7 ms·

European iPhones are more fun now

94 points by hilux 2y ago

irdc 2y ago
I know regulation isn’t as popular on HN as it is on, say, Reddit, but note that this is going to be enabling a lot of innovation in mobile apps in the EU.
- politelemon 2y ago
  on iOs. These innovations have existed for many years now.
- blfr 2y ago
  It's not popular because the costs usually outweigh the benefits and when they do, there's rarely a correction. The EU will do something great (roam like at home) or minor but positive (like OP, however we've had USB-C, Firefox, and sideloading on Android anyway) and then annoy you to no end with cookie banners and attached bottle caps.
  - timeon 2y ago
    Regulations are backbone of societies. Most of engineering is heavily regulated except for computer engineering.
  - piva00 2y ago
    > and then annoy you to no end with cookie banners and attached bottle caps. The only reason cookie banners are so annoying is due to the people implementing them wanting them to be annoying. It doesn't need to be, the directive explicitly states that giving or withdrawing consent should be equally easy. All of these annoying cookie banners requiring you to manually toggle 5+ checkboxes for opting out are illegal.
    - blfr 2y ago
      Maybe, although I'm skeptical, but regardless: if a regulation backfires or becomes unenforceable and the regulator cannot correct course, then I'm gonna blame the regulator. You wouldn't accept blaming the user if a UI caused wide-spread issues. Legal systems aren't that different. They're made for people and they have to work for people.
      - viraptor 2y ago
        You can read the actual regulation instead of being sceptical. And the most annoying ones are being sued already. The change may be slow, but we'll get there.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - krior 2y ago
    There is no regulation to make cookie banners annoying, afaik. Plus there are addons that solve this problem. Could you explain your annoyance with bottle caps?
    - MrGilbert 2y ago
      They are attached to the bottle permanently, and tend to get in the way, depending on how the manufacturer decided to implement the regulation.
    - morsch 2y ago
      They're referring to new rules mandating tethered caps. Drives some people nuts. https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/07/02/why-are-bottle-caps-attached-to-the-bottle-inside-the-eu-directive-causing-drink-spills-ev https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/07/02/why-are-bottle-cap...
    - blfr 2y ago
      I'm not posh enough to routinely pour my drinks into a glass so an attached cap either drips, scratches, or gets in my way and I have to tear it off and then usually remove the plastic ring since it now comes with prongs that only sometimes come off with the cap. Attached cap is also less convenient when screwing the cap back onto the bottle.
      - foxhill 2y ago
        friends. you understand that you can just.. take it off, right? fully unscrew the cap then just either continue twisting the cap over the the edge - honestly effortless - or just.. pull it off? the cap still functions as a cap, afterward. apologies, but i don’t understand the furore over this change.
      - thih9 2y ago
        But you can flip the cap so that it stays open and in a single place when attached. There is often a small bump at the bottom of the cap that makes this easier. I also drink straight from the bottle and I find this unobtrusive. Even helpful - I no longer misplace a cap; I guess that was the goal.
  - planb 2y ago
    > The EU will [...] then annoy you to no end with cookie banners and attached bottle caps. You know there's no EU cookie banner insertion agency that intercepts traffic and injects cookie banners - the sites could handle this way less obstrusive. I'm with you on the attached bottle caps though. It's just a minor annoyance but you really gotta ask: Are environmental benefits really worth the negative reactions to regulation this will spur in the population every time someone tries to drink from a plastic bottle?
    - czottmann 2y ago
      > Are environmental benefits really worth the negative reactions to regulation this will spur in the population every time someone tries to drink from a plastic bottle? Yes. We fucked up our ecosphere so badly, every little bit to counter our effects helps. Sure, it's just a goddamn bottle cap, but as a friend of mine uses to say: "No one snow flake feels responsible for the avalanche." Can be read both ways – all our small "misdeeds" accumulate, but all the small "good deeds" do, too. Regulation helps, people will get used to it, and quickly, especially when it's just about minor inconveniences.
  - dzikimarian 2y ago
    I see less targeted ads, when I click "reject" on cookie banners. Also more & more has "reject all" opinion on the top level. It should be checkbox on browser settings, but overall it works and I like it better than creepy notifications to sell me things that I randomly googled.
    - hummusFiend 2y ago
      That is the general idea behind global privacy control[1], though Firefox still has it hidden behind about:config. [1]: https://globalprivacycontrol.org https://globalprivacycontrol.org
      - dzikimarian 2y ago
        There was also "Do not track" earlier, but if it's not regulated, businesses will not give a crap.
  - pjerem 2y ago
    Guess what, the EU never mandated websites to add cookies banners. The reason cookie banners are annoying is because they show you in plain sight how much the site you are visiting doesn’t respect you as a visitor. Worse is that it’s always written in an hypocritical language. Those websites had a disrespectful and dangerous business model that needed to be regulated. The GDPR have been announced 8 years ago and is implemented since 6 years. It’s nearly a decade old and those websites decided to change nothing except to ad banners. Otherwise, there are a hella lot websites that don’t show banners because in the first place they decided to have a business model which was respectful of their customers /users.
  - haizhung 2y ago
    I would say it is working as intended if the regulators are able to mildly inconvenience you to achieve a greater goal. Bottle caps are under the top 10 single-use plastic products most often found on European beaches [1], IMHO that’s good enough reason to mandate they be attached to the bottle. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_2631 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_...
    - card_zero 2y ago
      Where will it all end? Somewhere perfectly fine, probably. But still, I wonder about the far limits and edge cases to this logic. If it was in all cases considered preferable to mildly inconvenience you to achieve a greater goal, that sounds like the cumulative effect would cease to be mild and would in fact be a bad thing. Maybe that could be fixed by regulation regulations?
      - pas 2y ago
        it's a continuous cost-benefit optimization. if it would be cheaper to clean beaches we would just do that. if it would be cheaper to put some manners into beachgoers, we would do that. if it would be cheaper to "police" beaches, we would do that too. regulations also have costs, such as annoyance, inconvenience, enforcement, etc. we will see how these will turn out culturally. (as in which "external rules" will turn into internal ones.)
  - yard2010 2y ago
    I would click on any banner you want as long as I can use my one cable for everything and use Vivaldi browser on my iPhone with uBlock origin built in so I can browse the internet on my phone without the need to worry about catching AIDS or cancer. Like, apple not allowing to use a browser with an adblocker is like not letting people use condoms. It's spreading diseases. Good thing Europe is yet again taking the responsible adult role for the sake of the rest of the world.
  - JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
    Saying that USB-C is a minor benefit feels like American propaganda, or someone bitter.
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    > annoy you to no end with cookie banners That is due to o malicious compliance. The actual problem is the amount of advertisement cookies, how invasive they are, and how advertisers really don't want to let them go. > and attached bottle caps What major problem is that?
    - card_zero 2y ago
      So the law was aimed at reasonable and compliant money-grubbing wrong-doers, but they all turned out to be unexpectedly malicious.
      - kyriakos 2y ago
        Its not malicious. The moment you see a cookie banner you know the site is planning to plant tracking cookies in your browser. Before it did it without your consent now it gives you the option to avoid it if you want.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >I know regulation isn’t as popular on HN as it is on, say, Reddit, This is an aside, but I remember when Reddit was Liberty Central. I'm getting too old for this.
- filleokus 2y ago
  It's going to be interesting to see the state of things in a few years. I'm admittedly in the less pro-regulation camp, but I'm not hopeful this is going to enable much meaningful innovation, rather I'm expecting enshittification via oligopoly. Sure, there will probably be some apps that use new EU features / APIs to do something cool. Most likely Apple will add those in the "standard" API set. Similar to how jailbreakers and Android have paved the way for e.g third party keyboards or call blocking api's. Emulators are the first example of this. We will go from the "apple monopoly" to probably an oligopoly, where companies with enough pull effect will start their own stores. To get more info about the users, "own" the relationship, skip (part of) the apple tax etc. Great, now I'll get the pleasure to create yet another account or jump through 47 hoops to cancel my subscription. I'm also expecting this will sooner or later put the nail in the coffin of the last substantial non-chromium browser user base. "This page is best viewed in Chrome for iOS". Also really looking forward to when some German MDM company will figure out they can innovate some custom phone/messagings apps to improve the "security posture" of my employer.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- karmakurtisaani 2y ago
  > I know regulation isn’t as popular on HN Increasing freedom using regulation is not the right way to do it for our libertarian brethren.
  - SequoiaHope 2y ago
    It’s always interesting to share the Mises Institute talk on how intellectual property restrictions are an unfair government-created monopoly on ideas that harms capitalism and see how libertarian the person really is. Many people, of all backgrounds and creeds, have a politics of convenience that is only pro or against things when it benefits them, despite claiming to have a principled stance. https://youtu.be/cWShFz4d2RY https://youtu.be/cWShFz4d2RY
stephenr 2y ago
[flagged]
- Etheryte 2y ago
  Did we read the same article? They listed third party app stores, custom browser engines, replacing default apps and more, all of which alone are already great.
  - stephenr 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - wiseowise 2y ago
      > Custom browser engines means "a blink monopoly on the web". Some of us were around the first time and remember how shit that was. Don’t care, this should be fought with regulation and competition, not by phone manufacturer deciding to enforce monopoly on their devices that they’ve sold TO ME. As a user, I want proper Firefox with proper extensions, Apple can get a handful of deez.
- defrost 2y ago
  Kind of weird that you skipped right over Third-party app stores, the ability for browsers to run their own engines, Fortnite, and now the ability to replace lots of default apps to land on a fart noise app as the only thing of interest that caught your eye.
  - stephenr 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - jay_kyburz 2y ago
      >give Google even more power over the internet If it was North America too I have no doubt we would see Firefox (as we have on Android) along with uBlock Origin.
defrost 2y ago
Cutting to the chase: How can I location fake my iPhone in Australia to act as if it was purchased in and currently in the EU. Bonus edge question: Is an iPhone visiting the EU an "iPhone in the EU" and subject to the same EU data and open OS etc. regulations as every other (local) phone?
- can16358p 2y ago
  I believe it was tied to the Apple ID and ALSO had some countermeasures against faking location but I might be wrong.
  - defrost 2y ago
    I imagined that was the case, I was also starting a mental countdown clock until the first dot point side loading Ich bin ein Berliner iPhone guide appears.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      Might be waiting a while. Just like iOS jailbreaks and Cydia stopped being a thing, I doubt Apple's gonna let publicized workarounds work that don't involve a ton of effort to work for an extended period.
- fpoling 2y ago
  AppStore location country can only be changed if you have a credit card from a bank in EU with customer address also in EU. And these days there are strong regulations in EU about bank accounts that pretty much ruled out an option to get a EU credit card while being a tourist that was possible like 8 years ago.
- Etheryte 2y ago
  I travel between different countries every now and then and sometimes need to install apps that are only available in a given country. At least for that case, Apple uses your billing address, which is verified by a payment method. E.g. you need a Dutch domiciled payment method to configure your app store location to be the Netherlands and install apps that are available to locals only. These days many apps are available without geographic restrictions, but far from all. I would imagine they use a similar setup for the whole EU only perks.
goethes_kind 2y ago
Why is there only one Apple, anyway? It does not make sense to me. Their niche is luxury consumerism + overbearing paternalism. I don't think that is hard to replicate. Since BlackBerry gave up on making smartphones, there is no other phone manufacturer trying for the same market. Sure you can buy an Android with cutting-edge tech specs, but you don't get the Apple customer experience and the brand recognition.
- blfr 2y ago
  Samsung and Pixel are trying but Apple has the advantage of the integrated ecosystem. Samsung is supposedly approaching it from the angle of their home devices but I don't know how valuable a seamless integration between my phone and a washing machine is. Also, high-end phones aren't really like luxury goods. I think the margins on a manufactured phone are only ~50%. That may sound like a lot but is pretty close to manufacturing of most not-dead-simple stuff.
  - slekker 2y ago
    It's unfortunate that with Samsung phones you can't uninstall the myriad of bloat apps, not to say of their telemetry volume (compared to Apple at least).
    - blfr 2y ago
      I only have a Samsung tablet and I could either disable or uninstall all of their apps. Also, I think you can remove them effectively with `adb`, without root, but haven't tested.
    - dzikimarian 2y ago
      Do you have source of telemetry comparison?
    - whstl 2y ago
      A friend of mine once had a Samsung phone that had advertisement on the Home Screen and was having a hard time removing it. He did reset the phone and all. This was ten fricking years ago, and I never really looked close to know what it really was, but it was enough to put me off the brand forever. Until recently, of course: I thought about getting a TV from them. But I ended up with an "OK" brand dumb TV instead of a Samsung because the Samsung TV on the shop also had an AD in it. Samsung can become another Apple, but it's gonna take some effort.
wiseowise 2y ago
[flagged]
- kyriakos 2y ago
  [flagged]
SoKamil 2y ago
Is there already a browser with its own engine? Does any browser have this planned?
- dzikimarian 2y ago
  Firefox? Available on Android since forever.
- Cockbrand 2y ago
  None exist yet AFAIK, but at least Chrome is on its way. See e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/PWA/comments/11is5ew/first_look_at_google_chromes_blink_engine_running/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PWA/comments/11is5ew/first_look_at_...
hennell 2y ago
Made me chuckle that this praise of the EU over USA regulations was unreadable behind a large green privacy notice starting: "We and our 843 partners store and access personal data, like browsing data or unique identifiers, on your device."
- AndyMcConachie 2y ago
  I recieved no such notice. I'm in the EU, use an Ad Blocker, and NoScript to block JS.
  - irdc 2y ago
    There’s also Consent-O-Matic (https://consentomatic.au.dk/ https://consentomatic.au.dk/).
- antoniojtorres 2y ago
  Is that supposed to mean that no banner and thus no consent is somehow better?
- szszrk 2y ago
  Without regulation they just sold your data to hundred companies without any chance of you knowing, or ability to deny... and that's better?
epanchin 2y ago
If I wanted an open system I could have bought an android. This is a terrible change, can’t wait to see what my less technologically competent friends have been talked into installing.
yard2010 2y ago
It's absolutely amazing that europe is a thing. A world with just the US as the main western power is so lame, everyone cares just about money, no other values, sounds so boring. Now the average american can look up to something and demand it from the policy makers. God bless Europe.
- irdc 2y ago
  Seconded! I think competition like this between governments is a good thing. Let the best laws win.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    I don't know that I want a second US, though. I have reservations about the first one.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    > Let the best laws win The Brussels effect implies that for now, the EU is winning.
- voidr 2y ago
  The EU is not as altruistic as it seems, a lot of good looking policies are backed up by bad intentions. Not having the possibility of a 3rd party app store means that you can never have an app store in the EU, where the 30% stays in the EU. I also don't believe that the EU is doing a great job, the cookie law didn't accomplish anything other than force companies to pay monthly for a cookie banner service and waste millions. GDPR failed, it just created legal black holes and it's now fine to transfer data to the US, rendering the whole thing ineffective. I'm an EU citizen and I'm not sure if the EU would have been so keen on USB-C if Apple would have been a company in the EU. This talk about saving the environment fades away at the first sign of economical inconvenience.
  - aeurielesn 2y ago
    AFAIK, there's no such thing as a cookie law, it's about PII consent. I'm fine knowing in advance how scummy a website is even before I use it by their dark patterns on cookie warnings and thousands of "legitimate interest" partners. Edit: People should stop whining about the cookie warnings and start being concerned that selling PII is such a common (and not even looked down upon) practice. It's disgusting.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
In America people keep forgetting that in Europe, everything has 2 years warranty HANDLED BY THE STORE. Picture Amazon which sells everything. Now, everything that breaks from. Amazon can be returned within TWO YEARS. European laws are way ahead.

94 points by hilux 2y ago

irdc 2y ago

I know regulation isn’t as popular on HN as it is on, say, Reddit, but note that this is going to be enabling a lot of innovation in mobile apps in the EU.

politelemon 2y ago
on iOs. These innovations have existed for many years now.
blfr 2y ago
It's not popular because the costs usually outweigh the benefits and when they do, there's rarely a correction. The EU will do something great (roam like at home) or minor but positive (like OP, however we've had USB-C, Firefox, and sideloading on Android anyway) and then annoy you to no end with cookie banners and attached bottle caps.
- timeon 2y ago
  Regulations are backbone of societies. Most of engineering is heavily regulated except for computer engineering.
- piva00 2y ago
  > and then annoy you to no end with cookie banners and attached bottle caps. The only reason cookie banners are so annoying is due to the people implementing them wanting them to be annoying. It doesn't need to be, the directive explicitly states that giving or withdrawing consent should be equally easy. All of these annoying cookie banners requiring you to manually toggle 5+ checkboxes for opting out are illegal.
  - blfr 2y ago
    Maybe, although I'm skeptical, but regardless: if a regulation backfires or becomes unenforceable and the regulator cannot correct course, then I'm gonna blame the regulator. You wouldn't accept blaming the user if a UI caused wide-spread issues. Legal systems aren't that different. They're made for people and they have to work for people.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      You can read the actual regulation instead of being sceptical. And the most annoying ones are being sued already. The change may be slow, but we'll get there.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- krior 2y ago
  There is no regulation to make cookie banners annoying, afaik. Plus there are addons that solve this problem. Could you explain your annoyance with bottle caps?
  - MrGilbert 2y ago
    They are attached to the bottle permanently, and tend to get in the way, depending on how the manufacturer decided to implement the regulation.
  - morsch 2y ago
    They're referring to new rules mandating tethered caps. Drives some people nuts. https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/07/02/why-are-bottle-caps-attached-to-the-bottle-inside-the-eu-directive-causing-drink-spills-ev https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/07/02/why-are-bottle-cap...
  - blfr 2y ago
    I'm not posh enough to routinely pour my drinks into a glass so an attached cap either drips, scratches, or gets in my way and I have to tear it off and then usually remove the plastic ring since it now comes with prongs that only sometimes come off with the cap. Attached cap is also less convenient when screwing the cap back onto the bottle.
    - foxhill 2y ago
      friends. you understand that you can just.. take it off, right? fully unscrew the cap then just either continue twisting the cap over the the edge - honestly effortless - or just.. pull it off? the cap still functions as a cap, afterward. apologies, but i don’t understand the furore over this change.
    - thih9 2y ago
      But you can flip the cap so that it stays open and in a single place when attached. There is often a small bump at the bottom of the cap that makes this easier. I also drink straight from the bottle and I find this unobtrusive. Even helpful - I no longer misplace a cap; I guess that was the goal.
- planb 2y ago
  > The EU will [...] then annoy you to no end with cookie banners and attached bottle caps. You know there's no EU cookie banner insertion agency that intercepts traffic and injects cookie banners - the sites could handle this way less obstrusive. I'm with you on the attached bottle caps though. It's just a minor annoyance but you really gotta ask: Are environmental benefits really worth the negative reactions to regulation this will spur in the population every time someone tries to drink from a plastic bottle?
  - czottmann 2y ago
    > Are environmental benefits really worth the negative reactions to regulation this will spur in the population every time someone tries to drink from a plastic bottle? Yes. We fucked up our ecosphere so badly, every little bit to counter our effects helps. Sure, it's just a goddamn bottle cap, but as a friend of mine uses to say: "No one snow flake feels responsible for the avalanche." Can be read both ways – all our small "misdeeds" accumulate, but all the small "good deeds" do, too. Regulation helps, people will get used to it, and quickly, especially when it's just about minor inconveniences.
- dzikimarian 2y ago
  I see less targeted ads, when I click "reject" on cookie banners. Also more & more has "reject all" opinion on the top level. It should be checkbox on browser settings, but overall it works and I like it better than creepy notifications to sell me things that I randomly googled.
  - hummusFiend 2y ago
    That is the general idea behind global privacy control[1], though Firefox still has it hidden behind about:config. [1]: https://globalprivacycontrol.org https://globalprivacycontrol.org
    - dzikimarian 2y ago
      There was also "Do not track" earlier, but if it's not regulated, businesses will not give a crap.
- pjerem 2y ago
  Guess what, the EU never mandated websites to add cookies banners. The reason cookie banners are annoying is because they show you in plain sight how much the site you are visiting doesn’t respect you as a visitor. Worse is that it’s always written in an hypocritical language. Those websites had a disrespectful and dangerous business model that needed to be regulated. The GDPR have been announced 8 years ago and is implemented since 6 years. It’s nearly a decade old and those websites decided to change nothing except to ad banners. Otherwise, there are a hella lot websites that don’t show banners because in the first place they decided to have a business model which was respectful of their customers /users.
- haizhung 2y ago
  I would say it is working as intended if the regulators are able to mildly inconvenience you to achieve a greater goal. Bottle caps are under the top 10 single-use plastic products most often found on European beaches [1], IMHO that’s good enough reason to mandate they be attached to the bottle. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_2631 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_...
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Where will it all end? Somewhere perfectly fine, probably. But still, I wonder about the far limits and edge cases to this logic. If it was in all cases considered preferable to mildly inconvenience you to achieve a greater goal, that sounds like the cumulative effect would cease to be mild and would in fact be a bad thing. Maybe that could be fixed by regulation regulations?
    - pas 2y ago
      it's a continuous cost-benefit optimization. if it would be cheaper to clean beaches we would just do that. if it would be cheaper to put some manners into beachgoers, we would do that. if it would be cheaper to "police" beaches, we would do that too. regulations also have costs, such as annoyance, inconvenience, enforcement, etc. we will see how these will turn out culturally. (as in which "external rules" will turn into internal ones.)
- yard2010 2y ago
  I would click on any banner you want as long as I can use my one cable for everything and use Vivaldi browser on my iPhone with uBlock origin built in so I can browse the internet on my phone without the need to worry about catching AIDS or cancer. Like, apple not allowing to use a browser with an adblocker is like not letting people use condoms. It's spreading diseases. Good thing Europe is yet again taking the responsible adult role for the sake of the rest of the world.
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
  Saying that USB-C is a minor benefit feels like American propaganda, or someone bitter.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > annoy you to no end with cookie banners That is due to o malicious compliance. The actual problem is the amount of advertisement cookies, how invasive they are, and how advertisers really don't want to let them go. > and attached bottle caps What major problem is that?
  - card_zero 2y ago
    So the law was aimed at reasonable and compliant money-grubbing wrong-doers, but they all turned out to be unexpectedly malicious.
    - kyriakos 2y ago
      Its not malicious. The moment you see a cookie banner you know the site is planning to plant tracking cookies in your browser. Before it did it without your consent now it gives you the option to avoid it if you want.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>I know regulation isn’t as popular on HN as it is on, say, Reddit, This is an aside, but I remember when Reddit was Liberty Central. I'm getting too old for this.
filleokus 2y ago
It's going to be interesting to see the state of things in a few years. I'm admittedly in the less pro-regulation camp, but I'm not hopeful this is going to enable much meaningful innovation, rather I'm expecting enshittification via oligopoly. Sure, there will probably be some apps that use new EU features / APIs to do something cool. Most likely Apple will add those in the "standard" API set. Similar to how jailbreakers and Android have paved the way for e.g third party keyboards or call blocking api's. Emulators are the first example of this. We will go from the "apple monopoly" to probably an oligopoly, where companies with enough pull effect will start their own stores. To get more info about the users, "own" the relationship, skip (part of) the apple tax etc. Great, now I'll get the pleasure to create yet another account or jump through 47 hoops to cancel my subscription. I'm also expecting this will sooner or later put the nail in the coffin of the last substantial non-chromium browser user base. "This page is best viewed in Chrome for iOS". Also really looking forward to when some German MDM company will figure out they can innovate some custom phone/messagings apps to improve the "security posture" of my employer.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
karmakurtisaani 2y ago
> I know regulation isn’t as popular on HN Increasing freedom using regulation is not the right way to do it for our libertarian brethren.
- SequoiaHope 2y ago
  It’s always interesting to share the Mises Institute talk on how intellectual property restrictions are an unfair government-created monopoly on ideas that harms capitalism and see how libertarian the person really is. Many people, of all backgrounds and creeds, have a politics of convenience that is only pro or against things when it benefits them, despite claiming to have a principled stance. https://youtu.be/cWShFz4d2RY https://youtu.be/cWShFz4d2RY

stephenr 2y ago

[flagged]

Etheryte 2y ago
Did we read the same article? They listed third party app stores, custom browser engines, replacing default apps and more, all of which alone are already great.
- stephenr 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - wiseowise 2y ago
    > Custom browser engines means "a blink monopoly on the web". Some of us were around the first time and remember how shit that was. Don’t care, this should be fought with regulation and competition, not by phone manufacturer deciding to enforce monopoly on their devices that they’ve sold TO ME. As a user, I want proper Firefox with proper extensions, Apple can get a handful of deez.
defrost 2y ago
Kind of weird that you skipped right over Third-party app stores, the ability for browsers to run their own engines, Fortnite, and now the ability to replace lots of default apps to land on a fart noise app as the only thing of interest that caught your eye.
- stephenr 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - jay_kyburz 2y ago
    >give Google even more power over the internet If it was North America too I have no doubt we would see Firefox (as we have on Android) along with uBlock Origin.

defrost 2y ago

Cutting to the chase: How can I location fake my iPhone in Australia to act as if it was purchased in and currently in the EU. Bonus edge question: Is an iPhone visiting the EU an "iPhone in the EU" and subject to the same EU data and open OS etc. regulations as every other (local) phone?

can16358p 2y ago
I believe it was tied to the Apple ID and ALSO had some countermeasures against faking location but I might be wrong.
- defrost 2y ago
  I imagined that was the case, I was also starting a mental countdown clock until the first dot point side loading Ich bin ein Berliner iPhone guide appears.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Might be waiting a while. Just like iOS jailbreaks and Cydia stopped being a thing, I doubt Apple's gonna let publicized workarounds work that don't involve a ton of effort to work for an extended period.
fpoling 2y ago
AppStore location country can only be changed if you have a credit card from a bank in EU with customer address also in EU. And these days there are strong regulations in EU about bank accounts that pretty much ruled out an option to get a EU credit card while being a tourist that was possible like 8 years ago.
Etheryte 2y ago
I travel between different countries every now and then and sometimes need to install apps that are only available in a given country. At least for that case, Apple uses your billing address, which is verified by a payment method. E.g. you need a Dutch domiciled payment method to configure your app store location to be the Netherlands and install apps that are available to locals only. These days many apps are available without geographic restrictions, but far from all. I would imagine they use a similar setup for the whole EU only perks.

goethes_kind 2y ago

Why is there only one Apple, anyway? It does not make sense to me. Their niche is luxury consumerism + overbearing paternalism. I don't think that is hard to replicate. Since BlackBerry gave up on making smartphones, there is no other phone manufacturer trying for the same market. Sure you can buy an Android with cutting-edge tech specs, but you don't get the Apple customer experience and the brand recognition.

blfr 2y ago
Samsung and Pixel are trying but Apple has the advantage of the integrated ecosystem. Samsung is supposedly approaching it from the angle of their home devices but I don't know how valuable a seamless integration between my phone and a washing machine is. Also, high-end phones aren't really like luxury goods. I think the margins on a manufactured phone are only ~50%. That may sound like a lot but is pretty close to manufacturing of most not-dead-simple stuff.
- slekker 2y ago
  It's unfortunate that with Samsung phones you can't uninstall the myriad of bloat apps, not to say of their telemetry volume (compared to Apple at least).
  - blfr 2y ago
    I only have a Samsung tablet and I could either disable or uninstall all of their apps. Also, I think you can remove them effectively with `adb`, without root, but haven't tested.
  - dzikimarian 2y ago
    Do you have source of telemetry comparison?
  - whstl 2y ago
    A friend of mine once had a Samsung phone that had advertisement on the Home Screen and was having a hard time removing it. He did reset the phone and all. This was ten fricking years ago, and I never really looked close to know what it really was, but it was enough to put me off the brand forever. Until recently, of course: I thought about getting a TV from them. But I ended up with an "OK" brand dumb TV instead of a Samsung because the Samsung TV on the shop also had an AD in it. Samsung can become another Apple, but it's gonna take some effort.

wiseowise 2y ago

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kyriakos 2y ago
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SoKamil 2y ago

Is there already a browser with its own engine? Does any browser have this planned?

dzikimarian 2y ago
Firefox? Available on Android since forever.
Cockbrand 2y ago
None exist yet AFAIK, but at least Chrome is on its way. See e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/PWA/comments/11is5ew/first_look_at_google_chromes_blink_engine_running/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PWA/comments/11is5ew/first_look_at_...

hennell 2y ago

Made me chuckle that this praise of the EU over USA regulations was unreadable behind a large green privacy notice starting: "We and our 843 partners store and access personal data, like browsing data or unique identifiers, on your device."

AndyMcConachie 2y ago
I recieved no such notice. I'm in the EU, use an Ad Blocker, and NoScript to block JS.
- irdc 2y ago
  There’s also Consent-O-Matic (https://consentomatic.au.dk/ https://consentomatic.au.dk/).
antoniojtorres 2y ago
Is that supposed to mean that no banner and thus no consent is somehow better?
szszrk 2y ago
Without regulation they just sold your data to hundred companies without any chance of you knowing, or ability to deny... and that's better?

epanchin 2y ago

If I wanted an open system I could have bought an android. This is a terrible change, can’t wait to see what my less technologically competent friends have been talked into installing.

yard2010 2y ago

It's absolutely amazing that europe is a thing. A world with just the US as the main western power is so lame, everyone cares just about money, no other values, sounds so boring. Now the average american can look up to something and demand it from the policy makers. God bless Europe.

irdc 2y ago
Seconded! I think competition like this between governments is a good thing. Let the best laws win.
- card_zero 2y ago
  I don't know that I want a second US, though. I have reservations about the first one.
- sofixa 2y ago
  > Let the best laws win The Brussels effect implies that for now, the EU is winning.
voidr 2y ago
The EU is not as altruistic as it seems, a lot of good looking policies are backed up by bad intentions. Not having the possibility of a 3rd party app store means that you can never have an app store in the EU, where the 30% stays in the EU. I also don't believe that the EU is doing a great job, the cookie law didn't accomplish anything other than force companies to pay monthly for a cookie banner service and waste millions. GDPR failed, it just created legal black holes and it's now fine to transfer data to the US, rendering the whole thing ineffective. I'm an EU citizen and I'm not sure if the EU would have been so keen on USB-C if Apple would have been a company in the EU. This talk about saving the environment fades away at the first sign of economical inconvenience.
- aeurielesn 2y ago
  AFAIK, there's no such thing as a cookie law, it's about PII consent. I'm fine knowing in advance how scummy a website is even before I use it by their dark patterns on cookie warnings and thousands of "legitimate interest" partners. Edit: People should stop whining about the cookie warnings and start being concerned that selling PII is such a common (and not even looked down upon) practice. It's disgusting.

deleted 2y ago

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Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago

In America people keep forgetting that in Europe, everything has 2 years warranty HANDLED BY THE STORE. Picture Amazon which sells everything. Now, everything that breaks from. Amazon can be returned within TWO YEARS. European laws are way ahead.