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Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

>E.g. It’s not illegal to be the only seller of gasoline in the country. It is illegal though to bundle laundry powder with gasoline sales to corner the laundry powder market.

I mean, it's far more than that. Most importantly:

>Historically they have been held to include exclusive dealing, price discrimination, refusing to supply an essential facility, product tying and predatory pricing.

While IANAL - even as a plebe I can pretty easily tie refusing to allow third party app stores to both refusing to supply an essential facility, and product tying.

Why should my choice of hardware or OS dictate the apps I'm allowed to install? That's 100% product tying. It would be one thing if third parties just had no interest in supplying an alternative app store. It's another thing entirely to lock them out via your monopoly on the ecosystem.

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> Why should my choice of hardware or OS dictate the apps I'm allowed to install?

Do you own an iPhone? I suspect that the vast majority of people complaining about Apple's "lock down" are people who don't even use an iPhone.

If you do own an iPhone ... why the heck did you buy one knowing its limitations. It's like buying a pink shirt when you hate pink, despite the availability of shirts of other colors, then going to the manufacturer to complain about the color.

I can't speak for others, but I'm an iPhone user, and I'm complaining!

> why the heck did you buy one knowing its limitations.

Because:

• Almost everyone I know uses iMessage exclusively.

• I very strongly dislike Android's UI design.

• I strongly prefer iPhone hardware.

Any two of these would be insufficient to offset how furious I am that I can't decide what code runs on my own damn phone! But taken together, Android just doesn't make sense.

I jailbroke my iPhone for years, despite the many inconveniences of running an outdated version of iOS, but Apple's security has just become too good.

Some specificity is required when discussing legal concepts like tying and essential facility.

For tying, while not a firm ‘rule’ the most common application of tying is limited to the ‘tied’ product being from another market when compared to the ‘tying’ product. Also, the current appellate court standard (worded semi-informally) is that a tying of products raises antitrust concerns when it restricts competition AND provides no benefit to consumers.

As to essential facility, the most impactful factor for the plaintiff (as in the hardest burden for the government to overcome to establish monopolistic abuse) is as follows: the plaintiff is REQUIRED to prove that the compelled permission to competitors to utilize the “facility” does not interfere or allow for detrimental effects of the dominant firm’s ability to serve its own customers.

Apple’s historic marketing speak and other ‘on the record’ statements about the app store’s exclusivity ensuring tight control for the security of Apple’s customers is directly written to advance defenses to these two claims.

You can certainly argue that Apple’s conduct is characterized as abuse of monopoly, but there arguments against that can also be compelling.

The above IS NOT and should not be considered legal advice.

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