Apple’s antitrust fight begins | The Vergecast
The Verge's David Pierce, Alex Cranz, Lauren Feiner and Nilay Patel discuss the breaking news about the the US Department of Justice accusing Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in an expansive new antitrust lawsuit.
Further reading:
www.theverge.com/2024/3/22/24...
US v. Apple: everything you need to know: www.theverge.com/24107581/doj...
0:00 - Intro
00:49 - The DOJ's Allegations
02:23 - Five key areas of the DOJ's complaint against Apple
05:55 - Super Apps
15:14 - Cloud gaming on iOS
23:48 - Messaging apps and green bubbles
30:17 - Smartwatches
35:04 - Apple's control over NFC and transactions
42:00 - Nilay joins us from vacation
48:59 - Google's market dominance
51:51- Middleware and the future of apps
58:51 - Apple's defense
01:02:18 - The Open Web
01:13:22 - Lightning round
01:18:16 - A Super App for babies
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Nilay not being physically there for this podcast today of all days must have destroyed him inside.
That is second only to Deiter being at Google as RCS hit the big time. But yeah, the amount of scream with on the family vacation must be deafening.
I think the alcohol was to cure those wounds
Props to Nilay for perfectly scheduling his vacation to avoid ever being in the studio with David yet again
The GameCube is there though. 2 out of 3.
“use vocabulary that is more popular over there in crazy town” 😂 Can we have more Nilay beach episodes please?
Essentially the eu won so now they can try
The thing that I would keep in mind, because it keeps coming up as a reference, the Microsoft Anti-trust case. That case ended in failure, the US government settled out and the case went away.... but the discovery that was brought up was useful anyway. This case spooked Microsoft in a way that nothing else did, between that and the EU case (whom actually got to do something about it, how effective it was..... less so) the effects of it are LONG. If you remember a few months back at the whole GAI thing (and ChatGPT specifically) blew up, with Microsoft aggressively introducing Co-Pilot Chatbot in Edge in a way to "Make Google jump, and to know that we did it.".... Microsoft as a company has NEVER been that aggressive in years, and the anti-trust case is the reason to why. It showed Bill Gates and co how close to the sun they were, how close to losing it all they were. They are adamant of not letting that happen twice, at least not without a near 30 year distance. Even if the US Government loses, it really important how they lose. How much pressure Apple has to deal with as the case mounts in the courts for years, how utterly existential for their existence this becomes. If the US Government can spook Apple (assuming the political winds don't change drastically), the government would have earn a haunting place in the minds of the c-suite (and the rest of the company) at Apple for years. As the Microsoft Anti-trust case proves, the effect of that is far reaching and somewhat effective at being a deterrent.
Nah, EU played the first move in releasing the DMA, apple responded with their 50¢ fee and now the EU has to work on continuing the ever ongoing game of regulatory chess.
@tedzards509 the eu will ban them if they continue to be blatantly anticonsumer
What about charging $200 for ram and storage upgrades on macbooks.. keeping 8gb ram on a $999 MacBook Air is ridiculous by today's standard.
No one has to buy apple laptops. There are a lot of options out there. Apple can’t set its own pricing and let competitors establish their own pricing and consumers decide if they want to buy Apple products?
@@tm7517 Yes, gov doesn't get to set prices.
This the vergecast. The flagship vergecast of vergecasts.
I love vacation Nilay!
Can we FedEx Nilay a pair of wired earpods? The audio was so hard to understand while listening in the car.
I like Lauren's Wall of Timekeepers.
literal time keepers, they kept the time when they stopped
@@wielsonf makes sense
Talking about Apple monopoly because you want a super app seems kinda… ironic?
true, but i think they mention super apps since it highlights a lot of issues with the app store. they say this in the podcast as well
Exactly. This is such ridiculous nonsense. Apple has a minority of both OS and hardware in the market that it created, and they are the ones being attacked LOL
It’s about choice, people want them so why can’t they?
@@Lixgribum, apple has 61% in the US, doj is US enforcement agency. 61% is not minority buddy
This is the first time I’ve watched the video version of the podcast, and holy moly, the lighting in that studio is nice!
Ok so David and Alex held it down, but my man Vacation Nilay came in Silver Surfer cool. Always a good show, just added Vacation Opinion Nilay flair.
If our country did have an app that did everything like WeChat the goverment would sue them too
right? how does it make sense for the government to call one company a monopoly because it won’t let other companies become monopolies? It’s almost like the US government is fighting for monopolies to exist more than anything
Yes, how can you leverage a bunch of apps in one giant app,...pushing out all others, absurd.
No it won’t, read the lawsuit lmao.
There are many super apps and apps that can do multiple things in many countries. It's quite competitive. Many payment and ewallet apps. Not just Apple pay and Google wallet. The Verge should pay David to go live abroad for a month. 🤣😊
As a non US user, i find the SMS thing very weird, i think that its more of a societal issue than a tech issue, if people want to feel special with the blue bubble its on the user not wanting to downloa other of the Several messaging apps, by saying that its an issue its ignoring the fact that people use IG, FB, Snapchat, etc with the DM funcionality, i get why an issue is that its the "default" but its only an issue on the US, so is ir really a monopoly or an issue if globaly its really a non issue?
This is a US court suing a US business for a US monopoly. The US DOJ never said anything about these being global issues. Can Americans use WhatsApp or another messaging service? Yes. I do it all the time with my ex-pat and international friends. That doesn't take away from their case. This whole antitrust lawsuit is focused on the US. When the EU forced USB-C and better security measures Americans weren't like "well that's not really an issue for us." We just sat back and reaped the benefits of a universal charger (even though now I have data transfer USB-Cs and charger USB-Cs I can't tell which is which) and being able to turn off app tracking. This will probably lead in some form to a more competitive Apple from an innovation standpoint. And that should be something we can all benefit from.
like the Pepsi clock!..
Apple is actively taking action to prevent these apps in the United States ie the Beeper Cloud/Beeper Mini situation.
As a web dev I completely agree that they prob didnt include PWAs cus its hard to be clear about what they actually are
It will always be consistently funny to me that Android users, like myself, simply dont complain to iphone users about how much we hate communicating with their devices. Like, the average iphone user has never heard of a single issue that apple causes on the android end, but could rant about the color of a text bubble for 45 minutes uninterupted.
Why does Lauren have so many clocks? And why do they all have different times!?
they've all stopped
Art.
I think technically the correct time will be shown at least ten times a day, that's not bad
I want more vacation Nilay.
REALLY great discussion!
3:36 NAILED IT
Penocolata Nilay is the best Nilay,
22:40 I think you’re forgetting the iPhone SE, but those who still want a home button and a tiny phone haven’t
This has been the best vergecast of all time. David talking about the humane pin is an emotion and I’m all for it ❤
Mike Armstrong - coasterfan!!! Have watched so many of his train videos with my now 3 year old over the last two years. He now knows the difference between his videos and imposters (he’ll say “this isn’t coaster fan” hahaha)
They also don't make the watch app available on iPads etc. and force you to buy a phone.
Exactly nobody who doesn’t own an iPhone is going to buy one specifically to use an Apple Watch. At least it’s unlikely. The Apple Watch is a supplement to the phone. Not the other way around.
@@topherick , I just want to take the calls on the watch when I'm outside. And use the iPad at home and not own a phone at all.
It is worth noting that even if you purchase digital movies, audiobooks, or ebooks from Apple, you cannot transfer them to your Windows laptop or Android phone. This means that your purchases will be locked into the Apple ecosystem, which some may consider to be stealing.
I really doubt that moving the application layer to the web is better for the user experience of the application. It’s economically much smarter because you can reach a much broader audience with less effort but all the platform specific feature are useless at that point. So in a way competitiveness of the phone becomes even less because you’ll get the least common denominator of all platforms. Just look at Premiere vs Final Cut to see what writing for one platform does. Final Cut still runs circles around Premiere when it comes to performance, feels much more at home at macOS regarding the UI because they use native UI elements and they actually use the hardware, same with Pixelmator. I get that people like Premiere because it’s platform agnostic and the workflow feels familiar in Adobe products but objectively the UX is much better with native apps.
I will never use one app for everything. Having different apps allows for security. If one login gets hacked then everything gets hacked. If I have use multiple hack than only that gets hacked.
True
A bigger question is what is allowed to belong to Apple and what has to be free and open. Apple developed iMessage for their platform. Why are they being forced to open up proprietary software tied to hardware they development and sale as a whole product.
Because some things are generally meant to be open despite being made by one person. For example, certain food recipes are required to be open to public despite being created by one company person because it’s to generic. Example: potato chips, but some aren’t ex:coke. Apples messages are similar, messages are too broad and generic to be propriety, but other apple things aren’t.
@@justanotherrandomdisneyfan3717 I don't know where you came up with your food analogy. No food company has ever been forced to produce another company's food product.
They don't have to open iMessage to everyone. What they can't do is intentionally make features on non-Apple apps worse
They don't need to open iMessage up to android. Android uses RCS messaging protocol and it's just as good as iMessage. The problem is that Apple purposely degrades the messaging experience with android users. Apple has at least announced that they are adopting RCS messaging protocol this year, so messaging between iMessage and Android will be much better (High quality images, typing indicator, etc.)
If there were alternative app stores and high-quality PWAs, would the TikTok ban be harder to enforce?
It would be impossible to enforce.
And for what’s it worth, we will absolutely have more super apps if Apple is stopped, and that’s a good thing. I have Apple fatigue.
About the Super Apps thing. Do Super apps exist outside of China? In India, 650million odd smartphones. 95% Android. No super app whatsoever. Many, many, many have tried.
Lauren, none of your clocks are working!
Oh wait, one of them is.
David is right about the blue and green bubble thing regarding to the USA being ahead in SMS/ MMS and also because it was cheap if not free but in other countries texting was expensive which made people gravitate towards free services like WhatsApp.
Why can’t you guys get Dieter to guest host a Verge episode, it’s been too long
the crazy thing is that no other company can get all of their own devices talking together as well as apple does so I doubt they will ever get their devices working better with apple devices than apples own products. let em try, the apple devices will always be the better choice.
Max is on vacation, she doesn't care. Also she's 5!
I believe they should focus on how whenever Apple competes with other developers and manufacturers with their own applications and hardware, they keep some operating system level APIs exclusive to their apps and hence now everyone else’s apps and devices become relatively worse even when those developers and manufacturers have the capability to make their products as good as Apple’s, if not better. The examples being Airpods, Apple Watch, etc. This is clearly anti-competitive in my opinion.
That is what I think the most important thing is. The exclusive APIs. There are endless examples of this with one being on the Apple Watch how Apple Maps can do things that other maps apps just can’t. Imagine the innovation that could occur if those APIs were let loose
David Pierce is the best podcast host
My Garmin watches work fine on Iphone.
We have about 56% iPhone users in the UK and the main messaging app here is WhatsApp. Most of these arguments are ridiculous. They are going to make things worse.
In the States we don't call them "super" apps we call them "bloated" apps. And most people don't want them. Facebook has tried to be a super app and X wants to morph into a super app, but most people aren't looking for a million more bloated features stuffed into those apps.
Oh god where’s Niall ! Horrible hosts and Apple fanboys. DOJ finally made the right move to bring this against Apple.
Most of iPhone user dont realise any other digital wallets out there, bcoz Apple never show it blatantly. Let think, what if you can choose 3,4 digital wallets, should you consider to change to other instead of staying with only one option Apple wallet? The digital wallets will soon become "consumers infor mine" bcoz all customers habit of purchasing, location, market behaviour...which Apple wants it only one could harvest. That's anti-competition.
American products are not lame when you compare what the rest world from cars(hilux,fj70 series,nissan patrol ,prado, wagon,vans,..trucks(peter belt vs scania or volvo usa vs volvo cabover),airplane(boeng vs airbus ),sports (thats why they have there own kind of sport)..thats why usa government have to protect them and also the companies and cooperations have to protect there market
Matter smart devices save Apple HomeKit on the iPhone 💯
Google: announces AI US Government: Lawsuit Apple: Announces AI & Rumored to work with google Gemini US Government: Lawsuit 😂😂
I can't stand the blue bubble
Picture-in-picture is a pay walled item behind KZhead!
Microsoft took antitrust, Google took antitrust, Apple took antitrust... Apple fans: "Hey! Apple can't take antitrust, our beloved company", this is simply hilarious... you have to take antitrust even if it is hurting the market now !... this is simple to understand.
On the question that was asked “if you could do everything in an app, would you spend $1600 on a phone?” The answer was “probably not.” Here’s the problem. How do you argue that this encourages innovation for the US government perspective? This discourages everyone from making better hardware and encourages companies to make things where you have to be in their “thing.” We then get the Walmart super app, the X super app, the Amazon super app, etc, etc. This gets you into a situation where you are now stuck in certain apps where you live and where you shop. What if it gets to the point where you have to pay your electric bill in the Amazon super app but then you have to pay your water bill in the Walmart super app. This is not innovation. This is making consumer lives miserable.
🍎If Apple wins the case, then other companies will follow Apple 💯💯
i think this sue is more of a personal issue from a tech illiterate who just wants things to work across multiple devices.
Isn’t that how Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam all work?
🍎I agree, Apple want iPhone users to buy Apple watch only. Apple will not allow iPhone users to buy Wear OS smart watches for the iPhone 💯
His name is Mike Armstrong, great videos. My 2 year old loves them. He likes to tell us which trains are fast and which are slow. Also into a big and little categorization that has no bearing on reality. 🚂
Can we consider Google not making any Windows Phone app and limiting those 3rd party apps, also anticompetitive?
If you go about most comment sections, you'll always find Apple & Android Fanboys at each others throats...The point every one is missing here, is that ultimately that the lawsuit will be decided on one thing only ..Whether Apple violated the sherman act or not. Microsoft essentially commited coersion to promote their OWN software bundle on OTHERS hardware, that's why they faced action in their anti trust lawsuit, Google has essentially done the same , that's why they lost their case against epic. Apple controls the entire experience hardware , software from top to bottom which is why THEY more or less won their lawsuit against epic, with only a slap on their wrist regarding the anti-steering rule. If Apple is to be declared a monopoly , congress will literally have to amend the sherman act or create a new one , like the EU has. Other than that the only outcome i see for this lawsuit is either apple narrowly wins or settles the matter with certain concessions like opening up the apple ecosystem to other companies wallets and watches & allowing cloud streaming of games. As far as messaging is concerned china has more or less forced them to adopt RCS. Removal of App Store gate keeping and allowing super apps is a long shot , but only time will tell
I also hate web apps. Even Figma. Desktop Figma is better UX. Sorting through my tabs find my app is not fun at all, and it makes the browser a clunky mage app. I also hate gossip, please don't let this show become tech tabloid click-bate.
Apple will still find a way to abuse it's power. They'll probably move everything on the iPhone to the cloud. The phone could just run an A.I. assistant locally. And they'll avoid calling it an operating system 😂
Is Insta a part of Apple Problem because the Video Quality upload on Android is worse than on Apple ? I cant imagine a technical neccesary reason for that in Instagram.
That's instagram compressing videos into oblivion to save on server costs!
You do realize that Instagram is a product of Meta and not owned or operated by Apple in any way? Apple doesn't make the app nor host the photos. But to answer your question, the Android API for 3rd party apps to access the camera has often not been very good.
28:11 Why did you have to personally attack me 😢
I don’t understand this lawsuit. Apple close ecosystem is feature that most like. Why would Apple Watch should work with other phones? In that case we should let manufacturers sells car directly and not dealership? Or force Sony or Xbox or Nintendo exclusive to be played across all consoles? Should we also force Netflix show to be on Hulu? I don’t understand why Apple has to do this? I am for c port or lower price for developer who starting out in Apple eco system? But government to force private company to share their technology to their competitor? It doesn’t make sense? Should we also let good engine to share across other search engine cause it’s popular? I don’t like this overreach of government trying to tell private company who own 50 to 60% market in the USA. Only 20% in the world about monopoly. Apple product is not necessity like penicillin, insulin, milk and etc. they are luxury item. I have android before and love it. I also have Apple products and it works across my device. Why can the consumer choose themselves about what’s best for them? To me this lawsuit is saying other company is not as good as Apple. Government is coming in to force Apple to work with android? Huh? I can go to ATT or Verizon and they have other phones there. They are amazing phone. No one is forcing you or you didn’t have choice to buy other phone?
I share your opinion completely. If you don't like the way your iPhone works with something, well you don't have to buy an iPhone. An iPhone is not a necessary thing you need in your life and can't switch.
Is the only problem with texting back and forth with android users is the color of the bubbles? I text back and forth with android users. Nobody cares
No, sharing media is compressed to the point of being useless, sent, read, typing, reactions, etc. are completely missing. That's supposed to be fixed because Apple announced they'd be adding RCS support to iMessage, announced following the EU forcing them to adopt USB-C and allow third party app stores, likely to avoid further "issues", but it shouldn't have ever been like that in the first place.
Pics and videos get degraded to, like, 144p. Group chats break a lot too.
@@SpeakingJargon I totally forgot about that. I'm a web dev and my Android phone makes communication with my team more difficult because of the problems with group chat in iMessage with non-iOS devices.
lol - send a video
@@velohench And Apple will argue that those are SMS limitations, which is exactly why they developed iMessage. By supporting SMS, they are supporting the carrier’s standard. The government wants better messaging, regulate the standard. Just saying SMS is so inferior that Apple should be forced to share their service solution for their iPhone customers with competitors is insane.
Personally I have annoyances around the digital wallet as a non apple user, when it comes to payment cards im golden but its the non payment part i have an issue with everyone these days has boarding passes, event tickets ect that work with apples wallet but only some of them work with the google wallet. im sure if given the opportunity google would love to adopt the apple wallet pass standard too but they're not allowed to by apple
It is up to individual developers to support "passes" on either platform. Apparently Google is rolling out support for Apple pass files in the Google Wallet. But again that is something that Google has to do, not Apple.
First❤
Indeed
And i hope US whens i wanna see how Apple navigates this - if the US WINS
27:01 Yet again, someone is taking notes about a criminal conspiracy. How many of this folks don't watch The Wire is maddening.
Nilay is right. Apple makes decisions that result in a worse and less secure experience for both Apple and non Apple users. In the case of iMessage they do it to lock in users. Same goes for smart watches.
Imagine the volume of billable hours before both sides of the action. Nikon did Apple a solid resolving the RED raw codec thing… as for DOJ, too bad they can’t use their resources concentrated on Apple for things like 🤔 Puerto Rico Statehood?
Who told you Puerto Rico wants statehood?
Not relevant @@ndrwfm , but Puerto Rico is a more productive use of DOJ time and billable hours. There is so much there & it should not regress to the next Vieques vs US Navy [but with tax evasion] to get an investigation. See the reportage of Nomiki Konst, Bianca Graulau and Johnny Harris has an explainer to get you up to speed.
It’s disgusting, it’s their product, they shouldn’t be forced to work well with other companies
Think of the users
It’s not about them, it’s for the user.
@@prime12602 they shouldn’t have any right in that kind of product. People don’t have to buy it. It’s a disgusting over reach
@@prime12602 it’s not about the user, they have a choice.
@@reactionsok no, users have the options to use other products
the government dictating how iPhone makers design their flagship product...is itself anti-innovative. It limits progress.
Businesses of all types have always been able to offer exclusive features, services and goods. Apple is a For Profit company that offers Hardware, Software and Services that contain proprietary features. They shouldn’t be coerced by Governments to operate like a Non Profit Open Source group. Otherwise what is the point in offering anything proprietary?
I applaud the lawsuit. I use Apple devices and am frustrated by the lock-in and resulting elevated prices they can charge. It's like going to a movie theater where you can't bring in food and drinks so they charge $12 for a small drink and small popcorn, or more. They can only do that because there is no competition.
You are literally locked into the theater and can't leave and must sustain yourself on theater food or you starve. Just like how you are forced to use an Apple device. 🙄
Every service or piece of hardware that connects to an iPhone is crippled or not allowed where Apple competes. That’s anticompetitive. AirTags and AppleWatch are easy examples, as are payment and messaging services.
@@badam1814 Everything is "crippled?" If you use very loose definitions of every and "crippled." But that is not the basis for legal action. Tile and Chipolo exist. Walmart pay and Paypal/Venmo and many other payment services exist. Numerous messaging services exist.
I understand, but how is that monopoly? You can do what you want. Why punish Apple for wanting to create product to work with theirs? Should we punish Ferrari to not let Lamborghini use their part or tech? Should we also force Nintendo to make games for Sony and Microsoft? It doesn’t make sense. In that case KZhead is a monopoly? It’s owns huge margin of market? Is DOJ suing KZhead?
Also Apple only own 20% of global market and 50-60% of USA market?
Regarding super apps, Microsoft/Xbox, Epic, and other game platforms would love to make super apps with their games on them, but Apple wont allow it. That is not in their user's best interests.
Great show until 42:01
Do you not like Vacation Nilay?
Yea, exactly... mental gymnastics. Apple does what it does to give us a superior experience. You are talking nonsense. LINE works better on iOS than anywhere else, and that is one of the 'super' apps that you are talking about (which is nonsense anyway). It's all a bunch of nonsense. Android and Samsung have far more market share in the hardware and OS... in the market that Apple actually created. And they did it illegally. Get real people and stop speaking nonsense.
I understand what David is saying.... But the specific reason why I don't have an iPhone after switching from Windows phone is because I do not want Apple making decisions about what software I can and can't use based on their arbitrary rules. An Xbox and by extension game pass which by the way is the single most used piece of software that isn't a computer or phone.... Not being in their app store but being in Google's the first day is the North Star as far as why I will never use any of their products. Because I really don't care what apples reasoning is. I've been playing games since I was five. Apple is essentially like an ISP. You are a means to an end. I don't need you getting in the way "because reasons". No USBC, because reasons. No Game pass because reasons. iMessage in RCS because reasons. Being able to just have an Xbox controller in my backpack and play all of my games whenever I feel like it is a severe reason to not have an iPhone. Not a web app... The actual game pass app. The idea that they want the hardware to be the focus so they would deny software advances that their own customers would take advantage of because they want to be the North Star to be the hardware....is insane.
Yeah but does that make it a monopoly because they don’t support everything ? You easily switched to a platform that had what you want.
And you were free to make that purchase decision and are all the better for it. How does that make Apple the bad guy and anticompetitive? Apple’s competitors offered a concept/product that you were interested in and you voted with your wallet. That is the market at work and a perfect example of competition thriving.
It is funny to watch this discussion as the entire panel shows off their Apple watch, MacBooks and EarPods. Guess their Apple t-shirts were all in the wash.
The hypocrisy regarding this topic is huge.
I see that as proof of the problem. If one of their machines just happens to be the best for something you do they make using products from anyone else such a bad experience that it pulls you in.
@@velohench Nothing they do on the podcast couldn't be done with a Chromebook and no watch. It's all just signaling so that people know that this is their job, but don't get any funny ideas about who they really are. Potentially, because that's a little unfair, but the perception matters in journalism. I just think that there must be somebody with a Pixel watch and a Surface Pro that could also talk intelligently about the lawsuit.
This whole lawsuit sounds like boomers got frustrated with their technology and literally made a "federal case" out of it. But most of the complaints are just subjective personal feelings.
I wonder if any of you at The Verge has heard about privacy and cybersecurity.
"Most countries in Asia have super apps" What?? NO!! Do you even know which countries belong to Asia?
Just starting the podcast but I am coming in with the notion that if you are in the ecosystem and own no other analogous products, your opinion is invalid.
It's funny how the presenters criticize Apple but they both use Apple laptops, watches, and iPhones 😂. They need to talk the talk and walk the walk.
Wait... so somebody can't own Apple products and also talk about Apple products? How does that work?
Alternatively they are well suited to make this argument because they want better, more open and useful apple hardware
How will criticise something you don’t know or use? Huh?
Don’t you have any other topics other than Apple? Common guys, your channel has become so boring and waste of time watching these days