| Hey y'all, it's Austin. Have you ever set up Apple Inc.'s AirPods with your iPhone? The process is beautifully seamless, requiring the devices only to be close to each other for pairing to begin. In fact, the intuitive interaction is so slick that it's now earning Apple criticism in Washington over perceived anticompetitive practices. At a U.S. Senate antitrust hearing last week, Tile Inc. General Counsel Kirsten Daru said this "magic onboarding flow" gives Apple an unfair advantage over the competition. As with AirPods, Apple's new AirTag device, a small location beacon that can clip onto household keys or purses to keep track of their whereabouts, will sync seamlessly with an iPhone, unlike Tile's hardware, which require extra steps. "You just put them near [each other]," Daru said. "That magic flow isn't available to third parties like Tile." It may sound funny to hear a technology company bemoan user experience hiccups before Congress, but Daru was making a serious point about how such seemingly insignificant product handicaps could help Apple's business at the expense of Tile's. While major developers such as Spotify Technology SA and Match Group Inc. took Apple to task over what they described as an abusive sales tax Apple forces on their apps, Tile argued the company is also imposing, essentially, a design tax on its foes, prohibiting them from offering the same magical features as Apple. These tiny design frustrations are often imperceptible if not invisible, but they're what separate a decent product from one you can't live without. Setting up AirPods, the Apple Watch or the HomePod smart speaker is a cinch with other iGadgets. Yet, it has at times proven arbitrarily painful for me to use competing devices without Apple's "magic flow." My Amazon Echo is constantly running into pairing problems, for example, while after buying AirPods, I mostly gave up using my Sony headphones, due to troubles with its automated syncing. An Apple spokesperson didn't respond to a question about why this "magic onboarding flow" isn't available to competing companies but said in a statement that the iPhone maker lets developers like Tile tap into its ecosystem of hundreds of millions of Apple devices that support its location-finding program. A Tile spokesperson said there needs to be a "level-playing field" and that third-party developers ought to have the same access to platform capabilities that Apple grants its own products. "Right now, Apple is the decision maker on innovation and consumer choice, and that's not good for anyone but Apple," the spokesperson said. That Apple products work better with other Apple products is inevitably good for Apple, but is it good for its customers? The company's success has long stemmed not only from the magic of its in-house design, but also for all the magic outside hardware and software developers bring to that ecosystem in a way that "just works," as Steve Jobs often said. Put another way, Apple's brand grew because a Mac would connect just as simply with an iPod as it would an HP printer. Imagine if Apple decided to jump back into the inkjet game, and suddenly, installing a new HP printer was more difficult than a modern version of the Apple StyleWriter? That's effectively what Tile claims Apple is doing with the AirTag. Regardless of the merits of this antitrust argument, there's little doubt it makes Apple's overall experience feel less streamlined. Apple is likely banking on customers growing annoyed enough with the lack of "magic flow" in third-party products to switch to Apple's hardware, but just as easily, they could grow annoyed with Apple for not working as magically with devices from Tile or Sony. The more Apple ventures into the accessories market, the more it risks implementing designs that prefer its proprietary hardware to the detriment of others. That may not be violating antitrust law, but it certainly means Apple's product ecosystem no longer "just works." —Austin Carr | 
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