<story><title>Telegram files EU antitrust complaint against Apple’s App Store</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/telegram-files-eu-antitrust-complaint-against-apples-app-store/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>veselin</author><text>It is full of Apple (and other corporate) apologists. But I just want to point out that Google executives were saying some years ago that if Android was not part of Google, it would have been one of hottest startups in the valley.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I am sure that if PASemi is spun off Apple, it may be the hottest CPU company in the world. I am sure that the Apple services will also do better outside the Apple hardware group. There are plenty of innovations and certainly there is the tendency to use them to raise the prices for consumers (which is illegal) as opposed to grow the market. I will refrain to say if Apple if guilty in this case, just saying that if hypothetically it is, this is not the end. In fact, many good things may happen in the long term by actually applying the anti-monopoly laws and breaking up a few companies instead of working around the laws.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chipotle_coyote</author><text>&amp;gt; I am sure that if PASemi is spun off Apple, it may be the hottest CPU company in the world.&lt;p&gt;This may be true, but it seems hard to make the case that Apple is using monopoly power to stifle innovation in the CPU market, of all things.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I am sure that the Apple services will also do better outside the Apple hardware group.&lt;p&gt;Really? I&amp;#x27;m not at all sure that Apple Music, for instance, would be competitive with Spotify if it wasn&amp;#x27;t bundled with iOS devices -- I can&amp;#x27;t think of any other unbundled music service that&amp;#x27;s competitive with them. (And how many of your Android-using friends are Apple Music subscribers? It&amp;#x27;s technically possible, right?) Likewise, would lots of people be lining up to use iCloud if Macs, iPhones and iPads started with what amounts to &amp;quot;click here to use iCloud?&amp;quot; iMessage, maybe? Eh, maybe, but.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In fact, many good things may happen in the long term by actually applying the anti-monopoly laws and breaking up a few companies instead of working around the laws.&lt;p&gt;Sure, but I&amp;#x27;m not convinced the problems with Apple&amp;#x27;s App Store policies are best addressed by forcing Apple to spin off &amp;quot;The App Store Company.&amp;quot; They&amp;#x27;d be much better addressed by forcing Apple to allow sideloading of apps (probably using the &amp;quot;Gatekeeper&amp;quot; technology they already have in place on Macs, which I naïvely thought would have come to iOS by now) and relaxing in-app purchase rules to the point where apps that don&amp;#x27;t -- or &lt;i&gt;can&amp;#x27;t,&lt;/i&gt; like Amazon Kindle -- use Apple&amp;#x27;s in-app purchase framework can at least &lt;i&gt;tell&lt;/i&gt; you how to buy content from it. Hell, as some HN nerds would tell you, you could get a huge chunk of the way there simply by forcing Apple to build full PWA support into WebKit. None of those things require Apple to be broken up in any material way.&lt;p&gt;Also, side note:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Google executives were saying some years ago that if Android was not part of Google, it would have been one of hottest startups in the valley.&lt;p&gt;You know Android &lt;i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; one of the hottest startups in the Valley and that&amp;#x27;s why Google bought them, right? :) (Arguably hotter than PA Semi was when Apple bought them!)</text></comment>
<story><title>Telegram files EU antitrust complaint against Apple’s App Store</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/telegram-files-eu-antitrust-complaint-against-apples-app-store/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>veselin</author><text>It is full of Apple (and other corporate) apologists. But I just want to point out that Google executives were saying some years ago that if Android was not part of Google, it would have been one of hottest startups in the valley.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I am sure that if PASemi is spun off Apple, it may be the hottest CPU company in the world. I am sure that the Apple services will also do better outside the Apple hardware group. There are plenty of innovations and certainly there is the tendency to use them to raise the prices for consumers (which is illegal) as opposed to grow the market. I will refrain to say if Apple if guilty in this case, just saying that if hypothetically it is, this is not the end. In fact, many good things may happen in the long term by actually applying the anti-monopoly laws and breaking up a few companies instead of working around the laws.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tonyedgecombe</author><text>Except Apple doesn&amp;#x27;t have a monopoly in any of its markets. They don&amp;#x27;t have a monopoly in phones, laptops, desktops, tablets, music, TV, processors, none of their products dominate their market.&lt;p&gt;Of course you can try and distort the meaning of monopoly but that isn&amp;#x27;t going to get you very far.</text></comment>