Apple is getting ready to extend its apps platform into Spatial Computing with Apple Vision Pro and at the same time to create a more socially-connected FaceTime experience. However, the company is facing two apparent competitive threats that also represent two opposite extremes of influence. The first threat relates to Artificial Intelligence, and the second to Apple’s App Store. They might not seem related, but as media narratives that seem to be. Both threat comes from the same kind of thinkers who a while back imagined Apple would be out of business because it wasn’t investing all of its resources into Voice First smart microphones and folding displays. They also insisted that world governments should force the company to manufacture replaceable battery packs, license Adobe Flash on its mobiles, adopt mini-USB, and provide free tech support for counterfeit components. These are all examples of tech media populism, which imagine that vast and expensive infrastructures should be built to solve problems at somebody else’s expense. In the tech industry, this kind of shallow-thought populism has regularly predicted the death of Apple for not voluntarily doing what they demand, while also predicting horrible consequences if Apple is not forced to do what they want by big governments. The first threat pertains to a larger array of competitors all touting generative AI tools that Apple doesn’t have. All of the big tech companies have jumped on the bandwagon of touting Large Language Models that can freshly generate anything from text to photorealistic images to computer code. Apple has yet to badge its logo on an LLM the way almost everyone else already has. On the other hand, Apple is being portrayed as an evil and conniving monopolist exercising oppressive control over its App Stores for iPhones, iPads and the upcoming Apple Vision Pro. Just like a lot of other problems that don’t exist, politicians are racing to offer “solutions” to Apple’s creation of the safest, most productive, and largest level playing field platform to ever exist in the history of computing. The only jurisdiction where they’ve really made progress in in the EU, which has written a law, the Digital Markets Act, that specifically seeks to isolate Spotify from paying for its use of Apple’s platform. The fact that virtually all of these app markets are terrible in comparison to Apple’s isn’t a problem for governments to solve. Instead, it’s evidence that Apple’s approach to building a functional marketplace that takes notice of the interests of both developers and customers was a great investment for the company and good for society in general. Microsoft created an app system for Windows patterned after the App Store, and also attempted to launch a mobile software store for its ill fated Windows Phone platform. A major contributing factor to the demise of Windows Phone was that its app platform wasn’t very good. Microsoft struggled to attract enough developers to build and maintain sufficient apps for its mobile devices, highlighting how critically important is is for a device maker to devote enough attention to keep their app platform attractive, functional, diverse, and complete in its offerings. The tech media often likes to describe Apple’s success with the App Store using pejorative terms ranging from “Walled Garden” to “sticky ecosystem.” Apple has delivered free but regulated markets that cater to individual demand rather than power centers of administrative right or the idealistic left. Apple has become the epitome of American strength through diversity, and the results are so desirable that everyone everywhere is trying to copy the company.
