EU Planning to Force Apple to Give Developers Access to All Hardware and Software Features

[ksj1]

You have heard of OBDII no doubt?

There is little doubt you have never used it for anything significant since it doesn't allow you to do much more than view and clear codes, and view limited statistics by itself. Unless you buy the vehicle manufacturers super expensive tool and software to make any changes. I guess that's a model Apple could use.

 

[ksj1]

Apple isn’t asked to write new code. They are asked to remove code.

LOL!!! You are clearly not a developer!

 

[ksj1]

That's why I never in my life had to use such antiquated payment methods as checks (like they do in the U.S.).

I haven't seen someone use a check in years in the US. What on earth are you talking about?

 

[Sophisticatednut]

are more efficient today than yesteryear.

None of these are consumer oriented mass-produced electronic devices where innovation reigns. Can you cite one example where government actually regulated a company who lost billions on their ip and the industry was better as a whole? In the US the breakup of ATT didn't really have the effect, the government hoped it would 40 years ago. Today we have 3 overpriced major cell phone carriers.

Eu banning Microsoft from including Internet Explorer as the default browser. And by law, need to provide the user the option to pick a competing solution.

It killed IE and we are better off for it

The next company that has an innovative idea for an app store, probably won't deploy it to the EU.

Epic store exist in EU. Microsoft have launched its Windows store. Having a App Store isn't dependent on a closed off ecosystem.

 

[ksj1]

It killed IE and we are better off for it

Pretty sure it was Chrome that killed IE, not the EU...

 

[Sophisticatednut]

If you read the details, interoperability is mentioned. As WhatsApp is end to end encrypted, they’d either have to a: remove a layer of encryption, or b: share their encryption keys with other companies. That’s why many folks are surprised with what’s being presented by the EU. Something that sounds “common sense” has many downstream impacts that the sponsors and supporters can’t possibly be considering. Because, if they were, they wouldn’t be bringing it up in the first place...

this is exactly how encryption works.

two keys are created.
one is private and ONLY exist on the phone.
the other one is shared to everyone who whats to communicate with you.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Does Microsoft still include a browser with Windows 10 and 11 in the EU today?

Do they still have the "browser ballot" when you first install Windows or purchase a new computer?

That was fun...

?

 

[I7guy]

Eu banning Microsoft from including Internet Explorer as the default browser. And by law, need to provide the user the option to pick a competing solution.

It killed IE and we are better off for it

Yeah 23 years later.

Epic store exist in EU. Microsoft have launched its Windows store. Having a App Store isn't dependent on a closed off ecosystem.

Missed the point.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Pretty sure it was Chrome that killed IE, not the EU...

Eu killed IE by forcing micrososft to show chrome as a choice. in 2010

 

[ksj1]

Eu killed IE by forcing micrososft to show chrome as a choice. in 2010
View attachment 2008285

Right... You realize that was only done in the EU, right?

 

[I7guy]

EU regulation has been instrumental in creating a cheap, fast and secure pan-European international payment systems for the benefits of consumers and businesses (arguably not so much the banks).

That's why I never in my life had to use such antiquated payment methods as checks (like they do in the U.S.).

This thread isn’t really about payments - but payment markets are a good example of - forceful but successful - EU regulation that has benefitted both small businesses and consumers.

We‘ll see how that‘ll play out with regulating the tech companies - and particularly the big smartphone software ones. One may disagree that such regulation is „justified“ or necessary and be of the opinion that it‘s an overreach. But EU regulation has certainly been beneficial to consumers and businesses and created more competitive markets in some areas.

It has proven wrong the narrative that only unfettered free-market competition free of government intervention and regulation will always be best in promoting technological progress and innovation.

It’s also been proven correct that regulation stifles innovation. Unfettered is a straw man. Laws are always needed. Laws requiring apple to open up iMessage are over-regulation.

 

[ksj1]

Has anyone brought up that this will require a huge government compliance organization? That will cost billions per year?

 

[Beautyspin]

This is very specifically not what is being asked for in the regulations being discussed - rather, they're insisting on gateways between the various messaging services.

Yes, I'm sure Apple could write such a program ("Messages for Android"). It appears they haven't, for competition / business reasons. That's their prerogative, since they're not owned by the government. I would prefer it if they did release an Android version, but I'm not in charge, and I'm not paying the bills. Are you volunteering to pay for them to write and maintain an Android version? I suspect that at this point Messages also ties into iCloud and their other infrastructure in numerous ways. So you're looking at either a whole lot of expensive reengineering to support both iCloud-connected and non-iCloud-connected versions of the code, or giving (selling?) iCloud accounts to any prospective "Messages on Android" users. Again, this is all quite different from the main topic of this thread.

It could also be there are some patent reasons involved - that's what kept FaceTime (initially announced as something that would eventually be cross-platform), from actually becoming cross-platform - someone made a patent claim against parts that made it work in a distributed manner, and they had to redesign parts of the mechanism, which now, if I understand correctly, route some things through Apple servers - not something they'd want to do for free for users on other platforms.

As long as they do not lock people into the ecosystem for using the messages app, the EU is fine. If Apple developed an App that lets people easily migrate from iOS to Android (or whatever is there in a few years), I think that suffices the EU requirement. Apple's greed is what brought them to this situation.

 

[CarlJ]

As long as they do not lock people into the ecosystem for using the messages app, the EU is fine. If Apple developed an App that lets people easily migrate from iOS to Android (or whatever is there in a few years), I think that suffices the EU requirement. Apple's greed is what brought them to this situation.

Apple users are not locked into using Messages. They can use any messaging app they want. Many use WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, etc.

 

[visualseed]

Yes, Arpanet, and the beginnings of TCP/IP were written by engineers/companies working on DOD contracts to build a communications system capable of surviving a nuclear war (literally, routing around nodes in the network that might no longer exist). The bureaucrats weren't designing it, they asked for a system to be built meeting specific requirements. The design work was done by engineers and academics. And once it emerged from military use out to "civilian" use, basically every standard that controls how the internet works, since then, has been done by RFC - a process where someone (person or company) proposes a protocol or a change, and it is debated and tested thoroughly before being possibly approved.

The point being, it gets designed by engineers, not by politicians, it gets implemented by consensus, not by mandate, and it gets replaced as technological improvements merit, not when someone passes a new law.

No government (thus far) says, for instance, "we've decided that POP is the proper way to handle client-to-server email transfer, so we're legally mandating that to the exclusion of all other protocols" (which is a good thing, because IMAP presented a superior protocol for that task and largely replaced POP).

Engineers didn't build the internet. Al Gore did

On a serious note, you are correct. There is an economic model called "Dynamic competition" which is centered on continual innovation instead of static preservation. Joseph Schumpeter, Finance Minister of German-Austria in the 1920s, called it the “gale of creative destruction” which was a “process of industrial mutation...that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.”

The basic premise is that continual innovation and market forces will ultimately destroy or extremely commoditize existing markets and replace them with or focus growth on new markets which are always transitory. Current competition enforcement has generally placed little weight on dynamic competition and instead focused on short-run competition in an environment of static markets. That means existing products or services are protected and the competition that is valued and prioritized is typically price competition among these products or services. This static view of regulating competition assumes that everything is fixed and there are no fundamental changes to products or services.

Regulations actually penalize innovations that could disrupt or redefine markets because they challenge the static state of the markets and are perceived as giving companies unfair competitive advantages (Example: Uber vs. taxi companies all over the world) In turn, it incentivizes companies to compete on a cost basis by reducing the production or delivery costs of their current offerings. This actually creates more market monopolies because, in the static view of markets, consolidation is the ultimate competitive advantage. This myopic thinking is how we ended up with regulators breaking up AT&T and dividing up its marketshare to smaller companies that wanted to operate the same business model selling the same service instead of investing in companies that were going to revolutionize communications. It's a shame that we have unlimited capacity to bake new pies, but the prevailing wisdom is to turn off the oven and find ways to get more slices out of the one in hand.

 

[0924487]

This is democracy

 

[0924487]

Apple users are not locked into using Messages. They can use any messaging app they want. Many use WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, etc.

Apple should not have a “platform advantage.”

Those bills are to shift the playing field so that the big guys don’t have a competitive advantage over the small guys just because they own the platform and can act as gatekeepers to stack the cards against those budding competitors.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Apple should not have a “platform advantage.”

Is iMessage really an advantage?

Sure it adds some additional features if the other phone I'm texting happens to be another Apple iPhone.

But I can still send and receive plain ol' text messages from any Android user using the same app called "Messages"

In fact... I can turn off iMessage... and I'll be texting like I did 10 years ago.

Besides... does the EU really care about iMessage? I thought WhatsApp was all the rage there?

And speaking of.... WhatsApp was created before iMessage was even introduced. First-mover advantage!

 

[visualseed]

Apple should not have a “platform advantage.”

Those bills are to shift the playing field so that the big guys don’t have a competitive advantage over the small guys just because they own the platform and can act as gatekeepers to stack the cards against those budding competitors.

There are no "small guys" making messaging services that are going to be able to capitalize on the network effects of a platform owner. There are only handful of messengers that operate at this scale and all of them are large businesses or business units that are already highly competitive with iMessage and, in some cases, already more competitive.

 

[AppliedMicro]

The bureaucrats weren't designing it, they asked for a system to be built meeting specific requirements

Well… the EU bureaucrats aren’t specifying how iMessage or Facetime (or an App Store) have to technically work, do they?

No government (thus far) says, for instance, "we've decided that POP is the proper way to handle client-to-server email transfer, so we're legally mandating that to the exclusion of all other protocol

The EU doesn‘t either, do they? I haven’t read about mandating a specific protocol in the DMA.

It’s also been proven correct that regulation stifles innovation

So do monopolies or duopolies.

Is iMessage really an advantage?

Apple certainly thought so. I just linked to Federighi‘s take on it.

 

[Michael Scrip]

I dunno...

With 90% of users in Europe using WhatsApp... but the iPhone only having around 30% market share in Europe... I'm kinda having a hard time seeing the "advantage" of Apple's iMessage in Europe.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[visualseed]

I dunno...

With 90% of users in Europe using WhatsApp... but the iPhone only having around 30% market share in Europe... I'm kinda having a hard time seeing the "advantage" of Apple's iMessage in Europe.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The problem is many people assume that all messengers are drop-in replacements for each other when in reality they are all streamlined social networks with their own communities, unique technological infrastructure, and business models. The irony is that the DMA and DSA will decimate many of their business models more than forcing interoperability will weaken iMessage use on the iPhone.

 

[BvizioN]

Yep, I’m sure that pulling out of a relatively affluent market of almost half a billion potential customers is right at the top of Tim Cook’s to-do list. Just right after he closes down the much smaller US market. ?

Hardly half a billion, not sure how you came up with such a daft claim since EU population by itself is less than 450 millions. Android dominates EU market and iOS only holds 27% Same on PC market. EU is the most bureaucratic frunked UP organisation know to human kind. I am just so glad UK left them in the dust and don't have to deal with their ridiculous policies and requirements. So the idea of Apple not having anything whatsoever to do with such a backward organisation is not as crazy as it may sound.

 

[visualseed]

Hardly half a billion, not sure how you came up with such a daft claim since EU population by itself is less than 450 millions. Android dominates EU market and iOS only holds 27% Same on PC market. EU is the most bureaucratic frunked UP organisation know to human kind. I am just so glad UK left them in the dust and don't have to deal with their ridiculous policies and requirements. So the idea of Apple not having anything whatsoever to do with such a backward organisation is not as crazy as it may sound.

Technically, by the draft rules, a company could operate in up to 2 member countries (say France and Germany 145M people combined) and not be subject to the DMA regulations. They only kick in when you have a nexus in 3 EU member countries.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Yeah 23 years later.


Missed the point.

better late than never

Right... You realize that was only done in the EU, right?

Accelerating its downfall.

Hardly half a billion, not sure how you came up with such a daft claim since EU population by itself is less than 450 millions. Android dominates EU market and iOS only holds 27% Same on PC market. EU is the most bureaucratic frunked UP organisation know to human kind. I am just so glad UK left them in the dust and don't have to deal with their ridiculous policies and requirements. So the idea of Apple not having anything whatsoever to do with such a backward organisation is not as crazy as it may sound.

ha, please look at your own UK governments policies that are being worked on this very second

UK Planning Huge Fines for Companies Like Apple That Do Not Meet New Rules

Following reports that the UK government had dropped plans to heavily regulate Apple and other big tech companies using a new Digital Markets Unit...

www.macrumors.com

And we are all happy UK left considering the political disagreements we had. Shame it just took forever to finally leave as the people demanded