Remember the 1990s when Microsoft was the big bad wolf of the tech world? Their iron-fisted control over the PC ecosystem led to a massive antitrust case and made Bill Gates public enemy #1 for a while.
Well, it looks like Apple didn’t learn from Microsoft’s mistakes because it’s now following the same playbook with the iPhone. And surprise, surprise—the antitrust cops are knocking on Cupertino’s door.
Glorious leader Tim Cook
Apple runs the iPhone like Kim Jong-un runs North Korea. It’s their way or the labour camp highway. Want to offer an app that competes with an Apple service? Get ready for your app to mysteriously get “caught in review” or be banished from the App Store. Want to let users install apps from outside the walled garden? Ha! Not a chance, comrade. The App Store is the only game in town, and Apple gets a juicy 30% cut for everything that happens there.
For years, Apple has argued this dictatorial control is for our own good. That it keeps the iPhone “safe and trusted.” But let’s be real. Having a single gatekeeper pick the winners and losers is fucking terrible for competition and innovation. And you know what happens when competition and innovation get choked out? Prices go up, quality goes down, and consumers get screwed.
It’s the same playbook that got Microsoft into so much hot water. Remember when they forced PC makers to bundle Internet Explorer and squash Netscape? How they deliberately broke compatibility with non-Microsoft products? It’s deja vu all over again, except this time, it’s happening on the device in your pocket instead of your desk.
But the jig may finally be up for Emperor Cook and his merry band of single-party apparatchiks. The Department of Justice has seen enough and is reportedly about to sue Apple for antitrust violations
. This comes on the heels of Apple being slapped with a $1.8 billion fine in Europe for squeezing out Spotify and other streaming music providers. The wall around Apple’s garden is starting to crumble.
Look, I’m not saying Apple is actually the Chinese Communist Party (although have you seen those Apple Stores? The minimalism is a bit eerie). And there are legit arguments for why some level of control can benefit users. But when your grip squeezes so tightly that you’re breaking the fingers of competitors, it’s clearly gone too far. Imagine if the government was the only party allowed to approve what books you could read! We’d call that censorship. When Apple does it for apps, it’s just “curation.”
Just like the Soviet Union eventually fell, the Apple regime will need to open up. They’re on the wrong side of history here. Developers are fed up, the government has smelled blood, and users are starting to question whether being stuck behind Apple’s Great Firewall is worth that blue iMessage bubble. Something’s gotta give.
The next few years are going to be a wild ride as the last superpower of the tech world faces its reckoning. It’s 1989 all over again, and Apple is the Berlin Wall. Tear down this wall, Tim Apple!
