They aren't preventing anyone from buying a competitor's donuts. At one point I had both an Apple and a Google Android phone. Apple preventing other app stores on iOS is more like Starbucks preventing Peet's from coming into its stores to sell its coffee. That's not monopolistic behavior.
No but it's not just going to a competitor's donut shop, it's losing your family group chat, cloud storage, apps you've paid for, integration with your laptop, tablet, earbuds, smart watch, etc, etc. Apple has on purpose (there are verified transcripts of execs talking about it) built a walled garden ecosystem that is incredibly hard to leave.
You mean your existing shoes, pants, or shirt won't let you enter the other coffee shop, and the expensive coffee mug you bought at the old shop (which was the only place they would allow you to buy one) won't hold coffee from any other brand so you have to ditch that too. Now you're getting closer
I think it is more lake the mayor allowing his son to open a Starbucks in the city but preventing everyone else from opening a Peet's because he is concerned about how that might negatively affect the image of the city in the eyes of coffee enthusiasts as he has no control over coffee prices and quality there.
IMO this isn't the correct take. Starbucks' stores are their own property and as long as they follow applicable laws regarding public accommodations, health and safety and the like they're free to run their stores however they want to. Where I live, we've got a plethora of Starbucks but we've also got Peet's and a whole bunch of small coffee roasters/shops that seem to be doing just fine. To me, Apple's App Store is the same way - it's Apple's property, run by Apple and branded by Apple. Everyone who develops for it knows the rules and (for the most part) follows them, because Apple makes sure you read the rules in multiple different places.
If you want to have an analogy along those lines, Apple is more like a Starbucks prohibiting coffee bean providers other than the ones it has agreements with from coming into Starbucks locations to sell their coffee beans.
> At one point I had both an Apple and a Google Android phone.
What percentage of people do you suppose carry two different phones in their pockets? Is this something you reasonably expect the majority of people to do?
> Apple preventing other app stores on iOS is more like Starbucks preventing Peet's from coming into its stores to sell its coffee.
Just look at your own words. Preventing other stores is like preventing competitors from selling in your store?
Preventing other stores is preventing other stores. You can put whatever you want in your store, they put what they want in theirs, and the customer gets to choose where to get their app.
Preventing the customer from using the other store is the anti-competitive thing being objected to. It doesn't need an analogy, that's literally what it is.
The issue is that "their store" is the only way to install things on your phone. You're trying to set up a catch 22 where the only way to install a competing store is from an existing store, theirs is the only existing store and competing stores aren't allowed in it.
It is anti-competitive to prevent competing stores. How you do it is irrelevant.
and their OS. I don't care if they allow whatever on their store. I would like the option to go to other stores or even sideload my own apps without the store intervention. That's right now impossible without a) hacking the device or b) being a dev working on an app.
It depends on if you think of IOS as a commons or as a private OS. And more and more court arguments are leaning towards the commons argument because of its market dominance in the mobile space. Becoming more regarded as a general purpose OS than "just a phone with a store hosted on it".
So IOS may one day not be considered a starbucks, but a park. And you can't hog a park to yourself
So is Apple the building that contains a Starbucks or the business known as Starbucks? It seems like it’s both — that is a problem. Is Starbucks charging its customers steep costs for entering the building? Where does the existing App Store with its large transaction fees and restrictions around billing fit into this analogy?
And, to extend the analogy, paying the coffee patrons you think might consider opening a competitive donut shop next door to avoid that from happening (ie Google).
"Coffee patrons" would be consumers - literally paying consumers to not shop at your competitor is just offering extremely low (i.e. negative) prices, which may be perfectly legal depending on the context.
Paying off gamedevs would be analogous to paying off dough-makers (or doughnut bakers?) to only supply your store, and not your competitor, which would be super illegal. AMD sued Intel for very similar activity, and won.
Yeah, that's why the monopoly argument is important. Not because monopolies are illegal, but some new competitor being aggressive is different from the established robber baron squashing potential competition using its establishment.
Epic as a game store is very much not a monopoly by any means. Game consoles are certainly an argument, but thus far none are dominant over the other. It would mostly be a problem if a new console jumped in and Sony/Microsoft teamed up to hardball it out.
Epic already does that and has a number of exclusives to their store, like Alan Wake 2. They also will pay devs to have it exclusive to their store for a year.
> There is a difference between selling donuts in the coffee shop and preventing anyone who drinks your coffee from buying a competitor's donuts.
Isn't the resolution the same in each case? If you have an iPhone and you want to install an app from another store, you have to buy another phone. It's the same with these deals with Android, just overt.
I don't know what restaurants you frequent, but I can't think of anyone being okay with bringing outside meals or beverages. Probably you are just not kicked out because staff is not noticing or apathetic.
I only know of the concept of Corkage, where you pay the restaurant a fee if you bring your own wine to drink:
> A corkage fee is the price charged to guests who choose to bring their own bottle of wine to a restaurant. Corkage fees usually exist at restaurants that already serve wine. The practice of allowing guests to bring their own wine is considered a courtesy to guests. … The average corkage fee ranges from $10 to $40 per bottle but may be as high as $100 or more.
>Or you know, they don't care as long you're a paid customer.
Some do, some don't. In my experience, Starbucks couldn't care less as long as you buy a coffee (and even then couldn't care less. maybe a restaurant would care more but it's on bar logic: they don't mind lending seats until paying customers come in). Smaller shops tend to be more strict about doing that kind of thing.
