Apple officials have met with the DoJ several times during the investigation, which has covered everything from iMessage to the Apple Watch. Some of the topics looked at:
- How the Apple Watch works better with iPhone than other smart watches do.
- How Apple locks competitors out of iMessage.
- How Apple blocks other financial firms from offering tap-to-pay services similar to Apple Pay on the iPhone.
- Whether Apple favors its own apps and services over those provided by third-party developers.
- How Apple has blocked cloud gaming apps from the App Store.
- How Apple restricts the iPhone’s location services from devices that compete with AirTag.
- How App Tracking Transparency impacted the collection of advertising data.
- In-app purchase fees collected by Apple.
Apple competitors like Tile, Beeper, Basecamp, Meta, and Spotify have talked with antitrust investigators, as have banks that have wanted access to the iPhone’s NFC capabilities.
Taking a break from world news. So I’ve been an all Apple person since 2004 and this screams jealousy from android users rather than an actual antitrust? Apple devices are not a meaningfully large majority of human consumers for this to even register as anticompetitive.
But sure I guess the biggest problem for US regulators right now is why the App Store would stop slimy advertising companies spying on users – apparently that’s bad.
Can’t you guys be consumer advocates like the EU? Remember how we got USB-C? Tracking cookie protections? No? Of course not. Capitalism wins.