6 ms·

Apple set to be first Big Tech group to face charges under EU digital law

121 points by saeedesmaili 2y ago

saeedesmaili 2y ago
https://archive.ph/1WQu3 https://archive.ph/1WQu3
candiddevmike 2y ago
> The European Commission has determined that the iPhone maker is not complying with obligations to allow app developers to “steer” users to offers outside its App Store without imposing fees on them, according to three people with close knowledge of its investigation. I think that's a fair assessment based on the bizarre fees and hoops Apple has created under the guise of malicious compliance. There was even a brief moment where they blocked PWAs.
- talldayo 2y ago
  The Core Technology Fee was such a mistake, on Apple's part. Presumably it's their attempt at creating a defensible position ("well it's not the App Store but our core technology now"), but it also relocates a relatively volatile discussion from just the App Store to the iPhone itself. Apple knows what they're doing, they even retroactively added a Free software carveout to the policy in an attempt to offer an olive branch. The longer they spend trying to reinvent the same racket though, the more obvious their market damages become. And if the EU lets them get away with this reconfiguration, they'll let them get away with anything. The US suit ought to bring the hammer down, and threaten Apple with a breakup if they can't find a way to compete with third-parties naturally.
  - chucke1992 2y ago
    Apple's hope is probably EU backepdaling or something but as Microsoft vs USA demonstrated, the government machine can be very slow but if it wants to - it will get the things done.
    - Retric 2y ago
      I think Microsoft vs USA demonstrates that stalling until a new administration shows up can be a valid tactic. It’s not guaranteed to work, but even if the odds are say 20% that’s far from nothing when you’re talking 100’s of billions of dollars.
      - chucke1992 2y ago
        It allowed them to avoid breakup but it still immensely affected Microsoft creating the dead decade or whatever it was called. Nobody expects that regulators will force Apple to breakup (Google is in bigger danger there).
  - _aavaa_ 2y ago
    The Core Technology Fee is so absurd. I couldn't help but notice that the Mac is conspicuously missing it. Perhaps the farce would have been too obvious to non-tech people if they had tried to impose it on the Mac.
  - aaomidi 2y ago
    Next time someone says lawyers don’t do stupid shit. This was lawyers doing stupid shit. FAFO.
  - MBCook 2y ago
    Apple deserves money for every app on the phone (per Apple). Therefore the CTF makes perfect sense to them. I think they’re really annoyed by the Facebooks and Spotify’s of the world that make a fortune from the iPhone and pay nothing. “We have to open up” + “this is our chance to claw some back” = here’s the core technology fee.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      > I think they’re really annoyed by the Facebooks and Spotify’s of the world that make a fortune from the iPhone and pay nothing. And not the Mac? It seems pretty obvious that it's not even an ideological thing, Apple is fine with some users not being forced through their ecosystem. They know that the iPhone specifically is most lucrative and are trying to arbitrarily distinguish it from their other products. It frankly doesn't matter how Apple feels about it at the end of the day, there's only compliance and noncompliance.
      - MBCook 2y ago
        I think they see them as different for historical reasons. The Mac is a computer and the iPhone is an appliance, so the differences makes sense to them. Also they tried to retrofit the App Store onto the Mac, it’s a joke compared to what they seem to have thought it would become. Yeah there is software, and I use it, but for many reasons it’s far less successful than it should have been if done well. > It frankly doesn't matter how Apple feels about it at the end of the day, there's only compliance and noncompliance. I agree. Some people see the CTF and can’t imagine why they’d create it. I’m just trying to explain what I (and others) have suggested was the reason. It makes sense and is just given their seeming point of view. Problem for them is no one else, even huge fans, seems to agree.
    - fennecbutt 2y ago
      Wait so you really think that Ford should be viciously angry at somebody if they buy a non ford branded air freshener for their car? Because the air freshener company "makes a fortune from the car and pay nothing".
- ocdtrekkie 2y ago
  The PWA block has more nuance than that. PWAs are locked to Safari's engine and Apple interpreted that as potentially against the law. And part of the problem is that some competing web engines allow extremely dangerous APIs in their web platform which Mozilla has considered harmful. Which isn't to say that Apple isn't playing malicious compliance hard, the entire CTF thing is ridiculous and demonstrates how desperately they do abuse the claim of security when it is actually all about profit... but the PWA thing isn't really part of that.
  - dangus 2y ago
    So why are PWAs and alternative browser engines okay on macOS but not iOS? These security excuses are bullshit and that does include PWAs.
    - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
      I mean, I think those alternative browser engines are dangerous on other OSes too. Both at work at home I enforce policy on computers which disables a lot of harmful web APIs. It is much harder to protect mobile devices with policy.
  - fallingsquirrel 2y ago
    Those so-called "dangerous" APIs are available in a normal browser visiting a normal website too. The APIs don't somehow become more dangerous if you let people put an icon for your site on the home screen.
    - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
      This isn't true on iOS. Because allowing arbitrary websites access to system hardware is pretty dangerous and stupid, Safari gates some of the newer APIs they do support behind PWA installation.
      - TheLoafOfBread 2y ago
        So basically Apple screw up writing their iOS kernel and Safari?
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  and yet, Microsoft still get purchased without licitation at the comission and all other branches. because of the same reason. lol
richwater 2y ago
[flagged]
- Dah00n 2y ago
  Please add something to the conversation.
- pipeline_peak 2y ago
  Or they want to put an end to monopolistic practices? What are rivals supposed to do, make a new phone os that we'll all just hop aboard? Edit: really have no idea why I’m the one being downvoted here
- radley 2y ago
  Spotify succeeded because it started in the EU first.
  - ImJamal 2y ago
    Is that actually why it succeeded? Pandora started in the US and is (was?) pretty successful.
    - radley 2y ago
      From what I recall, Pandora limited themselves to radio (license) rules, which is less appealing as interactive. Interactive requires specific licensing deals, which will include minimum annual fees in the millions. Further, if you try to launch in the US, you're essentially "in the eye of Sauron" with music labels and subject to tons of microaggressions, as well as the Apple 30% tax. By launching Spotify only in the EU, and launching early, Spotify wasn't exposed to so many hurdles. They gained a strong enough foothold that allowed them to pivot to the US safely. Their entry forced Pandora to pivot to interactive, and triggered Apple's attempt to Sherlock them with Apple Music. Fortunately, Spotify was too big to get squeezed down.
      - rightbyte 2y ago
foepys 2y ago
As an Android user iOS is kind of bizarre to me. There are so many weird limitations compared to Android. E.g. I cannot choose a different default navigation app. When I attach a location to a calendar event in the Apple calendar app, I can only open it in Apple Maps. Android asks me which app I want to use. Same with browser engines, NFC payment providers, etc. Everything is unchangeably linked to the Apple ecosystem. Every user has to jump through hoops to get their favorite apps/user cases connected with each other.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  What you're describing probably just doesn't matter to 99.99% of users I'd imagine. I'm in tech, sometimes care about these things, and even I don't care about it when using iOS.
- maxwell 2y ago
  And that's illegal under federal law in the United States, hence the antitrust suit.
- owlbite 2y ago
  I find the same problem with gmail on my iPhone. Every time I clock a link it asks me to use Chrome or the default browser. I set a default browser for a reason dammit, just use that one.
- imglorp 2y ago
  And this is the improved situation! The original iPhone did not permit installing an alternate browser. It also did not allow Flash in 2010, and this was during the height of its popularity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash Same thing with other plugins or interpreters that would sidestep the app store: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12972802/appstore-ios-apps-and-interpreted-code-where-do-they-draw-the-line https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12972802/appstore-ios-ap... These are not technical limitations, they are business, building a walled garden to enshrine the app economy.
  - ViktorRay 2y ago
flumpcakes 2y ago
I do personally think the core technology fee is abhorrent. However, playing devil's advocate, is it actually wrong? Aren't there plenty of examples of platform holders monetising things released on the platform by other publishers? I'm thinking of games consoles as one obvious example. I'm pretty sure you would have to pay per copy produced, even back before the monolithic digital stores we have today.
- burnerthrow008 2y ago
  > I'm thinking of games consoles as one obvious example. Yes but games consoles are not on the arbitrarily list of products that can be considered monopolists... sorry, I meant to say "gatekeepers", so it's totally ok for them to be monopolists, I mean "gatekeepers". And, you see, it completely logical and ethical for that list to not include consoles because consoles are not general purpose computers (even though they use the same CPUs, memory, storage and input peripherals as general purpose computers) because the manufacturers of said devices defined them as not general purpose computers. Which is totally different from what Apple did in defining the iPhone as not a general purpose computer because... well, you know why, don't you? In other news, isn't it just grand that Europe doesn't have corruption?
  - hamandcheese 2y ago
    It's not about that they are made of, it's about how people use them and what their market penetration is.
    - burnerthrow008 2y ago
      > it's about how people use them Lol. "How people use them" is entirely a question of "how the manufacturer lets people use them". Somehow it is ok that Sony and Nintendo have defined their consoles as "not a general purpose computer", while it is not ok for Apple to define their device as "not a general purpose computer". What you are actually asking for is that companies should impose more restrictions on what people can do, lest they be targeted as gatekeepers. > market penetration is. Yet "hometown" companies like Spotify are mysteriously absent from the list of gatekeepers. And iPad OS, despite not meeting the thresholds defined for gatekeepers has been added "because we felt like it".
mrtksn 2y ago
This really bothers me because Apple doesn't need to do that, it's a short term rent seeking that will bite them the long run. Why? because Apple is perfectly capable of selling very good experiences at premium prices but instead they try to lock down the users so they can sell the sub-par experience that users might not purchase if given a choice. Personally, I'm very fond of the App Store model and I like the ease of use and the guarantees Apple gives about it but Apple's lock down combined with Apple's editorial makes the iPhone lag behind. For example, in UK I used Apple Pay for everything but Apple Pay isn't available in some of the countries I spend long time and Apple doesn't let the banks to implement their payment systems and doesn't let the city transit to implement their payment systems and effectively I'm getting a worse experience than Android here. Also, the lockdown doesn't let anything niche and creative to flourish. People should be able to build experiences beyond what we got in 2008 with the iPhone revolution so that we can get beyond this overly commercialised super addictive way of using smartphones. Some nerds should be able to come up with new ideas and try them out with people interested in this. Somewhere in China/Russia/Africa where iPhones are not dominant, they will come up with something and we will find ourselves stuck in these old ways. It will be like the Japanese who used to have the most advanced tech in smartphones getting obliterated with iPhone. I also don't have a problem with the %30 cut Apple takes, I think its a fair cut for the services given. What I'm concerned is strictly about stalling the progress and degrading the user experience.
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  you confuse cause and effect. had apple not locked in earlier customers with such tactics since forever (they never had any standard port or media for example) they wouldn't have had the marketing budgets required to convince you that they can deliver experiences for 60x markup. see, you're the next batch paying for the marketing that will come for things like vr
- MBCook 2y ago
  I really like Apple. I’m a big fan of their stuff. They have gotten really really drunk on the App Store and Smurfberry/lootbox cash. They think they just have to release an App Store and developers will flock to it, but it hasn’t really worked outside of the iPhone. They think developers owe them for the privilege of being allowed to develop for an Apple platform. 30% is a “bargain”. They’ve had a million chances to cut back on rates, expand what developers can do, etc. they’ve ignored them all and often doubled-down on kafkaesque app review weirdness. They need a humility check. And only world governments are big enough to do it. Sadly I don’t think they’ll learn until this happens a couple of times. “The EU just doesn’t get it”. I don’t want the iPhone thrown totally open. I like some of what Apple says they do. But they’re so out of whack they’ll lose it and be worse off than if they just had some humility.
leumon 2y ago
Glad to hear that apple did not get away with this. I just hope that they can end up actually allowing sideloading, meaning we can install any ipa, just like you can run any executable on a mac. Is the mac less secure because of this? No.
cletus 2y ago
I've said for years you're always better off settling with regulators on negotiated terms than having that regulator taking you to court. And Apple have been holding on too tightly to their App Store monopoly. It simply creates too much money now that we're way past covering costs. It's a massive cash cow. And everybody knows it. Like when Apple offered to allow third-party payment processors but would only reduce its cut from 30% to 27%. So Apple has two big problems now: 1. It's going to have to justify that 30% and it can't; and 2. It will come out that for certain companies, Apple charges significantly less than 30%. By picking favorites, particularly in markets Apple itself competes in, it's going to be a problem. I suspect we will end up with Apple (and Google): 1. Being allowed to charge 10%; 2. Allowing third-payment payment processors; 3. In-app purchses through third-party mpayment processors yielding 0% for Apple. Think Amazon digital purchases like Kindle books and movies or Netflix subscriptions; 4. Purchase of apps charging less but I honestly don't think this matters because apps have largely moved away from upfront purchases in favor in in-app purchases and I see this trend continuing. The big question is: will Apple have to allow third-party app stores? That's really what Apple wants to avoid.
- chx 2y ago
  The European Union wants third party app stores and they control the rules of a market bigger than the United States.
  - shuckles 2y ago
    The United States market by GDP is about $10T bigger than the EU. Apple's Americas revenue is about 41% of total revenues while Europe is about 26%.
    - colonwqbang 2y ago
      To me this just means that apple has a lot of growth opportunity in Europe.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

121 points by saeedesmaili 2y ago

https://archive.ph/1WQu3 https://archive.ph/1WQu3

> The European Commission has determined that the iPhone maker is not complying with obligations to allow app developers to “steer” users to offers outside its App Store without imposing fees on them, according to three people with close knowledge of its investigation. I think that's a fair assessment based on the bizarre fees and hoops Apple has created under the guise of malicious compliance. There was even a brief moment where they blocked PWAs.

talldayo 2y ago
The Core Technology Fee was such a mistake, on Apple's part. Presumably it's their attempt at creating a defensible position ("well it's not the App Store but our core technology now"), but it also relocates a relatively volatile discussion from just the App Store to the iPhone itself. Apple knows what they're doing, they even retroactively added a Free software carveout to the policy in an attempt to offer an olive branch. The longer they spend trying to reinvent the same racket though, the more obvious their market damages become. And if the EU lets them get away with this reconfiguration, they'll let them get away with anything. The US suit ought to bring the hammer down, and threaten Apple with a breakup if they can't find a way to compete with third-parties naturally.
- chucke1992 2y ago
  Apple's hope is probably EU backepdaling or something but as Microsoft vs USA demonstrated, the government machine can be very slow but if it wants to - it will get the things done.
  - Retric 2y ago
    I think Microsoft vs USA demonstrates that stalling until a new administration shows up can be a valid tactic. It’s not guaranteed to work, but even if the odds are say 20% that’s far from nothing when you’re talking 100’s of billions of dollars.
    - chucke1992 2y ago
      It allowed them to avoid breakup but it still immensely affected Microsoft creating the dead decade or whatever it was called. Nobody expects that regulators will force Apple to breakup (Google is in bigger danger there).
- _aavaa_ 2y ago
  The Core Technology Fee is so absurd. I couldn't help but notice that the Mac is conspicuously missing it. Perhaps the farce would have been too obvious to non-tech people if they had tried to impose it on the Mac.
- aaomidi 2y ago
  Next time someone says lawyers don’t do stupid shit. This was lawyers doing stupid shit. FAFO.
- MBCook 2y ago
  Apple deserves money for every app on the phone (per Apple). Therefore the CTF makes perfect sense to them. I think they’re really annoyed by the Facebooks and Spotify’s of the world that make a fortune from the iPhone and pay nothing. “We have to open up” + “this is our chance to claw some back” = here’s the core technology fee.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    > I think they’re really annoyed by the Facebooks and Spotify’s of the world that make a fortune from the iPhone and pay nothing. And not the Mac? It seems pretty obvious that it's not even an ideological thing, Apple is fine with some users not being forced through their ecosystem. They know that the iPhone specifically is most lucrative and are trying to arbitrarily distinguish it from their other products. It frankly doesn't matter how Apple feels about it at the end of the day, there's only compliance and noncompliance.
    - MBCook 2y ago
      I think they see them as different for historical reasons. The Mac is a computer and the iPhone is an appliance, so the differences makes sense to them. Also they tried to retrofit the App Store onto the Mac, it’s a joke compared to what they seem to have thought it would become. Yeah there is software, and I use it, but for many reasons it’s far less successful than it should have been if done well. > It frankly doesn't matter how Apple feels about it at the end of the day, there's only compliance and noncompliance. I agree. Some people see the CTF and can’t imagine why they’d create it. I’m just trying to explain what I (and others) have suggested was the reason. It makes sense and is just given their seeming point of view. Problem for them is no one else, even huge fans, seems to agree.
  - fennecbutt 2y ago
    Wait so you really think that Ford should be viciously angry at somebody if they buy a non ford branded air freshener for their car? Because the air freshener company "makes a fortune from the car and pay nothing".
ocdtrekkie 2y ago
The PWA block has more nuance than that. PWAs are locked to Safari's engine and Apple interpreted that as potentially against the law. And part of the problem is that some competing web engines allow extremely dangerous APIs in their web platform which Mozilla has considered harmful. Which isn't to say that Apple isn't playing malicious compliance hard, the entire CTF thing is ridiculous and demonstrates how desperately they do abuse the claim of security when it is actually all about profit... but the PWA thing isn't really part of that.
- dangus 2y ago
  So why are PWAs and alternative browser engines okay on macOS but not iOS? These security excuses are bullshit and that does include PWAs.
  - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
    I mean, I think those alternative browser engines are dangerous on other OSes too. Both at work at home I enforce policy on computers which disables a lot of harmful web APIs. It is much harder to protect mobile devices with policy.
- fallingsquirrel 2y ago
  Those so-called "dangerous" APIs are available in a normal browser visiting a normal website too. The APIs don't somehow become more dangerous if you let people put an icon for your site on the home screen.
  - ocdtrekkie 2y ago
    This isn't true on iOS. Because allowing arbitrary websites access to system hardware is pretty dangerous and stupid, Safari gates some of the newer APIs they do support behind PWA installation.
    - TheLoafOfBread 2y ago
      So basically Apple screw up writing their iOS kernel and Safari?
1oooqooq 2y ago
and yet, Microsoft still get purchased without licitation at the comission and all other branches. because of the same reason. lol

richwater 2y ago

[flagged]

Dah00n 2y ago
Please add something to the conversation.
pipeline_peak 2y ago
Or they want to put an end to monopolistic practices? What are rivals supposed to do, make a new phone os that we'll all just hop aboard? Edit: really have no idea why I’m the one being downvoted here
radley 2y ago
Spotify succeeded because it started in the EU first.
- ImJamal 2y ago
  Is that actually why it succeeded? Pandora started in the US and is (was?) pretty successful.
  - radley 2y ago
    From what I recall, Pandora limited themselves to radio (license) rules, which is less appealing as interactive. Interactive requires specific licensing deals, which will include minimum annual fees in the millions. Further, if you try to launch in the US, you're essentially "in the eye of Sauron" with music labels and subject to tons of microaggressions, as well as the Apple 30% tax. By launching Spotify only in the EU, and launching early, Spotify wasn't exposed to so many hurdles. They gained a strong enough foothold that allowed them to pivot to the US safely. Their entry forced Pandora to pivot to interactive, and triggered Apple's attempt to Sherlock them with Apple Music. Fortunately, Spotify was too big to get squeezed down.
    - rightbyte 2y ago

foepys 2y ago

As an Android user iOS is kind of bizarre to me. There are so many weird limitations compared to Android. E.g. I cannot choose a different default navigation app. When I attach a location to a calendar event in the Apple calendar app, I can only open it in Apple Maps. Android asks me which app I want to use. Same with browser engines, NFC payment providers, etc. Everything is unchangeably linked to the Apple ecosystem. Every user has to jump through hoops to get their favorite apps/user cases connected with each other.

barbazoo 2y ago
What you're describing probably just doesn't matter to 99.99% of users I'd imagine. I'm in tech, sometimes care about these things, and even I don't care about it when using iOS.
maxwell 2y ago
And that's illegal under federal law in the United States, hence the antitrust suit.
owlbite 2y ago
I find the same problem with gmail on my iPhone. Every time I clock a link it asks me to use Chrome or the default browser. I set a default browser for a reason dammit, just use that one.
imglorp 2y ago
And this is the improved situation! The original iPhone did not permit installing an alternate browser. It also did not allow Flash in 2010, and this was during the height of its popularity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash Same thing with other plugins or interpreters that would sidestep the app store: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12972802/appstore-ios-apps-and-interpreted-code-where-do-they-draw-the-line https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12972802/appstore-ios-ap... These are not technical limitations, they are business, building a walled garden to enshrine the app economy.
- ViktorRay 2y ago

flumpcakes 2y ago

I do personally think the core technology fee is abhorrent. However, playing devil's advocate, is it actually wrong? Aren't there plenty of examples of platform holders monetising things released on the platform by other publishers? I'm thinking of games consoles as one obvious example. I'm pretty sure you would have to pay per copy produced, even back before the monolithic digital stores we have today.

burnerthrow008 2y ago
> I'm thinking of games consoles as one obvious example. Yes but games consoles are not on the arbitrarily list of products that can be considered monopolists... sorry, I meant to say "gatekeepers", so it's totally ok for them to be monopolists, I mean "gatekeepers". And, you see, it completely logical and ethical for that list to not include consoles because consoles are not general purpose computers (even though they use the same CPUs, memory, storage and input peripherals as general purpose computers) because the manufacturers of said devices defined them as not general purpose computers. Which is totally different from what Apple did in defining the iPhone as not a general purpose computer because... well, you know why, don't you? In other news, isn't it just grand that Europe doesn't have corruption?
- hamandcheese 2y ago
  It's not about that they are made of, it's about how people use them and what their market penetration is.
  - burnerthrow008 2y ago
    > it's about how people use them Lol. "How people use them" is entirely a question of "how the manufacturer lets people use them". Somehow it is ok that Sony and Nintendo have defined their consoles as "not a general purpose computer", while it is not ok for Apple to define their device as "not a general purpose computer". What you are actually asking for is that companies should impose more restrictions on what people can do, lest they be targeted as gatekeepers. > market penetration is. Yet "hometown" companies like Spotify are mysteriously absent from the list of gatekeepers. And iPad OS, despite not meeting the thresholds defined for gatekeepers has been added "because we felt like it".

mrtksn 2y ago

This really bothers me because Apple doesn't need to do that, it's a short term rent seeking that will bite them the long run. Why? because Apple is perfectly capable of selling very good experiences at premium prices but instead they try to lock down the users so they can sell the sub-par experience that users might not purchase if given a choice. Personally, I'm very fond of the App Store model and I like the ease of use and the guarantees Apple gives about it but Apple's lock down combined with Apple's editorial makes the iPhone lag behind. For example, in UK I used Apple Pay for everything but Apple Pay isn't available in some of the countries I spend long time and Apple doesn't let the banks to implement their payment systems and doesn't let the city transit to implement their payment systems and effectively I'm getting a worse experience than Android here. Also, the lockdown doesn't let anything niche and creative to flourish. People should be able to build experiences beyond what we got in 2008 with the iPhone revolution so that we can get beyond this overly commercialised super addictive way of using smartphones. Some nerds should be able to come up with new ideas and try them out with people interested in this. Somewhere in China/Russia/Africa where iPhones are not dominant, they will come up with something and we will find ourselves stuck in these old ways. It will be like the Japanese who used to have the most advanced tech in smartphones getting obliterated with iPhone. I also don't have a problem with the %30 cut Apple takes, I think its a fair cut for the services given. What I'm concerned is strictly about stalling the progress and degrading the user experience.

1oooqooq 2y ago
you confuse cause and effect. had apple not locked in earlier customers with such tactics since forever (they never had any standard port or media for example) they wouldn't have had the marketing budgets required to convince you that they can deliver experiences for 60x markup. see, you're the next batch paying for the marketing that will come for things like vr
MBCook 2y ago
I really like Apple. I’m a big fan of their stuff. They have gotten really really drunk on the App Store and Smurfberry/lootbox cash. They think they just have to release an App Store and developers will flock to it, but it hasn’t really worked outside of the iPhone. They think developers owe them for the privilege of being allowed to develop for an Apple platform. 30% is a “bargain”. They’ve had a million chances to cut back on rates, expand what developers can do, etc. they’ve ignored them all and often doubled-down on kafkaesque app review weirdness. They need a humility check. And only world governments are big enough to do it. Sadly I don’t think they’ll learn until this happens a couple of times. “The EU just doesn’t get it”. I don’t want the iPhone thrown totally open. I like some of what Apple says they do. But they’re so out of whack they’ll lose it and be worse off than if they just had some humility.

leumon 2y ago

Glad to hear that apple did not get away with this. I just hope that they can end up actually allowing sideloading, meaning we can install any ipa, just like you can run any executable on a mac. Is the mac less secure because of this? No.

cletus 2y ago

I've said for years you're always better off settling with regulators on negotiated terms than having that regulator taking you to court. And Apple have been holding on too tightly to their App Store monopoly. It simply creates too much money now that we're way past covering costs. It's a massive cash cow. And everybody knows it. Like when Apple offered to allow third-party payment processors but would only reduce its cut from 30% to 27%. So Apple has two big problems now: 1. It's going to have to justify that 30% and it can't; and 2. It will come out that for certain companies, Apple charges significantly less than 30%. By picking favorites, particularly in markets Apple itself competes in, it's going to be a problem. I suspect we will end up with Apple (and Google): 1. Being allowed to charge 10%; 2. Allowing third-payment payment processors; 3. In-app purchses through third-party mpayment processors yielding 0% for Apple. Think Amazon digital purchases like Kindle books and movies or Netflix subscriptions; 4. Purchase of apps charging less but I honestly don't think this matters because apps have largely moved away from upfront purchases in favor in in-app purchases and I see this trend continuing. The big question is: will Apple have to allow third-party app stores? That's really what Apple wants to avoid.

chx 2y ago
The European Union wants third party app stores and they control the rules of a market bigger than the United States.
- shuckles 2y ago
  The United States market by GDP is about $10T bigger than the EU. Apple's Americas revenue is about 41% of total revenues while Europe is about 26%.
  - colonwqbang 2y ago
    To me this just means that apple has a lot of growth opportunity in Europe.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]