Why the Justice Department is taking on Apple’s iPhone
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2024
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today on “Post Reports:” Why the Justice Department is going after Apple over green text bubbles. And what its lawsuit says about the Biden administration’s stance on Big Tech.
Read more:
Last week, the Justice Department – along with 16 state and district attorneys general – accused Apple of illegally wielding a monopoly over the smartphone market. The civil complaint alleges that the tech giant stifled competition with restrictive App Store terms and high fees.
“Apple has maintained monopoly power in the smartphone market, not simply by staying ahead of the competition on the merits, but by violating federal antitrust law,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference Thursday.
Apple spokesman Fred Sainz said in a statement that the lawsuit is “wrong on the facts and the law” and that the company “will vigorously defend against it.”
Today on “Post Reports,” tech policy reporter Cristiano Lima-Strong breaks down the allegations and what they tell us about the government’s battles with Big Tech.
Today’s show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy, with help from Peter Bresnan. It was edited by Maggie Penman and mixed by Sean Carter.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I don't know if you've experienced this Christina where you're on a group |
| 0:06.4 | text with a bunch of people and I understand that you have an Android and people get upset that now the text thread has reverted from blue to green. |
| 0:19.0 | So I experience this from the Android side. |
| 0:21.1 | We have this big family group chat, |
| 0:23.1 | and whenever we're planning a vacation or something, |
| 0:25.8 | there's a couple iPhone users. |
| 0:28.0 | And on my end, I'm always seeing like, |
| 0:30.4 | oh, X liked this post, or X laughed at this post and instead of just getting like a |
| 0:36.2 | thumbs up that I'm sure like Apple people see and on the other end they're just |
| 0:40.0 | seeing my little green bubbles popping up all over the place. |
| 0:42.8 | Yeah, and they're like, what is this? |
| 0:44.8 | Right. |
| 0:45.8 | Well, I've definitely forced some group chats to migrate to other messaging platforms |
| 0:51.1 | precisely because I can't deal with this anymore. |
| 0:55.0 | Christiana Lima Strong covers tech policy for the post and I wanted to ask him about this weird |
| 1:04.5 | quirk of how he texts, not because I find it annoying, though I do, but because I |
| 1:09.6 | spotted a description of this exact situation in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. a minor annoyance is at the heart of this massive antitrust lawsuit against Apple that the federal government is now taking up. |
| 1:29.0 | And basically the argument that they've made is that Apple instead of trying to compete on the merits with other companies and |
| 1:35.8 | developers it has made it harder for developers to come up with products like a |
| 1:41.8 | cross messaging platform that would work seamlessly between |
| 1:45.1 | Android and iPhone users. |
| 1:48.2 | And in doing so, it has locked people into the Apple ecosystem. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Washington Post, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Washington Post and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.