[pjmlp]

That is exactly what I look for as judge decision.

It has been legal since ever, game consoles have 40 years of history by now.

And back in the 16 bit days, one would need to pay for SDKs.

PCs only became open due to IBM's failure to keep ownership of their creation, and Compaq's cleverness in clean room reverse engineering.

Since Windows 8 I am a big fan of Windows store app.

[simion314]

IMO consoles are an historic thing, this days I think if you pay full price to a console then you should have all the rights to unlock it, and if Sony wants to limit me then this should only work if I did not buy the product but I have a subscription for it.

Other giant difference between smartphones and consoles is that smartphones and internet are required for a majority of people (banking, messaging/email, COVID apps, 2FA apps ) I can't tell my bank please make an app for this free OS, or my company please make a 2FA app for this free OS and the reverse the company/bank can tell us "use Android because Apple banned our app because the small bug fix update triggered someone"

[pjmlp]

People can get Internet via other means, and there are plenty of ways to do phone calls.

[simion314]

So you see this smartphones as just different kind of consoles. Maybe you just play games on them but reality is more diverse. For example in real world you are forced to own a smartphone by work or society , like parking,banking, different activities are this days setup for phone users and if you don't own one you are forced to do a lot of extra work.

A few years ago some money exchanges were abusing the users by having large commissions rates, then a law was passed so this commissions will be printed in large fonts outside the exchange, this worked so maybe we can force Apple to print with large fonts on the box "30% of all future transactions go to Apple" (Apple can add with smaller fonts that they have some special exceptions) or "Apple decides what can you install and can change it's mind at any moment".

[pjmlp]

Parking, there are machines to get the tickets, and most places also support SMS or mobile Web apps, no need for an iPhone specifically.

Banking, one can walk to the bank office, use any phone model to call them, use the mobile Web site no need for an iPhone specifically.

Alone the fact that iPhone only matters to 22% of the world population pretty much validates the fact that is isn't water.

[throwaway34241]

> PCs only became open due to IBM's failure to keep ownership of their creation

> Since Windows 8 I am a big fan of Windows store app

Do you think it would have been better if PCs were not open (so going through IBM or Microsoft was the only effective way to distribute software)?

In certain ways the freedom that PCs allow is less convenient than having everything go through a central authority, but as one example I don't think web browsers would have been allowed to develop as they did under this model (since forcing more areas of software development to use platform-specific native apps would be more advantageous for the platform owners with market share).