So according to you, a company that has about 25% of the global smartphone market, should be _legally forbidden_ from creating a tightly integrated software/hardware bundle.
Whereas, a company that has 70% of the global browser market somehow would have no way to take advantage if they had an even larger share.
I wonder how our species would survive without the unique market analysis from one-of-a-kind minds like yours.
> a company that has about 25% of the global smartphone market, should be _legally forbidden_ from creating a tightly integrated software/hardware bundle.
Absolutely not. Most of us are perfectly happy with Apple tightly integrating Safari with their hardware.
However, we're going to legally forbid them to prevent users from breaking that tight integration, because it's their device. Apple doesnt "own" the smartphone market: it provides hardware and services, and it shuts the fuck up.
Web and Apple ecosystem is not comparable. IE had quite large market share and was brought down by Chrome in quite short time. Firefox challenged IE quite effectively before that. But Windows (desktop) still enjoys quite large market share even though Google, Linux and Apple (macOS) are trying hard.
The OS lock-in is much more difficult to break than Web where the standards are openly built and made available. One aspect in favor of Google is the complexity of implementing all those standards. But that is not lock-in, rather an issue of having enough resources to implement a compliant browser.
> The OS lock-in is much more difficult to break than Web where the standards are openly built and made available.
Where have you been in the past 10 years or so? Chrome views the web as their own fiefdom, and web devs happily oblige. There are now dozens of Chrome-only non-standards that are presented as "openly built standards" and devs deride other browsers for not implementing them.
It is the decision of the other vendors to not implement the standards (for good reasons, like for e.g. privacy - but it is still the vendor's decisionand not an inherent limitation). The documentations and specifications are available for free.
In case of Windows, there is no spec. There is no possibility of implementing another Windows clone (patents limit such clones). Wine exists, but was reverse engineered with great difficulty.
> It is the decision of the other vendors to not implement the standards
A scribble on a napkin does not a standard make.
A feature released in a single browser engine without support, consent, and against objections of other browser vendors does not a standard make.
Just because Chrome ships something does not make whatever they ship a standard.
> The documentations and specifications are available for free.
That's how Chrome abuses its position and relies on gullible devs to assume that just because something is documented it becomes a standard the moment it's shipped in Chrome.
I'd wager a large sum that you were told about a capability in the app, you _wrongly_ thought this meant it could _only_ be done in the app, and then you decided to take a very, very dumb stand.
STEM PhD students typically pay with labor rather than cash. Labor to teach undergrads, and to perform other university research. (though they typically pay their undergrad with large piles of cash).
That is, very much, a substantial form of payment.
I have Find My running on this computer (which is unlocked) now. I've upgraded from Monterey to Tahoe without issue (startup that went AWOL).
However, you touch on two things - 1) I have no idea (and doubt) that this would bypass a device that has been locked, and 2) newer versions may not be as vulnerable. This computer is an M1, and Monterey can be made to go through a full install process without internet access, as described, but newer versions will not (or they may, but I couldn't find a way to force it with Sonoma or later). That means if I do an erase, I have to do a new Monterey install, and then upgrade (but nothing untoward there, don't have to do iterative updates).
Live Apple demos were always held together with duct tape in the first place. That first "live" iPhone demo had a memorized sequence that Jobs needed to use to keep the whole phone OS from hard crashing.
During that first iPhone demo they also had a portable cell tower (cell on wheels) just off-stage to mimic a better signal strength than it was capable of. NYTimes write-up on the whole thing is worth the read [0].
They also force the developers to make it work, under threat of being fired, and in the ire of Steve Jobs case, being yeeted in to the sun along with their ancestors and descendents.
Whereas, a company that has 70% of the global browser market somehow would have no way to take advantage if they had an even larger share.
I wonder how our species would survive without the unique market analysis from one-of-a-kind minds like yours.