As a cyber criminal the first thing I would do is hack that switch to my advantage. Every bad decision is the OS design can lead to bad consequences!
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Apple Confirms iOS 17.4 Disables Home Screen Web Apps in the European Union
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As a cyber criminal the first thing I would do is hack that switch to my advantage. Every bad decision is the OS design can lead to bad consequences!
Being better than the competition is possible if they allow you to be. The parts that they are forcing Apple to change are part of their competitive advantage. Those parts that were better now are not. When you keep neutering a company’s competitive advantages, they can’t compete nearly as well. You can say “try harder then”, but the other side doesn’t have to. The whole point I wrote about monopolistic competition is that companies strive for their competitive advantages by innovating so they can win the better widget battle. If you take those away, you’re just another widget with no particular reason for anyone to buy yours.
I don’t live in the EU, so I’m going to start with that. Also, I don’t use web apps on my home screen.
I feel like Apple is screwed if they do, and if they don’t. People are complaining about a feature being removed when Apple said that not enough users were using it to justify the expense of building the future of the way that’s acceptable to their business. Would the people complaining rather of had no comment? Would the people complaining rather have apple do whatever people want rather than what they think is best for their business?
Sure, it’s easy to speculate on why a business is taking an action, in fact the speculation is especially easy when it aligns with what we want. However, the truth is all we have to go on is what we were told, and if we happen to have some inside information. Given the information provided, the decision seems reasonable from a business perspective. Was there maybe something vindictive involved, maybe, but that doesn’t dismiss the business validity and would be nothing more than a guess.
I trade across borders inside the EU commercially. EU laws and institutions make so many things far easier than they would be without it. Cross-border taxation, tariffs, different currencies, common standards, payments. The list is much longer.
Switzerland has numerous treaties with the EU to facilitate trade. So many, that it would make sense for the to join. As to why they are so rich? Being the world hub for commodities trading, financing and associated money laundering and corruption are good reasons. I would also mention the cheese and the chocolate
.And the counter point to is if you dont want to go outside the Apple app store you dont. Apple approach not even allowing side loading is a different issue.
If you dont like side loading dont use it. Let the user make the choice.
BTW if you think Apple keeps you secure then you are being full as it is child's play to slip threw frond and hide it from apples reviewers. Your best defense is always your own brain.
So the walled garden is not a selling point. Apple actively blocks sideloading or anything like that and it sure as hell not a selling point for a vast majority of buyers
If that is the only reason Apple is competitive, than it should go bankrupt! I came into the eco system because Apple made better products than the competition. If a company is only successful when it locks in their users, it is not good. I mean, look at Facebook, they are terrible and they only can be terrible, because many users are essentially locked in. I want my old Apple back, an innovative company, which makes great products which feel amazing to use and work with.
I understand that. But they have to let those browsers run on the platform anyways. That's part of the legislation.
Pretty much this. If this were 2009, yeah I get it being a thing. But we've had third party apps since 2009.
Apple, please take away the glorified bookmarks from the US too and give us access to third party app stores.
All these features require engineering work that could be spent doing things that people actually use. Which feature of iOS 18 would you be willing to give up so Apple could expend engineering resources on a feature hardly anyone uses? Who knows what we’ve already given up since Apple was forced to spend thousands of engineering-hours on allowing alternative app stores?
I love how people say Apple could “easily” do anything. How would they know unless they knew the source code? I do know that Apple puts feature toggles into everything, an initiative put in place years ago by Craig F to allow isolated testing after a particularly buggy OS release (I don’t remember which one, iOS 12 was it?). That was in many Apple-related news articles. Removing the feature is as simple as toggling a flag to turn it off. But adding a feature by revising the core architecture would take time. How much time, I don’t know, but it’s definitely non-zero. You call it anti-consumer. I call it a no-brainer. If PWA were a feature everyone used, Apple would have definitely done the work to implement it for other browsers because they would lose sales if they didn’t. But since nobody uses it, they didn’t see the point in diverting resources better spent elsewhere.
Apple knew this would be a nightmare and that is exactly what it is turning into! Not everyone is a security expert, especially Governments!
I never said they were.
The DMA is still way more, than what the US has in way of App Store opening legislation.
If I were to fight for the "little guy", I'd have to cease using smartphones altogether - neither Google nor Apple are in any way the good guys.
If anyone is the little guy in this story, it's the consumers, who in Europe have flawed legislation that is still open to abusive interpretation, but it's something!
Then again, come on, law has always allowed to reach different conclusions, that aren't always what the lawmakers had in mind, but the EU has something, while Apple stans stateside cry wolf and wish Apple quit ungrateful Europe completely - if anything that's borderline delusional.
LLM! If Apple would scrap that feature in favour of a gold standard DMA implementation for everybody. iOS would be the best platform to be on.
The Mac is a different system with a different model. It's more complex, less secure and less user friendly for people who don't understand computers. It's great when you know what you're doing and need to do complex tasks.
The locked down iOS is wonderful for convenience and simplicity. You know Apple is in control which is great if you trust Apple. You don't have to be that careful with security since it's locked down. To install software there is only one single choice which is convenient, simple and easy to use.
We don't need iOS to be like Windows, macOS or Android. iOS is unique in its locked down mode where the manufactures is in almost total control.
We would loose diversity if iOS became more like the other.
I see Windows, macOS and Android as flawed democracies. iOS is enlightened despotism where developers are treated as second class citizen to serve the despot and the rich users.
By their own choice and lack of will. It technically is possible to sandbox 3rd party browser instances similarly as PWA using webkit is being separated right now.
Is it financially viable to implement it? Probably not. Would it be pro-consumer? Definitely. Am I personally bothered? Not at all. I'm not using single PWA and did not use it for quite some time. Is their PWA approach lazy and anti-consumer? Yes. Is it aligned with EU's DMA? Yes it is.
It’s not their ONLY competitive advantage, but the walled garden gives them a great ecosystem, better than anyone else’s. Their full control of hardware and software gives them another advantage. What the EU is doing is taking away a good portion of their competitive advantages and forcing them to do things the other side doesn’t have to do. Their ecosystem is what makes for Apple’s greatest strengths. Take that away and they aren’t Apple anymore. Google doesn’t have to compete. They can just sit back and let EU regulators knock out their competition for them. We always say we strive for an equal playing field. The EU has upended that level playing field in favor of the 70% monopoly by specifically going after things they know would affect Apple but not Google. Competition is great and makes everyone better, but when government tilts the scale, things don’t get better because the other side doesn’t have to compete.
That's wrong. The European Parliament, directly elected by the people, has as much of a say in the legislative process for these decisions as the Council which is essentially the upper house. Upper houses aren’t directly elected in many countries. That doesn’t make these countries undemocratic. Examples: Netherlands, Germany, France, …
European Union legislative procedure - Wikipedia
I get it. But why talk just about App Store revenue?
Consumers are whole EU market revenue, not just App Store. Why would you exclude hardware sales in the first place?
Apple doesn't have the biggest tech resources in the market. Apple is (in)famous for having small developer teams and using less than almost any other large tech company on developing/programming and R&D.
The alternative was to change the security architecture. Apple said they chose not to solve this problem because
1) required a lot of work
2) risky changes to security
3) very few people uses this in the EU
What they didn't say is of course almost no-one will stop using or start using iPhones because you have to run web apps in the browser instead of integrated into Webkit.
There is no upside for Apple to support this.
As I stated in my previous comment.
I'm just stating the fact. Their PWA change and DMA implementation is just lazy. It could have been done better.
Should it be done better? I don't know. I don't use PWAs at all, so I'm personally not bothered at all. But it was their choice to implement it lazy way. It's shocking to me how it's hard to swallow for some people (I'm not saying it's you) that I'm just stating the fact that it's lazy approach and that it was Apple's own choice to implement it this way.
Nowhere I'm saying I care about PWAs or I don't understand why they did it this way. Their approach makes sense from the economical standpoint - but it still does not change the fact it's lazy and bad implementation. It's bad because it does not keep its features. It's breaking the PWAs. So it can not be good.
But if one disagrees with almost everything Apple does and vehemently so, like you do, I do think it's interesting to know why you choose to buy iPhones, iPads and Macs?
I would never be a customer of Apple if I had your opinions about Apple. I have never seen you write anything positive about iOS
Define ”gold standard DMA implementation”. From the way the EU regulators act, iOS would look like Android. What’s the point of that if you only have two flavors of vanilla to choose from? The regulators have weighted the scale in favor of Android. That is not good for competition, especially when Android already has a 70%+ market share. They’re going after the big fish in the little pond instead of the big fish in the big pond.
That won't change. Apple doesn't have to use Android on their iPhone or Windows on their Mac.
Google's Android and Play Store is also a gatekeeper. The difference is, Google allowed alternative app store for a while now, like e.g. F-Droid or Sideloading. So of course Google had an easier time complying with the DMA.
That is sad for Apple. Also the eco system how the different products Apple makes work together, this is not part of the DMA. They can still work well together.
Google has to follow the DMA too, Google has 8 of its services in DMA regulation: Youtube, Google Maps, Google Play, Google Shopping, Google Search, Chrome, Google Ads, and Android. For Apple is the App Store, Safari, and iOS.
Maybe you should look it up: https://digital-markets-act.ec.euro...epers-under-digital-markets-act-2023-09-06_en