I think people are ignoring looking at this through the lens of anti-competitive behavior. Right now there is an alternative, yes. But Apple continues to grab the marketshare in the US (and some Asian and EU markets). However, there is no guarantee that will be forever. Sure, they support SMS now, but again, no guarantee that'll continue to last.

Apple has displayed on numerous occasions that they do not care about interoperability with other platforms and have even been outright hostile and aggressive against them. Just look what happened when some kid figured out how to make iMessage work on any other platform. Sure, that kid's solution was hacky, but he was 16 years old. If one kid can do it, then there's absolutely no justifiable reason seasoned software engineers can't figure out a secure solution.

It astounds me that there are so many people defending any company that not only encourages walled gardens, but in some cases aggressively enforces it. Yeah there are alternatives, but people are lazy and seek convenience. iMessage just works by default, and so many folks get annoyed or even sometimes confused when non-Apple users ask them to use a 3rd party app to communicate with modern features instead of being stuck with SMS's severe shortcomings.

That's why I think the DOJ is justified in this. Because it is anti-competitive behavior.

Ignoring the users in here who obviously don’t understand how critical SMS actually is and how fucking awful it is from a security standpoint because they’d rather be armchairs than actually learn anything useful or true…

Wondering if this sudden move is at all to do with Apples announcement of their quantum encryption. US govt intel complex is probably seething rn

I hope something significant happens because of this, but somehow I just see Apple walking away with a slap on the wrist before continuing to engage in anti-consumer practices like nothing happened

They'll roll over and offer an encryption backdoor, DOJ will offer a token fine, everything goes away and consumers get a deep, hard, dry anal fuck.

Sue every US corporation with over 100B market cap please.

This is why I voted blue.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Rather than focusing on two or three illegal acts, the complaint alleges that Apple engages in a pattern of behaviors that further entrench consumers into their ecosystem and make it harder to switch, even in the face of high prices and degraded quality.

“They’ve written a complaint in a way that seeks to avoid weaknesses that I think the judge might have seen in that case, to add additional material so it’s not simply a reprise of Epic v. Apple.”

Rather than going after one or two discrete harmful actions, the DOJ looks to establish an interlocking pattern of illegal behavior that is epitomized by five examples, like the “green bubble” non-interoperability in messaging between iPhones and Android phones.

“DOJ has stepped back from the details and simply asked and answered the question, what are all these about?” says John Kwoka, professor of economics at Northeastern University who recently served as chief economist to FTC Chair Lina Khan.

In that case, the appeals court found that the denture manufacturing company violated anti-monopoly law by using “exclusive dealing arrangements to prevent rivals from getting inputs they need to succeed,” according to Kovacic.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, one of the state AGs who has joined in the DOJ lawsuit, tells The Verge that the enforcers “are focused on injunctive relief.”

The original article contains 2,022 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 89%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

“The one that really jumped out at me was this idea that parents don’t want to get their kids Android phones if they have Apple phones" 🤣🤣🤣🤣 i'm sorry, but who came up with that, google? i can't even imagine parents with apples buying androids for their kids, nor vice versa. how silly.

i do agree that texting and other basic phone functions should of course be interoperable.