Comment by pornel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pornel | Hacker News Reader

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Google Pixel Buds have a translation feature, and a bunch of other "Gemini AI" gimmicks, available in the EU.

Apple managed to get approvals for medical devices and studies (highly regulated everywhere), custom radios and satellite communication (highly regulated everywhere).

Apple already has machine translation, voice recognition, voice recording, and dictation features shipped in the EU.

But when EU hurt Apple's ego by daring to demand to give users freedom to run software they want on devices they bought (that could break them out of a very lucrative duopoly), Apple suddenly is a helpless baby who cannot find a way to make a new UI available in the EU.

The EU has not declared that Android gatekeeps headphone technology, so the comparison to Pixel Buds is totally irrelevant. There is no interop requirement placed on them.

So all Apple needs to do is stop gatekeeping headphone technology.

What is the definition of gatekeeping technology?

In Apple’s case it mostly means that the API:s Apple use for the AirPods use should be available for others to also use. Apple is not allowed to deny or punish headphones from other manufacturers that want to use those API:s.

This is not quite the problem.

There are multiple issues at play.

The two main issues are:

1 - Sometimes processing is done in private cloud servers for complex translations. Apple is not allowed to do that for EU users. Full Stop. Even if it were not prohibited by EU law, you still have issue 2.

2 - It's unclear whether or not Apple can charge. If another dev uses the APIs, and it triggers a call to the cloud, who pays for the inference? Until Apple gains clarity on that, charging could be considered "punish"-ing a dev for using their APIs.

My own opinion? Issue 2 they will get worked out, but it won't matter because I don't think the EU will move at all on issue 1. I think they see data privacy as serving a twofold purpose. One, protecting their citizens from US surveillance. ie-National Security. And two, part of their long term strategy to decrease the influence of US tech firms in the EU. Both of which I think European policymakers and European common people feel are critical to Europe.

On-device API use is what is relevant here, services such as servers and interference services are out of scope. The DMA clearly allows companies to charge for service use, but they cannot deny API use for any competition who wants for example to use the quick pairing feature or low-latency communication.

They can design the API in such a way that you can provide your own interference solution, or just disable the cloud interference. This is purely a business decision.

It’s some combination of a market companies in the EU care about where Apple sells a product that has some amount of market share, where the threshold and market definition are totally made up and seem to only impact foreign multinationals.

If it's any consolation, Apple is in a league of their own. Any fair, proportional legislation would impact them more than anyone else.

So Apple is welcome to divest AirPods into a separate company and problem solved. Who knows, "AirPods Inc" may discover there are a great many phone brands out there that could use a nice integration and extra features. Win for consumers.

I agree, the Beats takeover should have never happened. The US is basically allowing everything to be swallowed by big-tech.

> the Beats takeover should have never happened.

I agree from a business perspective, those headphones were all brand and a bad fit for apple from a quality perspective. Do we really need regulators deciding when businesses are wasting their money?

The integration works so well because airpods and apple phones use a protocol that isn't bluetooth, their "Magic protocol". You have to own the whole stack to make it work so well.

I wish this would happen. I loved my AirPods Pros 2 but the Android/Windows support was so abysmal that I eventually ditched them.

That's literally the Boeing model

So, the problem is indeed the EU.

On the contrary, the EU is the solution.

Or you know Linux/Windows PCs that would definitely be a big win.

So many other features, such as iPhone mirroring also don't work. Quite ridiculous.

Vote with your wallet?

Easier said than done, but this relatively small annoyance is not a dealbreaker to change the phone. I had it before this feature was announced :D

Half of the new Google Pixel AI features are not enabled in EU. Magic cue, text image editing... These are on-device features too, so really not sure why

I'm a disappointed Pixel 10 owner living in Germany

Instead of these conspiracy theories, the more likely answer is that it takes time to get through these additional regulations, and they didn't want that to hold back their US rollout. Its a pattern that we've seen plenty of times already in the tech industry.

So Samsung could nail the regulation part with their earbuds, but Apple with Airpods can't.

Samsung isn’t a “gatekeeper” under the DMA. The regulations in question here don’t apply to them.

Most probably as you say they can't ship the capability yet, so they're blaming the regulations.

Or really the headphones actively register and send data outside of the EU. There's been some pushback recently on this front (ie. recent MSFT case [1]) since it's a known fact in the field that the approved 2023 EU-US DPF is basically BS, as it doesn't really address the core issues for which US companies were deamed not-compatible with GDPR.

[1] https://www.senat.fr/compte-rendu-commissions/20250609/ce_co...

In my quest to check if deamed was the correct spelling, I stumbled upon an interesting read https://reginajeffers.blog/2024/03/04/damned-or-deemed-or-de...

Indeed. But in my case it’s quite easy as it was a typo. Deemed is the correct one

EU isn't forcing Google to let random 3rd parties replace Gemini AI with TotallyHonestAndNotStealingYourData Corp's AI.

You already can replace the default assistant app with any app that declares itself as an assistant on Android, and have always been able to.

Google is a designated gatekeeper carrying all the same DMA obligations for:

Google Search, YouTube, Chrome, Shopping, Maps, Ads, the Play Store, and Android.

https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en

You can replace Gemini with Perplexity or whatever you want on your Android phone, that includes the main system-wide assistant.

It's almost like you can only shakedown your victims so many times before they say no mas.

Did you just describe Apple as a victim?

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