[ImPostingOnHN]

> Apple have been running their little fiefdom mostly unchanged for almost fifteen years and it's only in the past few years that the EU has chosen to intervene in their marketplace

You literally just described Apple "starting it". They took the initial action (~15 years ago, by your words), starting it, and the other parties reacted, after that action.

[simondotau]

I’m sorry, what fight did Apple start with the EU fifteen years ago? You do know what a fight is, right?

[ImPostingOnHN]

They started engaging in the sort of anticompetitive behavior that the EU laws in question were written to discourage or forbid, as you yourself noted when you pointed out that apple's actions took place before said legislative reactions. Here's the quote from you:

> Apple have been running their little fiefdom mostly unchanged for almost fifteen years

Apple could have started out being more consumer friendly from the beginning, and it wouldn't have been starting a fight with consumers. But they didn't, and now they're reaping the consequences.

[simondotau]

That's a wholly different claim than the one I disagreed with. Be careful with your language.

Opposing a powerful entity's behaviour is not an excuse for sloppy language or misleading hyperbole. In fact it's especially important to avoid it because the powerful entity only needs to re-frame the criticism around that hyperbole and then proceed to factually disprove it.

Regardless, your new framing is still a ridiculous claim. To suggest that Apple was being "anti-competitive" in 2009 is self-evidently absurd — because their marketplace was simply too small to matter with respect to any competition regulation. They grew their marketplace under the supposedly "unfair" rules which means that the rules cannot be framed as an antitrust violation. This is arguably the most significant point of fact which lost Epic their case against Apple.

If you disagree, then you need explain why every two-bit little nobody who creates any kind of marketplace of any size shouldn't be required to follow strict market fairness rules. Under that logic, Tide could force your local chicken shop to sell Tide products, because they should be entitled to fair access to that chicken marketplace.

[ImPostingOnHN]

It's self evident that apple was engaging in anticompetitive behavior first, because you yourself said they've been operating unchanged for ~15 years, and they're getting in trouble for it now. The obvious conclusion to draw here is that their behavior was always bad.

Indeed, your entire argument relies on some rule about anticompetitive behavior apparently invented just now, something to do with market size? Maybe if we were talking about monopolies, that would be relevant. But a business of 1 user can engage in anticompetitive behavior by locking the user into their ecosystem, or restricting what they can do with their property when it involves competitors.

Apple should have made better choices, earlier: They're engaging in anticompetitive behavior now, so if you claim that they're unchanged, that means they were engaging in anticompetitive behavior before, too. Your framing and claims to the contrary, then, we see are patently ridiculous.