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Apple Appeals EU Digital Markets Act Interoperability Rules
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You don’t and you can’t and that’s the purpose of software integration. Not to provide a platform for your competitors. (You can but you don’t have to) Why can’t I out my Porsche engine in a Honda civic. If the automotive industry was regulated by the DMA that would be a requirement.
No it’s not because that is fundamentally different and you know that
Because how can Bose for example produce software that integrates better than an actual apple product?
They shouldnt be allowed to. They can build software that sits on top of the platform but not in it. Or they can just build a Bluetooth speaker. iPhones support Bluetooth.
I disagree it’s fundamentally different.
When I say “if you want an open ecosystem buy an Android device” I get told that “open/closed ecosystem is just one of many reasons people buy a phone, so it’s reasonable to require Apple to open up even though many of its customers bought an iPhone because it was closed.”
And now the same people are saying “people only buy headphones because of how they integrate with their phone’s software”. Which I think is a ridiculous argument. People buy headphones for many reasons. Anyone buying headphones for the best sound quality isn’t going to buy AirPods no matter how seamlessly they connect to their devices.
Make an overall better product and people will buy it! Most people pair headphones once and then never again. Or build more comfortable headphones, or cheaper headphones. Plenty of ways to compete. Just because “ease of integration” is your #1 feature doesn’t mean it’s everyone’s.
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Apple designs the OS and device.
Design a better OS and device. Then build better connectivity.
Ok so a company that makes only headphones have now to build an entire OS
Because certain people don’t like the DMA
Same goes for Amazon: if you want your products to be shown 1st in the search, you build your own store.
Same goes for Tesla Supercharging: if you want your EV to be charged cheaper than Tesla's Supercharging, you build your own charging network
Same goes for Playstation: if you want your games to perform better than Sony's first party video games, build your own gaming console so that you have access to low level APIs generally reserved for first party developers
Same goes for Netflix: if you want your TV show to be recommended at the home page, build your own streaming service
and so on.
Why should people who built the infrastructure/platform let you freeload off of their work? They did the hard work, you should too if you want to compete.
Exactly. The DMA isn’t an enabler is a disabler. It’s a disabler of innovation. Nowhere else in the world are vendors entitled to their suppliers ip, unless by some prior agreement.
Yeah, because I would rather have one optimised choice (think about how there may be a lot of options of android wear watches, but they all kinda face the same issues, and you don’t really have the android equivalent of the Apple Watch Ultra), then have a ton of options that all suck equally.
Mac is in most perspective not great due to the lack of software and hardware choices. No 4090 in the Mac and there is tons of professional software missing. Mac is good for some managers ( like myself) but gives you lots of headache in the corporate world.
Strange to defend a position that essentially only allows Apple peripherals to function optimal iPhone, Mac, iPad. The reason Mac never will be dominating is due to similar mechanisms. The idea with connectivity is free choice of peripherals but Apple hamstrung the competitors . Likely to stay competitive. Reminds me of tariffs to shield some producers from more efficient and better producers.
ps. I do not see AW as a classical peripheral device but as a stand alone device. Ds
ps. I do not see AW as a classical peripheral device but as a stand alone device. Ds
I agree there shouldn't be a problem. Headphone manufacturers make better headphones, the market will prefer those headphones. The way it works in literally every other industry.
No need for the government to come in to say "Apple has too many users so it can't make its products work better together and use that integration to compete."
That’s too simplistic. What is being defended is the ability for a manufacturer to produce value added products. Also being defended is a closed system for those who want it.
I disagree.
No it doesn’t. Using the device driver kit a manufacturer can do what they need to.
Aw is neither a classic peripheral or a stand alone device.
Your understanding of history is a bit misplaced. Once IBM made MS-DOS/PC-DOS the de-facto standard for operating systems, all software bets were off. Apple had a small chance when the Mac came out. But that was soon copied by Microsoft anyway. Apple survived only because a) Microsoft supported Office for Mac that allowed for that some interoperability and b) Apple diversified into the iPod->iPhone. Remember Apple is primarily a hardware company and the software is designed to support hardware sales. To argue that the software should be open to all takes away the primary feature of using Apple devices.
Apple-MS 1997
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Not sure about this. There isn’t much I can do with it without also having an iPhone. The Apple Fitness features requires an iPhone to sync.
Well they can’t even do that either. It’s just the bluetooth stack. Anything else is banned.
Luckily it’s not like that in the real world as that would be a terrible customer experience and fragmentation.
They can always license it. That’s better in my opinion.
And i use many different headphones, while I can get back to the AirPods because of the connectivity feature. Would make it easy to switch between devices. Such as my iPhone, my iPad, my laptop or the stationary windows computer and to go back to my iPhone
well would you still use your Bose over the AirPods if it couldn’t connect with bluetooth?
Honestly, probably not. Or at least not on the phone. But "not being able to use bluetooth" would be a huge strike against both AirPods and the iPhone, leading to, what I imagine would be, significantly lower sales for both devices.
Which is how things should work. The market decides, not the government.
Remember: the way Apple designed the integration was to work on top of Bluetooth, preserving the same pairing experience that existed before Apple improved on it. Had Apple not bothered to improve it, we'd all be stuck with the same bad experience that we've had for decades. Bose never did anything to try to make it better. They (or some other headphone manufacturer) could have worked to change the bluetooth standard to make it better. They didn't.
There has to be incentive for companies to improve things. If you take that incentive away, innovation won't happen. And when you have the government saying "Apple's competitors get access to literally any hardware or software that gets put into the iPhone or iOS" you're removing all incentive to innovate to make things better. Sure Apple will "keep ups with Android" - but they lose all incentive to go above and beyond, because if they do they're subsidizing the R&D of all of their competitors.
Yes, for gatekeepers. If you're not a gatekeeper, you can maintain your walled garden.
You didn't actually add anything substantive to the argument there. Just parroting my line back to me is, with all due respect, not as clever an argument as you think it is.
I set out why I think there are compelling reasons for this, but you're of course free to disagree with them.
What I keep asking you, since your entire argument depends on consumer choice and preference being sacrosanct, is whether you agree that there can be reasons to limit consumer choice regardless and gave you an example.
But if indeed a large subset of consumers are picking a walled garden because that is what they prefer, they will eventually get big enough where it is no longer allowed. What the government is saying is "walled gardens are only ok if not many people want them."
I don't want the government making that decision for me. Particularly when the largest platform, that is over twice the size of the nearest competitor, is open in every way the EU wants.
To conclude, kneecap all other players to stay competitive?
I remember these days but remember them differently. IBM was in no position to make MS-DOS a standard at the time. Through market forces, they displaced all others due to modularity and openness and ability to support 3:rd party solutions. Separation between OS provider and later hardware providers ensured that all segment needs were met(IBM could not). It nearly killed Apple and it killed scores of companies with hardware/OS pairs. Since then, Apple is the underdog. Given some really poor backward compatibility, MacOS is dead in the water for many professions. For home and managers, Macs are fine.
Compare professional software for Windows and Mac and Mac looses with a wide margin. The reason is history and lack of support. IOS and iPadOS have by contrast a good number of 3:rd party software competitive with Android, all driven by desirable hardware and a good OS and being first with a compelling package. MobileOS was driven by needs of private persons and exactly the target group Apple is good at addressing. Personal computer early development was driven by companies often with IT support. No wonder Apple nearly died. I worked at an IT department at the time and heard the reasoning.
No, Apple is not mainly a hardware company, it’s equally an operation system company. The OS should not be seen as a software (like Safari) as the software sits on top of the OS. I argue that it is in Apple best interest is to do what Apple does best; provide an excellent OS paired with slick hardware. Let others provide the goodies because Apple software and peripherals are not always the best on the planet or updated at a regular interval. Unlike its OS and hardware that sees yearly development so Apple knows what is their key business.