The Back Page: 2024’s all right for fighting

Look, the simple truth is that when you get to be a company the size of Apple, you can’t help but butt up against certain other entities, whether they be competitors, nation states, or the occasional megalomaniacal social-media purveyor. We’ve come to expect it—frankly, it’s built into Apple’s cost of doing business.

But while most of these conflicts may be predictable, every once in a while you run into one that’s most decidedly not on anybody’s radar. The good news is that it’s my job to expect the unexpected; I’ve consulted my patented heirloom, Jony Ive-designed jet black polycarbonate spherical oracle¹ and it’s provided five fracases awaiting Apple that neither you, nor I, nor Tim Cook’s council of seers are going to see coming.

Apple farmers: It was only a matter of time, but after almost half a decade of existence, Apple Inc. will end upin the crosshairs of apple inc…ome.…