While I do agree with some criticisms regarding Apple's management of their app ecosystem, I'm much more fearful of a legal regime that could step in and simply dictate the business operations of a private entity.
If you are critical of Apple's 'dictatorship', how can you be comfortable with the idea that the government is going to wield its power any better? You can choose not to do business with Apple. Try that with the government.
We aren't talking about public safety, fraudulent behavior, or monopolistic advantage here. You can even utilize Apple's hardware and ditch their curated ecosystem if you want (jail break your phone). Nobody is going to stop you.
Running to a lawyer and the courts when you don't like the product offerings of a private company is absurd.
> I'm much more fearful of a legal regime that could step in and simply dictate the business operations of a private entity.
They already do. In the US we call those dictatorial edicts regulations, and they specify how many business operations are to be done or impose restrictions on how things can be done.
Laws against putting sawdust in meat? dictating the business operations of a private entity. restrictions on how pure gasoline must be to be used in a car? dictating the business operations of a private entity. Laws restricting the reasons a business can fire someone or refuse to hire them? dictating the business operations of a private entity. I could keep going, but I think I've made my point here.
> If you are critical of Apple's 'dictatorship', how can you be comfortable with the idea that the government is going to wield its power any better?
Because in the us the government is not a dictatorship.
> You can choose not to do business with Apple. Try that with the government.
I believe that is called immigration.
> We aren't talking about public safety, fraudulent behavior, or monopolistic advantage here.
The government is not restricted to making laws abut just those things. Article 1, sections 8 through 10 of the Constitution define what the government can and can't make laws about.
> Running to a lawyer and the courts when you don't like the product offerings of a private company is absurd.
I think you are mischaracterizing what is happening here. I think it is more correct to say that what is happening is that people are running to a lawyer and the courts when a private company is trying to control how you use their product (and possibly making changes to how it works/what it does) after you have purchased it.
> I think you are mischaracterizing what is happening here.
I was responding to the notion that Apple's decision to only support a curated app store should be 'fixed' by the government because it is in some unexplained way 'illegal'.
You are introducing a lot of other issues that I wasn't trying to address.
If you don't like Apple's curated ecosystem: use Apple's Enterprise Program to distribute unreviewed apps or jail break your phone or switch to Android or switch to a Windows smartphone or start your own company and compete against all of them or don't use a smartphone or ...
These are all preferable to supporting the idea that there is something illegal going on that has to be remedied by a lawsuit.
"I'm much more fearful of a legal regime that could step in and simply dictate the business operations of a private entity."
Which is so unlike the legal regime that backs up that "private" entity when it uses government granted privilege to keep competitors at bay (such as with patents and insane copyright legislation).
I would be perfectly fine with having their own little private ecosystem where they pull the rug out from under developers -- if they would stop trying to undermine those trying to compete with it via lawsuits, for that would just mean that they would ultimately learn their lesson. But when the government stands behind their tyranny over developers, they never learn.
Did you just suggest that, to teach Apple a lesson for protecting granted patents[1] - which is legal - the government should control what they can and cannot do with something they created?
[1] If the patent system is good/evil/broken/whatever is a separate argument. And if the patent system is the problem you fix the patent system, not something else that isn't related to it.
ashish*: "Did you just suggest that, to teach Apple a lesson for protecting granted patents[1] - which is legal - the government should control what they can and cannot do with something they created?"
No, I said if the free market were in force (as opposed to the protection racket that is the patent system), then THAT would teach Apple a lesson.
I made no remark about whether there should be strings attached to government privilege, but certainly it's reasonable that if someone is profiting unjustly from government handouts (e.g. patents), then they shouldn't have carte blanche.
If you are critical of Apple's 'dictatorship', how can you be comfortable with the idea that the government is going to wield its power any better? You can choose not to do business with Apple. Try that with the government.
We aren't talking about public safety, fraudulent behavior, or monopolistic advantage here. You can even utilize Apple's hardware and ditch their curated ecosystem if you want (jail break your phone). Nobody is going to stop you.
Running to a lawyer and the courts when you don't like the product offerings of a private company is absurd.