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Comment by JSR_FDED | Hacker News Reader

America invents it, China scales it, Europe regulates it.

EU doesn't regulate enough IMO

Apple is intentionally building a walled garden, which is a monopoly, which hurts our economy

They've been building and tending the exact same pay-to-enter garden for 16 years, and even that garden initially — for a year — started with the equivalent of a padlock and "no-entry, no exceptions" sign on the gate itself because iOS was originally "just Apple's Apps, nobody else"*.

Took a long while before Apple was big enough that people cared about the walled gardens, before "smart phones" as a market opportunity were dominant enough that them having one was even capable of hurting anyone's economy.

* if you want to find exception, consider if the exception would also inherently reject the idea that what currently exists is a walled garden

If the customers prefer the walled garden then what’s the big deal? There are a number of other phones people can buy.

> If the customers prefer the walled garden then what’s the big deal?

What the customers "prefer" and what's good for society are two very different questions. Anti-competitive behavior for one, like charging your direct competitors a 30% tax on their revenue because you own the platform, ensuring that you always come out ahead.

> There are a number of other phones people can buy

I don't understand this argument. For smartphones there's just one viable alternative which is itself trending in the walled garden direction. Google has been imposing additional restrictions for sideloading and adding various roadblocks that are slowly reeling back user freedoms.

Both companies have a long list of customer-hostile behaviors and we have to pick one of them because interoperability is dead. Because we have to pick one, there's no real pressure to address those grievances on either side.

It's always "just use Android" when we complain about Apple and "just use iOS" when we complain about Google. It's like that scene out of South park with the Cable company people rubbing their nipples listening to disgruntled customers.

There are at least a dozen companies making Android-based phones without Google. Are none of them "viable"? If not, whose fault is that?

no. China. Next question.

I was actually thinking of European companies like Volla and Fairphone given that the article is about the EU.

There are Apple phones and there are Android phones, that's pretty much it. It's a duopoly. It is practically impossible for a third player to enter the market. This circular logic of "if Android does not offer enough liberties, use an Apple phone" and "if Apple does not offer enough liberties, use an Android phone" doesn't make any logical sense and everyone who uses your argument knows it, but chooses to continue making it to push an agenda.

I agree. I get a nasty feeling that Apple is going to get away with a significant level of malicious compliance.

Compliance is a very binary thing in this matter. Either Apple complies, or they don't. It's the the EU'a job to fix the legislation, the legal system does not care about "not faithfully honoring the spirit/intent".

Which is why they will get away with it. It is why others people get away with similar behaviour in general in many jurisdictions. One legislation (which is slow to change and can be opposed by lobbying) catches up with one thing they do something new.

Legislation can be worded more generally though, which helps. Regulators and judges can be given some discretion.

Commonly echoed indeed :)

When would we say this started, year-wise? As in the past, most of the technology/innovation came from Asia and Europe, and it seems not until after computers (or earlier perhaps?) did the US start to catch up with the rest of the world, but haven't really done a deep dive into it.

Cold war, USA propped up the Silicon Valley out of nothing, and now your social rules are all decided from there.

If only the EU was busy doing that instead of cookie banners.

Well, until it doesn't, which seems to be edging closer and closer every day.

Not sure where you are located, but as I'm within the EU, I'm quite happy with the approach we take, I'd prefer that to the capitalistic hellhole the US seems to be. If that means I have to decline cookies when I visit websites who misunderstand regulation, then so be it, totally worth it.

America invents it, China copies it, Europe regulates it.

At least someone is setting limits, Biden noted in his farewell address how America is being shaped by oligarchs which has echos of Eisenhower's farewell address warning of the forming of a 'military-industrial complex'.

A speech he very well may have watched live.

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