Apple’s public relations stakes for the Spring Loaded event

Like you, I’m looking forward to seeing what shiny new toys Tim Cook has to share with us today.

But showcasing new products isn’t the biggest stakes for Apple today. The company will sell mountains of whatever it introduces.

Rather, today’s Spring Loaded event is Apple’s biggest chance to share it’s messaging around two issues critical to the future of its business, with antitrust implications in play.

iOS 14.5 and Apple’s privacy fight with Facebook

iOS 14.5 may release today, and it includes a new privacy feature for users: App Tracking Transparency (ATT). The concept is simple: Apple will ask users if they want to permit each app--like Facebook--to track their web activity for advertising purposes.

ATT has huge implications for Facebook’s core advertising business. And Facebook alleges Apple is using its market power to harm small businesses by limiting ad targeting.

The App Store and antitrust behavior

In May, Apple has a court date with Fortnight developer Epic Games, Inc. Epic claims Apple’s iron grip on the App Store and its 30% cut of in-app payments amounts to anticompetitive behavior, higher customer costs and reduced market choice.

Apple can highlight its key App Store messages today:

The economic opportunity created by the App Store for third-party developers (Apple calls the App Store an “economic miracle”).

The enhanced user safety created by only allowing apps onto the iPhone (and iPad) via the App Store

The brightest spotlight

Apple is already conducting strategic and steady PR campaigns on both the user privacy and App Store fronts. But today the company will speak to its largest possible audience: the entire tech press, the wider, general press, industry analysts, and millions of ardent Apple supporters and tech enthusiasts, all at once.

What Apple has to say--and how it says it--about the ATT and App Store issues is just as fascinating as the new products to be paraded across the stage.