Apple Pulls Back the Curtain for One Company
Apple is famous, or infamous, for not working well with others. It would rather make its own digital music player than let iTunes play on a different device. Ping doesn't connect to Facebook. Flash won't play on iPads. — That just changed.
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's wall has been the story all year: the Flash feud that the iPad magnified and June's "evil/genius" plan to punk the Web both framed a company that would rather rebuild a technology than let a rival's run on its devices. Even the Facebook relationship was defined by friction — a 2009 report confirming Apple had NOT banned Facebook was itself newsworthy precisely because everyone assumed the worst.
First-order effects
- Facebook becomes the single outside company granted access to Apple's ecosystem, ending the isolation that left Ping cut off from Facebook's social graph.
- The reversal hands Facebook distribution inside iTunes' audience overnight — reach it could not buy elsewhere in Apple's walled garden.
Second-order effects
- Other web services locked out by the same logic — Flash being the loudest case — now have a precedent to point to when pressing Apple for equal treatment.
- Selective openness makes Apple's gatekeeping explicit: access is no longer a default or an impossibility but a decision Apple alone makes, which shifts bargaining power over every would-be partner.
Third-order effects
- If partnership-by-exception becomes the pattern, interoperability turns into strategic currency — platforms grant connections selectively to reinforce, not dilute, their moats.
The trend: Platform owners are shifting from blanket closure to selective interoperability, using controlled openings as leverage rather than concession.