Apple escaped Android's 'toxic hellstew' - now Siri AI

What happened

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. " 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. ) 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.

"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.

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). 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. 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.

" 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.

Why it matters

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.

What to watch

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.

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.