I'm not sure if it's a monopoly when people can decide if they want to buy Apple products.
There are plenty of alternatives to Apple products if you don't want to be constrained to the Apple app store.
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Apple Files Legal Challenge Against EU Law as Sideloading Requirement Looms
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I'm not sure if it's a monopoly when people can decide if they want to buy Apple products.
There are plenty of alternatives to Apple products if you don't want to be constrained to the Apple app store.
They are arguing against the making the iphone and software a public utility instead of letting the market decide.
If you value your security, many sites list the hash of the download so you can compare. I do this whenever possible due to the open nature of macOS and windows to ensure I’m getting the right download. Over the years, there have been a few times where it didn’t match and stopped me from installing the product.
Nope...
I mean a separate T&C iPhone page that specifically deals with and has language with respect to sideloading, where a user must agree to accept all responsibility for any adverse consequences to both the user and iPhone, holding Apple harmless, should an app that a user sideloaded cause harm to the user and iPhone.
Such a page and agreement requiring a user acknowledgement would come up every time a user decides to sideload an app.
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The EU has protected the consumer by not allowing a dishonest corporation to ride roughshod over our rules.
Just because people can decide if they want to buy a particular product doesn't necessarily mean that company/product doesn't have a monopoly. Microsoft was declared a monopoly with Windows in the desktop OS market in the 1990s despite there being alternatives like Mac OS, OS/2, Linux, BeOS, etc. Having a choice (or choices) in a market doesn’t necessarily negate antitrust laws or mean companies can engage in anticompetitive behavior.
I'm not too sure how Apple is riding roughshod over the EU rules.
The Apple app store and Apple restrictions were implemented a long time before the recent EU rules.
The EU might have passed these rules in response to Apple's behavior but Apple is in no way acting differently then they have always acted.
What legal purpose do you think that would serve? As I said, Apple's T&Cs already include language that completely disclaims Apple's liability for software problems due to misbehaving apps. Such an additional T&C page would not grant Apple any additional legal benefits and would not affect the end users' legal situation in any way, either. The only purpose (and your comment below kind of proves it) for doing something like this is to scare-monger end-users or make the process needlessly inconvenient.
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Uuuugh. No, no no! Please don't let them take my (potential) (not directly for iPad) (only in EU) sideloading away!
To be completely comprehensive, your reply should really have been thus;
Perfect. Here's to hoping that Apple further protects by ceasing to do business in the EU under their rules.
This is a Security issue not a Monopoly issue, the Government does not always know what is best for you, and in America we do not like Socialism or Communism!
I've read this whole thread and it seems like nobody is actually thinking about consequences. Whether you like this decision or not, what are the likely effects in the market over the next few years?
The most predictable early result is that the most major apps - the true behemoths, which pull users - will all move to their own stores, to avoid dealing with Apple (not just Apple's 15-30%, but all the other rules they'd like to avoid). Facebook/Messenger, Microsoft, Epic, X (for now), Google... the list is pretty long. Smaller (though still major) apps won't be able to pull out of the app store, at least at first, for fear of losing downloads/sales - but Facebook can be quite confident that if you use Messenger, you'll go get if from Facebook's app store if you have to. You won't just stop using it.
As the app landscape begins to fragment, less and less traffic will come to the store. As that happens, some apps in the next tier down from the behemoths will find that the benefit of staying in the app store has declined until it no longer balances the expenses (15-30%). This effect will snowball.
The problem I see coming is that that will cause a fundamental shift in user behavior. There will no longer be a reliable default place where you can go to get all your apps. And that will have some very negative consequences for security (and for anyone doing any sort of support). There will also be negative consequences for the overall user experience (loss of convenience, less accountability, etc.).
So whether you choose to use alternate app stores is irrelevant. You will be affected by this change in a major way, whether you like it or not. You don't get to retain the old default, because it won't exist any more.
As for me, my personal preference is for an unlocked desktop and a locked down phone. I *chose* to buy into the walled garden, and it's pretty upsetting that the gov't wants to take away my right to choose that. But my personal preference, and whether you agree with it or not, is unimportant. What matters is actual market consequences. I don't think many people will be happy with those, several years down the road.
The most predictable early result is that the most major apps - the true behemoths, which pull users - will all move to their own stores, to avoid dealing with Apple (not just Apple's 15-30%, but all the other rules they'd like to avoid). Facebook/Messenger, Microsoft, Epic, X (for now), Google... the list is pretty long. Smaller (though still major) apps won't be able to pull out of the app store, at least at first, for fear of losing downloads/sales - but Facebook can be quite confident that if you use Messenger, you'll go get if from Facebook's app store if you have to. You won't just stop using it.
As the app landscape begins to fragment, less and less traffic will come to the store. As that happens, some apps in the next tier down from the behemoths will find that the benefit of staying in the app store has declined until it no longer balances the expenses (15-30%). This effect will snowball.
The problem I see coming is that that will cause a fundamental shift in user behavior. There will no longer be a reliable default place where you can go to get all your apps. And that will have some very negative consequences for security (and for anyone doing any sort of support). There will also be negative consequences for the overall user experience (loss of convenience, less accountability, etc.).
So whether you choose to use alternate app stores is irrelevant. You will be affected by this change in a major way, whether you like it or not. You don't get to retain the old default, because it won't exist any more.
As for me, my personal preference is for an unlocked desktop and a locked down phone. I *chose* to buy into the walled garden, and it's pretty upsetting that the gov't wants to take away my right to choose that. But my personal preference, and whether you agree with it or not, is unimportant. What matters is actual market consequences. I don't think many people will be happy with those, several years down the road.
One doesn't need to be an attorney to know that the T&Cs included with every single piece of computing hardware and software sold in the past 30+ years includes verbiage that disclaims responsibility for software failures.
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It's not a monopoly if you can just buy an Android phone.
Sloganeering is always a sign of a weak (or poorly exercised) mind.
In America, we in fact live in a socialist country. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaide, and zillions of smaller programs, are all socialist by definition. We just have a lot of people who are too uneducated - or to indoctrinated - to understand that. And of course we have a (relatively few) truly libertarian types who would prefer to burn it all down - a real minority, fortunately.
Whether you like the EU's decision or not (and I don't, for reasons I just stated above), it has nothing to do with Socialism (or Communism, lol). And why would anyone in the EU give a damn about what we like over here anyway?
Notice that there were no EU companies listed on that "Gatekeeper" list. It begs to question what policies the EU countries have adopted to where no major tech company has been able to arise in their territory. They appear to have fallen behind in the tech-industrial 21st century and been reduced to regulation as their only tool for "competing".
But you must LOVE having a big government that controls you! It's not a monopoly if you can buy an Android phone.
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This is a political issue with that country which Apple doesn’t agree with their policy. Apple does allow for VPN but not the country. We do not need to sacrifice our security or privacy because of another country. Also the can still choose another phone. This doesn’t support your argument very well.I'm willing to be that a lot of people who live in dictatorial countries (i.e. China) don't just want this but need this if they want to be able to get around China's great firewall.
Even Apple expressed their concerns about this.
Apple 'Concerned' About China's New App Store Rules Banning Unregistered Foreign Apps
Apple staff met with Chinese officials in recent months to discuss concerns over new rules that will restrict Apple from offering many foreign apps...www.macrumors.com
Of course, if Apple had to choose between Apple App store control and profits vs allowing people to download/install apps outside of their App Store, Apple will choose the former.
Just because you don't need this doesn't mean others don't. In other words, don't speak for others.
You comment doesn’t make any sense. How does this relate to having or not having choice and choosing a platform that allows you to install apps of your choosing. If you wan’t to install apps outside of the manufactures App Store choose Android if you want more security and privacy choose an iPhone. Side loading cannot give you both.
This is straight up fiction. You can look at the Play Store right now and see that most "true behemoth" apps are still listed there even though they could easily pull their apps and force sideloading. We even have an example of an app that tried to do that and had to reverse course — Epic pulled Fortnite from the Play Store, saw downloads drop off significantly, and subsequently had to bring Fortnite back to the Play Store.
What this will do is provide an avenue for apps that Apple deems unfit for the App Store, whether that's because they don't like the content or subject matter (think adult content) or they don't want to deal with legal ramifications (emulators, for example, can open them up to a litigation minefield), or things they simply don't want users to be able to do (compiling code, etc).
I see this argument all the time here, and it is a brutally disingenuous one. Apple's platform was built upon the app ecosystem. That ecosystem was built by app developers, not by Apple.
Apple artificially limits which browsers can be installed on their platform, and thus also diminishes the user experience of those web apps. It is hardly an "open platform" when browser extensions and improved browser technologies are not allowed to be used on the platform.
They pay Apple exactly as much as Apple has earned.
Apple carved a special exception for companies like Netflix to be able to do this, specifically because they realized that without those key players, the iOS platform would die. Most third-party services are not allowed to offer client software on iOS and charge for those services separately. This has been an ongoing fight for quite some time now. There are companies who specifically don't want to have to rely on Apple's infrastructure at all, and yet they are forced to.
Apple needs to start realizing that they don't "own" every iOS customer.
Companies want to gain access to their own customers and not have to utilize Apple's platform at all.