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Comment by bsaul | Hacker News Reader

i don't understand how the EU didn't put up a very simple rule : users owns their phones and should be able to install any software they want without apple putting artificial restrictions or gateways exclusivity. Period.

That should remove all the possibilities of apple trying to find the loopholes with shit measures such as those "options".

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Or alternatively, that the manufacturer shall have no special privileges when it comes to software. The OS APIs needs to be public and if Apple can do something, someone else unauthorized should be able to do it also. This would also apply the play store privileges on Android, but that is a much less egregious violation than what Apple does.

They already did that.

Article 6(7):

> 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.

Would this mean that something like safetynet and the payment api need to allow 3rd party alternatives? That would be very good for the rooting/custom ROM community.

Google Play store has some exclusive privileges?

Yes, for example you can't allow an alternative app store to do auto updates on the background.

That kind of restriction is now gone https://www.xda-developers.com/android-14-new-apis-app-store...

No, not “period”. As if Apple wouldn’t attempt loopholes around that rule as well. What defines an “artificial restriction”, or what’s “gateways exclusivity”? Things need to have definitions and laws have contexts. No EU regulator is reading random internet comments and thinking “ah, if only we thought to put in that one random sentence from sword_punisher_69, it would’ve made the law airtight. Those arm chair regulators sure know their stuff”.

People in tech are in dire need of some humility. We don’t know everything, we don’t have all the answers, we can’t just jump into someone else’s job and immediately do it better. Is the law flawless? Probably not. Would all its issues be solved with one sentence? Definitely not.

The EU will still want to protect their capabilities to spy on people's phones, now, or maybe in the future. They will not want to mess with that by giving users too much control over their phone.

Your view of "the EU" as some sort of personified and consistent entity, is very naive.

This legislation is primarily pushed by commercial interests.

In the end it is always people making the decision. That is who "they" refers to.

But you are right, the EU should be much more unified and consistent. Also, have their own army that they could send into Ukraine to put Russians back where they belong.

Because the EU wanted to be able to target specific companies and not others. The way the DMA is written they can pick and choose to enforce it on whoever they want.

They can (and do) always pick and choose when to enforce the law.

But they wouldn’t be able to do that with OP’s suggested phrasing, which amongst other flaws calls out Apple specifically (and exclusively).

There are also security requirements imposed by regulation. A free for all would not be compliant as far as I understand. Also arguably not in the user’s interest.

No, they are not imposed, merely allowed, and only if they are “strictly necessary and proportionate”.

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