Apple needs to be broken up

[AlexMac89]

This happened to AT&T back in the 80's. The breakup resulted in the formation of the Baby Bells and eventually Qwest, Verizon, Century Link and others.

Breakup of the Bell System - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Anyone who owned AT&T stock before the breakup and held their resulting stocks from the breakup is sitting very, very, very pretty today. I'm not saying I'm for the breakup of Apple, but can you imagine what life would be like if the breakup never occurred and AT&T controlled everything today? Hindsight...

And yet despite all that, nearly the entire batch of baby bells from the Bell Systems break up have all recombined back into AT&T and Verizon. Long distance competition happened due to the break up in the short to medium term. Long term? The market is still controlled by a handful of players, and the two that dominate are the mergers and combinations of nearly every baby bell.

8 baby bells, 5/8 right back to AT&T, 2/8 Verizon, 1/8 Lumen Technologies.

So I’m not sure this one example is even all that great. They were so large and powerful that they ultimately remerged in to two entities that dominate?

 

[Lcgiv]

Oh boy! Another productive forum troll post

 

[TayIsTay]

And yet despite all that, nearly the entire batch of baby bells from the Bell Systems break up have all recombined back into AT&T and Verizon. Long distance competition happened due to the break up in the short to medium term. Long term? The market is still controlled by a handful of players, and the two that dominate are the mergers and combinations of nearly every baby bell.

8 baby bells, 5/8 right back to AT&T, 2/8 Verizon, 1/8 Lumen Technologies.

So I’m not sure this one example is even all that great. They were so large and powerful that they ultimately remerged in to two entities that dominate?

From "The Curse of Bigness": "in more recent times the campaigns against AT&T and IBM sparked a momentous boom in the telecommunications and computing industries." (I think that's generally non-controversial)

The Curse of Bigness by Tim Wu: 9781984843654 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

From the man who coined the term "net neutrality," author of The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants, comes a warning about the dangers of excessive corporate and industrial concentration...

www.penguinrandomhouse.com

 

[GMShadow]

I predict that no only has no one ever found value in one of OP's recommendations, no one will find value in them in the future either.

 

[TayIsTay]

congressional report on tech antitrust: "To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons."

from https://venturebeat.com/ai/u-s-cong...t-powers-of-amazon-apple-facebook-and-google/

original congressional report: https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_digital_markets.pdf

"Apple should be broken up, so its hardware and OS division is separate from its app store."

from: https://venturebeat.com/business/heres-how-the-big-tech-breakup-should-go-down/

I know most folks here don't like the idea of breaking up Apple. That's fine, but at least understand and engage with the arguments for breaking it up.

 

[AllThingsTruth]

Break them up into individual companies so they can outsource the hardware and software to one another, effectively creating a singular company?

 

[kc9hzn]

And yet despite all that, nearly the entire batch of baby bells from the Bell Systems break up have all recombined back into AT&T and Verizon. Long distance competition happened due to the break up in the short to medium term. Long term? The market is still controlled by a handful of players, and the two that dominate are the mergers and combinations of nearly every baby bell.

8 baby bells, 5/8 right back to AT&T, 2/8 Verizon, 1/8 Lumen Technologies.

So I’m not sure this one example is even all that great. They were so large and powerful that they ultimately remerged in to two entities that dominate?

Well, there’s the matter of Pareto distributions. Some markets, such as nation-wide cell coverage, are likely to only support a small number of competitors due to capital expenses or other reasons, which naturally sets up a Pareto distribution. But I’ve visited family in places in the US where neither I (on AT&T) nor my brother (on Verizon) had reliable cell coverage. We asked the locals we were visiting what they did for cell coverage, and they all had it through small regional companies (that presumably had fairly affordable roaming agreements with the major networks for when you were out of their network coverage). The regional companies thrived by targeting service in small markets where the major firms had little to no infrastructure (ie that 20% of the market that fell outside of the Pareto distribution). Likewise, the market probably wouldn’t support 100 manufacturers of game consoles (or PC OSes and CPU architectures), like it does manufacturers of clocks and timepieces or of electronic radios. (The markets where hundreds of manufacturers thrive are also markets that are fairly homogenous; highly differentiated markets typically have very few competitors.)

 

[cupcakes2000]

This happened to AT&T back in the 80's. The breakup resulted in the formation of the Baby Bells and eventually Qwest, Verizon, Century Link and others.

Breakup of the Bell System - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Anyone who owned AT&T stock before the breakup and held their resulting stocks from the breakup is sitting very, very, very pretty today. I'm not saying I'm for the breakup of Apple, but can you imagine what life would be like if the breakup never occurred and AT&T controlled everything today? Hindsight...

It’s not even in the same ball park.

Apple is currently at a level like the “Roman Empire” was, without any groundbreaking innovations, just having a decadent living based on the foundation that has been set by Steve Jobs.

The SOC section of Apple begs to differ. from the original A series through to the M series and everything in between reeks of innovation and has shaken up the industry, probably for the better, though time will tell.

 

[AlexMac89]

Well, there’s the matter of Pareto distributions. Some markets, such as nation-wide cell coverage, are likely to only support a small number of competitors due to capital expenses or other reasons, which naturally sets up a Pareto distribution. But I’ve visited family in places in the US where neither I (on AT&T) nor my brother (on Verizon) had reliable cell coverage. We asked the locals we were visiting what they did for cell coverage, and they all had it through small regional companies (that presumably had fairly affordable roaming agreements with the major networks for when you were out of their network coverage). The regional companies thrived by targeting service in small markets where the major firms had little to no infrastructure (ie that 20% of the market that fell outside of the Pareto distribution). Likewise, the market probably wouldn’t support 100 manufacturers of game consoles (or PC OSes and CPU architectures), like it does manufacturers of clocks and timepieces or of electronic radios. (The markets where hundreds of manufacturers thrive are also markets that are fairly homogenous; highly differentiated markets typically have very few competitors.)

Carriers outside the big three are all rounding errors. The the largest regional carriers: US cellular (5 mil), C spire (1mil), GCI (under 500,000—I can’t find a number from after 2017 which was around 200,000).

Each of the big three is over 100 million, and Verizon is the largest at 143 million. Those handful of regional networks combined don’t have a meaniful amount of subscribers, and if they didn’t exist, it would put zero pressure on the big three to cover those areas in their place. On top of that, they are all going to pay to use the nationwide networks outside of their tiny local markets.

That is NOT an example of any kind of competition. The “Big Three” total over 358 million subscribers. 6.5 mil from the “three largest regional competitors” combined—1.8% of their size. Well beyond 80% (to the point of it being nearly all) of the mobile network traffic runs through the big three. All of their network traffic, all of the American MVNO’s, and all of the roaming from those 3 little regionals, and more.

Edited: So many typos on mobile.

 

[teh_hunterer]

Apple needs to be broken up, probably into hardware, software and services companies.

Notably, I predict more competition around macOS would drive down hardware prices, and charging for macOS, iOS, etc., upgrades and maintenance would slow down hardware churn which would be better for the environment.

Just when you think you've seen all the dramatic nonsense hot take bait threads... Surely now I've seen it all.

 

[Dhonk]

Because more competition around Apple's operating systems would benefit consumers.

until the Gov’t breaks up Amazon, they won’t even think of Apple. Amazon is a massive loss-leader that undercuts every brick and mortar store in the country and most online vendors as well. They subsidize these heavy losses with AWS. Some politicians have called for that breakup, but it hasn’t gained much traction yet.

 

[Howard2k]

I don’t think OP thought really well about what he posted 🤣

x1,000,000

 

[PauloSera]

Apple needs to be broken up, probably into hardware, software and services companies.

What makes Apple good in the first place is that they do all 3. You couldn't come up with a worse idea if we gave you until the end of the decade.

 

[goku_vegeta]

Sounds about as well thought out as Elon's plan for Twitter.

Now now, compared to the OP, Elon’s plan was ingenious.

 

[theluggage]

For whom does Raspberry PI meet that criteria? A hobbiest?

Well, the Pi currently out of the running because of component shortages and scalping, but the (normally) ~£100 "Raspberry Pi 400" model is built into a keyboard like an old-school Commodore 64, plugs into a HDMI TV and boots up into a Linux desktop with perfectly serviceable browser, email and office suite. A MacBook, or even a half-decent Windows PC it ain't, but it would be a perfectly good basic personal computer for light work.

...but...

Selling a new computer with a new OS and a new office suite isn't actually all that difficult.

The Pi is a "new computer" based on an existing Broadcomm ARM system-on-a-chip designed for embedded applications (I've always assumed set-top boxes) running a version of Linux (a powerful OS which has supported ARM since the M1 was a twinkle in Apple's eye) and a load of other existing free/open source software (e.g. Libreoffice) and produced by a charitable foundation - initially funded by donations - to promote computer science teaching. The creators & community still put in a heck of a lot of work developing it and customising the existing software, but they had a massive headstart. So it's not really a good example. The commercial success was a bonus... probably because it was end-of-argument cheap. The charity/education aspect (and, it the UK, a lot of nostalgia since it's the spiritual successor to the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum) got it a ton of publicity. The "friendly" RasPi 400 version didn't appear until the bare-board hobbyist version was well established.

There are many, many small-ish companies making their own PCs but usually by assembling "commodity" PC components (or re-badging mass produced generic laptops) and selling them with MS Windows, Office etc. Producing a "new" computer - e.g. a distinctly different laptop or something with a non-PC architecture and/or creating a new OS, office suite etc. is a far larger and resource-heavy undertaking and selling anything that doesn't run Windows or MacOS outside of a niche is nigh-on impossible - otherwise we'd be ankle deep in cheap Linux boxes.

 

[Wildkraut]

It’s not even in the same ball park.

The SOC section of Apple begs to differ. from the original A series through to the M series and everything in between reeks of innovation and has shaken up the industry, probably for the better, though time will tell.

Well, no doubt the SoC Team is very competent, but we have to add a few more things to account. Apples SoC heavily profits from TSMC ARM low nanometre manufacturing. That’s what mainly makes Apple SoC superior to e.g. Intel, the performance to power consumption ratio (Thanks to TSMC and ARM), and that Apple is able to heavily optimize iOS. They turn cores and features on and off on demand, freeze Apps, limit Multitasking, etc. all just to achieve/maintain this ratio. Thats why newer careless situations often brings iOS to shake and iDevices to drain battery like crazy, as we often read here in the forums.

Apple almost reached the zenith of their SoC and iOS optimization. All they can do from now on is…

…scale or add more cores and accept the negative power consumption hits, while trying to compensate this with even heavier iOS optimization. It’s called optimization, but Apples multitasking optimization reached a level that makes iOS multitasking just suck, it’s more like a castration. E.g. iOS is unable to run Apps in the background due to this.

…hope that TSMC lowers their nanometre tech manufacturing even more, so that more power is left for the usage of additional cores and features.

I see the Apples M series as a normal evolution of their A Series.

 

[Coochie Boogs]

Sorry, I try my best to not be rude, but this thread is a joke. Why are we feeding this?

 

[AlexMac89]

Well, no doubt the SoC Team is very competent, but we have to add a few more things to account. Apples SoC heavily profits from TSMC ARM low nanometer manufacturing. That’s what mainly makes Apple SoC superior to e.g. Intel, the performance to power consumption ratio (Thanks to TSMC and ARM),

…hope that TSMC lowers their nanometer tech manufacturing even more, so that more power is left for the usage of additional cores and features.

Yes, apple’s SOC heavily profits from TSMC’s advanced nodes. More importantly, the emergence of TSMC’s leading edge nodes and rapid growth in valuation track with the rapid and massive investment by Apple in the early to mid 2010’s.

TSMC may very well not be the leader today if it wasn’t for apple’s huge investment and converting the majority of their product stack to critical components produced by them. The same way that Apple’s priority access to leading edge technologies would not be a given without the partnership, and that has been a key component of their growth.

What makes Apple superior (to their competitors) is their ability to control the product and component stack through strategic partnerships and investments. They aren’t superior because they managed to lock down TSMC with cash for access to their technology. They are superior because they managed to build a synergistic and symbiotic relationship with a critical partner that has catapulted both companies into the stratosphere.

 

[BellSystem]

Apple needs to be broken up, probably into hardware, software and services companies.

Notably, I predict more competition around macOS would drive down hardware prices, and charging for macOS, iOS, etc., upgrades and maintenance would slow down hardware churn which would be better for the environment.

Ya cause breakups have always benefited the consumer lol. This is as well thought out as the Bell breakup of 84.

 

[Canezmd]

What about Google? Or Microsoft? Or Samsung? Or any other tech company?

All of them need to be broken up as well.

 

[ndouglas]

Ha, this OP reminds me of all the drama and tomfoolery of the long, drawn-out Microsoft court case with the stated goal of being forced to “break up“ Windows and Internet Exploer, that some folks of a certain age may recall…

True, Apple keeps expanding and trying to do more and more stuff, but personally there are way more pressing things to break up, media conglomerates, pharmaceutical and cable companies, etc etc…

 

[ndouglas]

And yet despite all that, nearly the entire batch of baby bells from the Bell Systems break up have all recombined back into AT&T and Verizon. Long distance competition happened due to the break up in the short to medium term. Long term? The market is still controlled by a handful of players, and the two that dominate are the mergers and combinations of nearly every baby bell.

8 baby bells, 5/8 right back to AT&T, 2/8 Verizon, 1/8 Lumen Technologies.

So I’m not sure this one example is even all that great. They were so large and powerful that they ultimately remerged in to two entities that dominate?

Trippy, and very true… yikes…

 

[helmsc]

Apple has a de facto monopoly on hardware allowed to run macOS. This is not in the best interest of consumers because it removed competition from this space.

In that argument, what about the Xbox OS (can't run it on anything but Xbox) and the PlayStation's OS? You do know that there are Hackintoshes, right?

 

[bousozoku]

I seem to remember a Power Computing Mac clone sitting on my desk, running MacOS 8.5, which was great for many of us, but almost killed Apple in the act of diversifying their market.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

A stated in this thread by Moderator Emeritus @maflynn the answer to trolling behavior like this thread is to report it.