The Justice Department has announced a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Apple, accusing the tech giant of engineering an illegal monopoly in smartphones that boxes out competitors and stifles innovation
I’m not. But yeah, I’d easily vote for Biden. Not because he strikes me as a good and capable president, quite far from it, but because he’s obviously leaps and bounds better than the other train wreck of a human being.
Honestly American politics would be funny in their ridiculousness if they didn’t set the tone for politics here in the years to come.
You need an Apple ID for the Mac’s App Store, but the Mac’s App Store is very much the second banana on MacOS. You can open up Chrome or Firefox and download an installer for any ‘ol app, or another app marketplace entirely.
That said, if a developer hasn’t registered as a “Trusted developer” with Apple, installing an app will ask the user if they’re sure that they want to install the program. All of the settings around trusting known developers are at the OS account level. They require a local admin login, not an Apple ID. Its somewhat similar to what Google does with Android.
Yeah, I was mostly referring to the “install apps” part of your comment. You can just download installers from websites. Very few Mac developers rely on the AppStore as their only means to distribute apps.
As for the OS updates, the stuff around major point releases keeps changing. They were forcing people to download installers for major point releases in the AppStore for certain versions of MacOS. I don’t know if that’s still the case with Sonoma. The update experience got refactored about a year and a half ago.
The latest OS for that particular MacBook was Big Sur. Not sure if that’s before or after Sonoma. It was previously on 10.10 or something, whatever that is.
Was thinking that too, although there are some caveats, you need to at least log into the store to download apps as it stands right now. I think you can log out after installing them, but still. Also using FaceTime or iMessage require accounts, when Apple otherwise could have it set up to just register with the phone number only, have no account, and just be ephemeral to that specific device. (But then at that point, they might as well just follow the IMS video call standard that is cross-platform and do away with FaceTime altogether, and the mobile industry should figure out the SMS replacement to then eliminate iMessage.)
Forced bundling of their preferred apps like a browser was what triggered the Microsoft anti trust, this is well overdue and Apple should have known it was coming
I mean MS has gotten away with exactly that, and so much more since then. The modern government hardly ever gives a shit anymore. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple totally expected to get away with it in perpetuity, and I won’t be surprised if they walk away from this unscathed because they filled the right pockets.
No one said it’s a monopoly, and they’re not a monopoly, in the strictest sense, but:
It doesn’t have to be a monopoly to violate anti-trust laws.
Apple has an enormous market share of national and global OSs
It’s a Duopoly, since there is really only 1 other legitimate competitor for the OS.
And while I agree no one should buy Apple products, people continue to do so and that doesn’t mean they deserve to be forced into these arbitrary anti-competitive restrictions that benefit Apple exclusively, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
My mistake, then. You’re right, they are not a monopoly, again, in the strictest sense of the word.
Many people use “monopoly” to just mean “company with overwhelming market share”, and that is not correct, but it is unfortunately how it is colloquially used and likely what was meant in this context.
FUUUUCK YEAH, long overdue.
That will be a good start. Hell I might even buy an Apple device if they were able to get all of that.
And to be clear, all of this should apply to all other companies but Apple are the most egregious violators.
This should be a rule for all products.
cough Windows cough
… and make it easy to find
You can, you just can’t install any apps
problem is that they are ready to do anything to keep their locked ecosystem (see how they sabotaging alt stores in EU)
you have to stomp apples anticompetive strategies HARD
Yeah and then keep stomping.
I’m loving how governments are finally starting to stomp on corporations. I only wish they’d stomp *harder. *
If you’re in the US, vote for Biden or Trump is going to direct all of that to stop.
I’m not. But yeah, I’d easily vote for Biden. Not because he strikes me as a good and capable president, quite far from it, but because he’s obviously leaps and bounds better than the other train wreck of a human being.
Honestly American politics would be funny in their ridiculousness if they didn’t set the tone for politics here in the years to come.
Can’t you already do #5?
I have Macs and iOS devices that aren’t logged into an iCloud account.
I dunno. I used one for 5 minutes last week and I wasn’t able to update the operating system or install any apps without logging in with Apple id
I was trying to upgrade a family member’s SSD and it was an absolute nightmare but I got it done eventually.
Installing apps on iOS is good point. You need an account. MacOS doesn’t have that constraint.
Mac is what I was referring to
You need an Apple ID for the Mac’s App Store, but the Mac’s App Store is very much the second banana on MacOS. You can open up Chrome or Firefox and download an installer for any ‘ol app, or another app marketplace entirely.
That said, if a developer hasn’t registered as a “Trusted developer” with Apple, installing an app will ask the user if they’re sure that they want to install the program. All of the settings around trusting known developers are at the OS account level. They require a local admin login, not an Apple ID. Its somewhat similar to what Google does with Android.
Listen, I know nothing about this, but I had to update a Mac recently, and as far as I can tell, the only way to do that is through the App Store.
Yeah, I was mostly referring to the “install apps” part of your comment. You can just download installers from websites. Very few Mac developers rely on the AppStore as their only means to distribute apps.
As for the OS updates, the stuff around major point releases keeps changing. They were forcing people to download installers for major point releases in the AppStore for certain versions of MacOS. I don’t know if that’s still the case with Sonoma. The update experience got refactored about a year and a half ago.
The latest OS for that particular MacBook was Big Sur. Not sure if that’s before or after Sonoma. It was previously on 10.10 or something, whatever that is.
Was thinking that too, although there are some caveats, you need to at least log into the store to download apps as it stands right now. I think you can log out after installing them, but still. Also using FaceTime or iMessage require accounts, when Apple otherwise could have it set up to just register with the phone number only, have no account, and just be ephemeral to that specific device. (But then at that point, they might as well just follow the IMS video call standard that is cross-platform and do away with FaceTime altogether, and the mobile industry should figure out the SMS replacement to then eliminate iMessage.)
Can I use a web browser not based on Safari finally?
dewebkiting browsers hasnt happened yet, but in EU, they arely have the select a browser on launch instead of installing safari by default iirc
That sounds like a net negative, considering Chrome is basically the only mainstream competition to Safari.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/14/brave_mozilla_europe_ios/
i mean theres already news about what people are installing
That’s news about a few other browsers that people are also installing, and nothing to do with Chrome, which is probably 100x more.
Forced bundling of their preferred apps like a browser was what triggered the Microsoft anti trust, this is well overdue and Apple should have known it was coming
I mean MS has gotten away with exactly that, and so much more since then. The modern government hardly ever gives a shit anymore. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple totally expected to get away with it in perpetuity, and I won’t be surprised if they walk away from this unscathed because they filled the right pockets.
I don’t see how this was a monopoly though. Don’t like their phone? Buy a competitors.
No one said it’s a monopoly, and they’re not a monopoly, in the strictest sense, but:
And while I agree no one should buy Apple products, people continue to do so and that doesn’t mean they deserve to be forced into these arbitrary anti-competitive restrictions that benefit Apple exclusively, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
It’s in the title, the justice department said that. There’s no way they are a monopoly.
My mistake, then. You’re right, they are not a monopoly, again, in the strictest sense of the word.
Many people use “monopoly” to just mean “company with overwhelming market share”, and that is not correct, but it is unfortunately how it is colloquially used and likely what was meant in this context.
It is a moot point, regardless.
They don’t even have that. Android phones are really popular
Have what?
overwhelming market share
LOL of course they do.
Nobody is forced. You have language comprehension or usage issues.