Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
New EU Law Could Force Apple to Allow Other App Stores, Sideloading, and iMessage Interoperability
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Someone needs to stop the predatory subscription business model.
Oh give me a break! Video games? There is not a single person on the planet that needs video games. They are a TOTAL LUXURY and there is, and could never be, anything "predatory" about charging people any amount of money to play them.
You misunderstand me. Subscription business models for things you should buy once and own needs to be stamped out.
It should be noted that there were more than 2 options. If we look back through history we had many mobile platforms: Palm, Blackberry, WebOS, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, Symbian, Android, and iPhone.
But consumers stopped choosing most of those platforms... and started choosing Android and iPhone. And that's how we got to where we are today.
Those other platforms simply weren't as desirable as Android and iPhone... so consumers stopped choosing those other platforms.
I hear what you're saying... maybe we should have more than 2 mobile platforms.
Well as I said... we tried that. At one point there were 5 mobile platforms competing in the market.
But consumers made their choice. And only 2 platforms ultimately remained.
So you could say competition did work as it was supposed to work.
Wish you still had that keyboard extension that suddenly vanished from the App Store after Apple implemented their own mediocre swipe-to-type? 😂😂
You sound like you enjoy being hamstrung by price and speed. Sweet suffering? For what? Definitely better than being regulated by the EU… 😂😂I have only one cable provider and I'm being hamstrung by price and speed. Competition in the form of a choice would be great. Two is competition, one is not. But I guess according to the EU those two cable providers would be gatekeepers.
Consumers currently have no access to open source for example, unless someone brings a build to the App Store and maintains it. I am sure that there are many people across the entire spectrum of types of consumers that would enjoy being able to access what the open source devs come up with (many of which led to iOS features in the jailbreak days, like f.lux for example). Also there‘s Xbox gamestreaming currently being hamstrung by only being able to offer its service through a web app. And I am sure there are quite a few people who wouldn’t mind being able to buy their Kindle books directly from the app.
Don’t just limit yourself to believing that everyone is just using social media, free to play games that border on gambling and subscriptions to mindfulness apps.
What keyboard extension?
And what is "swipe to type" ? Why would I want to swipe to type something?
https://www.macrumors.com/2019/06/03/ios-13-quickpath-swipe-keyboard-iphone/
While you may not like or have known about them, these types of keyboards do seem popular with some users.
Why not also Safari and FaceTime as those are also available in the App Store. What about alternative browser engines used by various browser apps? Would those be "required"?
I get your thinking that it's risky for a company to create and market a new OS if app developers aren't required to make their apps available for it but I don't think this would be the best approach.
I am not so much bothered by the fact that there are essentially two choices in mobile OS (Android and iOS). The same is largely true in desktop OS with Windows and macOS having about 92% of the market. My issue continues to be more with (potential) anticompetitive behavior among these major players in the respective markets.
If you are looking for incidents where Apple was fined in Europe, here is an example from 2020:
This fine was recently reduced from 1.1 € billion to 372 € million.
That's fine. But you said:
"Wish you still had that keyboard extension that suddenly vanished from the App Store after Apple implemented their own mediocre swipe-to-type?"
And my answer is "no". I don't have any keyboard extensions....don't see why I would. Phone comes with a keyboard. I use it. Move on with life.
Nice deflection there. How is this comparable to Microsoft’s action?
In any case, IMHO this is another money grab.
That's exactly and all it is.
We need money! Time to fine some more American companies!
Apple are much worse than Microsoft.
Microsoft was only bundling, Apple doesn't let people install their software on their OS without their permission and they dictate what aspects of your service can be mentioned in your software.
American companies are welcome to operate in a law-abiding manner in the EU. They won't get fined for playing by the rules.
It doesn't take an EU investigation or genius lawyer to figure out right from the beginning that their practices may be considered anticompetitive and violating the law. They deliberately took that risk, hoping they'd get away with it.
Last edited:
It's similar in that Microsoft, Apple and other dominant companies have been investigated, fined, etc. for antitrust violations and no one is getting a pass here. And none of them deserve to. In this particular situation, however, Microsoft doesn't restrict sideloading or alternative app stores on Windows the way Apple does on iOS so Microsoft isn't violating the law/legislation.
They never allowed sideloading similar to android. Yes one could sideload from the Mac, but that’s not what this is about.
IMHO, the term sideloading is non-sensical when we’re talking about macOS. Even for iOS, it’s non-sensical. Either you can install an app or you cannot. It depends on the OS design. Legislating how an OS should work is never the job of any regulatory bodies.
We call that installing software. It's weird that this word has tried to make something normal sound like something shady.. just stop it. I will install software on any device I own whether the maker approves or not.