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It’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!
by isodev 10mo ago
It’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.
- tekknik 10mo agoPharmaceuticals have very large margins.
- avianlyric 10mo agoMost people also complain about how pharmaceuticals are greedy corporations that seek to exploit monopoly status for profits above human health. Hardly a good example of a well functioning market.
- tekknik 10mo agoComplaining doesn’t mean action. To affect prices people need to vote with their wallet, and they won’t do that when their life is on the line. Or to put it another way, find an alternative.
- illiac786 10mo agoI would agree in general, but in this specific case it’s still an advantage for the iOS platform in general. It just removes a buying incentive for the AirPods. The general problem is that there must be a line. Vendors don’t create lock-ins because they are malicious, they create it because it makes them money. Now, if we limit these lock-ins, it will reduce their ability to make money and yes, it will impact some features - short term. But looking at it long terms, vendor lock-ins are actually a reason to stop innovating: your customers are locked in anyway. So, overall, I would say this is good for innovation in general.
- websap 10mo agoI actually have a problem with this. I want AirPods to be undeniably the best experience for me because I am fully locked into the Apple ecosystem, and I know many folks have complaints against that. I find it to be rather pleasurable to use compared to all the other alternatives out there. So if I have to start sacrificing my experience in favor of universal support, that really sucks.
- reorder9695 10mo agoBut this isn't sacrificing your experience, you're free to keep using your Apple AirPods with the quality and reliability you'd expect from Apple. This just means other brands can create products with similar features to AirPods, and if they're not as good or reliable, well that's why you're paying Apple for theirs.
- DANmode 10mo agoI see their point. If Apple knew they would need to expand this feature past their gear, possible they’d never have implemented. We may never know what stays unimplemented due to this. (This is a neutral take - note I do not have a personal opinion formed in this “debate”.)
- supermatt 10mo ago> If Apple knew they would need to expand this feature past their gear, possible they’d never have implemented. And this is EXACTLY why they need to open up more core access to their devices. So someone else can innovate.
- wiseowise 10mo agoBro, market is there to benefit consumer first, not to make money for shareholders.
- phatfish 10mo agoThat is what the "free market" was supposed to do, if you believe capitalist lore. Shareholders getting a cut was the side hustle.
- morshu9001 10mo agoI disagree with this, but it shouldn't get downvoted. That's not how it works here.
- dangus 10mo agoIsn't Apple currently disincentivized to make features because they don't even allow competing smartwatches to access a basic feature set on iPhone? You're basically saying Apple would be disincentivized to innovate on the Apple Watch because Apple would need to release the underlying APIs that make those work with the phone to competing solutions. But the status quo is that competing solutions that are already better than the Apple Watch straight up aren't allowed on the platform, and the Apple Watch generally costs more than its competitors. You are unintentionally saying that if Apple had to allow third parties to use their private APIs, that the Apple Watch would have to cost less and/or innovate more in order to convince us all to buy it instead of buying a watch from Samsung or Google. What you are describing is a more competitive and open market where consumers benefit from lower prices and more of an incentive to innovate and justify high prices. I would also dispute the notion that merely releasing these APIs would somehow give away all your secret sauce. Competitors still have to build the experience on top of that.
- djtango 10mo agoI thought the first thing they teach you about capitalism is that competition is good, and monopolies are anti-competitive...
- beeflet 10mo agocompetition is for losers
- alextingle 10mo agoApple giving themselves an advantage in the markets for headphones and watches, because they have a dominant position in the market for phones is a textbook case of monopoly abuse. They've done extra work to cripple competing devices. It's obnoxious.
- miohtama 10mo agoApple market share is 10% in the EU. Hardly a monopoly.
- supermatt 10mo agoThat depends on the interpretation of a market, which is why laws like the DMA establish a market based on its size. In the iOS market, apple have a monopoly. EDIT: Downvotes for what? That’s literally what the DMA is for. If you don’t like it, take it up with your representatives - it’s nothing to do with me.
- tekknik 10mo ago> In the iOS market, apple have a monopoly. So if a company creates a widget and sells that widget, thereby creating a market, they are automatically a monopoly? how is anything invented without creating a monopoly? Also why is it an iOS market and not a mobile phone market? if we compare features of devices then there’s not a lot of difference between modern phones, so segregating them by what OS they run seems odd.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- supermatt 10mo agohttps://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/index_en https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/index_en
- tordrt 10mo agoWhere do you get 10% from? Its close to 40%, and the company with the biggest market share in Europe. https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/europe https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/europe
- Teever 10mo agoLaws that mandate interoperability between devices are a net win for individual consumers and the market as a whole. They simplify people's lives, make society more efficient, prevent opportunities for blatant rent seeking and ultimately foster market productivity. A government mandating standards in electricity transmission or gasoline composition may disincentivize the development of features that make some people's devices incompatible with charging at certain locations or cars that can only use gas from certain gas stations but that is the opposite of a bad thing. We live in a much better world because people in the past decided that all telephones should be able to make calls to each other and that people don't really have to think about messing up putting fuel in their car because the size of the nozzles at pumps are standardized. There are absolutely more opportunities for governments to make small but objectively measurable improvements in society with well placed regulations on interoperability.
- websiteapi 10mo ago[flagged]
- wobfan 10mo agoLast time I checked the European Union was a political construct and not a phone manufacturer.
- websiteapi 10mo ago[flagged]
- whynotmaybe 10mo agoStill don't get your point. How can the failures to innovate from privates companies be the responsibility of a political union of different governments?
- morshu9001 10mo agoEU regulations strangle corporate innovation there
- deaux 10mo agoAnd another one parroting this without talking to EU founders.
- disgruntledphd2 10mo agoI mean, they're not entirely wrong, but it's actually the lack of a capital markets union that causes the issues here. So in fact, this is a case where the answer is more EU (specifically, a better set of cross-country capital markets). Depressingly, the obvious place to build this is no longer in the EU.
- 10mo ago
- SunshineTheCat 10mo ago[flagged]
- tt24 10mo ago[flagged]
- tkz1312 10mo agoNot sure why self proclaimed "hackers" seem to be in love with walled gardens and corporate control :)
- tt24 10mo agoThat's the thing, you don't have to be! You are welcome to use another phone more to your liking.
- cromka 10mo agoYou obviously know that it's not just the phone, it's the apps we can use on them. There are only two companies and they both control the market.
- tt24 10mo agoThere are far more than two companies selling phones.
- Sayrus 10mo agoAnd yet if you want applications to work on your phone, many times you'll need approval from either Apple or Google. Google can effectively ban manufacturers (like they did with Huawei) from using "Android" by blacklisting them from Play Services. Apple owns the entire ecosystem and prevents third-party from having access to the same feature set.
- rock_artist 10mo agoI live in the EU and now traveling my family outside the EU. Today I’ve tried updating AltStore but it won’t let me. Even VPNing to my home won’t do it. So until there will be more incentive to make it globally, the UX is intentionally crippled not only by making the minimal viable but also by region locking. Imagine pairing headphones working great in EU and then you’re traveling somewhere and it’s broken.
- WA 10mo agoThis is the future of the internet. More and more countries have their local laws and international companies need to comply with local laws. This has been the case forever for companies selling products and (physical) services and some digital services restricting music and movie rights in certain countries, but it will expand to more and more services and apps in the future.
- hu3 10mo ago"Local laws" is quite the loaded term when your parent commenter's anecdote is about EU which currently encompasses 27 countries. And when "comply with local laws" means "unbrick bluetooth pairing for third-party devices" then a company in good faith could just, you know, not brick the functionality in the first place. There's no law against products that "just work".
- bigyabai 10mo agoGood. It was hubris to think that the internet would forever be segregated as an American asset.
- tekknik 10mo agoI think the EU believes they have more of an effect on the rest of the world than they actually do. Complying with every law in every jurisdiction that has access to a product sounds like a nightmare that will only stifle innovation.
- 10mo ago
- layer8 10mo agoHopefully third-party devices will actually implement what is necessary to take advantage of it. Being limited to the EU market, it’s not clear if it will happen much.