United States v. Apple is pure nerd rage

The Verge has such a hard on for this story. They’ve published like ten articles about it already.

To be fair, it’s the most interesting story the verge has covered in about, well, as long as the verge has existed.
This is a big deal - it’s going to shape the entire tech industry for the foreseeable future. And it’s going to drag on in court and probably also congress for years and years.
Apple is the target of the lawsuit but the DoJ is also telling every other tech company what rules they need to operate under. The last decade of “just do whatever you want” is over.
- They have an entire story covering the US v Microsoft case. You should give it a read.
Because we all do, because someone is finally trying to do something about Apple's decades long walled garden anti-competitive bullshit.
What, are you upset that your favourite trillion dollar mega corp feels picked on?
- Europe already did. That's just usa kind of catching up, if it ever success.
- I’m upset when the government wastes resources on a big lawsuit that it’s absolutely going to lose, because it’s weak on the law and inept on the not-that-complicated technological issues. I also question the leadership of an organization that, in the name of consumer protection, decides to target a product with ludicrously high customer satisfaction ratings. Consumers love their iPhones, perhaps more so than literally any other product they own. What a monumentally stupid target.
I expect them to cover this in as much detail as possible. They are probably the last big tech / business news website standing. I know Gizmodo, Engadget, Tech Crunch etc exist but nobody seems to have resources and connections The Verge does.
- Uhhh 404media???
Good! It's a massive story.
They were like this about the Epic V Google suit too. their legal reporting team is over-the-top.
Think about all the legit clicks.
Really? I kept getting the feeling they were being sarcastic so I stopped reading

Since someone else brought up superapps, do they seem like an initial attempt to get around the manufacturer's app store lock-in?

Super apps allow adding mini apps. Seems like an app store.

The goog/apple app stores are already saturated by malware, I can't imagine some mini app store would do better. Even if the big two did do a better job, how would they go about vetting all the code these super apps might have access to?

I guess I'm too jaded, but it seems like just another malware loader you intentionally install.

Am I being too hard on the concept? Are there any really good ones you've used?

F-Droid is good one
Why rely on them doing the detective work and just not give 1 more second to think through before hitting that install button? This is basic digital hygiene.
- I had hoped that as most younger adults now were kids who grew up with computers, the average person would have a pretty good understanding of how they work. I never expected everyone to be a programmer or sysadmin of course, but to have a general sense of things like whether data is stored on their device or remotely, how to find out if an app install is risky, and whether a prompt requesting permissions, a password, etc... is reasonable.
  For the most part, I don't think that has happened. The average person doesn't know how to use a computer and isn't going to learn.
- That requires thinking, an activity most people are unwilling to engage in.

Here's the full complaint, for those who want to read the whole thing.

Thanks for sharing! This was an amazing read.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

United States v. Apple is a lawsuit written for the general public, an 88-page press release designed to be read aloud on cable news shows.

That’s not against the rules — note that United States v. Google (filed 2023) has a single, terse intro paragraph outside the numbered section — but US v. Apple powers up for two whole pages before getting into allegations.

There are even a beguiling few paragraphs in which the DOJ compares the need to regularly update AAA video game titles to the onerous process of App Store review and then concludes that “Apple’s conduct made cloud streaming apps so unattractive to users that no developer designed one for the iPhone.” At no point does the DOJ allege that Apple is why I can’t play AAA games on my iPhone….

(At the Thursday press conference, Attorney General Merrick Garland made no mention of how Sarah Jeong would like to see the SE return to its 2016 size.)

It’s fun to engage with the legal distillation of nerd rage at the line level, but there’s also an overarching narrative here that the DOJ is trying to push, one with potentially enormous ramifications.

Meanwhile, the opening volley in its battle against one of America’s favorite companies is a killer start, not least in part because of an unusual degree of lawyerly insight into the human psyche.

The original article contains 1,258 words, the summary contains 228 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I don't think this lawsuit is going to make a difference.

Edit: an upstream comment led me to be able to find this article which does a way better job of explaining the DOJ complaints:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/21/24107669/doj-v-apple-apple-watch-messaging-digital-wallets-lock-in

Honestly, I would be happy if Apple addressed all of these things as long as doing so has absolutely zero chance of degrading my experience as their customer.

My original comment:

Apple already announced that it'll be supporting RCS sometime this year. Cloud streaming games have been available on iOS for years now, but prior they had to be a Web App and as of earlier this year that is no longer the case. Now they can be a regular app in the app store.

Superapps are hot garbage and should be banned. But WeChat exists on iPhone so I am honestly confused about this one. What features is it not allowed to have?

The NFC and wallet issue is a thing still.

The watch thing is a head scratcher. What API does Apple Watch currently use which 3rd party watches don't have access to? Because it seems like Apple is being blamed for other companies not making better products.

I'm surprised they didn't mention that every browser is just re skinned safari
- Right?
  The complaints that they did list, many aren't valid anymore. But they didn't call out a lot of common complaints.
Defend and deflect
- Yes yes. Apple Bad pls upvote me.
  But in this case I pointed out some things that are wrong with the DOJ's complaints, one thing that is valid, and asked questions about two that nobody, and my searches, have answered. They seem to also be completely wrong on the DOJ side.
  I doubt you use their products or will be affected by them being altered in any way, but I do and will, so this case interests me as do the details.
I don't think you can reply to a text message using a third party watch on iOS but you can with your Apple watch. I've seen that cited as an exclusive API.
- Thank you!
  Searching for what you said got me this recent article which does a better job of explaining all the issues and complaints:
  https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/21/24107669/doj-v-apple-apple-watch-messaging-digital-wallets-lock-in
Tell me you're an apple fanboy without telling me you're an apple fanboy.
- I tried to keep it super subtle but you got me!
Superapps are hot garbage and should be banned.
What the hell. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it should be banned
- Let me put it this way, superapps rely on harvesting and exploiting massive amounts of user data for profit, which is much worse than anything that Apple does. That aspect should be banned.
  The quality of the service or content they provide is not my preference, but that's not what I was referring to as hot garbage in this case.

Imagine you're a government lawyer working on the US case and you show up to a deposition and pull your iPhone out set it on the table.

What are the chances that your Apple ID and iCloud are mysteriously banned for violations of the terms of service for which Apple can't share the specific reason because of "policy related security reasons" before the week is out?

That’s called “ retaliation” and Apple would have to be pretty fucking stupid to do that to the prosecutors at any point, let alone in the middle of a dep.
- Apple would have to pretty fucking stupid to openly retaliate against Epic for criticizing their DMA plan but here we are.