EU Approves Landmark Legislation to Regulate Apple and Other Big Tech Firms

[Michael Scrip]

The iOS initial setup is already full of ballots, 2-3 more won’t make it worse than it already is.

That's not the point.

I'm saying it's ridiculous and unnecessary to have all those ballots.

I get it. You think it's unfair that Apple "bundles" their own services that gives them an unfair advantage over other 3rd-party services.

Alright. Maybe ProtonMail should make a phone and don't let Apple get onto the onboarding screen. Or a Spotify phone.

Of course those companies won't... but they still want equal treatment even though they didn't do any of the hard work to design hardware and an OS. They just want a free ride on top of Apple's hard work.

Or how about this...

McAfee pays Dell to include McAfee Anti-Virus on their laptops.

Alright... why doesn't ProtonMail and Spotify pay Apple to have an icon on the homescreen?

Like I said... no free rides. If those companies want a leg up... they gotta pay for it.

 

[Wildkraut]

I get what you're saying... but that's just a horrible choice of words.

Slavery is a real thing in this world.

True 100% agree!
I replaced it by „customer bondage“…

 

[bobbie424242]

Comply or go to jail, Tim !
In practice, Apple will do the strict minimum and act in bad faith as much as they can, exploiting loopholes, dragging their feet, be annoying as much as possible, invoke security privacy and "think of the children", claiming that they are acting solely for the greater good of humanity, etc.
Hopefully, EU legislators will not particularly enjoy Apple usual ******** when it comes to interpreting the law.

 

[GeoStructural]

Apple will probably need to make it clear that you will void your warranty if you sideload, loose access to Secure Enclave features, loose access to upgrades, etc. There's a lot they can do to demote sideloading wishes. It will be good to be able to use chrome to access websites, since some of them just don't work in safari.

Absolutely not, if they do I am sure they will get into even bigger trouble. A warning is enough, sideloading can be absolutely safe or malicious, but voiding a warranty is not the way to go for Apple.

 

[GeoStructural]

This shows that people behind EU legislations are no real tech guys and dont understand how giants work in this segment...probably old people behind EU that thinks like in the 80'

Yeah, how dare these old guys protect us and give us options, how un-tech-y of them…

 

[cocky jeremy]

I think you got it backwards. If they all left EU, they'd lose a third of their annual revenue. In some cases more. They wouldn't be the same companies after that.

Because I'm sure they'd do real well with no Windows, no MacOS, no iOS, no Android.

 

[dumastudetto]

These idiots are enemies of innovation, consumers, and capitalism.

Apple should be the blueprint model for economic success... built on values, fairness and boundless innovation.

 

[erikkfi]

sideload directly from the internet

Enough double-speak; this is called installing from a file and it’s been part of computing for 50+ years.

 

[citysnaps]

If the cost to apple to comply with these regulations is close to the revenue, I can see apple exiting the EU and let the citizens use android.

It will no doubt be tempting and for sure be gamed out by Apple.

 

[avz]

That American company sells on the EU market. That means the EU should have a say in those companies interacting with its consumers, just as I would expect Americans to do the same with a company that sells on the US market.

EURO is merely an extension of the US dollar emission. There is a reason why EU has no choice but to enjoy their 2 min showers and follow the lead of the current US administration in their attack on Apple.

 

[TheDailyApple]

I welcome this. More CHOICE is good. You don't like sideloading the don't sideload.

If you do then sideload.

Except now the choice to use Apple as they currently are rather than android will be gone. The device that meets the EU’s requirements isn’t an iPhone. It will be something different (which I don’t want).

I hope Apple takes care of all of this by telling users to wipe it and install Android if they discover that they didn’t want an iPhone.

 

[jz0309]

typical move by bureaucrats heavily influenced by lobbyists and neither has "end users" in their mind ...

 

[CTHarrryH]

why bother innovate if you aren't allowed to take advantage of your innovations? Will they force Mercedes to allow Chevy software or something I write myself to run their cars.
Can I put my own software on the chip that my credit card uses?

This is really bad and will kill the future

 

[ericwn]

I want an option that my phone is closed and just as it is now? I can no longer have that so I have less options. After regulation there are fewer options almost by definition.

Well, just live in the walled gardens and don’t pick those fruits that you yourself deem forbidden and all shall be well. It is of course, still more to chose from rather than not having the proposed choices at hand.

 

[CTHarrryH]

If you can't sell a phone with installed software how is it going to connect to internet or how are other software going to get installed on it - something needs to enable it to connect to the world

 

[GeoStructural]

Because I'm sure they'd do real well with no Windows, no MacOS, no iOS, no Android.

A competing OS would be born in no time if that were to happen, which is not going to happen anyway. There is fantastic talent in Computer Science and Programming in Europe, the reasons they don’t have big tech companies the size of Apple or Google are not related to that.

 

[GeoStructural]

If you can't sell a phone with installed software how is it going to connect to internet or how are other software going to get installed on it - something needs to enable it to connect to the world

The law covers that, software can be preinstalled for basic tasks but the user must be allowed to uninstall it later and use third-party options. What are basic tasks? Depends who you ask, but I think we both would agree that it is the software that allows you to set up your device, make calls, send messages, and browse the web.

 

[xDKP]

This shows that people behind EU legislations are no real tech guys and dont understand how giants work in this segment...probably old people behind EU that thinks like in the 80'

Most of these rules are written and decided by people, that have never received a single vote from a citizen in their career and who doesn’t understand a thing about what the customers really want.

I see 90% of this as a major step backwards in security and privacy

 

[GeoStructural]

I want an option that my phone is closed and just as it is now? I can no longer have that so I have less options. After regulation there are fewer options almost by definition.

I think you misunderstood the entire thing…

By the way, nothing in this law seems to affect what you want, you’ll be fine.

 

[rme]

If the cost to apple to comply with these regulations is close to the revenue, I can see apple exiting the EU and let the citizens use android.

It's not really relevant. The EU economy is collapsing. Every year more and more EU citizens are too poor to afford Apple products.

 

[JM]

Some people are devastated by who gets elected every four/eight years. Some people are devastated by this news today.

I’m in the latter camp.

Whether or not this is an arguable “good” thing or not, it’s still a big change that Apple will have to implement, and where do you think they are going to find the resources to program all this? iOS needs help already, and now they’ll have to work around this too?

What’s next? EU decides that private secure servers aren’t allowed because that’s “just not fair” to companies who want to have their servers open and free to anyone who wants to use them?

(Curious what the comments here say… Onwards!)

 

[rme]

This shows that people behind EU legislations are no real tech guys and dont understand how giants work in this segment...probably old people behind EU that thinks like in the 80'

The EU is based on ideas from the 1930s/1940s, and they haven't been able to evolve. Just like the Soviet Union it will collapse eventually.

 

[TTTedP]

Baffled. The EU should come up with their own competitive alternative to Apple, Google, etc. instead of trying to kill the business model of these successful companies. Consumers have all the choice they need. They can either buy an iPhone or not. What more of a regulation do you need?

Admittedly I am only following this on the surface but I dont get it either. They push for privacy laws and then set about dismantling the ecosystems that offer it?! Apple gets targeted while Meta, TikTok and others can keep doing their thing? Nuts.

TBF, Apple did it to themselves a little with the "my way or the highway" approach. They could've read the room and conceded a little *before* European regulators got all fired up (like USB-C). Still, I guess the EU would prefer a continent filled with start up Chinese companies running hacked Android.

 

[darkpaw]

Huh, people can now use WhatsApp to read their SMS texts...?! Why? Why would you want WhatsApp to be interoperable with your SMS app? Why would you want your SMS app to be interoperable with Facebarf Messenger?

Should each app that can receive a message fire off a notification? Great, so now I'll get notifications for the same message from Messages, WhatsApp, Facebarf Messenger, Signal, Telegram...

Does it mean when WhatsApp introduces some new feature like animated smileys, Apple has to do the same? If they don't implement it within say, six months, do they get fined? Are SMS within WhatsApp backed up within a WhatsApp backup? What are the legal ramifications of this?

Should I be able to book an Uber with a London black cab app? How about we just have apps that do what they're built to do? Apple has Messages which does SMS and iMessage. FBM does FBM messages. WhatsApp does WA messages.

This is a massive can of worms, and I don't see how it helps anyone. All it will do is take engineering and testing time away from companies making sure their own stuff works, and there'll be no secrecy in new features because everyone will already know about them because they've had to implement them.

 

[rme]

Baffled. The EU should come up with their own competitive alternative to Apple, Google, etc. instead of trying to kill the business model of these successful companies. Consumers have all the choice they need. They can either buy an iPhone or not. What more of a regulation do you need?

They've tried. They've poured hundreds of millions in search engines (ever head of qwant?) , and they're pouring 10s of billions of taxpayers money into semiconductors at the moment. All "financed" with freshly printed money. No-one wants to use the crap they come up with.