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iPad Accessory Integration Becomes the EU's Next Regulatory Feud With Apple
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This is what the EU is doing to apple with the dma. The are forcing apples services open. Services and features which apple has spent time and money on.
No I don’t get it. You are always welcome to buy a product which fits your needs. I only hope that you are not the victim of apples new openness courtesy the dma.
The reason apple is successful is they produce a product enough people want to buy.
Yes if I couldn’t get my goods elsewhere. I could go to Amazon to get them delivered, for example.
To my knowledge there has been no call to make the Pope open up to other religions!
The Logitech crayon was a special collaboration between apple and Logitech to produce a "cheap" version for the education market. There are no public APIs for smart Pena in iPadOS. All the other smart pens just simulate a finger.
It's funny how all you lot came back cheering when emulators were finally "allowed" on iPadOS. Your claim has been countlessly debunked, but no point arguing against the internet I guess...
The existence of the DMA is all the proof you need that Apple isn’t a monopoly. That’s why the EU had to go out of their way to craft new legislation with the express intent of “fixing” US tech companies, and which conveniently omit companies that happen to fall into the same categories (such as game consoles with their closed ecosystems and 30% cut).
At the end of the day, it’s not going to change much, and while I am no fan of it myself, I believe in Apple’s ability to navigate the DMA with minimal impact to itself.
That’s really the only consolation here. That the impact to Apple should be quite minimal overall.
Consider it this way: Apple fans, for their own reasons don't like the idea of a foreign power interfering in the affairs of an american company. Whilst I would argue the toss on the term 'american' due to its international presence it is still based in California and its postal address also. As predominantly American users I assume they probably don't like the idea of foreign powers intefering with US politics either. Their ancestors didn't fight a war with the British Empire for nothing, they did it because of the taxes levied on them without any say in parliament.The existence of the DMA is all the proof you need that Apple isn’t a monopoly. That’s why the EU had to go out of their way to craft new legislation with the express intent of “fixing” US tech companies, and which conveniently omit companies that happen to fall into the same categories (such as game consoles with their closed ecosystems and 30% cut).
At the end of the day, it’s not going to change much, and while I am no fan of it myself, I believe in Apple’s ability to navigate the DMA with minimal impact to itself.
That’s really the only consolation here. That the impact to Apple should be quite minimal overall.
The European Union also does not like the idea of foreign powers having undemocratic power over its citizens. In this case though Apple is the foreign power, with financials larger than most countries, a userbase larger than their populations, their own state religion and bottomless pockets to lobby, acquire and stifle whoever they want. Apple do not build a product as much as a platform. If European businesses want to sell their own apps they are still at the whims of Apple, the unaccountable corporate foreign power agreeing or denying their place on the App Store. If a company tried to launch a rival device from scratch with a new OS that genuinely offered something interesting, Apple could acquire them and shut them down, Sherlock the best features or advertise them out of the market without accountability. It is, to put it in classical terms taxation without representation.
If you were the EU, what would you do?
(Addendum: The games console analogy largely falls flat. Even Sony and Nintendo's sales figures are pretty small compared to the size of the wider games industry, you can still buy physical copies of software from a variety of retailers outside the internet and most games are available across different platforms. First party exclusives are fine: nobody is asking Apple to port Pages to Android)
Let's use this scenario as an example (I confess first that it's late at night here, I am for some reason having a hard time trying to word my thoughts cogently, so forgive me if some points don't seem coherent).
Say I am a developer who just released a mobile game. It's apparently okay for Nintendo to collect 30% of revenue of app sales on their Switch Platform, for Sony to collect 30% of revenue from their PS5, for Microsoft to do the same with their Xbox console, for Valve to also do the same via their Steam platform, and somehow, Apple is being singled out as the greedy villain for collecting 30% from developers while everyone else gets a free pass?
Not to mention that even if a game were to be available as a physical disc or cartridge (not every game is, and there are also consoles that don't have a disc drive, meaning you can only access games via their online store), you still need the parent company like Nintendo to green light your game, and they still get a cut regardless.
Yet I do not see anyone clamouring for the ability to access third party app stores on their switch or PS5 game console. A game developer is evidently supposed to be grateful for the opportunity to sell a game for $60 on the switch, and for Nintendo to collect 30% of that, but lord forbid that Apple collect even 1%?
I would start by being honest. I am not American, and I buy Apple products not because it's an American company but because they really do make products that I like to use.
First off, I would admit that computing platforms are considered essential infrastructure, and it is in society's interests to ensure that innovation can continue to exist in that space.
Second, I would acknowledge that this is definitely a violation of Apple's property rights. There should be some sort of FRAND-type licensing arrangement where Apple still gets compensated for the use of their IP, and I would frame this tradeoff as being measured as a society, I would argue that Apple should still invest in their ecosystem because they are already making so much money and it's good for the platform and for society in general.
The EU will never admit to this because it opens a can of worms, but it doesn't mean this isn't happening, or that it's right just because it's being done to Apple. Just as theft is wrong, even when it happens to my greatest enemy.
The EU is obviously free to do whatever they want to do. I have never denied that. Just be honest about the fact that this is almost certainly a violation of Apple's property rights, even if it is being done for the "right" reasons. This is why I want to see Apple push back against the DMA, because then it drives us towards greater clarity about what is being asked. Even if Apple gets fined big big, I want to see them make the EU say the ugly part out loud for all to hear.
And honestly, if Apple does decide to retaliate by say, pulling out of the EU one day, well, that's their right as an independent company too. Actions have consequences, and this applies equally to all parties.
And maybe that's why I would suck as a politician, because I can't make politically-correct statements to save my life. 😛
I completely see your point about Games Consoles. I was thinking more about it from the POV of a consumer. I guess it comes down to numbers. I'm likely to have bigger sales of my game on iOS via market penetration alone.
As for politics: We are working on an assumption Apple works in some way for the common good. They certainly present themselves this way but everything they do still influences their bottom line. Localised AI might be good for the environment and user privacy but it also cuts down on server running costs.
I guess we're too entrenched in the current way of working to unpick it all. It would be great if iOS was as open as the Mac but it was never designed to be anything other than Apple as the gatekeeper. Unpicking that and user trust in the platform should be a conversation but it should be one Apple and the EU have directly.
As as been mentioned Apples market share is only 25%. The EU should really be aiming their ire at Google and calling for the seperation of Android and the Play Store from their parent company. Android is supposed to be open source so that anyone can just start their own company and use it as the OS yet access to the Play Store requires signing up to Google Services as a result. This is a hideous form of lock-in designed to filter all user data to Google.
I picked an iPhone knowing fully well that it was closed in nature, in the face of numerous of countless Android alternatives. I have been an iPhone user since 2011. Don't you think that if the ability to sideload apps or change keyboards or run emulators was such a big deal, I would have switched by now?
Over 1 billion people have opted for iOS in spite of it being closed, or perhaps, precisely because its closed nature afforded better security (My country has been tackling a wave of scams whereby android users are tricked into downloading malware onto their phones via shady ads / links. These malware apps then proceed to take control of the users' phones and drain their bank accounts). You know what doesn't get reported in the news? iPhone users falling prey to this specific instance of scam, because it's technically impossible for iOS users to download apps from outside the App Store.
In terms of absolute numbers, yes, Android outnumbers us many times to one. But not once has the iPhone ever been close to failing. We made Apple one of the richest companies in the world. Developers continue to release apps for iOS first or exclusively. Piracy is rife on Android, in part because it's so easy to download cracked versions of existing apps. Yet somehow, we are always being painted as being prisoners of Apple's walled garden who need to be saved from ourselves evidently.
Whatever the EU wants to do to Apple, I suggest they do it quickly. With the upcoming change in US administration, I suspect many antitrust lawsuits accusing Apple of being a monopoly simply won't stick. We may even see Apple laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to apply pressure to water down or maybe even break apart the DMA.
Which also means, ironically enough, that Tim Cook remains the best person to head Apple for the next 4 years at least, if only because he looks like the only person who can not only tolerate Trump, but also keep Apple out of his crosshairs.
I really, really hate to quote such a terrible movie but do you remember in Dawn of Justice when Batman's motivation for fighting Superman was that there needed to be safeguards against his power in case he ever went rogue?
I'm not for one moment disagreeing with the way Apple have conducted themselves over the last 20 years. I use Apple products every day and I'd be a hypocrite to claim otherwise.
But what if Apple decided tomorrow to triple the cost of all apps and subscriptions because the iPhone wasn't pulling its weight. What if it decided to then help itself to 50% of that increased revenue? What if it decided to use iCloud data, your iCloud data to sell advertising space or that all web traffic had to be rinsed through Apple's servers first?
These are all silly, extreme ideas but they serve to illustrate the point that Apple holds all the cards. I could move to another platform but mine and your data in many cases is imprisoned in iCloud. Sure you can mass-copy Photographs to Google's servers in the background but what about OneDrive or Dropbox? MP3's lost their DRM years ago due to Apple's pressure but Books cannot be extracted and used on a Kindle or other tablet. Hundreds of Notes need to be hand-copied to another app and .Pages files are hardly known for their wide compatibility. And yes, we can label Google with the exact same accusations.
But what if you didn't have to give up your nice shiny iPhone because other options existed?
Regulations exist to ensure that companies, even ones that come across as on the side of the consumer like Apple act in the interests of a public who have no say in how they are ran. Maybe the EU have gone a bit too far on certain things (The Pencil? Really?!) but I'd argue that the opening up of digital platforms does not go far enough.
Apple doing that would be evidence of them abusing their dominant position and they should be rightly prosecuted. The issue here is that the EU have had to deliberately create new laws to make Apple’s business suddenly illegal, despite it having not been illegal for all the years prior. This is the issue people have with the DMA.
You can't have it both ways. Either you harness the power of Superman, both for better and for worse, or you don't (also for better and for worse).
You can have Superman around, because you know you need him to ward off a greater evil like Darkseid (which also means tolerating the risk of Superman going rogue, and he certainly has in the animated series). Or you get rid of Superman, thus removing one risk, but also opening the door for another greater power like Lex Luthor, Doomsday or Brainiac to step in.
Very often, you notice with these kind of shows that the person making the case to rein in a superpower does so because he wants to take over as the next power. Are you really safeguarding against one potential danger (ie: Superman) or merely replacing one potential tyrant for another far worse?
I don't disagree with you. But I also go back to my original adage - that there is also good in bad, just as there is bad in good. Very often, people look only at the surface-level ramifications, and don't think long and hard enough about the possible tradeoffs (some of which become apparent only in the long run).
These sort of things are rarely ever good or bad in an absolute sense. Rather, it all comes down to tradeoffs and unintended consequences, and we don't have enough of an honest conversation about this.
For example, Google being found guilty of being a monopoly may mean that they no longer have a reason to keep funding Mozilla (and said company has already started to retrench employees). This could impact the long term financial viability of the Firefox browser, meaning that in the long run, we may be back to just Chrome and Safari (the direct opposite of what the lawsuit was intended to achieve).
The DMA is an attack on Apple's integration. The very legislation that brings you third party app stores and emulators and the ability to delete stock apps is also responsible for iPhone mirroring not being available in the EU (at least for now). Moving forward, we may also see other software features being withheld from the EU (and only the EU) because Apple doesn't think it's worth their while to engineer a solution that's DMA-compliant. You want more app stores, and it also means more apps that don't respect ATT and the inability to centrally manage all your purchases, updates and subscriptions.
Is Apple really such a big, bad monopolist that the EU feels compelled to personally intervene, or is it merely a symptom of the state of over-regulation in the EU that has strangled any hope of homegrown tech innovation on its own soil? Is it really Apple's fault that we don't have a third mobile competitor, or that developers simply don't want to support more than 2 mobile platforms?
At the end of the day, life is all about tradeoffs, and no one likes being told in life that they can't have it all, and yet that's what the EU seems to expect - that they get to have their cake and eat it too. The DMA is simply not good legislation. In time, perhaps more will come to view it that way as well (and based on the responses I am seeing in these threads, that's arguably already happening).
We are at an interesting crossroads with regards to IT infrastructure and platforms where for the first time in history nearly everything the world depends on is ran or maintained by private companies. The DMA is an early clumsy attempt to apply the rules of the physical world to those of the digital, to bring more parts of these private platforms under civilian scrutiny.
But how do we even apply state-level laws to global infrastructure? Do we spin-off the App portals and then give them similar powers to whoever controls what physical shopkeepers can do? Or do we need new laws for an ever-changing future?
Apple isn't a big-bad monopolist but it does fit into the definition of an international platform where software is the end product. The same applies to Google x10. It might be possible to spin-off the App Portals and set them up as an international nonprofit that operates in local juristictions as the gatekeeper to permits for digital distribution but this requires an international effort to do so.
There are all sorts of clumsy legislation that doesn't work very well when applied to software. You only have to look at the debate on videogame preservation to see that.
As I touched on in the previous post, we are entering a period of transition where we realise that the laws of the physical world do not work in the realm of the digital. The DMA is a clumsy start at something new.
The DMA is a direct attack on innovation and stays a company’s hand in profiting from its work. We will see what the long term impact is as time moves forward.
We shall see indeed.
After Trump win, EU leaders tackle 'urgent' reform agenda
BUDAPEST: Reforming Europe's economy is all the more urgent following Donald Trump's United States election win, warned the author of a blockbuster report, Mario Draghi, ahead of talks on Friday (Nov 8) with European Union leaders in Budapest on tackling the challenge. Although Europe's public...
I can't help but wonder if the two are related somehow.
The antidote for a sluggish economy is even more government control or nationalization? Plus the DMA to push for more digital bucks being swirled around in the EU? Hmmm.We shall see indeed.
After Trump win, EU leaders tackle 'urgent' reform agenda
BUDAPEST: Reforming Europe's economy is all the more urgent following Donald Trump's United States election win, warned the author of a blockbuster report, Mario Draghi, ahead of talks on Friday (Nov 8) with European Union leaders in Budapest on tackling the challenge. Although Europe's public...www.channelnewsasia.com
I can't help but wonder if the two are related somehow.
There are many high-GDP countries which are not part of the EU such as the UK, Russia, Turkey, Switzerland, Norway, and Ukraine.
EU is not equal to Europe, so that 25% is non-sense.
And I believe Apple puts the Middle East, Africa, and India also under "Europe" in their reporting.
So really stop spreading that non-sense that EU is important.
You all should be happy that Apple is taking such a huge hit to their earnings, no?
My GOOJODOQ GD13 pencil happily provides palm / finger rejection on my iPad Air: When I put and/or move a finger on my display in addition to the Pencil, only the Pencil's input is registered. This clearly shows that it does more than just simulate a finger.
It also happily reports its battery status as a pencil in Apple's battery status widget.
And it cost a fraction of Apple's Pencil (or the Logitech crayon, for that matter) and has better compatibility across different iPad models than Apple's own models.
Interoperability, choice and competition is good. 👍
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