this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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Literally not a problem for anyone but Google, a company.
Monopolies are definitely a problem for consumers. It allows Apple to get away with high prices for example.
No, competition is really important. Apple can be very consumer-unfriendly at times (see the ongoing raging about the 8gb ram Macbook Pros) and without competition, there’s nothing stopping them from being even worse.
Competition is very important. Two players is bad enough, having just one player reduces innovation and cost competitiveness.
See what happened with Intel and what they did when AMD finally brought some proper competition to the market again.
Eh. With iMessage’s popularity among teenagers, it would be harder for Android users to make friends in school. That’s a real problem and while many will say “you shouldn’t want to be friends with those types of people anyway,” it’s hard enough to make friends in school without this barrier. At that point, you can go through the hassle of working around that, or give in and use a device/OS that you find less favorable.
I mean , yeah , it would be good to not be friends with people that judge others based on using an android for example.
It's a problem for every other oem, and (more importantly) for current android users. If people stop using it Google are simply gonna stop making android.
Which also indirectly affects ios users, less competition (and Innovation) isn't good for anyone.
As long as apple prices their phones like how they are, they are never going to have total domination.
It can be an Apple issue if Androids market share diminishes to below 20%
Google has the money to lobby congress for antitrust suits and Apple may have to pay Google to keep Android alive
I'll never forget a few months ago on Reddit I saw a dude comment the only reason so many teenagers have iPhones is because they usually don't pay for it themselves, and they're gonna switch to Android when they get older.
It still boggles my mind that you can get in trouble because your competitors can't keep up with you or have a worse product than you. I get that this doesn't really happen often, but it's both funny and sad.
It’s a little more complicated than that. It’s not just a question of market share, but whether you use your market share to make it impossible for others to compete against you.
For example, Microsoft was getting itself into trouble in the late 90s because they essentially used their dominant position in the OS market to push Internet Explorer— making it next to impossible for other browsers at the time, like Netscape, to compete. For example, they made it difficult for other companies to install their software when their own competitive alternatives were included for free, and in some cases, impossible to remove (explorer was fully integrated into Windows at this time and you couldn’t remove it).
There are plenty of companies that essentially own entire markets. Google for example something like 85%. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Almost no one remembers you used to have to pay for Navigator, but they couldn't compete with free and built in IE.
Heck with windows 95 you used to have to pay for IE, you had to get the Windows 95 plus package or you had to buy IE separately.
It's the only reason Apple even exists today.
it still boggles my mind how people don't understand how a company having a monopoly isn't a good thing. prices go up, innovation goes down because you have no options.
How is it a monopoly tho? There are shitload of smartphone companies and Android still has more users worldwide than iOS.
We are talking about a hypothetical suit here, not an actual antitrust case
iMessage is vendor lock in, not being better. Apple is just as bad as 90s Microsoft on vendor lock in and EEE.
vendor lock in is not what you think it means.
I know full well what it means. Did you also sleep through the docs where Apple said they use iMessage as a way to prevent people from switching? What Apple does here is no different than Microsoft making using anything but IE on Windows in the 90s miserable. Or how to this day they keep obfuscating Office formats while pinky promising for real this time they'll support open document standards.