One of the things that all generations since the industrial revolution have had to learn is that corporations are not their friend. They don’t care about you nearly as much as you could possibly care about them. It’s a reality that a lot accept tacitly and others have real issues dealing with. The die-hard Apple fans should probably be taking a good long look at themselves now in this matter.
Not because Apple has decided malicious compliance is the way to go on recent rulings. That’s usually the way companies in general and Apple in particular react when they are forced to do something they don’t want to do. It takes a couple of rounds of back and forth and the odd legal precedent ruling for something to be truly addressed. But can we at least agree that one of the parts of malicious compliance is playing it like you’re just agreeing with the letter of the law? Instead, Apple has decided to go on the offense, presumably secure in the knowledge that people won’t care enough to move from their precious Ecosystem Pro Max.
But for the people that are paying attention, it stops looking like an underdog trillion-dollar company facing against big bad government, and more like an annoying child that’s annoyed about having to share. And every fine and hasty backtracking that they attempt is going to continue to lose them goodwill. Ultimately from customers, but first from governments, regulatory entities, and companies displeased with them for getting those previous two angry.
And I know, there’s Apple precedent for this sort of thing, notably that one time when Steve Jobs declared war on flash. But when he boldly told the world that Adobe Flash was garbage software and he’d ensure that it wouldn’t be supported on iOS, we all knew that Flash was indeed garbage software. And even if the tone was traditionally Steve, he signed that particular missive with his name. By contrast, Apple’s self-aggrandizing Spotify article? Nameless. As if 1 Apple Park Way itself manifested it to life. With all of the soullessness that comes with it.
I don’t know where this will end up with. Apple pulling out of Europe would be a power move, but one that would really just leave a prestige market for other manufacturers to take it. Not to mention confirming to the entire world that this is “Apple takes its ball and goes home” levels of corporate nonsense. If Apple’s business model is still to sell hardware there’s relatively little incentive to not just have it as annoying as Android is when installing apps. people who service iOS devices will be somewhat more annoyed as people are scammed into installing bogus nonsense, but most people won’t. Most people won’t notice any difference. Alternate app stores and PWA’s are not killing their market share the way clone Macs were in the 90s. And if selling hardware is now just a way to lure people into services, pissing people off won’t make them any more likely to prefer their products over the competition.
It’s almost as if this is just how it has always been on desktop operating systems.
