Imagine Brussels telling Steve Jobs in 2007: "You can't ship the iPhone until everyone can write apps for it." No launch. No App Store a year later. Possibly no iPhone at all. That's not a hypothetical anymore. Apple just announced iOS 27's Apple Intelligence features won't ship in the EU, because the Digital Markets Act demands that deep APIs and AI features be open to every platform from day one. As someone who has spent decades building products, here's what that requirement gets wrong: no complex product launches finished. Version one is a foundation. You build, you ship, you learn from real users, and you harden the product before you extend it. That's not gatekeeping — it's the only way complex systems have ever been built. Demanding that on-device AI — touching the most private data on a person's phone — support every third-party integration on day one isn't regulation. It's a physics violation. The interfaces aren't stable. The security model hasn't been battle-tested. Opening it all up immediately doesn't protect consumers; it exposes them. Remember: the original iPhone launched with only Apple's own apps. The SDK and App Store came a year later, once the platform was stable — and it became the most open, successful app ecosystem in history *because* it was built in stages. Apple says it made multiple proposals to protect consumer privacy while phasing in access. The EU rejected them all. The result isn't a more open market. It's European consumers getting fewer features than the rest of the world. There's a better way: an 18–24 month safe harbor. Time to build, ship, gather feedback, and harden the product — then open it to the broader ecosystem. Innovation first, interoperability second, on a clock, with accountability. That's not anti-regulation. It's regulation that understands how things actually get built. #Apple #DMA #iOS27 #Innovation #TechPolicy