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.