The Apple Corporation has grown from humble beginnings and Steve Jobs garage to a multi trillion dollar international company. And one of the primary reasons for this is the ecosystem that Apple built. The Waldgarten, as people often call it, is really a fitting name because consumers often think that Apple products are going to give them the best user experience compared to the competition. But it's also going to be a much more restricted locked down experience. You see, Apple products tend to only work great with other Apple products. If you want to download apps to your phone, then you're going to have to go through Apple's App Store and only download apps that they approve. If you want to text back and forth with your friends, well, they better be using an iPhone as well. Otherwise, their messages are going to arrive in a gross green bubble and all of their video attachments are going to look like they were filmed on a potato. If you've got an Apple watch, an iPad, or a MacBook, then prepare to lose a lot of functionality from those devices if you ever switch to an Android phone. Now, in recent years, the biggest obstacle to Apple's Waldgarten has been governments, specifically the EU government. Apple's proprietary charging port, their lock down app store, and their purposefully difficult to repair phones, are all violations of EU law and non-compliant devices are going to be banned from the European market in the coming years. So, Apple's response to these regulations has been to create a slightly more open version of their devices for the EU market. They'll let you install apps from other app stores and they'll give you a little bit more control over your device as long as you remain in the EU's borders. But if you leave the country for a holiday that lasts 30 days or more, then you're going to get bumped down to the peasant class experience. The Waldgarten just got a little bit higher. Now, the EU hasn't been alone in trying to regulate Apple, India, and Brazil's governments have also passed laws over the years to put a few dents in the Waldgarten. But the United States government, who would by far have the most influence over Apple, has mostly just been turning a blind eye to their lock down ecosystem until now. Last week, the United States Department of Justice filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Apple and the complaint perfectly articulates the issue. For many years, Apple has built a dominant iPhone platform and ecosystem that has driven the company's astronomical valuation. At the same time, it has long understood that disruptive technologies and innovative apps, products, and services threaten that dominance by making users less reliant on the iPhone or making it easier to switch to a non-Apple smartphone. Rather than respond to competitive threats by offering lower smartphone prices to consumers or better monetization for developers, Apple would meet competitive threats by imposing a series of shape-shifting rules and restrictions in its App Store guidelines and developer agreements that would allow Apple to extract higher fees, Thwart Innovation, offer a less secure or degraded user experience, and throttle competitive alternatives. It has deployed this playbook across many technologies, products, and services, including super apps, text messaging, smartwatches, and digital wallets, among many others. Apple products used to be more innovative, and that's part of what seemed to drive their success in the beginning. I mean, of course, the main innovation was always better marketing, but modern Apple devices have gotten so much worse in comparison to the competition. And the main thing that's keeping them in business at this point is the cult of Apple. It's the fear of sunk costs. People know that if they switch to an Android phone, it's not going to work as good with their MacBook or their iPad. People know that if they text someone and their message shows up in a green bubble, then there's a chance that they're going to get bullied or rejected by a woman. That's literally what the whole green bubble Android meme is based around. Oh, this person's poor because they don't spend twice as much money on every device so that they can work seamlessly with one another. Apple's cash cow over the past few decades has been creating problems so that they can sell you an over-price solution. Now, the case that's being made against Apple here is very similar to the anti-trust case that was brought against Microsoft back in 2001. Back then, Microsoft Windows had a market share of 80% or more amongst consumer desktop users, but their web browser, Internet Explorer, this is long before Edge, was not nearly as popular. So Microsoft started bundling the two together and all of a sudden, Internet Explorer became the dominant browser simply because it was the default one that was packaged with the most popular OS. Microsoft was initially found guilty in the anti-trust case and they were ordered to break up the company into one that developed the operating system and another one that developed all the rest of their software. And that decision would have probably stuck if the judge that made the decision in the case didn't show clear and obvious bias against Microsoft in interviews with the media, which caused the judgment to be reduced in appeals court to Microsoft just opening up their API a bit more for developers. In my opinion, Apple's conduct here is much more anti-competitive than Microsoft's was like the browser monopoly argument against Microsoft always sounded really weak to me because nothing really prevented you from using a different browser on Windows unless maybe you just had a really, really small hard drive and you couldn't install a new browser without removing Internet Explorer first, which of course Microsoft prevented you from doing for a really long time until I think another EU regulation allowed you to uninstall i.e. and Edge and some of those other default apps. But anyway, with the app store on iPhones, you really don't have any choice to use in alternative like you had with browsers on Windows. If your favorite app gets removed from the app store, it's much more difficult to get that app onto your iPhone compared to any other platform. With iMessage, Apple purposefully reduces the quality of attachments that are coming from people with Android devices, they strip out the encryption and the red receipts for the messages, and they basically just leave you with an outdated, insecure messaging platform whenever you decide to communicate with someone who doesn't have an Apple device. Apple purposefully makes it more difficult to interact with your phone's file system compared to Android. They purposefully limit API access to app developers to stifle the use of super apps or third-party digital wallets on iPhones, and they purposefully limit the iPhone's cloud computing ability so that they can continue to force overpriced phones on people who don't need them. There's actually a quote from an Apple executive about this in the complaint saying, imagine buying a fucking Android for 25 bucks at a garage sale and it works fine. And you have a solid cloud computing device. Imagine how many cases like that there are. Yeah, imagine it. Well, we might not have to imagine it for much longer if the US takes the same approach as the EU and forces Apple to be great again. If you enjoyed this video, please like and share it to hack the algorithm and check out my website, base.when, where you can get accessories for your PC or smartphone and my awesome custom merch like the common-finding hoodie or the tie-dye tourty. 10% discounted checkout when paying in Monero XMR. Have a great rest of your day.