I thought I listed a bunch of cases where there were options (and not monopolies). But yes, 100% inside many ecosystems are monopolies, and those ecosystems/walled gardens have been slowly expanding every chance these companies have.

I’m saying the competition can only exist because products that actually fill the same need.

If you decide that you need product A, and have multiple options on where to get that, you have competition.

So if you’re looking for a Cola, you have options.

If you’re looking to play StardewValley, you have options where you want to buy it and which platform you want to play it on, you don’t need to buy a new game system to play it.

If you’re looking to play the latest Zelda game, you don’t have options, you need to buy a Switch.

If you’re looking to watch Ozarks, you don’t have options, you can only watch Netflix.

If you’re looking to just have something playing on TV and don’t really care what it is, you have options.

If you’re looking to listen to music, you have options, most of the steaming services have most of the music.

If you’re looking to be able to text friends, you have options, any phone will work.

If you’re looking to be able to iMessage friends and for your case only iMessage will work, iPhone is your only option.

Competition is complex and is more dependent on a consumer needs than just classification of what a product is. In your earlier point you used Apple as an example of a company that can increase prices despite competition, but really Apple is a prime example of a company putting up walls to an ecosystem making it really hard to leave once you’re in.

Generally in the current tech landscape there barely is any competition outside openish platforms. But with tech, you often can’t look at competition as product A vs Product B. Like while we can say that Window competes with OSx, it’s harder to say that a Mac laptop competes with a given Dell laptop (because what you can do with each OS is different to different people).

This is why I like to think of all the tv streaming services as different types of food stores. There is no supermarket that supplies everything, you’re forced to have memberships to the single butcher, the single milk man, the single bakery, etc. if you want a particular food, there is currently no (or very little) competition. You can certainly survive on just bread, and people are happy to do that, but that bakery can and will increase prices whenever because they aren’t really competing with the butcher.

I still think you’re looking at competition slightly wrong.

Coke and Pepsi do compete with eachother, along with the rest of the drink market. And overall prices in that industry are pretty low, some people will buy other competitors (the store brand Cola’s). But overall competition is working.

Apple only kinda competes. Sure a phone is a phone and a laptop is a laptop. But unless someone is entering the market for the first time. They already have applications they are looking to use, so if you need an iPhone, you need an iPhone, and same for a Mac. But if you’re an android or Windows user, suddenly you have a lot more choice because there is lots of competition!

The reason companies setup walled gardens, or pay for exclusive access to a piece of media is to erode competition. If a user wants that thing, they can only get it from that one place.

It’s only competition if they provide similar products.

The current landscape is like farmers markets and butchers. Sure they both provide food, but they don’t really directly compete with eachother.

Of course, percentage just help show relativity. It’s why people can look at a 0.5% increase and dismiss it as not significant.

Would it help if I translated the percentage for you? Linux surged 600000 to 2.3 million.

I’m super confused by your point.

In this case we’re looking at Steam.

I have no clue how many people submit to the steam survey, but I’ll assume it’s representative.

A quick google suggests steam has about 120 million active users.

Linux went from about 1.4% to 1.9%.

Rough math says Linux went from 1.7 million to about 2.3 million.

Or an increase of 600 000.

That a lot, both in relative terms and in real terms.

Here’s a counter example for you.

You own stock in banana company. Over one day the price increases 2x. All the news agency’s are talking about how banana surged in price today. Will you then suggest that banana didn’t surge in price because it only makes up 1% of the overall stock market?

That’s why we’re talking about relative percentages.

In your example we would need to know how many trees existed on your road/city before. If there were less than 3 or 4 trees in your city before this, saying there was a surge is likely fine.

What percentage increase do you feel is required for surge to be a reasonable definition. A 35% increase feels surge-y me.

This Samsung app is the one thing I need to actually switch my family over to jellyfin.

I could do the workaround for myself, but I’m not doing it for others.

So for now I’m the only jellyfin user

What part wasn’t worth it? You said it’s not worth it, then made it sound worth it.

The ROI is 10-25 years based on the electricity prices you locked in at the start.

With regular inflation, and general increases in the electricity rates, over the long run you’re going to save money. The return might not be investment market level returns, but if you can justify the up front costs it’s unlikely to not come out ahead.

For future reference. Anytime people are talking about “their tax bracket” in a progressive tax system, they are talking about the top level bracket.

It’s typically redundant to, mid conversation, list all the tax brackets that exist under the one you’re talking about.

Underground is not artisanal, underground is cigs smuggled into Canada from the US or Mexico, and containing fillers you would never know.

Sure it would be great if banning the sale of it would work, but it would just make the problem harder to manage.

This would only create an underground market for it, and if we’ve learned anything at this point, those underground markets are impossible to regulate and often are more dangerous and risky to the user.

Legal sales and regulating it is usually much more effective.

This was my experience too. Ubuntu asks if I want to install the docker snap, I say sure. I then try to use docker and it’s completely unable to do what I need. I then need to figure out how to uninstall the snap and then install docker normally.

I tried a few snaps, but everytime they were a pain in the ass and I regretted it. Now I avoid them at all costs

I’m in a similar boat. The only time I do plug in headphones (via the usb port) is on nights I’m having a very hard time fall asleep. But I do that at the expense of being able to charge my phone 😔

I pretty much stopped using my phone for audio when they got rid of the headphone jack.

Wireless headphones still aren’t great and most are uncomfortable. It’s super annoying keeping them charged and they are so expensive when you consider how short their lifespan is.

Nothing has changed though. YouTube has been funding their infrastructure via ads for that last decade. Those of us who didn’t watch with ad block always had to watch more ads to help offset those who blocked ads.

As ad blockers have become more widespread, it had meant that YouTube has been needing to show more ads to everyone else, it was only a matter of time before they needed to do something about those blocking ads.

You always were breaking their EULA by blocking ads, and they aren’t changing any rules, you can still watch these same videos for free. And if you leave it really doesn’t matter to them because you were only costing them money.

… that’s why YouTube premium is a thing. Over 50% of the monthly subscription is distributed among the creators you view in a month.

Because ad spots don’t fit in well to videos. And they are a pain to negotiate and often (depending on the partner) limit what can be in the videos.

If we’re lucky, in time (and with enough YouTube premium subscribers) the need for YouTubers to have 3rd party sponsorships will decrease.