Apparently the US DOJ and more than a dozen other states attorneys general filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, for among other things, it's use of blue bubbles vs. green bubbles as an attempt to force more people into the Apple ecosystem. Apple sued in a landmark iPhone monopoly lawsuit By Brian Fung, Hannah Rabinowitz and Evan Perez, CNN Washington CNN — The US Justice Department and more than a dozen states filed a blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Apple on Thursday, accusing the giant company of illegally monopolizing the smartphone market. It’s the largest in a recent string of Big Tech companies to face antitrust complaints from the US government, which is cracking down on the massive industry, whose power has gone largely unchecked over the past several decades. The complaint, said Attorney General Merrick Garland at a news conference, alleges that ”Apple has maintained monopoly power in the smartphone market not simply by staying ahead of the competition on the merits but by violating federal antitrust law.” “Consumers should not have to pay higher prices because companies break the law,” he added. The long-anticipated lawsuit, which was filed in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey, comes after years of allegations by critics that Apple has harmed competition with restrictive app store terms, high fees and its “walled-garden” approach to its hardware and software: Apple famously makes its tech easy to use, but it achieves that by tightly controlling – and in some cases, restricting – how third-party companies can interact with the tech behemoth’s products and services. In some cases, Apple may give its own products better access and features than its competitors. More: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/21/tech/apple-sued-antitrust-doj/index.html Honestly fuck Apple. Whenever anyone I know who uses an iPhone tries to send me videos, Apple forces the video to be compressed beyond recognition. And then Apple has created a culture where non-Apple users are to blame for that decision, made by Apple. And it glitches to shit anytime an iPhone user is on a group text because Apple delays sending their texts such that the conversation becomes impossible to follow sometimes.
The enshittification continues. Apple is the SUPREME of computing (a wildly overpriced brand that serves no purpose beyond the appearance of exclusivity), and they don't have to be. Remember when Apple made great hardware and software so people of all ages could use it without the stigma of being seen as nerds? Sure, it was a little more money than what IBM compatibles offered, but the hardware quality and ease of use made it justifiable. I remember when Apple was the cool kid introducing everyone to technology, and so everyone was welcome. Now, if you're not buying the latest $1000 iPhone you're garbage. So, yeah, fuck Apple. While we're at it, fuck Microsoft.
Apple fucked up badfly for a number of reasons during the PC revolution of the 90's and early 2ks. Apple failed because they chose brand name over competition. MS attached itself to the intel platform which was allowing a lot of competition between hardware manufacturers which lead to a fast pace speed increase that apple could not generate because they focused on image and artistry. You ne3eded them for graphic design, video editing, and music creation in the day. However they failed to be gaming machines and office machines while Intel and MS offered up cheap upgradable systems, and put them in the range everyone could have one in their office and at home. Jobs was a major league asshole fascist shitbag who wanted a cult of idiots that called themselves elite while they really had to call the certified mac pro to fix their overpriced computer while anyone could learn PCs and did not have to have speciakl permission from lord Jobs to know how they worked. I think people need different OS to fit the different ways they think, but Apple is neither simple or intuitive IMO. It is to some people, and that is why it is great it exists, but I find it to be frustrating and back assward. Apple has been blowing their users pretendinmg they are elite because they use MAC for their entire life. Now that the field has been leveled in terms of Adobe products and media production being developed for MS and other systems Apple is just an expensive choice for the people who prefer their OS. Apple was never really better than windows. What Apple did was protect their users from shitty written programs and half assed developers because they only wanted perfection. Most of the problems with MS and the hardware manufacturers for PCs was they really let everyone make products for them. This mean buggy but cheap hardware and software, but you had competition rather than Lord Jobs telling you what you were allowed to buy or put into your computer.
Now? Sure. Back in the late 1980s, early 1990s, Apple was very user friendly. These days, not so much.
I still love the Apple II to this day. Steve Wozniak is a brilliant man. Jobs was a fool for exploiting him and so many others (also for believing in pseudoscience to cure one of the nastiest, deadliest human diseases that even the best medical science fights to overcome). Now we have a faux luxury brand where computing is secondary, and it's so sad. I do see some of it through nostalgia goggles, I'll admit, but 1980s and early 1990s computing was just the best.
