[itopaloglu83]

Who’s stopping anyone from competing with Apple?

Let’s force ASML to open up its manufacturing line and cancel their patents for squandering innovation, but wait they’re an incredible company that dominated the field with their hard work and diligence, so it’s not fair for them.

Similarly, the open markets should apply to everyone, not just dominant American firms.

Though, I’m not saying they’re innocent and I think they have to be even broken up due to their monopolistic behaviors.

[lmm]

> Who’s stopping anyone from competing with Apple?

Apple's dominant market position and abuse of network effects via their proprietary standards, like the one we're talking about from this article.

> Let’s force ASML to open up its manufacturing line and cancel their patents for squandering innovation

No-one's arguing for any equivalent of that to happen to Apple. Just that when there's an open standard for inter-device communication, they should follow that. Imagine if ASML-manufactured processors wouldn't work with standard DDR5, only with some special memory chips that only ASML could manufacture, that would be the equivalent to what Apple is doing.

Apple should enjoy the profits from when they make better products that win on their merits. But they should have to compete fairly.

[itopaloglu83]

Since people are getting very fixated on Apple's success and how they dominated all the previous European phone manufacturers, let me state it clearly, they're a monopoly and must be regulated, but you regulate a market by setting up market rules, not by chasing individual companies.

European regulators are playing favoritism for themselves, not dismantling monopolies for the sake of consumers. There are a lot of companies from Spotify to ASML who are enjoying monopolistic powers in their own market, squandering innovation by not letting their competitors use their platform or implement standards created by other foreign companies. Apple being a bigger monopoly doesn't make others a saint, it's just that those monopolies suit the regulators while Apple doesn't, and that's the original point I made with the ASML example, they're being a hypocrite about it.

[lmm]

> you regulate a market by setting up market rules, not by chasing individual companies

Which is exactly what Europe is doing. They have interoperability rules and they're applying them consistently. Nothing here is targeting Apple specifically, they're getting hit by the rules because they're a big monopoly abuser.

> There are a lot of companies from Spotify to ASML who are enjoying monopolistic powers in their own market, squandering innovation by not letting their competitors use their platform or implement standards created by other foreign companies.

What standards would those be, concretely? Have any of them bothered to pursue the EU standard designation process?

[ExoticPearTree]

I think it is wrong to force Apple to support various "open standards". Other device manufacturers should make better devices and have people switch naturally to them because they are better.

Like Google cried to every possible regulator that Apple is the big bad wolf that doesn't want to support RCE. Why? If it was that good, more people would use Androids for that.

The problem, as I see it, is that everyone else besides Apple spends very little on physical devices build quality and software polishing, and you end up with crap devices that are slow, with weird interfaces and so on.

[lmm]

> Other device manufacturers should make better devices and have people switch naturally to them because they are better.

That doesn't work when they're a monopoly. Did the whole robber baron era just not happen in your world?

I'd flip it around: Apple should make better devices so that they can retain customers on their merits, rather than because their friends' phones are going to "accidentally" lose their text messages if they dare try a non-Apple phone.

[ExoticPearTree]

I compare iPhones with Samsung flagships such as the S line.

Tge iPhones are simply better made: they don’t feel light or plasticky, the UI on Android is way worse compared to iOS and so on.

And the whole SMS thing is just ridiculous: iMessage and SMS are two differrent things, hence they are highlighted with different colors so you know you can’t send pictures via SMS and most likely you have to switch to other apps such as Whatsapp, FB Messenger, Telegram and others. It does not mean you have to buy an iPhone to talk to your friends that prefer Apple products.

[cyberax]

ASML provides their devices to any (eligible) company.

If you want an Apple analogy, imagine ASML requiring that they get 30% of all the income generated by devices that use ASML-produced chips.

[fennecfoxy]

ASML isn't selling hundreds of millions of units to people like you and me.