>So in terms of the framing of "market abuse", at what point between the launch of these rules and now did Apple cross that threshold between free-market competitor who can legally control their own platform to monopolist abusing its power?
When Apple launched Apple Pay (in 2014, not that long ago), its App Store rules turned from dubious to outright market abuse by using one market where it had a strong position to infiltrate another very different market of payment processing (there are other issues, but this story is about payment processors).
By the way, 'monopoly' has little to do with it. It's about market power, monopoly is an nigh irrelevant term to the issue.
When Apple launched Apple Pay (in 2014, not that long ago), its App Store rules turned from dubious to outright market abuse by using one market where it had a strong position to infiltrate another very different market of payment processing (there are other issues, but this story is about payment processors).
By the way, 'monopoly' has little to do with it. It's about market power, monopoly is an nigh irrelevant term to the issue.