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The biggest flaw with the complaint seems to be the claim that Apple locked down the iPhone as a response to the success of Cydia.

That seems hard to rationalize, given that the iPhone was already locked down before Cydia, and Cydia could only be installed by exploiting a security vulnerability.

It’s true that Apple made jailbreaking harder by fixing vulnerabilities, but you’d expect them to do that for security reasons.

If the iPhone had supported the installation of 3rd party stores, and then Apple had withdrawn this support after launching their own, I think the case would be stronger.




That’s like saying for an antitrust violation to have occurred, the violator must have previously intentionally not been violating.

E.g. Intel can tell PC manufacturers they must not sell AMD devices, if they started with condition when they made their first sale.

I don’t think the courts will buy this argument. What Apple did from Day 0 was anticompetitive.


It’s unclear how it could have been anticompetitive from day zero.

Are you suggesting that all devices capable of running an open operating system must have a way to allow one to be installed?

If so, I can get behind that as an actual law worth supporting, but it doesn’t seem like an anti-trust issue.


No, I’m suggesting that a company may be pursued for an antitrust remedy even if they have been in continuous violation of it in the beginning.

The argument I would be making here is that Apple used illegally bundled its app distribution system with its hardware, and used anticompetitive actions to enforce it.


They didn’t bundle the app distribution system from day 0.

That is part of Saurik’s argument in the legal complaint.




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