The Justice Department, writing in its lawsuit against Apple filed on Thursday:

For example, by denying iPhone users the ability to choose their trusted banking apps as their digital wallet, Apple retains full control both over the consumer and also over the stream of income generated by forcing users to use only Apple-authorized products in the digital wallet. Apple also prohibits the creation and use of alternative app stores curated to reflect a consumer’s preferences with respect to security, privacy, or other values. These and many other features would be beneficial to consumers and empower them to make choices about what smartphone to buy and what apps and products to patronize. But allowing consumers to make that choice is an obstacle to Apple’s ability to maintain its monopoly.

Has the Justice Department forgotten that Apple is a private corporation?

Apple inflates the price for buying and using iPhones while preventing the development of features like alternative app stores, innovative super apps, cloud-streaming games, and secure texting.

Samsung’s flagship handset is more expensive than Apple’s, but go on about “inflating the price for buying and using iPhones.”

Apple’s U.S. market share by revenue is over 70 percent in the performance smartphone market—a more expensive segment of the broader smartphone market where Apple’s own executives recognize the company competes—and over 65 percent for all smartphones. These market shares have remained remarkably durable over the last decade.

“By revenue?” What nonsense! Is this how the Justice Department concluded Apple is a monopoly?

Following that consent decree in October 2003, Apple launched a cross-platform version of iTunes that was compatible with the Windows operating system. As a result, a much larger group of users could finally use the iPod and iTunes, including the iTunes Store. The iTunes Store allowed users to buy and download music and play it on their iTunes computer application or on the iPod. Apple benefited substantially from this new customer base. In the first two years after launching the iPod, Apple sold a few hundred thousand devices. The year after launching a Windows-compatible version of iTunes and gaining access to millions more customers, Apple sold millions of devices. Apple went on to sell hundreds of millions of iPod devices over the next two decades.

The Justice Department attributes the iPod’s success to its consent decree against Microsoft.

Third, Apple uses these restrictions to extract monopoly rents from third parties in a variety of ways, including app fees and revenue-share requirements. For most of the last 15 years, Apple collected a tax in the form of a 30 percent commission on the price of any app downloaded from the App Store, a 30 percent tax on in-app purchases, and fees to access the tools needed to develop iPhone native apps in the first place. While Apple has reduced the tax it collects from a subset of developers, Apple still extracts 30 percent from many app makers.

“Monopoly rents” is an interesting way of describing a fee for services the App Store provides. Warranted or not, we live in the United States — a capitalist country — and the market decides what’s sane or not. Not the government.

Apple recognizes that super apps with mini programs would threaten its monopoly. As one Apple manager put it, allowing super apps to become “the main gateway where people play games, book a car, make payments, etc.” would “let the barbarians in at the gate.” Why? Because when a super app offers popular mini programs, “iOS stickiness goes down.”

Apple does not need to host content it doesn’t want to host for whatever reason. If you don’t like that, build your own phone. I like iOS, so I’ll live with the rules. It seems like my fellow iOS users agree with me.

That is not a monopoly — that’s just business.

Apple did not respond to the risk that super apps might disrupt its monopoly by innovating. Instead, Apple exerted its control over app distribution to stifle others’ innovation. Apple created, strategically broadened, and aggressively enforced its App Store Guidelines to effectively block apps from hosting mini programs. Apple’s conduct disincentivized investments in mini program development and caused U.S. companies to abandon or limit support for the technology in the United States.

The section this excerpt is from can be called the “WeChat Section,” and yet WeChat, the prime example of Apple “abusing its monopoly power,” remains on the App Store today. This is nonsense.

Until recently, Apple would have required users to download cloud streaming software separately for each individual game, install identical app updates for each game individually, and make repeated trips to Apple’s App Store to find and download games. Apple’s conduct made cloud streaming apps so unattractive to users that no developer designed one for the iPhone.

Keywords: “Until recently.” “You aren’t speeding now, but we’ll still write you a ticket for speeding because we think you sped before.”

Apple undermines cloud gaming apps in other ways too, such as by requiring cloud games to use Apple’s proprietary payment system and necessitating game overhauls and payment redesigns specifically for the iPhone.

“…requiring cloud games to use Apple’s proprietary payment system” is wrong as of a few weeks ago.

While all mobile phones can send and receive SMS messages, OTT only works between users who sign up for and communicate through the same messaging app. As a result, a user cannot send an OTT message to a friend unless the friend also uses the same messaging app.

How is that last part Apple’s fault?

And when users receive video calls, third-party messaging apps cannot access the iPhone camera to allow users to preview their appearance on video before answering a call.

There is an application programming interface built within iOS for developers to be able to add that functionality to their apps.

“Many non-iPhone users also experience social stigma, exclusion, and blame for “breaking” chats where other participants own iPhones. This effect is particularly powerful for certain demographics, like teenagers—where the iPhone’s share is 85 percent, according to one survey. This social pressure reinforces switching costs and drives users to continue buying iPhones—solidifying Apple’s smartphone dominance not because Apple has made its smartphone better, but because it has made communicating with other smartphones worse.

That is not Apple’s fault. Try suing Lamborghini because someone got made fun of for not having a Lamborghini.

Recently, Apple blocked a third-party developer from fixing the broken cross-platform messaging experience in Apple Messages and providing end-to-end encryption for messages between Apple Messages and Android users. By rejecting solutions that would allow for cross-platform encryption, Apple continues to make iPhone users’ less secure than they could otherwise be.

That’s the Beeper reference.

In 2013, when Apple started offering users the ability to connect their iPhones with third-party smartwatches, Apple provided third-party smartwatch developers with access to various APIs related to the Apple Notification Center Service, Calendar, Contacts, and Geolocation. The following year, Apple introduced the Apple Watch and began limiting third-party access to new and improved APIs for smartwatch functionality.

Apple is a private corporation. Nobody is entitled to access to iOS. As I pointed out earlier on Thursday, the smartwatch argument is the only somewhat sound argument, legally speaking, but it’s still woozy.

Apple instead requires these users to disable Apple’s iMessage service on the iPhone in order to use the same phone number for both devices. This is a non-starter for most iPhone users.

Great work, Justice Department, you just contradicted your entire “Messaging” section with one sentence.

Thus, switching to a different smartphone requires leaving behind the familiarity of an everyday app, setting up a new digital wallet, and potentially losing access to certain credentials and personal data stored in Apple Wallet.

Moving to a new house requires learning where the bathroom is again.

The exclusionary and anticompetitive acts described above are part of Apple’s ongoing course of conduct to build and maintain its smartphone monopoly. They are hardly exhaustive. Rather, they exemplify the innovation Apple has stifled and Apple’s overall strategy of using its power over app distribution and app creation to selectively block threatening innovations.

“Hardly exhaustive,” probably because the Justice Department hasn’t pointed out a single “act” where Apple abuses its non-existent monopoly power.

These subscriptions [sic] services can also increase switching costs among iPhone users. If an Apple user can only access their subscription service on an iPhone, they may experience significant costs, time, lost content, and other frictions if they attempt to switch to a non-Apple smartphone or subscription service.

It’s a crime to do business in the United States in 2024, according to the federal government.

Apple has told automakers that the next generation of Apple CarPlay will take over all of the screens, sensors, and gauges in a car, forcing users to experience driving as an iPhone-centric experience if they want to use any of the features provided by CarPlay.

Nobody is forcing drivers to experience driving as an iPhone-centric experience. This is purely uneducated. CarPlay does not supplant an automaker’s interface, it just supplements it for iOS users who would like access to the Apple-made interface. A user is always able to disable CarPlay or opt out of using it if they don’t want to use it or don’t have an iPhone. Why did the Justice Department choose the most technology-illiterate people to file a lawsuit against the world’s largest technology corporation?

Apple’s conduct extends beyond just monopoly profits and even affects the flow of speech. For example, Apple is rapidly expanding its role as a TV and movie producer and has exercised that role to control content.

Sometimes you read something so incomprehensibly stupid that it just leaves you speechless.

“If Apple wanted to, Apple could allow iPhone users to send encrypted messages to Android users while still using iMessage on their iPhone, which would instantly improve the privacy and security of iPhone and other smartphone users.

Apple already does that. You can download WhatsApp for free on iOS today.

Apple has monopoly power in the smartphone and performance smartphone markets because it has the power to control prices or exclude competition in each of them.

The way the Justice Department calculated that is wrong — it calculated it by revenue, as stated earlier. Apparently, it’s illegal to be good at business and make a profit in the United States.

For example, if an iPhone user wants to buy an Android smartphone, they are likely to face significant financial, technological, and behavioral obstacles to switching. The user may need to re-learn how to operate their smartphone using a new interface, transfer large amounts of data (e.g., contacts), purchase new apps, or transfer or buy new subscriptions and accessories.

Exhibit B: When moving to a new house, you need to learn where the bathroom is again.

Many prominent, well-financed companies have tried and failed to successfully enter the relevant markets because of these entry barriers. Past failures include Amazon (which released its Fire mobile phone in 2014 but could not profitably sustain its business and exited the following year); Microsoft (which discontinued its mobile business in 2017)…

Due to Apple’s monopolistic practices, the Windows Phone and the Fire Phone both failed, according to the Justice Department. I am not making this up.

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What a stupid lawsuit. I annotated this lawsuit as I was reading it on Threads and Twitter, too, if you’d like highlighted images of the excerpts.