As mentioned here in the CBS News YT video – “Breaking down the Apple antitrust lawsuit”.
iMessage vs text message. I noticed some issues in the group text messages in the past: for example, I can not add someone on Android to a group text. If one of the member in the group text is on Android, we need to resend via text message (default is iMessage), and so on.
Recently I asked my daughter (14 year old) about the group text chat as well, and she said: we prefer iPhone, but we don’t exclude Android people too 🙂 I guess they are the inclusive generation.
This reminded me of the CAD interoperability product: I worked on long time ago, it translates from competitor’s file format to ours. Also around the time, I recall it was very hard for us to compete in the 3D CAD market place (we were No. 2 in terms of market share). And our executive’s marketing strategy: we are more open (than the big bad No. 1 guy). See some similarity with Apple here? 🙂 Btw, I recall it was not easy to develop the translator, both from technical and business perspectives.
‘Buy your mom an iPhone.’ – Tim Cook’s 5-Word Remark Could Curse Apple’s iPhone (newsweek)
Social Stigma
Apple’s ‘green bubble’ Android texts fuel ‘social stigma,’ DOJ claims in landmark suit
More about Anti-Trust
I had to admit I am not a legal expert. But one thing to note this is not isolated to Apple. This Yahoo Finance article Justice Department files antitrust suit against Apple has a graph says Regulators vs Big Tech that summarized all the US regulators actions against the big tech currently.
Why Google Is Being Sued by the Justice Department | WSJ (YT Video)
Why the DOJ and 16 states are suing Apple in a landmark antitrust case (PBS Newshour, YT Video)
United States v. Microsoft Corp. (Wikipedia)
Acclaimed tech columnist Mossberg says the DOJ’s claim of an Apple monopoly is ‘laughable’ (Walt Mossberg)
Walter Isaacson: The law says you can’t use market dominance to then dominate an adjacent field (YT Video): I was in the Mossberg camp until Walter mentioned the “dual mandate” of DOJ/FTC regarding the anti-trust laws: protect both competition and the customers. In terms of competition, he said, a company that uses its dominant position to get dominance in tangential areas, that company may have violated the law.
Some of my thoughts on the topic in Chinese (linkedIn)
很多年前在一个CAD/PLM 软件公司打工。我的东家在三维CAD行业里是老二，有一段时间公司很紧张，因为汽车行业里面除了美国通用汽车有不少公司要换老大的软件：福特说要换，丰田后来还是选了老大的软件（世界上最大的两家飞机制造公司也用她家的），尼桑（日产）是我东家非常想保住的客户。后来我们那里的人想到一招：就说我们比她们更open, 她们是封闭的（就像今天美国司法部的AT部门的人说的那样）。题外话：大概也是二十年前，苹果用我们的软件设计她们的产品，她家当时的当家花旦是iPod. 前提是我们的三维设计软件在她家的Mac 上运行。#DOJvsApp || Back to software or more broadly the technology business, building better #mouseTraps or #moat if I could use #warrenBuffett words, is one important measurement of success #yardstick
More on Proprietary Software (Wikipedia, note the vendor lock-in as well)