Notorious for its walled-garden approach, Job's Mob whined to Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that forcing it to open up WebKit or iOS features to competitors could hurt its ability to develop new technology.

The CMA is investigating Apple and Google over their grip on mobile browsers, browser engines, and cloud gaming distribution, with findings published on the government’s website this week.

In a desperate attempt to cling to its dominance, Apple argued that being required to provide feature access for free would be "inappropriate," complaining that its development efforts take time and money.

"Apple cannot recoup a reasonable amount of those expenses ... to do so would have a chilling impact on Apple’s incentives to innovate and would lead to free-riding and underinvestment on the part of third parties," the company lamented.

Of course, the watchdog might see that as proof that Apple wants to keep competitors locked out, ensuring its browser monopoly remains untouched while continuing to dictate how users interact with the web.

Apple has been appealing to the US King, Donald Trump, to get him to stop European regulators from picking on it. King Trump has had some success lately in preventing Europe and Ukraine from picking on Russia. A month King Trump criticised European Union regulators for targeting Apple, Alphabet subsidiary Google, and Meta Platforms, labelling their actions against American firms as “a form of taxation.”