1. IBM 1956 = Google 2024 (and Apple, and Microsoft, and and and)
As I've noted before, you are likely to read an awful lot of bad punditry about Apple's cases with the EC/DOJ in the next few months/years. But you're likely to hear a lot of even worse punditry about the judgement in Google's case. One thing to bear in mind whenever you read something is this: what is legally permissible when you're a smaller company can become illegal action when you're a monopoly. A “distribution agreement” that's OK when you're a scrappy upstart in a competitive market is likely to be exclusionary practice for a monopoly.
2. "The Purpose of antitrust is to protect competition"
Another great piece in The Verge was the long interview with Jonathan Kanter, assistant attorney general for antitrust at the DOJ. It's worth a read in its entirety, but probably the most important point is where Kanter talks about "the restoration and validation of a core of element of antitrust — the purpose of antitrust is to protect competition and the competitive process." This is bringing the US view of antitrust both back to its pre-1980s roots and closer to that of the EU (which is obsessed with protecting competitive markets), and it bodes badly for big tech companies.
3. Acquisition by stealth
Interestingly, one of the questions that Kanter is asked but doesn't really answer is about Microsoft's deal which saw it gain 51% of OpenAI and a chunk of control over it without actually buying the company. These "acquisitions by stealth" are increasingly common, as big tech firms see them — wrongly — as a way of avoiding antitrust trouble. The latest such deal has seen Google “buy” Character.ai by hiring its team, licensing the tech and handing investors a cheque for $2.5bn. The company still exists — in theory — but as Ed Zitron points out "without exclusive access to their models, and without an engineering team, the company is effectively dead." The problem for the likes of Google, as Kanter makes clear in his Verge interview, is that the DOJ is wise to the move. I wonder which big tech company will get hauled through court over this practice first.
4. Apple's increasingly Vista-like prompts
Since macOS Catalina, Apple has loved prodding you to check if you really wanted to do something. This is not a bad thing: Unix-based/like systems like macOS let users do many things which could endanger the security of the computer, and there are many people out there who make a living from fooling you into doing something you shouldn't. But, as Jason Snell notes, macOS Sequoia takes this a step further by making you confirm permissions over and over again — in some cases, every week. Jason says, "at some point, the user must be in charge" and this is an argument that I come back to a lot. There is a group of (very loud on the internet) people who want Apple to oversee their computers, “protecting” them from everything so they never have to learn to take any responsibility for themselves. I'm not one of those people, and I genuinely think most computer users don't fall into that camp either.
5. Weaponised litigation
Elon Musk is suing an advertising group because no one wants to put ads next to homophobic, transphobic, racist and far-right content. Nothing says “loser” like this level of entitlement.
6. Fees fees and more fees
Does Apple really think that crap like this is going to fly? As Benjamin Mayo points out, this means that, in theory, Apple could end up being entitled to fees from a service which is purchased on Android. John Gruber is correct, in saying "what Apple wants is to continue making bank from every purchase on digital goods from an iOS app". But Apple just isn't going to get that unless it starts playing the game with a little more wisdom and stops this kind of playground nonsense. Microsoft tried the same. How did that work out for them?
7. But you know Apple earns its App Store money
There is currently a deluge of fake reviews for Mac App Store products. Maybe Apple is too busy attempting to weasel out of its legal responsibilities to proactively stop them?
8. On notarisation
If you want to know a huge amount about the way that notarisation of applications works on the Mac, by the way, Howard is your man.
9. When Apple's line was a mess
Oh the Performa line. A bit before Apple was in its “beleaguered” phase, it came up with the Performa brand for its “consumer” PCs. Performas weren't actually much different to the rest of the line, but they came with some consumer software. Occasionally Mac models got three versions, all identical apart from the badge. My second Mac, for example, was the LC475, which was called that name when sold to education, but was also the Performa 475 when sold to consumers, and the Quadra 605 when sold to business. What a mess that whole era was.
