House lawmakers demanded emails and executive communications from major tech firms, including Apple, Friday. The move is part of its ongoing antitrust inquiries into the tech industry.
Lawmakers’ Letter
Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Ranking Member Doug Collins, Antitrust Subcommittee Chair David Cicilline and Ranking Member F. James Sensenbrenner wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook. They asked for a host of documents. These included, financial statements, organizational charts and information on discussions regarding competitors.
They also asked for communications from key Apple executives:
- Tim Cook
- Katherine Admas
- Eddy Cue
- Philp Schiller
- Johny Srouji
- Dan Riccio
- Jonathan Ive
- Craig Federighi
- Luca Maestri
- Jeff Williams
- Steve Dowling
- Tory Myhren
- Lucas Masestri
- Jane Horvath
Google, Amazon, and Facebook received similar requests. The lawmakers demanded the documents arrive by October 14, 2019.
Kind of a breathtaking fishing expedition. Though it is interesting they use the term “sherlocked” to describe Apple integrating features that duplicate and/or replace a popular third-party app or extension; I’d definitely be interested in hearing Apple’s response to that!
My own take is that the shelf life of system extensions/features/utilities and/or obvious missing features (for example using an iPad as a Cintiq, something that I have wanted for years to be included as an OS feature that “just works” when you plug it in) depends strongly on whether it might ever make sense for Apple to implement the feature.