I don't think your understanding how a Monopoly applied in the situation with Microsoft.
Microsoft's Anti-trust suite was because of its web browser's dominance, IE was during the anti-trust suite upwards of 95% of all browsers on the Internet, this was because of bundling and defaults.
While other OS's may not execute on Apple's own hardware, other hardware exists (other smart phones) that directly compete with Apple. And by compete I mean neither Apple nor Andriod nor WindowsPhone 'owns' >90% of the mobile market.
This is how Sun didn't get involved in trust litigation over the fact that Solaris was the only OS that ran on Sun SPARC hardware, because its hardware was work station hardware. Which had to compete with Silicon Graphics, IBM, Apple, Next, etc.
> This is how Sun didn't get involved in trust litigation over the fact that Solaris was the only OS that ran on Sun SPARC hardware
There is also the fact that Sun didn't prohibit other operating system or application vendors from making operating systems or applications for its hardware by locking the boot loader.
The rest of the comment was also not an argument, it was just a restatement of the statement you were denying. Are you claiming that there is no circumstance in which Sun exercising control over what software could be run on the hardware of its customers could lead to an antitrust violation? That seems implausible. Once you're exercising gatekeeper control in that way, you would among other things for example have control over any downstream monopolies, such as any enterprise software vendors with a monopoly in their own market whose software ran only on Solaris/SPARC and could not easily be ported.
>Are you claiming that there is no circumstance in which Sun exercising control over what software could be run on the hardware of its customers could lead to an antitrust violation?
No, I'm claiming that under the circustances that you (or the OP) described in the previous comment it wouldn't lead to an antitrust violation.
I can't talk for "under ANY circustances".
>That seems implausible
Well, the low allows it and companies have been doing it for ages, e.g with game consoles.
> No, I'm claiming that under the circustances that you (or the OP) described in the previous comment it wouldn't lead to an antitrust violation.
The OP was claiming that the reason Sun was not prosecuted for an antitrust violation despite the lack of OS competition for SPARC hardware was that other hardware existed in competition with SPARC. But the reason there was no competing OS to run on SPARC is not the same reason that there is no competing OS to run on iPhone. In the case of SPARC the lack of OS competition was not a result of any interference on the part of Sun. When Linux was subsequently ported to SPARC they made no effort to prevent it, I imagine they probably did most of the work. In the case of iPhone the lack of OS and app store competition is directly a result of Apple thwarting it. It is extremely likely that at least one of Android/Ubuntu/FirefoxOS/etc. would be ported to iPhone hardware in the alternative, and that Amazon or others would be operating competing app stores. So the existence of hardware competition was not the only thing saving Sun from an antitrust violation -- even if they had a strong hardware monopoly their behavior wouldn't have been an abuse of it. Apple is behaving differently. Its behavior is distinguishable from that of Sun in a way that makes an antitrust violation significantly more plausible. There is a much stronger argument that Apple exerts monopoly power over the market for iOS applications than Sun ever did over the market for Solaris applications. Which part of this do you deny?
> Well, the low allows it and companies have been doing it for ages, e.g with game consoles.
I'm not sure how clear that is. Was there an antitrust case against a game console maker in which they were vindicated? Just because the government has never prosecuted anyone doesn't mean it isn't a violation. Antitrust law is about as clear as mud and they rarely prosecute anybody even in cases of much less nuanced violations.
"The issue central to the case was whether Microsoft was allowed to bundle its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) web browser software with its Microsoft Windows operating system. Bundling them together is alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft's victory in the browser wars"
Microsoft's Anti-trust suite was because of its web browser's dominance, IE was during the anti-trust suite upwards of 95% of all browsers on the Internet, this was because of bundling and defaults.
While other OS's may not execute on Apple's own hardware, other hardware exists (other smart phones) that directly compete with Apple. And by compete I mean neither Apple nor Andriod nor WindowsPhone 'owns' >90% of the mobile market.
This is how Sun didn't get involved in trust litigation over the fact that Solaris was the only OS that ran on Sun SPARC hardware, because its hardware was work station hardware. Which had to compete with Silicon Graphics, IBM, Apple, Next, etc.