You might disagree with Apple's move, but all the EU has is power. Apple provides value, from which it derives money. The EU is combatting it not with an environment that allows competitors to arise. It's combatting value with power.
In fact, the EU is making changes that will in fact make it easier for competitors to arise, so I really don't know what you're on about.
Let me give you one example of some EU provided value:
"ASML is the only company in the world that makes a specific machine needed to make the most advanced chips. Apple couldn’t make iPhone chips without this one machine from the Netherlands’ biggest company. ASML doesn’t just shape the Dutch economy — it shapes the entire world economy."
source: https://www.theverge.com/23578430/chip-war-chris-miller-asml...
Apple could cease to exist today and the world wouldn't lose much except some overpriced gadgets. Couldn't say the same for ASML. And that's just one example.
ASML is floated on a small EU stock exchange, and also NASDAQ. NASDAQ is what allows them to scale and become enormous and keep their position, other than IP laws on their techniques. I'm not saying the EU can't produce companies; I'm saying that, in this case, if it were good at it they wouldn't need to float in the US to scale.
Regardless, the point is that the EU has zero muscle when it comes to building out consumer-facing software. All it knows how to do is regulate.
The EU's answer to AI? To nuke its only successful AI startup, Mistral, with the AI Act [1]. They had to gerrymander an exception in for Mistral.
The EU pretends to care about consumer privacy and then introduces Article 45, completely destroying web security and privacy [2] more than Meta/Apple/etc ever could.
Fundamentally, the EU does not understand what it is doing. It is a broken clock that is right twice a day. All it has demonstrated is the ability to rent-seek and grift from international tech companies, while enacting protectionist laws that conveniently avoid its own (few) companies. Why isn't Spotify targeted by the DMA? Who knows!?
You can say "it doesn't matter, follow our laws!" Okay. But don't be surprised when your TLS communications are being MITM'd by the EU and when companies maliciously comply with these ridiculous laws. The EU can only push things so far, and miss out on so many "industrial revolutions", before it becomes an irrelevant/unprofitable market, impossible to build for.
[1]: https://twitter.com/arthurmensch/status/1725076260827566562
[2]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/article-45-will-roll-b...
If you have to straw man, what's the point? I'm not mentioning altruism. They provide value; they get money. The second they stop providing value, they have no money.
That's different to power. A bureacrat can write some words and suddenly phones can't be sold any more. That's power.
Fundamentally, I don't see a difference between Apple writing some words and suddenly, you have to pay a fee for distribution of iPhone apps on non-Apple app stores, and say, a government writing some words and suddenly, foreign imports have to pay extra taxes. Neither is generating value; they're both rent-seeking in those examples. They both have power because of what's "theirs".
Alternately, you could say neither has any power, and both provide value. The government provides value by funding public infrastructure, promoting economic development, protecting citizens from foreign invasion, and so on. If citizens don't like it, they can vote the government out (though it would be different if it were a dictatorship).
In my original comment, I was basically irritated by you implying Apple has no "power," and that they can only counter the government's power through "value," i.e., making people's lives better somehow. It's insinuating Apple derives no power from their business, and that Apple provides value for no reason (hence the use of the word "altruism").
