Because the government will just kick apple out of their market. Big economic blocks or rich countries get to write laws that bully monopolies because they’re the consumer of the goods. “Change the browser on your phone, or you’ll lose out on the 120 million potential consumers in the japanese market” will get anyone considering opening up the restrictions. Same for EU or US etc. If they want to they have consumer numbers to throw around

They can’t do that any more than a restaurant can ignore food safety laws because their food is ‘meant to be like that’ or a driver can ignore speed laws because their car was made to go fast.

But this got me thinking, why couldn’t Apple just tell them to fuck off by saying that iOS is meant to be that way cause we are the ones who designed it and the ones who own it. And if you want a change, go make your own products.

Most large companies have different implementations in different countries to comply with their laws. Apple opening up iOS in Japan doesn’t mean they have to open it up everywhere. Same with how some games have to tone down blood and gore for certain countries, but that is localized and not worldwide.

On the other hand, car laws in California don’t apply to the rest of the country but manufacturers usually implement the laws everywhere because it is cheaper for them to do so.

In both cases, the reason they comply is because laws are laws and if they want to do business in a certain location they must comply.

The really short answer is Apple doesn’t have a military to enforce their will on hostile governments.

Yet.

I mean, in general, if your business model is to break the law and the government tells you not to, that is the government infringing on your ability to conduct business in the way you want to.

Laws, also generally, are designed to balance the tradeoffs between allowing personal freedoms and protecting a populace from expected or possible harm.

Non-compliance to a country’s laws could lead to: a ban of that product from that country, fines/taxes/expenses to the business, or in serious cases prosecution of company representatives within the country.

laws; telling a maker to make the product in a specific way, eliminating creative freedom?

Do you think we need no laws at all anymore?

Well, every law limits somebody’s freedom, somehow. That’s nothing special at all.

Yes. Then Japan declares the product illegal in Japan. Apple loses 123M potential customers and their competitors gets 123M customers without even trying.

It’s better business to just do as Japanese law says. (But only in Japan) Keep the customer base and instead make a bit less money per unit sold.

That is after they spent a few million dollars on legal fees just in case they can find a loophole.

aren’t these kind of laws; telling a maker to make the product in a specific way, eliminating creative freedom?

In the realms of monopoly regulation, product liability, energy efficiency, or pollution emissions, to name a few examples, the objective of the law is to define a floor (read: minimum requirements) that balance competing interests. In a democratic society, the government holds the public interest in high regard, but solely focusing on just that would lead to some very strange results, some of which are too philosophical to distill into practice.

Laws on anti-competitive or unfair business practices serve to level the playing field, so that businesses cannot assert an undue advantage over competitors, often to the hindrance of a competitive market for consumers. So there are two harms: other businesses have no hope of breaking into the market, and consumers don’t get as many choices as they could have had. The fundamental idea is one of fairness.

The word “undue” is carrying a lot of weight, because some practices definitely assert an advantage to the disadvantage of everyone else: retaining all the good engineers is one such example, because good engineers can churn out good products, meaning other competitors have a harder time producing similarly-capable products. But that’s not an unnatural advantage, unless somehow the deck is being stacked to produce that result (eg bribing universities to only send the good engineers to them).

As a practical matter, flouting the law is an excellent way to get one’s products banned from the marketplace, either by mechanism of law or by alienating consumers. Take VW’s emissions scandal as an example: US State DMVs were prepared to invalidate the vehicle registrations for noncompliant automobiles already on the road, and consumers fled for other automakers, causing both the used and new prices for VW cars to drop. Many (all?) US States prohibit the sale of automobiles currently subject to a recall, with penalties for the seller. So why would anyone want to continue owning such a car, nor could they even get rid of it except by getting/suing VW to buy it back.

When a government really wants to turn the screws on a nonconforming business, they absolutely have the means to do it. And it doesn’t even require a top-down regime like what’s often said about the Chinese government.

So creative freedom = non monopoly ?

Japan would immediately become like China & remove all copyright laws.

Other asian countries would follow suit. Let’s see how Apple deals with them then.

I’ve the same question with EU. At a certain point they must realise that the reason they’re a tech desert is because of their red tape and failing 20th century top-down economic view. There’s a reason even their car manufacturing and sales are failing, one of the last remaining industries.

Doing the same with tech from abroad will just ruin innovation there as well.

Maybe it’s a “if we can’t have good things, you can neither” kind of thinking?