[zaroth]

The Venn diagram of things that you are capable of doing, and things that are legal to do, changes when you either are or are not a monopoly.

Offering rebates for using your product and not using someone else’s, for example, may be illegal if you are a monopoly but not illegal if you are not.

There are innumerable things a given company could do that harms its competition. Up to a point, that’s kinda the whole idea! It doesn’t become illegal unless it is done by leveraging a monopoly market position.

[Wowfunhappy]

I'm arguing the law (or our interpretation of it?) should be stricter than it currently is, in light of how much power modern technology gives platform holders, and the situation I outlined above.

[zaroth]

I think as long as Apple does not have a monopoly, history has shown us that competition will take care of this.

If Apple clamps down on 3rd party apps to the point where it is no longer serving its user-base, the user base has many good alternatives, and Apple would lose business.

I think the Spotify example is a good one; if Apple kicked off Spotify, there could be millions of people switching to Android just because of that. Apple might love the idea that only Apple Music should exist on their iPhone (in fact they was kinda Steve’s original vision) but they can’t get away with it specifically because they would be clobbered by the competition if they tried.

Even as (if) Apple’s reputation shifts away from “walled garden that protects you from junk and malware and spyware” toward “overlord trying to control what you can buy” this causes some users to leave.

As long as there’s viable competitors, I’d rather let users vote with their wallets. This is actually the best way to give people the choice of which system you would prefer using. If the fully open system is preferred by most users then most users will choose that product. But because there are actually huge trade-offs and very hard unsolved problems with a fully open system, it’s important to provide consumers both options.

[Wowfunhappy]

> I think the Spotify example is a good one; if Apple kicked off Spotify, there could be millions of people switching to Android just because of that.

We'll never know unless/until it happens, but I think you are 100% wrong on this point—most would just switch to Apple Music. Phones are much too expensive to switch immediately, and while some users might initially want to switch at their next upgrade cycle, they would need to sign up for Apple Music in the interim, and then they'll become accustomed to it.

iPhone users are a captive market. The costs of switching are too high, both economically and in terms of inertia.