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> No consideration for trade-offs involved here, it’s naive at best I recommend you to read the ruling [0] and form your own opinion. > The EU wants Apple to

> No consideration for trade-offs involved here, it’s naive at best I recommend you to read the ruling [0] and form your own opinion. > 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. No, the EU mandates that Apple cannot implement OS features for the sole benefit of its own hardware-offering in a different market, because this is not fair competition. They are not required to foster new HW ecosystems for each feature, they just have to provide access to such OS features under equal conditions: "By mandating an equally effective interoperability solution, the legislator acknowledged that the implementation of interoperability does not always need to (and potentially cannot always) be the same for the gatekeeper and third parties, but interoperability must be granted to the same feature under equal conditions." [0] https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/202523/DMA_100204_2073.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...

trimbo 1y ago
And Apple is now saying "That's fine, we'll instead adhere to the law by having our product do less. Don't buy it if you don't like the reduced featureset." Someone at Apple did math on this and it's not worth their time to make this feature interoperable just for the EU market. That's because of this law. They wouldn't have even considered it without the law.
- rickdeckard 1y ago
  Which is fine as well if that's really the case (which I don't think it is, Europe apparently makes up ~1/3 of Apple's total Airpods revenue). If they refrain from distorting the market in their favor (and instead "retreat and rally up the userbase") the DMA seems to work surprisingly well so far... The procedures with the EU are quite interesting here, Apple was 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. This gives Apple little room to argue on violation of the DMA later-on, because they were actively involved in defining the criteria beforehand. So it's possible that they currently just need to find a mode to achieve launch-parity for EU on such features, and they're not there yet. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/202523/DMA_100204_2073.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
  - a2dam 1y ago
    Saying that the DMA is working well by reducing the features available to users with no apparent upside is a tough sell.
    - bootsmann 1y ago
      The upside is that the market for headphones is more competitive because apple cannot use its control over the iphone to muscle competitors in the headphone market.
      - a2dam 1y ago
        The goal is to make consumers better off, not just to have a competitive market. There's a lot of ways to make markets more competitive that don't result in better value for consumers, and I'd argue that this is one of them.
        like_any_other 1y ago
        In the short term, specifically because of Apple's malicious compliance. In the long term, a more competitive market results in better off consumers. But no, the goal is not to make consumers better off, but citizens and nations better off. And their interests do not stop at $PRODUCT. Namely, they probably don't want a slow slide into serfdom to foreign corporations that abused their market power.
    - rickdeckard 1y ago
      This is a play of Apple here, trying to spin the narrative in its favor. The upside for the user is to have a larger variety of devices to choose from, each with similar interoperability with his Apple device. The upside for the market is that all vendors are technically able to compete on the same terms. Apple is not allowed to operate a market, invite others to compete but also participate as a player with preferential treatment. This is already decided for the existing features of Airpods, Apple Watch, etc. Apple is trying to rally its userbase against the EU by withholding new features now, in hopes that they can secure their skewed playing-field
- idle_zealot 1y ago
  > Someone at Apple did math on this and it's not worth their time to make this feature interoperable just for the EU market. That's because of this law Let's not pretend like Apple isn't doing everything it can to turn its EU users against their government by complying with the DMA in the most obtuse, disruptive, and useless ways possible. They're risking fines and further punishments betting that they can ultimately subvert the democratic process that put in place laws that would require more developer and user freedom. To Apple, the threat of users owning their computers is an existential one.
  - jacobjjacob 1y ago
    If the consumers in EU don’t like the legal and predictable effects of the DMA in this case, how is Apple subverting the democratic process? If the act isn’t having the intended effect, then either voters will change their minds or it will need to be reformed. But this sounds like a successful outcome of the law insofar as preventing anticompetitive behavior. Subverting democracy, to me, would involve things like dark money campaigns and lobbying.
    - idle_zealot 1y ago
      > If the consumers in EU don’t like the legal and predictable effects of the DMA in this case, how is Apple subverting the democratic process The issue is that Apple isn't following the law. It's breaking it and then miming to its customers that its actions are on account of the law. That misrepresentation is meant to convince citizens of the EU that DMA is a bad law with consequences they don't support so that they pressure their representatives to get it removed. It's Apple making a big show of directly harming consumers as part of a misinformation campaign to get policy that limits their power repealed. To me that reaches the bar for subverting democracy.
      - sroussey 1y ago
        How is it breaking the law?
      - nostrebored 1y ago
- const_cast 1y ago
  It's more complicated then this. Apple is a big company with a lot of money - they're absolutely willing to burn millions in the pursuit of principle. The reality is that, if Apple conforms non-maliciously, they're proving that the law is reasonable and they can do it while remaining profit. Um, that's a huge problem. They require the plausible deniability of "oh we can't do this, it's too expensive!" Otherwise, other governments (US) might look to implementing similar laws. So, it's a long con. They're burning lots of money, now, with the hope it allows them to continue their anti-competitive behavior for longer. If they're REALLY lucky, they might even stall out the EU and get the EU to backtrack on their laws. That's the golden scenario.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  We are anyway an Android market, so they only get to loose by behaving like a child.
stagalooo 1y ago
There is a world of difference between shipping a feature, and shipping an api that anyone can use to ship a feature. It is such a normal progression to make an api and dogfood it internally, iterate until you have something you feel comfortable supporting indefinitely, and then expose that api publicly. It is not reasonable, IMO, to require that every feature you ship has an API that is ready for public consumption. Granted, Apple generally doesn't do that last part unless forced. I think some kind of timeline on the DMA requirements would be more reasonable. e.g. you have two years to make a feature publicly accessible before fines start accruing.
- yread 1y ago
  > It is such a normal progression to make an api and dogfood it internally, iterate until you have something you feel comfortable supporting indefinitely, and then expose that api publicly For a hobbyist? Sure! For a company with half the smartphone market and a trillion dollar market cap? EU doesn't mandate that they define a new standard and support it indefinitely.
  - hellisothers 1y ago
    You can see the headlines though “Apple skirts interoperability law by deprecating API after only one year”. Maintaining a public API is a cost usually only taken in because it has a benefit to the company.
    - rickdeckard 1y ago
      They are free to do that but they need to deprecate the feature for their own devices as well. Apple is not required to develop or maintain any feature against their will. The DMA is not written like that, it is much more objective and industry-agnostic. The EU demands that features implemented in the OS to be used by Apple accessories must be made equally available to competing accessory vendors.
      - taneq 1y ago
coldtea 1y ago
>No, the EU mandates that Apple cannot implement OS features for the sole benefit of its own hardware-offering in a different market, because this is not fair competition. Why don't the other players make their own smartphones and smartphone OS and then "implement OS features for the sole benefit of its own hardware-offering"? Is it fair to force another player to let you hijack their ecosystem?
- rickdeckard 1y ago
  The answer is right in the text you quoted. Because it's a different market than the smartphone itself and *unfair competition. It's Apple using its dominant position in the smartphone market to prevent others from competing on equal grounds in a different market. With iOS Apple owns the playing field where all accessory vendors compete, and Apple competes on the same field. There is no healthy competition possible if Apple puts the finger on the scale to ensure it always wins.
  - coldtea 1y ago
    >The answer is right in the text you quoted. Because it's a different market than the smartphone itself and unfair competition.* That's not an answer, it's a decree. Others can make their own phones and headphones just for their own devices, did Apple stop them?
    - const_cast 1y ago
      It's not a monopoly because if this other theoretical company which does not exist existed then there would be more than one option and it wouldn't be a monopoly. Not very convincing.
      - coldtea 1y ago
        There's Android which has even more market share, and several behemoths like Google, Samsung, Xiaomi making similar sets of devices, so not theoritical.
dilyevsky 1y ago
> No, the EU mandates that Apple cannot implement OS features for the sole benefit of its own hardware-offering in a different market, because this is not fair competition. Thats would involve exposing public api ie “a burden”
- rickdeckard 1y ago
  No, forget APIs. Apple was found to have created a burden in the OS for all their competitors in the Accessory-market, by introducing elements only available to their own brand, and are now required to remove those again. A duelist was found to arrive with a gun to a knife-fight and is asked to either allow everyone a gun or use a knife. Now we're arguing that it's a burden to him because bringing a gun is his innovative approach to win knife-fights, and making it a gunfight or keeping it a knife-fight is hindering the innovation he brings. Apple OWNS the terms for this fight. If they believe that their fights should evolve to be gun-fights then all players should have guns. It was decided that they can't continue restricting guns while shooting all knife-duelists, at least not in the EU.
  - dilyevsky 1y ago
    If you chose to show up with just a knife to an actual armed conflict that's on you buddy. Apple doesn't own european market their share is below 35%, just another case of classic european bureaucracy
    - rickdeckard 1y ago
      Read the metaphor you're trying to dismantle. Apple owns the terms of this fight, they dictate that everyone else is only allowed knives. The EU stepped in and said that they can't distort duels like that any longer

trimbo 1y ago

And Apple is now saying "That's fine, we'll instead adhere to the law by having our product do less. Don't buy it if you don't like the reduced featureset." Someone at Apple did math on this and it's not worth their time to make this feature interoperable just for the EU market. That's because of this law. They wouldn't have even considered it without the law.

rickdeckard 1y ago
Which is fine as well if that's really the case (which I don't think it is, Europe apparently makes up ~1/3 of Apple's total Airpods revenue). If they refrain from distorting the market in their favor (and instead "retreat and rally up the userbase") the DMA seems to work surprisingly well so far... The procedures with the EU are quite interesting here, Apple was 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. This gives Apple little room to argue on violation of the DMA later-on, because they were actively involved in defining the criteria beforehand. So it's possible that they currently just need to find a mode to achieve launch-parity for EU on such features, and they're not there yet. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/202523/DMA_100204_2073.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
- a2dam 1y ago
  Saying that the DMA is working well by reducing the features available to users with no apparent upside is a tough sell.
  - bootsmann 1y ago
    The upside is that the market for headphones is more competitive because apple cannot use its control over the iphone to muscle competitors in the headphone market.
    - a2dam 1y ago
      The goal is to make consumers better off, not just to have a competitive market. There's a lot of ways to make markets more competitive that don't result in better value for consumers, and I'd argue that this is one of them.
      - like_any_other 1y ago
        In the short term, specifically because of Apple's malicious compliance. In the long term, a more competitive market results in better off consumers. But no, the goal is not to make consumers better off, but citizens and nations better off. And their interests do not stop at $PRODUCT. Namely, they probably don't want a slow slide into serfdom to foreign corporations that abused their market power.
  - rickdeckard 1y ago
    This is a play of Apple here, trying to spin the narrative in its favor. The upside for the user is to have a larger variety of devices to choose from, each with similar interoperability with his Apple device. The upside for the market is that all vendors are technically able to compete on the same terms. Apple is not allowed to operate a market, invite others to compete but also participate as a player with preferential treatment. This is already decided for the existing features of Airpods, Apple Watch, etc. Apple is trying to rally its userbase against the EU by withholding new features now, in hopes that they can secure their skewed playing-field
idle_zealot 1y ago
> Someone at Apple did math on this and it's not worth their time to make this feature interoperable just for the EU market. That's because of this law Let's not pretend like Apple isn't doing everything it can to turn its EU users against their government by complying with the DMA in the most obtuse, disruptive, and useless ways possible. They're risking fines and further punishments betting that they can ultimately subvert the democratic process that put in place laws that would require more developer and user freedom. To Apple, the threat of users owning their computers is an existential one.
- jacobjjacob 1y ago
  If the consumers in EU don’t like the legal and predictable effects of the DMA in this case, how is Apple subverting the democratic process? If the act isn’t having the intended effect, then either voters will change their minds or it will need to be reformed. But this sounds like a successful outcome of the law insofar as preventing anticompetitive behavior. Subverting democracy, to me, would involve things like dark money campaigns and lobbying.
  - idle_zealot 1y ago
    > If the consumers in EU don’t like the legal and predictable effects of the DMA in this case, how is Apple subverting the democratic process The issue is that Apple isn't following the law. It's breaking it and then miming to its customers that its actions are on account of the law. That misrepresentation is meant to convince citizens of the EU that DMA is a bad law with consequences they don't support so that they pressure their representatives to get it removed. It's Apple making a big show of directly harming consumers as part of a misinformation campaign to get policy that limits their power repealed. To me that reaches the bar for subverting democracy.
    - sroussey 1y ago
      How is it breaking the law?
    - nostrebored 1y ago
const_cast 1y ago
It's more complicated then this. Apple is a big company with a lot of money - they're absolutely willing to burn millions in the pursuit of principle. The reality is that, if Apple conforms non-maliciously, they're proving that the law is reasonable and they can do it while remaining profit. Um, that's a huge problem. They require the plausible deniability of "oh we can't do this, it's too expensive!" Otherwise, other governments (US) might look to implementing similar laws. So, it's a long con. They're burning lots of money, now, with the hope it allows them to continue their anti-competitive behavior for longer. If they're REALLY lucky, they might even stall out the EU and get the EU to backtrack on their laws. That's the golden scenario.
pjmlp 1y ago
We are anyway an Android market, so they only get to loose by behaving like a child.

stagalooo 1y ago

There is a world of difference between shipping a feature, and shipping an api that anyone can use to ship a feature. It is such a normal progression to make an api and dogfood it internally, iterate until you have something you feel comfortable supporting indefinitely, and then expose that api publicly. It is not reasonable, IMO, to require that every feature you ship has an API that is ready for public consumption. Granted, Apple generally doesn't do that last part unless forced. I think some kind of timeline on the DMA requirements would be more reasonable. e.g. you have two years to make a feature publicly accessible before fines start accruing.

yread 1y ago
> It is such a normal progression to make an api and dogfood it internally, iterate until you have something you feel comfortable supporting indefinitely, and then expose that api publicly For a hobbyist? Sure! For a company with half the smartphone market and a trillion dollar market cap? EU doesn't mandate that they define a new standard and support it indefinitely.
- hellisothers 1y ago
  You can see the headlines though “Apple skirts interoperability law by deprecating API after only one year”. Maintaining a public API is a cost usually only taken in because it has a benefit to the company.
  - rickdeckard 1y ago
    They are free to do that but they need to deprecate the feature for their own devices as well. Apple is not required to develop or maintain any feature against their will. The DMA is not written like that, it is much more objective and industry-agnostic. The EU demands that features implemented in the OS to be used by Apple accessories must be made equally available to competing accessory vendors.
    - taneq 1y ago

coldtea 1y ago

>No, the EU mandates that Apple cannot implement OS features for the sole benefit of its own hardware-offering in a different market, because this is not fair competition. Why don't the other players make their own smartphones and smartphone OS and then "implement OS features for the sole benefit of its own hardware-offering"? Is it fair to force another player to let you hijack their ecosystem?

rickdeckard 1y ago
The answer is right in the text you quoted. Because it's a different market than the smartphone itself and *unfair competition. It's Apple using its dominant position in the smartphone market to prevent others from competing on equal grounds in a different market. With iOS Apple owns the playing field where all accessory vendors compete, and Apple competes on the same field. There is no healthy competition possible if Apple puts the finger on the scale to ensure it always wins.
- coldtea 1y ago
  >The answer is right in the text you quoted. Because it's a different market than the smartphone itself and unfair competition.* That's not an answer, it's a decree. Others can make their own phones and headphones just for their own devices, did Apple stop them?
  - const_cast 1y ago
    It's not a monopoly because if this other theoretical company which does not exist existed then there would be more than one option and it wouldn't be a monopoly. Not very convincing.
    - coldtea 1y ago
      There's Android which has even more market share, and several behemoths like Google, Samsung, Xiaomi making similar sets of devices, so not theoritical.

dilyevsky 1y ago

> No, the EU mandates that Apple cannot implement OS features for the sole benefit of its own hardware-offering in a different market, because this is not fair competition. Thats would involve exposing public api ie “a burden”

rickdeckard 1y ago
No, forget APIs. Apple was found to have created a burden in the OS for all their competitors in the Accessory-market, by introducing elements only available to their own brand, and are now required to remove those again. A duelist was found to arrive with a gun to a knife-fight and is asked to either allow everyone a gun or use a knife. Now we're arguing that it's a burden to him because bringing a gun is his innovative approach to win knife-fights, and making it a gunfight or keeping it a knife-fight is hindering the innovation he brings. Apple OWNS the terms for this fight. If they believe that their fights should evolve to be gun-fights then all players should have guns. It was decided that they can't continue restricting guns while shooting all knife-duelists, at least not in the EU.
- dilyevsky 1y ago
  If you chose to show up with just a knife to an actual armed conflict that's on you buddy. Apple doesn't own european market their share is below 35%, just another case of classic european bureaucracy
  - rickdeckard 1y ago
    Read the metaphor you're trying to dismantle. Apple owns the terms of this fight, they dictate that everyone else is only allowed knives. The EU stepped in and said that they can't distort duels like that any longer