Apple escaped Android's 'toxic hellstew' - now Siri AI is creating a new one

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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.

"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).