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Comment by lucianbr | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure they stop being "Apple's own devices" when they sell them. Selling means change of ownership, no? Though I expect that both Apple and Apple fans don't agree with this definition.

As long as they don't sell them in the EU, of course they can put whatever they want in "their own devices".

Also, you're obviously a fan of Apple. Nobody neutral would frame the discusson this way, "their own devices". Like Tim Cook is building some phones in his garage for his own usage. The whole reason for all this is that the citizens that buy the devices don't get all the benefits of ownership.

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I do use Apple devices, I'm not a fan of Apple as a company for many reasons.

Though just because I don't like a company doesn't mean that I can't agree with them at one point.

EU shouldn't have right to decide on a company's own design. (Unless it's medical, military etc.)

I wonder how well Apple would sell phones if radio spectrum was unregulated and anyone would be allowed to design and build devices that emit radio waves on any wavelength at any power. After all, this is the world you want, where governments aren't allowed to decide companies' designs.

My guess is cellular telephony would not exist at all in this world.

That example would pollute the EM spectrum, a public resource.

A company with its own ecosystem and design doesn't.

Proprietary charging cables lead to more e-waste, which is a public externality as well.

The reasoning is that apple's marketplace is such a central cornerstone to digital life that it becomes a public resource.

And proprietary chargers, particularly multiple revisions within a single product line, pollute the actual ecosystem.

Regulation at the EU level - outside of their moral crusade regarding e2e encryption - tends to be more about combatting planned obsolescence and promoting CSR at the expense of an increased BOM.

These are symptoms of the actual problem with US based MNCs which lies with at the US Federal level, characterised by rabid lobbying for deregulation and genuflecting at the altar of fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.

You pretend to have a principle that the government should not interfere, but you carve out an exception whenever the principle bothers Apple. You'll always find something, I'm sure.

What the EU should or should not have the power to do is up the citizens there (but they have to live with the consequences of that, too).

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