Mr. Cook, Tear Down That Walled Garden (Premium)

Apple’s antitrust woes in the US and Europe are being mischaracterized by its legions of ardent fans, and the misinformed who believe that Apple and other Big Tech firms should be allowed to continue their ongoing abuses of consumers, developers, competitors, and partners. But the truth is out there.

I’ve previously discussed how personal technology’s dominant platform makers—Apple, Google, and Microsoft—use anticompetitive business practices to maintain their monopolies, behavior that’s illegal in both the U.S. and EU. But Apple is unique among its peers in two ways: It actively works to thwart technology stacks like the web that threaten its App Store empire on mobile, and it incessantly and successfully markets its anticompetitive behavior as being good for consumers.

Consumer harm weighs heavily in any antitrust discussion, and it’s as central to any antitrust case as market definition. It’s also as misunderstood as the term monopoly, which many incorrectly believe is tied to some specific market share percentage. And that’s because dominant monopolists, like Apple today or Microsoft in the late 1990s, are so adept at a debate strategy that, while curiously effective, amounts to nothing more than misdirection. It’s a sleight of hand.

Consider the central debate of US v. Microsoft, that the software giant was so intent on destroying Netscape Navigator, because of the threat that an open web platform posed to Windows, that it artificially integrated its own web browser, Internet Explorer (IE), into the operating system. Evidence showed that this strategy was employed solely to harm Netscape: Microsoft’s internal emails couldn’t have been more damning. And from our 2024 viewpoint, we can identify this action as an early, almost prototypical, form of enshittification because Microsoft undermined the security and reliability of Windows, thus harming its own customers, to protect the profits it derived from its ecosystem from a new rival. But that is not how Microsoft marketed this work, which it described as integration that would provide its customers with a more seamless web experience.

I’ve made this argument before, and I’ll probably have to keep making it, given how unreceptive some are to basic facts. But there’s nothing mutually exclusive about Microsoft, in this case, making a product design decision that both helps and hurts customers. Microsoft, like any Big Tech company today, can be, and is, both good and bad. With IE, there were some customer advantages to the integration of Windows and IE. But there were also disadvantages. And, of course, illegal intent to subvert the market. The question for antitrust regulators, then as now, is to determine whether behavior is illegal. And then it is on the courts to hear the arguments and issue a legal ruling on that behavior.

Apple is employing the same rationale in its defense of its business practices today. This is smart for many reasons, but mostly because the consumer harm debate hinges on what seems like theoretical what-ifs. Who cares that Apple charges 30 and 15 percent fees, forces developers to use its billing systems, and doesn’t allow them to communicate with their own customers? Where’s the consumer harm? After all, Apple has sold hundreds of millions of iPhones to happy customers, and developers have sold (or given away) many billions of mobile apps. This seems like a healthy, thriving ecosystem. If anything, Apple is being magnanimous here. Who are we to question this brilliance?

Sigh.

As Apple’s antitrust issues in the US and EU lurch forward, there will be arguments made on both sides of this debate, some salient, some ridiculous. But a voice of reason has emerged to highlight not just theoretical harm, but literal harm and, as important, I think, literal intent. That voice, in the form of the not-for-profit organization Open Web Advocacy, is made up of industry players who are fighting for what they call the future of the open web, and their aim is simple: To give antitrust regulators the evidence they need to prove that Apple and other Big Tech firms are engaging in anticompetitive business practices that do harm consumers.

We all understand the notion of cause and effect. But in this case, what matters is intent, which is the cause, and then the effect of that intent. For example, when Microsoft subverted the default apps interface in Windows 11—an interface that was forced on it by antitrust regulators in the early 2000s, by the way—it’s important to understand why. So let’s step through the history.

The initial version of Windows 11 introduced a contortion of the default apps interface in which it was no longer possible to select an app and then configure it to be the default app for whatever file types and protocols it supported. Previously, this was a one-click operation: You could simply tell Windows to use the app you preferred for all the things it was compatible with. Windows 11 killed that functionality.

This wasn’t about preventing third-party text editors from easily replacing Notepad, though it did have that effect too. No, the intent here was to help Windows generate more income per user on an ongoing basis, and the only clear way to do that reliably was to ensure that users were pushed in front of Microsoft’s growing online services business, which includes consumer-facing websites, yes, but is really about that sweet, sweet advertising money. And so Windows 11 includes two other related non-innovations that Microsoft never promoted (for obvious reasons): a web browser called Microsoft Edge that could not be configured to not track users across Microsoft’s services ecosystem, a key component of the advertising model, and the disappearance of the “default browser” interface that was the impetus for default apps in the first place.

Customer outcry brought back a simple new default browser UI, and to outsiders that must have felt like a victory of sorts. But Microsoft undermined that supposed concession by simply ignoring your default browser choice. In Windows 11, certain actions—clicking an item in Search highlights or Widgets, for example—will always launch Microsoft Edge, and not the default browser you chose, because those items open Microsoft services online and put users in front of its trackers and advertising partners. This behavior has only expanded since then with the introduction of Copilot in Windows 11, a feature that appears to be part of the OS, a native app, but is in fact just an instance of Microsoft Edge. Copilot could be rendered by any web browser in Windows, but the intent there is obvious. And these behaviors are all now illegal in the EU, so users there have the unique ability to disable them, while those of us in the rest of the world do not.

Microsoft isn’t all that inventive: These ideas—ignoring user choice, forcing customers to use a web browser they explicitly bypassed, and using tracking and advertising as backend revenue generator—all came from mobile or, more specifically, Apple and Google. And here, I can almost feel sympathy for Microsoft, which was slapped down, not once but twice, by antitrust regulators at a time when it dominated an industry of fewer than one billion people, while Apple and Google today lord over much bigger markets while engaging in much worse abuses. If these companies could get away with it, why not Microsoft? After all, Windows may have dominated the PC-centric world of the late 1990s and early 2000s, but it’s a distant third behind Apple and Google’s dominant mobile platforms today.

But Apple, as noted, is unique in this world. Apple does things that even Google and Microsoft wouldn’t attempt. As a result, its abuses are even more nefarious.

For example, many probably know that Apple only semi-recently (in 2020) allowed its customers to configure a third-party web browser as the default. And that, despite this, it has a unique restriction that all third-party browsers must use its WebKit-based browser engine, the one that’s used for Safari. Third-party browsers can still innovate on user experience, of course, and do. But this Safari restriction brings with it both pros and cons. Apple, of course, argues that a single rendering engine provides some measure of performance, battery life, and reliability, and perhaps even security. But aside from the obvious but vague “choice” argument here, it also prevents others from innovating on the platform and potentially surpassing Safari in some key metrics. Here, as elsewhere, the fallout from the lack of choice feels speculative, while Apple’s promises feel real, and defensible. They’re not. But marketing may literally be the company’s biggest strength.

What few know, however, is that the Safari rendering engine that Apple requires third parties to use is not the same one it uses itself. Instead, third-party browsers get a less capable rendering engine that, among other things, lacks access to certain APIs. They can’t install web apps, most notably, a feature Apple asserts it will continue blocking under the DMA.

What some Apple users do know, however, is that Apple, a company renowned for its user interface prowess, has done a curiously bad job of implementing a default browser interface in iOS (and iPadOS, which is essentially the same platform). On the Mac, you configure a default browser much as you do in Windows, and if you search System Settings (the Mac version of the Windows 11 Settings app) for default, you will quickly find a default web browser interface that lets you choose from every installed browser with one click. You can likely just run any web browser and let it configure itself as the default browser.

Interestingly, this is better than how things work in Windows 11 because Apple, unlike Microsoft, doesn’t ignore user choice on its desktop platform. When you configure Chrome, or whatever other browser, as the default, you’ll never see Safari again, nor will it silently pop up like some specter and run unbidden in the background.

But that’s not how it works in iOS.

And I noticed this myself recently because I’ve been using that MacBook Air I just bought quite extensively, and as part of my testing I switched back, at least temporarily, to my iPhone 15 Pro Max as well. (Among other things, I’m looking into where and how Apple’s Continuity and other cross-device features might be advantageous. For example, the iPhone makes for a terrific webcam.) In iOS, you can search Settings for default all you want, but you’ll never find a default browser choice. It doesn’t exist. Instead, what Apple does is engage in a game of whack-a-mole.

I noticed this when I was testing Safari on the Mac and decided to configure Safari as the default browser on the iPhone. I knew from experience that the way Apple implements the default browser interface on mobile is convoluted. That is, instead of a central interface for default apps, like we see in Android and Windows, or at least one for the default browser, like we see in Android, Mac, and Windows, iOS thinks different.

The iOS Settings app is a mess with little in the way of organization. At the top level, there are groups of iPhone functions, none of which are alphabetized, and whose differentiation from each other is unclear. The top group has things like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the next group has Notifications, Sounds & Haptics, Focus, and more, and the third group has General (whatever that means), Control Center, Action Button, and many more. Then App Store and Wallet & Apple Pay are in their own group. And then there’s a group with Passwords, Mail, Contacts, and random other Apple apps and services (again, not alphabetized or ordered logically). And then there’s another group of Apple apps (TV, Photos, Camera, etc.), a one-item group for TV Provider. And then, finally, a group for all the third-party apps you installed. That one, at least, is alphabetized.

To configure a third-party app as the default web browser, you must find it in that last group and then tap it to view its settings. (Well, some of its settings. Depending on the app, Apple or third party, you can find settings both here in Settings and in the app itself.) And all third-party web browsers will display a Default Browser App setting that displays the default browser. You can click it to choose from the available choices.

That’s convoluted enough, but in my case, I thought I needed to change Safari to be the default browser on the iPhone. So I found Safari in Settings (it’s in the fifth group, the one that starts with Passwords) and tapped it. There was a Search Engine option. But no Default Browser App option. Was I missing something?

I Googled it (or DuckDuckGo’d it, or whatever). And found nothing useful. So I did what I could do: I went into the settings for another browser, Chrome, to see if that option was there. It was. And it told me that the default web browser was … Safari. Interesting. Confusing, too, but then I’ve always found iOS Settings to be an illogical morass. So I forgot about it and moved on.

And then I read In-App Browsers: The worst erosion of user choice you haven’t heard of, one of a growing body of evidence that the Open Web Advocacy is providing to regulators and publishing publicly so the rest of the world can understand what we’re up against here. And in reading this, it became clear: Apple purposefully built this default web browser interface in iOS to be so confusing that most users would give up. And this is just a small piece of a broader strategy tied to that Safari rendering engine requirement that doesn’t just obfuscate choice, but literally undermines it, much as Microsoft does in Windows 11.

The issue, as implied by the article title, is that Apple allows app makers to use so-called in-app browsers—implemented as a web pane in native iOS apps—that ignore your default browser choice and use their own browsers, which among other things can track your activities. And have: The OWA notes that Meta’s Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Facebook apps have all been caught tracking users on iOS, and TikTok was running what is essentially a keylogger using this technology. So much for that “what happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone” pledge. (Then again, this is the company that accepts over $20 billion a year to keep Google as the default search provider, a configuration that ensures your activities are being tracked on iPhone.)

The OWA has proposed remedies to this issue to the EU that include requiring gatekeepers like Apple (and Microsoft) to respect customer choices like the default web browser (already part of the DMA, but including secret bypassing like this example), requiring app stores to mandate that third-party apps likewise respect customer choice, and the like. It’s all very logical and straightforward. You know, unlike iOS Settings and its ridiculous implementation of default web browsers.

This is just a single and maybe small example of how walled gardens like that on the iPhone can quietly subvert choice and harm consumers. And while there are obviously worse abuses—Apple’s insanely high and arbitrary App Store fees and unfair polices among them—I find this one particularly interesting because it neatly highlights the company’s true intent and the effect of its actions. As with Microsoft’s bundling—sorry, integration—of IE with Windows from two decades ago, the intent is nefarious, and the effect is enshittification. And anticompetitive, of course.

To Apple’s biggest fans, I’ll just say this: Forget about individual abuses, or features, or whatever else. All regulators are asking for, essentially, is for this company to live up to the lofty ideals that it promotes for itself. In that sense, we all want the same thing, for Apple to be as good as it says it is. Surely, you find it odd that the company is pushing back so hard, especially on those things that seem so trifling, like respecting choice in web browsers. This isn’t how an innocent, customer-focused company behaves. And if Microsoft’s history of belligerence in the face of regulation is any guide, and I think it is, this won’t end well for Apple or its customers.