Apple’s DNA and Europe’s DMA

I praised a few video essays by Jon Prosser in the past, and I respect the guy, but while his latest This is the END of Apple may have a ‘hit’ title and premise, I feel it’s actually a ‘miss’. A fair warning and admission: I’ve only watched the first 10 minutes of this 14-minute video, then I got so irritated that I had to close the browser tab. But I think it was enough to understand Prosser’s argument, and in any case what I’m going to talk about here is based on what I watched, so I don’t think I’m jumping to conclusions. But do let me know if I missed something crucial.

Prosser’s video first points out how the appearance of USB‑C in iPhones is remarkable because for the first time in Apple’s history, it’s not exactly there because Apple chose to go this route, but it was a decision heavily influenced by EU legislation and its Digital Markets Act. Prosser theorises that this turning point — Apple’s compliance with government legislation — may very well be the beginning of the end for Apple. Because now that the EU Commission has successfully forced Apple’s hand, like the story of the mouse and the cookie, the EU will want more, the EU will require Apple to make changes to their products in ways that go against Apple’s own direction, and ultimately against Apple’s DNA. This is what Prosser calls ‘the end of Apple’.

Prosser:

A week or so ago, a chief of EU industry, Thierry Breton, publicly called on Tim Cook to open up the iPhone’s walled garden ecosystem of hardware and software to… rivals. In a quote, Thierry said, The next job for Apple and other Big Tech, under the DMA (Digital Markets Act) is to open up its gates to competitors. Be it the electronic wallet, browsers or app stores, consumers using an Apple iPhone should be able to benefit from competitive services by a range of providers.

This doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request for most companies, and it can be hard to pinpoint where the problem lies exactly for iPhone users, for Apple fans in general. But let’s really look at what this means. Under this new DMA law, Apple’s major platforms like the App Store, Safari, and iOS as a whole were officially classified as ‘gatekeepers’ [Note: To be precise, the Wikipedia entry for the Digital Markets Act states that “Twenty-two services across six companies — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft — were named as ‘gatekeepers’ by the EU in September 2023.”] and as a solution Apple is expected to add support for the sideloading of apps from outside the App Store on iPhones and iPads. Apple’s argument for their walled garden approach has always been user security and privacy. Obviously the lack of competition in their own platform is another huge positive, and our guy Thierry was quick to respond to that argument too. In a quote, he said, EU regulation fosters innovation, without compromising on security and privacy. And in a very ‘Apple’ move, [Apple] haven’t responded to this comment. But I will: this is fucked up!

Here Prosser inserts a Steve Jobs quote taken from the interview at the All Things Digital D8 Conference in 2010 with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher:

We’re just people running this company. We’re trying to make great products for people, and so we have at least the courage of our convictions to say, “We don’t think this is part of what makes a great product, we’re gonna leave it out”. Some people are going to not like that, they’re going to call us names, it’s not going to be in certain companies’ vested interests that we do that, but we’re going to take the heat. Because we want to make the best product in the world for customers, and we’re going to instead focus our energy on these technologies which we think are in their ascendancy and we think are going to be the right technologies for customers. And you know what? They’re paying us to make those choices! That’s what a lot of customers pay us to do, to try to make the best products we can, and if we succeed they’ll buy them. And if we don’t, they won’t.

Then Prosser comments:

This opening of Apple’s ecosystem is not pro-consumer. This is not something consumers — Apple’s iPhone users specifically — are asking for. This is just anti-Apple, and it’s kind of gross.

So much to unpack here. I’ll start from the very last paragraph quoted above, and loudly call bullshit.

This opening of Apple’s ecosystem is very much pro-consumer, and very much anti-fanboy. I sympathise a lot with that Steve Jobs’s quote, and every time I see excerpts from his attendances at the various ‘D’ Conferences I get nostalgic and start missing the man badly. But we have to put that quote in context. And the context is the year 2010, thirteen years ago, when the newest phone was the iPhone 4, the latest iOS version was iOS 4, the first iPad had just been introduced, the iOS App Store was two years old, and iCloud didn’t exist yet. An era when Apple’s ecosystem was rather strong in general, but not as stifling as it would become in the following thirteen years.

I’ve been writing online about tech since late 2004 (if you don’t count my participation in forums and mailing lists, which started circa 2000), and I’ve launched this website in 2011. Since morrick.me started getting some traction circa 2014, I have lost count of the number of emails I have received from people, Apple users, utterly frustrated by the progressively walled-garden structure of Apple’s mobile ecosystem. Even back when the iPhone 3G was introduced, and it finally became widely available here in Europe as well, I had clients and friends who were puzzled by certain aspects of ‘Apple’s way of doing things’. Bluetooth file transfer between phones was one. An acquaintance at the time pointed out how easy it was for them to just send any file via Bluetooth from a Nokia (or any other brand) dumb phone to another phone, with just a few clicks. Try that with an iPhone to any other phone, or even between iPhones. There was no AirDrop back then. The quickest way was sending the file via email, or maybe uploading it somewhere and sharing the download link. Or using some kind of third-party solution, but both iPhones had to have the same third-party app installed, and so forth.

When Jobs says, That’s what a lot of customers pay us to do, to try to make the best products we can, and if we succeed they’ll buy them. And if we don’t, they won’t. — That’s not as clear-cut as it perhaps was in 2010. Recently, in a feedback email I received, one of my readers was sharing his exasperation about feeling irrevocably locked into Apple’s ecosystem:

I’ve seen a lot of interesting Android devices in the past 2–3 years or so. I like what certain brands like Google and Samsung and Nothing are doing with the design. iPhones feel stale in comparison. And Android, I’ve tried the latest version on a borrowed Google Pixel. I like it. When you remove all the crap and the bloatware, it’s pleasant, and certain quality apps don’t feel that much different from their iOS counterparts. I also think this Pixel takes better photos than my iPhone 13.

But I can’t just switch to Android and leave the iPhone behind. Why? Because friends and family all have iPhones. Because chats means using iMessage. Video calls means FaceTime. Photo sharing, file sharing means iCloud. Convenience should mean using whatever the hell solution you want to seamlessly connect with others. Not, let’s just all lock ourselves in the same ecosystem and use the tools that are graciously bestowed on us by our overlords.

And before you ask, no, I can’t afford to dual-wield an iPhone and an Android phone. I’m also not saying it’s impossible for me to just switch. I’d probably find a workaround for many situations where the 2 platforms [iOS and Android] diverge. But it’s exhausting, and you know, also ridiculous if you stop and think about it. It’s 2023, there should be more interoperability and fewer ivory towers, you know? These constraints look more and more stupid and artificial.

And this is by no means the only message I’ve received with this kind of complaint or frustration.

Sideloading

To avoid becoming too long-winded, I’ll point you to my article On sideloading from November 2021. My position on the matter hasn’t changed since then (it never changed, by the way).

Painting sideloading as this serious threat against Apple’s ecosystem or even DNA is really just parroting Apple’s stance and just accepting a closed and proprietary system as the best and most consumer-friendly solution. It is neither. It’s simply the easiest solution to implement, the easiest to maintain, and the one that potentially brings more money through user lock-in.

Apple likes to use privacy and security as a way to justify the walled-garden approach of its mobile ecosystem. I don’t doubt that a locked-down system (like current Macs’ hardware and some parts of Mac OS) or a locked-down platform (like iOS on iPhones and iPads) is inherently more secure than a system or platform where users have complete freedom of movement and choice. But the flipside is, well, that as a consequence, users do not have complete freedom of movement and choice. So they cannot replace a Mac’s internal SSD or expand a Mac’s RAM if they want more down the road, because it’s all soldered and impenetrable. You have to go through Apple, probably spending double or triple what you would spend by sourcing the parts yourself and replacing them yourself or having them replaced in a repair shop.

And if someone creates a wonderful Commodore or Nintendo simulator to play classic games on your iOS device, and Apple rejects the app citing some App Store rule, you won’t be able to enjoy such app, full stop. If someone creates an iOS utility that truly takes advantage of certain iPhone/iPad features, but in a way Apple considers too ‘close to the metal’ or too competitive with what they’re already offering in the operating system, Apple will reject this utility. Not because it’s ‘dangerous’ or ‘malware’, but because it interferes with their agenda in some way. And we should believe that Apple has the customer’s best interests at heart? Sideloading may open the doors to frauds, scams, and malware, but also to many potential great apps that are currently rejected for some bizarre App Store rule, technicality, or interference with Apple’s internal plans. And by the way, the current state of all App Stores is not really secure for customers either, since a plethora of scammy apps are discovered practically every day. As I wrote back in 2021:

[Back when the App Store was first introduced] Instead of teaching users how to fish, Apple decided to position themselves as sole purveyors of the best selection of fish. Now, leave aside for a moment all the tech-oriented observations you could make here. Just stop and think about how arrogant and patronising this attitude is. Sure, I can believe the genuine concerns of providing users with the smoothest experience and protecting them from badly-written apps (or just straight malware) that could compromise the stability of their devices. But by not taking a more moderate approach (it’s either we lock down the platform or we’ll have the cyber equivalent of the Wild West!), you also deprive users of choice and responsibility.

The problem of appointing yourself as the sole guardian and gatekeeper of the software that should or should not reach your users is that you’re expected to be infallible, and rightly so. Especially if you are a tech giant which supposedly has enough money and resources to do such a splendid job that is virtually indistinguishable from infallibility. Instead we know well just how many untrustworthy and scammy apps have been and are plaguing the App Store, and how inconsistent and unpredictable the App Review process generally is.

The EU is not the enemy

It’s worrying to me that Prosser and so many technophiles (especially from the US) prefer to side with Apple and Big Tech and frame this whole matter as government/legislation versus tech companies/innovation — the typical us-versus-them mentality — as if these were two irreconcilable entities. In a world where tech companies are dictating and controlling (directly or indirectly) so many aspects of our lives, seeing a governmental body and legislation — whose purpose is to really care about people’s best interests — as the enemy is just misguided. According to many of these nerds, tech companies should be given free rein to do whatever they please, because otherwise innovation would not happen; and we should give them free rein also because they said they want what’s best for their customers and we of course must believe this narrative, because tech companies are typically sincere and altruistic in their pursuits. Shareholders, fiscal quarter results, money and capitalism are just minor, tertiary factors we shouldn’t really look too much into — Right?

You know what’s gross and fucked up, Prosser? Siding with Big Tech today, instead of understanding that maybe a bit of legislation and compliance is necessary to protect customers from being treated like sheep with wallets, or reduced as products.

The typical retort, If they don’t like the status quo, customers can vote with their wallet, is just ridiculous and out of touch with many realities. Platform lock-in is a serious issue, and many people can’t just buy an Android phone or a Linux laptop on a whim or in protest. Sometimes migrating platforms involves many months or even years of transition, especially if your business has always gravitated around Apple solutions. Sometimes you can’t even migrate to a platform while leaving the other entirely behind, because your clients need compatible, cross-platform solutions. And on a personal level, like with the feedback email I quoted before, what keeps you locked into a platform is peer pressure, or the increased friction you would experience by switching. Mind you, increased friction that is artificially created by tech companies to keep you locked in. Friction that tech companies, if they truly wanted to enhance people’s lives, would remove and let people decide what they want by really offering them incredibly good-quality products. Healthy competition and all that, you see.

Because if you think about it, one quite detrimental side effect of a locked-down ecosystem is that you as a company (especially if you’re in Apple’s position) are not exactly incentivised to provide quality software. Apple still makes good hardware, but when software is concerned, the ‘good quality’ is essentially a myth today. The quality here is mostly tied to Apple’s reputation and legacy, but its software has been on a downward spiral since Jobs passed away. With so many locked-in customers, you can get away with so many things, such as the appalling quality and reliability of iCloud services, which is incredibly baffling considering the resources of a trillion-dollar company and the fact that by now iCloud has been around for twelve years. Same with Siri, another 12-year-old fiasco. And some people complain, but due to the intricacies of switching to third-party solutions, or even migrating entirely, they remain within Apple’s ecosystem, so customer retention is really not something Apple is terribly worried about.

So, since people don’t really have enough power to make tech companies behave in a more customer-friendly way, it’s entirely natural that the government step in to act as a sort of mediator. I don’t know if it’s because I’m European and have a different mindset from an American citizen, but I welcome this attempt by the EU Commission to legislate and provide a set of rules Big Tech should abide by, and nowadays I prefer this over a scenario where Big Tech can control and manipulate our lives without any kind of supervision.

You could cynically point out that both Apple and the EU Commission are pushing their own agendas using the ‘customer’s best interests’ as a pretext. But the difference between a big tech company that uses customer friendliness and acting in the customers’ best interests as essentially marketing ploys, and a governmental body drawing legislation that should be more protective of customers’ rights, is that the latter necessarily involves accountability. Laws and regulations are codified and written down. They aren’t blurbs on a website you can retroactively change or delete if the wind turns a certain way. How much accountability has Apple had for all the troubles and headaches they created with the MacBook’s butterfly keyboards? Is that pro-customers? The way they’ve handled the whole ‘right to repair’ matter, does that look pro-customers to you? A governmental body wanting to create some legislative framework and regulations Big Tech must comply with in order to operate within a specific territory (not in the whole world), is that really the enemy here?

Innovation, schminnovation

Don’t even get me started with the argument that the European Digital Markets Act is stifling innovation. Eleven goddamn years with the Lightning connector — is that innovation? Persisting with an aging, proprietary solution even when every other port in every other Apple device is standard? What’s innovative or even remotely user-friendly here?

And opening up Apple’s ecosystem and allowing the sideloading of any kind of compatible app isn’t exactly stifling innovation, either. Quite the opposite, because when people can install whatever software they like on your devices, you are absolutely incentivised to innovate. Firstly because, if you really have at heart your customers’ best interests, you ought to start taking security and privacy even more seriously. Secondly because, when your customers aren’t pushed to use your first-party solutions, you want to keep reeling them in by providing (but for real this time) the best software, services, and solutions you can come up with. You can’t afford to rest on your laurels.

A walled-garden structure hinders innovation in a more profound way than having an open structure or an environment where competitors are allowed to participate. In a closed ecosystem, only Apple has the final word on what you, the customer, may use or not use. Any innovation here either comes from Apple or from whatever third-party solution Apple allows you to use. And so many fanboys and techies are okay with that, mind-bogglingly. Because ApPlE kNoWs BeSt. And let me tell you, as an Apple user since 1989: Apple used to know best; they really knew best for a period of time. An era when the company was much more genuine in their intents and purposes, an era when their main goal was really to put technology, innovation, and customers first (how much they cared for the final user was intrinsic to, and apparent in, the very way the operating system’s UI was designed); by doing that, the money and the revenue just came as a natural consequence.

The passion was palpable. Even in the most delicate phase in Apple’s history, when they acquired NeXT and Jobs returned at the helm, and Apple’s future was entirely uncertain, Jobs didn’t approach the situation by thinking, In what way can we make money and save our arses? — Had he thought that, Apple would have probably released a computer or device completely in line with what people wanted or expected in 1998. Instead we got the iMac, which was an utter left-field move whose success was far from guaranteed. It was a different, unexpected product, getting rid of almost all legacy connections seen in previous Macs, getting rid of the floppy drive in a tech landscape where that was still a widely used medium. But it also made a lot of stuff easier, and made personal computing a more pleasant affair overall. The Think Different marketing campaign was also stellar, and it certainly helped with the sales. But in the end, the iMac’s success rewarded Apple’s innovation and courage (yeah, that was courage).

Opening up Apple’s ecosystem is not making a disservice to the customers; and is not really an obstacle to innovation. It’s reducing Apple’s immense control over their ecosystem and over their customers. And look, Apple isn’t the only entity classified as gatekeeper in this scenario — there are other five big-tech companies, too. The issue isn’t, Should a governmental body decide how a company shapes the ecosystems the company itself created? — The issue is more like, Should Apple (and Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft) have this level of control over people’s personal lives and livelihoods, and society at large? With little to no accountability, at that?

And by the way, if you like using Apple products and ecosystems as they are, the provisions of the DMA won’t really change your experience. You can keep using the App Store as Apple intended and never install any kind of extraneous software on your iPhone or iPad. And Apple’s compliance with the DMA is only expected in the EU territories. It’s up to the company to decide whether it’s worth complying and keeping the presence on the European market. The burden is entirely on Apple’s shoulders here, and their protests over the supposed threat to innovation the DMA poses really sound like the crocodile tears of someone playing the victim. If your attitude is to defend Apple, rather than your rights as a customer, I’m sorry to say this but you’re a fool.

The real end of Apple

There’s this interesting passage in the Steve Jobs Lost Interview with Robert X. Cringely (1995). In discussing Xerox’s failure, Jobs says:

Oh, I actually thought a lot about that. And I learned more about that with John Sculley later on, and I think I understand it now pretty well. What happens is, like with John Sculley… John came from PepsiCo, and they, at most, would change their product once every 10 years. To them, a new product was, like, a new-size bottle, right? So if you were a product person, you couldn’t change the course of that company very much. So who influenced the success of PepsiCo? The sales and marketing people. Therefore they were the ones that got promoted, and therefore they were the ones that ran the company. Well, for PepsiCo that might have been okay. But it turns out, the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies. Like, oh, IBM and Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox… So you make a better copier or a better computer. So what? When you have a monopoly market share, the company is not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision-making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers. So that’s what happened at Xerox.

Apple, as it is and as it operates today, is gradually becoming like this. The process is subtler, of course, and perhaps not entirely irreversible. But if and when comes a point where you can exactly identify Apple in these words from 28 years ago, then you’ll have the real end of Apple, and the final disintegration of its DNA.