I don't see how the analogy is "absurd", nor did you make an effort prove it. Maybe we're really trying to "prevent Big Knife from using their position of power to sell more knives, instead of helping law enforcement"!
I know nobody is asking me to do anything; even if i don't do anything, my device suddenly gets one more attack surface that I never asked or voted for. That's what I'm concerned about.
I really have one, but I'll let you decide whether its ridiculous or not. Look into Canada's Online News Act. It has all the sweet intentions just like the DMA, just in the news industry: making sure Canadian news publishers are fairly compensated, promoting voluntary agreements between online platforms and news publishers, etc. They tried to do this by mandating that online platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, or even Google Search, to pay Canadian news publishers every time their article is displayed on the platform. Estimated extra revenue generated by this Act for Canadian agencies was in hundreds of millions of dollars.
The EU lost their competitiveness in tech for a reason. So is the US's accrued superiority in the tech industry (and a number of other industries). And the regulatory environment is one big reason. If being popular and successful suddenly brings you extra burdens, many of them unjustified, that IS an envirnment where business success -- and, by extension, innovation -- is penalized. On top of that, if they only apply to foreign companies, that makes the law discriminatory as well.
So… it’s just a COINCIDENCE that their result of their regulation ONLY affects companies that have been successful enough to attain at least 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the Union and at least 10,000 yearly active business users established in the Union in the last three years? No, that’s not a coincidence, that’s what the legislation says.
It quite literally is about making products people want! 🙂 Do you believe it’s just random chance that money exchanged hands between Apple and customers in the EU such that Apple attained a level of 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the Union and at least 10,000 yearly active business users established in the Union in the last three years? Of course not. 😊 Those people saw something they wanted and bought it. Without those people WANTING those products, they wouldn’t have sold.
No, this is “the letter of the law”. 🙂 And, it’s just that bad that no one needs to misrepresent, exaggerate or fabricate anything about it.👍
Because I’m not in the EU, I’ve got features still unavailable in the EU. And, yes, those features are working very well! And future features will ALSO work well and come with no delay, because there’s not a requirement for those features to work identically with non-Apple products.
Nope, but RCS on the iPhone was a requirement from China, all 5G phones had to support it or they couldn’t be sold in the region. So, you know, zero to do with the DMA (especially as not even all carriers in the EU support RCS). 😉
The DMA LITERALLY creates a ceiling! If a company does not have 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the Union and at least 10,000 yearly active business users established in the Union in the last three years, they are free to implement whatever they want, including "Magic Pairing" (the instant popup connection for AirPods), with zero regulatory oversight. However, if that SAME company becomes more successful and eventually gets to a point where they DO have 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the Union and at least 10,000 yearly active business users established in the Union in the last three years, then that same feature, that the EU allowed because the company wasn’t successful enough in prior years, would then need to be changed. And the ONLY difference between one time and the next would be that they got more successful because more citizens liked their products enough to buy them.
Yup, helping the EU in their goal to reduce their reliance… ahhh… on US tech companies?🧐
The DMA is in place to provide a framework by which they can focus regulations only on companies that have been successful by selling greater than a specific number of products (that, of course, EU citizens liked enough spend their money to purchase). The regulation says “Go over that threshold, and you WILL be regulated”. That threat of punishment for success means it’s not smart for ANY company to sell products in the EU that are tightly integrated with their other products because, if EU citizens like it and those citizens buy enough of their product, then they will suddenly be under regulatory pressure for something that was fine when they weren’t as successful.
Pretty much. I just refreshed myself on that case a few months ago and the main point throughout the entire document is all the things Microsoft was forcing OEM’s to do. Anyone that’s actually reviewed the report will understand that there’s no parallels between the cases because, at this time, Apple doesn’t have OEM’s. They did, at one point, but, unlike Microsoft, they ended that after 2 years, 95 to 97. One can imagine how different things would have been if OEM’s had a say in going from OS9 to OSX!
The 45 million user threshold doesn't define "success," it defines a "Gatekeeper." There is a fundamental economic difference between a successful business and a structural bottleneck. The DMA acknowledges that once a platform reaches a massive scale, network effects lock consumers in, making it impossible for adjacent markets (like smartwatches or headphones) to compete on their own merits. Furthermore, no company in the history of capitalism has ever intentionally stopped growing at 30 million users to avoid regulation; that is a purely theoretical fallacy.
Of course people wanted the iPhone. Making a product people want is how you win the market. But once you win the market, antitrust laws and the DMA exist to stop you from using that dominance to rig other markets.
It is a textbook strawman because you keep claiming the law forces Apple to break or degrade its own products. Quote the specific letter of the law that says Apple must make their products worse. You can't, because it doesn't exist.
Apple strategically withholding features in the EU (like Apple Intelligence or iPhone Mirroring) is a corporate tantrum, not a technical requirement of the DMA. Under Article 6(7) of the DMA, Apple must provide "effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, hardware and software features accessed or controlled via its operating system iOS".
A few pages ago you were saying nobody forced Apple to do anything but now it is China. You are absolutely right that China's mandate also forced Apple's hand on RCS. But thank you for proving my exact point: A massive government regulation forced Apple to adopt an open interoperability standard that they fought against for years. And what happened? iMessage didn't break. The iPhone wasn't ruined. Apple successfully implemented the open standard alongside their proprietary one, and the sky didn't fall. The DMA is doing the exact same thing for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.
Again, you are confusing a structural market gatekeeper with a regular business. When a company under that threshold invents a cool feature like "Magic Pairing," they are innovating to gain market share. When a Gatekeeper with over 45 million captive users invents "Magic Pairing" but strictly forbids any third-party headphone maker from accessing the Bluetooth discovery protocols required to do the exact same thing, they are leveraging their monopoly to destroy competition.
When people bring up OEMs as the only way to violate antitrust laws, it proves they don't understand Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
You are focusing on the specific tactics of the 1998 case instead of the underlying legal principles.
The 45 million user threshold doesn't define "success," it defines a "Gatekeeper." There is a fundamental economic difference between a successful business and a structural bottleneck. The DMA acknowledges that once a platform reaches a massive scale, network effects lock consumers in, making it impossible for adjacent markets (like smartwatches or headphones) to compete on their own merits. Furthermore, no company in the history of capitalism has ever intentionally stopped growing at 30 million users to avoid regulation; that is a purely theoretical fallacy.
The DMA does not force Apple to stop making products that work well. It literally just requires them to allow third-party devices to also work well by providing access to the exact same APIs and hardware radios Apple uses for itself.
Of course people wanted the iPhone. Making a product people want is how you win the market. But once you win the market, antitrust laws and the DMA exist to stop you from using that dominance to rig other markets.
Microsoft made an OS that everyone wanted to buy in the 90s. The Department of Justice didn't penalize them for selling Windows; they penalized them for using Windows to illegally crush competing web browsers. Apple makes a great phone, but they are using their dominant smartphone OS to artificially cripple competing smartwatches and headphones by locking down the necessary Bluetooth and Wi-Fi protocols. People wanting iPhones doesn't give Apple a free pass to monopolize the wearable market through software lock-ins.
Apple used their position as a dominant platform holder to prevent other browser engines on iOS and forced literary every browser to just be a wrapper for safari.
It is a textbook strawman because you keep claiming the law forces Apple to break or degrade its own products. Quote the specific letter of the law that says Apple must make their products worse. You can't, because it doesn't exist.
The European Commission’s exact proposed measures state that interoperability solutions for third parties will have to be "equally effective" to those available to Apple and "must not require more cumbersome system settings or additional user friction". The law demands Apple raise the floor for competitors, not lower the ceiling for themselves.
Apple strategically withholding features in the EU (like Apple Intelligence or iPhone Mirroring) is a corporate tantrum, not a technical requirement of the DMA. Under Article 6(7) of the DMA, Apple must provide "effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, hardware and software features accessed or controlled via its operating system iOS".
If Apple chooses to delay a feature entirely rather than simply document the APIs so competitors can interoperate with it, they are the ones choosing to punish their EU customers to make a political point.
A few pages ago you were saying nobody forced Apple to do anything but now it is China. You are absolutely right that China's mandate also forced Apple's hand on RCS. But thank you for proving my exact point: A massive government regulation forced Apple to adopt an open interoperability standard that they fought against for years. And what happened? iMessage didn't break. The iPhone wasn't ruined. Apple successfully implemented the open standard alongside their proprietary one, and the sky didn't fall. The DMA is doing the exact same thing for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.
Again, you are confusing a structural market gatekeeper with a regular business. When a company under that threshold invents a cool feature like "Magic Pairing," they are innovating to gain market share. When a Gatekeeper with over 45 million captive users invents "Magic Pairing" but strictly forbids any third-party headphone maker from accessing the Bluetooth discovery protocols required to do the exact same thing, they are leveraging their monopoly to destroy competition.
The DMA explicitly requires that Apple allow third-party connected devices to make use of a pairing process that is "as user-friendly and seamless as the one for Apple's devices". The feature doesn't have to be removed or degraded; it just has to be shared. If Apple's only competitive advantage for AirPods is that they legally forbid Bose and Sony from using the iPhone's Bluetooth radio properly, then it's an anti-competitive advantage.
When people bring up OEMs as the only way to violate antitrust laws, it proves they don't understand Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
OEM licensing was just the specific mechanism Microsoft used to exert its monopoly power. Apple’s mechanism is vertical integration, controlling the hardware, the OS, and the App Store, and then locking down the APIs. The legal violation is the exact same: exclusionary conduct to maintain a monopoly and crush competition in adjacent markets.
In fact, the US Department of Justice and 16 state attorneys general literally sued Apple for antitrust violations in March 2024. During the DOJ's press conference, Attorney General Merrick Garland explicitly cited the 1998 U.S. v. Microsoft case as the direct legal precedent for their lawsuit against Apple. One of the core pillars of the DOJ's lawsuit? Apple illegally degrading the functionality of third-party smartwatches by denying them the same background execution and connection APIs that the Apple Watch gets.
You are focusing on the specific tactics of the 1998 case instead of the underlying legal principles.
Microsoft weaponized OEM contracts because that was the choke point for Windows distribution. Apple weaponizes App Store guidelines and private, undocumented iOS APIs because that is the choke point for iPhone distribution. Controlling the "whole widget" (making both the hardware and the software) does not grant a company immunity from antitrust laws.
If a company holds monopoly power which the DOJ argues Apple holds in the U.S. performance smartphone market, it is illegal to use that power to build a moat that destroys competition in other markets. Whether you do that by threatening an OEM (Microsoft) or by physically hard-coding your OS to refuse third-party Wi-Fi Direct/Aware connections while allowing them for your own accessories (Apple), the anti-competitive result is identical. The DOJ sees the parallel, even if you don't.
Neither of you know what you are talking about
Oh my, the US government is trying to punish a US company and prevent their success for being too successful.
Justice Department Sues Apple for Monopolizing Smartphone Markets
The Justice Department, joined by 16 other state and district attorneys general, filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Apple for monopolization or attempted monopolization of smartphone markets in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.www.justice.gov
