On the browser front, it’s easy. iPhones have batteries so battery life is a concern. That’s why Apple treats them differently than Macintosh computers, which you can choose your own default browser engine for.
The user is choosing the Apple ecosystem and is happy to make these rules. They allow games because some people like to spend their battery power on games.
The user is choosing out of an artificial lack of better options, which Apple can only get away with by having a big share in the US market. In markets where they are not dominant, the consumer benefits.
I'm the user and I know what I'm doing. I'm not being tricked into anything. I'm trying to avoid a certain type of personality that thinks they are saving the world.
The user is choosing an iphone because their friends have one. Do you actually think the average person thinks about these things before buying a phone? No. They are just told by apple "you don't get to do that" once they realize they want to try it.
I think Apple’s argument would be that making choices as to what you sell and for what price more or less is the core of what running a company is. If users don’t like the choices they make, they can shop elsewhere. That’s capitalism 101.
That brings us back to the question whether they’re a monopoly. The justice department seems to say they have a monopoly on iOS, so that users cannot shop elsewhere.
If such a thing can exist, of course they have a monopoly on iOS, just as Coca Cola has one on Coca Cola, Mercedes has one on Mercedes cars, etc. Next question would be whether they misuse that monopoly.
Apple will argue that ‘a monopoly on iOS’ doesn’t make sense as a concept and that, if you want to run Firefox or Chrome on a smartphone, there’s plenty of choice in the market, and even if there weren’t, there’s no obligation for them or any company to make a product that users want.
In the end, the outcome of this will depend less on logical arguments than about what ‘the people’ want. Laws and their interpretation will change if the people want that. That, I think, is what Apple should be worried about.
The argument would be that they didn’t want iPhone users, especially with early models, to end up choosing other engines that were much worse on battery life and that would hurt the image of the iPhone. Back then, there was no battery settings where you could see what was eating your battery. It was all opaque and could make people think the device had lousy battery life.
And yeah, I think it’s unlikely someone could have made a more efficient browser than Apple since they didn’t give public access to all of their functionalities. And that might have been partly for security reasons, if there were less-secure aspects to hidden functions, for example.
The counter-argument is that they should have opened everything up, but Apple will say they were going as fast as they could responsibly go, and that’s why there were limitations that have been relaxed over time.
That feels like an argument that could apply to bar any category of apps to compete with Apple ones on the phone.
For instance giving a special placement to Apple Music and not allowing other apps to get the same privileges, because music playback needs to be efficient, and a bad music experience would hurt the iPhone's image. Same for movies, same for ebooks, same for spreadsheets (including needing to execute macros, so security risk is through the roof)
I feel I could get paid by Apple to come up with excuses for each app they need any.
The real justification for browser engine restrictions is not battery life but security.
If you look at any iOS vulnerability reporting, Safari is a big weakness and often the source of zero day attacks. Browsers are hugely complex pieces of software with a lot of attack surface. A large part of Apple’s value proposition is being secure. It sounds like the new approach (in the EU only) that allows additional browser engines requires specific security measures to be taken.
Rightly or wrongly device security is going to be a strong defense Apple has against some of these allegations.
Then by the same argument, it should be ok for Microsoft to prevent users from installing any other browser on Windows besides Edge because it could make that person’s device less secure…
No, a user should be allowed to take the security risk of installing whatever they want on their computers. Security-conscious users will have clean phones, and ordinary users will have phones full of viruses like their computers.
Battery life is more of a concern on mobile devices because if your phone dies you can't call 911, get an uber, navigate with maps, or message a friend. There's more reason to protect mobile batteries than laptop batteries.
