If that happens, prices may have to go up, that mathematical. Currently lots of people bought digital stuff they don’t need anymore. If they resell, people buying it don’t need to buy it from somewhere else.
I know it’s not really a zero sum game, but it’s obvious it would have a significant impact.
And I’m not even talking about media, which I’m sure some platform would start mass renting/selling in a fully automated fashion (upload all your licenses, watch whatever you want anytime because there will always be somewhere a license which is unused and a copy of the movie which is not actively watched at this moment). Basically they would only sell as many copies as the peak number of simultaneous watchers…
> If that happens, prices may have to go up, that mathematical.
I'd expect the opposite: competition between the "used" and the "new" markets would drive prices down, not up. Mathematically, you'd be increasing the supply, while keeping the demand nearly the same, which in the traditional supply and demand model means lower prices.
So how are the developers who make these products going to get paid?
When you resell a physical item it’s worn and costs time & effort to resell. Software is very different. That means no one would ever buy the software from the developer once a few copies are sold and can be passed around.
That would force SaaS even harder, since developers would need to justify it being a license.
Or lower the prices for everyone. Why does Adobe Photoshop still cost a small fortune. Hasn’t improved much for the last two decades has it? Why can’t I rent it from my buddy for the few hours a month I might use it?
Does it really cost a “small fortune”? You can “rent” Photoshop from Adobe for 3¢ an hour. Way back when you could buy a permanent license for PS, you were looking at about $700, which is just shy of 3 years at the current subscription rates.
> All that will happen is that all software will move to a SaaS or IAP model.
Seems a little to late for that, everything is a bloody in-app purchase or subscription already. I really wish I could filter out apps with in-app purchases or subscriptions when searching the app store, but that would probably ruin the business of countless companies.
To play devils advocate, couldn’t that allow a single purchase of a movie to be watched by millions of people? At which point no studio would sell it digitally.
In theory this could’ve happened with DVDs, but it was too much hassle for a single disc to be shared by that many people.
You could compromise with restrictions on how many times a file could be sold etc, but that concedes the point of a digital good not really being your property. And it might be used as a Trojan horse for even more DRM and surveillance.
I don't feel like this would be a major issue in practice. People can already pirate, sneak into the theater, etc., if they want to game the system.
Most people aren't interested in routinely selling and buying their media, so I would wager that most digital copies will end up on the digital "shelf" just like physical copies do, rather than being routinely sold off.
One person could buy a million ‘new’ units of a movie and continuously rent them out (via short term repurchase agreements) on demand to make something resembling a streaming site.
I don't see why that's an issue, either. A library can already buy multiple copies of books/ games and loan them out. It's not streaming, sure, but somebody with a little patience can avoid buying a copy by just going to the library.
> Borrow and enjoy audiobooks, eBooks, comics, movies, TV, magazines, or music everywhere you have a screen-your computer, your phone, your car, even your TV. All you need is a library card.
I can’t quite tell if this is satire! You may be familiar with a small startup (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix) in the business of buying a million DVDs and continuously renting them out on demand to make something resembling a video rental store.
I'm pretty sure that even video rentals were not allowed without the consent of the copyright holder. The videotapes or DVDs you could buy at retail weren't licensed for commercial use.
Lending them without cost, like a library, I don't think they could stop you. But commercially renting out the physical media wasn't an automatic right, as far as I know.
In theory, same is very much applicable for nearly all non-hygienic physical goods, but that did not make any business to stop.
A popular book can change hand a million times and save a lot of money, carbon emission, tree cutting, paper production cost, transport and logistics. The problem is careful usage and patience, i.e. not spilling coffee or food and waiting may be a year before a copy is available.
> To play devils advocate, couldn’t that allow a single purchase of a movie to be watched by millions of people? At which point no studio would sell it digitally.
You're not thinking creatively enough. One day, somebody's going to use the law and make the "sales" API-driven. This will then turn it into a rental service where you can "buy" a game for two hours for $37.50 and then "sell" the game back to the mother ship for $36.50 of credit. The mother ship being, of course, whatever VC firm puts millions into having the world's largest Steam account.
I don't have to like the current ecosystem of no-transfers and DRM, to acknowledge breaking all that down would have major economic consequences against studios. Right now is especially not the time to be asking for this, because the whole video game industry is in deep financial trouble at the moment.
Isn't that just a (expensive) library? And libraries are constantly being lobbied against by publishing groups, yet there doesn't seem to be major harm (financial) caused by them.
Why is this worse than a company renting out physical copies, though? This is the way games rentals work for physical copies. The renter buys one copy and rents it out numerous times. (It's also the way libraries work for books, of course.)
Books you take out for a week or more usually, games rentals and films (from the olden days when I'd get to go to an actual store) were at least several days.
Renting a film is something you could do from the second you start watching it to the second it finishes. Going from a few days to hours makes this in the region of 10-100 times faster turnaround.
Having to physically move things just adds significant time.
I'm still not seeing it the issue, though. A significant portion of the world's population lives within a short distance of a library. Even if each individual library branch serves a relatively small chunk of the population, the collection of libraries effectively makes a global network that enables people to almost instantaneously rent books, movies, and games. Having this exist out in the world really doesn't ruin things.
It's nowhere near instantaneous for physical items. I live near a library and it's a drive or a half hour walk away, open a few days a week during shortened times. That's nothing like clicking a button and renting a film for exactly the length I watch it for.
Oh dear, imagine if people bought a bunch of books, let’s say Harry Potter, and then let anyone come in and read books for a fee! Or even rent them! would be horrible!
Isn’t it hilarious how having property rights and freedoms over Things You Paid For is now unthinkable??
The challenge with digital goods is having a system where multiple people can have property rights.
Digitising your library example, would likely result in a price of zero. Someone like Apple would be well placed to turn its books app into a library of books it purchased once. And use this to get more hardware sales.
The current system of only one entity having rights isn’t desirable. But alternatives aren’t easy. Even if you tried to rule out sales for profit then marketplaces and bulletin boards would make things complicated.
Phones has become everyday items (and as a sibling comment pointed out, gone past the DSA regulation threshhold), homeless people in the Stockholm subway will go around with crappy Androids asking for "Swish" (immediate money transfer app, used for P2P and other fast small amount transactions around here like restaurants and at open air markets).
Low-tech people often don't bother buying new computers since their phones are required for banking (BankID identification) whilst the computer is optional.
> They arguably have an even more restrictive environment than iOS.
Yet they inarguably have less marketshare and a reduced role in citizens’ lives. Modern living in society necessitates some digital access to the internet. Even homeless people have smartphones. Yet all those crucial interactions are mediated by devices controlled by too few players, meaning that a couple of foreign rich companies dictate too much of what you can do and have provably and repeatedly abused that power to entrench themselves further.
Consoles are entirely different, people don’t depend on them for interacting with society.
It’s about economic opportunity for EU citizens and businesses.
The EU has a responsibility to promote the prosperity of its citizens. If that means dictating how a US company does business, then that’s what they are going to do. Which is the EUs prerogative.
As an aside, and something that is seldom mentioned, but if Apple and the other trillion dollar tech giants just paid their fair share of taxes then they may not be in this mess!
The original point was “let users access online banking and manage assets”, not whether you could “pull [it] out in the town square to make payments”. As an aside, why the town square? It’s oddly specific and is a phrase I’ve mostly read in stupid comments about Twitter in the last couple of years.
> The original point was “let users access online banking and manage assets”,
e.g. Can you pay for groceries with it like you can with a phone? Can you use it to pay for food at a restaurant, buy train tickets, or many other things are in many cases cashless.
"access online banking and manage asset" is a shorter way of saying all of the myriad of ways people need to use online banking day to day.
> a phrase I’ve mostly read in stupid comments about Twitter in the last couple of years.
The PS5's browser is hidden (it'll pop up when clicking links in Youtube video descriptions, etc), but it seems that the XBox one is just there to be used.
Having a browser online does not mean you can do your banking. It just means you have a browser. It's also almost guaranteed to not be a browser supported by the banks. Not to mention the myriad of other things that mobile phones provide in the context of mobile phones.
The nature of those platforms is they're devices to play video games specifically made for them.
Yes, they're computers, but so is your washing machine. But these aren't general purpose computing devices. To me, it makes no sense to enforce a free-for-all for those.
Phones are, honestly, more of an obvious first target, and harder for the manufacturers to argue about. Everyone has a smartphone. Game console sales in Europe are in the 5-10 million/year range, by contrast. And only one of the console manufacturers (Microsoft) is covered by the DMA at all, AFAIK; the other two just aren't significant enough.
That said, I wouldn't be amazed if attention is paid to consoles sooner or later, possibly bundled in with smarttvs.
There's more than one person in these threads. It's entirely possible (in fact, it's actuality), that the people asking it before are not those asking it now.
From the rules: do not assume astroturfing or that others are non-genuine.
I didn't assume astroturfing, I assumed that it wasn't actually genuine. Most things that people say are genuine, there is no need to say, "genuine question!"
What do you mean? I’ve never heard of a bank force you to login with a PlayStation or Xbox, but they do often force you to use the iOS or android apps for various functionality.
Why gate such a basic functionality for users in the European Union? People elsewhere do not have access to alternative app stores anyway. Is allowing them to uninstall such apps too much?
Apple aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their own hearts, they’re being forced to by the EU. So unless their hand is being forced elsewhere they’re not going to do it.
Yup. You can bet most developed countries will start to follow suit now. Remember Apple's argument before they exhausted their appeals with the EU was that they could never do any of this, and the sky would fall, and their whole business would be destroyed. Now, that will have been proven to be absolute poppycock as they begin to abide by all these regulations in this one (large) region. I expect regulators in Japan, UK, Australia, etc. will start to say "Yeah, we want that too." And Apple has zero plausible argument left for why consumers everywhere else don't deserve or can't have the same level of choice.
Obviously not in America though, since we don't have a functioning government, just an executive branch that doesn't have the support of Congress, and a judicial branch that believes strongly that only an act of Congress could create the authority needed to actually rein them in. And a Congress which would ideally like to avoid doing any legislating besides passing a continuing resolution or debt ceiling bill every now and then, since there's too much fundraising work to do.
That makes no sense. If you’re the type of person who’d want to delete the App Store app despite not having access to alternatives, you’re not someone who’d ever want it or use it or buy from it.
I mean, on their own, many of the core apps probably don’t bring much revenue to Apple. I can understand their reluctance to allow uninstalling the App Store, but what do they gain by preventing someone from uninstalling the Camera, for instance? Those who want to do so will use an alternative app anyway.
I don't know why this is downvoted. There are definitely a ton of users who will accidentally delete the camera and then complain their phone is broken, wasting everyone's time.
People have already apps they can delete. And when they do it by mistake, they just go to the App Store to download it again, wasting nobody’s time. Why would it be any different?
There’s just need to be a button in the settings if the App Store itself is deleted.
Folks in USA/CA would remove Safari and then return phone to the carrier/Apple as defective. No, I'm not kidding. I saw that multiple times - Windows messed on laptop? Laptop within return window? Return it is!
Eh, people return their devices because don't know how to correctly use them all the time, I don't see how it is different here. And people definitely don't need to intentionally do this -- in the US, most major retailers allow you to return opened products within the return window (although it could get complicated with so-called "activatable devices")
There are already a ton of default apps that can be removed, so I don't see how this matters.
The only thing I don't understand is the App Store, since today that's the place you go if you have "deleted" say, Notes or Music, and want it back. I guess they'll have to add a button in Settings or something called "Restore App Store."
And while people in general are certainly idiots and will certainly find a way to screw up, I don't think it's going to be a massive big deal to tell them "go to the App store and redownload _____" (plus whatever the way is to put the App Store back). We all know that the way to get it back isn't going to be like, SSH into the phone. Apple will have some way to do it that takes 10 seconds when people call into AppleCare, or literally the first person you see at the Apple Store will know about it.
i must be an idiot. As an iphone user for about a year i'm constantly confused what's happening or stuck on some screen or can't find what i need or mysteriously trigger some screen or popup.
It's not even a matter of whether the user knows how to use their device. I've seen plenty of Windows laptops shipped with a somewhat-broken software configuration out of the box, and on multiple occasions I've seen two "identical" machines fresh out of the box get offered different software updates with the end result that a few hours and several reboots later, one system is noticeably misbehaving.
I’m sure a non-trivial number of users would delete apps that are required for basic functionality. Stopping them prevents support issues that could require resetting to factory settings, if they didn’t add some other way to get the App Store back.
Definitely. I’ve had family members delete a bunch of the stock apps and then complained to me that various fitness and health functions stopped working. Turns out the fitness and health apps were important.
Is that really sufficient justification for stopping users from having more control over their device?
Like should we really let the 'Grandma Finds the Internet'[0] meme be the reason that you and I can't make decisions for ourselves?
Whatever cost savings that Apple has from avoiding support for these people is dwarfed by the money they make from stopping competitors to these apps from growing due to these control mechanisms.
That's the real reason apple doesn't want to do this and has to be kicked dragging and screaming by the EU.
Forcing both companies to have the same features reduces customer choice in the overall market. Some people want to choose the simple curated experience and the EU and others backing their decisions are removing that option from the market. iOS has already become significantly more complex over the years and this keeps dialing up the complexity and areas where a user can get tripped up.
The support calls I’ve received from family since they all moved to Apple have dropped dramatically. It may not be the platform for you, but it’s the platform a lot of people prefer. This is because of the curation, not in spite of it. Infinite choice and control means an infinite potential for problems. A lot of people don’t want that. If they did, desktop Linux would be mainstream instead of a meme.
I like that open platforms exist, but I also like that other platforms exist that don’t require much effort. Rarely do those things exist in a single package. I don’t know why people, who I only assume don’t use Apple products, feel the need to change them and take away what people like.
Not being able to delete literally everything doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Especially when those apps are ones a significant number of other applications assume exist and try to interact with. Where is the line? Or is there no line? Will people try to compel Apple to keep removing stuff until iOS boots up to a prompt where the user can net boot the OS of their choice?
What is this bollocks? Slavery being illegal "reduces customer choice in the overall market". Being compelled to clean up industrial waste rather than pump it straight into the air and rivers "reduces customer choice in the overall market". Being required to be honest about financial investments "reduces customer choice in the overall market" - the market for RUBES.
The EU is not compelling Apple to remove anything, it's compelling Apple to offer their end-users the CHOICE to use third-party apps and app-stores where Apple mercilessly locked it all down for their own financial benefit - deliberately calculating what would benefit them the most.
You know who reduces customer choice? Apple. When they lock you in for their own benefit.
"I think this is all pretty simple — iBooks is going to be the only bookstore on iOS devices. We need to hold our heads high. One can read books bought elsewhere, just not buy/rent/subscribe from iOS without paying us, which we acknowledge is prohibitive for many things." https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/31/emails-apple-blocked-ki...
...the executive wrote to Jobs about [an ad promoting cross-platform compatibility], saying that one “message that can’t be missed is that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android. Not fun to watch.” The suit doesn’t quote Jobs' response at length, but says he wrote that Apple would “force” developers to use its payment system to lock in both developers and users on its platform. https://www.wired.com/story/4-internal-apple-emails-helped-d...
If laws and regulations are not vigourously enforced, companies will do anything they can get away with. Including kidnapping, torture, starting wars, poisoning millions, and in this case abusing a monopoly in one area to force out competition in others and enrich themselves by depriving people of choice. Like Standard Oil before them. Do you want the robber barons back?
> This is because of the curation, not in spite of it. Infinite choice and control means an infinite potential for problems. A lot of people don’t want that.
And those people don't have to opt into the unclean world of freedom that hasn't been blessed by Apple. All your family would need to do is NOT check the box that says "Let me explore outside this walled garden", which would be accompanied with a plethora of scaremongering confirmation screens.
I think we’ve all met the people who know just enough to be dangerous, while overestimating their abilities. These were always the worst support calls when I was younger, and are the co-workers that give me pause was setting up access for the team.
Not everyone who receives a computing device is the same one who set it up. I’ve told this story before but I’ll repeat it because it’s illustrative. Back when MacBooks ran intel processors and bootcamp was both new (and explicitly unsupported) I spent a few hours assisting a new and very irate customer in figuring out why their new MacBook was having all sort of problems that as they described it were not possible in macOS or had already been solved by software/firmware updates. Turns out they’d bought their new MacBook and given it to their nephew who was “smart with computers” to set up. Said nephew decided on their own that what their aunt needed was not a MacBook running macOS but an expensive windows laptop. So they installed bootcamp, installed windows, shrank the mac boot partition to the smallest it could be and configured it to boot directly into windows. As a result, all their usual issues with windows were still present and firmware updates weren’t being installed because it never booted to macOS to run the macOS software updates. I spent a few hours with the woman explaining what her nephew had done, the general concept of an OS/dual booting and fixing things so she could use the MacBook as a mac, without losing data in a drive re-partition. The reality is that not every end user is making informed decisions about their devices, and not only does that harm the user, but it also harms Apple. From their perspective I spent hours supporting unsupported software and trying to repair their brand and reputation in the eyes of an irate customer for something that wasn’t even their fault, and caused by giving other people the choice to leave the curated path. That customer later became one of our better customers, but if they hadn’t happened to get the store employee who understood bootcamp, and who had a manager that would allow them to spend that time supporting unsupported software, they might have both never been a customer and been an active detractor.
It's really illustrative into the mind of Apple fans that your takeaway from this wasn't that "dumb opinionated teenagers make stupid choices" and rather that "It's a good thing we're rid of Boot Camp, and it should be physically impossible to end up with a poorly configured Apple device, the heck with the consequences for people who know what they're doing.
You can't protect people from their absolute ignorance or in that case active sabotage. And the costs to society of having our only two mobile platforms both engaging in lots of anticompetitive behavior, are huge. Not to mention that if I want any choice at all in anything I apparently have to 'choose' Android, which I don't even like to use, due to the fact that in the US (and backed up by every job I've had) companies develop the iOS version of their app with great care, and farm out the Android version to some distant contractor, and since no executive has an Android device to even try it, no one above IC level even knows their Android app is a buggy pile of trash. All of this is not even due to any inherent qualities or policies of either platform, just that rich people all buy Apple devices.
I think you’re trying too hard to squash a nuanced post into some fan binary where you’re either for or against Apple, starting with making a strong claim which the person you’re replying to never made.
GP post wasn’t that nuanced; it strongly implied that since granny gave her Mac to her silly nephew for setup and had a bad time, that justifies stripping the supposed owners of all Apple devices of meaningful control of those devices. An unsurprising take from someone who sounds like he may be a onetime or current Apple employee.
I think what makes someone a “fan” is that complete trust of Apple to do “What’s Best,” a completely coincidental perfect harmony between “What’s Best” and Apple’s financial interest, and the suggestion that the platform(s) simply aren’t “for” people like me who want any choice whatsoever, and we should just F off to Android if we don’t like it because ceding us any control would somehow explode the “safe, easy” walled garden by its very availability, a completely bogus argument.
You’re again putting words in their mouth. That post illustrated that this is not a simple binary, having real costs to that flexibility. I think your feelings are valid emotions but they’re leading you astray by thinking that Apple’s customers are not making a rational choice.
I also note that you can install non-Apple operating systems on the latest hardware and they even put engineering time into supporting that and making it safer for Mac users to do so.
The world is a better place because the government mandated interoperability between POTS telephones and that car manufacturers must be supply owners with parts that can be installed by any mechanic.
We can and will have the best of both worlds with open devices that are user friendly. Apple has the resources both financial and technical to make this happen. It's just a matter of regulators making them do it.
I thank the EU for pushing companies like Apple in the right direction first with USB-C, 3rd party app stores and now this.
> Will people try to compel Apple to keep removing stuff until iOS boots up to a prompt where the user can net boot the OS of their choice?
Hopefully regulators will compel Apple to open their mobile devices up the same way that their personal computers are. If I can install linux on my macbook why can't I install it on my iPhone? It doesn't affect people like your grandmother one bit.
Some Mac Genius commented up thread claiming that because someone's grandson secretly installed Boot Camp and converted her MacBook to Windows (with dumb consequences), nobody should be able to make significant choices about how to use ~their~ I mean Apple's, computers.
Releasing it as a feature everywhere would require at least a bit of public explanation and might give the appearance that EU forced Apple into doing something good for everyone. Being petty and releasing the bare minimum georestricted only to EU requires no public explanation and gives more the appearance that this is some dumb law Apple was forced to comply with. At least that's probably their thinking.
That is probably a more likely explanation that "because it would lose them money".
I suspect that the number of people who are actively going to switch to a different App Store is minimal. Users can already install other browsers, even if they are still using WebView, same of messaging apps and I doubt that many would care to replace the camera app. Photos maybe, but is that really a huge lose for Apple? That saves them from storing your photos.
People on HN is often assuming that people would leave the App Store in droves, if given to option. I really don't see that happening.
If I buy a phone in the EU can I keep this ability everywhere even with a UK Apple ID? Seems pretty nice having everything separate like this. I hope it forces them to allow different browser engines than Safari too.
No. Apple spent a lot of time and money building a service called "countryd" with the sole purpose of making sure that people outside the EU can't use any of the features that they already did the work to develop anyway.
> countryd determines the user's physical country based on multiple characteristics. It is used by the eligibility system to ensure it is difficult to spoof the user's true physical location. It was introduced in iOS 16.2 and macOS 13.0.
Meh, if they were really doing favors for governments they'd do something to nerf VPN software for places like China. I'm pretty sure this was created to serve Apple's intere$t$ first and foremost
I'm assuming at some point they'll move away from bespoke ROM-level settings like "Japan-bought iPhones always have a shutter sound" or "Chinese iPhones use the term "WLAN" instead of "WiFi", and instead path all of that through `countryd`. Maybe for WiFi and cellular regulations also.
How wonderful of Apple to make sure non-EU citizens are protected from the terrible dangers of freedom to choose, forced upon EU iOS users by the tyrannical EU government /s
After staying in one region consistently, all the big tech companies will automatically switch your region for you. Some might take longer to force you than others, but it’s not certain that you can forever stay on another region.
But what makes most people have to switch eventually is a bank/government app that is region locked and you need it to live your life without pulling your hair out jumping through stupid hoops.
A VPN and two devices is the only way to stay truly separate from the region you live in full time over the long term.
> After staying in one region consistently, all the big tech companies will automatically switch your region for you.
I have been using an iPhone with a British Apple ID and the British App Store, and the UK regional settings on some devices despite not living there anymore for a couple of years now. I am fairly confident switching countries requires the user to do it consciously.
Sign out of the app store. Sign in with a different ID. Install the app you want. Sign out again.
The apple ID used for the app store doesn't have to be the same as the apple ID for Facetime, Messages etc.
You don't even need to be signed in to the app store to use an app that's already installed.
I wonder, if another country were to leave the EU in the future, would Apple actually go in and modify the code (or enable a server flag) to remove the feature from all of those country's users' devices?
It just seems so wrong to own a device, but still have the manufacturer dictate what that device is allowed to do, AND they have the ability to change those capabilities at will. It feels like buying a physical calculator, where the manufacturer can one day wave a magic wand and I lose the "divide" button. I'm generally an Apple fan and I get that people like Apple's "walled garden" but even to me this seems like an abuse.
They need to do that anyway, because the laws depend on the country. There is no other option: different sets of laws are often incompatible, there is not always a common subset that works everywhere. So the behaviour of the device has to change depending on the location.
But yes, it is silly in this specific case. I’d like someone to explain credibly why letting users delete apps is wrong. In the worst case it’s a minor pain and the user has to re-download it from the store. These apps are thin UI layers over system frameworks anyway.
> the behavior of the device has to change depending on the location.
That wasn't the case in a previous era. A country could make a decision that says division is illegal and ban new 4-function calculators, but all the calculators made before that would still work the same. Banned books could still be read if you already had them. Today thanks to the double-edged sword of constant connectivity, it's plausible that Apple can just add and delete features when you pass over physical borders, meaning that the set of functionality you buy is increasingly ill-defined. You don't own a phone, you just own a conditional license to the iPhone experience, which they'll tweak over time to comply with various governments on the most limited geographic scale possible while maximizing their revenue.
None of this is that shocking or interesting now that we're used to it, but it's annoying that we don't own or control the devices we buy and can't even guarantee they keep a certain feature set.
No, it's not close at all. macOS allows you to sideload, EU iOS still does not. macOS allows you to write programs for your own device without paying Apple $100 every year, EU iOS still does not. macOS provides an environment for general purpose computing, EU iOS still does not.
Those apps are deactivated after 7 days unless you pay for an Apple Developer subscription. There's the non-EU version of the AltStore which attempts to circumvent this restriction, but it's a dirty hack and I expect Apple to patch it out eventually.
This. It's just one more annoying weekly chore to keep in mind, as the automatic backround refresh, in typical iOS fashion, only works when it feels like it. And doesn't work at all if you use energy saving mode.
Great first step, now if we could just get apple hardware without apple software and get full access to the subsystems with a linux or android instead of the iOS/OSx slop, even I would consider paying for it.
Are the apps actually uninstalled for real, or does the system just hide them to create the same appearance as uninstalling to satisfy legal requirements?
Yes, (search) indeed they use WebKit [1] [2]. You also have the option to use WKWebView. But in this context you should use WKWebView if you want to access WebKit as a developer and be able to publish in the App Store. If you don't need to be accepted in the App Store you can use WebKit compiling it from the source.
Sort of? Like, the way it at least used to work, is that there was a MobileSafari.app that used the UIWebDocument class from UIKit.framework and which in turn used WebKit. I don't think anyone is expecting Apple to uninstall the UI widgets that are being used by numerous existing third-party applications, and yet it is still meaningful to be able to delete the Safari "app".
They are part of the iOS System partition, so almost certainly just hidden. Considering that the entire point is to improve competitiveness, hidden is almost certainly good enough, as it's not the EU's job to be disk space czars.
Beyond just that, if you uninstall the app store, how would you get it back without it already being available on-device? You'd probably need Safari but then if that's removed too?
> Apps that are removed, such as the App Store , can be re-downloaded using an "App Installation" section in the Settings app.
Whether that's really a redownload or restore from disk cache probably doesn't matter unless the EU starts to argue that it being available with 0 latency from disk is a competitive advantage.
They'd need some hook to get the app store back if you really uninstalled everything.
Worst case, a box where you type in the url for an ipa (and a restriction that you must have at least one keyboard installed; although if your keyboard always crashes...)
Even worse case, use iTunes on a computer to push apps to the phone, although that imposes a requirement of access to a computer. Maybe a way to push apps between iPhones.
Or you know, just keep it around on disk without removing it fully. The bigger issue is I’m surprised they’re being allowed to remain the default. I wonder why the different tack vs what they forced Windows to do with IE in Europe.
The following is a wildly optimistic speculation here since we're talking about government bureaucrats here, but perhaps they noticed that in the Windows/IE case:
- The choice screen thing didn't make one lick of difference, and:
- MSIE died of completely self-inflicted wounds anyway only a few years after this.
Perhaps these two facts, though they don't prove the 'choice screen' was bad, also did nothing to establish that approach as a proven way to promote competition, so regulators weren't moved to emulate it.
(Personally, I would argue that choice screens at a point in time when one option has overwhelming mindshare are pretty pointless. Everyone will choose the dominant one by recognition, except geeks who knew how to change defaults anyway, and confused newbies who are probably the ones who realistically should be using the most 'mainstream' option anyway.)
What if I'm an EU resident whose bank or workplace security software are sideloaded or distributed by an alt store? What if I'm traveling for longer than a month? What if, to keep banking or working, I need an updated version of said apps?
F me for being away for longer than an arbitrary amount of time that Apple thinks characterises ... what?
The problem is not that I can’t use alternative apps - it’s that they don’t have access to various important system level features.
Some examples:
Only Messages and Mail can provide OTPs, again only when using the system keyboard.
When swiping the lock screen to the left, only the system Camera is allowed to appear.
When using navigation, only Apple Maps is allowed to provide the navigation overlay on the lock screen and Apple Watch.
After years, the default Mail app can be changed, but AFAICT that doesn’t do anything other than override mailto links. However, this functionality isn’t available for Calendar for example.
Similarly, you can’t override natural language Siri incantations to use your preferred apps. Like “message X” always uses Messages or “remind me of X” can only use Reminders. And alarms and timers can only use the Clock app.
I really want Apple to fix all of this, but I guess it’s easier to act like the “deletion” of system apps provides a level playing field. The real problem is that the default apps lack a lot of other features that only third parties provide - but Apple can’t be assed to improve them.
Your parent comment isn’t suggesting they go “above and beyond”, they’re saying they don’t even do the bare minimum to comply. Those are wildly different things.
And as to why Apple would do it (either comply or go above and beyond), there are numerous reasons:
* To avoid government intervention. All the stuff they’re being forced to do was absolutely avoidable. The writing has been on the wall for long.
* To not have to keep paying fines.
* To not trash their reputation.
* For long-term customer satisfaction.
* So developers, which they depend on, don’t hate them. Just look at the Vision Pro, which shipped with no apps from the big players.
In short, being an asshole only made short-term business sense. In the long run, they should strive to do better.
Reasonably certain that when the parent wrote "We'll comply" they very explicitly said Apple is complying. Which removes the majority of your bullet points.
The thing is most normal users don't really want random apps to be able to provide OTPs. While it would be nice to have an API for every system functionality like reminders where every app is allowed to register as the reminder app, it would necessitate far more complexity and far slower pace of development on the reminder interfacing.
This is where there is a big difference in what the ultra few power users want and what normal users want. Ultra power users want to be able to install an app file for a random app with app store like experience and with as less hurdles as possible, while normal users are very scared of receiving an apk file in whatsapp and installing it by mistake (there is a spectrum here and it's not binary).
They do, but they also want to be safe from being able to choose unexpectedly and doing this in a way that both protects the user and gives them choices is hard. I also want mobile OSes to be flexible but they should always err on the side of caution given most of their users don't have time and energy to understand how to use such features safely and correctly.
Could you explain the security problem you foresee? The Gmail app already has received an email which has the OTP in it. Why can’t it provide that to your keyboard? What’s the vulnerability here?
I used to think similarly. However in the past 4-5 years I have observed closely my non tech family member's usage of smartphones and they frequently install totally random apps, they have no idea what their default browser/keyboard is at any moment or how to change it and who frequently receive apks on whatsapp and almost always click on it (only the android hurdle against apks protects them) so on. Sure it might be fine for gmail to write OTP but what about abcdmail, what about go pro SMS style apps. I think there is a fine balance here between flexibility and non tech user safety.
You don’t need to invent a “random apps” strawman. Apple already restricts which apps can be used as default mail/browser, just allow them access to the same APIs.
Why not at least Gmail, Chrome, and gBoard? Millions of “non power users” use these apps over Apple’s offering.
Same thing that happens when someone sends you a message on any messaging platform when you don't have the app to view the message. It just sits unviewed by you.
There are zero EU companies designated as gatekeepers by the DMA. That will likely affect the dynamic of how the EU perceives any complaints about the law by companies.
Edit: I was incorrect. Booking.com, based in the EU, was added earlier this year. See below
> There are zero EU companies designated as gatekeepers by the DMA.
Not true. Booking.com is also designated as a gatekeeper and is based in the Netherlands. Yeah, they're the only one, but there are only seven designated gatekeepers total.
> Though I would note that Booking.com are a subsidiary of an American company, Booking.
Good point, yes. They were sold to Priceline.com in 2005 which has since renamed to Booking Holdings. However, they were founded in the Netherlands, are still based there (unlike their American parent company), and are still a major tech employer there. They’re European enough for this particular discussion.
Probably not, but in that case, the U.S. would fill that void instead. It's a wonderful symbiotic relationship where countries don't give a shit about other countries' pet companies. God forbid if the EU would actually be strict with the automotive industry of Germany. God forbid if the U.S. would actually be strict with their tech industry.
The EU wouldn't need to if the US gave a crap about regulating their own companies. What's the state of privacy regulations in the US? Anti-trust? Power cable standardisation? Nothing. Well then.
I'm not surprised though. Whenever companies are "forced" to abide by California's more stringent regulations (such as with cars), I always see Americans bitch and moan about how unfair it is. Instead of trying to improve things, some of you just don't seem to care about anything except the bottomline of some billion dollar corporation.
> Instead of trying to improve things, some of you just don't seem to care about anything except the bottomline of some billion dollar corporation.
>
> It's weird and disturbing.
When the US was making leaps in technological and computing advancements around the 60s, one third of Europe was under the iron curtain and its economic stagnation. The other two thirds had just about finished rebuilding their infrastructure and amenities after World War 2.
The Marshall Plan led to the establishment of very strong trade relationships between the US and Europe, and it was a time of economic boom in the US. The Cold War led to technological advancements in computing, communication, and aerospace, where the US government funded much tech the like ARPANET to stay ahead of the Soviets in all these fields.
You take a stable business environment not disrupted by world wars, a government showering businesses with free hand-me-down technologies, and a huge economic boom fuelled by a whole continent of people suddenly looking to buy your products (some of which are computers), and you get Silicon Valley just a decade later.
When Woz was tinkering on the first Apple computers with Jobs, their peers in East Germany were looking for ways to go around the Berlin Wall. The economic circumstances and business opportunities couldn't have been more different.
Believe it or not, in the 1970s and 80s when Apple and Microsoft were born, Europe didn't have many of the consumer rights protections that it has today. It was largely focused on protecting its people from the USSR. In many European countries, consumer rights came into political focus only in the last 20 or so years.
Today things are different. European Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft all exist and I believe are incorporated in Ireland. These companies do a large portion of their business in Europe. And if you consider today's tech, EU is very competitive with the US. In fintech, Revolut, Klarna and Adyen have similar user numbers as US alternatives. In AI, Google DeepMind is and has always been a UK company, and Graphcore makes NVIDIA's specialised AI chips. In the EV space, you may have heard of Volkswagen, Porsche, Land Rover, etc. In the business environment, SAP dominates ERP worldwide. And in games, you may have heard of Ubisoft, CD Projekt Red, Arkane, Playground Games, and many other European companies. The list goes on and on.
The argument that Europe didn't form Silicon Valley post WW2 because of its current consumer protection laws is inane. Or that Europe doesn't have the same FANGMAN companies that operate in the US, or that it doesn't have strong tech competitors in the global space on the scale of FANGMAN. There were much larger forces at play than being able/not able to delete the App Store in the formation and development of tech hubs around the world.
I don't think your examples really prove your point. You include 100 year old auto manufacturers, companies long acquired by US tech giants, and a failing AI hardware company that has nothing to do with Nvidia. Probably the most valid example is SAP but even then it's in the slowest moving most bureaucratic ridden industry.
Probably another instance of people who somehow couple the success of their chosen team/group to their own self-worth. Depending on the intensity of the manifestation, we call it national pride, gang affiliation or John Gruber.
Because you’re on a site where a lot of people believe in less regulation and more free market? I would guess that’s the thing. And people have strong opinions on both sides.
It’s not just comment sections. Pundits with large following can be very much the same.
John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, is viciously anti-EU to the point he’s gone full looney.
A handful of days after Threads launched he called it “the most fun app of the year” or some nonsense, and made fun of people in the EU (this as DMA-related).
A few weeks ago I saw him compare the EU to Trump, only because some EU document had bolded words in a way he felt was haphazard.
Every time I’m faced with one his posts, the replies are now full of the “old man yells at cloud” image.
I tend to assume they either work for Apple, are in a business making obscene money with similar lock-in, or have learned the toxic behavior from those who are. It does seem unnatural.
EU is seen as anti-competitive, but the reality is that it's Pro-Consumer...
...maybe too pro-consumer. Also the lack of a Google or Facebook etc is more of a result of it being harder to gain a critical mass of users. A social media company started in Poland would struggle to deal with the cultural and language differences with Holland. A more homogenous society such as the US doesn't have that issue.
What about Health.app? It collects data, and likely sends it to Apple, without user's permission. The permission to allow Apple / the app to collect data actually only allows _the_user_ to see the data collected earlier.
Get an iPhone, only after few months enable Health permissions and one will see all the data collected before one allowed data collection. Oh, and Apple absolutely knows which country the device is used in - they base sound level warning levels on specific country's laws.
So Apple sucking the data from user's device to their cloud without permission is not data collection because Apple says it can't access iCloud data? Come on. It's a US-based corporation owning the keys to systems on both ends. They are obligated to release the data when requested. And they may be obligated to lie about it, also by law.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the US laws around things like the PRISM program, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, National Security Letters, etc have ever required companies to state affirmatively false things, and I suspect that any such law would be unconstitutional. All of those laws have only required companies to refrain from saying or disclosing things, which is very different.
Exactly which law in the US might allow the government to require Apple to falsely state that they don't have access to certain data?
As I said, laws that prohibit companies like Apple from disclosing something are very different from laws that force them to affirmatively make false statements.
Your citation falls in the first category. I’m well aware that such laws do exist, and I alluded to some of them in my comment (e.g. National Security Letters).
But a law that allowing the government to oblige Apple to lie about whether they can access iCloud, as you said exists, would fall in the second category. This would go far beyond simply prohibiting a disclosure.
Can you identify any US law in the second category? Not only don’t I believe that such a law exists, other more ordinary laws like the FTC Act make many such lies illegal in the commercial context.
> As I said, laws that prohibit companies like Apple from disclosing something are very different from laws that force them to affirmatively make false statements.
1. Apple tells users that they don't snoop on iCloud data, and sprinkles this marketing statement by assuring users that they are literally incapable of doing so.
2. US government lawfully forces Apple to gather and share intelligence, with an adjacent gag order. Apple changes a few settings on their backed and issues updates to to iPhones, along with publicly disclosed changes. Apple - as any business wishing to still exist in a year (or the management wishing to keep their seats) - complies with government's demands to the letter.
3. Gag order literally renders Apple and any person aware, [edit: s/incapable/disallowed/] of stating "we started logging this data" or "we have not been logging this data in the past, but..."
4. Apple logs and shares data, has to lie to customers to abide the law.
I trust apple, because I trust greed. They get a lot of loyalty because people they aren’t data mining their iPhone for health and ad information. I mean they could be, but I haven’t seen it, and it would be a bombshell. I still believe that apple is a hardware company first and everything else second. I would leave them and go back to android if they just became Android 2.0. I never really had a problem with android other than the massive data mining and wide open permissions apps had to rifle through your data (much improved however in recent versions, I understand)
Nice. I hope that eventually they will force app stores to allow users to resell/inherit/gift digital goods such as apps.
If I can sell something physical that I don't need anymore, I should be able to do so with the things I "bought" on, let's say, Steam.
If that happens, prices may have to go up, that mathematical. Currently lots of people bought digital stuff they don’t need anymore. If they resell, people buying it don’t need to buy it from somewhere else.
I know it’s not really a zero sum game, but it’s obvious it would have a significant impact.
And I’m not even talking about media, which I’m sure some platform would start mass renting/selling in a fully automated fashion (upload all your licenses, watch whatever you want anytime because there will always be somewhere a license which is unused and a copy of the movie which is not actively watched at this moment). Basically they would only sell as many copies as the peak number of simultaneous watchers…
That would be amazing actually.
> If that happens, prices may have to go up, that mathematical.
I'd expect the opposite: competition between the "used" and the "new" markets would drive prices down, not up. Mathematically, you'd be increasing the supply, while keeping the demand nearly the same, which in the traditional supply and demand model means lower prices.
So how are the developers who make these products going to get paid?
When you resell a physical item it’s worn and costs time & effort to resell. Software is very different. That means no one would ever buy the software from the developer once a few copies are sold and can be passed around.
That would force SaaS even harder, since developers would need to justify it being a license.
> allow users to resell/inherit/gift digital goods such as apps.
Users can't gift/resell what they don't own ;-)
All that will happen is that all software will move to a SaaS or IAP model.
As well as making the most expensive price the same globally e.g. buying apps in Bangladesh to resell in the US.
Making the entire industry worse off for everyone else except you.
Or lower the prices for everyone. Why does Adobe Photoshop still cost a small fortune. Hasn’t improved much for the last two decades has it? Why can’t I rent it from my buddy for the few hours a month I might use it?
Does it really cost a “small fortune”? You can “rent” Photoshop from Adobe for 3¢ an hour. Way back when you could buy a permanent license for PS, you were looking at about $700, which is just shy of 3 years at the current subscription rates.
There is a 20x difference in the price of Youtube across various countries:
https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-premium-cost-around...
The idea that every developer is going to reduce their revenue by 20x is delusional.
That's regional pricing.
Or, take the geometric mean of all the existing prices.
> All that will happen is that all software will move to a SaaS or IAP model.
Seems a little to late for that, everything is a bloody in-app purchase or subscription already. I really wish I could filter out apps with in-app purchases or subscriptions when searching the app store, but that would probably ruin the business of countless companies.
To play devils advocate, couldn’t that allow a single purchase of a movie to be watched by millions of people? At which point no studio would sell it digitally.
In theory this could’ve happened with DVDs, but it was too much hassle for a single disc to be shared by that many people.
You could compromise with restrictions on how many times a file could be sold etc, but that concedes the point of a digital good not really being your property. And it might be used as a Trojan horse for even more DRM and surveillance.
I don't feel like this would be a major issue in practice. People can already pirate, sneak into the theater, etc., if they want to game the system.
Most people aren't interested in routinely selling and buying their media, so I would wager that most digital copies will end up on the digital "shelf" just like physical copies do, rather than being routinely sold off.
One person could buy a million ‘new’ units of a movie and continuously rent them out (via short term repurchase agreements) on demand to make something resembling a streaming site.
I don't see why that's an issue, either. A library can already buy multiple copies of books/ games and loan them out. It's not streaming, sure, but somebody with a little patience can avoid buying a copy by just going to the library.
Check out Hoopla [0]
> Borrow and enjoy audiobooks, eBooks, comics, movies, TV, magazines, or music everywhere you have a screen-your computer, your phone, your car, even your TV. All you need is a library card.
Also, Libby [1]
[0]https://www.hoopladigital.com
[1]https://libbyapp.com
I can’t quite tell if this is satire! You may be familiar with a small startup (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix) in the business of buying a million DVDs and continuously renting them out on demand to make something resembling a video rental store.
I'm pretty sure that even video rentals were not allowed without the consent of the copyright holder. The videotapes or DVDs you could buy at retail weren't licensed for commercial use.
Lending them without cost, like a library, I don't think they could stop you. But commercially renting out the physical media wasn't an automatic right, as far as I know.
It would be trivial to automate the process of selling unused digital goods.
In theory, same is very much applicable for nearly all non-hygienic physical goods, but that did not make any business to stop.
A popular book can change hand a million times and save a lot of money, carbon emission, tree cutting, paper production cost, transport and logistics. The problem is careful usage and patience, i.e. not spilling coffee or food and waiting may be a year before a copy is available.
Isn't there a quote about how if libraries didn't already exist, they couldn't be created in the modern day?
How long would millions of sequential hours of watching take for the devil to have its due?
> To play devils advocate, couldn’t that allow a single purchase of a movie to be watched by millions of people? At which point no studio would sell it digitally.
You're not thinking creatively enough. One day, somebody's going to use the law and make the "sales" API-driven. This will then turn it into a rental service where you can "buy" a game for two hours for $37.50 and then "sell" the game back to the mother ship for $36.50 of credit. The mother ship being, of course, whatever VC firm puts millions into having the world's largest Steam account.
I don't have to like the current ecosystem of no-transfers and DRM, to acknowledge breaking all that down would have major economic consequences against studios. Right now is especially not the time to be asking for this, because the whole video game industry is in deep financial trouble at the moment.
Isn't that just a (expensive) library? And libraries are constantly being lobbied against by publishing groups, yet there doesn't seem to be major harm (financial) caused by them.
The difference is that libraries are local and so the impact is minimal.
With software you can share it out to anyone in the world.
Why is this worse than a company renting out physical copies, though? This is the way games rentals work for physical copies. The renter buys one copy and rents it out numerous times. (It's also the way libraries work for books, of course.)
The amount of time makes a practical difference.
Books you take out for a week or more usually, games rentals and films (from the olden days when I'd get to go to an actual store) were at least several days.
Renting a film is something you could do from the second you start watching it to the second it finishes. Going from a few days to hours makes this in the region of 10-100 times faster turnaround.
Having to physically move things just adds significant time.
I'm still not seeing it the issue, though. A significant portion of the world's population lives within a short distance of a library. Even if each individual library branch serves a relatively small chunk of the population, the collection of libraries effectively makes a global network that enables people to almost instantaneously rent books, movies, and games. Having this exist out in the world really doesn't ruin things.
It's nowhere near instantaneous for physical items. I live near a library and it's a drive or a half hour walk away, open a few days a week during shortened times. That's nothing like clicking a button and renting a film for exactly the length I watch it for.
Oh dear, imagine if people bought a bunch of books, let’s say Harry Potter, and then let anyone come in and read books for a fee! Or even rent them! would be horrible!
Isn’t it hilarious how having property rights and freedoms over Things You Paid For is now unthinkable??
The challenge with digital goods is having a system where multiple people can have property rights.
Digitising your library example, would likely result in a price of zero. Someone like Apple would be well placed to turn its books app into a library of books it purchased once. And use this to get more hardware sales.
The current system of only one entity having rights isn’t desirable. But alternatives aren’t easy. Even if you tried to rule out sales for profit then marketplaces and bulletin boards would make things complicated.
Cannot be resold for a year after last purchase.
Maybe we'll see these changes sooner rather than later
Since you have "bought" in quotes, you realize it's not the same as something physical, so why should it follow the same rules?
Genuine question ...
Why doesn't the EU apply these same rules to video game consoles (Xbox/PlayStation)?
They arguably have an even more restrictive environment than iOS.
Phones has become everyday items (and as a sibling comment pointed out, gone past the DSA regulation threshhold), homeless people in the Stockholm subway will go around with crappy Androids asking for "Swish" (immediate money transfer app, used for P2P and other fast small amount transactions around here like restaurants and at open air markets).
Low-tech people often don't bother buying new computers since their phones are required for banking (BankID identification) whilst the computer is optional.
> They arguably have an even more restrictive environment than iOS.
Yet they inarguably have less marketshare and a reduced role in citizens’ lives. Modern living in society necessitates some digital access to the internet. Even homeless people have smartphones. Yet all those crucial interactions are mediated by devices controlled by too few players, meaning that a couple of foreign rich companies dictate too much of what you can do and have provably and repeatedly abused that power to entrench themselves further.
Consoles are entirely different, people don’t depend on them for interacting with society.
Who’s to say they won’t at some point?
This isn’t about punishing Apple.
It’s about economic opportunity for EU citizens and businesses.
The EU has a responsibility to promote the prosperity of its citizens. If that means dictating how a US company does business, then that’s what they are going to do. Which is the EUs prerogative.
As an aside, and something that is seldom mentioned, but if Apple and the other trillion dollar tech giants just paid their fair share of taxes then they may not be in this mess!
[dead]
Can the XBox or PlayStation let users access online banking and manage assets?
PS4 has the browser, so yes.
I'd love to see someone pull out a console in the town square to make payments.
The answer is no.
The original point was “let users access online banking and manage assets”, not whether you could “pull [it] out in the town square to make payments”. As an aside, why the town square? It’s oddly specific and is a phrase I’ve mostly read in stupid comments about Twitter in the last couple of years.
Anyway, please consider stopping trolling.
> The original point was “let users access online banking and manage assets”,
e.g. Can you pay for groceries with it like you can with a phone? Can you use it to pay for food at a restaurant, buy train tickets, or many other things are in many cases cashless.
"access online banking and manage asset" is a shorter way of saying all of the myriad of ways people need to use online banking day to day.
> a phrase I’ve mostly read in stupid comments about Twitter in the last couple of years.
I try not to read stupid content so I don't know.
> Anyway, please consider stopping trolling.
The irony.
The PS5's browser is hidden (it'll pop up when clicking links in Youtube video descriptions, etc), but it seems that the XBox one is just there to be used.
So, yes.
Having a browser online does not mean you can do your banking. It just means you have a browser. It's also almost guaranteed to not be a browser supported by the banks. Not to mention the myriad of other things that mobile phones provide in the context of mobile phones.
The answer is only "yes" if you ignore reality.
There are serious problems with this reasoning. A bank supporting a platform or not does not change the nature of that platform. That would be stupid.
The nature of those platforms is they're devices to play video games specifically made for them.
Yes, they're computers, but so is your washing machine. But these aren't general purpose computing devices. To me, it makes no sense to enforce a free-for-all for those.
Phones are, honestly, more of an obvious first target, and harder for the manufacturers to argue about. Everyone has a smartphone. Game console sales in Europe are in the 5-10 million/year range, by contrast. And only one of the console manufacturers (Microsoft) is covered by the DMA at all, AFAIK; the other two just aren't significant enough.
That said, I wouldn't be amazed if attention is paid to consoles sooner or later, possibly bundled in with smarttvs.
You have to start somewhere maybe? Might as well be the 1800lb gorilla
> Genuine question ...
It's so genuine that it's asked in every single thread on this topic.
There's more than one person in these threads. It's entirely possible (in fact, it's actuality), that the people asking it before are not those asking it now.
From the rules: do not assume astroturfing or that others are non-genuine.
I didn't assume astroturfing, I assumed that it wasn't actually genuine. Most things that people say are genuine, there is no need to say, "genuine question!"
Because none of them have sold enough units to count as very large platforms under the DSA.
Both XBox and PlayStation have more MAU than what the DSA states as the threshold.
[0] https://www.eu-digital-services-act.com/[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/531063/xbox-live-mau-num...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/272639/number-of-registe...
That's global, not Europe.
Huh? They play video games; not provide your portal into the entire digital world and life that is unavoidable in the modern day.
Same thing for some people.
What do you mean? I’ve never heard of a bank force you to login with a PlayStation or Xbox, but they do often force you to use the iOS or android apps for various functionality.
Why gate such a basic functionality for users in the European Union? People elsewhere do not have access to alternative app stores anyway. Is allowing them to uninstall such apps too much?
Apple aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their own hearts, they’re being forced to by the EU. So unless their hand is being forced elsewhere they’re not going to do it.
Yup. You can bet most developed countries will start to follow suit now. Remember Apple's argument before they exhausted their appeals with the EU was that they could never do any of this, and the sky would fall, and their whole business would be destroyed. Now, that will have been proven to be absolute poppycock as they begin to abide by all these regulations in this one (large) region. I expect regulators in Japan, UK, Australia, etc. will start to say "Yeah, we want that too." And Apple has zero plausible argument left for why consumers everywhere else don't deserve or can't have the same level of choice.
Obviously not in America though, since we don't have a functioning government, just an executive branch that doesn't have the support of Congress, and a judicial branch that believes strongly that only an act of Congress could create the authority needed to actually rein them in. And a Congress which would ideally like to avoid doing any legislating besides passing a continuing resolution or debt ceiling bill every now and then, since there's too much fundraising work to do.
I think GP’s point is that in this case gating the feature is extra work with zero benefit for Apple², so why not just do it anyway³?
¹ At the very least more code and cases and testing where it could go wrong.
² Maybe reduced support calls?
³ Spite could be a reason.
Zero benefit? They get to keep a captive audience using the App Store. What's not to like?
That makes no sense. If you’re the type of person who’d want to delete the App Store app despite not having access to alternatives, you’re not someone who’d ever want it or use it or buy from it.
Because it doesn't benefit Apple to allow you to uninstall these apps.
I mean, on their own, many of the core apps probably don’t bring much revenue to Apple. I can understand their reluctance to allow uninstalling the App Store, but what do they gain by preventing someone from uninstalling the Camera, for instance? Those who want to do so will use an alternative app anyway.
Safari generates billions of dollars in revenue for Apple through the default search engine deal with Google.
Google lost an antitrust case specifically because of that, so doesn’t look like that’s a deal that can continue.
https://www.ghacks.net/2024/08/07/u-s-judge-rules-that-googl...
You’re right, I forgot about that.
Because you'll have users who do it by accident and lose basic hardware functionality of their device without knowing how to fix it
I don't know why this is downvoted. There are definitely a ton of users who will accidentally delete the camera and then complain their phone is broken, wasting everyone's time.
People have already apps they can delete. And when they do it by mistake, they just go to the App Store to download it again, wasting nobody’s time. Why would it be any different?
There’s just need to be a button in the settings if the App Store itself is deleted.
-
The EU forced them. Apple has been fighting pretty hard to not have to do any of these changes, it seems they gave up
Folks in USA/CA would remove Safari and then return phone to the carrier/Apple as defective. No, I'm not kidding. I saw that multiple times - Windows messed on laptop? Laptop within return window? Return it is!
Eh, people return their devices because don't know how to correctly use them all the time, I don't see how it is different here. And people definitely don't need to intentionally do this -- in the US, most major retailers allow you to return opened products within the return window (although it could get complicated with so-called "activatable devices")
> I don't see how it is different here.
iPhones are almost 'idiot proof' for a lack of a better description. Allowing removal ( or rather hiding ) of the apps will 'break' that impression.
I'm surely in favour of making iPhones/IPads general computers, but that not going to happen. Those legislations from EU are no help.
There are already a ton of default apps that can be removed, so I don't see how this matters.
The only thing I don't understand is the App Store, since today that's the place you go if you have "deleted" say, Notes or Music, and want it back. I guess they'll have to add a button in Settings or something called "Restore App Store."
And while people in general are certainly idiots and will certainly find a way to screw up, I don't think it's going to be a massive big deal to tell them "go to the App store and redownload _____" (plus whatever the way is to put the App Store back). We all know that the way to get it back isn't going to be like, SSH into the phone. Apple will have some way to do it that takes 10 seconds when people call into AppleCare, or literally the first person you see at the Apple Store will know about it.
i must be an idiot. As an iphone user for about a year i'm constantly confused what's happening or stuck on some screen or can't find what i need or mysteriously trigger some screen or popup.
It's not even a matter of whether the user knows how to use their device. I've seen plenty of Windows laptops shipped with a somewhat-broken software configuration out of the box, and on multiple occasions I've seen two "identical" machines fresh out of the box get offered different software updates with the end result that a few hours and several reboots later, one system is noticeably misbehaving.
cause they dont need to, if Apple isn’t forced to give up their deathgrip on the user they won’t.
I’m sure a non-trivial number of users would delete apps that are required for basic functionality. Stopping them prevents support issues that could require resetting to factory settings, if they didn’t add some other way to get the App Store back.
It is mentionned in the article that the apps that can be uninstall have a quick reinstall option in the settings.
Sounds anti-competitive to have special install options for your own apps right in the settings menu of the device...
/s
Definitely. I’ve had family members delete a bunch of the stock apps and then complained to me that various fitness and health functions stopped working. Turns out the fitness and health apps were important.
Is that really sufficient justification for stopping users from having more control over their device?
Like should we really let the 'Grandma Finds the Internet'[0] meme be the reason that you and I can't make decisions for ourselves?
Whatever cost savings that Apple has from avoiding support for these people is dwarfed by the money they make from stopping competitors to these apps from growing due to these control mechanisms.
That's the real reason apple doesn't want to do this and has to be kicked dragging and screaming by the EU.
[0] https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/Grandma-Finds-The-Internet
> Is that really sufficient justification for stopping users from having more control over their device?
People who want more control over their devices; have Android. Not all solutions need fit all desires.
That isn't enough.
The public interest is served by the end users having more control over their devices than Android and Apple currently offer.
Forcing both companies to have the same features reduces customer choice in the overall market. Some people want to choose the simple curated experience and the EU and others backing their decisions are removing that option from the market. iOS has already become significantly more complex over the years and this keeps dialing up the complexity and areas where a user can get tripped up.
The support calls I’ve received from family since they all moved to Apple have dropped dramatically. It may not be the platform for you, but it’s the platform a lot of people prefer. This is because of the curation, not in spite of it. Infinite choice and control means an infinite potential for problems. A lot of people don’t want that. If they did, desktop Linux would be mainstream instead of a meme.
I like that open platforms exist, but I also like that other platforms exist that don’t require much effort. Rarely do those things exist in a single package. I don’t know why people, who I only assume don’t use Apple products, feel the need to change them and take away what people like.
Not being able to delete literally everything doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. Especially when those apps are ones a significant number of other applications assume exist and try to interact with. Where is the line? Or is there no line? Will people try to compel Apple to keep removing stuff until iOS boots up to a prompt where the user can net boot the OS of their choice?
> reduces customer choice in the overall market
What is this bollocks? Slavery being illegal "reduces customer choice in the overall market". Being compelled to clean up industrial waste rather than pump it straight into the air and rivers "reduces customer choice in the overall market". Being required to be honest about financial investments "reduces customer choice in the overall market" - the market for RUBES.
The EU is not compelling Apple to remove anything, it's compelling Apple to offer their end-users the CHOICE to use third-party apps and app-stores where Apple mercilessly locked it all down for their own financial benefit - deliberately calculating what would benefit them the most.
You know who reduces customer choice? Apple. When they lock you in for their own benefit.
"I think this is all pretty simple — iBooks is going to be the only bookstore on iOS devices. We need to hold our heads high. One can read books bought elsewhere, just not buy/rent/subscribe from iOS without paying us, which we acknowledge is prohibitive for many things." https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/31/emails-apple-blocked-ki...
...the executive wrote to Jobs about [an ad promoting cross-platform compatibility], saying that one “message that can’t be missed is that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android. Not fun to watch.” The suit doesn’t quote Jobs' response at length, but says he wrote that Apple would “force” developers to use its payment system to lock in both developers and users on its platform. https://www.wired.com/story/4-internal-apple-emails-helped-d...
>Slavery [...] industrial waste [...]
Only on HN will you see the ability to uninstall a phone app be contrasted with slavery and industrial waste.
All three are outcomes of unfettered capitalism.
If laws and regulations are not vigourously enforced, companies will do anything they can get away with. Including kidnapping, torture, starting wars, poisoning millions, and in this case abusing a monopoly in one area to force out competition in others and enrich themselves by depriving people of choice. Like Standard Oil before them. Do you want the robber barons back?
> This is because of the curation, not in spite of it. Infinite choice and control means an infinite potential for problems. A lot of people don’t want that.
And those people don't have to opt into the unclean world of freedom that hasn't been blessed by Apple. All your family would need to do is NOT check the box that says "Let me explore outside this walled garden", which would be accompanied with a plethora of scaremongering confirmation screens.
I think we’ve all met the people who know just enough to be dangerous, while overestimating their abilities. These were always the worst support calls when I was younger, and are the co-workers that give me pause was setting up access for the team.
Not everyone who receives a computing device is the same one who set it up. I’ve told this story before but I’ll repeat it because it’s illustrative. Back when MacBooks ran intel processors and bootcamp was both new (and explicitly unsupported) I spent a few hours assisting a new and very irate customer in figuring out why their new MacBook was having all sort of problems that as they described it were not possible in macOS or had already been solved by software/firmware updates. Turns out they’d bought their new MacBook and given it to their nephew who was “smart with computers” to set up. Said nephew decided on their own that what their aunt needed was not a MacBook running macOS but an expensive windows laptop. So they installed bootcamp, installed windows, shrank the mac boot partition to the smallest it could be and configured it to boot directly into windows. As a result, all their usual issues with windows were still present and firmware updates weren’t being installed because it never booted to macOS to run the macOS software updates. I spent a few hours with the woman explaining what her nephew had done, the general concept of an OS/dual booting and fixing things so she could use the MacBook as a mac, without losing data in a drive re-partition. The reality is that not every end user is making informed decisions about their devices, and not only does that harm the user, but it also harms Apple. From their perspective I spent hours supporting unsupported software and trying to repair their brand and reputation in the eyes of an irate customer for something that wasn’t even their fault, and caused by giving other people the choice to leave the curated path. That customer later became one of our better customers, but if they hadn’t happened to get the store employee who understood bootcamp, and who had a manager that would allow them to spend that time supporting unsupported software, they might have both never been a customer and been an active detractor.
It's really illustrative into the mind of Apple fans that your takeaway from this wasn't that "dumb opinionated teenagers make stupid choices" and rather that "It's a good thing we're rid of Boot Camp, and it should be physically impossible to end up with a poorly configured Apple device, the heck with the consequences for people who know what they're doing.
You can't protect people from their absolute ignorance or in that case active sabotage. And the costs to society of having our only two mobile platforms both engaging in lots of anticompetitive behavior, are huge. Not to mention that if I want any choice at all in anything I apparently have to 'choose' Android, which I don't even like to use, due to the fact that in the US (and backed up by every job I've had) companies develop the iOS version of their app with great care, and farm out the Android version to some distant contractor, and since no executive has an Android device to even try it, no one above IC level even knows their Android app is a buggy pile of trash. All of this is not even due to any inherent qualities or policies of either platform, just that rich people all buy Apple devices.
I think you’re trying too hard to squash a nuanced post into some fan binary where you’re either for or against Apple, starting with making a strong claim which the person you’re replying to never made.
GP post wasn’t that nuanced; it strongly implied that since granny gave her Mac to her silly nephew for setup and had a bad time, that justifies stripping the supposed owners of all Apple devices of meaningful control of those devices. An unsurprising take from someone who sounds like he may be a onetime or current Apple employee.
I think what makes someone a “fan” is that complete trust of Apple to do “What’s Best,” a completely coincidental perfect harmony between “What’s Best” and Apple’s financial interest, and the suggestion that the platform(s) simply aren’t “for” people like me who want any choice whatsoever, and we should just F off to Android if we don’t like it because ceding us any control would somehow explode the “safe, easy” walled garden by its very availability, a completely bogus argument.
You’re again putting words in their mouth. That post illustrated that this is not a simple binary, having real costs to that flexibility. I think your feelings are valid emotions but they’re leading you astray by thinking that Apple’s customers are not making a rational choice.
I also note that you can install non-Apple operating systems on the latest hardware and they even put engineering time into supporting that and making it safer for Mac users to do so.
The world is a better place because the government mandated interoperability between POTS telephones and that car manufacturers must be supply owners with parts that can be installed by any mechanic.
We can and will have the best of both worlds with open devices that are user friendly. Apple has the resources both financial and technical to make this happen. It's just a matter of regulators making them do it.
I thank the EU for pushing companies like Apple in the right direction first with USB-C, 3rd party app stores and now this.
> Will people try to compel Apple to keep removing stuff until iOS boots up to a prompt where the user can net boot the OS of their choice?
Hopefully regulators will compel Apple to open their mobile devices up the same way that their personal computers are. If I can install linux on my macbook why can't I install it on my iPhone? It doesn't affect people like your grandmother one bit.
Some Mac Genius commented up thread claiming that because someone's grandson secretly installed Boot Camp and converted her MacBook to Windows (with dumb consequences), nobody should be able to make significant choices about how to use ~their~ I mean Apple's, computers.
And push Apple to improve their default apps
Releasing it as a feature everywhere would require at least a bit of public explanation and might give the appearance that EU forced Apple into doing something good for everyone. Being petty and releasing the bare minimum georestricted only to EU requires no public explanation and gives more the appearance that this is some dumb law Apple was forced to comply with. At least that's probably their thinking.
That is probably a more likely explanation that "because it would lose them money".
I suspect that the number of people who are actively going to switch to a different App Store is minimal. Users can already install other browsers, even if they are still using WebView, same of messaging apps and I doubt that many would care to replace the camera app. Photos maybe, but is that really a huge lose for Apple? That saves them from storing your photos.
People on HN is often assuming that people would leave the App Store in droves, if given to option. I really don't see that happening.
If I buy a phone in the EU can I keep this ability everywhere even with a UK Apple ID? Seems pretty nice having everything separate like this. I hope it forces them to allow different browser engines than Safari too.
No. Apple spent a lot of time and money building a service called "countryd" with the sole purpose of making sure that people outside the EU can't use any of the features that they already did the work to develop anyway.
this one?
https://theapplewiki.com/wiki/Filesystem:/usr/libexec/countr...
> countryd determines the user's physical country based on multiple characteristics. It is used by the eligibility system to ensure it is difficult to spoof the user's true physical location. It was introduced in iOS 16.2 and macOS 13.0.
Creepy that they feel the need to know exactly where you are IMO...
i'm guessing it's an indirect requirement from governments (e.g. "on our territory it's illegal to use the internet/device for X").
Meh, if they were really doing favors for governments they'd do something to nerf VPN software for places like China. I'm pretty sure this was created to serve Apple's intere$t$ first and foremost
I'm assuming at some point they'll move away from bespoke ROM-level settings like "Japan-bought iPhones always have a shutter sound" or "Chinese iPhones use the term "WLAN" instead of "WiFi", and instead path all of that through `countryd`. Maybe for WiFi and cellular regulations also.
How wonderful of Apple to make sure non-EU citizens are protected from the terrible dangers of freedom to choose, forced upon EU iOS users by the tyrannical EU government /s
Theoretically this ability should remain active regardless of using a UK Apple ID, as it's tied to the device's region
After staying in one region consistently, all the big tech companies will automatically switch your region for you. Some might take longer to force you than others, but it’s not certain that you can forever stay on another region.
But what makes most people have to switch eventually is a bank/government app that is region locked and you need it to live your life without pulling your hair out jumping through stupid hoops.
A VPN and two devices is the only way to stay truly separate from the region you live in full time over the long term.
> After staying in one region consistently, all the big tech companies will automatically switch your region for you.
I have been using an iPhone with a British Apple ID and the British App Store, and the UK regional settings on some devices despite not living there anymore for a couple of years now. I am fairly confident switching countries requires the user to do it consciously.
[edit] for this feature specifically, they are more aggressive: https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/7/24093437/apple-iphone-thir...
I don’t think they change anything about your accounts or device settings themselves, though.
Both iOS and Google Play allow you to install apps from two different accounts (each in a different region) on the same device.
So you can have a single iPhone with both US and UK banking apps. Same for Pixel.
How does this work on ios? In my experience, a phone can only have one apple ID at a time.
Sign out of the app store. Sign in with a different ID. Install the app you want. Sign out again.
The apple ID used for the app store doesn't have to be the same as the apple ID for Facetime, Messages etc. You don't even need to be signed in to the app store to use an app that's already installed.
I'm sure if you jailbreak the phone, you'll be able to enable this capability natively.
Sorry if it's a sore question, but is the UK in the EU (For the purposes of Apple's DMA compliance)?
Edit: best I could find is "no", according to techcrunch from August 2024
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/21/uks-competition-authority-...
I wonder, if another country were to leave the EU in the future, would Apple actually go in and modify the code (or enable a server flag) to remove the feature from all of those country's users' devices?
It just seems so wrong to own a device, but still have the manufacturer dictate what that device is allowed to do, AND they have the ability to change those capabilities at will. It feels like buying a physical calculator, where the manufacturer can one day wave a magic wand and I lose the "divide" button. I'm generally an Apple fan and I get that people like Apple's "walled garden" but even to me this seems like an abuse.
They need to do that anyway, because the laws depend on the country. There is no other option: different sets of laws are often incompatible, there is not always a common subset that works everywhere. So the behaviour of the device has to change depending on the location.
But yes, it is silly in this specific case. I’d like someone to explain credibly why letting users delete apps is wrong. In the worst case it’s a minor pain and the user has to re-download it from the store. These apps are thin UI layers over system frameworks anyway.
> the behavior of the device has to change depending on the location.
That wasn't the case in a previous era. A country could make a decision that says division is illegal and ban new 4-function calculators, but all the calculators made before that would still work the same. Banned books could still be read if you already had them. Today thanks to the double-edged sword of constant connectivity, it's plausible that Apple can just add and delete features when you pass over physical borders, meaning that the set of functionality you buy is increasingly ill-defined. You don't own a phone, you just own a conditional license to the iPhone experience, which they'll tweak over time to comply with various governments on the most limited geographic scale possible while maximizing their revenue.
None of this is that shocking or interesting now that we're used to it, but it's annoying that we don't own or control the devices we buy and can't even guarantee they keep a certain feature set.
It used to be, it's not anymore.
No, it is not!
Brexit meant leaving the EU.
Look at all the freedom we gained in the UK!
EU iOS is the closest thing to a OS X like experience on iPhones. Wish these features came to more regions.
No, it's not close at all. macOS allows you to sideload, EU iOS still does not. macOS allows you to write programs for your own device without paying Apple $100 every year, EU iOS still does not. macOS provides an environment for general purpose computing, EU iOS still does not.
Maybe not for long though: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/commission-sends-pr...
You can turn developer mode on an iPhone and write programs on it for “free” as far as I can tell.
It's limited in time and number of apps, so not really
Gotta pay $100 a year for developer program.
Those apps are deactivated after 7 days unless you pay for an Apple Developer subscription. There's the non-EU version of the AltStore which attempts to circumvent this restriction, but it's a dirty hack and I expect Apple to patch it out eventually.
It doesn't circumvent anything, it just re-signs the apps so they continue working.
This. It's just one more annoying weekly chore to keep in mind, as the automatic backround refresh, in typical iOS fashion, only works when it feels like it. And doesn't work at all if you use energy saving mode.
The solution is as Apple as it gets: Pay up.
when you said "maybe not for long" I wondered if macos would be locked down...
Great first step, now if we could just get apple hardware without apple software and get full access to the subsystems with a linux or android instead of the iOS/OSx slop, even I would consider paying for it.
Are the apps actually uninstalled for real, or does the system just hide them to create the same appearance as uninstalling to satisfy legal requirements?
I suspect that Safari is still needed as a "webview" component for various services.
It is the reverse... Safari uses the webview.
Don’t they use a more cutting edge/faster version of webview and other browsers like firefox/chrome/brave get an older less optimized version?
Yes, (search) indeed they use WebKit [1] [2]. You also have the option to use WKWebView. But in this context you should use WKWebView if you want to access WebKit as a developer and be able to publish in the App Store. If you don't need to be accepted in the App Store you can use WebKit compiling it from the source.
[1] https://webkit.org/blog/15443/news-from-wwdc24-webkit-in-saf...
[2] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit
This is correct and I don’t understand why it is being downvoted at all. WebKit is a framework, Safari is an application that uses that framework.
Maybe but that's just semantics.
Sort of? Like, the way it at least used to work, is that there was a MobileSafari.app that used the UIWebDocument class from UIKit.framework and which in turn used WebKit. I don't think anyone is expecting Apple to uninstall the UI widgets that are being used by numerous existing third-party applications, and yet it is still meaningful to be able to delete the Safari "app".
It's not. None of the UI is present in webview. Webview is just the 'rendering pane'.
No, it is not. Just create an app in Xcode and see that you have a WebView component. Easy to check: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit/webview
I have the same suspicion
They are part of the iOS System partition, so almost certainly just hidden. Considering that the entire point is to improve competitiveness, hidden is almost certainly good enough, as it's not the EU's job to be disk space czars.
Beyond just that, if you uninstall the app store, how would you get it back without it already being available on-device? You'd probably need Safari but then if that's removed too?
> Apps that are removed, such as the App Store , can be re-downloaded using an "App Installation" section in the Settings app.
Whether that's really a redownload or restore from disk cache probably doesn't matter unless the EU starts to argue that it being available with 0 latency from disk is a competitive advantage.
They'd need some hook to get the app store back if you really uninstalled everything.
Worst case, a box where you type in the url for an ipa (and a restriction that you must have at least one keyboard installed; although if your keyboard always crashes...)
Even worse case, use iTunes on a computer to push apps to the phone, although that imposes a requirement of access to a computer. Maybe a way to push apps between iPhones.
> if you uninstall the app store, how would you get it back without it already being available on-device
via a different install mechanism? How do you install Windows apps without MS store?
What does Windows have to do with this?
It serves as an example of what is possible
Or you know, just keep it around on disk without removing it fully. The bigger issue is I’m surprised they’re being allowed to remain the default. I wonder why the different tack vs what they forced Windows to do with IE in Europe.
The following is a wildly optimistic speculation here since we're talking about government bureaucrats here, but perhaps they noticed that in the Windows/IE case:
- The choice screen thing didn't make one lick of difference, and:
- MSIE died of completely self-inflicted wounds anyway only a few years after this.
Perhaps these two facts, though they don't prove the 'choice screen' was bad, also did nothing to establish that approach as a proven way to promote competition, so regulators weren't moved to emulate it.
(Personally, I would argue that choice screens at a point in time when one option has overwhelming mindshare are pretty pointless. Everyone will choose the dominant one by recognition, except geeks who knew how to change defaults anyway, and confused newbies who are probably the ones who realistically should be using the most 'mainstream' option anyway.)
[flagged]
What is required to unlock all these EU goodies on iOS? An iCloud account on an EU country?
What happens if I have accounts in other countries and switch between them?
They track the physical location of your phone and revoke your access to them if you're ever out of the EU for a month. https://9to5mac.com/2023/04/25/ios-16-restrict-features-base... https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/7/24093437/apple-iphone-thir...
Huh, interesting. Thanks for the links!
What if I'm an EU resident whose bank or workplace security software are sideloaded or distributed by an alt store? What if I'm traveling for longer than a month? What if, to keep banking or working, I need an updated version of said apps?
F me for being away for longer than an arbitrary amount of time that Apple thinks characterises ... what?
The problem is not that I can’t use alternative apps - it’s that they don’t have access to various important system level features.
Some examples:
Only Messages and Mail can provide OTPs, again only when using the system keyboard.
When swiping the lock screen to the left, only the system Camera is allowed to appear.
When using navigation, only Apple Maps is allowed to provide the navigation overlay on the lock screen and Apple Watch.
After years, the default Mail app can be changed, but AFAICT that doesn’t do anything other than override mailto links. However, this functionality isn’t available for Calendar for example.
Similarly, you can’t override natural language Siri incantations to use your preferred apps. Like “message X” always uses Messages or “remind me of X” can only use Reminders. And alarms and timers can only use the Clock app.
I really want Apple to fix all of this, but I guess it’s easier to act like the “deletion” of system apps provides a level playing field. The real problem is that the default apps lack a lot of other features that only third parties provide - but Apple can’t be assed to improve them.
Equal access to core system functions for all apps is needed
Apple seems to have a culture of being assholes. "Okay, we'll comply, but here's the shittiest version of comply we can offer."
Yes, why would they go above and beyond to create unrecaptured expenses for themselves?
I mean, you as a human only ever pay the minimal price for a product that they will sell it to you for. Why would any other human do otherwise?
> why would they go above and beyond
Your parent comment isn’t suggesting they go “above and beyond”, they’re saying they don’t even do the bare minimum to comply. Those are wildly different things.
And as to why Apple would do it (either comply or go above and beyond), there are numerous reasons:
* To avoid government intervention. All the stuff they’re being forced to do was absolutely avoidable. The writing has been on the wall for long.
* To not have to keep paying fines.
* To not trash their reputation.
* For long-term customer satisfaction.
* So developers, which they depend on, don’t hate them. Just look at the Vision Pro, which shipped with no apps from the big players.
In short, being an asshole only made short-term business sense. In the long run, they should strive to do better.
Reasonably certain that when the parent wrote "We'll comply" they very explicitly said Apple is complying. Which removes the majority of your bullet points.
> they very explicitly said Apple is complying.
But they very much are not, which is a point the EU Commission continues to hammer on.
I guarantee you they have created "unrecaptured expenses" making it shitty.
The thing is most normal users don't really want random apps to be able to provide OTPs. While it would be nice to have an API for every system functionality like reminders where every app is allowed to register as the reminder app, it would necessitate far more complexity and far slower pace of development on the reminder interfacing.
This is where there is a big difference in what the ultra few power users want and what normal users want. Ultra power users want to be able to install an app file for a random app with app store like experience and with as less hurdles as possible, while normal users are very scared of receiving an apk file in whatsapp and installing it by mistake (there is a spectrum here and it's not binary).
> The thing is most normal users don't really want random apps to be able to provide OTPs.
You're right! But most normal users DO really want the app they CHOOSE to be able to provide OTPs!
They do, but they also want to be safe from being able to choose unexpectedly and doing this in a way that both protects the user and gives them choices is hard. I also want mobile OSes to be flexible but they should always err on the side of caution given most of their users don't have time and energy to understand how to use such features safely and correctly.
Could you explain the security problem you foresee? The Gmail app already has received an email which has the OTP in it. Why can’t it provide that to your keyboard? What’s the vulnerability here?
I used to think similarly. However in the past 4-5 years I have observed closely my non tech family member's usage of smartphones and they frequently install totally random apps, they have no idea what their default browser/keyboard is at any moment or how to change it and who frequently receive apks on whatsapp and almost always click on it (only the android hurdle against apks protects them) so on. Sure it might be fine for gmail to write OTP but what about abcdmail, what about go pro SMS style apps. I think there is a fine balance here between flexibility and non tech user safety.
You don’t need to invent a “random apps” strawman. Apple already restricts which apps can be used as default mail/browser, just allow them access to the same APIs.
Why not at least Gmail, Chrome, and gBoard? Millions of “non power users” use these apps over Apple’s offering.
Wohoo! EU is the land of freedom! Suck it, USA
What will happen if I uninstall Messages and someone sends me a text message?
Probably not much because everybody uses WhatsApp anyway ;) (in Europe that is)
Same thing that happens when someone sends you a message on any messaging platform when you don't have the app to view the message. It just sits unviewed by you.
And where will photos be saved? In a folder in the Files app? The horror!
The Photos app has been so deeply integrated into the OS it’s almost difficult to imagine it not being there.
Not that I would mind, I recently switched to Android so I can rsync my .dng files around, thankyouverymuch.
Has someone ever sent you a message while your phone was off?
If Apple was a European company, I really wonder if EU would be putting all these restrictions on Apple.
Yes EU would. Believe it or not, companies in the EU currently have to comply with the same EU laws.
There are zero EU companies designated as gatekeepers by the DMA. That will likely affect the dynamic of how the EU perceives any complaints about the law by companies.
Edit: I was incorrect. Booking.com, based in the EU, was added earlier this year. See below
> There are zero EU companies designated as gatekeepers by the DMA.
Not true. Booking.com is also designated as a gatekeeper and is based in the Netherlands. Yeah, they're the only one, but there are only seven designated gatekeepers total.
Ah thank you. I see my error, there were six non-EU companies originally designated last year. Booking was added earlier this year, and I missed that.
Though I would note that Booking.com are a subsidiary of an American company, Booking.
> Though I would note that Booking.com are a subsidiary of an American company, Booking.
Good point, yes. They were sold to Priceline.com in 2005 which has since renamed to Booking Holdings. However, they were founded in the Netherlands, are still based there (unlike their American parent company), and are still a major tech employer there. They’re European enough for this particular discussion.
Probably not, but in that case, the U.S. would fill that void instead. It's a wonderful symbiotic relationship where countries don't give a shit about other countries' pet companies. God forbid if the EU would actually be strict with the automotive industry of Germany. God forbid if the U.S. would actually be strict with their tech industry.
The EU wouldn't need to if the US gave a crap about regulating their own companies. What's the state of privacy regulations in the US? Anti-trust? Power cable standardisation? Nothing. Well then.
I'm not surprised though. Whenever companies are "forced" to abide by California's more stringent regulations (such as with cars), I always see Americans bitch and moan about how unfair it is. Instead of trying to improve things, some of you just don't seem to care about anything except the bottomline of some billion dollar corporation.
It's weird and disturbing.
> Instead of trying to improve things, some of you just don't seem to care about anything except the bottomline of some billion dollar corporation. > > It's weird and disturbing.
In that vein... https://www.wfae.org/energy-environment/2024-04-12/florida-b...
Yeah, and that's arguably the reason why there is no European Apple, or Facebook, or Google, or Microsoft...
OTH there's Spotify which isn't any better than Google, Facebook or Apple when it comes to enshittifying their user experience.
Also:
https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2023/imy-issue...
Popular soundbite but not true.
When the US was making leaps in technological and computing advancements around the 60s, one third of Europe was under the iron curtain and its economic stagnation. The other two thirds had just about finished rebuilding their infrastructure and amenities after World War 2.
The Marshall Plan led to the establishment of very strong trade relationships between the US and Europe, and it was a time of economic boom in the US. The Cold War led to technological advancements in computing, communication, and aerospace, where the US government funded much tech the like ARPANET to stay ahead of the Soviets in all these fields.
You take a stable business environment not disrupted by world wars, a government showering businesses with free hand-me-down technologies, and a huge economic boom fuelled by a whole continent of people suddenly looking to buy your products (some of which are computers), and you get Silicon Valley just a decade later.
When Woz was tinkering on the first Apple computers with Jobs, their peers in East Germany were looking for ways to go around the Berlin Wall. The economic circumstances and business opportunities couldn't have been more different.
Believe it or not, in the 1970s and 80s when Apple and Microsoft were born, Europe didn't have many of the consumer rights protections that it has today. It was largely focused on protecting its people from the USSR. In many European countries, consumer rights came into political focus only in the last 20 or so years.
Today things are different. European Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft all exist and I believe are incorporated in Ireland. These companies do a large portion of their business in Europe. And if you consider today's tech, EU is very competitive with the US. In fintech, Revolut, Klarna and Adyen have similar user numbers as US alternatives. In AI, Google DeepMind is and has always been a UK company, and Graphcore makes NVIDIA's specialised AI chips. In the EV space, you may have heard of Volkswagen, Porsche, Land Rover, etc. In the business environment, SAP dominates ERP worldwide. And in games, you may have heard of Ubisoft, CD Projekt Red, Arkane, Playground Games, and many other European companies. The list goes on and on.
The argument that Europe didn't form Silicon Valley post WW2 because of its current consumer protection laws is inane. Or that Europe doesn't have the same FANGMAN companies that operate in the US, or that it doesn't have strong tech competitors in the global space on the scale of FANGMAN. There were much larger forces at play than being able/not able to delete the App Store in the formation and development of tech hubs around the world.
I don't think your examples really prove your point. You include 100 year old auto manufacturers, companies long acquired by US tech giants, and a failing AI hardware company that has nothing to do with Nvidia. Probably the most valid example is SAP but even then it's in the slowest moving most bureaucratic ridden industry.
This is a good thing!
But it’s also a token gesture. Wake me up when I can ACTUALLY sideload apps and it’s possible to use a synchronization service other than iCloud.
Please Siri next, please, please, please.
You can disable Siri and there’s no app for it on the Home Screen. What exactly are you asking for?
Optionality.
What’s not optional about being able to disable it entirely?
Not being able to replace it with an alternative that is a first class citizen.
The difference in the comment section between the source and here is quite impressive.
I can't understand why people feel the need to throw so much hate in reaction to this kind of announcement.
There isn't even the beginning of a reflection, just pure hate.
It's sad, really.
Probably another instance of people who somehow couple the success of their chosen team/group to their own self-worth. Depending on the intensity of the manifestation, we call it national pride, gang affiliation or John Gruber.
Because you’re on a site where a lot of people believe in less regulation and more free market? I would guess that’s the thing. And people have strong opinions on both sides.
It’s really odd to me, too, seeing as that Apple products don’t scream overt conservatism, but clearly their product practices do.
I don't think that word "conservatism" mean what you think
It’s not just comment sections. Pundits with large following can be very much the same.
John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, is viciously anti-EU to the point he’s gone full looney.
A handful of days after Threads launched he called it “the most fun app of the year” or some nonsense, and made fun of people in the EU (this as DMA-related).
A few weeks ago I saw him compare the EU to Trump, only because some EU document had bolded words in a way he felt was haphazard.
Every time I’m faced with one his posts, the replies are now full of the “old man yells at cloud” image.
I tend to assume they either work for Apple, are in a business making obscene money with similar lock-in, or have learned the toxic behavior from those who are. It does seem unnatural.
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Nice nice nice! Finally some freedom for the consumer.
Is the purpose of this to help the EU build a tech giant? Protect consumers?
EU is seen as anti-competitive, but the reality is that it's Pro-Consumer...
...maybe too pro-consumer. Also the lack of a Google or Facebook etc is more of a result of it being harder to gain a critical mass of users. A social media company started in Poland would struggle to deal with the cultural and language differences with Holland. A more homogenous society such as the US doesn't have that issue.
Right, because every browser on iOS isn't obviously a Safari skin.
That's no longer a requirement since iOS 17.4 (also thanks to the EU, but also only for users in the EU):
https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...
Wow, the comments section in that website is so full of rednecks I can smell it.
What about Health.app? It collects data, and likely sends it to Apple, without user's permission. The permission to allow Apple / the app to collect data actually only allows _the_user_ to see the data collected earlier.
Get an iPhone, only after few months enable Health permissions and one will see all the data collected before one allowed data collection. Oh, and Apple absolutely knows which country the device is used in - they base sound level warning levels on specific country's laws.
No. Users can control what it collects and shares. Data stored in iCloud is not available to Apple.
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/health-app/
So Apple sucking the data from user's device to their cloud without permission is not data collection because Apple says it can't access iCloud data? Come on. It's a US-based corporation owning the keys to systems on both ends. They are obligated to release the data when requested. And they may be obligated to lie about it, also by law.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the US laws around things like the PRISM program, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, National Security Letters, etc have ever required companies to state affirmatively false things, and I suspect that any such law would be unconstitutional. All of those laws have only required companies to refrain from saying or disclosing things, which is very different.
Exactly which law in the US might allow the government to require Apple to falsely state that they don't have access to certain data?
Prohibition of Certain Disclosure under 18 U.S.C. § 2709(c) AKA "gag order".
As I said, laws that prohibit companies like Apple from disclosing something are very different from laws that force them to affirmatively make false statements.
Your citation falls in the first category. I’m well aware that such laws do exist, and I alluded to some of them in my comment (e.g. National Security Letters).
But a law that allowing the government to oblige Apple to lie about whether they can access iCloud, as you said exists, would fall in the second category. This would go far beyond simply prohibiting a disclosure.
Can you identify any US law in the second category? Not only don’t I believe that such a law exists, other more ordinary laws like the FTC Act make many such lies illegal in the commercial context.
> As I said, laws that prohibit companies like Apple from disclosing something are very different from laws that force them to affirmatively make false statements.
1. Apple tells users that they don't snoop on iCloud data, and sprinkles this marketing statement by assuring users that they are literally incapable of doing so.
2. US government lawfully forces Apple to gather and share intelligence, with an adjacent gag order. Apple changes a few settings on their backed and issues updates to to iPhones, along with publicly disclosed changes. Apple - as any business wishing to still exist in a year (or the management wishing to keep their seats) - complies with government's demands to the letter.
3. Gag order literally renders Apple and any person aware, [edit: s/incapable/disallowed/] of stating "we started logging this data" or "we have not been logging this data in the past, but..."
4. Apple logs and shares data, has to lie to customers to abide the law.
I trust apple, because I trust greed. They get a lot of loyalty because people they aren’t data mining their iPhone for health and ad information. I mean they could be, but I haven’t seen it, and it would be a bombshell. I still believe that apple is a hardware company first and everything else second. I would leave them and go back to android if they just became Android 2.0. I never really had a problem with android other than the massive data mining and wide open permissions apps had to rifle through your data (much improved however in recent versions, I understand)
It's not without permission.
Its not moved out of device without permission.
> They are obligated to release the data when requested
They don't own the keys on both ends. They are not obligated to have backdoors either.