Apple Facing Imminent U.S. Antitrust Lawsuit
The United States Justice Department is preparing to sue Apple for violating antitrust law as soon as Thursday, reports Bloomberg. The lawsuit will be the culmination of an investigation that initially started in 2019 as an antitrust review of major technology companies. U.S. regulators have already sued Google, Meta, and Amazon.
Over the last several years, Apple officials have met with the DoJ multiple times, and the investigation has covered everything from iMessage to ad practices. Some of what the DoJ has looked into:
- How the Apple Watch works better with iPhone than other smart watches do.
- How Apple locks competitors out of iMessage.
- How Apple blocks financial firms from offering tap-to-pay services similar to Apple Pay.
- 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 had discussions with antitrust investigators to voice their complaints about Apple's practices, as have big banks. According to Bloomberg, the DoJ plans to argue that Apple has used illegal practices to maintain a dominant market position, blocking competitors from hardware and software features on the iPhone.
Back in 2020, a United States House Judiciary Subcommittee investigation concluded that Apple, Meta, Google, and Amazon have the "kinds of monopolies" last seen in "the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons." The subcommittee recommended new antitrust law, but the DoJ opted to target Google before going after Apple because Apple was embroiled in an antitrust lawsuit with Epic Games.
Apple in iOS 17.4 had to make sweeping changes to the way the App Store operates in the European Union to comply with the Digital Markets Act, and it was also recently fined $2 billion in Europe for anti-competitive behavior against rival music services.
Popular Stories
iOS 18 will give iPhone users greater control over Home Screen app icon arrangement, according to sources familiar with the matter. While app icons will likely remain locked to an invisible grid system on the Home Screen, to ensure there is some uniformity, our sources say that users will be able to arrange icons more freely on iOS 18. For example, we expect that the update will introduce...
Apple today released iOS 17.4.1 and iPadOS 17.4.1, minor updates to the iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 operating systems. The new software comes a couple of weeks after Apple released iOS 17.4 and iPadOS 17.4 with app changes in the European Union, new emoji, and more. iOS 17.4.1 and iPadOS 17.4.1 can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software...
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models concurrently, which is why we sometimes get rumored feature leaks so far ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and already we have some idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup. If you plan to skip...
On this week's episode of The MacRumors Show, we discuss Apple's rumored plan to refresh the entire AirPods lineup with a series of new models. Subscribe to The MacRumors Show YouTube channel for more videos The fourth-generation AirPods will reportedly feature a new design with a better fit, improved sound quality, and an updated charging case with a USB-C port. For the first time ever,...
An unpatchable vulnerability has been discovered in Apple's M-series chips that allows attackers to extract secret encryption keys from Macs under certain conditions, according to a newly published academic research paper (via ArsTechnica). Named "GoFetch," the type of cyber attack described involves Data Memory-Dependent Prefetchers (DMPs), which try to predict what data the computer will...
The latest 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models have been available for two weeks now, and MacRumors videographer Dan Barbera has been using the 15-inch version since it launched. Over on our YouTube channel, Dan shared a review now that he's been able to spend some quality time with the machine. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. The M3 MacBook Air is a perfect...
We're getting closer to the launch of new iPad Pro and iPad Air models, while rumors about iOS 18 are continuing to ramp up with this week's surprise revelation that Apple has been talking to Google and others about potentially helping power the generative AI features expected to be a major part of this year's update. Other news this week saw the release of iOS 17.4.1 and iPadOS 17.4.1...
Top Rated Comments
* How Apple locks competitors out of iMessage.
* How Apple blocks financial firms from offering tap-to-pay services similar to Apple Pay.
* 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.
Man, I hate this garbage. Sure as a consumer, it be nice to have some of this stuff more open, but this is Apples product. The government attempting to control how they operate it is insane. It's not like there isn't an alterative to iOS and the Apple Ecosystem. If I ever created an incredibly successful business like Apple I would want to be able to operate it how I please. This is nuts.
Yeah, dojPhone, nobody is building apps for that thing.
They build the software for both so shouldn't it work better?