Three Things That Should Trouble Apple
I believe that many Apple observers have been too invested in picking off the low hanging fruit of obviously out-of-touch commentators, columnists, and analysts. Apple is winning. It's fun to pick on the idiots, and we do tune in for the affirmation that engenders, but that's not insight.
Context & Ripple Effects
The piece lands mid-spiral in a five-year-old argument about whether Apple's control instincts are a feature or a liability: coverage going back to 2007 asked why customers care so much (why Apple customers care so much) and flagged an unwinnable iPhone war alongside a reputation at risk, while a 2009 Times piece (Apple Wouldn't Risk Its Cool Over a Gimmick, Would It?) pressed the same cool-versus-control tension. Kickingbear's complaint is that the commentariat spends its energy dunking on out-of-touch analysts instead of the things actually worth worrying about.
What makes that framing timely is the cluster of confirmed developments around the same date: Apple publicly accuses the US Department of Justice of siding with monopoly over competition in the e-books fight, takes credit for breaking Amazon's near-total grip on that market, removes Airfoil Speakers Touch from the iOS App Store, settles its patent dispute with SimpleAir out of court for an undisclosed sum, and rolls out 'editors' choice' and a free 'app of the week' on the Mac App Store and iTunes — starting with promoting the contact manager Cobook. A rumored Nest Learning Thermostat listing via iLounge and a reported analyst thesis about Apple taking over TV round out the noise.
First-order effects
- Apple is fighting on two legal fronts at once — accusing the Justice Department of backing monopoly in the e-books case while paying an undisclosed settlement to SimpleAir over patent claims — and each removal like Airfoil Speakers Touch's costs goodwill with the independent developers who built the App Stores.
- The new editors' choice and free app-of-the-week slots hand Apple direct merchandising power over which third-party apps get discovered, with Cobook as the first beneficiary.
Second-order effects
- Publishers and Amazon both face a contested e-books market: Apple claims credit for cracking Amazon's dominance even as the DOJ challenge puts the agency-pricing structure that enabled it under legal threat.
- Developers watching Airfoil Speakers Touch disappear must price platform risk into iOS builds, while rivals' stores gain a talking point about predictable review rules.
Third-order effects
- If removals, patent settlements, and antitrust fights keep clustering around the same storefronts, the gatekeeping layer itself — not any single device — becomes the structural battleground for consumer software distribution.
- Apple's own argument that breaking Amazon's lock-in was pro-competitive sets up a durable tension: the same control it defends as good for markets is what regulators and developers increasingly litigate.
The trend: Consumer-platform gatekeepers are accumulating enough curation and pricing power that their storefront decisions, not just their products, are becoming the recurring site of legal and developer-trust disputes.