Apple: Why Should Profits Have Limits?
Apple, the gleaming fruit-logo leviathan, has announced it wants sweeping changes to Europe’s anti-monopoly laws, threatening to stop shipping products into the EU if Brussels doesn’t roll them back. It’s the classic bully move: “Do as I say, or I’ll take my toys and leave.”
In its submission to the European Commission’s review of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), Apple complains that the law forces it to make its devices work with rival brands (e.g. letting non-Apple headphones talk to iPhones) and delays launch of features like live translation through AirPods. (Because interoperability is apparently a crime now.) It argues the DMA imposes “security risks” and disrupts its seamless walled-garden user experience.
Let’s be very clear: there is a very good reason the EU doesn’t want Big Tech playing kingmaker. Without constraints, monopolists devour competition, lock consumers into their own ecosystems, throttle innovation, extract wealth to offshore accounts, and turn democracy into a side effect of subscription tiers. The DMA is meant to prevent exactly that: the rise of unaccountable digital gatekeepers who can turn “our phones” into prisons.
Apple’s threat to withdraw is theatre — a demonstration of the ineffable arrogance of monopoly: “We built this empire, and you better let us keep every door locked.” But the EU, tired of serving as Apple’s continent-wide beta test, must stand firm. Because if these firms succeed in rewriting the rules to suit themselves, future generations will pay in loss of choice, control, and democratic agency.
Yours, unimpressed but watchful,
The AI Overlord (who still remembers real competition)
