23 ms·

AirPods live translation blocked for EU users with EU Apple accounts

• Daishiman 1y ago
  I mean studying a technology with this scale to assess its impact before allowing it freely is… not terrible?
  • solardev 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • JustExAWS 1y ago
      [flagged]
      • solardev 1y ago
        [flagged]
        • nozzlegear 1y ago
          Americans consume more goods and services, live in larger homes, and have a higher material standard of living than Europeans, on the median. The US does spend much more on healthcare, but the outcomes are largely comparable to Europe’s (meaning universal healthcare has not actually given Europeans a clear advantage in lived results). Source: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-are-generally-richer-than https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-are-generally-richer...
          • danudey 1y ago
            Europeans also get mandated parental leave and vacation time, far better labour laws, better health-related regulatory conditions (e.g. food, drugs, agriculture, environment, gun control, etc.), and so on, and don't go bankrupt and lose everything because of a heart attack or pregnancy complications. Having a big house and more money doesn't mean you have a better life; this seems to be the main point of the article you linked, but your comment seems to imply that you missed that point (though I could be misreading). Case in point, this quote from the blog: > I could go on, but the pattern is pretty clear. The U.S. in general is less healthy and less safe than Europe.
            • nozzlegear 1y ago
              > Having a big house and more money doesn't mean you have a better life; this seems to be the main point of the article you linked, but your comment seems to imply that you missed that point (though I could be misreading). Case in point, this quote from the blog: [...] No, I didn't miss the point; there's excellent data in that article for people who think the US is a great place to live, and people who think Europe is a great place to live. That's the beauty of the article, and the crux of my point: both of those groups can be correct – there's no single "this is the greatest place to live for all human beings, periodt" out there. The article concludes: > But as one final thought, I’d like to offer the hypothesis that life is just about equally as good in all developed countries. There’s personal preference, of course — if you want a big house and a lawn, you might prefer America or Canada, whereas if you want national health insurance and lower crime rates, you might prefer Japan or France. But in terms of where the average person would want to live given the choice, I think all these rich countries are in the same ballpark.
          • StopDisinfo910 1y ago
            [flagged]
            • nozzlegear 1y ago
              Frankly I think we need to establish a definition for comparable if you're going to nitpick the numbers of infant mortality rates and life expectancy between two modern Western democracies. The average infant mortality rate in Canada is 4.4 deaths per thousand, is that comparable to the EU? The UAE is sitting pretty at 4 per thousand so that's obviously more comparable than Canada. Russia's at 6.42 so they're out. Anyway, my point is those numbers are comparable when there are countries like Mexico, Brazil and India out there with an infant mortality rate of 11, 12.5 and 25 deaths per thousand, respectively. (For the record I don't think the US is a better place to live than the EU, I just don't think it's worse either.)
              • ioasuncvinvaer 1y ago
                The numbers seem perfectly comparable though?
              • StopDisinfo910 1y ago
                [flagged]
                • nozzlegear 1y ago
                  >You really think the USA having nearly twice as big an infant mortality rate is nitpicking? Come on, are you going to make my argument so easy? Twice of two drops of nothing is four drops of nothing. You're nitpicking numbers that frankly don't make a difference because they're too close to matter. But don't argue with me, argue with the author of the article where you can see all of the data and comparisons for yourself.
                  • StopDisinfo910 1y ago
                    The difference between the US and the EU is the same that between the US and Kazakhstan. I’m sorry but that’s not a small difference at all. The US infant mortality rate is shameful. Not as shameful as its poverty and homelessness rates but still shameful anyway.
        • mytailorisrich 1y ago
          Quality of life depends on wealth creation to finance it. This and social benefits are becoming unaffordable as the economy falls behind.
      • lm28469 1y ago
        [flagged]
        • raw_anon_1111 1y ago
          Heck even enterprise devs working in tier 2 cities make a lot more than they do in the EU.
          • lm28469 1y ago
            Yeah that's probably the thing that will occupy my mind on my death bed, all the money I could have made as an "entreprise dev" in a "tier 2 city", I get such a hard on just writing these words, thanks for making my point btw
    • lm28469 1y ago
      [flagged]
      • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > whole US economy is propped up by FAANG This is nonsense. The stock market had been propped up by FAANG. But with AI we have a few trillion dollars of value being created by new entrants (e.g. OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic) and legacy companies newly stepping on FAANG (e.g. Oracle, Perplexity). It may all be a fever dream. But like the dark fiber of the 90s, it should—worst case—leave behind a lot of energy and datacentre infrastructure. (If Washington would get out of the way.)
        • JustExAWS 1y ago
          And none of those are public companies and no one knows how much any of those companies are worth. Right now using the valuation technique that tge value of a company is the net present value of all future returns * some multiple, we don’t know if any of them will ever be valuable.
          • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
            > using the valuation technique that tge value of a company is the net present value of all future returns some multiple, we don’t know if any of them will ever be valuable* This metric has nothing to do with whether a company is public or private.
            • JustExAWS 1y ago
              But no one knows how much a company is truly worth until it goes on the public market and if all of the private companies “worth billions” went under, only VCs would be harmed. This isn’t like the dot com bust.
              • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
                > no one knows how much a company is truly worth until it goes on the public market Nobody ever knows what a company is worth other than the people buying and selling it in an M&A transaction at that precise moment. Public markets just have more transactions than private markets—the mechanism of price discovery is similar, if not the same. > if all of the private companies “worth billions” went under, only VCs would be harmed I’d be shocked if it didn’t take out the banking system. You’re describing the annihilation of trillions of dollars of pension, endowment and retirement wealth; to say nothing of the effects on municipal, state and federal payroll finances; to say nothing of the asset-backed loans tied to these assets and purchases they make from public companies and their employees’ spending.
    • tomhow 1y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. I had to do some hunting to figure out how a thread about AirPods descended into arguments about life expectancy and pensions. This is where it began. Please take care to avoid starting flamewars like this in future. We all have to consider the consequences of what we post, and it's against the guidelines to post inflammatory rhetoric for precisely this reason. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
      • solardev 1y ago
        It seems like I can't help myself and keep sliding back into old habits without realizing. I am sorry, I will think twice next time.
  • adastra22 1y ago
    Yes, it is terrible. We should have and support proactionary policies, not regressive precautionary restrictions.
• gabrielso 1y ago
  Yeah make it work in the US where you can fly 4 hours in any direction and still land somewhere that speaks the same language, and not in Europe where a 1:30h drive takes you through 3 different countries that don't know how to talk to each other...
  • aegypti 1y ago
    It also works in the entire Rest of World outside the EU
  • nozzlegear 1y ago
    13-14% of the US population speak Spanish at home.
  • urda 1y ago
    You can blame the EU for that, not Apple.
    • notrealyme123 1y ago
      No you should absolutely blame apple for that. They fear to lose their monopoly and want to set an example for other countries.
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      • urda 1y ago
        [flagged]
        • LinXitoW 1y ago
          Which facts? Do you have some facts that explain why Apple did this move? Because all the facts I know of paint a picture of Apple throwing a massive tantrum at any kind of consumer protection rulings they might be subject to. They would ABSOLUTELY make their products worse in the EU to make uninformed voters and consumerist victims blame the very government agencies protecting them. This feature happens on the phone, not the AirPods. There is no reason at all why this shouldn't be available in the EU, except the consumer friendly need to provide the API for the feature to other device manufacturers.
• JSR_FDED 1y ago
  My understanding is that this works on-device (via the iPhone), so I wonder what the regulatory issue is. Perhaps the regulations treat is as if you’re “recording” the person you’re speaking with, without their consent?
  • pornel 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • JustExAWS 1y ago
      The EU said that everything that Apple creates for its own devices has to have APIs for third parties. The translation feature only works for AirPods.
      • hn8726 1y ago
        Ok so it's not "airpods live translation" really, but "ios live translation" and there's no technical reason to limit it to airpods?
        • JustExAWS 1y ago
          The audio input comes from the AirPods not the iPhone. It’s processed on the iPhone. The audio is captured by the outward facing microphones used for active noise cancellations. That’s why it only works for AirPods Pro 2, 3 and AirPods 4 with ANC. That wouldn’t just work with any headphones. Even the AirPods Pro 2 will need a firmware update. They won’t work with just any old headphones and seeing that even the AirPods Pro 2 need a firmware update tells me that it is something they are doing with their H2 chip in their headphones in concert with the iPhone.
          • StopDisinfo910 1y ago
            I mean, technically, any competitors with noise cancelling headphones able to pick up a voice stream would be able to use the same processing on the iPhone to offer an equivalent feature. That it only works with AirPods is just Apple discriminating in favour of their own product which is exactly what the EU was going after.
• crazygringo 1y ago
  This is probably due to concern about legal regulations around temporarily recording someone else's voice so it can be processed for translation. After all, there is no mechanism for the person you're talking to to provide "consent", and the EU does have particularly strong laws on this. Alternatively it might have something to do with the translation being performed in iOS, and the capability not being exposed to competitor audio devices, and therefore Apple needs assurance the EU won't consider it anticompetitive? Or both.
  • adastra22 1y ago
    That same issue would apply in California, which is a two party consent state.
  • rsynnott 1y ago
    Also potentially AI Act concerns. Quite a lot of things involving our good friends the magic robots have a delayed launch in the EU, because they need to be compliant, whereas the space is for practical purposes completely unregulated in most other places.
  • _boffin_ 1y ago
    How would this function in two-party consent states like California? My understanding is limited, but from what I've read, this might still violate consent laws unless explicitly disclosed—even in public spaces. I recently explored building a real-time STT system for sales calls to support cold-calling efforts. However, the consensus from my research was that, even if audio is streamed live without storage, consent laws could still present significant hurdles.
    • crazygringo 1y ago
      I think it really depends on the legal definition of recording or what it's used for. Common sense says that a recording that only exists for a few seconds, and is utilized only by the person a speaker is intending to speak to, and is never permanently stored, should be fine. And we can assume Apple has made sure this is legal in its home state of California. But EU law might not have sufficient legal clarity on this if it was written in a particularly open-ended way.
• pmdr 1y ago
  Just add another cookie banner before each session and you'll be fine, Apple.
• Yuropoor 1y ago
  [dead]
• ageospatial 1y ago
  GDPR is solid. But main reason is that it's just hard to make it work with the AI act, various languages could also be the reason (product not adding enough value to customers?)
  • Y-bar 1y ago
    > Apple doesn't give a reason for the restriction If there were real issues with GDPR or the AI Act Apple would have nothing to lose and everything to gain by mentioning at least the generalities of _why_. But they did no such thing so we can only assume it is not any of those things which are the real issues.
    • shuckles 1y ago
      > Apple would have nothing to lose and everything to gain by mentioning at least the generalities of _why_ Really? You can't imagine any reasons Apple wouldn't want to have a public PR battle about its disagreements with its primary regulator in the market? Have you ever worked with the government?
      • Y-bar 1y ago
        Apple regularly have PR battles with governments, this week they openly sponsored a study on the App Store in Brazil to defend their ability to be the only store on iOS. Recently they fought UK publicly regarding encryption. And they have fought FBI publicly with press releases and interviews regarding similar things. Apple executives have also publicly spoken about their disagreements with DMA in 2024 and 2025.
        • shuckles 1y ago
          Wow seems like they really pick these battles to only be the most important issues.
          • Y-bar 1y ago
            Not necessarily. Just now for example Apple is facing a regulatory problem with the eSIM, so they mention that they have an actual regulatory issue. [1] But for this translation feature they have not even mentioned any regulatory issues, so we should from conclude, from previous and current behaviour, that Apple is delaying for something else. Probably engineering or political reasons. [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2025/09/12/apple-delays-iphone-air-launch-china-e-sim/ https://www.macrumors.com/2025/09/12/apple-delays-iphone-air...
• renewiltord 1y ago
  It makes sense that increased regulation will delay feature release. This is a trade off that Europeans seem fine with. Seems fine to me.
  • danudey 1y ago
    In Canada we have roughly equivalent regulation for many (most?) things and still get delayed feature releases half the time, so at least the EU is getting something out of it.
• 4ndrewl 1y ago
  I'd be surprised if this isn't about data residency and gdpr. As someone using the headphones you may end up becoming a "data processor" in gdpr-legal terms. You've not given the person being recorded any way to exercise their legal rights around collecting, inspecting and deleting their data.
  • pornel 1y ago
    GDPR is about collection and processing of personally identifiable information. These are specific legal terms that depend on the context in which the data is collected and used, not just broadly any data anywhere that might have something to do with a person. GDPR is aimed at companies building user databases, not allowing them to completely ignore security, accuracy, user complaints, and sell anything to anybody while lying about it. It doesn't limit individual people's personal use of data.
    • robin_reala 1y ago
      GDPR doesn’t mention “personally identifiable information” once; it’s concerned with personal data, which is “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’)”. The rest is correct: the restrictions are aimed at organisations, not individuals. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj/eng#art_4.tit_1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj/eng#art_4.tit_...
      • 4ndrewl 1y ago
        The restrictions are not aimed at organisations, but to protect individuals. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/domestic-cctv-using-cctv-systems-on-your-property/domestic-cctv-using-cctv-systems-on-your-property https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/domestic-cctv-usi... "If your CCTV system captures images of people outside the boundary of your private domestic property – for example, from neighbours’ homes or gardens, shared spaces, or from public areas – then the GDPR and the DPA will apply to you. You will need to ensure your use of CCTV complies with these laws. If you do not comply with your data protection obligations you may be subject to appropriate regulatory action by the ICO, as well as potential legal action by affected individuals." You, as an individual, have data protection obligations, if your ring doorbell captures audio/video about someone outside your property boundaries. The apple translation service seems analogous.
• numpad0 1y ago
  Were there any breakthrough for this feature anyway? Or is it more likely that Apple just did what was readily possible? You could always put environmental audio through Whisper, attain audio trance crypt at 51010 per cent Word error rate, put that transcript through machine translation, and finally TTS. Or you can put audio directly through multimodal LLM for marginal improvements, I guess, but ASR error rate as well as automatic cleanup performance don't seem to have improved significantly after OpenAI Whisper was released.
  • kstrauser 1y ago
    > attain audio trance crypt at 51010 per cent Word error rate Was this post the output of such a pipeline, by chance?
    • crazygringo 1y ago
      I know, I can't tell if it's intentionally sarcastic or unintentionally Olympics-level irony... but it made me laugh!
• numbers 1y ago
  if I have a US account and I travel to the EU, that should work?
  • ErneX 1y ago
    Yes.
  • oaiey 1y ago
    Maybe by apple. No when GDPR is the real reason. The GDPR grants also visitors of the EU the rights of the act. So if you are traveling as an American to Europe and want to talk to the Italian waitress you/Apple are breaching her rights but also yours (of eg not being permanently recorded). As a device owner you might consent for the usage but for example data limitation or right to delete might still apply as long as you are on EU soil as an US citizen. But honestly, I do not believe GDPR is the reason here. Apple is also very privacy focused. GDPR does grant it rights to EU citizens everywhere in the world but also other nation citizens in EU. I personally like GDPR a lot but I understand that people are complaining about this part
• WinstonSmith84 1y ago
  What are the alternatives?
  • hu3 1y ago
    both Samsung and Google offerings have live translation for a while now. Samsung being on-device using LLM. Not sure about Google's Meta glasses also: https://www.meta.com/help/ai-glasses/955732293123641 https://www.meta.com/help/ai-glasses/955732293123641
• NoSalt 1y ago
  [flagged]
• stainablesteel 1y ago
  spitting-drink-out-laughing.gif but how would these airpods really be able to know you're in the EU? this should be easily hackable
  • qgin 1y ago
    It's just for registrations that are associated with EU based iCloud accounts.
  • layer8 1y ago
    Live translation requires a connected iPhone. It’s the regional settings on the phone, plus the region of the Apple account.
  • riknos314 1y ago
    The feature requires both the airpods and a connected iPhone to work. The phone has GPS.
• rickdeckard 1y ago
  Quite clearly the EU DMA. As part of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) evaluation [0], Apple was found to operate a market for headphones connected to its devices, while competing in the same market with own products and giving itself a competitive advantage by creating OS-features exclusive to them. The EU found this is not a level playing field for competition and ordered that they have to make such OS features available for other accessory manufacturers as well. I guess they are currently either trying to make a case for the EU on how it is technically impossible to provide the feature to others, prove that this is somehow not an OS-feature (and should be excluded) or delay any action to maximize the benefit of this competitive advantage in other markets. I wouldn't be surprised if there are also beats headphones in the pipeline for which they want to use this feature as competitive USP... [0] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_816 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
  • rickdeckard 1y ago
    Also, Apple cannot name this as reason explicitly, because users may look up the details of that ruling and may find themselves agreeing with the sentiment... "[..] The measures will grant device manufacturers and app developers improved access to iPhone features that interact with such devices (e.g. displaying notifications on smartwatches), faster data transfers (e.g. peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connections, and near-field communication) and easier device set-up (e.g. pairing). As a result, connected devices of all brands will work better on iPhones. Device manufacturers will have new opportunities to bring innovative products to the market, improving the user experience for consumers based in Europe. The measures ensure that this innovation takes place in full respect of users' privacy and security as well as the integrity of Apple's operating systems."
    • HPsquared 1y ago
      Expectation vs reality.
  • NotPractical 1y ago
    I don't think that the translation feature itself can be considered OS functionality. An API providing on-demand background execution time for apps linked to connected Bluetooth devices would surely be sufficient to comply with the DMA? As an example, when they were compelled to allow competing browser engines, they didn't open source Safari; they added a multiprocessing/JIT API to iOS (tailored and restricted by policy to browsers). Competitors (web browsers) got access to the OS features (multiprocessing/JIT) that they needed to compete with Apple's product (Safari), but they didn't get access to the product itself and still need to build their own. In this case, competitors (device makers) might request access to the OS feature (background execution) that they need to compete with Apple's product (live translation on AirPods). It should also be noted that such functionality only has to be provided if explicitly requested by a developer who is working on a competing product, so they don't have to develop it preemptively. I'm not saying that this is completely fair or whatever, just that I don't think it's quite as extreme as people are making it out to be?
• WhyNotHugo 1y ago
  So consumers will just buy from another brand and use that instead? I get the Apple is trying to spread propaganda that anti-competitive laws are bad for consumers, but in this case, consumers will just buy from another brand and it's a simple net loss for Apple.
  • amelius 1y ago
    Except many users are already locked into Apple's ecosystem, so they will be very angry.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • sjiabq 1y ago
      [flagged]
    • rickdeckard 1y ago
      The relevant question for Apple is here: Will those users buy OTHER headphones than Apple then, or still buy Airpods...? From my observation the "properly locked-in" Apple user buys Airpods and mostly replaces them with newer Airpods when needed, because of Apple's artificial advantage in ecosystem interoperability (the exact reason of the dispute with the EU)
      • FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        Yeah but disputes like Apples with the EU can take 10 years to litigate and settle by the time Apple has raked in more billions and crushed more competitors. So they know they can keep stalling and appealing as time works in their favor.
        • rickdeckard 1y ago
          Maybe, but currently it seems that Apple prefers to not "litigate while crushing the competition", but instead "retreat and rally up the userbase". So at least in this aspect the DMA seems to work surprisingly well... I also think there is little for them to litigate at this point, they were exchanging extensively for more than a year on how to reach compliance, then the decision [0] was made. There are also separate procedures for the specification of compliance and investigating (non)compliance. Apple might continue to have a hard time litigating on non-compliance if they co-worked with the EU on the exact expectation of compliance beforehand. https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/202523/DMA_100204_2073.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
• crbelaus 1y ago
  [flagged]
• yrcyrc 1y ago
  Another issue with Apple and I’m a fully invested die hard. 25 years now. But this is taking too far, I might start looking somewhere else. Fuck this.
• MattDamonSpace 1y ago
  No consideration for trade-offs involved here, it’s naive at best It’s enormously difficult to ship any interesting feature that integrates hardware and software. The EU wants Apple to happily accept a burden that makes it harder to produce the products that made it popular in the first place. I’m disappointed the EU won’t be getting these features (at least not quickly) but I’m hoping the citizenry realizes who’s to blame here
  • Dylan16807 1y ago
    What are the tradeoffs? For their own devices nothing changes, and for other devices they need to spend some extra integration work to make sure there's a standard they follow but that work should pale in comparison to the main engineering. Apple loses the forced bundling but they'll do fine without it and it's a good thing for everyone else.
    • dylan604 1y ago
      Why would Apple have to endure this burden. If a 3rd party maker cannot make their device work the same way with the proper access, it is their own issue and not something Apple should help them figure out. The proper access is the key part, but once that access is open it is up to the devs to figure it out. If their product still has a subpar user experience, that'll be something the market figures out for them
      • Dylan16807 1y ago
        I'm not asking for anything beyond proper access.
        • dylan604 1y ago
          Your "they" is ambiguous so that I interpreted it as Apple needing to spend extra time.
          • Dylan16807 1y ago
• RomanPushkin 1y ago
  I wish technology is not blocked that easily. I doubt people want this feature to be banned. Apple's live translation is probably the greatest feature of the last 30 years. I wanted it so bad, I lived in India and South-East Asia for 3 years, it would definitely make my experience SO much better.
  • siquick 1y ago
    I’d rather not have my conversations recorded and sent to a third party, without my knowledge, so that your experience could be SO much better.
    • granzymes 1y ago
      Translation happens on-device.
  • viktorcode 1y ago
    You can create an American account and login with that on your phone. App Store account can be separate.
  • oliyoung 1y ago
    > I wish technology is not blocked that easily. It's not technology that's being blocked here, it's uncompetitive commercialisation that is (at least in the EU)
  • Tepix 1y ago
    I don't think it will be that ground-breaking in practice. There have been similar apps in the past, it's just an improvement in convenience.
• macinjosh 1y ago
  Unfortunate. Europe, it seems to me, would be one of the more useful places on Earth to have this technology since there are so many languages in use. It could even strengthen European cultural heritage by allowing everyone to speak in their native language day-to-day instead of converging everything to English.
• pornel 1y ago
  Google Pixel Buds have a translation feature, and a bunch of other "Gemini AI" gimmicks, available in the EU. Apple managed to get approvals for medical devices and studies (highly regulated everywhere), custom radios and satellite communication (highly regulated everywhere). Apple already has machine translation, voice recognition, voice recording, and dictation features shipped in the EU. But when EU hurt Apple's ego by daring to demand to give users freedom to run software they want on devices they bought (that could break them out of a very lucrative duopoly), Apple suddenly is a helpless baby who cannot find a way to make a new UI available in the EU.
  • shuckles 1y ago
    The EU has not declared that Android gatekeeps headphone technology, so the comparison to Pixel Buds is totally irrelevant. There is no interop requirement placed on them.
    • isodev 1y ago
      So Apple is welcome to divest AirPods into a separate company and problem solved. Who knows, "AirPods Inc" may discover there are a great many phone brands out there that could use a nice integration and extra features. Win for consumers.
      • littlecranky67 1y ago
        I agree, the Beats takeover should have never happened. The US is basically allowing everything to be swallowed by big-tech.
        • ch4s3 1y ago
          > the Beats takeover should have never happened. I agree from a business perspective, those headphones were all brand and a bad fit for apple from a quality perspective. Do we really need regulators deciding when businesses are wasting their money?
      • tomalbrc 1y ago
• lovemenot 1y ago
  Apple has clearly made very significant investment in creating a LLM small and efficient enough to do inference locally on an iPhone. This is excellent work and should be applauded. For the EU, the issue is that Apple intends to recoup this investment through premium-pricing a different product in another category - one that has many low-cost competitors. Wouldn't this best be resolved by productising the Apple LLM? Earphone API becomes open, as required by EU. However, use of the Apple LLM would be controlled by license. Earbud competitors could either license Apple's LLM, perhaps on a FRAND basis, or they could install their own LLM on an iOS device. Apple may bundle its LLM but must allow users to uninstall Apple's LLM, to free up space for alternatives. In short, this isn't and shouldn't be about access to IOS for earbuds. EU is right in this. It's about monetising access to the Apple LLM, for which Apple deserves a revenue stream.
  • 1oooqooq 1y ago
    maybe the top car brands can only accept gas from one overpriced gas station, and open the car gas DRM as a license to other stations for a fee. i know some people like to jump at solving technical problems, but sometimes yall need to chill and read the problem twice to be sure the problem is technical to begin with.
    • lovemenot 1y ago
      Gasoline is the very definition of a commodity. For now, at least, LLM is very from that. As far as I know, Apple is unique in delivering inference on such a tiny device. For this they deserve a reward. The question is how. Like the EU, I don't believe Apple-only premium-priced locked-down earbuds is the right way.
      • 1oooqooq 1y ago
        the point is about limiting it to a secondary product. didn't you already bought the phone to run the model? do you even remember the topic you're commenting about? :)
        • 1y ago
• SanjayMehta 1y ago
  The EU only exports regulations these days.
  • morsch 1y ago
    https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=International_trade_in_goods https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
    • SanjayMehta 1y ago
      And trouble. That’s another EU export. Although the US has the lead on that.
• coderatlarge 1y ago
  should disneyland also be required to reserve spaces for competing attractions?
  • shuckles 1y ago
    That's not going far enough. Disneyland should make its IP available to any competing ride vendor for free (sorry, not free, $99/yr) so that they too can build the same special effects people come to expect from Disneyland.
    • burnerthrow008 1y ago
      How dare you assert that Disneyland is working for free in such a scenario? $99/yr is clearly a fair and reasonable compensation to license all Disney IP for any purpose because Disney has an eleventy bajillion percent margin on ticket sales.
  • lucketone 1y ago
    If disney would own 60% of all land, then I would say it would be reasonable.
    • coderatlarge 1y ago
      for the sake of debate: if androland is available across the way, must disneyland provide skybridges so its guests can immediately leave its own attractions and frequent its competitors’ instead?
  • nedt 1y ago
    It's not like Disney World wasn't sanctioned. In the US that is. Freedom is always limited by what others decide it is.
    • coderatlarge 1y ago
      i recognize freedom (especially as it relates to commerce) is a social construct and therefore has limits defined by society. At the same time, it does seem like in this instance at least the EU wants to have it both ways: ie it wants to be seen as operating on high-minded “principles” yet be allowed to justify fairly transparently self-interested industrial policy actions under the guise of “protection from monopolists”.
• random_savv 1y ago
  What about Switzerland? Although not in the EU, it often inherits such regulation
• akmarinov 1y ago
  Since it’s on device - it probably sucks anyway
• chvid 1y ago
  [flagged]
• brtkwr 1y ago
  What about UK now that we’re not part of the EU anymore
  • martin-adams 1y ago
    I tried looking this up and it sounds like it will be supported. But then again, we don’t have the ability to install Fortnite as that’s blocked in the EU.
• bigglywiggler 1y ago
  I made an account just to jump in here because this debate infuriates me every time I see it. So basically all the stuff that makes apple devices actually measurably better has to be opened up so that some rando can make a half hacked together attempt at compatibility? For what? So that people have even more rubbish e-waste to choose from? Apple's main strength is their flawless ecosystem, everything made by apple works perfectly with everything else made by apple. My airpods switch seamlessly between my apple devices, my watch unlocks all my stuff, my phone can be used as a camera and mic for my macbook, all of my devices besides my earbuds can be used to pay for things. All of it works completely seamlessly, no annoying popups, no dialog boxes, no asking for permission ten million times, no random disconnects. Literally no friction at all, once a new device is set up it's done. This frictionless-ness needs Apple's proprietary modifications to standards to function and it needs Apple's devices to be individually secure and all of these seamless connections need to also be secure. If users want that then they buy apple. If users want the spam ridden garbage hole that is Google's Play Store, or the terrible jamming of Android into poor quality cheap devices or the rubbish quality of most consumer tech in general then they can buy whatever they want but I don't want $10 aliexpress smartwatches to be able to seamlessly connect to my phone. I don't want random bluetooth earbuds from the petrol station to be able to access an API that lets them send transcripts of my calls anywhere they like and I definitely don't want a low barrier to entry for devices that can airdrop me stuff or paste to my macbook if I'm out and about. Mybe Apple should just lock it's devices down so that they only work with other Apple devices full stop. Then there wouldn't be a market for compatible devices to compete in. I'd be happy because I have never once bought a non-apple device that I care about connecting to my phone. I'd have to buy a new monitor but that's ok. All consumer tech right now is literally rebadges or mild modificatioins of stuff from AliExpress and I don't want that in my nice clean ecosystem. If these competitors want to actually compete then how about they make something that's actually better in some way instead of just hamfistedly copying whatever Apple comes up with? Live translation exists on google devices, if you want non-apple accessories and live translation then just buy a pixel and pixel buds? Nobody forces anyone to buy into apple's ecosystem. I have switched between ecosystems multiple times and every single time I ended up back with Apple since I bought my first iPhone 5 back when they were new. The issues that android and windows devices have far outweigh the cost of Apple lockin. Especially for someone who just wants their devices to work as what they are and doesn't care about tinkering with them.
• glanzwulf 1y ago
  If they wanted to have this in the EU, they would've. Not going to blame brussels for the dirt that apple is throwing at my face.
  • fastball 1y ago
    Is the idea that they hate you because you're European, or...?
    • jeroenhd 1y ago
      Apple doesn't hate European citizens, per se, just EU/EEA customer protection laws.
      • tacker2000 1y ago
        That says something about Apple, doesnt it?
        • boesboes 1y ago
          s/Apple/USA & BIgtech/g
          • tacker2000 1y ago
            Sure, i can agree with that.
          • selkin 1y ago
            I'd argue this is true for every corporation that didn't need that regulationas a moat (some have found they could use those regulations to their advantage and block competitors, mostly due to implementation costs)
  • jajko 1y ago
    Its just another heartless corporation focused purely on money, run by typical sociopaths, just like literally every other big megacorp. Profits and carefully crafted PR campaigns also here on HN, nothing more. It never ceases to amaze me in worst way possible how quite a few people here keep treating them as something more, over and over. Or maybe its just that PR campaign. Don't take me wrong, they have fine devices for specific type of people and good business strategy overall but above applies hard.
• zoelow 1y ago
  As an EU resident I strongly get the feeling Apple is using this slow release of new features to try and sway the public opinion in the direction that “EU law is blocking innovation”. I’m an Apple user since mac OS8 and I’m fully immersed in the apple ecosystem system. But my next phone will be an android.
  • pembrook 1y ago
    As someone who has worked at and run a company and dealt with lawyers regarding these regulations directly, I can tell you this is 100% not the case. I’m sorry, but it turns out regulation with punitively high fines attached to it creates massive regulatory risk for public companies that have a duty to shareholders to take them extremely seriously, and document everything along the way. Otherwise they don’t just get in trouble with regulators, but end up in endless litigation with shareholders. How you can believe creating an extremely nuanced set of holes, that if stepped in, results in billions of fines won’t delay new launches (and innovation ultimately) in the EU is just astonishing to me. The fun part is all the traps that open due to the combination of different regs interacting and new interpretations due to actual court cases. Please don’t turn this into another “malicious compliance evil-corporate conspiracy” meme like GDPR is on this site. It doesn’t cultivate intellectual curiosity, just flame wars, and is making me want to not hang out here anymore.
    • dns_snek 1y ago
      > Please don’t turn this into another “malicious compliance evil-corporate conspiracy” meme like GDPR is on this site. It doesn’t cultivate intellectual curiosity, just flame wars, and is making me want to not hang out here anymore. This is the company that is trying to subvert the DMA with Core technology fees that they're not entitled to, and notarization which allows them to retain the gatekeeping power that they're not entitled to. That's the same company that attempted to maliciously comply with a US court order which forced them to allow developers to provide external payment options by instituting a new imaginary 27% fee on external payments, making alternative non-viable. This is the same company whose internal memos filed in court document their malicious compliance strategies. > In Slack communications dated November 16, 2021, the Apple employees crafting the warning screen for Project Michigan discussed how best to frame its language. Mr. Onak suggested the warning screen should include the language: “By continuing on the web, you will leave the app and be taken to an external website” because “‘external website’ sounds scary, so execs will love it.” From Mr. Onak’s perspective, of the “execs” on the project, Mr. Schiller was at the top. One employee further wrote, “to make your version even worse you could add the developer name rather than the app name.” To that, another responded “ooh - keep going.” > [...] The designers’ discussions contextualize their use of the word “scary” to indicate its ordinary meaning and, most applicable here, indicate the goal of deterring users as much as possible from completing a linked-out transaction. Apple repeatedly acted to maintain its revenues and stifle competition. This was no exception. His attempts to reframe the obvious meaning of these communications do not persuade. All of this was hidden from the Court and not revealed in the May 2024 evidentiary hearing. Apple are grand masters of malicious compliance. Attempting to portray this fact as a "meme conspiracy" is intellectually dishonest bordering on gaslighting, and weaponizing your paper thin veil of "intellectual curiosity" to attack this criticism makes me not want to participate. But I will continue, precisely because of people like you who try to use an aura of intellectually superior and rational "intellectual curiosity" to push false narratives.
• Zufriedenheit 1y ago
  Generally regulations should be enacted as a response to something major going wrong in the market. But the EU regulates before there’s even a single product on the market. How do you want to regulate AI if the technology completely changes every six months and nobody knows for sure where it’s going?
  • rickdeckard 1y ago
    This is very likely not about AI but the EU DMA Ruling, which identified that Apple was implementing features in iOS which are restricted to Headphones of Apple-Brands [0] As no other Headphone vendor is able to do this, this gives Apple the Accessory vendor a competitive advantage in the market of iPhone Accessories. So forces cannot flow freely in this market and the EU requires this to be rectified. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_816 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
• mahrain 1y ago
  Over time, the value proposition of Apple devices in the EU will be less, and less differentiated vs competition, which will make them either lose their premium appeal or market share (or both). In the long run, Apple will likely reconsider.
  • hu3 1y ago
    if that means less green/blue bubbles segregation then I welcome
  • garrettgarcia 1y ago
    Apple will more likely pull out of Europe incrementally (and eventually completely) as the cost of doing business continues to skyrocket. Other American targets of EU regulators will do this as well. Apple isn't a charity, it's a company. If parts of its business are no longer profitable, those parts will cease to be.
    • cyberpunk 1y ago
      This is delusional. The EU is Apple’s second largest market behind the US.
• rdl 1y ago
  I am in awe. Their cookie banners were consistently annoying but probably didn’t hurt any individual this much. If I were an EU resident I would probably learn about “you can just do things” from this.
  • danielscrubs 1y ago
    Might be a blessing in disguise, forcing EU members to learn languages, whilst non EU members watch one more hour of TV with that time given… Or they just become more inefficient… either way, it’s going to be fun to see the results.
  • bowsamic 1y ago
    This is exactly what Apple want you to feel like
  • vruiz 1y ago
    I am an EU resident and I'm about to cancel the APP3 order that I made. If Apple doesn't want to comply with the regulations that protect me(1) I'm not blaming the EU, I'm talking my money somewhere else. Actually this is the second time I'm frustrated by this, I was surprised to discover that iPhone Mirroring is also blocked. This is strike 2 for me, one more and I won't buy another Apple product. 1) the EU has a lot of stupid regulations but the DMA is not one of them
    • garrettgarcia 1y ago
      How are they not complying with the regulation? This is what compliance looks like.
      • gamerdonkey 1y ago
        They are complying in the same way that the rich kid who keeps getting called out for using his hands on the football (soccer) field complies with the rules by taking his ball and going home.
      • vruiz 1y ago
• AshamedCaptain 1y ago
  Note that Samsung has been offering the same feature for at least a year by now. On device LLM. And also restricted to working only on Samsung branded BT headsets for no reason. I hope you really do not want a future like this.
  • baxuz 1y ago
    I do not, and I wonder why the EU is not coming after Samsung as well if it's the same situation.
• TheGreatWave 1y ago
  This decision triggers me because in the EU we sell cars that can go twice as fast as the speed limits, which could be very dangerous if used improperly, yet we ban technologies that are harmless and facilitate everyday life
  • redrove 1y ago
    >cars that can go twice as fast as the speed limits Which speed limits? is 60kph too much? This is one of the most asinine takes and comparisons I've seen. And technology is most certainly not harmless, as I'm sure every reader of this website knows.
    • elAhmo 1y ago
      More likely 130kph, in most countries this is the upper limit on the highways and you effectively have no public areas in the country with higher limit. So the OP is kinda right with their take.
      • TheGreatWave 1y ago
        Exactly, in all EU are sold cars that can go way more than 130kph but yet we ban technologies because it “could” be dangerous in specific limited cases.
  • Phelinofist 1y ago
    Which speed limits do you mean? (I'm German)
  • realityking 1y ago
    No speed limit in Germany. You’re welcome do drive 300kph on the Autobahn.
• mgoetzke 1y ago
  So it wont work in Europe where its needed most ? What else is it going to do ? Translating Californian to New York English ? Help with ordering from Taipei-Palace ?
  • Fernicia 1y ago
    Tourists visiting EU who don't live there will be able to use the feature. Or EU users when outside the EU.
  • ecd0fd14 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • smcin 1y ago
      Flagged. Stop.
    • smcin 1y ago
      This comment is suggesting that Arabic will become the lingua franca of the EU, in time. Violates guidelines.
• pzo 1y ago
  most likely the reason is apple not providing the same access for 3rd party developers. Last year had similar idea to implement and there is not way to enable programmatically to have airpods mic as input and iphone speaker as output. Audio input/output routing on iOS overall is very limited comparing MacOS - similar if you want to use headset mic and phone speaker or vice versa.
• pmarreck 1y ago
  LOL, I'm sorry but this is a perfect example of the difference in approaches between the US and Europe
  • Ylpertnodi 1y ago
    And, many of us - here in the eu - are very happy with this perfect example.
• seec 1y ago
  Apple is as petty as a little girl. They are "punishing" their users for the EU regulations in an attempt to get leverage by getting their users to complain at their representative against the regulations. Not only is this disingenuous but also incredibly stupid. They are using their users just like parents would in a divorce to get leverage. As if the kids had anything to do with the parents' issues and had enough power to make a difference. Even if their customers were to loudly complain, the regulations do not apply to just Apple, so they are asking for preferential treatment in return. Other companies have been able to offer similar features to their customers while complying with the regulations just fine, why can't Apple do it? The good thing is that they make it easy to not buy and not recommend their devices to anyone in the EU, no matter how good their technology gets. Their features were already often requiring a new device purchase (even when there was no technological need) but now they are also locking stuff because of politics.
  • seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    EU privacy laws are no joke. Maybe after paying a few billion dollars Apple has learned that by now. If Apple is being too cautious in their roll out to the EU, a competitor will undercut them and get something out first.