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lxgr

> so you would have to declare a monopoly as “things I can run on an iPhone” as your position for that to work

Yes, that's pretty much it. A similar concern applies to Google and Android.

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But you can install other OSes such as Graphene on Android phones, I dont think you can do that on iPhones can you?

https://grapheneos.org/

On a lot of Android devices you can't install ANY other custom OS because of locked down bootloaders. If you want GrapheneOS specifically that list is even narrower due to 1. official support 2. hardware security features just missing from the devices.

Sure, but on many, you can, which supports their point.

Painting Apple and Android devices with the same brush in this particular regard doesn't make a lot of sense.

Can you install any other OS on any iPhone at all? As far as I am aware the best Android phone for installing non stock OSes on is the Google Pixel itself, Googles own 1st party phone.

I have seen Android booted on an iPhone. It was a long time ago, and I don’t think anybody continued working on it because... why do it when you could already buy an Android device?

Also, I'm curious... can you really install an OS besides Android on a Pixel, etc? AFAIK it's just different distros of Android, it's not like you could install BSD or something, right?

You can install various linux distros (not android distros) such as postmarketOS and Ubuntu Touch on a Pixel 3a

https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/device/sargo/

I figured Linux would be available, since Android is a Linux distro itself (of sorts, at least). But no other OS's like BSD, Unix, or Windows is available. Am I to understand correctly that only the Pixel 3a is able to run Linux distros, or was that meant as an example?

That's not how monopolies work, though.

It's absolutely how they work. If there's only a single grocery store in town (and for whatever reason others can't be opened), is that somehow not a monopoly even though there are several pharmacies and hardware stores?

You can buy whatever phone you want. Many of them can run multiple OSes if that’s what you want. There is not a single mobile platform in town.

When Ford sells me an F150 I don’t cry about them having a monopoly on their Sync platform. That’s not now monopolies work

If you don’t like the town with only one grocery store, you can move to any other place you want.

And what about the other mobile platform (singular)? That one’s also making it harder and harder to sideload apps.

That's not a good analogy for the situation. A better grocery-based analogy would be if there's only a single Bob's Grocery in town (and for whatever reason more Bob's Groceries can't be opened) but there is a Sally's Groceries in town. Then Bob's Groceries isn't a monopoly. The only thing Bob's Groceries is a monopoly of is Bob's Groceries, which is a useless tautological argument.

Apple has neither a monopoly on phones nor on app marketplaces.

They don't have a monopoly on phones. They do have (something like) a monopoly on app distribution on the iOS platform.

Maybe monopoly is not the right legal category, and maybe what they are doing is perfectly legal and always will be, but I don't think the fundamental point can be argued away with analogies like these.

Bob's Grocery likewise has a "monopoly" on distribution of products in their store. They have no control over Sally's Groceries.

Still not any kind of monopoly

Does Ford have a monopoly position on the F150 because I can’t run Linux on it?

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