I personally think the fact that Apple built their platform literally from the ground up is more than sufficient justification for them to maintain as much control over it as they please. Shouldn't we all just say "Hey, thanks Apple for advancing the state of the art so tremendously far" and leave it there?
Apple seems to disagree strongly with this position when it comes to paying royalties for patents on components they rely on from other companies in the iPhone (that’s supposedly built from the ground up). I’m not sure why no one ever thought to tell Apple that they should just thank these companies for inventing the critical radio technologies that their entire platform rests on and pay them whatever these companies think is appropriate.
It’s so fascinating how other people’s inventions are “obvious” and not worthy of exorbitant fees, while our own inventions are unique and clearly deserve special protections.
No? Software platforms are always going to lead to a few competitors at best. It's a natural monopoly scenario and smartphones are pretty much a saturated market at this point. There really isn't much room for new competitors and the barriers are extremely high. Why should Apple be able to abuse consumers and devs?
There's plenty of room for new competitors who can properly innovate on the platform, much in the same way that there was plenty of room for Apple when they brought out the iPhone amid Blackberries. Anyone who can do the same should be promptly thanked and not further interfered with. Or do you think we have nothing to be grateful for?
It seems like you're saying there is no more room for innovation/paradigm shifts in handheld computing. Do you really think that's true? Phones will be more or less the same as they are now forever?
I think there's a ton of room for innovation/paradigm shifts in handheld computing.
I think that very few of them are significant enough to flood over the moat Apple and Google have built.
Among those? Screen-less mobile computing (glasses/HUD) and true conversational AI agents.
But the rub is that (particularly within the Apple ecosystem), a competitor has to not just be better (on day 1, vs the 14+ years of iPlatform evolution), but better enough that people are willing to jettison the entire Apple platform for a competitor.
Which means Apple can release later, with less quality, and still retain most of their users. That's the evil genius of pivoting to a platform / services company.
Google to some degree, albeit to a lesser extent, since their services aren't as tightly coupled to first party hardware.
Lets take a step up the value chain: Qualcomm also literally built their dominant position in 3G/4G/5G radios from the ground up. Is that more than sufficient justification for them maintaining as much control as they please? Because I remember Apple being pretty peeved about having to pay a % rake to Qualcomm, complaining that it was unfair.
You could repeat that for any product that has a dominant player somewhere up it's value chain.
If that was the world we wanted, then we all would have cheered as Microsoft steamrolled over Apple in the 90s, and we all get our software from the Microsoft Store today.
Large, wealthy companies and rich investors also exist on the market. They routinely fund innovative ideas that have the potential to disrupt established players. Absent any government interference, how long do you think Google or Apple will remain household names? 10 more years? 40? 100?
