EU Has 'No Intention' to Repeal DMA Following Apple Challenge

[frenchcamp49er]

The EU doesn’t care about anyone they only care about Apple being their cash cow.

 

[Big_D]

I mean why not. They'll find out how the law is affecting EU consumers...and making their experience better. Maybe it will help other countries ensure their citizens get better experiences too. Good for Apple for making this recommendation, lol

The conclusion would be that Apple is unfairly holding its users hostage, in the hope they will complain to the EU and not to Apple...

 

[H_D]

I am usually pro EU and very much pro regulation, it is important to gain political, democratic control over technology that has such an impact on society. And opening up the iOS App Store, more choices for users, less proprietary standards, that is all in all the way to go. But Apple makes very good points about product differentiation, incentives for innovation, privacy and progress. As a user I want the full fledged features of the devices I pay for. There has to be a better, less antagonistic way to achieve regulatory goals. Which, considering the aggressive stance of US market politics at the moment, might not come to pass.

 

[Big_D]

I think its rather sad that Apple won't bring live translation for headphones to Europe because they would be forced to allow it on other headsets not produced by Apple.

Apple doesn't make the best headphones per price.

I don't think they would, as it is a feature limited to the AirPods Pro 2nd and 3rd generations, not the 1st and not normal AirPods or Beats headphones, I can't see any valid argument that they would have to make it available for other manufacturers.

Samsung and Google do exactly the same, the translation is restricted to their buds, not generic ones.

 

[emulator]

The criticism of the EU on here is clearly nothing to do with tech, but has a lot to do with the realization that Europe isn't looking up to the USA anymore, it's looking downwards at the USA, sometimes laughing but mostly cringing.

I guess it's getting harder and harder to believe in Manifest Destiny when it's clearly going very wrong.

I'm off to a doctor's appointment tomorrow. The charge for the medical treatment will be zero. Then walk home with no fear whatsoever of some random maladjusted manbaby shooting me for no reason at all. And then I'll eat my dinner of chicken salad that hasn't been washed in chlorine.

In my experience, there are very very few Europeans who wish they were living in the USA right now.

But yeah, USA's the best, man. It must be awful to live as a European peasant in a freedomless, godless wasteland.

There is no such thing as zero medical charge but yeah, enjoy your 20-25% sales tax and 60%+ income tax. Also be grateful there are no guns... "only" knife attacks or cars ramming into crowds. And plz keep coming back complaining about the $1k iPhone selling for €1.5k.

 

[danny842003]

The US may not be in the best shape politically right now, but I’m sure glad I don’t live in the EU

Is this satire?

This is from someone who voted for and believes in Brexit, just not the brexit we landed on.

 

[Big_D]

There is no such thing as zero medical charge but yeah, enjoy your 20-25% sales tax and 60%+ income tax. Also be grateful there are no guns... "only" knife attacks or cars ramming into crowds. And plz keep coming back complaining about the $1k iPhone selling for €1.5k.

🤣 Sales tax is 7% for food and essentials, 19% for luxury goods (Germany) and Income Tax is around 30%, total deductibles, including health insurance, unemployment coverage, pension etc. comes out at around 40% for most people. The medical coverage would remain if I was made unemployed or I retire.

Medical care is free at the point of use. Need an ambulance? Free of charge. Need to visit the hospital for an emergency? Free of charge. Need to visit your doctor? Free of charge. Need prescription medicine? 5€ per prescription (I usually get 90 days worth of blood pressure and purine inhibitor for 5€ each). If I stay in hospital, I pay around 3-5€ a night, plus another couple of Euros for the TV, if I want it - the last time, I took my iPhone and iPad and watched Netflix and listened to audio books and podcasts and didn't pay anything extra.

There is no copay, there are, apart from the overnight fee, no bills to pay and I don't find 40€ a year for my prescription meds too much to pay.

I fell off my bike (somebody laid a cable along the path next to our office and the wheel rolled off the cable and I fell hard), I went to the hospital, 8 x-rays to cover knee, wrist and ribs, which all hurt - just a light sprain and bruising - the total cost was 4€ for the car park.

 

[laptech]

China: Apple, if you want to operate in our country, to protect our citizens you will do as we say
Apple: OK, will do as you say

EU: Apple, if you want to operate in the EU, to protect our citizens you will do as we say
Apple: Not a chance, we fill fight you every step of the way to make sure we get our way.

 

[philstubbington]

Interesting to bring up Spotify. Apple Music is clearly the problematic service - look up a list of streaming services by when they started and stopped. Prior to Apple Music, several launched every year and few died. In the several years since, I think only one launched and most of the old ones died.

So the launch of Apple Music was clearly the catalyst that killed innovation/competition in the field. But it's interesting to realize that Spotify, though they did nothing wrong, also saw some benefit as most of their competitors disappeared and as they stopped having a stream of new competitors to take on.

… and Spotify screw over artists more than Apple.

 

[MilaM]

They developed it, they should get to profit from it. Same for Apple’s translation feature.

There is an easy solution. Apple could just charge for Live Translation. Boom, problem solved.

Right now the feature comes as part of the OS image free of charge to use for iPhone users. Legally iPhone owners are allowed use it whichever way they want. But if Apple absolutely can't stomach the idea of funnelling audio data from third-party hardware to their magical translation algorithm, they should just put it behind a paywall.

 

[philstubbington]

The criticism of the EU on here is clearly nothing to do with tech, but has a lot to do with the realization that Europe isn't looking up to the USA anymore, it's looking downwards at the USA, sometimes laughing but mostly cringing.

I guess it's getting harder and harder to believe in Manifest Destiny when it's clearly going very wrong.

I'm off to a doctor's appointment tomorrow. The charge for the medical treatment will be zero. Then walk home with no fear whatsoever of some random maladjusted manbaby shooting me for no reason at all. And then I'll eat my dinner of chicken salad that hasn't been washed in chlorine.

In my experience, there are very very few Europeans who wish they were living in the USA right now.

But yeah, USA's the best, man. It must be awful to live as a European peasant in a freedomless, godless wasteland.

Likewise. Just had eye surgery which from a quick search would cost around $5000 or more in the US. Cost to me? £0 - excluding the cost of the train to the town where the hospital is located - that was £8.20 return.

 

[ginkobiloba]

The argument is completely nonsense and contradictory (I explained explained that numerous times, most recently today).

If their intention is to break encryption and surveillance (which, frankly, it unfortunately is), they would not push for alternative App Stores and consumers being able to install apps without support of their phone manufacturer and OS developer.

Wanting to control communication does not align with allowing consumers to install apps from uncontrollable sources.

👉 Competition regulation and police/law enforcement are just two different branches of EU government, if you will. Acting more or less uncoordinated in this case.

There is no contradiction in what I wrote, the contradiction is within the EU right now. You are right that there are different branches that seem to be going in different directions, and contradicting themselves ( like recently

EU Questions Apple on Fraud Prevention After Forcing Support for Riskier App Distribution ) .​

But it doesn't mean everything is disconnected. A walled garden like Apple's, where they don't own the encryption keys, is harder to crack than a space where the market and the developers are more willing to compromise by building weak encryption or backdoors ( some of them because they don't care, and others who might care but don't have the weight of a giant like Apple to defend themselves ). Which is easier to intercept : you downloading Signal from the Apple AppStore, or you downloading it from AltCheapKoolAppStore ?

here, I'm not just talking about outside app markets ( that certainly contributes to it, but they're ), but stuff like forcing Apple to share their users data with third-parties competitors. You can't break into Apple ? How about you force Apple to share their users data with Google/Meta devices and siphon it from there ? Who is more willing to let ( as in share or sell to ) all sort of foreign parties ( from Governments to Data Brokers ) access their users data ? Apple or Google/Meta ?

And to make it clear, for the millionth time, I'm not saying Apple is doing this out of heroic deological conviction, they may very well do it because the privacy mantra simply helps them sell more stuff. But in the end, i don't care. I only care about the end result.

 

[MAlbi]

List of missing features is only going to grow I am afraid.
I am not going to buy Airpods PRO 2 or 3 but the live translation is cool imo.
I like that other marketplaces are open, but there is real lack of useful apps for me. Emulators are fine, I have an SE 3 so small screen anyway and for this I use online versions on my ipad.
This time I would definitelly be full on Apples side. If I cared that two gigants are fighting over something.

 

[MAlbi]

Likewise. Just had eye surgery which from a quick search would cost around $5000 or more in the US. Cost to me? £0 - excluding the cost of the train to the town where the hospital is located - that was £8.20 return.

Ok got it but its still rotten system, when you start speaking about paid extra care you are instantly labeled as greedy. And extra care i mean better materials, less invasive operation, better drugs, standards. Its cheap here but you get exactly what the doctors can do at that moment. No standards. Overpaid doctors, underpaid nurses etc.

Edit: Changed communist to greedy, it was logical mistake, conmunist would be the opposite of what i ment

 

[Powerbooky]

Many comments on EU-related topics seem so crazy to me. I mean, the EU is basically the only zone in the world where they at least try to conserve privacy at a minimum. Just think about what Apple does to appease China. There of course no one bats an eye...because it's China. But as soon as Apple doesn't want to deal with EU law, the EU all of a sudden is the bad guy.

Some representatives in the EU do fight for privacy and protection, unfortunately it's the EC (European Comity) that keeps on trying to do the opposite. Certain German politicians are actually lobbying for spying on all services where citizens can send messages. These guys already tried it nationally a few years ago by proposing a law that mandates a backdoor in home routers for government agencies - basically making every citizen a suspect when he/she accesses the internet. These days they want ISP's do the same thing.

Certain politicains now want use AI to monitor everything and everone. If there are datacenters big enough to do that task, it will certainly negate the all "green targets" given the energy all these systems need.

 

[bsmr]

To all those who are upset about the EU: https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2024/us-files-landmark-antitrust-suit-against-apple.html

 

[philstubbington]

Ok got it but its still rotten system, when you start speaking about paid extra care you are instantly communist. And extra care i mean better materials, less invasive operation, better drugs, standards. Its cheap here but you get exactly what the doctors can do at that moment. No standards. Overpaid doctors, underpaid nurses etc.

Ooookay. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

Ok got it but its still rotten system, when you start speaking about paid extra care you are instantly labeled as greedy. And extra care i mean better materials, less invasive operation, better drugs, standards. Its cheap here but you get exactly what the doctors can do at that moment. No standards. Overpaid doctors, underpaid nurses etc.

Edit: Changed communist to greedy, it was logical mistake, conmunist would be the opposite of what i ment

You have no idea what you’re talking about.

 

[AppliedMicro]

But the IT department are also specially trained. Whilst I’ve long argued at my work that there should be some sort of base level IT training so that we can alleviate the techs from menial jobs (like installing USB drivers!) I also understand not everyone is that literate.

There are many non-professionally trained drivers on the road. And they aren't only mainly putting themselves a risk (as with operation of an general purpose IT system) but also the lives of others.

But then I also know nothing about cars and happily rely on my garage to fix things.

...although the law doesn't require you to so.
You can "fix" your car entirely yourself (other than, maybe, having to pass inspection every couple of years.

 

[AppliedMicro]

There is no contradiction in what I wrote

There is.

Which is easier to intercept : you downloading Signal from the Apple AppStore, or you downloading it from AltCheapKoolAppStore ?

The one from Apple's App Store.

The question is completely misguided. Because chat control surveillance will not be implemented through selective "interception" of downloaded app stores. It will (above a certain threshold of user base) just be made illegal to operate a messenger service and without built-in backdoors.

Signal, WhatsApp, and possibly Apple, the chat service operators themselves will be required to scan messages - and thus build a screening mechanism and ultimately backdoor into their chat apps.

👉 How do you stop a user from downloading, installing and using a non-backdoored version of, say Signal? By making sure he has to download and install it from a controllable source - such as Apple's App Store. And not through sideloading.

I'm not just talking about outside app markets ( that certainly contributes to it, but they're ), but stuff like forcing Apple to share their users data with third-parties competitors. You can't break into Apple ?

👉 There is no need to break into Apple - since Apple themselves will be required to "scan" content. And so will large messenging apps on your iPhone.

Who is more willing to let ( as in share or sell to ) all sort of foreign parties ( from Governments to Data Brokers ) access their users data ? Apple or Google/Meta ?

Well, Apple was willing to do it without being compelled by government.
But it doesn't matter. They'd all be required to scan content.

 

[psingh01]

Likewise. Just had eye surgery which from a quick search would cost around $5000 or more in the US. Cost to me? £0 - excluding the cost of the train to the town where the hospital is located - that was £8.20 return.

The cost of most medical procedures in the US is going to depend on the insurance coverage the person has.

Googling “what does x cost” really doesn’t say much about what a person will have to pay out of pocket. It could be $0 but their insurance gets billed $5k.

These arguments on the internet are silly when neither you or the other person know how it works in the other country.

In neither case is it really $0 or £0. You either pay for insurance or pay in higher taxes.