As a no-longer-practicing attorney and someone who generally digs Apple, I reviewed the DOJ complaint filed today and have a few takeaways.

• A taxpayer-funded lawsuit against a trillion-dollar company is not going away anytime soon. It will take on a life of its own. Trust me on this one.
• In my eyes, the monopoly case here is much more complicated than it was against Microsoft back in the day. The iPhone has a lot of viable competition.
• To follow up on that point, Apple considers the benefits arising from its control over the iPhone a competitive advantage. Can the government force Apple to make the iPhone more (for lack of a better term) hackable and diminish its market advantage? I suspect many Apple customers don’t even want that.
• Regardless of merits, this will be a distraction for Apple. The only question is: How big?