Kinda like how US force TikTok to be sold to a US company? Govt been doing this for decades. Imagine of EU force Apple to be sold to someone from EU?
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Impending EU Regulation to Force Apple to Allow Third-Party App Stores and Open Up iMessage
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“They can easily get out”? How exactly? Putting aside the huge amount of money they’d lose on product sales, they have a major campus in Ireland, they’re creating a Core OS team in the Czech Republic and they’re investing more than a billion euros in a campus in Germany (and those are just a few).
The market share may be bigger in the US (largely due to the fact that the products are a lot more expensive in Europe), but make no mistake, Apple has very deep ties to Europe and the EU.
So you agree there are viable alternatives to iMessage. Why, then, should Apple have to open it up to other apps? Not everything in the world has to be interoperable.
The alternative is having to install half a dozen messaging apps to be able to participate in all the group chats you want to participate in, or are forced to by school/work/business relations etc. There are many business services provided via messengers; for example, where I live, you can order a taxi via Whatsapp, but not via Telegram, iMessage, Signal, Threema or whatever, because the taxi business (understandably) doesn‘t want to maintain a multitude of different channels. And Whatsapp wins because it’s the most prominent messaging app here. This is how lock-in happens, because it’s virtually impossible for other messaging services to break up this de-facto Whatsapp monopoly. That’s the reason why the EU wants the major messaging services to be interoperable. It shouldn’t matter which app to use for your child to participate in the messaging group of it’s school class (currently often forced to be Whatsapp here), or for you to call a taxi, or contact product support, or whatever. It’s like you don’t have to subscribe to all phone carriers to be able to call whoever you like, because regulation forces them to be interoperable.
Exactly this ^^
It would be intensely miserable if we had phone connectivity lock in and no interoperability and required certain Apps -- or worse -- certain different devices entirely just to call each other.
I'm not telling you to force your family to do anything. I'm merely pointing out that there are already universal options to iMessage so why should Apple be forced to allow interoperability? And if keeping up with group messages is so critical, maybe talk to your family about how you're getting dropped from group messages when they use iMessage and suggest an alternative?
As for being locked into iOS, having used it for over 15 years, I can say with 100% certainty that I am free to change platforms whenever I want. Would it be hard? Absolutely, but it isn't impossible and I wouldn't lose access to a single critical resource by doing so. You're portraying this like Apple is holding a gun to iPhone users' heads preventing us from making decisions for ourselves and the EU has come to our rescue.
But you have the ability to install a half dozen messaging apps, right? Just because it's inconvenient for you to use that many doesn't mean it isn't possible. Maybe the EU should crack down on your local taxi service and make them support multiple messaging apps.
As for the phone carrier analogy, that's completely different because (at least in the US, I can't speak for other countries), phone service is a regulated utility. Messaging apps are not, nor should they be.
There are quite a few big tech companies in the EU…
- Klarna
- Revolut
- N26
- Glovo
- Wolt
- Trivago
- King
Are these as big as Apple, Amazon or Google? Obviously not, but I’d argue that’s not really a fair comparison. Each of those three companies has a huge presence in Europe and the EU, too, though.
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Not according to Americans -- who can't seem to see past the barrel of their own gun and cowboy boots.
??
(I'm American - this is self deprecation - please everyone relax)
I get the feeling that a lot of people, particularly in North America, have an idea of Europe and the EU as just a few small, quaint countries and don’t really appreciate how rich it is and how much global power it has. I say this as an American that’s lived in Europe for almost ten years. ??♂️
People keep saying this and they keep ignoring the answer.
Once 3rd-party stores become a thing, you'll end up with some apps that will only be available from 3rd-party stores. And some 3rd-party stores will work very hard to make this happen, to bring attention to themselves and get people to add their store. Eventually, apps that everybody wants to use, or, say, some that you have to use for business, will only be only available from some 3rd-party store. And folks who would much prefer to stay with just Apple's App Store will be pushed into using one or more 3rd party stores.
Yet people keep repeating this tired talking point of, "if you don't want to use the 3rd party stores you can just not - it does nothing to harm you". Please stop it with this crap. And stop the patronizing crap about "grandfather Apple telling you what to think". Stop trying to portray anyone with a different opinion than you as being a mindless child.
While I fully get the idea and in some ways support it, I guess I just can’t picture the implementation of sending a message in WhatsApp to someone on iMessage. I generally prefer iMessage, but as I’m in Europe, I really only use it with two friends in the US. Almost everyone else is on WhatsApp except for a few on FB Messenger and a few others on Instagram. Theoretically, I’d love to just use iMessage myself, but still be able to communicate with everyone on their preferred apps.
I think that bringing iMessage to Android would be the easier, quicker solution, though I know probably not as impactful as the interoperability.
Android operates this exact business model right now. In 2022. And there are approximately zero exclusive apps on competing app stores to the Play Store which is used by 95% of all users without issue.
Any argument that iOS would somehow be in a different situation is laughably absurd.
I have substantial concerns about the messaging provisions... From the article:
Depends a bunch on the politician's notion of what "immediately" means. This makes it sound like, "well, starting right now, you're going to have to allow other services to use your messaging API". Which assumes that the various services already have existing APIs that are suitable for outside use. I expect for many of them this is not the case. It will take time to implement something. It'll take more time to implement something that really works well.
And what really should be done would be for the various companies to get together (ideally under the auspices of one of the existing standards bodies that do such work, like the ISO) to work out a uniform message exchange standard that can be implemented across the various platforms, that supports a workable subset of the capabilities that are present in all or most of the platforms (with probably a lot of arguments along the way about what vendor-specific features should be included/excluded, what fields should be included, what lengths each field should support, how attachments are handled, what kinds of attachments are permitted, etc. - I leave out what character set/encoding should be used because the answer must be UTF-8).
This would have substantial long-term benefits in that if there were a problem with communications between any two of the companies, there would be a standard to consult to see which bit of software was working incorrectly. As well, it would massively reduce the amount of work for any new player entering the arena (which, presumably, is exactly what the backers of the DMA/DSA want) - instead of getting "here's Apple's API documentation, here's Google's API documentation, here's Facebook's API documentation, etc." (which each being a dozens or hundreds of pages long), the new entrant would get "here's the messaging exchange standard document", and they just need to build their end of it once.
Unfortunately, I expect the backers of the DMA/DSA will interpret anything more than a couple weeks for implementing their "immediately" requirement as being the various companies dragging their feet, and will push for "something" to be thrown into service right away.
VW was violating diesel emissions laws in the US and even in the EU, with clear intention. American autos hardly run on diesel at all, only trucks really. Apple's not violating anything here, at least not as clear cut as PPM.
Email = open messaging solution compatible between different platforms which everyone posting on here for or against a similar system for IM uses.
I was having a hard time envisioning how this could work. Using email as an example makes it so obvious. ??♂️
The article uses “immediately” to mean “when the regulation comes into force”, in the sense that not all features (like group chat and video support) will be required from day 1. But as usual, there will of course be a delay of 1-2 years between publication of the regulation and it’s coming into force, to give the affected parties time for the transition.
I mean, think a bit how silly your suspected interpretation is. There are actually reasonably smart people behind those regulations, with a lot of subject matter expert input. They mostly know what they are doing. However it’s not their job to explain it to you, you’ll have to do some legwork yourself if you’re actually interested in the logic and thinking behind those proposed regulations.
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Yes, and email took a very long time, and a lot of iterations of standards work, to get to where it works as well as it does today. I lived through, and remember, the days of dozens of different addressing formats for email users on different services and server1!server2!server3!host4!user addressing for routing through various UUCP hosts to get a message somewhere. We didn't end up with the current near-universal user@host.domain addressing (and all the plumbing that makes it work) magically, or by accident, but rather by hard work and lots of debate by developers and standards working groups over decades.
I fear that the non-technical politicians behind this current legislation will want a quick solution and won't understand the technical problems to be solved - not just top-level issues, but hundreds of low-level details to be hashed out. They'll just be, "we want it by the end of next week - if you can't give it to us by then, then you're clearly just dragging your feet, and we should start imposing some fines".
Again, I respectfully disagree. If you look at p52 of the main proposal, then chapter 3, article 6, pp1(c) and (f), it seems pretty clear that the gatekeepers must allow 3rd parties to install 3rd party software and interoperate with the operating systems, hardware and software features used by the gatekeeper.
Paragraph 52 could be seen to extend to proprietary hardware capabilities. If so, this might be seen to split the M1 chips open like a frog in middle school biology class. Hopefully this would be superseded by patent law or at least require licensing.
If you have specific references otherwise, that would be great and much appreciated.
I think the EU is going the wrong way about it. Trying to get existing services to be cross compatible will be a nightmare.
Instead they should get some outside party like the IEEE to come up with an open IM standard with E2EE and then legislate that all messaging apps should use that protocol.
RCS actually checks all these boxes but it's E2EE is an extension built by Google rather than the original developers.
I can understand why people might object to sideloading (normally based on Apple's propaganda) but we already have SMS and Email as open messaging standards.
An IM standard that lets people create groups but remains compatible with a variety of apps is in everyone's interest.
It forces me to accept the data processing agreements of all those services, and often to share more of my contact’s details with them than I’d like, which presumably won’t be the case for the messaging interoperability.
Well, that’s begging the question, why should phone service be a regulated utility but internet messaging not? It’s effectively the purpose of this regulation to make it one, because IM has become as ubiquitous as, if not even more so than, phone calls.
I use Revolut myself, heard of N26, everyone knows Trivago. Never heard the rest, but I know my awareness doesn't matter.
As you pointed out those are nıt comparable to Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Facebook etc. My point is not about their presence, but somehow those giants exclusively created in USA in the last few decade.
Potentially, but the legislation might be the very big stick that will get these discussions going and trigger the detailed work necessary to make it happen.
We already had messenger services that were interoperable. They weren't all encrypted and far from ideal, but they existed. Rather than expanding on them, we seem to have gone in the complete opposite direction.
I think we can disagree on whether or not government intervention in this space is a good idea or whether the ends are justified, but I think it is likely that all the work you mention will not happen in the current market unless companies are being forced to play nice with each other.
Those companies all rose out of the PARC culture cultivated in SF post-war.
The European counterparts tended to be more hobbyist than corporate. In the 1980's we had BBC computers in our schools in the UK (yep, the Doctor Who BBC!) and machines like the ZX Spectrum or Amstrad.
In the 21st Century it is the Raspberry Pi, another hobbyist success story that is the name on everybody's lips.
Oh, and ARM.