If there were any doubt that Merrick Garland is a mediocre hack with banana pudding between his ears, I don’t know why, given the desultory reluctance to do anything about the events of the January 6 attack on Congress. But the announcement of an antitrust suit against Apple yesterday should have dispelled any questions.
There are plainly things that Apple could be dinged for. Mostly because they already have, by an EU determined to take a chunk out of the hide of American tech companies. And the things they have been dinged for are illuminating, as are the things they haven’t. The EU didn’t view Messages as an issue, because unlike the US with its fixation on “green bubbles”, literally everyone in Europe is on WhatsApp – which is in the App Store. They said nothing about “super apps”, because WhatsApp is a product of China’s authoritarian marketplace and nothing anyone in Europe uses any more than they do in the United States. They did say a lot about the App Store – and Apple is already deploying the framework for additional App Store options to be run by third parties. Whether that works has yet to be seen, but it’s in progress.
The problem with the DOJ suit is that it seems to have been whipped up three years ago by someone without any experience of tech, and not touched since. “Green bubbles,” about which some people are entirely too much in their feelings, are a product of carriers sticking with SMS and MMS to the point Apple felt the need to build their own superior solution (as did Facebook, twice, and as did Google, more times than anyone can remember, and as did Signal, which is the one you should be using). Things like the Amazon Fire Phone failed not because of anything Apple did, but because it was shit on toast.
In the macOS settings, you have three options for apps: install from the App Store only, install only from the App Store or from verified developers, or install anything from anyone. Option one is what the iPhone has now, option two is what Apple is moving to for iOS in Europe, and option three – which is not the default in Android at all, for what it’s worth – is asking for Ed Earl Brown to fling down his phone with the same disgust as his virus-riddled HP Pavilion running WinXP. I suspect that implementation of something similar in iOS – choose from these three levels of security and buy the ticket, take the ride – is probably inevitable and will disembowel a huge chunk of this case, as will the RCS implementation in iOS 18.
It seems like most of the DOJ’s case is based on vibes, like suing Apple because they should have built Messages for Android or because super apps should be a thing or because CarPlay shouldn’t be superior to the typical car infotainment system. It’s a piss poor case, honestly, but that means nothing with the right forum-shopping and a good jury draw. But the real dagger is that this case seems to revolve far more around the harm to Spotify or to Epic than any harm to the end-user, and the fact that this is rhetorical flagship case – rather than going after Google or Facebook – uncomfortably suggests that Puddin’head Garland is far more worried about the well being of companies than people. Which makes it just as well he didn’t wind up on the Supreme Court, really. Shame Doug Jones couldn’t also have wound up at the DOJ instead.