European DSA Recipients of Services Report | Hacker News Reader

European DSA Recipients of Services Report

apple.com

213 pointstech234a165 comments

> iOS App Store: 101 million

> iPadOS App Store: 23 million

Asserting that the iPad App Store is distinct from the iOS App Store - and totally isn't in scope for the regulations - is certainly a bold strategy.

I wonder why iTunes and Apple TV+ aren't included, and why Podcasts is only counting paid subscribers. Is there some obvious reason why these kinds of services would be out of scope?

I don’t think they will be out of scope, because they all uses the same AppleID backend and users can cross login with the same AppleID everywhere. To be out of scope, Apple would have to block iOS AppleIDs and iOS purchases from working on the other gadgets and stores.

They share the same AppleID backend.

But users don't have to use the same login for each store.

iTunes and Apple TV aren’t app stores.

The Apple TV App Store is listed.

That explanation does not work. The DSA isn't a law restricted to App Stores.

Also, podcasts and ebooks are not apps, but they listed their ebook store and podcast subscriptions platform in this disclosure. Why not the music store, the TV series and movie subscription service?

Apple says this is a list of their App Store user counts, and the things they’ve listed are their app stores.

Perhaps they’ll release those other numbers in a different document.

I can’t say why Apple appears to be doing things this way. I was only pointing out why Apple may not have included them here.

The explanation I see as relevant: the relevant portions of the DSA are about online platforms, which it defines as:

> ‘online platform’ means a provider of hosting service which, at the request of a recipient of the service, stores and disseminates to the public information."

For some content, particularly music, video, and some ebooks, Apple is the merchant of record. They are not acting as a platform for that content but as a traditional retailer. Compare this with the App Store, where Apple instead acts as a platform, intermediating the dissemination of information between non-Apple content providers and the public.

A service like Amazon would have this distinction as well. Some interactions are direct retail transactions between an Amazon entity and the public. At the same time, its Amazon Marketplace service provides a platform for non-Amazon sellers to disseminate information to the public.

Note that this is the Digital Services Act compliance, and not the Digital Markets Act which affects sideloading.

Yes I know, and they share the same AppleIDs/AppleID Backend/Purchages. These AppStores are not fully independent and have to be seen as one. Many Apps even share the same binaries and are cross Apple Device available. You can install iPhone Apps on iPads, and you can install iPad Apps on Macs.

That won't work on court.

> That won't work on court.

How do you know? If there was no chance of it working, you would think Apple's lawyers would have said so.

There is a reason why they bend over for EU's DSA.

They can view the stores as they want, but they know that per law they aren't distinct online platforms, as long their Userbase, AppleIDs, AppleID Backend, Hosting Services, Databases, iCloud Services, Apps, Games and In-App Purchases are cross-wired and shared between all Apple devices/stores. The DSA sees it as one(1) united Online Platform and would not care for Apple's Store breakdown.

This is just the typical Apple FUD: Without prejudice to further consideration of the legal characterisation, Apple views each version of the App Store as a distinct online platform under the DSA, and only the iOS App Store may qualify as a VLOP. Nonetheless, Apple intends, on an entirely voluntary basis, to align each of the existing versions of the App Store (including those that do not currently meet the VLOP designation threshold) with the existing DSA requirements for VLOPs because the goals of the DSA align with Apple’s goals to protect consumers from illegal content.

> This is just the typical Apple FUD

Thanks for including that prominently enough it made it easy to skip the comment without reading.

Eh, I get the position here. Different device classes, different markets.

I've gotten more than a few apps approved on tv, watch, Mac, iOS, iPad. They are distinctly different. As much as Apple is helping us leverage 'one code base to rule them all' there are so many gotchas and detail required to make great experiences on each.

I agree. Almost anyone of these one size fits all approaches hits a wall sooner or later. Besides very basic applications, I would never make use of frameworks like Flutter or React Native. Same goes for Windows Universal Apps. Great concepts, but not very feasible in reality for slightly complex apps with good UX.

Do you think it is worth the increased time to start out as a native app, or is it still worth rolling your MVP as flutter/reactive native?

IMO, roll your MVP with something like React Native, although it all depends how important the user experience is for your end users.

Snapchat built with some platform-independent UI toolkit would have felt kind of wrong, and the speed at which I've seen teenagers use it (this was years ago) shows that they would have been frustrated with anything that is slow-ish. I assume similar trends dominate for TikTok and Instagram today.

So unless you're attracting a very hip, fast-moving, perhaps even young-person's market, you probably just want an app that basically works and is available to folks on whichever phone they use. React Native, Flutter, Xamarin / .NET MAUI will all get you there.

This depends on the number of platforms you're trying to support.

iOS, Android, mobile web, Windows and Linux? Flutter or Expo.

I strongly disagree. This is just big companies artificially separating their market segments to argue against too large of a market, and preserve their enormous profits with their huge percentage take. The world would be much better off with multiple stores. It will take legal action by the eu, and it will be hard, these rich companies are very influential. In the us we have too much capture of federal politicans, I only hope the eu can push it.

I hope multiple stores shake a bit the iPad ecosystem. It's a great device and, unlike in mobile, there's no competition.

Android tablets are pretty bad. Google dropped the ball, although they seem to be coming back.

iPads could be fantastic devices to program in, but they are quite crippled by limitations.

Boutique software companies, such as Panic or Omni Group, plus other developers could really extend the ecosystem beyond content consumption and simple document creation tasks.

I believe that Google's ball drop with tablets has to do with that the phone manufacturers that Google partners with for Android are not as interested in tablets (likely using wifi) as they are with phones. Combine that with a lack of standardization and lack of focus for the tablet form factor... and that's what you've got.

The iPad, on the other hand was the original "this is what we want". The iPad was the first thing that Apple was trying to make.

> Work on the iPad itself actually traces back to 2004, when designer Jonathan Ive and others crafted a new tablet prototype. The product was originally supposed to ship before the iPhone, but the company came to decide the latter was more important, premiering it in 2007 using similar technologies.

( https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/03/a-brief-history-o... )

So from the very beginning with the iDevice, the idea of different form factors and sizes was part of how it was written rather than as a phone that grew bigger.

They've been trying to make the iPad since the Apple Newton. The tech to do it just wasn't there.

The desktop OEMs lament their inability to differentiate their hardware offerings. I had always wondered why some of them didn't see the opportunity to enter the tablet space on Android as a path to differentiation. The only risk I would imagine would be the potential cannibalization of their laptop lines, but that really shouldn't stop them.

The cannibalization is one part of it (compare Apple - https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-on-cannibalization-201... and https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/apples-dwind... -- Jobs reportedly said “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will.”)

The other part of it is that android has been poorly designed for the tablet interface. For an OEM to try to make a tablet out of android they would have to invest significant software development resources into what would amount to be a fork of android (compare Amazon Fire tablets). While they likely have some software developers, they probably don't have enough to maintain that amount of development on android (and always being behind with Google preferring phones).

... and even if they were close to parity with Android (and the challenge that would imply at trying to keep their devices up to date - with the largest investment customers would expect them to last longer) you would still have difficulties with the developers for Android aren't making things that fit well in the tablet form factor (Amazon was trying to bribe/incentivize developers to write for its form factor - https://readwrite.com/amazon-give-developers-rewards-build-f... ).

All that means that unless Google wants to do it and you're willing to go head to head with Amazon its probably not that good of an investment of time, reputation, and resources.

> Boutique software companies, such as Panic or Omni Group, plus other developers could really extend the ecosystem beyond content consumption and simple document creation tasks.

If that’s the case why hasn’t Omni or Panic written these apps already?

The 30% cut Apple takes is indeed large. But any new store will likely attract only a small fraction of all App Store customers.

Can you help me understand this better?

Owning an iPad, there's one thing I know it's missing that makes me feel that I can't really use it seriously for development. And that thing is that you can't publish an iPadOS app on the App Store that allows you to compile and run native code within the app. So while there are "cloud IDEs" for iPadOS; and there are local IDEs for interpreted languages (or which do sandboxed interpretation of otherwise-compiled languages, like the Swift Playground) for iPadOS; there are no local IDEs for iPadOS that actually compile and execute native code.

AFAICT, this restriction (and the one where no app but Safari can use use the Webkit JavaScriptCore JIT) is in place, because the alternative — allowing arbitrarily-badly-coded apps to do "dynamic native code injection" — would be a near-infinite wellspring of jailbreak exploit vectors.

But, insofar as Apple's own semi-manual QA process is required to preventing the publication of apps that include this kind of "dynamic native code injection", a third-party App Store would presumably not inherently have this same restriction (although individual third-party App Stores might.)

I'm currently on a four-person team developing/maintaining a popular React Native app. Working with React Native is awful, but having two of us doing Android and two doing iOS would be worse.

Yeah, sort of how Microsoft could argue that there exists two separate markets for Windows running on stationary compute devices and Windows for mobile devices. Except this is a sad joke and letting Apple get away with two devices running the same OS would be playing into their hand that they stacked years ago when they split them off. What is up with the enormous amount of people on this site who are inexplicably apologetic to Apple and other FAANG giants.

I don't think it's apologetic, it's two different approaches. MS has chosen to try to kill 2 birds with one stone, and Apple has allowed their devices to become more focused. As someone with an iPad, I appreciate Apple not trying to force that iPhone and iPad apps be the same thing. The experience is better.

This is hilarious considering that the classical, yet irrational, fear amongst long time MacOS users is that Apple might be secretly planing an OS convergence. This is usually perceived as doomsday for MacOS and have been feared by some for up to 15 years.

You are basically stating the opposite while completely ignoring the actual complexity of such an hypothetical merge for codebases that forked 15 years ago. They share a kernel and some API, but on the UI side recent cross platform framework are more like a proof of concept than a production ready thing.

Another thing that's hilarious[1] is in the Epic lawsuit Apple wanted to define the market as big as possible while here they define it as small as possible.

[1] not actually hilarious

Almost like the word "market" can mean different things in different contexts. Some people define it as the place you get produce... crazy!

Catalyst, fka Marzipan, definitely did not help alleviate the concerns that Apple would prefer for the operating systems to be unified.

Them pulling ill-suited features over to macOS, like the Control Center[0] and toggles, also give me pause.

[0] Which lives in the menubar, lacks any keyboard accessibility, and introduced bizarre new interface behaviors, e.g. multi-step dropdowns where you click inside the dropdown to navigate back. Ugh.

The OSes have been the same since forever. It's just the same macOS kernel, filesystem, and basic userland with different UI and a few different core libs (given the different form factor and hardware features needed to hook to).

Most of the same people that fear the convergence also ask for "iPadOS" and "iOS" to be more like the Mac (add mouse support, multitask like the Mac, and so on).

So what they do fear is the mythical "dumbing down" of Mac, as in the outcry when Logic got a different skin, and everybody losts their minds as if it's now "just Garageband Pro" (meanwhile it has never been more powerful). Same for FCP (where a few features were lost due to the rewrite, not for any dumbing down).

I mean convergence was a 100% goal internally when I worked at Apple 8 years ago. afaict they’ve been gradually bringing the experiences and software stacks closer and closer together and they’ve been locking down MacOS more and more.

Not sure why you see it as an irrational fear. What timeline are they actually working under / how are they prioritizing that convergence? I don’t know but it’s clear it will happen. I’m sure there’s a lot of unification going on of background services (radio stacks, security hardening, etc) in addition to more visible UI pieces.

The Microsoft comparison would be more like the Microsoft Store on Windows (the PC client version) vs. Xbox.

Would it? Xbox never ran Windows and never had access to Windows applications as far as I'm aware.

The App Stores share user accounts, send a shared invoice at the end of the month, and many of the apps you buy are compatible with multiple platforms (eg. my calendar app comes with an iOS, a watchOS and an iPadOS version).

And the store is called just "App Store" on every platform.

Claiming that I somehow used 3 different stores to buy a single app is an accounting trick, nothing else.

But does the iOS app run directly on the iPad? (with a good user experience?)

It does not run on watchOS without extra work, correctly?

I think their position is kinda defensible here. Yeah maybe with iPad/iOS not so much, but for the other devices, definitely

That's a weird argument. Are Aldi supermarkets the same, "no the one on 5th avenue sells vegetables in isle 5 and the one on 3rd they are on isle 2". It's still really the same and particularly they advertise it to be the same.

I think there should be a hard rule, that if companies try to sell something as the same to consumers, they immediately loose if they try to argue they are separate things when it comes to regulations.

But all Aldi stores sell the same stuff more or less

> "no the one on 5th avenue sells vegetables in isle 5 and the one on 3rd they are on isle 2"

But that's not what's happening here

Is an iPad app the same thing as an iPhone app? Or a watch app?

If an iPhone app took minimal work to work on the iPad, then I'd say it's the same thing, sure

You can literally run iPhone apps on an iPad and have been able to since day one. You can also run some iPhone/iPad apps on a Mac if the developer allows it. Often the iPhone/iPad apps are the same binary and the same purchase gets you both versions, you just get a different UI depending on the device.

I don't think it matter what the developers do on the backend. If I buy XYZ app for iPhone, does that mean I also have XYZ app for iPad (if its available)? If so, they feel like the same store.

That's an implementation detail that the dev needs to worry about.

As a customer, I go to the store page on one of my devices, it says the app is compatible with my device x, y and z. I click the "Buy" button once. Then I get the app on all my devices. I get a receipt that shows I purchased one item.

But what Apple is saying is that I somehow used 3 independent stores?

Thanks, I was not so familiar with the behaviour of the app store for multiple devices like that

And yes, if you click buy once and get 3 different apps, then I'd say it's the same store

Counting iOS, iPadOS, and macOS app stores as different is going to be challenged by the EU for sure, since their own marketing touts the 'unified app store experience' of buying once across all platforms.

> I wonder why iTunes and Apple TV+ aren't included, and why Podcasts is only counting paid subscribers. Is there some obvious reason why these kinds of services would be out of scope?

Probably because they don't exceed the 45MM MAU threshold.

> Online platforms with 45 million or more average monthly active recipients

Most of the services they listed were nowhere near the threshold, so that can't be it.

> iPad App Store is distinct from the iOS App Store

the whole idea that applications written in software shouldn't handle screensize differences (and dynamic changes) intelligently is just so broken. I get that feeling in the pit of my stomach like "who let these people in? is the door wide open out there?"

i mean, to each their own, that's just me, but that's how I feel software should be written, and while we're at it, give the user some input/options at runtime.

iOS/iPadOS does allow you to have one code base that dynamically responds to screen sizes.

But almost always the experience for iPad users is terrible.

Which is why Apple's initial approach of forcing developers to build distinct iPad apps was the right one and a large reason why its tablets dominated the market versus Android competitors.

> iOS/iPadOS does allow you to have one code base that dynamically responds to screen sizes. But almost always the experience for iPad users is terrible.

are you saying the tools aren't there for developers to create equally pleasing (mutatis mutandis) apps, or simply that the developers aren't able to create equally pleasing (mutatis mutandis) apps? Or that designers can't grok the mapping between their equally pleasing ideas and the tools available?

A phone and a tablet are just wildly different devices. Screen size —sure— but also usage patterns, input methods, workflow conventions, etc.

The “mutationes” that must be made reach deep into the functionality of an app, not just UI-level stuff. The whole purpose of the app should probably change. It’s therefore a big and challenging job to make an app scale seamlessly from one device to another. That’s irreducible complexity. The tools available will always be at best “necessary but not sufficient”.

I'd say it's on the other end. users can't find the apps which are properly designed for tablets, and get tired of wading through crap to find them. the tips are totally there, but if you search for, eg, python, you can be sure the iPadOS app is decent and designed for ipad, vs you have no idea if the Android app is actually pleasing on tablet.

That developers have the tools and can or cannot use the tools is secondary to that, imo.

There is no tool that can scale a mobile app to tablet size whilst maintaining a great UX.

You need to optimise for the particulars of each device.

Having worked on an app that, at least in my opinion, was pretty well done for each platform (phone and iPad), this is the case.

Our UI for the iPad was a completely separate one. The core code was shared via various internal libraries, but the UI was entirely different. Adding a feature to iPhone required one entirely separate set of code compared to the iPad app. The app was a universal binary though and one app ran on both device types.

This was, at the time, an absolute requirement. There was no way to scale the app from iPad to iPhone in such a way that it would give a great experience on both iPhone and iPad. It just wasn't possible to give an excellent app.

I've long since left and the app does seem to be written in SwiftUI now and seems to be one shared codebase. But I wouldn't say it's as good as it was previously.

If you're brave, you can configure views for all sizes (portrait/landscape/iphone/ipad) using XCode's UI Tool with trait based constraints. When you get it to work, it works quite well, animating changes when switching from portrait to landscape, but if things go wrong, it can be a massive pain to debug.

Software that dynamically changes to fit different form factors is difficult to write and rarely comes without compromises to the UX.

I prefer it when my iPhone and iPad apps have separate bespoke UIs that take full advantage of the different sizes and shapes.

writing software is about writing the hard-to-write parts one time, so that users aren't confronted with the anomalies all the time. Computers are our servants, we need to let them figure things out for users, and take care of the headaches, not simply declare "here, this is a headache".

yes, what you are pointing out is the challenge. solve it, don't slough it onto the user.

However, the same app can appear on different sized screens with different skins, it doesn't have to be a different app.

I'm not saying we should slough it on to the user. I'm saying there is no true substitute for hand tailoring your app for each platform you choose to support.

The iPad store didn't break away from the iOS store until 2019. The original app store came out in 2008, eleven years earlier. While you have as certain point, the division is meant to highlight apps which treat the iPad as a mini laptop, with a keyboard and pencil, vs just a bigger phone. If you've ever coded a website to resize, that's child's play. to actually get an app working properly across both sizes, you've got to put in significant work for each. For developers that don't want to put in that work *, listing in one or the other is fine, and possible Uber the current regieme.

* the developer for papers please's blog about the mobile port is indicative of the work that goes into supporting other screen sizes. Asking developers to have infinite time and motivation is just not realistic. also note that it took a few years for the mobile port to be released.

https://dukope.com/devlogs/papers-please/mobile/

This is not true. From the day that the iPad was introduced, you have always been able to sell separate iPad versions of an app then iPhone versions.

You can still do it without doing it well. That's probably not at issue so I think the parent is not false

> you've got to put in significant work for each

Even Apple themselves couldn't expend the effort to make an iPad version of their vaunted new Classical music app: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/03/apple-music-classical...

I like your comment and not because I polemically see this as correct compared to the other people who disagree with you. I think it is a good comment although I don't agree with you, so thanks, and (on second thought I suppose you comment frequently so I am not referencing any other comments in general but) happy to hear more of your sensibility in various threads.

To each their own indeed. I think mobile responsive design has crippled the desktop experience of software, particularly on the web.

Don't purchases literally work between the iPad and iOS stores in most cases?

I have one app that doesn’t have an iPhone equivalent - Duet.

But a developer can sell separate iPad versions of an app. Most don’t anymore.

It's worth noting that they assert still wanting to comply on the other platforms:

> Nonetheless, Apple intends, on an entirely voluntary basis, to align each of the existing versions of the App Store (including those that do not currently meet the VLOP designation threshold) with the existing DSA requirements for VLOPs because the goals of the DSA align with Apple’s goals to protect consumers from illegal content.

Yes, but the regulatory fee you pay annually is calculated by reference to the in-scope service(s)' userbase, so by slicing you reduce what you pay, and your rivals end up footing more of the cost (since it's a cost-share system). Well played, Apple.

Yeah, in the EU bold strategies are pretty expensive. But sadly Apple is a slow learner.

They wouldn’t base their strategy on numbers but function.

They are very different app stores. Only android is still in the world where a tablet app is a phone app zoomed in.

I think you’re conflating separate issues. There’s barely any difference between iOS/iPadOS/macOS app stores. I can ship the same app for iOS and iPadOS in the same binary even.

The issue you’re describing is just the lack of investment in adding multi-pane views to android apps.

There are still iPad apps that are essentially iOS apps zoomed in. X1 credit card app is something that comes to mind that I have to use

Fantastic, now Epic can use this as evidence for their inevitable appeal against the recent decision which decided exactly the opposite.

It's strange that the iPhone apps I purchased also work on the iPad. I don't have to buy them again.

How is it then a "different store"?

I'm surprised there are more Apple TV users than Apple watch users. It always felt like a fairly niched device.

On a somewhat unrelated side-note, as a hardcore Plex user for the last 5-6 years, Apple TV has been an amazing Plex client. Second only to a Nvidia Shield Pro downgraded to 8.2.3 firmware.

Honestly with the quality of their TV boxes, screens and the "ecosystem", I'm kind of surprised they didn't dive into the TV business.

I don't find this surprising. Apple TV probably has nearly 100% penetration of app store usage, you download your streaming apps as a necessity (Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Disney+ are all apps).

Meanwhile there's almost zero useful watchOS apps. The device is great out of the box and doesn't need much else.

I'm actually NOT surprised by this stat - keep in mind these numbers are the number of active users of the stores, not of the devices themselves. I've had an Apple Watch since day 1 but I can't remember the last time I went to the App Store on my watch itself. On the other hand, I have to use the AppleTV App Store once every couple months to download whatever app is required by the newest streaming platform the family want to use. I suspect most people are like me as well in that they use their iPhone to manage the "apps" on their watch (or, don't manage them at all), but are forced to download apps on the AppleTV periodically, which causes it to have higher usage stats.

> Second only to a Nvidia Shield Pro downgraded to 8.2.3 firmware.

What's special about 8.2.3 vs the latest firmware? I've only owned my Shield for a few months so I'm curious what I may be missing.

I think its about external storage: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShieldAndroidTV/comments/yjt6aq/wha...

Not really relevant if you're mostly streaming on the box or streaming locally from a file/plex server

I'm not sure either, are they referring to the shitty new home screen courtesy of Google? That comes in separate of the firmware.

Class action suit against Nvidia for effectively removing local Gamestream from the Shield. Mine's a $200 brick now.

[0]: https://www.classaction.org/news/nvidia-hit-with-class-actio...

I'm sad about this, because I use Moonlight for the same purpose, and there doesn't seem to be any good reason for this? It's just removing a feature.

They're moving to streaming your "Connected Apps" (Steam, EA, etc) through their cloud stream service now.

I'm mad since I only bought the Shield in September for the sole purpose of local desktop streaming.

I played around with Moonlight for about 15 minutes but have yet to get it work the same. I do love there's an open source solution but I'll probably be going with an AMD build for the first time in my life instead of Intel/NVidia because of this.

>I'm surprised there are more Apple TV users than Apple watch users.

I don't think these stats suggest that there are more Apple TV users than Apple watch users.

They say more people use the App Store on tvOS than use the App Store on Apple Watch.

As an Apple Watch user, I'm not surprised by that all. Why would I want to browse the app store directly on my watch? That's annoying and cumbersome. I do it on my phone, it's quicker and easier and therefore I assume that'd be counted as iOS app store usage.

And I also reckon most Apple Watch apps people use are companions to apps they installed on their iPhone anyway, rather than Apple Watch only apps.

Spot on, nobody uses the App Store on the Apple Watch, most people either never use third-party apps on the watch or only use companion apps which are installed alongside iOS apps

Family setup Apple watches are the most likely situation where people are browsing the app store from their watch. No companion iPhone.

I had zero idea there was an App Store on the Apple Watch until this thread. There's some neat apps listed on there - glad everyone in this thread talked about this!

Let me guess, you're using the grid view? :)

Wow, TIL there's an app store on the watch...

There’s a browser too…

It's much cheaper. Especially the non-4K models were dirt cheap for Apple products.

The Apple Watch will automatically install the watchOS app for each iOS app you install on your phone by default, if a watchOS app exists for the iOS app. I don't know if the auto installs count towards user visits to the watchOS App Store. I don't think I've ever used the watchOS store, and my watch is full of apps.

https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/get-more-apps-apd99e3c....

Apps aside, my house has two adults with Apple Watches and four TVs with AppleTVs. I don't think it's surprising that the aTV outnumbers the Watch.

Purely anecdotal but I know way more TVs with an Apple TV device than I know humans with an Apple watch. In most cases they are households with many TV-Apple TV pairings, and maybe one or two people in the household have an Apple watch.

Apple sells far more watches than AppleTVs by every estimate that you can find.

Apple TV (the hardware, not the streaming service) is so underappreciated. The smooth task switching alone makes it worth a buy. I think it's severely undermarketed.

And the old touch remote that so many people hated.. I like it so much.

(Haven't tried the newest remote that has a combined d-pad/touch area because of troglodyte customer feedback ( ;) ) but I suspect I will hate it since the touchpad area is so much smaller.)

Apple TV+ the streaming service too is under-appreciated, Severance is one of the absolute best tv work out there yet nobody’s talking about it.

Wow, they may 'sell' millions in the market, but many end up in a drawer, or rarely seen as anything other than a wrist worn notification device. This information is beautiful! Reaffirms the true value of these things.

(Well that, or the metric is truly skewed not including companion apps - though that would feel disingenuous)

I don't have Apple Watch, but have Garmin. I used the store once during the initial setup and I don't see why it should be different for AW users.

A lot of Watch apps also get installed through the attached iPhone when you install the associated iPhone app. I think it was the default, I turned it off, to have "Automatic Downloads" on for apps. So if that's still the default (or the present setting for the watch) then if you download Strava for iPhone you'll get Strava on your Apple Watch without ever touching the Watch App Store.

But it's still Watch App Store which installed and delivered the app right? And the developers must use it to give you the application?

Just because you didn't open the UI it doesn't mean the developers weren't forced to go through that app store to reach you.

This is the disingenuous piece if so - as in if the target is non companion iOS, then it’s watchOS App Store? That breaks the logic of the rest of the data disclosure

Most apple watch apps are installed and managed through the watch app on your iPhone not from the app store on the apple watch itself. I just checked and I've never even opened the app store app on my watch but I have configured dozens of 3rd party apps using the Watch app on my iPhone.

> I'm surprised there are more Apple TV users than Apple watch users

Anecdotal but everyone in my proximity that uses apple products have an apple tv. My mother, my father, etc. Very few have an apple watch. That’s like me and my developer friends or friends who are more nerdy about workout.

Note these counts are for *European* users. The Apple watch seems really successful in my American suburb but that may not be true in the EU.

You can thank me. I've been shilling the ATV to any friends or family I hear complain about their Roku/Fire Stick/smart TV.

I went through literally all of them before getting an ATV, even the Shield, because for a long time I refused to believe Apple could make a good TV experience.

And one with zero ads on the home screen. Something the shield now does by default :(

I would say it's more about accessibility of the store and what you can do with the device. There's not many games you can play on the Apple Watch, not many TV channel apps to download, I expect it's more to do with that than users of the device. They may well have sold more Apple Watches, but the Apple TV has sold less and there's more TV App Store users. This is totally over the top, but just as an example, what if 1% of Apple Watch users use the Watch App Store and 75% of Apple TV users use the Apple TV App Store.

It looks like Google has the same report, I hadn't seen it before.

https://transparencyreport.google.com/report-downloads

Less than 1% of European iPhone users have an Apple Watch, or am I misreading something? I really thought this percentage was bigger in such a rich place.

I interpret this to be users of the service, not users of the device the service supports. Most users probably don't open the Watch app store and use the iPhone app store instead.

Probably just mean the users visit watch store less often than they visit ios app store

This is monthly ??? Store users. Having an Apple Watch does not imply they use the Apple Watch App Store every month, or even any month. Even having an iPhone does not mean they'll use the iPhone App Store each month (though it's probably more likely).

What even is the Apple Watch store? Isn’t that just the iOS store?

> What even is the Apple Watch store?

Apple Watch App Store. It's an app store on the Apple Watch showing Apple Watch apps. Many of which, but not all, have an iPhone/iPad companion app.

We don't call them europoors for nothing!

(I'm a European myself)

All those riches are taken back as taxes. So while it sounds like europeans are rich it’s just on paper. But they take comfort in projecting their own status on similarly poor people from parts of europe that are developing faster but are bit behind since you know they only recently became free. It’s hilarious to observe and funny in a sad way.

Far better to live in a low tax, failed state with extreme economic inequality. At least we’ve got Apple Watches, am I right?

Depending on your circumstances, yes.

Circumstances can change real quick. One of the benefits of contributing to society is that, if that happens, you won't find yourself on the streets.

You are describing most European countries though, minus the low taxes part.

(I say this as a non american, so not really biaised in that way)

I would bet on this being more of a cultural preference thing. In Ireland, which would have broadly similar incomes to the wealthier continental European countries, you see quite a lot of Apple watches, but, yeah, they do seem much less popular in, say, Germany.

Anecdotal, but that seems about right looking at my circle of friends and acquaintances in Germany. I know lots of people with iPhones, but very few of them have an Apple Watch. The only ones that have one tend to be hardcore Apple fans that own pretty much every Apple device.

I don’t think it’s really an affordability issue but more so that most people (myself included) don’t really see the point of the device. Heck, I actually own one as a hand-me-down from a friend and I still can’t be bothered to charge and wear the thing.

Im addition I think Apple watches sort of have a stigma as an unfashionable 'nerdy' device here.

"Without prejudice to further consideration of the legal characterisation". I am using that in every conversation I have with my wife.

> Without prejudice to further consideration of the legal characterisation, Apple views each version of the App Store as a distinct online platform under the DSA, and only the iOS App Store may qualify as a VLOP.

LOL LMAO ROFL. I really hope there is some EU directive that this is breaking so they can be fined just for being asses.

Given that the definition of a VLOP is >45M MAU, and the iOS store is the only one that's even remotely close to being over that, what do you object with in this characterization?

Also you left out the very next sentence, which completely reverses the interpretation you're trying to imply:

I think the point is: App Stores for iPhone and iPads are in reality one and the same. Apple tries to artificially split them, so they can avoid regulations for at least one of them.

Show me where apple is avoiding regulations here

They’re not the same. You can’t install an iPad app on an iPhone. Only because most Apps for iPad also have an iPhone version doesn’t make them the same.

> the iOS store is the only one that's even remotely close to being over that

What iOS store? They're all one and the same. You can install iOS apps on iPadOS right?

It doesn't matter that they "voluntarily comply". They just shouldn't have the nerve to split them.

You can’t install iPad only apps on iPhone though.

you can if you check one checkmark during publishing of your iOS app (same with mac).

> your iOS app

How many of the 45 million users have ever touched xcode?

I think the point is that if your markets are defined by a toggle switch in xcode, it's probably arbitrary.

Is it though? Checking the box quite literally opens you to more users. If you have an iPad native app, your market is much smaller than if you were to allow it to be downloaded on iPhones. And supposedly you get access to 2 million users by deploying to the list of apps available on Apple TV.

Look at the Microsoft Store. It's one storefront - you buy Minecraft for Xbox online, you can download it on PC and Xbox alike. It is a single marketplace, despite hosting mutually exclusive platforms. The App Store's situation is nearly identical - all of these platforms share a kernel and a common API base (much like the PC/Xbox relation). The App Store just has a different set of arbitrary boundaries that seem to be re-drawn every time they receive anticompetitive scrutiny.

Put another way - how would accepting this as-is help regulators proceed? It's a finely-tuned joke, and if it didn't come with the olive branch of "illegal content moderation" then it wouldn't have been taken with a straight face.

> The App Store just has a different set of arbitrary boundaries that seem to be re-drawn every time they receive anticompetitive scrutiny.

Apple introduced the iPad in 2010 with the capability of selling different apps for iPhone and iPad. Back then, they didn’t have a framework for supporting screens of different sizes - which wasn’t introduced until around 2012.

They introduced the AppleTV that could have third party apps in 2015.

This was way before the EU started making up regulation because it can’t produce a viable tech company to save its life.

Can you please make your substantive points thoughtfully? We're trying to avoid shallow flamewars here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is a pointless gesture on part of apple. They know their artificial separation of stores won't fly with the EU but they still have to peacock around and pretend that they will comply because of their infinite generosity.

I suppose HN frowns upon this, but I find these attempts to save face ridiculous.

You've got the beginning of a good comment here:

> This is a pointless gesture on part of apple. They know their artificial separation of stores won't fly with the EU

but it starts to go off the rails again with this:

> they still have to peacock around and pretend that they will comply because of their infinite generosity.

That's not as bad as your GP comment but it's still veering into snark and lashing-out, which is the thing that most destroys curious conversation. It's the latter we're trying for here. If you completed that sentence more thoughtfully, we'd have an example of a good post advocating your view.

It's in your interest to do that, too, because it will make your arguments stronger and your comments more persuasive. The benefit of the snark-and-lashing-out thing is a short lived feeling (for you and whichever readers already agree with you); the benefit of the curious-conversation thing is much higher in the long run.

Wait, why is this a regulation? Why should a corporation have to disclose MAU? I’m holding off my cynicism, asking for a friend.

There’s fairly broad political pressure to regulate large players in online platforms such as Apple and Google.

As a result, the EU regulated online platforms. As is often the case, they aren’t stupid, and put more stringent requirements on large players than on smaller ones.

So, they have to know which players are smaller and which are larger. They chose to use number of active users as the way to measure whether players are large, with 10% of the population (45 million) a cut-off point.

That’s why they require all digital services companies to report # of active users.

(Aside: it turns out that Wikipedia is a very large online platform, too. See https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...)

To comply with section 24(2) of the DSA. You need to publish that information about your number of EU users.

Currently there's no strict rules on how you calculate or even necessarily the information you publish. Other than saying based on your calculation your number of users is below 45 million (in the EU). In the future there will be delegated articles on how the calculation must be done.

Obviously the regulation was made in comitee with team of lawyers but I expect the justification for "Why should a corporation have to disclose MAU?" is something like:

* The majority of businesses will with minimal work be able to tell the difference between having under say 4 million EU usere and having 45 million eureopean users so they'll know if they're in a range where they should be concerned about the regulations.

* If they're getting to a size where they have millions of users (in europe alone) they should have the resources to put in place logging/policy to figure out if they're approaching the 45 million EU users with more confidence.

* By making them publish a statement saying they've done what they believe is due dilligence on making sure the rules don't apply then enforcement becomes much easier. Auditing only needs to be done randomly on a handful of sites that declare they're just under the limit and on those who look like they are taking the piss saying they're well below the limit or seem to be growing but keep saying they're just under the limit declaration after declaration.

So these numbers are shown in Apple's case because it's in a companies best interest to show they're acting in good faith in working out these numbers (Especially since in Apple's case they're trying to differentiate the services so that they can try to reserve the right to not apply the DSA to some of those services in a possible future). Stating a number (or that you're well below the user limit) implies you've done a real calculation (i.e. I only get 44 million site visits from anywhere in the world every 6 months so I can't have 45 million EU users) and in the case of an audit where it's not the case shows you were acting maliciously/with gross negligence/with a calculation tha needs to be changed, making any enforcement much more justifiable.

Because many jurisdictions have regulations that target large corporations and large is objectively defined in the rules as some number of users. (I am using large loosely. EU defines very large as 10% of the 450M EU consumers).

EU statute has both monthly reporting, yearly and 3 year trends for determining specific applicable rules for large operators.

Example:

The regulation that Apple is trying to comply with EU Digital Services Act [1], [2]

The EU Digital Markets Act [2], [3]

(India) Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (updated 06.04.2023) [4]

(Germany) Network Enforcement Act [5]

(France) Law requiring large social media operators to remove hate speech, crimes against humanity, sexual harassment etc., [6]

[1]: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-se...

[2]: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...

[3]: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_...

[4]: https://www.meity.gov.in/writereaddata/files/Information%20T...

[5]: https://germanlawarchive.iuscomp.org/?p=1245

[6]: https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/actualites-accueil-hu...

This sounds like something I would expect from China.

> because the goals of the DSA align with Apple’s goals to protect consumers from illegal content.

An interesting gambit. It sounds like they want to concede to the regulators while using "illegal content" as the new boogeyman stopping people from freely using their device.

The freedom-loving part of me wants the EU to push the DSA/DMA further, damning all the "content" boogeymen that exist. The realistic part of me knows that this is an amazing deal for the regulator, a literal Golden Apple if you will. Apple is signalling cooperation here, and attaching it to a "think of the children/terrorists" sentiment that most politicians will jump on. It's a damn good strategy, and would almost be impressive if it wasn't used in a desperate struggle to stop the user from installing F-Droid on iOS.

It'll be interesting if the plot is twisted and instead the EU requires Google to limit Android to only Google Playstore.

It would be a hell of a pivot, but kinda unlikely given how the AOSP exists.

That would imply that Amazon app store or Samsung app store apps are illegal content. While they are not as popular in the US, these alernate apps stores have existed for years on android without issue.

> The freedom-loving part of me wants the EU to push

I'd expect that writing this phrase caused actual physical pain from the cognitive dissonance.

Why? A big part of governance is to ensure individual freedom: Minimum salary, unions, etc.

The comment seems to be perfectly congruent.

(Though you have to accept a more ... European world view)

Uhh, those are antithetical to individual freedom.

If I want to work for less than the minimum salary, I can't.

If I want to work at a company and not join a union, I can't.

As someone once said, "the true minimum wage is zero."

It is possible to be free in a society that restricts some personal freedoms. The libertarian extremist model that you're suggesting doesn't resemble a society at all, and it's mostly a testament to why we can't provide total personal or market freedom. Without being able to disincentivize bad behavior, everyone will race to the bottom regardless of altruistic intent.

> The libertarian extremist model that you're suggesting doesn't resemble a society at all

Prior to Woodrow Wilson, and more explicitly prior to Franklin Roosevelt's four freedoms[1] (specifically, the 3rd and 4th), most (legal) liberty was of that kind. Whether that's better or worse is arguable, obviously, but it certainly counts as society.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms

You're describing freedom as in anarchy, the parent is describing freedom as in liberty.

I am more free and able to use the software I want when the government forces Apple to unlock their devices even though it makes Apple less free.

I am more free to travel when everyone follows the rules of the road even though I give up some autonomy to do so.

I am more free to use wireless networks because everyone has to stick to their assigned bands even though I give up my ability to use other bands to do so.

I am more free to live and sleep because of noise ordinances even though it means I can't play loud music late at night either.

For people who value liberty, freedom means the ability to do the things you actually want to do. Social norms get enforced everywhere, even in the state of nature.

It appears to me that they're describing a negative liberty whereas you're describing a positive liberty.

From [1]:

> As [Iasiah] Berlin showed, negative and positive liberty are not merely two distinct kinds of liberty; they can be seen as rival, incompatible interpretations of a single political ideal. Since few people claim to be against liberty, the way this term is interpreted and defined can have important political implications. Political liberalism tends to presuppose a negative definition of liberty: liberals generally claim that if one favors individual liberty one should place strong limitations on the activities of the state. Critics of liberalism often contest this implication by contesting the negative definition of liberty: they argue that the pursuit of liberty understood as self-realization or as self-determination (whether of the individual or of the collectivity) can require state intervention of a kind not normally allowed by liberals.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative...

Anarchy would be without laws.

I am describing liberty.

There are people whose work is worth less than $20 / hour. If there is a minimum wage, those people are not able to work. So they don't have the freedom to work if they want to.

You are free to buy a phone from someone else if you don't like Apple's terms. Everyone at Apple is not forced to do labor to provide you something that they don't want to provide.

We have what are called "right-to-work" states which means that people in those states are not forced to join unions in those states. In other states, if there is a union at a particular workplace, employees are forced to join it, even if they do not want to.

> Anarchy would be without laws.

And you don't see laws as antithetical to individual freedom? Anyone bound by a law by definition is less free.

Paying someone less than what is required for them to live in the area they work reduces my individual freedom because I end up forced to pay the cost of your laborer through social welfare programs. When you buy anything including labor you pay for its cost not its value to you.

Is requiring food be safe to eat forcing someone to do labor they don't want to provide?

If you don't like that a workplace has a union you're free work somewhere else. Unionized workplaces aren't forced to provide you the benefits of collective bargaining without joining.

Liberty is way more complicated than you're making it and isn't fewer restrictions on individuals --> more feee.

In Denmark we have no mandated minimum salary and no mandated unions. You are free to work for 1cent an hour, if you want.

However, we do have the structures to balance power asymmetries. Most people are a part of a union and we do have a de-facto minimum salary (at around 20 USD).

Would that be freedom enough for you?

Sounds great. I've been to Denmark a number of times. Nice place :)

As long as there's no requirement to join a union it's cool if they exist.

The freedom-loving part of me also cheers on the Right to Repair, even though it isn't a truly libertarian ideal. Is there a problem with that?

Preserving individual freedom is what keeps the free market in check. It is precisely the thing stopping 1984 from being like 1984.

It's a balancing act between the negative freedom to be allowed to manufacture and sell a locked down device VS the positive freedom to install whatever software you want on the devices that you buy. I know libertarians skew very much towards the negative end, but they don't get to gatekeep the word freedom.

it’s cognitively dissonant to believe that regulations cannot create freedom

Apple tried their hardest to make non-iPhones "pedo phones", and they'll do the same thing here.

Non-App Store apps help terrorists, criminals, pedophiles, etc someone please think of the children.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com