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iPhone owners can leave EU for 30 days before they lose third-party app stores
- rcarmo 3y agoSo now I can’t take a Summber break, internship or deliver a project outside the EU? This feels like reverse colonialism.
- rchaud 3y agoApple will give it a catchier name: iRon Curtain.
- CornishPasty 3y agoThis sounds very much like Apple being maliciously compliant. Similar to their complaint against Epic Games... I'd be interested to see what the EU makes of this.
- DavideNL 3y agoSo, does this mean that if citizens who live outside of the EU, say the US, travel to the EU, they will then get access third-party app stores ?
- _visgean 3y agoApple really trying to be the asshole here. Imagine installing work apps that disappear after 30 days.. Also what happens if the user chooses not to share their live location with apple?
- paulpan 3y agoWonder how stringent they'll try to be, since you could technically VPN even for a few hours back into an EU server to reset the 30-day period. Or someone will inevitably create an app that will do this automatically & indefinitely.
- CubsFan1060 3y agoThey don't lose access to the apps. I suspect the phone itself is what disables it, not sending the location to Apple.
- randmeerkat 3y ago> They don't lose access to the apps. I suspect the phone itself is what disables it, not sending the location to Apple. Imagine paying a thousand dollars for a computer that actively sabotages its user based on their gps data… All because the manufacturer wants to control how someone can install a piece of software on it…
- CubsFan1060 3y agoIt.. doesn't bother me. But none of this is different than when said person spent a thousand dollars. If this is the sort of thing that annoys you, you should probably have bought a different device in the first place.
- refulgentis 3y agoThis is a brand spanking new feature[^1], I'm not sure they knew this kind of thing would bother them until recently. [^1] Source: TFA, the thing we're commenting on, at least, hopefully we're not just looking for comments to reply to, and then replying in a way that makes people feel small and look silly
- CubsFan1060 3y agoRight. So, when the person bought the item, the expectation was that Apple's App Store was the only option. Now, there is an additional option, while in the the EU. So the feature set when the person bought the phone is the same, and there is now a new added ability.
- refulgentis 3y agoThat's right. Apple never dictated app operation, especially ones they officially support, via GPS before. It was completely unforseeable. Are you the same person who was saying tough noodles, you should have accounted for this when buying the phone? Or is someone else operating the account now?
- Sayrus 3y agoOr worse, imagine realizing you forgot one important app when reaching your destination. Uber doesn't exist in the country you went to? You can now only install this country's taxi app through the App Store since your alternative app marketplace lost its ability to install apps... > However, you must be in the European Union to install alternative app marketplaces and new apps from alternative app marketplaces
- CubsFan1060 3y agoI'm confused at the scenario you are presenting. So in this case, you travel out of the EU, but are installing a taxi app from a non-eu country, but the app is only available in the EU?
- Sayrus 3y agoMaybe my example wasn't the best since Uber is practically in all countries. It has however competitors which also are available in many countries and could be available as apps in this EU only store Let's get to a more down to earth example then: you break your phone while abroad, you can't buy a new one and reinstall old apps anymore. Or another one: you forgot to install an application available only on this alternative store before leaving (it's not that crazy, see F-Droid on Android where apps are not always available on the Play Store), you can't install it anymore since you aren't physically in the EU anymore.
- chipweinberger 3y agothe phone disables itself without sharing to apple
- dylan604 3y agothe phone is not disabled
- Aloisius 3y agoInstalled apps don't disappear. Access to the app store disappears.
- lm411 3y agoUnless I misunderstand, the apps still work? They just can't be updated after 30 days and you can't install new apps from the third party stores.
- Larrikin 3y agoAfter MVP, the first security feature a mobile team should implement is a forced upgrade flow.
- lm411 3y agoI don't disagree. Given the barrier to entry and cost, with little benefit, if I were to guess, the Epic store might be the only "third party App Store" to ever see the light of day. And the way that's going, even that is in doubt.
- turquoisevar 3y agoThere are already five or so credible announcements of alternatives app stores, not counting Epic who tried to slip in through the back door. One of them even announced providing a white label service for others to launch their app store. I have no interest in them, but it’ll be fine.
- turquoisevar 3y agoNo, you understand it correctly. People are just being dramatic because they’re not getting what they want. The DMA doesn’t even stipulate a 30 day provision, just a stipulation that it applies to people who live or are located in the EU. There’s a bit of wiggle room on how to read that (i.e., people who live in the EU, people who are located in the EU, people who live or are located in the EU) and Apple chose the middle road, presumably with the expectation that if it turns out to be an issue it’ll be settled before the CJEU.
- em-bee 3y agoa stipulation that it applies to people who live or are located in the EU if i travel to leave the EU for longer than 30 days, do i no longer live in the EU? according to tax law, i am considered living in the EU as long as i spend at least 6 months per year there. so by that metric, the feature should be available for at least 6 months after leaving the EU.
- m463 3y agoI wonder if you turn off location services, and use a european VPN, if you maintain access. If you do not have access, I would wonder if they would run across the problem google ran into with private browsing, that people expect to have privacy. In other words, if you turn off location services, that apple will not track your location and should have (legal) no way of knowing if you are inside or outside of the EU.
- kayodelycaon 3y agoThe phone still needs to know which country you are in so it can follow local laws and regulations. Apple doesn’t need to know where you are because the phone can enforce their rules offline.
- archagon 3y ago"The phone" doesn't need to know anything about anything, and it's up to the user and/or any web services they use to follow local laws. Historically, physical objects have not needed to change their behavior when moving across national borders.
- diebeforei485 3y agoiPhone VPN's are not enabled when connecting with Apple's domains.
- bpye 3y agoIn that case a WiFi network that tunnels all your traffic to an endpoint within the EU?
- bongodongobob 3y agoI think there's still issues even if you do that. I worked on a corporate firewall issue a few years ago where iPhones were getting around our DNS and outbound VPN blocking. It had something to do with DoH but for the life of me I can't remember exactly how it was related. I just remember that they were very sneaky in connecting to things that should have been blocked and were successfully blocked on the PCs and Androids.
- politician 3y agoApple seems keen on demonstrating their dominance over government.
- rchaud 3y agoSo dominant, that they tried to spin an iPhone USB-C port as their own idea and not something they were ordered to implement.
- freeAgent 3y agoGovernment and everyone else.
- JoshuaRogers 3y agoHonestly, I laughed when I saw your username and the comment together.
- dakial1 3y agoThat always ended well for all organizations that went head to head against governments…
- paulddraper 3y agoWorked for Uber.
- gruez 3y agoMore like the fact that EU's reach isn't global, contrary to what many people here would like to be the case.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoBrussels effect. EU come up with something, other powers will start implementing it too. Japan is already poking into Apple in the same way and India might join with their demands as well. I believe that China already has its own App Store and then you have only USA not willing to make regulations.
- samatman 3y ago> Whether or not that will be something the European Commission takes issue with, remains to be seen. After all, an EU citizen is an EU citizen even after they leave the EU. I fail to see how this is in any way relevant. Cannabis is legal in Canada, and Canadians remain Canadian citizens abroad. If they're caught with cannabis in a country where it's illegal, they will be prosecuted for breaking the law. Laws don't follow people around like this.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoHow so? US citizens pays taxes to US government, even if they live on the Moon. So these duties are quite common.
- 20after4 3y agoOn the other hand, if you do something in a foreign country which is legal in that place but illegal in your home country, you can be prosecuted back home for it.
- willcipriano 3y agoOnly some things in the US have "extraterritorial jurisdiction". Travel for child sex tourism (what Epsteins pals should be charged with) and bribery abroad for two examples. [0]https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-federal-law-extraterritorial-sexual-exploitation-children https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-ceos/citizens-guid... [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdiction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritorial_jurisdictio...
- oyashirochama 3y agoSome other countries have similar things with their citizens, China being one of the fun ones.
- oyashirochama 3y agoKind of, not entirely true for most laws, only ones of certain levels typically the big captial punishment or long term imprisonment ones such as rape, CP, murder, certain financial crimes, and conspiracies to commit said prior. Drinking underage for example, most examples of drugs too. Even internally in the US they don't have specific right to arrest someone for smoking weed in a state that is legal as federal agents on state land (or private), not within 50 miles of a border.
- ActualHacker 3y agoHow generous of them not to brick your phone once you install any unapproved software It's almost like monopolies are bad for society
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- gruez 3y agoiOS isn't even the #1 mobile operating system in the EU. Even in countries where it's the majority, it caps out at around 60%. Characterizing that as a "monopoly" is absurd.
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoWhich is why the DMA created the "gatekeeper" distinction. Monopolies aren't the only bad things for society.
- freeAgent 3y agoHow does this improve security?
- dylan604 3y agoyour malevolent actor must be good enough to hide from Apple's scrutiny instead of cousin Bill's App Store's highly qualified security professional.
- BoiledCabbage 3y agoIt doesn't - none of what Apple is doing is security. It's using the lack robust market competition to make tortured interpretations of DMA laws to continue to play rentier.
- freeAgent 3y agoBut I thought the only reason Apple prevented third-party stores and sideloaded apps in the first place was to improve security. Therefore, I’m sure that disabling app updates once someone spends a month outside the EU must improve security, too. Right!? /s
- lesuorac 3y agoI mean the more functionality you remove from a device the more secure it becomes. Let me know when your flipper zero can hack a brick.
- KiwiJohnno 3y agoI was having exactly the same thought. Doesn't apple's new policy show all their arguments against the DMA are complete crap? They have acted in bad faith right from the start.
- Aloisius 3y agoIt doesn't disable app updates. It prevents installing new apps. Edit: Actually misread that. It might prevent updates.
- karaterobot 3y agoI believe the grace period is entirely voluntary on their part, and since they're digging their heels in on the entire matter, I'm honestly surprised (though not impressed) by their generosity. > Apple had previously said that it would give EU citizens a period of graze Three paragraph article. Couldn't proof read it. Fair enough.
- Cheer2171 3y agoWell with that obvious of an error, you know an LLM probably didn't write it.
- dylan604 3y agoi'm curious of the author's normal use of the word graze that the autocorrect selected graze. do they type about farm/ranch animals that frequently? do they write about taking "samples" from the produce section of the grocery?
- paulddraper 3y agoEveryone needs time to eat.
- spywaregorilla 3y agoDoes a european embassy count as EU?
- dylan604 3y agooh that's brilliant. i wonder how detailed Apple's geofence maps are, because by international law, you are absolutely correct in that is how they are considered.
- eadler 3y agoWhat makes you believe that to be the case? I can't find anything here [0][1] which implies that embassies are foreign soil. I believe, for example, that if, hypothetically, a woman were to give birth in a US embassy they would not become a US citizen. [0] https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventio... [1] https://fam.state.gov/FAM/08FAM/08FAM030101.html#M301_1_3 https://fam.state.gov/FAM/08FAM/08FAM030101.html#M301_1_3
- dylan604 3y agoBecause this is what all of the TV shows tell us of course
- privacyking 3y agoFor some countries, people working in embassies count as being from the originating country for the purposes of determining citizenship by birth
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- user_7832 3y agoNot only is this a great question, it's an excellent example of how pointless this arbitrary restriction is. Thanks, Tim Apple.
- geoffeg 3y agoNew business opportunity: A company that ships iPhones to Europe and installs/refreshes alternative app stores on them.
- kccqzy 3y agoA company that produces a device that fakes GPS (with extremely weak RF so as not to draw the ire of FCC or other government bodies) to convince the phone it is in Europe.
- Aloisius 3y agoCell towers and wifi base stations announce country code too. There's no guarantee they're using GPS.
- freeAgent 3y agoYeah, if I was a betting man I would bet that they're using location from cell tower pings. Good luck with that.
- op00to 3y agoThis would be illegal, even at a low power.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoFaraday cage, where you will close the phone inside - Inside it will have WiFi VPNed to EU country and emulated GPS
- extraduder_ire 3y agoIt's cheaper than that, if you're in the US. There's plenty of EU countries' land on the west side of the Atlantic. All over the world, in fact.
- dakial1 3y agoHow long before EU ask FAANG to "split or don't make business here anymore"? US won't ever do that because of all the lobbying, but EU might, no?
- CubsFan1060 3y agoWhat would be available for phones and laptops in this scenario? The FairPhone, System 76 laptop... what are the other options? (Assuming you also mean Microsoft)
- dakial1 3y agoThat's a good point. Would EU be able to allow selling the phone but not the app store? Also, what is the line of monopoly or abuse of market dominance that would put these companies get caught in the EU's cross hairs?
- CubsFan1060 3y agoI'm sure they could pass laws to make these things possible. Assuming that these ideals are correct, I'd think that new device makers would pop up to satisfy these markets. I think something similar has happened with Huawei in China. The EU is going hard after FAANG, but if they all pulled out, does the EU have anything that can replace them? Edit: Actually, Fairphone is a great example. I think it's the sort of thing that satisfies all the ideals that the EU is trying to get to.
- pillusmany 3y agoNot a credible threat. There would be millions of people in the streets if Facebook/Whatsapp/Google were blocked due to EU regulations.
- dakial1 3y agoDon't really think so. Whatsapp was blocked many times in my country and the only thing it caused was for companies to realize they were relying too much on it and for people start using telegram.
- Astraco 3y agoI don't know what they expect with this, but it will end with the EU's shoe up their asses.
- paulddraper 3y agoI'm the exact opposite of a Apple fanboy, but can you enlighten me with what they are supposed to do here? EU says "you must allow XYZ in our jurisdiction" so Apple allows XYZ in their jurisdiction. Right? --- Tbh, this just seems like unintended consequences of policy. But explain what I'm missing.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoDoes one cease to be an EU resident or citizen if traveling abroad for more than 30 days?
- tmottabr 3y agono.. but EU laws only apply to EU territories. the second you step out of EU, EU laws stop applying to you and the laws from whatever country you are in the moment start applying.
- margana 3y agoThe EU law here applies to Apple, not to you. Apple remains in the EU for as long as they have entities in the EU or operate in the EU. Thus Apple must follow EU law for as long as they have not exited the EU market completely.
- tmottabr 3y agoAnd apple does follow the law.. Apple devices that are within the EU laws jurisdiction does have access to third-party stores.. apple devices that moved to another jurisdiction are no longer subject to EU laws and therefore no longer have access to third-party stores. The big question i have is if i with my non-EU iPhone will have access to third-party stores as soon as i step into EU, even if i do not live in EU and i am not a EU citizen.
- klabb3 3y agoIIUC this is a deliberate act of aggression by Apple - which is important to note. Apple already has regional accounts, so the infrastructure for this is in place already, for preexisting reasons. My Apple ID is still within US after months of being in the EU. They have not “kicked me out” yet. There’s no other way than to interpret this, and the preceding actions by Apple, as a temper tantrum of malicious compliance. That begs a whole new set of questions. Optically, this is the behavior you’d expect from companies that stopped innovating and are clinging onto power with the power of lawyers. It seems like an incredibly small hill to sacrifice your reputation on. Are their long term ambitions to live off the 30% cut? Because it sure as hell appears like they’re fighting an existential battle, which doesn’t inspire confidence in their visionary leadership. Perhaps the best thing for Apple is to take away their comfort blanket, so they’re setting sights on innovation again.
- paulpan 3y agoIt's crystal clear that Apple is trying to protect its Services revenue, which just grew 11% and hit a new record last quarter at $23.1B (https://www.statista.com/statistics/250918/apples-revenue-from-itunes-software-and-services/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/250918/apples-revenue-fr...). Services is becoming its lone growth segment. Otherwise why go through the additional overhead and headache of implementing region-specific rules? iOS is becoming branched into 3 forks: EU, China, and rest of the world.
- wolpoli 3y agoIt sounds like someone in Apple is burning the corporate brand to make their division's target because the target wasn't adjusted in the face of the law. Leadership at the top is at fault.
- lancesells 3y agoApple is showing it's true colors here, and it's not the joyful rainbow of the past.
- klabb3 3y agoYes, but the concerning thing is that this behavior you’d expect from Oracle or similar. The App Store, in-app payments etc is not bad – Apple would seem to be able to compete fairly and still win a big slice of the cake – higher prices but premium experience, like they’ve always done. So.. have they stopped believing in themselves? Or did the sweet taste of monopoly turn them greedy and arrogant beyond salvation in just a decade?
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- canucker2016 3y agoIf this were a court case on TV, the next words from the EU/"prosecutor" should be, "Permission to treat the witness as hostile?"
- Someone1234 3y agoThis is wildly off-topic, but a prosecutor asking for a defense witness to be "treated as hostile" is redundant. They're hostile by default. The request to "treat someone as hostile" is about their OWN witness that THEY introduced getting turned into a hostile aka opposition witness. > A hostile witness is a witness who testifies against the party who has called them to testify. The examiner may ask a hostile witness leading questions, as in cross-examination. Also known as an adverse witness. As I said, a witness from the other side is always hostile, so asking for it would never make sense. To give an example: Criminal case, prosecutor brought in a on-scene witness to testify. But the witness is arguing against the prosecutor's case/evidence, so they request the judge to allow them to turn a witness hostile which allows a different style of questioning.
- turquoisevar 3y agoYou’re right, they completely botched on the applicability of the terminology. Can’t fault them too much for it though, they did indicate that their inspiration was TV.
- diebeforei485 3y ago30 days is way too low. It should be something like 90 days.
- freeAgent 3y agoMaybe 2190 days.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoSome more discussion yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39617531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39617531
- yowzadave 3y agoIs it too much to hope that this is a natural experiment that we can learn from? Either Apple is right, and this will lead to worse security, a worse app ecosystem, and damaged business in the EU…or they are wrong, and their business and ecosystem will be unharmed. If the latter occurs, will it encourage them to rethink their approach and allow for a more open ecosystem everywhere?
- lamontcg 3y agoIn addition to everything covered above: US company can't imagine someone would take a foreign vacation away from their job for more than 30 days.
- reustle 3y agoOh they totally can, they just want to make the experience outside of the official App Store as painful as possible.
- paulddraper 3y agoOr if they do, they won't be able to update after then.
- AnonC 3y agoApple: “While you are in the EU, you get reduced protections and greater risks due to DMA. Once you are out of the EU, you get the best protections that the Apple App Store offers. No malware. No scamware. No adware. No silly apps with enormously unbelievable weekly subscriptions. No apps that are an exact copy of another. You benefit from our investments and efforts in our legendary and famous app review process. Don’t ask us. Just ask our developers about how great our App Store is.” /s Seriously though, can Apple claim or pretend that it’s protecting EU residents and that once someone is out, they’re not residents anymore? The 30-day period for something as critical as apps in today’s world is too short though.