Thoughts on the #Apple antitrust case?
My first reaction is that it's going to be extremely difficult to prove.
I've long been critical of Apple's walled garden and their massive markups on components like storage and RAM, but I understand their appeal and clearly so do millions of customers.
I could have bought an iPhone but I chose Android devices because that's what I prefer. Does Apple really make it that hard to move away?
@voltronic only every time I contemplate a different operating system...so not a fan of Android devices. Not as durable, in my opinion, and there's a lot of PITA programming you have to do.
@joycereynoldsward
Neither of those things are true in my experience.
@voltronic my experience says otherwise.
@joycereynoldsward
Well that's fine. We're each free to choose the devices we like better, and that's kind of my point. I don't see how what Apple is doing is explicitly anticompetitive, at least when it comes to phones.
@voltronic oh wait. I thought you were responding to something else. Sorry.
For direct comparison, I had an Android tablet and an iPad. The iPad is much more durable.
@joycereynoldsward
I would agree with you there. iPads are made much better than any Android tablet I've ever tried.
For phones you have way more options to compare. I think Samsung flagships rival their Apple equivalents in durability, for example.
@voltronic oh yeah. My son has gone to Samsung from Android.
@joycereynoldsward
I'm not sure that's what you mean. Samsung is the premier manufacturer of Android devices.
@voltronic I dunno. He has to do more programming with his phone than I do with mine.
@voltronic gotta agree about the anticompetitive thing. I know plenty of people with other OS devices and you can't pry 'em out of their preferred systems.
@joycereynoldsward
But that's really their choice, right? I'd say if anything locks you in, it's apps that don't have a direct equivalent in the competing app store.
One thing that's certainly true of Android is that it's incredibly fragmented, so one person's experience can't tell you much about someone else's.
Something like 90% of Apple device users are running whatever the latest version of the (single) OS is. The figure for Android users is less than half that.
@mcfate
That fragmentation is the price you pay for device choice, I suppose. The differing security patch levels are a real problem though. Google could fix that by requiring all manufacturers to keep pushing out those updates as a condition of the licensing agreement.
They'd put a bazillion tiny third-world cellphone makers in India and such right out of business, and they don't choose to do that, and GOSH.
@opie
I've come close to buying them more than once, but their lack of expandable storage always disqualified them from my consideration.
I must phone differently than everyone else...I have zero need for massive storage on my phone...I have a 256GB Pixel 7 Pro with 40GB used...I need to stop buying the 256GB versions...waste...
@opie One word: Music
@stueytheround @voltronic @joycereynoldsward
aight...all my tunes is in da cloud...I want it accessible from more than just my phone...so yeah, I'm doin phone differently
@opie
I'm with @stueytheround on this. I don't do streaming music because I want to own, not rent, the music from artists whom I support. And I want it in full quality. I refuse to pay for lossy encoded downloads or streams unless there is no other choice.
This is why I have a 256 GB microSD card with overflow on the internal storage. At some point pretty soon I'm going to upgrade to 1 TB.
@voltronic @opie @stueytheround @joycereynoldsward My hearing is bad enough I can't tell that much difference anymore between the two. So I just listen to whatever is least expensive.
@opie
Apart from using Amazon for convenience on my phone, all of my music outside of bandcamp purchases is hard copy. Vinyl and CDs. @voltronic @joycereynoldsward
@stueytheround @voltronic @joycereynoldsward
I friggin love bandcamp...FLAC download, 320kbps CBR encode to MP3, upload to cloud...
but I get it...I'm not an audiophile...I can def hear the difference tho...I'm just a lazy sucker for convenience... 🫤
@opie
Bandcamp is awesome. I really hope things don't go south following the buyout.
@voltronic For the timebeing I haven't noticed any difference. Time will tell. They'd be fools to mess with it. It's a winning formula. Customers love it, creators love it. @opie @joycereynoldsward
@opie @stueytheround @voltronic @joycereynoldsward
Yeah, call me a boomer. I still buy CD's & load them into my hard drive on both my desktop & laptop.
I create playlists for what I want to hear for my phone from my laptop. If something crashes, I still have the CD's to reload the music. #Backup. 🎶
@opie @joycereynoldsward @voltronic I lurve my Pixel 7.
@LiberalLibrarian @opie @joycereynoldsward @voltronic Trigger warning: This thread contains heresy.
@JolieSaboteuse
That depends which side you're on...
I love my Apple universe. The rest of family prefer Android. We’ve never had any issues between the two universes. I have no idea what this case is about. LOL But the DOJ should have just gone after them about their chargers………😂😂
@voltronic I think the government is missing that Apple and Google have together made it so that it's nearly impossible to get anything that is not one of their phones. I think Apple is far worse at making your data portable if you leave the platform. They really hate it if you leave their ecosystem.
But I think both of them should have had the shit beat out of them with anti-trust long ago, and been broken up.
Well, the fact is that if you have more than a single Apple device, there are synergistic effects. I can use a passkey on my phone to sign in to a web site on my Mac Mini or my iPad, just to give one example. I can remotely control my AppleTV box from any other device. If I subscribe to a streaming service, it gets added everywhere.
But that's not any different than "my iRobot mop and vacuum share a map", really.
The DoJ isn't going to win this, in my opinion.
@mcfate
I agree that just a convenience feature. I have multiple Roku devices and they all stay in sync when there's a change somewhere, because I'm signed into all of them. Like anyone would expect it to work.
What the DoJ seems to be claiming is that Amazon Fire sticks should be able to ""get inside" Roku devices and vice-versa, or someone's doing someone a monopoly.
It's crazy that this is essentially all about green and blue balloons in messaging and some people feeling grumpy about about the color they get.
@mcfate
The iMessage thing is quite annoying, but should have no bearing on this.
Really we should have all stopped using SMS years ago and only use open source and audited encrypted messaging apps.
One thing I can tell you about Apple is that they'll tell you that they're not in the "computer business", they make consumer electronics.
@mcfate
Now that sounds like something the legal staff told them to say. They've always been in the computer business. All they make are computers of various sizes and shapes.
We were saying it thirty-odd years ago, though. It's not a legal thing, it's a "how do you think about the products you make" thing.
@mcfate
Oh well then it makes sense from that standpoint.
Calling an iPhone a "computer" is something like calling a toaster an "energy converter". It's not wrong, but it's not right, either.
@mcfate
A modern smartphone is absolutely a computer, and I'm honestly confused by your resistance to that.
I can see that. I stand by my statement.
@mcfate
You could have made an argument in support of your point rather than condescending. We were having a nice conversation up until then.
Fine, I'll spare you any further pain, and mute this thread.
I'm assuming they've fixed this (maybe not tho), but moving from iPhone to droid used to wreak havoc on sms...
IRL fren switched from iPhone to droid, and everyone they knew who had an iPhone couldn't text them anymore, cuz iMessage was dev nulling all the messages to the "blue" which no longer existed
(think I'm recalling that correctly)
iMessage ≠ SMS. Not doing this would open people to fake messages from people spoofing your number.
Except people seem to think they're seamlessly interchangeable and they aren't.
As I said, there are security reasons for that behavior, just like there are security reasons for you needed to sign out of iCloud to transfer an iPhone to a new user.
You don't have to love them, but they're there for a reason.
totes...not sayin folks aren't blissfully ignorant...but one could also argue Apple's "it just works" mantra kinda breeds that mindset in its users...
Okay, but it DOES just work. Don't expect it to KEEP working if you change to an usupported device.
The DoJ has made an unwise decision bringing this suit, in my estimation. We shall see.
yeah...all my google stuffs do that too...that's just like...cloud service 101...
@voltronic feel the same way, surely there's better things to litigate about but that's just me
I feel like part of the issue is that you cannot get the OS or ancillary storage/services on a device other than what they manufacture? It DEFINITELY makes it hard for people to buy a different phone and then access their digital life on it if all the data pre-exists/was created on an iPhone.
@voltronic I use Apple. A friend of mine does security for a legal firm. Said to kick down an apple product was less than an hour of work. All others were at least a day. I appreciate that I can turn off permissions by app, like location, microphone, or cellular data, that my Motorola and Nokia family members can’t do. I’ve never had a storage issue but I also still use a Sansa clip MP3 player (from “the 1990’s” as my kids say) when I want to listen to music.
^ Just to be clear, I do not want this thread to become a fanboy/girl flame war. I'm a longtime Android devotee and I'm giving Apple the benefit of the doubt here, because the case to me is a head-scratcher.
I want to focus on the legal issues. You would think the DOJ knows what they're doing if they're even going to file this. What am I missing?