> This is an indication that your complaint is not in Apple's behavior, but your regret that the competition sucks and it's not Apple's fault.
No it's not; GP didn't even address this. Competition sucks, and that is Apple's (and Google's) fault.
> Most people choose to buy iPhones knowing that only certain watch options work.
I'm sure that's not true. Most people choose to buy an iPhone because it's an iPhone. No one is going to buy an iPhone because Apple Watch works and Garmin watches don't work (as well).
Certainly some people buy an iPhone because they also want to buy an Apple Watch (which I assume doesn't really work well or at all with Android), but I think that's a minority of purchasers. They by an iPhone because of the iPhone itself.
> It's not like Apple started off letting third party watches work well and then suddenly locked them out (but you could argue from the article that they started off with minor handicaps and have increased the level of handicap over the years).
I feel like your parenthetical refutes any point you were trying to make in the prior sentence. The first part of your sentence is irrelevant. While it does take work to standardize public APIs, it also takes work to lock things down and choose what subset of functions third parties are allowed to access. The fact of crippling third-party smartwatch access is anti-competitive behavior.
This is the same shit we went through in the 90s with Microsoft, but many people here are too young to remember what that was like. MS gave their own apps (Office, IE, etc.) access to private, undocumented Windows APIs that let them provide a better experience than similar third-party apps could provide. The US government and courts decided that was illegal. It should be illegal for Apple to do so as well. (And before you start quoting relative market share numbers between MS in the 90s and Apple now, I don't think that's relevant. You shouldn't need a monopoly in order to be restricted from anti-competitive behavior.)
> But it seems like Google, Samsung, and the other Android players are losing on their own merits.
That's a naive explanation for complex social phenomena. Android doesn't suck. It's fine. Very good even. But it's not enough to be good, or even excellent in today's markets. You need incumbency, lock-in, social capital, and, yes... anti-competitive behavior.
And to be clear, Android manufacturers are not losing. In most places outside the US, Android is the dominant operating system.
But! This isn't about Android winning or losing. It's not about Android at all. It's about companies like Pebble and Garmin being hobbled in the iOS smartwatch market because of Apple's anti-competitive practices. Android is irrelevant to this.
Yes they did, when they said they were amazed that Apple dodged anti-trust lawsuits. I said that from the rest of their post it seemed like they acknowledged that competition existed, they just didn't want to use Android options. The legitimate anti-trust example they gave (LTT/Floatplane) is from an app developer perspective (not a smart phone and watch buyer), which is why I talked about that.
> I'm sure that's not true. Most people choose to buy an iPhone because it's an iPhone. No one is going to buy an iPhone because Apple Watch works and Garmin watches don't work (as well).
I didn't say that people buy iPhones because other watch brands don't work well, I said that they buy iPhones knowing that the other watch brands didn't work, and it still doesn't deter them. But they had the information available when they made their choice.
> I feel like your parenthetical refutes any point you were trying to make in the prior sentence.
No, I said it's not like they totally changed course from being welcoming to other brands to locking them out. They were always hostile to other smartwatch makers, but I acknowledged that the article mentions that they may have gotten more hostile in recent years. Acknowledging that their hostility may exist on a spectrum doesn't refute the point that they've always been hostile to other smartwatch brands. I love that in your next paragraph you include a parenthetical that could refute your own argument though- market share is absolutely relevant. Nobody is going to bother suing a small fry over anti-competitive behavior with 0.01% market share in a healthy competitive market- the market takes care of that issue on its own.
> Android doesn't suck. It's fine. Very good even. ... It's not about Android at all
This article is partly about Android since "Apple is being restrictive" is in comparison to features that the Android API offers. They are saying that they are going to make an Apple app for the Pebble but it is not going to be as good as the Android experience.
No it's not; GP didn't even address this. Competition sucks, and that is Apple's (and Google's) fault.
> Most people choose to buy iPhones knowing that only certain watch options work.
I'm sure that's not true. Most people choose to buy an iPhone because it's an iPhone. No one is going to buy an iPhone because Apple Watch works and Garmin watches don't work (as well).
Certainly some people buy an iPhone because they also want to buy an Apple Watch (which I assume doesn't really work well or at all with Android), but I think that's a minority of purchasers. They by an iPhone because of the iPhone itself.
> It's not like Apple started off letting third party watches work well and then suddenly locked them out (but you could argue from the article that they started off with minor handicaps and have increased the level of handicap over the years).
I feel like your parenthetical refutes any point you were trying to make in the prior sentence. The first part of your sentence is irrelevant. While it does take work to standardize public APIs, it also takes work to lock things down and choose what subset of functions third parties are allowed to access. The fact of crippling third-party smartwatch access is anti-competitive behavior.
This is the same shit we went through in the 90s with Microsoft, but many people here are too young to remember what that was like. MS gave their own apps (Office, IE, etc.) access to private, undocumented Windows APIs that let them provide a better experience than similar third-party apps could provide. The US government and courts decided that was illegal. It should be illegal for Apple to do so as well. (And before you start quoting relative market share numbers between MS in the 90s and Apple now, I don't think that's relevant. You shouldn't need a monopoly in order to be restricted from anti-competitive behavior.)
> But it seems like Google, Samsung, and the other Android players are losing on their own merits.
That's a naive explanation for complex social phenomena. Android doesn't suck. It's fine. Very good even. But it's not enough to be good, or even excellent in today's markets. You need incumbency, lock-in, social capital, and, yes... anti-competitive behavior.
And to be clear, Android manufacturers are not losing. In most places outside the US, Android is the dominant operating system.
But! This isn't about Android winning or losing. It's not about Android at all. It's about companies like Pebble and Garmin being hobbled in the iOS smartwatch market because of Apple's anti-competitive practices. Android is irrelevant to this.