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Comment by greenthrow | Hacker News Reader

Why the legal focus on Apple when Android devices are much more popular and Google and other providers have plenty of locked features?

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You can use any smartwatch or earbuds with Android, there aren't private Google-only APIs for those things.

Apple also has a big enough marketshare to matter to the DMA.

I think the question is why they aren’t also forcing Android Cast etc to work with Apple.

One reason may be that it already works with iOS devices? https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/ios_sender

You mean Chromecast? Which does work from iPhones?

Chromecast only works from iOS for apps that have integrated with the Chromecast SDK. Like Netflix and Youtube.

Maybe the EU can ask Google to open Chromecast up so Apple can integrate it into iOS. Then you can use it from any app without needing special integrations.

How do you think Chromecast support in Chromium, VLC or even GNOME Network Displays worked?

It is open.... Apple just refuses to implement it.

Yeah, it's not like Chromecast is the only alternative. The Wifi Alliance has Miracast which plenty of TVs support, but iOS also doesn't support.

Apple has all the information they need, available publicly, to implement an OS-wide Chromecast client. They haven't done so because they don't want to.

Does everyone else have access to the data mining that Google has on every Chrome and Android user? Does every other company have unfettered access to Google Maps without providing identifying data? Does every other company have the ability to utilize Youtube vidoes as they wish?

You are comparing Apple's primary product/service against a throwaway part of Google's. Google has walled gardens around its primary business too. But they are so deeply ingrained into our world that nobody questions it, because there's also no viable competitors.

You're comparing apples (heh) and oranges. This order requires Apple to allow functionality that Android permits.

Criticism of Google is fair, but it has nothing to do with excusing Apple here.

What locked features are you referring to?

Because with Android devices you can sideload any app, alternative stores, you can set any 3rd party app as default, they can handle pretty much any type of file, etc...

The DMA doesn't make having exclusive features illegal, this ruling is specifically about exclusive hardware interoperability features that use Apple's control of the OS to advantage their products in related product segments. Google has been hit with a ton of DMA rules for other aspects of the OS and their business model but very few of Android's hardware interoperability features are exclusive to Google devices so I'm not sure what they would even need to do differently. Samsung is worse with that sort of thing but they aren't classified as a gatekeeper so the rules don't apply to them anyway.

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