It’s 2003, and I’m working for a small firm that manages tech sales and support for one of the labs in New Mexico. My main job is literally manually translating purchase orders and product requests from an ancient order system at the firm to communicate with an ancient UNIX system at the lab. When I’m not transferring data and approving requests though, I work with the sales teams, support teams, and I spend a lot of time in their warehouse taking systems apart. It’s a great job.

We ran two main contracts that would completely change the entire course of my life. We sold and supported HP systems and Apple systems.

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This era of Apple completely blew my mind.

We were selling, configuring, and imaging PowerMac G5’s and XServes, and I would often skulk away to the showroom to play with the Dual Socket, Dual Core, water cooled beasts. I got pretty good at stripping and building those workstations. I still think this was the most impressive era of Apple design, and the attention to details on the G5 directly influenced modern HEDT gaming and workstation computers sold today.

I wasn’t working directly in sales, so I didn’t NEED to do this, but I opted to take all the courses on Apple’s site to become a product specialist. I still have the certificate in a box somewhere. I was really proud of that.

I was insufferable as hell online…

Marie and I were planning a move to Los Angeles to work in the entertainment industry. I was already doing production work in New Mexico with what little voice over industry was there, mostly working with actors on recording demos, and cutting commercials and promos for radio stations. I would fire up my little franken PC (an AMD T-Bird with an Audigy sound card), and desperately wish I was working on one of those PowerMacs back at the office.

That didn’t stop me from stomping into every online Mac vs PC conversation to evangelize the PowerMac. I knew those machines inside-out. Anyone who disagreed that Power Macs were “the bestest” workstations you could buy, got a barrage of FAXANDLAWJICKS from some tech doofus keyboard warrior in a porkpie. (Yes, even back then I was super into hats.)

I expended an incredible amount of energy in online debate, re-shared numerous claims from Apple, referenced vague Apple marketing bar graphs, and every time someone would just give up on a forum conversation, every time someone would stop replying, I’d chalk that up as another victory.

I never did get a PowerMac.

Shortly after we moved to LA, I worked for a brief time in B2B computer sales. Apple started transitioning from IBM PowerPC chips to Intel chips. It was a boon for the MacBook, but I couldn’t help feeling deflated over the PowerMacs. All the energy I had burned defending and promoting the PowerPC chips felt wasted.

I’ve always been a hardware guy. What made Apple better or superior to PC workstations if they used the same chips as PC workstations?

I convinced myself that I was just going to stop-gap one more Windows PC build, one more AMD rig, because of the low budget I had to work with. Building that system though, I clicked on ideas like “performance per dollar”. My second frankenbox was CHEAP. The case was UGLY, but it performed REALLY well.

That altar I had placed Apple on was crumbling through the practical experience of building my own affordable beater systems.

I knew kids with parents who would buy them brand new Mustangs. Instead, I liked to hang out with the shop kids rebuilding busted up junkyard racers that could run crazy quarter miles, but those cars never seemed to get a better paint job than gray primer.

My computer fandom shifted pretty hard in a similar direction.

I never expected that geeky gadgety techy stuff would come to dominate society the way it has. Then, I was a nerd who lusted after PDAs. Now, the world revolves around communication, information, and relationships hosted on our pocket computers. I feel validated in my geekery.

Today, I try not to let myself get too caught up in what any ONE tech brand is producing, because I remember who I used to be. That guy sucked. If I’m gonna be insufferable about ANYTHING in tech, I’ll commit that energy to a broad idea of competition instead of fawning over any single individual brand.

I want to be a tech fan, not a brand fan.

We’re at the beginning of an interesting turn.

Regulators and lawmakers are finally trying to figure out how to manage the impact of MASSIVE tech companies. I’d be lying if I wasn’t a little gleeful over Apple facing more scrutiny, but there’s a nuance to that glee. So many of the trends I’ve come to loathe originated from Apple, and later spread to other companies hoping to mimic the same financial  success and consumer lock in.

If we’re to start regulating consumer gadgets and create a more equitable market, Apple is a necessary target. Apple executives and Apple investors need to feel that pressure. If we make a good example out of Apple, it gives us better precedent to reign in other tech brands, and we get better information on how these companies do business with each other. If Apple can be admonished publicly for anti-consumer business practices, it might chill efforts from smaller companies looking to emulate Apple’s bad policies.

There’s a kneejerk reaction at play when these types of discussions hit social media. I’m not surprised. Apple fans in North America have never really confronted their relationship with Apple. Folks so used to being the “winner” by default, simply because of the phone in their pocket, the tablet in their kids hands, or the laptop on the café table in front of them.

As the DOJ starts to argue an actual case, and supply evidence of their claims in court, we need this lawsuit to accomplish more than just digging a fine out of Apple’s pockets. We need to completely redefine the relationship between companies and consumers, one company at a time.

The “market correction” Apple needs most is NOT a slap-on-the-wrist fine that they will pay off with a week of profits. The market correction Apple needs is a subtle reshaping of the emotional manipulation Apple maintains over its customers.

We DO NOT want Apple to “fail”. We don’t want Apple to crumble or disappear. We just need to chip away at the marketing that enables an abusive consumers relationship.

It’s the idea I feel Apple executives fear the most.

So much of the brand’s identity is hinged on this emotional feel-good marketing. They don’t want their customers considering purchases too closely. All companies hope to arrive at a consumer conditioning where purchases are simply performed on auto-pilot. Apple is tactically good at creating those conditions.

The most critical aspect of this trial will be disclosures where Apple consumers will get to hear how little Apple executives think of Apple customers. The disgust found in the tone of Apple communication towards people using less expensive (but still competitive) products.

“Imagine buying a [expletive] Android for 25 bux at a garage sale and it works fine . . . . And you have a solid cloud computing device. Imagine how many cases like that there are.”

How many people really don’t need the “premium” experience Apple offers, and don’t understand how well their needs would be covered with a less expensive device. Another quote directly from the DOJ filing:

This means that innovations fueled by an interest in building the best, most user-focused product that would exist in a more competitive market never get off the ground. What’s more, Apple itself has less incentive to innovate because it has insulated itself from competition. As Apple’s executives openly acknowledge: “In looking at it with hindsight, I think going forward we need to set a stake in the ground for what features we think are ‘good enough’ for the consumer. I would argue we’re already doing more than what would have been good enough. But we find it very hard to regress our product features YOY [year over year].” Existing features “would have been good enough today if we hadn’t introduced [them] already,” and “anything new and especially expensive needs to be rigorously challenged before it’s allowed into the consumer phone.” Thus, it is not surprising that Apple spent more than twice as much on stock buybacks and dividends as it did on research and development.

Quotes like these are the most damning to Apple’s credibility and reputation. End users are no longer the audience Apple most hopes to satisfy.

We all kind of “know” Apple isn’t at the forefront of new technologies, but we deluded ourselves into thinking that Apple would spend the extra runway time to polish the experience better than any competitor.

We simply can’t allow that idea to remain.

Apple feels no pressure to operate as an actual market leader, or beat other products through R&D and competition. Apple delivers the most expensive “good enough” product portfolio that it can. Apple can hold markets in place at will, and Apple executives openly discuss selling cheaper products year over year if they could get away with that.

Apple has grown “too big to care”.

I want people to love the gadgets they buy. We invest huge amounts of money and time into the products we use. We develop personal relationships with the gadgets that enable our communication and content experiences.

Beyond what might be illegal from a business perspective, I think there’s a social contract that matters. When people pay increasingly higher prices every year, it will matter to some folks that Apple has been holding them in place to offer shareholders dividends and stock buybacks.

It doesn’t take a lot.

We want Apple executives to feel like they need to work for their customers’ money again. We want some acknowledgement from tech enthusiasts and tech press that competing products are “just as good” or better than Apple products at competitive prices. We want more consumers empowered to fix their gadgets and use them for longer periods of time. We want to erode the most divisive barriers between consumers, and we want to embrace interoperability.

From the DOJ, to a new investigation in the EU, to class action lawsuits, Apple is a critical step, but this legal effort can’t stop with Apple. Our legal system has been too slow to respond to tech evolution, and we need to build momentum faster from here.

We have GENERATIONS of bad tech habits to unravel, and this is a HUGE industry to course correct. It’ll take a lot of time. It’ll be really expensive. It’ll be an incredible amount of work.

I think we can do it.