This entire mindset is wrong and is exactly what the DMA is trying to address. Apple, Google and other big tech companies aren't just small random companies whose product you can switch between every time they do something you dislike. Due to a lack of interoperability there's huge switching cost associated. They're digital gatekeepers with platform effects massively working in their favor.
But I do like the way Apple does things. To be specific, I want to buy Apple hardware and I want to run Linux on it.
What I don't like is the little digital fiefdom they created. When we buy stuff, we're supposed to own them. The problem is they just refuse to give us the keys to the machines. So we absolutely should make it a matter of law.
While I agree philosophically about owning stuff, this isn't about that. If the only problem were "Apple doesn't give you the keys", then competition is a solution.
The problem is network effects. An app developer cannot just choose to develop for Android, because maybe 90% of their business comes from iOS users. A user cannot just choose to use Android, because half their friends use iOS and cannot have a decent group chat experience outside iMessage. So, choice is illusory.
The point is to make the choice real. In this case "giving you the keys" is really about giving app developers more freedom to choose how to reach users.
Giving Apple users more control over their own freely-chosen devices is more like right-to-repair. Similar, but kinda different.
> If the only problem were "Apple doesn't give you the keys", then competition is a solution.
A solution. The solution is to make them to do what's good for us by force of law. We can't afford to wait a century for some open mobile hardware platform to become available to us. We want good products now. Apple computers are good products and we should have every right to run whatever software we want on them now.
There is no technical impediment to it, the only reason they don't let us do it is it would destroy the little digital fiefdom they have created for themselves. Digital fiefdoms should not be allowed to exist in the first place. Society should actively work to dismantle them. Giving us the keys to the machine will swiftly put an end to them.
> The problem is network effects.
Absolutely. Network effects should work to our advantage, not theirs. Basically anything that lets corporations "own" users should be straight up illegal.
> A user cannot just choose to use Android, because half their friends use iOS and cannot have a decent group chat experience outside iMessage.
We should mandate interoperability there too. Why is it that every corporation gets to have their own messaging system? They should all work with each other via the same protocol. Just make sure that end-to-end encryption is fully supported and there will be no problem.
Actually here's an even better idea. Just make it legal to reverse engineer and interoperate regardless of what contracts say. People will do it adversarially if they need to. Make it so you don't need their permission. Make it illegal for corporations to retaliate against users for using things like an alternative messaging client. Get rid of nonsense like anti-circumvention laws. Then all of this will just happen on its own via market forces with no need to actually regulate anything.
Do you not consider the software part of the product? By any reasonable measure, the software is the product, and the hardware enables that product to operate.
> Do you not consider the software part of the product?
No.
> By any reasonable measure, the software is the product, and the hardware enables that product to operate.
That's what they want people to believe. It's actually just a general purpose computer. They put "IP" on it and suddenly they own it forever and control everything people do and if you resist it's felony contempt of business model.
