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Comment by purpmint008 | Hacker News Reader

Apple is the biggest monopoly in the US right now. Hands down.

They get to get away with everything!

Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. all get hammered on the daily in the US and in the EU. But, Apple is a golden child that can do no wrong.

Do you people not realize that they've created a peer-pressure device in the form of the iPhone by packaging SMS and iMessage into 1 app called "Messages"?

How is that even legal?!

The app should be broke up into 2.

You should be given options on what messaging app you want to install.

Their practices are anti-competitive.

15-30% cut via the App Store for Apple?! Is this a joke?!

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> Do you people not realize that they've created a peer-pressure device in the form of the iPhone by packaging SMS and iMessage into 1 app called "Messages"? How is that even legal?!

https://www.gihosoft.com/iphone-tips/best-messaging-apps-ios...

I am well-aware of these.

The issue is the joint-packaging.

If we went hard on Microsoft for packaging IE and WMP into Windows, we should go equally ballistic about iMessage and SMS being fused in together. They should be broken up.

We didn't "go hard on" Microsoft for mere bundling of basic tools like media viewers and web browsers. It was because they were using that dominant position (which is perfectly fine to have) to behave anticompetitively (which is not).

> "behave anticompetitively"

What is Apple doing when it bundles iMessage and SMS together? Deception and anti-competitive behavior, that's what!

How so? What is their nefarious plan and how do they go about it? If you are the one seeing the truth and you want to be taken seriously you need to do better than just throw around words like “monopoly” and “anti-competitive” with no justification whatsoever.

Bundling of iMessage and SMS = reduction in competition by integration.

I can read, and you’ve already written that. But there are logical bits missing between your premise and your conclusion. Is there any measurable effect? Is say WhatsApp adoption rate significantly lower on iOS because of this? How much more anticompetitive is it than just bundling a SMS app with every phone?

Anything a company does to improve its market share is a reduction of competition, the threshold for anticompetitive behaviour is higher than that. Not saying Apple never does anything anticompetitive (they do), but iMessage is a very stupid hill to die on.

How about the Apple Music store being embedded into the default Music App? Blatantly anti-competitive against Spotify.

Right, but that wasn’t the point you were making. I wasn’t arguing that Apple was never anti-competitive.

Integration by itself is not anticompetitive.

Going back to the Microsoft example, Microsoft got into trouble, not because they were bundling a web browser with an OS (which would be stupid to not have), but because they were forbidding OEMs to include any other browser on pain of revoking their agreements. That is anticompetitive.

If Apple were forbidding the installation of WhatsApp because it competes with iMessage, that would be the most direct equivalent to what Microsoft was sanctioned for.

Anticompetitive behavior is a legal term with a specific definition, it does not apply to software that decreases a competitor's potential marketshare only by way of doing something a competitor could be doing on their own.

Keep downvoting me, fanboys! Long live the resistance!

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? We're trying for something different here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

How about the Apple Music store being embedded into the default Music App? Blatantly anti-competitive against Spotify.

Sure, that would make a good point as part of a relevant comment somewhere.

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