EU Provisionally Agrees on Law That Would Force Apple to Allow Alternative App Stores, Sideloading, and iMessage Interoperability

[1madman1]

I'm hoping that either this doesn't get geolocked, or that there will be some way of spoofing an EU location for phone setup.

Safari and all it's autoplaying media garbage will be banished from my phone.

 

[1madman1]

What are your thoughts of Nokia phones?

Microsoft bought Nokia's phone division and ran it into the ground with Windows Mobile. Stephen Elop's infamous "burning platform" memo infamously killed Symbian OS - at the time the world's most popular smartphone OS - almost overnight.

 

[NapoleonIV]

Why would a company spend the resources to develop and release a new feature if they have to then turn right around and allow every competitor to copy it? How will they be able to differentiate themselves in the market?

What you'll get is everyone supporting the lowest common denominator, and shifting focus to other products where they can innovate.

This is what is called an open standard. Google has already done it. Apple, in the case of iMessage, has not.

 

[dk001]

In this day and age being first to market is not the grand thing it was.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

EU is usurping apples ip. The legislation is crap legislation and the EU will reap what it sows.

Nothing of apples IP is usurped. Notice how apple have barely used the IP ownership as a defense but security and privacy. Two things we have a lot of in EU and value.

Apple still maintain 100% ownership of their ip, they just can’t do whatever they want in EU that harms the market and consumers.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

“Small and medium-sized companies "are exempt from being identified as gatekeepers, apart from in exceptional cases," the press release said.”

Translation: We’ve made sure no European companies are affected.

90%+ of companies is USA and EU are small and medium size. But I guess you just care now when eu cracks down on abuse from American companies but ignore the vast majority affect EU companies

 

[I7guy]

Nothing of apples IP is usurped. Notice how apple have barely used the IP ownership as a defense but security and privacy. Two things we have a lot of in EU and value.

Apple still maintain 100% ownership of their ip, they just can’t do whatever they want in EU that harms the market and consumers.

The entire App Store ip is being usurped. I guess we have different definitions of exactly what is happening. Security and privacy are legitimate.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

The entire App Store ip is being usurped. I guess we have different definitions of exactly what is happening. Security and privacy are legitimate.

We should work on objective definitions then. The only thing happening is apple no longer can force people to use their AppStore proprietary IP and use something else.

Nobody is taking their store. They just can’t demand merchants use their proprietary payment system IP instead of their own or competing solutions.

Security and privacy isn’t threatened. Apple could easily provide a list of pre vetted and approved payment systems, not a real problem in EU as all systems are heavily regulated and vetted etc.

What you are complaining about is apple can’t force people or businesses to use their IP and force them to pay for that IP

 

[I7guy]

We should work on objective definitions then. The only thing happening is apple no longer can force people to use their AppStore proprietary IP and use something else.

Yes, that is usurping Apples ip for the app store.

Nobody is taking their store. They just can’t demand merchants use their proprietary payment system IP instead of their own or competing solutions.

Yes, the government is taking ownership of their store with these regulations.

Security and privacy isn’t threatened.

Security and privacy are threatened in a big way.

Apple could easily provide a list of pre vetted and approved payment systems, not a real problem in EU as all systems are heavily regulated and vetted etc.

Right, and heavily regulated means zero fraud in the EU...right.

What you are complaining about is apple can’t force people or businesses to use their IP and force them to pay for that IP

What I am complaining about is regulation I hope falls on it's face hard and gets the EU exactly what they asked for.

 

[vipergts2207]

Yes, that is usurping Apples ip for the app store.

Yes, the government is taking ownership of their store with these regulations.

This logic makes zero sense. Nobody is taking Apple's Store. My iPhone is not Apple's store. The iOS App Store is Apple's store. Apple is simply being told that just because you own a store in some location doesn't mean you can stop others from opening up a competing store next door.

 

[I7guy]

This logic makes zero sense. Nobody is taking Apple's Store. My iPhone is not Apple's store. The iOS App Store is Apple's store. Apple is simply being told that just because you own a store in some location doesn't mean you can stop others from opening up a competing store next door.

I agree to disagree.

 

[vipergts2207]

I agree to disagree.

Agree to disagree or not, but nothing I've read on this legislation indicates that it takes Apple's iOS App Store and gives it to a government or anyone else. Feel free to point to where that's the case though.

 

[I7guy]

Agree to disagree or not, but nothing I've read on this legislation indicates that it takes Apple's iOS App Store and gives it to a government or anyone else. Feel free to point to where that's the case though.

The regulatory bodies telling a (consumer focused company that mass produces products) in a specific way is the point.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

No that is patently false. Customers seemingly love apple; except for the usual cadre of critics. The people who sell their wares on apples platforms want less of apple controlling them. This bill unfortunately will wrest control of apples assets from them. It’s a socialist move…

Er, no. Apple has been bleeding customers for awhile. Their response has been to milk remaining customers even harder than before, so that the illusion of growth can continue.

This has come at a cost though, as people are increasingly PO'd at Apple and leaving the brand behind.

1 - Apple stopped disclosing sales volumes. Because they're dropping quite quickly.

2 - Apple has countered this by aggressively raising prices. In 2013, the most expensive iPhone (5S with 64 GB) was $399.* Accounting for inflation, the most expensive iPhone from 2013 in today's USD is about $485. That isn't the price of a top end iPhone today. In fact, you can barely buy any iPhone in 2022 at that price - the only one cheap enough is the iPhone SE with 64 GB. Remember Moore's law? The price of 64 GB of storage is less than 1/10th of what it was in 2013. Where did those 90% savings go? Straight into Apple's pockets - they certainly didn't go to the customer. You want the top end iPhone today? It's an eye watering $1600. Accounting for inflation, the price is up 3.3x. A family of three could have all had a top end iPhone 5S in 2013 and still had $100 left over for the same amount of money as it takes to buy a single top end iPhone in 2022.

What improvements have justified this dramatic price increase? It's hard to name any. MacRumors ran an article on 15 improvements since the original iPhone for the 15th anniversary of the iPhone - only 3 of those improvements occurred between the 5S and the 13 Pro Max.

Anyways, enough about the iPhone. How's the Mac?

In 2013, the iMac started at $1099 for 500 GB of storage and went up to $1499 for 8 GB of memory and 1 TB of storage. Today, the bottom iMac is $1299 and only has half as much storage. The top iMac is $1699 and has the same 8 GB of memory and half as much storage, again.

[*] Apple actually held the $99-$399 price point for a long, long time... you can trace it back to the original iPod in 2001 all the way up until 2014, when Apple suddenly raised the price range from $199-399 for the iPhone 5S to $550-750.

 

[vipergts2207]

The regulatory bodies telling a (consumer focused company that mass produces products) in a specific way is the point.

This is a non-statement.

 

[I7guy]

This is a non-statement.

To me it’s THE statement.

 

[vipergts2207]

To me it’s THE statement.

At best it’s poorly worded. Read it without the parentheses and you’ll see it’s not entirely coherent.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Yes, that is usurping Apples ip for the app store.

How? Usurping means you’re seizing private property or taking control

when carrying on your commercial activity you are hindered or blocked by valid protective rights of third parties. The law prevents apple from encroachment on developers IP by telling apple can’t force them to use their IP.

Yes, the government is taking ownership of their store with these regulations.

Apple can’t sell iPhones without warranty, is that also the government taking ownership? Apple can’t fire people for unionizing/ joining a union is this taking ownership by the state?

Or is the state quite literally providing you with rules, standards and guidelines to run a business

Security and privacy are threatened in a big way.

Yes by US federal governments and companies illegally using and storing EU citizens user data on on us soil

Right, and heavily regulated means zero fraud in the EU...right.

EU have about 50% less credit card fraud than USA. With eID and bank verification need you can lower it even more

What I am complaining about is regulation I hope falls on it's face hard and gets the EU exactly what they asked for.

Then you should argue against democracy.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

The regulatory bodies telling a (consumer focused company that mass produces products) in a specific way is the point.

This regulatory body is quite literally telling everyone what you can’t do.

And this you say, isn’t this the case every where?

 

[JimmyHook]

All the EU is doing is trying to prop up their tech industry, artificially elevate European companies. What if the US govt required Spotify to divest themselves of podcasts? It’s just bad policy masquerading as “users rights”. Y’all should look into how they arrived at “45 million active users”. Why not 40 you ask? I wonder who is just below 45 and is a European company…

 

[Sophisticatednut]

All the EU is doing is trying to prop up their tech industry, artificially elevate European companies. What if the US govt required Spotify to divest themselves of podcasts? It’s just bad policy masquerading as “users rights”. Y’all should look into how they arrived at “45 million active users”. Why not 40 you ask? I wonder who is just below 45 and is a European company…

Yea you have no clue what your talking about. Spotify have more than 125million active users a month in EU

In USA apple and Spotify have about the same podcast listeners.

gatekeeper is a de-facto digital market bottleneck: EU businesses and consumers find it hard to avoid gatekeepers. According to the Commission’s DMA proposal, a gatekeeper must operate a ‘core platform service’ (CPS). The CPS list includes:

• online intermediation services,
• online search engines,
• online social networking services,
• video-sharing platform services,
• number-independent interpersonal communication services,
• operating systems,
• cloud computing services,
• advertising services provided by a provider of any of the services listed before.

A CPS provider may qualify as a gatekeeper if it meets three qualitative criteria. A gatekeeper:

1. “(…) has a significant impact on the internal market;
2. it operates a core platform service which serves as an important gateway for business users to reach end users; and
3. it enjoys an entrenched and durable position in its operations or it is foreseeable that it will enjoy such a position in the near future.”

 

[I7guy]

This regulatory body is quite literally telling everyone what you can’t do.

And this you say, isn’t this the case every where?

Understood that ongoing regulations are necessary in society, where life, limb, health or finances are in danger. But regulating the app store after 15 years, imo, is government overreach. Not that I can stop it, like death and taxes, we will all be there at some point, but I don't have to be for this type of government abuse.

 

[BaldiMac]

Understood that ongoing regulations are necessary in society, where life, limb, health or finances are in danger. But regulating the app store after 15 years, imo, is government overreach. Not that I can stop it, like death and taxes, we will all be there at some point, but I don't have to be for this type of government abuse.

The other part of this is that the EU is effectively compelling speech in forcing Apple to create code that it does not want to create. If there was some sort of societal benefit to the forced speech, then we'd have an argument.

But there's not. Mobile app prices are already low, because mobile apps already compete in a dynamic market.

Opening iOS to alternative app stores in the EU is about two things. First, billion dollar corporations want a to take power from the trillion dollar corporations (Apple and Google). Second, the EU wants more tax money from the mobile market to stay in Europe.

As far as messaging interoperability, that's just a complete pile of crap. It's an attempt to completely kill end to end encryption in messaging packaged as a competition issue.

 

[ponzicoinbro]

Could get really bad.

Hard line conservatives and conspiracy theorist loving crazies are promising to smash up companies like Apple and Disney.

Conmen market manipulators like Elon and Cohen badly want to sit on Apple’s board.

If they get their way they will turn Apple and any other company they touch into a complete ******** and phones full of Palantir spyware deep inside the OS and all your money transactions spied on a public ledger.

Their fascists and religious crazy friends will simply fine you or wipe you off the planet if you buy something they don’t like, pay for a service they don’t like, donate to a political party they don’t like.

I really hate what has happened. The public and greedy gamblers have given sociopaths billions of dollars of free money investing in the companies they own and now they are going to use that money for worst reasons.

World is going to be so ugly if they are not stopped. Guaranteed they will either take advantage of side loading bugs or taking over Apple.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

The other part of this is that the EU is effectively compelling speech in forcing Apple to create code that it does not want to create. If there was some sort of societal benefit to the forced speech, then we'd have an argument.

Lol coding isn’t speech any more than being forced to have the FCC logo or CE to be allowed to sell it or any other of the Millions of safety regulations that exist.
But apple is more told to stop providing code harming the broader market

But there's not. Mobile app prices are already low, because mobile apps already compete in a dynamic market.

That’s your opinion, and not factual considering in Netflix and appleTV both refuse to provide you the ability to purchase a subscription in order to not have to pay 30% to the play store.

Opening iOS to alternative app stores in the EU is about two things. First, billion dollar corporations want a to take power from the trillion dollar corporations (Apple and Google). Second, the EU wants more tax money from the mobile market to stay in Europe.

It’s not about a company taking power from another company. It’s about EU removing power from bigger companies and giving it to smaller ones.
Secondly EU doesn’t collect taxes.

As far as messaging interoperability, that's just a complete pile of crap. It's an attempt to completely kill end to end encryption in messaging packaged as a competition issue.

You obviously don’t know how messaging works or what the bill is saying about this.

Hint zero content to kill encryption