by On Thursday, the United States said that Apple is breaking the law by locking competing technologies that could be better for you.
The antitrust lawsuit filed by the Justice Department and 16 attorneys general is the latest government claim that several Big Tech giants – Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta – leverage their popular products to compete in the marketplace. free to push. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
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The government’s accusations against Apple will likely face a high legal bar in court, if the lawsuit goes this far.
Apple said it would “vigorously” prosecute the lawsuit. A win for the plaintiffs would “impede our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple,” the company said.
But if you have an iPhone, you can see the heart of the government’s allegations for yourself.
The Justice Department says Apple limits options with apps, text messaging, the ability to tap phones to buy lunch and options to seamlessly use a Garmin or Samsung smartwatch with an iPhone.
Apple has previously stated that there are similar limits to those that protect your security and privacy. But the government says Apple’s restrictions limit your options to allow Apple to grow even richer at the public’s expense.
If you use an iPhone, you are subject to a number of limitations set out in government law, including:
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You can’t send secure iMessages to someone with an Android phone
If you have an iPhone and you send an email to a friend with an Android phone, each of your phone companies gets a copy of that message – and it’s less secure from hackers.
If you text a video to your Android friend, it probably looks compressed or garbled. You don’t indicate that your friend has read your text, as you would if they had an iPhone.
If you have a Windows computer, you can’t easily read your iMessage conversations on your computer like you can on a Mac.
Apple has said its options keep you safer, but the company’s actions make many chat messages less secure and less functional.
According to the Justice Department lawsuit, an Apple executive in 2016 sent an email to CEO Tim Cook that said making it easier for iPhone and Android phone users to text each other “will hurt us more don’t help us.”
You can read the government law here.
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You can’t try some apps that might be useful
Imagine downloading one app that lets you play a bunch of games like “Candy Crush” and “World of Warcraft.”
Xbox made an iPhone app like that several years ago, but Apple didn’t let you try it. Instead you generally need to download and pay for each game app separately.
The Department of Justice said that Apple’s decision to block those types of apps within apps prevents you from trying potentially innovative products. Government lawmakers have essentially compared it to Netflix only letting you watch one movie rather than giving you access to a series of shows.
Apple said in January that it would start allowing apps within other apps, although it’s not yet clear how that might work in practice.
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You can’t tap to pay with anything other than Apple Pay
In the United States, Apple restricts access to technology on your iPhone that allows you to move your phone near a payment terminal to pay for groceries, subway fare or a cup of coffee.
That’s partly to keep your phone safe, but it also routes all your tap-to-pay purchases through its own Apple Pay service, allowing the company to collect a fee every time. Even if you wanted to, you can’t pay instead with PayPal, the Money app, Venmo or other payment services.
In its lawsuit, the Justice Department said Apple is “enforcing its smartphone monopoly” to stop financial companies from “developing better payment products and services for iPhone users.”
After the European Union recently passed a law forcing Apple to allow access to its tap-to-pay features, PayPal told its investors that it planned to make its payment service available for tap-to -pay on iPhones.
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Apple has lifted some iPhone restrictions before
If you click a link in the standard iPhone email app, you can open the page in the Chrome browser instead of Safari. You can ask Siri to play music from Spotify and not just from the Apple Music app.
You can now use the Gmail or Outlook apps as the default email app on your iPhone instead of Apple’s email app.
Apple didn’t allow those options until a few years ago, when it lifted those previous restrictions following claims from US government officials and rival companies like Spotify that Apple was unfairly restricting technology options.
Also after pressure from regulators, Apple is working to make the iPhone messaging app a bit more compatible with the standard Android texting app.
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