Apple’s Epic rollercoaster ride is trapped in a full-on freefall

These days it is a bit of a fool’s game to try to write anything about Apple and Epic because it’ll probably be out of date by the time writers hit “Publish.” But such are the vicissitudes of covering Apple.

Last week was quite the rollercoaster. Sadly, more of a seaside tourist town kiddy coaster, one that’s rickety but not high or fast enough to really hurt anyone if it goes off the rails, and just goes around and around in a tiny, unimpressive circle.

Here are three headlines from Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of last week to give you an idea of how quickly this evolved.

So what was that all about? It’s a little hard to tell, even in hindsight, really. Apple seems to be having a tough time coming to terms (literally and figuratively) with recent legislation in the EU. When taken with the company’s irate blog post about Spotify just days earlier, the company has the air of being just hours away from curling up with a box of wine to get on with the depression phase.

Denial? “We can just make the new rules so lousy no one will want to do it!” CHECK.

Anger? “Did Spotify ever thank us for making the App Store which, by the way, is the best thing ever? No, they did not.” CHECK.

Bargaining? “We now recognize that Epic did already say it would follow the rules after we asked them if they would and they said they, okay, yeah, we will and we still terminated their developer license anyway, so we’re reinstating their license which we shouldn’t have revoked in the first place.” CHECK.

On the plus side, as fast as this ride is going we might get to the acceptance phase as early as the end of this week.

To say that Apple has not exactly been putting its best foot forward here is putting it mildly. It is fortunate for the company that few outside of the tech community are probably taking notice at anything more than a superficial level–IS FORTNITE BACK Y/N–because who has time for this nonsense? Even if you are paying attention, it’s probably not going to affect your choice of smartphone because Tim Cook does not personally deliver your smartphone and sit around to chat with you about it, the industry, and other topics of interest. If he or Phil Schiller or whoever wrote that Spotify post is a bit touchy about recent jurisdictional policy enforcement actions, it’s not going to stop most people from enjoying their iPhones.

Tim Sweeney, sure. But not most people.

And, again, that’s good, because it’s not a great look for the company. You can make all the analogies to game platforms you want, while they may be true, if you ask most consumers if they wanted to be able to see how they could get something cheaper within an app by going to the app developer’s website, they’re going to say, sure, give me the info, regardless of who makes that “safe and trusted marketplace” that’s “an incredible business opportunity for developers.”

We may have hit a temporary lull in the fighting here, but despite all the Macalope’s jokes about the stages of grief, Apple’s probably not done by a long shot. Which is great because the horny one will not personally be satisfied until Apple and Epic are forced to share a small Airbnb with overhead cameras (before they’re banned) where they can work out their issues.

There doesn’t have to be a white cat there, too, but it feels like not having one wandering around is just leaving money on the table.