That was not what it was intended to do. I quote from the US Constitution:

Article I Section 8 | Clause 8 – [Congress has the power]. To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

That's the purpose of the patent system - to incentivize the disclose of inventions in exchange for being granted a limited monopoly on that invention so that others can build upon those ideas to create new novel and non-obvious inventions. It has nothing to do with protecting anyone from "big business."

Ironically, if that was the intended goal, I think it will have the opposite effect. Apple's position has always been that they treat every developer the same and the way they're treating Epic is an example of this. (note: before y'all start saying what about Amazon's "special" deal - remember that every streaming provider got that deal).

Exactly! This is such a good example of selective presentation of the facts. So many people are missing this key point.

Steve told DropBox, they're a feature and not a business. He was right, but they're trying to overcome this by adding more and more features - hence the boat. Unfortunately, it feels like they're turning into a product that's looking for a problem to solve.

What's missing in this discussion is the awareness that the consent degree against Microsoft expired in 2007 (the year the iPhone was released). So at that point, Microsoft was technically free to do whatever it wanted again. But everyone in the company was incredibly, incredibly gun shy to go even close to the perception of monopoly behavior. So there was a window for MSFT to be android, but they didn't take it because of fear (not law, fear). The consent degree haunted Microsoft for years and years. Really up until SteveB left. That's something I think other tech companies don't grok yet. The impact of a government investigation on a company goes far, far beyond the specifics of any ruling or settlement. The loss of the mobile market by Microsoft should be a cautionary tale for every big company in tech.