I'd welcome a return to transit tokens. They were simple and easy to use, and could be easily shared with guests visiting town. And they couldn't be used to track anybody.

How does "pay for transit with NFC" work without the metro having access to the NFC hardware?

In Chicago you can put your metro card in your apple wallet and it’ll automatically use it on the public transit system even if you have a different default set. Not sure if apple is charging them fees or what, but it works pretty well for me.

Having worked on such systems, yes, Apple charges fees for that. Hefty ones.

IIRC, those fees are charged to the merchant in order to process transactions. Traditional credit cards are similar in theory. For example, American Express has long had the reputation that in addition to the cards people know (Green, Gold, Platinum, etc.) technically being "charge cards" that need to be paid in full each cycle, merchants pay a higher fee to accept them.

^ Offset of course by the fact that most customers have pretty good credit to begin with and probably spend more than your average Visa or Mastercard.

In addition, I would also expect them to be paying for integration into someone's payment infrastructure to provide other services - PayPal, Stripe, Square, and the like.

I think the complaint was about being able to use NFC hardware outside of Apple Pay.

See also, Aussie banks who wanted the same thing.

How anyone would ever think this is a good idea, with third parties having unmediated access to hardware has not thought this through.

The whole point of an NFC chip is to allow this sort of thing. I don't see how anyone can think it's a good idea to make Apple entitled to set arbitrary payment processing fees for all NFC payments on an Apple device.

It’s their platform. If you don’t like it, there’s the door.

I’m not opposed to regulations, but the EU should be careful not to be too permissive or specific, keeping in mind the limitations of doing either one.

See also: the EU directive about mandating USB-C ports. They claim the standard will be revised in response to market conditions on the ground, which is nice to hear, but governments are slow - often by design - and they will need to prove it before they can be trusted not to screw up.

My phone is nobody’s platform. It’s my phone. I paid for it. I demand the right to use someone else’s software on my device if that suits me better.

It’s not like apple subsidises the devices with income from the App Store fees. They’re just double dipping, and I’m glad the EU is slapping that down.

Again, it's not a huge leap to imagine someone (in this case, banks or transit authorities) using that unfiltered access to do something gross, like giving your data to an entity you've never heard of.

Using the official API prevents most of this misbehavior, which is why it doesn't bother me if Apple are jerks about enforcing compliance.

If you, or an app you use, feel like access is necessary, make your case to them. Repeatedly if neccessary. Software is nothing if not malleable and most of these areas are slowly opening up, as the company seems to have read the room on a few things and would like to get ahead before the law requires they do so.

On the other hand, especially with hardware that could conceivably track your location, I'm surprised that users - the knowledgable ones anyway at least - aren't up in arms about what access to raw data (e.g, not mediated by an API) by someone other than the platform vendor might mean for them.

I don't think it's necessary to pull an EFF move and demand everything be private, but this is one area that I suspect would meet the standard where people want the bar to be much higher about who gets access to data and what they are allowed to use it for.

I’m sympathetic to the privacy argument. But I’m suspicious.

Particularly after reading the memos which came out in the Epic lawsuit, I can’t tell how much all of this really is about privacy. Or how much privacy is just cover to take a cut of the profits of Netflix, Amazon and visa by controlling access to our phones.

The privacy argument probably has some truth, but it seems suspiciously self serving for Apple.

I think there’s plenty of ways apple could preserve my privacy without taking such extreme control of my device. A simple answer would be to give banks direct access to the NFC chips on the condition of user privacy. And cut them off if they violate that policy rule.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that apple’s chosen solution just happens to be the one which maximises their profit.

The testimony I recall from the Epic trial was pretty clear - Cook & Co. see this as a point of differentiation that helps them sell hardware.

After all, Google can't really do the differential privacy stuff to the extent Apple does due to their reliance on ad revenue - which is only so targeted because they collect it in the first place, giving their Ads customers (businesses) more opportunities to sell to.

Netflix wants to build viewer profiles of its users, so gathering that data in a way that they can ID helps; Amazon will do similar things to suggest purchases based on your history.

As a card provider for the general public, Visa kind of has to play ball and even then, their customers are merchants and financial institutions that issue cards.

Given enough size - think FAANG, or really any financial institution - Apple probably can't reject them for shady behavior, but can always work to build guardrails to prevent the worst offenders from going off.

> Again, it's not a huge leap to imagine someone (in this case, banks or transit authorities) using that unfiltered access to do something gross, like giving your data to an entity you've never heard of.

So you would also approve government entity to control what you do in your house, just to make sure you don't do something gross? If not, why you want some private company to control a phone you bought and own?

So the OS updates each year are free labour? The constant research as well? Okay…

How about the fact that you knew about the restrictions before you bought the product?

I feel you are in the wrong here. You knew the contract conditions and still signed it but because you don’t like it you want to change it. Well I like it so why is your view stronger than mine? Keep in mind you do have the option of Android and with this law you are taking away my right to choose a completely closed garden. Something I actually enjoy - I’m not just playing devil’s advocate here

As I see it, the $1000+ I paid for my phone more than covers the cost of Apple’s R&D, and a few years of software updates. Apple’s balance sheet bears this out too.

> You knew the contract conditions and still signed it

I didn’t sign a contract. I bought something with my money. I don’t have an ongoing business relationship with apple. But apple still thinks they’re in the right to control what I do on my own hardware.

And wow do they make a lot of money inserting themselves into my financial transactions. All in the name of privacy I hear. Suuuureee.

Apple is cleverly using the iPhone as a moat to stop banks and other companies from competing with them on software for their devices. They know nobody else has the expertise and deep enough pockets to compete on hardware - and they’re using that to milk as much money through software as they can get away with. It’s just the same as what Microsoft did bundling IE with windows - except way worse because apple doesn’t even let you install anything else.

It’s a terrible deal for consumers and the EU is right to slap them down for it.

> It’s their platform. If you don’t like it, there’s the door.

It's my phone, I should be able to do everything with it, if they don't like it they don't need to sell it in EU.

ummm?? government is slow then what is Apple? with its bs expensive cable that is like a decade behind with its USB2 speed? its 2022 every other phone has fast transfer rate