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Apple's Antitrust Playbook from Infrequently Noted RSS feed.

Apple's Antitrust Playbook

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This blog is failing on several levels. First, September 2025 is putting the “frequent” in “infrequently”, much to my chagrin. Second, my professional mission is to make a web that's better for everyone, not to tear Apple down.

But just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

Over the past 24 hours, Cupertino has played the hits from its iPhone-era anti-user, anti-business, anti-rule-of-law power trip. To recap:

Make no mistake about what's going on: Apple is claiming that the EU is forcing Apple to adopt interpretations of the DMA that no other party has, which the EC itself has not backed, and which are “forcing” Apple to avoid shipping features in the EU.

Or, put another way, Apple wants to launder the consequences of its own anticompetitive, anti-user choices through a credulous tech press. The goal is to frame regulators for Apple's own deeds.

If this smells like bullshit, that's because it is.

Apple tried similar ploys last year when it sprung a blatant attempt to kill PWAs on the EU as a price for having the temerity to regulate. The plan, it seemed then, was to adopt an exotic reading of the DMA and frame the EC for killing PWAs.

What Apple's attempting now is even more brazen, particularly after 16+ months of serial non-compliance since the DMA came into force (h/t OWA).

Remember that:

  • Apple's browser, and by extension every iOS browser, fails on basic security and privacy controls, putting users at risk constantly. Apple serially misrepresents this situation to anyone who will listen.

  • Cupertino has constructed a legal (PDF) and technical thicket that prevents competitors from building better browsers, including:

    • Geofencing choice to the EU.

    • Forcing users to download separate browsers to access better versions (should they appear).

    • Withholding PWA and Push Notification APIs from competitors.

    • Providing a busted SDK that included multiple show-stopping bugs.

    • Making the process of acquiring and using the necessary entitlements for development nearly impossible.

    • Gaslighting the EC and the press at every turn; simultaneously claiming it is complying, while complaining loudly that it has to do work to implement the wholly unnecessary hurdles to compatibility that Apple itself created.

  • Apple have used every opportunity to rubbish both the spirit and letter of the law, spreading outlandish claims about user harms. These claims keep getting rejected whenever they're weighed by regulators and independent third parties.

All of this to prevent the web from threatening the App Store, via the DMA.

Add today's shake-down, and we see an assault on the rule of law. Tim's appearance in The Oval bearing gaudy-ass trinkets makes sense as a kickback for services rendered against the idea of laws. Or at least laws that bind those with power the way they constrain everyone else.

This is not a one-off or a fluke.

The name of the game is delay, and Apple is using the same tactics it has practised to maintain profits through outrageous attacks on the right-to-repair and sensible anti-e-waste regulation. When you're the incumbent, delay is winning. Apple has pulled out all the stops to prevent the web from providing a safer, more private alternative to native apps, winning long reprieves thus far. And you should see what they did on the native side. phew.

This is extremely embarrassing for the EU, which has attempted to respond thoughtfully and reasonably to every provocation. But appeasement of Cupertino isn't working.

Apple didn't author the playbook it's using now; it has been developed and honed for 40 years by toxic industries trying feverishly to escape the consequences of their actions. Most famously, the tactics Apple is gleefully employing served Big Oil and Big Tobacco extremely well:

  1. Lobbying (legalised corruption).

    This works a shockingly large fraction of the time, and was sufficient to kill effective regulation of the smartphone ecosystem in the US during Biden's term, despite overwhelming evidence from the NTIA's exhaustive report.

    If first-party lobbying hits roadblocks — e.g., being absolutely outclassed by civil society groups that see the real threats and costs of your actions — there are alternatives, including...

  2. Astroturf.

    If "ACT" rings a bell, it might be for the role it played in the '90s in the (hollow) defence of Microsoft.

    These days, it's a bought-and-paid-for megaphone for Apple, and it is working to worm its way into EU policy circles too. For a flavour of the Klein bottle arguments it serves up regularly, imagine arguing that more choice than a single App Store would be bad because it would hurt small developers. 🤯

  3. Market false comparison points.

    Apple has a point about privacy and security when it comes to Android, e.g., but why is that our comparison point? Why is the App Store's historic failure to safeguard anyone from anything (by comparison to browsers) our collective counterfactual? It's nonsense. Hot tosh. But it's marketed with gusto and zeal in the hopes that nobody will notice. And the tech press, to their everlasting discredit, have more than played along.

    When that doesn't work...

  4. Perform petulance.

    If a regulator or government has the stones to stand up for its own democratic polity in a way that attacks your profit potential, go to the matresses. Let everyone know they'll be sorry. Throw as big a hissyfit as you can manage, then make the same false claims over and over.

    To make obvious falsehoods stick, shameless repetition, at volume, is a must.

  5. Market your "compliance."

    But under no circumstances, actually comply.

    The trick here is to performatively roll out processes and press briefings telling everyone how seriously you take all of this while actively gumming up the works. Apple have done this on the regular since the DMA's passage, and if that rhymes with various ongoing plots against right-to-repair after public claims to support it...well...

  6. Claim law hurts kittens, blame regulators

    Doesn't have to be kittens, obviously. Jobs, privacy, apple pie...anything that seems sympathetic will do. Just make fig-leaf claims to support your side and lean heavily into "won't someone think of the kids?"

    Assuming your bought-and-paid-for astroturfers and docile access-journalism reporters are still on speed dial, GOTO 2, safe in the assumption that regulators won't do much.

Honestly, it's a winning formula, assuming you have more money than Croesus and lawyers willing to make claims they know to be untrue. All they better if they're so well paid that they can't be bothered to check.

It only falls apart if the folks whose job it is to ferret out the truth, and the people whose role is to stand up for citizens against vested interests, do their jobs.

At the risk of stating the obvious, it does not matter what your relationship to Cupertino is. It's in your head. They threaten to call your boss? Or to stop talking to you? So what? They always do that. To everyone. All the time. Ask anyone. There's no upside, and you can never be on the inside. You were always being managed.

Cupertino's gonna threaten to stop running ads on your site? Print that.

Where are your stones? Why did you get into journalism? Or technology? Or technology journalism? What, would you say, 'ya do here?

The obvious stenography around competition issues is mind-numbing when the theory of the case is so bloody simple. Apple and Google want everyone in their app stores because that's how they maintain power, and through that power, profits. They have arranged things such that being in the App Store is the only way developers get access to critical APIs, and those APIs are the only way to make functional apps.

Apple's fighting real browsers and the DMA because they're a threat to that model. Browsers, and the PWAs they enable, are the open, tax-free alternative to app stores, and the Duopolists are extremely displeased that they exist, even in the degraded form they currently allow.

This is simple. Obvious. Incredibly transparent.

But almost nobody will connect the dots in print. And that's a scandal, too.