[lacker]

The best case outcome is to get publicity leading to US and EU antitrust regulators to file a lawsuit against Apple, both of which Apple loses. The conclusion of this lawsuit is that not only must Apple allow access to iMessage, they also must allow changing the default for every component of iOS - messaging app, browser, app store, let you replace Siri with other voice assistants - and to lower the 30% app store fee to 10%. Same rules apply to Android.

Okay, that might not be likely, but you did ask about the best case outcome.

[snakeyjake]

How is this an actionable anti-trust issue?

iMessage doesn't even register as a messaging platform in the minds of most users globally.

In the US is it dwarfed by at least three other platforms.

Globally, do any of the other top ten (Apple is nowhere near the top ten) messaging apps allow third parties to spoof their service?

The purpose of anti-trust is to increase competition and prevent unlawful monopolies. Apple is a flea on the tail of an ox when it comes to messaging, as capable of influencing the market as I am.

[r3trohack3r]

> iMessage … messaging platform

For me, personally, it’s an SMS app not general messaging. And on iOS there is absolutely no competition for SMS by design.

I suspect iMessage would enjoy far less adoption if the iMessage features were a separate application from the SMS features, or if a 3rd party app could assume the role of handling SMS (I.E. Signal).

If Signal were allowed to handle SMS on an iPhone, ditching iMessage would be one of the first things I’d do when setting up my device.

On iOS, if I want to send a message to a phone number using a cross-platform protocol that (nearly?) all cellphones understand by default without coordinating a separate communication channel out-of-band, my option is: iMessage. That is not organic, it’s Apple using its position as the device manufacturer to force all competition out of the SMS space, and then offering a “progressive enhancement” on top of an open protocol that nobody else can compete with or interopt with.

[dwaite]

Slight correction - you can't (or rather, shouldn't) override the SMS handling on an android phone.

Instead what an app like Signal does is request all the permissions it can from the SMS/MMS handling service of the phone - to read and send SMS entries, and to get events on an incoming SMS, and then request to be the default handler of the `sms` custom URI scheme.

But you can have any number of SMS clients at once. It is likely if Apple Messages ever came to Android, it would do the same thing - otherwise, the fallback behavior (when talking to an android user without the app installed, for example) would be sub-par.

[acaloiar]

I'm not a lawyer.

But I do believe there's reason to consider Apple's policy relative to iMessage clients monopolistic. Apple's behavior is not significantly different from Microsoft's, which instigated US v. Microsoft [1]. That case largely took issue with Microsoft's mandatory bundling of IE with Windows and the extent to which Microsoft created an inorganic monopoly. In addition to how Microsoft's monopoly came to be one, the judge also took issue with Microsoft's methodology in quashing threats to that monopoly. One could claim that Apple is taking similar quashing action relative to Beeper now.

Microsoft of course appealed the judgement, and prevailed. But they prevailed only because the judge had broken his code of conduct in discussing the case with media; not because Microsoft's behavior was not monopolistic.

I don't believe global or domestic iMessenger usage is relevant.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

[threeseed]

> I'm not a lawyer.

This is very obvious because you have a poor grasp of the facts.

a) The issue with Microsoft was that it had a monopoly in operating systems. At the time it was about ~95% market share. Gates woke up one morning, decided web apps were a threat to this, saw Netscape as their major competitor and decided to eliminate them. It didn't try to compete with them. It went straight for elimination by bundling IE and coercing OEMs e.g Compaq to not bundle Netscape. Using a monopoly in one market to force a monopoly in another is exactly what the laws were designed to prevent.

b) Global and domestic iMessage usage is relevant. In fact it is the whole point. You need to demonstrate that there is an absence or distortion of a market for anti-trust laws to be applied.

c) Apple is not trying to eliminate Beeper, they have no monopoly in anything and there is clear evidence of a fair and functioning market by the presence of WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, Signal etc.

[acaloiar]

a) The issue with Microsoft was that it had a monopoly in operating systems. At the time it was about ~95% market share. Gates woke up one morning, decided web apps were a threat to this, saw Netscape as their major competitor and decided to eliminate them. It didn't try to compete with them. It went straight for elimination by bundling IE and coercing OEMs e.g Compaq to not bundle Netscape. Using a monopoly in one market to force a monopoly in another is exactly what the laws were designed to prevent.

I don't dispute these facts. And I don't think they dispute my comment. By mentioning US v. Microsoft, I pointed out that there are similarities between Microsoft in the 90s and Apple today.

> b) Global and domestic iMessage usage is relevant. In fact it is the whole point. You need to demonstrate that there is an absence or distortion of a market for anti-trust laws to be applied.

Thank you for the correction.

> c) Apple is not trying to eliminate Beeper, they have no monopoly in anything and there is clear evidence of a fair and functioning market by the presence of WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, Signal etc.

Unless one can believe that Apple is both willing to block Beeper and not eliminate it, then Apple is trying to eliminate Beeper as a Messenger competitor. From their statement: "We took steps to protect our users by blocking techniques that exploit fake credentials in order to gain access to iMessage."

I think Apple has a reasonable argument for doing so. Though, in a world where Apple controls the only App Store where iOS users are blocked from downloading alternative SMS applications, they do hold a monopoly over both how iOS users install applications, and the only SMS application available on iOS: Messenger. Non-iOS users who want to message iOS users with the same quality of service as iMessages may only do so by installing 3rd party software. Otherwise they need to implicitly agree to having messages treated as second class, to Apple's likely enrichment. I think reasonable people can perceive some amount of anti-competitive intent in Apple's action. Should Apple be able to block 3rd parties from using the iMessage service infrastructure? Possibly, but it's hard to argue that doing so is pro-competition.

I think most of the concern over Apple's refusal to admit 3rd party iMessage clients will be eliminated if and when they make good on their promise to support RCS next year.

[hifreq]

Agreed. Every single platform/device has apps that are exclusive to it. It's mind-boggling to me that people are so obsessed with Messages. I can't play thousands of Steam games on my Mac. My friends who have PCs play those games together, have fun, chat online. Should Steam be forced to "open their protocol" whatever that means?..

[blep_]

Steam does run on Macs. The individual games do not.

[hifreq]

I never said it doesn't.

> I can't play thousands of Steam games on my Mac

This is the point I am making. There are certain apps and features that are exclusive to certain devices. I can 't play the vast majority of Steam games on my Mac. Should Steam (and all game companies involved, including Valve) be forced to enable support for MacOS for all their games because Mac users have FOMO?

[thomastjeffery]

Apple has a literal complete monopoly on operating systems. Every iPhone must either run iOS or be cracked (jailbreak). That's not the whole story, though: Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior was not monopolizing the OS market. It was using that monopoly to promote IE.

> Apple is not trying to eliminate Beeper

They are literally eliminating one of their products. That's anti-competitive.

> they have no monopoly in anything and there is clear evidence of a fair and functioning market by the presence of WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, Signal etc.

You just moved the goalposts out of the stadium. Anti-competitive behavior doesn't need to overwhelm every segment of a market to be anti-competitive behavior.

[threeseed]

a) That's not how it works. You need to have a functioning market in order to have a monopoly.

b) Apple is not interfering with the ability of Beeper to sell their product or add new features. They are simply closing loopholes in their product.

c) I never said that anti-competitive behaviour needs to overwhelm every segment. In fact I said the complete opposite when I referred to market distortion.

[hraedon]

This is a silly argument: Microsoft's bundling of IE resulted in real damage to another company (Netscape) that had a viable and independent competitor product. Beeper doesn't have an independent product: they have a hacky workaround that Apple fixed.

What Microsoft did with IE isn't really analogous to Apple refusing to let another company free ride on their infrastructure. This isn't even as egregious as patching iTunes to break the Palm Pre sync was, and the legality of that action seems pretty settled by now.

[haswell]

> What Microsoft did with IE isn't really analogous to Apple refusing to let another company free ride on their infrastructure.

Zoom out for a moment and take Beeper out of the picture. The issue is not Beeper specifically, it’s the underlying reasons that Beeper even exists.

If you buy an iPhone and want to interoperate with friends/family on Android, the default experience is extremely broken.

Apple’s behavior here is directly driving users away from Android, not because Apple is better, but because it’s the only way to actually use the native experience.

I don’t know if the cases are equivalent, but there’s certainly a case to be made that they’re in a similar category.

[hraedon]

If I want to "interoperate" with friends and family who use Android, I have zero issues doing so. SMS works fine, and the default experience being "bad" is really completely unrelated to any sort of antitrust concern. If we want more features, they're an App download away.

Apple offers a product that has seen significant success in a small number of markets versus android, including the US. Dressing up what is ultimately the normal bump and tumble of competition in a market as antitrust because they're winning enough in the market(s) you care about is silly.

[haswell]

> …because they're winning enough in the market(s) you care about is silly

I disagree that what follows “because” is an accurate representation of what is happening, and reduces a more complex issue to an oversimplified notion of “winning”.

Microsoft was also winning in the market. How a company wins is what matters in discussions about anti-trust. If that winning is appreciably supported by anti-consumer behaviors, it becomes problematic.

I don’t know if what Apple is doing rises to the level of antitrust, but it’s certainly anti-consumer.

> Dressing up what is ultimately the normal bump and tumble of competition in a market as antitrust because they're winning enough in the market(s) you care about is silly.

Anti-consumer behavior being part of the “normal bump and tumble” is hardly a good reason to find it acceptable. Anti-trust actions have been weak or almost non-existent for years now, but again has nothing to do with whether or not the status quo is acceptable.

I don’t find those arguments compelling, and we’ll have to agree to disagree

[FridgeSeal]

> If you buy an iPhone and want to interoperate with friends/family on Android,

Then use a cross platform messaging app. FB Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord. I have all of them on my phone.

> the default experience is extremely broken.

It’s not broken. Apple devices have a low-friction “hot path” for communicating with other apple devices. That’s it. Want to use it? Get an apple device.

Apple isn’t obliged to make its messaging app work for everyone, on all platforms.

[haswell]

> It’s not broken. Apple devices have a low-friction “hot path” for communicating with other apple devices. That’s it. Want to use it? Get an apple device.

As an Apple user who likes Apple products (I just really dislike this iMessage stance), I don’t agree. When I open the app that allows me to communicate with other users via phone number, and when that experience can’t handle sending a photo in the year 2023, the experience is broken.

I’m glad they’re implementing RCS support (which seems to be their acknowledgement that there is an issue to solve), but the fact that they chose to wait until 2024 is unacceptable.

> Apple isn’t obliged to make its messaging app work for everyone, on all platforms.

That’s not what I’m arguing. The desire for iMessage is a symptom, and I’m not saying they should be forced to make iMessage work everywhere. The problem is that non-iMessage support on the phone is atrocious. They’re selling a general purpose communication device that is incapable of exchanging run of the mill content with other general purpose communication devices, and using that poor experience to drive iPhone sales.

There are many ways to solve this that don’t require Apple to make its messaging app work for all platforms. They’ve already solved this for other categories like VOIP apps, which enjoy a unified OS-level experience.

[stouset]

> I'm not a lawyer.

> But I do believe there's reason to consider Apple's policy relative to iMessage clients monopolistic.

In order for antitrust laws to apply, it’s not enough to exhibit monopolistic behavior. You actually have to be a monopoly and use this behavior to achieve and/or retain it.

[tzs]

That's not the whole story in the United States. Antitrust law prohibits monopolization, which is monopoly power couple with anticompetitive practices, but it also prohibits various practices from companies that do not have monopoly power.

For example the Sherman Act prohibits attempted monopolization. You run afoul of that for anticompetitive conduct and a specific intent to monopolize if there is a dangerous probability that will achieve monopoly power.

The Clayton Act added restrictions on price discrimination, exclusive dealing, tying, and mergers and acquisitions that substantially reduce competition or tend to create monopolies.

[RobotToaster]

> You actually have to be a monopoly

Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony — Sherman Act, Section 2

[lowbloodsugar]

> But they prevailed only because the judge had broken his code of conduct in discussing the case with media;

You seem to think this was a terrible, terrible accident on the part of the judge, rather than just one of the many mechanisms by which the powerful evade laws to protect the weak. That is, a deliberate terrible terrible "mistake".

[tapoxi]

Aren't 70% of American teenagers on iPhone because of the iMessage network effects? The whole "green bubble" shaming issue.

[snakeyjake]

>The whole "green bubble" shaming issue.

Even if that's a real thing and not an imaginary or minor phenomenon hyped up for clicks, it is hardly anti-trust-worthy.

70% of American teenagers may have access to iMessage due to it being on their phones but there is a 0.0% chance that, in aggregate, iMessage is in their top five most-used messaging apps.

[cmiles74]

I can't speak to the anti-trust issue but it is a real thing. My daughter couldn't join the group chat used by her (all iPhone) cheerleading team. We ended up missing last minute changes to practice locations more than once.

And, of course, there was some teasing from the other team members about how my daughter's parents were too cheap to buy them a proper phone.

[spease]

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their SMS but by the content of their character."

[hnfong]

... "by the content of their messages".

[tibbydudeza]

We had the same issue when Blackberry ruled the roost at school and the go to question was what is your BBM PIN.

Eventually we gave up and bought two Curve's.

Never discount peer pressure.

[hifreq]

I can't play many games on my MacBook, so can't play and hang out with friends who all have Xbox/PS5. What should I do?

[hcurtiss]

I have teen girls in Oregon. iMessage is decidedly the number one messaging app. The others aren't even close. There's no universe where my daughters use anything but iPhones. For better or worse, their friend group deliberately excludes those who cannot use the full functionality of iMessage. In case you've forgotten, teen girls are not terribly "equity" minded, particularly when it comes to tech.

[tibbydudeza]

Teen girls and clique's - tell me about it as a parent of two daughters.

[tmiku]

I'm not sure why you're so confident in that 0.0% assertion. iMessage is integrated with the default/ubiquitous messaging app on iPhones, and I think it's reasonable to assume that teenagers are messaging mainly other teenagers who are likely to have iPhones (and thus using iMessage).

What do you think is beating out iMessage here apart from SMS? Snapchat, WhatsApp, various social net DMs? The biggest non-iMessage usage numbers I can imagine still don't exceed what I'd expect from iMessage, just based on its ubiquity in that demographic.

[airstrike]

> Even if that's a real thing and not an imaginary or minor phenomenon hyped up for clicks, it is hardly anti-trust-worthy.

I'm in a group chat with (former) coworkers who repeatedly (albeit playfully) shame the one group member who forces us all to use green bubbles. It's a real thing

[TerrifiedMouse]

This whole green bubble equal shame thing is 100% on people.

The reason there are 2 different colors is so people can tell when they are using SMS because SMS are capped / cost money in most of the world - while iMessage messages are unlimited and free.

[airstrike]

> This whole green bubble equal shame thing is 100% on people.

Easy, then! Let's just fix people

[jpc0]

Sounds like you need a new group of people around you.

You honestly see Apple as the aggressor in that situation and not those people?

[airstrike]

> Sounds like you need a new group of people around you

...

> You honestly see Apple as the aggressor in that situation and not those people?

Where did I call Apple an aggressor? Stick to the facts, please.

[Miner49er]

Do you have data to back this up? I would be shocked if iMessage wasn't the most used messaging app by US teens or consumers in general.

[jdlshore]

I would guess Discord is more popular, based on my teens’ usage.

[Miner49er]

Maybe, but they probably text you through iMessage.

[RobotToaster]

> it is hardly anti-trust-worthy.

why?

[canucker2016]

from Piper Sandler's 2023 Fall survey of US teens ( https://www.pipersandler.com/teens ):

"87% of teens own an iPhone; 88% expect an iPhone to be their next phone; 34% own an Apple Watch"

No idea how many bought them specifically for iMessage...

[stevehawk]

we should caveat all of this with "USA teenagers" as Apple does not have nearly these adoption levels anywhere else in the world.

[canucker2016]

"...2023 Fall survey of US teens ... "

[mthoms]

Canada is somewhere else in the world. As are Japan, Norway, Denmark and Australia.

[Justsignedup]

its more than a shame. emoji, gifs and images are a core part of teens' communications (I have one, I know all too well), and iMessage's green bubble is also a guarantee that these things won't work, so its not just a shame, it is a hard road block.

Fortunately a lot of teens moved to discord.

[Jtsummers]

Based on all the messages I get from my work colleagues (mostly android users much more into memes and things than I am), gifs and emojis and other features work just fine these days with MMS messaging on iPhone.

[canucker2016]

When iMessage has to send a pic or vid to a group that contains non-iMessage recipients, iMessage will fallback to MMS and may need to recompress the pic/vid to get under the MMS media limit.

MMS, introduced in 2002, has much lower limits for pictures/video than if the messaging apps were to send the media over data/internet.

Also these MMS media limits aren't hardcoded, the limits are set by the sending and receiving carriers.

see https://www.androidpolice.com/why-text-message-videos-look-b...

[fsckboy]

videos taken on your or their phones don't show up postage stamp sized and blurry/bricky any more? that's usually how a green bubble drags an iphone group down

although the "liked your message" type stuff is also annoying.

[lazycouchpotato]

Google thankfully added a workaround/fix for that. "Liked your message" shows up as a reaction on Google Messages.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/10/googles-message-app-can-no...

In fact, the role's been reversed - the iPhone user now gets the "liked your message" text message while on Google Messages it shows up as a reaction.

[jtriangle]

So "monopoly" as a single entity controlling a single market is a simplistic view of the issue at hand. Anti-trust is far broader than that, where any anticompetitive action can be subject to anti-trust lawsuits/regulatory action.

So the legal argument would be that, because Apple allows for a single messaging app, and interacting with that app requires an iphone, they're effectively preventing messaging app competition.

Apple has a very, very talented legal team though, so, for this to even see argument in court someone's going to have to realllly have to want it, and be able to fund it.

[dickersnoodle]

>So the legal argument would be that, because Apple allows for a single messaging app, and interacting with that app requires an iphone, they're effectively preventing messaging app competition.

That is weapons-grade horseshit. You can put WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Signal on your iPhone and message to your heart's content. (I know, because I've had the first two on my phone before and they did not get killed in their sleep by Apple's native messaging app).

[laserlight]

> Apple allows for a single messaging app

Do you mean that Apple doesn't allow third-party SMS apps? Because there are lots of messaging apps on iOS.

[evilduck]

They don't know what they mean, because there isn't a legal precedent for narrowly defining monopolies to facets of a single company's stores and platforms. It's just wishful thinking phrased authoritatively.

[cmiles74]

IMHO, the argument is that Apple does not allow any third party messaging app to send message to the built-in messaging application (Apple Messages) on the iPhone. That is Apple ships one messaging app that is the default and may not be removed, and they also do not allow any interoperability with that one messaging application.

Apple Messages is not an SMS application; it's an internet messaging application that falls back to SMS messages when communicating with any non-iOS device. There are some situations where there may be no data network and, maybe, it falls back to sending an SMS message to another iOS device but this is pretty rare.

[grishka]

> Globally, do any of the other top ten (Apple is nowhere near the top ten) messaging apps allow third parties to spoof their service?

The one I know a lot about — Telegram — has official public protocol docs and is fully open to third-party clients: https://core.telegram.org

[progval]

> iMessage doesn't even register as a messaging platform in the minds of most users globally.

It doesn't matter what the users think. However, the EU Commission agrees with you here, as it explicitly decided that iMessage doesn't fall under the DMA: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_... ("gateway" is one of the three conditions to be a gatekeeper, see https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... )

[fomine3]

My opinion from the beginning

* Platform dependent messanger is a terrible idea, but perhaps anyone have right to implement legal terrible idea.

* Why the US people widely adopt terrible idea? It's terrible as designed.

* Although, since it's widely adopted in the US, it should be opened, maybe. EU won't help because they don't adopt terrible idea.

[Miner49er]

What dwarfs iMessage in the US? I would assume that it is the most used messaging platform in the country.

[sbuk]

Facebook Messenger - approx 140 million users, then WhatsApp at approx 75 million. iOS has approx 136 million users (not sure if that includes iPad). So "dwarfs" might be a bit extreme. However, its extremely unlikely that all the iOS users use iMessage and none use either Facebook or WhatsApp. Statista has the figures, but I'm not going to pay $149 per month to find out more!

Source: Googling around, so take it for what it is!

[quantumsequoia]

Many Americans have Facebook/WhatsApp accounts they haven't used in years. I'd be skeptical they surpass iMessage in terms of volume of messages

[sbuk]

It's not about having accounts. Again, the data source (which I admit could be wrong/misleading) all say active users, which I take mean users actively sending messages using FB messenger. The sources, by the way, are companies that sell services that market to consumers using these services, so it's in their interest to know usage stats and patterns. Admitedly finding information around iMessage usage is harder, which is why I went with number of active iOS devices. Yes, it's sketchy AF, but I'm not going to pay Statista $149 in a vain attempt to pyrricly win internet points.

[Miner49er]

With this numbers I would still guess that iMessage has WhatsApp beat.

I would also guess it does more volume then FB Messenger, even if it technically has less users.

[sbuk]

How? 140 > 136! And the figure reported are active users. I accept it's back-of-the-napkin, not trustworthy sources, but even so, your math just doesn't make sense.

[Miner49er]

I'm just speculating that iMessage users use the app more then FB messenger users use FB messenger. I don't think there's anyway to know, so I definitely might be wrong.

[Miner49er]

Not allowing interop makes it harder for new competitors, because no one is going to use a messaging app that no one else uses.

[rezonant]

> In the US is it dwarfed by at least three other platforms.

Do you have a source for this?

[cmiles74]

How is Apple Messages not the #1 most popular messaging application on the iPhone? I know many people that use an iPhone and they all use Apple Messages. I know because I have an Android phone and this is the only way to communicate with them.

[rezonant]

There seems to be a huge disconnect from people who are in countries where texting is not dominant. In the US (and apparently the UK) that is not the case, and iMessage and texting more broadly are overwhelmingly dominant from all indicators I've seen.

[TeMPOraL]

> How is this an actionable anti-trust issue?

How is this less of an issue than Microsoft integrating Internet Explorer with Windows back in the day?

The shit Google and Apple seem to be getting away with these days would make regulators of yore spin in their graves.

[gafage]

It is less of an issue because of market share. MS crushed Netscape with IE. imessage is not used in the EU

[TeMPOraL]

Does this mean that existence of Android allows both Google and Apple to mutually shield themselves from antitrust accusations? They basically get to do what they want, and argue "us refusing to give you X is not antitrust-relevant, because there's the other 50% of the market that refuses to give you X in an entirely different way".

[gafage]

This has nothing to do with android. iphone comes with an app store and that app store contains lots of messenger applications. Users overwhelmingly download one or several messenger applications from the store and use them instead of imessage. What's the similarity to IE here? IE had over 90% of browser share at some point.

[TeMPOraL]

Integration. None of the alternative messaging apps are first parties on iOS. Just like IE, for a moment, was the only first-party browser on Windows.

[Xenoamorphous]

> In the US is it dwarfed by at least three other platforms

Maybe because it comes preinstalled?

[sroussey]

This makes no sense.

“Because it comes preinstalled it is dwarfed by at least three other platforms”??

[cstrahan]

Which other 3 platforms come preinstalled?

Edit: wait, are you talking about iMessage being preinstalled? If so, how does iMessage being preinstalled make it dwarfed by other non-preinstalled platforms? Are you suggesting it’s human nature to use third party apps, or maybe you mistook the meaning of “dwarfed by”?

[cmiles74]

I am very curious what three other messaging application are available on iOS and have more market share than Apple Messages! Nearly every member of my family has an iPhone and they all use Apple Messages.

[threeseed]

WhatsApp, WeChat, Messenger, Telegram, Snapchat, QQ:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-glob...

[Miner49er]

We're talking US, not global.

[Psyonic]

Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram

maybe Discord, FB Messenger

[Miner49er]

There's no way WhatsApp is more widely used in the US then iMessage. Same with Signal and Telegram.

[hifreq]

It's a ridiculous comparison. How do you calculate "more widely" usage? I use Messages for all SMS messages. I've had maybe 5 group chats in Messages over the last 10 years, all groups are organized in WhatsApp or Signal. So what is more widely used in my case?

Messages is the default SMS app on iPhones. 130M iPhones in the US does mean there are 130M Messages users. So what? Some teenagers are angsty because of green bubbles? FFS do we not have bigger problems to deal with?

[cmiles74]

I started looking around, I can find charts that show messaging app market share on iOS but none of them include Apple Messages. For sure Apple doesn't share these numbers, it looks like no one else has gone through the trouble to collect them.

[sbuk]

They do supply the number of active iOS devices, though it doesn't necessarilly mean that they are all active iMessage users. 136 million iPhones in the US, ~140 million active Facebook Messenger users in the the US.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Globally, do any of the other top ten (Apple is nowhere near the top ten) messaging apps allow third parties to spoof their service?

The top messaging services are SMS and email. Do these allow different companies to interoperate with each other? Yes, of course.

And so should all messaging apps, regardless of how many other messaging apps there are, because they all have a network effect. They're segmented into their own markets by the act of restricting interoperability.

There is no carrier with a monopoly on SMS but Apple is trying to maintain a monopoly on iMessage. Why should that be allowed for anyone? Restricting interoperability -- i.e. competition -- is not a legitimate business practice.

[peyton]

I dunno, fixing the market to be “company X’s own services” doesn’t seem to be in the spirit of antitrust laws. Should I be allowed to sell gasoline at Shell’s gas stations?

[AnthonyMouse]

You should be able to sell your gasoline to customers with Ford's cars, regardless of whether or not Ford has their own gas stations.

But why are we reaching for a car analogy? Should gmail or google.com be able to block Firefox and force you to use Chrome? Not make use of some feature Chrome has, but just purposely block Firefox even if it supports that feature or its users are content to use the service without it.

[jwells89]

I would hope that this “best case outcome” also comes with regulations to keep other giants (mostly Google) from marketing and cross-promoting their way into dominance on iOS, creating monopolies in the process.

For instance, Google apps shouldn’t be able to drive Chrome installs by presenting a sheet offering to download Chrome every time I tap a link in them, as they do currently.

[Scarbutt]

This happens to me constantly when I use google search in ios safari.

[jwells89]

Chrome’s quality is what’s usually cited as being the primary driver behind its rise to its current position of most popular browser, but the reality is that Google’s intense marketing is at least as responsible. In-app prompts, prompts in Google search, and Chrome getting bundled in installers for every other Windows app were big contributors to its momentum.

Of course it becoming the default browser on the majority of Android devices and Google web apps underperforming in other browsers also played a role but that’s a bit of a different topic.

[Zak]

I have no doubt marketing played a role, but Chrome and Chromium-based browsers were the only ones with a multi-process architecture for over half a decade after Chrome's launch. That meant a bad web page couldn't crash the browser or block the UI, which used to happen frequently on other browsers.

Firefox eventually caught up, but had lost much of its userbase and mindshare by that point.

[jwells89]

WebKit went multiprocess with the release of WebKit2 around 14 years ago, with the difference being that the multiprocess architecture is part of WebKit itself and thus easily reusable — just embed a WebView in your app and you have it. This contrasts to the Chromium implementation where multiprocess is handled by Chromium rather than Blink, meaning to get multiprocess you have to ship the whole of Chromium and can’t just embed Blink.

That said this really only relevant for Apple platforms and Linux/Android, unfortunately. WebKit for Windows is somewhat in a state of disrepair.

[verdverm]

Microsoft does this with Windows links, to the point it opens edge despite my default browser being set to not edge.

The insidiousness of them all is frustrating

[mmanfrin]

Ironically, if Google were ever allowed to replace siri on iPhones, I would probably never buy an android again.

[UseStrict]

Siri is so incompetent it's basically unusable. I would love if they were forced to allow 3rd party assistants.

[graphe]

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-use-chatgpt-as-a-siri-s...

https://www.howtogeek.com/713498/how-to-launch-google-assist...

I remember doing something like this a while ago.

[sircastor]

> and to lower the 30% app store fee to 10%.

In danger of being an Apple apologist, the app store fee for the vast majority of sellers is 15%.

[sneak]

...which is still more than 5x the normal rate for payment processing.

Reducing your price gouging from 10x to 5x isn’t exactly a kindness.

[hifreq]

Clearly, App Store is not just a payment processor, stop misrepresenting the situation.

[lazycouchpotato]

15% seems reasonable. They're not only charging to cover payment processing, there are salaries to pay for those developing the app stores, the human app reviewers (virtually non-existent in case of Google Play), storage, bandwidth, etc.

Granted, both Apple and Google also earn money from ads (shame on Apple's part). In that case I can sort of see the justification to lower their cut to below 15%.

[sneak]

Even the normal 3% overhead for credit card payment flow charged without these monopolistic practices isn’t reasonable. Even 0.1% allows the bloodsucking rentseekers a gigantic margin, as their marginal costs are approximately ZERO.

15% is pure “you have no other options” robbery, expanding on the same thing pioneered by Visa/MC/AmEx.

All of the expenses you listed are a) trivial and b) already paid for by iPhone purchasers. Apple is a hardware company with the highest margins in the industry.

They’re double dipping, and gouging whilst they do so.

The storage and bandwidth costs of the App Store are the size of a rounding error at this scale. Furthermore, the App Store is a marketing tool and value add for the iPhone, and benefits them directly. To expect app developers to pay for it is insane.

[toyg]

Only now, because they were forced to lower it. There is nothing stopping them from raising it again, once the prospects of antitrust prosecution disappear.

[chipgap98]

When were they forced to lower it? It seems like you are saying they decided to lower it

[toyg]

https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/18/21572302/apple-app-store...

For context: Epic launched their lawsuit in August 2020, fighting the 30% cut, and less than 3 months later Apple lowered it to 15% for small businesses. Absolute coincidence, I'm sure.

[sbuk]

If it's not in the ruling, it's their choice, maybe they read the room...

[toyg]

I guess that depends on your definition of "forced". In my recollection, the wave of bad press was so big that they really had no choice but to give ground.

[misnome]

US? When has that ever happened in the last 30 years? I’d buy the EU stepping in to mandate interoperability though. I’d welcome that!

But… shouldn’t mostly everyone here view needing the EU to force the behaviour of a US company kind of against the entire supposed benefit of the US system and the purpose of the domain this forum is hosted on?

[petemir]

> US? When has that ever happened in the last 30 years?

United States vs. Microsoft Corp, 2001? [0]

And ongoing: United States vs. Google LLC (2020) [1] and United States vs Google LLC (2023) [2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2...

Edited: formatting

[misnome]

> United States vs. Microsoft Corp, 2001? [0]

As the wikipedia page you yourself are citing, overturned on appeal.

> And ongoing: United States vs. Google LLC (2020) [1] and United States vs Google LLC (2023) [2].

Ongoing, so a bit hard to count these as evidence of successful market regulation.

[FireBeyond]

> As the wikipedia page you yourself are citing, overturned on appeal.

So the law says "Don't do behavior X", the government takes you to court, there is a judgment, you appeal, and win the appeal.

I'm not sure "dismissed on appeal" means "this isn't working as intended".

Successful market regulation includes investigating issues, prosecuting them where there is reasonable grounds to do so and it also includes a determination (either in investigation or in court) that something is not an issue.

[jimbob45]

Overturned on appeal but MS was fined heavily over the years using the same justification. The one I remember off the top of my head was the WMP fine[0].

If you have an OS, everything within should be open for competition and courts have generally ruled as such for years.

[0]https://www.npr.org/2007/09/17/14465160/eu-court-defeats-mic...

[mschuster91]

> But… shouldn’t mostly everyone here view needing the EU to force the behaviour of a US company kind of against the entire supposed benefit of the US system and the purpose of the domain this forum is hosted on?

European here. From my POV it seems as if the USA have forgotten that for a truly free market to exist, there needs to be serious oversight to prevent capitalism from devolving into "corporate Darwinism" - aka the strong ones staying strong because they (b)eat all the competition by being so strong in the first place or because they impose their externalities upon everyone else.

There is many an argument to be had if a free-market system is better than one more oriented on the government running things (obviously, I'm in the latter camp), but the problem is y'all don't have a free market at that point.

[misnome]

Also European^wfrom the european area (I think you get lynched here if you say that after brexit), and I completely agree. But it seems an awful lot of USian cheer for “free markets” only when it is giving the specific outcome they personally want, and I think you should mostly approach these “US Company” issues without the expectation of a Europarliament-ex-machina solution.

[doublepg23]

Where are you coming up with these theories?

A capitalist economy needs the government for some very key laws like upholding private property rights but how does that extend to "mandating interoperable message systems"?

[Sohcahtoa82]

The definition of "free market" includes being free from monopolies.

If the government wants to maintain a free market, that means they need to step in and prevent monopolies, which includes preventing anti-competitive behavior.

Apple is being very anti-competitive with iMessage. It's not just the blocking of Android clients, but the fact that Apple will not let you use any other SMS app on iPhone, so users are locked into iMessage.

[zappb]

The government has done a dandy job enabling tech monopolies by making copyright and patent law so draconian.

[mschuster91]

> Where are you coming up with these theories?

By simply looking at the general state of the US economy that has lost competition across the board over the last decades as large companies consolidated to form extremely large behemoths that dominate their respective markets (e.g. Boeing for aircraft, Microsoft for computer operating systems and office software, Meta for social media, Walmart for groceries, Google for search, Cargill/Tyson/JBS in agriculture, AA/Delta/Southwest/United in airlines), use both legal and illegal (such as wage collusion) tactics to cement their marketshare, and extract ruinously low purchase prices from their vendors. This shit used to be different, with lots of competition and resulting innovation, not even a few decades ago.

> A capitalist economy needs the government for some very key laws like upholding private property rights but how does that extend to "mandating interoperable message systems"?

Easy. Apple has a very popular product that they (ab)use to push its users to push their friends to get themselves iPhones. Breaking up their stronghold over iMessage would allow Android users to communicate on their devices with people who own iPhones, and it would lead to a flurry of competing messenger applications.

[chipgap98]

How would interoperability and end to end encryption work together?

[mschuster91]

The same way HTTP+SSL/TLS or OpenPGP/SMIME work: by standardization. No matter if you run Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, cURL or your own client, you can connect with end-to-end encryption to any HTTP server with any kind of SSL frontend. For email, it's just the same - any client communicating with any other client implementing the respective standard can do so with e2e encryption.

[cmiles74]

There's no technical reason why services could not interoperate and still provide end-to-end encryption.

[QuercusMax]

Many of us on this site think modern hypercapitalism, the US system, and VC financing are basically evils, and are here for the general tech content. US regulators have been captured by monied interests, so rooting for the EU to do the job the US government won't is the best we can currently hope for.

[dexwiz]

Apple is THE consumer tech company in the USA. Its their darling. The only way the USA will rule against Apple is that if they are losing them money elsewhere.

[freedomben]

Not to mention that virtually the entire ruling class in the USA has iphones and are largely tech illiterate so incapable of understanding nuance. Add some big lobbying money from Big Gray and Apple seems pretty safe

[mlindner]

A lawsuit to do what exactly? Require Apple release an iMessage client on Android for free? That'd get thrown out pretty quick anywhere with a functioning legal system.

The only antitrust comparison I can see was Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer, but that doesn't really work because that was Microsoft preventing other competing chat clients from accessing the wider internet, not Microsoft's own servers. There has never been an antitrust lawsuit won anywhere that forces a company to open its own servers that its paying for open to anyone who wants to access them.

[vhold]

That's the best case for most of us, but probably not Beeper Mini, since the cat-and-mouse game is their killer competitive advantage. With the barriers gone the space will be totally flooded with options, not to mention just normal Android integration.

[idonotknowwhy]

Reminds me of how bleemcast made game console emulators officially legal

[GeekyBear]

While they are at it, can they file an antitrust action against Google for making changes that break ad blockers and third party clients for YouTube?

[zffr]

Let's say that Apple is forced to allow third parties to use iMessage. Can't Apple just make the cost prohibitively high?

[loloquwowndueo]

The “forcing” would likely come with conditions and some oversight. See how big phone companies in some countries are “forced” to allow competitors (eg. MVNOs) to connect to their networks at wholesale prices - do you think they chose that price point themselves?

[kanbara]

this might be the “best outcome” for some nerds or android users, but it certainly isnt the best outcome for most consumers.

iOS has resisted a lot of the crap and cruft of windows and android because of its opinionated nature. sure, siri could use improvement, but at least iPhones never fail to call 911.

[Keegs]

I’ll admit I’m one of these nerds but I disagree. There’s a difference between being opinionated and not allowing me to change the defaults on a device I own.

[pb7]

If we’re talking best case outcomes, then why settle for 10%? 0%! Free distribution for everyone.

[dwaite]

Or even Apple paying developers a cut of iPhone sales, since apps provide so much value to the hardware ecosystem.

And maybe a pony.

[askonomm]

Yes! We don't need any moderation or policy enforcement, viruses for everyone!

[gkbrk]

You have a garbage sandbox if you can get viruses that easily. People expect much better from modern operating systems.

[askonomm]

By viruses I don't only mean them in the classical sense, but also apps that steal your data, apps that mislead you, apps riddled with ads everywhere. That's the future if you want app stores with no oversight, and you will have app stores with no oversight if you put 0$ as the budget for managing the stores.

[gkbrk]

Today iOS doesn't allow running apps that were not vetted by Apple. And yet you can find loads of apps that steal your data, with ads everywhere. All approved by Apple.

In contrast, Android has multiple app stores that exclusively host open-source, non-spyware and ad-free ads.

[_v7gu]

God I miss F-droid, hope EU makes apple allow them in soon

[askonomm]

I have found the overall design aesthetic and user experience to be tremendously worse on Android however, and with a lot more ad-riddled apps.

[pb7]

> ad-free ads

The future is here!

[hjkdgshkdfjhg]

Best case outcome for who? Super happy user of Apple here, I would hate that outcome.

Apple shit just works, I like my wallet garden, don't want third party trash or getting spammed from android clients.

[ksclarke]

Ha, "wallet garden" gave me a good chuckle. I usually hear it expressed as a "walled garden", but this might be the perfect typo (or clever twist / word play).

I'm guessing it was a typo, but well done nonetheless.

[dimitrios1]

The actual best case outcome is consumers become increasingly educated on these issues and use the market to not reward Apple for these practices, rather than relying on the coercive apparatus of the state that easily falls victim to corruption and regulatory capture, until such the time where we can have an actual functioning government again that isn't strangling small businesses, close the revolving door and get money out of politics and, yeah.. pigs flying and all that.

[blitz_skull]

I don’t think relying on consumers to “not reward” anti-competitive behavior is a good strategy.

I own several Apple devices primarily because the UX and ecosystem is so far beyond anything Android offers (in my opinion), that I’m simply not willing to switch. Of course, Apple’s anti-competitive behavior is a big reason for that.

But I’m not willing to hurt my own daily interactions with the tech that enables my life just because the US Government isn’t willing to do its job.

[freedomben]

I am the opposite of you, in that I refuse to buy Apple products, regardless the degraded UX I experience because of it. I will gladly suffer with a worse UX in order to vote with my $ and support vendors that align with my principles.

But I fully agree with you on this. It would be ideal for consumers to change, but it's not going to happen and it's not reasonable to expect it or demand it IMHO. If we rely on consumer behavior then things are only going to get worse and Apple more entrenched. Machiavellian behavior in business works. We have long known that individuals making microeconomic (e.g. personal) decisions can have a negative macroeconomic (e.g. big picture) effect[1]. I don't think anything will change for the better if left entirely to the market.

[1]: Tragedy of the Commons