[gpm]

> The interactions between a silicon chip and software drivers has nothing to do with right to repair. Never has been.

Software bugs... you could reasonably end up with a right to fix them given the current direction of right to repair lobbying. And that right might include the right to documentation.

> Apple doesn't have a monopoly on any hardware, except insofar as any company has a natural monopoly on their own products, as made explicitly legal by copyright and patent laws.

Which is to say they have a monopoly...

Anti trust never makes having a monopoly illegal, it makes exploiting that monopoly to gain further monopolies illegal. It doesn't care about where the monopoly came from.

It does care about the kind of monopoly, current anti trust rules probably don't consider the monopoly Apple has from copyright and patents on hardware to be of the right category (to cover an entire market)... but that could easily change.

> Obviously legal. See above.

On the contrary...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_misuse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_misuse

> Obviously legal. See above.

Yes, I agree under current definitions, but it would be a reasonable way for the laws to evolve. It is very similar in nature to the existing limits on patents, for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/business/university-s-dru...

[hishnash]

If apple were found to be in violation of Patent misuses the result would not be that apple is forced to open up the internals of how their products work but rather that patens apple has would be make null and void and others could copy them (based on the already public patent filling and nothing more).

[gpm]

Indeed, but if the doctrine started becoming more widely applied I imagine that they would start actively trying to avoid having it apply to them, e.g. by not using their hardware monopolies (patents) in ways that create software monopolies.

[simondotau]

> Which is to say they have a monopoly...

Sure, but by that definition every commercial product constructed from multiple parts has a monopoly over all their components. Starbucks has a “monopoly” over what coffee is sold within Starbucks cups. Sorry, but I just can’t take that kind of argument seriously.

> current anti trust rules probably don't consider the monopoly Apple has from copyright and patents on hardware to be of the right category (to cover an entire market)... but that could easily change.

Copyright and patents are the very definition of a legal monopoly. I don't think you're being serious.

[gpm]

> Sure, but by that definition every commercial product constructed from multiple parts has a monopoly over all their components. Starbucks has a “monopoly” over what coffee is sold within Starbucks cups. Sorry, but I just can’t take that kind of argument seriously.

You're right, my reply there was poorly worded, fortunately you seem to agree with the point of the reply anyways since you say

> Copyright and patents are the very definition of a legal monopoly.

Which really is just the point.

However I am being entirely serious that there is more that not all monopolies implicate current anti trust law. Whether or not they do depends on whether or not they're a monopoly over the entirety of a market, not over a certain invention (patent) or copying a certain work of art (copyright).

You can see that at play in the current Epic v Apple case for instance. It's unambiguous that Apple has a monopoly over distributing apps to iPhones, it is ambiguous over whether the relevant market here is iPhone users, and therefore whether or not anti trust law applies.