lol. No they aren’t.

Seriously, windows is about to release forced advertisements in the Start Menu. Windows 12 is going to be a shit show. People aren’t going to flock to Linux, they’re going to Apple. Think they have a lot of money now? Wait until they get more desktop market. They can afford to build another garden.

Say what you want about Apple, it’s probably true. But don’t pretend they don’t have gardens inside gardens.

The only way Apple will fall is if there is actual competition, and nothing is on the horizon.

The “walled garden” is both what the average Apple customer wants, and what technophiles despise. Most iPhone users want the full assurance that they can download any app without performing research, knowing it won’t crash their indispensable device or track their every move. Say what you want about the limits of customization, it’s probably true, but Apple’s tight leash on software is precisely why iPhone is so reliable and private.

Apple's history of being walled garden is interesting.

So in the 80s and 90s, Apple tried the wall garden approach. And it absolutely failed. The IBM clones won out, with software and all that that worked across vendors and platforms. The hardware and software could be separated, so Apple's approach of both and closed didn't work.

Then Apple languished for decades.

Then with smartphones you had this product where the hardware and software needed to be tightly integrated. And tight integration was necessary to give a high functioning, small, compact device, where you needed the software to be highly optimized for the specific hardware.

I find it fascinating that Apple has stuck with the same formula for decades of wall garden and control of both hardware and software. That business model failed spectacularly, then treaded water, and then succeeded spectacularly. I think none of which was from an insightful or brilliant business analysis, it was just how the stubbornness played out.

So as for where it will go from here, I think who knows. Phone hardware is now powerful enough that you don't need the same hardware and software vendor where it needs to be so tightly controlled. But Apple has built itself a nice market which is kind of self sustaining. Will people care about prices again?

Or everyone is starting to figure out that the garden looks just as good outside the fence as it does inside the fence. Technology has been converging for many years now to the point where most devices especially smart phones have reached a bottleneck and no one can make things go any faster and there is really no big need for even more massive storage space for the average person. So phones have hit a ceiling and the place that Apple once had where they were one of the few manufacturers that made good phones is now overshadowed by lots of other companies that are comparable or near comparable. Does the average person really care if they have a high definition 20MP camera or a 22 MP camera. All they care about is being able to scroll through Tik Tok, FB or Instagram and no one really seems to care what device they use to do that any more.

Does it matter even if they do? The company has lost consumer trust and respect going into the future.

I'm glad we are finally treating phones like the mini computers they are, they should be free as in freedom just like'em.

it's still a fetish for a lot of you alarming maniacs.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

So it’s been doing the logical thing for years, which is finding other ways to make money, and it’s been largely successful, particularly as it added the App Store and services like Apple Music.

And smaller developers struggled to find a business model that worked between Apple’s commission fees and strict guidelines over how and when it could charge customers for their product.

Microsoft recognized that Java could make porting software from Windows to other systems easier, so it sabotaged Sun’s efforts and instructed its allies not to aid the company.

Apple responded to the pressure by promising to support RCS on the iPhone — a standard that updates the relatively ancient SMS/MMS protocol and includes more iMessage-like features.

The other shoe fell last month when the US Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple for operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market.

But that’s unlikely to be the end of it — app developers aren’t happy with the company’s “malicious compliance” to new rules under the DMA, and European regulators are investigating Apple’s response.

The original article contains 2,020 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 91%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Honestly I'd be truly thrilled if they were merely forced to open up iMessage. I'd be a huge quality of life improvent for people who don't want to daily drive an iPhone but have to keep in contact with Americans.

And for those living in the US with Androids.