The important takeaway for this Article, though, is the degree to which Senator Warren missed the point: there is significant consumer benefit both to having preinstalled apps and also to Apple controlling the installation of apps. There is a big benefit to suppliers (app developers) as well: the app market on PCs died in large part due to security concerns, which Apple obviated with the App Store to the tremendous benefit of every participant in the ecosystem. Senator Warren’s proposal would make the App Store worse for everyone.
There is just so much goodness in Ben’s article, you really have to read it all to get a sense of how wrong Warren is in her proposal.
The thing missed is that anti-competitive monopolies have many benefits. Some of the stuff that Ben brings up you could have said about AT&T. Having 3rd party hardware on a telephone network is more unpredictable and average quality goes down. There’s also a lot of value in having your local telephone company tightly coupled with your long distance provider.
A better comparison might be the anti-trust action against IBM in ’69. While ultimately unsuccessful, the beginning of the anti-trust action likely led IBM to unbundle business applications from the hardware. If the unbundling never happens, it is likely the DOJ wins the case. Without the unbundling of business applications and IBM charging for them, the enterprise software industry likely takes another decade or so to emerge.
I could imagine 1968 Ben asking, “What, you expect a company to buy a mainframe with no business applications on it?”
There’s certainly value for the monopoly in having left you no other choice to seek better price, products, or services. Even if those services are integrated.
Or would you actually prefer having, say, HP or Comcast as the only remaining players in their respective categories?