Apple Fellow Phil Schiller defended Apple’s App Store in a lawsuit alleging antitrust violations brought by Epic Games, having to answer Tuesday for a laundry list of other alleged antitrust claims, including the question: where’s Messages for Android?
Mark Gurman and Malathi Nayak for Bloomberg:
During Phil Schiller’s cross-examination in a trial in Oakland, California, Apple’s former global marketing chief was confronted about several instances in which the company has locked in users and made it difficult for them to switch away from its devices.
Katherine Forrest, a lawyer for Epic, pointed out that Schiller emailed his colleagues a 2016 news article titled “iMessage is the glue that keeps me stuck to the iPhone,” which explained that Apple’s messaging platform is a reason people don’t switch to Android devices.
She also quizzed Schiller on the idea that users can’t easily move music and video purchased on Apple services to Google’s Android. She went further, indicating that Apple’s iCloud Keychain service for storing passwords on Apple devices can’t synchronize with Android devices.
MacDailyNews Take: You know they’re desperate, and know they’ve lost, when they resort to neither-here-nor-there attacks.
Apple is not responsible for helping rivals to sell their stolen products.
There are myriad reasons why people don’t downgrade from real iPhones to fake ones beyond “Messages for Android,” including privacy, security, speed, features, hardware, design, software, accessories, morals (using the real thing instead of a blatant knockoff), etc.