TLDR: Don't blame Apple as a company for not lowering their prices when the law doesn't require that.

Apple is a lying company that wants to maximize profit.

And that's okay.

I don't use Apple products (anymore) and I'm not planning to use them because I try to not do business with companies that lie. Period.

But...

... the current trend of people vilifying Apple is laughable. Every blog post I read about it has a final argument that comes down to: Apple changed nothing because they didn't lower their prices (for me).

If the EU wants Apple to lower their prices for everybody, they would have said so. But they can't. So Apple doesn't do that. They exactly did what the DMA requires them to do. And nothing more. They don't have to. That's how it works and only voting differently has a chance of changing that. Good luck with waiting.

Bad faith or good faith? Doesn't matter for this kind of law. Besides, we already know that companies work like this. Apple is not a benevolent dictator that has your wishes in mind. It's cool if they overlap, and a pity if they don't. It's up to individuals to not become dependent on stuff they should not become dependent upon.

But my PWA doesn't work anymore, you say? If you depend on native stuff like notifications, app badges and local storage, than you have been dependent more on the 'walled garden' than you probably realize. I think your web app can do without the 'progressive' part anyway. It's not fun to do a rebuild and go server-side like a pure web app, but setting oneself free always comes with work.

If you want full and reliable access to camera, contacts, notifications, GPS, other sensors and local storage, it has been clear for almost seventeen years that one should go native. It has also been clear for seventeen years that open personal computers were the default for that era, and that a closed system like the iPhone was a deviation from that. Also the 30% cut was clear from the beginning. Just like the rules for the developers. Rules that were not found on the open web.

I think the biggest gripe people have with Apple now, is that their skillful marketing (PR if you will) and beautiful products set expectations way too high. People really started believing, and that comes crashing down. Google and Facebook and the like also lie like crazy, but we've come to expect that from them by now. Less of a cognitive dissonance there.

We can keep complaining, but we know now that nothing changes because of that. Besides, are you going to wait three years before Apple is in court? And then another three years before they are forced to give you a little? Of course not.

I use Android for my smartphone right now. Obviously not an ideal choice either, seen in the light of what I just said. So a question that keeps popping up in my head lately is this:

What is left of (mobile) personal computing and communicating - for me - when I try to ignore big tech like Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, AWS, Twitter, etc.?

I worded the first part of the previous sentence very carefully, and I'm still figuring out what that would mean for me personally. I don't think anymore that a good solution is just done by changing software. My feeling is that hardware changes are necessary. Just like the different hardware of the iPhone caused a paradigm shift back in the day. I have some ideas and also some potential solutions, probably hardcore solutions that won't work for everybody. I might explain these in a future blog post.

I'm very curious what your (first or final) ideas are on that question! Please let me know.

Here it is again:

What is left of (mobile) personal computing and communicating when one tries to ignore big tech?

Have a good day, eat an apple!