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Apple Reinstates Epic Games EU Developer Account, Paving the Way for Alternative App Store
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The DMA doesn't force side-loading. You as an owner of the phone can't stop a developer from getting data from its use. That's protected by the DMA.
If you don't want the software on your phone to not contain advertising, you can do anything about that. You can't stop either Apple or developers from sending info about you or your usage back to them.
Lot's of things you can't control on your devices.
The DMA explicitly states that a gatekeeper can have conditions on alternative application stores.
Whether Apple's core platform fee is a violation isn't entire clear to me. The DMA doesn't seem to explicitly forbid it.
Can you point to which parts of the DMA regulation you believe forbids such fees?
The DMA has explicitly provides for the gatekeeper to have and enforce certain conditions.
It would really help if you read the regulation in its entirety.
I wonder how long before we start facing the very real possibility of a global antitrust investigation and possible regulatory vivisection of Apple, Inc. into Apple US, Apple EU and so on.
They can’t drag US judicial rulings into conversations with EU entities and officials with any greater relevance than they could do the very same in with EU, Asia Pacific, Middle Eastern etc. judicial rulings back into the United States.
Apple needs to get their **** together and stop acting like a privileged and defiant teenager trying to best their parents in an argument.
They can’t drag US judicial rulings into conversations with EU entities and officials with any greater relevance than they could do the very same in with EU, Asia Pacific, Middle Eastern etc. judicial rulings back into the United States.
Apple needs to get their **** together and stop acting like a privileged and defiant teenager trying to best their parents in an argument.
The DMA is not perfect and we are in the embryonic stages of regulation across all countries of the world. This is not a finished process that stops with the first draft of the DMA. Discussions are still underway, other governments are mulling their responses, and there is more coming. Much, much, much more.
Because
1) I want to
2) It's how it works
I want Apple to do a lot of things on my phone, so I don't have to. Things like security and stopping apps when it's discovered they behave badly.
Because of iOS locked down nature and Apple's control of the entire ecosystem, I have to do a lot less maintenance and administrative stuff on my iOS devices than on Macs.
And I really don't have to think much when using iOS which is nice.
To be honest, it’s a tiny niche of people, and mostly large often morally questionable companies demanding any change. Much like 60Hz screens, a majority of iPhone users don’t care and were quite happy with the way it was.
I honestly don’t believe I’ve ever read anything quite like this statement in any part of “the free world”. It comes across as rather anti-capitalist / anti-free market.
To that end… Apple cannot be both the beneficiary of the liberties a free market affords then create it’s own fiefdom to refuse those same liberties to any whom it deems “unworthy”. This is the ESSENCE of the argument we are all having here.
I know that it is not the EU, which is why I wrote Europe not EU. They actually do over 90 billion in revenue in Europe and we don't know how big a portion of that is non-EU countries but since the only major economy not in the EU that matters is the UK we can be pretty confident that the majority of that 90 Billion is from the EU.
If Apple doesn't want to keep getting fined they should stop behaving like a petulant child in their attempts to protect their rent seeking services revenue.
This isn't revenue they are making selling Apple Music, or iCloud+ or whatever, its revenue from the App Store commission that is at risk.
I have said elsewhere (many times) that I believe Apple is entitled to charge for SDK access but that to avoid continued regulatory pressure they need to stop trying to get a share of every transaction that occurs on iOS (even those they do not directly facilitate).
I think this means having something like the CTF (but maybe a little smaller so it scales better) but applied to all apps. Allowing apps to continue to exist under the old terms demonstrates to me that the CTF is not about paying for SDK development but is a stick to try and prod developers into remaining on the old terms and staying in Apple's App Store.
Apple could use their power as the gatekeeper to ban these types of transactions... they don't, it's in Apple's power to improve this market but they choose not to.
Sounds like they'd only be happy with the Democratic People's Republic of Apple and nothing less.
I get it. I really do… But the very nature of the device mandates interoperability and Apple cannot offer interoperability without collaborating with other partners, vendors and even competitors.
Apple does not have an entirely foolproof solution, they never did. I liked the homogeneity of iOS and its devices but the market has changed in the nearly two decades since the iPhone was first introduced and as such the platform MUST adapt.
One thing though…. The statement about how much you have to think gave me a great idea for Apple’s next big marketing campaign.
Apple, “Think Less” LOL
No, not in this case. The DMA transfer power from Apple to developers.
It's worse for me because what I want aligns better with what Apple wants than developers. Developers are much more likely to do things I don't want.
Also, there are millions of developers. It's hard to evaluate them before I use their applications or services. With Apple, I know how they work and they have made sure developers have to follow Apple's standards. This have made my job more easy. I know each developer in the App Store has met some minimum level which I know how.
Now, everything will be come more complex and less uniform.
That doesn't really dodge the fact that the iPhone is a large and important platform... the point is that smartphones are important enough these days to warrant regulatory interest. Android's existence doesn't negate that, it just means that the regulators are going to look at both...
Not in Europe, but certainly governments have amassed too much power in almost all of Europe for the last 1000 years*-
Unless you mean capitalism = any collection of companies
*with maybe the exception of when the Black Plague took out so much of the European population.
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The thing is, Epic never actually violated the integrity of the product, they offered an in app purchase at a lower price, that violates the rules (rules which are now illegal) but it doesn't actually compromise the security of iOS.
Actually that is incorrect.
Microtransactions come from the TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY!!!
Everyone else just modeled after that.
Here’s a phone…. Oh and a charge for each and every thing you want to do with it under various circumstances…. Each one unique to region and participant.
Once upon-a-time Apple championed eliminating micro transactions by selling hardware once and offering free OS upgrades that included the means to communicate without text (SMS) micro-transactions or phone call micro-transactions (via FaceTime video and audio).
They also tried to give away as much content as possible and heavily pressured the music industry to never charge more than 99 cents per song or the video entertainment industry to never charge more than 1.99 per episode in iTunes.
You know who was a champion of all this? Steve Jobs.
You know who WASN’T entirely aligned with that vision? Tim Cook.
Apple is a different company now.
While it was fun while it lasted Apple has begun to take on many aspects of the very entities that Jobs would vilify and frankly everyone is less for it.
Now Apple has grown to the point that it too needs to be regulated rather than coddled.
I think that something like the CTF could be legal if Apple hadn't exempted their own store and if they charged for it worldwide. If Apps chose to remain exclusive to the App Store and not accept the new terms they aren't subject to the CTF and as such this seems like it is straight anti-competitive right from the get go. I think that if Apple had to make the CTF universal they would also have to lower it from 0.50/device/year to something more reasonable because 0.50 is just not going to scale well.
Since they don't actually seem to care to charge a platform access fee under the old terms or in the rest of the world (even for the largest companies on the platform) it severely undermines their argument that the CTF is required for iOS development.
I'm not and any who have been following similar cases in USA, Japan and South-Korea wouldn't have been surprised. Apple is dead set against the DMA and all other regulations which affect their closed system negatively or how they do business. Apple will fight the DMA every legal way they can and stubbornly so.
I actually agree with you on Alt Stores, the problem is that Apple doesn't operate their store in a way that is just for safety and security. They also tell developers what kinds of Apps they can sell. The big one here (though I don't actually care) is emulators, but there are also limits on virtual machines, development tools, etc... If Apple actually put an effort into being a more neutral store that only acted to prevent malicious apps (had had they bothered to put in place a fairer system of paying for the App Store and SDK access they would have had better arguments against the DMA.
The browser thing was the worst part of the DMA IMO, chrome is already so dominant and this is only going to help cement that dominance.
The competition were on other platforms.
APple went from having about zero percent of the mobile gaming market in 2007 to become the largest one. If the App Store, which is such a central component of the iOS ecosystem, was bad for users, why were they able to beat their competitors?
The reason is that the App Store was and is good for most of the users.
Platforms with freedoms like Windows, Linux and macOS lost. Even Android being so open and free, didn't bring in as much revenue per user as iOS.
It seems to be that people with money and who likes to spend them, enjoys locked down systems.
It will definitely happen. The EU commission has already said in ubambiguous terms that basically it looks like Apple is trying very hard to be the first one to be found non compliant with the new legislation. The abhorrent malicious compliant it tried won’t get Apple very far at all, it will just be another humiliating u turn. Poor Apple’s apologists, more embarrassment and disappointment is coming their way.