11 ms·

What the hell is going on at Apple? It's starting to become really funny to see one obviously non-compliant malicious compliance attempt being made after anothe

What the hell is going on at Apple? It's starting to become really funny to see one obviously non-compliant malicious compliance attempt being made after another. Do they really not understand that they're no longer involved in the relationships between users and developers?

paulcole 3y ago
They are deeply involved. If it’s that bad for developers, drop the iPhone and develop solely for Android. Developers need the iPhone and Apple needs developers.
- pbmonster 3y ago
  > They are deeply involved. If it’s that bad for developers, drop the iPhone and develop solely for Android. EU: "No."
  - paulcole 3y ago
    Yes, that's called having differing opinions and it's not bad. If enough people in the EU agree with this, go for it. If Apple ends up saying that they're willing to abide by the letter of the law and no more, great.
    - oblio 3y ago
      Apple's not abiding by the letter of the law, though. They're the drug dealer flushing drugs before the cops come in, or in this case Apple is trying to buy time because each month they can delay this they're probably making $1bn more.
    - malermeister 3y ago
      Actually that's exactly the misunderstanding that's getting Apple in trouble. In European law, the letter of the law doesn't matter. The intent does. It's called teleological interpretation, here's an EU document with a bit more background: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/599364/EPRS_BRI(2017)599364_EN.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/5993... Key quote: > When interpreting EU law, the CJEU pays particular attention to the aim and purpose of EU law (teleological interpretation), rather than focusing exclusively on the wording of the provisions (linguistic interpretation). This is explained by numerous factors, in particular the open-ended and policy-oriented rules of the EU Treaties, as well as by EU legal multilingualism. Under the latter principle, all EU law is equally authentic in all language versions. Hence, the Court cannot rely on the wording of a single version, as a national court can, in order to give an interpretation of the legal provision under consideration. Therefore, in order to decode the meaning of a legal rule, the Court analyses it especially in the light of its purpose (teleological interpretation) as well as its context (systemic interpretation). Facebook, too, tried rules-lawyering EU regulations only to be slapped with a huge fine. This shit doesn't fly here.
      - Filligree 3y ago
        It feels bizarre that companies keep making this mistake. People on HN, sure; we aren't all lawyers. But companies? The EU is the second biggest market on the planet, might pass the USA any year now. They really should be familiar with the basics of EU lawmaking.
        kristjansson 3y ago
        It feels bizarre to an American perspective. How is a company supposed to follow rules that are open to interpretation? Or does the EU think it can legislate outcomes (even if they're uneconomic) ?
        stoltzmann 3y ago
        You have to demonstrate that you're willing to follow the law. It's not like you'll get a gigantic fine as soon as the new law is implemented, assuming you actually make an effort to be compliant. In this case, Apple is dragging their feet screaming trying to do their best not to comply with the intent. What's going to happen next, they'll get a notice of nonconformity where they're asked to fix their behaviour. If they don't show good intent, they'll get hit with a fine. If they fix it and adhere to the laws here, then we'll all end up better - well, maybe the poor shareholders won't survive this hit... If you're a company operating in the EU, just a little bit of willingness to adhere to the laws goes a very long way.
        v7n 3y ago
        The "reasonable person" tool is really useful here, and not at all unheard of in the US of A.
        stale2002 3y ago
        > How is a company supposed to follow rules that are open to interpretation That's easy. Make a good faith interpretation of the intent of the law and follow that. And don't try to find loop holes that only work in your favor.
        justinclift 3y ago
- realusername 3y ago
  > If it’s that bad for developers, drop the iPhone and develop solely for Android. That's what I've done personally but that's not something you can ask most companies.
  - labcomputer 3y ago
    Why not? Android has nearly twice as much marketshare as Apple in Europe.
    - realusername 3y ago
      Because it's not a market, that's the whole problem, you have to target both platforms no matter what you do otherwise you are losing some marketshare. (Unless you are doing it as a hobby like me of course) It's not like you can install android apps on iphone or iphone apps on android. Sure in a market you might tell the consumer "shop somewhere else" but that's not an option here since they can't.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - carlosjobim 3y ago
        There's endless examples of apps that are exclusively iOS or exclusively Android. Many high quality paid apps are only on one platform.
        realusername 3y ago
        That still doesn't make it a market, they lost users with this decision. It's nowhere like shops where you can price compare and pick the shop you want every week. In an actual market, both marketplace would compete.
        carlosjobim 3y ago
        I fail to understand your point. It's up to developers what platforms they want to serve.
- pbhjpbhj 3y ago
  Isn't it that software developers need hardware, and Apple seek to use their position to prevent developers enabling users on their (the user's) hardware without paying a large fee to Apple. Apple already got paid a large fee as manufacturer though Put another way: Devs don't need iPhones, they need users to have freedom to install the apps they choose to on the computing devices those users own; regardless of the three manufacturers of those devices. I wonder how this all works for Nintendo wrt the Switch?
  - ensignavenger 3y ago
    Th DMA was written explicitly to target a small group of mostly American tech companies, while excluding others like Nintendo. Traditionally, console manufacturers have lost money on hardware, and made it up in license fees for software and accessories. It is a bit more complicated in reality, and I think that situation should change, but the DMA as currently written won't have any impact on it.
    - oblio 3y ago
      It's targeting high impact companies. Smart phones are universal, 90% penetration. Game consoles are at best at 20% or similar.
  - pennomi 3y ago
    It doesn’t affect Nintendo, yet. I suspect that if this legislation is successful, it will expand in scope.
- deergomoo 3y ago
  > Apple needs developers Yet they are constantly making the case that third-party developers are value sponges that use “their” platform and access “their” customers for free, and give back nothing in return. They said the same towards Spotify in response to the recent ruling about anti-competitiveness in music apps. What Apple conveniently fails to acknowledge is that they make an obscene amount of money from selling hardware, and their motivation for investing in the platform and SDKs is that more and better software leads to higher sales of hardware. (I am aware that iPhone sales have effectively peaked, which is likely exactly why they have decided that they are the sole enabler of all digital commerce on the iPhone)
- BlueTemplar 3y ago
  Android is too much tied to Google too. At this point, the best that could happen is for the EU to grow a pair, and ban the US (/Russia/China...) tech companies, especially since there's already a 2015 court decision about that : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems#Schrems_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems#Schrems_II
eastbound 3y ago
At this moment, I’m really scared that the EU might not react.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  So far, it has, fairly aggressively (or at least Thierry Breton has publicly; who knows that's going on behind the scenes), notably on the Epic thing.
- EMIRELADERO 3y ago
  Why wouldn't they? There's an EU-ran Apple DMA compliance workshop on the 18th this month[1] which I suggest anyone interested listen to. Stakeholders will be able to voice their concerns and there will no doubt be many, mostly about the Core Technology Fee which is non-compliant per se. How do I so surely know that? Because Article 6(7), the one that forces free-of-charge OS access for developers, is the only piece of the DMA being proactively challenged in EU court by Apple even before the compliance deadline passed[2]. [1] https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/events-poolpage/apple-dma-compliance-workshop-2024-03-18_en https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/events-poolpage/app... [2] https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=281105&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=1092653 https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&do...
  - przemub 3y ago
    > inconsistent with the requirements of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights Corporations are people too, or something :)
- oblio 3y ago
  Governments generally don't like when legislation is being flauted publicly.
rsynnott 3y ago
So, this is a strategy that has actually worked quite well for the likes of Facebook in dealing with the GDPR; they did eventually get some pretty nasty (>1bn) fines, but it took a long, long time. Early indications are that Europe has learned from the mistakes of the GDPR, and enforcement of the DMA is going to be a lot more proactive. Notably, Facebook seems to be scared of it; the delay to launching Threads in Europe seems to have been for DMA/DSA compliance (in particular, it's not login-walled anymore, at least in Europe). Hard to imagine them delaying a product launch for GDPR compliance...
concinds 3y ago
Don't overcomplicate it. They want to preserve their Services revenue, because Tim Cook is a bean-counter and wants to maintain the profit margin. "After Steve" by Tripp Mickle provides some background. Many Apple indie devs and fanboys are literally screaming. I bet many people @Apple are too. There are so many things the company could do to regain geek-cred. Package manager and windowing on macOS. Align Mac App Store policies with the more liberal Windows 11 Store policies. Let people run what they want, even outside the EU, including other web engines. Invest in Proton so old Windows games can run on Mac (but then, no App Store tax). Keep OpenGL and Vulkan around for the scientific computation folks (and others). Commit to keeping Rosetta2 around indefinitely, because compatibility is your #1 job as a platform. Open-source more stuff (god forbid, your OSes! why not?). But they've gotten timid and conservative. Top execs see risk, and VPs seem to think they're making products only for the stereotypical technophobic grandpa, rather than power users.
- rekoil 3y ago
  They would make money hand-over-fist if they did all of that.
  - addicted 3y ago
    And before the Apple fanbois come and tell you how Apple is a multi trillion dollar business so they know what they’re doing, a reminder that Apple didn’t want the App Store in the first place, and wanted 3rd party apps to be web apps. It was the popularity of unofficially created apps running on unlocked original iPhones (which led to many unlocking their iPhone) that convinced Apple to create the App Store.
    - zarzavat 3y ago
      Apple didn’t really want 3rd party apps to be web apps. The infamous “just build web apps” was a stop-gap measure while they were building the App Store.
    - giantrobot 3y ago
      > It was the popularity of unofficially created apps running on unlocked original iPhones (which led to many unlocking their iPhone) that convinced Apple to create the App Store. This just isn't the case. The first iPhone with iOS 1.0 was essentially a very advanced demo that just barely made it out the door. There was no SDK, API documentation, or much of any developer toolchain for early iOS. Ask anyone that fought to build even simple unofficial apps what a nightmare using those early frameworks was like. They were not ready for public consumption. Web apps were never the long term goal for third parties. Steve Jobs might have said that in public but it was a deflection about native SDK questions. Web apps were a stopgap until the dumpster fire of an internal SDK could be rebuilt.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

paulcole 3y ago

They are deeply involved. If it’s that bad for developers, drop the iPhone and develop solely for Android. Developers need the iPhone and Apple needs developers.

pbmonster 3y ago
> They are deeply involved. If it’s that bad for developers, drop the iPhone and develop solely for Android. EU: "No."
- paulcole 3y ago
  Yes, that's called having differing opinions and it's not bad. If enough people in the EU agree with this, go for it. If Apple ends up saying that they're willing to abide by the letter of the law and no more, great.
  - oblio 3y ago
    Apple's not abiding by the letter of the law, though. They're the drug dealer flushing drugs before the cops come in, or in this case Apple is trying to buy time because each month they can delay this they're probably making $1bn more.
  - malermeister 3y ago
    Actually that's exactly the misunderstanding that's getting Apple in trouble. In European law, the letter of the law doesn't matter. The intent does. It's called teleological interpretation, here's an EU document with a bit more background: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/599364/EPRS_BRI(2017)599364_EN.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/5993... Key quote: > When interpreting EU law, the CJEU pays particular attention to the aim and purpose of EU law (teleological interpretation), rather than focusing exclusively on the wording of the provisions (linguistic interpretation). This is explained by numerous factors, in particular the open-ended and policy-oriented rules of the EU Treaties, as well as by EU legal multilingualism. Under the latter principle, all EU law is equally authentic in all language versions. Hence, the Court cannot rely on the wording of a single version, as a national court can, in order to give an interpretation of the legal provision under consideration. Therefore, in order to decode the meaning of a legal rule, the Court analyses it especially in the light of its purpose (teleological interpretation) as well as its context (systemic interpretation). Facebook, too, tried rules-lawyering EU regulations only to be slapped with a huge fine. This shit doesn't fly here.
    - Filligree 3y ago
      It feels bizarre that companies keep making this mistake. People on HN, sure; we aren't all lawyers. But companies? The EU is the second biggest market on the planet, might pass the USA any year now. They really should be familiar with the basics of EU lawmaking.
      - kristjansson 3y ago
        It feels bizarre to an American perspective. How is a company supposed to follow rules that are open to interpretation? Or does the EU think it can legislate outcomes (even if they're uneconomic) ?
        stoltzmann 3y ago
        You have to demonstrate that you're willing to follow the law. It's not like you'll get a gigantic fine as soon as the new law is implemented, assuming you actually make an effort to be compliant. In this case, Apple is dragging their feet screaming trying to do their best not to comply with the intent. What's going to happen next, they'll get a notice of nonconformity where they're asked to fix their behaviour. If they don't show good intent, they'll get hit with a fine. If they fix it and adhere to the laws here, then we'll all end up better - well, maybe the poor shareholders won't survive this hit... If you're a company operating in the EU, just a little bit of willingness to adhere to the laws goes a very long way.
        v7n 3y ago
        The "reasonable person" tool is really useful here, and not at all unheard of in the US of A.
        stale2002 3y ago
        > How is a company supposed to follow rules that are open to interpretation That's easy. Make a good faith interpretation of the intent of the law and follow that. And don't try to find loop holes that only work in your favor.
        justinclift 3y ago
realusername 3y ago
> If it’s that bad for developers, drop the iPhone and develop solely for Android. That's what I've done personally but that's not something you can ask most companies.
- labcomputer 3y ago
  Why not? Android has nearly twice as much marketshare as Apple in Europe.
  - realusername 3y ago
    Because it's not a market, that's the whole problem, you have to target both platforms no matter what you do otherwise you are losing some marketshare. (Unless you are doing it as a hobby like me of course) It's not like you can install android apps on iphone or iphone apps on android. Sure in a market you might tell the consumer "shop somewhere else" but that's not an option here since they can't.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      There's endless examples of apps that are exclusively iOS or exclusively Android. Many high quality paid apps are only on one platform.
      - realusername 3y ago
        That still doesn't make it a market, they lost users with this decision. It's nowhere like shops where you can price compare and pick the shop you want every week. In an actual market, both marketplace would compete.
        carlosjobim 3y ago
        I fail to understand your point. It's up to developers what platforms they want to serve.
pbhjpbhj 3y ago
Isn't it that software developers need hardware, and Apple seek to use their position to prevent developers enabling users on their (the user's) hardware without paying a large fee to Apple. Apple already got paid a large fee as manufacturer though Put another way: Devs don't need iPhones, they need users to have freedom to install the apps they choose to on the computing devices those users own; regardless of the three manufacturers of those devices. I wonder how this all works for Nintendo wrt the Switch?
- ensignavenger 3y ago
  Th DMA was written explicitly to target a small group of mostly American tech companies, while excluding others like Nintendo. Traditionally, console manufacturers have lost money on hardware, and made it up in license fees for software and accessories. It is a bit more complicated in reality, and I think that situation should change, but the DMA as currently written won't have any impact on it.
  - oblio 3y ago
    It's targeting high impact companies. Smart phones are universal, 90% penetration. Game consoles are at best at 20% or similar.
- pennomi 3y ago
  It doesn’t affect Nintendo, yet. I suspect that if this legislation is successful, it will expand in scope.
deergomoo 3y ago
> Apple needs developers Yet they are constantly making the case that third-party developers are value sponges that use “their” platform and access “their” customers for free, and give back nothing in return. They said the same towards Spotify in response to the recent ruling about anti-competitiveness in music apps. What Apple conveniently fails to acknowledge is that they make an obscene amount of money from selling hardware, and their motivation for investing in the platform and SDKs is that more and better software leads to higher sales of hardware. (I am aware that iPhone sales have effectively peaked, which is likely exactly why they have decided that they are the sole enabler of all digital commerce on the iPhone)
BlueTemplar 3y ago
Android is too much tied to Google too. At this point, the best that could happen is for the EU to grow a pair, and ban the US (/Russia/China...) tech companies, especially since there's already a 2015 court decision about that : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems#Schrems_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems#Schrems_II

eastbound 3y ago

At this moment, I’m really scared that the EU might not react.

rsynnott 3y ago
So far, it has, fairly aggressively (or at least Thierry Breton has publicly; who knows that's going on behind the scenes), notably on the Epic thing.
EMIRELADERO 3y ago
Why wouldn't they? There's an EU-ran Apple DMA compliance workshop on the 18th this month[1] which I suggest anyone interested listen to. Stakeholders will be able to voice their concerns and there will no doubt be many, mostly about the Core Technology Fee which is non-compliant per se. How do I so surely know that? Because Article 6(7), the one that forces free-of-charge OS access for developers, is the only piece of the DMA being proactively challenged in EU court by Apple even before the compliance deadline passed[2]. [1] https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/events-poolpage/apple-dma-compliance-workshop-2024-03-18_en https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/events-poolpage/app... [2] https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=281105&pageIndex=0&doclang=en&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=1092653 https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&do...
- przemub 3y ago
  > inconsistent with the requirements of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights Corporations are people too, or something :)
oblio 3y ago
Governments generally don't like when legislation is being flauted publicly.

rsynnott 3y ago

So, this is a strategy that has actually worked quite well for the likes of Facebook in dealing with the GDPR; they did eventually get some pretty nasty (>1bn) fines, but it took a long, long time. Early indications are that Europe has learned from the mistakes of the GDPR, and enforcement of the DMA is going to be a lot more proactive. Notably, Facebook seems to be scared of it; the delay to launching Threads in Europe seems to have been for DMA/DSA compliance (in particular, it's not login-walled anymore, at least in Europe). Hard to imagine them delaying a product launch for GDPR compliance...

concinds 3y ago

Don't overcomplicate it. They want to preserve their Services revenue, because Tim Cook is a bean-counter and wants to maintain the profit margin. "After Steve" by Tripp Mickle provides some background. Many Apple indie devs and fanboys are literally screaming. I bet many people @Apple are too. There are so many things the company could do to regain geek-cred. Package manager and windowing on macOS. Align Mac App Store policies with the more liberal Windows 11 Store policies. Let people run what they want, even outside the EU, including other web engines. Invest in Proton so old Windows games can run on Mac (but then, no App Store tax). Keep OpenGL and Vulkan around for the scientific computation folks (and others). Commit to keeping Rosetta2 around indefinitely, because compatibility is your #1 job as a platform. Open-source more stuff (god forbid, your OSes! why not?). But they've gotten timid and conservative. Top execs see risk, and VPs seem to think they're making products only for the stereotypical technophobic grandpa, rather than power users.

rekoil 3y ago
They would make money hand-over-fist if they did all of that.
- addicted 3y ago
  And before the Apple fanbois come and tell you how Apple is a multi trillion dollar business so they know what they’re doing, a reminder that Apple didn’t want the App Store in the first place, and wanted 3rd party apps to be web apps. It was the popularity of unofficially created apps running on unlocked original iPhones (which led to many unlocking their iPhone) that convinced Apple to create the App Store.
  - zarzavat 3y ago
    Apple didn’t really want 3rd party apps to be web apps. The infamous “just build web apps” was a stop-gap measure while they were building the App Store.
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    > It was the popularity of unofficially created apps running on unlocked original iPhones (which led to many unlocking their iPhone) that convinced Apple to create the App Store. This just isn't the case. The first iPhone with iOS 1.0 was essentially a very advanced demo that just barely made it out the door. There was no SDK, API documentation, or much of any developer toolchain for early iOS. Ask anyone that fought to build even simple unofficial apps what a nightmare using those early frameworks was like. They were not ready for public consumption. Web apps were never the long term goal for third parties. Steve Jobs might have said that in public but it was a deflection about native SDK questions. Web apps were a stopgap until the dumpster fire of an internal SDK could be rebuilt.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]