Who decided the iPhone is a general-purpose computing device?
Seriously, what site are we even on right now?
Or did you mean just running ARM Assembly?
...or a sufficently advanced browser :p (and people wonder why MacOS is loaded with lazy Electron ports...)
Distributing software should be free, ignoring the cost of transmitting the information and storing it on the client. Apple's pricing is arbitrary, and their defense of it is unsubstantiated. Forcing the App Store to compete is the only natural step forward for Apple, whether they (or their shareholders) want to admit it or not.
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.
For a certain demographic of people, I would agree. I continue to push the iPad for my aging parents because it can do what they need to do without my tech support. They don't need all the flexibility of a computer as a general purpose computing device. They just need to browse the web, write emails and watch videos, and the iPad is perfect for them.
Any questions, or do you still want to whinge over how "turing completeness isn't computation!"? You're welcome to it, but quite obviously the Digital Markets Act has nothing to do with it. Apple would be a designated gatekeeper if they sold Cuisinart blenders, now they have to cope or leave the relevant markets.
It's truly shocking to me how some people are willing to write multiple pages of comments in response to this. Half the people in this thread are replying to every positive comment they can find crying "Atlas Shrugged!" like bloody murder.
I don’t think the DMA will change much but do find it funny how many people think they are defending human freedom by getting a convoluted process to run emulators, uBlock, and piracy apps on their phone.
So... what's a better way to defend human freedom? Letting market conditions deteriorate further?
Tell it to me like you're trying to convince the European regulators, not like you're sitting across from Tim Cook. Petty solutions are a non-starter.
How exactly are they different from Apple, then? Why didn't Apple resist their incorporation into FIVE-EYES and Europe's surveillance network?
> If I were them, I’d say their best chance at defending human freedom would be to make nuclear reactors easy to build
That's the Free Market's job. If the world's largest company was a nuclear reactor business and not a smartphone one, maybe they'd be doing it.
> This will end up being as useful as GDPR privacy notices and cookie consents on websites.
Or as effective as their USB-C regulation. Time will tell, eh?
Because Apple sells the highest security mass market consumer device ever made? Because Apple brought easy to use, end to end encryption to the masses with iMessage?
No clue what your point here is besides regurgitating some non-specific conspiracy theory about the extent of Apple’s cooperation with the government.
> That's the Free Market's job.
Regulation is not the free market’s job, as you evidently believe since you are so excited about digital markets regulation.
Maybe they could start by not categorizing wood pellets shipped across the Atlantic and produced from strip mining forests in southeastern United States as “green energy.”
> Or as effective as their USB-C regulation
How was USB-C regulation effective? Yeah Apple complied, but are customers’ lives better? In aggregate? By what metric? I for one had to buy a new iPhone cable for the first time in half a decade to connect my phone to my car. By its stated aims, the regulation was not effective in my case.
https://twitter.com/trunarla/status/1706760798662758517
I suppose hackers really are digging EU regulation in this area!
https://twitter.com/trunarla/status/1706766113672212932
Gamers too?
This argument may not be worth continuing if you don't have anything left to say.
Me: By what standard? In my specific case, it wasn’t.
You: Blah blah blah burden of proof hierarchy of disagreement.
So do you have any citation or do you plan to keep deflecting? So far, my anecdote has been the only evidence provided about the matter, even if it’s weak which I already conceded.
Deflecting what? Nobody here cares about your metric of success, which so far seems to be substantiated on the same marginal frustration that people felt with the 30-pin to Lightning switch. Nothing you have presented suggests a populist rejection of USB-C. If anything, it's actually much more popular than Apple's standard.
> How was USB-C regulation effective? Yeah Apple complied, but are customers’ lives better? In aggregate? By what metric?
...did you miss all those links of people plugging their iPhones into displays and class-compliant devices? People programming and gaming and working with standard audio equipment using a single cable, like they should have been able to do from the start?
Customers lives are great right now. People who own non-Apple products like the Nintendo Switch or cough cough a Macbook can now charge their iPhone using the same cable. Households that avoid Apple products waste less money and material owning and buying cables for one device. Lack of MFi certification means that the cheap cables don't have to be built like shit. Hell, the simple fact that you can break the connector to remove it from your phone instead of taking it to the Genius Bar so you can get the whole IC board replaced.
I'm sure it's frustrating for Apple, losing out on the licensing fees and killing their dream of owning a serial standard. Sucks to suck.
Citation: Apple
> Regulation is not the free market’s job, as you evidently believe
Innovation is. The European Union was not founded to build a better Nuclear Reactor (nor would it tangibly impact their citizen's freedom). Regulating the market those citizens participate in does. I'm not so sure why you're complaining about this so much. If Apple's self-righteous crusade to own all digital IP was truly worth it, they could abandon Europe and continue on. But it's not- for one because they value money, and for two because they already work with FIVE-EYES and every domestic European nation to surveil on their users. No conspiracy, Apple documents it themselves: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/
> I for one had to buy a new iPhone cable for the first time in half a decade to connect my phone to my car. By its stated aims, the regulation was not effective in my case.
Cope.
It's a democratically passed bill to protect a market from extensive damage. Here are the people who voted for it: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/242706/IMCO%20Voting%...
Again, if Apple shared your opinion then maybe they'd call Europe's bluff. Again, Apple is chronically incapable of doing this because it would mean being eaten alive by shareholders that make $DIS owners look rational. Leaving the European market would be the trigger-pull of Apple's suicide.
> and now all they can do is nitpick connectors
...you're still mad about a $4 gas station cable? Seriously?
> and firmly demand that Apple support something almost no users care about.
"Why is the United States wasting their time with these Rockefeller people? They're coping over things the unbridled success of Standard Oil, pushing legislation that none of their customers care about!" - imagine the free market with a bunch of yous at the helm.
One can believe regulation is counterproductive while complying with it. Compliance isn’t evidence of success.
> you're still mad about a $4 gas station cable? Seriously?
USB-C is the last connector I’d cheap out on for my personal electronics, given its tendency to fry devices. In any case, the rationale for standardizing the connectors was that buying cables was an environmental and anti-consumer catastrophe, which is hilarious for a continent that imports wood pellets from across an ocean to heat homes. Suddenly me having to buy one is no biggie?
(I’m not mad, I’m perplexed.)
> imagine the free market with a bunch of yous at the helm
It’d be much better. I actually care about asking if regulation is productive and effective. You seem to be focused on whether it’s a sick own and think people who question efficacy are “coping”.
For example, I commented elsewhere in this thread that Apple’s requirement to only rent Macs for 24 hours at a time in VPS services is silly and shouldn’t be enforceable.
As annoying as it is to call it out, that’s a classic whataboutism right there.
If I could facepalm any harder, my hand would pass through my skull and hit the wall behind me. Your definition of success is relative, and judging from every piece of evidence you have presented so far, it's also quite petty. Not the same definition of success the EU is using. So... you're welcome to disagree, but nobody is using your metric of success.
> Suddenly me having to buy one is no biggie?
Quite literally, yes.
> It’d be much better.
I'm going to tear my hair out. This is the reason nobody takes you seriously.
> I commented elsewhere in this thread that Apple’s requirement to only rent Macs for 24 hours at a time in VPS services is silly and shouldn’t be enforceable.
Congratu-fucking-lations. Next you're going to have some prophetic vision that their relationship with China is somehow harmful, or that the Butterfly Keyboard hurt your fingers. Maybe you are the expert market correspondent you claimed to be, shuckles.
> You seem to be focused on whether it’s a sick own
You know what? I am. Apple spent the last 10 years playing their own game of sick ownership, now it's only fair that they should be forced to choose between first-world market access and fair play. If you want to question the efficacy of user freedom, use actual examples and arguements. Here's the chart again if you need help: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qgQR5VUoGDU/UzV5nP4xKnI/AAAAAAAADo...