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Your post has some fair points. But it also makes statements that seem illogical to me. For example:

> I don't want $10 aliexpress smartwatches to be able to seamlessly connect to my phone

Why? What is an objective reason for something like that?

You are the gatekeeper of your devices. You choose which accessories to pair. If you only want Apple-made devices to connect to your phone, fine. You do that. No one is suggesting or even implying that customers should be forced to use non-Apple devices.

The main point is to give the customers a choice. And let them decide what they want.

What I don't want is for the protocols that allow for apple's seamlesness to be opened to cheap trash. If Apple is forced to make it open to manufacturers of cheap trash and support it for manfacturers of cheap trash then it won't be economical for them to make cool stuff anymore and we won't have cool stuff anymore. I also dont want it to be easier to make devices that could maliciously take advantage of the friction removal capabilities that Apple builds into their devices. Customers already have a choice, e-waste slop garbage or apple products. The idea that they should be able to have both is quite ridiculous.

> What I don't want is for the protocols that allow for apple's seamlesness to be opened to cheap trash.

You either allow "cheap trash" that no one forces you to buy, or you exclude everyone. Here's Pebble on how they can't make their otherwise capable watch compatible with Apple products for absolutely arbitrary decisions on Apple's part: https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...

> Customers already have a choice, e-waste slop garbage or apple products.

Ah yes. As we all know, there are exactly two categories of products: Apple's flawless products and cheap trash. Nothing in between.

I used to have a pebble time, it worked fine for me with my iphone that I had at the time. It died when I swam with it the first time. I loved that thing, was really bummed when it died. My Apple Watch SE2 blows literally everything it could do out of the water. Even not including the apple proprietary walkie talkie feature which I use more than anything else on my watch because me and my wife love it. Except the battery life but I can't sleep with a watch on so it doesn't really matter. It still gives me 2-3 solid days. It's a shame that they had/have difficulty making it work but the reality is that I never ever used it to do any of the things that they couldn't get it to do. And I don't use my current apple watch for any of that either. I never cared about sending texts with it, I didn't do much with the watchfaces and I'd never have paid for one. I used it to control music, count steps and see notifications without going in my pocket. If it lived up to it's waterproofing claims I'd probably still be using it today. It certainly wasn't trash and I want to see them succeed but if they had these features then [URL for first google result for aliexpress smartwatch removed] would also have these features and that would not be what anyone wants. Least of all the repebble team who wouldn't have any edge over the dollar or so price new user welcome deal on that particular piece of ewaste. IMO pebble should focus more on the things that people actually care about like the cool e-ink screen, distraction-lowered functionality, battery life and making sure it doesn't die the first time you swim with it like in the ads than bashing Apple for making their stuff more secure than everyone else and raising the barrier to entry for manufacturers of slop. Pebbles worked great on Android but 40% of their current customer base uses an iphone and they still want the pebble. Maybe the 'less developed' functionality wasn't so bad? Maybe, like me, they wanted a smart-lite watch as opposed to a smartwatch? If I had known that they were actually making watches again then I'd have actually bought one instead of my apple watch and I'd live happily never knowing about walkietalkie. I do marketing, if by some chance Eric Migicovsky reads this then I'd be honored to quit my current job and go sell pebbles for him.

This huge meandering text completely avoids addressing the issues described at the link.

> Pebbles worked great on Android but 40% of their current customer base uses an iphone and they still want the pebble. Maybe the 'less developed' functionality wasn't so bad?

Yes, because the watch isn't "cheap garbage" as you pretend that everything non-Apple is.

The question is: why can't they have the dame functionality on iOS?

It wasn't that long and it didn't meander much. It's clear that you didn't realy understand what I was saying. Sure, Pebbles weren't cheap garbage but mine literally died the second that I tried to use it the way that it was used in their ads. I didn't care about the less developed functionality at all. You still don't address the fact that the vast majority of tech out there right now is e-waste.

The point which I was making is that Eric and the pebble team complained about Apple instead of competing in the space that they themselves had created. They were first to market with a smart watch and instead of just finding the consumer base which exists for what they had built and catering to them they tried to appeal to literally everyone and lost. They lost to literally better devices, better screens, better hardware, better software and better capabilities across all ecosystems. Cheap devices using Google's watch OS wiped the floor with Pebble. They had a loyal fanbase who liked the watch for what it was. I was part of that fanbase.

I suggest that if they had just did what they could for apple users and moved on to focus on the nerdy, first adopter types who actually liked their product and are somehow still coming back for it now then they'd have succeeded. It's hard to understand why they spent so much time and money focusing on ios notifications when Android also has a much higher market share and the majority of their customers were/are there anyway. They could have continued to develop their device in that direction and probably still been around today. they could have made better e-ink screens, better colour, better battery life, better charging hardware, better build quality, better waterproofing, built-in GPS, a real attempt at fostering a developer ecosystem for their OS or any number of other great features but they spent gorillions on ios notifications?

I'd also like to take a second to point out that they sold out to fitbit at the behest of their VC overlords because they were insolvent and ditched their userbase hard. Fitbit absolutely bought them out in order to take their IP and kill them as competitors for good. Complaining about Apple on the relaunch and relying on a community of enthusiasts to maintain an opensource codebase for their OS after Google bought out fitbit isn't really very customer focused of them.

Myreply to your question is why should they be able to have that functionality? Why should Apple allow other companies to compete with them within it's walled garden whch they made effort building and have the features that they designed and spent money developing? Why can't other companies develp their own cool features and their own ecosystems? It may benefit some people who want to use non-Apple stuff with Apple stuff but how does this actually benefit Apple and it's customers?

There are many misleading claims based on wrong assumptions and plain falsehoods in your post.

> What I don't want is for the protocols that allow for apple's seamlesness to be opened to cheap trash.

Why not? Is there any objective reason for that?

> If Apple is forced to make it open to manufacturers of cheap trash and support it for manfacturers of cheap trash

What are you even talking about? No one is suggesting that Apple should be supporting other manufacturers' products in a sense that it should be Apple's responsibility to make sure that they work.

This discussion is about interoperability. The only ask is to do things in a standardized way. So that other manufacturers can develop interoperable products, if they so like.

Right, but they have to do R&D for their cool stuff because the standardized way doesn't allow for their features. Then other manufacturers get salty because they didn't do any of their own expensive R&D to make things work properly and the EU makes laws to force Apple to open up their R&D and support iit so that other companies don't have to do their own. The EU is definitely saying that it should be Apple's responsibility to maintain support of it's proprietary features for 3rd party products. If you don't want Apple products then don't buy them? In fact, what is the objective reason that other manufacturers should be able to make interoperable products?

To add, this would disincentivize companies from pursuing novel Research and Development. Why would a company invest a lot of money to develop hardware if they will be eventually forced to open it up to some random competitor? If I was a competitor to Apple I would lobby hard to obtain access and not do any R&D of my own.

Right? Why spend money and effort to R&D actually interesting devices if you can just make cheapo compatible slop instead?

Oh no. How did we ever live without companies spending money and effort between the invention of computers and now.

We didn't. There has been constant innovation from then up until now.

Indeed. Yet you claim that opening platforms somehow prevents companies from investing in R&D

It does when a company has spent R&D to create a closed platform specifically for their customers. The closed platform is Apple's USP, their features are better because they only have to develop and support them for their devices.

> So basically all the stuff that makes apple devices actually measurably better has to be opened up so that some rando can make a half hacked together attempt at compatibility?

Only the interfaces and protocols. This is not the interesting or expensive part, unlike the implementation. Apple can still have the best implementation of the protocol, and a lot of people will believe that this is the case.

> For what?

So that people are not locked into the ecosystem when they buy the device. The price for the phone is what they pay, not what they will be forced to pay later, for example by only being able to choose airpods or apple watch for full experience later. For example.

> I don't want random bluetooth earbuds from the petrol station to be able to access an API that lets them send transcripts of my calls anywhere they like

First, don't buy them, you don't have to. Second, technically, the API exposed by the device will first need to allow them to connect somewhere online and send any data. That's a separate issue. Not to mention that, hypothetically, if bluetooth airbuds were able to send data somewhere by themselves, a malicious airbud manufacturer could still use the protocols by reverse engineering them. Not necessarily the case with legit manufacturers. Such lockin only stops legitimate, non-malicious actors.

> and I definitely don't want a low barrier to entry for devices that can airdrop me stuff or paste to my macbook if I'm out and about.

Allowing everyone and anyone to airdrop you stuff is a bad idea anyway. The protocol was reverse engineered too.

> I'd be happy because I have never once bought a non-apple device that I care about connecting to my phone. I'd have to buy a new monitor but that's ok.

And a lot of other Apple users wouldn't be happy.

> All consumer tech right now is literally rebadges or mild modificatioins of stuff from AliExpress and I don't want that in my nice clean ecosystem.

A lot is not. Again, just don't buy it, you have to choose to let such devices to connect to your device.

> If these competitors want to actually compete then how about they make something that's actually better in some way instead of just hamfistedly copying whatever Apple comes up with?

A lot of the time they legitimately want to, but Apple locks them out of certain features. For example, AFAIK, Garmin watches (legitimate company! with an original take on a smartwatch, definitely not copying Apple) are locked from accessing certain iOS features Apple Watch can access.

I replied to someone else in the same vein but having had a garmin watch in the home there was nothing that it would have done better if it was able to work with Apple's proprietary stuff. If random devices of unknown provenance were able to freely connect with Apple devices then the security of Apple's ecosystem would take a hit. This would be bad.

> I replied to someone else in the same vein but having had a garmin watch in the home there was nothing that it would have done better if it was able to work with Apple's proprietary stuff

Maybe to you. Garmin watches cannot respond to notifications on Apple devices, for example. Detailed article about restrictions on iOS from Pebble: https://ericmigi.com/blog/apple-restricts-pebble-from-being-...

> If random devices of unknown provenance were able to freely connect with Apple devices then the security of Apple's ecosystem would take a hit. This would be bad.

Random devices are not able to connect over bluetooth to your device without your consent. Then, the bluetooth device can only get as much information as the companion app will allow it to get.

Besides, we have that on Android (and PCs) and the security of these "ecosystems" is not worse because of it.

Your argument seems a little bad faith. Sure, random devices aren't able to connect to my phone without my consent but Apple devices only need that consent once. After they're on my apple account they can connect with my other apple devices seamlessly, no companion apps at any stage.

My AirPods move from my phone to my macbook all by themselves based on which device needs audio and my macbook can ask for my iphone's camera and mic at will. My Apple devices can do this because they have hardware level security to allow for this. The EU wants the same capabilities to be extended to non-apple devices.

This would mean that Apple would have to let devices connect without a companion app and possibly make a backdoor in their hardware security layer or worse allow anyone to incorporate their hardware security into any device.

If some aliexpress buds were able to do that then this would definitely pose a problem. Bad actors should not get access to Apple's proprietary security tech and that tech is one of the reasons that Apple devices have capabilities which non-apple devices do not.

edit: Your original comment makes a couple of good points re: the cost of lockin for consumers. However, I would like to point out that this cost isn't a problem when the locked in devices are as good as they are. Apple's devices routinely either come near to the top or sit at the top of the list of best X devices from many different review sources. If their locked in devices were worse this would make sense but often they are much better than all of their competition. I wouldn't buy any AirPod competitors because they genuinely don't actually represent better value even when they are cheaper than AirPods. Similarly with other devices, I've tried almost everything at one point or another. The first time I used Android I installed it myself on an HTC HD2. When I ditched windows I went with linux before I went with Apple. I've had powerful self built windows machines and Asus gaming laptops and a google pixel and a pebble and tried many more devices without actually owning them myself. Nothing has ever come close to my apple silicon macbook, my old iphone which I'm still using, my 2nd hand cheap ipad mini or my apple watch. I don't buy apple devices because I'm locked in and have no other choice, I buy them because they actually represent good value for me and my use case.

You're naively assuming that Apple will always act in your best interests,which they don't:

In 2017, Apple secretly throttled the performance of older iPhones to prevent shutdowns, without informing users.

In the butterfly keyboard years (2015-2019) Apple denied that their tech was crap and blamed users.

The 30% fee in the app store is outrageous.

The right-to-repair restrictions are clearly anti-consumer. Preventing users from using 3rd party parts for repairs, voiding warranties. $500 display repairs.

Agressive planned obsolescence. Non-upgradable components. Software updates that slow older devices down.

Sideloading restrictions, reducing user choice and security options.

So the throttling was because they found that the old hardware and batteries weren't keeping up and so, instead of letting the devices become completely useless they throttled them.

Butterfly keyboard isn't great but it works better without being crammed full of cheeto dust.

Play store has no barrier to entry and it's a slop filled garbage shithole. There's garbage slop on Apple's Appstore too but nowhere near as much.

The flipside to the 3rd party parts that nobody talks about is that if there was a sudden flood of apple devices repaired poorly with sheapo shit parts then buying used apple devices would be a terrible experience. I bought a lot of my Apple stuff 2nd hand and it all works great. Nobody said that anything had to be cheap, you want cheap go buy something else. Price is what you pay but value is what you get.

The planned obsolescence is not even a thing, they have by far the best record for supporting their old devices. I have an '09 Macbook Pro that is able to run El Capitan and the last security update for that was 2018. Iphone 6s is STILL receiving security updates. If you want to easily upgrade your components then don't buy apple devices, if you don't want to maintain winblows but still want serious applications to be able to run natively then buy apple. Older devices slow down because literally nobody cares about writing software that's lightweight and only uses actually necessary system resources.

Again with the Appstore and the 'user choice' you have choices, dont buy Apple products if you want the freedom to bloat your stuff with crap software. There's a massive market of winblows and android devices with all the pointless unsupported-open-source-with-the-last-update-to-the-project-made-in-1234BCE software your heart desires out there for your slop and e-waste buying pleasure. What security do you gain from installing random shit beyond the security that Apple builds in by default?

ALL tech currently sucks massive donkey cock but at least if you buy an iphone then you know that it'll reliably perform the duties of a small pocket based social media based computer/car audio brain until such a time as you choose to replace it. If you buy a macbook then you know that it'll do the job of portable computing for you as long as your needs don't esceed what 99% of people actually use a computer for besides playing videogames (just get a console for those, seriously how the fuck is a weird RGB chair in an RGB room better than a couch with your cat/dog/friends/family) for over a decade of your life. At least when you buy Apple products you know that you're paying out your ass for something that will 100% deliver on all the promises it makes.

> So the throttling was because they found that the old hardware and batteries weren't keeping up and so, instead of letting the devices become completely useless they throttled them.

There's no credible excuse to justify Apple's planned obsolescence of only a couple generation older products, except to increase the sales of newer models.

Also it's not like this company doesn't make big mistakes either. Remember the GSM iPhone 4 Antenna fiasco?

I just provided the credible excuse, these same obsoleted devices continued to receive software support from Apple for a long time after other devices that came out in the same year stopped receiving software updates. That's not really what i would call obsolescence. Every company makes mistakes including apple., my point is that in terms of consumer devices Apple makes fewer mistakes than anyone else.

As the saying goes: Looks like you're not EU's target audience. You're free to move elsewhere. /s

On a serious note, why would apple-apple integration stop working just because apple stops blocking competition?

If this competition is only competing on price then it's not really competition, it's a race to the bottom. If you genuinely think that because two pairs of earbuds make noise and connect via bluetooth that makes them the same thing then you are welcome to buy slop and have it work rubbishly with your other slop.

There's more to competition than price.

After all apple hardware isn't even the most expensive. There are pricier phones and laptops being sold daily due to different features. So your race to the bottom point is moot.

If anything, competition could fix apple's sloppiness which it manages to leverage over the gullible due to artificial anti-competitive measures.

If Apple was so good, it wouldn't need to abuse their customers intellect.

I don't feel like Apple abuses my intellect. It's well known that Apple doesn't really care about people who want things that they don't offer, they market their devices to owners of their other devices. There are more expensive devices out there but none of them deliver the same value that Apple's devices do. They use standard methods and they have standard functionality and that's fine but if you want Apple then you buy Apple. Everyone is talking as if users are forced to buy and use Apple devices. The fact is that if you want a pebble or a garmin watch then you can just buy an Android phone and use that as the center of your tech and be happy with your non-apple devices. Why would someone want a Garmin watch that's compatible with their iphone? What possible real, non theoretical, reason is there to have one over an Apple watch? My wife had one and it's features were fairly pedestrian. There is nothing it did better than an Apple watch and that wouldn't have changed if it was able to work with Apple's proprietary technology. The existence of a comfortable walled garden alongside an open forest is not impossible by any stretch.