Your view is a bit myopic as you seem to assume Apple can just throw its weight at it and that winning in the US market would be the same as winning globally.

Books are one of the oldest media around and as a consequence most jurisdictions have fairly extensive and specific laws around them and their authors' and publishers' rights. In many cases copyright itself is ultimately based on laws created to deal with authors and publishers.

Infamously, Amazon tried to snub book pricing laws and lost. Google got into hot water with newspaper publishers because its news app violated laws originally written for citing physical newspapers.

This is like suggesting Spotify just ignore the RIAA or Netflix should just stream all content in all countries, licensing restrictions be damned.

> Apple is big enough they could just tell authors "here is our new narration feature for users. If you don't like it, pull your books off our platform.".

You assume that it is authors who sell books on Apple platform (or on any platform).

Let me introduce you to a couple of chunky boys:

- Penguin Random House https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_Random_House

- HarperCollins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarperCollins

- Simon & Schuster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%26_Schuster

It’s not big enough to to tell the major publishers that. Especially if it wants mainstream titles on its relatively small ebook platform.

Apple is big enough to have the EU dictate what port to ship their phones with, too. The regulatory landscape requires careful navigating.