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Apple to EU: "Go fuck yourself"

122 points by bertman 3y ago

juanani 3y ago
[dead]
camillomiller 3y ago
These issues need good unbiased reporting, and as much as I love Cory, his reporting is all but unbiased. It's activism. Which is perfectly ok, and extremely important, but in this case it reeks of an extremism that is damaging to the cause itself. The truth is that decrying things like Apple's splash screen about the use of alternative stores, for example, is ridiculous. Apple has all the legal rights to do that, and formally that is not even incorrect. I personally don't let tech unsavvy people from the family use anything but the App Store and iPhone. Not because we couldn't find better Android phones for the same price, but because I know they would be easily scammed by shady apps that don't have to pass through the App Store's review process. That is clearly a monopolistic advantage to Apple, but the alternative is equally bad and, admittedly, even worse for less tech savvy users, which are the majority.
- atoav 3y ago
  So more options are bad, because people might make choices that they don't understand? Is this the invisible hand of the market that people have been wanging on about for the past dekades? Or is this new-found worry about people choosing wrong things something that is only limited to Apple? Because I could imagine other, worse markets with much more impact on people that are less regulated (e.g. food).
  - dash2 3y ago
    Food is highly regulated by the state, at least in the US and EU (probably too highly regulated). It is also a market with numerous platforms which compete to offer quality guarantees - i.e. supermarkets. The difference with Apple is just that the platform is more tied in to the hardware.
    - atoav 3y ago
      Sure, but would you like one company to decide which food you are allowed to eat?
      - jjgreen 3y ago
        ... it's made out of people!
      - dash2 3y ago
        I understand the loss of being stuck with a single platform, but that's not quite right. You can have multiple devices, just as you can shop at multiple supermarkets. It's just that the price for doing so is higher (syncing multiple devices, carrying them around, the initial outlay), so most people don't. Nobody forces you to buy either Apple or Android. But the services they provide are indeed valuable: the walled garden protects me from certain kinds of harmful software, for example. The duopoly in smartphones is an outcome of the underlying technologies. That doesn't mean it is efficient in the economic sense, compared to an ideal world, but the comparison has to be what we can actually implement.
- realusername 3y ago
  I can't see how you would interpret Apple's "compliance" other than contempt, no matter how unbiaised you try to be. Even Apple's own press releases aren't even trying to hide that.
- echelon 3y ago
  > Apple has all the legal rights to do that They should not. Mobile computing is as fundamentally important as the right to free speech. They're taking over access to every part of life and are more important than cash. Two trillion dollar companies should not be allowed to gatekeep belonging to modern society. > even worse for less tech savvy users, which are the majority. We let people drive multi-ton vehicles with little training at 80mph. I think they'll be fine with web downloads.
  - Tempest1981 3y ago
    > multi-ton vehicles with little training at 80mph. I think they'll be fine with web downloads. I wish this were true, but in my experience, it's a very different skill than driving.
    - echelon 3y ago
      Only in tech do we dismiss all of the absolutely deadly degrees of freedom in life to defend the entrenched positions of monopolies. We won't even mention the decades of research and literal human millennia of engineering efforts that went into the best practices that can protect people. Sandboxes, what are those? Surely only two companies lording over everything can protect us from ourselves. Free web installs are just as bad as speeding cars, chainsaws, electrocution, etc.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wkat4242 3y ago
  It's not reporting, it's a personal blog. It's an opinion piece. Activism is definitely ok there in my book, and it's clearly needed considering how this situation is getting out of hand.
- southerntofu 3y ago
  > I know they would be easily scammed by shady apps that don't have to pass through the App Store's review process. My entire family uses F-Droid on ungoogled Androids. They have much less chances to be scammed/exploited because F-Droid is community-run and is explicit about anti-features in the store UI. There just isn't any malware/scam on F-Droid to be scammed with, because the community decides what apps to add and the community server builds them. Pretending There Is No Alternative ® to Apple monopolistic practices is misleading to say the least.
  - dzhiurgis 3y ago
    How do you go about modern luxuries like opening and charging your car, controlling your home, paying, using public transport, chatting, using digital id, flying a drone...?
  - tuyiown 3y ago
    > They have much less chances to be scammed/exploited because F-Droid is community-run and is explicit about anti-features in the store UI. That, but also because it's a niche that has not been targeted by malevolence. Enjoy it while it last.
    - southerntofu 3y ago
      Debian and other distro repositories would like to disagree. When the packager doesn't provide the final build, it becomes much harder for malware/adware to reach end users. Not technically impossible, but much harder than direct-to-users stores such as Apple AppStore or Flathub where it is trivial because whatever binary the uploader provides ends up directly running on user machines.
      - tuyiown 3y ago
        That works fine until hostiles manages to trick users to install their software directly or, to get back to the topic, their own app store or browser. I find it quite ironic that the discussion circles back to the level of lock down on "supported" app distribution channels.
- pimterry 3y ago
  > The truth is that decrying things like Apple's splash screen about the use of alternative stores, for example, is ridiculous. The article is talking about splash screens for 3rd party payments (like this: https://developer.apple.com/support/images/apps-using-alternative-payment-providers-in-the-eu/screen-private-large_2x.png https://developer.apple.com/support/images/apps-using-altern...) not for 3rd party app stores (like this: https://developer.apple.com/support/images/alternative-app-marketplace-in-the-eu/screen-install-large_2x.png?3 https://developer.apple.com/support/images/alternative-app-m...). I would agree the app store warning is pretty reasonable: "<site> would like to install an App Marketplace" is clear and to the point, sure (and the article doesn't disagree). "This app doesn't support the App Store's private and secure payment system" as the main headline on a full screen warning with a huge long scary blurb every time you try to pay anybody who isn't Apple is not reasonable. This is not the great danger Apple is pretending it is - literally every single one of their customers has paid money to somebody outside the App Store in the past. Being aware of the risks of that is a basic & essential skill that everybody who owns a credit card must have already. Apple has a responsibility to protect non-technical users against technical risks, but it does not (and should not) try to protect users from lack of very basic life skills. > Apple has all the legal rights to do that That's not necessarily true at all! I'm sure there'll have a good lawyerly debate on this soon, but the DMA requirements generally seem to mandate no restrictions for these new features than those strictly required to preserve device integrity & security. Given that the existing global payment system is very familiar to all their customers, far more widely used than App Store purchases, and _generally pretty good_ (yes, you can quibble on UX and subscription management, but we all use it all the time, there's plenty of anti-fraud backstops, and payments in the world outside the app store do work) I don't think this screaming warning can be justified as an essential measure required to protect user security. To me, it looks like a unnecessarily scary screen actively discouraging users away from their competition. A small calm confirmation for "Pay outside the App Store? This payment will be handled by 'Example Dev' directly." would be far more justifiable.
- ysnp 3y ago
  If you were a designing an app store that provides apps that are safe for non technical users you would probably want to ensure: excellent curation where human reviewers can have deep knowledge of all of the apps that have been reviewed/published, clear provenance so you can be strongly confident of the source/supply of the applications in case of abuse or infra compromise (with a smaller problem blast radius for each app) alternative app stores so that end users are never beholden to your app store and they can get similar or the same apps from elsewhere if your policies or practices change for the worse. Some of these help ensure that no third party can maliciously update an app at the behest of a criminal actor without also compromising the app developer, or that no third party can gather invasively detailed information and fingerprinting surface concerning the apps people use and have in case of dissent. Apple don't seem to have any interest in doing any of this, so I can't understand how their solution would be better for less tech-savvy users.
- pjc50 3y ago
  > Apple's splash screen about the use of alternative stores, for example, is ridiculous. Apple has all the legal rights to do that, Isn't the question whether the EU thinks they have the legal right to do that, and how the law can be changed so that they don't do that? Anyway, the article points out that certain companies are exempted from those alleged "Apple rules" already ..
- black_puppydog 3y ago
  > the alternative is equally bad As others have pointed out, this isn't true for community curated FLOSS repositories like F-Droid. But I want to point out that the french "pole expertise" for digital issues, PEReN, also wrote about this a while back: https://www.peren.gouv.fr/en/actualites/2022-02-18_eclairage_sur_os/ https://www.peren.gouv.fr/en/actualites/2022-02-18_eclairage... TL;DR: the "trust relation" that users have with Apple's review department could just as well (and often better) be filled by third party app stores or even independent entities.
- Lutger 3y ago
  We need opinion pieces as much as (so-called) unbiased reporting. This one puts things into perspective, rather than merely summarizing facts and viewpoints. I appreciate that it clearly does so and doesn't pretend to be unbiased. Nor does the so-called activism work behind the screen to manipulate politicians - like no doubt many paid by Apple lobbyists are currently doing. You call it activism like it is a bad thing. If it is, then let us dump freedom of speech.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  > Apple has all the legal rights to do that Law doesn't say what's morally right. > I personally don't let tech unsavvy people from the family use anything but the App Store and iPhone Do you also make sure they can only access Apple-certified websites in the browser? No? Sounds pretty unsafe. > I know they would be easily scammed by shady apps that don't have to pass through the App Store's review process Both Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store have hosted malware in the past. It's quite rare for the average user to even try installing Amazon's third-party appstore, let alone a random .apk from the internet, it's about having the option to be less dependent. Sure some users will be negatively affected, just like some people could be convinced to put their iPhone in the microwave to recharge the battery, but if you take that seriously you might as well ban knives. > That is clearly a monopolistic advantage to Apple, but the alternative is equally bad You need to be a lot more convincing to tell me that something is as bad as a monopoly.
postepowanieadm 3y ago
How unkind!
megablast 3y ago
Paraphrasing
jillesvangurp 3y ago
I don't think I agree with all of his points but I do agree with his point that other countries outside the EU will try to persuade Apple that they want Apple to play by those rules. They'll be under a lot of pressure to roll out what they do there elsewhere. And the argument that they can't goes away the second they show that they can in the EU. And of course everybody forgets about the Chinese market where Apple has been playing by Chinese rules for many years (which isn't great for privacy, obviously). So that's three separate markets where they are treating users very differently.
- jocaal 3y ago
  > They'll be under a lot of pressure to roll out what they do there elsewhere. Japan is also in the process of making similar laws[1]. [1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-d...
wkat4242 3y ago
I'm liking this guy even more every time. I agree with him so much and his enshittification term really hit the nail on the head. Also really like that he hosts his blog on his own site so I don't have to go to that terrible crap that medium is to read it.
- Voultapher 3y ago
  I'm in the same boat. While his writing is clearly ideological, it aligns with my world view and opened my eyes to the extent of these abuses. For example with this article, I was aware of some of the points, but didn't realize the million dollar fee thing for alternative app stores. Looking at this press post by Apple https://www.techpowerup.com/318370/apple-announces-changes-to-ios-safari-and-the-app-store-in-the-european-union https://www.techpowerup.com/318370/apple-announces-changes-t... we can see them patting themselves on the back. They are so arrogant they literally put out marketing material that says, we believe our compliance with the DMA is so malicious that less than 1% of developers would want to chose it, even when the alternative means sticking to the outlandish 30% fees.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  He's been around, to say the least. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Comics_featuring_Cory_Doctorow https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Comics_f...
shmerl 3y ago
> For one thing, Apple will only allow European customers to run alternative browser engines This is idiotic beyond measure, but so Apple, trying to claw every inch of monopolistic abuse as long as they can get away with it. They should be punished with fines in billions for this. May be that will teach them a thing or two.
adastra22 3y ago
Apple's European revenue for the App Store is only 7% of its global App Store receipts. At some point apple will just leave the market. The EU is a bit bonkers to think that it can get global tech companies to comply with increasingly tech-hostile regulations without any push back or red lines. At some point it just stops being worth the hassle.
- 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
  > At some point apple will just leave the market. maybe a good thing. yanis varoufakis said EU had become irrelevant in tech. more investment can go to local tech instead of US monopolies.
  - adastra22 3y ago
    I would love for there to be a vibrant European tech scene. But these same sort of business-hostile behavior is exactly why there isn't a European version of Silicon Valley.
    - dedene 3y ago
      That is not true at all
      - adastra22 3y ago
        You're free to think otherwise, but this is what I've been repeatedly told by entrepreneurs in Europe (who mostly copy US ideas), and europeans living in Silicon Valley (who came here to innovate in ways they can't back home).
        qngcdvy 3y ago
        Yeah or it's just the capital that has been there in abundance. Spawned from the defense industry, thriving through the money made in the 2000s and after by creating profits all over the world (ads!) and then evading taxation as much as possible while funneling the money back to the valley and hiring the world's best talent to keep that first place. The small business owner pays taxes because what else can they do? Big corps go through tax-havens and relocations and don't do so, while profiting off of the infrastructure paid for by taxes (=> enabling customers over seas to even buy iphones). Traditional companies ship physical products and/or employ more people in the respective countries, while they also try to evade taxation I think those circumstances make them a much better subject to it though. Really, the more I keep on talking to my friends in the Valley the more it boils down to the money factor. Salaries, VCs and all the likes. I don't say Europe shouldn't be less business hostile, but one should see the Valley the way it is and realize that just buy changing the laws and trying to copy it Europe can't succeed. They should find their own path.
fxtentacle 3y ago
That article nicely highlights how much contempt Apple has for its developers. I don't know how they got there, but small companies have certainly come a long way from being treated like partners.
- Epskampie 3y ago
  This went out the window the moment that developers weren't rare anymore. Nowadays there is so many people all over the world willing and able to do the work to produce apps, apple is free to exersize their duopoly power and treat them as expandable. I've created some iOS apps, and you can really feel this in every single interaction. From their crummy badly written out of date documentation without code samples, to the painfully slow developer portals, to the random app rejections.
kybernetyk 3y ago
>murder Setting a bunch of cookies isn’t something I would equate to murder. If you want me to read your article please use less hyperbole. The author sounds like an unhinged lunatic who takes his pet issue way too seriously.
- coldtea 3y ago
  Isolating a single word out of context isn't something I would equate with a good faith comment. The comment author sounds like an unhinged lunatic driven to irrelevant knee jerk reactions. The author, in the context of an article talking about how big companies can bypass various monopoly and privacy laws, wrote how: "companies really do get away with both literal and figurative murder". That's a general statement about what companies can get away with. He didn't assign cookie violations to "literal murder". It's obvious that "figurative murder" is the kind he abscribes to the violations he talks about, like GDPR. As in the very common figurative idiom "getting away with murder", which is about doing bad stuff/breaking the law, and not having any serious consequence. Or do you pretend to never have heard of it? As for the general statement, it still stands. Companies have historically also gotten away with literal murder too, and it's a valid point to raise when talking about how companies can often violate laws with impunity.
- Voultapher 3y ago
  I think the user coldtea makes valid points. I'd like to add that we don't know what the author Cory Doctorow was alluding to when he wrote: > Companies really do get away with both literal and figurative murder. If you interpret that as corporations, sometimes commit literal murder. I think that's factually true, for example https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/philippines-mining-industry-killing-arrests-activists/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-securit... and https://lawblogs.uc.edu/ihrlr/2021/05/28/pipeline-of-violence-the-oil-industry-and-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women/ https://lawblogs.uc.edu/ihrlr/2021/05/28/pipeline-of-violenc... Taking that out of context and implying he equates setting cookies, I think that's in bad faith.
newbie578 3y ago
I have zero doubt in my mind that Apple is in for a rude awakening. No way will the EU stand this level of malicious compliance. The gloves are off and I fully expect for Apple to not come out unscathed.
- masklinn 3y ago
  I doubt it’s going to be an awakening, unless Apple’s execs have taken to huffing paint on a musk scale, I would assume it’s more of a cynical ploy: while the EU doesn’t like companies ignoring the spirit of the laws it usually takes limited action until it’s refined the word to match, so they’re trying out ignoring the spirit in case it either works out or gives them more time, even if the odds are low. That’s a high risk manoeuvre if the EU courts decide to make an example though.
  - surgical_fire 3y ago
    > That’s a high risk manoeuvre if the EU courts decide to make an example though. And the EU courts absolutely should.
- maxglute 3y ago
  > Apple to not come out unscathed. Doesn't mean Apple won't still come out the relative winner.
  - piva00 3y ago
    Depends, if the EU wants to set an example that corporations trying to skirt the law by malicious compliance will be heavily penalised we might see Apple's products being barred from commercialisation in the entire EU until they comply. Will it suck for consumers? Yup, some people will be screaming out loud about how the non-democratic EU bureaucrats are stifling innovation (as we usually see in HN comments about EU regulations against huge corporations), at the same time Apple will capitulate if a ban on the sale of their products in the EU goes on for more than a few weeks. They capitulated on the Apple Watch sales ban in the US and the US is much more pro-business. I can't see what's the case where they end being a relative winner though, if there's one thing the EU is good at is on enforcing commercial regulations since it's still its main raison d'être.
Kipters 3y ago
In some way I secretly hope that the EU is waiting for DMA to come into effect in March to declare Apple as non compliant and hit them as hard as they can.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  They better not, I don't think I can handle that much schadenfreude.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
coldtea 3y ago
>But there was a curious pattern to GDPR enforcement: while smaller, EU-based companies were swiftly shuttered by its provisions, the US-based giants that conduct the most brazen, wide-ranging, illegal surveillance escaped unscathed for years and years, continuing to spy on Europeans. (...) One (erroneous) way to look at this is as a "compliance moat" story. In that story, GDPR requires a bunch of expensive systems that only gigantic companies like Facebook and Google can afford. These compliance costs are a "capital moat" – a way to exclude smaller companies from functioning in the market. Thus, the GDPR acted as an anticompetitive wrecking ball, clearing the field for the largest companies, who get to operate without having to contend with smaller companies nipping at their heels. This is wrong. (...) A harder look at what happened with the GDPR reveals a completely different dynamic at work. The reason the GDPR vaporized small surveillance companies and left the big companies untouched had nothing to do with compliance costs. The Big Tech companies don't comply with the GDPR – they just get away with violating the GDPR Nothing about what he wrote refutes the GDPR being a "compliance moat". In fact, he even spells it out himself: "And that's why Google and Facebook haven't been extinguished by the GDPR while their rivals were. It's not compliance moats – it's impunity. Once a corporation attains a certain scale, it has the excess capital to spend on phony relocations that let it hop from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, chasing the loosest slots on the strip." He has the idea that a requirement is only a compliance moat if a small player can't comply (because of complexity, costs, etc), but a big one can. But it's fine for the "compliance moat" purposes that the small player can't comply and the big player can just ignore compliance. It's still a great moat, and it can still be consciously created as a moat: "Let's put out a law that makes it difficult for small players to do this shit, and we big players have avenues to bypass").
dandanua 3y ago
> "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further" -D. Vader Yeah, that's the motto of modern techno-fascists as well
fauigerzigerk 3y ago
What surprises me a little bit is that Apple didn't choose a model that is viable at least for some smaller competitors or special situations while keeping competing mainstream app stores out. Why did they choose to rub it in the EU's face that not a shred of lawmakers' intentions was going to be implemented? This can't be an accident. So what's the plan?
piltdownman 3y ago
This is the epitome of ill-informed and emotive polemic, written in a tabloid-esque fervour worthy of The National Inquirer. The Author starts with a inherently flawed argument around the concept of duty-free - holding it as some sort of totem indicating a cultural proclivity for the Irish towards large-scale tax evasion. The concept of things like bonded warehouses and Tourist Refund Schemes are ignored, despite him linking to the Wiki page detailing all of this (which he has either neglected to read or disingenuously ignored). Nor is there acknowledgement that U.S. citizens receive substantially higher duty exemptions than normal when they visit or transit through US Protectorates. But I digress. Lets move on to the more overt racism - where he decries the concept of MNCs setting up in Ireland as 'Potemkin Villages', or removes all artifice of balance using pulp-fiction phraseology like 'Ireland is a made town, where the cops are all on the take'. Much like the rabid UK Tabloids pre-Brexit, the conversation re: corporation tax is simplified to focus on the headline rate. It’s never been about the headline rate - France amongst other EU countries has a far lower effective corporate tax rate than Ireland. e.g. The French Agency for International Investment cited an effective tax rate of 8.2 per cent in advertising literature aimed at attracting foreign business to the country. The agency’s promotional documents note various tax mechanisms reduce the effective tax rate significantly from the nominal rate, citing a PricewaterhouseCoopers report (2011) https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/paying-taxes/pdf/paying-taxes-2011.pdf https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/paying-taxes/pdf/paying-taxes-2011... They're also non-English speaking, have layers of bureaucracy around employing people or setting up any sort of business, effectively close down on Sundays and have a storied history of industrial action, striking without warning, and other non-corporate aligned things like the gilet jaune movement. Ireland is heavily criticised because we encourage large US businesses to trade in Europe but use specific accounting and corporate formation practices to ensure that the majority of their European businesses pay as little tax as possible in Europe. Other countries though, particularly France and Germany would have quite substantial tax incomes if Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, PayPal, EBay and most of the major drug manufacturers based in Ireland had to pay more local taxes in those countries. We don’t benefit by the setting of ECB rates like Germany does, so we take what we can as a Service Based economy isolated on an Island on the Western Periphery of Europe with a highly-educated English Speaking Workforce. We facilitate widespread tax reduction (again legally) which directly affects those countries denying them tax income which they would really prefer to obtain. That’s why our tax practices generate so much anger in the rest of Europe. It’s not the rate, it’s that we collaborate with those US firms to keep denying tax income to the rest of Europe. Why a US Citizen would get angry at Ireland about this is another question entirely - e.g. Ireland gets the blame for Apple not paying its fair share of taxes but what it really boils down to is: Apple is a US company, yet the US won't force Apple to pay taxes on its foreign earnings. In contrast, if you're a US citizen who, perhaps lives anywhere else in the world for all your life, you're still expected to pay US taxes...
r-spaghetti 3y ago
This article feels to me more relevant to hackernews' original target audience than much of the current top-10 marketing crap.
- crotchfire 3y ago
  ... which is probably why it got flagged. Gotta keep those sheep toeing the line.
hnaiobsession 3y ago
Whether Apple is non-compliant and if yes, to what extent, will be known weeks or months after this is rolled out. John Gruber, writing on “Apple’s Plan for DMA in the European Union” [1]: > I’ve emphasized throughout this piece the word proposals. That’s key, because no one, including Apple, knows whether the European Commission is going to find any or all of them compliant with the DMA. Apple has met with EC representatives dozens of times across several years regarding the DMA, but the way the EC works is that (1) they pass laws; (2) companies do all the work to attempt compliance with those laws; and only then (3) does the EC decide whether they comply. Companies like Apple don’t get to run ideas past the EC and get a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. They have to build them, then find out. I loved this ending in that post: > The delicious irony in Apple’s not knowing if these massive, complicated proposals will be deemed DMA-compliant is that their dealings with the European Commission sound exactly like App Store developers’ dealings with Apple. Do all the work to build it first, and only then find out if it passes muster with largely inscrutable rules interpreted by faceless bureaucrats. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/apples_plans_for_the_dma https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/apples_plans_for_the_dma

122 points by bertman 3y ago

[dead]

These issues need good unbiased reporting, and as much as I love Cory, his reporting is all but unbiased. It's activism. Which is perfectly ok, and extremely important, but in this case it reeks of an extremism that is damaging to the cause itself. The truth is that decrying things like Apple's splash screen about the use of alternative stores, for example, is ridiculous. Apple has all the legal rights to do that, and formally that is not even incorrect. I personally don't let tech unsavvy people from the family use anything but the App Store and iPhone. Not because we couldn't find better Android phones for the same price, but because I know they would be easily scammed by shady apps that don't have to pass through the App Store's review process. That is clearly a monopolistic advantage to Apple, but the alternative is equally bad and, admittedly, even worse for less tech savvy users, which are the majority.

atoav 3y ago
So more options are bad, because people might make choices that they don't understand? Is this the invisible hand of the market that people have been wanging on about for the past dekades? Or is this new-found worry about people choosing wrong things something that is only limited to Apple? Because I could imagine other, worse markets with much more impact on people that are less regulated (e.g. food).
- dash2 3y ago
  Food is highly regulated by the state, at least in the US and EU (probably too highly regulated). It is also a market with numerous platforms which compete to offer quality guarantees - i.e. supermarkets. The difference with Apple is just that the platform is more tied in to the hardware.
  - atoav 3y ago
    Sure, but would you like one company to decide which food you are allowed to eat?
    - jjgreen 3y ago
      ... it's made out of people!
    - dash2 3y ago
      I understand the loss of being stuck with a single platform, but that's not quite right. You can have multiple devices, just as you can shop at multiple supermarkets. It's just that the price for doing so is higher (syncing multiple devices, carrying them around, the initial outlay), so most people don't. Nobody forces you to buy either Apple or Android. But the services they provide are indeed valuable: the walled garden protects me from certain kinds of harmful software, for example. The duopoly in smartphones is an outcome of the underlying technologies. That doesn't mean it is efficient in the economic sense, compared to an ideal world, but the comparison has to be what we can actually implement.
realusername 3y ago
I can't see how you would interpret Apple's "compliance" other than contempt, no matter how unbiaised you try to be. Even Apple's own press releases aren't even trying to hide that.
echelon 3y ago
> Apple has all the legal rights to do that They should not. Mobile computing is as fundamentally important as the right to free speech. They're taking over access to every part of life and are more important than cash. Two trillion dollar companies should not be allowed to gatekeep belonging to modern society. > even worse for less tech savvy users, which are the majority. We let people drive multi-ton vehicles with little training at 80mph. I think they'll be fine with web downloads.
- Tempest1981 3y ago
  > multi-ton vehicles with little training at 80mph. I think they'll be fine with web downloads. I wish this were true, but in my experience, it's a very different skill than driving.
  - echelon 3y ago
    Only in tech do we dismiss all of the absolutely deadly degrees of freedom in life to defend the entrenched positions of monopolies. We won't even mention the decades of research and literal human millennia of engineering efforts that went into the best practices that can protect people. Sandboxes, what are those? Surely only two companies lording over everything can protect us from ourselves. Free web installs are just as bad as speeding cars, chainsaws, electrocution, etc.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wkat4242 3y ago
It's not reporting, it's a personal blog. It's an opinion piece. Activism is definitely ok there in my book, and it's clearly needed considering how this situation is getting out of hand.
southerntofu 3y ago
> I know they would be easily scammed by shady apps that don't have to pass through the App Store's review process. My entire family uses F-Droid on ungoogled Androids. They have much less chances to be scammed/exploited because F-Droid is community-run and is explicit about anti-features in the store UI. There just isn't any malware/scam on F-Droid to be scammed with, because the community decides what apps to add and the community server builds them. Pretending There Is No Alternative ® to Apple monopolistic practices is misleading to say the least.
- dzhiurgis 3y ago
  How do you go about modern luxuries like opening and charging your car, controlling your home, paying, using public transport, chatting, using digital id, flying a drone...?
- tuyiown 3y ago
  > They have much less chances to be scammed/exploited because F-Droid is community-run and is explicit about anti-features in the store UI. That, but also because it's a niche that has not been targeted by malevolence. Enjoy it while it last.
  - southerntofu 3y ago
    Debian and other distro repositories would like to disagree. When the packager doesn't provide the final build, it becomes much harder for malware/adware to reach end users. Not technically impossible, but much harder than direct-to-users stores such as Apple AppStore or Flathub where it is trivial because whatever binary the uploader provides ends up directly running on user machines.
    - tuyiown 3y ago
      That works fine until hostiles manages to trick users to install their software directly or, to get back to the topic, their own app store or browser. I find it quite ironic that the discussion circles back to the level of lock down on "supported" app distribution channels.
pimterry 3y ago
> The truth is that decrying things like Apple's splash screen about the use of alternative stores, for example, is ridiculous. The article is talking about splash screens for 3rd party payments (like this: https://developer.apple.com/support/images/apps-using-alternative-payment-providers-in-the-eu/screen-private-large_2x.png https://developer.apple.com/support/images/apps-using-altern...) not for 3rd party app stores (like this: https://developer.apple.com/support/images/alternative-app-marketplace-in-the-eu/screen-install-large_2x.png?3 https://developer.apple.com/support/images/alternative-app-m...). I would agree the app store warning is pretty reasonable: "<site> would like to install an App Marketplace" is clear and to the point, sure (and the article doesn't disagree). "This app doesn't support the App Store's private and secure payment system" as the main headline on a full screen warning with a huge long scary blurb every time you try to pay anybody who isn't Apple is not reasonable. This is not the great danger Apple is pretending it is - literally every single one of their customers has paid money to somebody outside the App Store in the past. Being aware of the risks of that is a basic & essential skill that everybody who owns a credit card must have already. Apple has a responsibility to protect non-technical users against technical risks, but it does not (and should not) try to protect users from lack of very basic life skills. > Apple has all the legal rights to do that That's not necessarily true at all! I'm sure there'll have a good lawyerly debate on this soon, but the DMA requirements generally seem to mandate no restrictions for these new features than those strictly required to preserve device integrity & security. Given that the existing global payment system is very familiar to all their customers, far more widely used than App Store purchases, and _generally pretty good_ (yes, you can quibble on UX and subscription management, but we all use it all the time, there's plenty of anti-fraud backstops, and payments in the world outside the app store do work) I don't think this screaming warning can be justified as an essential measure required to protect user security. To me, it looks like a unnecessarily scary screen actively discouraging users away from their competition. A small calm confirmation for "Pay outside the App Store? This payment will be handled by 'Example Dev' directly." would be far more justifiable.
ysnp 3y ago
If you were a designing an app store that provides apps that are safe for non technical users you would probably want to ensure: excellent curation where human reviewers can have deep knowledge of all of the apps that have been reviewed/published, clear provenance so you can be strongly confident of the source/supply of the applications in case of abuse or infra compromise (with a smaller problem blast radius for each app) alternative app stores so that end users are never beholden to your app store and they can get similar or the same apps from elsewhere if your policies or practices change for the worse. Some of these help ensure that no third party can maliciously update an app at the behest of a criminal actor without also compromising the app developer, or that no third party can gather invasively detailed information and fingerprinting surface concerning the apps people use and have in case of dissent. Apple don't seem to have any interest in doing any of this, so I can't understand how their solution would be better for less tech-savvy users.
pjc50 3y ago
> Apple's splash screen about the use of alternative stores, for example, is ridiculous. Apple has all the legal rights to do that, Isn't the question whether the EU thinks they have the legal right to do that, and how the law can be changed so that they don't do that? Anyway, the article points out that certain companies are exempted from those alleged "Apple rules" already ..
black_puppydog 3y ago
> the alternative is equally bad As others have pointed out, this isn't true for community curated FLOSS repositories like F-Droid. But I want to point out that the french "pole expertise" for digital issues, PEReN, also wrote about this a while back: https://www.peren.gouv.fr/en/actualites/2022-02-18_eclairage_sur_os/ https://www.peren.gouv.fr/en/actualites/2022-02-18_eclairage... TL;DR: the "trust relation" that users have with Apple's review department could just as well (and often better) be filled by third party app stores or even independent entities.
Lutger 3y ago
We need opinion pieces as much as (so-called) unbiased reporting. This one puts things into perspective, rather than merely summarizing facts and viewpoints. I appreciate that it clearly does so and doesn't pretend to be unbiased. Nor does the so-called activism work behind the screen to manipulate politicians - like no doubt many paid by Apple lobbyists are currently doing. You call it activism like it is a bad thing. If it is, then let us dump freedom of speech.
alpaca128 3y ago
> Apple has all the legal rights to do that Law doesn't say what's morally right. > I personally don't let tech unsavvy people from the family use anything but the App Store and iPhone Do you also make sure they can only access Apple-certified websites in the browser? No? Sounds pretty unsafe. > I know they would be easily scammed by shady apps that don't have to pass through the App Store's review process Both Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store have hosted malware in the past. It's quite rare for the average user to even try installing Amazon's third-party appstore, let alone a random .apk from the internet, it's about having the option to be less dependent. Sure some users will be negatively affected, just like some people could be convinced to put their iPhone in the microwave to recharge the battery, but if you take that seriously you might as well ban knives. > That is clearly a monopolistic advantage to Apple, but the alternative is equally bad You need to be a lot more convincing to tell me that something is as bad as a monopoly.

postepowanieadm 3y ago

How unkind!

megablast 3y ago

Paraphrasing

jillesvangurp 3y ago

I don't think I agree with all of his points but I do agree with his point that other countries outside the EU will try to persuade Apple that they want Apple to play by those rules. They'll be under a lot of pressure to roll out what they do there elsewhere. And the argument that they can't goes away the second they show that they can in the EU. And of course everybody forgets about the Chinese market where Apple has been playing by Chinese rules for many years (which isn't great for privacy, obviously). So that's three separate markets where they are treating users very differently.

jocaal 3y ago
> They'll be under a lot of pressure to roll out what they do there elsewhere. Japan is also in the process of making similar laws[1]. [1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-d...

wkat4242 3y ago

I'm liking this guy even more every time. I agree with him so much and his enshittification term really hit the nail on the head. Also really like that he hosts his blog on his own site so I don't have to go to that terrible crap that medium is to read it.

Voultapher 3y ago
I'm in the same boat. While his writing is clearly ideological, it aligns with my world view and opened my eyes to the extent of these abuses. For example with this article, I was aware of some of the points, but didn't realize the million dollar fee thing for alternative app stores. Looking at this press post by Apple https://www.techpowerup.com/318370/apple-announces-changes-to-ios-safari-and-the-app-store-in-the-european-union https://www.techpowerup.com/318370/apple-announces-changes-t... we can see them patting themselves on the back. They are so arrogant they literally put out marketing material that says, we believe our compliance with the DMA is so malicious that less than 1% of developers would want to chose it, even when the alternative means sticking to the outlandish 30% fees.
moffkalast 3y ago
He's been around, to say the least. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Comics_featuring_Cory_Doctorow https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Comics_f...

shmerl 3y ago

> For one thing, Apple will only allow European customers to run alternative browser engines This is idiotic beyond measure, but so Apple, trying to claw every inch of monopolistic abuse as long as they can get away with it. They should be punished with fines in billions for this. May be that will teach them a thing or two.

adastra22 3y ago

Apple's European revenue for the App Store is only 7% of its global App Store receipts. At some point apple will just leave the market. The EU is a bit bonkers to think that it can get global tech companies to comply with increasingly tech-hostile regulations without any push back or red lines. At some point it just stops being worth the hassle.

5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
> At some point apple will just leave the market. maybe a good thing. yanis varoufakis said EU had become irrelevant in tech. more investment can go to local tech instead of US monopolies.
- adastra22 3y ago
  I would love for there to be a vibrant European tech scene. But these same sort of business-hostile behavior is exactly why there isn't a European version of Silicon Valley.
  - dedene 3y ago
    That is not true at all
    - adastra22 3y ago
      You're free to think otherwise, but this is what I've been repeatedly told by entrepreneurs in Europe (who mostly copy US ideas), and europeans living in Silicon Valley (who came here to innovate in ways they can't back home).
      - qngcdvy 3y ago
        Yeah or it's just the capital that has been there in abundance. Spawned from the defense industry, thriving through the money made in the 2000s and after by creating profits all over the world (ads!) and then evading taxation as much as possible while funneling the money back to the valley and hiring the world's best talent to keep that first place. The small business owner pays taxes because what else can they do? Big corps go through tax-havens and relocations and don't do so, while profiting off of the infrastructure paid for by taxes (=> enabling customers over seas to even buy iphones). Traditional companies ship physical products and/or employ more people in the respective countries, while they also try to evade taxation I think those circumstances make them a much better subject to it though. Really, the more I keep on talking to my friends in the Valley the more it boils down to the money factor. Salaries, VCs and all the likes. I don't say Europe shouldn't be less business hostile, but one should see the Valley the way it is and realize that just buy changing the laws and trying to copy it Europe can't succeed. They should find their own path.

fxtentacle 3y ago

That article nicely highlights how much contempt Apple has for its developers. I don't know how they got there, but small companies have certainly come a long way from being treated like partners.

Epskampie 3y ago
This went out the window the moment that developers weren't rare anymore. Nowadays there is so many people all over the world willing and able to do the work to produce apps, apple is free to exersize their duopoly power and treat them as expandable. I've created some iOS apps, and you can really feel this in every single interaction. From their crummy badly written out of date documentation without code samples, to the painfully slow developer portals, to the random app rejections.

kybernetyk 3y ago

>murder Setting a bunch of cookies isn’t something I would equate to murder. If you want me to read your article please use less hyperbole. The author sounds like an unhinged lunatic who takes his pet issue way too seriously.

coldtea 3y ago
Isolating a single word out of context isn't something I would equate with a good faith comment. The comment author sounds like an unhinged lunatic driven to irrelevant knee jerk reactions. The author, in the context of an article talking about how big companies can bypass various monopoly and privacy laws, wrote how: "companies really do get away with both literal and figurative murder". That's a general statement about what companies can get away with. He didn't assign cookie violations to "literal murder". It's obvious that "figurative murder" is the kind he abscribes to the violations he talks about, like GDPR. As in the very common figurative idiom "getting away with murder", which is about doing bad stuff/breaking the law, and not having any serious consequence. Or do you pretend to never have heard of it? As for the general statement, it still stands. Companies have historically also gotten away with literal murder too, and it's a valid point to raise when talking about how companies can often violate laws with impunity.
Voultapher 3y ago
I think the user coldtea makes valid points. I'd like to add that we don't know what the author Cory Doctorow was alluding to when he wrote: > Companies really do get away with both literal and figurative murder. If you interpret that as corporations, sometimes commit literal murder. I think that's factually true, for example https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/philippines-mining-industry-killing-arrests-activists/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-securit... and https://lawblogs.uc.edu/ihrlr/2021/05/28/pipeline-of-violence-the-oil-industry-and-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women/ https://lawblogs.uc.edu/ihrlr/2021/05/28/pipeline-of-violenc... Taking that out of context and implying he equates setting cookies, I think that's in bad faith.

newbie578 3y ago

I have zero doubt in my mind that Apple is in for a rude awakening. No way will the EU stand this level of malicious compliance. The gloves are off and I fully expect for Apple to not come out unscathed.

masklinn 3y ago
I doubt it’s going to be an awakening, unless Apple’s execs have taken to huffing paint on a musk scale, I would assume it’s more of a cynical ploy: while the EU doesn’t like companies ignoring the spirit of the laws it usually takes limited action until it’s refined the word to match, so they’re trying out ignoring the spirit in case it either works out or gives them more time, even if the odds are low. That’s a high risk manoeuvre if the EU courts decide to make an example though.
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  > That’s a high risk manoeuvre if the EU courts decide to make an example though. And the EU courts absolutely should.
maxglute 3y ago
> Apple to not come out unscathed. Doesn't mean Apple won't still come out the relative winner.
- piva00 3y ago
  Depends, if the EU wants to set an example that corporations trying to skirt the law by malicious compliance will be heavily penalised we might see Apple's products being barred from commercialisation in the entire EU until they comply. Will it suck for consumers? Yup, some people will be screaming out loud about how the non-democratic EU bureaucrats are stifling innovation (as we usually see in HN comments about EU regulations against huge corporations), at the same time Apple will capitulate if a ban on the sale of their products in the EU goes on for more than a few weeks. They capitulated on the Apple Watch sales ban in the US and the US is much more pro-business. I can't see what's the case where they end being a relative winner though, if there's one thing the EU is good at is on enforcing commercial regulations since it's still its main raison d'être.

Kipters 3y ago

In some way I secretly hope that the EU is waiting for DMA to come into effect in March to declare Apple as non compliant and hit them as hard as they can.

moffkalast 3y ago
They better not, I don't think I can handle that much schadenfreude.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

coldtea 3y ago

>But there was a curious pattern to GDPR enforcement: while smaller, EU-based companies were swiftly shuttered by its provisions, the US-based giants that conduct the most brazen, wide-ranging, illegal surveillance escaped unscathed for years and years, continuing to spy on Europeans. (...) One (erroneous) way to look at this is as a "compliance moat" story. In that story, GDPR requires a bunch of expensive systems that only gigantic companies like Facebook and Google can afford. These compliance costs are a "capital moat" – a way to exclude smaller companies from functioning in the market. Thus, the GDPR acted as an anticompetitive wrecking ball, clearing the field for the largest companies, who get to operate without having to contend with smaller companies nipping at their heels. This is wrong. (...) A harder look at what happened with the GDPR reveals a completely different dynamic at work. The reason the GDPR vaporized small surveillance companies and left the big companies untouched had nothing to do with compliance costs. The Big Tech companies don't comply with the GDPR – they just get away with violating the GDPR Nothing about what he wrote refutes the GDPR being a "compliance moat". In fact, he even spells it out himself: "And that's why Google and Facebook haven't been extinguished by the GDPR while their rivals were. It's not compliance moats – it's impunity. Once a corporation attains a certain scale, it has the excess capital to spend on phony relocations that let it hop from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, chasing the loosest slots on the strip." He has the idea that a requirement is only a compliance moat if a small player can't comply (because of complexity, costs, etc), but a big one can. But it's fine for the "compliance moat" purposes that the small player can't comply and the big player can just ignore compliance. It's still a great moat, and it can still be consciously created as a moat: "Let's put out a law that makes it difficult for small players to do this shit, and we big players have avenues to bypass").

dandanua 3y ago

> "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further" -D. Vader Yeah, that's the motto of modern techno-fascists as well

fauigerzigerk 3y ago

What surprises me a little bit is that Apple didn't choose a model that is viable at least for some smaller competitors or special situations while keeping competing mainstream app stores out. Why did they choose to rub it in the EU's face that not a shred of lawmakers' intentions was going to be implemented? This can't be an accident. So what's the plan?

piltdownman 3y ago

This is the epitome of ill-informed and emotive polemic, written in a tabloid-esque fervour worthy of The National Inquirer. The Author starts with a inherently flawed argument around the concept of duty-free - holding it as some sort of totem indicating a cultural proclivity for the Irish towards large-scale tax evasion. The concept of things like bonded warehouses and Tourist Refund Schemes are ignored, despite him linking to the Wiki page detailing all of this (which he has either neglected to read or disingenuously ignored). Nor is there acknowledgement that U.S. citizens receive substantially higher duty exemptions than normal when they visit or transit through US Protectorates. But I digress. Lets move on to the more overt racism - where he decries the concept of MNCs setting up in Ireland as 'Potemkin Villages', or removes all artifice of balance using pulp-fiction phraseology like 'Ireland is a made town, where the cops are all on the take'. Much like the rabid UK Tabloids pre-Brexit, the conversation re: corporation tax is simplified to focus on the headline rate. It’s never been about the headline rate - France amongst other EU countries has a far lower effective corporate tax rate than Ireland. e.g. The French Agency for International Investment cited an effective tax rate of 8.2 per cent in advertising literature aimed at attracting foreign business to the country. The agency’s promotional documents note various tax mechanisms reduce the effective tax rate significantly from the nominal rate, citing a PricewaterhouseCoopers report (2011) https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/paying-taxes/pdf/paying-taxes-2011.pdf https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/paying-taxes/pdf/paying-taxes-2011... They're also non-English speaking, have layers of bureaucracy around employing people or setting up any sort of business, effectively close down on Sundays and have a storied history of industrial action, striking without warning, and other non-corporate aligned things like the gilet jaune movement. Ireland is heavily criticised because we encourage large US businesses to trade in Europe but use specific accounting and corporate formation practices to ensure that the majority of their European businesses pay as little tax as possible in Europe. Other countries though, particularly France and Germany would have quite substantial tax incomes if Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, PayPal, EBay and most of the major drug manufacturers based in Ireland had to pay more local taxes in those countries. We don’t benefit by the setting of ECB rates like Germany does, so we take what we can as a Service Based economy isolated on an Island on the Western Periphery of Europe with a highly-educated English Speaking Workforce. We facilitate widespread tax reduction (again legally) which directly affects those countries denying them tax income which they would really prefer to obtain. That’s why our tax practices generate so much anger in the rest of Europe. It’s not the rate, it’s that we collaborate with those US firms to keep denying tax income to the rest of Europe. Why a US Citizen would get angry at Ireland about this is another question entirely - e.g. Ireland gets the blame for Apple not paying its fair share of taxes but what it really boils down to is: Apple is a US company, yet the US won't force Apple to pay taxes on its foreign earnings. In contrast, if you're a US citizen who, perhaps lives anywhere else in the world for all your life, you're still expected to pay US taxes...

r-spaghetti 3y ago

This article feels to me more relevant to hackernews' original target audience than much of the current top-10 marketing crap.

crotchfire 3y ago
... which is probably why it got flagged. Gotta keep those sheep toeing the line.

hnaiobsession 3y ago

Whether Apple is non-compliant and if yes, to what extent, will be known weeks or months after this is rolled out. John Gruber, writing on “Apple’s Plan for DMA in the European Union” [1]: > I’ve emphasized throughout this piece the word proposals. That’s key, because no one, including Apple, knows whether the European Commission is going to find any or all of them compliant with the DMA. Apple has met with EC representatives dozens of times across several years regarding the DMA, but the way the EC works is that (1) they pass laws; (2) companies do all the work to attempt compliance with those laws; and only then (3) does the EC decide whether they comply. Companies like Apple don’t get to run ideas past the EC and get a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. They have to build them, then find out. I loved this ending in that post: > The delicious irony in Apple’s not knowing if these massive, complicated proposals will be deemed DMA-compliant is that their dealings with the European Commission sound exactly like App Store developers’ dealings with Apple. Do all the work to build it first, and only then find out if it passes muster with largely inscrutable rules interpreted by faceless bureaucrats. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/apples_plans_for_the_dma https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/apples_plans_for_the_dma