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iOS 26.3 brings AirPods-like pairing to third-party devices in EU under DMA
- clayhacks 10mo agoSo this tap to pair won’t work in the US? The side loading stuff I can understand to restrict to the EU, but this just seems like a nice feature for everyone
- justapassenger 10mo agoApple is not really interested in giving you nice features that makes it easier for you to escape their ecosystem and have Apple make less money.
- Otek 10mo ago> The side loading stuff I can understand to restrict to the EU Just curious: why do you understand they restrict it to EU?
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- hu3 10mo agoIt's pretty clear isn't it? They do so with third-party app stores. And if they wanted to have airpods-like pairing to third-parties in US, they would already have. The only reason they might bring this to US is customers will be royally pissed.
- latexr 10mo ago> It's pretty clear isn't it? If it were, they wouldn’t be asking. And you haven’t answered it either. Your parent comment is asking why the grandparent commenter thinks it makes sense to restrict third-party stores to the EU instead of having them everywhere.
- kalleboo 10mo agoThey even restrict "letting you choose the default maps app" to jurisdictions that legally require it (EU and Japan), there is literally no justification for that other than "we want to increase KPIs for our shitty Apple Maps app by making people accidentally open it", it's an extremely basic toggle that pretty much any user of Google Maps would prefer.
- dwaite 10mo agoThe problem is you can’t regulate interoperability where it doesn’t exist. What does it mean to open the “default map app”? Maps apps typically act a native rendering for a web site, and have their own web-parameter based API for locations, navigation, and points of interest, as well as customizing informational layers. So if I set say Bing maps to be the default map app, does that mean: 1. The OS hijacks attempts to link to sites such as Google Maps (https://maps.google.com https://maps.google.com) and Apple Maps (https://maps.apple.com https://maps.apple.com) and send them to Bing Maps instead? 2. Bing Maps reverse engineers as much as possible of the various other mapping products and tries to support them with roughly equivalent features or error messages? What the default maps app setting Apple created does is create an entirely new URI scheme of geo-navigation and an entitlement for apps which wish to support it to be the default map app. This appears to be roughly limited to a subset of parameters common between Apple and Google Maps. So this setting in the EU and Japan.. mostly does nothing currently. Every developer needs to change their native apps and web pages to call out to this new custom scheme that only works on Apple platforms. Each of these mapping apps needs to support this scheme. That hasn’t happened yet. The EU (and in this case Japan) gets early access and the potential exposure of multiple breaking revisions. It is also certainly possible that a good number of web/app developers decide they don’t _want_ to support multiple mapping apps, since they’ve only verified one or two of them actually provide proper navigation/visualization/POI, and that the whole concept is flawed.
- einarfd 10mo agoNot only isn’t this or any other of the DMA features accessible in the USA, but Norway which is a member of the EEC and which therefore both have to and is in the process of ratifying the DMA. Don’t get this either. That Apple is so petty that it blocks on legal technicalities like that, when everyone knows it is just a matter of time. Really sours me on the whole company.
- general1465 10mo ago[flagged]
- hu3 10mo agohttps://mistral.ai https://mistral.ai
- isodev 10mo agoIt’s fascinating the kind of cool features we can have when products are made to be useful, with their target user in mind. Go EU!
- tiffanyh 10mo agoOr it disincentivizes creating those features, if you must give it to your competitors.
- avianlyric 10mo agoThat’s a rather silly view to take. We have a phenomenon called “the first mover advantage” for a reason. Plenty of other markets and businesses operate just fine while operating in an environment that makes protecting individual innovation functionally impossible. Just look at any related to fast fashion (not that I think the fast fashion market is a healthy phenomenon) or any commodities market. Or for that matter, most of the software industry. The incentive for creating features should be to remain relevant and competitive. It shouldn’t be to build moats and war chests.
- websiteapi 10mo ago"plenty of other markets" have way smaller margins and are not nearly as robust an industry as software.
- avianlyric 10mo agoAre you trying suggest that Apple’s margins are so small that they need state protection? Or that Apple can’t compete if they’re not able to tightly lock down every aspect of their ecosystem?
- stefan_ 10mo agoI don't understand. Robust markets don't have large margins. Why would a regulator even want markets with enormous margin? That's usually market failure.
- madspindel 10mo agoApple should dump their Product Managers and hire the EU bureaucrats directly then we will finally see improvements and innovations again.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- arlcode 10mo agoIt's a tragedy, though no surprise, that this is required I guess "the regulations will continue until product management improves".
- dsign 10mo agoLet’s call them bureaucrats, but let’s not forget that their baseline is to be public servants, while that of product managers is to increase profits :-) . I think the system is working as intended though, because increasing profits can be a great driver for innovation and service to the consumer, until it’s not and the “immune system” (the bureaucracy) must be called on to fight the uncontrolled pathological growth…
- officialchicken 10mo ago[flagged]
- avianlyric 10mo ago> ALL OF THE LEGALLY SANCTIONED GOVERNMENT MONOPOLIES HERE. This is the kinda claim that really needs citations, and ideally some commentary on how the examples demonstrate the point you’re trying to make. Otherwise it’s impossible to reply to, and just comes across a little shrill and conspiratorial. Which I don’t think is your goal.
- super256 10mo agoCan't wait for CSAM client scanning and chat control. And blocking of social networks during periods of civil unrest.
- Y-bar 10mo agoThree months ago a commenter here on HN claimed to me that this will be bad for Apple users: > There is simply no good way to make the API public while maintaining the performance and quality expectations that Apple consumers have. If the third party device doesn’t work people will blame Apple even though it’s not their fault. And, competition probably can’t build for it anyway: > It’s impossible to build Apple Silicon level of quality in power to watt performance or realtime audio apps over public APIs. And: > […] Apple has to sabotage their own devices performance and security to let other people use it. The EU has no business in this. Well, I look forward to next year when we’ll have the receipts and see!
- vachina 10mo ago[flagged]
- x3ro 10mo agoYou mean it will benefit Apple’s customers, who prefer headphones not made by Apple? If only the incentive for Apple to improve their interface was that its paying customers will have a better interface.
- stavros 10mo agoI really don't understand people who defend Apple on this. The only reason I can imagine is that they're shareholders who don't use any Apple products, or shareholders who use exclusively Apple products and can't understand what sort of poor scrub might want an accessory not made by them.
- darkwater 10mo agoIt's the second one, but without being shareholders.
- tt24 10mo agoStrange opinion. Anyone that holds the SP500 (which is probably 99% of HN users between 9am and 5pm PT) are Apple shareholders, and what’s good for Apple is entirely aligned with what’s good for them. Taking a further step back, this same group of HN users probably understands the straightforward idea that what’s good for Bay Area tech companies is beneficial to them in a much broader sense, since they’re generally employed by them or by a very small group of other companies closely related to them. You can accuse them of being greedy, selfish, or whatever, but certainly not that they’re unaware of where their interests lie.
- zeristor 10mo agoWould this include the UK I wonder?
- isodev 10mo agoIt seems the UK will have to undertake their own procedure. Unless they rejoin before that (one can hope).
- matthewcanty 10mo agoJust realised I’m not in the EU (from UK). There was me thinking about digging my old Garmin out!
- saubeidl 10mo agoYou guys are always welcome to rejoin once you figure your drama out. We miss you, British Friends <3
- hdgvhicv 10mo agoOnly let us back if we join schengen.
- saubeidl 10mo agoHonestly, ideally you'd rejoin without any of the weird opt-outs you had. But I wouldn't let that be the sticking point, y'all are too important to us to get hung up on it.
- latexr 10mo agoConsidering how aggressive they’ve been about internet legislation lately, mandating age checks and asking companies to give them keys to encrypted data, I think I’d rather them not rejoin just yet, we don’t need another country trying to force Chat Control and making it worse.
- Someone 10mo agoLikely not. FTA: “The changes to proximity pairing and notifications are only available for device makers and iPhone and iPad users in the European Union.”
- Lio 10mo agoI wonder, could this means we get better support for things like sending messages from Garmin smartwatches? Previously, this was available on Android but not iOS as Apple didn’t expose the APIs for watches other than their own.
- lloeki 10mo agoDepending on how you look at it, there may be two distinct parts to this: a) API to not just read notifications but also perform the notification quick actions (if any), e.g snooze for a calendar event, mark complete for a reminder, and of course reply for a text (SMS or otherwise). This seems entirely reasonable and ludicrous that it doesn't exist. b) API to access SMS / Messages. That one appears to be heavily guarded because security / E2E (for iMessage). I mention b) because a lot of times people invoke the problem a being b) (and possibly a problem in its own right, forcing one to use Messages for SMS) but really for watches a) is sufficient and probably much more relevant. There's also a.1) API access to media (images) in notifications. In any case, DMA could definitely help crack both.
- port3000 10mo agoI would settle for my Garmin not disconnecting every few days at this point
- Lio 10mo agoI mean I’d settle for the status quo and Garmin itself not deleting big parts of my watch faces. The last update from Garmin did this to my Epix. Funnily enough the complications can still be activated if you touch the screen, they’re just invisible.
- saubeidl 10mo agoWow, it's almost as if regulations were necessary to curtail the worst excesses of capitalism and steer it towards user interest instead of maximal exploitation...
- Someone 10mo agoFTA: “The changes to proximity pairing and notifications are only available for device makers […] in the European Union.” Will that mean we’ll see some last step assembly move into the EU, or does it only require legal presence?
- pzo 10mo agoYeah this would be weird if it's only for EU based companies. I think apple strategy is overall 'divide and conquer' making all different stuff working different in EU, Japan, UK, US. To this already many variables also if the user has account in EU and also if is living in EU or for how long. Their whole compliance is not robust and reliable making this in fact dead on arrival. Any maker relying on this will have more complains from customers. Customers will think that all non-apple solution are buggy and reliable and will stick with apple stuff.
- latexr 10mo ago> I think apple strategy is overall 'divide and conquer' I think Tim Cook’s strategy is rather “hoard and extract as much money as legally possible, no matter what it does to the experience”. Selling tech products is no different to him than selling car parts of frozen meat. What matters to him is the pile of money at the end.
- heavyset_go 10mo agoCurrently, on the AirPods side and not iOS side like the article covers, Apple breaks Bluetooth feature parity with other devices by not sticking to the Bluetooth spec with AirPods themselves. For example, you need to root and patch your Bluetooth stack on your phone if you want to use all of your AirPods features on Android, and not because Android is doing something wrong, it's because the Android Bluetooth stack actually sticks to the spec and AirPods don't. And even when you do that, you can't do native AAC streaming like you can with iOS/macOS. Even if you're listening to AAC encoded audio, it'll be transcoded again as 256kbps AAC over Bluetooth. Even no name earbuds on Amazon manage to not break Bluetooth and can offer cross platform high quality audio over Bluetooth.
- bluescrn 10mo agoCan headphones that stick to the spec actually play nicely with multiple devices? - switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do?
- formerly_proven 10mo ago> switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do? They do that? Mine can't even switch quickly between my corporate and my own iphone.
- pityJuke 10mo agoAre they on the same iCloud account? I believe that's the magic needed.
- formerly_proven 10mo agoOf course not, that's the whole point of having a separate corp phone ;) But why would switching headphone connections need the cloud... ah... nevermind...
- rafram 10mo ago
- jwr 10mo agoI have no doubt that Gruber will find reasons why the EU is bad and regulation is bad. At this point it's rather amusing how Daring Fireball (and many other American media) rants against regulation, and in another post complains about how companies exploit users. Regulation is unfortunately necessary: the market isn't as magical as we would like it to be and competition is not a magic wand that makes everything good for users. Companies either become dominant, or universally screw over their users. Users either have no choice, do not understand the choices, or simply don't care. I am glad the EU tries to do something. They aren't always right, but they should be trying. As a reminder, one of the biggest success stories of EU regulation: cheap cellular roaming within the EU. It used to be horribly expensive (like it is in the US), but the EU (specifically, Margrethe Vestager) regulated this and miracle of miracles, we can now move across the EU and not worry about horrendous cell phone bills.
- Y-bar 10mo agoThey also capped credit card fees at 0.3% in 2015. It also included a prohibition on discrimination against any merchant based on eg size or category of goods sold. And as far as I can see neither Mastercard nor Visa had problems staying in business.
- jwr 10mo agoYes! I forgot about this. The EU Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) effectively eliminated the high fixed minimum fees that previously made small-value card transactions unprofitable for merchants. The net effect of this is that in Poland, for example, you can carry your phone and no wallet, because you can pay literally for everything using your phone. And I do mean everything, I've recently been to a club in Warsaw and the cloakroom had a terminal mounted on the wall, people just tapped their phones.
- whazor 10mo agoSo you cannot compare it apples to oranges. There is much more regulation in EU. In EU there is also more consumer protection by default, so charge backs can be rejected by merchants but a consumer can easily take a merchant to court. So capping card fees is also more reasonable. Also, when a merchant goes bankrupt and customers perform charge-backs it would involve the entire payment chain. First merchant reserves, then acquiring bank, then MasterCard/Visa, then issuing bank (customer), and lastly the customer. With lower card fees, this has impact on the merchant reserves and their risk profile. Furthermore, acquirers can add additional fees on top if needed. You can also get lower card fees in US if you have a low risk business model.
- Arn_Thor 10mo agoWhere there's a will--or a law--there's a way. Hallelujah!
- rikafurude21 10mo agoRecently bought an apple watch for my mom and got it set up with her iphone. Almost instantly she notices that she cant accept WhatsApp calls on her watch, and after looking into it I found out that it was another one of those apple things where they assume youre obviously using facetime so that functionality isnt available for any other app. For context, in europe Whatsapp is the dominating messaging app and alot of people use it for calling as well as messaging. The apple watch is, as far as I can tell, a simple Bluetooth wearable with a speaker and a microphone, so the only reason its like this is that apple has a concept of how the device is "supposed" to be used and only lets you use it that way. After that experience I fully support all the regulations the EU is putting on apple to open up.
- aprilnya 10mo agoHuh, with CallKit’s existence I would have assumed any app using CallKit would work on Watch…
- wltr 10mo agoI was genuinely sure it’s not a problem, as I personally know quite a few people who do that. But I think they use either FaceTime or regular cellular. That’s sure weird a simple call does work in iPhone 4S (imagine a price for it in 2026), but doesn’t on modern Apple Watch Ultra, which is quite expensive.
- stefandesu 10mo agoUnfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Third-party app calls don't go to the Watch. It's so annoying, I have to tell people to call me using regular phone calls or FaceTime instead of using Signal or WhatsApp because I always miss the latter ones.
- pests 10mo agoSeems like this has changed?
- AnonC 10mo ago
- hollow-moe 10mo agoGot a MacBook for work recently, paired it to my AirPods I had for months, and it was funny noticing you could enable FindMy for them from the settings but they wouldn't show up in my devices on the map. Indeed, for this you need to pair with an iPhone or iPad. However it did enable the beacon on the airpods as the next day AirGuard notified a device was following me. And since, I can't disable it, the switch in the settings doesn't disable the beacon AirGuard still detects them. Even within their ecosystem they'll punish you for not being fully "part of the familly".
- ankit219 10mo agoAre we learning the wrong lessons? Integrated always works better than modular components. Here, Apple is being asked to enable their versions of software for third party devices, which do not have the same hardware assumptions as Apple did. (Apple will not release the exact hardware spec for airpods anyway). This means the newer version will be designed modularly, with some tradeoffs to enable the "same" kind of access to third party. Then there is a caveat that it there is even a bit of experience change from 1st party to third party access, it will be complained about and investigated. so, the way fwd is designing with third party in mind, and that almost always leads to bloat and substandard experience for end user. Probably better would have been just simpler access, even if not the integrated experience like. But that would lead to complains from third party manufacturers.
- isodev 10mo agoThe lesson being learned is that Apple could’ve avoided all this trouble if they had used or produced standards for the connection between their components. The whole concept of a gatekeeper was created in response to Apple-likes being difficult and simply hostile to interop opportunities even though they’re defacto the phone company and there is no way around them. So if the solution is not optimal, that circles back to Apple who are responsible for coming up with a solution that works. Then choosing to prioritise platform lock-in is a business strategy, leaving regulation the only recourse.
- ankit219 10mo agoA company making an integrated experience would inevitably provide a better experience/performance than a company asked to build for 100s of devices with different spec. That Apple did not want to open it up is a separate discussion. My contention is this: expecting a third party provider to be able to provide the same experience as the first party is an impractical goal. Even pushing companies towards that means a lot of second order effects where everyone ends up like Intel or Windows for that matter. We already have android on that level. You can have a reasonable requirement where Apple should not be able to block other companies from providing similar services based on an iphone. But clearly the directive here is that Apple's competing products should not be better based on better integration, which can only go in one direction. Apple degrades its own products to comply. Yes, competition wins, but consumers lose. In this case specifically - consumers who would want to choose Apple, better experiences would not be able to simply because Apple cannot ensure the level of software/hardware alignment as it works today if the same software is written with modular hardware in mind.
- fleroviumna 10mo ago[dead]
- volemo 10mo agoI hope EU subdues Apple fully, and one day I can run Linux on my iPad. At least virtualised.
- 2dvisio 10mo agoWaiting to read the news that this unblocks all functionalities in the re-pebble so I could finally purchase one that fully works with iPhones. Way to go EU!
- drewg123 10mo agoThird-party accessories like smart watches will be able to receive notifications from the iPhone This seems incorrect, or at least misleading. I have always (since I switched to iPhone in 2020) been receive notifications on my Garmin Fenix watch. In fact, the only problem I have with notifications is that I have no ability to blacklist apps from notifying on my watch, and its all or nothing. This is a huge downgrade from Android, and I wish whomever is responsible could fix that.. That's probably my biggest annoyance with my iphone.
- morshu9001 10mo agoApple removed the headphone jack to sell AirPods. This was always one of the dirty little details: You could buy non-Apple BT headphones, but they weren't able to work the same way.
- big_toast 10mo agoI've had no trouble using corded headphones with my iphones (either via an adapter or e.g. the $20 usb-c earpods). In fact, it seems like people using corded headphones is a news cycle[1] every 6 months. [1]:https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/dec/19/bluetooth-wired-headphones-trend https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/dec/19/bluetooth-wi...
- fainpul 10mo agoI bought that adapter, because I wanted to keep using my good old, high quality, corded earphones. It technically works, but it's not a nice experience. The adapter looks and feels out of place. It's the only white part in the setup (can't buy it in black), the cable is thin as a hair and feels like it might break soon, and I now have the additional plug and socket on that cable, which makes it awkward to put the phone in my pocket.
- morshu9001 10mo agoThe adapter is annoying enough that very few people bother, and Apple knew it. It's also a bit flaky. Sometimes my phone doesn't detect it at first, or an inline mic doesn't work.
- Schnitz 10mo agoI really wonder what the technical detail is that makes it so much harder for this feature to work when your phone is outside the EU, does anyone know?
- bigyabai 10mo agoYou can rest assured that Apple is paying hundreds of engineers to discover any potential solution and then mitigate it.
- TheDong 10mo agoThe same technical detail that makes it so the "Default Navigation App" toggle to change the default from 'Apple Maps' to 'Google Maps' only shows up if you live in the EU but not in the US.
- cdrnsf 10mo agoRooting for Apple in cases like this is akin to watching Star Wars and rooting for the Empire.
- sfblah 10mo agoSomething like 5% of the time when I pair my airpods to my apple wathc to go for a run, only one of them pairs. So, if I've actually started running, I then have to circle back to get the headphones case, unpair them, stick them back in the case and hope it then works after i close the lid for a minute. Anyone have a solution for this?
- nradov 10mo agoWell you need to bring your iPhone to take selfies for Strava anyway because otherwise the run doesn't count.
- Hnrobert42 10mo agoI had that problem with PowerBeats Pro. Sadly, my solution was to get new headphones.
- DebugDruid 10mo agoIt's sad that we have to wait for the EU instead of having laws for cross-device and software compatibility.
- hapticmonkey 10mo agoI don't know much about this, but does "proximity pairing" use some open standard API that's part of the bluetooth spec? Are there any examples of other devices using something like this? Part of the appeal of Airpods is how seamless they are to pair and share between devices. The UX of bluetooth headphones pairing and device switching before Airpods came along seemed atrocious. Is this a case of Apple arbitrarily locking out third parties, or is a case of Apple doing the work to get something to work nicely and now being forced to give competition access?
- hu3 10mo agoI don't know how proximity pairing works in Apple land. My wife uses Apple devices. But between my Android phone and my contractor issued Windows laptop, the $20 headphone I use just works. It connects to both of them because of multi-pairing. If one of the devices is playing, say, a Youtube video, the other doesn't take over the sound even if I start playing music there. And if I pause the Youtube video in one device, the other is free to play sounds. It's seamless and intuitive. I should try also pairing to my Linux workstation. If that works too I would be impressed.
- commandersaki 10mo agoDoes proximity pairing also mean seamless switching between iDevices? As it stands non Apple earphones need to disconnect from the currently paired device to only then connect with another. My Beats Studio pro on the other hand can control primary device and on secondary device I can prompt it to connect and it will switch.
- heavyset_go 10mo agoThis is already part of the Bluetooth spec that Apple didn't implement: multipoint pairing.
- rafram 10mo agoThis is wrong - Apple did implement multipoint pairing. I’ve had Bose headphones and cheapo Amazon headphones and both switched perfectly between various Apple devices.
- heavyset_go 10mo agoNo, they did not implement mulitpoint Bluetooth as per the spec in AirPods, they are doing proprietary handoffs between their own devices, multipoint pairing is not implemented for Airpods outside of macOS and iOS.
- doodlesdev 10mo agoIf you're defending Apple in this situation, I am sorry, but you're an absolute idiot. Android has had this feature for any compatible earbuds for quite some time now, behind a Google-branded technology. Personally, I discovered it in Android when I recently bought Xiaomi buds for $15 (in Brazil, where this kind of stuff is much more expensive), took them out of the case, and my phone instantly asked whether I wanted to connect. One click, done. Afterward, every time I took those earbuds out, they were _instantly_ connected, and I had access to their individual battery levels in the system UI. These didn't have geolocation, but that's because I literally bought the cheapest earbuds I could find that would be delivered in 24 hours. Has anyone had bad experiences with the Google Fast Pair (proprietary) technology? (Like Apple defenders here say would happen if you “open up” the proprietary protocol for everyone to implement).
- dwaite 10mo agoDoes anyone know what this adds beyond AccessorySetupKit, which shipped over a year ago?
- ulfw 10mo agoWe will soon have US/ROW Tech - EU Tech - and Chinese Tech. Some countries will align with one or the other, a few might pick 2 of the 3. But worldwide tech is dying