> 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."
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Then why not deprecate the API every month? Also do a firmware update every month across their ecosystem.
Why? Because Apple is in the money making business and no one will buy a device where their (expensive) accessories cease working randomly.
Especially when the user finds out the reason.
But you just described the existing Apple ecosystem!
Or, just not block access.
Does DMA allows Apple to do certification? Like Certifies devices for Apple Translation compatible ? Or is that straightly forbidden?
I think it will depend on if it seems like it's anti-competitive gatekeeping or has a legitimate use. The DMA specifically prohibits measure that are meant to gatekeep, but iirc it has allowances for things that have real technical justification.
Certifying devices to make sure they're safe for users, like "this cable is certified as compatible, it won't set your iphone on fire", seems fine.
Requiring your app to be "certified by apple to sell ebooks", and then only granting that certificate to Apple Books, not the Kindle app, that seems anti-competitive.
correct. An example of this is building a WhatsApp client, you need certification from Meta and that seems to legitimate.
If it’s deprecated then it’s still there, it might just go away someday. Releasing an API and then deprecating it immediately seems sneaky.
A public proprietary API.
If the industry wants better open standards, they the participants should develop those standards and build devices that implement those standards.
What Apple does outside of such standards is nobody else's business - as long as they correctly implement and support the industry standards.
> Granted, Apple generally doesn't do that last part unless forced
which is the point here.
If they made a new feature, something AR based, they are totally allowed to build that and keep it relatively private for a few years. What they can't do is when competition appears, actively keep them off their platform. For example if a device manufacturer manages to make an AR device that works well with android, but its impossible with apple and apple have significant market share, then that would be illegal.
The point of this is to stop thiefdoms and to keep innovation. You're allowed to have a competitive advantage, you're not allowed to build a monopoly.
(if we look at defence, budgets are still very high, but the rate of innovation has plummeted compared to other industries. Its only now with the spur of VC cash into non-traditional backgrounds are we seeing innovation again)
> It is not reasonable, IMO, to require that every feature you ship has an API that is ready for public consumption.
It is, if we're talking about features designed to boost sales of your other products while preventing competitors from offering those features.
Look, even if they're able to compete fairly, those competitors might remain inferior options for other reasons. But Apple having to compete will make their products better. All of their best achievements came from fierce competition as the underdog. Apple's current situation is not good for it.
What if it relies on non-standard changes to Bluetooth and WiFi?
Must they get these passed in the standards committees first?
The DMA does not define such details, it is much more simple and agnostic. It identifies if a company creates a market within its own ecosystem, invites others to participate but doesn't offer a fair competitive field.
--> If iOS introduces non-standard changes to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to compete against Android, this does not concern the DMA.
--> If iOS introduces non-standard changes to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to create a product of ANOTHER market-segment (Headphones, Watches, Routers,...) they are required to provide interoperability for other brands than Apple as well.
The reason is simple: iOS has such a critical size that it is anti-competitive behavior for Apple to modify iOS in order to beat the competition on e.g. headphones.
With Bluetooth they do ruse non standard changes, heavily influenced the development of LE Audio and there is no statement about when if ever they will support LE Audio, possibly never. Apple simply doesn't care
The best part is: the EU demands Apple do all the necessary R&D, including an indefinite liability of API maintenance, at no cost to developers.
Garmin pays apple already for a developer license to have an app to pair garmin watches.... and yet 90% of the features of the apple watch simply cannot be implemented for a garmin watch, no matter how much they pay, because those APIs are private to apple watch.
Yes, apple did the R&D to figure out how to let their watch filter notifications by app, and it must have cost them so much to be able to filter notifications that it has to be locked into their watch. That's not them being intentionally anti-competitive, it's just R&D costs, sure, I'm sure it cost a ton to make that private API.
Yes, the $99/yr Garmin pays covers the 40 minutes of labor it would take annually for an Apple engineer to support this I'm sure.
You said "no cost to developers", that part's not true. you're of course right that it's not really enough money to be relevant though.
The more cogent argument is that if apple doesn't want to spend money making their phone work with smartwatches, they do not have to make it work with smartwatches.
They want it to work with watches so users buy the phone.
If they want it to work with _only_ their watch, then sure, they make more money, but they also harm the user and market in the long-term by making it so competitors aren't on an even playing field.
Do you just kinda believe anti-competitiveness doesn't exist?
Should apple be allowed to make it so you can't communicate with android users at all to increase sales (which they already more-or-less did)? Should they intentionally make it so you can't play the music you purchased on non-apple devices by breaking "iTunes for windows"?
The API already exists, they just don't let other people use it because they're greedy. There's no additional maintenance burden.
Technically cost is not zero.
1. Api designed for internal use could take shortcuts and let’s say use secrets that are and should be internal, or run things as root or something.
2. Proper API maintenance includes at least documentation and some kind of update path/schedule. Internally it’s simpler. (E.g. you must be sure not to leak secret stuff in docs)
But in the end I agree with the notion that these changes for Apple are not a huge burden. (Existing behaviour is anticompetitive)
I agree, but IMO they should already have this done if the API is properly designed. It might not be, but if so they should change it anyway.
I mean, even if you assumed that it would actually take 40 minutes (it likely doesn’t), I suspect Apple engineers working on this cost the company more than $249k a year
Wow sounds like the $99/yr the commenter was saying developers "pay" Apple is a trivial amount and cannot be used to justify the development of an entire SDK that maybe a dozen companies will use.
But Apple already justified building a secure, private, on-device SDK that exactly one (1) company will be guaranteed to use.
I see no reason it cannot be a private entitlement similar to the other sensitive entitlements on iOS.
Internal API is not an SDK. It regularly astounds me how many commenters on a so-called hacker forum seem to think it is. Is everyone else publishing their tightly coupled business logic code as API these days? Is that what GraphQL is?
I would hope that security critical parts of the OS that can't be exposed as an API aren't being used to communicate with the apple watch. Why would the apple watch need access to these APIs that can't be publicly exposed? Is there any reason beyond apple wanting to make sure other smartwatches are second class citizens in their ecosystem?
This isn't exposing business logic, this is an operating system vendor deciding what it exposes to vendors. There is clearly an API that the apple watch is using to communicate with the OS, why shouldn't other vendors be allowed to access this?
Apple can revoke the entitlement if it's abused, as they've done many times in the past with signed apps. Nobody (including the EU) is demanding that it be an zero-auth free-for-all API, only that competitors can use it. It's not an absurd demand and there is absolutely precedent for Apple individually trusting competitors in this regard.
If you're astounded by hackers asking practical questions, maybe you should stop carrying water for corps and see how your back feels. Let's talk shop, what are the roadblocks Apple faces here?
No, the EU demands that features implemented in the OS to be used by Apple accessories must be made equally available to competing accessory vendors.
This prevents Apple the platform provider and gatekeeper from giving preferential treatment to Apple the Smartwatch/Headphones/Payment/Entertainment provider
Which is what companies like Intel had done for ATX, USB, Thunderbolt, ... They were never required to, but they've done it, and they made money on it.
What Apple do slightly differently is that they half-ass the standardization, and then chuck it in the trash. Amounts of efforts spent is within the ballpark.
Given that Apple already maintains a comprehensive entitlement system[0] they charge EU developers[1] to use, I don't see how that's an issue. Apple's work amounts to swapping out a .plist file, they could be compliant in 10 minutes with an OTA update. If they wanted.
[0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/en...
[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-memberships/
Ah, so Apple is not selling iPhones but it just gives them out for free?
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Look in the mirror.
Apple makes money by selling devices. With giant profit margins, at that.
So why should they be able to charge developers in addition to consumers?
Other device manufacturers ship hardware built on pre-existing software with some customizations, often using off-the-shelf drivers and software components. Apple is not only selling you a device, they’re selling you an OS and a quite decent software package including options that compete with other paid software offerings.
And?
Apple also benefitted from third-party developers writing software for its platform. Remember the "there's an app for that" ads?
I think developers deserve to be treated fairly by Apple, not exploited four different ways. Because to develop for Apple you need:
1. Buy Apple hardware, because Apple doesn't provide cross-platform development tools (unlike Android or even Microsoft).
2. Pay $100 a year just to be able to publish the software.
3. Pay 30% of the app income to Apple (this changed only recently).
4. Have to endure odious restrictions imposed only because Apple wants to keep control of its platform.
> Pay 30% of the app income to Apple (this changed only recently).
This is among the biggest fictions of this crazed argument. Spotify, the company that whines about Apple the most, pays Apple $0 (sorry, $99) for building the entire market for consumer mobile internet upon which their business depends.
How much does Apple pay every networking equipment manufacturer, ISP or carrier upon which its market depends on? Last time I checked Apple devices don't operate on an Apple-exclusive worldwide mobile internet network.
Apple users pay carriers so much money that for half a decade there was substantial competition to be the exclusive carrier for iPhone and even still carriers will pay Apple users to become their customers through device subsidies.
> Spotify, the company that whines about Apple the most, pays Apple $0 (sorry, $99) for building the entire market for consumer mobile internet upon which their business depends.
You mean, Apple leeches that glomped onto Spotify success to prop up the iOS market share? When not having Spotify meant that people might end up moving to Android? And yet they still required Spotify to pay 30% up until 2022, when the "reader app" exemption was made?
Remember when Apple offered Spotify private APIs for subscription control to work around the iOS App Store piss-poor subscription management?
That Spotify?
The "reader app" exemption Apple introduced in 2022 is merely about an entitlement to link to your website for account management, isn't it ([1])? But your argument sounds as if each Spotify purchase made through the app is or was taxed 30% by Apple, which would seem anti-competitive. Could someone clarify what Spotify or its users have to pay to Apple?
[1]: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=grjqafts
Spotify has not supported IAP for premium in a decade and therefore has never paid Apple any fees besides the $99/yr developer fee.
I assure you iOS users would’ve been perfectly happy using Rdio, Tidal, Apple Music, or any one of a dozen other equally good streaming music services over dealing with the garbage of Android.
I assure you you're wrong. Clearly Spotify sold subscriptions, I bought one on my iPod and my SO pays for Spotify on his current iPhone.
The parent is right. Resorting to catch-22s proves how utterly indefensible your stance is.
I thought the DMA lovers were all aboard saying companies that win in their marketplace do it because of coercion, not because they had a better product?
The iPhone Pro Max retails for as much as the Samsung Galaxy Ultra, and only one of the two OEMs builds the application platform used by all its developers. What are these "giant profit margins" you're referring to?
Apple SEC report 2023, Q3: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/0000320193240...
Net sales: $119575 billion, net income $33916. Margin: 28%
Sounds like they have pretty bad margins!
Because selling devices is orthogonal to maintaining a marketplace and dozens of APIs for third parties to use, and the latter can be charged for as well.
If EU doesn't demand for those API to be free, may be Apple could just have terms and cost for those API to be charged? Basically like Lightning adoptor where Apple collects dollars on accessories sold.
I agree on both side some money needs to be exchanged in terms of features and Apple cant have it all to themselves. But currently it doesn't seems both side is listening and no middle ground. One side wants it all for free, the other side dont want their money and wants to keep everything themselves.
Apple proposed something like this with their "Core Technology Fee" which the EU commissioners were upset about. They literally do not want to let Apple directly monetize the R&D it takes to produce an application platform.
I think there is a different in Core Technology Fee and let say Apple Translation Software Fees. One is too broad while another one is specific. Apple could theoretically give away that translation software as bundle of AirPod. And see that software for a cost to other user or third party.
Yeah, because this fee was crazy unreasonable (50 cents per app download).
Who are you to say what a reasonable price is for Apple’s intellectual property?
The EU, that's who. The law exists because these policies stifle competition and prevent the proper functioning of the free market and the DMA is a small step to restore the competitive balance.
It's bizarre that you're even framing this conversation in this way - who are you to say how Apple is allowed to behave, and how anti-competitive they deserve to be on the EU market? Are you under the impression that corporations like Apple should wield more power than world governments?
They shouldn't and they don't, but they think they can bully the EU into submission. They wouldn't dare pull this crap in China, they make every concession to be allowed access to the Chinese market. Yet the EU is expected to ask dear Apple for permission to be allowed to regulate their destructive anti-competitive behavior? Insanity.
>It's bizarre that you're even framing this conversation in this way - who are you to say how Apple is allowed to behave, and how anti-competitive they deserve to be on the EU market? Are you under the impression that corporations like Apple should wield more power than world governments?
More like that governments shouldn't dictate such terms and let the market decide - they should just prevent collusion and regulatory capture monopolies.
This is the opposite, an organically grown market share.
> This is the opposite, an organically grown market share.
It was found to be exactly NOT an organically grown market share in Headphones and Smart Watches.
The DMA identified that Apple owns a significant portion of the playing field for those market (iOS), and modified them to ensure a competitive advantage ONLY for their brands.
This is being rectified now, at least for the EU.
> they should just prevent collusion and regulatory capture monopolies.
Is there any reason why you're picking your words so carefully as to include "regulatory capture monopolies" but exclude "anti-competitive behavior" as the umbrella term?
Regulating anti-competitive behavior is precisely what the EU is doing with the Digital Markets Act. The EU recognizes that a company does not need to be a monopoly to have severely detrimental effects on the free market.
For developers? $0.0 for app publishing. Bandwidth cost for download. We can use AWS egress fees as guidance.
Let's see... How much should Apple pay to the European Union to be allowed to sell devices there? I say 50% of gross income?
If we’re posting uneconomic nonsense like it’s Reddit, might as well go big and propose a 99% tax on gross income.
Sure. Totally agree. Maybe even transfer the control of Apple to the EU Commission.
They violated the law, so they deserve to be properly disciplined for that.
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.
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/2...
Saying that the DMA is working well by reducing the features available to users with no apparent upside is a tough sell.
Quite a few upsides.
There are a few clear precedents where Apple held a feature back in the EU, then shipped later and/or exposed a path others could plug into:
Apple Intelligence: Announced as “not at launch” in the EU in 2024, then rolled out to EU users with iOS 18.4 in spring 2025 (most features). One carve-out remains: Live Translation with AirPods
NFC access for third-party wallets (HCE): After an EU antitrust case, Apple committed to open iPhone NFC (“tap-to-pay”) via Host Card Emulation, let users set a default non-Apple wallet, support Field Detect/Double-click flows, etc., so a genuine “build a platform others can plug into.” The Commission made these commitments legally binding for 10 years.
With iOS 17.4 Apple created EU-only entitlements for non-WebKit engines (e.g., full Chromium/Gecko), so browser makers can ship their own engines on iPhone/iPad in the EU.
Home-screen web apps (PWAs) reversal: Apple initially said PWAs would go away in the EU for 17.4, then reversed and kept them—implemented on WebKit with the usual security model.
Alternative app distribution (marketplaces + web distribution): In response to the DMA, Apple shipped EU-only APIs/entitlements for third-party app marketplaces and later web distribution (direct from developer sites) with notarization, installation, backup/restore hooks, etc.
Tap to Pay on iPhone (SoftPOS): Apple’s merchant “no extra hardware” payments feature expanded across EU countries and is designed for platforms like Adyen/Stripe/Mollie to integrate via SDKs
The fact is adapting a service to provide and support a generic API for the long term that others can hook into is extra work, compared to a private API tailored to their own hardware and that they can change whenever they like. It may be they could provide this as an open service in future.
On the other hand, what is to prevent another ear bud manufacturer writing an iPhone app their ear buds connects to that provides translation? Is this really a hardware feature in the phone? If it’s just software at the phone end, as long as other manufacturers have the feature access to implement this themselves, surely that’s their problem? Why should apple offer translation software as a service to other companies for free? I can see the argument for hardware but not software that others could implement themselves on iPhones.
None of those are new features out since the DMA.
The only one clearly DMA related with EU specific unlocks are:
* app store
* browser engines
The DMA could have been just an app store regulation. It seems to have had its intended effect there. Very very unproven outside of it. At best you've shown no harm other than delay in some areas.
I'm assuming NFC lawsuits are separate from the DMA but could be mistaken. But in any event NFC payments already existed and aren't a new feature apple decided to release under the DMA.
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
> The upside for the user is to have a larger variety of devices to choose from, each with similar interoperability with his Apple device.
That is the dream of the dma. It has not been proven to be the reality.
The reality could very well be that EU users just don’t get features. Apple doesn’t have to play ball.
And that’s fine. If they don’t want to follow the rules they can’t release the thingy.
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
So your belief is that, if DMA didn't exist, Apple still would not ship this feature in the EU?
I don't know how you reached that conclusion, sorry.
It's fine if Apple decided to refrain from its anti-competitive behavior in the headphone market because it's not economically viable to have this feature as a generic OS feature.
They know best and are free to do that.
I find your views alien and strange (and vaguely upsetting, because they negatively impact the entire world)
There are huge hosts of software and hardware that work better because of an ecosystem of interoperable components. That’s not anticompetitive, it’s the benefit of good design with compounding returns.
As the manufacturing process and software becomes less complicated, there is a natural trend towards budget competitors (see: SaaS in 2025) that can replicate functionality they know has a market.
The idea that making it unappealing to make an integrated product is good for consumers — or anticompetitive — seems so wrong that it’s farcical. There are definitely cases where verticalization can harm consumers, but this opens the space for good competition. Perplexity wouldn’t exist if Google actually cared about search customers. Internet Explorer didn’t have to be regulated out of existence — by virtue of sucking, there is opportunity.
Apple is free to do as many interoperable components or integrated products as they please. The DMA doesn't define ANY such restriction.
What they CAN'T do is maintain an environment where their products cannot be met with fair competition by other players, by intentionally giving advantages in the ecosystem only to their own brands.
Apple might not dominate the market for fitness trackers above 150USD today if they wouldn't have prevented others to achieve the same interoperability with their iOS ecosystem.
Apples featureset for wellness tracking was not competitive, neither in function nor in price. Fitbit and Garmin were better in doing that task, but they were not able to display message notifications, apps, etc. because the required interfaces in iOS were only available to Apple's Watch.
Maybe Apple would have beaten them in 2nd Gen, maybe competitors would have followed with equally tight iOS-interoperability in 2nd Gen.
Maybe Apple Watch would nonetheless be the leading Smartwatch in the market today. Or maybe it would be e.g. the Moto360 (google it) just due to Apple's "virtue of sucking" and insistence of doing rectangular watches.
We don't know, because none of the other players are able to compete on fair terms with Apple in this segment until today. And today Apple has such a leap-start that it's questionable whether this can still be rectified.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
It’s not breaking the law in this case as far as I know.
The law requires Apple to provide equal access to the iPhone hardware and software in marketplaces that it competes in.
That can be done in a manner that is either additive, by providing access to third parties (which is potentially a significant expense and liability) or subtractive, by choosing not to engage in the regulated activities at all, in that jurisdiction.
You're right that they're not breaking the law in this specific instance. I was referring to the many instances they've lost or are disputing in court, mainly around browser engines/JIT, their handling of default app screens, third party app distribution, extra fees, and mandatory app bundle signing.
In this case they're merely being obtuse by refusing to provide an API to other device manufacturers. Unless you genuinely believe that the cost/benefit analysis of adding a new feature to their OS dictates that they basically freeze development unless they're able to recoup costs by tying it to their accessories, then you must conclude that they made the live transcription API Apple-only, and therefore not DMA-compatible, only to make EU citizens feel like their laws were depriving them of new features.
An organization interested in good-faith compliance would expose their internal API surface with some vetting process for access by interested parties. Then as the API becomes stable they would open it up more broadly. If accused of being anti-competitive by restricting access they could easily and correctly argue that they were working with potential competitors on that stable and secure API, and that their actions balanced the interests of market competition and security.
Of course, Apple is not interested in good-faith compliance. It's my belief that they should be made an example of so that they and other companies running the math in the future decide that proactive and good-faith compliance with regulations is more cost-effective than attempting to fight them.
Proponents of EU competition law seem to be the most egregious version of “America isn’t the center of the world.” Why should international companies build products to align with regulation that has put the nail in the coffin of European innovation?
The DMA is barely past the toddler stage. I think it’s a bit premature to claim lids on coffins here.
It’s not just the DMA. The EU has been regulating innovation to death for decades.
Typical meme comment with zero substance. The DMA is a competition-promoting regulation which will breed innovation as long as it's properly enforced.
Inventing a substandard product and using your market dominance in one area to ensure that nobody can compete with your substandard product is as far detached from innovation as you can possibly be. One size fits all solution with centrally planned development where one person knows best and competition isn't considered a driver of progress, isn't that a very communism-shaped approach to "innovation"?
I'm not even joking here and it's bizarre that I'm having to promote the good parts of free market capitalism to someone who claims to care about innovation.
They don't have to, Apple is free to leave the market if they really don't think it's worth it.
That reminds me of Zukerberg's bluff saying he's going to leave the EU which lasted exactly one day.
How is it breaking the law?
They risk getting fines for not releasing a feature? The EU is insane
No, they're not risking fines that way. They are free to not bring such features to the EU-market which prevent a level playing ground for competition.
But they were found to have already skewed the market with several Apple-accessory-exclusive iOS-features in the past (Proximity pairing, Watch-integration, etc.) and for those they have to provide interoperability now.
They worked with the EU for a year now on how exactly they should reach compliance, then the ruling was made, ordering them to make such interoperability features also available to other brands than Apple.
Now it seems that they try to rally their userbase against that ruling, in hopes to create a political climate that gets the ruling revoked again...
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.
We are anyway an Android market, so they only get to loose by behaving like a child.
> 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”
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.
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
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
>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?
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.
>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.*
Was that an unearned position due to regulatory capture or something, or did people buy their stuff, even if it's more expensive?
Is it even a dominant position with no recourse? (last I heard Android has more share in the EU and the world). Did they collude with Google and other smartphone vendors to not allow them to build and allow similar features themselves?
>With iOS Apple owns the playing field where all accessory vendors compete, and Apple competes on the same field
Isn't that playing field their own OS and device ecosystem, they build?
Again, this is not about the OS, it is about Apple USING the OS to secure a dominant position in ANOTHER market-segment (headphones, watches, payment, entertainment,...).
> Isn't that playing field their own OS and device ecosystem, they build?
That playing field is their own OS, and the entire ecosystem of all accessory brands.
>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?
Well yes, that’s what laws are?
That (a kind of decree) is what any law is, including unfair laws or Jim Crow.
Doesn't mean it's an answer to the issue why that should be the case.
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.
There's Android which has even more market share, and several behemoths like Google, Samsung, Xiaomi making similar sets of devices, so not theoritical.
But that's not even close to the argument you made.
Also, you're confusing markets here. We're not talking about the smartphone market. We're talking about the market of apple accessories.
Apple solely controls that market and also participates in it. Its a true monopoly.