Over the course of 88 pages of surprisingly readable legalese, the US Department of Justice attempted to make the case that Apple is a problem. Apple, the DOJ alleges in its sweeping antitrust complaint, has systematically crushed innovation in the smartphone world, robbing not only competitors but also iPhone users of the opportunity to get better software and use better hardware.
Apple’s antitrust fight begins
On The Vergecast: the case against Apple as a monopoly, how super apps became part of an antitrust fight, and why your Apple Watch can’t hang on Android.
On The Vergecast: the case against Apple as a monopoly, how super apps became part of an antitrust fight, and why your Apple Watch can’t hang on Android.
Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge
is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
The argument is complicated, but it has an awful lot in common with another big antitrust trial, one the government won more than two decades ago: US v. Microsoft. That case was about a huge corporation ruthlessly working to neutralize any company that threatened to open up its walled gardens, make it easy for people to build and use cross-platform software, or end the control it had over its massively successful and massively popular platform. This one is very different but also very much the same.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk about the DOJ’s complaint. A lot. For like an hour and a half. We talk about the five main parts of Apple’s ecosystem — super apps, the cloud streaming, messaging apps, smartwatches, and digital wallets — that the DOJ is concerned with. We ask which arguments make sense... and which don’t. And then, we try to handicap how long this is all going to take to shake out. The over / under is set at 2030 before everything is settled. What would you bet?
After that, we release Nilay Patel into his Mexican vacation, and we do a newsy lightning round. We almost manage to stop talking about Apple. Almost.
If you want to read more on everything we talked about in this episode, here are a few links to get you started, beginning with Apple’s antitrust case:
- US v. Apple: everything you need to know
- The full lawsuit (it’s really an interesting read!)
- Apple’s response to the DOJ’s iPhone antitrust lawsuit
- US sues Apple for illegal monopoly over smartphones
- Five takeaways from the huge US antitrust lawsuit against Apple
- Apple CarPlay is anticompetitive, too, US lawsuit alleges
- How Apple’s war on super apps became the center of its antitrust fight
- The lock-in problem at the heart of the Apple monopoly lawsuit
And in the lightning round:
- Alex Cranz’s first pick: YouTube TV’s multiview comes to iPhones and iPads in time for March Madness
- David Pierce’s first pick: Beeper couldn’t bring iMessage to Android — but it can still make a great chat app
- Alex’s second pick: These toddler games for iPad are actually good — and that’s all too rare
- David’s second pick: What else can Humane’s AI pin do?
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