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I don’t think Apple’s pettiness is gonna work in their favor. I am not in the EU but my next iPhone is almost certainly not gonna be an iPhone despite me havin

I don’t think Apple’s pettiness is gonna work in their favor. I am not in the EU but my next iPhone is almost certainly not gonna be an iPhone despite me having used a non iPhone for about 6 months in the last 15 years. Their throwing their customers under the bus just to throw a tantrum in the EU does not bode well for how they would treat their customers in other situations.

JadeNB 3y ago
> I am not in the EU but my next iPhone is almost certainly not gonna be an iPhone …. Next phone, right?
- shaan7 3y ago
  Thats just parent's way of playing around with all the AI models reading this page xD
  - CaptainFever 3y ago
    As a large language model, hey!
- addicted 3y ago
  lol good call. To be honest an iPhone and a phone have been synonymous for me for 15 years. The 6 months was a period of madness (or genius, considering I actually loved it) when I was using a Windows Phone, until basically all the 3rd party apps I used dropped support.
toyg 3y ago
They're desperately hoping that their fanbois will howl so much, that MEPs will relent.
- montagg 3y ago
  I don't understand. How do you see disabling a feature that few people use leading to riling people up so the EU reverse itself?
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    I don't get it either, but that seems to be the plan. Either peer pressure or they are just dragging their feet in inevitable litigation. Trying to get a few more years of max monetization before a niche of users and apps exist outside of IOS (without jailbreaking, if that's still a thing).
- andix 3y ago
  Even the biggest fanboys will understand it's Apples fault. The laws apply to all the manufacturers and just Apple "thinks differently".
  - crossroadsguy 3y ago
    Then you don’t know Apple fanboys. If Apple releases an automatically installing iOS patch that bricks everyone’s iPhones (including theirs) unless they agree to subscribe to a Hardware Maintenance Plan™ of 19.99 USD per month, the first reaction from fanboys would be “Was waiting for Apple to do something like this. This is how it is supposed to work. It took them so long. Good on them getting rid of non-serious iOS users”. And this chorus will come long before Apple had to say anything on the matter in a press release or so.
    - tobyhinloopen 3y ago
      Truth. Many Apple fans are not only fine with everything, they will defend it hard
    - andix 3y ago
      How right you are, just a few comments apart: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39394424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39394424
akmarinov 3y ago
Whatever they manage to eek out in the EU, is the future of what iOS will be in the US and worldwide eventually. If they go with fully fledged PWAs that the other browser engines will enable - there’s little reason to use the Appstore, hence Apple losing their 30% commission. From their perspective it’s not so much throwing a tantrum but clawing and screaming their way into giving up as little revenue as possible.
- jkestner 3y ago
  And as a developer, I see how I'm going to be collateral damage, and am less likely to do anything that gives Apple more power over me and my customers. If that means a bookmarked web app, so be it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- bloppe 3y ago
  Idk if you have kids, but tantrums usually involve trying to claw and scream your way into not giving something up
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  It could very easily be worth it to maintain a gimped iOS for Europe. We’re talking about a lot of money here.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  We also know 70% of revenue comes from games. And there's no way proper game is going run on a PWA. I also invoke Android again... PWAs exist, Google still holds the lions share. Google has freaked out about it too and is being sanctioned as we speak for it, but most customers simply aren't going to look for an alt app store outside of niche uses.
  - sakjur 3y ago
    If we’re looking at a game that doesn’t use a lot of hardware resources like Candy Crush or Angry Birds, those could possibly run quite well as a PWA?
Zagitta 3y ago
I hope EU comes down HARD on them for trying to pull this shit
- buzzert 3y ago
  What exactly does that look like, in your mind? The EU coerces Apple engineers to work for free?
  - Barrin92 3y ago
    I'd personally love a sort of anti-trust czar who can just very unbureaucratically slap large tech companies with sensitive fines. If you had someone like that in charge and the moment companies engage in malicious compliance (for example cookie acceptance dark patterns) you go "now you pay 2% of your revenue in fines, you pull the same thing again we'll double the fine next month", how long does it take until companies play ball?
    - JayPalm 3y ago
      Just imagine all the corruption that would be possible!
      - MrDresden 3y ago
        You do realise that this position is by appointment by a council made up of members voted in by representative democracies, right? That there are checks and balances (courts and oversight committees) that weigh in regularly on decisions made by these kinds of appointed offices, right?
        buzzert 3y ago
        Of course, that's always how it works!
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    To work for their salary to comply with the country they serve in and still continue to be a trillion dollar company. Yes. I don't know why people are trying to spin this as if Apple operates on thin margins. In the very worst case, they either get fined out the ass until it's unprofitable to play these games, and/or sanctioned as a whole and lose the whole EU market, a market of 750m users. What other business gets to ignore laws and still operate in that land?
shusaku 3y ago
This is exactly why this legislation is stupid: if you don’t like the way Apple does things just buy an android.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  But I do like the way Apple does things. To be specific, I want to buy Apple hardware and I want to run Linux on it. What I don't like is the little digital fiefdom they created. When we buy stuff, we're supposed to own them. The problem is they just refuse to give us the keys to the machines. So we absolutely should make it a matter of law.
  - bloppe 3y ago
    While I agree philosophically about owning stuff, this isn't about that. If the only problem were "Apple doesn't give you the keys", then competition is a solution. The problem is network effects. An app developer cannot just choose to develop for Android, because maybe 90% of their business comes from iOS users. A user cannot just choose to use Android, because half their friends use iOS and cannot have a decent group chat experience outside iMessage. So, choice is illusory. The point is to make the choice real. In this case "giving you the keys" is really about giving app developers more freedom to choose how to reach users. Giving Apple users more control over their own freely-chosen devices is more like right-to-repair. Similar, but kinda different.
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      > If the only problem were "Apple doesn't give you the keys", then competition is a solution. A solution. The solution is to make them to do what's good for us by force of law. We can't afford to wait a century for some open mobile hardware platform to become available to us. We want good products now. Apple computers are good products and we should have every right to run whatever software we want on them now. There is no technical impediment to it, the only reason they don't let us do it is it would destroy the little digital fiefdom they have created for themselves. Digital fiefdoms should not be allowed to exist in the first place. Society should actively work to dismantle them. Giving us the keys to the machine will swiftly put an end to them. > The problem is network effects. Absolutely. Network effects should work to our advantage, not theirs. Basically anything that lets corporations "own" users should be straight up illegal. > A user cannot just choose to use Android, because half their friends use iOS and cannot have a decent group chat experience outside iMessage. We should mandate interoperability there too. Why is it that every corporation gets to have their own messaging system? They should all work with each other via the same protocol. Just make sure that end-to-end encryption is fully supported and there will be no problem. Actually here's an even better idea. Just make it legal to reverse engineer and interoperate regardless of what contracts say. People will do it adversarially if they need to. Make it so you don't need their permission. Make it illegal for corporations to retaliate against users for using things like an alternative messaging client. Get rid of nonsense like anti-circumvention laws. Then all of this will just happen on its own via market forces with no need to actually regulate anything. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera... > In this case "giving you the keys" is really about giving app developers more freedom to choose how to reach users. It's really not. Developers can't reach users because Apple owns them. User freedom means developers can bypass Apple and reach them directly.
nonethewiser 3y ago
> I am not in the EU but my next iPhone is almost certainly not gonna be an iPhone despite me having used a non iPhone for about 6 months in the last 15 years. Did you just subconsciously equate phones to iPhones in your rebuke of Apple?
buzzert 3y ago
I'm not really sure what you're getting at—the statement is that it was too much work to make the feature compliant with the rules of the DMA, so the feature was removed since few people used it. Are you arguing that Apple is lying about how much work it was to execute that?
- Arch485 3y ago
  Yes
dclowd9901 3y ago
What customers? The ones that use PWAs? I would bet a good portion of my arm that fewer than 10% of Apple’s user ship relies on PWAs. This is Apple saying “if it’s important to you dozen folks out there who use PWAs or care about installing a non-web view browser on your phone, that you can continue doing that, we’re not the company for you.” They won’t blink because who gives a shit?
tobyhinloopen 3y ago
I ditched Apple for this reason (and their storage upgrades pricing) Android is fine but it's not as smooth as iOS. Still, I hate what Apple has become.
the_gipsy 3y ago
Im going to ditch my iPhone in favor of a Pixel. This attitude has pushed me over the edge, and the device isn't really any better than Android. Some aspects yes, but other are much worse. Dark patterns like the appstore/web/browsers restrictions and iCloud upselling are a big no-no. Never again.
- visarga 3y ago
  my last Pixel had shit battery compared to iPhone, buyer beware
  - MrDresden 3y ago
    And all my Pixels (Pixel 1, Pixel 3 and now Pixel 6a) worked flawlessly for years after purchase. Whereas two separate family members had constant issues with their iPhones. Beware of anecdotal evidence.
    - reissbaker 3y ago
      Yup, my Pixel 8 Pro has great battery life. +1 on don't trust random internet anecdata.
  - the_gipsy 3y ago
    My current iPhone has shit battery compared to my slightly less shitty previous pixel's battery.
  - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
    I own a Pixel 7a and an iPhone 14. Battery life is too similar for me to notice a difference. I never systematically tested it though. Pixel 6 was the same as well. The only phone I owned recently that had really terrible battery life even when new was the iPhone 12 mini.
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  I still can’t fathom how people can look at the pixel range with their multi-generational emergency call issues and still think “yep, that’s the phone for me”.

JadeNB 3y ago

> I am not in the EU but my next iPhone is almost certainly not gonna be an iPhone …. Next phone, right?

shaan7 3y ago
Thats just parent's way of playing around with all the AI models reading this page xD
- CaptainFever 3y ago
  As a large language model, hey!
addicted 3y ago
lol good call. To be honest an iPhone and a phone have been synonymous for me for 15 years. The 6 months was a period of madness (or genius, considering I actually loved it) when I was using a Windows Phone, until basically all the 3rd party apps I used dropped support.

toyg 3y ago

They're desperately hoping that their fanbois will howl so much, that MEPs will relent.

montagg 3y ago
I don't understand. How do you see disabling a feature that few people use leading to riling people up so the EU reverse itself?
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  I don't get it either, but that seems to be the plan. Either peer pressure or they are just dragging their feet in inevitable litigation. Trying to get a few more years of max monetization before a niche of users and apps exist outside of IOS (without jailbreaking, if that's still a thing).
andix 3y ago
Even the biggest fanboys will understand it's Apples fault. The laws apply to all the manufacturers and just Apple "thinks differently".
- crossroadsguy 3y ago
  Then you don’t know Apple fanboys. If Apple releases an automatically installing iOS patch that bricks everyone’s iPhones (including theirs) unless they agree to subscribe to a Hardware Maintenance Plan™ of 19.99 USD per month, the first reaction from fanboys would be “Was waiting for Apple to do something like this. This is how it is supposed to work. It took them so long. Good on them getting rid of non-serious iOS users”. And this chorus will come long before Apple had to say anything on the matter in a press release or so.
  - tobyhinloopen 3y ago
    Truth. Many Apple fans are not only fine with everything, they will defend it hard
  - andix 3y ago
    How right you are, just a few comments apart: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39394424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39394424

akmarinov 3y ago

Whatever they manage to eek out in the EU, is the future of what iOS will be in the US and worldwide eventually. If they go with fully fledged PWAs that the other browser engines will enable - there’s little reason to use the Appstore, hence Apple losing their 30% commission. From their perspective it’s not so much throwing a tantrum but clawing and screaming their way into giving up as little revenue as possible.

jkestner 3y ago
And as a developer, I see how I'm going to be collateral damage, and am less likely to do anything that gives Apple more power over me and my customers. If that means a bookmarked web app, so be it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bloppe 3y ago
Idk if you have kids, but tantrums usually involve trying to claw and scream your way into not giving something up
nonethewiser 3y ago
It could very easily be worth it to maintain a gimped iOS for Europe. We’re talking about a lot of money here.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
We also know 70% of revenue comes from games. And there's no way proper game is going run on a PWA. I also invoke Android again... PWAs exist, Google still holds the lions share. Google has freaked out about it too and is being sanctioned as we speak for it, but most customers simply aren't going to look for an alt app store outside of niche uses.
- sakjur 3y ago
  If we’re looking at a game that doesn’t use a lot of hardware resources like Candy Crush or Angry Birds, those could possibly run quite well as a PWA?

Zagitta 3y ago

I hope EU comes down HARD on them for trying to pull this shit

buzzert 3y ago
What exactly does that look like, in your mind? The EU coerces Apple engineers to work for free?
- Barrin92 3y ago
  I'd personally love a sort of anti-trust czar who can just very unbureaucratically slap large tech companies with sensitive fines. If you had someone like that in charge and the moment companies engage in malicious compliance (for example cookie acceptance dark patterns) you go "now you pay 2% of your revenue in fines, you pull the same thing again we'll double the fine next month", how long does it take until companies play ball?
  - JayPalm 3y ago
    Just imagine all the corruption that would be possible!
    - MrDresden 3y ago
      You do realise that this position is by appointment by a council made up of members voted in by representative democracies, right? That there are checks and balances (courts and oversight committees) that weigh in regularly on decisions made by these kinds of appointed offices, right?
      - buzzert 3y ago
        Of course, that's always how it works!
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  To work for their salary to comply with the country they serve in and still continue to be a trillion dollar company. Yes. I don't know why people are trying to spin this as if Apple operates on thin margins. In the very worst case, they either get fined out the ass until it's unprofitable to play these games, and/or sanctioned as a whole and lose the whole EU market, a market of 750m users. What other business gets to ignore laws and still operate in that land?

shusaku 3y ago

This is exactly why this legislation is stupid: if you don’t like the way Apple does things just buy an android.

matheusmoreira 3y ago
But I do like the way Apple does things. To be specific, I want to buy Apple hardware and I want to run Linux on it. What I don't like is the little digital fiefdom they created. When we buy stuff, we're supposed to own them. The problem is they just refuse to give us the keys to the machines. So we absolutely should make it a matter of law.
- bloppe 3y ago
  While I agree philosophically about owning stuff, this isn't about that. If the only problem were "Apple doesn't give you the keys", then competition is a solution. The problem is network effects. An app developer cannot just choose to develop for Android, because maybe 90% of their business comes from iOS users. A user cannot just choose to use Android, because half their friends use iOS and cannot have a decent group chat experience outside iMessage. So, choice is illusory. The point is to make the choice real. In this case "giving you the keys" is really about giving app developers more freedom to choose how to reach users. Giving Apple users more control over their own freely-chosen devices is more like right-to-repair. Similar, but kinda different.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    > If the only problem were "Apple doesn't give you the keys", then competition is a solution. A solution. The solution is to make them to do what's good for us by force of law. We can't afford to wait a century for some open mobile hardware platform to become available to us. We want good products now. Apple computers are good products and we should have every right to run whatever software we want on them now. There is no technical impediment to it, the only reason they don't let us do it is it would destroy the little digital fiefdom they have created for themselves. Digital fiefdoms should not be allowed to exist in the first place. Society should actively work to dismantle them. Giving us the keys to the machine will swiftly put an end to them. > The problem is network effects. Absolutely. Network effects should work to our advantage, not theirs. Basically anything that lets corporations "own" users should be straight up illegal. > A user cannot just choose to use Android, because half their friends use iOS and cannot have a decent group chat experience outside iMessage. We should mandate interoperability there too. Why is it that every corporation gets to have their own messaging system? They should all work with each other via the same protocol. Just make sure that end-to-end encryption is fully supported and there will be no problem. Actually here's an even better idea. Just make it legal to reverse engineer and interoperate regardless of what contracts say. People will do it adversarially if they need to. Make it so you don't need their permission. Make it illegal for corporations to retaliate against users for using things like an alternative messaging client. Get rid of nonsense like anti-circumvention laws. Then all of this will just happen on its own via market forces with no need to actually regulate anything. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera... > In this case "giving you the keys" is really about giving app developers more freedom to choose how to reach users. It's really not. Developers can't reach users because Apple owns them. User freedom means developers can bypass Apple and reach them directly.

nonethewiser 3y ago

> I am not in the EU but my next iPhone is almost certainly not gonna be an iPhone despite me having used a non iPhone for about 6 months in the last 15 years. Did you just subconsciously equate phones to iPhones in your rebuke of Apple?

buzzert 3y ago

I'm not really sure what you're getting at—the statement is that it was too much work to make the feature compliant with the rules of the DMA, so the feature was removed since few people used it. Are you arguing that Apple is lying about how much work it was to execute that?

Arch485 3y ago
Yes

dclowd9901 3y ago

What customers? The ones that use PWAs? I would bet a good portion of my arm that fewer than 10% of Apple’s user ship relies on PWAs. This is Apple saying “if it’s important to you dozen folks out there who use PWAs or care about installing a non-web view browser on your phone, that you can continue doing that, we’re not the company for you.” They won’t blink because who gives a shit?

tobyhinloopen 3y ago

I ditched Apple for this reason (and their storage upgrades pricing) Android is fine but it's not as smooth as iOS. Still, I hate what Apple has become.

the_gipsy 3y ago

Im going to ditch my iPhone in favor of a Pixel. This attitude has pushed me over the edge, and the device isn't really any better than Android. Some aspects yes, but other are much worse. Dark patterns like the appstore/web/browsers restrictions and iCloud upselling are a big no-no. Never again.

visarga 3y ago
my last Pixel had shit battery compared to iPhone, buyer beware
- MrDresden 3y ago
  And all my Pixels (Pixel 1, Pixel 3 and now Pixel 6a) worked flawlessly for years after purchase. Whereas two separate family members had constant issues with their iPhones. Beware of anecdotal evidence.
  - reissbaker 3y ago
    Yup, my Pixel 8 Pro has great battery life. +1 on don't trust random internet anecdata.
- the_gipsy 3y ago
  My current iPhone has shit battery compared to my slightly less shitty previous pixel's battery.
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  I own a Pixel 7a and an iPhone 14. Battery life is too similar for me to notice a difference. I never systematically tested it though. Pixel 6 was the same as well. The only phone I owned recently that had really terrible battery life even when new was the iPhone 12 mini.
thebruce87m 3y ago
I still can’t fathom how people can look at the pixel range with their multi-generational emergency call issues and still think “yep, that’s the phone for me”.