Apple is an existential threat to the PC

[Wesker]

The difference is the brand power and the culture Apple have built, not just the overpriced stuff they sell. The disdain from Apple users to others is often palpable and so obvious.

I would have to disagree.

Unfortunately we don't have empirical evidence, so I can only speak from personal experience. Most vitriol comes from the "PCMR" and Android community first. For example, if you go to the comments section of an Apple product review on a PC-focused site, the comments section is pretty terrible.

I would agree with your description of Apple fans during the Steve Jobs era -- heck, it was one of the reasons why I steered away from Apple products. But I think that's all changed now, and the shoe is on the other foot so to speak.

 

[MfA]

Only thing which annoys me is the lenghts Apple supporters will go to rationalise their support for its monopoly powers.

"I don't care Apple can rentseek, I don't want dirty peasant companies in their walled garden. Apple for dictator!"

 

[Wesker]

That’s fair criticism. But again, those fans are in the minority. Furthermore, they’re a minority in a minority. When you look at market share, Windows and Android are far closer to monopoly status than either macOS or iOS.

EDIT: though I understand that even in Apple’s own ecosystem — when we isolate from the overall market — some of its policies are anticompetitive. For example, I think Apple’s preferential treatment of large companies in the App Store is pretty adhoc and hurts small app developers, and I think they really need to change their stance on gaming (e.g. adopt Vulkan) and streaming apps.

But again, these sorts of shenanigans occur in the PC market too. Nvidia pulls dubious crap like this every generation, Intel used to be a regular offender, and AMD has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar too.

 

[MfA]

I didn't talk about anticompetitive, I talked of monopoly.

The industry is anticompetitive simply because of the massive hurdles to entry at this point. You don't have to deliver just a laptop, nor a mobile phone with a large amount of apps including a map solution with streetview, you have to deliver an entire consumer electronics ecosystem which has those things. It's a 100+ billion endeavour to compete with Google and Apple, a little less for Samsung and Microsoft.

Microsoft is gun shy after the Nokia cluster fuck and is caught in a lot of legacy tying millstones around it's neck such as trying to support PC platforms with way too much variety. Samsung seems unable to do software right to go independent from Google. Google meanwhile is stuck in a situation where they can only ever offer lower end, even when expensive, because their customers have to get datamined. Apple can compete far more effectively with Google than vice versa.

Apple is going to run away with the entire consumer electronic market.

PS. I actually think Google's technology has a value proposition which could compete with Apple, as I said Apple is slow on the uptake for cloud centric computing, while earning enough from the appstore and hardware certification to keep paying for development. The advertising part of Google will never let Android/Chromebook go though.

 

[PSman1700]

Apple is going to run away with the entire consumer electronic market.

Maybe, maybe not. We dont know that.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Only thing which annoys me is the lenghts Apple supporters will go to rationalise their support for its monopoly powers.

And the thing which annoys me is the lengths Apple haters will go to try and convince others that Apple has any kind of monopoly in any market. iOS is a fraction of smartphone OS market and macOS is a fraction of the desktop OS market. There are plenty of alternatives to iPhones and Macs.

That doesn't make any of Apple's shitty decisions right but what this means is, most Governments can only get involved when there is an actual breach of the law. The laws that allow a Government to force a company to do things differently are balanced by the need for there to be a genuine monopoly or where or anti-competitive practises occur.

The reason for this is, if/when a company starts doing shitty things, customers will generally go elsewhere and the market corrects itself - there are obviously options to iOS. But when a company establishes a genuine monopoly, options are limited and that's why Government's can step in. Most of Apple's shitty decisions do not impact customers in any meaningful way. Developers could drop iOS but the platform has a disproportionately large spending customer base compared to Android so you go where the money is, or you just forfeit some money. In terms of anti-competitiveness, Apple's actions of not harm their competition, restricting what software can run on iOS is a big plus point for other platforms.

Apple does not have a monopoly, and posting it over and over and over and over again will not make it true. We get it, you absolutely hate Apple. But posting nonsense detracts from the legitimate points you make. Think that over.

 

[BRiT]

And the thing which annoys me is the lengths Apple haters will go to try and convince others that Apple has any kind of monopoly in any market

But Apple has a monopoly on Apple products...

 

[MfA]

iOS is a fraction of smartphone OS market

Over 50% of the US mobile phone market and climbing in other major markets. The snowball effects from ecosystem locking (including social, ie. imessage), strangulation effects from vertical integration and margin/segment differences also makes it insidious. The upper segments are far more important than the lower, you can not make it up in volume.

By the time even you see I'm right, they will have decimated the component markets for everything they moved in house. I don't think that can be really stopped at this point, but at least for software the damage can be limited somewhat.

 

[zed]

“Apple has a monopoly in the Apple App Store,” said Margrethe Vestager, executive vice-president at the European Commission.

The case dates back to last summer when music-streaming company Spotify issued a formal complaint to the EU against the Cupertino, California company, accusing the tech titan of using its market dominance to force smaller businesses to pay extortionate commissions or not get access to the Apple ecosystem. The complaint resulted in an official antitrust probe by the European Commission.

https://www.verdict.co.uk/apple-has-a-monopoly/

 

[PSman1700]

 

[Deleted member 11852]

https://www.verdict.co.uk/apple-has-a-monopoly/

And Walmart has a monopoly inside Walmart. Costco has a monopoly inside Costco. I have a monopoly inside my house. Controlling what you own is the way things are. The "inside the AppStore" qualifier is important and it's why the Commission have yet to do anything. What Apple does inside their AppStore does not impact Apple's competitors in the mobile operating system or smartphones market. Now if Apple inistsed apps released in the AppStore not be released elsewhere, that would be anti-competitive.

@MfA 50% is not a monopoly.

 

[PSman1700]

And Walmart has a monopoly inside Walmart. Costco has a monopoly inside Costco. I have a monopoly inside my house. Controlling what you own is the way things are. The "inside the AppStore" qualifier is important and it's why the Commission have yet to do anything. What Apple does inside their AppStore does not impact Apple's competitors in the mobile operating system or smartphones market. Now if Apple inistsed apps released in the AppStore not be released elsewhere, that would be anti-competitive.

@MfA 50% is not a monopoly.

What happened to Dark Sky wasnt that nice though

 

[Wesker]

Over 50% of the US mobile phone market and climbing in other major markets. The snowball effects from ecosystem locking (including social, ie. imessage), strangulation effects from vertical integration and margin/segment differences also makes it insidious. The upper segments are far more important than the lower, you can not make it up in volume.

By the time even you see I'm right, they will have decimated the component markets for everything they moved in house. I don't think that can be really stopped at this point, but at least for software the damage can be limited somewhat.

You need to concern yourself with Samsung first before Apple. Then there’s Nvidia and its stranglehold on the GPU market…

 

[zed]

50% is not a monopoly.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america
iOS 59.15%
Android 40.54%

Section two of the Sherman Act prohibits monopolies, attempts to monopolize, or conspiracies to monopolize.
A monopoly is a form of market structure where only one or very few companies dominate the total sales of a particular product or service.
A market share greater than 75 percent indicates monopoly power, a share less than 50 percent does not, and shares between 50 and 75 percent are inconclusive in and of themselves.

Red = definitely a monopoly
Blue = perhaps a monopoly
So not cut and dried

 

[Deleted member 11852]

So not cut and dried

No, it's not cut and tried. Having the greater market used to be defining factor but it's fallen out of favour in modern interpretations of the law, including the Sherman Act which Epic weirded against Apple and for which Apple was found not to be in violation just a few month ago. Although the language of the Sherman Act forbids all monopolies, the courts have held that the act only applies to those monopolies attained through abused or unfair power.

The purpose of defining a monopoly was is to provide a counter to where consumer choice genuinely becomes limited. How would Apple be doing that? Apple releases a few phones every year whereas the competition released hundreds. The competition's phones comes in more varied sizes, with more varied features, spanning many more piece brackets. Small phones, large phones, sliding phones, folding-screen phones. Nor does Apple control any core technology necessary to make a smartphone.

Nothing that Apple is doing limits consumer choice, and nothing Apple is doing limits its competition. These are the core principles of why monopolies and anti-competitive legislation exists.

 

[PSman1700]

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america

Glad i dont live there. In EU/asia were not depended on imessage/factime luckily.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Glad i dont live there. In EU/asia were not depended on imessage/factime luckily.

This a good example. WhatsApps works pretty much anywhere and Apple make it really easy for messenger-type apps to integrate well into iOS. This is why WhatsApp is vastly more popular than iMessage - the last number I saw was 2bn users - helped by it being cross-platform, along with a web-interface.

Nobody is dependant on iMessage or FaceTime. They are popular I presume because people like using them. Then there is Google. Ars Technica has a good de-construction of how Google f***ed up messaging. Google did that to themselves. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[PSman1700]

Nobody is dependant on iMessage or FaceTime. They are popular I presume because people like using them.

Yes but, in the US its abit different. You dont have to use imessage/iphone, but if most of your friends/population do and you prefer an android phone over an iphone its ye....

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Yes but, in the US its abit different. You dont have to use imessage/iphone, but if most of your friends/population do and you prefer an android phone over an iphone its ye....

I know colour is a big issue in the US, but it takes a special sort of culture to be racist about message bubbles.

 

[PSman1700]

I know colour is a big issue in the US, but it takes a special sort of culture to be racist about message bubbles.

Lol. But how does someone living in the US with an android phone message to someone using an Iphone, since most there only use the build in imessage app, you'd either have to convince them to install or use fb messenger/whatsapp etc, pay the texting fee (and live with the different colour) OR get an iphone

As i said, glad we dont have this problem in the EU.