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Comment by lovemenot | Hacker News Reader

Apple has clearly made very significant investment in creating a LLM small and efficient enough to do inference locally on an iPhone. This is excellent work and should be applauded.

For the EU, the issue is that Apple intends to recoup this investment through premium-pricing a different product in another category - one that has many low-cost competitors.

Wouldn't this best be resolved by productising the Apple LLM? Earphone API becomes open, as required by EU. However, use of the Apple LLM would be controlled by license. Earbud competitors could either license Apple's LLM, perhaps on a FRAND basis, or they could install their own LLM on an iOS device. Apple may bundle its LLM but must allow users to uninstall Apple's LLM, to free up space for alternatives.

In short, this isn't and shouldn't be about access to IOS for earbuds. EU is right in this. It's about monetising access to the Apple LLM, for which Apple deserves a revenue stream.

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> Wouldn't this best be resolved by productising the Apple LLM? Earphone API becomes open, as required by EU. However, use of the Apple LLM would be controlled by license. Earbud competitors could either license Apple's LLM, perhaps on a FRAND basis, or they could install their own LLM on an iOS device. Apple may bundle its LLM but must allow users to uninstall Apple's LLM, to free up space for alternatives.

They already tried that with the "Core Technology" fee, and the EU smacked them for it. So doing what you propose is probably a non-starter.

I didn't know this. Then I agree with you.

maybe the top car brands can only accept gas from one overpriced gas station, and open the car gas DRM as a license to other stations for a fee.

i know some people like to jump at solving technical problems, but sometimes yall need to chill and read the problem twice to be sure the problem is technical to begin with.

Gasoline is the very definition of a commodity. For now, at least, LLM is very from that.

As far as I know, Apple is unique in delivering inference on such a tiny device. For this they deserve a reward. The question is how. Like the EU, I don't believe Apple-only premium-priced locked-down earbuds is the right way.

the point is about limiting it to a secondary product. didn't you already bought the phone to run the model?

do you even remember the topic you're commenting about? :)

You seem to be claiming that LLM is necessarily integral to iPhone. I am suggesting that need not be the case.

Remember, half of the consideration here is to find a way for Apple to recoup it's investment in LLM. Without creating anti-competitive forces in another market. If you have a different suggestion, or if you think Apple doesn't deserve compensation, make your case.

If an LLM, apple or otherwise, runs on a phone, with audio input and output, then airpods and AliExpress five dollar earbuds should both be able to perform the I/O. I don't see a technical reason the latter is impossible. Indeed, it seems like it should work with the phone mic and speaker and no headset, too.

This isn't rocket science: audio goes into mic => STT engine => translation model => TTS engine => audio comes out of speaker. As a fellow hacker here, you could piece together something like this in a weekend on your computer for fun.

As for your question though: they can charge a subscription for using their LLM if they want, or charge for this specific app/feature of iOS. Or just be like me: whenever I'm about to execute on a business plan, I ask myself: "Is this business plan economically feasible without breaking the law?" And if it is not, then I do not do that plan. So far I haven't been cited for illegal conduct by any unions of dozens of countries, so it appears this tactic works.

By EU DMA, Apple is not allowed to develop a free feature in iOS (!) in order to recoup the cost by restricting it to their own brands and crushing the competition with it in ANOTHER product-segment (in this case, Headphones).

They could easily make this live translation feature a separate app using publicly available iOS-APIs. Every competitor would be able to develop and provide the same feature.

Ah, not integrated enough for them? Fair enough, then whatever further integration they see fit needs to provide interoperability for competitors.

That's exactly the stance of the EU DMA.

you completely lost me. the issue is the eu forbids "feature X on product A only workd if you buy product B, which already have market alternatives"

your post doesn't even get close to the subject

I don't know what to say. I have tried to point it out more than once. I agree with EU's approach to earbud access, but am also sympathetic to Apple wrt to ROI on its LLM.

Perhaps the issue you seem to be having is that there's nuance in a position which tries to see an issue from both sides. Whatever is the problem with your comprehension, I advise you to reflect on the fact that others in this thread seem to get it and some have raised valid counterpoints or added relevant information.

> For the EU, the issue is that Apple intends to recoup this investment through premium-pricing a different product in another category - one that has many low-cost competitors.

Let’s be serious for a moment. They sell iPhones with enough margin to recoup that investment.

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