Apple is very quickly driving toward an inflection point, and it feels like they're asleep at the wheel; either unaware of what this is going to do to their App Store business, or so full of themselves that they don't care.

One can argue that decisions like this are driven by valuation, revenue, and stock price; but I don't think so. If I were a major Apple shareholder, I'd be majorly concerned. From every possible angle, Apple is shooting themselves in the foot by crossing their arms and saying "no, we won't work with you, you work with us." Its unsustainable; developers can be pushed, even quite far, but eventually they will snap back, and Apple can't afford to acquire all of them before they do.

Apple, and the iOS platform, physically cannot sustain the combined push-back from all the areas they're experiencing it; from revenue cut, to alternate payment processors, to the game streaming ban, to gagging developers from telling their customers why they have to do what they do, to their stance on naked humans, to their app tracking transparency changes... these are all stances you can take when you've got a few million customers, but they're the sole source of executable code for a billion devices around the planet.

Its absolutely and totally unacceptable and untenable at this point. Ethically, sure. Legally, very likely. Even economically! Apple's short-sighted App Store policies are primed to substantially hurt that part of their business, and that pain will echo throughout their tight ecosystem. If I can't play Xbox Game Streaming or Fortnite, maybe I don't buy an iPhone. If I don't buy an iPhone, I definitely don't buy an Apple Watch, nor likely a Mac either. I may pay for Apple TV+, but certainly not Apple Music, or Fitness, or iCloud Drive.

Why are their shareholders putting up with this? It baffles me. History has demonstrated one thing, with the clarity of polished glass: We do better when we work together. Countries who isolate their economies inevitably falter. Markets which isolate perform worse. Open source projects gain more traction than similar proprietary ones. Working together, with each other, is always the way forward; its better ethically, morally, legally, and economically. But Apple refuses to work with anyone else.

They're choosing to fight wars on ten different fronts. No one forced them to. Tim Cook has adopted the likeness of Ghengis Khan, trying to secure Apple's legacy for the next century by forcing anyone who Thinks Differently to instead think like Apple, or be destroyed. It won't work, and Apple will be irrevocably hurt in the process.

The government needs to get involved. Not only to protect consumers; but to protect an otherwise strong, amazing American business. They're destroying themselves for no reason. I don't want to live in this reality Apple has plotted for the world, but I also don't want Apple to return to their status of the late 90s; there's a middleground where they remain a force for legitimate good in the domains of privacy, security, and ease-of-use. I miss that Apple, and I'm fearful that Tim Cook's legacy won't be the highly successful Apple of the 2010s, but instead what happens to them in the 2020s: a growing list of companies who refuse to do business with them, sophisticated customers leaving by the handful, and overblown government intervention.

It could be different, Tim. But not like this.