Episode 82 - The United States sues Apple

This week on the Solid State Podcast, we go a little bit… wide….. You should be used to it by now, but especially on what many consider a “slower” time of year for tech news in general we saw it as a good opportunity to slow down and have an earnest conversation about a company that we normally have on the show in the context of a new device, gadget, or service that we can’t wait to hand over our money in exchange for… 

Except this time, that same company is in hot water with none other than the United States Department of Justice for, objectively, that very same reason… see Apple has built an empire of a business out of delivering a product that quote-un-quote “just works” except that it frankly “just works” with other products and services from none other than Apple itself… 

Want this most seamless audio pairing? Buy some AirPods… Don’t like AirPods? Buy some Beats… and ignore that they too, are from Apple. Take more than 2 and a half photos with your shiny new iPhone and therefore have “run out of storage”… iCloud will happily solve that for you. Oh, and all those apps that make the phone great in the first place, our store is the one-and-only place to get those…

See, when you start boiling it down to the ridiculous, the case here suddenly feels pretty cut-and-dry… If you want blue bubbles, backups that work, games to play, and a watch that does more than tell the time… have we got a bundle for you...

And that is where things don’t just get interesting, they get familiar… because another tech behemoth once decided that playing in their walled-garden was a sure path to preserving their market dominance… until the DOJ showed up, locked them in a court room for three years, and changed theirs (and many others) business forever… The case simply said the United States versus Microsoft, the year was 1998, and, other than that… well, we’ll just let history speak for itself… 

Now, excuse me while I got look for a lightning cable to charge my keyboard because… that just makes sense...