I'm certain they have the best legal team that money can buy, but I'm equally certain that that legal team is under the sort of pressure that happens when a multinational corporation is looking at the prospect of possibly losing billions of dollars in zero-effort recurring profit. I also think these sort of behaviors are damaging their brand, which is certainly Apple's most valuable asset - which is to say that I think they're acting in an irrational way, because of the amount of money at stake.
I have a lot of Apple kit, and the Vision Pro is hugely tempting. Unfortunately, Apples’ shenanigans the past few years, starting with “we will scan all pictures you want to send to iCloud on your phone” which signalled to me that Apple feels fine about unilaterally altering our agreement whenever they feel like, have increasingly soured me on their brand to the point where we as a household and as a business were discussing to stop purchasing new Apple products and services. Their recent actions, both in terms of their Epic situation as well as their reaction to these new EU regulations, have cemented that decision.
Unlike every other cloud photo service, Apple invited community discussion before implementing it. Apple heard the feedback and didn't implement it, but people still criticise Apple as if they did. What should I conclude from this? That criticism of Apple is frequently false, disingenuous and devoid of context?
Pretty much every other comparable mainstream ecosystem has most of the same vices. Most are arguably worse in my opinion. Epic still haven't satisfactorily explained why they haven't pursued Sony or Nintendo with the same arguments.
Since there is only one alternative, I am going to assume that this is a rethorical question designed to invite a discussion about how the alternative is significantly worse in your point of view. Not an interesting debating technique, to be honest.
> Pretty much every other company with a mechanism to send photos to the cloud scans your pictures for CSAM right now and nobody cares. They've been doing it for many years.
There are alternatives available that don't do this, but again, your point appears to be written simply to elicit this specific reponse. Your "pretty much every other company" makes it clear that you are also aware that options exist.
> Nobody cares.
Your next paragraph indicates that, actually, a _lot_ of people cared.
> Apple invited community discussion before implementing it.
Not really. Apple made an announcement, and in the face of an absolute, unmitigated _shitstorm_ of criticism from pretty much _everyone_, they -after fighting an incredibly hard and expensive PR battle- grudgingly called a temporary truce and relented on some of the items they wanted to implement. To frame this as "Apple worked with the community and listened" is... fancy.
The point of that debacle, and this sub-thread, is that Apple is irrepairibly damaging their brand. In the "we will scan all your photos on your device to make sure the content is acceptable" story, they destroyed (literally forever, in the eyes of many people) their branding message that they were on _my_ side, when it comes to privacy and unwanted intrustion of all vendors, including Apple, into my device. That was literally the reason I switched from Android, and by retroactively changing that deal unilaterally on devices I already purchased, they instantly and irrepairably invalidated my only reasons for buying into their overpriced and closed walled garden.
In this new debacle with the EU and their -frankly- childish reponse they once again showed their disdain for their users.
Apple sucks.
Devolving a discussion into meta commentary about debating techniques is not an interesting debating technique either. There isn't only one other alternative to the Apple ecosystem, I was asking an actual question. It wasn't a rhetorical question. But even if it was, are you seriously saying that rhetorical questions are a point of criticism in persuasive writing? Seriously?
Then you want to take issue with "Nobody cares" as though it was intended to be literal rather than idiomatic. For the record I was being idiomatic. I hope this clarifies things.
As for your alternative interpretation of what went down in the great Apple CSAM scanning controversy, none of what you said strictly conflicts with what I said. The core facts aren't in dispute, but I accept that people interpreted motives differently. Do you seriously think Apple would have made a big song and dance about their proposal around CSAM scanning if the intent was to implement it regardless? (Apologies for the rhetorical question.) Obviously they wouldn't have. They would have just subtly changed the license terms and implemented it without telling anyone.
It's amazing how quickly people forget why Apple wanted to implement the initial fingerprinting stage on-device, rather than in the cloud as all their major competitors had already done. Disdain for users' privacy, really? Nothing could be further from the truth. The whole point of doing it on device was, as I'm sure you remember, protecting privacy by having industry standard scanning while remaining compatible with end-to-end encryption.
I think the reason why people are angry at Apple in spite of their climbdown is because Apple did a lot of damage announcing it the way they did.
Far from "inviting a debate" on how or whether this can be done in a safe and privacy friendly way, they made an announcement explaining exactly what they were going to do and how it was going to work.
The message was received loud and clear by politicians who are up against critics disputing the technical feasibility of surveilling the entire population in a safe and privacy friendly way.
Apple has dealt a hammer blow to privacy advocates. The effects of Apple's announcement have been percolating through parliaments and law enforcement agencies all over the world ever since.
Add to that the effects of Apple's side-loading ban, which is hands complete control over what software people can and cannot install to authoritarian rulers across the planet, their decision to hand over Chinese iCloud operations (including encryption keys) to a state owned company, and their willingness to make questionable security claims in defense of their own business model.
The picture that emerges is not pretty.
At the same time, Apple provides privacy protections to hundereds of millions of people who would not otherwise have them - realistically speaking.
If mobile OS competition was between Google, Microsoft and Samsung, there would not be a setting to blanket disable all tracking requests. Markets often end up in an equilibrium where certain choices simply don't exist.
Regulating this space without doing more harm than good is very difficult. We're going to have to wait and see whether the EU has done a good job this time.
The olden days equivalent of the HN crowd (Slashdot? Kuro5hin?) hated Microsoft's behaviour but had to build on their platforms because there wasn't an alternative that would pay the bills. So Microsoft kept raking in profits and probably thought that everything was OK and there wasn't an issue.
But that ill-feeling meant that as soon as an alternative emerged (in this case Apple, powered by open-source, Unix, the web - and later smartphones with the iPhone and Android) there was an exodus and Microsoft's attempts to regain ground (IIS, Windows Phone) were widely ignored.
Apple is on the same ground now (and I say this as an Apple-lover). They are pulling in huge amounts of money through their behaviour but I have no doubt, as soon as an alternative appears (probably through some platform shift) they will come to regret it.
UPDATE: and it would be ironic if the Vision Pro was the thing that triggered the platform shift. If the Vision Pro works well as a Mac alternative (a proper productivity environment but with an infinite screen), once others implement the same idea effectively (and maybe not quite as well as Apple has) it could be the catalyst for developers (and hence apps) jumping ship.
> So apple responded by allowing developers to apply to place exactly one text-only (non-hyperlink), static, reference to an outside payment source on one page in an app
They allow an actual button that links directly to a website[0]. I mean the article by Apple that describes the terms and options literally is titled “Distributing apps in the U.S. that provide an external purchase link” and there a plenty of examples provided.
> and further added a new term that developers must also pay Apple 27% of all revenue from these off-site purchases.
Both the district court[1] as well as the appellate court that later affirmed the ruling[2] spelled out in clear plain language that developers would still owe Apple the commission, that Apple would be able to audit developers and that it’s all legal because its payment for the use of Apple’s IP. Only difference is that the courts assumed Apple would simply charge 30% instead of the discounted 27%.
Some examples:
> In essence, Apple uses the DPLA to license its IP to developers in exchange for a $99 fee and an ongoing 30% commission on developers' iOS revenue.
> As the district court noted, in a world where Apple maintains its distribution restriction but payment processing is opened up, Apple would still be contractually entitled to its 30% commission on in-app purchasers. Apart from any argument by Epic, the district court "presume[d]" that Apple could "utilize[e] a contractual right to audit developers ... to ensure compliance with its commissions."
> Because the court upheld the app-distribution restriction, Apple would still be entitled to its 30% commission on in-app purchases within apps downloaded from the App Store. On its own initiative, the district court floated the idea of Apple permitting multiple in-app payment processors while reserving a right to audit developers to ensure compliance with the 30% commission.
> Suffice it to say, IAP is not merely a payment processing system, as Epic Games suggests, but a comprehensive system to collect commission and manage in-app payments.
> First, and most significant, as discussed in the findings of facts, IAP is the method by which Apple collects its licensing fee from developers for the use of Apple's intellectual property. Even in the absence of IAP, Apple could still charge a commission on developers. It would simply be more difficult for Apple to collect that commission.
0: https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...
1: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...
2: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2023/04/24/2...
Kinda the way Apple doesn’t want to pay ATT for the same thing.
I think you're vastly overestimating how much people outside of the HN crowd cares... or even knows what you're talking about for that matter.
Being a Mac user since the 90's, it is unfortunate what Apple has become. However, this is often happens when a charismatic leader leaves the company (in one way or another). From what is seen in the the process of how so many startup at YC went from little company to transnational corporation, and what people's reaction to them have changed over the course of the year as well as the influence of funding and corporate culture has on a company are also very telling.
Now days I'm sticking to linx BSD F-Droid for personal stuff even though they are not as user friendly in the UI aspect.
It has everything to do with when a company is an outsider it tries to be consumer friendly, but then when it becomes the dominant player then it adopts all the characteristics all dominant players do of trying to attract as much rent from their business as they can, users be damned.
This has absolutely nothing to do with a charismatic leader or founder.
Steve Jobs was notoriously the most hard-ass negotiator you'd ever meet. The way Apple is dealing with the EU here is probably exactly how he would have done it, or maybe he might have been even worse.
He created incredibly user-friendly machines, but in the business world he was incredibly ruthless.
When you come from a place of "We have all the right answers and your views don't matter" like how Steve Jobs operated, you can see the harm that mind set is causing in the world today.
The right term for this is malicious compliance.
Not only does it happen all the time, it's often the only way to sort out what legislation means in practice.
A US-centric perspective, stereotypically, would be like 'my Starbucks coffee is too cold, I am suing'. You can have common law without sue-happy individuals.
No, the judges rule with what they have, based on the case’s specifics and the "legislator’s intent" underpinning existing law.
Although it does not become law, their ruling can be used as precedent in later similar cases, until the legislator catches up.
Likewise in civil law the judge isn't simply a referee, they're meant to actively investigate. While in common law lawyers get to do a big show by asking various questions, in civil law the questions are asked by the judge and the lawyers only exist to make an argument.
For people, yes. For businesses, absolutely not.
In the EU Apple could have sorted this out with regulators without having to involve lawsuits and legal proceedings.
Unfortunately Apple has a strong deeply held conviction about its walled garden which it’s unwilling to compromise on.
Tim Cook’s hundreds of millions in salary/bonus are dependent on Apple being able to extract a 30% cut out of the entire app and media ecosystem.
Apple will as shown here do their best to comply the least with the intent of the legislation, but it's up to the legislators if it is acceptable.
E.g., if notarization turns out to be used for central gate keeping by declining specific apps in the human review step or by using it to impede the process for apps intended for third-party stores, that would be a violation.
So there can be multiple layers to this, and ultimately I don't think the EU really works as a robust legal system any more, there are so many politically driven cases where the courts follow the politics not the law.
Unless you also want to argue that the Irish courts are compromised of course.
"The first thing to note is that no one — including Apple — knows if this plan abides by the DMA. This is, unfortunately, par for the course for the European Union. Regulations are passed that insist on certain outcomes, with various carve-outs and definitions, and it is up to the companies impacted to figure out how to meet them; only then do the powers-that-be decide whether or not said company is in compliance. This is, needless to say, an insane way to write regulations, but when you consider the E.U.’s insistence on contradictory end goals — increasing competition while insisting on an absolutist approach to user privacy, for example — you can understand how the burden ends up falling on companies to come up with their own solutions. This also, needless to say, opens up the door to massive loopholes (like the fact that Apple believes it can still enforce App Tracking Transparency restrictions on apps not in the App Store)."