> Apple should be forced to allow side loading of apps and alternative app stores onto their devices.

I think the government forcing all platforms to be open is just as bad as them forcing all platforms to be closed. Users should be able to choose.

> Otherwise they can make any demand they want from their ecosystem developers.

You mean like any other platform/store owner? Why should only Apple not be allowed to do this?

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A new platform is exactly what Apple created. Like you, everyone said it could not happen. Boom.

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> why won't it release source code?

You never know, they just might. Keep your eye on https://opensource.apple.com/

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> Apple locks down the platform and forces all of them to go through Apple's store, giving Apple a cut of the profits.

And this is perfectly legal, just like many other closed platforms that exist today. It's true some people have a problem with closed platforms and they are welcome to their opinion. Indeed, some of those people feel strongly about it and have been suing Apple (without success) over the store since it opened.

The word monopoly has a specific meaning with regard to antitrust, and it relates to control of a market. There's no market here. The App Store is feature of iOS. It exists at Apple's pleasure. Apple doesn't have competitors in the App Store, it has guests.

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You are taking one company's product, calling that a market, and then saying that they have a monopoly. That's like saying Costo has a monopoly on Kirkland products.

Charles Arthur is the EU author of "Digital Wars: Apple, Google, Microsoft and the Battle for the Internet". When asked about Apple's 'monopoly', he said "a market defined as iOS App Stores is absurd on its face".

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> If they have enough power for their logo to actually appear above their competitors they have enough to get fined under anti-trust regulations for anti-competitive practices against competitors.

There's a difference between a market and one's own product, and iOS is a product. And like any other company, Apple has pretty much absolute power over it.

The point is moot, as Apple isn't requiring placement, and the whole Login with Apple is a developer-request feature in the first place.

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> They were still brought up on antitrust charges for using their Windows Monopoly to promote Internet Explorer.

Microsoft did not have a monopoly on Windows, they had a monopoly on PC operating systems. That was the market, and you practically could not buy a PC without paying for a copy of Windows whether you wanted it or not. That's not true with Apple; there are plenty of other phones to choose from and anyone is free to make a new platform from scratch - just like Apple did.

> Claiming that Apple is not a Monopoly just because they also don't allow third parties to use their hardware or software is absurd.

I made no such claim. A monopoly (when referring to things like the Sherman Antitrust Act) means control of a *market*. Apple is not a monopoly because they control no market, and make no attempt to control any market. I pointed out that defining a single company's *product* as a market is absurd.

> If tomorrow, Apple decided to start allowing people to install IOS on third party hardware, would them becoming more open cause them to magically become a Monopoly? That makes no sense.

This makes no sense because you don't have monopolies on products, you have them on markets. If Apple made iOS available and it became so popular it was the only smartphone OS, then Apple would have a monopoly on the smartphone OS market.

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> For example, using their IOS market position...

iOS is Apples *product* (its software product at that). Any definition of a market made up of a single companys product is absurd. Samsung would have an actionable monopoly on Samsung devices, LG would have a monopoly on LG panels, ad infinitum.

Apps in the App Store are not written from scratch, they are built on the back of Apple SDKs, and Apple has the final say in how their software is used.

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...and the first draft has none of the aforementioned text. If you are going to play, you need to do better than that.

In the end, it is true that the timing of the release of GPL3 makes it hard to claim the included language was a reaction to the App Store (but not so for the iPhone, which was released earlier).

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Visual Voicemail let you see and individually play your voicemails rather than having to listen to them in order like an old answering machine. It was a great improvement, and did come with the original iPhone.

Transcription came later.

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It has gotten so bad, and the carriers have done so little, I have decided that they must be planning on getting themselves out of the voice business. Nobody I know is glad to hear their phone ring.

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(Who currently uses a silent ringtone as the default)

The anti-Apple camp regularly assigns motives to Apple without a shred of evidence, so forgive me if I do a bit of it myself.

Apple introduced the App Store, and the next major revision of the GPL included specific language about end-user consumer devices. I am sure the two things were totally unrelated...

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Traditionally, Apple does not change the shell for existing users during an upgrade.

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There are two sides to every coin. When you specifically tweak your license to prevent someone from using software, you are no longer about being open.

The only people being hurt here are the users, by people purporting to do good.

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I suspect it is all about licensing as zsh is MIT-ish, bash is GPL. Since the GPL has been tweaked over the years to keep Apple from using it*, a change to zsh makes sense.

* people complain about ancient Unix tools supplied with macOS, and this is part of the reason. Luckily Apple keeps the old ones patched.

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