Justice Department officials are in the late stages of investigating the iPhone maker, focusing on how Apple has used its other products and services to defend against threats to its core business.
    • Jackcooper@lemmy.world
      4·
      11 months ago

      My conspiracy theory is Biden goes after Ticketmaster in say September/October just in time for the election…

      • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
        3·
        11 months ago

        Ticketmaster is awful, but there are many oligopolies/oligarchies that would materially make peoples’ lives better if they were taken care of first, in no particular order:

        Amazon

        Facebook/Meta

        Google/Alphabet

        Microsoft

        Bayer

        Phizer

        Merck

        3M

        CVS

        UnitedHealth

        Healthcare Service Corp

        Centene

        Johnson and Johnson

        SC Johnson

        Unilever

        Procter and Gamble

        Kraft

        DuPont

        Honeywell

        Nestle

        Mars

        Rail Companies

        Auto Industry

        Barrilla

        GE

        Boeing

        Ratheon

        Northrop Grumman

        Blackstone

  • clearedtoland@lemmy.worldEnglish
    362·
    11 months ago

    Ha. I just came here to post this too. It’s an interesting angle they’re taking by attacking the way Apple’s ecosystem works better together, naturally locking consumers in. I’m an Apple sucker myself but frankly the Apple-exclusive features (Siri, Handoff, iMessage, Airplay) are, at best, gimmicks that would be much better if they had broader compatibility.

    • Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world
      222·
      11 months ago

      The thing is, there are versions of all of these (Cast, any number of messaging clients) that have broader compatibility already. They just tend to be locked out of Apple’s ecosystem and Apple has its own versions that lock everyone else out of there’s.

      These systems would be so much more friendly for the consumer if everyone just worked together but this insistence on keeping these things siloed just makes it worse for literally everyone.

      Wanna share your video on the TV at my house? Oh you have an iPhone? Oh, Yeah your gallery can’t Cast. I want to share a video at yours? Oh, you have an Apple TV so I can’t Cast to it and Airplay doesn’t exist in my gallery or OS.

      This only hurts consumers. And the only people it’s helping is the manufacturers selling you Google TV/AppleTV via suckers that buy both.

      • reddig33@lemmy.world
        62·
        11 months ago

        Meh. Airplay is like CarPlay. Modern TVs support both Android and iOS casting. Just like most modern cars support both Android Auto and CarPlay.

        There are apps you can get for devices that allow you to AirPlay to them as well if they don’t already support it. I got one to AirPlay to my Xbox for example.

        I wouldn’t mind an open standard for casting. But both Google Cast and Airplay are currently proprietary. Maybe something will come out of the Matter standards board that everyone can adopt.

        • Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world
          3·
          11 months ago

          Meh. Airplay is like CarPlay. Modern TVs support both Android and iOS casting. Just like most modern cars support both Android Auto and CarPlay.

          The key is, most. Not all. And there are still two standards. It is taking more development time and complexity to support this, and therefore, not all car manufacturers nor all TV manufacturers are doing this. It’s still a problem, you’re just arguing semantics of whether it’s the consumers problem or the middle-man’s problem who will end up thrusting the cost upon the consumer anyway.

          Either way, it’s extra dev time, complexity, room for things to go wrong, things to think about, different interfaces on different devices, etc. This just doesn’t need to exist and provides no benefit to the end consumer.

          There are apps you can get for devices that allow you to AirPlay to them as well if they don’t already support it. I got one to AirPlay to my Xbox for example.

          Of course there are. There have been for years. But again, see above. This is just more complexity and shit for you to deal with. And another app for someone to manage. And another thing to go wrong. And something else that needs to be updated when Apple devices to change something.

          It’s not beneficial to you. At all. It’s another stumbling block. You can argue about it’s size, but it literally gives zero benefit to the consumer and has no need to exist.

      • Wrench@lemmy.world
        42·
        11 months ago

        At least in Google case, chromecasts are super cheap. I have bought several for relatives to make the above scenarios easy

        • Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world
          31·
          11 months ago

          It is, but it’s still an extra device that covers one of the options. It’d be obviously better if one device just supported a shared protocol either phone could use.

          • Wrench@lemmy.world
            21·
            11 months ago

            Absolutely agree. At least in chromecasts case, it’s an open protocol, and Apple apps can choose to integrate with it. But of course, none of the 1st party apps do

  • alienanimals@lemmy.world
    29·
    11 months ago

    I can avoid using Apple products. What I CAN’T avoid is the ISP oligopoly.

    Break up the internet (lack of) service providers.

  • kibiz0r@lemmy.worldEnglish
    223·
    11 months ago

    About fuckin time.

    I like Apple. Their UIs are comfortable, their OSes are reliable, their hardware is top-notch, and they design better SDKs than 99% of the world.

    But their greed has completely eradicated the “damn the man” ethos that they espoused in the early iWork days. “Microsoft wants to lock you in. You gonna let them?” Well now who’s the jailer?

    • Uranium3006@kbin.social
      32·
      11 months ago

      the problem with the hippies is they had no theory, so they just ended reproducing the patterns that led us to this mass in the first place

  • sylver_dragon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    11 months ago

    Someone must have forgot to include the appropriate “political donations” line item in the Apple 2024 budget.

    • Heresy_generator@kbin.social
      233·
      11 months ago

      Worldwide figures aren’t relevant to US anti-trust cases; iPhones account for over half of the US market, their closest competitor, Samsung, is around a quarter, and everyone else combined is even less than that.

        • kibiz0r@lemmy.worldEnglish
          192·
          11 months ago

          sales

          Yeah, that’s not market share. iPhone users are more likely to keep their phone for longer. Search “iphone market share us” and see that every result confirms the >50% figure.

  • helenslunch@feddit.nl
    66·
    11 months ago

    as well as how Apple locks competitors out of its iMessage service

    I don’t give a shit about this. Apple shouldn’t be forced to allow competitors to use their servers.

    However, they should be required to allow other apps to be used for SMS. But they’re like 10 years too late on that one.

    Apple has already agreed to RCS but if it were me I would require feature parity with iMessage over RCS.

    No one will do that and Apple’s RCS implementation will be bare-bones, and they’ll probably go out of their way to make it nearly as bad as SMS, because that’s what they do.