Yet rules enacting strict control over what is and isn’t welcome on an iPhone usually won’t look arbitrary or targeted in the long story of Apple’s empire. Control is what has always made Apple, well, Apple — even before the company became the behemoth it is today. The tight integration of products and services makes every Apple device simpler to use. It also, the company contends, makes those devices reliable and reliably safe.
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Courts haven’t tended to find that companies have a duty to build products that will help their competitors — and they haven’t generally concluded that products must be open by design. For the transformation many competition advocates seek, the country would need different laws.
Instead of increasing competition between Apple and other smartphone makers, the practical effect of the Justice Department’s case would be to make iPhones look like Androids. This leaves consumers no better off while giving a massive leg up to Apple’s rivals.
The case is bigger than one company. Will antitrust law promote consumer welfare and competition as it has since the Supreme Court adopted the consumer welfare standard? Or will antitrust law once again become a weapon wielded by companies and special interests against their larger rivals, consumers be damned?
The fact that a widget can be running while the app is not has finally sunk in to my little head, and I have to make some code adjustment to my hobby project.
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Thanks for reading.