It depends how you define the market. In the 2001 microsoft case [0], the courts ruled Microsoft had a monopoly over the "Intel-based personal computer market".
Apple has a monopoly over the "M-chip" personal computer market. They have a monopoly over the iOS market with the app store. They have a monopoly over the driver market on macOS.
Like, Microsoft was found guilty of exploiting its monopoly for installing IE by default while still allowing other browser engines. On iOS, apple bundles safari by default and doesn't allow other browser engines.
If we apply the same standard that found MS a monopoly in the past, then Apple is obviously a monopoly, so at the very least I think it's fair to say that reasonable people can disagree about whether Apple is a monopoly or not.
I wouldn’t say it is obvious. Apple does not have the monopoly of ARM based PCs. Labeling it as a monopoly of M chips is not fair or accurate when comparing to MS on Intel. It’s also probably relevant that MS was not selling PCs or their own hardware. They had a monopoly on a market where you effectively had to use their software to use the hardware you bought from a different company. Because Apple is selling their own hardware and software as a single product, the consumer is not forced into restricting the hardware they bought by a second company’s policies.
> Labeling it as a monopoly of M chips is not fair or accurate when comparing to MS on Intel.
The relevant thing here isn't the chips, it's tying things to the chips, because those would otherwise be separate markets. If you could feasibly buy an iPhone and install Android or Lineage OS on it or use Google Play or F-Droid on iOS then no one would be saying that Apple has a monopoly on operating systems or app stores for iOS since there would actually be alternatives to theirs.
The fake alternative is that you could use a different store by buying a different phone, but this is like saying that if Toyota is the only one who can change the brake pads on a Toyota and Ford is the only one who can change the brake pads on a Ford then there is competition for "brake pads" because when your Toyota needs new brake pads you can just buy a Ford vehicle. It's obvious why this is different than anyone being able to buy third party brake pads for your Toyota from Autozone, right?
> It’s also probably relevant that MS was not selling PCs or their own hardware.
This is the thing that unambiguously should never be relevant. It can't be a real thing that you can avoid being a monopoly by owning more of the supply chain. It's like saying that Microsoft could have avoided being a monopoly by buying Intel and AMD, or buying one of them and then exterminating the other by refusing to put Windows on it. That's a preposterous perverse incentive.
> It can't be a real thing that you can avoid being a monopoly by owning more of the supply chain.
Move the most important aspects of your software to hardware. Hard for MacOS but for a Chromebook style thing you could write the browser into its own pice of wafer.
> Move the most important aspects of your software to hardware.
So now you have a piece of silicon with a two year old version of Chrome with seventeen CVEs hard-coded into it, and still have all the same antitrust problems because the device still also has an ordinary general purpose CPU that you're still anti-competitively impeding people from using to run Firefox or Ladybird.
Well “had to use” is a strong phrase here. Linux was already around and you could have used it too with your hardware. I think you can always bend an argument to fit your point.
Didn’t knew that, but only if they also sold windows pc? Like, if a company would only sold blank PCs without any offering associated to MS they wouldn’t need to pay MS anything.
That was the what the trial about. If you wanted to contract with MS you had to pay for a license on every box shipped. Dell, Compaq, Gateway, HP, IBM, Acer, and others had to sign the contract or ship only alternate OS’s
If one sold a computer with OS/2 they also paid for a windows license.
I don't think any of what you're describing are legal "monopolies". I don't have a single Apple product in my life but I'm fairly sure there's nothing I'm prevented from doing because of that.
And back in the "Microsoft has a monopoly on IE6" ruling's days, I did not use Windows or Internet Explorer, and I was not prevented from doing anything because of that. Netscape Navigator on Linux worked fine. Sure, I occasionally hit sites that were broken and only worked in IE, but I also right now frequently hit apps that are "macOS only" (like when Claude Cowork released, or a ton of other YC company's apps).
Microsoft was found guilty, so clearly the bar is not what you're trying to claim.
Microsoft was found guilty of using their market power to do product bundling, which is illegal. The fact that they had dominance in the market is not what they got popped for, nor is it illegal.
It's possible on the Mac, but it's not easy. Apple uses an immutable system volume on macOS, so you can't just delete the Safari app like you would a user-installed app. To actually delete Safari you need to disable System Integrity Protection and reboot.
There are plenty of Linux distributions that use immutable root volumes. They protect the user in a huge number of ways by preventing the system from getting hosed (either by accident or by malicious unauthorized users / malware). Apple made the decision to do this for their users, and it has prevented a HUGE amount of tech support calls, as well as led to millions of happy users with trouble-free computers.
It also hasn't stopped users from installing Chrome and/or Firefox on their Macs, and millions of ordinary users have.
> It also hasn't stopped users from installing Chrome and/or Firefox on their Macs, and millions of ordinary users have.
You seem to be ignoring the part where you can't install the Chome and/or Firefox browser engines on iOS and the apps with those names on that platform are just skins over Safari. Notice in particular that the iOS version of "Firefox" can't support extensions.
> Let me know how I can unbundle Safari from macOS or iOS.
> Go ahead, I'll wait.
You can't get even macOS from the store without Safari, which is the thing Microsoft was doing, but what Apple does on iOS is far worse than what Microsoft was doing and talking about only macOS is kind of burying the lede.
For MacOS this is just as dumb of an argument as it was for Windows. The web engine is used to render system dialogs. You can easily choose a doffeeent browser on Macs. Chrome has quite a large market share on Macs
What next? Do you want to unbundle the built in drivers?
The argument for Windows is that you pay for Windows, and used to pay for Netscape Navigator, but now you have to get Internet Explorer if you want Windows. You can't say that you want to pay e.g. $160 for Windows without Internet Explorer and then $40 for Netscape, your only option is to pay $200 for Windows + Internet Explorer. It's tying. It's not really about whether you can remove it, it's about whether you can not pay for it when you don't want it. Notice that they quite successfully bankrupted Netscape with this.
The inability to remove it is just the dodge Microsoft attempted to use to claim that they're inseparably the same product, and was clearly a load of self-serving nonsense. Operating systems had system dialogs before there was any such things as browser engines.
The dynamic looks weird from the frame of reference of the modern browser market because the answer the market found to Microsoft's tying was to "pay for" the browser by allowing the vendor to choose the default search engine. No surprise then that the browser that ultimately supplanted Microsoft's was the one from the biggest search engine company. But that workaround came with negative consequences, e.g. Google now crippling ad blockers in Chrome.
And the tying problem is still there even if markets with low marginal costs are often weird. Okay, so the way we pay for browsers now is by letting the vendor choose the default search engine, but now we have Google paying Apple billions of dollars to be the default search engine in Safari, and Apple quashing Firefox ad blockers on iOS, instead of that money going to Mozilla or Ladybird or anyone else who has to compete by making a better browser instead of "competing" by tying use of their browser to an operating system, with correspondingly fewer resources and market share for competing alternatives.
> What next? Do you want to unbundle the built in drivers?
Making Asahi Linux get there by full reverse engineering actually is kind of a dick move? Intel publishes hardware documentation.
And it seems pretty obvious that Apple is tying their OS to their hardware and vice versa. Is that even supposed to be ambiguous?
And that argument is dumb in 2026. What are they supposed to do, use ftp to download a web browser?
> Notice that they quite successfully bankrupted Netscape with this.
Were you around back then? Absolutely no one paid for Netscape even before IE. And famously what bankrupted Netscape was because it “did things you should never do”.
Netscape was trying to make money selling web servers also. Should Linux and Windows not come with web servers? Should Apache not have been free?
People seem to forget that Netscape sucked around the time IE came out. It was so crash prone on every operating system it ran on that people use to brag on .advocacy groups about how good their operating systems were by how well they handled Navigator crashes.
And there has never been a point that Microsoft had to unbundle their browser in the US and there was never a browser choice screen.
> And it seems pretty obvious that Apple is tying their OS to their hardware and vice versa. Is that even supposed to be ambiguous?
This is about as bad of an argument as saying that Fors ties its motor to its cars or Nintendo forcing you to use their OS with their consoles. Apple doesn’t sell operating system, Apple sells computer products. What do you think should happen? Force Apple to create versions of its operating systems that run on other computers? Force Apple to sell Macs without operating systems? Anyone is free to choose an x86 PC and 90% of the market does
Firefox is also free to bundle an ad blocker with Firefox even if it does use WebKit and when you download Firefox for iOS - they get money from searches.
Are you suggesting that iOS shouldn’t come with a browser? Should ChromeOS also not come with a browser?
Absolutely no computer operating system comes bundled with Chrome besides ChromeOS yet Chrome still has the majority of the market share on desktop computers. Firefox competes with Chrome on an equal playing field on computers - people choose Chrome
> What are they supposed to do, use ftp to download a web browser?
How about, sell the product without restricting retailers from replacing the vendor's browser with another one, or give the customer a choice which browser they want the same as they choose how much RAM they want etc.
> And famously what bankrupted Netscape was because it “did things you should never do”.
Internet Explorer was bundled with Windows 95. The Netscape release before they attempted to rewrite was released in 1997. The rewrite was a failed attempt to make their browser good enough that people would pay for it when Microsoft was already bundling IE with Windows.
> And there has never been a point that Microsoft had to unbundle their browser in the US and there was never a browser choice screen.
Indeed, Microsoft successfully paid off the Bush administration to settle the case for a slap on the wrist after they'd already been found guilty by the court.
> This is about as bad of an argument as saying that Fors ties its motor to its cars or Nintendo forcing you to use their OS with their consoles.
Ford will happily sell you a motor without an entire car, or a frame or any other part of the car without a motor. Nintendo is forcing you to use their OS with their consoles.
> Force Apple to create versions of its operating systems that run on other computers?
This makes it sound like it's someone making Apple do something instead of Apple making someone do something.
What stops you from running macOS in qemu or a virtual machine on any non-Apple hardware with the same architecture? What stops Samsung from writing iOS drivers and offering iOS on Galaxy phones? Only Apple's refusal to sell it to you without making you also buy hardware.
> Anyone is free to choose an x86 PC and 90% of the market does
60% of phones in the US are iOS.
> Firefox is also free to bundle an ad blocker with Firefox even if it does use WebKit and when you download Firefox for iOS - they get money from searches.
The Firefox ad blockers are extensions, e.g. uBlock isn't from Mozilla, but the ability to use it is a reason to use Firefox. The iOS browsers can't use extensions. Then you can't use uBlock on iOS and fewer people use Firefox.
> Absolutely no computer operating system comes bundled with Chrome besides ChromeOS
Android. And then people who want to use the same browser on desktop and mobile for sync.
> yet Chrome still has the majority of the market share on desktop computers. Firefox competes with Chrome on an equal playing field on computers - people choose Chrome
Chrome is made by the largest advertising company in the world. For years if you opened google.com, gmail or their other services in a non-Chrome browser you would get a huge banner imploring you to install Chrome. This was a successful strategy to overcome the inertia of the default browser on desktop operating systems, but Mozilla never had anything like that available to them, and then the two-front assault from Microsoft/Apple on one side and Google on the other resulted in declining Firefox market share and correspondingly declining revenue with which to improve it.
Mozilla the organization also suffers from significant mismanagement, but that doesn't explain why no one has been able to establish a popular fork or new independent browser, whereas the OS vendors successfully impeding anyone who can't command the equivalent of billions in advertising explains it really well.
> How about, sell the product without restricting retailers from replacing the vendor's browser with another one, or How about, sell the product without restricting retailers from replacing the vendor's browser with another one,
PC vendors have been and do ship any type of crapware they want on their computers.
> or give the customer a choice which browser they want the same as they choose how much RAM they want etc. browser they want the same as they choose how much RAM they want etc.
And when they had that choice in Europe - they mostly still chose Chrome…
> Android. And then people who want to use the same browser on desktop and mobile for sync.
And those people can still download Firefox on iOS or Android and sync bookmarks.
In fact Firefox and Chrome Windows users can sync their bookmarks to iOS Safari using extension written and supported by Apple.
> What stops you from running macOS in qemu or a virtual machine on any non-Apple hardware with the same architecture? What stops Samsung from writing iOS drivers and offering iOS on Galaxy phones? Only Apple's refusal to sell it to you without making you also buy hardware.
Is that really a reasonable argument when Samsung doesn’t even support its own hardware with drivers for more than a couple of years?
> whereas the OS vendors successfully impeding anyone who can't command the equivalent of billions in advertising explains it really well.
Just maybe Firefox - which is free to compete with Google on desktop computers just doesn’t make a compelling case for why no one wants it?
Apple has not, to my knowledge, required OEMs to bundle Safari with macOS alongside threats to withhold macOS if they don’t comply expressly to put Firefox out of business.
But hey, maybe some weird shit happened during the clone years that I’m not privy to.
The crucially important subtlety here is that Apple requiring developers to use the App Store doesn't leverage an existing monopoly (like what Microsoft had with Windows).
Compare the games console market. Nintendo is allowed to say you have to go through them to sell games for the Switch, ditto Microsoft with the Xbox. Sony doing the same thing with the Playstation is exactly equivalent, but they're approaching the sort of market dominance where it might soon be illegal for them (and them alone) to do that in some markets.
> The crucially important subtlety here is that Apple requiring developers to use the App Store doesn't leverage an existing monopoly (like what Microsoft had with Windows).
Copyright (e.g. over iOS) and patent (e.g. over iPhone hardware) are explicitly government-granted monopolies. Having that monopoly is allowed on purpose, but that isn't the same as it not existing, and having a government-granted monopoly and leveraging into another market are two quite distinct things.
> Compare the games console market.
Okay, all of the consoles that require you to sell you to sell through their stores shouldn't be able to do that either.
> but they're approaching the sort of market dominance where it might soon be illegal for them (and them alone) to do that in some markets.
Wait, your theory is that a console with ~50% market share has market dominance but Apple with ~60% of US phones doesn't?
There’s no such thing as “having a monopoly on iPhone” in law. You have to have a monopoly in a market, of which iPhone is part of the “smartphone” market. It is not a monopoly in the smartphone market, to the best of my knowledge.
> You have to have a monopoly in a market, of which iPhone is part of the “smartphone” market.
Products and markets are not a one to one mapping. For example, if you sell low-background steel, that's part of the broader "steel" market because anyone who needs ordinary steel could buy it from you and use it for the same purposes as ordinary steel. But low-background steel is also its own market, because the people who need that can't use ordinary steel. Likewise for sellers of products with higher purity levels, products that satisfy particular standards or regulatory requirements, etc. It's only the same market if it's the same thing. Clorox bleach is the same as other bleach; Microsoft Windows is not the same as MacOS.
And iOS is not the same as Android. I mean this really isn't that hard: Are they substitutes for each other? If you have a GE washing machine, can you use any brand of bleach? You can, so they're in the same market. If you have an app that exists for iOS and not Android, can you use an Android device? No, so they're not in the same market. Likewise, if you've written a mobile app and need to distribute it to your customers who have iOS devices, can you use Google Play? Again no, which is what makes them different markets. They're not substitutes, any more than a retailer in Texas is a substitute for a retailer in California when you have customers in both states -- or only have customers in California.
Yes, but that was coupled with other factors like them strongarming vendors, already being hugely dominant on desktops and abusing that position et al. I don't see this as being the same. Maybe my bar here is wrong, but it doesn't change whether they are a monopoly or not.
The issue was never "Microsoft has a monopoly on IE6". That's obviously nonsense.
The monopoly that Microsoft held was the home computer operating system market, first through DOS, then later through Windows. Holding a monopoly like that isn't illegal unto itself. What they were actually found guilty of was unfairly leveraging their monopoly on the OS market to gain the upper hand in a different market (the browser market). The subsequent range of issues we had with IE6 (compatibility, security, etc) was a result of Microsoft succeeding in achieving a monopoly on the browser market through illicit means.
Likewise, "Apple has a monopoly on the App Store" is just the same amount of nonsense. What you could argue is that Apple has a monopoly on the home computer market, or the mobile phone market, and that the way they integrate the App Store should be considered illegal leveraging of that monopoly, but that argument simply doesn't hold water — Microsoft's monopoly on the OS market at the time was pretty much incontrovertible, you simply couldn't walk into a shop and buy a computer running something else (except maybe a Mac at a more specialised place). Today, just about any shop you walk into that sells computers will probably have devices for sale running three different OSes (macOS, Windows, ChromeOS). Any phone place will have iPhones and Android devices, and probably a few more niche options. Actual market share percentage is nowhere near the high 90s that Microsoft saw in its heyday. At most, Apple is the biggest individual competitor in the market, but I don't think it hold an outright majority in any specific product class.
Mind you, I think that there is a good argument to be made that the Apple/Google duopoly on mobile devices does deserve scrutiny, but that's a very different kettle of fish.
You were not prevented from doing anything, but that doesn’t mean others weren’t. For example, OEMs were not allowed to offer any other preinstalled OS as a default option. That effectively killed Be and I’m sure hindered RedHat.
That’s not how monopoly definitions work. That makes about as much sense as saying Nintendo has a monopoly on Nintendo consoles or Ford has a monopoly on Mustangs
> Apple has a monopoly over the "M-chip" personal computer market. They have a monopoly over the iOS market with the app store
When a company is deemed an illegal monopoly, the DoJ basically becomes part of management. Antitrust settlements focus on germane elements, e.g. spin offs. But they also frequently include random terms of political convenience.
I don’t think we want a precedent where companies having a product means they have an automatic monopoly on said product.
More to the point: having a monopoly isn't de facto illegal (just look up natural monopolies), it's using the monopoly power in an anti-competitive way that's illegal. Microsoft wasn't charged with having a monopoly, they were charged because they used that monopoly to exclude Netscape Navigator and force bundling of IE.
There’s no such thing as “monopoly on Apple-produced processors” because that’s absurd. The monopoly for MacBook would be “consumer laptops” most likely. Apple does not have a monopoly in consumer laptops to the best of my knowledge.
> Apple has a monopoly over the "M-chip" personal computer market
lmao what ? the "M-chip" is literally their chip that they designed, built relationships with TSMC over and bankrolled into production to put in their products. literally hardware by apple for apple. this was a decade plus long thing in the making, this is the risk/gamble apple took and invested heavily into. that is apples innovation. any other manuf is free to go do this themselves for their own devices, they just didn't and for the most part still don't. that just like isn't a monopoly at all, i'm amused you even got to that point in the first place. seems to carry some broad misunderstandings of what the M-series chips are or carries an assumption that cpus are supposed to be shared to any interested parties just because that was intels business model. intel was historically slacking & their one-size-fits-most approach wasn't meeting the engineering requirements apple was after generation after generation, so apple took the cpu destiny into their own hands and made their own. if you feel like non-apple laptop chips aren't living up to that kind of perf/ppu.... well yeah you'd be right. but that's not really apples fault. that's not a monopoly thing, like at all. either laptop manufs need to go make their own chip (unlikely) or intel/qualcomm/etc need to catch up.
It isn't just about monopoly or unfair competition. This can also be covered under consumer rights - the Right to Repair. No OS provider should be allowed to dictate what software you can or not run on your own device and / or OS you have paid for.
> It isn't just about monopoly or unfair competition. This can also be covered under consumer rights - the Right to Repair.
If we have a right to repair (we broadly do not, AFAICT), then that doesn't necessarily mean that we have a right to modify and/or add new functionality.
When I repair a widget that has become broken, I merely return it to its previous non-broken state. I might also decide to upgrade it in some capacity as part of this repair process, but the act of repairing doesn't imply upgrades. At all.
> No OS provider should be allowed to dictate what software you can or not run on your own device and / or OS you have paid for.
I agree completely, but here we are anyway. We've been here for quite some time.
Courts have already ruled it does in the iOS app store market. You can disagree of course but then you'd be disagreeing with legal experts who know more about anti-trust law than you do.
You can, but that doesn't mean your opinion is as valid as those who study the subject. Otherwise we might as well follow the sovereign citizen believers.
