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Apple interoperability efforts under EU law falls short, advocacy groups argue
- JSR_FDED 2y agoAmerica invents it, China scales it, Europe regulates it.
- s_dev 2y agoAt least someone is setting limits, Biden noted in his farewell address how America is being shaped by oligarchs which has echos of Eisenhower's farewell address warning of the forming of a 'military-industrial complex'.
- skummetmaelk 2y agoA speech he very well may have watched live.
- bugtodiffer 2y agoEU doesn't regulate enough IMO Apple is intentionally building a walled garden, which is a monopoly, which hurts our economy
- graemep 2y agoI agree. I get a nasty feeling that Apple is going to get away with a significant level of malicious compliance.
- Longhanks 2y agoCompliance is a very binary thing in this matter. Either Apple complies, or they don't. It's the the EU'a job to fix the legislation, the legal system does not care about "not faithfully honoring the spirit/intent".
- graemep 2y agoWhich is why they will get away with it. It is why others people get away with similar behaviour in general in many jurisdictions. One legislation (which is slow to change and can be opposed by lobbying) catches up with one thing they do something new. Legislation can be worded more generally though, which helps. Regulators and judges can be given some discretion.
- xyzzy4747 2y agoIf the customers prefer the walled garden then what’s the big deal? There are a number of other phones people can buy.
- dns_snek 2y ago> If the customers prefer the walled garden then what’s the big deal? What the customers "prefer" and what's good for society are two very different questions. Anti-competitive behavior for one, like charging your direct competitors a 30% tax on their revenue because you own the platform, ensuring that you always come out ahead. > There are a number of other phones people can buy I don't understand this argument. For smartphones there's just one viable alternative which is itself trending in the walled garden direction. Google has been imposing additional restrictions for sideloading and adding various roadblocks that are slowly reeling back user freedoms. Both companies have a long list of customer-hostile behaviors and we have to pick one of them because interoperability is dead. Because we have to pick one, there's no real pressure to address those grievances on either side. It's always "just use Android" when we complain about Apple and "just use iOS" when we complain about Google. It's like that scene out of South park with the Cable company people rubbing their nipples listening to disgruntled customers.
- dialup_sounds 2y agoThere are at least a dozen companies making Android-based phones without Google. Are none of them "viable"? If not, whose fault is that?
- flax 2y agono. China. Next question.
- dialup_sounds 2y agoI was actually thinking of European companies like Volla and Fairphone given that the article is about the EU.
- ben_w 2y agoThey've been building and tending the exact same pay-to-enter garden for 16 years, and even that garden initially — for a year — started with the equivalent of a padlock and "no-entry, no exceptions" sign on the gate itself because iOS was originally "just Apple's Apps, nobody else"*. Took a long while before Apple was big enough that people cared about the walled gardens, before "smart phones" as a market opportunity were dominant enough that them having one was even capable of hurting anyone's economy. * if you want to find exception, consider if the exception would also inherently reject the idea that what currently exists is a walled garden
- coldpepper 2y ago[flagged]
- imoverclocked 2y agoI’m an American. I’m not a pure materialist. The us vs them in your comment feels quasi-political and unfounded.
- jjtheblunt 2y agoMaybe he would like to pretend he's surveyed 330+ million individuals and has assessed each with respect to materialism and ability to understand life.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago> The us vs them in your comment feels quasi-political and unfounded. Yeah, I've noticed there's a lot of virtue signaling form some Europeans, especially amongst the wealthier Germans, Benelux, and Nordics who have this "holier than though" posture on how much better they are than Americans(wide brush stroke here) for being non-materialistic (also copium for their low skilled wages), while coasting on generational wealth inherited from those before them. Well if you're so non-materialistic, why aren't dropping the prices of your housing so other people can actually afford to buy something instead of hoping to profiteer from them like those "greedy" Americans? As always, the people lecturing you on how money doesn't matter, are those who already have money. Just like those Germans laughing at Trump when he warned them about Germany's dependence on Russian energy in 2018. [1] They can be so smug and full of themselves sometimes. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKEycjREgPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKEycjREgPE
- KerrAvon 2y agoI dunno — in the torrent of sludge that came and will come from the Trump administration, how is anyone supposed to distinguish an occasional nugget of truth?
- 2y ago
- nonethewiser 2y agoAmerica invents it, China copies it, Europe regulates it.
- diggan 2y agoCommonly echoed indeed :) When would we say this started, year-wise? As in the past, most of the technology/innovation came from Asia and Europe, and it seems not until after computers (or earlier perhaps?) did the US start to catch up with the rest of the world, but haven't really done a deep dive into it.
- eastbound 2y agoCold war, USA propped up the Silicon Valley out of nothing, and now your social rules are all decided from there. If only the EU was busy doing that instead of cookie banners.
- diggan 2y agoWell, until it doesn't, which seems to be edging closer and closer every day. Not sure where you are located, but as I'm within the EU, I'm quite happy with the approach we take, I'd prefer that to the capitalistic hellhole the US seems to be. If that means I have to decline cookies when I visit websites who misunderstand regulation, then so be it, totally worth it.
- auggierose 2y agoI don't know, before going after that, maybe go after all of the popups you created that are not in the spirit of letting you control who you share your browsing data with. To consent to sharing, I just have to click the consent button. To reject sharing, I need to a) click the manage options button b) click the reject all button (if there is such a button) c) avoid the "agree to all and confirm" button that is somehow now highlighted as if that would be the logical next button to click after I rejected all d) click on the "save changes" button, which is really helpfully titled, and greyed out, but thankfully still clickable e) pray that all of that made a difference
- rcxdude 2y agoIndeed, it is something regulators should be hotter on, because that is not only breaking the spirit but the letter. I think they've been trying to go after the bigger fish in this regard (notice that google's box at least has one click to say no now), but it'll take some time for it to filter downwards, and still people will cargo-cult the pop-ups even if they don't actually need them (which, for the average wordpress blog, you don't).
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoSome companies were already fined for not having the opt out be just as easy as the opt-in; may many more follow.
- natch 2y agoYou are talking about the popups created by European lawmakers? Yes these are the worst thing to happen to the web in recent memory.
- jkaplowitz 2y agoNone of those popups are required by European lawmakers. Websites don’t need to ask for permission for the essential cookies like what’s necessary to log into an online account or add items to a shopping cart - indeed, many compliant EU cookie popups have “only essential cookies” as the least permissive option. They only need to ask for permission if they want consent for the kind of invasive tracking that the GDPR and related regulations were intended to discourage anyway. And they aren’t required to use popups or banners to get any consent they might need. The popups, and especially the quite probably legally invalid common implementation where granting consent is made easier than refusing it, are a frequently bad-faith attempt by the industry to continue tracking-centric business as fully as possible contrary to the policy intention of the GDPR. They are not a requirement of the law.
- xlii 2y agoIMO title should be edited. Original one is "Apple's interoperability efforts aren't meeting spirit or letter of EU law, ADVOCACY GROUPS ARGUE” I get that it’s long but IMO HN title doesn’t represent source article content.
- grajaganDev 2y agoAgreed, we need longer titles on HN.
- dang 2y agoThere's nearly always an adequate fix. In this case I took the HTML doc title and appended the advocacy groups to it. This fits easily within the 80 char limit.
- amelius 2y agoJust a pair of quotes around the title will do.
- nonethewiser 2y agoI guess I agree in principle. Although I think every title has an implicit "[INTERESTED PARTY] argues." Again, I agree with you... I just hope everyone took the title as someone's opinion in the first place.
- f1shy 2y agoThe difference is that if nothing is added seems (at least so understood it) the government says that. Not a third party.
- whimsicalism 2y agothe implicit interested party for a headline like that is the EU commission
- dang 2y agoEdited now. Thanks!
- richwater 2y ago[flagged]
- black_puppydog 2y agoI wonder if we could be spared the next few rounds of US "innovation" while we take a breather and fix the stuff that broke during the last few fast-moving rounds.
- nonethewiser 2y agoVote for that
- pierot 2y agoIt's called breaking up walled gardens, (quasi) monopolies and protecting consumer rights. It's outright wrong to call this 'annoying'.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoIt's worrying that it's only considered annoying to US companies; after all to them it's just a fine, if it even comes to that. A fine is only a punishment for poor people, for rich companies it's a one off expense.
- sib 2y agoIt's called making products worse, reducing security, and stripping the fruits of innovation from investors & creators. It's deeply annoying.
- weberer 2y agoI wish these guys regulated Microsoft even half as much as they go after apple. I dream of a day where I can just walk into the local electronics store and buy a computer with Linux installed. I don't really care about Apple since they're only around 25% of the smartphone market and 10% of the PC market.
- kalleboo 2y agoWouldn't that be regulating PC manufacturers/retailers rather than Microsoft? The things they're forcing Apple to allow, Microsoft already allows (installing third-party web browsers and App Stores, choosing default apps, etc)
- nonethewiser 2y ago> I wish these guys regulated Microsoft even half as much as they go after apple. Kinda sounds like a "show me the man, I'll show you the crime" kinda policy. What specific rules are Microsoft breaking? Just at a high level I would expect less issues from Microsoft because they dont produce as much hardware and windows is more open by design.
- Cumpiler69 2y agoMicrosoft's Windows monopoly in desktop computers is far less irelevant today, as desktop computing is less relevant compared to the past due to mobile, and also not a walled garden since you can install apps on Windows outside the Windows Store unlike on iPhone. The things Microsoft is being investigated for is the Monopoly on Office365 services such as bundling Teams by default. Oh and your numbers are totally wrong. iPhone market share is over 80% on US teens making them a dangerous monopoly since teens tend to become grownups at some point.
- 65 2y ago> ...and how the iCompany should accommodate developer requests for interoperability. That's got to be my favorite word mirror I've ever read for "Apple".
- efitz 2y agoI worked for Microsoft during the EU consent decree where Microsoft had to document[1] all of their protocols to enable interoperability. Apple seems to be getting off much easier than Microsoft did; EU would never have stood for the same behavior from Microsoft. (Side note: those documents were some of the best protocol documentation I've ever seen [or written]) [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/MS-WINPROTLP/e36c976a-6263-42a8-b119-7a3cc41ddd2a https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocol...