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Editors’ Note: Welcome to a new series called An Apple a Day, where we’ll share pieces of Apple content from our archives daily from now through late September. In addition to PCMag, this series will include pieces from our sibling sites CNET, Lifehacker, Mashable, and Popular Science.
In 2014, I called Android a “toxic hellstew of vulnerabilities.” Little did I expect CEO Tim Cook to use the exact phrase on stage during that year’s WWDC keynote. Someone even made T-shirts. (Contrary to the rumors, no, I had nothing to do with them.)
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But oh, how things have changed since those seemingly much simpler days. In the decade since, the battle lines have shifted from app store dominance and making developers fall in line to AI. But what happened back then — especially in the courts — shaped how this new battle will be fought.
It started with a walled garden
“Walled garden” is a phrase used a lot to describe Apple’s approach to its ecosystem, but fortress would be more appropriate. That reputation began with Apple establishing control over the hardware ecosystem as it worked to avoid the toxic hellstew Android had created for itself.
When it came to the App Store, the company took on an “our way or the highway” attitude and expected developers and publishers to agree to a long and stringent list of demands, such as a single distribution channel, no sideloading, 15% to 30% commissions on all sales, a ban on alternative browser engines, and strict rules banning even mentioning alternative payment methods.
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While this was seen as a massive money-making opportunity for Apple — and it certainly was — the company pushed it as the only way to keep users safe from the hellstew.
To be fair, the walled garden approach worked. For years, the iPhone was consistently less affected by malware and other unsavory things hitting Android users. Google, on the flip side, began taking notes from Apple in order to fix its toxic hellstew.
Apple’s fortress held firm for a good decade, and any changes Apple has made haven’t been because of a change of heart but because of legal pressures.
I don’t want to delve too deeply into legal events here because we’ll get sidetracked for hours, but if you want some rabbit holes to go down on your own, there’s the Epic Games v. Apple case (which forced Apple to allow different payment links), the EU’s Digital Markets Act (which forced Apple to allow sideloading, alternative marketplaces, and alternative browser engines), and the US Department of Justice’s 2024 antitrust case against the company (this is in settlement talks, so it’s too early to know the impact).
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One thing that’s definitely changed since 2014 is how much Apple is being shaped by the EU.
In response to the Digital Markets Act, Apple put a new tollgate in the fortress wall in the form of a Core Technology Fee (CTF), a fee that became part of an EU Digital Markets Act probe, with the Commission issuing preliminary findings that it, too, breached the act.
AI is the new battleground, but it’s still a fight over control
Currently, Apple is battling the EU using a playbook we’ve seen before.
Remember back in June 2024, when Apple delayed a bunch of features — Apple Intelligence, iPhone Mirroring, and SharePlay Screen Sharing — in the EU, blaming Digital Markets Act compliance? The same happened last June when Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, said Siri AI wouldn’t roll out in the EU for the same reason.
The EU fired back that “the decision not to roll out Siri AI in the EU is Apple’s and Apple’s only,” and the company was “unable to develop interoperability solutions that meet essential EU privacy and security standards.”
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Remember that Apple doesn’t have a frontier model to compete against the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, or Google’s Gemini. In 2014, Apple would likely have worked to keep these apps out of the App Store. But those days are gone, and AI apps are freely available in the App Store.
However, what Apple does want to prevent is giving them the same system-level access that Siri has, and by keeping Siri AI out of the EU and away from the oversight of the Digital Markets Act, it has a chance of keeping things this way — for now.
Apple is trying to control the AI ground in a few key ways, from giving developers API access to the capabilities of Apple’s on-device model but not the model itself to requiring apps get explicit consent from users before sharing any personal data with third-party AI models. That bit about getting user consent falls under Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, a feature that attracted the attention of French regulators and ended up earning Apple a $162 million fine in 2025.
But keeping Siri AI out of the EU probably doesn’t seem like it will be enough to halt investigations. In fact, the EU is now looking to bring smart TV platforms like Apple TV and virtual assistants like Siri under the scrutiny of the Digital Markets Act because they act as gatekeepers — just like app stores and browser engines.
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This means the landscape into which Apple is now putting AI tools is different, but Apple still wants to maintain as much control as possible and will only give up ground when compelled to do so.
And when it comes to control, that extends to when Apple has to rely on a third party for help.
For example, Apple is showing no signs of being interested in controlling much of the underlying AI tech and instead is reportedly paying Google $1 billion a year to power Siri. Rather, it is choosing to focus on the interface between the user (the user who’s bought the expensive phone, laptop, computer, or home entertainment doodad) and the AI. What’s interesting here is Google’s models are running on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers.
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(Think $1 billion a year is a lot? According to unsealed court documents, Google pays Apple $20 billion a year to be the default search engine in the Safari browser.)
Apple might not want to invest the R&D into building AI models itself, but it’s not letting any of the data leave its servers.
The argument could definitely be made that Apple is working to protect users — and their data — from all being vacuumed up by AI companies, and it’s definitely a valid one. And the information an app might collect on a user pales in comparison to what an AI might collect and access, especially when it comes to health and financial data.
So Apple, once again, claims this walled garden approach exists to keep users safe and their data secure. Regulators argue it’s a monopoly and users must have choices. And so the cycle continues.
I can see both sides of the argument, and both make good points. There’s a lot of data on a modern smartphone, and that needs to be kept as safe as possible, but monopolies and stifling competition are also bad for consumers.
Bottom line: The system is working as it should, with both sides pushing.
History is repeating itself
The subject matter might be different, but the playbook is the same. Apple will try its best to maintain as much control as possible over everything to do with AI that might hit its bottom line and only give ground when regulators start throwing stratospheric fines about. And Apple has shown it’s willing to pull products from territories rather than lock horns with some regulators.
But it’s also clear regulators — especially the European Commission — are moving faster than ever to nip any possible monopolies in the bud before they take hold.
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The toxic hellstew nowadays is less about malware and more about regulation, litigation, and trying to strike a balance in which users’ data is kept safe.
