By Dan Moren
June 28, 2024 12:10 PM PT
The Back Page: EU, gross
Hi team,
You might have heard recently about some challenges we’ve been having when it comes to regulation. It’s been alleged that Apple is anticompetitive, that we use our power and position in the market in order to dictate terms. That we are “gatekeepers” preventing a free flow of commerce and innovation. But nothing could be further from the truth: Apple is and always has been committed to building the best products that we can and competing on the merits. Keep gates? We’re firmly anti-gate! People just keep foisting them on us.
Frankly, it’s insulting to suggest that we, the company behind the competitive and democratic engine that is the App Store, would do anything that discourages a free and open market. Apple fully complies with all laws and regulations in local jurisdictions—just look at China, for example. Do you think we want to be in business with a repressive regime that directly contradicts so many of the values we claim to espouse? No. But we would never dream of depriving the Chinese people of owning our products and also we would basically not be able to manufacture iPhones.
But Europe?! Come on, it’s not even a real country. I mean, there’s a reason you need two modifier keys to type a Euro symbol. That’s where we stick stuff nobody uses, like ligatures. Even £ just needs one. The dollar? Printed right there on the 4.
Who is this commissioner for competition to be lecturing us on competition, anyway? That makes about as much sense as having a hundred centimeters to a meter. Apple is a profit-seeking, capitalist-as-apple-pie corporation, and if that means throttling every last dime out of our customers in our attempt to make the world a better place that you will enjoy living in, then so help us god, we will do it. I mean, have you seen what we charge for iPhone cases?
They want to fine us? They want to fine us? Go ahead: last time a country all the way across the ocean tried something like this, we dumped a bunch of tea in the harbor and then nobody in the United States ever drank tea ever again. Seriously, try ordering it in a restaurant and watching the server freeze like a deer in the high beams.
Look, Apple’s not going down without a fight. If that means depriving some users of the latest and greatest technology, so be it. Let’s start with our most exciting new feature: Apple Intelligence. None of that for you, EU. Your Apple products will be dumb as rocks and we’ll see how all the people in Europe like it! And, yes, we may have just started shipping the Apple Vision Pro in France and Germany, but frankly, that’s not because we want to, just because we really need to sell more Vision Pros in order to make sure the platform survives, so please go spend the equivalent of $4200 to get one.
So, what are we going to do? Well, people have been saying we should pull out of Europe. But where’s the sense in that? We’re not the problem; they are. So we’re not going to pull out of Europe—we’re going to pull Europe out. They say that Americans aren’t good at geography, but I’m pretty sure this empty space in Apple Maps is where Europe used to be. Go ahead and try and fine us now—lalalalala, we can’t hear you when you don’t even exist. Next time you want to issue us with a fine, you can stick it in whatever’s European for “where the sun don’t shine.” Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have some apps to not notarize.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]