Seems a bit hyperbolic. Anti-trust laws are still in place, but I don't see anyone seriously arguing that Apple engages in widespread anti-competitive behavior, much less calling for a legal remedy.
Apple certainly is in a place that they could illegally crush competitors if they were so inclined, but the fact that they're not doing so seems to make the natural read of the situation that they've been hugely rewarded for making products that customers can't wait to spend their money on. Hardly a disaster.
They do engage in widespread anti-competitive behavior, by making really good products that people want to buy! It really hurts their competition's ability to sell cheap plastic laptops.
All joking aside, the fact that Apple could crush anyone but has explicitly chosen not to is worthy of some amount of praise.
The only reason they aren't able to crush people is because of Android and Microsoft. If you look at how the App Store was run and the general way Apple did things before Android became dominant, it was pretty scary. There were stories almost every other day about Apple just arbitrarily banning apps that might have conceivably intruded upon their corporate interests.
But they could drop the prices on their devices and corner the market overnight. If Apple offered an iPhone 6 for $99 off contract and a $299 Macbook Air... not everyone would switch, but enough would that their competitors would have a hard time staying in business. And Apple could do it. Forgetting for a second that dumping is generally illegal, selling products at a loss in order to put competitors out of business isn't unheard of.
The leadership of Apple seems still focused on dominating the "affordable status symbol" sector of IT, which I guess is something they'd want to keep doing for as long as possible because that could be a big part of why they can afford having higher margins.
I guess only time will tell what they'll do if/when that stops working, they certainly have the potential to unleash hell on their competition if they ever decide to go for market share.
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Seems a bit hyperbolic. Anti-trust laws are still in place, but I don't see anyone seriously arguing that Apple engages in widespread anti-competitive behavior, much less calling for a legal remedy.
Apple certainly is in a place that they could illegally crush competitors if they were so inclined, but the fact that they're not doing so seems to make the natural read of the situation that they've been hugely rewarded for making products that customers can't wait to spend their money on. Hardly a disaster.
They do engage in widespread anti-competitive behavior, by making really good products that people want to buy! It really hurts their competition's ability to sell cheap plastic laptops.
All joking aside, the fact that Apple could crush anyone but has explicitly chosen not to is worthy of some amount of praise.
The only reason they aren't able to crush people is because of Android and Microsoft. If you look at how the App Store was run and the general way Apple did things before Android became dominant, it was pretty scary. There were stories almost every other day about Apple just arbitrarily banning apps that might have conceivably intruded upon their corporate interests.
But they could drop the prices on their devices and corner the market overnight. If Apple offered an iPhone 6 for $99 off contract and a $299 Macbook Air... not everyone would switch, but enough would that their competitors would have a hard time staying in business. And Apple could do it. Forgetting for a second that dumping is generally illegal, selling products at a loss in order to put competitors out of business isn't unheard of.
The leadership of Apple seems still focused on dominating the "affordable status symbol" sector of IT, which I guess is something they'd want to keep doing for as long as possible because that could be a big part of why they can afford having higher margins.
I guess only time will tell what they'll do if/when that stops working, they certainly have the potential to unleash hell on their competition if they ever decide to go for market share.
Instead they were just illegally crushing employee wages and e-book markets.