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Apple says it takes "significant actions" to protect the user

March 6, 2017 by Carolyn Mueller

Apple says it takes "significant actions" to protect the user experience.

"What we have seen with iTunes is that they are using their own tools to control the user experience," Spotify says in its filing. "They are making an unfair advantage of Apple by making some of their services less popular, and by removing the user experience from iTunes.

"To remove the experience is to make a product that is not very popular on the App Store. They are trying to squeeze you out of your iPhone 4s, which you don't have in the App Store, and then make it more popular in the App Store, just because you're not paying for it. That's not fair."

A new report published by the Free Software Foundation suggests that Apple is attempting to protect the user experience by blocking apps that aren't Apple's own.

"Apple has been doing this for years. It has been making some of its own services and even making some of its own apps available as open source software, which it claims would allow it to be more competitive," the report says. The report says that the App Store has been unfairly attacked by Apple because it's used by a small "small number of companies."

"The data shows that Apple does not fully intend on changing the App Store's way of distributing the music in the App Store," the report adds. "They seem to believe that consumers can choose the music that they want to listen to in the App Store by paying a fee in order to get it, which is not what they want to do and is not at all the way they want it."

The Free Software Foundation says it's important to note that Spotify is not a piracy site. Neither is Apple Music, which tracks and stores its music on iTunes. Spotify does allow apps that require payment to use its Music app and is not a third party, and is free of charge to use.

While the free market is a good place to start, many of the criticisms of Apple Music are about the way they operate.

"There are some companies within Spotify who are not taking advantage of the user experience for their own benefit, and which have an unfair advantage," reads the report.

The report says that while Apple has been open about its plans to "unlock and remove content from the App Store," it's not clear whether this is a policy that is being implemented directly or indirectly by one of the companies.

"Apple has been the largest company in music distribution in recent history to have a policy that effectively prevents it from