U.S. Senator Calls AirTags Release 'Timely' as App Store Antitrust Hearing Kicks Off

[_Spinn_]

Nothing of consequence happened to Microsoft in the 1990s when they were the giant, nothing will happen to Apple today. As usual, the correct politicians are bought and paid for.

Tile isn't the first (and won't be the last) company to get Sherlocked.

While true that Microsoft was never broken up, many would argue that the years of government oversight were Microsoft’s “lost decade”. That’s when Google and Apple pretty much took over the consumer market and Windows began it’s transition to “legacy” status. Windows obviously isn’t going away any time soon but it’s importance to consumers is gone and there’s not a whole lot of exciting development going on either.

Now Microsoft is still making tons of cash but they aren’t what anybody from 2000 would expect 20 years later. Had the government not gotten involved there’s no telling what computing would look like today.

 

[howywood]

Capitalism:

We favor competition for the best kind of economy, except for when you outperform every other company and have too many customers. That’s not fair.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Apple is gonna say meh... lets not put any app stores on any future devices. Problem solved. ??‍♂️ Hope the web apps are good. I already think thats what people should be doing anyway.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Even if you are an Apple super fan and believe they can do no wrong, it’s not really hard to see Apple(and others) have been taking plenty of ideas and products from others to create their own with the platform to highlight their own products over the years.

Apple is a company that takes an idea and makes it better, that’s why I like them. But we are really getting into an area of companies clearly taking ideas and smashing independent competition.

Do I like Apple and their products? Obviously. Do I want Apple, Google and Amazon to control every aspect of the future with zero chance of other competition because they were the big companies in the beginning? Absolutely not.

I agree. I do think Apple owes royalties of some sort to Tile.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Apple has a Complete & Total Stranglehold on App Discovery in their "curated" iOS App Store !

It is for that Reason ALONE, that third-party App Stores MUST be allowed, at least here in the States, where my U.S. Gov't has control over it.

App Discovery competition will in turn, lead to a reduction in Apple's cut.

Epic & others have been fighting the problem from the wrong angle.

Trying to take on Apple from a price perspective is NOT, IMO, the correct OR smart way to go.

App Discovery is !

Why for example, is the Today tab of the iOS App Store App flooded every single day with Game Apps & Apple Arcade promos ?

Why are there NO filters in Settings to filter-off such content for those who have NO interest in it ?

Because Apple wants to control the narrative !

And they do that to the detriment of NON-Game Apps, & those interested in such apps.

Tim Cook & Phil Schiller need to be removed from interacting from the App Store !

Once that happens, the NON-Game portion of the App Store will blossom !

If that requires New Law, so be it !

The issues you site are because Apples search algorithm is terrible.

Having the government run an app store on my phone? You are seriously smoking dope. That is not going to fly in the US. We are not China.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Same here.


Congress and any free-market business/idea.

No such thing. All of these products especially these days are the result of significant government investment in defense and infrastructure. So... but Congress is definitely tech inept. I wish they’dlet the lawyers duke it out. Im not confident in these people to handle tech issues at all especially given their ages and professions before joining congress.

 

[AdonisSMU]

I just signed their petition because I would like to see the option of alternative app stores. I’m not forced to use the Mac App Store so I don’t see why I should be forced to use the iOS AppStore.

Have you considered that there is still the option for no App Store? No new apps. Just the preinstalled apps.

 

[damphoose]

I honestly forgot who Amy Klobuchar was. I said “why do I know that name.....oh yeah”.
We really need a subcommittee in the US that understands tech. They could be a strictly adviso role. Too many Senators falling for this anti-competitive rhetoric. Their default position is big company=bad.

 

[Wanted797]

“given Apple's well-documented history of using its platform advantage to unfairly limit competition for its products”

Source?

 

[Wildkraut]

While true that Microsoft was never broken up, many would argue that the years of government oversight were Microsoft’s “lost decade”. That’s when Google and Apple pretty much took over the consumer market and Windows began it’s transition to “legacy” status. Windows obviously isn’t going away any time soon but it’s importance to consumers is gone and there’s not a whole lot of exciting development going on either.

Now Microsoft is still making tons of cash but they aren’t what anybody from 2000 would expect 20 years later. Had the government not gotten involved there’s no telling what computing would look like today.

Well, Windows was never the primary source of income for MS, it was just a instrument to make contracts with B2B/OEMs/Companies.

Anyway, there is a lot of great things going on the Windows side, I don't see it or MS as "legacy".
Windows has many default build-in feature, where macOS People keeps buying inferior 5-10€$ Apps to a achieve the same thing, e.g. Magnet, because Apple is unable of build a decent Maximize/Minimize/Close and Snap Windows behavior, just to name one that keep popping up in here.

The Feature List is long... very long... and App List even longer...

MS payed for what they did in the 90s (Browser war, Default App war, Mediaplayer war, Pre-installation war), and that did good to them, it made even MS become the good guy today.

Same thing will happen to Apple and Google, it's payday and this will be good.

 

[applepuree]

With the App Store competition hearing kicking off today, Fight for the Future launched an "Abolish the App Store" initiative that calls on people to sign a petition to demand that Congress "end the App Store monopoly."

If Apple (Google and others) was to just "Abolish the Apple Store monopoly" (which isn't really a monopoly anyway) How many small companies and developers would fold ? How many would complain that smartphones only come with the manufacturers apps? I do feel Apple could charge a smaller commission lets say 15-20% but they enable so many new and small companies to exist in the first place. Does the Gov really want to risk all those cottage industries and smaller companies closing down ?

 

[I7guy]

...

MS payed for what they did in the 90s (Browser war, Default App war, Mediaplayer war, Pre-installation war), and that did good to them, it made even MS become the good guy today.

MS payed out (bribed) not the same and not much happened.

Same thing will happen to Apple and Google, it's payday and this will be good.

Don’t be too hopeful. The letdown could be bad.

 

[Wildkraut]

MS payed out (bribed) not the same and not much happened.

Don’t be too hopeful. The letdown could be bad.

Sure, MS did and even Adobe did. E.g. in the EU used OEM licenses can still be officially re-sold as used.
MS had to pay, they lost the IE browser war, Thanks to courts around the world, and much more.
They are still "suffering" from these decisions.

That's also a reason, why these companies are moving everything to the cloud(buzzword), account based and subscription based.
Don't worry I'm not a fanboy of any side, I won't have a letdown, gimme 20 years maybe 25 and I'll timeout anyway, this would not affect me much.

I'm more concerned about what will happen to our children, helpless in the hands of filthy greedy corporations, who keeps forming them into consuming monsters without control, that's why I hope.
But yeah, the first shot is always free...

Anyway, "IF" Apple,Google win here (in some way they won't), then have fun in the future, this will confirm their behavior and they will continue to setup new ways to suck people out. Even other companies will go that route.

Just a question of, when will you have to pay for Breath ( the App for this they already have ), good I won't be here anymore.

 

[1258186]

Have you considered that there is still the option for no App Store? No new apps. Just the preinstalled apps.

No I haven’t because iPhone sales would collapse if Apple did that and they know it.

 

[PimpDaddy]

The Find My network is open to Tile, but it does require item trackers to work exclusively with Find My, and Tile already has an established item tracking app and its own network that uses smartphones for crowdsourced tracking purposes.

The Find My network is open to anybody. If Tile doesn’t want to use it, it’s not Apple fault and it is not unfair competition

Until I read the top quote from the article I didn’t get why Tile felt AirTags had an unacceptable advantage. But forcing them to totally forgo the own network and platform they have built up over years to be able to get in to the Find My network seems like BS from Apple.

I think it’s a very hard ask that 3rd parties like Tile HAS to be Find My exclusive to be able to join the network. So it’s not really open to everyone. Seems like a lowkey direct jab at Tile.

 

[I7guy]

Sure, MS did and even Adobe did. E.g. in the EU used OEM licenses can still be officially re-sold as used.
MS had to pay, they lost the IE browser war, Thanks to courts around the world, and much more.
They are still "suffering" from these decisions.

That's also a reason, why these companies are moving everything to the cloud(buzzword), account based and subscription based.
Don't worry I'm not a fanboy of any side, I won't have a letdown, gimme 20 years maybe 25 and I'll timeout anyway, this would not affect me much.

I'm more concerned about what will happen to our children, helpless in the hands of filthy greedy corporations, who keeps forming them into consuming monsters without control, that's why I hope.
But yeah, the first shot is always free...

Anyway, "IF" Apple,Google win here (in some way they won't), then have fun in the future, this will confirm their behavior and they will continue to setup new ways to suck people out. Even other companies will go that route.

Just a question of, when will you have to pay for Breath ( the App for this they already have ), good I won't be here anymore.

What MS did back then was to "bribe" vendors. So it's not really the same thing. People are still free to use IE or Edge. In reality it was a stupid thing that MS did that in the end made really no difference. The "bribing" part is what got MS into trouble.

I'm against government intervention as we have a good use case called AT&T that wound up by not really serving it's customers 40 years. Today, the US can boast a fairly mediocre and expensive cell phone service compared to the rest of the world. AT&T was stupid back then, one had to buy their phones from them, back in the day.

The government wants to do the same to Apple and Google, turn them into mediocre corporations from exceptional corporations. The vacuum will be filled, but years later there will be mediocrity littered in it's place.

 

[genovelle]

Because they have a monopoly and engage in anticompetitive activities?

They do not and will never have a monopoly. They offer a complete solution. If it were not for Apple we would be forced to use tiles inferior devices forever with no competition, because the cost of market entry was too high.
Apple lowered the bar of entry and opened up competition not the other way around. This reminds me of how Amazon was able to get the government to maintain their 90% hold on the digital book space while holding publishers to unreasonably low profit margins.

Apple knows the drawbacks of not creating solutions of their own that customers want. One, when they partner with them and give them deeper access they get stabbed in the back, if they don’t require exclusive non competitive access to deeper access their technology gets stolen from them by their partners and has to compete with clones of their own work, think, Windows, Android, and Samsung’s Galaxy after 2010.

The other risk is partners withholding features or suddenly deciding not to support Apple to focus on another competitor. If Apple didn’t have iWork as an alternative, Microsoft would have continued to allow Office to languish and Google docs wouldn’t even work in Safari. Even Safari was created, because explorer and other browsers refused to properly support the Mac.
As an Apple user I want Apple to make things that work with my Apple stuff. I also want them to insure my privacy and that my items are well supported for years after I buy them. Something that can be killed in a heart beat if a company like Tile decides to remove support or stop updating, or is purchased by another company like Samsung.

 

[SactoGuy18]

This is political grandstanding at its worst. Make Tile compatible with Apple's Find My ecosystem and this controversy ends.

 

[deevey]

Until I read the top quote from the article I didn’t get why Tile felt AirTags had an unacceptable advantage. But forcing them to totally forgo the own network and platform they have built up over years to be able to get in to the Find My network seems like BS from Apple.

Tiles' business model is selling subscriptions (and possibly user data), selling hardware is secondary. They would need to forgo their old business model entirely.

Their tiny "network" consisted of less than 4.5 million subscribers in a 9 year period. Limiting its usefulness.

If Tile had opened up their network the same way as Apple did, they would have had alot more users by now and a far more useful product.

If they had focused on licensing the technology from the get-go rather than focus on their own devices, they may have been big enough now to be still be relevant. There was multiple ways of using the technology outside of just Tiles (they got a few companies on board, but obviously not enough to make it worthwhile).

Bottom line. Their slow corporate growth over the span of almost a decade cannot be solely attributed to Apple releasing a product a month ago.