Yesterday, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a historic lawsuit against Apple for maintaining an alleged illegal monopoly on the iPhone preventing developers and rivals from fairly competing in the smartphone market. This follows years of developers such as Epic Games voicing their frustrations with Apple’s current App Store guidelines. The documents put forward for the lawsuit contain evidence of Apple’s alleged anti-competitive behaviour, and included a quote from an interview with CEO Tim Cook during Vox Media’s Code 2022 event.

At the event, a reporter had asked Cook about the iPhone not supporting the RCS messaging standard, which the company recently announced support for and should be available later this year. Cook replied “I don’t hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy in on that at this point”

However, the comment that caught people’s attention came when an audience member noted they were having trouble sharing videos with their mom who used an Android phone, Cook humorously responded with “Buy your mom an iPhone.”

The comment was seen as light-hearted at the time, with several audience members erupting in laughter. However, it seems that the comment is back to haunt Apple and Cook following its inclusion in the DOJ’s antitrust case that alleges the Cupertino company is deliberately stifling competition on its products. The comment is specifically mentioned as evidence in the DOJ’s 88-page case document, which you can read more about here.