I would argue the point of consumer choice is at device selection. If they choose the ecosystem with the heavy markup, when they had alternatives, then they are responsible for incurring their own additional costs. The information is public regarding app costs between devices and marketplaces. This seems to me a bad ruling based on that.
Blaming the consumer in this case doesn't fly because the consumer owns the device once they purchase it, and it is anticompetitive for Apple to lock out competing services on the consumer's device. The "Just don't buy it" argument also doesn't work for The Right to Repair movement.
Either way, end users have the right to sue Apple here, not just the developers.
That requires making the case that the consumer believes they are buying a general computing device that they can use for any purpose and customize freely, which is simply not the case.
Furthermore, repair applies to the hardware of the device, not the software ecosystem. You have to make a separate, very different argument for software as it is more malleable and less restricted than hardware components are.
> That requires making the case that the consumer believes they are buying a general computing device
Considering Apple has been pushing the "iPad is a PC replacement," it's a fairly easy case to make with regard to iOS and the App store. There is a lot Apple has done to push the idea that the "users" are in control of their information and that "there is an app for that." Couple that with the history of people being able to customize their phones in certain ways, it's not a case that is that hard to make, especially when compared to contemporary phones.
I do think you have a better argument: if Apple has falsely advertised the capabilites of its platform as being capable of general computing, it may be liable on that count. I do not think you can argue a history of customizing phones, given Apple was the first provider with this scale of adoption.
I am arguing it is constrained by its manufacturer and that consumers are well aware of those constraints on purchase. That is sufficient for the consumer to take on liability if the choice does not meet their needs.
Again, a consumer using something doesn't justify anti-competitive behavior with companies. If the bar for antitrust was whether or not a person bought it, then there wouldn't be a need for antitrust law.
I would recommend looking up what antitrust does and does not cover. This is not suitable grounds for antitrust arguments as the law is currently given; if you were arguing 'Apple has a monopoly on Apple-exclusive apps', you might have a case, but even then there are many apps that are cross platform, and those that choose to develop exclusively for Apple are making a market decision that they may be liable for if the cost of production increases because of it.
I don't think you can argue platform monopoly here any more than you could argue, say, that Amazon has a monopoly on AWS-specific services. Since an app developer can choose which platform to use with approximate levels of parity between those platforms and a few distinctive services per platform, it is my opinion that the 'platform monopoly' argument is rendered void. This argument is only weakened in recent years as feature parity increases between Android and Apple ecosystems.
Vertically integrating and excluding competition is exactly what antitrust covers! The monopoly that Apple has on the app store for the devices it sells allows it to exploit consumers with pricing. That's the case that the Supreme Court has allowed to move forward.
AWS is also a platform but they don't lock customers into only using AWS or AWS-licensed services. This is almost as preposterous as saying, "Someone bought it, so it's not anti-competitive".
All the vertical integration Apple has been able to muster hasn't prevented more open competition from growing in the smartphone market, so your point continues to remain moot.
Again, to make your case, you must argue that Apple products are categorically different from any other device available on market and that they are preventing new entrants from competing with it, which is so blatantly not the case here.
Addendum after edit time passed: the final and primary criticism I'm making about this argument is this: if you selectively narrow your view to the Apple ecosystem and ignore all external entities, you would easily come to the conclusions you are coming to. I believe that is an artificial and distorting narrowing of the scope that must be considered in this argument.
This is incoherent, non sequitur. Again, we're talking about two different categories of devices: general computing vs. non-general. At the moment, smartphones are non-general, insofar as they are not made for user programmability from the device itself.
Secondly, that MS case is a different matter than the one cited here, and does not map well onto this case.
Thirdly, the major precedent of the original ruling appears to have been overturned shortly after. This damages the argument somewhat. The ruling seems scurrilous in the first place, in my opinion.
1. Apple advertised the iPad (which is also an iOS device) as a laptop replacement.
2. My point is not to compare the two cases, legally speaking, but you argued that "consumers are well aware of those constraints on purchase". Well, consumers were well aware of the limitations of Windows and that didn't change the fact that Microsoft was charged with unlawful monopolization.
3. Sorry, I'm not sure what you are referring to here.
A key finding was that Microsoft had a monopoly on the PC OS market, with marketshare > 90%. If 90's Microsoft had Apple's marketshare today, <50% in US, the judgement would have been absurd.
Everyone has a different opinion on this, but I have a hard time believing desktop users (Linux, Mac, Windows) would accept getting their software only from the computer manufacturer's officially approved store.
I certainly don't like it, no, but that doesn't make it antitrust in this case. My feelings and desires aren't what determines law, and thank goodness for that.
In a democracy, they kind of are. Indirectly, obviously.
My feelings and desires affect how I vote, and voting affects legislation as well as such things as who gets appointed to the Supreme Court. (and given our legal system, courts determine law as much as legislators do)
I think it is awful that manufacturers of devices have that level of control of who can sell apps to run on them, and I certainly hope enough other people do to affect law. I'm old enough to remember when you could only buy a (landline) phone through Ma Bell, and luckily the law -- via courts of course -- stopped that eventually.
This is very similar, but in my opinion the current issue is a good bit worse that AT&Ts monopoly.
Is there a general principle at work here? I have a Wii, a PlayStation, an LG smart TV, a Chromecast. All of these runs apps and are substantially more locked down than my iPhone.
If I make a device, you should not be able to force me to support your software running on it. That seems fundamental.
Consumers have a choice, though, and that trumps most other considerations. With Android, they receive an alternative set of constraints. Do I think Apple is wise to be as restrictive as they are? No. Is it within their bounds to do so? Absolutely.
As a consumer, I can be disgruntled that my chosen platform is not as flexible as I wish. I can either throw a fit and lobby congress to force Apple to open its gates, or wait a year or two for my phone to slow down and pick up an Android device. In fact, this kind of migration occurs in both directions on a regular basis. Only religious loyalists stick with a single ecosystem without examining the tradeoffs they're making, as a general rule.
They have a choice between two monopolistic platforms, frankly.
Your purchasing decisions are not mutually exclusive with action from courts and legislators and voters and such. And, especially if you take into account that market theory as well as game theory tends to view individuals as rational agents pursuing self interest (1), a pure free market approach simply does not effectively curtail monopolistic and otherwise anti-competitive behavior of corporations.
And a court would likely take that into account. They might even consider that you have the right to fabricate your own phone, and write the operating system from scratch.
Luckily courts take into accounts the barriers inherent in such things. If few enough people do such things because the difficulty of doing so makes them impractical for most people, they give appropriately low weight to such arguments.
