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Gruber never pretends to be objective - he likes what he likes, and he dislikes what he dislikes. Notably, he has a pretty strong "pro-business" streak in him that objects to anything resembeling workers rights or unions, and government regulation/interference in businesses.

The EU tends to do a lot of that, so overall he's very critical of it. And at the moment there's a lot of governments telling Apple what to do, so it's the perfect storm of getting his knickers in a twist constantly.

I don't think I've seen him do opposition to workers rights / unions? He hasn't been constantly yelling about supporting them either, but that's different.

E.g. a quick google for "daring fireball unions" turned up mostly articles like this one which were pro union-demands: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/11/24/wirecutter-unio...

Closest to a negative I found in that quick search was him making fun of the Maryland Apple Store union that was asking to be allowed to request tips from Apple Store customers... while also saying that the rest of their demands sounded like good things to ask for.

Oh man I had forgotten about that.

Have you actually looked into the claims of the US case? Some of their statements are completely incorrect and they don’t even try to address what most commenters on HN seem to care about

He and Ben Thompson are very consistent. If the government wants changes in the way that Apple and other tech companies operate - pass laws - like they did in the EU instead of trying to make up definitions and facts based on a law that was passed almost 100 years ago

Yes I have. But that’s completely irrelevant because I’m not a lawyer.

Ben Thompson and Gruber are not lawyers.

Lawyers I’ve followed have not found any mistakes though they do think some stuff is pushing it, but that’s completely normal and how all such cases work.

You have a core case on which you add a bunch of stuff. Because, one, you expect stuff to get thrown out, but more importantly these cases are rarely litigated to the end. They’re settled. So you put more in, even the slightly weaker stuff, so you can compromise on it during negotiations.

I wouldn’t have know this stuff, which is why I don’t pretend to know this stuff. Unlike Gruber and Thomson. Instead I follow lawyers online and speak to friends who are lawyers who have a better idea of what’s going on.

The ridiculous part of Gruber’s assertions is because he hears about these things only when Apple is involved he seems to think they are unique or new. That’s why his insinuations in a couple of posts that the EU actions were to punish American companies and protect European ones. If he had half a clue about this area he would have known that the EU has fined way more European companies than it has companies from the rest of the world put together.

However, Andrew Sharp, Ben’s cohost on SharpTech was a lawyer and he also says that the judicial system is not the way to go and they should pass laws.

But you don’t have to be a lawyer to know the statements of fact are in correct as far as the technology.

They also condemned EUs ruling against Facebook where Facebook can’t even give users a choice of having an ad free experience by paying.

I have no problem paying money for stuff I want. I think that’s an honest transaction.

On Dithering, Gruber commended the EU for actually passing a simple law forcing Apple to open up NFC and the USB C mandate for iPhones instead of dragging it through some arcane legal doctrine. He didn’t necessarily agree with the law. But it was at least straightforward and honest.

But even if you aren’t a lawyer - the things that most HN users care about were not addressed at all in the lawsuit. For instance there is no mention of the App Store at all except concerning NFC, cloud gaming (that Apple has already addressed) and whatever apps are called with other embedded apps.

And no one in the Apple commentary community thinks the anti steering provision for Spotify and Kindle and Netflix etc is legitimate nor the former ban on cloud gaming.

Right now I’m listening to the Talk Show podcast with Gruber and Jason Snell (former editor in chief of Macworld) and they aren’t giving Apple a pass at all for the three items I mentioned

Excellent points.

> For instance there is no mention of the App Store

In fact the DOJ would have likely had issues doing that given Apple’s recent victory in that point against Epic (whatever you think of it).

The fact that the DOJ may be able to win the case does not make an antitrust case like this the correct way to legislate how we want companies to operate.

It would be SO MUCH SIMPLER to just pass a law that says “sideloading has to be legal, easy, and free”. That’s all it would take.

Or maybe “all cell phones must support RCS.”

But not only have we not done that, the lawsuit against Apple for being a monopoly on the App Store was won by Apple. A court said they are legally in the clear. Apple already said they were adding RCS before this whole thing started.

So the DOJ has come up with a bunch of issues, some of which that don’t even seem relevant anymore, in an attempt to draw out concessions from Apple in a settlement to get what they couldn’t get through previous court cases. Or perhaps win a verdict and charge them a whole bunch of money for stuff that doesn’t matter all that much because again, some of the stuff they seem to be really mad about Apple already won on in another trial.

The DOJ is supposed to be about enforcement, not creating the laws. This is not how this process should be working. And as Gruber and others have pointed out, if you have to twist a bunch of hundred plus year-old laws to try to come up with a case to do something that could’ve been done with a single stroke of a pen… maybe that’s what you should’ve done instead.

I haven’t seen anyone saying who is arguing that Apple should 100% get out of all of this and they’re not doing anything wrong. Gruber and many others in the app world have been saying for years that Apple’s blatant greed is going to get them a smack down, and they’ll lose some of their good policies along with the bad.

People are arguing that the lawsuit doesn’t seem well-made and that it shouldn’t how the government accomplishes its goals in the first place anyway.

Laws like you propose tend to age poorly. RCS is incredibly consumer-hostile (e.g., there is no end to end encryption unless you use Google’s data-harvesting stack on both sides).

Similarly, requiring side loading could preclude new classes of devices.

Usually, the laws are written more vaguely for this reason. I think the big change we need to make is to say that anti-trust laws apply whenever N or fewer organizations control over X% of the market. I think N=3 and 75% would be good starting points.

Among other things, this would open up licensing and cell plans on 5G modems.

It would also mean that the google app store and apple app store both have monopolies over cell phone software resale and distribution.

(Google’s “android is open source and supports side loading” argument wouldn’t matter in such a regime, unless that meant that consumers and device manufacturers could reasonably expect degoogled android to actually run android apps and stuff, and that over a quarter of the market actually did so).

> Laws like you propose tend to age poorly.

And court cases don’t?

There was a court case against IBM over anti trust that started in 1969 and it was finally dropped in 1982 because the world has moved on.

One of the issues in the current case is already irrelevant - Cloud gaming that Apple has addressed.

Another issue was whatever you call the mega apps. Apple has allowed that for years and Microsoft, Google and Facebook all moved away from the mega app into smaller apps.

I think you should reconsider your judgement on the EU ruling being good.

If you can’t argue the EU ruling is bad (and not because Apple is greedy or shortsighted etc), you are missing something.

Apple has a vision - the EU has a vision and they do not align.

The EU is poor. It has been mismanaging itself for years: they should be doing better than they are. Is this caused by outside vectors or the leadership, or maybe the structure (too many cooks in EU kitchen)?

Is the vision of the world the EU wants 15-25 years out strong?

Is the world the EU would create good for the EU - 30 years out? I’d argue it’d be a comfortable one. But a poor and weaker one.

I’m not trying to defend Apple. I’m trying to say that the EU leadership is likely bad - my hunch is anyone truly good would work in the state department of the respective nation.

Kinda like how UN ambassadors for the US are never our best - our best maybe might once in a blue moon take the post like a retirement phase.

Now take the ruling, are you sure they made a smart long term move?

I don't know what "ruling" you're talking about. The DMA is a law, and it will be enforced despite Apple pretending to comply with it. There's nothing like a judicial proceeding as yet, much less a ruling.

This really underscores the point, and it's not just Gruber and random internet commenters opining on EU law while having zero clue about it, it's also Apple fans I respect like John Siracusa and Jason Snell who have a lot of opinions without familiarizing themselves with the facts.

Gruber had Jason as his guest on the last episode of The Talk Show, just to give some context to both of their arguments.

At the very least, they seem to agree that issues with the DMA - and the US DOJ case - stem from the idea that these lawmakers fundamentally misunderstand Apple's approach and why customers choose iOS, macOS, etc.

Tl;dr, the integration is the point and these legal challenges pose the idea that this approach doesn't comport with the law as written and should be disallowed.

That sounds like critical understanding failure on what DMA is about, what law is about, what EU is and is about.

If, by that you mean:

1. The EU passed a law that was too complicated for its own good and... 2. Is a law that isn't practically enforceable 3. Lastly, is largely incompatible with how US public companies operate - welcome to Capitalism, it's how the world works...get used to it.

If market forces mean people either choose piracy to get what they want (Napster), that's one thing and regulation can help with that. However, the idea that you can't build a closed ecosystem that operates how you want - before you even get to shareholders in a public company - because this imposes restrictions on citizens, is a weird way to look at the world for a region that is - nominally - still capitalist.

> The EU is poor. It has been mismanaging itself for years: they should be doing better than they are. Is this caused by outside vectors or the leadership, or maybe the structure (too many cooks in EU kitchen)?

> Is the vision of the world the EU wants 15-25 years out strong?

> Is the world the EU would create good for the EU - 30 years out? I’d argue it’d be a comfortable one. But a poor and weaker one.

The EU vision isn't just about economy and making money. This is something that the US will never understand because money and unrestricted capitalism is the only thing that counts there. The US truly doesn't understand that any other model can work, because the only way they measure success is $$$.

Whereas we in Europe care more about quality of life, a safety net etc. Our bank accounts are a means to that end but not a goal in themselves.

Of course Europe is quite different depending on the area with Netherlands and the UK also very neoliberal but most of the other countries are way more moderate.

I often get this disconnect even with my Dutch friends. They don't understand why I won't move back to Holland as I could make twice as much there in the same role. But the cost of living is also higher and more importantly the quality of life is much lower. People in Spain truly enjoy life much more.

For example during lunch a Dutch person would have a quick sandwich at the canteen so they can head off home early and beat the traffic jam. They always want to have the prettiest house and the fanciest car and work hard for it. So hard they lose time to enjoy those things. In Spain we go for lunch to a restaurant to have a three course meal with a glass of wine and after work we often grab a beer or two and sit in the sun. Most of my colleagues don't even own a car.

Life feels way more real to me here.

I don't think "Spanish people get to be alcoholics" is enough proof that a system works where you need to have the same currency as a poorly run country like Greece or, at this point, Germany.

(Germans are psychotically high trust and seem to just believe anything anyone tells them, like "you should shut off all your nuke plants" or "Russians are really nice and it's fine to buy all your energy from them" or "you should sell your robotics companies to China" or "you should never ever run a budget deficit".)

It's not really about the drinks and many people don't have the wine or beer. I just included them as a way to describe the informal nature. At lunch we only ever have one (in France even the canteens serve wine, it's quite normal). And we don't do it every day :)

It's just about enjoying life being the primary goal, not amassment of material goods.