A few days ago, we posted about MKBHD: Apple vs The Paradox of Choice!. If you’ve not watched the video, dig in, then press on.

With that as background, enter Gruber:

The problem for a company like Tile — to name one high-profile company that is not pleased by Apple’s entry into its market — is that location tags are inherently simple, and Apple’s Find My network is bigger and better than Tile’s device network. Everything about AirTags is better than Tile, if you’re an iOS user. So it goes. If the answer to the question “Would this add-on be better, and be useful to many users, if it were built into the system?” is yes, you should expect it to be built into the system sooner or later.

Perfect take. Tile’s complaint would have more teeth if they had built a product that was better than AirTag. You could argue that Apple has an unfair advantage, but Apple built that themselves, over the course of many years, with much effort and sunk cost. It’d be one thing if they made some corrupt side deal, bribing government officials or the like. But they did the work. AirTag is an ingenious product that takes advantage of a massive, R&D fueled, years in the making build-out.

Apple does, indeed have a built-in advantage. But they built it themselves.