[swingingFlyFish]

I think when companies become a 'necessity' like this, they have to be regulated or broken up. I'm not a big fan of Apple taking a commission if you port an app to their phone and I loathe the idea of having to use iCloud if I want to use Apple Pay, in fact, can't stand the idea of a phone company being my credit card company/bank either.

And don't get me started on non standard USB...what was that? I applaud the EU stepping in and quite frankly i'm looking forward to Apple being broken up. It's that time.

[pmarreck]

I disagree. _I_ think that when companies become a "necessity" like this, they end up resting on their laurels because they won the economic game. And what happens next will happen regardless of regulation or not: They will begin their long but steady decline into irrelevance.

I state this as a huge Apple fan since 1984 when my family bought the first Mac: The best things to ever happen to Apple were almost dying in 1997, and (essentially, despite the M chips being fantastic technologically) losing the PC war (which I will argue was not due to price, but to 2 things: 1) failure to embrace the AAA gaming market and thus the mindshare of the next generation, and 2) re-closing the Mac platform after it was open, which it only did because the news kept reporting only on the impact to Apple sales and not the overall Mac market, which was actually growing at the time!)

> And don't get me started on non standard USB

Do you mean Lightning? That was a massive improvement (both physically in terms of design, by being reversible and supporting higher voltages as well as being durable) on both mini and micro USB and came out long before USB-C existed. And to this day, Apple devices are STILL some of the few devices that fully support the USB-C spec, as opposed to all the Chinese crapware that uses a USB-C plug but will fail to charge when plugged into anything but a USB-A charger because someone picked the cheap way out.

[pertymcpert]

lmao some strong feelings there. Lightning is a brilliant port.

[ambichook]

lightning was brilliant when it was introduced, but now its just USB-C but nonstandard