Apple Met With DOJ Antitrust Chief in Bid to Head Off Antitrust Lawsuit
Apple representatives met with the U.S. Justice Department last week in a last ditch effort to persuade the agency not to file an antitrust suit against the company, according to Bloomberg.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the report states that Apple and its lawyers met with Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, who will have the final say on whether to file a suit.
Since 2019, the Justice Department has been looking into Apple's App Store business practices and whether iOS favors Apple's own apps and services over those provided by third-party developers and other companies.
The DOJ began by inquiring about Apple's App Store policies, and reportedly met with developers to learn more about the App Store's review process.
The department reportedly escalated its probe in early 2023 by assigning additional litigators to the case and requesting documents and consultations with companies connected to the investigation.
Apple has been accused of or investigated for anticompetitive practices in several other countries over the past few years, with many of the complaints related to the App Store. Most recently, Apple announced major changes to the way the App Store and apps operate in the EU in order to comply with the bloc's inbound Digital Markets Act before March 7, and the DOJ has reportedly been monitoring these developments.
The DOJ is expected to make its first legal move in the coming weeks, likely by the end of March, according to Bloomberg's sources, potentially leaving Apple facing an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. government.
Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Popular Stories
Apple today seeded the first betas of upcoming iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming a week after Apple released iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2.
iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3 can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software update.
There's no word yet on what's included in iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3, ...
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year.
Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
Apple is planning a series of "major design" and "format changes" for iPhones over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie.
The paywalled report published today corroborated the widely-rumored "iPhone 17 Air" with an "ultrathin" design that is thinner than current iPhone models. The report did not mention a specific measurement, but previous...
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
Apple on Monday seeded the first tvOS 18.3 beta to developers for testing. The update will likely be released in January. So far, there are only minor changes for the Apple TV, with one new feature and a few code changes discovered.
Below, we outline what is new in tvOS 18.3 so far.
Robot Vacuum Support in Home App
First, tvOS 18.3 will add robot vacuum support to the Home app on the...
Contrary to recent reports, the iPhone 17 Pro will not feature a horizontal camera layout, according to the leaker known as "Instant Digital."
In a new post on Weibo, the leaker said that a source has confirmed that while the appearance of the back of the iPhone 17 Pro has indeed changed, the layout of the three cameras is "still triangular," rather than the "horizontal bar spread on the...
