Which unelected bureaucrats? The European Parliament is elected? The European Council is elected. They pass the laws.
The European Commission isn't, but neither is any civil service in the world.
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Impending EU Regulation to Force Apple to Allow Third-Party App Stores and Open Up iMessage
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Which unelected bureaucrats? The European Parliament is elected? The European Council is elected. They pass the laws.
The European Commission isn't, but neither is any civil service in the world.
So you create something (iMessage) but then the government (EU) forces you to allow your competitors to take advantage of it without compensation. You did all the work and they reap all the benefits. How does this make sense? Who would want to develop and sell products under these terms?
Which would trigger immediate countermeasures on all American consumer goods. Then what, screw Apple over twice? That sounds like a winning proposition.
You bought the iPhone knowing iMessage is iPhone only!
WhatsApp has been around long before the iPhone was even made. So you knew where you stood on that.
All the other messaging Apps don’t have not been made by a hardware manufacturer.
You argument doesn’t hold water.
What bugs me the most about legislation line this, which is written to supposedly benefit the consumer, is that I am sure they never ASKED any iPhone users (the iPhone consumers only) whether they wanted this or not. I am sure they didn't
If forced to do these things, they should make them all optional in preferences, defaulting to off, and if turned on, the user gets a dialog box warning them that by doing so, they will no longer have AppleCare support, they will pay more for repairs and service, will lose their iCloud and other free connected services, and if their iPhone payments are monthly, they have to pay the remaining fees immediately. They are on their own.
If forced to do these things, they should make them all optional in preferences, defaulting to off, and if turned on, the user gets a dialog box warning them that by doing so, they will no longer have AppleCare support, they will pay more for repairs and service, will lose their iCloud and other free connected services, and if their iPhone payments are monthly, they have to pay the remaining fees immediately. They are on their own.
Why? Don't see everything in a negative kind of way. Ever heard of Html and the standardisation of Html? If you do, have you also heard of XMPP? So if all the messenger folks get together and either use oder use/extend XMPP or invent a new messaging protocol, we're almost there.
Also the Apple fans crying about 3rd party AppStores and 3rd Party IAP. What will happen is called competition. Competition is the reason for evolution - evolution is the reason why animals/humans, insects, mushrooms and ... exist today. It is the reason why birds have color. Evolution is the reason for photosynthesis.
But back to AppStores. If two or three AppStores exist, the best will win. It is simply not the case that developers will leave Apples AppStore. It is more likely that Apples AppStore will change: Cheaper, better user experience, added flexibility, less restrictive. It has to, since Apple wants the developers to stay.
Evolution is really not a bad thing, but Apple needs it badly. Competition is the key to evolution.
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I think the solution is to allow multiple app stores but make every one of them conform to a single security policy. I do think EU's political stance and possible pressure from the DoJ Antitrust Division and the FTC may force Apple and Google to merge iMessage and Google's Rich Communications Services (RCS) into a single messaging standard, whether Apple likes it or not.
exactly why is opening iMessage a good thing? to text between your desired app and iMessage? why can't the person your chatting with download and create an account for that app and be done? why does Apple need to sacrifice end to end encryption so that yahoo messenger works with iMessage? will Yahoo Messenger be required to work across all possible chat apps as well??
What gives you the idea that Apple would be compelled to "sacrifice" end-to-end encryption in iMessage?
That is not at all what this does!
iMessage can remain exactly as private and secure as it has always been, other messaging services can just request the opportunity for iMessage users to decide themselves to send messages to users of those other services, too, and receive messages from there, too.
If a user does not choose to do this (and blocks messages from users of other services) nothing changes at all, but that is now the decision of each user, not of the owner of the native service (Apple in this case)!
Actually, the EU regulation puts that decision into your own hands. What changes is that Apple can't force you any more to install that other service instead.
Not at all, as evidenced by GDPR already.
Legitimate security concerns remain relevant, so gateways will need to retain privacy and security and operate on the basis of expressed user consent where necessary.
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That would be the idea, if WhatsApp requests access, implements a working iMessage gateway and if you then choose to enable this for your own account.
why can't the person just download the message app that they want to speak on? explain this slowly please cause I don't get why if my friend uses WhatsApp, I cannot simply download WhatsApp and begin chatting. will WhatsApp be forced to accept messages from ALL possible chat apps now and in the future???
All the named kinds of services are relatively basic commodities nowadays, containing relatively limited amounts of innovation beyond relatively minor frills and perks.
What the EU addresses here is the anti-competitive abuse of the "stickiness" of such commodity services by using them as a lever to increase their overall market position at the expense of the competition.
Compete with actual innovation all you want, just don't try to leverage incompatibility and existing market position to block your competition.
if Apple "forces" you to install WhatsApp in order to receive WhatsApp chats, doesn't that mean WhatsApp "forced" you to install their app in order to use their chat? does WhatsApp accept messages from all other current and future chat apps? why aren't they being forced to open their app up to allow messages from competing chat apps?
The whole point of all this is to hand the actual users the power to make those choices!
The status quo is that large gatekeeper corporations force the user to stay limited to only their silo, abusing it as platform leverage. The new rules take many of those levers out of the hands of those gatekeepers and hand the decisions over to the users.