[tmp231]

Of course you own it and should be able to put whatever OS you want on it. But you are confusing that with forcing apple to write their software in a way that suits you.

Antitrust laws _can_ be good, but like I said elsewhere, we are a country swimming neck deep in regulation and seem to like our particular hammer. It has a cooling effect on innovation, and China in some ways has a freer economy than we do.

I think it odd that many people rush to strongarm companies through law when there is a perfectly good alternative in Android. Even Microsoft and Amazon have been in the phone business and could get back in, offering you a phone with multiple app stores. Epic could even do it. There doesn’t seem to be enough people who care. You apparently do, and actually I agree with you that Apple should allow alternative app stores. But voluntarily because the people demand it or are leaving for Android, not because the hammer came down on them.

[stale2002]

> when there is a perfectly good alternative

There is very little cost in simply preventing Apple from taking so many intentionally anti-competitive actions.

It is not about forcing Apple to write software. Instead it is about preventing them from spending so much effort and trying to remove other people's ability to install other app stores.

Allowing other app stores, really would not be a huge burden on Apple, and it would give people a lot of choice.

> should be able to put whatever OS you want on it

That is not really very possible when Apple spends so much effort engaging in illegal anti-competitive practices, to prevent other app stores from being installed.

Finally, even if it were possible/easy to provide jailbreaking software, I think that Apple would almost certainly make serious efforts to prevent people from doing that.

But sure, I agree that game companies, and major tech companies should absolutely take action to provide people with very easy ways of jailbreaking people's phone.

Perhaps if Fortnite was available through Epic provided jailbreaking software, then that would be enough to kickstart things, and cause a bunch of other companies to move off of Apple's app store, and move to the jailbreak only version.

EX: imagine if fortnite provide incentives, like "free vbucks" to a large number of people, in order to get a large amount of people to jailbreak their phone, and then imagine if other companies, like Facebook, worked together on that, until almost everyone had a jailbroken phone.

That could certainly work. But I doubt Apple would just let that happen.

[tmp231]

I appreciate the back and forth, I really do.

> Instead it is about preventing them from spending so much effort and trying to remove other people's ability to install other app stores.

I think we are coming at this from 2 separate sets of foundational assumptions. I’m of the camp that companies are free to make devices and we are free to buy or not buy them. If we don’t like how they operate, we buy a competitor who does what we want. Hopefully enough people agree with us that a competitor will cater to us, or we can start our own. I know that some people start from a different set of assumptions that assumes we can just force the seller to sell us what we want. I don’t know that we can bridge that divide easily, but I wish you well. Thanks for the back and forth.

[stale2002]

> If we don’t like how they operate, we buy a competitor who does what we want.

I agree that there are some other "free market solutions" that could work.

The example that I gave, which would absolutely be a free market solution, would be if Fortnite, and other major companies, like facebook, banded together to build easy to use jailbreaking software, and to use their companies to try and convince a large critical mass of people to jailbreak their phone.

That could work. But I am worried about the government intervention, that Apple would try to engage in, to stop this free market solution, via lawsuits that they would inevitably use against this free market answer.

But lots of companies, acting together, to help everyone jailbreak their phone, so that, hopely half, or a large amount of users, now are in a position where they can easily install other app stores, would be a reasonably free market way of solving all of this.

When there is enough critical mass of users doing this, those major companies could then remove/ban their app from the Apple app store, so that basically everyone else has to follow along as well, and then basically everyone is outside of Apple's control.

[tmp231]

If they would band together, why not just make a new phone? Going after jail breaking apple devices would be fruitless since apple could release a new firmware to block your OS. I wish they wouldn’t, but the market solution would be for people to stop buying apple devices.

[stale2002]

> If they would band together, why not just make a new phone?

Because it is much easier to write jailbreaking software, than it is to build an entirely new phone.

> since apple could release a new firmware to block your OS

People have been jailbreaking phones for years. That is always the game of cat and mouse. And people have continue to get around it, even though they don't have large amount of resources, like big companies would.

But, furthermore, if there is a large enough userbase, that is jailbreaking their phone, then it would cause Apple a large amount of economic damage, if they decide to screw over this critical mass of users.

If 30% of Apple's users, would get their phone bricked after an Apple update, then Apple would probably be cautious about doing that.

But I guess it is hypothetically possible that Apple would be willing to brick 30% of their customers phones (if that was the critical mass). That would certainly hurt their customer friendly image though, and it would cause Apple billions of dollars in damages.

> but the market solution would be for people

Putting lots of resources into jailbreaking phones, and convincing a lot of users to do it, such that it would cause Apple a lot of damage, if they stopped it, is also a free market solution.

That is a free market solution that is much easier to do, than building a new phone.

[tmp231]

As long as it doesn’t break the contract you signed when buying the device, go for it.