Steve Jobs, A ‘Not Fun To Watch’ Ad: How U.S. Lawsuit Against Apple Begins

The antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple Inc. by the U.S. Department of Justice starts by citing a 2010 email exchange between a top executive and the iPhone maker’s iconic founder, Steve Jobs.

“...message that can’t be missed is that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android. Not fun to watch,” the executive wrote to Jobs, then CEO, referring to an ad showing that Kindle e-reader will be available on Android phones.

“Jobs was clear in his response: Apple would “force” developers to use its payment system to lock in both developers and users on its platform,” according to the lawsuit.

The U.S. Justice Department and 16 attorneys general sued Apple for allegedly violating antitrust laws by blocking rivals from accessing hardware and software features on its popular devices.

The suit, filed Thursday in a New Jersey federal court, marks the culmination of a five-year probe into the world’s second-most-valuable technology company.

Instead of lowering smartphone prices or offering better monetisation to developers, Apple met “competitive threats by imposing a series of shapeshifting rules and restrictions” in its App Store guidelines and developer agreements, the lawsuit alleges. That allowed it to “extract higher fees, thwart innovation, offer a less secure or degraded user experience, and throttle competitive alternatives”.