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Here's some context which a lot of people, including most news media, seem to have missed: The reason Apple is still playing games with the EC is that they're

Here's some context which a lot of people, including most news media, seem to have missed: The reason Apple is still playing games with the EC is that they're waiting on an EU Court's ruling[1] on whether Article 6 (7), the provision that mandates free of charge iOS APIs for all developers, is "constitutional" within the EU framework itself. Most people who call out the Core Technology Fee use that provision as one of their main arguments, and it's one of their strongest, because the "free of charge" language throws away the general idea that the law doesn't want to interfere with Apple's monetization strategies. Since Apple could very well have chosen to monetize certain local API access in the past, the fact that this provision put a stop to that effectively nullifies Apple's argument (to the courts) that the law could never have meant to actually control how they make money. [1] https://curia.europa.eu/juris/fiche.jsf?id=T%3B1080%3B23%3BRD%3B1%3BP%3B1%3BT2023%2F1080%2FP&nat=or&mat=or&pcs=Oor&jur=T&num=T-1080%252F23&for=&jge=&dates=&language=en&pro=&cit=none%252CC%252CCJ%252CR%252C2008E%252C%252C%252C%252C%252C%252C%252C%252C%252C%252Ctrue%252Cfalse%252Cfalse&oqp=&td=%3BALL&avg=&lgrec=en&lg=&cid=3423184 https://curia.europa.eu/juris/fiche.jsf?id=T%3B1080%3B23%3BR...

graemep 2y ago
The problem is that apple is going to continue malicious compliance while the EU is trying to be reasonable: "the EU hopes ongoing dialogue will lead to compliance rather than sanctions."
- musictubes 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - nomel 2y ago
    Could anyone help me understand why this was flagged dead? Is it incorrect somehow? This is a discussion around legality, so it makes sense to keep the discussion in that context. Apple being able to do something undesirable, in the perspective in the intent of the law, is either a "loophole" in the law, or the law doesn't actually accomplish what it was made to. Both are problems with the law. This isn't an Apple thing as much as a "anyone who will benefit in complying minimally will comply minimally". Apple today, whomever else tomorrow.
    - senguidev 2y ago
      > What is malicious compliance? Apple is either in compliance or it isn’t. Because funnily enough, the comment itself is kind of malicious compliance. It has the form of polite debate, but it also feigns to not understand the parent (bad faith is a pretty simple/obvious concept and I'm sure the author gets it), which ruins the discussion. So yes, it appears reasonable that it is flagged.
      - docmars 2y ago
        From a point of argument, they're not wrong though, albeit an obvious point they're making that if loopholes exist, companies will definitely find them and take advantage, and still be in compliance because the pitfalls of said regulations weren't accounted for. This leaves it up for debate in courts to settle those shortcomings, but it wouldn't be surprising if they found they were compliant and that the rules need adjustments.
    - buran77 2y ago
      Because GP's comment mixes the concepts and who thinks what in a very "I'm just asking a question" way, while suggesting that everything not illegal is 100% fine. People don't appreciate that because they see exactly the kind of person who would operate in that malicious compliance mode. Obviously you can't regulate every bit of behavior and this will always leave room for abusing corner cases. You have quiet hours in your neighborhood? I'll just make the maximum amount of noise every second it's allowed, forever. It's legal, it's not fine. So clearly GP's comment rubs people the wrong way enough to be flagged. It's pretty clear from the term itself that malicious compliance is compliance or else it would have been called (malicious) noncompliance. This is what people think Apple is doing. What EU authorities believe is that Apple is not compliant with the law, perhaps for different reasons than people see as malicious compliance. So the EU is bashing Apple for them not being compliant, while regular people are bashing Apple for the malicious compliance. The second one is perfectly fine to do even without a judge's verdict.
  - mettamage 2y ago
    > If a company is in compliance to the law and you don’t like the outcome the problem isn’t the company it is the law. The law isn’t the only thing that upholds a cohesive society that is nice to live in. At the very least, culture plays its own part as well. There are probably many more things If I only cared about being legal, I would behave very differently. Just think about how far a citizen could go if they would live in full malicious compliance. One would be a nightmare to others
    - secstate 2y ago
      And despite this, some people DO insist on living just on the edge of legality. I recently had an interaction with someone declared a "vexatious litigant" in Texas. That's a legal status that requires them to get authorization from a judge before opening a new lawsuit against another party. I prefer a world where most people don't ride the edge of legality.
      - imoverclocked 2y ago
        An overly complex set of rules often breeds this kind of behavior; Functioning legally in a world with a practically infinite number of rules requires it. Fixing the unwanted behavior often involves making more rules… and thus a cancer is born. Another common outcome is complete apathy for the rules. ie: nothing seems legal, why bother trying?
    - paulddraper 2y ago
      > If I only cared about being legal, I would behave very differently. While I wouldn't recommend you live that way, I also wouldn't call you a criminal. Just an a*s.
      - carlosjobim 2y ago
        Please report to your local Komsomol office to collect 5 credits as a reward for upholding the right attitude against these ruthless reactionaries and hooligans. Remember to bring your credit book for the stamp.
      - 2y ago
  - KronisLV 2y ago
    > What is malicious compliance? I think cookie dialogs are the best example of malicious compliance in tech. Instead of just a "Reject all non-essential cookies" button, corporations went the extra mile to instead have a "Manage preferences" button which opens some slow menu with like 70 separate checkboxes, all of which are ticked by default and so you have to go through all of them manually, which then makes like 90% of the users just cave in to the dark pattern and just click "Accept all". No law can predict all of the ways someone will try to weasel around it, regardless of whether it's something like the example above, or a company trying to maintain a walled garden. > As part of the new investigation, the commission is examining 0.50c charge, or “core technology fee”, Apple demands every time a developer’s app is installed on a phone. That said, while this sounds a bit like the infamous Unity Runtime Fee, if done correctly, personally I wouldn't have as much of an issue with this as others might, if it's done in a way where it never will cause a developer to go in the red: https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/ https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/
    - bmicraft 2y ago
      > Instead of just a "Reject all non-essential cookies" button, corporations went the extra mile to instead have a "Manage preferences" button which opens some slow menu with like 70 separate checkboxes, all of which are ticked by default and so you have to go through all of them manually, which then makes like 90% of the users just cave in to the dark pattern and just click "Accept all". That's straight up non-compliance. The law literally says that refusal has to be as easy as accepting.
    - Rygian 2y ago
      > Instead of just a "Reject all non-essential cookies" button, corporations went the extra mile to instead have a "Manage preferences" button which opens some slow menu with like 70 separate checkboxes, all of which are ticked by default and so you have to go through all of them manually, which then makes like 90% of the users just cave in to the dark pattern and just click "Accept all". That is not malicious compliance. That's outright non-compliance. Reject All must be as prominent as Accept All.
      - 2y ago
- xvector 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - thibaut_barrere 2y ago
    It's a 450M people hand, with decent GDP :-)
    - spacedcowboy 2y ago
      ... which makes up a small fraction of Apple's profits. About 7% [1]. Losing 7% would be "A big deal", although they'd also lose a lot of the operational costs so the overall loss may be less than that. There are several costs of doing business in the EU. I can also see them selling more to the UK and a black-market opening up in the EU for UK phones. Again, not a huge thing but a little +ve offset. Overall, I could see it happening, maybe, emphasis on the maybe part. I think the EU thinks it's inconceivable for Apple to exit their market. I also think Apple are very hard-headed. Make the cost/benefit balance skew too heavily in the -ve direction, and the potential of future profits stop outweighing the costs. Personally I really hope they just do as they're told by the EU because I think it'd hit the stock, and I could do with the stock staying reasonably high in the short term, but they'd recover. Hell, they could run on cash/savings with no sales for several years at the current rate... [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/more_on_the_eus_market_might https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/more_on_the_eus_market_mi...
      - Iulioh 2y ago
        >It’s unclear whether Maestri was saying that the EU accounts for 7 percent of Apple’s worldwide App Store revenue, or 7 percent of all revenue, but I suspect it doesn’t matter, and that both are around 7 percent Eh.
      - mahkeiro 2y ago
        Is it a joke? Apple is 27% of Apple revenue, profit is irrelevant as this is just finance engineering and you can put the value you want for tax reason.
- drivingmenuts 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Aeolun 2y ago
  That’s one whole year of free money from Apple’s perspective.
kmeisthax 2y ago
So... what's Apple's argument here? Do they just think the DMA was badly drafted, or do they want to strip competition law out of the EU? Or is this the same "we have a right to monetize our IP[0]" argument they used in the Epic lawsuit? [0] Intellectual property, in the Doctorowian sense of "thing that lets us tell our competitors what to do"
- xvector 2y ago
  The DMA was badly drafted, and it's quite protectionist. The EU does not write good tech legislation overall, because it does not understand tech industry at a cultural level, having never built out its own.
  - kklisura 2y ago
    Generally wondering: how to you look at US imposing 100% tariffs on EVs from China?
    - Spivak 2y ago
      That it's an absolutely insane thing to do to a trading partner and calling prices "artificially low" is just "our glorious government investment their savage government trade war subsidies." Go read the whitehouse announcement, it's blatant. The best part is that is centers around IP literally proving that any country that ignores the insanity of western IP laws will outcompete. Big no no, it's the children that are wrong energy. Absolutely do not support the US artificially limiting EV adoption by forcing prices higher to prop up a domestic auto industry that got caught with their pants down. If they're gonna sell us EVs below cost we would be stupid not to buy them all up and make them lose money. But there's the rub, they're not actually doing that, they are just able to make them cheaper.
      - Zelizz 2y ago
        If they're selling below cost, who's the "we" that should buy them all up? Because if it's US consumers, then the domestic auto companies could fail in the while that's happening. If it's the US government - isn't that kind of what the tariff accomplishes, without having to take ownership of a bunch of inventory?

graemep 2y ago

The problem is that apple is going to continue malicious compliance while the EU is trying to be reasonable: "the EU hopes ongoing dialogue will lead to compliance rather than sanctions."

musictubes 2y ago
[flagged]
- nomel 2y ago
  Could anyone help me understand why this was flagged dead? Is it incorrect somehow? This is a discussion around legality, so it makes sense to keep the discussion in that context. Apple being able to do something undesirable, in the perspective in the intent of the law, is either a "loophole" in the law, or the law doesn't actually accomplish what it was made to. Both are problems with the law. This isn't an Apple thing as much as a "anyone who will benefit in complying minimally will comply minimally". Apple today, whomever else tomorrow.
  - senguidev 2y ago
    > What is malicious compliance? Apple is either in compliance or it isn’t. Because funnily enough, the comment itself is kind of malicious compliance. It has the form of polite debate, but it also feigns to not understand the parent (bad faith is a pretty simple/obvious concept and I'm sure the author gets it), which ruins the discussion. So yes, it appears reasonable that it is flagged.
    - docmars 2y ago
      From a point of argument, they're not wrong though, albeit an obvious point they're making that if loopholes exist, companies will definitely find them and take advantage, and still be in compliance because the pitfalls of said regulations weren't accounted for. This leaves it up for debate in courts to settle those shortcomings, but it wouldn't be surprising if they found they were compliant and that the rules need adjustments.
  - buran77 2y ago
    Because GP's comment mixes the concepts and who thinks what in a very "I'm just asking a question" way, while suggesting that everything not illegal is 100% fine. People don't appreciate that because they see exactly the kind of person who would operate in that malicious compliance mode. Obviously you can't regulate every bit of behavior and this will always leave room for abusing corner cases. You have quiet hours in your neighborhood? I'll just make the maximum amount of noise every second it's allowed, forever. It's legal, it's not fine. So clearly GP's comment rubs people the wrong way enough to be flagged. It's pretty clear from the term itself that malicious compliance is compliance or else it would have been called (malicious) noncompliance. This is what people think Apple is doing. What EU authorities believe is that Apple is not compliant with the law, perhaps for different reasons than people see as malicious compliance. So the EU is bashing Apple for them not being compliant, while regular people are bashing Apple for the malicious compliance. The second one is perfectly fine to do even without a judge's verdict.
- mettamage 2y ago
  > If a company is in compliance to the law and you don’t like the outcome the problem isn’t the company it is the law. The law isn’t the only thing that upholds a cohesive society that is nice to live in. At the very least, culture plays its own part as well. There are probably many more things If I only cared about being legal, I would behave very differently. Just think about how far a citizen could go if they would live in full malicious compliance. One would be a nightmare to others
  - secstate 2y ago
    And despite this, some people DO insist on living just on the edge of legality. I recently had an interaction with someone declared a "vexatious litigant" in Texas. That's a legal status that requires them to get authorization from a judge before opening a new lawsuit against another party. I prefer a world where most people don't ride the edge of legality.
    - imoverclocked 2y ago
      An overly complex set of rules often breeds this kind of behavior; Functioning legally in a world with a practically infinite number of rules requires it. Fixing the unwanted behavior often involves making more rules… and thus a cancer is born. Another common outcome is complete apathy for the rules. ie: nothing seems legal, why bother trying?
  - paulddraper 2y ago
    > If I only cared about being legal, I would behave very differently. While I wouldn't recommend you live that way, I also wouldn't call you a criminal. Just an a*s.
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      Please report to your local Komsomol office to collect 5 credits as a reward for upholding the right attitude against these ruthless reactionaries and hooligans. Remember to bring your credit book for the stamp.
    - 2y ago
- KronisLV 2y ago
  > What is malicious compliance? I think cookie dialogs are the best example of malicious compliance in tech. Instead of just a "Reject all non-essential cookies" button, corporations went the extra mile to instead have a "Manage preferences" button which opens some slow menu with like 70 separate checkboxes, all of which are ticked by default and so you have to go through all of them manually, which then makes like 90% of the users just cave in to the dark pattern and just click "Accept all". No law can predict all of the ways someone will try to weasel around it, regardless of whether it's something like the example above, or a company trying to maintain a walled garden. > As part of the new investigation, the commission is examining 0.50c charge, or “core technology fee”, Apple demands every time a developer’s app is installed on a phone. That said, while this sounds a bit like the infamous Unity Runtime Fee, if done correctly, personally I wouldn't have as much of an issue with this as others might, if it's done in a way where it never will cause a developer to go in the red: https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/ https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/
  - bmicraft 2y ago
    > Instead of just a "Reject all non-essential cookies" button, corporations went the extra mile to instead have a "Manage preferences" button which opens some slow menu with like 70 separate checkboxes, all of which are ticked by default and so you have to go through all of them manually, which then makes like 90% of the users just cave in to the dark pattern and just click "Accept all". That's straight up non-compliance. The law literally says that refusal has to be as easy as accepting.
  - Rygian 2y ago
    > Instead of just a "Reject all non-essential cookies" button, corporations went the extra mile to instead have a "Manage preferences" button which opens some slow menu with like 70 separate checkboxes, all of which are ticked by default and so you have to go through all of them manually, which then makes like 90% of the users just cave in to the dark pattern and just click "Accept all". That is not malicious compliance. That's outright non-compliance. Reject All must be as prominent as Accept All.
    - 2y ago
xvector 2y ago
[flagged]
- thibaut_barrere 2y ago
  It's a 450M people hand, with decent GDP :-)
  - spacedcowboy 2y ago
    ... which makes up a small fraction of Apple's profits. About 7% [1]. Losing 7% would be "A big deal", although they'd also lose a lot of the operational costs so the overall loss may be less than that. There are several costs of doing business in the EU. I can also see them selling more to the UK and a black-market opening up in the EU for UK phones. Again, not a huge thing but a little +ve offset. Overall, I could see it happening, maybe, emphasis on the maybe part. I think the EU thinks it's inconceivable for Apple to exit their market. I also think Apple are very hard-headed. Make the cost/benefit balance skew too heavily in the -ve direction, and the potential of future profits stop outweighing the costs. Personally I really hope they just do as they're told by the EU because I think it'd hit the stock, and I could do with the stock staying reasonably high in the short term, but they'd recover. Hell, they could run on cash/savings with no sales for several years at the current rate... [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/more_on_the_eus_market_might https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/more_on_the_eus_market_mi...
    - Iulioh 2y ago
      >It’s unclear whether Maestri was saying that the EU accounts for 7 percent of Apple’s worldwide App Store revenue, or 7 percent of all revenue, but I suspect it doesn’t matter, and that both are around 7 percent Eh.
    - mahkeiro 2y ago
      Is it a joke? Apple is 27% of Apple revenue, profit is irrelevant as this is just finance engineering and you can put the value you want for tax reason.
drivingmenuts 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Aeolun 2y ago
That’s one whole year of free money from Apple’s perspective.

kmeisthax 2y ago

So... what's Apple's argument here? Do they just think the DMA was badly drafted, or do they want to strip competition law out of the EU? Or is this the same "we have a right to monetize our IP[0]" argument they used in the Epic lawsuit? [0] Intellectual property, in the Doctorowian sense of "thing that lets us tell our competitors what to do"

xvector 2y ago
The DMA was badly drafted, and it's quite protectionist. The EU does not write good tech legislation overall, because it does not understand tech industry at a cultural level, having never built out its own.
- kklisura 2y ago
  Generally wondering: how to you look at US imposing 100% tariffs on EVs from China?
  - Spivak 2y ago
    That it's an absolutely insane thing to do to a trading partner and calling prices "artificially low" is just "our glorious government investment their savage government trade war subsidies." Go read the whitehouse announcement, it's blatant. The best part is that is centers around IP literally proving that any country that ignores the insanity of western IP laws will outcompete. Big no no, it's the children that are wrong energy. Absolutely do not support the US artificially limiting EV adoption by forcing prices higher to prop up a domestic auto industry that got caught with their pants down. If they're gonna sell us EVs below cost we would be stupid not to buy them all up and make them lose money. But there's the rub, they're not actually doing that, they are just able to make them cheaper.
    - Zelizz 2y ago
      If they're selling below cost, who's the "we" that should buy them all up? Because if it's US consumers, then the domestic auto companies could fail in the while that's happening. If it's the US government - isn't that kind of what the tariff accomplishes, without having to take ownership of a bunch of inventory?