy books directly from her phone, because Apple's terms of service for third-party developers gives Apple 30% of all in-app purchases of electronic content. That would include 30% of all e-book and audiobook sales. That's some bullshit.

Now last time she went to Audible, she had the option to buy, which I thought was weird. Don't know who blinked on that face-off.

[Kyle]

I know the European Union sanctioned Apple and made them open up their store somewhat- although I don't know the exact terms. But the fact that we can charge new iphones with USB-C cords (yay!) is because of the European Union standards also.

Fuck Apple.