EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved | Hacker News Reader

EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved

consilium.europa.eu

1,098 pointsGareth3211,389 comments

This is easily one of the most expansive Acts regarding computing devices passed in my lifetime. The summary is in the link. As an iPhone user, this will enable me to:

* Install any software

* Install any App Store and choose to make it default

* Use third party payment providers and choose to make them default

* Use any voice assistant and choose to make it default

* User any browser and browser engine and choose to make it default

* Use any messaging app and choose to make it default

* Make core messaging functionality interoperable. They lay out concrete examples like file transfer

* Use existing hardware and software features without competitive prejudice. E.g. NFC

* Not preference their services. This includes CTAs in settings to encourage users to subscribe to Gatekeeper services, and ranking their own services above others in selection and advertising portals

* Much, much, more.

After the Act is signed by the Council and the European Parliament in September, Apple, Google, Amazon, and other "Gatekeepers" will have six months to comply. Fines are up to 10% of global revenue for the first offense, and 20% for repeat offenses.

Is this potentially breaking apple's walled garden? I wonder wether they will comply at all. Besides, I'm glad to see interoperability mentioned there, perhaps one day we could text from one messenger to another one without being held back by the owner.

It depends what you mean by walled garden. If you're referring to their ability to secure iOS, then no. The legislation includes many exceptions for security purposes; but they must be demonstrable and genuine. The current iOS implementation already sandboxes applications and only provides limited permissions ad hoc, according to user approval. So even under the current architecture, allowing users to install applications doesn't undermine security.

> Is this potentially breaking apple's walled garden? I wonder wether they will comply at all.

They will or there will be a repetition of Microsoft Corp. v. Commission, but with much higher fines.

> I wonder wether they will comply at all.

Of course they will try not to. They will do everything to prolong the appeal process and so on - it's unthinkable they would allow any other app store on their devices, that's the very core of their identity - to be as closed and unified as possible. I don't believe the EU has enough power to fight Apple. I'll believe it when I see the first iPhone with an USB-C charger.

The other side of the coin is "Does Apple have enough brand goodwill to spend it on X years of 'Apple fights EU to keep monopoly' news articles?"

Kind of hard to claim you're all unicorns and rainbows, when you're actively involved in a court case to defend anti-user practices...

I think you underestimate them. Off the top of my head:

1. EU bureaucrats are threatening one of the most successful business models ever.

2. Jealous EU tries to punish successful American tech companies as they can't compete with them in the market.

3. The EU attempts to lower the value of tech stock, threatening pensions of millions of Americans.

4. Apple will need to fire thousands if the malicious plan of EU bureaucrats succeeds.

Etc. etc.

1. Who cares, it's an American company contributing very little to the EU market - in fact, siphoning billions of euros to tax havens

2. see point 1

3. see point 1

4. see point 1

The EU has a bunch of reciprocal trade agreements with the USA to not engage in punitive harassment of each other’s companies. Of course they still can, but that’s what’s called a “trade war” and it’s generally not a good thing for all involved. Public perception of these changes in the US is also very important, since if the US government chooses to view these actions as punitive harassment calculatedly targeted only at US companies, it will respond with tariffs etc on EU goods.

> but that’s what’s called a “trade war”

Yeah. That has been going on since 2005, and the US started it. It even adopted the whitepapers of think-thanks that advocated that exact trade war, elaborating how to sink the Eu's economy. This has been escalating since then.

This law basically says that the Eu is going full-out.

They have to convince the EU power structure, which truly doesn't care about any of that on any level.

It would seem so, yes. But in fact they need to convince the US government that the issue is worth exercising some pressure on the EU. And the USA has a wide array of options here.

When Chelsea Manning released her cables, there were too many of them for any journalist to read or even glance not to mention understanding what is going on. But I spent several weeks grepping and reading many fragments. My conclusion is that the US government cares a lot about their business in other countries, especially in Europe. Ambassadors reported a great deal about how things are going for American companies, what threats are (like European citizens realizing what's better for them), how to neutralize them and so on.

If the US was able to exert sufficient influence on the Eu, the trade war that the US itself started in 2005 would not reach such a point in which the Eu basically placed a kick in the balls of the US tech monopolies.

Which should never have happened and those companies should have never been let to dominate the Internet and everyone's lives to this extent. Especially considering how they are private tyrannies that decide whatever is the best for them, not their users.

1. Yes, and they do not care.

2. If true that is an argument in favor of the EU. That means no member countries will undermine the act.

3. The EU buteacrats do not care.

4. The EU buteacrats do not care.

Wow. All of those points that you listed ARE the reasons why nobody in Europe will take Apple's side when left-wing European MPs start telling their constituents about all those stuff.

Actually they do - thats the reason why that law was passed. That kind of thing may fly in the US, but not elsewhere.

Of course. But these points aren't aimed at the EU (they don't have a leg to stand on, at most they can say they need more time but they can't really find good arguments against the new law). The way I see it, Apple has 3 options:

1) Appeal to infinity, using all resources they can.

2) Comply but make things so difficult for the user that they effectively retain the control over the device as before. (Anybody remembers browserchoice.eu?)

3) Convince the US government the law goes too far and they should intervene. Given the war in Ukraine, it would be extremely easy to convince the countries bordering with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine they should support the USA in this case.

> I don't believe the EU has enough power to fight Apple

Of course they do. EU Commission, with parlament and member state approval (which they have), has supreme sovereign power over these matters. Market regulation is basically the main point of EU. Because it's a new targeted law, Apple has zero chance of appealing this to a higher court.

Thank god that companies don't have "power" over countries and sovereign bodies. I don't want to live in a cyberpunk world.

> I don't want to live in a cyberpunk world.

Snow Crash was like that, companies > countries.

I don't think USB-C is a good yardstick. Apple could (and I think should) move to USB-C voluntarily. They already switched laptops and tablets over to USB-C, and most phone peripherals these days are wireless, so why should phones stick with Lightning?

> Besides, I'm glad to see interoperability mentioned there, perhaps one day we could text from one messenger to another one without being held back by the owner.

By forcing message passing platforms to submit to sharing private encryption keys? And that interoperability entailing the possibility of passing messages to government eavesdropping schemes? Sounds like a utopian paradise!

> forcing message passing platforms to submit to sharing private encryption keys?

Why assume that requirement? For E2E encrypted messaging services all that needs to be shared are public keys for interoperability to work.

In the case of middleman encrypted messaging you already trust the provider not to sell you out. If they interoperate then you trust N providers, where N is the number of providers engaged in a particular chat thread.

You say this like it is not a big deal, I trust Apple much more than I trust Meta with my messages. Apple has made privacy a cornerstone of their sales pitch, Meta not so much. N=2 is too many.

Take a look at OMEMO (Signal encryption protocol for the XMPP internet standard). Interoperability and E2EE are not exclusive at all.

Huge. What if Apple claims implementing required feature X will take more than 6 months? I could see it happening given that planning has already happened and new func will need to be smoothly introduced into UX etc.

> What if Apple claims implementing required feature X will take more than 6 months?

Then that will increase the implementation cost by at least (edit: up to) 10% of their global revenue.

Up to 10%*

Assuming they won't go with the maximum amount early on.

Jumping to such colossal fines is probably an excellent way to annoy the US, too, and given the current security/economic/political/world/universe situation I'd wager that the US would lean heavily on the EU to reach some kind of compromise. These companies aren't just big themselves, they also have the most powerful country on the planet willing to exert pressure to make them stay powerful. I'd be very surprised if Apple/Google/etc. ever paid 20% of global revenue even if they blatantly violate much of what the EU wants.

> Jumping to such colossal fines is probably an excellent way to annoy the US, too, and given the current security/economic/political/world/universe situation

The US military having bases in Europe is a mutually beneficial arrangement, not some sort of charity America is giving Europe. The US threatening to withdraw from those bases for the sake of Apple would be supreme stupidity. Not impossible, but supremely stupid. There are much bigger fish in this sea than a handful of tech companies, large as they are. Apple is a small drop in the bucket compared to the vast commercial and industrial scope of America's global priorities.

That would be really stupid. The fines are set by courts, not politicians. So by pressuring politicians the US just makes an enemy out of the EU without changing the verdict. Good thing though is that GDPR shows that most European courts try to keep fines low for offenders actin in good faith.

The US leveraging its immense economic and political power would be...really stupid? Do you think it doesn't do that? I'm confused. It does that all the time, and if I was a US citizen I would expect it to do just that, although obviously preferably in favour of consumers (which this legislation very possibly is, so to be clear I'm not saying it'd actually be a good thing if the US used its influence to water anything down).

If the US was able to 'exert pressure', things would not come to this point. And no, the US is not the 'most powerful country on the planet'.

It is very likely that it is much lower than that in the beginning of noncompliance, as long as they show that they are trying.

There doesn't appear to be much of a provision for technical delays. Six months is what it appears legislators believe is reasonable and fair, given the enormous resources at the disposal of these companies. Bear in mind that this legislation has been in deliberation since 15 December 2020. It would have been prudent for Gatekeepers to be making strategic product choices - and likely prototype builds - which comply with this outcome; at least for the EU.

Nonetheless, I anticipate teething problems, including some form of malicious compliance. The latter of which the EU tends to take a dim view.

Big companies like Apple are aware of these (proposed) laws long before they actually become law. Not having the foresight to not have something ready six months after it becomes law, is stupidly poor planning if true.

One could also argue that if it takes longer than 6 months to add something dictated by law, you simply have to implement it faster or accept the consequences.

I don't think companies this big has a lot of excuses for taking so long to implement things. They have thousands of employees they can shift from other projects (projects that doesn't decide if the phone is illegal or not) to implement urgent things like this.

> Use any voice assistant and choose to make it default

Cool. I have an iPhone but everything in my house uses Alexa. It would be great to have my phone control my using using ‘Alexa’ as a wake word.

It will also be nice to have a real Brave or Opera or whatever (with Blink not WebKit) on my iPhone.

Second this, Apple has shown zero interest to support my native language (they went 11 years between adding new languages to iOS). This would allow me to switch to Google Assistant which supports it and just use that.

This almost sounds too good to be true. What are the odds of this being watered down, or being delayed into eternity?

IMHO, extremely low. The DMA has passed final debate and review, so it's not changing now. The last step is basically a formality. The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations. The level of abstraction is just too large. Apple, Google, Amazon, et al., can wage a PR campaign, but it's highly unlikely to succeed.

> The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations.

For how long, I wonder, given the megacorps have financial resources on par with entire nations, and the EU has been taking some pretty strong stances on topics of interest to them? Or will the megacorps at some point just decide Europe's no longer worth the trouble to operate in (probably not the worst outcome)?

> Or will the megacorps at some point just decide Europe's no longer worth the trouble to operate in

Companies will put up with almost anything if there’s money to be made there.

Considering how they bend to the local rules around the world, they will bend to this too. I remember only Google shutting down news in Spain and leaving China because of censorship. Apple looks at the money. There are too many money in Europe. They'll put on some sort of a fight but eventually we're going to have third party software on iOS that Apple doesn't approve.

Off-topic: FYI, the phrase should be "too much money", because money is an uncountable noun (you cannot say "a money", but can say "some money").

Thanks. I'm not a native English speaker but reading again my comment those words have a funny feeling. Your explanation points out why. So "There is too much money" (almost 10 M exact matches on Google.)

You're of course right but "too many money" sounds cute, too.

> The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations.

[citation needed]

The reason this regulations went through easily is that they mostly target foreign operators.

It's not the same with all regulations, the EU is a lobbying battleground as much as everywhere else, you can see that in most things, big corps just go through governments when not going through MEPs.

If it's a matter of lobbying aka legal bribery, why are foreign companies disadvantaged? These American companies have no qualms about lobbying in America, they could do the same in the EU. If the EU officials prefer to serve the interests of EU companies despite lobbying from both of them, maybe it's because they earnestly believe EU interests are better served by EU companies?

> The reason this regulations went through easily is that they mostly target foreign operators.

Because 1) foreign operators do the fuck they want in unregulated markets such as the US and 2) there are no such operators in the EU because they have already been regulated

As someone intimately familiar with the underbelly of the system I can add 3) most of the local corrupting pressure historically came from smaller (than big tech) companies outside of tech so less of a spotlight on them in forums like this one. Think auto industry.

EU institutions tend to want to do the right thing but will easily cave to "lobbying" when it comes to regulation that hits too close to home. They will not hesitate to regulate to the benefit of the people when the regulation hits far from home, lobbying be damned.

In fewer words, they will accept to be corrupted by interests close to home and still put the well being of citizens at any other time.

Cars, Cheese and Wine ;)

Huh? Where is the competitor to Google, Apple, Microsoft in the Eu.

The law doesn't even cover devices. It only covers online marketplaces and gatekeepers who control everything.

Citation indeed needed strongly because the opposite is likely true. Same principle why retail wants as few suppliers as possible. Easier to assert your influence. It wouldn't even possible with large central entities where only the largest corps have access to. But it would be far easier to influence some key EU members compared to subsidiary institutions.

> The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations.

the tradeoff is now there's only one entity to bribe instead of 27

there's almost 50,000 registered EU lobbyists

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/...

No. EU is governed by seven distinct institutions with distinct roles and interests. You can read more about them here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutions_of_the_European_U...

The high number of institutions taking part in governance is in part responsive for the reputation of EU to be "slow" to act but it also means that it's incredibly hard to bribe because you have to bribe different institutions that don't even share the same mindsets.

Not arguing there that EU is perfect (it's far from it), but it's really better that what most people think about it, which is because local governments always use the "it's the EU rules, we can't do anything". The thing is, they also omit to remind that ministers and head of states are part of two institutions and that they choose the council of the European Commission. So they are the ones making the rules and those rules have to be accepted by the democratically elected European Parliament.

So when a politician in europe blame the EU for anything, they blame rules that they wrote themselves and that have been approved by a democratically elected parliament.

this is not a pertinent distinction: member states aren't a single monolithic single institution either

the "7 institutions" is also not relevant: Putin wouldn't bother bribing Germany's federal constitutional court or government auditors to push his fossil fuels

he'd go after the executive and legislature: exactly the same as if he wanted to influence EU policy

Not all lobbying is bad. That this regulation clearly protects the local tech industry is in the interest of many companies, but also in the interest of many (if not most) of the population.

I think you are completely mad if thy think that corporate financial influence is far less. Where do you think the EU staff come from?

What happens is you are promoted out of the corporate world and into EU council advisory positions (special advisors). So you end up a fill time EU advisory position with part time and contract work for your parent company. Or there's the full time corporate advisors (institutional special advisors)!

Some are academically sourced and the universities are usually bankrolled by corporations who are just buying advisory positions.

Corporate financial influence is far less. Because there is a quite large segment of actual left, and even 5% to 10% actual communists in the Eu parliament. All thanks to proportional representation in the Eu allowing everyone's views to be represented.

And initiatives like this, same with the Microsoft ballot box initiative, are generally brought to Euparl and led by left-wing MPs, especially communists. There is considerable awareness and following of Open Source in Eu political circles, including Euparl.

Incidentally, a Green-Left coalition dominates Euparl right at this moment as far as I know.

My worry is that it will just not be enforced, just like the GDPR.

The GDPR wasn’t watered down but in the end it just wasn’t enforced (at least not enough) against the biggest offenders it was meant to regulate.

The DMA and DSA will be enforced by the Commission, rather than by member states' local authorities which - hopefully - will avoid the problems we've seen with the GDPR.

https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

I see your username pretty regularly, have you not seen my (many) rebuttals to this link?

TLDR: the enforcement is nowhere near enough.

I will not dispute that we need more enforcement, but it definitely exists and helps. For example, Google recently changed their "cookies" dialogue from "More options" to "Reject all".

Agreed about Google, but not only did it tame 4 years for such an obvious breach to be corrected, but I also don’t believe they were even fined for this particular violation - they decided to start complying after the IAB consent flow ruling.

They’ve basically been allowed to willingly and maliciously breach the regulation for 4 years.

Facebook appears to still be getting away with breaching the regulation on so many levels.

Google got fined €60M for this by the French authorities. That must've stung a little.

That's it? and mostly for pennies? Jesus no wonder so many companies just ignore it.

That enforcement is pretty much enough for Eu businesses to observe GDPR.

And its way more than enough for large foreign tech companies like FAANG to have obliged with it waaaaay earlier.

Enforcement generally happens upon reporting. So your garden-variety startup or corp somewhere in the US or another corner of the world is unlikely to get reported unless they start to get sufficient userbase in the Eu.

I once requested under GDPR my personal data on a well known dating app. It contained all messages ever sent as well as GPS positions for years (try it yourself). I then requested that data to be deleted permanently and they refused.

I didn't take it to court because I didn't want my dating history to be dragged out in court.

They did ramp up the potential fines compared to GDPR.

It doesn't matter how much you ramp up the fines if there's no willingness to enforce them. GDPR's potential fines were already adequate but the actual fines given out were laughable.

GDPR changed a lot. From my own experience, European companies think much harder about what data to collect, where to store it and how to distribute it. We're not even close to 100% enforcement, but a huge step forward from where we were.

If this law only reaches 20% of what it envisions, it'll do more for consumers than other laws before.

Or how about Apple crippling their own device whenever someone wants to do any of these things?

Sounds like a big fine for Apple.

How do you prove it if the performance difference is noticeable but small?

And I don't think any of the big companies is afraid of yet another fine.

Surely the tests that reviewers do every time a new phone comes to market would be sufficient to demonstrate noticeable-but-small?

That could just be written off as "third party developers just aren't as good as Apple's".

You send a court order to Apple to give up all their internal communications, and you use their own internal statements against them.

Is it possible to sneakily get around the law? Maybe.

But it isn't possible to do that, with thousands of people working on it? No, one of them will talk.

> And I don't think any of the big companies is afraid of yet another fine.

Which is why after being found noncompliant a third time, the new law gives the power to the EU Commission to impose structural changes to the company. Or they can stop operating in the EU.

They had to pay a fine in France because of throttling their devices with older batteries. Maybe they'll try again, but I'm sure it'll be proven eventually.

Does it mean Google will have to enable call recording APIs on Android?

That would be sweet. Currently none of call recording apps work on my phone and this is a must have feature for me. When I take a call with my doctor I have to use my separate memo recorder, so that I can refer to the call in the future if I forget something.

Let's not mention usefulness of this feature when you are placing orders over the phone and then the other party claims this is what I wanted once they deliver something not as agreed. If I could record a call I had evidence in case of dispute.

> If I could record a call I had evidence in case of dispute.

It might not be legal to do that, in all cases, and the evidence might not be valid.

It might not be legal to do a lot of stuff with your phone, but usually we leave that up to individuals to decide, rather than stifling the functionality of the phone.

Similar to how we treat knives and similar things.

This is not really a valid argument. If they were concerned about legality, we wouldn't have cameras on the phone and probably neither the call functionality.

That being said, call recording is legal in my country.

Depending on where they are located... the vast majority of US states are one-party consent states. And many businesses already have a recording when you call them informing parties that the call may be recorded, which clear more legal hurdles in more jurisdictions.

Generally informing the other party you are recording is enough consent if they stay on the line. Plenty of customer service lines do that with an automated voice: "This call may be recorded (for quality control purposes)". So their party has already been informed that the call will be recorded, and there's no expectation of privacy.

Wonder if this will also apply outside the EU (e.g. now Britain)

Surely that's at each company's discretion.

Let's hope that the Brussels effect does its magic

> The Brussels effect is the process of unilateral regulatory globalisation caused by the European Union de facto (but not necessarily de jure) externalising its laws outside its borders through market mechanisms. Through the Brussels effect, regulated entities, especially corporations, end up complying with EU laws even outside the EU for a variety of reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect

Can I now install Linux on an iPhone?

You already can have a phone running GNU/Linux (Librem 5 or Pinephone) though.

Yes but I may have a on old working iphone laying in my desktop that I would like to reuse for ecological reason

I have little hope that Apple will release enough information to develop free drivers for your phone. Without such information, you have to forever use an outdated, vulnerable Linux kernel. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26593274.

If your iPhone is old enough to be vulnerable to one of the bootrom exploits, then yes you can.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/06/developers-get-linux...

Interestingly enough, an iPhone that complies with these demands is actually the first iPhone I'd ever consider paying for. I wonder if this might actually increase adoption.

If "Install any software" becomes real and I can start writing software on Linux for iPhone, without requiring me to have a Mac, I'll become an instant iPhone fanboy as the hardware is second to none. It's the software that is stopping the phone from becoming the best one around.

I think that's completely unrealistic. It's not going to happen even if they open the platform up.

If the platform becomes open enough so we can side-load applications, I bet you 100EUR we'll be able to develop iPhone applications from any operating system, but first Linux, within a year :)

Note that I'm side loading two applications I actually wrote myself on my iPhone already...

How? I've been looking for ages on how to develop iPhone applications on Linux and there is no way that doesn't involve installing Hackingtosh, either as a new OS on a partition or in a VM, or renting a Mac server somewhere, so it's not really "developing on Linux" at all.

Um, you just create a cert in XCode, pair your device to it, load the certs onto the device and run the app on it.

You're not going to do it on a Linux box for sure as the tools aren't there but you certainly can run your own stuff on iOS. You don't have to sign up for anything either - just install XCode from the app store and build stuff.

Ah, I see. You completely missed the point...

> I can start writing software on Linux for iPhone, without requiring me to have a Mac

> we'll be able to develop iPhone applications from any operating system, but first Linux

> how to develop iPhone applications on Linux

^ is what I wrote, and you suggest "just install XCode from the app store"? Not sure how that's compatible.

Regardless, I hope we end with a phone that people can actually install their own software on, regardless of what laptops/desktop computer they own.

That's never going to happen and I'd rather Apple spent money on something else other than make it happen.

The issue is you don't have a Mac and that's really your problem, not theirs.

Random anecdote: if you don't pay 99€ yearly for your developer subscription Apple revokes your certificates and disables your apps on the Apple app store. Your problem indeed.

You don't have to pay Apple to deploy to your own device. I don't have a developer subscription. You only have to pay the 99€ to access the store and provisioning.

Your certs only last 7 days and IIRC you can only deploy 3 apps if you don't pay the 99$/year though.

Installation from an app store has become a reasonable customer expectation for most kinds of smartphone/tablet software.

The only thing you 100% need osx for is the signature / certificates crap.

You can build most of an iOS app today on Linux (eg. some game frameworks, qt)

Eg: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/development/compiling...

That's really helpful, didn't know about this and my endless searching didn't reveal this either. Thanks!

I googled. There do appear to be `codesign` implementations on other platforms now https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14321559/using-mac-os-co... as well . No clue if they work

I am not sure about this - does install any software also mean system software or is it only meant to allow installation from sources other than their own app store? To allow system software installations, Apple (and other mobile device manufacturers) will have to allow unlocking the bootloader. (But that alone is limited as without the hardware information of the individual parts, developing an alternate OS for such devices is painful work as you have to essentially reverse engineer everything to create the device drivers - as evident with the snail's pace that Asahi Linux are progressing at to port Linux to Apple M1 and M2 ARM processors. Unless ofcourse, the DMA also forces them to publish the hardware literature so that other system developers can use it, which would be a real game changer ... ).

Agreed. I switched from an iPhone to a Pixel because the iPhone experience is claustrophobic (admittedly I switched from Android to iPhone before that for the much better and lengthy software Apple gives). If this means the iPhone is getting things similar to F-Droid and NewPipe I'd be happy to switch back.

The new iPads have an M1 chip with virtualization capabilities, but you wouldn't know it with the stuff Apple allows on it. Imagine how much better iPads would be if Apple couldn't block Linux VMs just because it doesn't suit them.

Ha, a iPad running Linux would be something I'd look at.

It is a surprise so, that the EU is actually moving, at scale, in that direction. Maybe privacy, processed food and some other things next!

What?

The EU has enacted GDPR, 178/2002/EC (food safety), 44/1999/EC (consumer protection), any number of consumer protection Regulations and Directives.

GDPR is good, just needs reinforcement. The way things like the nutrition score are done is just bad so.

GDPR enforcement is getting better. But yeah man nutri-score is really flawed.

How is the nutri-score flawed?

I looked at the rules and it seemed like a really good idea.

I even got the impression, products got changed for the better in the last year to get a higher nutri-score.

The idea is good, it just got water down too much. On top of that, there are German laws dictating a certain minimum sugar content for certain products to be called mustard or marmalade for example, or lemonade. Which kind of screwed up if you ask me. But that is more of a national thing.

Water down to much?

It's the only drink that got A. Which seems reasonable to me.

It's based on product category, so you can see an A milk next to a (in absolute terms better) C oatmilk, etc...

I knew this, but I didn't know how dumb some of these categories are.

Thanks!

There's a reason mammals feed their infants milk, not oats. Milk is strictly more nutritious.

Inefficient to produce, sure. Destroying the environment, yeah. Cruel to animals, definitely. Unnecessary, yes. These should be reflected in the price, not nutritional labels.

Already possible due to a bootrom exploit in older iPads:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/06/developers-get-linux...

It’s not a popular opinion around here, but the reason I like my iPhone is _because_ it’s a walled garden. It just works, reliably, without surprises, for years on end.

And will continue to work exactly like that after the required changes. We’ll just have more options.

Not if players like epic games don’t support Apple Pay (with east cancellation). Don’t support the app stores rules and are only found in 3rd party apo stores..etc.

It’ll turn the iPhone into an android. Which sucks as I left android because I enjoyed the walled garden.

You are free to not use any app that doesn't want to submit to a 30%/20% Apple tax.

No one is forcing you to play Epic games.

But Apple will probably cut down their rates significantly so most companies stick with the app store.

Especially if the US follows suit.

There are countless ways one can be forced to use an app. My employer could require it. My bank could switch to their own system from Apple Pay. The public transport in my region could roll their own tracking ticket system instead of using Apple Pay. An app leaving the App Store could just have no viable alternative. Etc.

That's fine, just stay on the default settings then.

This however isn't a reason for the rest of the world to accept this. And since the power in the market is highly concentrated and all of it is moving more and more in this direction, regulation enforces these alternative options now.

All this does is regulate the power the provider of a product has over their customer. This does not ruin the walled garden for the people who prefer to stay in it for peace of mind, but it adds a door for the people who want to leave. There is no negative side-effects for the people staying, only the platform providers will have to spend some money and lose some revenue.

> That's fine, just stay on the default settings then.

This isn't going to end well.

That's fine, just stay on the default settings then.

I agree in principle, but I worry that we end up in the situation where if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust. (Something gross like Facebook starting an app store.)

Or course, this is mostly a result of Apple being greedy. If they had acted like a good steward of the platform rather than trying to extract a lot of money from developers, we probably wouldn't be here.

> you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust. (Something gross like Facebook starting an app store.)

As apposed to today where you can’t get it at all if apple and the app disagree about anything?

I know you are thinking of another large enough player you don’t trust as much forcing their store as the only avenue for an app, but it’s hard to imagine how that wouldn’t provide large incentives for a smaller party to make a competitor on the official store.

As apposed to today where you can’t get it at all if apple and the app disagree about anything?

Since there is only one app store for iPhones, almost every app vendor is willing to conform to Apple's guidelines (which are often pro-privacy and protect the user). Otherwise they lose out on a significant market share with a lot of spending power.

smaller party to make a competitor on the official store

Sure, they will pop up. But Facebook, Microsoft, and Google will start iOS app stores and app developers will go to their app stores because of network effects.

> Since there is only one app store for iPhones, almost every app vendor is willing to conform to Apple's guidelines (which are often pro-privacy and protect the user). Otherwise they lose out on a significant market share with a lot of spending power.

You've just described why these changes are good. I feel like the word "willing" in your statement is carrying a lot of weight.

Apple forces developers to publish from Apple devices, spend $100 a year for a developer account, give up 15-30% of any revenue generated from that app, use WebKit, etc.

That is not at all what I describe as restrictions that lead to "willing" app vendors.

> But Facebook, Microsoft, and Google will start iOS app stores and app developers will go to their app stores because of network effects.

They might try, but it would be a lot harder than you imagine.

Then don't use this particular app? This already exists today: A lot of apps are android-only, or jailbreak-only. In the same sense, tomorrow we'll likely have amazon-store-only apps.

In practice I doubt many apps will use a third-party appstore. Apple has a lot of leeway in how they will implement the regulation - they can make it painful enough to use a third-party store that most popular apps will want to keep using the primary app store to get maximum reach. Just like how almost every android app is on the google play store - despite sideloading being a thing since forever.

The issue is what if you have to use a specific app to access some service or community. And then that app requesting access to your location data and your address book even though there is no point in it requesting either. Sure you can deny but if you do it, the app will refuse service. It can only be solved by the app store requiring that users denying access won't result in the app refusing to work, or only the features will refuse to work that actually need that data.

"just don't install the app" won't work in many, many cases.

> The issue is what if you have to use a specific app to access some service or community.

Such compulsions are the real problem. In a free society, nobody should be compelled to have a phone at all, let alone install software on one. Government services in particular should never be gated in this way. If no compulsion exists, then there is no problem with people having the choice to use any appstore they wish.

If by 'have to' you mean something along the lines of "My brother keeps badgering me to install WhatsApp" then the answer is to simply say "No." Real example. He texts me instead.

In US I have not seen any government services that are available only via mobile devices. Most online government services are accessible via a website, and one can go to a public library to use a (non-mobile) computer there.

It's thankfully not mandated by governments. However, often there is social pressure to obtain a given app. E.g. when a friend group is all on snapchat and they organize outings via the group chat. Do you want to be left out of that discussion and only be informed by one person from that group who forwards the decision when and where to go to you?

Sounds like you need better friends.

Ideally OS should give you a way to feed such evil apps some fake / spoofed data.

I believe a rooted Android used to allow something like that, not sure if that still works nowadays.

The app might be able to detect the pattern generated by the fake data generator and refuse to work in that instance. E.g. apple's approximate location feature often puts you into the city center at a very specific location. It's trivial to detect devices that are always at that precise location and only move around in discrete steps between those points.

This can lead to an arms race where the OS creates increasingly advanced/realistic fake data, and apps get increasingly sophisticated logic.

So I'm not a fan of solving this the technical way. A policy is way better, but you need to be able to enforce it.

Why not both?

Sure, it'll lead to arms race like you describe on one side, but let's say 99% of the apps won't even engage in that arms race if the fake data is generic enough to cause a high number of false positives (blocking someone who's not actually faking the data).

Then, we can focus on the remaining 1% of worst offenders to actually enforce the policy.

But this doesn't really happen on Android now. Even though I can sideload apps and use different app stores, my bank never told me to get their app from Shady Store and the public transport company didn't ask me to you F-Droid. The official app store is still _the_ place you find apps in, you're just _also_ free to wander on your on.

The most famous example of an app choosing not to be on the play store is Fortnite. Google even had to add a feature to their play store search to show a message that Fortnite is not available, so that people don't get desperate and install one of the many scams. Fortnite did this because they didn't want to pay the Google tax, but other apps might do it because they want to spy on users more. The danger exists.

We can always use Apple's favorite defense on why they don't have an app store monopoly: use your browser. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc. all still work via the browser. I don't know a single one that doesn't (though I could be wrong)

And the browser sucks on purpose for app development/distribution.

> use your browser

Yeah, but I can't I can use only Safari engine, and I would like to use Firefox one.

Yeah, but for the apps that are on iOS devices, Apple is effectively currently standing in the position of "the lawyer who writes a 4000 page contract to de-risk the wish they're making with the evil wish-granting genie", so that we don't have to. Apple forces apps on their store to obey certain restrictions that make life better (less tracked, especially) for consumers; and those restrictions are begrudgingly accepted by the developers, because there's no other way for the dev to access the iOS user-base.

As soon as those devs can avoid Apple's restrictions and deliver their apps directly to users with the "intended" experience, they will.

Personally, I like neutered-evil-genie apps, and will be sad to lose them (i.e. have them turn into unfettered-evil-genie apps, which I won't use.)

Isn't the answer for Apple to provide operating-system level restrictions to apps (regardless of source) that make it so the only way any application on the system can access the identifier is by permission from the user? I wouldn't be surprised if this is how it works right now anyway, just because an app is deployed by an enterprise developer doesn't mean it should be able to bypass the app tracking transparency prompt.

Or does the EU law prevent them from having private APIs/system components period? It seems like many people are making the assumption that this means that every single sideloaded app will be able to bypass all of the privacy/security features on the device, and I don't see why that would be. My understanding is that this is for "fairness", which would mean that apps that are sideloaded would have the same level of access as those on the App Store, meaning they use the same APIs that trigger the same prompts.

No, because this isn't about OS-level identifiers; it's about things like e.g. applications working together to track you by passing permacookies through Shared Containers; or about apps that ask for microphone privileges then listening for ultrasound beacons in retail stores to determine their location.

These are the sorts of prohibited behaviors that can be heuristically recognized by technical means (e.g. static analysis), but where any such recognition would necessarily result result in tons of false positives; and so those issues, when raised, must be passed to a team of human auditors for determination.

This is, by-and-large, why App Store submissions — even for updates — still require that human-auditor step. They're always watching for those seemingly-minor "this app got sold to someone evil" updates that slip in spyware — the kind you see often with Chrome Extensions.

Your point is valid, but I think those examples are fixable. Permacookies could be fixed as simply as "Would you like to allow {EvilApp} to access data from {EvilPartnerApp}?", as there aren't a lot of reasons that apps should be passing data between each other without user consent (or the share sheet).

The second example has already been fixed with the microphone indicator from 1-2 versions back, where a light shows up in the corner whenever the microphone has been activated (and swiping down tells you what app activated it). A notification could be added if an app tried to activate the microphone when it wasn't in the foreground (but I don't think the OS lets you do that anyway?)

One other obvious "Turing-hard" spyware side-channel, is that it's basically up to the application developer to come up with a list of Internet domains it should be able to connect to, to put into the app's entitlements; and it's up to humans at Apple to determine whether that list is sane — often by starting up the app with syscalls to the network stack shimmed/traced, doing packet captures, and seeing what the app says to each of the domains it lists itself as entitled to talk to.

You'd think that maybe restricting connections to e.g. domains that are rooted in a zone the developer has proven ownership of, would be fine... but there are third-party advertising, analytics, and fingerprinting services that allow you to CNAME them as subdomains of your domain to evade ad-blocker signature recognition.

And, of course, no user could ever be expected to figure any of this out if asked in a prompt. "Example App is asking me to allow it to connect to abcdefg.example.com? Well, they own that, don't they? Why wouldn't I allow that?"

Asking the user sucks. All it does is train users to click yes without thinking about it because they just want to get on with their life. (See: The ubiquitous GDPR cookie prompts).

ANY "solution" that puts more burden on the user isn't.

They do it for location access, calendar access, notification access, and clipboard access for every app. Access to shared containers shouldn’t be a common occurrence outside of once when the app is set up.

You didn’t disprove what your parent said. People still just tap yes on them. I ran an experiment and put little snitch on my wife’s laptop. She just clicked “accept” every time it popped up without question.

Well, I'd love it if the GDPR consent prompts were anything like Apple's privacy prompts.

The problem with consent prompts on websites is that they are rarely in compliance with the GDPR.

The industry will always find ways around regulation. And what we’re left with is a confusing set of spaghetti laws.

They could just ask once for defaults not every time and have a per app dialog where the user could tweak the permissions, like browsers do. For instance I have almost everything blocked in the browser: camera, location etc.

Many of the restrictions that Apple added along the years were reactions to abuse by app developers (which in reality nowadays are "legal malware developers"). Everything you can think of has been tried: from reading the installed list of apps, spying on the clipboard, scraping location data from pictures, fingerprinting phones based on camera sensor or motion sensor and many others.

Permissions represent one of two pillars of their strategy against legal malware developers. The second one is the rulebook associated with the AppStore, preventing publishing non-compliant apps and banning developers for breaking said rules. A classic example is Facebook misusing enterprise certificates to install "Facebook research" which allowed them almost unrestricted access to the data of the users. Apple revoked their enterprise certificate, which also affected internal applications that Facebook employees were using. Facebook relented.

If Facebook launches their own app store, the second pillar is completely circumvented. Additionally they will find ways around the technical limitations, be it through use of private APIs, tricking users into clicking confirmations or bribing them. Technical limitations are not enough when dealing with malicious actors.

> If Facebook launches their own app store, the second pillar is completely circumvented

Meta be forced to offer their adware/spyware Facebook app through the Apple app store as well, as many people will not agree or won't have the technical knowledge to install more than one alternative app store. Apple will probably be forced to provide a list of alphabetically ordered app stores to choose from in the initial iPhone setup. It's quite convenient that their own app store starts with an A.

People always make this argument in these kinds of threads and I wonder how it isn't blatantly obvious that operating-system level restrictions are woefully inadequate to deal with unscrupulous developers. Put yourself in the mindset of an unscrupulous developer for a moment, can't you think of a hundred ways to abuse permissions granted by the user or operating system to violate privacy?

Take, for example, this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/w27x6j/uber_does_not_r...

If these abuses happen under the aegis of the current App Store, doesn't that nullify the argument that App Store review is sufficient protection?

This also ignores that it's conceivable that Apple can harden iOS's existing permissions system.

> If these abuses happen under the aegis of the current App Store, doesn't that nullify the argument that App Store review is sufficient protection?

Not at all. App Store review is not perfect and no one expects it to be. That doesn't mean it has no value or that we should get rid of it entirely. Otherwise you could make the same argument about any system involving unscrupulous actors: "people still kill despite there being laws against murder, doesn't that mean the law is pointless?"

> This also ignores that it's conceivable that Apple can harden iOS's existing permissions system.

Curious how you think this would actually solve the issue I linked above.

> App Store review is not perfect and no one expects it to be.

But Apple is clearly presenting it as such.

> That doesn't mean it has no value or that we should get rid of it entirely.

That is correct, but right now it is the only game in town. There's no secondary stores that present it with competition. Already we read about top-10 grossing apps that are actually scammy. Perhaps Apple will strengthen its App Store when presented with alternatives.

> Curious how you think this would actually solve the issue I linked above.

It really depends on what mechanism that Uber is using to bypass the notifications systems. But off the bat, iOS could force even more granular alerts to the user when sensitive permissions are required.

Curious too, how you think that App Store review currently solves this issue. Uber is already too significant to the platform for Apple to do much more than give them a slap on the wrist, as seen historically.

https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/apple-tim-cook-threatened-...

> But off the bat, iOS could force even more granular alerts to the user when sensitive permissions are required.

How does having more granular alerts actually solve this issue?

> Curious too, how you think that App Store review currently solves this issue.

Well, obviously it doesn't, currently. App Store review needs to update their rules to address this type of abuse. Uber is big but they've taken hard line stances against bigger apps before (e.g. Facebook).

> https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/apple-tim-cook-threatened-...

Sounds like a success story, imagine the alternative scenario where there was no review process and Uber could get away with this unimpeded.

I don't think it's a rules update thing. It's more like review didn't uncover this behavior. (In the past Uber had gone all the way to use geofencing to evade reviewers and regulators.) Maybe this could've been only uncovered through long-term testing by reviewers who actively use the app day to day. Maybe they need such a process that does that.

> Sounds like a success story, imagine the alternative scenario where there was no review process and Uber could get away with this entirely.

It'd say 60-40. The 40% downside is that Apple deigned to go through with actually pulling Uber from the store, even just for a few days. Do you think they'd do anything even remotely similar over the notifications permission leak you cited?

> How does having more granular alerts actually solve this issue?

More restrictive and more transparent handling of permissions. Maybe this mechanism was caused by Uber bundling some sort of library that led to permissions leak. Perhaps the OS could expose that permission being triggered.

> More restrictive and more transparent handling of permissions. Maybe this mechanism was caused by Uber bundling some sort of library that led to permissions leak. Perhaps the OS could expose that permission being triggered.

I don't think you've thought this all the way through. Once a user grants me permission to send them push notifications because they want to know when their ride shows up, you can't really stop me from pushing them ads through the same channel.

Then it sounds like we have found ourselves a problem that is unsolvable both by OS-level protections and App Store review restrictions, and perhaps we should look beyond to other ways to rein in Uber.

> Once a user grants me permission to send them push notifications because they want to know when their ride shows up, you can't really stop me from pushing them ads through the same channel.

Wait, can't an improvement upon the OS be to make it more granular so that Uber is forced to establish separate permissions channels for rides (vital) vs. ads (not-so-vital), and that every time a notification of a certain type appears, the user is given the option to mute that channel entirely?

Sure, you can offer me different notification channels for rides vs ads. But remember, I am an unscrupulous developer. How are you going to stop me from sending you ads through the rides channel?

My underlying point, of course, is just because the operating system provides certain APIs, does not mean they are going to be used in good faith.

What I mean is if a notification presents itself, allow the user to mute it. If that channel was intended for rides, then the unscrupulous developer simply disables their own app.

That's pretty unfortunate for the end user who is then forced to choose between having all notifications or not at all.

Fight the good fight, this is all valid concerns, I don’t look forward to the Netflix store to download Netflix, the Spotify store to download a Spotify, etc

Both Netflix and Spotify are having mounting problems with user retention and growth. Pulling their apps off of the official, most highly-trafficked, App Store is literally suicide for them. Not to mention the inherent difficulty of creating and maintaining their own app stores, of which trying to convince users to sign up for would be a hurdle on its own.

Perhaps they could team up with Facebook and create a rival app store of those who don’t want to pay the 30% tax. Of which they can all hemorrhage users together- it should be noted that FB is also having issues maintaining and growing DAU.

> that make it so the only way any application on the system can access the identifier is by permission from the user?

And let's say the user says No. Today the app will be forced to work without it. By Apple Store rules. Tomorrow the app will say "this permission is required for app to work".

So nobody downloads the app? Or are you afraid that other app users don't care about your needs, and are trying to force them into agreeing with you?

The government offers a democratic way to determine these requirements

When we tried to restrict cookie tracking via voluntary consent, every site installed an cookie consent overlay, where agreeing to cookies is one click, not agreeing is seventy-eight clicks.

Almost every site I've had this pop-up on required no more than 2-5 clicks -> manage cookie options -> either select ok because everything but 'required' is already off or deselect a couple of options then ok. That's easy after doing it a couple of times, it's pure laziness to say that's too hard, and we should not accept that as a good excuse to remove it.

It’s easy but very annoying. Especially when you have a secure setup that randomizes identifiers or removes cookies after the session such that the next session and every session after that you get the prompt. And how many people do you think actually take the time to deselect things? Your example here is the simplest case. Many sites it’s much more than 5-7 clicks as the pop up has a tabbed interface with 10+ checkboxes per tab. What was this supposed to accomplish again? Harass users?

> So nobody downloads the app?

Some apps are unavoidable for most people, like whatsapp or facebook.

WhatsApp is avoidable with this same law forcing interoperability with other messaging clients. Facebook's app is avoidable with a browser and Facebook.com . Actually WhatsApp's app is avoidable in the same way.

They’re all avoidable by just not using them. Use that fancy text message feature of your phone to communicate. 30 years ago these apps didn’t exist and people somehow continued to exist without them.

Implying SMS is anywhere near comparable to modern-day IM is hilarious, it isn't even encrypted. RCS makes SMS look archaic.

Future is Matrix.

Because everybody needs their conversations encrypted. What was that liberal saying, what are you hiding? Most people are not targeted by some state actor

Dude, get with the times. With a few bucks of hardware, anybody can intercept SMS all day long, that's why 2FA via SMS is considered bad form.

Ok, now tell me why i want to snoop on my neighbors SMS? Or why they want to see me asking my wife what to make for dinner?

Are you aware of man in the middle attacks? Do you think encrypted channels are safe from state actors?

Also most phones don’t even use SMS anymore, and instead go through an encrypted server to make it so you can hide your traffic from your neighbors.

Get with reality, not everybody wants or needs what your selling here.

It isn't about neighbours, it is about criminals.

Of course I am aware of this.

Spend $16 and sit in a coffee shop for an hour, guarantee you'll intercept plenty of SMS: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/03/16-at...

Not selling anything here considering every reasonable solution to this problem is something offered for free, or can be mitigated by a user with FOSS.

Yea totally normal for a majority to use SMS in my country when both platforms send messages through their own encrypted servers. I don’t have this problem, nobody in my family does, so now explain to me why I should use matrix?

Those are very avoidable. Try work apps like slack, teams, concur.

I just bridge them to Matrix, and get it all in Element.

We get that you like matrix.

But do you also get that I'm autistic and can go on about things to the point of pissing off complete strangers?

Fortunately HN has "you're posting too fast" rate controls.

The obvious counterargument here is that having lawyers write 4000 page de-risked evil genie wishes just normalized the concept of dealing with evil genies. Apple can negotiate around the margins - maybe they stop making their ad tracking identifier opt-out or something. And indeed, that seems good, we increased privacy compared to the alternative. However, this isn't the full picture. Apple is the one who provided that ad tracking identifier in the first place. More generally, they brought a lot of users straight into Facebook's open, gaping maw.

Furthermore, the lawyer isn't just de-risking one evil genie wish, they're de-risking millions of them. Apple does not just have Facebook on the App Store. They have millions of apps. And as you can imagine, many of them are barely reviewed garbage or outright scams. If these apps tried to get distributed outside of the App Store, nobody would trust them. But them being on the App Store gives users a false sense of security. Apple switched from being highly selective in the early days of iOS to doing bare-minimum checks because the latter made them more money.

Why not have the government do that? That's the role of government regulations

Then YOU don't use this particular brand of smartphone?

I think they have to make side loading a painful developer only endeavor.

Other wise you can end up like the streaming situation where people are just giving up with all the subscriptions and just pirating everything.

Pirating should be a breath of fresh air on mobile. Maybe the streaming services will finally start providing more value.(i.e shared catalog)

Ultimately I think the only person this benefits is Tim Sweeney, as he gets the Epic store on iOS/Android/Playstation/Xbox.

Realistically this just drives people into a different walled garden. One that is device-vendor agnostic, but a walled garden nonetheless - in that your purchases are tied to Epic. This law could have been so much better, but now it just trades one problem for a bunch of new ones (some even worse than what it's trying to solve).

One thing that might have been nice - making allowances in the law for centralised certification authorities with fixed tariffs, so that Apple still checks the builds as it does now for the App Store, but then the builds can be released elsewhere (as the signatures will match). For this they could charge a fee, which could be capped in the law at a percentage of the sale price (and obviously much lower than 30%). This way iOS/Android could still have guaranteed protection, for which Apple/Google's costs are covered, but the user would have freedom to get their software from wherever.

The problem is that hardline free software advocates would still complain about this, insisting that the certification authority be scrapped. iOS and Android are now Windows, and it's going to be a mess.

You underestimate the blessing that is an app store that's free of bullshit policies restricting what you can and cannot publish. With F-Droid on Android, I used to have access to apps like NewPipe that Google would never even consider carrying on their app store, but - because I had a third party store, that wasn't a problem.

Now that I have an iPhone, I miss NewPipe greatly. But with this law, I might be able to get something like it in a few months without jailbreaking.

Not underestimating it at all, it has value. Unfortunately it undermines so much of the security model in other areas that both platforms will rapidly become malware swamps.

> Then don't use this particular app?

And when your employer / school / insurance provider / other requires it, what then?

A dedicated phone for work/school that operate BYOD schemes? VM?

if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust

This will be a problem but the solution is not to transfer your freedom to choose to Apple and just let them decide which third party apps you are allowed to use.

In some cases that will mean making a hard choice between accepting the risk of using the third party app store, or accepting that you won't be able to use certain apps. The benefits are significant though - your device will actually be under your control. You will be able to do all the things Apple prevent now.

> In some cases that will mean making a hard choice between accepting the risk of using the third party app store, or accepting that you won't be able to use certain apps.

You already have that choice today: I can buy into the walled-garden, or go to Android and side-load to my heart's content.

Clearly the market has chosen the preferred route. (I personally am also in the camp of preferring the simple, locked-down approach for my family that Apple has created.)

> Clearly the market has chosen the preferred route

Indeed - iOS trails Android in Europe. With this law in effect, perhaps more Europeans will choose to buy iPhones

> You already have that choice today: I can buy into the walled-garden, or go to Android and side-load to my heart's content.

So if Google decided to force this policy onto Android phones, you would support the EU introducing this legislation to bring back the option of side-loading?

Or would you want the legislation to only apply to Android phones, and not Apple devices?

Give the Europeans the choice to own their device and install whatever they want!

> This will be a problem but the solution is not to transfer your freedom to choose to Apple

Will the solution involve a method to negotiate degrees-of-freedom? Or perhaps a freedom grant method with revocation protocol? Do I get a little widget to see how free I am at the moment?

I'd love to see a laundry list of changes to industry practice, too. But the language employed for these compatibility fights is just getting goofy.

The F150 cup holder is enslaving me, somebody pass a law quick!

> ...the solution is not to transfer your freedom to choose to Apple and just let them decide...

Very good point. It's almost like people believing it to be better for a "benevolent" dictator to make all decisions, so that they won't be bothered with having to make choices.

Not every user wants to give over their freedom of choice to Apple (or any seemingly "kind" dictator), and many would prefer they can make decisions about what is best for their particular situation and based on their own preferences.

I have never needed to install an app from Facebook, and never have. Amazon has an appstore; I have never been forced to install it or anything from it. Should the day come when people are actually forced to use any facebook app or appstore, that compulsion is the problem that needs to be corrected. The problem isn't having the option to install a facebook app; the compulsion is the problem.

Apple could make a greater incentive to use their approval

Competition

> but I worry that we end up in the situation where if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust

I often hear this argument but Android has had third-party app-stores and 'side-loadable apps' since day one and I can't think of a single major app that needs its own app-store.

More than one semi-legit app asks you to install the APK on its own.

There are also app stores on Android that basically push lots of scamware targeted at kids.

We aren't the target audience so we aren't going to see much of these going ons.

Pornhub

Fortnite has the Epic Games app. It's only the biggest video game in the world.

> the biggest video game in the world

My bet is on Microsoft Solitaire. :-)

Though Minecraft is supposedly still at 170 million monthly active players vs. 80M or less for Fortnite.

Not necessarily up to date but interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-played_video_game...

Wasn't meant literally, but sure. It's a big enough deal that it having its own store app is potentially something to take note of.

- Third-parry app stores exist, the app in question is available on one of them. You have a choice: install it, or ignore it and stay fully under Apple's aegis, as before.

- The app in question does not exist because the only existing app store run by Apple rejects it. Tough luck, no choice, but you still can stay safe.

Don't you agree that the latter situation is a strict subset of the former?

Also, if I were Apple, I would implement a one-click return to "safe defaults", and a prominent badge to tell Apple's software and setting from third-party.

> I worry that we end up in the situation where if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust.

This works both ways. Some people want to use iOS exclusive apps but can't justify buying an iPhone because of how restrictive it is. This act alleviates that.

>I agree in principle, but I worry that we end up in the situation where if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust. (Something gross like Facebook starting an app store.)

You have Android as a real world experiment, go ask an Android users to search the Facebook Messenger app on Google Play store and you will see it is there, FB did not forced Android users to install the app by side loading it and FB did not created their own app store for their apps.

What could happen though is you would get fair prices, say an app/Game would be 30% cheaper if you buy it directly from the developer and not from an intermediary, though I did not see this happening on PC (getting a better deal if I buy directly, I am wondering what causes this)

We did not see this as being in an app store actually has value: these 30% cover server/traffic for downloading, billing, discoverability, ease of use in getting the app, little marketing (getting featured). For lots of developers, this seems to be worth whatever the market in question asks for.

I'd much rather have lawmakers set standards on which apps are legal than appstores.

You can't believe how jolting people and/or companies make them change for the better. Maybe this is the kick we needed for the companies to start innovating and "Think Different"?

I use MacBooks and iPhone, and I love their current form, but they are victim of their own success at one point, like how Intel just dragged its feet to just keep the performance gap enough to keep the lead. Maybe this can help us to see a better, more exciting Apple and tech ecosystem, no?

The last battery lawsuit brought us "Battery health" menu, and this is immensely useful, even if it only reads a couple flags and shows us what the iOS is doing.

Don't quote me on this, but there was some discussions early this year about dominant platforms (I didn't read what does cover this Act, but) need to provide API to allow users to use third party alternatives, like Facebook, WhatsApp, iMessage, etc, so you could now have an app like Adium again where you have all your chats. So in theory this will be not an issue.

This will immediately happen, and is the intent of the law.

Direct downloads from websites isn't far off - I wouldn't be surprised if we very rapidly get to a place of each-app-is-it's-own-store for the purposes of complying with the law so you can freely download apps from websites.

It'll be Windows all over again, with all that implies.

> if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it from a third-party store that you don't trust

This sounds like iPhone user argument. In Android world you can have multiple app stores, but if you want your app to be used you must be on Google one, because it has the most eyes. Facebook didn't create their own app store.

Custom App stores are fringe apps, with exceptions of f-droid which is source of open source apps and many prefer it to google play (and apps are frequently on both stores) and maybe samsung/amazon ones because they are preinstalled on some devices.

>Or course, this is mostly a result of Apple being greedy. If they had acted like a good steward of the platform rather than trying to extract a lot of money from developers, we probably wouldn't be here

I don't think so. Another comment was mentioning how some desktop apps are built to install ONLY from a certain marketplace (eg Steam) so you can't install them from anywhere else. It could easily happen on iOS.

I think you missed the point of the new restrictions. Stopping those practices that are harmful to users is a good thing. Ending endless spying, aka corporate surveillance, that can be a good thing. When Apple made their changes, Apple conceptually blocked any new facebook app that spys on you, because you can't install it. If there's a future facebook store that has the only facebook app (because facebook won't agree to that more limited apple ad/surveillance world capability), you'd have freedom to install that app because of european rules described here - but you wouldn't necessarily be better off by having more spying.

European (and other) regulators are concerned about tech data collection. It’s an issue that’s not necessarily orthogonal to this development. If Meta wanted to try their luck at putting their apps on an exclusive Facebook app store, such a platform would be subject to regulator scrutiny as well, and would be an even more convenient target for investigation.

> This however isn't a reason for the rest of the world to accept this.

I guess most of "the rest of the world" will still be hindered by the price tag.

Price is right on the iPhone SE. Not an Apple user anymore, but it is very competitive versus Samsung, Google Pixel et al.

This is like if you'd say a Lamborghini is not an expensive car because there are Ferraris out there.

Just wait till Facebook forces you to download their app from the alternative app store with all their tracking crap up to 11

I imagine they'd like to do that, but they wouldn't like users to use the website instead, and they really wouldn't like users to use Facebook less.

You are forced to download the Facebook app?

Last I checked Facebook owned several popular apps including Instagram and WhatsApp.

> That's fine, just stay on the default settings then.

That’s actually not possible though. For instance, Microsoft is likely to create its own app store, as is Adobe, Google, and obviously Epic, among the many others. So now I will have to install a bunch of app stores just to install different softwares.

I already have this problem on my gaming PC where I not only have a bunch of different app stores, but a bunch of different update tools, payment providers, logins (not just for the games, but for the app stores). It’s a freaking pain in the butt. I just want to play a game on my PC and I have to deal with crap like that. I don’t want it on my phone!

Then maybe someone come with a platform that is agnostic. Like Humble Bundle - they offer in many cases both Steam codes AND ability to download directly from their servers with no need to install any additional platform software.

Don't think of them as stores, think of them as repositories, just like how civilized operating systems use package managers.

I’d don’t think many argue against that. It is just something that you should be able to opt out off.

Nothing stops you of staying in the garden though. Just don't install anything Apple and you'd be golden.

Now that there's a way out, however, you can be forced out if e.g. you have to install an app that isn't available in the App Store because its developer saw an opportunity to roll their own.

Not saying that the trade isn't worth it, just that, well, now that Pandora's box is open, it's coming to get you, even if you don't want it to.

This is situation with many conditionals:

1. Apple won't stay competitive for its major partners in the app store.

2. The app will be really important for you with no alternatives.

3. It will be both important and won't be up to your standards established by Apple.

My suspicion is that if it provides really interesting functionality, it will have enough competition that you will be able to choose from.

The major danger comes from scams targeting uneducated users, however, if Apple really wants to protect them, it will make everything possible to maintain their app store as a viable distribution channel.

> My suspicion is that if it provides really interesting functionality, it will have enough competition that you will be able to choose from.

I'm thinking of scenarios where you don't specifically want the app, nor does it offer any particularly interesting functionality - it's just a platform lock-in effect.

As a trivial instance, you can't install Fortnite on Windows machines without going through the Epic Store. Yet, the value of Fortnite isn't how the game plays, but the skins & community - things that cannot be replicated by another app.

> Now that there's a way out, however, you can be forced out if e.g. you have to install an app that isn't available in the App Store because its developer saw an opportunity to roll their own.

This is something iPhone uses use all the time and this did not happen on Android.

Some people just like golden handcufs.

At first I thought you had missed a word or two ("don't install anything unapproved by Apple"?), but then I decided this was deliberate as you're making a reference to Adam and Eve.

well, it was honest mistake, but I like your interpretation

I don’t see how your walled garden is threatened by giving Melbourne Trams the ability to use the NFC chip in my phone to pay for rides. Or threatened by Amazon having the ability to add an in-app purchase button to their iPhone app which uses my saved Amazon payment options.

I’m sure apple will fight this tooth and nail, but it’s my phone. I paid for it. I want to be able to do what I want with my device.

Because it requires the devotion of Apple's resources to supporting non-Apple things. It will necessarily degrade certain experiences away from those that Apple would provide without the regulation.

I kinda get your point that Apple will have to devote some more resources, but it will only be slightly more: All the API are already there and being used by Apple apps privately and they just have to make it open to everyone. That's not really a huge overhead for someone of Apple's size - they'll just need to publish / update documentation and increase their developer support teams and that doesn't cost 10's of millions of dollars (which is again peanuts for Apple).

This is really not how it works. Private APIs are usually poorly designed for general use — safeguards for excess power consumption, etc, often don’t exist.

Many things will need to be rewritten; this legislation will result in significant delays in shipping new end-user features, if Apple doesn’t simply pull out of the EU, since the EU is demonstrating with this legislation that they don’t care about end-user privacy/security.

Private apis are nothing like public. You can’t just document them and toss em out the door because Private means you can change and break them every release without concern because you control all the consumers. You can also start using incomplete ones before the contract is solidified. Public means they are in use and shouldn’t change much, and if you do you need to announce a deprecation and then slowly deprecate. Not that apple has to do that but generally that is the rather large difference and you know the moment they break one everyone will be scream at them for that.

How? If someone installs different app store and it breaks, they just don't handle the requests regarding 3rd party apps, just like now. What extra resources you're talking about

>Because it requires the devotion of Apple's resources to supporting non-Apple things.

Oh no, one of the richest companies on the planet might have to spend a tiny bit more on making things better for everyone.

The absolute horror!

It will be worse for me, a long time customer, at the benefit of you, possibly not even a customer?

Or, looking at it another way, it will not cause Apple's loyal customers to switch to a competitor, but it might attract potential new customers.

Why do there need to be new customers? If you didn't like the product before, you can look elsewhere (or look within). Seems pretty messed up to ruin the experience for those who have been enjoying the products as is for years.

How would opening up the API and payment system ruin the product? I want to buy audible books from the audible app on my phone but I can’t do that. I want to subscribe to Netflix from my phone but I can’t.

Seems to me that opening this stuff up would make our phones better, not worse.

Ah, yes, if only Apple Computer could have borrowed the wisdom of the famously prescient and tech literate European Union, it might have seen its way to these changes and new customers alone.

We live in a society. People who don't do business with a company nevertheless get a say in how that company does business.

> It will be worse for me, a long time customer, at the benefit of you, possibly not even a customer?

It wouldn't necessarily make things worse for you though.

By the time we'll find out it will be too late. I'm not interested in finding out.

It will be better for me, a long time customer, what now?

The status quo remains.

Apple has a bajillion dollars and cheats their own engineers.

> Apple is the world's largest technology company by revenue, the world's largest technology company by total assets,[454] and the world's second-largest mobile phone manufacturer after Samsung.[455][456]

> In its fiscal year ending in September 2011, Apple Inc. reported a total of $108 billion in annual revenues—a significant increase from its 2010 revenues of $65 billion—and nearly $82 billion in cash reserves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#Finance

And then...

> In re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation (U.S. District Court, Northern District of California 11-cv-2509 [10]) is a class-action lawsuit on behalf of over 64,000 employees of Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar and Lucasfilm (the last two are subsidiaries of Disney) against their employer alleging that their wages were repressed due to alleged agreements between their employers not to hire employees from their competitors.[11][12] The case was filed on May 4, 2011 by a former software engineer at Lucasfilm and alleges violations of California's antitrust statute, Business and Professions Code sections 16720 et seq. (the "Cartwright Act"); Business and Professions Code section 16600; and California's unfair competition law, Business and Professions Code sections 17200, et seq. Focusing on the network of connections around former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, the Complaint alleges "an interconnected web of express agreements, each with the active involvement and participation of a company under the control of Steve Jobs...and/or a company that shared at least one member of Apple's board of directors." The alleged intent of this conspiracy was "to reduce employee compensation and mobility through eliminating competition for skilled labor."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

and that was a decade ago? what's your point? that the entire tech industry was colluding on salary and comp?

> and that was a decade ago?

And do you really think they've "seen the light" since then?

> the entire tech industry was colluding on salary and comp?

And BTW it pretty much was the entire tech industry, it came out in the court proceedings: "Dozens" of other major tech companies were involved. Pando Daily had good reporting but they closed but you can still read up on it through the Archive.

- - - -

The OP said:

> Because it requires the devotion of Apple's resources to supporting non-Apple things. It will necessarily degrade certain experiences away from those that Apple would provide without the regulation.

The first point (about Apple's war chest) is that they have plenty of resources.

The second point (about how they conspired to cheat their own engineers despite having more money than Scrooge McDuck) is just to remind everyone that these are amoral money-grubbing bastards who will do pretty much anything they think they can get away with to make a buck.

The idea that opening up their walled garden to competition will "degrade certain experiences" is laughable.

I'm not thrilled with their having to open up most of these areas, but it's doable. If the API's don't already exist (read: Private, for Apple's use only) they can be written - that's an item on the to-do list, but it's not crazy.

However, the Apple Pay & NFC stuff just rubs me the wrong way. The only reason they have been begging for this is the ability to collect more data about riders, which isn't necessary and probably would get sold to third parties for the purpose of serving ads and other services.

I want none of this and those firms can kindly fuck off right into the Sun.

Existing API's do the basics just fine.

Thank $deity the MTA didn't entertain any of this bullshit when they rolled out OMNY. Now if we could get NJTransit on board, we'd be all set.

I'd welcome a return to transit tokens. They were simple and easy to use, and could be easily shared with guests visiting town. And they couldn't be used to track anybody.

How does "pay for transit with NFC" work without the metro having access to the NFC hardware?

In Chicago you can put your metro card in your apple wallet and it’ll automatically use it on the public transit system even if you have a different default set. Not sure if apple is charging them fees or what, but it works pretty well for me.

Having worked on such systems, yes, Apple charges fees for that. Hefty ones.

IIRC, those fees are charged to the merchant in order to process transactions. Traditional credit cards are similar in theory. For example, American Express has long had the reputation that in addition to the cards people know (Green, Gold, Platinum, etc.) technically being "charge cards" that need to be paid in full each cycle, merchants pay a higher fee to accept them.

^ Offset of course by the fact that most customers have pretty good credit to begin with and probably spend more than your average Visa or Mastercard.

In addition, I would also expect them to be paying for integration into someone's payment infrastructure to provide other services - PayPal, Stripe, Square, and the like.

I think the complaint was about being able to use NFC hardware outside of Apple Pay.

See also, Aussie banks who wanted the same thing.

How anyone would ever think this is a good idea, with third parties having unmediated access to hardware has not thought this through.

The whole point of an NFC chip is to allow this sort of thing. I don't see how anyone can think it's a good idea to make Apple entitled to set arbitrary payment processing fees for all NFC payments on an Apple device.

It’s their platform. If you don’t like it, there’s the door.

I’m not opposed to regulations, but the EU should be careful not to be too permissive or specific, keeping in mind the limitations of doing either one.

See also: the EU directive about mandating USB-C ports. They claim the standard will be revised in response to market conditions on the ground, which is nice to hear, but governments are slow - often by design - and they will need to prove it before they can be trusted not to screw up.

My phone is nobody’s platform. It’s my phone. I paid for it. I demand the right to use someone else’s software on my device if that suits me better.

It’s not like apple subsidises the devices with income from the App Store fees. They’re just double dipping, and I’m glad the EU is slapping that down.

Again, it's not a huge leap to imagine someone (in this case, banks or transit authorities) using that unfiltered access to do something gross, like giving your data to an entity you've never heard of.

Using the official API prevents most of this misbehavior, which is why it doesn't bother me if Apple are jerks about enforcing compliance.

If you, or an app you use, feel like access is necessary, make your case to them. Repeatedly if neccessary. Software is nothing if not malleable and most of these areas are slowly opening up, as the company seems to have read the room on a few things and would like to get ahead before the law requires they do so.

On the other hand, especially with hardware that could conceivably track your location, I'm surprised that users - the knowledgable ones anyway at least - aren't up in arms about what access to raw data (e.g, not mediated by an API) by someone other than the platform vendor might mean for them.

I don't think it's necessary to pull an EFF move and demand everything be private, but this is one area that I suspect would meet the standard where people want the bar to be much higher about who gets access to data and what they are allowed to use it for.

I’m sympathetic to the privacy argument. But I’m suspicious.

Particularly after reading the memos which came out in the Epic lawsuit, I can’t tell how much all of this really is about privacy. Or how much privacy is just cover to take a cut of the profits of Netflix, Amazon and visa by controlling access to our phones.

The privacy argument probably has some truth, but it seems suspiciously self serving for Apple.

I think there’s plenty of ways apple could preserve my privacy without taking such extreme control of my device. A simple answer would be to give banks direct access to the NFC chips on the condition of user privacy. And cut them off if they violate that policy rule.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that apple’s chosen solution just happens to be the one which maximises their profit.

The testimony I recall from the Epic trial was pretty clear - Cook & Co. see this as a point of differentiation that helps them sell hardware.

After all, Google can't really do the differential privacy stuff to the extent Apple does due to their reliance on ad revenue - which is only so targeted because they collect it in the first place, giving their Ads customers (businesses) more opportunities to sell to.

Netflix wants to build viewer profiles of its users, so gathering that data in a way that they can ID helps; Amazon will do similar things to suggest purchases based on your history.

As a card provider for the general public, Visa kind of has to play ball and even then, their customers are merchants and financial institutions that issue cards.

Given enough size - think FAANG, or really any financial institution - Apple probably can't reject them for shady behavior, but can always work to build guardrails to prevent the worst offenders from going off.

> Again, it's not a huge leap to imagine someone (in this case, banks or transit authorities) using that unfiltered access to do something gross, like giving your data to an entity you've never heard of.

So you would also approve government entity to control what you do in your house, just to make sure you don't do something gross? If not, why you want some private company to control a phone you bought and own?

So the OS updates each year are free labour? The constant research as well? Okay…

How about the fact that you knew about the restrictions before you bought the product?

I feel you are in the wrong here. You knew the contract conditions and still signed it but because you don’t like it you want to change it. Well I like it so why is your view stronger than mine? Keep in mind you do have the option of Android and with this law you are taking away my right to choose a completely closed garden. Something I actually enjoy - I’m not just playing devil’s advocate here

As I see it, the $1000+ I paid for my phone more than covers the cost of Apple’s R&D, and a few years of software updates. Apple’s balance sheet bears this out too.

> You knew the contract conditions and still signed it

I didn’t sign a contract. I bought something with my money. I don’t have an ongoing business relationship with apple. But apple still thinks they’re in the right to control what I do on my own hardware.

And wow do they make a lot of money inserting themselves into my financial transactions. All in the name of privacy I hear. Suuuureee.

Apple is cleverly using the iPhone as a moat to stop banks and other companies from competing with them on software for their devices. They know nobody else has the expertise and deep enough pockets to compete on hardware - and they’re using that to milk as much money through software as they can get away with. It’s just the same as what Microsoft did bundling IE with windows - except way worse because apple doesn’t even let you install anything else.

It’s a terrible deal for consumers and the EU is right to slap them down for it.

ummm?? government is slow then what is Apple? with its bs expensive cable that is like a decade behind with its USB2 speed? its 2022 every other phone has fast transfer rate

> It’s their platform. If you don’t like it, there’s the door.

It's my phone, I should be able to do everything with it, if they don't like it they don't need to sell it in EU.

Why can't Melbourne Trams use the standard contactless payments that everyone else already uses?

Yeah this doesn't make sense to me. I've used my iPhone with NFC to pay for transit in multiple cities in multiple countries, I don't see any reason Melbourne Trams can't implement it too.

True, countless times I had to fix friends/family android tablets and phones where all of the sudden apps stopped working and will boot crash . It is always some crap like apps messing settings and permissions or play not being updated etc… I converted most of family to iPhone/iPad problem solved.

I am a tech person but when it comes to phones I want the damn thing just to work and simple to use.

That family doesn't know how to keep proper phone hygiene shouldn't mean they get to force their locked down stuff on the rest of us.

Unfortunately that's exactly what it means because most common folk will never put an effort into learning the said proper phone hygiene. :(

none of these things you mentioned are specific to Android. this happens on iOS too.

> the reason I like my iPhone is _because_ it’s a walled garden.

Yeah, but now you can choose which walled garden you lock yourself up in, so it's even better.

Your walled garden gets better, mine (existing Apple ecosystem) gets worse. Less people -> less revenue -> less developers/features/customer support. Just want to highlight the no free lunch in this situation.

Forcing others to conform to your preferences so that you’ll enjoy a better UX is also known as fascism.

Well, as an average iPhone user, no. The reliability is mediocre.

Keyboard crashing, UI glitching and having wrong dimensions/inoperable sections, occasionally deciding that minimum brightness is the only allowed value and being entirely unresponsive to the brightness slider, some days using waaaay more battery with no battery accounting, sometimes requiring a reboot to use a Qi charger, occasionally freezing and dropping me back to the home screen after what I assume is a crash, sometimes requiring hard reboots as the UI is entirely locked up and doesn't even want to soft crash, ...

I can keep going. And yes, it's a new model that no it's not full of crap and apps. It sees light usage outside reading news sites.

The "apple is more reliable" thing is a myth. I feel that it used to be the case, but I haven't felt like that for a decade.

And no, having anecdotal good experiences is not very useful. I also have those, and so do users of every other platform. Reliability is about the bad experiences, and just works" implies none or at least very few bad experiences.

I hope you recognize that your experiences are anecdotal as well.

None of what you mentioned I even heard of, let alone experienced. Yet you come here and seem to be claiming that your anecdotal evidence weighs heavier than the anecdotal evidence of others. Weird.

It's a shame that you drew the short straw but maybe it's something in your setup, home network, mobile coverage or whatnot.

If we're going to exchange anecdotes, I can write at least 20 short horror stories of all 13 Android devices I owned over the course of 6 years, belonging to 5 different brands. They had systemic and repeatable / reproducible issues which I eventually concluded their custodians weren't interested in fixing.

I can keep going as well. None of what you said is actual evidence.

UI glitching and being stuck at minimum brightness is sometimes a sign of overheating or battery problems, and the OS applying draconic power management to compensate. Unusually high battery drain and overheating is something I once had because of a bad sim card, but YMMV. It is definitely not normal to see these problems on an iphone. I would take it in for service.

That's a fair explanation if the brightness thing, although I'm not particularly demanding of my devices. Unless my thigh was unreasonably warm, overheating would probably have to be a background service gone rogue. That one has only happened a few times though.

As for service, this is not unique to a single device. Many if the issues are seen on a newer model from a friend within a few weeks of purchase. For that to still be hardware or related to my iOS install, shipped product quality would have to be quite a lottery...

This sounds like you have a hardware or software issue on your phone. make a backup (if you aren't using icloud backups already) and then make a genius bar appt. and see if they can fix this. I have never seen that level of glitchy-ness on an iphone without there being a serious issue. either on my own phones or during nearing a decade in IT.

Yes, I have a hardware and a software issue: the root cause is that it's an iPhone running iOS as normal.

This isn't a hardware defect or a broken install. It's just mediocre software, nothing more. This isn't even that glitchy. All those things don't usually happen at once, although they are recurring - including for friends on different device generations, ruling out unlucky hardware and moon rays.

I agree with parent. You phone is broken, my friend. In the years I've been using iOS, these have happened to me less than a handful of times. Definitely not something I would ever remember if not prompted.

I'm sorry, but it's just not particularly believable that all devices in my vicinity should have rare hardware faults that cause the mentioned software crashes and glitches.

As mentioned, they are reproduced on devices of friends of different generations, and my earlier devices were no saints either.

Plus, remember the debugging manual: When software bugs out, it's safe to assume it's always the software that's broken. Suspicion of kernel, compiler or hardware faults come after the software has been proven free of fault (which you can't reasonably do without source access).

i switched to android after all these same issues, their software is not what it used to be

Man, software occasionally erroring out.

That eliminates...nearly all software ever created. Good luck out there

Yeah I don't get why people find bugs to be an unbelievable concept here... :/

HN should know that "works for me" is not a good answer to an issue report...

Take it to an Apple Store and have it replaced. Seriously, that isn’t a normal experience.

This argument keeps on popping up, but I don't really understand why. Apple themselves already have a platform that's had a reputation of reliability and "just works" that is not a walled garden in most of the ways the digital markets act intends to prevent: the Mac. There's no evidence the the qualities of Apple products are strongly linked with them being walled gardens. Your iPhone will be fine.

(Macs may not be as "just works" as iPhones, sure. I've personally seen that too many times. But computers are also intended to be more flexible and complicated in operation than smartphones, and regardless of personal anecdotes Apple is still widely regarded as building the most "just works" general purpose computers. And whatever faults Macs have, you'd be hard pressed to argue that if only the Mac was more of a walled garden that things would be better.)

And what in the new law would prevent them from continuing to make the same "reliable without surprises" iPhone experience you seemingly enjoy? I don't see anything that prevents them from saying "We can only guarantee an Apple-level experience by using apps vetted by Apple and download directly from the official Apple App Store." Most companies that I'm aware of don't have to warranty issues arising from after market/3rd party accessories. I mean, is Apple responsible if I download software from x company on my mac from x company's website? Why isn't the laptop ecosystem "all messed up" if you can install anything from anywhere on your macbook and use any payment processor? The only thing this really would do to upset Apple is taking away some of their walled-garden revenue, like processing fees. I'm not sure why a watch or phone or tablet needs to be treated opposite of other traditional computing devices. Just because it's a different form factor?

I'd argue appliances should be walled and computers shouldn't be.

I think the form factor is very relevant. A MacBook is treated like a computer. A phone is treated like an appliance.

Most phone/tablet users want the convenience of modular functionality without vetting the source. Said functionality should also be easy to discover and add/remove, hence app stores.

Whereas on a computer, app stores are ignored if they even exist. Most people install after doing their own Googling or seeing it run on another MacBook.

In my opinion phones intended for general purpose computing should have distinct marketing and different software-related features.

It's an extremely popular opinion. It's the tech grandma phenomenon. A lot of people in tech want to optimise for their grandmas. So whenever something like this is proposed, the standard response is, 'But what about my grandma ?'. It's a variation of the 'But what about the kids ?' argument.

Consider me a grandma. I work in tech but I'm also tired of it.

But what about me? I’m the one who likes the fact I don’t need to worry about malware on my phone and I open sensitive documents only on my phone without any anxiety that they might get leaked.

I feel a lot of ppl in tech actually don’t care about the end user and care only about the profit they can make while completely disrespecting my privacy. How about that being the phenomenon?

You will always have the option of sticking to Apple's recommended practices (their app store, their payment system, etc.). So what's the issue ?

I won't have when my bank decides their crappy app is better than Apple Pay, when an app I rely on decides to leave the app store, etc. Sure, I can find another bank/app, but I use the ones I use because they have the best conditions/features/etc for me, which others may not have. Or I can't even switch, because the app in question is required for work/public transit etc.

This does not happen on Android, so why should it happen here?

Most people use Google Pay there, bank apps with payments is something that is used rarely, but there is such possibility.

Here in Germany, “Sparkassen” and “Volksbanken”, which together have >50% market share, both don't support Google Pay, instead providing their own (according to acquaintances using them, not that good) payment apps. They both support Apple Pay, though.

But it does .. It does happen on Android. Plenty of banks refuse to support Google Pay, and will instead leave you with their own crappy app. They all support Apple Pay though.

If I were Apple - the way I would have gone about it was to sell an open developer phone that supported changing the defaults, etc.

That way when the inevitable "Apple has been hacked and is no better than Android" media driven hit pieces come out - Apple can highlight that this is happening on the open developer phone meant for the fringe consumers, not the safe walled garden that most of us normal, non bleeding edge consumers have in our pocket.

And us folks who just want a phone that works can sigh in relief versus having to read a 1000 word article only to find its because some guy went through several hoops to install some obvious malware.

Really, Apple could have headed off regulators at the pass if they had embraced the (semi-)opening of their platform themselves. Allow third party app stores but on their own terms, providing SDKs and APIs for creating your own iOS App Store with security checks baked in and mandating privacy protections built in. Sort of like a software services equivalent to Apple Authorized Service Providers and Apple Authorized Resellers.

They would have then controlled this debate, and there would have been less room for the Epics of the world to complain about the platform being locked down. Not to mention users would benefit from greater choice. Imagine boutique third party app stores springing up devoted to specific interests and niches such as F-Droid, or promising better curation or quality.

Companies who refuse to use the AppStoreKit that Apple so beneficently provided would then be seen as malefactors seeking to subject their users to lack of privacy and security, rather than Apple trying to uphold their 30% cut and restrictive behavior.

Instead, Apple tried to control everything and not only did they expose themselves to regulation like this, they deal with customers annoyed at scammy apps on their own App Store, and third party devs crying foul at inconsistent policing.

I'm not quite understanding this argument. If you prefer to stay behind a "walled garden", then you still can. The difference being that you will personally enforce your own preferences for all things dictated or suggested by Apple versus Apple imposing what they want upon everyone. The "walled garden" will be your own mentally imposed constraint.

Though you and various others might prefer the "walled garden", that is not to say that all Apple users prefer it that way. Clearly, as jailbreaking demonstrates, there are significant numbers of iPhone users that didn't and don't want to stay behind Apple's jail or wall.

Then go and buy an android phone. Honestly this looks to me like I bought a petrol car and I want it to be electric.

You have a choice when you buy things.

I want the walled garden for my parents so that I can tell them - anything you install is safe so don’t stress.

I think most engineers are so narrow minded and don’t understand a vast majority of the user base that it’s insane.

Ppl made the decision to buy a specific device. Respect their choice. You don’t like it? Don’t develop for that OS…

You are disrespecting the choice of iPhone owners, who want freedom of choice on a product they paid for. That's what jailbreaking was/is all about and the various App Store alternatives. It also shows a lack of understanding on the EU's position in regards to fair business practices, where Apple snuffs out any competition. Apple is not suppressing competition out of the kindness of their hearts, they did so to maximize profits off of their captive user base.

If you want to follow Apple's future suggested practices, then you will still be able to, it just won't be forcibly imposed on all users.

There might be some apps and hardware that are desirable on the iPhone and some apps that are desirable on an android phone.

For example, I might want to use iMessage without any of the restrictions that you get on other non apple devices. This is huge, my friends all have iPhones and use iMessage. I don't want a neutered experience. What happens to family that rely on these tools, mom's that are looking into buying their child's first phone? This is how people become trapped in these ecosystems.

The camera on iPhones is really good, apps like Snapchat or Instagram have always functioned way better on iPhone than on android.

There are many reasons why someone would want to use a lot of apps developed for the iPhone. But they might also have extra needs. Personally, I do have an android phone, and besides the apps that I've installed through the playstore I have lots of alternative apps from the f droid. They're great. I have wanted to try the iPhone because I know my mainstream apps would work better in the iPhone. But alas, there are too many restrictions.

Why would having more choice be a bad thing?

And this law is taking away my preference. I WANT to pay through Apple, because they make it easy. Subscriptions through Apple are super easy to cancel. That will for certain be gone, because now they get away with all their shady schemes that make it close to impossible to cancel. I want to pay with Apple Pay, because it is rock solid. I don't want to be forced into the banks half-baked crap app.

I too enjoy having an extra layer of protection from the companies writing apps. (And the companies providing libraries to them, like Facebook.) And for my own stuff, the sandboxing gives me a layer of protection from vulnerabilities in the libraries that I use.

I think being able to side-load stuff, while keeping the sandboxing (and requiring user permission for access to data) in place would be ideal for me. This makes it a bit easier to write stuff for the device and distribute ad-hoc to friends and family stuff that is of no interest to the general public.

I don't have a strong interest in alternative browsers, because I don't believe any of the developers of alternative browsers will prioritize battery life. But I know others have strong feelings about that.

I agree 100%. While I personally would love all these features as a tinkerer, I'm afraid my retiree parents are gonna click on malicious links and install malware. Because this is what they fall for on Windows and Android.

Then the solution will be to use anti viruses and other software, which will make the ecosystem even more exploitative (imagine the likes of Norton and Avast on your phone).

I believe the best solution is giving the user a choice of the OS. Like go to a store, select phone hardware, select OS and pay. Once you're on an OS you play by the OS' rules. Like for android you could choose vanilla, Samsung distro, Mi distro, etc. Similarly iOS could be available on Pixel hardware, etc.

I don't think the security concerns are totally valid - the OS sandboxing is still there.

Nothing wrong with a sensible OOBE, but please, some mercy for the power/niche users.

I don’t care as long as I can finally use firefox or chrome on my iphone and FINALLY play vp9 webms.

Also, I use a few mobile apps with web push notifications, so there is that too! Webkit still doesn’t support neither.

Im hyped.

That's not the only reason to get an iPhone though, and why should you get this at the expense of the rest of iPhone buyers? The iPhone is hardware, not software

Until it doesnt. Then there is nothing you can do. It leads to ewaste. Thats what happened to my ipod touch and iphone 6 plus after 2 years.

I don't think that letting you choose third party services is going to change that aspect of the iPhone...

Interesting why, the name Hacker News implies being able to hack around even (or espacially, this is basically a supercomputer most of us carry around all the time) with your phone.

As an iPhone user this is my primary concern.

The idea of this is great in theory. But since when have third party companies ever acted for the benefit of the user. This is one of those cases where I felt like Apple benefiting also benefited me as a user.

Epic is a fantastic example that went to great lengths to not use the App Store for Fortnite.

I worry that allowing this will make it so more developers use third party billing (and dark patterns for canceling), third party app stores that may do shady things, or just distributing packages directly.

Sure you can make the argument that I can just not download those apps, but once a company realizes they can abuse their customers by not needing to conform to the rules that Apple sets. Why would continue to be on the App Store?

I am watching this very carefully, but I worry that as a consumer I will loose one of the key reasons I use an iPhone.

you have some false assumptions though.

what is in the walled garden is decided by apple, and they do not have your best interests in mind.

For example - any app you install has unfettered network access.

what/who the app is connecting to, and what is being sent back and forth is opaque to you.

deep linking allows apps to intercept url references external to the app.

privacy policies are documents that live on a web server and can change at any time. And app updates can silently change the behavior of the apps as well.

It's all a mess, but because there are nice fonts and the icons have rounded corners people are subtly influenced to think it is well organized, maintained and modern.

Same, actually. I've seen enough iPhones in the hands of friends and family to be envious of some of the features, but I've never wanted to be part of Apple's walled garden. A more open iPhone that I would be free to choose my own apps for if I didn't like Apple's offerings? Yeah I'd try that.

Same although replaceable batteries would make it even more compelling. I enjoyed the early Motorola android phones because they were phones rather than jewelry and they also kept them lightweight.

Same here. I'm dying for a phone that doesn't balk at the idea of long-term support, but I'm simply not using a platform where I can't install the software I want and can't even get a real version of Firefox.

The Fairphone 4 has 5 years of support IIRC.

Having used iPhones since the very earliest ones, I also fear this might turn it into an Android situation. I like iPhone because I know it’s likely the page works in Safari since iOS+Safari is a large customer group. While choice, a diverse web, competition & all that is important, I personally wouldn’t want anything but a walled garden monoculture in most cases. Being able to integrate a different voice assistant??

Sideloading apps as an advanced user concept sounds great. But if users who switch on their iPhone for the first time had to @choose a store”, that would be an absolutely terrible UX.

Using Android really sucks. I hate being able to install whatever browser I want and old versions of apps

I realize it's sarcasm, but my Android has the ability to run whatever I want on it and I just use it for a handful of things that Google won't allow. That's all I need.

It's not a free-for-all or a virus-laden hellscape. It's just freedom.

Sideloading on iOS would be great but that’s an unimportant point in this article compared to “user chooses App Store and voice assistant”

>> I know it’s likely the page works in Safari since iOS+Safari is a large customer group

That until you find out some of the best web technologies are not working on safari(i.e indexeddb has been left unfixed for years on purpose by apple). I don't think people would like a safari only on desktop. Why would they want that on mobile?

I don’t really care about modern web tech I’m happy so long as web pages I visit work and lay out properly. (I don’t do web dev so I don’t need to professionally worry about the IE6-issues of having a large but slow moving target)

>> I don’t really care about modern web tech

Then you shouldn't have an opinion on modern web tech. Stick to what you care of.

>> I don’t do web dev so I don’t need to professionally worry about the IE6

Mobile safari is the IE6 of the modern web but as you don't do web dev you don't need to worry about it. Let the people who build for the web worry about the web.

>> I’m happy so long as web pages I visit work and lay out properly.

Simple text Webpages were workig on IE6 too so I can only assume that the transition from IE6 to Safari mobile was a smooth for you.

Part of why I like Apple products is because they tend to have more apps made natively and well fitting into the ecosystem. I don't want web apps which use double the energy, don't look and feel like they were designed for iPhone/Mac. And I use Safari because it does everything it has to (display information) while using the least energy for it. I've yet to see any really good web app, no matter the browser or device.

>> I don't want web apps which use double the energy, don't look and feel like they were designed for iPhone/Mac.

Then don't use web apps. You can still use only native apps and safari just like people could (until recently) use win32 apps and internet explorer.

It would be absolutely hilarious if this skews the market heavily towards apple dominance

Yep. Actually I could also consider using an iPhone and Mac devices in general in such a case.

Ironically it might be the last iPhone I use, even though I believe very much in free-as-in-speech software on my devices.

This just bludgeons so much of the security model of the iPhone. I get that this is by Apple's design, in that conflating the security model of the iPhone with App Store lock-in has been a gold mine, but I just don't see how you provide the same malware guarantees without that enforcement.

EDIT: Not sure why the downvotes, I guess it's from people that are big free-software-at-any-cost advocates. The cost of doing this is going to be too high for most iPhone users - I very much doubt this is in their best interests overall.

For me, "an iPhone that complies with these demands" would be a worse experience than the current one. I have no intention to install Microsoft app store (so I can get Outlook), Facebook app store (so I can get WhatsApp), and Google app store (so I can have Maps). I prefer having one app store to having four different ones.

You can use any store you want on Android, and yet you can get Outlook, WhatsApp and Maps from the Play store. Why would it be different?

That's a current situation, on one platform.

In the future, this might be the same on the other platform, — or it might be different. I don't trust any of Google/Microsoft/Facebook to not try to shove their app store (user account, personal information collection) down our throats in perpetuity.

I'd put good money on this only being available to EU users for all companies affected by the act. Especially Apple.

Possibly. The other possibility is it will make it impossible to buy an iPhone in Europe.

It certainly puts a huge incentive on Apple to figure out technical solutions to problems like "How do we get other browser engines on this thing without compromising a hundred OS assumptions, battery performance, or user security," but it's also possible Apple decides that's a no-go and it'll cost more than 25% of annual revenue to comply, at which point the winning market strategy is opt-out. That's fine; win-win for the EU market because it clears the playing field for a European-originated competitor to the iPhone.

ETA I forgot the third possibility: Apple decides it will cost more than 10% (and later 20%) of revenue to comply, but the 5% bump in value is still worth it and they write off non-compliance as a tax to do business in Europe. Then if the EU tries to impose structural or behavioral changes, we're back to square one on the question of whether those changes cost more than (now) 5% of Apple's revenue.

> Possibly. The other possibility is it will make it impossible to buy an iPhone in Europe.

I doubt Apple will be willing to forego sales in the world's third largest economy, tbh.

It's not about absolute value; it's about relative value. if not making the change costs them the whole market (about 25% of their revenue) and making the change adds 30% to engineering overhead or adds 30% costs due to secondary effects (such as market-share loss to Android because Apple's performance moat suffers), it might not be worth it.

To be clear: I think this is the right kind of hardball for EU to play. The stakes are high, but most outcomes are a net win for the EU. It seems like strategically good law.

Exactly.

If 30% of your business wants a change that means a 40% drop to all your business the smart move is to drop the customer that is 30%.

Last I checked the EU was still the largest single market block in the world. Maybe that changed since then, but I don't think Apple will simply cede that to a competitor - especially since it would go heavily against their "we care about users" narrative.

I think that depends what you mean by "biggest", as the US is richer and both India and China have more people. I think Apple sales in China and the EU are about equal, and that US are significantly higher, but my info may be out of date and was merely a summary in any case.

But I would agree, they're not likely to just give up on the market. Even ignoring the likelihood of similar laws everywhere else, it's too big and too tempting.

EU's a very large, very wealthy market, but not the biggest for Apple. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/europe Android owns more than 60% of the EU market. Even so, writing off the EU would be further knee-capping Apple's global market share, and would for certain constitute a more than 10% drop in revenue, and not just for this year, for all years going forward until they find a way back into it. So no I don't think Apple's going anywhere.

> It certainly puts a huge incentive on Apple to figure out technical solutions to problems like "How do we get other browser engines on this thing without compromising a hundred OS assumptions, battery performance, or user security,"

Virtualization? Run a hypervisor on the phone that allows running multiple virtual smartphones. Apple can provide two virtual smartphone environments, one that works like the current native iOS, and one that provides a basic smartphone that is wide open and on which you can install anything you want (maybe based on Android?). Make this second one open source so it can be a basis third parties can use to develop more virtual smartphones for iPhone hardware.

> That's fine; win-win for the EU market because it clears the playing field for a European-originated competitor to the iPhone.

I think that's what the EU is hoping for. Their technology industry completely failed in this space, so for them it makes perfect sense to simply drive competitors out of the market entirely. Worst case for them is that the international competitors actually comply.

Eu's technology industry did not 'fail' in this space. It allowed the US to dominate it due to the long-standing control of the US over NATO and its political-economic consequences. Similar to how the Eu let the US destroy its entire aerospace industry starting from 1960s until recently.

China, India did not allow that. Hence, they already have various competitors in various tech sectors.

> The other possibility is it will make it impossible to buy an iPhone in Europe.

On a practical level, it might not be all that easy to stop that entirely. Sure, Apple could stop selling iPhones in the EU (and would probably close their stores altogether). But a gray (black? In this case I'm not entirely certain) market would almost certainly appear. iPhones in the EU might acquire the cachet of Cuban Cigars in the US.

While I agree with this, I'm interested in seeing what the long term security consequences are.

These are all the highest risk API and integration surfaces on mobile devices.

Also I hope Microsoft get pulled into this as well because they're slowly turning Windows into a marketing device.

Edit: as an iOS user I'm optimistic that this will lead to complete device network whitelist capabilities though so you can neuter any apps which circumvent the current browser restrictions. That would destroy a lot of tracking capability instantly and completely stop embedded browser side channel attacks.

> I'm interested in seeing what the long term security consequences are.

Negligible; most large-format computing devices already allow you to do all of these things.

And it tends to be a bad experience for anyone who doesn’t naturally gravitate towards HN when they eventually get malware or unwanted browser adware extensions.

And the world will continue turning just like it had for the last 50 years of us having general purpose computers without an American at Apple telling us what we're allowed to do with our products.

However mobile devices have a dual role (in many people's lives these days) as being the custodian of all their MFA setup. weakening mobile security (which this arguably may do) could have an impact there.

Also "large format computing devices" are moving more to the lockdown model, at least partially due to the security problems inherent in allowing end users to install/run whatever they want :)

exactly. this law is the EU forcing companies to make phones more like PCs. this is brilliant news and a big step back from the powerless dystopia we've all been wandering towards

> User any browser and browser engine and choose to make it default

Hello, Alphabet world domination. They finally get the chance to get rid of that pesky Safari. Next stop: obligatory sign-in for using a service.

Article 101 and 102 from the "EU Antitrust policy" already protects against anti-competitive agreements and abusive behavior from those holding a dominant market position, I don't think that will change.

See. It is frankly pointless. Chrome already has a significant amount of mindshare and will grow even more after this.

The users have already chosen Chrome (and its derivatives). Mozilla has done absolutely nothing to stop it as Firefox has become totally irrelevant today. The EU is about to allow the world domination of Chrome and its derivatives to takeover entirely.

Just like the many choices of a Linux distro, you will have the many choices of Chromium based browsers! All thanks to 'oPEn SoUrcE'.

As a Chrome user I feel obligated to defend my use as: "I like it the most." As long as Google continues to offer a better experience, I don't mind them dominating the market. *As long as they don't use anticompetitive practises to prevent competition.* IE, backed by the most powerful tech company on the planet (at the time), used to be 95% of the internet. If IE can fall, so can Chrome.

This means, if blink/chromium does come to dominate, means an end to the open web. Be very careful what you wish for.

IE was replaced because it was a hole-riddled nonstandard mess, and Google used their position to shove Chrome into everyone's mindshare (something this regulation appears to forbid, incidentally). Chrome isn't nonstandard because Google are very careful to comply with standards - which is easy enough when they have many employees involved with designing them and tend to manipulate those committees in their favor, and even if they fail they can just release whatever they want and use the technology's widespread adoption to justify its eventual standardization. Also, as a modern browser, Chrome is patched frequently, so the security angle is also a nonstarter.

Mozilla self-sabotages so frequently and severely, I think you need to be very naive to not suspect the massive amount of funding they get from Google has something to do with it.

I'd believe this if that same money wasn't required to keep the lights on. Easier to just stop paying it and wait for them to run out of runway.

Two possible outcomes of Mozilla losing Google's funding: Maybe Firefox evaporates away to nothing, 0% market share, and now Google loses the fig-leaf covering their browser monopoly. Or maybe Mozilla loses their ineffectual but greedy leadership, allowing people who believe in the mission to step into those roles.

I think Google prefers the status quo to either of those scenarios. They prefer it to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, for that is how much they pay to perpetuate it.

Funny you mention that because for the last 3 weeks Google Search is nagging me to sign in on the iPhone Safari.

If that’s really how it rolls out, doesn’t it also mean that Safari wasn’t viable on itself and nobody wanted to use it in the first place ?

Apple is no underdog anymore, if their browser couldn‘t compete on its own merit I won’t be crying a river over it.

Firefox, while mired with its own problems, is another story; but I don’t see Mozilla losing from this decision.

“This website only works on Chrome.”

C-w

This is a serious issue that need to be solved directly, and not by carving out weird protected turfs for other monopolistic companies.

In the current situation a ton of websites are already bailing out and shoving mobile apps to their users instead of actually addressing Safari.

I like apps. Native look&feel, less energy use, etc.

Apps are great for recurring use, it’s a PITA when it’s single/twice use or if you want standard features (accessibility, print/save screen, sharing urls etc.).

For instance parking payment apps, mobile ticket apps etc. that you download when in vacation and could 100% be web only, or a PWA if Apple was onboard with it, instead of their “light app” thing.

Or I had some of the government services apps not exposing text labels as selectable, which is a pain if you need to search for it. Same thing when you want to print/save the screen, you end up with a single screen png instead of potentially a fully scrolled and text including pdf. All these features could be coded in the app, but realistically devs don’t give a damn as it doesn’t bring much praise or money.

> For instance parking payment apps, mobile ticket apps etc

Should just be a payment terminal instead of an app. Beyond that, there's App Clips for one time use, and accessibility is worse on the web than on the iPhone (can't speak for Android). For printing and sharing, might be right, but it's broken on websites often enough, too. There are lots of developers (or their management) not caring about UX at all on both sides..

> payment terminal

You need an interface on your phone for remote payment. Most of them have a workable mobile web site, but notifications for instance aren’t available in that case. Yes App Clips cover that case, but it doesn’t look to me that it got much traction.

> accessibility is worse on the web than on the iPhone (can't speak for Android). For printing and sharing, might be right, but it's broken on websites often enough, too.

I see this as the main point for having other browser engines. Mobile Safari is horrible to select text and on many basic features. I took these limitations for granted until I moved to android and the browsers work so much better (not flawless, but pretty close). Basically in this day and age, there’s no reason why a mobile browser should be weaker than its desktop counterpart.

But no ad block...

Safari is possibly the biggest competitor to chrome, since Firefox is falling out of use. It’s important for the ecosystem to have a strong competitor who isn’t dependent on google

Safari is only a competitor because folks don't have a choice. This would force Apple to actually compete against Chrome by giving users a reason to keep using Safari.

You know what Google is doing with Chrome, right? Adding APIs for battery status, USB access, etc. will lead to more information about your device ending up in their possession.

Aren't these APIs opt-in? Web USB certainly asks you before doing anything.

>It’s important for the ecosystem to have a strong competitor who isn’t dependent on google

Why ? Seriously - this competition argument gets brought up and I see 0 benefit. There is almost no innovation in the low level aspects and the foundations are opensource with several tech giants contributing.

The only thing "competition" adds at this point is fragmentation, compatibility issues and slower feature adoption.

This idea that competition beats cooperation is silly - innovation in browser rendering and JS engines is mostly done - the only real innovative effort was Servo and that died - modern variants are there just for political/commercial reasons.

If every browser out there converted to Blink/V8 and development resources were focused the web would be better.

I get the impression that firefox is regaining lost users lately

The problem with all of this shit is that the EU is only measuring sentiment from developers, not end users. End users are happy with Safari. Developers are the only ones who care about any of the rest of this.

If the users prefer Safari they can keep using it, no?

“This website only works on Chrome.” will be the new "Best viewed in Interet Explorer"

They can run both Chrome and Safari?

You can also list/lookup businesses on Facebook and eg Bebo, but factors that run contrary to user desire and performative obtuseness remove utility from one over time.

"performative obtuseness"?

I do not understand what you are saying.

- - - -

Ah, I think I get it. You're saying that Chrome would beat Safari if they were both available?

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

You’re capable of more, we’re capable of more, this entire thread of yours is beneath us all.

Eh? I did my best to understand what you wrote. I honestly found your language difficult to parse.

This is obviously a complex topic with a lot of strongly held views. For me personally it's a rare case where I haven't yet developed firm views of my own.

FWIW, I'm not particularly happy with the way this sub-thread has gone, but I found it stimulating at least. YMMV.

Firefox works just fine so stop with this dumb unfounded hyperbole.

My goodness, the cognative dissonance is dumbfounding.

So is the unsubstantiated FUD.

Spoken by people who want to eliminate competition of richest corporation on the planet because they're apparently not capable of building a competitive product (despite being the Best at Everything and being able to shove down authentication APIs and payment systems down everyones throat).

The EU is going after Google too. They might require Google to stop adding so many new features to Chrome so Safari and Firefox can catch up. Though would be a very tricky situation

> They might require Google to stop adding so many new features to Chrome so Safari and Firefox can catch up

I'm genuinely not sure if this is satire or not.

It's a well known problem. Chrome pushes tons of features into "web standards" since they have disproportionate power in the space, and then developers use the features because they are "web standards", and now there are websites that only support Chrome.

Chrome is becoming the new Internet Explorer. They are adding features the marketers want regardless if it is good for privacy or other ecosystems. We are already seeing websites and services that only work correctly in Chrome. Safari is the only viable competition.

> Chrome is becoming the new Internet Explorer. They are adding features the marketers want regardless if it is good for privacy or other ecosystems. We are already seeing websites and services that only work correctly in Chrome.

Okay. Granted. So what? IE died.

> Safari is the only viable competition.

Is it? It seems to me that it's not competing with Chrome if you can't run Chrome on your iPhone.

Safari is today's IE no one wants that crap anymore.

Safari has better UI and less battery use on my Mac. On the iPhone and iPad it just has better UI, hard to compare battery use without engine alternative. I want that crap.

thats fine you like it but its not keeping up with Firefox or Chromium and webkit it is becoming a security and horrible experience like IE was.

Why is Firefox another story?

Because it’s a whole can of worm that needs so much more to be discussed.

In a nutshell, I’m not sure Mozilla can still bring relevant change to the landscape, even if its handicap goes away.

As a firefox user, I feel it truely suffered from both Safari locking it out the the emerging mobile web where it had the biggest chance to shine (I actually like firefox mobile even with its current pretty severe limitations), and from Chrome pushing it down from the heavy desktop applications for reasons that aren’t only performance.

So it sits in a tough position, but Mozilla also appears to be shooting itself in the foot time after time, and I wonder if the people that made the magic happen haven’t abandoned the ship long ago.

That’s not how it work, is it? You can trick people into installing Chrome, and once that’s done, they won’t switch back, unless Apple tries to trick them. I can already hear the outcry when that happens.

That's kinda arguing for keeping people chained in the basement because they have a high chance of getting mugged if they get outside.

Except it's kinda hyperbolic beyond good faith.

Safari is a garbage browser. Why is it good that people are forced to use a bad browser?

What makes Safari a bad browser? Sometimes it feels like dev forums rate a browser entirely based on the dev tools.

For the average user Safari behaves identically or slightly better (battery life, privacy defaults, integration with the OS for login and payments) then chrome and Firefox.

Extensions are garbage (tapermonkey specifically), it requires multiple redirects instead of allowing third party cookies which increases latency.

NB: This is just the desktop version. The mobile version has been more or less fine for me.

If I'd like your crappy website to let third parties track me, I'd just enable third party cookies. I don't, so you're at fault here.

If an extension is garbage, blame the developer. The API is more or less the same.

Hello, Alphabet world domination. They finally get the chance to get rid of that pesky Safari. Next stop: obligatory sign-in for using a service.

I bet that Chrome adoption on iOS remains under 25% forever. People just don't care which browser they use so long as the default one works. Safari isn't so bad that people are desperate to replace it.

Until google breaks things on other browsers on purpose again.

There won't be any "default one" anymore, because the law appears to prohibit Apple from preinstalling Safari:

>[won't be able to]

>pre-install certain apps or software, or prevent users from easily un-installing these apps or software

>require the most important software (e.g. web browsers) to be installed by default when installing an operating system

If Apple gets defeated with trillion dollars of budgets and full controls on OS and its ecosystem, it may deserve its failure like IE6.

> Fines are up to 10% of global revenue for the first offense, and 20% for repeat offenses.

For Alphabet (Google) the revenue distribution from 2015 to 2021 was approximately 33% for all of Europe, Middle-east, and Africa. It's unclear to me the actual European numbers since they are combined EMEA.

For Apple in 2021 the revenue was approximately 23% for Europe (no middle-east or Africa).

For Facebook in 2021 the revenue was also approximately 23% for Europe (no middle-east or Africa).

So it's safe to say that a first offense would potential halve the revenue for the region, and a second offense would remove the financial rationale of doing business in the region.

What would the money even be used for? Why does the government have to profit from enforcing this.

I’d be fine if we take the money and burn it but it’s not gonna be that is it it’s gonna be we take the money and funnel it into organizations that politicians children happen to be on the boards of.

Deflationary fines are a hilarious idea. If you don't comply, we'll take 10% the value of your company and publicly set fire to it, enriching all consumers in the process

IIRC fines by EU agencies go into the EU budget reducing the member states contributions for the next year

Fines are "UP TO" 10% / 20% of global revenue. I doubt actual fines are going to be that high.

Also, it has to be global revenue, because otherwise they would just use funny accounting tricks to hide their revenue (they already do that).

in tomorrow's news: "Apple, Google and Facebook in joint venture to the moon"

The EU regulations are often quickly adopted in other market places in similar fashions. Leaving the EU might be a calculation worth, but leaving the rest of the world is often prohibitive.

Do not forget here: These are countries which existed hundred of years before FAANG and will exist hundreds of years after FAANG. They have to protect themselves as a society but also as a constitutional body. If you let the monopolies go their way, their own constitutional existence is in doubt (example: these companies have already gigantic control on aspects which are governed by law hate speech, nudity, etc or are normative in the society). Long rambling, short reply: Other countries will quickly adopt these laws to keep long-term relevant.

> example: these companies have already gigantic control on aspects which are governed by law hate speech, nudity, etc or are normative in the society

Yep. Its amazing how the rest of the world tolerated being moderated on the Internet per - mainly American - foreign laws and even cultural norms up until this point.

Great, if Alphabet, Facebook and Apple leave the EU, it will be a painful few years but finally boost the EU tech sector. It's what China did: Prohibit external services to force local innovation.

If the will (and financial muscle) was there, this might have actually been the spark needed for a tenacious 3rd player in the mobile OS space.

> Install any software > Install any App Store and choose to make it default

I wonder if, just like in Android, this will open the doors for a lot of malware targeting iOS users.

What malware? I've been using Android for over 10 years now. I've never had an issue personally. But I consider myself tech savvy and I don't install apps from untrusted sources. Also, iOS had multiple 0-days in the past. So you don't need to give users freedom over their paid for devices for them to be compromised.

Sure, iOS has had 0-days in the past. Which major OS/Hypervisor hasn't? The point is that Android is more susceptible to "lower hanging fruit" attacks, such as in the examples below.

For example: https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/camscanner-malicious-android-...

Very recent example: https://www.techradar.com/in/news/more-brutal-malware-laden-...

Your Android malware examples don't do much as an argument against sideloading. They both describe malware on Google's "curated" app store.

“ * User any browser and browser engine and choose to make it default”

This is huge and I cannot believe it has taken this long. Apple forcing everyone to use their own browser engine with all other ios “browsers” essentially just being skins for Safari was ridiculous.

You say the summary is in the link, but the first few things you mention are not in the summary, or called out at all in the article. I don’t think this is the “open up your App Store mechanism” regulation, as I believe there are two in flight right now

True, the closest summary as what parent posted I found at https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services... under "The consequences for gatekeepers", a page which is linked from the submission article.

It includes the following section:

    Gatekeepers will not be able to: 
    
        rank their own products or services higher than those of others
        prevent developers from using third-party payment platforms for app sales  
        process users’ personal data for targeted advertising, unless consent is granted
        establish unfair conditions for business users
        pre-install certain software applications or prevent users from easily un-installing them
        restrict business users of platforms
    
    Gatekeepers will have to:
    
        offer more choices, such as the choice of certain software on a user’s operating system
        ensure that unsubscribing from core platform services is as easy as subscribing
        provide information on the number of users that visit their platforms to determine whether the platform can be identified as a gatekeeper
        give business users access to their marketing or advertising performance data on the platform
        inform the European Commission of their acquisitions and mergers
        ensure that the basic functionalities of instant messaging services are interoperable, i.e. enable users to exchange messages, send voice messages or files 
    
    Fair competition of digital services is key to ensure that companies and consumers can all benefit in the same way from digital opportunities. This will also generate more innovation and boost consumer protection.

I read the legislation, included in the link (https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/PE-17-2022-INI...). Page 129, for example, details the rules for app and app store installation:

>The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the installation and effective use of third-party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, its operating system and allow those software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the relevant core platform services of that gatekeeper. The gatekeeper shall, where applicable, not prevent the downloaded third-party software applications or software application stores from prompting end users to decide whether they want to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default. The gatekeeper shall technically enable end users who decide to set that downloaded software application or software application store as their default to carry out that change easily.

It's odd that this extremely important component is omitted from the press release.

I agree. The press summary is very concise, and omits some of the most impactful parts. Previous reports on this legislation provide more details: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/25/22996248/apple-sideloadin...

- require the most important software (e.g. web browsers) to be installed by default when installing an operating system

How is chromebook going to exist without a chrome browser? Sometimes I wonder if the people making the laws have any knowledge of the technology landscape?

Why is a Chrome browser specifically required?

Let's have a popup that asks which browser you want to use. I am certain that Google is more than capable to create websites that work with any browser.

I am sure the ChromeOS user interface is the Chrome browser and the integration is at a much deeper level than just a pretty window or pop up. Integrating all other browsers at that level to the ChromeOS will be either extremely difficult or impossible IMHO.

If push comes to shove, I imagine Google will just not sell chromebooks in the EU.

> * Install any software

> * Install any App Store and choose to make it default

I don't see mention of this in the summary. Where is it described?

It's in the legislation included in the link (https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/PE-17-2022-INI...). Page 129, for example, details the rules for app and app store installation:

> * Make core messaging functionality interoperable. They lay out concrete examples like file transfer

It's entirely possible that to enable compliance with this will require explicit compromises to the security of iMessage, for example by requiring key exchange with startup messaging providers. The other rules seem to prohibit Apple from describing the risks involved in such a compromise.

> * Use existing hardware and software features without competitive prejudice. E.g. NFC

This appears to say that a malicious app can present UX elements that were previously limited to the OS. Read liberally, that would mean that e.g. any app could now get biometric data by presenting a fake privilege escalation screen (e.g. FaceID/TouchID) and then capturing the results from the Secure Enclave. Is this something people really want?

> * Not preference their services. This includes CTAs in settings to encourage users to subscribe to Gatekeeper services, and ranking their own services above others in selection and advertising portals

This will likely make it harder for users to find safe/private services to use. If every offering can find its way into the default browser/App Store/etc. settings page in the OS, scam services will appear to be endorsed and therefore legitimate.

Edit: Limitation of interop is still possible, the EU is just deciding to move decision making from California engineers to Brussels attorneys. From the Act:

> The gatekeeper shall not be prevented from taking strictly necessary and proportionate measures to ensure that interoperability does not compromise the integrity of the operating system, virtual assistant, hardware or software features provided by the gatekeeper, provided that such measures are duly justified by the gatekeeper.

So Apple just needs to explain security & encryption to Brussels attorneys to keep iMessage in a silo, for example. (Obviously making iMessage interoperable with e.g. Discord or ICQ will compromise the integrity of the software features of iMessage.) I don't think this is going to increase the pace of product improvements.

> It's entirely possible that to enable compliance with this will require explicit compromises to the security of iMessage, for example by requiring key exchange with startup messaging providers.

Is that really much worse than the status quo, where all iMessage plaintexts are shared with Apple by default, unless every participant in the thread has disabled iCloud Backup?

> So Apple just needs to explain security & encryption to Brussels attorneys to keep iMessage in a silo, for example. (Obviously making iMessage interoperable with e.g. Discord or ICQ will compromise the integrity of the software features of iMessage.)

Are you arguing that it's impossible for Discord or ICQ to implement the same feature set as the native iMessage client?

Yes, it is. All of the participants in an iMessage chat have consented to have their data stored by Apple. We can all do rough evaluations on how well we think Apple can protect our data.

The wording in the Act appears to not place constraints on exactly what services must be able to interop with iMessage, and it says Apple can't preference iMessage. So presumably the blue bubbles have to go. This means that when chatting in Messages now, one will not be able to know whether it's Apple alone protecting the privacy of the conversation, or whether the weakest link is a company of a single person that started this week using an OSS package to spin up a new messaging app on a Linode VM and was able to achieve parity in iOS messaging simply by virtue of this Act.

That's a very different situation than the status quo.

Similar logic applies to the App Store and payment details, but messaging is egregious because other participants in the chat can make (and potentially change) the security posture of the chat without your knowledge.

(Edit, adding reply to this part.)

> Are you arguing that it's impossible for Discord or ICQ to implement the same feature set as the native iMessage client?

No, I am saying that it's going to be trivial to implement the feature set. I fully expect there to be OSS libraries to implement the iMessage client.

The issue is that when people use iMessage and see a blue bubble, they also know something about how the encryption keys are handled & who does the handling, etc. This Act as written appears to allow any person to install an OSS iMessage server on a VM and achieve OS parity with iMessage, and Apple is prevented from indicating that others in the chat may be compromising the security of the chat. I used ICQ and Discord as examples because Apple exchanging my encryption keys with ICQ is definitely compromising a core feature of iMessage.

Most of my extended family is unaware that iCloud backups sends your words to apple, not to mention all the other things. There was no rough evaluation

(This is also about the encryption of the communication channel itself.)

I agree with you in general, but it is possible for this evaluation to be done by a simple read of e.g. the iOS marketing page. The Act proposes a regime where it is not possible for a chat participant to determine who holds the encryption keys for the chat. You may consider that better or worse or neither, but it is a significant change in the security posture for billions of deployed devices.

> The issue is that when people use iMessage and see a blue bubble, they also know something about how the encryption keys are handled & who does the handling, etc.

Realistically, the average person doesn't even know what an encryption key is and the average tech enthusiast doesn't know anything beyond "Apple handles everything".

> So presumably the blue bubbles have to go. This means that when chatting in Messages now, one will not be able to know whether it's Apple alone protecting the privacy of the conversation

Why can't iMessage to iMessage be blue bubbles with iMessage to anything else being green bubbles? Do you think the average iPhone user understands that green bubbles mean insecure rather than thinking they're "Android bubbles"?

Why are so many people convinced that consumer choice and security are mutually exclusive?

> average tech enthusiast doesn't know anything beyond "Apple handles everything".

The new law removes that person's ability to even discern this much.

> Why can't iMessage to iMessage be blue bubbles with iMessage to anything else being green bubbles?

This would pretty clearly be Apple preferring its own service over other services, and is prohibited under the new law.

I should be clear here: I think this law is clumsy and will have to be fixed or loosely enforced. But even if one is in favor of these changes, it's fair to acknowledge the reality that the law basically mandates a major change in the security posture of a billion deployed devices. One may still be in favor, but it's important not to lose sight of the fact that there are in fact compromises being made.

> Why are so many people convinced that consumer choice and security are mutually exclusive?

I am 100% not convinced this is true; security and choice can coexist. But this EU law does not aim at the goal of preserving security while increasing consumer choice. Which is strange, given how a consequence of a prior EU Act was the pollution of the Web with cookie banners. (I am aware these banners are not specifically required for many use cases, which is why I said this is a consequence of their Act and not something ordered by their Act.)

> This would pretty clearly be Apple preferring its own service over other services, and is prohibited under the new law.

Does it really, though? Is it something that that was explicitly brought up in the drafting of this law? Or is this a doomsday scenario that chooses to interpret the law in its most extreme form?

The legislation has been approved. Let us see how regulators actually enforce it. Until the EU bans green vs. blue bubbles, this is nothing more than FUD.

> The legislation has been approved. Let us see how regulators actually enforce it.

We're on the same page here: lawyers are now deciding matters of technical import, and that is not a good thing.

> This would pretty clearly be Apple preferring its own service over other services, and is prohibited under the new law.

I don't agree. Green bubbles indicate that messages travelled 100% within Apple's ecosystem. Indicating interoperability with a 3rd party by using blue bubbles doesn't do anything to prevent those 3rd parties from having their own green bubbles within their own ecosystem.

> Indicating interoperability with a 3rd party by using blue bubbles doesn't do anything to prevent those 3rd parties from having their own green bubbles within their own ecosystem.

The entire point of the law is Apple/Google don't get to manage their own ecosystems anymore; EU regulators do that. One read of the intent of the Act is that platforms should not be able to preference their own services over those of third parties. My skim of the Act indicates that it would be in bounds for a regulator to decide that this means no blue/green message distinction, and a direct consequence of that is that anyone in a group chat could be using Facebook Messenger as a client and allowing Facebook to log all the messages.

Engineering decisions henceforth need to weigh what a specific regulator believes the law says, since the law is not very specific about many details. This is not good, especially coming from the people who caused the global cookie disclaimer deluge.

Apple: it's impossible because of the encryption

Regulator: what are the others using?

Apple: something very similar but slightly different

Regulator: and it's impossible to develop an open standard thet allows p2p encryption to be maintained?

Apple: Yes obviously in this specific field of technology that's not possible at all.

(Not the) Regulator: Sounds legit

This facile response ignores that Apple Messages is a system, not just an encryption algorithm. Of particular concern is key management: who manages the keys that allow the messages to be decrypted? Currently, it's Apple.

What this Act says is that Apple Messages must interop with any other messaging system. If you spin up a VM running an iMessage-compatible server on Hetzner, Apple Messages must interop with you and cannot privilege Messages (e.g. by continuing to use blue bubbles as a differentiator). That VM may be malicious (for ex: it may log who communicated with whom when), but the Act still requires that it be placed on an even footing with Messages.

Similarly, the Act essentially says that once implemented, anyone using a phone can unintentionally be sending all of their messages to Facebook Messenger, which by law must have seamless interop with Messages. Any group chat could be logged by Facebook by virtue of one person in the chat choosing Facebook Messenger as their default messaging app.

This requirement materially changes the security posture of a billion devices currently in use. You may believe the tradeoff is worthwhile, but it's still not a free tradeoff.

That only means that the Apple Messages model is outdated and a replacement is hereby being required.

If Apple prefers lock-in over innovation, it's their problem, not the users'.

Is Signal's too, then? They also stated interop is no good.

Yep. If it's bad, make it better. Whining about cruel europeans isn't productive.

Some of the comments you posted on this thread are completely false, like EU forcing Apple to change bubble color or forcing them to handover encryption keys. Neither of that is even remotely true. If Apple doesn't want other companies to have encryption keys they can (and should) provide an E2E API. They can document their own protocol, or implement an existing open one, like Signal's.

> This will likely make it harder for users to find safe/private services to use.

That's what tech companies like to say. But from experiences with less tech-savy friends, the current way always leads people to share as much as possible. Opt-out is always harder than opt-in.

These sound great, but what is the list of bad ideas inevitably buried in the 230 pages of this act that we'll come to learn as they bite us all in the ass?

Another significant point: Gatekeepers also must allow uninstalling their bloatware software.

And yet, Apple can still charge software companies whatever they want to allow software to run on the phones. Nothing says anything about the business elements of these user experiences. So if anyone thinks this law is going to take money from gatekeepers and put it into the pockets of app publishers they are kidding themselves

I think you might want to read up on the law in question...

>And yet, Apple can still charge software companies whatever they want to allow software to run on the phones.

This is explicitly disallowed in the legislation. See page 131:

>The gatekeeper shall allow providers of services and providers of hardware, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same hardware and software features accessed or controlled via the operating system or virtual assistant listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9) as are available to services or hardware provided by the gatekeeper. Furthermore, the gatekeeper shall allow business users and alternative providers of services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same operating system, hardware or software features, regardless of whether those features are part of the operating system, as are available to, or used by, that gatekeeper when providing such services

The simple work around is to provide lower quality of service to all of the platforms features and claim it is the only way to achieve _effective_ interoperability without jeopardizing the user experience

They have lots of qualifiers around access and service standards. It's 230 pages and quite comprehensive. I'm sure Apple and Google will try to get creative, but these simple examples of potential malicious compliance are already covered.

I am not speaking with regards to malicious intent. I actually mean the scenario where providing a certain level of access does in fact degrade the user experience. Take for instance if US carriers were required to give all MNVO full 5G access with unlimited data simply because the carriers themselves sell this kind of capability directly to customers. This might put burden onto the network that just makes it terrible for everyone. We wouldn’t want that kind of regulation. I am just wondering if this will degrade the phone experience in a material way and the only recourse will be to uninstall apps.

> The simple work around is to (lie)

That seems like dubious advice.

Nobody said lie

Intentionally claim untruth (for personal benefit) == lie

So, yes they very much did.

Presumably you didn't live through the EU vs MS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission

That was the unbundling of Internet Explorer from PCs.

Which in hindsight looks like small beers compared to Chrome on-every-device usage, and probably why MS are getting away with it, again, bundling Edge and crippling Firefox workarounds.

I think we should expect Apple and Google to fight this tooth and nail. I'm sure they've been following it and looking at ways to exploit any holes that are in it.

In short, I expect it to be years before we can do most of the things you list in your post. There will be lots of court cases before we, as consumers, see any real change.

The EU doesn't operate the same way the courts do in America. The EU will require Apple/Google to cooperate with the changes while any cases are ongoing. If these cases take years to settle, so be it. If Apple/Google wins, any damages are back-paid.

Regulators have learned from GDPR.

Enforcement for the large gatekeepers is with the commission,and they have a good amount of tools to enforce compliance.

I'm sure A/G will try to drag it out, but it won't be years.

And for privacy conscious users and other business competitors:

> But they can no longer reuse private data collected during a service for the purposes of another service.

I hope this is applied retrospectively (for even data gathered before the DMA was legislated and came into effect).

"retroactively"

It depends on how much the Republicans have started to like on Apple and Google again, there's no way a European Union starving for gas come winter-time would impose a 10-20% cut of the turnover to two out of the 4 biggest US companies. I say Republicans because most probably they'll steamroll the Dems in November.

Considering these giants pay very little tax and employ very small numbers in the European tech sector, "there is way" indeed.

They pay so little tax exactly because they’re US behemoths. Again, the EU has a very weak hand in here, it’s not like these decisions are implemented in a vacuum.

Well the US has a strategic interest on EU using their spyware.

They're slowly losing their grasp on EU (e.g. threats regarding Nord Stream 2 in 2021). This could slowly turn into Cold War II and this time around it doesn't look like the US is capable of/willing to carry out a Marshall Plan if things turn ugly energy-wise. EU is starting to realize how they're puppets to the US and an economic war is being waged on their soil. The US is not the reliable partner that it used to be.

Russia is not looking good but neither is the US. China is going to slowly eat the european cake if they play their cards well as they're already doing in Africa.

> Again, the EU has a very weak hand in here

I wonder why all these megacorps have had to change their data-handling procedure and now ask you for consent to tracking cookies... oh wait

Adding a few pop-ups that almost everyone ignores or clicks at random to see them closed (I know I do) is different than having one of your main money-making ecosystems forcefully changed in a matter of a few months. (I'm thinking mostly about Apple here).

Its not 'a few pop ups'. GDPR has far reaching implications which every major company and even every prominent website implemented. From providing you your data when you asked to deleting your data when demanded. This also includes choosing what you allow to be tracked.

> After the Act is signed by the Council and the European Parliament in September

Lol. The encryption keys being shared with security services bits have political cover. Not the rest. It’s surprising European legislation doesn’t yet have a reconciliation process, to prevent this sort of burying-the-lede gambit.

> Install any software

Could we have something like F-droid on iOS? I guess that's Cydia now but could Cydia be installed without requiring jailbreaking?

The delicious irony if the Cydia devs come back with an official Cydia store.

While I am in the camp of apple allowing side-loading, i am not a fan of monopolistic regulations like this. It opens all kind of questions, like

1. What devices have to comply? 2. Who decides what device has to comply? Should playstation open their system too. What about a niche bank transaction signing device that internally uses an android capable hardware. Is this illegal now? 3. What about a car infotainment system that can theoretically run linux. 4. What if a European startup wants to compete with the iphone? Now they have so many regulations instead of focusing on a great device for their niche.

This looks like it will kill competition and harm European innovation, while major players will find their ways around it.

Sony's market capitalization exceeds €75bn (the threshold over which the regulation applies).

Is there something to stop worthless shell companies from shielding the parent company's size

Enjoy the special edition European only, double i phone, now available at the closest Aapple store.

Hopefully existing regulations that prevent companies from hiding behind shells.

Otherwise any regulation could be skirted by having a constantly revolving roster of fronts that import your product.

There is the law and there is the spirit of the law. Judges (and European regulators alike) don't like being taken for fools.

Fortunately for Sony and Microsoft they don't operate the sorts of highly profitable game stores for PlayStation and Xbox that Apple and Google do for iOS and Android.

Otherwise they'd be in trouble.

the first two are very important questions. For example, if I make $500 “unhackablePhone”, where it literally doesn’t run web apps and every app is vetted by top-talent security researchers for weeks, and then I sell billions of these devices, do I then have to open up the ecosystem to allow anyone to be able to take a phone, punch in the passcode, and install a third party App Store? This is synonymous with the current iPhone situation as many people only buy it for the benefit of Apple screening everything that can run on their phone, albeit at a lower security level where some mistakes are fine assuming Apple almost never allows known exploits to exist on the most up-to-date iOS release.

Yes. Users will just elect not to do that if they want to benefit from your curation.

The selling point for this theoretical device is that, even if someone steals your passcode, it can’t be hacked. This enabled evil maid (or customs processors, nation-state agencies, etc) attacks on the most vulnerable users looking to have defense-in-depth.

To avoid this it seems you’d either be forced to sell it at an insane markup (to avoid having too many users) or means test people to make sure they don’t purchase it if they’re not super vulnerable to attacks that matter.

Or just have a way that prevents those kind of attacks. Like having the trusted bootloader light a LED or show a hash code of the configuration on screen.

What are the chances some third-party OS vendor complains that they have to work with iBoot to launch their OS and demand they be able to replace it?

I think there are easy to think of solutions to the problem, that let's everyone win.

The obvious solution, for your hypothetical, would be to give a setting to the user, that turns on "safe mode" and make this setting only changeable on factory reset.

So any user could choose, at startup, to have safe mode on or off, on their own device.

Problem solved.

Easy, do it like android. In (some) android devices you can unlock the bootloader. But doing so will inevitably wipe out the device.

You wouldn't need to do anything to prevent people from buying it.

The restrictions inherent in the device (including only having a few apps that have been thoroughly reviewed by security researchers) would keep most people away.

The App Store is a garbage dump anyway. There are few apps you can pay upfront, the rest are ad-infested or require you to repeatedly do in app purchases to keep using them, to the point that I can't find games for my kids.

You can run DNS based ad blockers on iOS. It’s just a setting you change, mine is called adguard. Still get YouTube ads, but most others are blocked.

But in theory, someone controlling a walled garden could do the same that youtube does with any kind of content. If the app doesn't work in a transparent manner anymore, you can just shoehorn unblockable ads into it.

Sort of, it’d be tough though. YouTube ads aren’t blocked because they’re not using a third party ad vendor. They’re big enough that they run their own auctions. The vast majority of services aren’t capable of creating the auction themselves, so their ads can be blocked.

Well people who chose to use other app store don't get access to your curated list of apps. They still remain your selling point

> Well people who chose to use other app store don't get access to your curated list of apps

This is how Xbox currently works in that you can’t play any regular games if you enable developer mode to run unsigned code. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that, if Apple complied by disabling apps downloaded via their own store when a user is using a 3p store, then the EU would laugh and fine then $x millions of dollars per week.

>For example, if I make $500 “unhackablePhone”, where it literally doesn’t run web apps and every app is vetted by top-talent security researchers for weeks, and then I sell billions of these devices, do I then have to open up the ecosystem to allow anyone to be able to take a phone, punch in the passcode, and install a third party App Store?

Well that would depend, are you a "gatekeeper", as defined in the Regulation?

That is, do you have a significant impact on the EU's internal market (a turnover of €7.5bn or a €75bn market cap), provide a core platform service which is important for business users to reach end users (have have 45m monthly active end-users in the EU or 10k monthly active business users), enjoy an entrenched and durable position in your operations or foresee that you will enjoy such a position in the near future (i.e. you meet the above for three consecutive years)?

If you answered "no" to any part of that then you are not a gatekeeper, and these regulations do not apply to you.

It seems clear that the hypothetical company would meet this definition, and the regulation would completely defeat the purpose of the proposed company.

I don’t know how useful this particular hypothetical is, but it’s definitely a “code smell” that the proposed company’s seemingly only options would be to limit sales to retain the “not a gatekeeper” status or stop doing business in the EU.

> This is synonymous with the current iPhone situation as many people only buy it for the benefit of Apple screening everything that can run on their phone

I would love to read some surveys on this matter, because I highly doubt that security/privacy is a significant factor for more than a few percent points of iPhone buyers.

(I base this hypothesis on the fact that, in virtually every field of technology, end users have shown that they will overwhelmingly sacrifice privacy and security in exchange for convenience and cost savings.)

I expect that the main motivations for iPhone purchases are aesthetics, performance, ease of use, integration with the Apple ecosystem, and especially fashion/status symbol factor.

As for the rest of the comment, as other people have already pointed out, you can prevent evil maid attacks by putting the legally-required "open" mode behind a factory reset. Which is roughly what Android phones do with their unlockable bootloaders.

Apple's advertising for the last few years has continuously focused on privacy. There must be some interest from iPhone buyers if Apple spends their advertising money this way.

"assuming Apple almost never allows known exploits to exist on the most up-to-date iOS release"

That's a false assumption.

At the end of the day, consumers aren't children. If they so choose to destroy what the manufacturer gives them, that is their choice.

I did some cool things with early Android that made the phone tailored to me. If I wanted stock, it was just a reflash away. This is the way.

They will still be able to choose the apple ecosystem. Feigning to see? The regulation is to put a stop to walled gardens tynany.

The players this regulation target are pretty obvious. It's those that have gained such market dominance along the years that it has become unfair competition for newer players. It is the outcome of years of consumer pressures and entrepreneurs who are calling out for some government actions because markets are regulated anyway everywhere in the world, and these US based companies (for the most part for now) have lobbied along the years to get away with their practice but the EU has decided their lobbying won't do with them. At least not anymore.

Most of these rules apply only to companies above a certain size, both in number of users and revenue. Those get classified as "digital gatekeepers" and they are the companies that have to comply with extra requirements.

So no, this will not affect startups and harm innovation, it will just force the monopolistic behemoths to play nice and cease actively harming innovation.

It also starts to bother me quite a bit when we go from treating everyone equal before the law to creating certain requirements based on other factors.

Further it seems more like a moat to keep anyone else from getting as big as these "digital gatekeepers" are as suddenly when you get to a certain size you have an enormous expense.

If these companies really are that large that they have to get special laws for them isnt the solution to dissolve their monopoly and split the company up instead of starting to create separate classes of laws.

> It also starts to bother me quite a bit when we go from treating everyone equal before the law to creating certain requirements based on other factors.

Like tax brackets? Treating big things exactly the same as small things seems ideological, not rational.

This is the core of the issue.

I have no recourse against Big Tech scamming me. They are an oligopoly sharing the same anti-consumer practices.

But if I regularly buy something from a friend, maybe I'm a 10th of their customer base.

This doesn't work online, and is the opposite of how fraud works in practice though. Larger sellers have a reputation that they care about and invest in. Small sellers with 10 sales don't care at all, they will make 10 good sales and steal from the 11th for a 10% profit.

Created an account to say: citation needed.

Giants can afford to skimp on any single customer relationship. Go read Amazon reviews, etc...

The one-person show with only continental shipping taking PayPal payments for their hobby business absolutely cannot afford to screw over 10% of their customer base. PayPal (or any other provider) has no patience, and anecdotally will always side with the customer.

And sure, citation needed, I know :)

Have you used Amazon lately? They not only don't care, they push garbage that is obviously fake in their advertised/recommend blocks. Go search for an SD card on Amazon, and they will recommend a 5000 terabyte SD card that costs $9. I've switched to Best Buy because in this weird dystopian future they are more worthy of my business than Amazon now and I'm not doing business with garbage companies any more.

My personal experience with Amazon in particular has been the opposite of yours.

Amazon has completely refunded every defective or damaged products I have ever received. I've done two returns of $100+ items in the past month, in one case the seller disagreed with me and Amazon took my side. In total I've probably had 30 refunds over the past 10 years of which at least 5 were Amazon intervening to prevent the seller from screwing me.

Why do you buy so many defective or damaged products?

I cannot remember the last time I had to return something. I rarely buy from Amazon though, and choose quality products from reputable sources, not the cheapest offer.

Or maybe I'm just lucky.

I buy multiple things online every week, probably 200 per year on average. I also buy a lot of cheap electronics.

Amazon loves you.

I bought studio monitor speakers from Amazon. I received 1. Sent it back. Amazon refused to refund me. I had to point out over and over that from the weight of my package they can easily tell they did not ship me two speakers, only one. Nope. Months later I got an Amazon credit.

Just recently Amazon allowed me to buy a kindle book for my specific kindle device, which turned out to not be supported. But they still allowed me to purchase and deliver it to this kindle. Only once I went to the device to sync it did I learn that it was incompatible. I was not allowed a refund.

Amazon is full of minor counts of fraud like this and at their scale I bet it adds up to real money.

Very different structurally. Tax brackets almost always apply _marginally_. The higher tax bracket only applies to income made above the higher bracket level.

Behavior that applies marginally avoids most "discontinuity" and distortions in incentives that come along with them. For example, people whose income increases from $99,999 to $100,001 are only incentivized by a 100,000 bracket to hide the marginal $2, rather than suddenly needing to hide all of their income.

EU regulations that apply to companies above a certain size are not like this. Once you pass a certain level, it applies to all the business below the level. That already has a distorting incentive on growth and incentivizes companies to stay small. Maybe that's something you want in this case, but it's almost always an unintended consequence.

There are other taxes that don’t function that way though. Like capital gains and stamp duty. Those taxes do frequently get gamed.

And capital gains taxes in particular massively distort incentives. But in that case it's intentional

US long term capital gains do work that way: they have marginal brackets just like regular income taxes. (Your starting bracket is calculated based on your regular income, rather than from 0 the way regular income tax brackets work, but otherwise they work the same.)

And short term cap gains are just regular income.

I assumed the discontinuity the commenter was referring to here is the >=1 year cutoff for long term capital gains. After one year, all of the gains from the previous year are instantly converted to a lower tax bracket. You're not required to reassess the cost basis at the 1 year mark or anything like that, so there's a huge (intentional) incentive to hold capital for over 1 year.

The US isn’t in the EU though ;)

I can’t speak for all member states but I do know some have a threshold and from that point you have to pay a percentage of the total amount. So some investment firms will game your portfolio to bring you in just enough to fly under that threshold.

The U.K., while not technically an EU member any more (and I’m still bitter about that), also operates this way.

Stamp duty is a U.K. tax placed on purchases of property. It’s free for properties under a threshold but the moment you go over it you have to pay a percentage of the total price of your house. Stamp duty does have incremental percentages but it isn’t calculated like income tax. Thus you’ll often see a lot of properties for slightly under each increment and then a jump in prices after. Some sellers even go as far as to put the house on for £x (under that threshold) but charge extra for additional purchases outside of the property (like a gazebo, hot tub, etc). I’ve even seen some buyers/sellers ask for private bank transfers for the additional extra. Which is outright fraud. But it does still happen.

> I can’t speak for all member states but I do know some have a threshold and from that point you have to pay a percentage of the total amount

So, exactly the same thing with a bottom bracket marginal rate of 0%?

No. Income tax you only pay the percentage of the bracket you’re in. So (made up numbers here) if you earn 100k and the bracket changes every 40k then the first 40k will be taxed at the first bracket. The second 40k at the second bracket, and the remaining 20k at the third bracket. This means there’s no incentive to game income tax because if you narrowly slide into the next bracket then you only pay the higher tax rate for that margin you’ve gone over.

Whereas the capital gains and stamp duty go from (again made up numbers) 0% on 15k to 15% on anything above 15k. So if you had 15k you get taxed nothing. But if you get 15,001 then you pay 15% on ~15k (just by gaining an extra £1) rather than 15% on £1 (like how income tax works). Thus that extra £1 actually ends up costing you _a lot_ more in tax than it’s face value. And thus why people game such taxes to slide under the threshold in ways that doesn’t make sense with income tax.

This was true, but UK stamp duty was reformed in 2014 to use marginal bands like income tax.

There have been exceptions to that reform though. For example the “stamp duty holiday” incentive ~two years ago removed marginal bands for the lower thresholds during its run. Which created a great deal of chaos for the housing market.

I wonder if there's any way these sorts of regulations could be applied marginally.

Perhaps if we formalized legal code as code, we could apply automatic differentiation (just kidding... I think)

Continuous laws do seem more fair in general. But it seems more important (to me, at least) that this sort of fairness is applied to individuals. For companies... they aren't people, we don't need to worry about making their lives confusing or miserable. They have legal departments to sort this sort of stuff out, they'll respond rationally to incentives, it is just a business decision.

They aren't people, but every additional thing they have to contend with affects only people. The abstract company is just a common understanding of what people are doing and what group of people they are dealing with when they buy a product.

Make the fine 10% of the marginal revenue?

> Maybe that's something you want in this case

I think it is.

But keep in mind that this is at least partially contributing to the status quo, where there are very few large European tech companies and even fewer young ones.

The amount of market power Apple has left even after such extensive regulation still far surpasses what a small company can hope to get by building even the most restricted walled garden.

So, if there were any medium companies just below the regulation threshold, the discontinuity argument would make sense. But there isn't, and there won't be, precisely because of anti-competitive behavior of the giants, they can sustain walled gardens precisely because they are giants.

Sometimes it’s a fun mind experiment:

YES, like tax brackets. Everyone should pay 30k$ per year to the government, no matter how rich or poor, for the services they get, and it would be the literal individual fair share.

The percentage-based taxes are already an unfair distribution of cost for the rich, and the progressive taxes amplify it even more. After all, who costs more at school, a Jeff Bezos, or an unruly one?

Good comment, but this will get killed by libs. However you are too high with 30k. I think something like 3k should be plenty to finance our government, and affordable for all. If the rich want a more expensive program that the poor cannot afford then they gotta find another way to finance it, rather than from taxes. Our government is supposed to represent all of its people, not give preferential treatment to the rich, the poor, blacks or whites, retirees or students, renters or landlords etc. Its none of its business.

However who benefits more? Who relies more on street infrastructure for revenue? The CEO of a car company, or a random worker?

The government should protect our constitutional rights, provide security from other nations and represent all of us abroad. It shouldn’t build roads, (beachfront) housing, statues or plant trees. Thats up to the people that will benefit from it, whether that be a company, a worker or a town agreeing to do so.

Exactly, and this is why the rest of the world is wishing and waiting since years that US lawmakers start implementing serious anti-trust laws and entities which work in that direction.

I mean, after the facebook-whatsapp merge (and the whole aftermath) we mostly lost all hopes.

> It also starts to bother me quite a bit when we go from treating everyone equal before the law to creating certain requirements based on other factors.

This is completely normal for laws.

Your kitchen at home doesn't have to follow the same rules as restaurant kitchen, for example. You as a driver of your personal car don't have to go through the same process and registration as truck drivers do. Small stalls selling things have different rules than big stores. And so on.

I reckon this particular objection actually shows the forma mentis of developers. It seems like a lot of them feel like they are temporarily-embarrassed megacorps, worrying about things that will never really apply to them.

Exactly. Worrying about your company "suddenly" crossing the €75 billion market cap threshold... that's the sort of problem most people would give an arm and a leg to have.

It's possible to have an opinion on laws that you don't effect oneself. If a country had a law that if a company reaches $1 billion lifetime revenue that it gets repossessed by the state I can apply my belief that stealing is bad and be against that law despite it likely never affecting me.

Requiring monopolistic platform megacorps to compete is similar to expropriating them. Got it.

I was using an extreme example to illustrate my point more clearly.

> It's possible to have an opinion on laws that you don't effect oneself.

Sure, and it's possible to heavily discount your opinion when compared to the hundreds of opinions of experts in antitrust law that helped shaping this legislation. This would be less the case, maybe, if this legislation actually targeted you, so your insight would be relevant; but the fact is that it doesn't.

Democratic societies don't decide laws based off what "experts" think is right, but instead based off what the entire populace thinks. If I was European my opinion should matter just as much as one these "experts."

Europe is, for the most part, a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. We specifically elect experts to write laws, and not have the general populace decide it.

I think it's more having the mindset to think externally to yourself and put yourself into users 'usecases', not personal self interest.

Yeah, no. Neither systems thinking nor empathy lead to the position that megacorps should be treated exactly the same way as smaller companies. If anything, the exact opposite is the case.

> temporarily-embarrassed megacorps

This is a very perceptive extension of the famous Steinbeck quote. The sentiment is certainly not limited to the blue-collar labor class of which the original referred.

Also, equality principles that apply to actual persons don’t necessarily make sense if applied to corporations.

A person, even if very rich, has a limited lifetime and a limited amount of hours in a day to spend. A corporation is immortal and can have 100,000 people simultaneously working on something. It’s bizarre if the law pretends that such an entity is just another human.

Its because your kitchen at home is not a business.

I'd hazard it's more specifically because your kitchen at home has a lower ceiling of harm.

If you start a grease fire, you burn down your house.

If you serve meat that's been stored at room temperature, you make your family and some friends sick.

But a commercial kitchen's potential for harm is much higher in many ways.

This is even true for something like medical devices. The FDA is really soft with startups and a pain in the ass once you grew some years.

And it makes sense. Let the small business experiment a bit, give them a bit leeway and once they grew to a certain size, expect that they think about the bigger picture. Which our dear monopolists only do in their favor.

I don’t think the EU has the ability to break up American companies. I guess they could try to ban them from operating in the EU, but that would pretty much nuke diplomatic relations with the US so it’s hard for me to see it happening.

Oh we absolutely can do that. Microsoft barely avoided that fate over their antics with Internet Explorer back in the days.

Anti-American company sentiments are high across Europe, especially when it comes to big tech companies. Our people are sick of US companies playing wild west and stomping all over regulations - AirBnB and Uber caused the most public backlash here (AirBnB because of people complaining that they were priced out of their homes and illegal hotel-style operations disrupting their lives, Uber because taxi drivers have pretty good lobby connections), followed by Facebook (which was mostly a topic for privacy nerds). Also, we have not forgotten who caused the 2008 financial crisis and who keeps dodging tax and labor laws while the taxpayers are left to deal with the followup costs.

Pay up and behave or get kicked out, GDPR was just the beginning (and once we get the Irish authorities to behave, your companies are done). The EU bureaucracy is like a big tanker ship, slow as molasses, but once it is moving it is not stoppable other than by going out of its way.

Obviously the EU can institute rules and fine companies that break them. But forcing companies to break up or kicking them out of Europe might be a step too far for the American government. Is the EU really willing to enter a Cold War with the us? Especially with the Russia situation I’m not sure they’re even able to without mass protests because the lng pipeline from the us will immediately dry up.

They let these unregulated behemots to plunder effortlessly without any repercussions in the last 10 years or so. These rules are just topical treatment and came already too late.

When Microsoft made claims like you are back in the day we called it FUD. Dude, our government in the USA is barely functional right now. If they can't pull together for basic necessities but pulls together to go to 'cold' war with Europe over business practices the normies here would revolt. People can't afford rent, food, but the government's focus is ensuring Apple's profits? Yeah, good luck getting the people to support that. "I'm sorry you are at your breaking point, but real issue is poor Apple's profit struggle in Europe!".

The government had no problem instituting mega sanctions on Russia, entire European will obviously be a harder political pill to swallow but really doesn’t seem out of the question.

The US barely traded with Russia anyway, and most of it was aircraft, vehicles and various services [1]. Sanctioning off Russia was and is easy for the US, the only major problem is the loss of soft power the US had with the OPEC and the resulting hike in oil prices.

The ones really affected by the sanctions are us Europeans.

[1] https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/russia...

Sanctioning Russia was a huge gamble in that it will likely lead to a heavily decreased reliance on USD globally as well as create competitors to swift which the us uses to enforce its hegemony.

The US dollar will always be the major currency of the world. What should replace it? The Euro is a good valuable currency, but we lack the military power that secures the US dollar plus we suffer from internal issues like the Italian debt that threatens to destabilize the Euro once again. Japan is a major economy, but still small and it has issues because its backing by the government is uncertain after "Abenomics" and the gerontification of Japanese society. The Chinese currencies suffer from cashflow control measures, and who the fuck would buy anything from Russia even if they had more to offer than barely functioning tanks, oil, gas and grain?

Oh man. You do realize that some 50% of GPS satellites are EU satellites right now? The US doesn’t even have a fully functioning constellation without the EU’s Galileo satellites (which are far more advanced in offering a cryptographically provable time). If the US were to go down that road, I’m fairly confident you’d have to go back to MapQuest and print out your directions.

EU could break up the EU operations of the said company and it leaves it up to the company whether to break up in other parts of the world or just in Europe. Just think how many shell companies are created to dodge taxes. Same can be done here.

> I’m not sure they’re even able to without mass protests because the lng pipeline from the us will immediately dry up.

The cold war has already gone hot thanks to "Fuck the EU" US interference in Ukraine [0] by now having escalated into a full blown open war, just like there is no "LNG pipeline from the US" to Europe.

> not sure they’re even able to without mass protests

Do you mean mass protests like they we had over the invasion of Iraq? That didn't lead to anything and thus has crippled the global peace movement to this day.

That's why the idea that European people will "take to the streets" to protest for "American gas", is pretty out there and quite fantastical.

Before that happens you will see people take to the streets to protest the sanctions that are mainly responsible for this economic hardship, sanctions pushed for by Washington.

[0] https://youtu.be/WV9J6sxCs5k

> The cold war has already gone hot thanks to "Fuck the EU" US interference in Ukraine [0] by now having escalated into a full blown open war, just like there is no "LNG pipeline from the US" to Europe.

The Cold War got hot cause of Russia, no one else. Russia is the one who decided to invade Ukraine, Russia is the one who decides to bomb children, Russia is the one who decides to commit genocide against the Ukrainians, Russia is solely responsible for this war.

No amount of “Ukrainian bio weapons” or “Ukrainian witch battalions” or “Ukrainian inhuman super soldiers” stories pushed by the kremlin will change this fact.

> The Cold War got hot cause of Russia, no one else.

Because decades of NATO expansion have nothing to do with this [0], having literal NATO exercises at the border of Russia [1], just completely normal and not at all an escalation. Nobody ever warned about any of this, it just came completely out of nowhere [2].

While the US would have no issue with Russia holding military exercises in Mexico, and couping the Mexican government. It wouldn't react in any way, most certainly not with the military, it's not like we have a precedent like the Cuban missile crisis, and the US military illegally occupying parts of Cuba to this day, in a very similar way to what Russia has done to Crimea.

> Russia is solely responsible for this war.

Sure, as long as you just wholesale ignore and deny what actually led to the war and how it was an active choice by US officials to undermine a diplomatic and peaceful solution, brokered by the EU, because "Fuck the EU".

In that context most online debates about this topic are similarly dishonest and toxic as war on terror debates in the early 2000s were; Anybody who doesn't join in with the blatant jingoism shall be declared an "enemy supporter", back then it was "terrorist supporter" nowadays it's "Putin supporter" and allegedly the only way out of this is more conflict, more weapons, any diplomatic solution shall be considered "pro Russia propaganda" because the forever war can't stop.

In that context you might as well tell me about WMD in Iraq, that's the level of argument you can bring that solely rests on ignoring a coup and insisting how a civil war, resulting from that coup, is totally not a civil war.

[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-jul-07-me-10464...

[1] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/us-army-to-...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/international/bush-pulls-...

> Because decades of NATO expansion have nothing to do with this [0], having literal NATO exercises at the border of Russia

Putin has told the world many times that the Ukrainians (and other former Warsaw Pact countries) aren't real countries and destined to be colonies at best. All his actions align with these sentiments. For example, Belarus never threatened to join NATO, but they were invaded and subjugated all the same. This is 100% on Putin and Russia.

Your argument pretty much predicates itself on Ukraine not having agency to make decisions for itself.

Ukraine is free to lick whatever alliances it wishes to join.

> Because decades of NATO expansion have nothing to do with this [0], having literal NATO exercises at the border of Russia [1], just completely normal and not at all an escalation. Nobody ever warned about any of this, it just came completely out of nowhere [2].

Decades of NATO are literally driven by the current actions of Russia and the past actions of the USSR. To view this in a vacuum is disingenuous at best, and malicious at worst.

Those NATO exercises where in Ukraine in 2014. In what world is that on the border with Russia?. In it’s a _country_ that borders Russia far far away from the actual border, in Lviv on the border with _Poland_.

> While the US would have no issue with Russia holding military exercises in Mexico, and couping the Mexican government. It wouldn't react in any way, most certainly not with the military, it's not like we have a precedent like the Cuban missile crisis, and the US military illegally occupying parts of Cuba to this day, in a very similar way to what Russia has done to Crimea.

The worlds changed (at least outside of Russia). Since Cuba, if this is your best comparison maybe it’s a bet of a stretch. This comparison would also require Ukraine to plan to host US nukes to be comparable.

> Sure, as long as you just wholesale ignore and deny what actually led to the war and how it was an active choice by US officials to undermine a diplomatic and peaceful solution, brokered by the EU, because "Fuck the EU".

Sounds like your suggesting that Russia was forced to invade Ukraine and murder there citizens.

You need to remember that Russia has the ability to not invade and subjugate countries, although given their history this may be hard to believe.

Russia is solely responsible, no one else. Ukraines also had 3 elections since the revolution and different people got elected each time, amazing isn’t it.

Your source for [0] is from the 50s the world was a very different place back then.

> Russia is the one who decided to invade Ukraine, Russia is the one who decides to bomb children, Russia is the one who decides to commit genocide against the Ukrainians, Russia is solely responsible for this war.

To hear Russia tell it, Ukraine has bombed a lot of children in the last 8 years and was committing genocide in East Ukraine. Ukraine also got couped.

Note: I personally have no ability to determine the truth of the Russian side beyond reading the wikipedia page and noting it plausible. I wonder if you have some extra information on things like how many civilian causalties occurred in the Donbas before 2022 or what the real support for Crimea joining Russia was?

> To hear Russia tell it, Ukraine has bombed a lot of children in the last 8 years and was committing genocide in East Ukraine.

Russia likes to tell a lot of lies and half truths to muddy the waters of everything I wouldn't trust what they they also generally don't provide any solid evidence of any of there claims either, just take these examples.

"Russian State Media Claims to Discover Militarized Ukrainian Witches".

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dypmpk/russian-state-media-c...

"Russian lawmakers baselessly claim their army is up against biologically modified Ukrainian super soldiers"

https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-lawmakers-tout-basel...

"U.S. Ramps Up Ukraine Warnings as Russia Denies Invasion Plans"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-17/russia-te...

Russian state media just cannot be trusted to tell the truth, I wouldn't believe a single word they say.

> Note: I personally have no ability to determine the truth of the Russian side beyond reading the wikipedia page and noting it plausible.

This would be a mistake, the "firehose of falsehood" is a well known Russian tactic, they lie constantly just to muddy the water. All you need to do is look at MH70 (the civilian airliner that Russian troops pretending to be separatists shot down) to see it in action, before it was publicly revealed to be a airliner they where posing with pictures of the wreckage and bragging about downing a Ukrainian military plane then when it was revealed what happened a whole bunch of Russian pushed conspiracy theories started popping up regarding it.

> I wonder if you have some extra information on things like how many civilian causalties occurred in the Donbas before 2022.

Because of the way that Russia lies and muddies the water, the real numbers will never be known just look at how little casualties they are claiming on their side for the current war.

> or what the real support for Crimea joining Russia was?

Again because of the tactics the Russians use this will never be actually known. But maybe once Ukraine retakes Crimea we may know more.

> Ukraine also got couped.

Except that's not how Russia tells it, that's what actually happened.

On February 21 then acting Ukrainian president Yanukovych signed a transition deal with the Ukrainian opposition, brokered by the EU and Russia [0].

That should have been the end of most of it, but it wasn't, later that day Yatsenyuk, aka "Yats our guy" from the Nuland tape, and Tyahnybok, who both agreed and signed to the deal, went on stage on Euromaidan and then declared how "That's not enough" riling up the protesters to demand more.

Klitschko, who was constantly trying to keep the peace [1], and was Merkel's aka the EU's choice [2] was completely left out of that. More context on that in the leaked Nuland call, where she rates Klitschko's governmental experience not high enough for such a position, thus their go ahead with "Yats is our guy" and "Fuck the EU".

That situation escalated then so much, that by the early morning of February 22 the leader of Right Sector announced how they had taken over, and secured, the parliament and several other local government buildings [3].

It's exactly that part the current "Russia lies" narrative always leaves out, by claiming Yanukovych just randomly fled from a completely peaceful protest.

After Yanukovych fled, Yatsenyuk announced their new post-coup government to rather frosty reception on Euromaidan [4].

As a German I was actively following the situation back then, that's why I still have most of these sources. But since then so much information was straight up "deleted" from the web. It used to be extremely easy to find violent footage from Euromaidan on Twitter and YouTube, not anymore, all deleted as "Russian propaganda" so the "peaceful revolution, there was never a civil war" narrative can keep getting pushed without too much of an factual opposition.

Another, rather concrete, example is Yatsenyuk's "Open Ukraine Foundation", that went online shortly after the coup, it's partners page had all the usual US regime change actors bluntly spelled out [5]. First the foundation changed from his name, to his wives, and ultimately that partners page vanished completely, too blatantly incriminating.

[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/yanukovych-signs-transition-...

[1] https://youtu.be/5bPKFto1AFY

[2] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ukraine-merkel-will-k...

[3] https://www.unian.net/politics/888104-verhovnaya-rada-admini...

[4] https://youtu.be/wegtWNIFX1Y

[5] https://web.archive.org/web/20140302111543/http://openukrain...

> That should have been the end of most of it, but it wasn't, later that day Yatsenyuk, aka "Yats our guy" from the Nuland tape, and Tyahnybok, who both agreed and signed to the deal, went on stage on Euromaidan and then declared how "That's not enough" riling up the protesters to demand more.

Alleged Nuland tape, it hasn't been in anyway shape or form authenticated and we know from this war that Russia is more then happy to use deep fakes to control the narrative.

> It's exactly that part the current "Russia lies" narrative always leaves out, by claiming Yanukovych just randomly fled from a completely peaceful protest.

It's not a narrative, unless you seriously believe in Ukrainian weaponised witches/black magic and Ukrainian bio engineered super soldiers.

Its funny you paint a very different picture to the wikipedia article.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity

> The following day, police withdrew from central Kyiv, which came under effective control of the protesters. Yanukovych fled the city.[33] That day, the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from office by 328 to 0 (72.8% of the parliament's 450 members).

Looks like Yanukovych ran away after he got ousted by the parliament themselves.

> Alleged Nuland tape, it hasn't been in anyway shape or form authenticated

Except the USG officially apologized for the "undiplomatic language" on the tape [0]

Do you think the USG is in the habit of apologizing for Russian fakes or what happened there?

> It's not a narrative

Yes, the "peaceful revolution" is very much a manufactured narrative, you should check out your own link [1]

> unless you seriously believe in Ukrainian weaponised witches/black magic and Ukrainian bio engineered super soldiers.

Can you please stop the bad faith arguing and strawmanning? I didn't write a single thing about anything like that.

> Its funny you paint a very different picture to the wikipedia article

Lets take a look at the actual TIMES article that's the citation for that [2];

"Ukraine’s beleaguered President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev Saturday as protestors took full control of Ukraine’s capital"

Beleaguered president fled after protesters took control of the capital, which also involved taking control of the parliament and the local security authorities, Right Sector announced it very much themselves in the very early morning of 22 February [3];

"“The Seventh Hundred is located inside the Verkhovna Rada. Also there is a division of the "Right Sector". Protected by the Cabinet. The nineteenth and third hundreds are guarding the Presidential Administration. The Fifteenth Hundred guards the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” Parubiy said."

Right Sector had control over who they let enter the parliament and who not. Want to guess who they let in, and who don't? That's also why the Wikipedia article has several different numbers for that how many actually participated in those parliamental votes. Sometimes it talks about 328 attending, then it's 386 and then it's suddenly "450 members voted 332-0", the Wikipedia article is all over the place on that.

Additionally; Did Russia also fake McCain shaking all the right hands [4]? Was it Russia who then made an American investment banker the new minister of finance for Ukraine, complete with fast-tracked citizenship? [5]

The evidence is overwhelming and blatant, that's also why all you can do is deny, even trying to strawman the discussion by talking about "weaponized witches".

Very much the same as back in the early 2000s when everybody knew the USG was lying about Saddam being responsible for 9/11 and the WMD, yet everybody played along for appearances and not wanting to get called a "terrorist supporter". But unlike back then, this time the stakes actually involve nuclear weapons.

This might or might not be the reason US authorities have lately been very active in educating their population about the proper response to a "radiation event" [6] [7] [8].

Mostly unnoticed in the US, yet to those who was alive during the cold war, particularly in central Europe, that's just quite scary, particularly in combination with the even worse than war on terror levels of information distortion.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/06/us-ukraine-rus...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity#/media/F...

[3] https://www.unian.net/politics/888104-verhovnaya-rada-admini...

[4] https://www.businessinsider.com/john-mccain-meets-oleh-tyahn...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Jaresko#Citizenship

[6] https://youtu.be/N-5d7V4Sbqk

[7] https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/emergencies/index.htm

[8] https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/comments/ufbx40/the...

No response, just downvote, as usual.

What has lately been up with the voting system on HN? Apparently people I reply to, with much newer accounts, can just instantly downvote my comments.

Yet most of the time I don't even get a downvote option, and pretty much never to any of the replies to my comments.

Feels like the system is being gamed by people with alt accounts.

You should really read your own sources

> Except the USG officially apologized for the "undiplomatic language" on the tape [0]

>> Victoria Nuland reportedly said ‘Fuck the EU’ speaking of Ukraine crisis, though department didn’t confirm it was her voice on tape

There’s no confirmation whos voice is on that tape although the tape itself is reportedly said to be authentic

> Yes, the "peaceful revolution" is very much a manufactured narrative, you should check out your own link [1]

The Russians often lie _is not a narrative_ the Russian government nearly never tells the truth. All you need to look at is there state media during this war to see many examples of it, from downing civilian aircraft to weaponised witches, the firehose of falsehood is well and alive.

> Yes, the "peaceful revolution" is very much a manufactured narrative, you should check out your own link [1]

The only person on that page that suggests this is a coup is the former president who got deposed and ran away back to his masters in Russia. No amount of images will change the fact it wasn’t a coupe, no amount of walls of text from you will either.

> The evidence is overwhelming and blatant, that's also why all you can do is deny, even trying to strawman the discussion by talking about "weaponized witches"

Do you think the Russians lie?.

I just checked Uber from my home to the airport and it’s 17 EUR. If I call yellow cab, price would be 1.5-2x higher and if I imagine a foreigner catching one on the street without the meter - that could get even worse.

I went for 2 weeks abroad with a week vacation and other week working remotely. There was no hotel in the area to provide me with the proper accommodation. But Airbnb did that just fine.

So I don’t necessarily see those services and companies behind as pure evil. I would say the government running behind and reactively setting limitations rather than proactively thinking about the way to move forward is an issue here.

> I just checked Uber from my home to the airport and it’s 17 EUR. If I call yellow cab, price would be 1.5-2x higher

A taxi may be more expensive at "idle" times - but ever tried to grab an Uber at a big event like a concert, a soccer game or Saturday night out drinking? You'll pay triple or more. Regulated taxis are more expensive, but always consistent which is a value on its own. Also, you can be sure that the driver doesn't live in poverty [1] or works ridiculous hours.

> and if I imagine a foreigner catching one on the street without the meter - that could get even worse.

I can't speak for countries other than Germany, but at least here this is simply not a thing.

What is a pain point with German cabs (and other German services) is that the acceptance of credit and especially debit cards is still a bit lackluster, but the situation has massively improved during covid.

> There was no hotel in the area to provide me with the proper accommodation. But Airbnb did that just fine.

Yeah, because wherever you were is most likely zoned residential, meaning no hotels and the associated noise from partygoers, vehicles and the likes. Are the neighbors of your AirBnB fine with someone renting out a room to randoms? Most likely not.

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/He-drives-60-ho...

> Also, you can be sure that the driver doesn't live in poverty [1] or works ridiculous hours.

You absolutely can't. Taxi drivers are independent contractors in most european countries too, with no minimum wage protections or enforcement of hours worked.

> A taxi may be more expensive at "idle" times - but ever tried to grab an Uber at a big event like a concert, a soccer game or Saturday night out drinking? You'll pay triple or more. Regulated taxis are more expensive, but always consistent which is a value on its own. Also, you can be sure that the driver doesn't live in poverty [1] or works ridiculous hours.

The prior here is simply not having enough taxis available. Fixed cost and capacity versus incentives that increase capacity when needed.

whats the mechanism exactly for the EU to be able to break US companies? you completely eluded that point.

As a Swede with pretty much the opposite views, your monolithic EU "we" sounds pretty offensive.

The 2008 financial crisis might have started in the US, but outcomes in European countries varied greatly depending on local policies and debt levels. It's hardly Americas fault that some European countries had taken on very high levels of government debt.

AirBnB and Uber seems pretty easy to regulate on a local level and in many places in Europe they are.

> Anti-American company sentiments are high across Europe, especially when it comes to big tech companies.

Not "especially" but exactly those. Almost no other american companies are known here. Of course there are McDonalds and Coca-Cola, but their bad reputation is for their unhealthy products, not the companies themselves.

> Also, we have not forgotten who caused the 2008 financial crisis and who keeps dodging tax and labor laws while the taxpayers are left to deal with the followup costs.

But we have apparently forgotten about this [0], nearly a decade later and it still remains a completely ignored issue that pretty much nobody was held accountable for except the people who drew attention to it.

[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/2014...

Honestly, the EU better step up actually creating tech companies then, because the current situation generally sucks. I'd happily use European alternatives to the products from Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, etc. but you have very little at that level. For my use cases there's nothing from the EU to replace those companies for me. There are some alternative offerings but they're usually far inferior and so I can't count them as replacements. The ones that are good usually end up moving to the US because it actually isn't insanely difficult to run a business there.

Even Linux is more an American product at this point than a European one with Intel being iirc the biggest contributor. I just think it's a bit of a joke that the EU strategy is to regulate American companies to this extent without having any coherent vision on developing genuinely viable alternatives and providing incentives to stay in the EU.

Well, they can leave the market. But the problem here is, that the EU concepts are often adapted elsewhere (e.g. GDPR is more or less adopted by California) especially, since these regulations often make sense and are not too political/onesided. GDPR - while we all hated it - make sense. This DMA - while it is extremely hurtful for the gatekeepers - make sense for the users.

> But the problem here is, that the EU concepts are often adapted elsewhere

oh no anything but that

> GDPR - while we all hated it

Speak for yourself. Most users don't hate the GDPR, they hate the way companies tried to game it (very incompetently, I might add) by adding obtuse banners and modal dialogs.

As for companies: mostly US companies hated it because they previously got away with extremely abusive business models whereas EU companies were already facing similar regulations in individual EU member states.

Not speaking as a user but an architect needing to work it once though dozens of huge legacy systems .. as a user I love it. I am the biggest advocate.

How do you break up the iphone? You create one company with a separate model of iphone for each country?

Hardware and software? But of course it's not an EU company

I'm not sure how much that matters? Apple still have to abide by EU legislation to sell their products there.

Make the App Store a separate company from the one that sells you the phone and OS.

It's the difference between equality and equity.

there are two kinds of people in the world - those that think corporatuon are people, and those who haven't lost their mind.

I can't understand why would anyone apply narrative of systemic opression and social issues to corporations.

I was responding to the claim that companies were treated unequally, which OP claimed was unjust. I'm simply stating that treating companies equitably, not equally, is just.

I understand that awareness of the importance of treating individuals equitably rather than equally has been increased in light of the increasingly public discourse on civil inequity, but these words have always existed outside that context to mean what they do.

The meaning of "equity" in a legal context according to the american heritage dictionary [0]: Justice achieved not simply according to the strict letter of the law but in accordance with principles of substantial justice and the unique facts of the case.

Not seeing how that requires me to anthropomorphise corporations.

Also, I kindly ask you to extend a bit of respect my way and not imply that I suffer from a mental illness because you disagree with me. It's not very civil.

[0] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/equity

> Further it seems more like a moat to keep anyone else from getting as big as these "digital gatekeepers" are as suddenly when you get to a certain size you have an enormous expense.

Yes, and that's a good thing. It suppresses monopolistic tendencies before they can take hold, rather than trying to prove they are a monopoly and trying to figure out after the fact how to break them in a sensible way.

> If these companies really are that large that they have to get special laws for them isnt the solution to dissolve their monopoly and split the company up instead of starting to create separate classes of laws.

Why? All you're doing is letting that monopoly create the great device/service/whatever that lots of people seem to be enjoying, but levelling the playing field so they are still forced to compete for users instead of exploiting their monopoly power to kill any competition.

Encouraging competition is the ultimate goal because that's where the progress from capitalism comes from. If we can continue to encourage competition without going about the messy business of directly interfering with how a company is structured or how it operates, that seems like a win.

> treating everyone equal before the law to creating certain requirements

we are not treated the same, If I killed 300 people the way boeing did with its Max debacle, I would be serving 15 consecutive life sentences.

for all the times a corporation kills people, almost never does anyone go to jail

> isnt the solution to dissolve their monopoly

Why is that the preffered solution? If you are arguing for that, you need to provide some reasoning or benefits.

I am sure they would prefer not to be split up.

> It also starts to bother me quite a bit when we go from treating everyone equal before the law to creating certain requirements based on other factors.

Uh, are you secretly longing for filing the paperwork required to obtain Title V Operating Permit for a major air emission source, or is there some other reason you oppose the idea that different things will have to follow different laws?

Personally I think most people will agree that a company with 150000 employees (Google) is not the same thing as one with 750 (tinder).

> It also starts to bother me quite a bit when we go from treating everyone equal before the law to creating certain requirements based on other factors.

They are literally the internet. That’s not about some companies to get some of there dollars. They literally gatekeeping. Amazon just shut down a whole social media platform. You can’t sell apps to iOS without paying Apple a big part of it (15 % - 30 %). Yeah you could say just create your own phone that would be fine right? How realistic is this. You can’t even build a good one because the bigger companies have so many patents you can’t go out. Then you write your own OS because you don’t want to pay and global company for using there OS. So give me my 200billion $ to get in the market. You can’t even advertise your product because they wouldn’t show your ad at all. That’s equal?

Also the EU can’t just split up companies. It’s a step to get some freedom back.

Did you ever read Thinking in Systems (D. Meadows)? It's quite a nice read and there are some nice paragraphs about why we need rules to prevent or reduce monopolies.

There are very real, very scary monopolies in Europe that are actually an issue that will never be dealt with. Whether or not iMessage can talk to Whatsapp has almost zero effect on my life.

> It also starts to bother me quite a bit when we go from treating everyone equal before the law to creating certain requirements based on other factors.

We already do that. We always did that. We regard things that are used larger than a certain scale as infrastructure. Roads. Justice system. Military. Power network.

We always heavily regulated these. Entire world except the US also regulated the Internet backbone as a utility. So nowhere in the world do people and companies have to still pay mid-2000s prices for bandwidth like they have to in the US after 1990s regulations expired and major ISPs started to consolidate entire backbone. They even tried to declare the Internet backbone, therefore the Internet, their 'private property' to be able to do whatever they wanted.

When tech monopolies go over a certain size and become literal infrastructures that everyone HAS to use one way or the other, they should get the same treatment.

Is being a gatekeeper a function of overall size, or market share in a given sector?

I may have missed the definition in the article, but my cynical take is that it seems geared towards getting companies that enjoyed dominance in the 90s back into the game now.

Check the infographic[1]. Gatekeepers are digital platforms :

• with over 45 mil active users • more than €7.5 billion turnover for the past 3 years

[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/digital-mark...

I see now, thanks!

I'm getting more optimistic as I look into the details. Open messaging could be interesting, for instance.

It will limit startup’s valuation for sure.

Valuation will limit startups chance to raise investment.

Less investment in general will limit startups runway.

I very much welcome this legislation (and I use an iPhone).

How would you approach this otherwise? The EU probably can't break up Google or Apple (how would this even look like?) and the walled gardens are clearly a market failure, including apples fat margins. You mention details, but regulation can be well made and just continuing the status quo is also bad. All regulations open up questions but it's not the wild west here, we have rules and they regulate the economy, even for big multinational giants like apple. Sometimes companies even get nationalised (or nationalised companies get sold)!

I would allow the same approaches taken today. I don’t want any of these things, and would buy an android phone if I did.

“I oppose this legislation that will bring massive good because I can imagine a few edge cases that have almost certainly been addressed but weren’t explicitly stated in the summary I glanced at.”

This type of comment is everywhere on the Internet and completely predictable.

Plus an inability to accept that there will be corner cases and some drawbacks, and that the best you can do with legislation is have the good well outweigh the bad.

Frankly I don’t see how this legislation could possibly bring massive good. For one I like my iPhone how it is and don’t see how I could possibly benefit from this passing.

As an American I think regulation should only be enacted when absolutely necessary, and these laws seem anything but necessary. I’ve rarely seen convincing cases of innovation being stifled or people being harmed by Apple’s walled garden approach. It’s clearly not a market failure because (1) it is extremely profitable and (2) it is not a monopoly. As you can see in this thread, tons of people prefer differently, and those people can buy Androids. I also don’t like how this EU legislation mainly targets American companies.

Forcing Apple to allow other voice assistants will only strengthen Google and Amazons dominance in the voice assistant ecosystem.

Forcing messaging apps to allow cross compatibility only will give them more of my unencrypted messages.

I could go on, but I’m very curious what all of these “massive goods” that I’m not seeing are.

It cost me ~$600 in app purchases to switch from Android to Apple. So “just buy a different OS if you don’t like it” is not a reasonable solution unless you only have free software and it is also free on your target OS. The fact that these licenses can’t be transferred is part of the problem (though I’m not sure that is even addressed in this legislation).

You don’t personally have to benefit from this legislation, you can stay in an “official” configuration until the day you die. For some of us, this opens the door to have a FOSS App Store, or custom apps without having to rebuild them once a week.

I bet you would have said the same thing when Microsoft killed browser competition decades ago using its Windows dominance. Fortunately, the govt acted against Microsoft.

If Microsoft continued its monopolistic practices, it's very likely that the iPhone that you like so much now won't be existing today.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, constantly buy, "sponsor" or sue competitors (whatever is cheapest) in order to keep their monopoly. All innovation is killed or at best assimilated (Star Trek Borg style). It's a bit funny that we ended up with two major platforms for smartphones... Microsoft did have a good grip on the smartphone market before Apple and Google entered, but they couldn't simply buy Apple or Google in order to keep their monopoly, nor can Google buy Apple or vice versa. But they can kill anyone else that tries to innovate.

> Forcing Apple to allow other voice assistants will only strengthen Google and Amazons dominance in the voice assistant ecosystem.

I don't even know what to say to this. Backwards thinking? Apple employee speaking? I seriously wonder why you would use this argument.

Apple can be broken up in multiple ways.

- smartphones

- desktop/laptops

- music and video streaming

- App Store and payments with Apple Pay

- chip design

- physical stores

All of those could stand on their own.

Edit: I'm not saying that the EU can break them up but Apple is not a company with a single field where breaking it up is impossible. I misread the parent a bit.

How does the EU force an American company to break up? (Not a rhetorical question)

Perhaps they might pull a China and require them to open a 51% EU-owned subsidiary to do business here, which would then be subject to all sort of restrictions including company size.

As a EU citizen, I would absolutely love it. But I suspect that the EU is bound by many more and much more comprehensive free-trade treaties than China is, and such a draconian approach would require many of them to be renegotiated or exited outright.

They can tax and fine them unsustainable fees, prohibit them from being used there. Thus they can control them. If Apple found that onerous they could choose not to be in business there.

How would the eu force apple to break up? It’s an American company. I guess they could lobby the US, but doesn’t seem close to happening.

> the walled gardens are clearly a market failure

I wouldn't call it a market failure, there's plenty of benefits with wall gardens and it's not done solely for profit. BUT there's also drawbacks and places where walls don't make sense.

Not being able to install arbitrary apps from various app stores provides security, UX consistency, and stability of the software. But there's also drawbacks for things like privacy or abusive censorship or copyright policies.

Given the benefits/drawbacks, the best solution is to have options in the marketplace. If you prefer having more control, don't mind sacrificing deep horizontal product integration, or doing the leg work to make it ideal (doesn't need to always 'just work' predictably), etc, then you should have the option to use an OS/device that offers that.

Personally I'd rather see Google make Android more flexible (for ex: making Google Play Services less restrictive) rather than forcing every OS to be like Android.

But I'm not sure how that could be done via restrictive policy without throwing the baby out with the bath water (other than targeting monopolistic behavior like preventing choice in browsers). Otherwise taking a more-freedom approach would be best, maybe by investing in open platforms, investing in public relations campaigns to make people understand why lack of choice is bad or a consumer-friendly 'open platform' label to guide shoppers, incentives like small tax breaks for offering more open platforms, etc.

For Apple, they could offer a stripped down iOS (like a server edition of a desktop) without all of the services and side-loading restrictions, without having to ditch the current approach that people like.

> Given the benefits/drawbacks, the best solution is to have options in the marketplace.

Android has those options. Please point me to this great privacy and security conscious competitor to Google Play Store.

F-Droid, probably

> I wouldn't call it a market failure, there's plenty of benefits to [walled garden]

Do you realise the irony of arguing for free market and a walled garden (not a free market)- simultaneously?

You can't have it both ways, pick your poison

Smartphones are in a market, yes...? I can also buy an Android or Pinephone, or use an open source OS like Graphene. That means you have a choice not to use iPhone's garden or use Google's or none... via F-Droid style app stores.

Do you think free-markets means corporations also need to run their business operations and products/platforms like a market? Because that's not what that means. (Even if it did ideological purity is dumb)

Inversely governments forcing companies to all operate with the same business model is not on a free market.

The only thing that would prevent a walled garden from operating in a free market is if Apple et al was a monopoly/oligopoly and you had no other choices. I've already said antitrust laws for things like browser choice is one of the better solutions than the one proposed.

this is a non-sequetor: just because Smartphones and Shoes are a free market has no relevance of whether Apps are a free market. A has no effect on B.

If you want to sell an app, you have to deal with rules of App Store or Play Store, or Windows Store. You can't even sell pornographic apps - this is the definition of an unfree market.

> The EU probably can't break up Google or Apple

The default remedy isn't break up, it's 10% of the total worldwide turnover (20% for repeat offenders). The EU can very much fine Google or Apple (and already did so).

If break-up is not possible, retricting or prohibiting access to the EU market is quite possible.

Edit: also, on my dealings with Google, I am contracting with Google Ireland Limited, a company that the EU can break up.

These are excellent points.

And I first want to approach it from the "good faith" point of view. The past 20 years have seen a sea change in what surveillance and devices can do. And as such we (society at large) needs to adjust our understanding and approach to this new technology.

Firstly the opportunities are immense. With almost (*) every person having some kind of heart, lifestyle, monitoring and measurement we could see transformational medical and epidemiology breakthroughs. On top of which access to (free, correct!) information, hell GPS is amazing. We know

Secondly there are opportunities for abuse, and there is justifiable concern about privacy, about affect on democracy, truth etc. I personally think these are..the wrong terms to use, but never mind.

I think we have to assume Good Faith from the EU here. They don't know the answers any more than the rest of us do. But they have been upfront abut tackling obvious big problems - the GDPR, for all its many faults was first, and a again big Good Faith step in right direction (pace all the stupid cookie warnings)

As for answers

Which devices apply - which ever ones are "owned" by a Gatekeeper (45 Million users / 7Bn turnover). Should Sony open up Playstation. Yeah basically. Xbox too. Will that cause problems - I expect so. In 99% of cases a big warning saying "you are side-loading this is dangerous" will prevent most horrors.

I expect this will not lead to an Open source free for all. I expect there will be develop licensing programs and approvals - because I certainly see the walled garden of iOS as a real benefit.

The bank transaction signing thing is interesting. The definition of a gatekeeper (Article 2 in the Act) is fairly specific to things like online search engines, intermediation services, OSes etc. I think its unlikely 45 million users is a big floor for such a thing.

(#) 4.5 Bn smartphones are in use globally, that's almost every adult. In "western" countries there are 10s of millions of people with daily heart rate monitoring.

I always see comments like this and they're so confusing. They just kind of assume that nobody has thought about these questions. Did you even check if they were addressed? If not, why are you asserting that these questioned are opened? For one, it's not about devices, it's about digital market platforms. That's why it's called the digital markets act.

Let's see what we get when we google this? Here's one: https://www.akingump.com/en/news-insights/digital-markets-ac...

Core platform services include:

    online intermediation services.
    online search engines.
    online social networking services.
    video-sharing platform services.
    number-independent interpersonal communications services.
    operating systems.
    web browsers.
    virtual assistants.
    cloud computing services.
    online advertising services, including advertising intermediation services.

> The compromise text clarifies that the definition of core platform services should be technology neutral and should be understood to encompass those provided on or through various means or devices, such as connected TV or embedded digital services in vehicles.

> “Gatekeeper”, in turn, refers to an undertaking providing core platform services that meets the following qualitative and quantitative criteria, set out in Article 3:

> First, it must have a significant impact on the EU internal market. An undertaking is presumed to satisfy this requirement where (a) it either has achieved an annual EU turnover equal to or above EUR 7.5 billion in each of the last three financial years, or where its average market capitalization or its equivalent fair market value amounted to at least EUR 75 billion in the last financial year, and (b) it provides the same core platform service in at least three Member States.

> Second, it must provide a core platform service which is an important gateway for business users to reach end users. This requirement is presumed to be met where the undertaking provides a core platform service that had on average at least 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the EU and at least 10,000 yearly active business users established in the EU in the last financial year.2 Users are to be identified and calculated in accordance with a methodology set out in an Annex to the DMA.

> Third, it must enjoy an entrenched and durable position in its operations. This requirement is presumed to be met where the threshold points in the paragraph above were met in each of the previous three financial years.

All these numbers and criteria seem to be completely cherry picked to fit specific companies. So bad.

Which specific companies have they been cherry picked for? Are there any set of numbers that you would like more to generally capture the concept of large tech giants?

Monopolistic regulation? This is clearly aimed against existing monopolies, i.e. gatekeepers. Can you explain how ensuring that

1. Making unsubscribing is as easy as subscribing, and 2. Guaranteed interoperability between instant messaging services, and 3. Sharing marketing and/or advertisement performance with business users

will "kill competition"?

> monopolistic regulations like this

If anything, this is anti-monopolistic.

With sideloading, unlocked nfc and alternative stores and payment providers this will likely kickstart whole new markets (eg: a better app store for the iphone).

This is just great.

See my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32170049

Most car infotainment systems ship with Linux, just they don't let you change it, which might be a GPL violation.

But what if that system had a small app store? Now it should allow any app store and apps to be installed?

Sounds good to me.

You are free to buy cars that meet your needs for yourself, such as multiple app stores. So it looks your standards are achievable if your willing to actually pay for it. This is more limiting freedoms and harming others, for example more expensive cars for me to satisfy one your desires. Or less innovation or competition because of higher cost of startup.

You mean "anti-monopolistic" regulations. That also answers all of your questions.

> This looks like it will kill competition and harm European innovation

I don't really understand how you got from "you are not allowed to stifle competition" to having less of it?

It is monopolistic because it comes from a monopoly (the regulator) with no way around it for Europeans that disagree.

Well rent control is also supposed to lower rents but usually what it does is make them more expensive and lower the quality on the long term.

Haha, "democracy=monopoly". Haven't heard that one before.

>Install any App Store

That wasn't one of the bullets in the posted article. Do you have a reference to the language of the law that says this?

I am guessing if you can "install any software" (as the DMA says), then the device manufacturer can't prevent you from installing another app store.

Actually, "software application stores" are explicitly mentioned in the relevant Article 6(4) (https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/PE-17-2022-INI... page 129).

Does this ban Microsoft from using their privileged position to sabotage Firefox and to push their spyware browser?

I'm wondering about this, too. In recent updates Windows seems to do a lot to force users into Edge under certain circumstances and use cases (and pester the user to switch to Edge entirely), in ways that at a glance appear to be incompatible with the summary of this regulation.

This is much more negative then for Apple then google. Google subsidizes their (far less profitable) app ecosystem by selling user data in the form of advertisements. While there is language about Google having to share marketing response rates, it doesn't prohibit this practice.

Apple on the other hand makes their money by targeting features (privacy, integration, etc) that people pay more for.

Apple will have to transition to a more ad-tech focus in order to compete in Europe under this infrastructure.

Showing advertisements isn't "selling user data", it's showing ads. Being the company who shows the ads means keeping the targeting data for yourself, which is the opposite of selling it.

Or maybe settle for making a few billion less. Oh the horror

What about the Google Play Services as a whole? Most of the Android apps don't work without these (so you can't for example use LineageOS without GApps), does the act in any way reference such things? What about contactless payment without "Google's approval" which require hiding the root, hiding the fact that the system is unsigned or has unlocked bootloader.

That is already not a problem on Android. If you can install a 3rd party app store (and you already can install a bunch of these on Android) and don't use Google Play Services your app will still work. For e.g. Amazon Appstore ships lots of the same apps but without using Google Play Services.

Well, no, many apps require Google Play Services/Google Play Framework to work, I can use MicroG (https://microg.org/) with the spoofing enabled but this is unofficial thing and not everything works with that.

And many apps don't work without Apple iOS being present on device and many apps don't work without Windows being present on device, etc.

Play Services are core OS API just like Apple services are.

They are pretty obviously not core OS API if you don't need them.

Play Services is probably the worlds most expansive data collection and user tracking tool. Tying core OS APIs into it is just evil.

Google's push notification framework is baked into the kernel. There is no way to make a competing framework as efficient as Google's solution in Android, so next to no app supports something else.

Every app you see working without Google's tools is simply using good old long polling or periodically looks for new messages. Both are very inefficient and slow.

> Use existing hardware and software features without competitive prejudice. E.g. NFC

What this will mean for me as an iPhone user: instead of using Apple Pay which is seamlessly integrated in my phone, watch and desktop OS, I will instead have to use my bank's terrible HTML-based 'app' to perform contactless payments, making it 100 times less convenient. This probably will make me switch back to using my bank card.

But hey, my bank makes a little more profit at the expense of UX.

Thanks EU!

No one is forcing you too do that. But they are forcing apple to give anyone using apple devices the option to use the banks shitty ui app.

Maybe the ui app will stop being shitty as the usage goes up? That is the point

> No one is forcing you too do that.

The bank will by discontinuing Apple Pay support. They have every incentive to do so.

Then why isn't that happening on Android with Google Pay? Banks are able to handle NFC payments through their own apps if they want, but the vast majority support Google Pay and don't force users into their own app.

I suspect that is largely due to the success of Apple Pay. Banks used to have their own apps on Android for years and only grudgingly started to support Apple Pay since they couldn't use their own apps. They only started migrating from their own apps to Google Wallet/Pay after Apple Pay became a success and Android users started to feel left out. They would never have supported Apple Pay if they hadn't been forced to do so. In fact, even though there was no alternative they kept dragging their feet and complaining about it for years.

Why would you use apple pay if you are planning to use a banking app? Isnt the point of having a banking app so you dont have to completely depend on apple pay?

I have an Android phone and have every single one of my credit and debit cards from 7 different banks in Google Pay. Don't need to use the bank app for any of them.

EDIT: to be clear, currently on Android any app can handle NFC payments, not just Google Pay. Banks could easily force people to user their apps, but that's not happening.

A possible consequence of the current legislation is that instead of a system-wide service where Apple Pay or Google Pay can work with different banks, each bank now demands to handle NFC payments within its own app. You may find that Google Pay is no longer supported by banks.

Sorry if it wasn't clear, that was actually my point - on Android even though banks have the ability to handle NFC payments within their own apps, the vast majority still support Google Pay and don't force you to use their app.

Most banks I know of only started supporting Google Pay after they deployed Apple Pay. Basically, Apple Pay showed consumers how good the UX can be which more or less forced the banks to Google Pay support so they can also have a good UX on Android. Without Apple forcing the use of Apple Pay I doubt it would ever have taken off.

NFC payments were possible through the banking apps on Android for years before Apple Pay launched in my country. Note that contactless payment had also been around here for years and pretty much all payment terminals supported it. Technically, everything was in place for it to be adopted, yet no one used it. Only after introduction of Apple Pay did it take off. Google Pay support followed the success of Apple Pay.

Counterpoint: here in Israel we had (only) the bank apps on Android for 2+ years, and they were a combination of "okay" and "awful". My bank's app required to unlock your phone (with biometric auth), an app-specific pin code, and had a 30-second window. It then didn't work 30% of the time and required turning NFC off and on again to work. It took them over a year to change to "just unlock your phone".

Then Apple Pay launched here, contactless adoption on iOS became triple of Android's (despite Android having more than double the phones), and a few months later Google Pay launched in response with their better implementation. I'm guessing it was a combined "in response to Apple" from Google and "maybe this will increase adoption" from banks.

You can also use another bank.

If that's such an important issue for you, why don't you just switch to a bank with an app with good UX? There are so many banks out there, one will surely either support Apple Pay or have a decent app.

Apple Pay will not just die, Android has no restrictions on NFC and Google Pay is still supported by banks.

What you do is fear mongering that's not based on reality. Android shows that it works and Apple just wants their cut, as always.

So use Android? I don't get the reason to force all companies to be the same when customers clearly have preferences.

I've bought mostly Apple products because I prefer their system to Androids. People who disagree can buy something else.

Competition is better than these father knows best overarching regulations.

Isn't the point of this to create more competition?

Android already is a huge iOS competitor, in fact, the majority player in the space. So competition clearly exists without this heavy handed regulation.

Legally requiring companies to degrade customer experiences is frustrating.

Companies needing to be compelled by law to treat users as adults is also frustrating.

Frustrations everywhere, I guess we should just not do anything about it and go back to the stone age? Someone else in this thread was suggesting that.

I’m an adult, and I want Apple to sell a product that doesn’t comply with these regulations.

“You can opt out” doesn’t help, because I want Apple to leverage its market power to force other companies to act in my interest, such as by banning unnecessary location harvesting from the App Store. Today, if someone wants access to the iPhone market, they have to comply with a pile of requirements that benefit me. If Apple loses the power to force policies on developers, for example by being required to allow sideloading, developers won’t have any incentive to offer non-user-hostile apps, and the the product “a smartphone where apps are available that are not user-hostile” will be gone from the market. The only options will be “a smartphone where user-hostile apps are available” (if you succumb to sideloading), and “a smartphone where apps aren’t available” (if you refuse to sideload), because given the opportunity app developers will only make user-hostile apps.

The EU is making my life worse and I’m annoyed about it. People who want an Android can already buy an Android, why is the EU banning the product I want to buy?

Apple only loses power to force policies if developers AND users move off the Apple App Store. If you believe that people want to stay on Apple's App Store with all that it entails, then anything not on Apple's App Store will be irrelevant right?

Otherwise if you're saying that users WILL move off the App Store, then that's how Apple's monopoly is anti-consumer and anti-competitive.

If users choose to continue to use Apple App Store only, then Apple can continue to enforce policies while also not being (as) anti-competitive since they wouldn't be actively stifling competition.

I want to continue using Apple’s App Store, but most people are less aware of things like location harvesting, and are less privacy-sensitive than I am. Today, Apple can set policies that benefit users without those users having to be aware of those policies or understand why those policies benefit them. In a world where Apple’s policies can be sidestepped simply by asking the user to sideload the app, many, even most users will likely agree to do so without any awareness of what they’re giving up. The shady app developer certainly won’t tell them!

Users unambiguously benefit from most of Apple’s App Store policies (the payment rules less so, but even then there are benefits such as mandatory subscription cancellation support), but often in ways they can’t or don’t see. Apple’s policies are obviously negative for app developers, but I don’t care and nobody should care that Apple chooses to benefit its consumers at the expense of its third-party corporate partners. That’s just normal business behavior.

>In a world where Apple’s policies can be sidestepped simply by asking the user to sideload the app, many, even most users will likely agree to do so without any awareness of what they’re giving up.

This doesn't happen with any kind of frequency on Android so I'm curious as to why it would happen on iOS. Do you have ideas on what it would be like? Why would it be so different than android or windows?

Facebook tried successfully to do this in 2019 by misusing their internal corporate app certificate, and only stopped because Apple noticed and revoked their certificate. So we already have proof that in the absence of Apple’s ability to punish and ban companies for asking users to sideload to bypass tracking restrictions, they will ask and users will accept.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/30/18203551/apple-facebook-b...

As for Android, many Android app stores (especially ones in China) impose no restrictions or barely any at all. The only one that imposes meaningful restrictions is Google’s Play Store, and the restrictions are much less than in Apple’s App Store, so the incentive to bother circumventing them is much lower. For example, unnecessarily harvesting user location is not a blocker for access to the Play Store.

I don't disagree with the benefits, but there are also negatives to me as a consumer with Apple's App Store policies that do nothing but benefit Apple. And as long there's no competition, Apple have no incentive to change that because it benefits them.

Look at Fortnite's removal, all because they added an additional payment method that bypassed Apple's. You could still use Apple's method if you wanted to for all those benefits, but Apple want their cut. Apps like YouTube increase prices to make up for Apple's cut. Others like Netflix and Spotify not only do not allow you to pay for it via the app, but also aren't allowed to tell you how to pay for it, making a worse user experience.

Or how about the blocking of streaming gaming apps like Stadia and Xbox Cloud Gaming? Who benefits from that? Only Apple.

>given the opportunity app developers will only make user-hostile apps

Can you give examples of this? Android has plenty of non-user-hostile apps...

So, the competitor of one major tech monopoly that controls half of the people's online lives is another major tech monopoly that controls the other half. And they implement almost the same policies. And that is, 'somehow ok'.

Man, you Americans are SO taken in by your corporate landscape that you seem to have literally forgot what it is making your own choices.

So your bank can have more funding, instead of Apple shaving it off up to 50%, and it is able to develop a neat React-based UI instead of the simple HTML ui you so strongly disdain...

sure they will..

PS: It's 0.10-0.15%, don't know where your 1/2 come from

How about they just make a native app ?

Of course you can use Apple Pay, but if you don't like it you could also use Google Pay or Samsung Pay instead. But Apple Pay could also be used on Androids if Apple chooses to offer it.

Where does it mention side loading? Still skimming the legal doc, but it just says basically they need to be fair and non-discriminatory about app-store access.

Nevermind, my ctrl-f'ing failed me. Ignore.

iPhones are now shipped with FreeDOS. Optional iOS is available separately.

If this is an accurate description of the regulation, I can help but feel they brought it on themselves but closing the garden so hard. These were normal computing options before iPhone/Android took over.

Does it break any privacy/digital-dignity protections though?

Have you read it? Do you have any info on how the vendors can react to these changes in terms of policy? Like is there anything that disallow apple to offer post-sales support / warranty in case you install any software / app store? etc?

does anyone know when the messaging interoperability comes into force? i am really anxious to have this work finally

You're really anxious to have infinite amounts of spam from bridged messaging services that noone can do anything to stop?

yeah, pretty much

>that noone can do anything to stop

I think clicking the button that says "only accept messages from my contacts" on the messaging service of your choice ought to solve that problem

this is the kind of FUD that needs to be stopped. sure, if you get telegram spam, wont you be able to block telegram from messaging you so whats the big deal about this?

Why would you be able to do that? I don’t have regex blocking in any of my messaging apps right now. If you think you’ll be able to block specific other services, that sounds anticompetitive.

An individual should be able to do that, not talking about app wise blocking someone.

Blocking one sender at a time does nothing to stop spam if you can’t cut off an entire service.

The idea seems good. But after GDPR my confidence in EU lawmakers ability to craft truly well-thought-out tech legislation is low.

I am still excited about Apple's answer to this. They have been extremely creative so far in mitigating rules.

I believe that they will find a way to somehow undermine these rulings. EU hasn't won yet.

I assume Apple will just release special unlocked phones that only work in the EU (only support EU carriers, only support EU cell frequencies, etc)

Europe’s requirement of those pesky cookie notices have killed the joy of surfing the net. Every goddamn site has this stupid cookie popup show up. It is like playing whack-a-mole. They should have instead only allow necessary cookies and marketing and other cookies should be part of signing up for a specific service and not just visiting the website. The thought is noble but the implementation sucks.

EU requirement was to inform users on how the data collected about them will be used and give them a choice.

Cookie notices was the industry response, ignoring the spirit of the law and complying at a minimal rate

If this is how the industry is complying the law was poorly written no?

Cookie notices > having tracking cookies enabled by default with no easy way to turn them off

try easylist-cookies. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23521399

> The thought is noble but the implementation sucks

And you know who does the actual implementation, right?

This is mostly a case of malicious (arguably non-) compliance.

it most cases it's not even arguable

> Europe’s requirement of those pesky cookie notices have killed the joy of surfing the net

This is like blaming the dentist for your tooth pain.

With the right plugin (both mobile and desktop), you can automatically opt out, something that wasn't possible before. And larger ad companies actually enforce compliance here (where possible).

Cookie banners are a brain-dead, malicious compliance way of evading the actual goal, which was to reduce the needless use of tracking and analytics cookies. AFAIK, if you only use cookies strictly when they need to be used to make your application work, you don't even need the banner.

> Install any software

Scams proliferate, praying on elderly and young. Widespread tracking of your location, browsing history. Same with other points, narrow, selfish thinking.

wow people sure love giving corporations the power to decide what they can do with their device... selfish thinking? naaa its a walled garden for one reason to make a ton of money...

There would be scam-tracking services, which anyone could use.

I think six months is a pretty unreasonable time frame for Apple. While the security concerns around this sort of thing are often overblown, Apple will need to rework their security model for the iPhone. If there is an API surface between the OS and the App Store, they may need to rework it since it's not been designed with third party stores in mind.

The writing has been on the wall for years. Sounds like a problem of their own creation.

I think they assumed, like the rest of us to a degree, that "it will never happen". If this kind of "ffs, just effing solve it with a law already" kind of law comes through, I'm seriously considering moving to an EU country.

The noises out of government have been that this will happen for a few years now, at least from the perspective of an EU citizen. They should have been preparing.

That’s why I moved here five years ago from the US. It’s actually pretty easy, depending on where you go.

There is no "if this comes through". The law was adopted, all that's left is a formal step (getting the law signed) and then a standard waiting period (six months to allow companies to adapt).

GDPR came out years ago and almost no one is compliant today.

Where are you getting your data from?

not the commenter, but I would imagine they're referring to the stipulation in GDPR that it must be as easy to decline marketing cookies as it is to accept them, which the overwhelming majority of websites don't abide by

Okay, so no data. Just speculation.

if you've been on any websites in the EU (or a country with similar DP laws) recently, you'll know this without even thinking

but here you are anyway: https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-aims-end-cookie-banner-terror-and-is... https://noyb.eu/sites/default/files/2022-07/ANNUAL%20REPORT%...

if you still don't believe me, try and use google maps, or youtube in incognito mode

That's just not true, it's a going concern for anyone working on online projects in Europe. It's come up for me personally in discussions with every client on every project for the last 4 years now. We're even at the point where major companies are being fined for misteps:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/15/facebook-2018-breaches-dpc...

We take GDPR very seriously in the EU. Fines are steep. There are difficulties getting foreign companies to comply, and there isn't a one-size-fits-all compliance toolbox for those breaches.

The funny thing is, Apple originally had plans for sideloading all the way back in 2008. An email that came out from the Apple vs. Epic trial last year had none other than Steve Jobs signing off on UI copy for installing apps from outside the App Store! [1]

Obviously, those plans were shelved when they changed strategy for iOS to walled-garden, but it's surprising how in the course of fourteen years the issue went from product roadmap to cultural anathema at Apple.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/c/22611236/epic-v-apple-emails-proj...

What timeline do you think the Gatekeepeers would prefer? Is it a reasonable goal to let BigTech drag it's feet making these changes they didn't want to do on their own accord in the first place?

Amazing things are possible when the incentive is right. Given their VAST resources, it's only a matter of focus.

I don't know how anyone would think that timeline is in any way possible. Not gonna happen.

Then let the motivational fines begin and see if that helps get things moving.

Mandating things that are impossible and then fining companies for failing to achieve them is just a silly and roundabout way to impose a tax, and if the EU just wants to tax a bunch of tech companies they should do so directly instead of this absurd charade.

clearly that's not what they want. they want less anti-competitive practices and they want them quickly. a massive fine that brings in some public money and punishes them for past actions is a nice upside

Do people really think this is impossible? We're talking about Apple here.

Honestly I think the timeline is a punishment for forcing the governments hand by never doing any of these things themselves.

sometimes the vaster the resources the slower things happen

to be fair they have been warned for years

I don't think it's realistic. One example:

> Make core messaging functionality interoperable. They lay out concrete examples like file transfer

Google, Apple, and Amazon are supposed to design, ratify, implement and ship a universal messaging standard in 6 months? This won't happen even if they skip the first two steps and use an existing standard.

Apple ships a new iOS version in September, when this timer is supposed to start. Are they supposed to upend their entire release cycle and ship these major changes to their OS by March?

I've used iPhones for years, and I'm totally down with these bullet points. But I think we can all chuckle at the timeline, given the scope of this.

> Google, Apple, and Amazon are supposed to design, ratify, implement and ship a universal messaging standard in 6 months?

If they all agree that email or sms is the common messaging standard, is that problem solved?

sms is already interoperable... does this law say they have to remove iMessage to make all messaging lowest common denominator?

They will negotiate a proper time frame. It will take years till we see the benefits. The EU will charge them a smaller fine and give them some time with that. Not their first rodeo on both sides.

'Negotiate'? No no my good man. That kind of thing gets easily abused by US corporations and they don't work elsewhere:

When Eu put out the 'browser ballot box' requirement for OSes, Microsoft said that it was technically very complicated, near impossible to implement it.

Then the Eu started fining Microsoft ~700,000 Euros a week or something.

Microsoft magically made the ballot box happen within a week.

>* User any browser and browser engine and choose to make it default

...only works if the OS doesn't unchange it every. sodding. day.

The title says it all: the EU Act aimed against literally half the top USA companies.

But that's just realpolitik for you. This is the same reason that in the USA it is legal to have California Champaign and New York Bordeaux (style in small font) wine.

Do you think that this would mean providing these new services to phones outsides of the EU i.e. would the whole world benefit from this?

What about installing an alternative operating system on an iPhone?

Under much much more,

Install any app you've previously purchased, from any app store, I think regardless of whether they'd otherwise offer said app

I think that will get rid of selling the same game, app, whatever on many platforms. Buy once, use everywhere

This will also apply to Xbox, Switch and Playstation, among other devices - unless I'm understanding the legislation wrong. The impacts are staggering.

Nintendo may not be big enough. Microsoft certainly is.

Yeah, finally.

I wonder why Google is there, they don't block any of this.

Six months??? What does "comply" mean? Ship a version of the OS that supports all these new features? Or begin implementation of them?

Six months is barely enough time for companies to digest and understand the new requirements, and certainly not enough time to develop and ship such dramatic changes.

Yet Samsung manages to release a new phone every 6 months.

> Install any software So it's like a jailbreak. More software, less security.

> Make core messaging functionality interoperable. They lay out concrete examples like file transfer.

Encrypted messaging by someone not in the U.S.' jurisdiction. More privacy, more terrorism.

> Fines are up to 10% of global revenue for the first offense, and 20% for repeat offenses.

Ouch, that'll impose some discipline.

It blows my mind how many people have bought into Apple's position on this. No, Apple restricting your freedom does not afford you greater security. You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software. If you're not confident in your ability to tell shady from legit, just stick to the App Store. Don't demand that Apple treat the rest of us like children just because that's how you would like to be treated.

This is a very myopic view of what it’s like for the elderly and less tech savvy. Most aren’t capable of telling the difference and yet they constantly find themselves unknowingly getting scammed. I take it you’ve never had to clean out a horribly malware infested computer for a mother-in-law before?

While this is certainly a problem, I don't accept it as an argument for why we all have to be locked in the walled garden. Just add a system setting that controls the walls. Let people disable it if they want, and tell your mother-and-law to never ever disable it no matter what. If you're worried that they'll be tricked into disabling it, then they probably should not be in control of a bank account or anything else serious anyway.

Anyway, this isn't really relevant to this regulation. People already get scammed on iPhones all the time. It's silly to think that anybody would be more vulnerable as a result of the DMA.

What happens when installing Facebook requires this setting to be disabled because it's only installable with their own App Store and rampant with privacy intrusions?

> People already get scammed on iPhones all the time.

I disagree with this assertion. It's certainly far less than those getting scammed on Mac/PC.

> It's silly to think that anybody would be more vulnerable as a result of the DMA.

There's a failure in imagination here in all the ways that companies will take advantage of this to the severe detriment of users, often with the user being clueless on how much they're compromised. What's undeniable is that this regulation dramatically increases the surface area of ways to scam people.

There are so many other ways to deal with this danger that don't involve relinquishing everybody's freedom to a monopoly. You could just make the setting unchangeable except by an administrator account, then don't give your vulnerable relative the admin password. Boom, they're in the exact same position as they were before this regulation, but I don't have to deal with Apple's extortion if I don't want to. Win win!

The thing that’s missing is that Facebook can now exploit people whereas previously Apple was forcing Facebook to act just slightly less shitty. If Facebook can bypass Apple then there is no leverage.

Apple was enforcing some baseline of good behavior that developers no longer need to abide by. Apples subscription management is actually pretty consumer friendly, for example and I have to imagine plenty of companies are chomping at the bit to extract more money from shady tactics once they are no longer forced into decent behavior

Facebook in the EU should be regulated by the EU, not Apple. The EU should not be delegating this regulation to an American corporation.

Then why was it up to Apple? The EU failed to regulate the pervasive tracking of Facebook on devices, Apple did what they could to protect their users.

> setting unchangeable except by an administrator account

Part of the regulation appears to require third-party apps to have the ability to use any APIs. Therefore, any malicious app will be able to present system dialogs that are (possibly) indistinguishable from official OS dialogs. This seems bad.

> relinquishing everybody's freedom to a monopoly.

And yet we're consistently reminded that iOS's marketshare is globally small and that the macOS share is vanishingly small. Which is it?

umm what? go watch those scam calls on youtube they target iphone users all the time

> What happens when installing Facebook requires this setting to be disabled because it's only installable with their own App Store and rampant with privacy intrusions?

You can then add a regulation that all popular social apps need a web version that is fully functional. If the OS should support the necessary web APIs for a good app experience, people can choose that instead.

Considering the app permissions are still controllable via the OS, I don’t see how the app can become “intrusive” anyway. Just deny it the unnecessary permissions.

> tell your mother-and-law to never ever disable it no matter what

Just like banks telling people they would never ask for their password/social security number. Works very well! /s

> I don't accept it as an argument for why we all have to be locked in the walled garden.

You’re not, even today. You can of course choose not to use an iPhone

You don’t have to be locked into a walled garden! You don’t have to buy an iPhone.

Yep. They can just buy Android and get locked into another walled garden.

The argument betrays itself:

How will that elderly and less tech savvy find and install another app store into their iPhone.

If they are not tech savvy enough to be able to decide something is scammy, they are not tech savvy enough to install a freaking app store in their phone.

To get this great new shiny "game" just follow these steps to install it on your iPhone: ..

The apparent desire for paternalism unnerves me. Any time people are free to choose who they associate with, they run the risk of coming across bad actors who would scam them or worse. In most domains of life, we have special protections for the senile elderly and children but everybody else is given freedom and subsequently expected to develop and exercise a sense of good judgement, because freedom is more important than security.

But in the specific case of iphones, the argument is made that giving rational level-headed adults the freedom to associate with the software they wish would imperil children and the elderly, and you don't have to look far to find somebody arguing that that risk outweigh any other consideration. If this belief were likely to be limited to iphones I wouldn't really care, I'd simply not buy an iphone. But I fear special-case exceptions don't stay that way forever, and I fear Apple's style of paternalism (which is very profitable) will inevitably spread and become difficult if not impossible to avoid unless stomped out soon.

I absolutely agree with you, but here's a hypothesis worth considering: What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more?

Societies have long accepted that things like medical treatments have to be prescribed by an expert, and some societies have even decided that healthy people can be forced to have medical treatments even against their will (i.e. vaccines).

My hope is that we are just in a temporary phase, where society has learnt how to transmit information freely but not how to reliably transmit trust. If the reputations of software developers and medical practitioners could be established without corporate or government monopolies, then society might get past this local minimum and into a more stable state.

> What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more?

Then we should apply the regulator brakes immediately, as hard as possible. If the threat new technology poses to society is so great as that, then we should regulate those technologies, possibly to the point of strangulation.

Ancient Roman urban legend: An inventor came to the Emperor to show off a new material, unbreakable glass. He showed the Emperor a glass chalice and threw it to the floor. Instead of shattering it merely bent, and the inventor bent it back into shape with a hammer. The emperor was very impressed, then ordered for the inventor to be killed. Unshatterable glass was very nice, but it wasn't worth the social and economic disruption it might cause.

I am not that Roman emperor. What I support is the regulation of business practices, not technology itself. But if you (and Ted Kaczynski, for he has argued the same) are right and the threat to society comes from the technology, then we can regulate the technology as well.

It is obviously that we cannot do that because of the global competition.

Regulation of technology to reduce risk to society will just make competing part of society you have no influence on to dominate. And you lose on both fronts - technology domination, and ability to control it in the future.

Regulating Apple specifically, or the role of smartphones in society generally, imperils national security? Sorry, but I'm not buying it. The relevant business behavior and technology to squash is the technology that intersects with the lives of common people in an intimate way, not military R&D. I'm talking about regulating the way online banking and ecommerce work, not the etching of silicon or production of rocket motors. The cited threat is phones getting pwnd by scammers who drain your grandpas bank account. If that threat is indeed so severe that digital freedoms for everybody need to be curtailed, it would be better to ban online banking entirely than to put the entire population under the paternalistic control of a handful of corporations.

You'll have to dig deep into nth order effects to justify such regulation imperiling national defense, essentially tea leaf reading.

I won't argue with the hypothesis at large (even though I hope it's unfounded), but as it applies to this particular situation, you're ignoring a crucial factor: the gargantuan incentive for monopolists to convince you that their monopolies actually protect you. It's incredible how successful Apple has been in convincing their users that freedom is bad, and I'm absolutely positive it's not because Apple is genuinely concerned about society; they're concerned about their multi-billion-dollar revenue streams.

If we reach a point as a society that we decide we have too much freedom, we should absolutely never let it be regulated by corps with such a perverse incentive.

And on top of this increase in complexity, is a decrease in legal consequences for bad actors taking advantage of this complexity. That is what is going on currently due to how the Internet crosses international borders which makes policing much more difficult for society.

It is a difficult conundrum as freedom is definitely something I value, but I think freedom may not be the best solution in a world without legal consequences for those abusing that freedom to take advantage of others.

Freedom with no guidelines to prevent use of that freedom to abuse others is not real freedom

We're not building that society. We're living in that society.

I don't understand how people didn't realize this over the last couple of years.

We are not qualified to have opinions on a lot of things we do have opinions on.

Many years ago I had a roommate who was an actual Marxist (this was in Berkeley CA) and who had a kind of a job or volunteer position with a local radical politician trying to influence local politics. They would do things like go to city council meetings and march around the room singing songs. Dumb shit like that.

One day I'm reading in my room and the lights flicker and I hear a yalp from the living room. I go out to investigate and I can smell the magic smoke (not weed, electrical) and the roomie is standing there with a screwdriver and a spooked look on her face.

It transpires that she wanted to move a certain bookshelf to a certain spot and have it flush against the wall, but it was blocked by a little external electrical outlet. It was an old house, you see, (old for the West Coast that is) and when it was electrified they didn't both to run the wires through the walls. Instead they ran little conduits along the baseboards and mounted external socket blocks so we could plug in lamps, etc. One of these external electric sockets boxes was in the way of the bookshelf.

You can see where this is going?

She got a screwdriver and tried to remove the electric socket box without turning off the circuit. The flickering lights were when she shorted the circuit with the screwdriver and made the magic smoke come out.

Fortunately she wasn't hurt, just startled.

Now this person was in her fifties! How the hell to you get to be fifty years old and not know how electricity works!? And yet she felt confident that she knew how cities and countries should be run.

I think there are at least two points here:

1.) We have already made the world more complicated than the average person can understand. Computers are like pouring fuel on that fire, but it's been burning for a while now.

2.) People can be really stupid and ignorant and yet feel like they know what's going on and what to do about it.

I think the obvious though perhaps unpleasant conclusion is that we should look to radical simplification in all areas, and treat complexity as something that should be budgeted, treated as an expense and necessary evil.

> Now this person was in her fifties! How the hell to you get to be fifty years old and not know how electricity works!?

Shtty American education system? Which so gimps anything that is non-profitable and makes anything that is worth studying so expensive that people live without access to knowledge?

The US is the only country where it is needed to put 'dont microwave your cat' on Microwaves and other dumb sht.

So no.

The 'dumb sh't is not that actual Marxist is doing. Trying to change that situation in which education costs an arm and a leg and people have to struggle.

The dumb sht is people like you talking as if her being a Marxist was a bad thing all the way at the start of your 'arguments', giving an example from something which should be a damning condemnation of your system and the mentality that you espouse. Because those are what keep you still mired in knee-deep sh*t - reaching all the way to a point where you have an entire population segment that believes the earth is flat and plans on taking your country 200 years back.

But hey. Suit yourself. Its natural selection.

I seem to have touched a nerve there. Sorry about that.

I'm not going to defend the US education system, it's been BS ever since I was forced to attend as a child and it hasn't gotten better from what I hear.

This person wasn't dumb because she wanted to make things better. The actual strategies employed were dumb, just ego-aggrandizement, and ineffective.

In re: Marx and Marxists I don't actually know much about it, but I also don't think much of economics in general.

I pointed out her political affiliation not to pick on Marxists per se but to illustrate that this person had strident beliefs about social/economic/political organization despite not understanding that one must turn off the circuit breaker before re-wiring the house.

Have a good day friend.

> What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more?

RIP Democracy.

> What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more?

That doesn't happen.

WordPress have an open development ecosystem through themes and plugins. It runs up to 50% of all web sites on the planet right now, including many gigantic ones. (various CNN, Reuters services included).

That did not lead to such an environment as you speak. Instead, there materialized many independent theme and plugin developer outfits, rising into prominence just for providing good software and having good reputation. And they have been half of the reason why WordPress now constitutes 50% of all web sites.

Open Source has been similar in general too - various high-reputation outfits dominate each field without curbing choice.

> The apparent desire for paternalism unnerves me.

I find the EU imposing these conditions, under threat of force, on Apple that sells a product that people are free to buy or not buy, much more paternalistic than anything Apple does.

That is the role of governments. Europeans made the EU for this and similar purposes.

So you're not concerned with paternalism itself, you just don't like Apple, right?

I think he doesn't like the fact that a corporation is controlling people for its own profit first and their customers' welfare a distant second. Apple is not a charity or a government, it's a business. The EU is a government, its purpose is to regulate and legislate for the sake of the people it represents. It's more sane to trust the motivations of the EU, even if its actions are ill-considered at times, than a corporation whose primary, overriding objective is to make its owners wealthier. The former will generally pursue actions that benefit consumers, the latter will only coincidentally do this, if it stands to make a lot of money in the process.

Whats the difference in between a corporation that dominates the life and choices of one half of the population and a feudal lord that does the same.

The 'paternalistic Eu' is at least comprised of officials appointed through democratically elected parliamentarians.

What kind of democratic powre does the public have in the decisions that Apple takes?

What has the result of 'free market' mechanics been, other than increasingly dominate people's lives to maximize profit all the way to reducing their phone's performance just at the right time when a new version is going out to force them to upgrade?

EU isn't a government. "Europeans" do not elect members of the European parliament. Finally, I would argue that the reasons for forming what became the EU, back in late 40s and 50s last century, were completely different from what we have today.

Europeans do elect members of the European parliament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_to_the_European_Parl...

Indeed. My bad.

Exactly. As if consumers needed to be protected from their own choices. Nobody is forced to buy apple. There are plenty of other manufacturers. Let the fucking market sort this.

You have a lot more freedom in the EU to switch countries than you do to switch phone ecosystems.

There are 27 countries you can freely move between. If you work in one and move to another your pension gets rerouted when you retire.

There are only two phone ecosystems. If you buy something in the Apple ecosystem, you don't suddenly have it rerouted to Android if you move.

The EU isn't threatening force. It's a civil issue. Apple can just not sell in Europe. And even if Apple can't use force, it's a lot more authoritarian.

> But in the specific case of iphones, the argument is made that giving rational level-headed adults the freedom to associate with the software they wish would imperil children and the elderly

By whom? You are the first person I heard this from.

>You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software.

For whatever reason, my dad cannot choose to not install shady software. Keeping him in iOS land is the only thing that has worked at keeping his devices clean.

>You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software.

For some reason every Linux user assumes everyone is as smart as they are and anyone who doesn't take the time to learn whatever esoteric config file to manage their DE is a child that can't tell left from right. Somehow the decade of directed scams and proliferation of malware and spyware isn't a problem and it's the developers "right" to be able to turn on your microphone and send that data to the cloud.

When Facebook mandates that to install Instagram you must sideload it from the Facebook store and your entire's family's location is being tracked 24/7 I hope you will thank Zuckerberg for all the freedom hes giving you

>Don't demand that Apple treat the rest of us like children just because that's how you would like to be treated.

You could just not buy from Apple. I never understand how the anti-Apple crowd is convinced that Apple is run by Satan himself, but cannot compel themselves from buying Apple products.

1. Who talked about Linux?

2. Who said spam isn't a problem or that this act allows or even enforce to circumvent the strong privacy rules that the EU (not Apple) actually guarantees for their biggest single market in the world?

News flash: you can combat spam and scams while keeping open and exchangeable basic infrastructure, without any walled garden. Otherwise, following your logic Apple would need to ban access to protocols like IP instantly, as those can be used to transport spam and exchange openly information.

People rather argue that the safety excuse is BS and people do not require being a Linux expert to detect spam, that they can also get over the landline or in person knocking on the door, for that one needs common sense and some not completely bad education.

I don't know why you've decided to focus on confidence scams, it's like you are intentionally trying to dodge my point.

>Otherwise, following your logic Apple would need to ban access to protocols like IP instantly

But they _did_. The browser engine is another walled garden. HTTP is one of those "open protocols" that has been rife with spyware, but for some reasons people don't tend to cry as loudly when Apple banned third party cookies.

>that they can also get over the landline or in person knocking on the door, for that one needs common sense and some not completely bad education.

I enjoy looking forward to you educating people not install Instagram. I don't know why people continue to assume the bad guys are blackhats or script kiddies. The company that stands to benefit the most from this is the company that lost nearly 400 billion dollars when Apple decided to curb fingerprinting.

That is 400 billion reasons they have to push you to sideload. You really think you can just tell people to exercise "common sense" against someone who stands to gain $400B?

Again, to circle back to Linux, you are displaying the same kind of hubris that developers have when it comes to software. It's a refusal to have any empathy for actual users - telling people not to install Instagram from the FB App Store because it's "common sense" is asinine. FB will spend $1B convincing your doctor that the FB App Store will cure cancer; how is a normal person supposed to combat that with "common sense".

Third party cookies are far from being required by spam or scams and that's actually an example how one can make platforms safer while keeping them open and exchangeable, as for that 3rd party cookies ain't needed at all and it's not a tech to prop up their garden's walls.

  > I enjoy looking forward to you educating people not install Instagram.

I never said anything about not installing Instagram just like I didn't argue those people should add doors or landlines to their houses ;-) So please, just stop it with propping up and taking down all those straw mans nobody talked about!

Rather, think common sense with a sexy lady offering their hot single friends to you, or some person offering you 10 million bucks as long as you can cover the small transaction fee of $1000, independent of the medium its send over (whatsapp, instagram, telegram, fb, irc, matrix, mail, ...)

And w.r.t your general suggestion that all devs just don't care about their users, it's anecdotal but personally I actually care a lot about UX and to offer users the information to allow them to make the right decision, that's one of main things I look out when reviewing UI or also API (as API users, even if developers themselves, are user too) patches, and I know quite a few other devs that try to do the same, not all "hate" their users.

> FB will spend $1B convincing your doctor that the FB App Store will cure cancer

Besides the point that they don't, that's again a complete straw man, nobody talked about that the FB app itself is a scam or evil or whatnot, it may even be, but that's not the point of the whole EU Act and your defense of Apples walled garden mechanisms like banning other payment providers, which still can and must be vetted to be even legal in the EU, or virtually breaking sharing of your data to other apps, that they can still vet and ensure basic security on.

>Rather, think common sense with a sexy lady offering their hot single friends to you, or some person offering you 10 million bucks as long as you can cover the small transaction fee of $1000, independent of the medium its send over (whatsapp, instagram, telegram, fb, irc, matrix, mail, ...)

>nobody talked about that the FB app itself is a scam or evil or whatnot

You are continuing to miss the point. It's not a strawman if you are ignoring my concern. Instagram _is_ the concern. I don't care about confidence scams; my problem is Facebook, and the rest of adtech in general building massive databases on everyone else. The EU has been toothless in preventing this; and adtech is so entrenched that this will likely remain the case.

"Opening" the platform is only good for developers, not for users. Opening the platform just means more ways for users to track me and others around me. This is not a strawman; this is literally apple's marketing on what a platform like their offers. For you to just ignore the problem that platforms like Meta propose is naive. Again I don't care about nigerian prince scams; that is not why I tell people to buy an iPhone.

> Besides the point that they don't, that's again a complete straw man, nobody talked about that the FB app itself is a scam or evil or whatnot

The thread you're responding to used the Instagram app and a probable "Facebook App Store" as examples. You can't ignore a point of contention and just say "well no one said anything about that".

> People rather argue that the safety excuse is BS and people do not require being a Linux expert to detect spam, that they can also get over the landline or in person knocking on the door, for that one needs common sense and some not completely bad education.

This ignores human nature and reality. People are easily manipulated at scale, and the proof is that the scams and spam calls continue. If it was a matter of "common sense" then those things wouldn't be as prevalent as they are.

To your first point: I find it telling that your main concern with reducing Apple's monopoly power is that it would elevate Facebook's monopoly power. How about we design regulations that mitigate against monopoly power in all its forms? Then there would be viable alternatives to Facebook and all of the sudden their business model based on hostile tracking becomes completely unsustainable because there's meaningful competition that actually respects their users. We don't need to be serfs.

To your second point: Apple exerts influence far beyond their consumers. Even though I'm sure this isn't news to you, I'll still point you toward some interesting articles:

https://proton.me/blog/apple-app-store-antitrust

https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/unsigned.html

Much of this is invisible to the typical resident of the walled garden, but they actually cause a lot of harm to society because of their market dominance. Anybody with a small child is probably aware of the harmful effects of the "dreaded green bubbles" (I'm sure people will try to counter this point with claims that iMessage is somehow more secure / more functional than other protocols. I invite those people to do some research first. I think you'd be surprised at the gulf between your own understanding of iMessage's security vs. reality).

>Then there would be viable alternatives to Facebook and all of the sudden their business model based on hostile tracking becomes completely unsustainable because there's meaningful competition that actually respects their users.

This assumes my problem is with Facebook and Facebook alone. My problem is with ad-tech and more generally all other developers. I know Apple exersts influence beyond their customers and I'm not sympathetic to developers who cry about Apple not letting them run $program.

What the web has shown is that given a free-for-all platform, users lose and any new technology is used to fingerprint people on the web. Apple has provided an option that, sure is a walled garden, but I can be reasonably confident isn't doing something I'm not interested in.

I'm not sure what "harmful effects" of green bubbles are but I'm sure envy isn't as bad as every ad tech company having an NSA style citizen database.

> I'm not sympathetic to developers who cry about Apple not letting them run $program

You don't have to be sympathetic to developers. By sympathetic to yourself. Apple stifling competition and charging exorbitant rents absolutely harms you as a consumer.

No, it doesn't. I extract more value from Apple's offerings than they extract from me in $$$.

I don't think you're grasping the point of antitrust. This was a common sentiment about AT&T in the 70's; people actually liked them despite their monopoly because they liked having telephones and didn't realize how much better things could be.

Nothing I’ve seen from the major players in this industry (Meta, Epic, etc…), has convinced me that they’re capable of doing better. I do hope I’m wrong though.

I think that's kind of the point. If they have to give up control of the industry it can move in better directions.

I would really love to have at least one competitive product to Apple's. At least one, which I could give my family and not have to worry about them getting scammed out of their payment details. Without having recourse.

Yes, Apple is fricking expensive. Yes, I'd prefer if they would offer something at cheaper price points. Yes, I'd prefer if they were forced to provide better-than-mediocre software. Yes, I'd prefer if there would be access in case things don't work, for me to fix stuff myself and not just shrug and try again. BUT they are still without a reasonable competitor that manages to even meet their bar in quality. And yes, that makes them comfortable enough to behave stupidly and in (more or less) open ignorance of anticompetitive regulations. However making their offering _worse_ is not helping _me_! Demonstrate a similar amount of customer safety and we can talk about mandating that also for Apple. But thanks but no thanks if the best we can hope for is AndroidII

>Apple stifling competition and charging exorbitant rents absolutely harms you as a consumer.

Please point to me where these harms are.

It's not about the user - it's about developers getting to do whatever they want. It's about _developers_ complaining that they can't use whatever APIs to track me. This is the same thing Facebook says when Apple rolled out opt in tracking. It was stifling facebook and it harms the facebook user experience. Can you give me an example how as a _user_ I am harmed? Replace facebook for anyone of your favorite DMPs.

Where is this competition on Android? Surely on Android there is a robust market of apps that aren't an exercise in how much fingerprintable data can they siphon off? Is the harm that I can no longer sell my data for a free flashlight app? Or is it just handwaving "harms"? It just seems on Android, there is no stifling of important industries like mobile location data.

> It's about _developers_ complaining that they can't use whatever APIs to track me.

No its not. Dont just make up stuff.

> My problem is with ad-tech and more generally all other developers.

Perhaps without Apple taking the 30% cut, and with the possibility of new app stores that are designed differently from the current App Store, the economics of mobile apps might shift so that there could be third party app stores that cater to users willing to pay for apps up front.

Rather than the current situation that is a race to the bottom as the majority apps are free or freemium, supported either by that intrusive adtech or by in-app purchases that range from subscriptions to outright scams or loot boxes.

> users lose and any new technology is used to fingerprint people on the web

User data tracking is also of great concern to regulators. I doubt they will sit still while third party app stores collect user data. Those app stores will still be subject to regulation, even if it's not Apple's own oversight.

>the economics of mobile apps might shift so that there could be third party app stores that cater to users willing to pay for apps up front.

>supported either by that intrusive adtech or by in-app purchases that range from subscriptions to outright scams or loot boxes.

This is like some cruel joke. Developers constantly making the claim that the 30% is too onerous and some future system will have some pass savings onto consumers. Please point to any proof that the future would be this way. 3rd party stores exist on Android _today_, and I don't see any thing you talk about. In fact what I do see are developers, like Epic, pushing their stores so they can charge you whenever you want for vbucks. Like where is this software utopia on Android if it's so important? Instead, android shows that these changes are potentially more user hostile.

Developers pretend its about making things better for users when its about making more money for them.

>I doubt they will sit still while third party app stores collect user data.

My friend, they are sitting still _now_, when supposedly GDPR was to fix all this. They are rushing to "open up" the one platform that pretends to care about user privacy

> Please point to any proof that the future would be this way.

Please provide your own proofs that the future would not be in this way. Prior to this change, the 30% cut was mandatory. Tomorrow, it won't be only the game in town. That alone shows that the future is at least one step towards a different app economy from the status quo. That alone changes things.

> 3rd party stores exist on Android _today_, and I don't see any thing you talk about.

But it opens up the opportunity for such a thing to arise. Someone can choose to create an app discovery platform like AppGratis or Chomp, to create new app catalog perhaps more targeted and organized than the current sprawl that is the existing App Store. The point is this change allows the possibility to arise, as well as the economics to shift. At the very least, this will lead to disruption of the status quo. That will breed opportunity and innovation.

> Instead, android shows that these changes are potentially more user hostile.

How have third party app stores made things any more hostile on Android? There is literally no competing Meta user data collection ap store there.

> Developers pretend its about making things better for users when its about making more money for them.

Users need developers, as much as developers need users. Anti-developer sentiment is puzzling. If you want Apple to build everything themselves, then close the platform entirely, allow only web apps (as Jobs intended), and let Apple Sherlock the entire App Store.

> My friend, they are sitting still _now_, when supposedly GDPR was to fix all this. They are rushing to "open up" the one platform that pretends to care about user privacy

GDPR was just the start, and further regulation on both sides of the Atlantic is in progress. Do you really think of all of this was meant to attack Apple specifically? Big Tech is under the crossfires by multiple regions, multiple nations, multiple political parties.

> Developers constantly making the claim that the 30% is too onerous

This one is honestly difficult to respond to. I encourage you to donate 30% of your next paycheck to charity. It would be a good deed and would illustrate for you how much 30% is in a better way than I ever could.

> Please point to any proof that the future would be this way

Another stumper. I don't usually claim to have proof about the future. I suppose you'll just have to use common sense here.

> Instead, android shows that these changes are potentially more user hostile

This I just find confusing. Where is the hostility in offering users choice? If your whole point is that nobody would use a 3rd-party app store, then why does this regulation even concern you in the first place? You don't have to use one! Just stick to the App Store and let other people do what they want, then thank them for providing the competition that ends up forcing Apple to lower their fees.

> Developers pretend its about making things better for users when its about making more money for them.

Actually, it's about competition, which is indeed something long considered essential to a healthy economy.

> My friend, they are sitting still _now_, when supposedly GDPR was to fix all this.

Ok, I'll come clean. I work for a big tech company. We had to overhaul a ton of services to comply with GDPR and I honestly believe our customers are better off because of it. GDPR did not magically fix all the problems in tech, but it's a big improvement.

> the one platform that pretends to care about user privacy

This level of cynicism is just so difficult to navigate. Are you saying Apple can or cannot be trusted? I much prefer to enable fair competition so that the best platform can actually emerge. Whether that's Apple or not, if users value privacy and the market is fair, they will be able to find it.

> Instead, android shows that these changes are potentially more user hostile.

More than a decade using Android, and another decade using the then-free Internet before that, I have never thought that having more choice was ever, ever user-hostile.

The proposition is so delirious for anyone who lived the early phases of the Internet that it defies interpretation.

The early years of the internet might as well have been a totally separate system. How anyone can think that the modern internet is anything like the small implicitly trusting internet of yore compared to the globalized commercialized ad-tech megamall where every single avenue for abuse is taken and just called a business model instead of malware.

It wasnt a totally separate system. Getting scammed was easier than today because people had a lot of trust in everything.

Then... stop using Instagram?

Build operating system level controls that function regardless of app source?

Just build my own operating system, ok.

Facebook isn't forcing Android users to install their apps from an alt store so that point is moot

Facebook doesn't need to; as far as I'm aware Android has done nothing as drastic as Apple's tracking opt-in. Android is already open enough for Facebook to do whatever they want.

If you're browsing the web version of Facebook, the banner to install their app links directly to an APK, not Google Play.

"Better with the app" shows in a bunch of places alongside a "accidentally broken" suggestion bar whose "X" doesn't work.

Messenger refuses to work on the web and requires you to download the app, unless you pretend to be a desktop browser.

Source: I refused to install Facebook's app while on Android and had to use the intentionally slowed-down and crashy web version. (on a flagship processor)

> If you're browsing the web version of Facebook, the banner to install their app links directly to an APK, not Google Play.

Can you please show me how you managed to make this happen? I just browsed to Facebook and the top banner takes me to the Play store.

I would be VERY surprised if facebook forced users to go into the special apps access settings page and enable installing apks. That's a power user feature.

If you're browsing it for a while (recurring use), it starts suggesting "Facebook Lite" and links to an APK to install, instead of Google Play. This was on Android, on a Pixel 2, but since then I've switched to iOS last year so I can't reproduce it right now.

This isn't the case, there's 0 chance Facebook redirected people to instructions to pull this off

DJI already does this with their Android app. The play store version doesn't work so you need to sideload something from their website.

No idea what they're doing with the data but there's no other way to fly your drone.

> For some reason every Linux user assumes everyone is as smart as they are and anyone who doesn't take the time to learn whatever esoteric config file to manage their DE is a child that can't tell left from right.

Notably, most of the non-technical users I am acquainted with manage to use Windows, which will also let you install any software package you want if you click continue on the warning.

Yeah, and that goes very well doesn’t it? That’s why users end up with tons of spyware and bloatware. And if they don’t, they might not be as non-technical as you think.

Lots of the free apps and f2p games on the apple app store could be described as spyware and bloatware, so I fail to see your point.

> That’s why users end up with tons of spyware and bloatware

We are not in 2010s. That does not happen. And when that happens, its because the users explicitly chose to do it in order to access certain things.

Hm, why does my mom call me every few months for help with her Windows laptop, then? She never needed help with her phone, since she tossed the Android one for my old iPhone (ok, actually once, but that was a faulty charging cable)..

I don't know, why do generalizations sometimes fail on specific anecdotes? My relatives need help with iPhones and Windows devices about equally.

So demand regulation against the tracking. Demanding everyone spread their butt cheeks to Apple because you like something that someone else could do is nonsense.

I see a lot of Apple fans make unsubstantiated claims that Apple's restrictions on its ecosystem is effective in stopping spam, malware, scams, etc... I have yet to see any data to back this up.

What kind of data are you looking for? Static analysis and Apple-signed binaries tied to developer profiles prevent the vast majority of abuses.

For example, it’s possible to modify the Mach-O link loader on a compiled app like DoorDash to use a fake Apple Pay API that steals credit card numbers. But it’s very difficult to get that scammy app installed on an unsuspecting victim’s device. And it’s impossible to upload to the App Store. Third party App Store? No problem.

tiktok sending your data to the CCP...

Can you elaborate on how that will be prevented by the Digital Markets Act?

?? how is Apple preventing this right now?

?? I never said they were

> Apple-signed binaries tied to developer profiles prevent the vast majority of abuses.

More unsubstantiated claims

> Third party App Store? No problem.

Nonsense.

Giving people choice does not mean opening the floodgates to malware. You can disable sideloading apps by default, but also enable them upon explicit user request. You can call it a "I'm a responsible adult" button.

You don't need walled gardens for this. A sensible safe default with a pathway to disabling it is sufficient.

You can't restrict choice for everyone just because a couple of tech-illiterate folks might make bad choices. It's silly and soon also illegal.

I just gave you a fairly straightforward and realistic method of malware injection into an app. Signed binaries prevent me from re-uploading the malware. What is unsubstantiated here?

And despite repeated claims of the loud and ignorant, you can side load to an iPhone without jail break. it does require a mere $100 a year and handful of terminal commands, but possible if you’re determined.

I’m willing to belabor your last point: the floodgates can open if all the restrictions are relaxed. One very dangerous system call[0] stands between Webkit and your choice of any browser engine. It’s not clear to me on a technical level if allowing that freedom to exploit by one app prevents any app from exploiting.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Sy...

> I just gave you a fairly straightforward and realistic method of malware injection into an app

Now provide the statistics for it.

Statistics for a thing that’s currently impossible due to Apple’s current policies?

Apple loves to claim that Apple is more secure, without offering any data to back it up.

> I just gave you a fairly straightforward and realistic method of malware injection into an app. Signed binaries prevent me from re-uploading the malware. What is unsubstantiated here?

You have not demonstrated that this is a serious and widespread problem. People have been sideloading for years without getting overrun with malware.

I don’t believe you’re arguing in good faith because you ignore my responses and keep repeating the same demands for data. Is there any data in the universe that could wobble your staunch view a little bit? What would that data look like? I digress.

I use both platforms daily. I’ve been working on smartphones since they’ve existed. I live and breathe them. Android has some great upsides, but security is definitely not one of them. Six years ago at a previous employer we had cardboard boxes full of completely bricked android phones from the Triada Trojan.[0] I have never seen anything like that on an iPhone. I can’t even recall witnessing a bricked iPhone (sans hw failure), but I won’t deny the possibility.

[0]https://www.google.com/amp/s/usa.kaspersky.com/blog/triada-t...

Just a cursory search shows things haven’t improved much since:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32154294

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32084635

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23027184

> You can call it a "I'm a responsible adult" button.

Apple even have the copy for it signed off by Steve Jobs.

“Are you sure you want to open the application ‘Monkey Ball’ from the developer ‘Sega’?”

https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/21043913-2008-may-...

https://www.theverge.com/c/22611236/epic-v-apple-emails-proj...

> When Facebook mandates that to install Instagram you must sideload it from the Facebook store and your entire's family's location is being tracked 24/7 I hope you will thank Zuckerberg for all the freedom hes giving you

How will the Instagram app evade iOS's security measures if it's sideloaded?

Doesn’t go through app review when it’s side loaded, so it can have features that go against the ToS or app guidelines

I think you misunderstand what the sandbox of the operating system does. An app cannot start tracking you 24/7 just because it's sideloaded.

Oh yes please, I would love to see Facebook do that. They're already in hot enough water with GDPR, doing this would absolutely nuke them out of existence in the EU.

I know it's a complicated concept to understand, but we have multiple sets of laws that are aimed at punishing exactly what you're saying. The DMA passing doesn't mean ePrivacy or GDPR is gone.

> You could just not buy from Apple.

The hardware scene is, in practice, quite monopolistic. This is especially true nowadays that Apple’s chips are vastly outcompeting others. I don’t know if this is because of some nefarious schemes or not, but even if it is a natural monopoly, it’s still a monopoly that might take years to be undone.

There is no reason to extend this hardware monopoly to software as well though. Apple can enjoy their great margin on their hardware, without also controlling everyone’s most intimate devices.

All true. At the same time it will undeniably increase opportunities for criminal actors. For a technical user, usually not a problem (like it is currently the case on Android). For an ordinary user caught in the hype of the day, not so much.

I would argue it's a problem for a technical user as well. It's just a problem.

Defenders have to win every time. Attackers only have to win once. That gives the attackers the advantage.

And it may not even directly be your fault. All you need is a flaw in any communications system that allows privilege escalation and code execution. Then you can be compromised by someone who just happens to be in the same room.

Now while this is true even now. It's even worse when every user can download and install whatever sketchware promises to mine dogecoins while the phone is idle for guaranteed returns of 100%. Because every other phone becomes a potential attack vector.

> You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software

But apparently you, as an adult, can't choose to not buy Apple if you don't like their policies? Strange.

Remember bonzai buddy?

Ah, it's so easy to write something like this, but...

> No, Apple restricting your freedom does not afford you greater security.

No, Apple restricting your freedom does not afford you greater security.

You don't know anything about me. How can you possibly make the call on what makes me secure or not? Not being able to install malware... that is by definition more secure than being able to install malware.

> If you're not confident in your ability to tell shady from legit, just stick to the App Store.

No, you believe that other people who are not confident in their ability to tell shady from legit, can just stick to the App Store.

...but that's not true for some people. Some people make bad decisions. Lots of people make bad decisions. What you believe other people should be capable of, is your choice, but it's (clearly) wrong for a certain cohort of people.

> Don't demand that Apple treat the rest of us like children just because that's how you would like to be treated.

You may feel like you're being treated like a child because you are being prevented from doing what you consider to be something you should be entitled to do.

...but, other people feel differently.

You don't represent everyone. Your opinions are not shared by everyone.

> It blows my mind

...that other people have opinions. I know, it's astonishing.

Just because you (and I) personally will be positively affected by this change, doesn't mean everyone one will be. Does the positive benefit to us few outweigh the negative benefit to many others?

I don't know. I'm pretty worried about it. I think it's gonna to end up with a lot of bad things, for a lot of people, who aren't good at making decisions, especially when it relates to computers and other technical stuff.

> Not being able to install malware

Not being able to drive is also much safer than being able to drive.

Not having internet access is also much safer than having it.

Not getting out is also much safer than getting out.

You’re right; but that doesn’t make me wrong.

Not being able to install malware is safer.

Maybe you should be able to, as an adult, decide to install it, or, as you say, decide to drive dangerously.

…but you can’t argue you aren’t safer if you choose not to drive (or install malware).

Driving is dangerous.

It’s safer to not be able to drive.

The argument the parent post made was that you are no safer not being able to drive.

Which is wrong. Categorically.

It blows my mind how many people have bought into EU's position on this. No, the EU restricting Apple's freedom does not afford you greater choice. You, as an adult, can choose not to buy Apple hardware. If you're not confident in your ability to do that, just stick to Android. Don't demand that EU treat the rest of us like children just because that's how you would like to be treated.

> You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software.

You assume that everyone is as smart as you in figuring out which software is "shady software". Majority of the population have no clue and if the path to complying with this regulation is to drop the stance on security (regardless of existing issues with default security, as implemented today) further, well... good luck. Me and you maybe will not get tricked into installing some "shady app" but I'm looking forward to reading more about how people got hacked via their phone because they have installed "a bank app" from "appstore x" thinking that it was from "appstore y".

> You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software.

You clearly do not play tech support to elderly family members, or have kids

You can just keep using an android phone.

I, for one, don't want to waste my time being IT support for my entire family. That's the whole reason most of us prefer the walled garden of iOS. I don't care if it is as powerful a computer as a server from some 15 years ago, I WANT to treat it like an appliance, a friggin consumer device, I want to standardize it across my home and have some peace of mind.

If I want to hack, I have plenty of other devices at home or that I can buy that are far more adequate to this end.

You can just keep using an old cell phone. See? I can do it too.

If you don't like a company's offerings then buy something else.

Do you think Apps should not be Sandboxed on iOS?

Apple famously went with gorilla glass over plastic for the original iPhone, despite glass being more breakable, because when it would break users tended to blame themselves rather Apple. Plastic on the other hand scratched just from everyday use and users would have blamed Apple for that cheap design. Perceived fault matters.

Interestingly, I think this can be used to argue either side.

Do you not remember the prevalence of viruses in the early 2000s? And how malware used clever UX to get people to install things?

What HackerNews thinks will happen: "zomg, I will finally be able to run Arch on my iPhone!"

What will actually happen: "honey, something is wrong with my phone, whenever I unlock it, a popup jumps up that says 'Please update the Adobe™ Updater™ to get up to date Adobe™ Software Updates', could you take a look at it?"

You forgot the best part: the same people who think the former are responsible for the latter.

Yeah, I'm honestly shocked at how welcomed the concept of "the government is telling developers that they must make their product less secure and streamlined" is here... This will not bring the interoperability utopia many believe, unless you mean 8 different app updaters bogging down your phone because now there's "competition" and the DrainMyBattery Store only charges 15% fees so it's the only place you can get CoolApp.

small price for an open ecosystem.

honestly, Apple had their chance and while claiming to self-police, in fact they enacted an obvious walled garden that went way way way beyond security requirements.

What is this open ecosystem worth if it's not as good as the closed one we have now? The choice always was there as one can buy Android (and install some Open(TM)Rom) or any niche OS.

Yeah, and that unsecured Linux is destroying the world!

It’s not about making products less secure. That’s what apple makes you wanna think.

It’s about giving customers choice. They can stay in Apple ecosystem (I will for example). Or they can not. Companies like Apple will have to work much harder now, to give both users and developers enough value to justify being locked in.

> They can stay in Apple ecosystem

Nope, Adobe will make sure all its apps require Adobe App Store. Same for Facebook with Whatsapp. No more stupid Apple store restrictions, yay!!

There's already a counterexample to this: Android. All Adobe apps are on the Play Store

Check recent story about IDFA on iOS and Facebook gone mad about it. No such story with Android.

Are you imply that if Android got rid of advertising IDs like iOS, then Facebook would take their app off the play store? Not so sure about that

They lost and keep losing serious money.

They’ll loose waaaay more money by removing their app from Apple App Store, even if they have their own.

People really don’t like extra friction. That’s why you see so much fight about getting stuff preinstalled.

Perfect example is iMessage - it’s years away other messengers, but it’s good snuff and it’s default so it dominates USA market.

Strange, this isn't an issue on Android.

Not strange, Google is an Advertising company, unlike Apple. Facebook likes Google.

This actually is an issue on Android. There's the Samsung store for example, where I have to create yet another account just to get my internal phone apps updated. Same shit with Xiaomi and Huawei.

True, but that's caused by OEMs packaging bloatware, which would not be a concern with iOS.

I mean apps like Camera, Calculator, Contacts... Not bloatware. They are much better than the AOSP defaults (on Samsung).

I don't see how it's so different. App vendor is forcing me to use an alternative app store that I don't want to use, don't trust and don't want to share my data with - the same thing.

I think Apple should be forced to allow sideloading, but forcing them to allow alternative appstores to integrate into the OS seems like a road to security/privacy and UX hell to me. I always saw single App Store as the better thing - finally someone learned from the Linux Desktop lessons.

Fair. That does suck that these OEMs gate essential apps like that. I didn't know that those are actually ever preferable to AOSP or Play Store equivalents. But again, hard to see how this situation could apply to iOS, regulators aren't going to force Apple to license it out to other phone manufacturers.

It will be AdTech giants instead, Google, Facebook, Adobe that will go that way. To avoid Apple store privacy rules for apps.

Again, I don't believe they are capable from a business/product perspective of luring customers into their stores. And if they try to force customers, they will have to deal with both angry users and regulators.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32172314

This whole scenario assumes that AdTech has unlimited power, that Apple has none, and that the courts are blind to their malfeasance.

Finally, Adobe isn't even an ad company. They literally sell software!

Eh, so regulators explicitly force a platform to open up, and then they will go after people making use of that just in spirit of the law? That seems super weird to me, much weirder than the opposite - that MS/FB/Google stores are being planned right now during the celebration party thrown because of this regulation.

I don't think regulators will allow Facebook to take crucial apps like WhatsApp away from the main App Store. That seems like an act of monopolistic power and overreach as well. We're not talking about a simple Contacts app here, of which there are innumerable alternatives on the main store. And even if they did allow it, they would immediately probe Meta's third party app store, because are already concerned with privacy violations and data collection.

> MS/FB/Google stores are being planned right now during the celebration party thrown because of this regulation.

I hope they are getting their PR team ready too with mea culpas once a vengeful public backlashes against third party exclusivity.

I don't see how regulators could forbid them without making a joke out of themselves. The whole point was to let apps choose - there are dozens of legit points Big Tech can claim as the reason. From fees to UX demands to review process too expensive to supporting banned (but otherwise legit) functionalities.

The whole point was to rein in Big Tech, and to protect consumers. Facebook or other companies forcing exclusivity into shady third party stores to suck up user data does not follow the spirit of these antitrust actions. I don't think regulators will just accept them doing that at face value. At the very least, the public outcry of "where's my Instagram?! Why do I have to sign up for this new thing?" will force some sort of inquiry.

Ultimately I have faith that both the public and public institutions will do the right thing, and that we shouldn't put all of our trust into one private corporation to check the power of other private corporations.

It's not going to happen with Contacts and Camera, but why wouldn't it happen with Adobe Reader, MS Office, Avast antivirus, etc?

And yes, the Samsung apps are miles ahead. Fast, no ads, low resource consumption, small sizes, great UX and nice UI design. Nothing in Play store comes even close, and I tried practically everything. Play store is a catastrophe in terms of app quality, you can't find even a decent calculator there.

> why wouldn't it happen with Adobe Reader, MS Office, Avast antivirus, etc?

I don't believe it's possible, partly because already on Android you don't see Adobe or Microsoft starting their app stores. On iOS it would be even more difficult, because the sheer overwhelming amount of users already find the App Store to be good enough, and I simply don't see those other companies as competent enough from a product perspective to entice users over to their own third party app stores (as I discuss in detail elsewhere in my comments).

Play store has much less demands on your app UX, much easier and faster review process, takes much smaller fee and doesn't claim any earnings out of the platform and the OS isn't locked down too much. It's not 1:1 comparable. There's not a big good reason to do it on Android, there are many on iOS.

Still, you would think they would've done it as a trial run. You really believe Facebook likes Google and they're not competitors? If they were interested and committed in running their own app stores, they would have tried it already. Facebook is simply not good at running their own app ecosystem, see the collapse of Facebook Apps as a platform.

I don't think it's going to be a real App Store anyways. It's going to be updater for their own apps - one without fees, reviews, UX demands and API restrictions, just like Play store.

Facebook doesn't care about Play store on Android. They have deals with most operators on the planet to preinstall their app and Play store is a nice updater only. A user never installs Facebook, it's already there.

I think you're onto something with the installer idea. Curious to think how it would work technically and UX-wise on iOS. Maybe users go to Facebook's mobile website to download the installer's binary. (Apple would probably just ban apps that are just installers for unreviewed apps, so Meta couldn't host the installer there.) Interesting to imagine how'd that go for them, as going through a webpage does complicate things for casual users. (And savvy users who might be turned off by it.)

Makes me wonder too if Apple might end up enforcing indirect app review outside of the App Store. They could bundle the iOS equivalent to Microsoft Defender, basically Apple's built-in security tool. It could mark binaries found in the wild as unsafe if Apple discovered them to be misusing permissions or to be malware. If iOS apps can just be sideloaded, they should still be inspectable...

> True, but that's caused by OEMs packaging bloatware, which would not be a concern with iOS.

Not only that, but this act requires the ability to uninstall bloatware.

Would they? If 90% of users stay on apple App Store, they won’t.

It’s all about value they can provide, both sides.

Lots of people just care about getting stuff done, amd don’t care about these kinds of arguments. So if having to click yes on a pop up to get the fb/adobe store is what they need to do, to do what they want, they’ll just do it.

We’ll basically lose a whole stack of the guarantees about data, app operation that Apple was able to enforce on hostile, belligerent companies like fb because of their position.

I still cannot get my head around that people on the site called “hacker news” are advocating for closed systems controlled by trillion dollars companies being good.

I trust Apple to design their operating system to be secure, without having to lock me in.

And isn’t Facebook dead and not used by anyone?

Yes Facebook is dead, only 2 BILLION daily active users

They can still have strict privacy permission controls at the OS level, regardless of where an app is installed from. They’ll just also have to give the same controls over their own software.

Not really. Let's say Facebook asked for location permission and the user says No. Today the app will be forced to work without it. By Apple Store rules. Tomorrow the app will say "this permission is required for app to work".

Apple could just set it up in privacy settings to allow location spoofing if you wish. They could even make it automatically change occasionally within your region. Facebook would have no idea if the location data was correct or not

Sure, but if getting the Adobe Reader involves downloading and installing the Adobe Store, creating an account, and finding and installing Adobe Reader there, lots of people will prefer using the next best app that's on the app store they already use. Convenience cuts both ways: yes, you can get people to do stupid things, but if installing your competitor takes one tap where installing your app takes ten you are going to lose market share.

That hasnt happened on android

Because you don’t need to on Android.

Googles standards for the App Store are low and they’re more than happy to let apps exfiltrate basically whatever user data they want.

Do you remember the hissy fits developers-and more notably advertisers-threw when Apple went “no you can’t have fine grained GPS unless you have a valid reason” and “the app still has to work even if the user declines sharing data”.

Imagine if Snapchat said "if you download the sideload version your snaps will continue to auto delete, but if you download the Official App Store version, every snap you send will be stored forever and never deleted from our servers".

I can tell you right now which one, Kristie, the 17 year old High Schooler is going to download. She'll then unknowingly be giving away all sorts or privacy away on the sideloaded version, under the guise of a marketed, more "in your face" privacy feature.

Sounds like a great way for Snapchat to undercut themselves and cause a competitor to arise.

That's a problem better solved by providing more granular, user-controlled limits on app permissions at the OS level than by locking down the 'ecosystem' and further removing users' control over their own devices.

> Adobe will make sure all its apps require Adobe App Store

It seems like your defense of Apple is that other companies will be able to act like Apple.

I'd rather have multiple small masters which compete with each other than a single all powerful master.

Well, I wouldn’t, and people who wanted the former could already go buy an Android phone. Why does the iPhone need to be the same?

Thats hasnt happened on android.

so on android they have to install adobe app store? and Facebook store?

Wouldn't the reasonable outcome here be that Apple will make their app store rules less authoritarian so that Adobe wouldn't want to leave the app store? The market for app stores would mean apple would have to actually adjust to complete. Isn't that the market competition most people claim to love?

In reality none of that will happen.

The magical rockstar engineers of Apple will listen for their best in the world UX and handcraft artisanal UI that will respectfully explain users what causes the popup.

Not to mention use plenty of dark patterns to steer them away from it.

Not to mention the vast majority of users will not bother to deal with alternative app stores when the vast overwhelming majority of existing apps will remain on the official App Store.

> when the vast overwhelming majority of existing apps will remain on the official App Store.

Oh my sweet summer child! Lol

Nice condescending snark. Is it based on anything?

My own position, in comparison, actually is. Contrary to your insinuation, it is based on jadedness and cynicism. I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes of this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163704

1. Facebook and Google, to put it bluntly, are not exactly product powerhouses these days and any attempts to present yet another platform will be met with skepticism and they simply will not have enough new apps to lure over users.

2. Without customer interest, third party developers will keep their apps on the official App Store, just as they do on Android on the Play Store, because that’s where the users are. They want the most eyeballs.

2.5. Sure, Facebook and co. can try to cut exclusive deals with third party devs to get apps on their store, but that is tricky, just see Microsoft’s or BlackBerry’s failure to woo devs to their platforms.

3. Consumers are tired of all of the accounts and services they have to deal with at this point, and dealing with more app stores will be a source of friction. Users are tired of this shit.

4. Facebook or Google trying to spur artificial growth of third party iOS stores by making their apps exclusive will likely run into regulator pushback, especially if those stores permit greater user tracking.

Okay, now justify your insult.

Your point 4 is what is going to happen.

And they will immediately run into 1) ban-happy regulators who will probe them for monopolistic power (withholding something as crucial as WhatsApp or G-Suite from the main App Store is pretty suspect), and for data collection (everyone already suspects them anyway) and 2) burned-out, pissed-off consumers who are sick of juggling all of their user accounts and being jerked around by yet another platform.

I have yet to see a convincing argument that any of these corporations will be able to charm users into joining competing app stores. So instead they will try to force them. Leading to backlash, and within days you'd see them putting their apps back on the App Store and begging the public for forgiveness. These are not companies who are particularly good at delivering huge new products anymore, and the difficulty is compounded by the fact that they would be playing on Apple's own platform.

So you're saying this is finally the year of the Linux Desktop?

It sounds like you don't understand what's actually in this regulation. There are some good summaries posted in this very comment thread.

I believe they are simply observing the predictable divergence between the intention and the outcome of said regulation.

Good that in the EU we live under rules that are judged on the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law.

Well, to sum it up Apple-wise, it's making iOS more like Android. I like iOS. I don't like Android. Short story..

So true. On my Pixel phone, which allows alternate app stores, I had to update the Adobe Updater to update Adobe Reader, Epic EpicStore to update Fortnite Update Store to update Fortnite, TenCent Store to update Grindr, and finally F-Droid Pro Max Store to update Signal. Why do I have to download so many app stores on Android!!

missed the /s.

Did Google removed IDFA yet? No. So FB is OK with Android so far.

It's on its way

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/16/google-plans-android-privacy...

> But while Meta fought against Apple’s changes, it voiced support for the way Google plans to implement its privacy

> “[It is] encouraging to see this long-term, collaborative approach to privacy-protective personalized advertising from Google,” Graham Mudd, vice president of product marketing

Not the same thing, looks like. Facebook likes Google.

Google is an ad revenue company haha.

It's got the EXACT same incentive as FB to track you.

Fortnite is not on the Google Play store because Google used their market dominance to force them to pay 30% commission or leave.

This is exactly the bad duopolistic behaviour this act is trying to break open.

And then you can remove the Adobe™ Updater™ bloatware and install something else that doesn't nag you so.

The security on iPhone comes from the app sandbox, not from App Store review. There are lots of scam apps on the App Store, despite Apple's review.

Apps from 3rd party stores will be sandboxed just like apps from the App Store are today.

>The security on iPhone comes from the app sandbox, not from App Store review.

Some of it. But Apple has the real-world identity of developers/organizations, and will ban them from the App Store for malicious behavior.

And next to no privacy protections are from App Sandbox. You can turn off things like advertising identifiers, but there are a million other unique hardware identifiers as well as things like IP addresses which can be used to track someone.

The way Apple solves this is - you need to get user consent to track, which will also hand you the advertising identifier. But if the user does not consent, you can't work around it by correlating other data from the phone. Or we will kick you out of the store.

> There are lots of scam apps on the App Store, despite Apple's review.

Just imagine how bad it would be without review.

> Apps from 3rd party stores will be sandboxed just like apps from the App Store are today.

Will they? Without someone reviewing/approving entitlements for side-loaded apps, they can all effectively seek out as many entitlements from the menu as they want.

App Sandbox offers a lot of privacy protections. For example, you can't access bluetooth / GPS / etc. without the OS asking the user for permission. Apple has also started to require entitlements for local networking, and so on.

There's really no point in having Apple check those permissions. It would be much better if the user could check entitlements.

What Apple currently offers (the privacy information and the tracking consent) is all based on goodwill from the publisher -- if the publisher says they don't track you, but they still do, it's going to be very hard to prove.

Uh no. How many phones are running F-droid? Please stop spreading useless fear. And my inlaws or parents have yet to install any malware on their androids. I check regularly.

Yeah. And that totally clueless person SOMEHOW found how to install a 3rd party app store on her phone and she was able to successfully configure it as well.

The argument doesnt make sense. The user is either tech savvy or not tech savvy.

...

And even more: You people talk as if that doesnt happen today. Nobody will try to scam anyone by creating an entire freaking APP STORE while they can just phish them by sending them an email to get their credit card numbers and whatever data they can collect.

And further: Today anti-virus software is capable of detecting and preventing most of those scams already. We are not in mid 2000s. Anti virus software will not disappear with the appearance of 3rd party app stores. So the problem does not even make sense to be considered a problem.

...

It just feels like some of you people (i mostly saw Americans) are SO mentally hostage to your corporations that you really defend the indefensible.

I do wish iPhones could use alternate browser engines and bypass the Apple 30% cut, but the fact I'm having to click through one of those stupid cookie dialogs on this page just leaves the bad taste in my mouth of how much the EU regulation screwed up the internet the last time they made a change like this.

Not saying I want tracking cookies everywhere, but they should have just made tracking cookies illegal outright, rather than legal if people agree meaning I have to dismiss thousands of cookie dialogs a year.

Because they were incompetent in writing their legislation, they doomed us to cookie dialogs for the rest of my life.

I left Europe before the full enforcement of this cookies dialog and everytime I spend time there I'm like: how can anyone accept this state of affairs

Exactly my situation. I was there for a business trip a couple of weeks ago and all those dialogs make the experience of web horrible.

More and more website do not have this Cookie warning simply because they choose to not collect enormous amounts of user data.

One example: https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/

The cookie law could've been better but there's not law that says you need this banner, only that you need it if you collect an unnecessary amount of data from your users.

You left Europe because of consumer protection laws? To solve a problem that is actually global and, if it really bothers you, can be solved with a browser plugins that clicks yes?

Rather odd choice, but everyone has their priority I suppose.

the cookie law should have ended up with a browser setting. but eu bureaucrats apparently don’t know the first thing about web standards (and why would they) so we get every single website in the world having to code a custom dialog, and billions of users having to click through them forever. this legislation is the eu cookie law writ large: well meaning, ill conceived, government overreach by bureaucrats who don’t represent or understand the companies being affected. it’s a sad state of affairs when the most significant contribution of europe to technology is not technology, but bad legislation with massive global implications.

No, the EU knew that something like a DNT header could never work. And let's not forget: No one needs a cookie popup. If you don't track more than technically necessary, there's no need to get consent or inform the user. It's just that everyone likes to collect as much data as they can that these popups are necessary.

This thinking is why we must dismiss multiple of these dialogs daily.

It could and should have been a setting.

you're really painting it.

in America, as a website, you're still perfectly allowed to use marketing cookies without permission, or just not provide the option of saying no. taking away that privilege is "government overreach"?

gdpr is also much bigger than just cookies. it's also a wide-ranging law forcing companies to more careful with your data and delete it if you ask

the EU politicians rightly do not represent the companies affected

We need a privacy API that browsers agree on and websites would have to follow, when present. Uniform dialogs per browser for this crap, rather than unique per website.

You are mistaken.

Firstly, as all should know by now there is no need to give a cookie warning for any technical cookies. This means whenever it is there it is provided because the website provider thought they need a third party tracking to manage ads or get customer info.

Secondly, the way the banners are designed is the problem, not that the banners are there. A few large providers (notably Google and an adtech alliance) have standardised intrusive, bad-default and dark-pattern heavy cookie banners. If this was a single well-remembered click on each site no one would mind, the problem is that the providers want to make it painful so you start to just click 'accept' to get it over with.

> If this was a single well-remembered click on each site no one would mind, the problem is that the providers want to make it painful so you start to just click 'accept' to get it over with.

God bless any website with a simple Reject All button.

I'm sort of surprised at the positive tone here. Sure, it's nice for non-technical people to enumerate a lot of nice to haves, but just asserting something doesn't make it true or possible.

As one example, making "core messaging functionality interoperable". How exactly does that work with end-to-end encryption? I suppose we'd need some sort of open system and protocol for all the tricky key sharing stuff? That would be nice but doesn't seem feasible in 6 months. And how do you know what they're using on the other end? If someone is using an app that doesn't support encryption, and they try to send a message to, say, you on WhatsApp, where you have e2e enabled by default, what happens?

Another one is they can't "limit payment possibilities to their own method". Presumably this means like iPay and Google Pay. Isn't there, again, some hardware security issues in play with that? I don't understand those systems well enough to know for sure, but I thought they were locked down and proprietary in part to protect your financial data.

If the app doesn’t support encryption, then they don’t see the message.

Client side lock downs aren’t security. They’re security theater.

> How exactly does that work with end-to-end encryption?

Exactly how we deal with everything else that works across platforms: standardization. We've done it at least once before (SSL/TLS), I'm sure these rich and "amazingly smart" companies can figure out how to achieve it once again.

> Isn't there, again, some hardware security issues in play with that?

Is there hardware security issues with accept CC details on the web? Assuming the computer itself isn't compromised, the web seems to (again) have figured out how to deal with it across platforms, both OSes and browsers, why can't phone OSes do it?

Ah, so now nobody can ever launch any new messaging features without reaching a consensus in a standardization body. Progress!

Nope, that's not how standardization works.

I'd refer you to the process of HTML/CSS/JavaScript if you want to see how it can work in a global manner that also works for innovation too (unless you'd argue that HTML/CSS/JavaScript is exactly the same in terms of "innovation" since they each first were created).

In short, the process is something like this: 1) a browser implements a new feature they think is useful 2) standard bodies start watching 3) another browser implements the same feature either the same way, or differently 4) standard bodies start working on a specification to unify the feature across browsers and OSes 5) Specification gets "blessed" and is now official recommendation 6) browsers modify their feature to be compliant with the specification

Yeah, web is the best example…

In short, the process is something like this: 1) Chrome implements a new feature they think is useful 2) Google uses their people in the standard committees to push it into the standards 3a) it's actually useful: other Browsers implement it or 3b) it's basically useful to Google: they'll continue blaming other browsers to not implement standards, “This website works only in Chrome” incoming

You have any evidence of this happening?

All cases I can think of for the last 4-5 years, have been Chrome/Firefox implements something -> The other implements it -> Standard pops up

What features has Chrome managed to standardize without having another browser implement the same feature?

Step 1 of that process violates the law, if it adds new “core messaging capability”. Perhaps the EU considers “core messaging capability” to refer exclusively to functionality that already exists today, and it could not even in principle refer to anything that doesn’t already exist, but that seems vague and unlikely. If support for Unicode emoji did not already exist, would a vendor be allowed to unilaterally add it? It seems uncertain.

So now, instead of websites breaking from browser to browser. My messages will fail from each app? Browsers show how global standards fail and the only thing preventing 99.99% market share of chrome is the walled garden that is apple & safari

The messaging interoperability is actually very worrying with the current discourse on scanning messages for certain content from the EU. Also various factions in the EU have been completely against end to end encryption.

What we can expect is weak protection on request of the government which puts people genuinely at risk.

If that happens I cannot possibly support the DMA or the EU on this but it'll be too late before it becomes apparent.

The "limit payment possibilities" means that, f.e., Apple cannot stop a banking app from using the on-device secure enclave and the NFC functionality from making payments available if Apple also offers a payment service using those functions (or to say it differently; If Google or Apple make a payments app, they must allow everyone to develop their own payment apps for their ecosystems and make all functions available that are necessary to have all functionality of Google or Apple's own apps).

it says core messaging, maybe only unencrypted chats can be interoperable.

TBH , unlike GDPR, this seems a lot more pragmatic and feasible

You can easily warn a user that messaging a user using a different protocol will not be encrypted.

On the iPhone, this is done visually with the blue/green bubbles. But other solutions can be implemented.

If I am using, say, Signal, I do not want it to be possible to send me an unencrypted message at all. That philosophy of security sounds likely to run afoul of this legislation.

Signal can give you the option to disable that. They just cannot force that decision on users.

Security needs to be a default though. It will be a serious problem if this law ends up being interpreted as requiring encrypted messaging systems to accept insecure messages by default.

There's no particular reason preventing us from having interoperable E2E; we could already have interoperable E2E e-mail today if we wanted. Securely bootstrapping key exchange could be done through having one phone take a picture of a QR code on the other phone. Though, to be fair, I have no idea if any existing E2E services actually let you do this. "In-band"/electronic key introduction does require the message server operator to act as a trusted bootstrapper, but nobody seems to be worrying about that as-is.

The real concern with interoperable messaging is antispam. E-mail was an absolute disaster because there was no barrier to entry for someone who just wants to send unsolicited garbage to everyone. Google killed federated messaging for Google Chat back in the day because for every one person running their own XMPP server there were hundreds who realized Google was just giving away valuable real estate on everyone's Gmail inbox to this chat service. The EU appears to be trying to mandate federation to fix the competition problems involved with iMessage[0] and I genuinely hope there's a user opt-out for this when it inevitably gets abused for spam.

[0] Which, ironically, is more of an American problem than a European one

> E-mail was an absolute disaster because there was no barrier to entry for someone who just wants to send unsolicited garbage to everyone.

Email spam is possible because of the expectation that you can contact someone you've had no prior interaction with. (Also, it at least used to be quite easy to spoof the sender address because participants couldn't cryptographically prove their identities, but we now rely on tech like DKIM to mitigate this).

Messaging apps have an easier job because the services can refuse to deliver messages to people who haven't already received your public key (or some short, per-contact, pre-shared secret).

In fact, email encryption could also work this way, if users first had to send a standardised introduction message, and servers rejected any further messages until the recipient had marked the sender as trusted.

> How exactly does that work with end-to-end encryption?

One way would be for Apple to offer a web API endpoint for companies that have signed an agreement with them (covering rate limits, server identification certificates, liability, etc.).

In fact, the API could be implemented in iOS itself, so you could have something like "Signal support for iMessage" as an app in the App Store, which would basically be a headless version of the Signal app which delegates all the UI tasks (mainly message display and input) to the iMessage app.

I like Matrix's write-up on it: https://matrix.org/blog/2022/03/25/interoperability-without-...

Also there's a line in the final full act:

>The level of security, including the end-to-end encryption, where applicable, that the gatekeeper provides to its own end users shall be preserved across the interoperable services

> As one example, making "core messaging functionality interoperable". How exactly does that work with end-to-end encryption?

Quite simply: it doesn't. It can only work the same way as iMessage interoperates with SMS, by throwing away security.

That's plainly not true. There are hundreds of open protocols able to establish encrypted connection, including some dedicated to instant messaging.

There's literally zero benefit that Apple, Google, FB or whoever is able to offer with their in-house implementation.

For two messengers operating on two different encryption protocols the only way to talk to each other is to introduce an intermediary, which will decrypt and then re-encrypt messages, thus throwing p2p model out of the window.

Some optimists here telling that all messenger might follow a certain "standard" for transmitting encrypted messages. And in fact some messengers might, but this standard will be the lowest common denominator, i.e. the weakest security protocol all know.

For p2p model generating secure private key is paramount. Can this be guaranteed by every peer operating in a chat? Not unless they all made by the same team with high security standard.

>For two messengers operating on two different encryption protocols the only way to talk to each other is to introduce an intermediary.

Or they simply could agree on solid common exchange protocol. There's no requirement to support crappy encryption. Just to open communication with your service.

We've dozens of functionality identical, incompatible proprietary protocols, because each corporate schmuck wants their own walled garden, to squeeze a few more cents.

Why should we agree to that?

Does anyone know if the definition of "gatekeeper" extends to infrastructure services like AWS or Cloudflare?

> A small number of large undertakings providing core platform services have emerged with considerable economic power that could qualify them to be designated as gatekeepers pursuant to this Regulation. Typically, they feature an ability to connect many business users with many end users through their services, which, in turn, enables them to leverage their advantages, such as their access to large amounts of data, from one area of activity to another. Some of those undertakings exercise control over whole platform ecosystems in the digital economy and are structurally extremely difficult to challenge or contest by existing or new market operators, irrespective of how innovative and efficient those market operators may be

Sure sounds cloudy to me

edit: it seems to be explicitly covered:

Article 2

> (1) ‘Gatekeeper’ means an undertaking providing core platform services, designated pursuant to Article 3;

> (2) ‘Core platform service’ means any of the following:

> (i) cloud computing services;

Article 3

> 1. An undertaking shall be designated as a gatekeeper if:

> (a) it has a significant impact on the internal market;

> (b) it provides a core platform service which is an important gateway for business users to reach end users; and

> (c) it enjoys an entrenched and durable position, in its operations, or it is foreseeable that it will enjoy such a position in the near future.

This act sounds like the US tech equivalent of Thor's hammer

It gives me feeling also kindle covered

Does it also cover gaming consoles?

Hopefully. Game consoles normalized the shit Apple is doing.

I'm not sure how this would mean anything for a service provider like AWS. You can already install and run whatever version of your own services you want on bare EC2s, and if you don't want to use the xen hypervisor for some reason, you can buy bare metal instances and do whatever you want with them. It's already possible to run OpenStack on AWS if you really want to do that.

Many orgs buy AWS for the unified billing and control plane. That part is fused shut and precisely addressed by the text (not quoted above). I can't as a third party build a service that competes with AWS and give it the usability that is possible buying direct from AWS

I'm not sure how I feel about this. My gut instinct is that opening these things can lead to a ton of malware and fake app stores, which will lead to a not-insignificant number of people being victimized. I'm also annoyed that the EU produces effectively 0 innovative tech, and subsequently has very suppressed tech salaries, but is so ready to regulate the American companies that make the world go 'round.

It's worth noting that Android already allows such things and there has been no malware apocalypse. In all the years Android existed I've never encountered someone with a malware filled phone. People stick with the default app store and are fine.

Agree about the EU though.

The entire history of Android is filled with malware stories. Google has gotten better about moderating their PlayStore, but there have been plenty of flashlight apps or similarly dumb apps that are just rootkits, bitcoin miners, or more malicious forms of malware.

AppStore is also filled with malware apps (including explotative flashlight apps and apps that trick you into subscriptions).

Yours is a throughly debunked argument.

Awesome, there will be more of those soon.

You are talking about malware in the official app store, not how installing software via alternative appstores or without an app store is worse.

Malware occurs in both environments and often comes through the default app store.

> I'm also annoyed that the EU produces effectively 0 innovative tech, and subsequently has very suppressed tech salaries, but is so ready to regulate the American companies that make the world go 'round

Because its almost impossible to compete? These companies have so many resources, its impossible for any local competitor to compete. Amazon can just crash the prices till the competition dies, Google can just not allow YouTube on it, Facebook will exist because of the network it has.

What the EU is doing is what is needed to happen long ago. These companies are not currently successful because they offer the best experience or the best innovativtion, they are successful because they crush anyone else.

For example WhatsApp has many many better alternatives, which have better features and better privacy, but it still the #1 because of the monopoly it has on communication.

What the EU did here is smart, they didn't outright ban WhatsApp, or funded a direct competitor. They forced them to play fair, to stop the monopolistic behavior and force them to compete on features, rather than succeeding only because my familly is on WhatsApp.

The same thing applies to Apple, which forces to everyone to use its crappy, intentionally handicapped browser engine.

And also forcing everyone to use its payment services while taking percentage of the profits and not even allowing you to increase the prices to cover their percentage!, this is absolutely outreagous and finally something is being done about it.

> Because its almost impossible to compete?

Explain the number of American unicorns and the (almost) complete lack of European unicorns then? Somehow American companies and startups find ways to compete and be relevant, and it just does not happen in Europe.

If you could snap your fingers and force Apple and Google to implement this today, these new markets (app stores and browsers for iOS) would be 99% filled by American companies.

Uncontrolled amounts of dollars entering the stock market and the financial system thanks to dollar having been used as a reserve currency for mainly trading oil? Allowing fractional reserve lending from private banks to awash the economy with cash?

Leading to EXTREME bloat in the stock market in 'valuations' that go over, what, 700 times the actual near-term revenue of corporations? Based on 'future revenue' that is supposed to materialize, but not visible into the next decade?

Ending up in the investment space being able to dump insane amounts of money on hundreds of startups at a time by calculating that even if 99 of them fail at any given time, just one of them turning into an over-valued 'unicorn' would end up flushing the investor with 'value'?

Which came down crashing the moment a few countries started trading oil and other resources with non-dollar currencies? So much that now all those unicorns all the way to Twitter and Facebook are in hot water because of their overvalued shares compared to their actual profits?

...

Give any country free, non-devaluing money, and anyone will be able to do anything.

The parent comment was being unfair. There is one market where Europeans dominate both in sheer volume and in innovation: excuses.

Excusing business, excusing governments; an international pastime of the Europeans, apparently.

Europeans did in fact exist before all of the listed examples came into being, and so could have outcompeted any of them even if they are now dominant. But I still think Europeans _could_ compete, even if culturally they are not prepared to be competitive. Amazon is only a fraction of retail sales and has huge weaknesses; Europeans who know their markets better could compete if they wanted to (especially with the huge amount of protectionism national governments are willing to engage in). LINE exists in Japan, presumably a smaller market than Europe that has managed to produce a viable WhatsApp competitor. Facebook was unstoppable until TikTok ate their lunch.

Again, I’m astounded by the European affinity for excusing uncompetitive businesses.

> Europeans who know their markets better could compete if they wanted to

This is not realistic.

When amazon noticed diapers.com, they were basically forced to sell out. because amazon was already selling diapers at a loss and was ready to drive the price "down to zero".

No body can compete with that.

https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-be...

Americans seemingly can. Walmart and Target do healthy business, despite facing the big and fearsome Amazon. So does Shopify and Shopify’s merchant partners. So does my local book store (the French say it is impossible for bookstores to compete with Amazon without absurd anti-consumer protections).

Before Amazon was ascendant, I think it was Walmart that was the dominant player making sure a small company like Amazon could never grow to become competitive.

I don’t understand the European culture of making excuses for uncompetitive business when time after time the Americans, and increasingly the Chinese, show that it is actually possible to innovate and disrupt entrenched competitors.

Yeah. And Europeans are astounded by American affinity for excusing socipathic corporations who bloat on uncontrolled cash influx floating their shares, giving them to power to profit from even murdering you Americans. From healthcare to guns to pink goo being sold as 'food'.

Any country can 'compete' if they allow their society to be ravaged by such sociopathy. Until they face social collapse. Like the US is doing now.

Europeans have a lot going for them that should make them more competitive - social safety net, better regulation, ability to build infrastructure without local opposition.

Gun violence is a huge drag on the American economy, so it doesn’t make sense to say “Americans are competitive because corporations can profit off guns”. Americans are competitive _despite_ massive regulatory failures and IMO could be quite a lot more competitive if we paired entrepreneurial ambition with basic government competence.

By the way, “pink goo” (more commonly pink slime) is not dangerous, and is used to cut down on waste. It is the “ugly produce” of the meat world. I don’t see anything objectionable about pink slime that isn’t also objectionable about meat in general as a food.

> Europeans have a lot going for them that should make them more competitive

And they are competitive. They have a big tech space rendering every single product and service that US tech renders. Except, there is no such obligation in Europe to constantly hawk stocks to increase stock prices. From cloud providers to social networks, all kinds of things are in Europe. In China. In Japan. Americans dont hear about them.

> Pink goo

It was an example. Those corporations have no obligation to tell you what exactly they put in the 'food'.

Sounds like pure copium to me.

Well its happening anyway, and companies can face fines up to 20% of worldwide revenue if they don't comply.

you seem oddly excited about the prospect of an EU with no smartphones

No I'm excited about a world where I can use one chat app for all of my contacts, a world where I don't have to deal with Safari's shortcomings, and many other improvements.

But you can, it's the sms app.

Signal is not a $75B company so it doesn't have to interop with Whatsapp (nor do I think this makes any sense, as the encryption story is different across apps)

I didn't mention signal in my comment, because I knew it didn't break the limits.

Also no body uses SMS outside the US, and the rule requires to keep encryption, yes its probably not going to be E2EE, unless the app is translating the message to another protocol locally. But its still better than SMS.

Yeaaaah. Its only US tech monopolies who make smartphones. Nobody else does.

> For example WhatsApp has many many better alternatives, which have better features and better privacy, but it still the #1 because of the monopoly it has on communication.

No, it’s because users don’t feel the need to switch. I have uninstalled WhatsApp 4 years ago, same time when I deleted my Facebook account. Haven’t had a single regret. When people ask me to contact them via WhatsApp, I tell them I don’t use it. Anyone can do that.

Well, at one point of history it was "impossible to compete" against Nokia on mobile market. I find statements that we are living at the point of the market where competition is no longer possible to be very naive.

I'm more worried about product line bifurcation. Europe has chosen this point in time to say "ok, the tech is good enough we're going to regulate and mandate a tech bill of rights now, anything new requires committee and our consent." As soon as something better comes along Europeans will get nerfed Europe-compliant phones and tech savvy Europeans will be importing grey market phones from America and Asia.

"innovative" tech companies: - Amazon exploits their workforce and has a turnover rate of 150% - Facebook destabilizes democracies and drives extremism while collecting as much data as possible and tracking you over the entire web - Google also collects as much data as possible and controls the big majority of the browser market - Microsoft has a monopoly on Desktop OS especially for the office. Entire states are fully reliant on them to continue to function. - Apple tries to convenience you to pay a hefty extra price for a more and more walled garden

Those companies are bigger than states, have high influence on politics and together could overthrow states. If you have a innovative idea without an entire law department they will just copy it or pressure you into a buy out. If you play by the law you cannot beat them at their game if they don't let you.

> the EU produces effectively 0 innovative tech

Eu produces effectively 0 innovative tech because the PR marketing-machine that is geared to sell you stocks on the US stock market makes incessant noise about American companies to sell those shares to you while excluding anyone outside.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/meet-europe-top-tech-...

Those are the 'hot up and coming'.

https://www.value.today/top-companies/top-technology-compani...

Those are by size.

All of this, without talking about SAP and the like.

European businesses dont operate on 'Sell over-inflated shares to those suckers to "capitalize"' - they operate on traditional indicators. Hence there isnt a need in Europe to constantly hawk any company's shares to make fools part with their money for the sake of financial sector. So you end up with companies like Hetzner slowly growing from engineering roots and then suddenly jumping on to the other side of the ocean to kick incumbent cloud butt there.

American companies can well decide to offer their services elsewhere you know...

One would think that if there is truly a Europe wide market for such an unlocked device a competitor should be able to challenge Apple and Google dominance. Europe could even subsidize it.

But instead, it’s more engineering by bureaucrats. Why is Europe so afraid of competing in the open market?

That's an ironic take given that these rules are there to take away monopoly power and have an actual open market.

How does Apple have a monopoly? The only thing that comes close is the App Store, which requires you buy an iPhone, which is not the most common mobile device.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/europe

Further, other phone companies start from nothing and become quite successful in market place, and some fail, but consider OnePlus - they decided to make a "Flagship Killer" and are still delivering high quality devices.

> How does Apple have a monopoly?

They have monopoly power and control over app developers' access to iPhone users.

If supermarkets offered a loyalty card program that made it physically impossible for you to shop at another supermarket, then this would be a monopoly/anti-trust issue too, even if no supermarket had a majority share of the market.

The usual response of Apple fans is "You can just buy a second phone", but asking app developers to give away free Android phones to their iPhone-using potential customers is not really a viable competitive strategy.

That example only works if you were denied using the actual loyalty card for shopping at another market, which is actually the case? Nothing about the Apple ecosystem means you can't buy an Android and continue using it

As expected, this is the "Just buy an extra phone, 4Head" suggestion that we always hear. (I'm assuming users would still want to access the apps and media they bought on their iPhone).

If switching from an iPhone to an Android device required the user to jump through literal hoops, on camera, Apple fans would probably complain about governments forbidding hoop-jumping clauses in EULAs.

I mean I also can't use the app I bought for my iPhone on my Windows desktop.... why would I expect two separate operating systems to interoperate?

I'm not suggesting that the government should require all OSes to provide identical APIs for apps to run on them, for example, as obviously that sort of "interoperability" would place an unreasonable burden on companies.

However, there are anti-competitive policies of Apple which burden not just app developers and users but Apple themselves, and it's really hard to justify their existence other than "monopolies are very profitable".

https://www.reddit.com/r/swift/comments/3d8koa/apple_rejecte...

I wasn't saying "Just buy an extra phone, 4Head" - I was pointing out how your analogy was actually the equivalent of "Just buy an extra phone, 4Head", because loyalty cards can't be taken and used at unaffiliated stores, and yet people are more than welcome to open multiple loyalty accounts, one with each store.

Monopoly power is not the same as a literal monopoly. The FTC has a pretty good definition of it:

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

Apple is not even close to a monopoly, especially in Europe, where they have less than a third of the mobile market. That said, the rest of the market is divided up between several different Android phone companies, so Apple is in fact the largest single mobile vendor in the EU (Samsung is neck and neck with them though, and may have overtaken them since I last checked).

So from a regulatory standpoint, Apple is the problem child even if it isn't a monopoly. The EU sees a third of its phone-using population as being "captured" by a uncompetitive foreign corporation that is far more restrictive and locked down than any of its competitors. Apple has also tenaciously resisted any attempts to open its platform by citing user security as a reason for its draconian level of control over the iPhone platform, so it became necessary for the EU to resort to powerful big-guns legislation to act. Well the big guns are here, and I don't think Apple's "user security" defense is going to be aegis enough against them.

> where they have less than a third of the mobile market

Its amazing how some people are SO obsessed with their favorite brand that they cant see outside its limits: Apple controls ~30%, Google controls ~30%, thats pretty much majority of the 'market'. And that 'market' is actual people, having to daily use these devices.

There being 3-4 companies implementing exactly similar business practices does not make an 'open market'. It makes uncoordinated, non-conspiratorial monopolies.

> Why is Europe so afraid of competing in the open market?

Because they haven't been winning. It's not a coincidence that the revenue thresholds for this bill is conveniently higher than any Europe-based companies.

The "invisible hand of the free market" doesn't work when manufacturing a device requires such a huge infrastructure around it, and benefits so much from economy of scale. "Exploitative business practices must not be that bad or the free market would step in" is a painfully naive take.

You're totally right. How ever will a tiny company like Apple compete against Blackberry with their massive marketshare advantage and extensive supply chain...

Blackberry was never "massive" in the same way that either Android or Apple are today. Blackberry had about 85 million users at its peak and while that sounds like a lot, it was essentially a fancy phone for checking emails and such, and is nowhere near the pervasive penetration in all aspects of society that have happened since then. All sorts of daily activities are harder – or even outright impossible – without an Android or iPhone.

Thats not the argument though. The argument was about the ability for smaller companies to compete with larger incumbents. Specifically, around the impact that advanced manufacturing and supply chain relationships have on that competitiveness. Blackberry certainly had all those advantages at the time.

You're talking about features, of which a company can also develop themselves. There is no app so pervasive on either platform that makes owning an Android or iPhone such a requirement that automatically disqualifies any competitor. Unless of course you mean the UX provided by the OS.

It may be a pain to switch to some new phone or start up, but thats the job of a business. To convince me that their product is worth paying them money for.

Love the username :)

> Thats not the argument though.

Yeah sure, fair enough. I agree that manufacturing isn't key; a small group of hobbyist managed to make the Pine64 phone, which is not "world class" but certainly not bad either, and if some hobbyists can do it then a "real" business can certainly do it (and in fact, many have).

> There is no app so pervasive on either platform that makes owning an Android or iPhone such a requirement that automatically disqualifies any competitor.

I don't know about that; the lack of things like WhatsApp can be a huge downside for your social life. This is not true for everyone of course, depending on where you are in your life, your location, and what kind of friends you have (if any), but it is true for many people. I moved to a different country a few months ago and making friends without WhatsApp is doing it on hard mode.

If I compare this with using FreeBSD and Linux back in the early 2000s when Microsoft was omni-dominant, it's actually much worse. Proprietary formats like .doc and drivers were annoying, but can be reverse-engineered and the only thing really stopping anyone from building something that works for them was just a time investment. Now, it's pretty much impossible because much useful functionality requires access to severs and networked protocols.

That is fair, WhatsApp could be a blocker. Although I think that speaks more about Facebook's Monopoly than Apple's.

However, I would argue that it's the same answer to the hardware problem. You start small, by offering a limited product to a segment of the population that believes in the same features that you care about. As you grow, you then become a target for Facebook to develop a native app for your OS.

I'm not saying it's easy, but the Apple/Android market was built over decades. The iPhone was terrible when it started, but it could call, message and email people. Seems like a good starting point.

Assuming BlackBerry's annual sales were trending up YoY prior to the start of the graph in this article [1] (IMO a safe assumption), then Apple sold more iPods [2] than Blackberry every year starting at least by 2004, 3 years before the first iPhone. They were never a "tiny company" in comparison to BlackBerry.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/blackberry-phone-sales-decli...

[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_quart...

Because it is not "one market".

There is free movement of good, services, money and people. But it is still 28 similar markets with different cultures, different languages, different bureaucracies and sometimes different currency.

It is 400 million people but comparing the EU to the US is wrong on so many levels.

Also calling the US an "open" market is like saying China is a "free" democracy.

"One would think that if there is truly a US wide market for such an affordable healthcare service a competitor should be able to challenge the current market dominance. The US could even subsidize it."

Also it doesn't matter if the EU could do it themselves. Our market, our rules. If you don't like the rules, don't play.

> our market, our rules

Do you really believe the EU would be better off if all US businesses left?

That won’t happen

> One would think that if there is truly a Europe wide market for such an unlocked device a competitor should be able to challenge Apple and Google dominance.

The problem is that such a device doesn't really have a chance because it's not compatible with existing infrastructure such as WhatsApp, Instagram, your banking app, what-have-you. It could be the best device in the world, but there's always a catch-22 problem with software that's fundamentally closed and can't be implemented by a third party.

Talking about "free market" when the gatekeeping megacorp selects winners in multiple downstream markets is ridiculous.

I thought it's common knowledge that consolidation and cartels cripple free markets to the point of not functioning and benefiting society anymore?

>Why is Europe so afraid of competing in the open market?

The open market employs children to work in coal mines. No one should trust the open market.

This is opening the market. A few megacorps have created walled gardens that prevent competition. EU finally says "no more".

Why is the EU able to pass pro-consumer laws, but America unable to? Are big tech companies just unable to properly bribe the European Union like they do the American Government?

Because of institutional corruption. Lawrence Lessig has some great talks about this topic, here's one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okfLPvBjImM Here's another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxCo2bE9Gtk

(Lawrence Lessig, a law professor, was one of the founders of Creative Commons. He later tried to change US copyright laws to be more consumer-friendly, but concluded that it's almost impossible to do so as long as corporate interests rule politics. He then shifted his research topics to institutional corruption in politics. He actually ran for presidency a few years ago, with funding only from the popuplation, and limited to a certain amount. It failed, he wasn't even invited to TV debates because "if he doesn't take company money he doesn't have a chance".)

What I'm afraid is that, if the EU continues to successfully assert their authority in matters of pro-consumer/worker/citizen issues, the affected corporations will be more motivated to bribe and thoroughly corrupt the system just like they've done in the U.S.

They can try but it’s much less effective in the EU.

US government just doesn’t care about its people

EU-based *aaS companies are practically nonexistent relative to US-based ones, so there's basically nothing holding them back from passing bills like this one gerrymandered to (i) companies with a global market cap above €75B, (ii) with 45 million European users, (iii) and an included web browser or messaging app. If they had companies satisfying those criteria, they'd certainly see more pushback.

I personally like these changes, but the cynical forum shopping underlying the €75B threshold they picked is pretty nasty behavior, and I hope US lawmakers retaliate appropriately.

So it's basically thinly veiled protectionism.

Would it not be possible to spin off “iPhone Europe PLC” which is worth less than the threshold?

If it were truly independent then Apple’s “global market cap” would be irrelevant, and Cupertino could collect via IP licensing in Luxembourg taxed at 5%.

[edited for clarity, I think]

> Would it not be possible to spin off “iPhone Europe PLC” which is worth less than the threshold?

That kind of loophole-explotation floats only in common law. Not in civil law. The civil law would go down like a hammer on such heads.

Apple with just European users would be worth much more. If a company really wasn't that big just in Europe, there would be a case to exclude them. Apple certainly isn't one of them.

Retaliate for what? There are zero rules and regulations in the US concerning these big behemoths. Those senate hearings are just laughingstock kinda theatricals.Just watch back the Microsoft Antitrust Depositions with Bill Gates.

"No vehicle from an auto manufacturer with annual global revenue exceeding $150B USD is eligible for EV credits unless they also offer a hybrid or electric vehicle with MSRP $27000 or less."

Oh, only the European VW and Daimler would be impacted? Such a shame.

Well that is a possibility.

There is a crucial difference. Unlike Google and Apple the German Autos employ a lot of Americans and pay quite some taxes in America (sometimes in structurally weak places). That gives them more leverage than their Digital counterparts.

Of course they are not doing that because they are more moral but because their products are bulky and need to be built locally.

Horrible. They will just divert all the sales to China then.

> I hope US lawmakers retaliate appropriately.

The US has already won (and indeed was always winning) in terms of tech companies. There's nothing to retaliate against!

The EU has other industries.

Political organizations need to bear in mind the appearance of their actions. Big tech companies are predominantly American (google, apple). Europe putting more regulations on them reads as a patriotic act of defending people from corporate imperialism. The US regulating them reads as limiting the freedom that enabled them to reach such a dominant position in the first place.

The U.S. government is pretty inept in general these days. It's hard to see how such an expansive govt regulation would get approved by the current Congress which gets deadlocked over pretty much anything.

Because tech behemoths are tentacles of the US. Part of the country's global strategy. US is also meddling in EU lawmaking big time. These rules should be brought around 10+ years ago when they were creating the basic rules for their nice ecosystem.

EU is a democracy.

Proportional representation allowing representation of all views in countries' parliaments on top of doing the same in Euparl.

This leading to many actual left-wing MPs getting elected and informing entire parliaments about stuff which the average American may never know about - less American congressmen would ever want to hear about: The browser wars came to Euparl way back in mid 2000s and left-wing MPs first warned that major corporations would abuse it, then over time they demonstrated that it was happening exactly so. Leading to Microsoft vs the Commission and the browser ballot box. Then GDPR. In the meantime, also GMO labeling. And food standards WAY back. And right to repair and all that stuff. And now this.

There are even communist MPs in Euparl who are MAJOR proponents of Open Source since a long time ago. They also subscribe to the ideology as well.

Which brings about an interesting point: The legislation precisely targets the early, free state of the Internet from mid 2000s to early 2010s before major tech companies consolidated everything.

Lovely. The EU is a behemoth that takes years to proceed, but I really like that they are still trying to fight for consumers' digital rights.

EU always starts slowly, often with inadequate policies and regulations. But there is constant grind and improvement.

Take for example carbon pricing. It started long time ago, was not good enough. There was gradually tightening and now it finally starts having some teeth and more is coming.

While at the same time being anti consumer and trying to pass chat control.

Chat control looks dead. (fingers crossed)

Created an account just to comment on this. This is huge.

This is basically forcing Apple to open their ecosystem to developers. It's also breaking up a lot of othre monopolies such as WhatsApp.

Sweet! Thanks EU!

You might want to hold on thanking the EU : are you aware of the accompanying proposal the Digital Services Act [0]?

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31132417

I'm very interested to see how this will affect closed gaming platforms like Nintendo, Sony, etc.

Personally I'd love to be able to install an itch.io app on my switch and play some silly indies.

If this law doesn’t force the consoles to open up, it will prove that it was not grounded in real principles. Consoles are computers, just as surely as an iPhone is.

> Consoles are computers, just as surely as an iPhone is.

I don’t think most people see it that way. Game consoles could be general purpose computers if you changed the operating system, but no one (except maybe PS3 customers) buys a game console expecting to use it for general computing.

Likewise, the computer in a Tesla is probably powerful enough to run a full desktop operating system, but it’s clearly not what it was designed for, not what anyone bought it for, and not what anyone reasonably expects it to be used for.

Smartphones are indisputably general purpose computing devices.

They are general purpose computers, just like phones. It's purely a software limitation.

My toaster probably have the same cpu as my phone, but limited by its software. Is it a general purpose computer as well?

The purpose of a game console is to run software and allow the user to directly interact with that running software, the software itself being the purpose and not cooking or transportation.

It's not the CPU that makes something a computer, it's the function. Regardless how the task is achieved, the purpose of my toaster isn't to run software, it's to provide measured doses of radiant heat. It's the same as the grandparent who observed that the purpose of a Tesla is as form of transport, not to be a general purpose computer. (Though I'd argue it's a rather blurry line when using the centre console for entertainment while at a supercharger.)

I disagree with the implied assertion that playing modern video games is insufficient to class a device as general purpose computing. Video games are no less of a "general purpose" computing task as sending an email or doing your taxes.

I further disagree that the rules should vary based on customer expectations. If Apple isn't allowed to argue that most of their customers see their iPhone as a communications appliance and not a general purpose computer, Sony shouldn't be allowed to argue that most of their customers think of their PS5 as an games appliance.

It doesn’t, it’s been carefully boundary-set so that it only impacts a small handful of large US tech companies. They probably would have just come out and written their names in explicitly into the law (like Australia did a while back), except that sort of thing is frowned upon.

What do you think why Sony started to bring their used to be exclusive games to PC?

What's the point of producing low margin hardware if you don't control the sales on this platform?

I'm conflicted about the app stores. On the one hand, a non-modifiable single point of sale tied to the OS, with rules to prevent private data (and private API) access, is good and reduces data risks to me personally and society as a whole.

On the other hand, I'm not an American, I don't live or work in America, and the users of my five most recent published apps have not been in the USA, so I've never been happy about the US federal government having any say at all about my use of encryption.

Plus my cultural norms are not those of the USA, so I'm comfortable with content Apple block outright and uncomfortable with stuff Apple lets though without any (apparent to me) concern.

The other stuff all appears straightforwardly good.

I wonder what this will mean for licensing/fees for future releases of Xcode, Swift, iOS etc.?

History is full of examples of malware slipping through and app review processes leaking everywhere, the non modifiable single point of sale is not there to benefit you.

> malware slipping through and app review processes leaking everywhere,

"It's not perfect" != "It doesn't benefit me"

(For other examples from my life: clothes, driving licenses, voting, spam filters, and the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency).

> the non modifiable single point of sale is not there to benefit you.

That probably wasn't the original point of it, but it does have the effect of protecting me.

To my understanding, the EU cookie law has mostly been met with malicious compliance; now I get a pop-up window on nearly every web page I visit asking me if I'm happy to accept their tracking cookies.

Does anyone have thoughts on how big tech might comply to this new digital markets act maliciously?

The GDPR outcome was largely good though. I can download my data from way more websites than I could before

> The GDPR outcome was largely good though.

The issue with GDPR-style regulations with huge penalties is that it makes it harder for new entrants to the market to operate without fear of violating the law by accident. Big tech has no such fear due to huge legal departments.

Maybe the outcome overall is still good, but let's remember that Facebook (and Mark Zuckerberg personaly) was/is at the forefront of demanding heavy regulations for social media [1] because they knew only they (and maybe one or two established competitors) could operate safely and actually make sure they comply with the law [2]. More regulation just entrenches the big incumbents.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mark-zuckerberg-the-...

[2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/regulation-good-for-facebook...

Please stop spreading this GDPR FUD, the demands are very clear - as is the case where you don't need informed consent at all. "New entrants" are either not scared of the GDPR or probably violating it, much like the big players.

good, screw them for "accidentally" violating GDPR and screwing with my data.

If you replace the abbreviation "GDPR" with the words "food safety", you'll understand how silly such arguments sound.

An example: "The issue with food safety style regulations with huge penalties is that it makes it harder for new entrants to the market to operate without fear of violating the law by accident. Big food has no such fear due to huge legal departments."

This is not good. I really enjoy the security of the walled garden that IOS is right now. Some say just don’t install a third party app store. My line of thinking is that takes the power away from the individual. Lets take for instance an app that everyone seems to want: TikTok. Right now they must abide by the app store rules and do security the way Apple requires and I want. This is the ONLY way they get onto the most popular mobile platform. Now with this decision from the EU they can stop offering it in the Apple app store and offer something less secure from a 3rd party app store. The user is now forced to make a security concession in order to use that app now. I no longer have a big bully (Apple) standing by my side forcing the issue. I’d say to Apple just stop selling to the EU. See how long it takes them to blink because they would.

>> I no longer have a big bully (Apple) standing by my side forcing the issue.

Perhaps you missed the news but there is a bigger bully in town. The U.S gov is looking to ban tiktok so you may not be able to use it at all. Not that I think tiktok is worth my time but I am pro choice.

>> I’d say to Apple just stop selling to the EU. See how long it takes them to blink because they would.

That doesn't sound like a good business plan. Are you sure the shareholders would approve it? Perhaps Apple should stop selling in China too instead to handover the approval process to the CCP(btw that's a bigger bully. Do you like it? )

Also although I've been an Apple fan since the ipod I would stay behind EU on this one. First Apple defies us with that open letter about taxes(thinking the siphoning tax money out of Europe is somehow the right thing to do) and now they stop selling in Europe unless we surrender to its monopolistic behaviour?

I think we are all good. Hopefully they will focus more on the hardware value and less on pushing users to buy subscriptions(i.e icloud storage).

I agree probably not the best business plan. Apple has plenty of cash so maybe it comes down to something more important than market share - principal.

On the other hand I don’t see how the U.S. banning TikTok has any bearing on Apple being the security gate on IOS. I don’t use TikTok myself but if I decided to at least I would do so with the knowledge that it at least meets Apple’s standards. I wouldn’t even get that if I was forced to use a 3rd party app store.

I assume apple can tell it's users that they cannot guarantee security of apps they download from another app store similar to how they do with the recent privacy changes? When someone like tik tok or fb realizes that their downloads are reducing significantly they'll still offer it from the apple app store.

like allowing Tiktok to send its users data to the CCP? ....

>My line of thinking is that takes the power away from the individual.

Takes the power away from Apple you mean.

If Apple cares that much about privacy, as opposed to their bottom line under the guise of caring, then they can implement additional controls into the OS layer that will help users control or even anonymize/randomize their data when running third-party apps.

I hope this means Apple is finally forced to start competing on features and not just on being able to block apps from their platform. Case in point: Push notifications for PWAs. If there is an alternate browser that supports this, that can be installed on iPhones, Safari is going to get this real quick.

that would be a great outcome! Sadly I think you overestimate the reach of PWAs.

Oh no, I know PWAs are not really all that capable. But there are an astounding number of apps which are apps only because they need push notifications. All of these could become PWAs.

Very good. Even politicians can do a good thing every once in a while.

Now, can we get rid of hardware remote attestation and impossible-to-unlock bootloaders please?

I am not sure that's a good idea. Now phones are rarely stolen. I would not like to come back to time when you get mugged for your phone. (1st hand experience)

You can still have FRP with an unlockable bootloader. Just place the unlock bootloader button after the forced Google login so that even if you factory reset the phone you cannot unlock the bootloader without the Google account.

In fact that is how most phones (that still have an unlockable bootloader) do it, the button is in the developer options which if you reset the phone you cannot get to without having access to the linked Google account.

Surprised nobody is talking about what a huge bonanza this is for software piracy. Sure, it'll come with Lovecraft-grade eldritch horrors in the malware space, but that's the price you pay.

Software piracy is good.

> The gatekeeper shall not be prevented from taking, to the extent that they are strictly necessary and proportionate, measures to ensure that third-party software applications or software application stores do not endanger the integrity of the hardware or operating system provided by the gatekeeper, provided that such measures are duly justified by the gatekeeper.

A lot of Apple's system design will hinge on this paragraph. They might still be able to require some form of Notarization. I'd welcome that. Keep the Security through code signing and a strong permission system. Allowing other App Stores to set their own review process and "guidelines".

Apple definitely can do more for iOS user security beyond App Store review, and much casual commentary overlooks that. Not to mention, given how the EU seems to be fairly pro-consumer protection, alternative app store guidelines will probably be subject to regulator scrutiny as well.

A lot of the doomsday scenarios about Facebook creating an app store to invasively track people seem to forget that regulators don't like that, nor their respective monopolistic practices, either. I don't think they'll be able to get away with creating an user-tracking scammy app store and then taking their existing ubiquitously-used apps off of the official App Store without drawing the ire of the EU.

European democracy at its best. Proud to be European today.

this is democracy? Seems like extortion and protectionism to me. If this affected any European companies I would just call it anti-business, but instead it's clearly xenophobia.

> Seems like extortion and protectionism to me

Wait until you learn about the import-quotas that the US applies to every country that it trades with. Including those with 'free trade' agreements.

Those of us who are not American prefer that the internet is not owned by a small number of American megacorps. EU is responding to that.

did you feel proud when the eu passed the cookie law? are you proud every time you have to wait for and click through a cookie modal? (never mind the development costs)

you might end up with an ad- and app-store- riddled europhone and if you decide that you want to buy a us or international spec iphone you won’t be permitted to do so.

Yes. I like the cookie walls. It’s a constant reminder most websites are garbage.

I welcome my ad- and app-store riddled europhones and then chose to not use most apps that use tracking ads

i like that companies are forced now to show me the data they collect on me with a simple request

I love that cookie pop up. That's an instant C-w.

You do understand that those popups indicate either malicious compliance, incompetence or unnecessary tracking? Do you think keeping any of those three hidden is in any way better?

I really hope there will be an open iPhone that people can buy and they keep their existing one for those of us who doesn’t want our phones to become cookie-pop up-ridden data collecting nightmares that is guaranteed to to happen.

Anyone want to bet against Spotify requiring you to install the Spotify App Store to use the client?

This looks like bad news for Apple, much more so then for Google. It doesn't really address Google's ad-driven ecosystem, but goes hard after the app store and hardware differences where apple has prioritized privacy rather then ad-spend.

I don't see a alternative to apple the to emulate Google and ditch privacy in favor of ad-tech after looking at the text.

Might end up being good for Goog if it expands the reach of Chrome on iOS. Google currently pays 10+ billion a year to be the default search provider on Safari.

These rules specifically seem targeted at Meta's/Google's ad business.

- (Gatekeepers have to) give business users access to their marketing or advertising performance data on the platform - (Gatekeepers can no longer) reuse private data collected during a service for the purposes of another service

What I don't understand about messaging is, do only the large providers have to be interoperable among each other or can I create my own crappy messaging app and integrate with WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal et al.?

Edit: typo

That's a good question, but I assume that anti-trust regulators will decide what is "reasonable" partly based on the number of users of your messaging app.

Obviously there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem there, but if one of these gatekeepers has 100 million users, then it is hard to justify them writing and maintaining a load of extra code to interoperate with an app that has less than, say, 1 million users.

Perhaps in practice, though, the gatekeepers will be able to publish a simple API and say that all competitors who want to interoperate with them can do so, after signing a contract with their lawyers and exchanging public keys in person, and paying an administrative fee (to prevent spammers).

These regulations apply only to "Gatekeepers", meaning large companies with huge revenue and market power.

This goes way further than I think anyone ever expected. Hopefully it works out well but some of these seem quite impractical. E.g. I'm curious if they're really going to implement end-to-end encrypted video calls between iMessage and Whatsapp users. Yes this is really required! Possibly even group video calls but the wording for that makes no sense so who knows. They have 4 years to implement it.

I feel like they could have gone a lot further to ban tivoising / locking devices too.

Obviously this is aimed at phones but does it extend to any other computing devices? For example, does it require Microsoft to allow access to a third party app store and payment system on a game console like Xbox?

I wonder if this will affect game consoles as well. They have software markets but they are extremely specific and targeted. In terms of size, I'd think that Microsoft and maybe Sony would reach the threshold.

Funnily that gives me an argument to buy an iPhone next year. This is a hit - great hardware without their terrible services. This opens so much more possibilities for everyone!

> After being signed by the President of the European Parliament and the President of the Council, it will be published in the Official Journal of the European Union and will start to apply six months later.

So will start by next mid-Jan? I thought this would take a years or two to materialize.

Adoption will occur in September, so my reading is that Gatekeepers need to comply by March 2023.

For obvious reasons most comments are about how this affects Apple, but doesn’t it also mean I will be able to develop apps for Kindle, and those apps will be able to use the built-in mobile data on the same terms as Amazon?

If I were Apple, I'd sell an open developer phone that allowed users to override the default settings. So that when the inevitable "Apple has been hacked and is no better than Android" media driven hit pieces come out, Apple can point out that this is happening on the open developer phone, not the safe walled garden that most of us normal, non bleeding edge consumers carry in our pockets..

When you just want to use your phone, you don't have to read a 1000-word piece to figure out it's because some man installed some obvious spyware.

Apple has been hacked and is no better than Android.

Linux has been hacked and is no better when Windows?

OP made an unsubstantiated claim that Apple products are more secure. I pointed that out.

And it is. iPhones have fewer exploits, and (in general) provide longer support with updates fixing them when they occur.

citation needed.

They are. You may be seeing more exploits in general because there is monetary incentive to find them, but iPhone is more secure in general especially when it comes to malware. They also have 5 or more years of support for devices and historically patched very old versions for security issues. Unlike android where 10% of the users are on the latest update, if the carrier even supplies it!

While this will put some pressure on Apple and Google, personally I still want a third choice of Smartphone Platform.

People would immediately point to Microsoft being a possible third should they decide to do it, I am not looking forward to it as much considering Microsoft would be more of the same as current Apple and Google.

In terms of consumer facing companies, it is sad there is not a single company in Silicon Valley which I like.

Really sad we don't have a Palm or a General Magic around these days.

Microsoft already tried and failed. They have also ruined Nokia.

> give business users access to their marketing or advertising performance data on the platform

Is it what Facebook was crying about when iOS hardened its privacy?

So, if tech companies don't extend these changes to customers in the USA, could I buy an unlocked smartphone in Europe and for use in the USA?

Not necessarily, most software uses is based on where you are based. On iOS your account is tied to your billing address (which is soooo annoying). This is done to follow local laws, and where an app publisher wants to sell.

I would expect this would also go in effect on existing iPhones, so it seems more likely that you'd need a European Apple ID/account.

So will google be forced to upgrade all older android sales to be upgraded to the latest release?

If so, they’ll be fined

Yawn. Let me know when this applies to all locked down devices including video games, security cameras, cars, tvs, farm equipment, and so on.

Interestingly, Russia does the same thing at the same time: https://www.reuters.com/technology/russia-says-apple-violate... Feels as if there is some universal push to force Apple to do these things.

So when I attempt to install the Amazon play store on my iPhone, will I get the following scary message?

"WARNING: You are about to install non-approved software which may be malicious or a virus. If this software causes damage to your iPhone we will not fix your device, even if it is still under warranty. Are you really sure you want to continue?"

I presume so. Does the EU ruling require companies to offer warranties for damage caused by users installing malicious software?

My reading of the legislation is that this kind of message is only permissible if the Gatekeeper also includes that message when installing the native equivalent. The legislation requires that on initial setup of the device, the user be given a choice of services like browsers, and the Gatekeeper cannot unfairly prejudice competitors by, for example, including such a warning for only the competitors.

This is a big step in the right direction to rein big tech. 100% inter operability based on common and accepted standards should be the next step. For eg. XMPP for messaging etc. I don't use Whatapp, and remain unconnected due to the mass adoption of that product.

I actually think this is an awful decision, and will likely result in the erosion of the data/privacy guarantees Apple has established, for little to no benefit.

“We’ll be able to side load apps” great. Good for you. I eagerly await the proliferation of trash app stores peddling all the apps that were rightfully rejected from the Apple Store for good reasons.

“You’ll be able to iMessage android users” fantastic, now I’ll have to trust that whatever random developer added iMessage support to their android app did it properly, and doesn’t violently leak keys everywhere and sell the contents of my conversations with every possible ad company. This is definitely an improvement.

Too bad Apple didn't implement RCS

Apple has not established any meaningful privacy guarantees. It's just PR.

Then maybe Apple should release an iMessage app for Android officially. So you don't have to worry about random developers.

Won't this at least increase the prices of the hardware produced by these companies?

We shall see. One thing to remember is that the price of a good is not determined by its costs or profitability, but rather by supply and demand. Apple and Google, for example, are undoubtedly already charging as much as they can for phones in all markets. Given their respective marketing prowess, I expect those prices to be very near the optimal price point already. If they increase prices, they lose sales to a greater degree, and ultimately earn less.

Either way I'm sure they will use this legislation as a marketing tactic to justify typical annual price increases.

8 years is too much time. I feel like a technology gets replaced every 15 years so by this logic, rules will only get applied at the tail end of its lifespan. Better late than never but maybe 3-5 years would be a better number.

This sounds awesome to me and some really good changes. We have these powerful devices and they are just shit in terms of what we are allowed to do. We live in the future and it has been ruined by corporations. Why can’t I play a YouTube video in safari and then open my snap and have a call with my son while listening to my song and have both of us enjoy that same song. That is just one example of I am sure hundreds of cool features that have been blocked by devices. I hope these new rules show that we deserve better devices and that no we are no where near peak technology.

I’m excited to see how Apple passive aggressively implements these changes.

I’m curious if this will result in fragmentation in the phones themselves.

I don't know what type of fragmentation you're referring to, but at least this act requires them to allow communication between companies (i.e. what phones were created for in the first place).

The big question now is.... Will this unlock Apple devices worldwide, or will apple make special EU-firmware which only gives this legally mandated functionality for phones sold in the EU?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect

So, there is the theoretical possibility that there could be a Google Play store on iOS, or an Apple App Store on Android! Interesting even as a thought.

All the panic in this thread about allowing apps without Apple review would make one believe iOS has no technical app security/isolation/restriction mechanisms.

These will just have to become an even more of a first class citizen in the new world order. And will have to become even more trustworthy in the new much more adversarial ecosystem. :)

> ensure that the basic functionalities of instant messaging services are interoperable, i.e. enable users to exchange messages, send voice messages or files across messaging apps

I am not a cryptography expert, but doesn’t this requirement make it more difficult to have end-to-end encryption unless users take key exchange into their own hands?

The EU is going to keep pumping out laws with massive fines and they’re going to be left with nothing before long.

How does this interact with non-Google manufactured android phones? Can Samsung lock things down where Google can’t?

Samsung specifically is well over the €75b threshold, so I would think this law applies to them as well.

I have a modular synthesizer app for iOS [1]. Will this legislation force Apple to let me JIT? (That’s a key restriction that prevents competing browsers.) Would be great for performance.

[1] http://audulus.com

It might force Apple to allow you to distribute a version of your app on a different store or sideloaded from a file, which doesn’t necessarily follow the restrictions on the official App Store. That’s how I understand it at least.

I like to think of this as payback for Android App Bundles and mandatory sharing of signing keys [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27699476

Subject: business models to become huge monopolies.

Apple makes $$$ from selling products people mostly love.

Google, Facebook/Meta make most of their cash from surveillance capitalism, I mean, advertising. Microsoft (tracking keystrokes in Windows) and Amazon (“we are a ‘data’ company”) also aren’t really privacy focused (though they do get chunks of income from actual products)

So I’m a bit torn with this legislation.

The rules described there make sense. What nasty rules enabling government surveillance or censorship/copyright enforcements did they also include that they not mention in this press release?

So, not sure if I understand - if Google makes a Google app store for IOS does their App store have to comply with all rules or can it skip because Google does not own the IOS platform?

Will it possible for Apple/Others to create something like Apple EU which then will license iOS from Apple US paying license fees and stay below €75 billion market valuation?

Companies already use local subsidiaries in this way to dodge taxes and regulations. The EU isn't likely to overlook it this time.

Does this mean that you can install a stock version of Android and Google can't prevent apps from running because they fail "safetynet" or what ever it is called.

Nice, this means i might consider buying an iPhone again at some point. I have an old iPod Touch but since it has been long abandoned by Apple it is practically useless - i can't even use it as a music player despite it obviously being perfectly capable of that. I've given up on Apple devices considering i can't even install another OS on their Macs too nowadays so i can at least use up-to-date software.

(technically i know it can be jailbroken but the process is so annoying and requires downloading some old version of iTunes from who knows where - so obviously i'd rather have that sort of functionality officially supported)

Great news, this means bloatware on Android will be no more right? Maybe even YT vanced can continue (still works perfectly fine for me at the moment I will say)?

I think we should enjoy this promise that we may soon be able own/control our computer devices(i.e run the software we want) not just to subscribe to services.

So does this help smaller players compete with the big guys?

Seems like it might make it harder to compete due to all the new rules, but I haven't dug into it for the details.

These rules only apply to large organizations: "gatekeepers" that have massive global revenue and market power.

This should have been named the Law of Unintended Consequences.

In the most abstract, opening up mobile and messaging platforms is a Good Thing. Unfortunately it is going to cause a mass of real world problems and will have significant negative consequences.

Requiring alternate App Stores will mean Facebook, Epic (Tencent), TikTok, and Scams R Us will all set up their own app stores. Their apps will slowly move to those stores where there are zero restrictions on the collection of personal data. Even if the OS requires user permission to access personal data people are just going to smash that accept button like they've been conditioned to do with GDPR dialogs.

Forcing alternate browser engines will just see Google use its enormous influence on the web to coerce everyone into using Chrome. The current "web standards" are ridiculously complicated. Google's "standards" are also privacy nightmares as they're perfect for fingerprinting. Web standards have gotten so complex Microsoft threw in the towel and just uses Blink. This legislation is just going to accelerate a Blink (and thus) Google monoculture on the web. If Microsoft can't maintain a viable browser engine against the complexity of web standards, driven primarily by Google, there's no hope for a plucky upstart to come along with a new browser engine. I guess learn to enjoy WebIrisScanner and WebAttention APIs when they're rolled out to help Google's ad business.

Messaging interoperability is going to be a clusterfuck. Messaging protocols and back ends are complex. The law doesn't seem to specify what messaging interoperability means at an implementation level. It's going to impose a huge cost on all messaging platforms to carry (and spool for delivery) traffic from third parties. While obviously the EU wants to impose cost on US companies, EU mobile carriers will end up subject to these laws and need to spend money supporting Facebook and iMessage traffic.

If history teaches us anything about sweeping technological regulation it's that we're not pessimistic enough about unintended consequences.

I really think that setting up an alternative app store is more difficult than one can imagine:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31991394

Out of the ones you've listed, I think Epic has the highest likelihood to do it, not just because they were the only one to take substantiative legal action to try to force it, but because theirs is a platform that might actually offer compelling content that would give users a good reason to switch. (Though then again, plenty of iOS games will remain with the Apple Arcade, and I'm not sure what killer apps Epic has beyond Fortnite.)

If Facebook or TikTok moves their apps to a new app store without offering an additional app library of new content, users are going to be irate and it could end up backfiring on them. I think TikTok would stand a greater chance of doing that given that ByteDance is a Chinese company subject to that nation's regulations and policies, but I don't see attempts at a Meta, Google/Alphabet, or Amazon app store succeeding for long. App stores are hard, and even harder when your competitor owns the platform- I'm sure Apple can still exercise leverage over iOS beyond the App Store.

Facebook took a huge revenue hit when Apple started enforcing permissions on app spying. I see them definitely creating a "Metaverse" App Store filled with their spyware. They have the leverage to push users to their store between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Don't forget Facebook used to be a huge games platform for Flash games.

Running an App Store is hard but companies like Facebook and ByteDance already run the sort of infrastructure needed. Since Apple can no longer enforce exclusivity with their store, Facebook et al have the incentive to create stores accessed from both Android and iOS. Before this law they'd only be able to target the lower revenue Android users while having to live with Apple's restrictions. Now they can make one Facebook (or ByteDance) store able to target higher revenue iOS users where they distribute their first party apps in addition to third party ones. You can be sure they would have no restrictions on data collection. The wording of the DMA also seems like it would be difficult for Apple to stymie their data collection at the OS level.

> I see them definitely creating a "Metaverse" App Store filled with their spyware.

They could do that from a technical/engineering level, but I question their product/business capability to woo users to such a store. Meta is an old tech dinosaur at this point, and their Metaverse initiatives have yet to bear any fruit. Users at this point are all juggling nearly a dozen of social media, email, e-commerce, streaming entertainment, and so on accounts. Dealing with another Meta App Store account to manage is going to be inherently a source of friction unless Meta presents a lot of compelling new content to win them over, which I completely question their product ability to execute on.

> They have the leverage to push users to their store between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

Right- I understand that taking their existing offerings and moving it to their store is a way to artificially boost demand. But it will come with blowback. Users will be annoyed at dealing with another account, most will see it as a transparent attempt to steal their data, and a non-zero amount will not bother to migrate. They'll try to use mobile web or stick to only desktop for some apps. Facebook DAU has dropped in a prior quarter, their continued level of usage is not guaranteed; perhaps Meta will soon find more users than they expected can live without their product.

And if something as crucial as WhatsApp is moved off of its currently largest platform- the App Store- into a scammy Meta App Store exclusively, well I doubt the regulators will sit still for that either. Not only does it also seem like a monopolistic move, that also subjects such a store to scrutiny as well. Regulators aren't happy at big tech for user data tracking. It's another issue they're pursuing, and the idea that they'll let a Meta or Google third party app store off scot-free for doing so is pretty unrealistic.

> Running an App Store is hard but companies like Facebook and ByteDance already run the sort of infrastructure needed.

I mean from a business perspective, not purely technical. I remember how Microsoft desperately tried to get third party developers for the Windows Phone store, and the steady demise of Facebook Apps as a platform. (Not to mention how their one prior mobile play, Facebook Home for Android, was a complete bust.) It's hard to chase after both third party devs and consumers, even if they offer lower margins than 30%. Most app devs will almost certainly keep their apps listed on the App Store and on the Play Store, because that's where the overwhelming majority users will be.

> The wording of the DMA also seems like it would be difficult for Apple to stymie their data collection at the OS level.

We'll see how it goes. I believe regulators can chew gum and walk at the same time. App Store monopolies aren't the only issue that's on their minds right now. Even Google itself is changing Play Store tracking policies:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/16/google-plans-android-privacy...

> Requiring alternate App Stores will mean Facebook, Epic (Tencent), TikTok, and Scams R Us will all set up their own app stores.

Where are the these app stores for Android?

This law is also hitting Google in a big way. Google has to give up their monopoly on many areas.

> prevent developers from using third-party payment platforms for app sales

Does this mean that you can install any application on iOS and tvOS now?

Does it include full ide support for ipads?

I hope so. I love my iPad but it is so annoying it is locked down

In 6 months time am i going to be able to send a whatsapp message to someone on facebook messenger?

The other question is, will you be able to follow a Twitter user from Facebook, and send them a DM?

I think the answer is "No", because that counts as social media interoperability rather than messenger interoperability, but I don't understand how Facebook have managed to convince the EU to exempt them from this.

This is very good news. Finally iPhone users will be able to truly own their devices, not begging Apple's permission to install the app they need.

Now, I wonder, how would Apple try to spoil this? When they were ordered to allow third party payment services, they started insisting on racketeering their additional 30% Apple Tax directly from developers. Any ideas?

What's the plan for enforcing it? Did the United States sign off on it?

In my opinion they need the US buy-in, and there actually need to be criminal penalties enforced against top executives (jail time) and the other executives need to see it happen. Unless they do that stuff it seems like they may really try to ignore and delay and do the absolute minimum effort.

It’s EU law, not US law. US cannot sign off on EU law.

considering the status of both companies as basically a duopoly, it will be hard for the US to object about unfair trade rules.

If it comes so far (which I really doubt) as them simply ignoring it, their European Operations can be fined (directly through their bank accounts if need be) or their European employees can be jailed.

They can also be disallowed to do business with European consumers and companies.

In short: "The fines will continue until compliance improves. Get in line or get out of the market".

They don't have much political leverage, given how few people they employ and how little taxes they pay over here.

Their standing in the US isn't the best either so it's doubtful whether America is willing to invest much political capital over something she herself is considering.

They won't simply ignore it, but they will do the minimum amount they can possibly get away with, which will amount to effectively ignoring it.

The European Union is a huge market. If Google or Apple doesn't comply then they say goodbye to those profits.

Is this basically a done deal? Incredible if so - I'd buy my first iPhone in YEARS.

Honestly the only thing I want is gecko for IOS and alternative payment options.

At what point does it just become cheaper and more prudent to leave the EU market?

Considering that the EU is the second largest consumer market in the world (at least according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_marke...), it seems like that point is kind of far away.

Could be as early as winter. Things are not very bullish for the EU right now given their energy situation.

You are suggesting the bad energy situation due to the war would make the EU a market small enough to ignore for any tech giant?

We’re fine, don’t worry.

Well most of us are

Copium.

EU is one of the largest consumer markets there is. US Tech companies are probably regretting the day they left China. They won't make the same mistake again.

I think this is aimed as much at Microsoft as any of the companies listed.

It certainly qualifies as a Gatekeeper, and perhaps I should have included Microsoft in the title. I'm just not sure how this impacts them. The most obvious candidate here is the Xbox, but I've not done any analysis with regards to this legislation and game consoles.

Does this cover it allowing the ability to develop browsers on iOS?

Yes, but Apple will make sure they run at 50% lower speed. /s

You joke, didn't Apple add custom instructions to their silicon to accelerate their safari/js hot paths like they did with rosetta 2?

No, those instructions are a part of ARMv8.3 and used by many.

Yes, they specifically reference browser engines.

The pirate party FTW!

So many loopholes

all pretty sound, aside from 'interoperability on instant messenger', which would be incompatible with privacy / security obligations from the providers.

Wonder how hard US govt will bat for the US tech, leverage is there vs the EU post Putin invasion of Ukraine

BS, XMPP federation has been around for decades now. Google messenger used to speak it before the removed it , maybe Facebook as well.

Hopefully this will be the re-birth of the XMPP standard. WhatsApp is built on it, has a huge market share and, when I read this correctly, will start federating in the near future.

yup. with google messenger it was used almost exclusively to spam google messenger users, and that's what'll happen with this as well.

To all the folks that worry that Apple won't any longer be able to police Facebook: We can regulate that too. We can some really draconian rules wrt. what can and can not be collected etc. See, with a working governing body, the people wins.

GDPR is great. USA don't have it, we do. Regulation works here. (Not always, not enough, it have unintended side effects and all that. But letting the big tech guys run the world instead: No thanks.)

> GDPR is great.

not at all from my experience. it’s been extremely frustrating so far.

you work at facebook?

Hopefully this goes better than GDPR. The only outcome I’ve seen is all my friends and family clicking “I accept” to explicitly allow tracking.

Remember how we were praising GDPR and the level of fines etc…

If sites actually obeyed the GDPR (i.e. if national governments actually devoted enough resources to enforcing it) then all those banners would have a "Reject" button that is just as clickable as the "Accept" one.

Hopefully your friends and family haven't become so trained to look for the word "accept" that they will be unable to find the correct button when companies finally start complying. Or better yet, companies will realise that 99% of users click reject, and the tracking data provided by the remaining 1% is not valuable enough to annoy the 99% for.

> dane-pgp 4 hours ago | parent | next [–]

Yeah, but there isn’t. There is no incentive, or a stick, to make them comply. It’s a dumb regulation. The regulator doesn’t care to enforce and has no resources to enforce.

It’s obvious that people who benefit from tracking will do anything to make people click that accept button. It’s obvious that they will also make it as obnoxious as possible to reject. It was clear from the beginning.

> It was clear from the beginning.

I don't remember anyone predicting that there would be an industry-wide effort to deliberately not comply with the rules, relying on lax national enforcement, with companies choosing to make their own websites less nice to use just to (successfully) trick people into hating the legislation and not the surveillance practices that the legislation was designed to stop.

That's proven to be a great strategy in hindsight, but I think that this Schelling point was only found by accident.

Wow I think that site has the 1st decent GDPR popup thing I've seen. Just two buttons, accept cookies, reject cookies, u click one and then it goes away.

That’s what a compliant one must look like.

If it has e.g “accept” and “manage choices” then it’s blatantly non-compliant and hopefully such popups will be extinct once a few such sites are fined.

Well it's the 1st of probably 100's of sites I've visited that's actually compliant then.

Oh please spare me this crap. This isn't true at all.

I knew this was bs before switching to iphone but I was optimistic.

Apple AirPlay is just pure trash, so I have to use chromecast. My Apple watch keeps bugging out and notifying me few minutes late and requires restart of both devices. The device keeps connecting to open networks while my remembered home network is available. The camera lens has issues with glare in the sun.

I got it because I plan on keeping the devices for 4-5 years, but the "it just works" is the worst kind of pro argument and has 0 information.

> Apple AirPlay is just pure trash, so I have to use chromecast.

What's trash about it? Never had any issues with it, ever.

> My Apple watch keeps bugging out and notifying me few minutes late and requires restart of both devices.

Bugging out and notifying you a few minutes late for what? I get text messages on my watch at exactly the same time as my phone.

> The device keeps connecting to open networks while my remembered home network is available.

The device will only connect to networks you've connected to before. So this is user error. It's simple, forget that network.

> The camera lens has issues with glare in the sun.

This is a problem with any phone, or any camera?

AirPlay doesn't connect, disconnects and cannot reconnect. This is far from working. Chromecast is MUCH MUCH more reliable. Just go look on forums.

The delayed notifications are also pretty common and addressed on many forums, even on apples. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7022042

https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/jj8wpv/slowdela...

The lens glare is extremely common on iphone 12/13, and I did NOT have glare this bad on my other devices. I believe some reviewers even mentioned it. https://www.reddit.com/r/iPhone13/comments/s0n095/iphon13_ca...

I usually avoid using apple.com discussions as 'evidence'...

> The lens glare is extremely common on iphone 12/13, and I did NOT have glare this bad on my other devices.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253200214

You can go rent a $5000 DSLR Camera and a $10,000 lens and /still/ get lens glare, and it can be much worse. That's why people sometimes shoot with a polarizing filter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarizing_filter_(photography...

I'm unaware of /any/ phone camera that has a polarizer by default. But essentially, you will get it on ANY lens. This is not something that happens only on iPhone 12/13.

-------------

> AirPlay doesn't connect, disconnects and cannot reconnect.

I haven't seen AirPlay on non-apple devices but between my iPhone and Apple TV it works amazingly.

Chromecast works ON ALL my devices TVs included, again unlike AirPlay.

Sure, but Android TV sucks. I mean its 2022 and it's still laggy and slow compared to Apple TV. And slowly getting more and more adverts. Even on the fastest TVs its still slow compared to AppleTV. So it could be supported on every single device in the world, it's still a turd.

What I've never understood is a high end Android decide is quite fast and responsive. Yet no matter how much hardware you throw at Android TV, its slow.

One time I’ve seen a similar problem was due to my home router screwing up multicast.

> Oh please spare me this crap

Someone else's opinion isn't 'crap'. Like what you have proffered, is as much an opinion as the OP.

I actually provided some cons, unlike OP.

> Someone else's opinion isn't crap.

Correct, but what has that to do with anything? They did not give an opinion but claimed several points as fact. These claims were crap.

Surely there's a better way to criticize somebody's take on a topic?

iDevices aren't perfect but they cover 95% of what I need from them.

Can it be better, much better even? Absolutely, yes. But your comment is painting a doom picture that is just not there for many people.

I'm responding to "it just works" comment. It's not perfect even though apple has complete control over the ecosystem.

The hardware is great but let's not pretend its perfect.

I don't think anyone here is pretending that it's perfect. It's just that your hyperbolic language in the other direction of the argument is giving off the wrong impression IMO.

I also don't think "it just works" implies perfect operation 100% of the time either. Usually it means "it doesn't work rarely enough that I don't notice".

All my experiences with Apple have been far below the expectations set by "it just works".

For example, don't use an Apple smartwatch to keep time (the clock will fall behind and stay there, even after interacting with the display to "wake" it up.)

The "Pencil 2" stylus they sell for iPads can't be used exclusively. (E.g. activating the "Command Center" requires you use your finger.)

They build advertisements into the OS (very notable if you don't use iCloud) and reset preferences willy-nilly (such as if you have iMessage disabled.)

I hope more people talk about these issues, I'd love to see Apple pressured to make meaningful improvements.

Please don't call names or post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. You can make your substantive points without that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32166399.

This is going to be bad. Regarding the iPhone:

It will open the door to apps asking me to install their own stores to access them. That will be inconvenient.

It will open the door to apps charging me through methods other than Apple’s subscriptions. That will make it harder for me to cancel.

It will open the door to malware on the phones of my less technologically capable relatives.

On the other hand I will be able to install pirated Spotify and YouTube much easily. I currently have to use AltStore, which is somewhat annoying.

I’m not even going to comment on interoperability between messengers. It’s simply absurd, no matter the way I look at it.

How is interop between messengers a bad thing? Wouldn't it be amazing if you wouldn't have to switch between 100 messengers all the time?

Personally I keep a different persona in all those messengers and they are all different in the way that they work and the features that they offer. I’m happy compartmentalising things. Not to mention the spam problem that will likely occur.

I read the legislation as that still being possible.

There is no need for you to communicate with anybody who you don't want to communicate with.

Since GDPR has an unbelievably wasted time to positive impact on people ratio, I fear that this will be the same.

I don't even want to know how bad this is going to turn out to be.

Part of me would love to see Apple pull out of Europe, and bully them to roll this back. Would be fun to watch!

I’d say 50-50, they’d win!

You can replace Apple products with similars. Apple cannot replace money with lack of money.

Looks pretty good, and I wish my country (USA) would pass similar things.

Still, as an Apple customer, I like having Safari pre installed and I like the Message app so I hope it’s functionality doesn’t change.

Finally, it's time to stop chat monopolies, and apple's empty excuses for monopolistic behaviors like only allowing WebKit and only apple payment process while also taking 15% and not allowing you to increase the price.

This is amazing. I can't wait until these changes get implemented. I'll never understand boot-lickers that complain about this sort of thing. These devices are computers, I couldn't imagine my computer getting this locked down. Now, the EU just needs to outlaw soldered components that can be made interchangeable and all will be good in the world.

They forgot the noscript/basic (x)html interoperability for the web. That does enable the possibility to use other browsers than big tech browsers. It is related to the "core messaging interoperability".

And making core messaging functionality interoperable is fairly not enough because we already know what they will do to lock users on their software: they will accelerate their planned obsolescence, will increase the complexity/size of their protocol (or open source software) in order to kill alternatives which cannot have full-time bazillions of devs.

Ofc, they will hide their malicious behavior behind words like "they have to evolve/adapt" or other security fallacies (I would not be surprise if corpos(=state?) paid hackers start to abuse the system in order to give corpos "good excuses" to trash interop), etc, well you get the picture.

Simple, but good enough to the do reasonably the job, stable in time is the way to regulate them.

Those guys are smart, their evil will be too.

> They forgot the noscript/basic (x)html interoperability for the web

Noscript has nothing to do with this.

They're smart, but the language of the regulation gives enforcers enough leeway to fine them for trying to pull bullshit like this. Using "bazillions of devs" to try to circumvent the spirit of the law would be an enormous waste of time and money. Hopefully they realize that before even trying.

That said, they are actually doing it for the web, and it is working.

I am more pessimistic than you about this since I am being hit hard by the web issue.

> They forgot the noscript/basic (x)html interoperability for the web.

I agree that interoperability on the web should be protected at least as much as on mobile, since the web as a platform has the potential to be more open than the tightly integrated mobile ecosystems.

Unfortunately, what that would look like in practice is harder to say, as I don't think governments could mandate "Semantic Web" versions of all websites, even though that would give true client choice and allow the building of complementary services.

My main disappointment with the legislation is that "core messaging interoperability" doesn't also require interoperability between social networks, since a Facebook user should be able to send a DM to a Twitter user, for example, and ActivityPub solves the more general issue of social network federation.

These regulations are precisely targeted to harm these monopolies, but ultimately they will also harm the small players trying to get into the market because of the huge compliance risk. So it is a double edged sword as we’ve seen this play out before.

The solution is to prevent monopolies forming in the first place and break them up quickly. And God sakes, stop approving mega mergers (facebook and Instagram? Lol. Google and YouTube? Double lol)

Despite this, I’m happy to see some action, but I’d rather set direct action against breaking them up.

>they will also harm the small players trying to get into the market because of the huge compliance risk.

You will be pleased to hear that the legislation has a floor defined for "Gatekeepers" as only those with a fair market valuation over €75 billion.

Didn’t notice that. Thanks for pointing that out. I can’t recall a recent piece of regulation that had that provision so this will be interesting to see if it works in reality.

It is arguably unprecedented, so I am also very interested to see how this plays out.

You will be extra pleased to learn that the DMA (this law) or it's cousin the DSA also has rules to restrict the formation of monopoly by limiting the ability of gatekeepers to buy out all competition even before the market dominance is established.

(As a side effect it'll probably result in fewer companies with unsustainable business models which are only funded to be bought out)

I'm looking forward to it and hope it'll work out.

Good to hear. Still too much complexity around laws and regulations, its easier to live in a cave.

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