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Comment by skydhash | Hacker News Reader

It's not about having a dominant position, it's about using your power in one market to further your position in another one. Apple control iOS and macOS which is always bundled with the hardware, and they use that to strengthen their own applications. Competitors cannot do it as they do not have the same access that Apple does regarding APIs and other features.

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Apple uses their own technology to make their products better. That’s not a scandal. Their products aren’t the most dominant in streaming, maps, or payment. Most of the complaints are about what they aren’t doing (going out of their way to make proprietary features available to 3ps), not what they are doing (say: giving themselves special push notification permissions). So what influence are they exerting exactly? Why is it so pernicious?

They're exerting the same influence that Google did over their Android partners. They created a faux-open market with arbitrary rules that ensure their products always win. Google lost their case because of this and Apple should too.

Google lost their case because, among other things, they offered back room deals which favored a blessed few and were not available to all. E.g. you could not get the rate Spotify was getting charged for in app purchases (zero%).

You are correct and Apple is offering very similar back room deals in the App Store. It was revealed as such in their last suit.

Did you miss the list of Apple products that were not winning earlier in the thread?

Do you think if any Apple product isn't "winning", suddenly their competition stifling rules and backroom deals don't exist anymore?

I think the people who say the following should have to engage with the fact that its implication is obviously not true:

> They created a faux-open market with arbitrary rules that ensure their products always win.

Have fun toting around your goal post my friend.

The article and linked 90 page document outline precise answers to your questions

The DOJ's 90 page lawsuit is a lot of things, but precise or even factual it is not. For example, it doesn't even cite the selling price or terms of the original iPhone correctly (off by almost 2x) and invents vague terms like "the performance smartphone market."

You didn’t ask “what was the price of the original iPhone”. Your questions were…

> So what influence are they exerting exactly? Why is it so pernicious?

Which are both answered in the document.

Almost the entire document is defining the performance smartphone market. It’s mentioned in the document 88 times. The definition isn’t “phones over $400” because it’s defined by the market forces that Apple creates - there’s a feedback loop

Okay. But what happened to the Windows Phone and its integration with the Windows OS? It simply failed.

There is a valid argument to be made here against Apple and how their firm grip is stopping a market from advancing further. But not by using their technical success in creating a great platform.

It's all about economical fair play. If you create a market, but position yourself as the de-facto winner, it will not be a healthy one. It was all good, especially when default apps provided by Apple were free, but now with Apple Music, Apple TV, and iCloud being paid services, competitors worry about being not able to compete.

Yes. That’s it. That’s anti-competitive. That’s where the consumer benefit was curtailed and competition was limited.

People usually talk about companies who cannot compete with Apple on fair grounds and then claim foul. Which sounds like they’re trying to punish a company for being successful not for playing unfairly.

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