You cannot compare a brick-and-mortar with a digital store, the logistics are completely different leading to completely different cost profiles.
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Apple Faces Antitrust Probe Into Pre-Installed Apps, App Store, and More in Germany
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You cannot compare a brick-and-mortar with a digital store, the logistics are completely different leading to completely different cost profiles.
Yes, there are complicated questions to that.
How many? Probably a handful, like the browser choice UI. Add a link to the App Store to look for more choices.
Which ones? Probably the most popular ones on the store.
Which categories? Those seem like a good start. (I don't think iOS ships with a word processing app, though.)
It does get complicated fast. However, it doesn't follow that it shouldn't be done. The Apple-Google duopoly is a real thing. How many people even know you can change your search engine to DuckDuckGo, for example? I would guess less than 1%.
Making it more obvious to the user that this is even possible doesn't seem like a bad thing to me.
Are you asking why antitrust is a thing?
Just because it wasn't a consumer group that filed the complaint doesn't mean the agency is anti-consumer.
(And that's kind of exactly the problem: FAANG companies, and yes, media corporations like Axel Springer, have too much influence. Is this particular proceeding going to fix that? No. Could it be an improvement? Yes, I can see that.)
I can compare how much I earned before to now. And I can also compare direct sales to App Store sales. Direct sales are cheeper than using the Epic game store but more expensive than Apple, Google, and Valve.
Credit card processing is a drop in the ocean compared to the other costs of selling a piece of software.
If just a handful, you are suggesting this law's purpose is to be more symbolic than actually effective and equally applied across all categories?
No, it speaks of the motive behind those issuing the complaints. A complaint can be valid even if the complainer has an ulterior motive.
If I hate you and complain to the police that your car is parked where it should not, I have an ulterior motive against you but the police should not just ignore your car because of that if it's indeed parked illegally...
No, not at all. I do think a measure can be useful even if not applied equally to everything.
iOS 14 added default apps for just two categories (web browser and mail client), but that doesn't mean it's a useless addition. I think surfacing that choice in the setup wizard could be a good compromise. There is the downside of alert fatigue; the setup wizard already has a lot of tedious choices to go through. But I think we'll survive if there's one more page that says "here's five categories; for each of them, you can tap edit to pick an app".
(If someone has a retrospective on how well that worked for Windows, and why that UI was ultimately removed again — perhaps the EU decided it didn't work well at all? — I'm interested in that. I don't find the outright "that's stupid", "government needs to stay out of it" and "Apple should be able to freely decide" arguments very interesting, though.)
It's not @wanha's job to explain the complicated history of antitrust law in a random MacRumors forum post, is it?
You are arguing for a "laissez-faire" approach to competition law: basically let the companies do what they want and let the market do its magic.
Modern competition law theory disagrees with that approach though and sees the necessity of intervention to protect competition from strong players in the market.
Basically all modern anti-trust regulations are based around that concept.
I don’t want my parents to get a randomized browser or a randomized chat application , should a wallet app from some 3rd party developer is something I need them to have ? Germany took over Europe with their cars once they were able to avoid taxes , ruining the local brands such as seat , Citroen and the more , but I guess each country wants more money from the big tech companies , as it’s basically money their citizens spend which they get no tax from back
99% of time it is. And primary victim is developer of the app. If developers could choose, most of them want "console style store" like playstation store. Because it is closed, there is almost no piracy. Only small percentage of companies want "open market" because it is good for their use case. For example Spotify, or another stores, like Epic store.
It's funny that people think that Apple (and Google for that matter) got where they are now at the smartphone business just because, you know, iOS is so good and iPhone is a great device (yes, both true) and not because they are e.g. buying out every tech company that matters, with money saved through tax evading via legal means, using laws they most probably lobbied hard for. Geez, you guys are a neoliberal capitalist's wet dream.
Its as typical response of the unable. When you cannot compete, tilt the landscape with affirmative action.
No, it's not. Are you telling me the apps that I have on my Mac are 95% pirated?
Are companies developing apps for the Mac starving because of piracy? No.
It's really a weak argument. Apple is gonna lose money and the total control. Plus they will have to work harder for security.
Apple can control what runs on the iPhone even without App Store exclusivity, using Certificate exclusivity, like they do on the Mac. No un-notarized software without a valid Apple Certificate would be allowed to run on the iPhone. This way pirates and malware could be kept out.
That's a trickier nuance.
I don't know what your car rant is about, and Citroen is owned by Stellantis, formerly known as Fiat Chrysler / PSA Peugeot Citroen. They're not German.
Seat is, but… since you criticize tax avoidance, aren't you arguing for… more government intervention there?
I'd say that depends a lot on the category. Something like iStat Menus is flat-out impossible to build on iOS. Or, say, a backup utility like Carbon Copy Cloner. Or a Linux VM like iSH.
There are absolutely power-user features that you can't currently do on iOS without sideloading.
Do you live in an Apple commercial-like world or under the desk in the PR office where Apple is some kind of angel that never tilts the landscape?
WTF? What has App Tracking Transparency to do with "anti-competitive practices"?
Also, I would hardly call it a business model if it's based on ripping off people and hoping they don't find out about it. If your customers decide to stop giving you money (data) when they find out what (how much) they pay for your service, it's the companies fault and not Apple's, isn't it?
And of course Facebook was involved here again. This company makes me so sick...
I just love how European legislation continues to improve my digital life. Oh the joy of clicking through innumerable cookie-nags every day.
Websites don’t need cookie nags if they don’t want to spy on you.
All of this is a great start. Apple needs to be put back into it's place or better yet broken up. They clearly have a monopoly and there has been more than enough proof that they bully others to comply in ways that benefit Apple and not healthy competition that the consumer can benefit from.
Are you still mad they removed head hole?
U understand you don't have to buy anything apple related...
So it's apple fault that their competitors are horrible? I'll await your reply
why arent all these nosy government groups more outraged about pre0installed crapware you get on non-Apple laptops and Android phones?
Theres plenty of Google apps you cant delete even. And some were decommissioned and still show on old phones and dont work.
Theres plenty of Google apps you cant delete even. And some were decommissioned and still show on old phones and dont work.